Searching for the lost boys

No characters in J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan have undergone a wider variety of interpretations over the years than the feral children known as the lost boys.

John Hassall, 1907, Duke of York's Theatre lobby posters

Artists who drew the boys immediately after the debut of the play in 1904 showed them as normal Edwardian boys in ordinary clothes. But the longer and more fully-realized version of the story in Barrie's book, published in 1911, takes pains to describe how the boys' garb differs from Peter Pan's suit of skeleton leaves and cobwebs.

They are forbidden by Peter to look in the least like him, and they wear the skins of the bears slain by themselves, in which they are so round and furry that when they fall they roll. They have therefore become very sure-footed.

Even shooting at the Wendy Bird, Flora White's 1914 Tootles looks adorable, even cherubic. This rather describes Tootles, actually, although artists have long seemed fond of thinking of the lost boys in general as sweeter than perhaps Barrie did.

The 1953 Disney animated film took the idea of the bear skins further and dressed the boys in full animal costume. The suits seem to take the place of differentiated personalities for these characters. And I'm sorry, but they're the ugliest lost boys I've seen. Plus there must have been some mighty big rabbits and foxes in Never Neverland.

Later artists such as Trina Shart Hyman (1980)

and  Scott Gustafson (1991) were more faithful to the book's portrayal, with their lost boys looking roly-poly in their bear-skin coats.

The 2003 Universal/Columbia Pictures Peter Pan movie took more liberties with the boys' attire, but it makes sense that boys in a permanent game of make-believe would take creative advantage of whatever props they came across.

With the modern popularity of "dark" versions of children's stories came grimmer versions of the lost boys, portrayals which do not shy from the more murderous nature of these children. A good example is the group in ABC's Once Upon a Time. However, portrayals of the lost boys as teens, according to Barrie, are impossible. As he tells us, "...when they seem to be growing up, which is against the rules, Peter thins them out." (Dark interpretations of Peter Pan often miss the darkness that has been in the story from the beginning.)

Unwind and unfold

Research is so often a tumble down a rabbit hole, an exploration of an intricate network beneath what we take for granted today--so much of it forgotten, but so much of it easily explored if you stumble into the right warren. 

I was reminded again how much history underlies The Stowaway when I researched what Captain Hook and Vivian Drew would find during a trip to London in 1908. To my joy, I found an actual floor plan of the National Gallery from 1907 (both online and for sale from www.old-print.com--this is going to be a lovely, geeky little bit of art framed on my wall.)

From a 1907 Karl Baedecker handbook
for travelers to London.

View of Trafalgar Square from 1908

Old-print.com also had this page from architectural publication The Builder from 1897, which I thought would be an interesting comparison. Which it certainly was--when I took a close look at it, I realized it was from another museum altogether. So why is it labeled "National Gallery"?

Tate Britain, aerial  view

As it turns out, because it's a schematic of the building that is now the Tate Britain. Henry Tate offered his collection of art to England in 1889, and it was housed in a building called "The National Gallery for British Art" when it opened in 1897. (This will become clearer in a minute.) Redubbed "National Gallery, Millbank" in 1920, and officially renamed "Tate Britain" in 1932, the museum has has had seven building extensions since 1897, and now comprises far more than its original eight rooms.

The building we know as the National Gallery today opened in Trafalgar Square in 1834, on the former site of the King's Mews, a site chosen to be central to all of London. It was the third building to hold the art collection, and (aha!) what is now Tate Britain was in fact built to address complaints that it was too small. The current National Gallery has also been expanded several times: in 1869, when its famous dome was added, and in 1907, when barracks at the back of the building (originally the King's Mews) were cleared to create five new galleries (which I assume would have been finished by the time James and Vivian visited). Further expansions took place in 1975 and 1991.

The National Gallery in Trafalgar Square as of Sept. 2014

View of the National Gallery from
my own visit in October 2014

I can't help thinking a fantastic book could be written about the National Gallery, and/or the Tate museums. But I'm afraid I have this one to finish first.