J.M. Barrie and the Lost Boys

by Andrew Birkin

  May 26th, 1906.

  Dearest Margaret,

  I had been hoping to manage a visit to Kirkby with Michael this Whitsuntide, to fit in with Sylvia's outing, but I am doomed to spend Whitsuntide less agreeably – in lying up for a small operation. I have a slight swelling in the side of the face, which is beyond the dentist's skill, and on his advice I consulted an expert in cheek and jaw. He is going to perform on Friday, and I shall stay at a nursing place till the following Tuesday. Probably the cause of the trouble is the root of an old dead tooth, possibly a minute fragment of a tooth long ago pulled out. … There is no ground for anxiety, but I can imagine pleasanter ways of spending money in June. … I expect to be more or less recovered after a week.

  Sylvia will probably leave with her friends for Paris on Tuesday (June 5) if I am fit to be left. [Margaret has scrawled her opinion in the margin: ‘I'm sure she won't!’] Crompton is kindly willing to come here on that day with me. …

  Yours affectly,

  A.Ll.D.

  Sylvia's dilemma was resolved for her by Barrie's agent, Arthur Addison Bright, who had gone to Switzerland, telling his client that ‘the mountain air would give him sleep’.11 Faced with the humiliation of imminent prosecution, Bright shot himself, and Barrie was obliged to travel to Lucerne and identify the body. He blamed himself for the tragedy, believing that his own vagueness over money matters had been Bright's temptation – he had not even noticed the £16,000 missing until it was pointed out to him. He contributed a short obituary in The Times on June 1st, in which he described Bright as a man ‘so beautiful and modest [in] nature that it may be said of him, he had never time to be much interested in himself he was so interested in his friends’. The irony was presumably unintentional.

  On the same day, June 1st, Sylvia wrote to Arthur's sister Margaret telling her that ‘Arthur seems pretty well and … I hope to get him home soon’, but the following day Arthur was giving more ominous news:

  12, Beaumont St., W.

  June 2, 1906.

  Dearest Margaret,

  I am sorry to say that I have bad news. The swelling in my face turns out on investigation not to be an abscess, as was hoped, but a growth. It is of a very serious kind, called sarcoma, and requires a grave operation. … I am afraid it means removing half the upper jaw and palate. … Poor Sylvia! I have told her everything except the name of the disease and the details of the operation. She is brave and infinitely kind and dear. After the operation I shall be incapacitated for about 6 weeks, and unable to speak properly for 3 or 4 months – and there will always be an impediment in my speech. I think of our future and the boys.

  We shall be very glad if you will come up on Monday and help us through this trying time – to me ‘glad life's arrears of pain, darkness and toil.’ My 43 years, and especially the last 14, leaves me no ground of complaint as to my life. But this needs fortitude. We both try our best.

  My love to Father.

  Your affect. brother,

  A.Ll.D.

  Dolly Ponsonby wrote in her diary:

  One of dozens of letters sent out by Barrie to Arthur's friends and colleagues. This one, to Sir Charles Dilke, reads: ‘Dear Sir, Mr Arthur Llewelyn Davies has asked me to let a few friends know of his present condition. Only a week ago he knew that he was suffering from the disease called Sarcoma’. The letter continues for a further four pages, concluding ‘He has been quite splendid all through this painful time.’

  ‘Monday 4 June. Got a letter from M.D. [Margaret Llewelyn Davies] to tell me the most tragic news about Arthur D. – That he has a terrible disease, sarcoma in the face, & will have to have part of his jaw & roof of his mouth removed – It is simply unbelievable! … That splendid, selfless, brave Arthur, who has slaved & worked all these years – to have his career absolutely changed if not wrecked by this – oh, it is incomprehensible!’

