Neverland
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When we first see him, he is reciting something in the Cologne dialect, and Gudrun (the Sylvia figure), though she cannot understand a word of it, is ‘spellbound watching him’; from the moment he sees her, Loerke wants to make a connection with her.
The holiday is a nightmare of dissolution and dirty disloyalties, just like the holiday Mary and Cannan shared with Barrie and Sylvia during Christmas 1908, at another fashionable Alpine resort, Caux. It was the year after Arthur died, the same year Jim discovered that Scott was having an affair with Cannan’s girlfriend, Kathleen Bruce, and it was during the Caux holiday that Gilbert’s affair with Mary, facilitated by Sylvia, took flight. If Mary and Cannan had discussed anything about Barrie, they would have discussed Caux.
We know that people are going to be horribly hurt emotionally on the holiday in Lawrence’s novel, as indeed they were at Caux. Mackail caught the atmosphere well:
Pity all this gay extravaganza at the Grand Hotel at Caux. There is something dreadfully ominous about. Something, behind the laughter, as cold and relentless as the Alps.
So, there were negative energies flying around in Caux just as there are at Innsbruck in Lawrence’s novel.
Loerke likes men (he has a companion upstairs in his room, a man called Leitner), and has an affair with a beautiful woman. He finds his way menacingly into Gudrun’s soul as Barrie found his way into Sylvia’s, introducing her to his relentlessly nihilistic interpretation of ‘the world as illusion’, lifting her up above the masses with his social hatred, discovering the cruel and the cynical at her core, making her feel apart and above the pitiful world. It is the same philosophy as Tommy’s, a fictional character who fascinated Lawrence.
Readers of Women in Love will already have recognised that my text of Barrie’s subjugation of Sylvia is virtually interchangeable with Loerke’s of Gudrun, though again there are interesting departures. Gudrun’s partner Crick, who is completely destroyed emotionally by Gudrun’s apparent infidelity with Loerke, as Arthur Davies was by Sylvia’s, does not die like Arthur, but like Captain Oates, the man on Scott’s expedition: he goes out into the blizzard and is not seen again. Lawrence jumbles things up, because replicating life in his fiction is definitely not his purpose.
But if one’s interest is not principally in Lawrence’s novel, but in Barrie, his choosing to jumble up the lives of his characters with the Scott story makes one feel even more convinced that the emotional tapestry was woven out of thread spun by Mary and Cannan in their conversations with the author. Mary Ansell knew the truth about Jim, and Lawrence’s fictional picture of Barrie is uniquely authentic.
How interesting, therefore, that Lawrence discusses fratricide in the novel, which, I have argued, was the root cause of Barrie’s compulsive personality. Gerald Crick as a boy accidentally killed his brother, and it ruined his life –
‘They were quite boys,’ said Ursula. ‘I think it is one of the most horrible stories I know . . .’
‘And isn’t it horrible too to think of such a thing happening to one when one was a child, and having to carry the responsibility of it all through one’s life. Imagine it, two boys playing together – then this comes upon them, for no reason whatever – out of the air . . .’
‘Perhaps there was an unconscious will behind it,’ said Ursula.
In the context of Lawrence’s novel, this is almost a gratuitous piece of emotional baggage for Crick to bear, yet it is discussed in great detail. Lawrence cannot let it go, and in the end he attaches it to one of his most important themes: Lawrence ‘did not believe that there was any such thing as accident. It all hung together, in the deepest sense.’
If her influence on Women in Love was Mary Ansell’s one attempt to put the truth across about ‘the tragedy in Barrie’s life... tragedy not to be treated humorously or lightly’, which, she wrote to Peter Davies, ‘Mr Mackail has ignored’, then Lawrence is unforgiving of Barrie. The destruction of the du Mauriers was no accident; blame rested with Barrie. Which is, of course, precisely the line Lawrence took with Mary after hearing of Michael’s death.
J. M. Barrie has a fatal touch for those he loves. They die.
* Completed in 1916 but not published until 1920.
Bibliography
George du Maurier: novels
Peter Ibbetson, 1891.
