Fairies at home

Wherever children are, there are fairies, J. M. Barrie tells us in The Little White Bird. Kensington Gardens in London is filled with them, although they hide behind railings during the day and only come out to carouse at night "after Lock-out."

As for their houses, it is no use looking for them, because they are the exact opposite of our houses. You can see our houses by day but you can't see them by dark. Well, you can see their houses by dark, but you can't see them by day, for they are the colour of night, and I never heard of anyone yet who could see night in the daytime. This does not mean that they are black, for night has its colours just as day has, but ever so much brighter. Their blues and reds and greens are like ours with a light behind them.

Not all fairy houses are so elaborate. Many are constructed from leaves and twigs, stones and feathers. And some are made with help from humans.

Kruckeberg Botanic Garden in Shoreline, Washington, USA, invites children to make fairy houses in their Enchanted Garden area. I found these there last Saturday:

I also managed to get lost in the garden repeatedly, although it's not enormous, ending up over and over at the Enchanted Garden. Leading travelers astray is, of course, a popular game among fairies.

One would expect Tinker Bell to live in just such a house. And in the videos about Pixie Hollow, where Disney tells us Tink lived prior to meeting Peter Pan, the fairies do live in similar structures, decorated with items scavenged from humans, like spoons and shoes.

By the time Tinker Bell meets Peter, she aspires to a more upscale lifestyle:

[T]here was one recess in the wall, no larger than a bird-cage, which was the private apartment of Tinker Bell. It could be shut off from the rest of the house by a tiny curtain, which Tink, who was most fastidious [particular], always kept drawn when dressing or undressing. No woman, however large, could have had a more exquisite boudoir [dressing room] and bed-chamber combined. The couch, as she always called it, was a genuine Queen Mab, with club legs; and she varied the bedspreads according to what fruit- blossom was in season. Her mirror was a Puss-in-Boots, of which there are now only three, unchipped, known to fairy dealers; the washstand was Pie-crust and reversible, the chest of drawers an authentic Charming the Sixth, and the carpet and rugs the best (the early) period of Margery and Robin. There was a chandelier from Tiddlywinks for the look of the thing, but of course she lit the residence herself. Tink was very contemptuous of the rest of the house, as indeed was perhaps inevitable, and her chamber, though beautiful, looked rather conceited, having the appearance of a nose permanently turned up.

By Anne Graham Johnstone, 1988

In The Stowaway, when Vivian Drew sees this little room, she feels a pang of sympathy for the fairy whose life is so unlike the one she desires to live--a sentiment Vivian understands. Of course she would never say this within earshot of Tink, lest she find entire strands of hair yanked mercilessly from her head. Fairies do not care for pity from humankind.

Captain Hook and the Merry Monarch

King Charles II, born on May 29, 1630, was a fashion influence on Captain Jas. Hook.

Portrait by Sir Peter Lely, 1670

As J. M. Barrie wrote in Peter Pan and Wendy, "[i]n dress he somewhat aped the attire associated with the name of Charles II, having heard it said in some earlier period of his career that he bore a strange resemblance to the ill-fated Stuarts."

Hook also wore his hair in long black corkscrews curls resembling the king's wig. While "[H]is eyes were of the blue of the forget-me-not," wrote Barrie, there can perhaps be seen a shared melancholy in the faces of both.

Portrait by John Michael Wright, c. 1660-1665

Yet Charles II, unlike Hook, was far from melancholy, though he might well have been. His father, Charles I, was deposed from the throne by the decidedly un-jolly Oliver Cromwell and executed in 1649, and the son exiled. Upon the death of Cromwell, Charles II reclaimed the throne in 1660--the start of the Restoration--with a style of rule so at odds with that of Cromwell that his court was renowned for all manner of licentious behavior. But he wasn't neglectful of his subjects, as one might expect from his frivolous ways--when the Great Fire of 1666 destroyed three-quarters of the wooden buildings in the City of London over the course of four days, he fought the fire alongside the citizens. And he founded the Royal Society of scientists in 1660. On a lighter note, King Charles spaniels are named after his favorite dogs.

As I have never yet passed up a chance to share the Horrible Histories "King of Bling," with Mathew here it is once more. Enjoy!

There are any number of entertaining stories about Charles II, a few of which I have fun mentioning in The Stowaway: He reinstated the celebration of Christmas, and was the recipient of the first pineapple brought to England. One anecdote which I haven't found a place for (yet) is about Thomas Blood, who attempted to steal the crown jewels (and whose portrait, incidentally, is a crucial part of the plot of Muppets Most Wanted). The crown jewels had been melted down after Charles I's execution and later refashioned by Charles II, so this was a grave crime indeed. And yet Charles was so impressed with Captain Blood's audacity that he rewarded him rather than have him punished.

