J. M. Barrie (1860-1937)
- in full
Sir
James Matthew, Baronet Barrie
Scottish
journalist, playwright and children's book writer. Barrie became world
famous
with his play and story about PETER PAN (1904), the boy who lived in
Never
Land, had a war with Captain Hook, and would not grow up. The first
name of
Peter Pan was almost certainly taken from Peter Llewellyn Davies (1897-
1960),
one of the several Davies brothers that Barrie knew.
"When the first baby laughed for the first
time,
the laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they all went skipping
about, and
that was the beginning of fairies." (from
Peter
Pan)
James
Matthew Barrie was born in the Lowland village of Kirriemuir, in
Forfarshire
(now Angus). His father, David Barrie was a handloom weaver, and mother,
Margaret Ogilvy, the daughter of a stonemason. They had ten children,
and
Barrie was the ninth. Jamie, as he was called, heard tales of pirates
from his
mother, who read her children adventure stories in the evenings. Before
her
marriage Margaret Ogilvy belonged to a religious sect called the Auld
Lichts,
or Old Lights, and many the stories concerning it inspired later
Barrie's work.
His father Barrie seldom mentions in his autobiographical works.
When
Barrie was seven, his brother David died in a skating accident. David
had been
the mother's favorite child, and she fell into depression. Barrie tried
to gain
her affection by dressing up in the dead boy's clothes. The obsessive
relationship that grew between mother and son was to mark the whole of
his
life. After her death Barrie published in 1896 an adoring biography on
her.
At
the age of 13, Barrie left his home village. At school he became
interested in
theatre and devoured works by such authors as Jules
Verne, Mayne Reid, and James
Fenimore
Cooper. His classmates Barrie observed like an outsider,
they were tall, interested in girls, while he remained small and
apparently
never had a girlfriend. Barrie studied at Dumfries Academy at the
University of
Edinburgh, receiving his M.A. in 1882. After working as a journalist
for the Nottingham
Journal, he moved in 1885 with empty pockets to London as a
freelance
writer. He sold his writings, mostly humorous, to fashionable magazine,
such as
The Pall Mall Gazette. In his mystery novel, BETTER DEAD (1888),
Barrie
made jokes of well-known people. Barrie knew such great figures of
literature
as G.B. Shaw, who did not like his pipe smoking, and H.G.
Wells, and could surprise them
with his
remarks. Once he said to Wells: "It is all very well to be able to write
books, but can you waggle your ears?" When a friend noticed that he
ordered Brussels sprouts every day, he explained: "I cannot resists
ordering
them. The words are so lovely to say." With his friends, Jerome K.
Jerome,
Arthur Conan Doyle, P.G. Wodehouse and others, Barrie founded a cricket
club,
called Allahakbarries. Doyle was the only
member who
could actually play cricket. During World War I Barrie made a western
film with
his literary friends, starring Shaw, William Archer, G.K. Chesterton,
etc.
In
1888 Barie gained his first fame with AULD LICHT IDYLLS, sketches of
Scottish
life. Critics praised its originality. His melodramatic novel, THE
LITTLE
MINISTER (1891), became a huge success, and was filmed later three
times. After
its dramatization Barrie wrote mostly for the theater. In 1894 he
married Mary
Ansell, who had appeared in his play WALKER, LONDON. According to Janet
Dunbar's biography (1970), Barrie was impotent. "Boys can't love",
was Barrie's explanation to her.
The Little Minister was a popular stage production in 1897 both in
England and in the Unites States, where Barrie began his collaboration
with the
impresario Charles Frohman and his star Maude Adams. Two of Barrie's
best
plays, QUALITY STREET, about two sisters who start a school "for genteel
children", and THE ADMIRABLE CRICHTON, in which a butler saves a family
after a shipwreck, were produced in London in 1902, and also later
filmed. In
the same year, Peter Pan appeared by name in Barrie's adult novel THE
LITTLE
WHITE BIRD. It was a first-person narrative about a wealthy bachelor
clubman's
attachment to a little boy, David. Taking this boy for walks in
Kensington
Gardens, the narrator tells him of Peter Pan, who can be found in the
Gardens
at night. Peter Pan was produced for the stage in 1904 but the play had
to wait
several years for a definitive printed version and it did not appear as
a
narrative story until 1911. The book was titled PETER AND WENDY. In the
novel's
epilogue Peter visits a grown-up Wendy.
