Complete Works of J. M. Barrie

by Unknown

  When I sent off that first sketch I thought I had exhausted the subject, but our editor wrote that he would like something more of the same, so I sent him a marriage, and he took it, and then I tried him with a funeral, and he took it, and really it began to look as if we had him. Now my mother might have been discovered, in answer to certain excited letters, flinging the bundle of undarned socks from her lap, and ‘going in for literature’; she was racking her brains, by request, for memories I might convert into articles, and they came to me in letters which she dictated to my sisters. How well I could hear her sayings between the lines: ‘But the editor-man will never stand that, it’s perfect blethers’—’By this post it must go, I tell you; we must take the editor when he’s hungry — we canna be blamed for it, can we? he prints them of his free will, so the wite is his’—’But I’m near terrified. — If London folk reads them we’re done for.’ And I was sounded as to the advisability of sending him a present of a lippie of shortbread, which was to be her crafty way of getting round him. By this time, though my mother and I were hundreds of miles apart, you may picture us waving our hands to each other across country, and shouting ‘Hurrah!’ You may also picture the editor in his office thinking he was behaving like a shrewd man of business, and unconscious that up in the north there was an elderly lady chuckling so much at him that she could scarcely scrape the potatoes.

  I was now able to see my mother again, and the park seats no longer loomed so prominent in our map of London. Still, there they were, and it was with an effort that she summoned up courage to let me go. She feared changes, and who could tell that the editor would continue to be kind? Perhaps when he saw me —

  She seemed to be very much afraid of his seeing me, and this, I would point out, was a reflection on my appearance or my manner.

  No, what she meant was that I looked so young, and — and that would take him aback, for had I not written as an aged man?

  ‘But he knows my age, mother.’

  ‘I’m glad of that, but maybe he wouldna like you when he saw you.’

  ‘Oh, it is my manner, then!’

  ‘I dinna say that, but—’

  Here my sister would break in: ‘The short and the long of it is just this, she thinks nobody has such manners as herself. Can you deny it, you vain woman?’ My mother would deny it vigorously.

  ‘You stand there,’ my sister would say with affected scorn, ‘and tell me you don’t think you could get the better of that man quicker than any of us?’

  ‘Sal, I’m thinking I could manage him,’ says my mother, with a chuckle.

  ‘How would you set about it?’

  Then my mother would begin to laugh. ‘I would find out first if he had a family, and then I would say they were the finest family in London.’

  ‘Yes, that is just what you would do, you cunning woman! But if he has no family?’

  ‘I would say what great men editors are!’

  ‘He would see through you.’

  ‘Not he!’

  ‘You don’t understand that what imposes on common folk would never hoodwink an editor.’

  ‘That’s where you are wrong. Gentle or simple, stupid or clever, the men are all alike in the hands of a woman that flatters them.’

  ‘Ah, I’m sure there are better ways of getting round an editor than that.’

  ‘I daresay there are,’ my mother would say with conviction, ‘but if you try that plan you will never need to try another.’

  ‘How artful you are, mother — you with your soft face! Do you not think shame?’

  ‘Pooh!’ says my mother brazenly.

  ‘I can see the reason why you are so popular with men.’

  ‘Ay, you can see it, but they never will.’

  ‘Well, how would you dress yourself if you were going to that editor’s office?’

  ‘Of course I would wear my silk and my Sabbath bonnet.’

  ‘It is you who are shortsighted now, mother. I tell you, you would manage him better if you just put on your old grey shawl and one of your bonny white mutches, and went in half smiling and half timid and said, “I am the mother of him that writes about the Auld Lichts, and I want you to promise that he will never have to sleep in the open air.”’

  But my mother would shake her head at this, and reply almost hotly, ‘I tell you if I ever go into that man’s office, I go in silk.’

  I wrote and asked the editor if I should come to London, and he said No, so I went, laden with charges from my mother to walk in the middle of the street (they jump out on you as you are turning a corner), never to venture forth after sunset, and always to lock up everything (I who could never lock up anything, except my heart in company). Thanks to this editor, for the others would have nothing to say to me though I battered on all their doors, she was soon able to sleep at nights without the dread that I should be waking presently with the iron-work of certain seats figured on my person, and what relieved her very much was that I had begun to write as if Auld Lichts were not the only people I knew of. So long as I confined myself to them she had a haunting fear that, even though the editor remained blind to his best interests, something would one day go crack within me (as the mainspring of a watch breaks) and my pen refuse to write for evermore. ‘Ay, I like the article brawly,’ she would say timidly, ‘but I’m doubting it’s the last — I always have a sort of terror the new one may be the last,’ and if many days elapsed before the arrival of another article her face would say mournfully, ‘The blow has fallen — he can think of nothing more to write about.’ If I ever shared her fears I never told her so, and the articles that were not Scotch grew in number until there were hundreds of them, all carefully preserved by her: they were the only thing in the house that, having served one purpose, she did not convert into something else, yet they could give her uneasy moments. This was because I nearly always assumed a character when I wrote; I must be a country squire, or an undergraduate, or a butler, or a member of the House of Lords, or a dowager, or a lady called Sweet Seventeen, or an engineer in India, else was my pen clogged, and though this gave my mother certain fearful joys, causing her to laugh unexpectedly (so far as my articles were concerned she nearly always laughed in the wrong place), it also scared her. Much to her amusement the editor continued to prefer the Auld Licht papers, however, as was proved (to those who knew him) by his way of thinking that the others would pass as they were, while he sent these back and asked me to make them better. Here again she came to my aid. I had said that the row of stockings were hung on a string by the fire, which was a recollection of my own, but she could tell me whether they were hung upside down. She became quite skilful at sending or giving me (for now I could be with her half the year) the right details, but still she smiled at the editor, and in her gay moods she would say, ‘I was fifteen when I got my first pair of elastic-sided boots. Tell him my charge for this important news is two pounds ten.’

