J.M. Barrie and the Lost Boys

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J.M. Barrie and the Lost Boys Page 21

by Andrew Birkin


  Good-bye

  from your loving son

  George

  George in 1907, aged 14

  Egerton House was sold in October, and, with Barrie's financial help, Sylvia bought a new home in London, 23 Campden Hill Square, not far from Kensington Gardens and Leinster Corner. While the house was being renovated, she took Peter, Michael and Nico down to stay with her mother in Ramsgate, from where Michael wrote to Barrie on October 18th:

  DEAR MR BARRIE

  I hope you are quite well

  I HAVE SENT'YOU A

  Picture of a Pirate he has

  GOT PLENTY OF WEAPONS

  and looks very fierce. Please

  COME SOON TO FISH

  from Michael with Love

  FROM NIK-O THE END

  In addition to supporting the Davies family, Barrie was helping a number of struggling writers, and had persuaded Frohman to invest money in several non-profit-making productions at the avant-garde Court Theatre in Sloane Square, run by Harley Granville-Barker and J.E. Vedrenne. All his life Barrie envied the rebellious, pioneering talents of writers such as Ibsen, though he himself seemed doomed to commercial success, and when Granville-Barker's play Waste was refused a licence by the Censor in October, Barrie rallied to the cause, lending his influence and support to the newly founded Committee seeking the abolition of the office of Censor. Soon he was hosting committee meetings at Leinster Corner, sending out circular letters requesting support from other writers, and drafting a petition to be laid before the Prime Minister. He wrote to Sylvia at Ramsgate on November 4th, 1907:

  Harley Granville-Barker

  Dearest Jocelyn,

  I am having a life of it over this censorship business. Receiving committees, telephones, telegrams, &c. all day and every day. I've done more business this last week or two than in all the rest of my life & it will go on till the 18th. It was stupid of me to get pushed into it but now that I am in I've got to do my best. There is just a shadow of a chance of its having any practical result.

  When I can I'm working hard at my play [What Every Woman Knows], which is dull, with occasional bright moments. … I would have sent the boys fireworks but the post office won't pass them. … At least write and tell me how you are. I want to know so much that I think you might do this. I'm very tired.

  Your

  J.M.B.

  George's ‘phiz’, which he sent Sylvia from Eton: ‘It is pretty hopeless, but I don't care. It'll last 2 or 3 years & then I shall have to be phizzed again in change clothes & stick-ups!’

  In another letter to Sylvia, Barrie mentioned having received ‘capital letters’ from George, which must have provided a pleasant respite from his censorship work. None of these early Etonian epistles to Barrie have survived, but they were doubtless in a similar vein to those written by George to Sylvia:

  Dearest Mother,

  I begin fagging tomorrow. My fagmaster is called Millington-Drake,* and is, I believe, awfully strict. … I am getting on rippingly at Eton footer, and shall probably be in my house Lower Boy team. … Yesterday was the Old Boy match. … At half past six came the sock supper! We had tons of sock, soup, and grouse and things. Towards the end a great silver challenge cup came round full of champagne. We all drank to the prosperity of the house. I was not TIGHT! … (Champagne is ripping stuff, and I wish I'd taken a longer booze!) Millington-Drake made some ripping speeches. … Mrs Millington-Drake came down to Eton yesterday. She had tea in the house and gave Lawrence major and me ten bob each! We were pretty bucked, I can tell you! … Millington-Drake has lent me a tremendous book to read, called ‘The Letters of Queen Victoria (Vol. I)’ It is a very instructive book, but I like it rather.

  From your loving son

  George

  Barrie wrote to Sylvia on November 29th:

  Dearest Jocelyn,

  Tomorrow I am meaning to go to see George as they have a big ‘footer’ day, and I am a good deal agitated as to what hat Millington Drake would prefer me to wear. It will probably end (against my better judgement) in my donning the now somewhat passée bowler. I was lunching today with Bernard Shaw in his flat in Adelphi Terrace, a very pleasant place. … I hope you are all pretty well. When I don't hear I dread you may be ill, but I trust it is not so. … I am longing for you to be on Campden Hill. Love to all,

  Your

  J.M.B.

