Mary Darling

I've been reading The Adventures of Mary Darling, a novel combining Peter Pan characters with Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. It's narrated by a Darling descendant who wishes to combat J. M. Barrie's tale by revealing what really happened when Wendy, John, and Michael disappeared one night. Mary is apparently the daughter of Watson's older brother Henry, who married and moved to Australia for the gold rush. (In chapter 5 of The Sign of Four, Watson did mention seeing gold prospecting in Ballarat, so perhaps he visited his brother or received photographs from his brother's family.)

Anyway, Mary Watson grew up in Australia with her brother Tom. Their mother Alice painted fairies and mermaids often, and she spoke like she's had experiences in Neverland. (Mermaids are malicious and not friendly.) Perpetually victimizing this family, Peter Pan takes Mary and Tom away to Neverland, and by the time the kids return, their mother has died, drowned in what could have been a suicide. So Henry Watson sadly decides to take his family to England, though they get separated from Tom and Sam, who is a friend of the family. (Actually Sam is one of the Lost Boys, and he helped them escape Neverland.) When the alcoholic Henry Watson dies, John Watson has to take care of his niece, with some help from Mrs. Hudson, a boarding school, and eventually his own wife Mary Morstan.

SPOILERS BELOW 

The main story takes place after John's niece Mary has wed George Darling and had kids with him. (Watson is now a widower at this time.) When Wendy, John, and Michael disappear in the night, George Darling panics and seems overwrought with guilt, vowing to live in Nana's dog kennel until the kids are found. Due to the family connection, George calls in John Watson and Sherlock Holmes to investigate, as if it's an ordinary kidnapping case. He should know better, though, as Mary Darling certainly knows the culprit to be Peter Pan; she meets with Sam Smalls again and makes plans to go back to Neverland. Meanwhile Sherlock Holmes keeps having Irregulars follow Mary Darling as if he thinks she's guilty of something. He's really quite a jerk to his friend Watson, and seems really disapproving of pirates.

Over the course of the book, we learn Mary's backstory and what exactly happened when she, Tom, Sam, and yes even George Darling were in Neverland together. I appreciated that this author preserves the amoral quality of Peter Pan. He's not a good guy or a fun hero; he's callous and self-centered. Whenever Lost Boys die, Peter just gets new recruits and calls them by the same names as the boys who died. Peter Pan doesn't understand that it's not fun to die or starve. Sam regards Peter as a petty god or sprite playing with humans for his own amusement. He tells Mary that Peter Pan is like the wind; he can be a pleasant breeze sometimes and a destructive hurricane at other times. He's neither good nor evil; he's just the wind, a force of nature that you have to learn how to deal with. Sam Smalls also gets his full backstory revealed. He has a British father, but his mother was a South Sea Islander, and their family was devastated by enslavers; his surviving family eventually moved to England too, but being half Black, he feels out of place in the white imperialist world. Classmates make fun of Sam as a savage cannibal like in racist adventure books. Only Mary Darling still treats him as a friend and a surrogate brother.

We also learn that Tiger Lily is just a stage name for a girl named Polly River. Polly and her family are indigenous people living in Canada; her grandmother Julia is afraid that Polly will be taken away to the Indian Boarding School, so she devises a plan to start an Amazing Indians show and tour Europe with a circus. So Polly's family escape Canada, and she performs in the wild west show as Tiger Lily, shooting with bow and arrows. Later, the Amazing Indians troupe decide to do a tour in South Africa, but their boat gets shipwrecked on Neverland; so they still have all their stage props, and they even have horses that they were traveling with. Polly's family teaches Mary that they played Indian stereotypes to make money from white people, but it's different from who they are in real life.

So as you can see, this story deals with dark parts of history, such as colonialism, racism, sexism. Mary Darling even has to go in male disguise at times on pirate ships, but maybe Marty Watson is more than a disguise. The story discusses gender and whether Mary feels more free and rebellious when she's not expected to be a Victorian housewife. She also regularly participates in a feminist club that teaches fencing and martial arts as self-defense. I'm sure she and everyone else have trauma from Neverland too, though they pretend they've forgotten it. I haven't finished the book yet, but so far I dislike Sherlock Holmes and George Darling for being terrible. George even tries to get a misogynist doctor to lock up his wife Mary as if she's the crazy one! We'll see if he can make up for it once she rescues the kids.