  Barrie was in the midst of sorting out the chaos created by Bright's suicide when he heard the news of Arthur's impending operation. In Tommy and Grizel he had written, ‘A burning house and Grizel among the flames, and he would have been the first on the ladder.’ If ever Barrie had his chance to show Sylvia and Arthur what they and their boys meant to him, it was now. He immediately dropped everything, cancelled all other plans, assumed full responsibility for meeting the enormous medical fees involved in securing Arthur the finest treatment available, then took up a more or less permanent vigil in his hospital room, performing any task or request that Sylvia and Arthur might ask of him, however menial or mundane. Before undergoing the operation, Arthur wrote to his father on June 4th: ‘Barrie has been wonderful to us – we look on him as a brother.’ Peter Davies commented in the family Morgue:

  Crompton Llewelyn Davies. Like his brother Theodore, who drowned in 1905, Crompton was one of the most remarkable men of his generation. ‘He combined wit, passion, wisdom, scorn, gentleness, and integrity, in a degree that I have never known equalled’ wrote Bertrand Russell in his Autobiography. ‘In 1921 it was Crompton who drafted the treaty of peace that established Irish self-government, though this was never publicly known.’

  ‘J.M.B. stepped in to play the leading part; and played it in the grand manner. … I can sympathise in a way with the point of view that it was the last straw for Arthur that he should have had to accept charity from the strange little genius who had become such an increasing irritation to him in recent years. But on the whole I disagree. We don't really know how deep the irritation went; and even if it went deep, I am convinced that the kindness and devotion of which J.M.B. gave such overwhelming proof from now on, far more than outweighed all that, and that the money and promise of future financial responsibility he was so ready with – and with what charm and tact he must have overcome any resistance! – were an incalculable comfort to the doomed Arthur as well as to Sylvia in her anguish.’

  Arthur's note of ‘things I think about’

  Crompton, Arthur's younger brother, wrote to their father at Kirkby Lonsdale on June 8th, giving a report of the operation: ‘They removed his cheek bone – apparently had intended to do so all along. … After coming round he is likely to be in some pain, and they will give him morphia as soon as possible. … His courage and serenity was so great that it gave others courage, I felt – and instead of requiring help he seemed able to give it.’ Barrie telegraphed Arthur's father that evening – ‘HE IS CONSCIOUS NOW AND SYLVIA SAT [AN] HOUR WITH HIM’ – then stayed by his bedside through the night, reading him the newspaper or simply holding his hand. Arthur was unable to talk, his face being completely bandaged, but he managed to communicate with Barrie by making spidery notes:

  Among the things I think about

  Michael going to school

  Porthgwarra and S's blue dress

  Burpham garden

  Kirkby view across valley…

  Jack bathing

  Peter answering chaff

  Nicholas in the garden

  George always

  While Arthur slept, Barrie made notes of his own:

  — The 1,000 Nightingales. A hero who is dying. ‘Poor devil, he'll be dead in six months’ … He in his rooms awaiting end – schemes abandoned – still he's a man, dying a man. … Everything going splendidly for him (love &c) when audience hears of his doom.

  — There's an ironical little God smiling at us. Favours – then gives twist of string & down we fall.

  Arthur

  * I had written to Nico asking him whether he felt that Barrie had been platonically in love with George and Michael. In a later letter he wrote, ‘I'm 200% certain there was never a desire to kiss (other than the cheek!), though things obviously went through his mind – often producing magic – which never go through the more ordinary minds of such as myself. … All I can say for certain is that I … never heard one word or saw one glimmer of anything approaching homosexuality or paedophilia: had he had either of these leanings in however slight a symptom I would have been aware. He was an innocent – which is why he could writ
e Peter Pan.’

  10

  1906–1907

  A week after the operation, Arthur's bandages were removed from his face. When Gerald du Maurier visited the nursing home that evening, Sylvia broke down in the corridor outside Arthur's room, weeping on her brother's shoulder and crying, ‘They've spoilt my darling's face.’1 Dolly Ponsonby visited Arthur the following day, June 14th:

  ‘Went to see Arthur Davies in a Nursing Home. … He looked very altered but with his usual determination insisted upon speaking in spite of having no roof to his mouth, or teeth, both of which he will have later. In spite of this I understood nearly everything he said. He tried to smile & made a remark as I left about my being beautiful in his old, dry, chaffy way; it was so pathetic. But to see Sylvia tending this poor maimed creature was something I shall never forget. She seemed a living emblem of love & tenderness & sorrow – Stroking his hair & his hand, & looking unutterable love at him & so beautiful – it seemed to have completed her. She broke down a little outside, & we talked about it, but she is brave, so brave – it was wonderful to see her. … Little Barrie was of course there, lurking in the background!’

