J. M. Barrie
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J. M. Barrie |
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Born |
9 May 1860 |
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Died |
19 June
1937 (aged 77) |
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novelist, playwright |
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British |
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Writing period |
Victorian, Edwardian |
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Notable work(s) |
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Spouse(s) |
Mary Ansell (1894–1909) |
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Children |
guardian of the Llewelyn
Davies boys |
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Signature |
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Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st
Baronet OM (9 May 1860 – 19 June 1937), more
commonly known as J. M. Barrie, was a Scottish novelist and dramatist. He
is best remembered for creating Peter Pan, the boy who refused to grow up, whom he based
on his friends, the Llewelyn Davies boys. He is also credited with
popularising the name "Wendy", which was very uncommon before he gave it to the
heroine of Peter Pan.[1]
He was made a baronet
in 1913; his baronetcy was not inherited. He was made a member of the Order of Merit in 1922.
Contents |
Childhood
and adolescence
Barrie was born in Kirriemuir,
Angus, to a
conservative Scottish Calvinist family. His father David Barrie was a modestly
successful weaver. His mother Margaret Ogilvy Barrie had assumed her deceased
mother's household responsibilities at the age of 8. Barrie was the ninth child
of ten (two of whom died before he was born), all of whom were schooled in at
least the
three Rs, in preparation for possible professional careers. He was a small
child (he only grew to 5 feet 3 inches as an adult), and drew attention to
himself with storytelling.
When he was 6 years old, his
next-older brother David Barrie , his mother's favourite, died two days before
his 14th birthday in an ice-skating accident. This left his mother devastated,
and Barrie tried to fill David's place in his mother's attentions, even wearing
his clothes. One time Barrie entered her room, and heard her say "Is that
you?" "I thought it was the dead boy she was speaking to," wrote
Barrie in his biographical account of his mother, Margaret Ogilvy
(1896), "and I said in a little lonely voice, 'No, it's no' him, it's just
me.'" Barrie's mother found comfort in the fact that her dead son would
remain a boy forever, never to grow up and leave her.[2] It has been speculated that this trauma induced psychogenic dwarfism, and was responsible for
his short stature and apparently asexual adulthood.[3]
Eventually Barrie and his mother entertained each other with stories of her
brief childhood and books such as Robinson
Crusoe and Pilgrim's Progress.[4]
At the age of 8, Barrie was sent
to the Glasgow Academy, in the care of his eldest
siblings Alexander and Mary Ann, who taught at the school. When he was 10 he
returned home and continued his education at the Forfar Academy. At
13, he left home for Dumfries Academy, again under the watch of
Alexander and Mary Ann. He became a voracious reader, and was fond of penny
dreadfuls, and the works of Robert Michael Ballantyne and James Fenimore Cooper. At Dumfries he and his
friends spent time in the garden of Moat Brae house, playing pirates "in a
sort of Odyssey that was long afterwards to become the play of Peter Pan".[5] They formed a drama club, producing his first play Bandelero
the Bandit, which provoked a minor controversy following a scathing moral
denunciation from a clergyman on the school's governing board.[4]
Literary career
Peter Pan statue
in Kensington Gardens, London
Barrie wished to pursue a career
as an author, but was persuaded by his family – who wished him to have a
profession such as the ministry – to enroll at the University of Edinburgh, where he wrote
drama reviews for a local newspaper. He worked for a year and a half as a staff
journalist in Nottingham, then returned to Kirriemuir, using his
mother's stories about the town (which he called "Thrums") for a
piece submitted to a paper in London. The editor "liked that Scotch
thing",[4] so Barrie wrote a series of them, which served as the
basis for his first novels: Auld Licht Idylls (1888), A Window in
Thrums (1890),[6]
and The Little Minister (1891). Literary
criticism of these early works has been unfavourable, tending to disparage them
as sentimental and nostalgic depictions of a parochial Scotland far from the
realities of the industrialised nineteenth century, but they were popular
enough to establish Barrie as a very successful writer. His two
"Tommy" novels, Sentimental Tommy (1896) and Tommy and
Grizel (1902), were about a boy and young man who clings to childish
fantasy, with an unhappy ending.
Meanwhile, Barrie's attention
turned increasingly to works for the theatre,
beginning with a biography about Richard
Savage (performed only once, and critically panned). He immediately
followed this with Ibsen's Ghost (1891), a parody of Henrik
Ibsen's drama Ghosts; unlicensed in the UK until 1914,[7]
it had created a sensation at the time from a single 'club' performance. The production
of Barrie's play at Toole's Theatre in London was seen by William Archer, the translator of Ibsen's
works into English, who enjoyed the humour of the play and recommended it to
others. Barrie also authored Jane Annie,
a failed comic
opera for Richard D'Oyly Carte (1893), which he begged
his friend Arthur Conan Doyle to revise and finish for him.
