ABSTRACT
Lord Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts, was so struck by J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan when it first appeared on the London stage that he returned immediately to see it again—alone—on the following day. He wrote to friends urging them to do the same, and he began to entertain the actress who played the part of Mrs. Darling. A few years later he wrote to another young actress friend, telling her that he thought of her as “a sort of Pete—(h’m, that’s odd; there is no feminine for Peter) a sort of girl Peter Pan, the boy who couldn’t grow up. And long may you be so.”1 When, despite this invitation, she did grow up, he discontinued their correspondence.