Portrait of Catherine of Braganza
by Otto Hoynck

Charles's wife, Catherine of Braganza, Infanta of Portugal, was controversial among the populace because of her devout Catholicism. Convent-raised, she had difficulty adjusting to life at court and was never able to bring a child of the union to term, but--unlike some kings--Charles refused to divorce her and insisted she be treated with respect. In time she did become more comfortable in her new home, embracing the fashion trends of wearing men's clothing and shorter skirts, scandalizing the Protestants by playing cards on Sunday, and popularizing the drinking of tea in England.

Charles II with actress Nell Gwyn, by Edward
Mathew Ward (1854), possibly wearing black to
recall the Great Fire of 1666

Charles II was surrounded by interesting women, in fact. He had a dozen acknowledged children with a plethora of mistresses, including two by actress Nell Gwyn. (Among his actions as monarch was legalizing the profession of acting for women.)

And he wrote poetry for one woman who resisted his advances, Frances Theresa Stuart, granddaughter of Walter Stuart, 1st Lord Blantyre and the face of Britannia, a Scot whose portrait whose portrait appeared not only upon medals commemorating a naval victory, but also on the English penny until the decimal system was put into use in 1971.

The Pleasures of Love

I pass all my hours in a shady old grove.
But I live not the day when I see not my love;
I survey every walk now my Phyllis is gone,
And sigh when I think we were there all alone,
Oh, then ‘tis I think there’s no Hell
Like loving too well.

But each shade and each conscious bower when I find
Where I once have been happy and she has been kind;
When I see the print left of her shape on the green,
And imagine the pleasure may yet come again;
Oh, then ‘tis I think that no joys are above
The pleasures of love.

While alone to myself I repeat all her charms,
She I love may be locked in another man’s arms,
She may laugh at my cares, and so false she may be,
To say all the kind things she before said to me!
Oh then ‘tis, oh then, that I think there’s no Hell
Like loving too well.

But when I consider the truth of her heart,
Such an innocent passion, so kind without art,
I fear I have wronged her, and hope she may be
So full of true love to be jealous of me.
Oh then ‘tis I think that no joys are above
The pleasures of love.

Of course, this being English history, all was not revelry during the reign of Charles II. Though he promoted religious tolerance, constant conflict between Protestants and Catholics led to his dissolving Parliament in 1681 and ruling alone. In 1677, Charles encouraged the marriage of his niece Mary (son of his Catholic brother, James) to the Protestant King William III of Orange, in hopes of increasing peace between the two religions, and also re-establishing his own Protestant credentials. Nevertheless, he officially converted to Catholicism upon his death bed.

William of Orange is reportedly an ancestor of my own, and his statue in Kensington Gardens, London, has been mentioned as another of J. M. Barrie's sources of inspiration for Captain Hook. (In other words, I find yet another connection to Peter Pan and the Captain in my own life.)

A baby named Peter

Despite what contemporary retellings may say, Peter Pan was never a street urchin or a fairy or a vampire, or even an orphan.

Rather, as J. M. Barrie tells us in The Little White Bird, or Adventures in Kensington Gardens, 

His age is one week, and though he was born so long ago he has never had a birthday, nor is there the slightest chance of his ever having one. The reason is that he escaped from being a human when he was seven days' old; he escaped by the window and flew back to the Kensington Gardens.

If you think he was the only baby who ever wanted to escape, it shows how completely you have forgotten your own young days.

Well, Peter Pan got out by the window, which had no bars. Standing on the ledge he could see trees far away, which were doubtless the Kensington Gardens, and the moment he saw them he entirely forgot that he was now a little boy in a nightgown, and away he flew, right over the houses to the Gardens. It is wonderful that he could fly without wings, but the place itched tremendously, and, perhaps we could all fly if we were as dead-confident-sure of our capacity to do it as was bold Peter Pan that evening.

But the little boy's presence frightened the fairies, and the birds shunned him. He went to bird-sentinel Solomon Caw for help, and Solomon told him could stay in the park, but would never be anything other than "a Betwixt-and-Between." Peter he was happy enough with this pronouncement, and made himself a reed pipe to play upon, and eventually, with the help of the thrushes, a boat made of a nest and the remnants of his old night-gown so that he could sail about on the Serpentine lake.

Peter always thought he could return home. He visited once, but could not resolve himself to stay. And when he tried a second time,

He went in a hurry in the end because he had dreamt that his mother was crying, and he knew what was the great thing she cried for, and that a hug from her splendid Peter would quickly make her to smile. Oh, he felt sure of it, and so eager was he to be nestling in her arms that this time he flew straight to the window, which was always to be open for him.

But the window was closed, and there were iron bars on it, and peering inside he saw his mother sleeping peacefully with her arm round another little boy.