In 1901 and 1902 he had back-to-back successes: Quality Street, about a responsible
"old maid"
who poses as her flirtatious "niece" to win the attention of a former
suitor returned from the war; and The Admirable Crichton, a
critically-acclaimed social commentary with elaborate staging, about an
aristocratic household shipwrecked on a desert island, in which the butler
naturally rises to leadership over his lord and ladies for the duration of
their time away from civilisation.
The first appearance of Peter Pan
came in The Little White Bird, which was
serialized in the United States, then published in a single volume in the UK in
1901. Barrie's most famous and enduring work, Peter Pan, or The Boy Who
Wouldn't Grow Up, had its first stage performance on 27 December 1904.
It has been performed innumerable times since then, was developed by Barrie
into the 1911 novel Peter and Wendy The Bloomsbury
scenes show the societal constraints of late Victorian middle-class domestic
reality, contrasted with Neverland, a world where morality is ambivalent. George Bernard Shaw's description of the play
as "ostensibly a holiday entertainment for children but really a play for
grown-up people", suggests deeper social allegories at work in Peter
Pan. In 1929 Barrie specified that the copyright of
the Peter Pan works should go to the nation's leading children's hospital, Great Ormond Street Hospital in
London. The current status of the copyright is somewhat
complex.
Barrie had a long string of
successes on the stage after Peter Pan, many of which discuss social
concerns. The Twelve Pound Look shows a wife divorcing a peer and
gaining an independent income. Other plays, such as Mary Rose and a
subplot in Dear Brutus revisit the image of the ageless child. Later
plays included What Every Woman Knows (1908). His final play was The
Boy David (1936), which dramatized the Biblical story of King Saul and the young David. Like the role
of Peter Pan, that of David was played by a woman, Elisabeth
Bergner, for whom Barrie wrote the play.
Barrie used his considerable
income to help finance the production of commercially unsuccessful stage
productions. Along with a number of other playwrights, he was involved in the
1909 and 1911 attempts to challenge the censorship of the theatre by the Lord
Chamberlain.
Acquaintances
Barrie travelled in high literary
circles, and in addition to his professional collaborators, he had many famous
friends. Novelist George Meredith was an early social patron. He had
a long correspondence with Robert Louis Stevenson, who lived in Samoa at the time,
but the two never met in person. George Bernard Shaw was for several years his
neighbour, and once participated in a Western that Barrie scripted and filmed. H. G. Wells
was a friend of many years, and tried to intervene when Barrie's marriage fell
apart. Barrie met Thomas Hardy through Hugh
Clifford while he was staying in London.
Barrie founded a cricket team for his
friends. Conan Doyle, Wells, and other luminaries such as Jerome
K. Jerome, G. K. Chesterton, A. A. Milne,
Walter Raleigh, A. E.
W. Mason, E. V. Lucas, Maurice
Hewlett, E. W. Hornung, P.
G. Wodehouse, Owen Seaman, Bernard
Partridge, Augustine Birrell, Paul
du Chaillu, and the son of Alfred
Tennyson played at various times. The team was called the
"Allahakbarries", under the mistaken belief that "Allah
akbar" meant "Heaven help us" in Arabic (rather than "God
is great").[4]
Barrie befriended Africa explorer
Joseph Thomson and Antarctica explorer Robert Falcon Scott. He was godfather to
Scott's son Peter,[4] and was one of the seven people to whom Scott wrote
letters in the final hours of his life following his successful – but doomed –
expedition to the South Pole.
Barrie's close friend Charles
Frohman, who was responsible for producing the debut of Peter Pan in
both England and the U.S. and other productions of Barrie's plays, famously
declined a lifeboat seat when the RMS
Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat in the North
Atlantic, reportedly paraphrasing Peter Pan's famous line from the stage play,
"To die will be an awfully big adventure."
Marriage
Barrie became acquainted with
actress Mary Ansell in 1891 when she was recommended by Jerome
K. Jerome for a substantial supporting role in Barrie's play Walker,
London. The two became friends, and she joined his family in caring for him
when he fell very ill in 1893 and 1894.[4] They married in Kirriemuir on 9 July 1894,[8]
shortly after Barrie recovered, and Mary retired from the stage; but the
relationship was reportedly sexless and the couple had no children. In 1900
Mary found Black Lake Cottage, at Farnham, Surrey which became the couple's "bolt
hole" where Barrie could entertain his cricketing friends and the Llewelyn
Davieses[9].
Here he compiled an album of his photographs of the area with captions as
"The Boy Castaways of Black Lake Island" an edition of just two
copies, one of which was gifted to Arthur Llewelyn Davies and promptly lost by
him on a train[10].
Here, too, he wrote Peter Pan and Dear Brutus[11].
