J.M. Barrie and the Lost Boys

by Andrew Birkin

  Your affectionate Father.

  Michael in the sand at Ramsgate

  A few hours before Arthur's death, Sylvia wrote to Michael:

  18 [April 1907]

  Darling son Michael,

  I hope your cold is not bad – get it quite well quickly for my sake.

  Here are some silkworm eggs from papa Gibbs [the local chemist] – I don't know what you do with them, but I've no doubt Mary [Hodgson] will know. … George is just going to Mr Timson to have his knickerbockers mended, but they look almost too bad to mend. What a pity it is that you all have to wear things – how much better if you could go about like Mowgli – then perhaps you would never have any colds.

  Goodbye now darling – write to me soon

  Mother

  Peter Davies wrote:

  ‘There is nothing more moving to me, or more admirable, in the whole of this melancholy record, than these two letters to Michael, the second written within a few hours of Arthur's death. … Nothing of the misery and despair Sylvia was racked with was allowed to reach her children. There is a stoicism in this which fully matches Arthur's. … It must have been very shortly after Michael received Sylvia's letter … that first Jack, and then I, was summoned to Grannie's bedroom … and by her told the news, which she had perhaps just had by telegram. She told us very simply, without circumlocution or excessive emotion, sitting up in bed with (I think) a lace nightcap on; and I believe the meaning of her words penetrated pretty clearly to one's immature brain, though not of course their full and permanent significance. It was, as I remember it, a dull and windy day, and I recollect wandering up to the night nursery and staring out of the window for long minutes in vague wretchedness and gloom, at the grey sea and the distant Gull lightship. … “A boy's will is the wind's will”, and as likely as not I was digging on the sands as usual next morning. But for the moment I think it was borne in on me that a disastrous thing had overcome us.’

  Of the many tributes paid to Arthur after his death, perhaps the simplest and truest came from a close family friend, Eleanor Clough, who wrote: ‘We used to think he was like a young warrior in an Italian picture. And now one knows that he was one.’ Peter commented, ‘I think Arthur's beauty was not less striking than Sylvia's, and, for my part, I confess that, much as I venerate all their other lovely qualities, it is the thought of their beauty which, more than anything else, brings the lump to my scrawny throat.’

  Michael, Peter and Jack on Ramsgate beach, April 1907

  * This theme was eventually expanded into the play Dear Brutus (1917).

  † The theme of the accursed thing first occurs in Chapter XXXV of Tommy and Grizel; Barrie developed it into a one-act play, ‘The Accursed Thing’ in 1908, but it was not performed until 1913, retitled The Will.

  11

  1907–1908

  Egerton House,

  Berkhamsted.

  [May, 1907]

  Dear Darling Dolly,

  I think of you so often & I know how you love Arthur & me & that helps me in my sorrow – You will love me always won't you – & help me to live through the long long years. How shall I do it I wonder – it seems so impossible. We were so utterly & altogether happy & that happiness is the most precious thing on earth. We were so young to part. I must be terribly brave now & I know our boys will help me. They only can keep me alive & I shall live for them and do always what Arthur wd most like for them. How he loved us all & he has been taken from us.

  Kind Hugh Macnaghten – a dear friend of Arthur's – is going to have George in his house at Eton in September. … I am grateful to many many friends, & I will show it some day I hope, but just now I am full of deadly pain & sorrow & I often wonder I am alive. The little boys are loving & thoughtful & I always sleep with my George now – & it comforts, more than I can say, to touch him, & I feel Arthur must know. He will live again in them I feel & that must be my dear comfort till I go to him at last. We longed to grow old together – oh my dear friend, it is all so utterly impossible to understand. My Jack is at Osborne now & writes happy letters to me – I am going to pay him a visit when I am strong enough – I miss him very much – but they have all got to be men & leave me & for Arthur's sake I must fight that fight too. I shall come to London later on – we are trying to let the house – it is too big for me & too full of pain & sorrow. I think of him almost always now as he was before the tragic illness & God gave him the finest face in the world.