  By Christmas 1907 the new house on Campden Hill was ready for occupation. Peter Davies described it in the Morgue:

  23 Campden Hill Square

  ‘A more attractive house than the two earlier homes, so close by, in Kensington Park Gardens; and I expect a snob would have to admit that it was a better address. … Very early in the proceedings J.M.B. affixed to the dining-room ceiling, by means of a coin adroitly spun, the penny stamp with which he used to hallmark his acquaintances’ houses, whether he effectually owned them or not. On the first floor, at the back, Sylvia had her lonely bedroom, next door to the schoolroom, whose most prominent feature was a new three-quarter-size billiard table presented by J.M.B. … On the second floor were nursery and night-nursery, where Mary Hodgson, Michael and Nico slept; and on the top floor were a two-bedded room for George and Jack when they came home, a single room at the back which I occupied, and another two-bedded room for slaves. … To 23 Campden Hill Square came, besides Mary Hodgson, Minnie the cook … and the pretty, buxom new house-parlourmaid, Amy, who stirred the young Adam in some of us, more or less obscurely.

  ‘And here, I think, Sylvia did succeed, gradually, in regaining something of the zest for life. The boys were a fond amusement and distraction for her, relatives came frequently, and the dog-like J.M.B. still living at Leinster Corner and constantly in attendance. … Everything must have been done, by all who had the care of us and above all by Sylvia herself, to shut out the imp of sorrow and self-pity from our young lives. In my own case, at any rate, it was not till a good deal later … that I began to look back with nostalgic yearnings on Egerton House and its garden and the three short years at Berkhamsted (long years, though, to a small boy), as on a sort of last paradise.’

  Tessie Parke as the Baby Mermaid

  Peter Pan had been once again revived for the holiday season – indeed its annual return was now taken as a matter of course, Frohman having pledged himself to revive it every Christmas for as long as the public cared to see it. At the request of the London Ambulance Service, Barrie had added a line ‘about no one being able to fly until the fairy dust had been blown on him; so many children having gone home and tried it from their beds and needed surgical attention’.1 On the last night of the run, the curtain came down at the end of Act V, followed by the usual deafening applause from the addicts in the front stalls. The curtain remained lowered for five, ten, fifteen minutes, the auditorium in darkness. The audience were bewildered, stamping their feet impatiently for the final tree-tops scene. Then Tessie Parke, the actress playing the baby mermaid, came on to the stage. ‘My friends, I am the Baby Mermaid. We are now going to do a new act for the first and only time on any stage. Mr Barrie told us a story one day about what happened to Peter when Wendy grew up and we made it into an act, and it will never be done again.’2 The curtain rose to reveal Wendy as an old married lady, telling her daughter Jane the story of Peter Pan and her own adventures as a child in the Never Never Land. Barrie described the essence of the scene that followed in Peter and Wendy:

  ‘Then … came the tragedy. … Jane was now asleep in her bed. Wendy was sitting on the floor, very close to the fire, … then the window blew open as of old, and Peter dropped on the floor.

  ‘He was exactly the same as ever. … He was a little boy, and she was grown up. She huddled by the fire, not daring to move, helpless and guilty, a big woman.

  ‘“Hullo, Wendy,” he said, not noticing any difference, for he was thinking chiefly of himself. …

  ‘“Hullo, Peter,” she replied faintly, squeezing herself as small as possible. Something inside her was crying “Woman, woman,
let go of me.”…

  ‘“Peter,” she said, faltering, “are you expecting me to fly away with you?”

  ‘“Of course, that is why I have come.”…

  ‘“I can't come,” she said apologetically, “I have forgotten how to fly.”

  ‘“I'll soon teach you again.”

  ‘“O Peter, don't waste your fairy dust on me.”

  ‘She had risen; and now at last a fear assailed him. “What is it?” he cried, shrinking.

  ‘“I will turn up the light,” she said, “and then you can see for yourself.”

  ‘For almost the only time in his life that I know of, Peter was afraid. “Don't turn up the light,” he cried.

  ‘She let her hands play in the hair of the tragic boy. … Then she turned up the light and Peter saw. He gave a cry of pain. …

  ‘“I am old, Peter. I am ever so much more than twenty. I grew up long ago.”

  ‘“You promised not to!”

  ‘“I couldn't help it. I am a married woman, Peter.”

  ‘“No, you're not.”

  ‘“Yes, and the little girl in the bed is my baby.”

  ‘“No, she's not.”