  Arthur wrote to Peter that evening:

  ‘Mr Barrie is now sitting here with me reading the newspaper, and Mother has gone for a little drive in the motor with Mrs Barrie. Don't you think Mr Barrie is a very good friend to all of us? Goodbye now, my dear Peter and all my dear boys. I don't forget whose birthday it is on Saturday.’

  Saturday's birthday was Michael's, and Arthur wrote to him from the nursing home:

  My very dear birthday boy Michael,

  How I wish I could see you with my own eyes on your birthday, when you are really 6 years old. But I can only wish you many happy returns by a letter, and send you my dear love, and a pencil as a little birthday present for you. … Perhaps when I am well enough to come back you will take me to see some more cricket matches. I am going to have quite a long holiday, and shall be able to take you to school every morning. …

  Now goodbye my dearest 6 year old boy, and I hope you will have a very very very jolly birthday.

  From Your affectionate Father.

  Sylvia also wrote to Michael:

  For June the 16th,

  My Michael's 6th birthday.

  I am coming to see you & I will bring my present to you my dear darling. I want so to tell you about father who is so brave & you will be so proud that you are his little son.

  I don't like being away from you on your dear birthday but I shall see you in a few hours. Oh my little Michael won't it be nice when we are all together again. Father does so want to be back with his sons. He is sleeping now, & I am being very still & writing this letter by his bed.

  Mr Barrie is our fairy prince, much the best fairy prince that was ever born because he is real.

  Loving Mother

  Last page of Sylvia's birthday letter to Michael

  Arthur wrote again to Michael on June 27th:

  My dear Michael,

  Here is my last letter of all before coming home to Berkhamsted and my boys. We are coming all the way in Mr Barrie's motor car, if it is fine, and we shall arrive in good time for tea. I want very much to see your motor car and Peter's stone roach, as well as Nicko's musical wheel-barrow. And I wonder whether there will be any good songs to be heard which I have never heard before. If there are it will be altogether a fine homecoming for Mother and me. After tea tomorrow you will take me carefully for a walk all round the garden, and show me all the flowers which have come up since we went away? …

  Goodbye now, my dear boy. My love to all my boys, not forgetting dear Nicko.

  From your affectionate Father.

  Michael and Nico in the walled garden at Egerton House (JMB)

  Arthur also wrote to his sister Margaret, who was staying at Egerton House looking after the boys, asking her to send him the sole surviving copy of The Boy Castaways. He had thought the book rather a puerile extravagance at the time Barrie gave it to him – indeed he had almost instantly lost his copy on a train – but now that he was separated from his boys, the photographs brought him a measure of comfort.

  Sylvia had paved the way for Arthur's homecoming by repeatedly asking Margaret to warn the boys of their father's ‘poor face and voice’ – ‘You will talk to the little boys and tell them how they can help me and how they must listen well when he talks.’ During the course of the operation it had been necessary to remove the tear-duct from Arthur's eye, with the result that he was unable to control the flow of tears – a somewhat harrowing sight for his boys, and one that he tried to hide by wearing a brown patch. A week after his return to Berkhamsted, Sylvia wrote to Margaret at Kirkby Lonsdale: ‘He and I walked to the fields yesterday and watched George at cricket, and he was not too tired afterwards. … The little boys are really wonderfully good, and so far … all is well.’ Arthur returned to London on July 5th to be measured for the artificial jaw that was to be fitted to facilitate his speech. Barrie wrote to Sylvia from Black Lake Cottage the same day:

  Dearest Jocelyn,

  I am conceiving you both in London today and I fear Arthur is having a bad time. If they put something into his mouth what I am afraid of is that it may seem pretty right at the time and gradually become unendurable after he is home. … I seem so far away from you now, and feel that you are not so safe as when I am by. That is the feeling that makes you in your heart hate all of us who propose to take a few of the five away for a ‘season’ (as Jack puts it), and it is strange that I should feel so now about Arthur but I do. … It has been a terrible month to yourself, I had so hoped that Jocelyn would always be spared such a time. ‘Sylvia in her blue dress.’