Peter called, "Mother! mother!" but she heard him not; in vain he beat his little limbs against the iron bars. He had to fly back, sobbing, to the Gardens, and he never saw his dear again.

And yet Peter, being so young, lost himself in adventures and did not think much of his old home again. One night a little girl named Maimie stayed after closing time in the park to see the fairies (not without incident), and there encountered a little boy out in the snow with no clothes on, in a meeting reminiscent of another in Peter's later literary life.

She said, out of pity for him, "I shall give you a kiss if you like," but though he once knew he had long forgotten what kisses are, and he replied, "Thank you," and held out his hand, thinking she had offered to put something into it. This was a great shock to her, but she felt she could not explain without shaming him, so with charming delicacy she gave Peter a thimble which happened to be in her pocket, and pretended that it was a kiss. Poor little boy! he quite believed her, and to this day he wears it on his finger, though there can be scarcely anyone who needs a thimble so little. 

The Little White Bird, or Adventures in Kensington Gardens was published in 1902, and was the first literary appearance of Peter Pan. After the success of the 1904 play featuring the boy who never grows up, the seven chapters (out of twenty-six) about Peter were published separately as Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. Illustrations by artist Arthur Rackham, including 49 color plates of his oil paintings, added to the popularity of both the book and Rackham himself. It's had a number of reprints since then, including one by the Folio Society. My own copy, found at Insatiables in Port Townsend, WA, is from 1976.

In 1912, when a statue of Peter Pan appeared in Kensington Gardens one morning, it was considered by many to be too commercial, akin to a statue of Harry Potter being erected in a major public park after only one book in the series. Now, of course, the statue of Peter is one of the best-known landmarks in London and the world.

For the entire text of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, with many of the Rackham illustrations, see Project Gutenberg.

Defending the Victorians

The Stowaway takes place in 1908, well into the Edwardian age. But Vivian Drew and Captain Hook were both born during Victorian times, and my research has wandered into that span of years as well. Through this, I've come to realize that many of the common conceptions we have of Victorian England are unfair.

Yes, the Victorian era--1837-1901, the years of Queen Victoria's actual reign--was a time of inequality and colonialism and classism. But there were also many advances, both technological and social, upon which we still rely: railway tunnels, sewer systems, the combustion engine.

The first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable was laid in 1858.

And contrary to current popular opinion, the Victorian era was also marked by humanitarian progress, including trade unions, old age pensions, and social mobility, as well as the growth of a middle class. Service jobs, despite their reputation for drudgery, offered a chance for advancement, and the employees had rights under the 1823 Master and Servant Act. Women's suffrage (as early as the Kensington Society of the 1860s) first gained ground then, as did free universal education and child labor laws. And the telephone, telegraph, typewriter, sewing machine, and cash register led to larger numbers of women finding employment outside the home and thus their greater emancipation.

We have a mental image of the repressed Victorian woman stuffed into a corset and unable to pursue work outside her home. But women first entered male-dominated professions during the Victorian era, won property rights, and found self-sufficiency through jobs in new industries like telegraph offices. A full third of the labor force was women, in jobs from blacksmith to pawnbroker to bookbinder. They also gained new rights in custody acts, property and inheritance laws, and divorce decrees. Women's colleges, starting with Queen's College in 1848, led to greater educational opportunities. (And as regards corsets, Ruth Goodman compares Victorian undergarments to underwire bras and shapewear, and finds that our foundation garments come up wanting.)

Let's not forget, aggressive gendering exists today, from the moment a pink or blue cap is tucked on the head of a baby in the hospital nursery. More women attend college than men, but their representation in the higher echelons of the work force is not equal to their abilities or numbers.  (For example, see The 5 biases pushing women out of STEM.) Books like The Rules should lay rest the notion that "traditional" ideas of female decorum are out of style today. And I can't help but notice the little-girl main characters of literature that is still popular today--Alice, Dorothy--despite the prevailing notion today that boys won't read books about girls.

Illustration by John Tenniel for Lewis Carroll's
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1865

"Characterised as the police force of obsolete, chauvinistic ideologies, Victorian men have been forced to embody many of our negative views of nineteenth-century culture," writes historian Matthew Sweet in Inventing the Victorians. Adventure novels of the day depict feats of daring which no human could hope to emulate, perhaps showing that men of that era, not just our own, were often confused as to their optimal role in society. Regardless, men like Charles Darwin took an active role in domestic life and did not consider it anything out of the norm.

The Labouchere Amendment, of which Oscar Wilde so famously ran afoul, actually changed the sentence for "buggery" from life to two years, Sweet writes. Labouchere seems to have intended to law to protect working-class men from the predation of aristocrats, and also to protect children from pimps, regardless of how it was interpreted in later years. In fact, according to Sweet, "[t]he 1890s were the high noon of erotic ambiguity, the last moment of freedom before the system of personal pathologies through which we have come to view our own sexualities became fixed."