  Lovingly

  Your Sylvia.

  Dolly Ponsonby wrote to Peter Davies in 1946:

  ‘Perhaps there were people who didn't know what [Sylvia's] passionate devotion to your father was – I have neither before nor since known such anguish as she suffered during his illness. She burst out twice to me about it, but not more – words were inadequate to both of us – and always her reserve about what she cared about was very strong. She had an inner life of her own, which is what gave her her great interest. I think I did know her as well as anybody – and I know that many of her lesser friends merely saw the charming vivacious lovely exterior, which is what she chose to show them. … I don't want to say that Sylvia was perfect. Perfection is dull, but she was perfect to me. … I loved her little feminine weaknesses, such as being frightened of going out in the dark. … I cannot think of any faults she had, unless it was that she would not answer letters – and enjoyed the admiration of men, naturally – while at the same time never apparently wanting to be the centre of a circle – which is very rare. She had some curiously old-fashioned virtues. She did not like one to criticize any one at all before the children. I remember her saying “Ssh” when I burst out with something about J.M.B. and Mary Barrie, who were staying at Rustington – looking at Michael, and I felt quite ashamed. … As I grew older, I realised that she was much more profound than as quite a young girl I had thought. Though so completely happy in her family, yet her sensitiveness and intuition did give her what I call an apprehensive imagination. She loved so much that she feared.’

  ‘The ineffably tragic figure of Sylvia in her despair’, with George at Egerton House (JMB)

  Arthur had died leaving very little money. Both sides of the family knew that Barrie was more than willing and able to support Sylvia and her boys – in 1906 alone he had earned £44,000, and Peter Pan had grossed over half a million – but they felt that she would wish to remain independent. Unbeknown to her, Arthur's brother Maurice organized a whip round among his brothers and Arthur's colleagues at the Bar. The resulting collection was presented to Sylvia, who adamantly refused to accept a penny of it. She gave no reason, she merely requested that it be returned to the donors. There is no record of any precise commitment from Barrie either: possibly this too was initially declined, though, as Mackail observed, ‘When Barrie had decided to give, he gave, and no one – unless they were literally superhuman – could hope to escape the gift.’

  Shortly after Arthur's death, Sylvia wrote out a series of notes or ‘Directions’, later identified by Barrie as being ‘Notes for a Will’. They are written in an urgent hand, on a block of drawing-paper, and appear to have been composed on impulse, ending in mid-sentence:

  ‘I may die at any time but it's not likely to happen yet as I am strong I think on the whole. However in case it happens (& God forbid because of my precious boys) I will put down a few directions. I wonder if my dear kind Florence Gay [a close family friend] would care to make a home for them till they are out in the world (if she is still single) … she could always ask advice from Margaret & J.M.B. & Trixie & May & all the kind uncles – (also of course Mama if she is still alive). With dear Mary Hodgson, & I hope she will stay with them always (unless she marries) … I believe they will all be good brave men (seeing that they are Arthur's sons & understand how very very much they were beloved by him & Sylvia, his altogether faithful & loving wife). I hope they will marry & have children & live long & happily & be content to be poor if it should have to be … Also that they will realise that there is nothing so per
fect as a true love match & in that no one was ever more blessed than their own mother. I hope that they will work hard, for to be idle is disastrous, that at play time (& everyone can play a little) I like to think of them doing so in a dear healthy honest way & bringing happiness to others as well as to themselves. … I should like all my dear one's love letters to me to be burnt unread … & lie with me & Arthur in the Hampstead churchyard close to that other dear grave. … Of one thing I am certain – that J. M. Barrie (the best friend in the whole world) will always be ready to advise out of his love for

  Peter Davies commented:

