No pic, sorry! Old book.
This volume, which I picked up in an estate sale somewhere, is an old one, published in 1913. It features an account of the author’s mother, Margaret Ogilvy (which was written in 1896), as well as the original version of Peter Pan. As far as the former goes, we meet his mum as a widowed Scot with a devious turn of mind and not a care in the world as to what anyone thinks of her. That was fun.
But on to the main event. This is an illustrated version (with plates by F. D. Bedford) and it surprised me how little Disney had to change for its animated version. Here is our introduction to Tinker Bell.
She is “exquisitely gowned in a skeleton leaf, cut low and square, through which her figure could be seen to the best advantage. She was slightly inclined to embonpoint.” That’s our girl!
And the pirates and Indians that populate Neverland? To a British child of this era, they would have been fantasy figures out of a child’s adventure book, in no way connected to real people.
I love the designation of the family dog, Nana, as the children’s caretaker as Mr. and Mrs. Darling head out for their social evening, the same sort of nonchalance that all well-to-do British parents seem to have towards children in the children’s literature of this period. Nana does seem pretty responsible. One could do worse.
And there is one of my all-time favorite lines: when describing where they will fly to, Peter points to the stars and says, “Second to the right, and straight on til morning”. What a glorious line!