  ‘But he supposed she was; and he took a step towards the sleeping child, with his dagger upraised. Of course he did not strike. He sat down on the floor instead and sobbed; and Wendy did not know how to comfort him, though she could have done it so easily once. She was only a woman now, and she ran out of the room to think.

  ‘Peter continued to cry, and soon his sobs woke Jane. She sat up in bed, and was interested at once.

  ‘“Boy,” she said, “why are you crying?”’

  Peter and Jane flew away, and in the stage version Wendy explained to the now ancient Nana: ‘Don't be anxious, Nana. This is how I planned it if he ever came back, … and when Jane grows up I will hope she will have a little daughter, who will fly away with him in turn – and in this way may I go on for ever and ever, dear Nana, so long as children are young and innocent.’ ‘And heartless’, added Barrie in the book – ‘Gay and innocent and heartless.’

  ‘When the curtain fell,’ wrote Denis Mackail, ‘there was another full quarter-of-an-hour's applause. And then something decidedly historical occurred. Mr J. M. Barrie actually showed himself on the stage. In his black overcoat, his scarf, and holding his bowler hat in his hand. He said nothing, the vision was distinctly brief, and he could still stick to [his claim] afterwards that never, since Richard Savage, had he taken a first-night author's call.’ As they left the theatre, Barrie slipped Hilda Trevelyan his hand-written manuscript of ‘Peter Pan: An Afterthought’, on which he had inscribed: ‘To Hilda Trevelyan – My incomparable Wendy’. The critic Ronald Jeans by chance saw the performance, and wrote in the Liverpool Daily Post: ‘All those privileged to witness this never-to-be-forgotten and only performance of this striking act will acknowledge it to be the finest thing that Mr Barrie has done.’

  Jack, aged 13

  * * *

  While Peter enrolled at Mr Wilkinson's celebrated institution in Orme Square, Michael and Nico started school at Norland Place in the New Year, escorted to and fro by Mary Hodgson. Sylvia's infrequent visits to the school were recalled by a former pupil, Betty Macleod, in the school's 1976 centenary magazine: ‘On Visitors’ day, twice, we noticed, watching drill, a lady with two really beautiful little boys. She had one of the saddest expressions on her face we had ever seen, and we wondered who she was. We were told that she was a friend of J. M. Barrie, and one of her boys was his model for … Peter Pan. Their name was Llewelyn Davies.’ In contrast to George's evident happiness at Eton, Jack experienced nothing but misery at Osborne. He later told his wife that ‘he hated it, he loathed it, he hated it with a deadly loathing. It was pretty awful – the ragging and the bullying that went on was intolerably horrible, and a little boy who had never been away from home was easy meat.’3 Why did Jack not mention his unhappiness to Sylvia or Barrie? ‘He was too proud. He adored his mother, and he didn't want to trouble her more than she was already troubled. He would never have told Barrie: he didn't confide in him as George, Michael and Nico did.’ Denis Mackail alluded to Jack's growing resentment towards Barrie in The Story of J.M.B.: ‘Jack, perhaps, with a touch already of inherited intolerance, had a deep-down notion that it was an interloper who was saving them all from ruin.’ Jack's wife was more direct. ‘He enormously disliked the idea of this silly little man presuming to take the place of his father. He wasn't the sort who bore malice, and I don't think that he disliked him – though, God knows, Barrie gave him cause enough in due course’. ‘Jack's whole attitude towards J.M.B. is very difficult properly to understand’, wrote Nico in 1976. ‘Jack more than most could swing emotionally from plus to minus; fundamentally he was very fond of Uncle Jim, tho' there were numerous times when he swung against him, largely caused by his being the loner in the Navy with us other 4 being more constantly under J.M.B.'s eye. Much as Jack loved & worshipped our father, I can't believe for a moment that George would have been “second” in this. Had Jack been to Eton like the rest of us, his attitude to Uncle Jim might have been very different.’4

  George returned to Macnaghten's House for his second term (or ‘half’, as it is called at Eton), and his letters continued to flow in high spirits to Sylvia and Barrie:

  ‘[February 20th, 1908] Yesterday I was called “a baby who had grown out of his clothes”. So I have, but it was meant because I'm not in tails. Some of my shirt always shows below my waistcoat, and if I tighten my braces, my trousers come up to my knees. I'm one of Eton's sights. Such is fame! … I have won two matches in Junior House Fives, and am consequently feeling rather bucked. [May 3rd] By a ghastly lie I got off going a walk with our dear Roger Woodhouse. I think it's excusable, because you can't say “No” when a chap asks you to go out for a walk with him. So I said a chap wanted to talk to me about something, and found a chap afterwards. On our walk we came across some chaps smoking away like anything, among them Viscount Carlton, who is about the biggest bounder out.* [May 14th] I saw Lady Cynthia Graheme today. She appeared wearing a hat 8 times the size of any ordinary hat. It was a sight for the gods! She came into Lower Chapel. I call it lip to Eton. … P.S. Love to the caterpillars.’