  ‘What would the next word or words have been if Sylvia had not stopped writing when she did? Jocelyn? My precious boys? … I think her attitude to him was a special and peculiar one, not very representative of her true self. Indeed, on reflection, I doubt if he brought out or even recognised (or wanted to) the true characteristics of anyone he made much of; he was such a fantasy-weaver that they ended by either playing up to him or clearing out. When he was strongly attracted by people, he wanted at once to own them and to be dominated by them, whichever their sex. The owning he was often able to manage for a time to a greater or less degree, with the help of his money, which made generosity an easy business for him (not that the rich are usually generous), plus his wit and charm and the aura of success and fame which surrounded him. The being dominated was more difficult of attainment, as he was a pretty strong character in his own strange way. There's no denying that, from Arthur's death onwards, he did increasingly “own” Sylvia and her boys after his fashion. And Sylvia, a strong character herself, couldn't help dominating him. Later, I think, he achieved something of the same peculiar equilibrium with George, and much more so with Michael. … Life went on for a while, in a half-hearted way, at Egerton House. I recall, not in much detail, but with a vague sense of misery and discomfort which still survives, the return of Jack, Michael and Nico and myself with Mary Hodgson from Ramsgate, and the ineffably tragic figure of Sylvia in her despair. … Of the last phase at Berkhamsted I have one little recollection which, though not particularly edifying, is perhaps worth recording. One day George and I were larking about in an intolerable way, arguing and letting off steam … until poor Sylvia, exasperated beyond endurance, cried out “Oh stop, stop, stop! You know you would never dare behave like this if your father was still alive!” … I only put this horrid little memory in because it is an instance [of] the … heartlessness or thoughtlessness of small boys.’

  It was a heartlessness perceived by Barrie, who wrote in Peter and Wendy: ‘Peter had seen many tragedies, but he had forgotten them all. … “I forget [people] after I kill them.”’ A casual remark from one of the boys (probably Michael) was also noted down about this time and used in Peter and Wendy, which he had started writing, but was not to finish until 1910: ‘Children have the strangest adventures without being troubled by them. For instance, they may remember to mention, a week after the event happened, that when they were in the wood they met their dead father and had a game with him.’

  In order to remove Sylvia from the pain and sorrow of Egerton House, Barrie rented a rambling house in Scotland, Dhivach Lodge, set high in the wooded hills above Loch Ness, perched like a gull's nest over a ravine. It was a long and singularly damp holiday, from early June until mid-September. Peter Davies wrote:

  ‘The whole pattern of the Dhivach holiday seems to me to have had something rather deplorable about it. … The boys did enjoy themselves, sometimes still chasing butterflies but fishing madly with worms most of the time in every burn within walking distance. Various people came to stay, including Crompton … and nice Madge Murray, J.M.B.'s niece, then in her very early twenties, the most normal and human member of the Barrie family, who sang songs at the piano and I think must have introduced a welcome note of natural gaiety into the household; and Captain Scott and Harley Granville Barker with Lillah [McCarthy] his then wife, a somewhat overwhelming person. … It would be fascinating to know what such guests as these thought of the Dhivach inmates. Plenty of scope for comment, one would say. And however thoroughly the boys enjoyed it, there must have been uncomfortable moments among the adults.’

  Sylvia at Dhivach Lodge (JMB)

  Mary Barrie was also at Dhivach, though she left in September to go on another of her motoring trips through France. Barrie wrote to Hilda Trevelyan on August 26th, ‘I do nothing up here but fish & fish & fish, and we ought all to be fishes to feel at home in this weather.’ In fact he was doing a good deal besides fishing. The remnants of his marriage were combining with his notes of A. E. W. Mason's political campaign and his flirtation with the Duchess of Sutherland to produce What Every Woman Knows, while Arthur's fatal illness and Barrie's troubled conscience about his own stupendous wealth were finding expression in a one-act play, ‘The Accursed Thing’. Captain Scott's visit to Dhivach Lodge prompted an idea for yet another play, though it never progressed beyond the notebook stage:

  – North Pole (or South) Play Tableau – Old man (leader) comes back when others gone – he must die. Ice – snow. We see his dream – succeeding ages represented by individuals getting nearer & nearer Pole, always having to turn back & die. At last he plants his staff or Union Jack at Pole & falls dying.

