J.M. Barrie and the Lost Boys

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J.M. Barrie and the Lost Boys Page 35

by Andrew Birkin


  Michael, Nico and Mary formed a reception committee for Jack and Gerrie on the top step of 23 Campden Hill Square, Nico recalling in 1975:

  ‘We were standing outside the front door of 23, waiting to greet Gerrie and Jack, who were getting out of a cab. As they started to climb up the steps, Mary just turned her back on them and walked inside the house. Jack was furious, understandably, but Michael and I wouldn't hear a word against her. Don't forget she was the person in our lives – she was the mother. She terrified pretty well everybody else in the family, but to Michael and me she was wholly unique and wholly irreplaceable.’

  Gerrie now found herself in ‘a quite impossible situation. Mary absolutely refused to speak to me. Everything was communicated via Michael or Nico, or written down as messages on bits of paper.’ Jack and Gerrie awoke on their first morning at Campden Hill Square to find one such message had been slipped under the bedroom door during the night. It was from Mary Hodgson to Jack: ‘Things have been going on in this room of which your father would not have approved.’ Gerrie was unable to discuss her predicament with the boys:

  ‘It was a completely taboo subject – besides, I was too shy, or maybe my pride got in the way. J.M.B. had told me I was in charge, and so I had to try my best. But I was completely outside my orbit – I was far too young and inexperienced, only a year or so older than Michael, though he was far, far more sophisticated than me. I tried on one or two occasions to be pleasant to Mary, to try and coax her into conversation, but she adamantly refused to address one word to my face. If I was standing next to Michael, she would convey her answers to him, always referring to me in the third person. She was completely demented.’

  Barrie spent most of Christmas 1917 at Campden Hill Square, but naturally turned a blind eye to the tension. He wrote blithely to Peter Scott from Campden Hill to thank the boy for his Christmas present:

  22 December, 1917.

  My dear Scott

  I am sitting here smoking the tobacco out of your pouch. It is a lovely pouch and I watch people in case they try to steal it. Who steals my purse steals trash, but if anyone tries to steal my pouch he had better watch out.

  I am hoping to see you soon. I am with my boys and they are as rowdy as ever.

  My love to your mother and you.

  I am

  My dear Scott

  Your humble servant

  Barrie.

  The domestic imbroglio came to a head in early January. Barrie and the boys had gone out before breakfast, and Gerrie was alone in the house. She went downstairs and found a note from Mary Hodgson propped up against a frozen water-jug – ‘Either you leave this house or I do.’ Gerrie's reaction was immediate:

  ‘I started packing there and then, telephoned my husband who had gone to see a friend, he came back to help with the luggage, and by night-fall we were staying in a hotel off Knightsbridge. That evening I began feeling exceedingly ill. Jack phoned Barrie's doctor and said, “I think my wife's having a miscarriage.” The doctor said “Why?” My husband, poor young man, hadn't got a clue. So then he called another doctor, and they shovelled me on to a stretcher and removed me to a nursing home. It was a miscarriage, and I spent the rest of the time weeping and weeping – I couldn't stop – Sheer nerves. I never saw Mary Hodgson again. I think Barrie was absolutely delighted when Mary handed in her notice as a result of it all. Everything could be blamed on me, and he didn't lose face with the boys. I suppose Mary Hodgson stayed long enough until the flat was ready for them, and then he moved them in.’

  Barrie responded to Mary's written letter of resignation with a letter of his own:

  23 Campden Hill Square.

  10 Jan 1918.

  My dear Mary,

  As I think you find it easier I am answering your note by another. I suppose I must accept your resignation very sorrowfully as the wisest step in circumstances that are very difficult. No need for me to repeat of what inestimable service to me have been your love and devotion to the boys, particularly to Michael and Nicholas who came into our hands when they were so young.