In 1909 Mary had an affair with Gilbert
Cannan (an associate of Barrie's in his anti-censorship activities) and
when she refused to end it, Barrie granted her a divorce.[2] This was highly unusual and stigmatised, and briefly
became a social scandal.[citation needed]
Llewelyn
Davies family
The Arthur Llewelyn Davies family
played an important part in Barrie's literary and personal life. It consisted
of the parents Arthur (1863–1907) and Sylvia, née du Maurier (1866–1910) (daughter
of George du Maurier), [12];
and their five sons George (1893–1915), John (Jack) (1894-1959), Peter (1897–1960), Michael (1900–1921), and Nicholas (Nico) (1903–1980).
Barrie became acquainted with the
family in 1897, meeting George and Jack (and baby Peter) with their nurse (i.e.
nanny) Mary
Hodgson in London's Kensington Gardens. He lived nearby and often
walked his Landseer Newfoundland dog Porthos in the park, and entertained the
boys regularly with his ability to wiggle his ears and eyebrows, and his
stories. He did not meet Sylvia until a chance encounter at a dinner party in
December. He became a regular visitor at the Davies household and a common
companion to the woman and her boys, despite the fact that he and she were each
married.[2]
When Arthur Llewelyn Davies died
in 1907, "Uncle Jim" became even more involved with the Davies, and
provided financial support to them. (His income from Peter Pan and other
works was easily adequate to provide for their living expenses and education.)
Following Sylvia's death in 1910, Barrie claimed that they had been engaged to
be married.[2] Her will indicated nothing to that effect, but specified
her wish for "J.M.B." to be trustee and guardian to the boys, along
with her mother Emma, her brother Guy Du Maurier, and Arthur's brother Compton.
It expressed her confidence in Barrie as the boys' caretaker and her wish for "the
boys to treat him (& their uncles) with absolute confidence &
straightforwardness & to talk to him about everything." When copying
the will informally for Sylvia's family a few months later, Barrie inserted
himself in an additional paragraph: Sylvia had written that she would like Mary
Hodgson, the boys' nurse, to continue taking care of them, and for
"Jenny" (Mary's sister) to come help her; Barrie instead wrote
"Jimmy" (Sylvia's nickname for him). Although Barrie and Hodgson did
not get along well, they served as surrogate parents until the boys were all in
school and Jack was married.[2]
Barrie also had friendships with
other children, both before he met the Davies boys and after they were grown,
and there have often been suspicions that Barrie was a paedophile
or engaged in child sexual abuse. However, there is no
evidence that Barrie did – or was accused at the time of doing – anything of
that sort. Nico, the youngest of the brothers, flatly denied that Barrie ever
behaved inappropriately.[2] "I don't believe that Uncle Jim ever experienced
what one might call 'a stirring in the undergrowth' for anyone — man, woman, or
child," he stated. "He was an innocent — which is why he could write
Peter Pan." [13]
His relationships with the Davies boys continued well beyond their childhood
and adolescence.
The statue of Peter Pan in
Kensington Gardens, erected in secret overnight for May Morning
in 1912, was supposed to be modelled upon old photographs of Michael dressed as
Peter Pan. However, the sculptor decided to use a different child as a model,
leaving Barrie very disappointed with the result. "It doesn't show the
devil in Peter", he said.[2]
Barrie suffered bereavements with
the boys, losing the two to whom he was closest. George was killed in action
(1915) in World
War I. Michael, with whom Barrie corresponded daily, drowned (1921) with
his friend and possible lover[14]
Rupert Buxton, at a known danger spot at Sandford
Lock near Oxford,
one month short of his 21st birthday. Some years after Barrie's death, Peter
wrote his Morgue, which contains much family information and comments on
Barrie.
Death
Barrie died of pneumonia on 19
June 1937 and is buried at Kirriemuir next to his parents and two of his
siblings. He left the bulk of his estate (excluding the Peter Pan works, which
he had previously given to Great Ormond Street Hospital) to his secretary Cynthia
Asquith. His birthplace at 4 Brechin Road is maintained as a museum by the National Trust for Scotland.
Biographies
The Story of J.M.B. by Sewell
Stokes, Theatre Arts, Vol.XXV No.11, New York: Theatre Arts Inc, Nov
1941, pp 845-848.
In 1978 the BBC made an award-winning
miniseries written by Andrew Birkin, The Lost Boys, starring Ian Holm as
Barrie and Ann Bell as Sylvia. It is considered highly
factual, includes Arthur Llewelyn Davies (Tim
Piggot-Smith), and briefly addresses the issue of Barrie's affection for
the Davies boys. The set of 2 DVDs is available in both the UK and USA. Birkin also published J.M.
Barrie and the Lost Boys, a factual book covering in greater detail the
material portrayed in the docudrama.
A semi-fictional movie about his
relationship with the family, Finding
Neverland, was released in November 2004, starring Johnny Depp
as Barrie and Kate Winslet as Sylvia Llewelyn Davies. It takes
liberties with the facts, alters the sequence of some events (e.g. Sylvia is
already a widow when she meets Barrie), and omits Nico altogether.
Sir James Barrie has a School
named after him in Wandsworth, South
West London.
©
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JM_Barrie
OTHER INTERESTING BIOGRAPHIES: Next [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]