James Matthew Barrie was
born in the
Lowland village of Kirriemuir, in Forfashire. His father, David Barrie,
was a handloom
weaver, and mother, Margaret Ogilvy, was the daughter of a stonemason.
The two
had ten children; Barrie was the ninth. Jamie, as he was called, heard
tales of
pirates from his mother, who read her children R.L. Stevenson's
adventure
stories in the evenings. 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 of his mother.
At the age of thirteen,
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.
Barrie
observed his classmates like an outsider; they were tall and interested
in
girls, while he remained small and apparently he never had a girl
friend.
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 to work 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 both 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 Barrie 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. 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.
"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)
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 later
filmed. In
the same year, the character of 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. "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, along
with her brothers,
accompanies 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 that 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, an 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.
In 1913 Barrie became a
baronet. In
1922 he received the Order of Merit. Barrie's penthouse at Adelphi
Terrace was
visited by ministers, duchesses, movie stars, and a number of admirers,
whom he
occasionally helped with money or advice. Even at his old age, Barrie
could
enthusiastically play 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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