  I earnestly hope that you will continue to see much of them in the future and be their friend thro' life. If you care to consult me about your own future I shall be very glad. I also hope you will now let me make the arrangement Mrs Davies asked me to make in the last weeks of her life and which I told you of a day or two after her death. It is entirely a matter between her and you, and I trust you will allow her earnest wish to be carried out.

  Always your most sincere friend,

  J. M. Barrie.

  Nico and Michael at Glan Hafren

  The ‘arrangement’ was a sum of £500, left to her by Sylvia, to which Barrie offered to add a further £500 of his own. Mary refused to accept either amount. She was mortified at the news of Gerrie's miscarriage, and suffered such guilt over her behaviour towards her that in later life she steadfastly refused to meet any of the boys' wives in case her innate jealousy once again mastered her better self.

  Barrie took Michael and Nico down to Tillington, near Petworth in Sussex, to stay with E. V. Lucas, who had separated from Elizabeth and was living alone with Audrey. Lucas later remarked on the ‘minute thoughtfulness for others’3 that had begun to creep into Michael's character, an empathy evident in his handling of the current domestic crisis. Michael wrote to Mary from Tillington on January 20th, 1918:

  Barrie and Michael

  My dear Mary,

  Do you mind if I try to reduce the painfulness of things by putting them down here in writing? I believe I can do it.

  I am assuming that matters have gone too far to turn back now, through whose fault I will not say, tho' I shrewdly suspect it had a little to do with everybody.

  Before going any further, let me assure you with the utmost assurance that it will not be at all possible for Nico and me to continue living at 23 with Jack & his wife – as you suggested. The proof lies in the last three weeks, whatever you say. This may be hard luck on Jack, but the fact remains, & when a man marries, his family is the one he is setting up for himself. You yourself said that Jack is having too much done for him. That is so, so why sh'd he be allowed to go on in this easy way, undisturbed and disturbing?

  A locket given to Mary Hodgson. Top to bottom: Michael, Peter, George, Jack and Nico

  It w'd be hardly possible for us to go on living at 23 even without Jack and Gerrie, unless you came back. As to this last it rests with your ‘pride’, & with your opinion as to the importance of maintaining 23 as a home for Nico.

  (I hope all this doesn't sound callous. You know me too well to make that mistake.)

  The present scheme I believe is to let things remain undecided for a month or two, so as to see which way to turn. As to whether going and living at the flat will be worse for Nico and me, that rests with our own strength of mind, don't it – and particularly with mine I believe.

  And of course the chief reason of 23's importance was that you were there – & – do not say I am wrong – I am sure we shall see very nearly if not as much of you as before.

  Let us weigh the past with the (??) future:

  Past. We have seen you only in the holidays, which has not been very much. We have written about once a week or so (when old Nico could be roused).

  Future. Of course we shall write as much if not more (when I can rouse old Nico). And in the holidays – mind you! – you're to come with your gingham & take up your quarters in the attic we'll have ready for you – if only to see my mustache grow! And besides that you will overcome yr dislike of travelling, & be dragged off in the summer holidays, or whenever we do disappear in the wilds. And – mind you! – this is absolutely serious – none of your absurd ideas of pride or absurd ideas of Uncle Jim not wanting you! That's what I call false pride, & harmful at that. Think how glad he'll be to get us off his hands for a time!

  This frivolousness of pen really hides the most serious inwardness I've ever had. I'm going to draw up a form for you to sign.

  The chie
f sadness this week then is the leaving of 23, & that was bound to come, so don't let us be cowards.

  Also – & I know this is not my business at all – do take that paltry thousand to please Nico & me, if only to start a social revolution! We'd have made it a billion only that's not a billionth part enough. I know it's twice as hard for you as it is for us, and that's precious hard. Nico is unaware of the state of affairs, so please Mary don't make it harder by refusing anything.

  AU REVOIR.

  MICHAEL.