  ‘Ay, but though we’re doing well, it’s no’ the same as if they were a book with your name on it.’ So the ambitious woman would say with a sigh, and I did my best to turn the Auld Licht sketches into a book with my name on it. Then perhaps we understood most fully how good a friend our editor had been, for just as I had been able to find no wellknown magazine — and I think I tried all — which would print any article or story about the poor of my native land, so now the publishers, Scotch and English, refused to accept the book as a gift. I was willing to present it to them, but they would have it in no guise; there seemed to be a blight on everything that was Scotch. I daresay we sighed, but never were collaborators more prepared for rejection, and though my mother might look wistfully at the scorned manuscript at times and murmur, ‘You poor cold little crittur shut away in a drawer, are you dead or just sleeping?’ she had still her editor to say grace over. And at last publishers, sufficiently daring and far more than sufficiently generous, were found for us by a dear friend, who made one woman very ‘uplifted.’ He also was an editor, and had as large a part in making me
a writer of books as the other in determining what the books should be about.

  Now that I was an author I must get into a club. But you should have heard my mother on clubs! She knew of none save those to which you subscribe a pittance weekly in anticipation of rainy days, and the London clubs were her scorn. Often I heard her on them — she raised her voice to make me hear, whichever room I might be in, and it was when she was sarcastic that I skulked the most: ‘Thirty pounds is what he will have to pay the first year, and ten pounds a year after that. You think it’s a lot o’ siller? Oh no, you’re mista’en — it’s nothing ava. For the third part of thirty pounds you could rent a four-roomed house, but what is a four-roomed house, what is thirty pounds, compared to the glory of being a member of a club? Where does the glory come in? Sal, you needna ask me, I’m just a doited auld stock that never set foot in a club, so it’s little I ken about glory. But I may tell you if you bide in London and canna become member of a club, the best you can do is to tie a rope round your neck and slip out of the world. What use are they? Oh, they’re terrible useful. You see it doesna do for a man in London to eat his dinner in his lodgings. Other men shake their heads at him. He maun away to his club if he is to be respected. Does he get good dinners at the club? Oh, they cow! You get no common beef at clubs; there is a manzy of different things all sauced up to be unlike themsels. Even the potatoes daurna look like potatoes. If the food in a club looks like what it is, the members run about, flinging up their hands and crying, “Woe is me!” Then this is another thing, you get your letters sent to the club instead of to your lodgings. You see you would get them sooner at your lodgings, and you may have to trudge weary miles to the club for them, but that’s a great advantage, and cheap at thirty pounds, is it no’? I wonder they can do it at the price.’

  My wisest policy was to remain downstairs when these withering blasts were blowing, but probably I went up in self-defence.

  ‘I never saw you so pugnacious before, mother.’

  ‘Oh,’ she would reply promptly, ‘you canna expect me to be sharp in the uptake when I am no’ a member of a club.’

  ‘But the difficulty is in becoming a member. They are very particular about whom they elect, and I daresay I shall not get in.’

  ‘Well, I’m but a poor crittur (not being member of a club), but I think I can tell you to make your mind easy on that head. You’ll get in, I’se uphaud — and your thirty pounds will get in, too.’

  ‘If I get in it will be because the editor is supporting me.’

  ‘It’s the first ill thing I ever heard of him.’

  ‘You don’t think he is to get any of the thirty pounds, do you?’

  ‘‘Deed if I did I should be better pleased, for he has been a good friend to us, but what maddens me is that every penny of it should go to those bare-faced scoundrels.’

  ‘What bare-faced scoundrels?’

  ‘Them that have the club.’

  ‘But all the members have the club between them.’

  ‘Havers! I’m no’ to be catched with chaff.’

  ‘But don’t you believe me?’

  ‘I believe they’ve filled your head with their stories till you swallow whatever they tell you. If the place belongs to the members, why do they have to pay thirty pounds?’

  ‘To keep it going.’

  ‘They dinna have to pay for their dinners, then?’

  ‘Oh yes, they have to pay extra for dinner.’

  ‘And a gey black price, I’m thinking.’

  ‘Well, five or six shillings.’