Victorian England had no anti-immigration laws (sorry, UKIP), and saw the election of the first Asian members of Parliament. The first black footballer, Arthur Wharton, kept goal for several teams during the 1880s and 90s. Mary Seale, a Jamaican nurse, was as famous then as Florence Nightingale. In 1868, an Australian cricket team made up entirely of Aboriginal players met an English team in an international match. Small advances, perhaps, but the 20th and 21st centuries are marked by their own share of "firsts."

"The Libertine's Death," from Rose Mortimer,
or, The Ballet Girl's Revenge, 1865

In many ways, we are not so different from the Victorians. Advertising and pornography were thriving industries during the 1800s, as they are now, and both societies share struggles with human rights and housing and pollution. And to claim our own era is a pinnacle of achievement is misguided. This is a time of tremendous medical advances (assuming one can afford them), the democratizing effects of the internet, and the growth of civil rights, absolutely. But we also live with the constant worries of school shootings and climate change and mass extinction. American economic inequality is worse now than at any time since the Great Depression, when it was similar to the inequality of the Gilded Age of the second decade of the 1900s. In many ways, our Victorian forebears would be as appalled at our own society as we so often are at theirs.

Why have we come to regard this particular era as so opposed to the ideals we most cherish today? For one, because every generation defines itself in opposition to the last. We feel better about ourselves in comparison. And the Victorians found enemies in people like Virginia Woolf and the rest of the Bloomsbury Group who spoke vociferously and effectively against its failings.

Also, the Victorians are judged by what is left of their literature, including advertising and editorials--and also tracts written by clergymen and schoolmasters, little-read at the time but looked upon now as representative of the time. Theories of the best way to live abounded, as they do now, which says nothing of how often they were implemented. If future generations look at us through the kind of sparse and arbitrarily-selected ephemera that we think of as representing the Victorians, the 20th century will be remembered primarily for two world wars, mass genocide, and the threat of nuclear destruction. Our own progress in human rights and medicine could go unremarked, just as we overlook the positive aspects of the Victorian era.

Queen Victoria, photograph by

Alexander Bassano, 1882

Progress stumbles and halts. History is a continuum, not a list of unrelated events, and no age is completely a golden epoch or a hell of oppression. And human nature has changed little since the first civilizations, as a look at the writings of Plato or Shakespeare will confirm. An inaccurate understanding of the past, including the Victorian era, makes it easy for a society to fall into an unearned complacency. And this, in turn, makes it more difficult to discern the most constructive actions to take next.


Sources:
Inventing the Victorians, Matthew Sweet
Pocket Guide to Edwardian England, Evangeline Holland
How to Be a Victorian: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Victorian Life, Ruth Goodman

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.

Sunset and sorrow

Long have I been intrigued by the near-ethereal quality of the paintings of Joseph Mallord William Turner, especially in his later, more abstract and experimental work. And in The Stowaway, when Captain Jas. Hook indulges Vivian Drew's wish to experience theater and art in London, they find their own fascinations with Turner's work at the National Gallery.

The piece that most draws their attention is The "Fighting Temeraire" Tugged to her Last Berth to be Broken Up. Painted by Turner in 1839, it's his depiction of a ship from the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar being taken to be destroyed as the age of sail draws to an end to be replaced by the era of industry.

Vivian is captivated by the colors and evocation of light in the painting, while James responds to the emotion contained within it. I recall an anecdote about an old sea captain in Port Townsend, WA, who lamented the loss of the grand ships and complained about the presence in the harbor of the steamers and "greasy little tugs." This is akin to James's yearning for the Age of Sail, the only milieu in which he feels he still has a place, as a changing economy forces him ever more completely from the shores of his native land to the perilous environs of Never Neverland.

Daniel Craig as James Bond and Ben Wishaw as Q
 discuss the Fighting Tremeraire in Skyfall

The Fighting Temeraire is prominently featured in the 2012 movie Skyfall, making me hesitant to include it in The Stowaway--although I had written the scene before the film was released. (If you think that means I've been working on this book for a long time, you are correct.)

But I've since learned more about the continuing popularity of the Fighting Temeraire. In 2005 (the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar), it was voted "England's favorite painting" in a BBC Radio 4 poll. It's so popular, in fact, as to have inspired the cultivation of a Fighting Temeraire rose.

In 2014, the Tate Britain held a popular exhibition of Turner's paintings from the later years of his life, when this successful painter dared to take his vision in a direction that received ire from critics and the populace.

And now that the Mr. Turner movie continues to meet with critical and popular acclaim, surely I can be excused for including The Fighting Temeraire in the tale of James and Vivian in London.