  Peter wrote to Mary from Flanders two days later:

  My dear Mary,

  I've heard one or two disquieting rumours lately about 23. Will you please tell me what's really happened, please? Because whatever I am or am not, or am thought to be or am not thought to be, I will always do anything in my power to help you. It seems to me from what I've heard – which is very little – that things are happening otherwise than they might have happened had I been at home; Nico would be heart-broken if you were to go – Michael too, I think. But I know so little – I wish you'd write.

  Yrs,

  Peter.

  By the time Mary received Peter's letter, the deed had been done. Campden Hill Square – ‘Little Old New Babylon’ as Michael used to call it – was to be closed down as a home for the boys, and by the Easter holidays Michael and Nico would be living with Barrie in his Adelphi Terrace flat. Mary appears to have faced up to her departure in good grace, judging by Barrie's letter to her of January 25th:

  My dear Mary,

  Thank you heartily for your letter, and for what you say about myself also, for I deeply appreciate it. No one knows, no one could know, so well as myself, what you have been to the boys, except indeed the boys themselves. What you say of the future is a great relief to me, for the uncertainty of life is before us all more than ever in these days, and the knowledge that if the need arose ‘The trust continues’ is the best that could be said to me. The practical matters we can talk over.

  Yours very sincerely,

  J. M. Barrie.

  Barrie wrote to Elizabeth Lucas four days later, bringing her up to date with the domestic situation:

  ‘Michael's letter to Audrey has told you of our adventures at Tillington where we had a very happy time, and Michael discovered an old shop at Petworth and triumphantly bought a soap-dish for his room here [at Adelphi Terrace]. That room is not finished yet, indeed three rooms are still in confusion which will give you some idea of the difficulties with workmen nowadays. … I had begun to feel in my bones tho' that it was all too fine a flat for me and that for my lonely purposes all I really needed was this room and the bedroom. … However the way has been cleared by trouble at Campden Hill. Mary is going sometime in February. This means Michael and Nicholas making this their home, as my idea is to put caretakers into Campden Hill for a little and then store the furniture and dispose of the lease. Of course it is a great thing to me to look to having Michael and Nico here tho' they are so much away. A sad thing is that Michael is now 17½ and in a year or less is eligible for the army. The depression of it all! I shy at thinking of it but it has no doubt a great deal to do with the gloom in which one seems to get enveloped.’

  Audrey, Elizabeth and E. V. Lucas

  Barrie wrote to Elizabeth again on February 20th:

  ‘I emerge out of my big chimney to write to you. I was sitting there with a Charlotte Brontë in my hands (when I read her I think mostly of Emily) and there was a gale on the roof; it is probably not windy at all down below, but with the slightest provocation the chimneys overhead in their whirring cowls go as devilish as the witches in Macbeth, whom they also rather resemble in appearance. … As I had to do without you this time, and scorned to put anyone in your place, the decoration of this room is perforce all my own. … The floor is matting, with rugs by Michael Llewelyn Davies, Esq. … There are no pictures beyond tiny ones, the books and wood crying out against our experiments therewith. … Naught else but in the fireplace two old settles and piles of firewood. …

  Barrie curled up on his wooden settle, from the painting by Sir John Lavery

  ‘I had an odd thought today about the war that might come to something, but it seems to call for a poet. That in the dead quietness that comes after the carnage, the one thing those lying on the ground must be wondering is whether they are alive or dead. Out there the veil that separates the survivors and the killed must be getting very thin, and those on the one side of it very much jumbled up with those on the other. … Perhaps it is of this stuff that ghosts are made. These be rather headachy thoughts. I expect the lot on the other side of the veil have as many Germans as British, and that they all went off together quite unconscious that they had ever been enemies. To avenge the fallen! That is the stupidest cry of the war. What must the fallen think of us if they hear it.’

  Gripped by the idea of the veil, Barrie set to work at once on another one-act play inspired by George, A Well-Remembered Voice. It concerns a mother, still grieving the death of her son, Dick. Her mourning is for all the world to see: she wears black, leaves Dick's ‘sacred’ fishing-rods lying around the study, and holds futile seances in an effort to get in touch with him ‘on the other side’. Her husband, Mr Don, is an extension of the father in The New Word: outwardly unemotional, he seems to be more interested in his newspaper than his wife's seance. She does not resent his apparent indifference; she knows that ‘a son is so much more to a mother than a father’. After the seance is over, Mrs Don goes to bed, leaving her husband alone in the study.

