an awfully big adventure

I went in search of Peter Pan. The statue of Peter Pan, that lives in Kensington Gardens, the large green space in London that used to be the private gardens of Kensington Palace, but are now freely accessible to all.

If your image of Peter is got solely from Walt Disney's 1953 animated film Peter Pan, then you'll picture a young boy dressed in Lincoln Green - tights and jerkin, with pixie boots and a cap with a jaunty feather. I mention Lincoln Green, specifically, because Peter's outfit calls to mind that other folk lore/fictional character, depicted in many a film, Robin Hood, who dressed in that particular shade of green. You'll see the resemblance between Peter's outfit and that of Errol Flynn's Robin, in the live action 1938 film, and also the same character, as played by a fox, in Disney's own animated Robin Hood from 1973. So my mental image of Peter Pan resembled nothing so much as a pint sized version of the outlaw from Sherwood Forest.

Poster image copyright Walt Disney  

   

The Peter Pan I found in the London park, however, looked very different. A mop haired lad in an Edwardian child's tunic, playing some kind of flute or the pan pipes, standing atop a tree stump, shared with fairies and some furry creatures. It's a bronze statue made by sculptor Sir George Frampton and placed in this spot in 1912. Perhaps it's worth remembering that the character of Peter Pan was actually created by author J.M. Barrie to appear in a 1904 stage play, and may well have been dressed, on stage, very much as he is depicted here in the statue.

Peter in the park, then, looks nothing like the Peter I thought I'd find. My expectations were dumbfounded, and I had to revisit what I thought I knew about the character. He looked more like an image I had of Christopher Robin from the Winnie the Pooh stories - a stereotypical Edwardian child then. And in this representation he has less to do with kidnapping children and fighting pirates, and is seemingly more at home in a fairytale woodland scene. But either way, I suppose it's the idea of this character, as the boy who never grew old, that embodies his appeal, for me at least. And his attitude to the prospect of dying, when faced with his own mortality, is one worth bearing in mind, "To die will be an awfully big adventure."

Photo is the author's own.