The moment was now! It’s 1904, and the curtain was about to go up on the premier theater production of J. M. Barrie’s latest play ‘Peter Pan.’
But Barrie and his friend and financier, Charles Frohman were worried. This play was to be introduced early in the century, in England, to an adult audience of moneyed, seasoned theater-goers; and Peter Pan was essentially a story about children; children who could fly! How to fill those seats!?
Barrie had an inspiration. He asked Frohman to save him twenty-five seats scattered about the audience, and would not say why. Frohman correctly assumed that to subtract twenty-five non-paying seatings would put the play in further financial jeopardy, over and above that imposed by the child-like subject matter. He felt all chairs must be filled with real customers for Peter Pan to have any hope of profit.
Just as the curtain was to rise, down the sidewalk came twenty-five children. The group drew abreast of the theater, and began to file in the front door and into the vacant seats. They were the orphans Barrie had arranged to be at the premier.
Barrie was concerned about the adult members of his audience. As was likely the case in America in those days, the tonier members of the English theater-set felt that decorum and taste were the be-all and end-all to a civilized society. They might watch the entire play with the following attitude: Quite a remarkable show! What! But the mere fact that one is enjoying oneself is no justification for letting that enjoyment show openly. Egad!
That was Barrie’s concern, and from it sprang a possible remedy. Receiving the youngsters with a stiff correctness, the theater-goers soon found themselves infected by the gaiety and laughter of the children as the play proceeded. Perhaps it came as a happy surprise to them that they too became transfixed by what was manifestly a work for children. Or not… [Some have said of Peter Pan that: there were deeper social allegories at work.]
And from that night, Barrie’s story took its permanent place in British and American lure.
We all know the story: The Darling family children and their St. Bernard, Nana, meet Peter Pan [the boy who would never grow old] and Tinkerbell. They travel to Neverland where they outwit pirates.
As I researched this work of dramatic art, I was, once again, amazed at how events of a writer’s past, find expression in the present.
Barrie was a Scot; he had six brothers. The mother’s favorite son, David, died, and so great was her grief she took to her bed. Young Barrie – at six years of age – determined to bring his mother some relief by dressing in his dead brother’s clothes, and learning to whistle his favorite songs. The mother, hearing the tune, and recognizing the clothes would say, “David is that you?” To which the young Barrie would answer, “No, Mom, It’s only me.”
Nevertheless, Barrie sensed it gave his mother surcease from her grieving to participate in this loving charade, that her dead son would be, in fact, a little boy who would never grow up, but remain her child forever.
The original name of Barrie’s play was ‘Peter Pan, Or The Boy who would Never Grow Up’…
When in junior high [or its British equivalent], Barrie’s and his comrades’ favorite pastime was playing pirates.
When married – in the days before this play, Barrie bought his wife a St. Bernard puppy. [Thus ‘Nana’ the St. Bernard in the play.]
So it is that disparate echoes from one’s past become a unified chorus for the present.
One unlikely consequence of the play’s success is that the name ‘Wendy’ [the oldest of the Darling children] – not often used in England – became one of the most popular names for new-born daughters thereafter.
It would appear from the enduring success of Peter Pan, and other works like it, that no matter how old we grow, there remains within us a small candle faithfully alight across the years which keeps alive our wish, if not to re-enter childhood, to at least peek into the past, and to remember…
A few afterthoughts: Charles Frohman, dear friend and financier to Barrie, died when the Lusitania was torpedoed. He had refused the last seat in the last lifeboat. An actress of the day, Rita Jolivet, a survivor of the Lusitania horror, was near Frohman. She reported his last words were a paraphrase from Peter Pan: Why fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure that life gives us.
By way of wrapping up, I offer you this brief fact, followed by one of those “coincidences” which so often leave me bewildered.
Aboard the Lusitania that afternoon was an enormously wealthy man, Alfred Vanderbilt, and his thirty-year-old valet, Ronald Denyer. Vanderbilt had promised a young mother – her baby in her arms- that he would find her a life jacket. He was unable to do so, so he gave her his own. Vanderbilt was unable to swim…
He and Denyer then tied numerous passengers, including babies, into floation devices. The waters rose ever higher. Denyer refused to leave his employer. Neither survived…
And now the coincidence for which I have no explanation: As I began to research this article on line, I got the persistent notion that I had read the names ‘Frohman’ and ‘Jolivet’ recently; quite recently. The mystery remained until I glanced at the table beside my reading chair. A book I was in the midst of reading: Dead Wake; The Last Crossing of the Lusitania…
Make of it what you will.
Lucky Garvin