  Notebook entry for 1907: ‘Peter Pan Ten years later – Wendy grown up & Peter still a boy. (one-act play?)’

  Barrie was also making numerous notes on Michael. Some of these appear to have been for a sequel to Peter Pan about Peter's brother, ‘Michael Pan’. It never got much further than the title, perhaps because by this time Barrie had begun to incorporate elements of Michael's character into Peter Pan himself as he developed the book, Peter and Wendy:

  ‘Sometimes … [Peter Pan] had dreams, and they were more painful than the dreams of other boys. For hours he could not be separated from these dreams, though he wailed piteously in them. They had to do, I think, with the riddle of his existence. At such times it had been Wendy's custom to take him out of bed and sit with him on her lap, soothing him in dear ways of her own invention, and when he grew calmer to put him back to bed before he quite woke up, so that he should not know of the indignity to which she had subjected him’

  In reality it was Barrie who fulfilled Wendy's role with Michael. He later wrote a short story about him, Neil and Tintinnabulum, which is as intimate as it is unknown, in which he elaborated on the nature of Michael's nightmares, referring to the boy as ‘Neil’:

  Michael splashing, unable to swim (JMB)

  ‘There was a horror looking for him in his childhood. Waking dreams we called them, and they lured Neil out of bed in the night. It was always the same nameless enemy he was seeking, and he stole about in various parts of the house in search of it, probing fiercely for it in cupboards, or standing at the top of the stairs pouring out invective and shouting challenges to it to come up. I have known the small white figure defend the stair-head thus for an hour, blazing rather than afraid, concentrated on some dreadful matter in which, tragically, none could aid him. I stood or sat by him, like a man in an adjoining world, waiting till he returned to me, for I had been advised, warned, that I must not wake him abruptly. Gradually I soothed him back to bed, and though my presence there in the morning told him, in the light language we then adopted, that he had been “at it again” he could remember nothing of who the enemy was. It had something to do with the number 7; that was all we ever knew. Once I slipped from the room, thinking it best that he should wake to normal surroundings, but that was a mistake. He was violently agitated by my absence. In some vague way he seemed on the stairs to have known that I was with him and to have got comfort from it; he said he had gone back to bed only because he knew I should be there when he woke up. I found that he liked, “after he had been an ass,” to wake up seeing me “sitting there doing something frightfully ordinary, like reading the newspaper,” and you may be sure that thereafter that was what I was doing. …

  Michael in 1907, aged 7. Barrie alluded to Michael's drea
ms in a later version of Peter Pan: ‘Peter is on the bed, asleep. … He is dreaming, and in his dreams he is always in pursuit of a boy who was never here, or anywhere: the only boy who could beat him.’

  ‘What is the danger? What is it that he knows in times during which he is shut away and that he cannot remember to tell to himself or to me when he wakes? I am often disturbed when thinking of him (which is the real business of my life), regretting that, in spite of advice and warnings, I did not long ago risk waking him abruptly, when, before it could hide, he might have clapped seeing eyes upon it, and thus been able to warn me. Then, knowing the danger, I would for ever after be on the watch myself, so that when the moment came, I could envelop him as with wings.’

  * * *

  At the end of the summer holidays, George began his first term at Eton. He wrote regular letters to Sylvia (a compulsory school rule), and seems to have settled into his new life with surprising ease, picking up the Etonian dialect within a few days of his arrival. He wrote his first letter home on September 18th, 1907:

  Eton College,

  Windsor.

  Goodness knows the date!

  Dearest Mother,

  At last I am in my study … It's not a bad den, and will be able to be fitted up jolly nicely. … There is a cup-board above my bed full of grub from the hamper, oh joy!

  I have spoken to two or three chaps here already. They are jolly decent. One is called Lord Newton Butler. … The Matron came in just now and has taken care of all my chink. She is awfully decent, and she takes lots of chaps' chink. She saw my picture of you and said you were very pretty. … I'm afraid there's nothing else to say.