  My love to Arthur and to his brown patch, and to dear Jocelyn.

  Your

  J.M.B.

  Peter commented in the Morgue: ‘I am not sure that the ghastly plate, or artificial jaw, isn't the most dreadful element in the whole sad story. It must have been a nightmare, and so much seemed to depend on it, and it so soon became impossible to wear, as J.M.B. had foreseen.’

  Sylvia on the beach at Rustington (JMB)

  The annual Rustington holiday was spent at Cudlow House, which Emma du Maurier had rented for August. Whereas in previous years Barrie's presence at Rustington smacked of the uninvited guest, he was now accepted as an integral part of the family. Arthur no longer referred to him as ‘Sylvia's friend’ in his letters to Margaret, but as ‘Jimmy’. He wrote to her on August 6th:

  Michael, dressed as Peter Pan, playing up to Barrie's Captain Hook

  Michael, aged 6, dressed as Peter Pan and photographed by Barrie in July 1906

  ‘We have had plenty of bathing, and the boys play endless cricket and lawn tennis in the garden. Just now we have an invasion by some friends of Jimmy's; Nicholson, an artist, and his family, one of them being of an age for George, and a large game of cricket is going on in the garden. … The sea has become thoroughly warm, and we all enjoy the water very much, except Sylvia, who has not yet completed her bathing costume.’

  ‘Nicholson’ was William Nicholson, who had designed the scenery and costumes for Peter Pan, and had brought with him a special Peter Pan costume requested by Barrie for Michael. The gift had an ulterior motive. Barrie had started to conceive vague notions of commissioning a statue of Peter Pan, and he wanted to give the prospective sculptor his own ideal vision of Peter on which to base the effigy. The result was a series of photographs of Michael, his eyes blazing with an energy that became entirely lost when translated into bronze six years later.

  Dolly Ponsonby visited the Rustington household on August 17th, writing in her diary:

  ‘Went to see Sylvia in the evening. She is an amazing creature, certainly beauty & charm could not go further, & now she is more beautiful with a touch of sadness in her face, & her wonderful blue garments. She talked so naturally of all her hopes & fears regarding Arthur, … [who] is more pathetic than he was – it gives one a terrible twinge to see him with his
poor maimed face, & always escaping from people. Mr Barrie is always with him, a nurse to the children & an extraordinarily tactful & helpful companion to Sylvia & Arthur – though his moods like those of most genius types appear to be a little trying.’

  Peter Davies wrote in his Morgue:

  ‘The presence of J.M.B. at Cudlow House throughout these holidays was a queerish business, when you come to think of it: as odd a variation of the ménage à trois as ever there was, one would say. I think by now Arthur had surrendered utterly and was reconciled, for all sorts of reasons. But how strange the mentality of J.M.B., whose devotion to Sylvia seems to have thriven on her utter devotion to Arthur, as well as on his own admiration for him. It would be misleading to call his devotion more dog-like than manlike; there was too much understanding and perception in it – not to mention the element of masterfulness. And how about Mary Barrie meanwhile? I suspect that on the whole the state of affairs suited her well enough, and I say this in no disparaging sense.’

  Sylvia and Michael, who had a terror of water, though he fought to overcome it (JMB)

  Arthur wrote to his sister Margaret on September 6th from Cudlow House:

  Fishing at Fortingal, August 1906. L to r: George, Jack, Sylvia, Michael, Peter. Arthur is standing in the background (JMB)

  ‘We are just at the end of our stay here, having failed to get an extra week for which we asked. We have succumbed to an invitation to go to Scotland with Jimmy for the close of the holidays. First the scheme was to take George and Jack only, then we were unwilling to abandon Peter, and lastly Michael has, inevitably, been included. Nicholas so far remains out of the cast. We are to stay at a small village called Fortingal, in Glen Lyon, 2½ miles from Loch Tay among high mountains, … and surrounded by burns in which the boys will fish. They are all prodigiously excited at the prospect. … The holiday [at Rustington] has altogether been entirely successful.’