  Barrie, standing by his study windows, where he would gaze for hours at the seven bridges visible across the Thames. ‘Charing Cross Bridge is the ugliest of them all,’ he once commented, ‘but I never want to see it pulled down. It was across that bridge that the troop-trains took our boys to France.’ The framed photograph on the sill is of Michael (p. 113)

  He stands fingering the fishing-rods, then wanders back into the ingle-nook. … Through the greyness we see him … in the glow of the fire. He sits on the settle and tries to read his paper. He breaks down. He is a pitiful lonely man.

  In the silence something happens. A well-remembered voice says, ‘Father’. MR DON looks into the greyness from which this voice comes, and he sees his son. We see no one, but we are to understand that, to MR DON, DICK is standing there in his habit as he lived. He goes to his boy.

  Peter Scott's painting of Barrie in his ingle-nook

  MR DON. Dick!

  DICK. I have come to sit with you a bit, father.

  (It is the gay, young, careless voice.)

  MR DON. It's you, Dick; it's you!

  DICK. It's me all right, father. I say, don't be startled, or anything of that kind. We don't like that.

  MR DON. My boy!

  Evidently DICK is the taller, for MR DON has to look up to him. He puts his hands on the boy's shoulders.)…

  DICK. I say, father, let's get away from that sort of thing.

  MR DON. That is so like you, Dick! I'll do anything you ask.

  DICK. Then keep a bright face.

  They talk matter-of-factly about the old days, Eton and cricket and fishing; although Dick talks in the manner of George, his character is closer to Peter Pan – indeed the whole scene is reminiscent of Peter's last meeting with Wendy. The ‘crafty boy’ roams about the room, always changing the subject when Mr Don looks as though he is in danger of becoming too emotional. The sight of his old fishing-rods prompts a memory:

  DICK. … Do you remember, father, how I got the seven-pounder on a burn-trout cast? … It was really only six and three-quarters. I put a stone in its mouth the second time we weighed it! … When I went a-soldiering I used to pray – just standing up, you know – that I shouldn't lose my right arm, because it would be so awkward for casting. (He cogitates as he returns to the ingle-nook.) Somehow I never thought I should be killed. …

  MR DON. Oh, Dick!

  DICK. What's the matter? Oh, I forgot. … Haven't you got over it yet, father? I got o
ver it so long ago. I wish you people would understand what a little thing [death] is. …

  MR DON. Tell me, Dick, about the – the veil. … I suppose the veil is like a mist?

  DICK. The veil's a rummy thing, father. Yes, like a mist. But when one has been at the Front for a bit, you can't think how thin the veil seems to get; just one layer of it. … We sometimes mix up those who have gone through with those who haven't. … I don't remember being hit, you know. I don't remember anything till the quietness came. When you have been killed it suddenly becomes very quiet; quieter even than you have ever known it at home. Sunday used to be a pretty quiet day at my tutor's, when Trotter and I flattened out on the first shady spot up the river; but it is quieter than that. I am not boring you, am I? … I wish I could remember something funny to tell you. … Father, do you remember little Wantage who was at my private* and came on to Ridley's house in my third half?…

  MR DON. Emily Wantage's boy?

  DICK. That's the card. …

  MR DON. She was very fond of him.

  DICK. Oh, I expect no end. Tell her he's killed.

  MR DON. She knows.

  DICK. … That isn't the joke, though. You see he got into a hopeless muddle about which side of the veil he had come out on … and he got lost … (He chuckles) I expect he has become a ghost!… Best not to tell his mother that. … Ockley's name still sticks to him. … He was a frightful swell you know. Keeper of the field, and played at Lord's the same year. …

 

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