  ‘Is that all? Losh, it’s nothing, I wonder they dinna raise the price.’

  Nevertheless my mother was of a sex that scorned prejudice, and, dropping sarcasm, she would at times crossexamine me as if her mind was not yet made up. ‘Tell me this, if you were to fall ill, would you be paid a weekly allowance out of the club?’

  No, it was not that kind of club.

  ‘I see. Well, I am just trying to find out what kind of club it is. Do you get anything out of it for accidents?’

  Not a penny.

  ‘Anything at New Year’s time?’

  Not so much as a goose.

  ‘Is there any one mortal thing you get free out of that club?’

  There was not one mortal thing.

  ‘And thirty pounds is what you pay for this?’

  If the committee elected me.

  ‘How many are in the committee?’

  About a dozen, I thought.

  ‘A dozen! Ay, ay, that makes two pound ten apiece.’

  When I was elected I thought it wisdom to send my sister upstairs with the news. My mother was ironing, and made no comment, unless with the iron, which I could hear rattling more violently in its box. Presently I heard her laughing — at me undoubtedly, but she had recovered control over her face before she came downstairs to congratulate me sarcastically. This was grand news, she said without a twinkle, and I must write and thank the committee, the noble critturs. I saw behind her mask, and maintained a dignified silence, but she would have another shot at me. ‘And tell them,’ she said from the door, ‘you were doubtful of being elected, but your auld mother had aye a mighty confidence they would snick you in.’ I heard her laughing softly as she went up the stair, but though I had provided her with a joke I knew she was burning to tell the committee what she thought of them.

  Money, you see, meant so much to her, though even at her poorest she was the most cheerful giver. In the old days, when the article arrived, she did not read it at once, she first counted the lines to discover what we should get for it — she and the daughter who was so dear to her had calculated the payment per line, and I remember once overhearing a discussion between them about whether that sub-title meant another sixpence. Yes, she knew the value of money; she had always in the end got the things she wanted, but now she could get them more easily, and it turned her simple life into a fairy tale. So often in those days she went down suddenly upon her knees; we would come upon her thus, and go away noiselessly. After her death I found that she had preserved in a little box, with a photograph of me as a child, the envelopes which had contained my first cheques. There was a little ribbon round them.

  CHAPTER V — A DAY OF HER LIFE

  I should like to call back a day of her life as it was at this time, when her spirit was as bright as ever and her hand as eager, but she was no longer able to do much work. It should not be difficult, for she repeated herself from day to day and yet did it with a quaint unreasonableness that was ever yielding fresh delight. Our love for her was such that we could easily tell what she would do in given circumstances, but she had always a new way of doing it.

  Well, with break of day she wakes and sits up in bed and is standing in the middle of the room. So nimble was she in the mornings (one of our troubles with her) that these three actions must be considered as one; she is on the floor before you have time to count them. She has strict orders not to rise until her fire is lit, and having broken them there is a demure elation on her face. The question is what to do before she is caught and hurried to bed again. Her fingers are tingling to prepare the breakfast; she would dearly love to black-lead the grate, but that might rouse her daughter from whose side she has slipped so cunningly. She catches sight of the screen at the foot of the bed, and immediately her soft face becomes very determined. To guard her from draughts the screen had been brought here from the lordly east room, where it was of no use whatever. But in her opinion it was too beautiful for use; it belonged to the east room, where she could take pleasant peeps at it; she had objected to its removal, even become low-spirited. Now is her opportunity. The screen is an unwieldy thing, but still as a mouse she carries it, and they are well under weigh when it strikes against the gas-bracket in the passage. Next moment a reproachful hand arrests her. She is challenged with being out of bed, she denies it — standing in the passage. Meekly or stubbornly she returns to bed, and it is no satisfaction to you that you can say, ‘Well, well, of all the women!�
� and so on, or ‘Surely you knew that the screen was brought here to protect you,’ for she will reply scornfully, ‘Who was touching the screen?’

  By this time I have wakened (I am through the wall) and join them anxiously: so often has my mother been taken ill in the night that the slightest sound from her room rouses the house. She is in bed again, looking as if she had never been out of it, but I know her and listen sternly to the tale of her misdoings. She is not contrite. Yes, maybe she did promise not to venture forth on the cold floors of daybreak, but she had risen for a moment only, and we just t’neaded her with our talk about draughts — there were no such things as draughts in her young days — and it is more than she can do (here she again attempts to rise but we hold her down) to lie there and watch that beautiful screen being spoilt. I reply that the beauty of the screen has ever been its miserable defect: ho, there! for a knife with which to spoil its beauty and make the bedroom its fitting home. As there is no knife handy, my foot will do; I raise my foot, and then — she sees that it is bare, she cries to me excitedly to go back to bed lest I catch cold. For though, ever careless of herself, she will wander the house unshod, and tell us not to talk havers when we chide her, the sight of one of us similarly negligent rouses her anxiety at once. She is willing now to sign any vow if only I will take my bare feet back to bed, but probably she is soon after me in hers to make sure that I am nicely covered up.