  Frohman was once again staying in Paris, and in order to lure Barrie over, he announced the opening of Peter Pan, ou le petit garçon qui ne voulait pas grandir, at the fashionable Vaudeville Theatre. It was a gesture in the best tradition of Frohman's spectacular extravagance, since the two-week engagement barely met the cost of transporting the scenery from London, let alone paying the cast. The play was performed in English, though the audience were guided by a special 12-page synopsis, L Histoire de Peter Pan, and the event received wide coverage in the Paris press, Le Figaro devoting three columns to the play's deeper meaning.

  Michael's eighth birthday was on June 16th, and Barrie arranged for a redskin outfit, complete with bows, arrows, peace-pipe and wigwam, to be delivered to 23 Campden Hill Square in his absence. He wrote to Michael from Paris:

  Pauline Chase as Peter in the Paris production of 1908. Le Figaro wrote: ‘If we look deep down in our memories, we will find Peter Pan: he is our fine hopes as we start forth, our certainty that we shall triumph, our complete confidence in ourselves, which for a moment lifted us on high, only to throw us to the ground later on. It was that prodigious hour when destiny hovered above an immense joy, before crushing it. We placed all that we love in life in Peter's hands. He did not understand, and went back to Fairyland. Peter Pan is what cannot be. He stands for our early memories and dreams that do not grow old along with ourselves.

  Hotel d'Albe,

  Avenue des Champs Elysées.

  15 June 1908.

  My dear Michael,

  Paris is looking very excited today, and all the people think it is because there were races yesterday, but I know it is because tomorrow is your birthday. I wish I could be with you and your candles. You can look on me as one of your candles, t
he one that burns badly – the greasy one that is bent in the middle. But still, hurray, I am Michael's candle. I wish I could see you putting on the redskin's clothes for the first time. Won't your mother be frightened. Nick will hide beneath the bed, and Peter will cry for the police.

  Dear Michael, I am very fond of you, but don't tell anybody.

  The End.

  J. M. Barrie

  Jack sent Michael two shillings for his birthday from Osborne, but George, at Eton, was feeling less flush: ‘Many happy returns of the day! I hope you will get lots of presents, although I have not sent you one, owing to poverty and forgetfulness. … I hope you have been finding caterpillars. I have got about 40! … Now I must tidy up Millington-Drake's room.’

  What Every Woman Knows began rehearsals at the beginning of July, with Gerald du Maurier and Hilda Trevelyan in the principal roles. It was Barrie's first full-length play for over three years, and he now devoted most of his time to rewrites and rehearsals. Sylvia and her boys therefore spent their summer holidays without him, renting a farm-house in the heart of the New Forest. Peter Davies wrote:

  ‘Butterflies were a principal lure this year. George still retained the bug-hunting enthusiasm of his very young days, and … I followed his lead in such things, and spent many happy days with him wandering in the woods and over the commons armed with net and killing-bottle and sandwiches for lunch, … while Jack was heartily bored by the whole business and thought it all tedious. In a word, he had outgrown it, maturing earlier than George. … Besides butterfly-hunting, I recall constructing a sort of encampment with George of old sacks over a hole in a sandy hillside, and spending hours crouched therein blissfully enough, eating plums and Mellin's Food biscuits; … [and] a grand motor expedition to Bournemouth – had J.M.B. come down? – involving the purchase of bows and arrows, banned since the dreadful day three or four years earlier at Black Lake when I had shot Jack in the lip. … I remember very little of Sylvia in the New Forest; only my own childish doings. I think that I, and probably George and Jack too, but perhaps Jack less than George, lived in the boy world to the exclusion of any other, and were little troubled by the disappearance of Arthur from our lives or by the misery which the bereft Sylvia no doubt did everything to hide from us. … I think she must have missed Arthur terribly indeed that summer. …

 

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