These are JM Barrie’s words: “I think that quite the most touching sight in the Gardens is the two tombstones of Walter Stephen Matthews and Phoebe Phelps.Here Peter found the two babes, who had fallen unnoticed from their perambulators, Phoebe aged thirteen months and Walter probably still younger, for Peter seems to have felt a delicacy about putting any age on his stone. I’d read it in the 1906 edition of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. I knew the stones would be here somewhere. I was too fascinated by the stones, for I’d been looking for them on a gravestone hunt, and it’s all JM Barrie’s fault. Maybe a chestnut tree? I did not pay attention. As good a family picnic spot as any, it has something that other grassy patches do not - two worn-out stones under an ancient tree. To find them, I took a walk with my girls to a small grassy patch in the park by the Round Pond. These two stones hold the key to one of its quietest secrets. Whether you believe in them or not, fairy stories run deep in the roots of its plants. The park is crisscrossed by invisible lines. Kensington Gardens is not all royalty, ducks and merry-go-rounds.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |