J.M. Barrie and the Lost Boys

by Andrew Birkin

  The Allahakbarries Cricket Team at Black Lake in 1905, with Michael as their mascot. Back row, 1 to r: Maurice Hewlett, Barrie, Harry Graham, E. V. Lucas. Front row: H. J. Ford, A. E. W. Mason, Charles Tennyson, C. Turley Smith

  Michael was now approaching his fifth birthday, and was, in Peter's opinion, ‘with his long curls just about at his most beautiful’. His mind still roamed freely in the wood of make-believe, which gave rise to a constant succession of nightmares that were to plague him throughout his boyhood. His cousin, Daphne du Maurier, remembered her own nanny telling her about these ‘terrible nightmares. She told me that Michael used to wake up and think he could see strange people and things coming in through the window, which probably stemmed from Peter Pan.’5 Unlike George and Jack, Michael had been brought up to believe in Peter Pan as other children believe in Father Christmas. He knew that ‘Uncle Jim’ (as he had now begun to call Barrie) had written a play about Peter, and that the Peter in the play was an actress pretending to be a boy, but he also knew that there was a real Peter Pan, who sometimes visited the woods at Black Lake. Michael had been scarcely a year old during ‘that strange and terrible summer’ of 1901, and this was his first opportunity to explore for himself the haunted groves, primeval forests and South Seas lagoon of The Boy Castaways. Barrie had begun to fear that he might have lost his touch with children; in Tommy and Grizel he had written of a father in not dissimilar circumstances, who is about to introduce his son to the haunts of his own childhood:

  Michael and Barrie on the lawn at Black Lake, July 1905

  ‘To-morrow he was to bring his boy to show him the old lair and other fondly remembered spots, to-night he must revisit them alone. So he set out blithely, but to his bewilderment he could not find the lair. It had not been a tiny hollow where muddy water gathered, he remembered an impregnable fortress full of men whose armour rattled as they came and went, so this could not be the lair. He had taken the wrong way to it, for the way was across a lagoon, up a deep-flowing river, then by horse till the rocky ledge terrified all four-footed things; no, up a grassy slope had never been the way. He came night after night trying different ways, but he could not find the golden ladder, though all the time he knew that the lair lay somewhere over there. … Then at last he said sadly to his boy, “I shall never be able to show you the lair, for I cannot find the way to it,” and the boy was touched, and he said, “Take my hand, father, and I will lead you to the lair; I found the way long ago for myself.”’

  Michael at Black Lake (JMB)

  Michael and Barrie

  One of two surviving letters from Barrie to Michael. The remainder, numbering several thousands, were destroyed by Peter in 1952 because they were ‘too much’

  Barrie had originally planned to incorporate Black Lake into Peter Pan, featuring it as the setting for a mermaid's lagoon scene, but he had never got further than a few preliminary notes. The Lake was, in reality, little more than the ‘tiny hollow where muddy water gathered’, but with Michael providing the golden ladder, it once again became a South Seas lagoon, and Barrie set to work on a new Act III for Peter Pan, in which Peter and Wendy are marooned on a rock after an encounter with Captain Hook and his pirates. The tide is rising and threatens to drown them both. Peter insists that Wendy escapes by clinging to the tail of the kite; there is room for two, but Peter, who is ‘never one to choose the easy way’, has a strange smile about his face as he perceives the prospect of a new and tantalizing adventure. The kite draws Wendy out of sight across the lagoon, leaving Peter alone on the rock:

  Michael by the shore (JMB)

  The waters are lapping over the rock now, and PETER knows that it will soon be submerged. Pale rays of light mingle with the moving clouds, and from the coral grottoes is to be heard a sound, at once the most musical and the most melancholy in the Never Land, the mermaids calling to the moon to rise. PETER is afraid at last, and a tremor runs through him, like a shudder passing over the lagoon; but on the lagoon one shudder follows another till there are hundreds of them, and he feels just the one. Next moment he is standing erect on the rock again.

  PETER (with that smile on his face and a drum beating in his breast as if he were a real boy at last). To die will be an awfully big adventure.

  * * *

  On November 6th, 1905, Peter Pan opened in New York, with Maude Adams in the title role. The American critics proved, as always, less averse to Barrie's sentimentality than their British counterparts, and the magazine Outlook welcomed the play ‘like a breath of fresh air’. Mark Twain wrote to Maude Adams: ‘It is my belief that Peter Pan is a great and refining and uplifting benefaction to this sordid and money-mad age; and that the next best play is a long way behind it.’6 The American public embraced Peter Pan with a fervour that made its London success seem almost trivial. It became the topic of much earnest analysis and intellectual vivisection among adults: the play was treated with a seriousness that mystified and amused its author – every aspect of it was lapped up and swallowed whole, except possibly its humour. The Never Land symbolized the New World, while Peter Pan – the Great White Father – was seen to represent the Spirit of Youth and Freedom, hailing the children of the Old World to leave their antiquated nurseries and fly away to the Never Land of Liberty. Audiences suddenly became ‘nursery-conscious, fairy-conscious, pirate-conscious’ and, not least, ‘Redskin-conscious’,7 since Peter's intimacy with Tiger Lily and the Lost Boys' alliance with the Red Indians was seen to have a special and meaningful significance. Children, however, were oblivious to all these subtle profundities: like their English peers, they contented themselves with falling in love with Peter and pined to fly away with him and indulge themselves in killing off pirates.

  New York programme for Peter Pan

  Only a handful of lines were changed for the benefit of the American public: Hook's ‘Down with King Edward!’ became ‘Down with the Stars and Stripes!’, and the singing of ‘Yankee Doodle’ replaced ‘God Save the King’. Peter's conceit at his victory over Hook took on an American flavour, and the Napoleonic tableau was expanded as a tribute to Frohman, who had a large bust of the Emperor in his New York office, and wore a Napoleonic ring:

  (PETER, now drunk with glory, pulls down the pirate flag and hoists his own – He marches about the deck in an ecstasy of glee)

  PETER. Oh, I'm a wonder! … Abe Lincoln, are you looking at me! Paul Jones, do you see me! (He looks up for Abe, and down for Paul) George Washington, what do you think? I'm the wonderfullest boy that ever was, and I don't say it in boasting, but just because I can't tell a lie!

  (The BOYS and WENDY … with exclamations of admiration for him, almost worshipping him…)

  WENDY. Oh, Peter, is there anything in the world you couldn't do?

  PETER. There's nothing, nothing!

  ALL. He's Napoleon – Napoleon!

  PETER. That's who I am – Napoleon! He was little too!

  After recording the longest single engagement in the history of the Empire Theater, Frohman toured Maude Adams in Peter Pan across the whole continent of North America. The play had become as a mission to him: he felt it his duty to bring Peter Pan into the life of every child in the country – not just in the large cities, but in remote outposts and ‘one-horse towns’ of what was then still the Wild West. It was a source of considerable satisfaction to the Davies boys to know that their own humble games of Red Indians, acted out in the comfortable woods of Black Lake, were being performed within the heart of real Indian Territory. For Maude Adams, the creation of Peter in America was no less a vocation than it was for Frohman, and over the next two decades her performance was witnessed by over two million people, from New Yorkers to the shattered populace of San Francisco (where the play opened ten days after the earthquake in 1906), from Southerners in Selma, Alabama, who took exception to Peter Pan's relationship with Tiger Lily, to Canadians in the frozen wastes of Northwest Territory. Frohman's biographers wrote: ‘Peter Pan … became a nation-wide vogue. Children were named af
ter [him]; articles of wearing-apparel were labeled with his now familiar title; the whole country talked and loved the unforgetable little character who now became not merely a stage figure, but … the best beloved of all American children.’

  Maude Adams as Peter Pan

  While Peter Pan played to packed houses on Broadway, the first London revival began rehearsals in November 1905. For reasons that have never been made fully clear, Nina Boucicault was dropped from the cast, and replaced by the inferior Cecilia Loftus. Gerald du Maurier again played Mr Darling and Captain Hook, though he had begun to tire of the double role. His daughter Daphne wrote, ‘Two performances a day was no joke, in a play that lasted nearly four hours, and playing to crowded houses of screaming, excited children was trying to the voice and to the temper. “There's only one thing I'd rather not be doing,” said Gerald in a fit of irritation, “and that's sweeping the floors of a mortuary at a shilling a week.”’8

  Barrie invited Sylvia to Paris in the New Year, but she declined as both Michael and Nico were in bed with colds. He wrote to her on January 3rd, 1906:

  My Dearest Jocelyn,

  As if I could be angry with you for caring for your children! I don't think it would have been the thing to leave them just now, and we can go to Paris any time.

  I hope Nicholas is getting better and that Michael is obstreperous once again. How I love that boy. … Whenever they are able for P. Pan, it awaits them.

  Your loving,

  J.M.B.

  Michael received a poem from Barrie a few days later:

  Nico and Michael (JMB)

  A's any Asses that don't love my Mick,

  B's what I fling at them, namely a Brick.

  C's Combinations, with Michael inside,

  D's Normandy's Dives where he once did reside.

  E's Evian water, his favourite drink.

  F is his Friend – who is that, do you think?

  G stands for George, his elderly brother.

  H for 14 and 2, that alarmed his mother.

  I stands for Imp, which applies to the lot of you.

  J is for Jack, who is sometimes too hot for you.

  K is for Kads who don't do as you wish,

  L's the eel caught at Dives when we went out to fish.

  M's your dear Mary, who's always awake,

  N's Nick, who's your sweet mother's smallest mistake.

  O's the Oil you are told for to take like a man,

  P stands for Peter, and Peter for Pan.

  Q are the Questions Mick asks for to pose me,

  R my Replies, which are vain, for he knows me.

  S stands for Sylvia, Michael's delight,

  T is his Tu'penny when tucked in at night.

  U is U silly who are reading this letter,

  V is your Vanity, you couldn't do better.

  W's old Wilk, who is still trouncing boys,

  X is the X's sent Mick with his toys.

  Y is the Yawns I give till we meet,

  Z are the Zanies who are not at his feet.

  J.M.B.

  Michael's illness persisted throughout the early spring, and as he was unable to come up to London and see Peter Pan, Barrie and Frohman took Peter Pan to see him, complete with scenery and a special programme printed for the occasion:

  ‘The performance [of Peter Pan] that is most vivid to me (and cannot be quite forgotten by you) is the one we presented to Michael in his bed. It was in the first or second year of Peter, and as Michael could not go to it, we took it to Michael, far away in the country, an array of vehicles almost as glorious as a travelling circus; the leading parts were played by the youngest children in the London company, and Michael, aged five, looked on solemnly from his bed and never smiled once. That was my only appearance in a professional performance, … and a copy of the special programme which I still have (my favourite programme of the play) shows that I was thought so meanly of that my name is printed in smaller letters than the others.’9

  Peter gave a description of the play in a letter to his grandfather, the Reverend John Llewelyn Davies, who was going to be eighty the following day. Peter himself was celebrating his own ninth birthday:

  Egerton House, Berkhamsted.

  Feb. 25th [1906]

  Dear Grandfather,

  I hope you will have a nice birthday, it is my birthday today, and although I am not quite so old as you, I hope to be soon. … Some actors and actresses from Peter Pan came down on Father's birthday in two large motor cars, to act the nursery. Peter Pan is about a boy [who] ran away from home the day he was born, and lived in the Never-never-never-Land. One day he came back to the house of some people called the Darlings, and in the night took away the three children away [sic]. The father was so sorry he had taken the dog, Nana, out of the room that he lived in the kennel. Then one day they came back, and Wendy, the girl, was allowed to go to Peter, every Spring cleaning.

  Wishing you many happy returns of the day, from Peter.

  P.S. I am sending you a programme of Peter Pan in Michael's nursery.

  Nico Davies wrote in 1975: ‘There was never the remotest feeling that Uncle Jim liked A better than B, though in due course we all knew that George and Michael were The Ones – George because he had started it all, and Michael … because he was the cleverest of us, the most original, the potential genius. … I haven't the skill to answer* about J.M.B. being ‘in love’ with George & Michael. Roughly, yes – I would agree: he was in love with each of them: as he was in love with my mother: when you come to Mary Ansell it's a different ‘feeling’: … for myself, Peter & Jack at our different times different again – nearer to normal deep affection.’

  George, aged 12, with his rabbit, ‘Mr’ (JMB)

  Peter (JMB)

  Barrie's letter to Peter on his ninth birthday was as affectionate as usual:

  25 Feb. 1906.

  My dear Peter,

  Hurrah for your birthday. Nine years ago the world was a dreary blank. It was like the round of tissue paper the clown holds up for the lady in the circus to leap through, and then you came banging through it with a Houp-la! and we have all been busy ever since.

  I expect twenty years from now there will be a half holiday given at the Berkhampstead School on the 25 of Feb. because it is the birthday of the famous pupil, Mr (now Lieut-General) Peter Davies, V.C.

  I am to get a knife tomorrow to send you. I expect it will draw blood before you lose it. If you are still on friendly terms with Primus &c, give them my comps.

  Your loving friend,

  J.M.B.

  Programme specially printed for PETER PAN in Michael's Nursery

  Sylvia and Michael (JMB)

  It would be wrong to suppose that all Barrie's time and energy was devoted to the Davies family. A glance at Denis Mackail's lengthy biography shows that these early months of 1906 were, as ever, crammed with diverse activity: organizing a banquet in honour of Frederick Greenwood's seventy-fifth birthday; wooing the friendship of Captain Robert Falcon Scott, who had recently returned from his first Antarctic expedition; trying to protect his agent and friend, Arthur Addison Bright, from prosecution for misappropriating £28,000 of his clients' earnings – including £16,000 belonging to Barrie; following his fellow writer A. E. W. Mason on election campaigns (Mason was standing for election as Liberal M.P. for Coventry, and Barrie was noting down the tricks of the political trade for use in his next play, What Every Woman Knows); becoming godfather to one of the Lost Boys in the cast of Peter Pan, the American actress, Pauline Chase; organizing and subscribing to numerous charities (he was wealthy enough by now to be generous to the point of prodigality, helping virtually anyone who cared to plead a worthy case); accompanying his wife to her mother's funeral; writing a couple of one-act plays: Josephine, a political burlesque lampooning Joseph Chamberlain, and Punch, in which he satirized Bernard Shaw – both plays written, rehearsed, performed (and taken off) within the space of six weeks; corresponding with Frohman about the American production of Alice Sit-b
y-the-Fire, which was to star Ethel Barrymore; writing to Maude Adams – ‘I feel sure you are the most entrancing little boy that ever was by sea or shore, and I hear of things you do in the part which are so absolutely what Peter did that it makes me gay. … I must see you as Peter, and so, dear little Maudie, good-night’;10 and, in the same week, flirting by post with one of the most beautiful women in England, Her Grace the Duchess of Sutherland:

  Pauline Chase as one of the Lost Boys (First Twin), doing her famous pillow dance. In 1906 she became Barrie's god-daughter and played Peter Pan annually until 1914

  Dear Duchess,

  May I come to dinner on Thursday or Friday? I am dining beside a duchess on Sunday. I want to come very much either of these days. On Sunday I am dining with a duchess. I was away for the week-end at Berkhamsted, and next week-end I am dining with a duchess. I hope you are all well in your sphere of life. What ups and downs we have. For instance, next Sunday I am

  Yours sincerely

  J.M.B.

  It was to prove the beginning of a long flirtation, not merely with Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland, but with the aristocracy as a whole, and was to earn him, from some, the label of a snob. For the moment, however, he retained his sense of humour and purpose, for though the dinner engagement was doubtless a pleasurable affair, Barrie was also measuring up Her Grace for future characterization in What Every Woman Knows.

  Towards the end of May, Barrie once again invited Sylvia to Paris, and this time she accepted. Arthur wrote to his sister Margaret at Kirkby Lonsdale:

  Margaret Llewelyn Davies, founder member of the Women's Co-operative Guild and close friend of Virginia Woolf

  Egerton House,

  Berkhamsted.