"Every time a child says 'I don't believe in
fairies' there is a little fairy somewhere that falls down
dead." (from Peter
Pan)
Peter Pan evolved gradually from the stories that Barrie told to Sylvia
Llewelyn
Davies's five young sons. She was the daughter of the novelist George du
Maurier, and a motherly figure, with whom Barrie formed a long
friendship.
Arthur, her husband, was not happy about Barrie's invasion of the
family. In
1909 Mary Barrie began an affair with the writer Gilbert Cannan and
Barrie's
marriage ended. When Sylvia Llwelyn Davies and her husband died, Barrie
was the
unofficial guardian of their sons, but in reality he was perhaps more a
sixth
child than an adoptive father. George, one of the sons, died in World
War I,
Michael drowned himself with his boy friend in Oxford. Michael's death
was a
deep blow to Barrie. Peter, who became a publisher, committed suicide
in 1960.
Peter Pan was first performed at the Duke of York's Theatre, London, in
1904. The
fantastic world of Peter Pan had previously been presented in Barrie's
The
Little White Bird (1902). "All children, except one, grow up. They
soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew this." The
story
begins in the Bloomsbury flat of the Darlings, which is visited by
Peter Pan.
He is a boy who has run away from his home to avoid growing up. Like his
attendant fairy Tinker Bell, he can fly and teaches the skill to the
three
Darling children. Wendy Darling with her brothers accompany Peter Pan
to Never
Land where he lives with the Lost Boys, protected by a tribe of Red
Indians.
Wendy becomes mother to the boys. When Peter is away, she is captured
with all her
'family' by the pirate Captain Hook. They are saved from the walk on
the plank
by Peter's bravery. Hook is eaten by his nemesis, the crocodile who had
swallowed a ticking clock. Peter takes Wendy and her brothers back home
but he
declines an offer of adoption from Mrs. Darling. Wendy promises visit
him every
year to do the spring cleaning. - Barrie himself was considered by
Freudians a
suitable target for analysis. Peter Pan has also been seen as an
Oedipal tale.
Barrie himself had stopped growing when he reached five feet in height,
he
suffered from migraines and rarely smiled. Wendy, Peter's girl friend,
borrowed
her name from Barrie - it was his nickname. W.E. Henley's daughter
Margaret
called Barrie Friendly-Wendy. The portrait of Wendy owes much to
Barrie's
mother, and orphaned "little mother" who had to raise her younger
brother.
Barrie
wrote two more fantasy plays. DEAR BRUTUS (1917) described a group of
people
who enter a magic wood where they are transformed into the people they
might
have become had they made different choices. MARY ROSE (1920) was a
story of a
mother, who is searching for her lost child. Eventually she becomes a
ghost.
WHAT EVERY WOMAN KNOWS (1908) portrayed a determined woman, Maggie,
whose
husband eventually realizes that he owes his success to her. "It's sort
of
bloom on a woman. If you have it, you don't need to have anything else,
and if
you don't have it, it doesn't much matter what else you have. Some
woman, the
few, have charm for all; and most have charm for one. But some have
charm for
none." (from What Every Woman Knows, 1908)
In 1913 Barrie
became a
baronet and in 1922 he received the Order of Merit. Barrie's penthouse
at
Adelphi Terrace was visited by ministers, duchesses, movie stars, such
as
Charlie Chaplin, and a number of admirers, whom he occasionally helped
with
money or advice. Even at his old age, Barrie could play enthusiastically
Captain Hook and Peter Pan with the son of his secretary, Lady Cynthia
Asquith.
Barrie was elected lord rector of St. Andrew's University and in 1930
chancellor of Edinburgh University. Barrie died on June 3,
1937.
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