Trilby, 1894.
The Martian, 1897.
J. M. Barrie: selected works
Better Dead, 1888.
When a Man’s Single, 1888.
A Window in the Thrums, 1889.
An Edinburgh Eleven, 1889.
My Lady Nicotine, 1890.
The Little Minister, 1891.
Ibsen’s Ghost, 1891 (play, prod. 1891, privately printed 1931).
Richard Savage, 1891 (play, with H. B. Marriot-Watson).
Walker, London, 1892 (play, prod. 1892).
Professor’s Love Story, 1892 (play, prod. 1892).
Jane Annie, 1893 (play with A. Conan Doyle).
Margaret Ogilvy, 1896.
Sentimental Tommy, 1896.
Tommy and Grizel, 1900.
Quality Street, 1902 (play).
The Little White Bird, 1902.
The Admirable Crichton, 1902 (play).
Peter Pan: Or The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up, 1904 (play).
Alice Sit-By-The-Fire, 1905 (play, prod, in London and New York 1905).
Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, 1906.
What Every Woman Knows, 1908 (play).
The Twelve-Pound Look, 1910 (play).
Peter and Wendy, 1911.
The Will, 1913 (play).
A Kiss For Cinderella, 1916 (play).
Dear Brutus, 1917 (play).
A Well-Remembered Voice, 1918 (play).
Mary Rose, 1920 (play).
Shall We Join The Ladies? 1921 (play).
Courage, 1922.
Neil and Tintinnabulum, 1925.
Representative Plays, 1926.
The Plays of J. M. Barrie (including first publication of Peter Pan), 1928.
The Greenwood Hat, 1930.
The Boy David, 1936 (play).
Uniform Edition of the Works and Plays, 1913–1937.
Daphne du Maurier: works
The Loving Spirit, 1931.
I’ll Never Be Young Again, 1932.
The Progress of Julius, 1933.
Gerald: A Portrait, 1934.
Jamaica Inn, 1936.
The Du Mauriers, 1937.
Rebecca, 1938.
Come Wind, Come Weather, 1940. Frenchman’s Creek, 1941.
Hungry Hill, 1943.
The Wars Between, 1945.
The King’s General, 1946.
September Tide (play, prod, in London 1948) 1949.
The Parasites, 1949.
The Young George du Maurier: A Selection of his Letters, 1860–1867 (ed.),
My Cousin Rachel, 1951.
The Apple Tree, 1952.
Happy Christmas, 1953. Mary Anne, 1954.
Early Stories, 1955.
The Scapegoat, 1957.
The Breaking Point, 1959.
The Infernal World of Branwell Bronte, 1960.
Castle Dor, 1962.
The Glass Blowers, 1963.
The Flight of the Falcon, 1965
Vanishing Cornwall, 1967 and 2007.
The House on the Strand, 1969.
Not After Midnight, 1971.
Rule Britannia, 1972.
Golden Lads: Anthony Bacon, Francis and their Friends, 1975.
The Winding Stair: Francis Bacon, his Rise and Fall, 1976.
Echoes from the Macabre, 1976.
Myself When Young, 1977.
The Rendezvous and Other Stories, 1980.
The Rebecca Notebook and Other Memories, 1981.
Classics from the Macabre, 1987.
Enchanted Cornwall, 1989.
[Note: many years ago The Breaking Point collection was broken up and some of the stories distributed among other of Daphne’s short story collecti
ons. A new edition is, however, now planned.
Notes
Part I
Chapter One
Peter’s suicide: a case to answer
1 Interview with Andrew Birkin.
2 Pamela Maude, World’s Away (1964).
3 The Story of J.M.B. (1941).
4 Interview in The Times.
5 Letter from Barrie to Ella Terriss (Hicks), 11 December 1905.
6 The Morgue. Unpublished history of the du Maurier and Llewelyn Davies family, compiled in six volumes by Peter Llewelyn Davies between 1945 and 1951. The history is to be found at The Walter Beinecke Jnr Collection at Yale University as part of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
7 David Edwards, Express Newspapers, 28 October 2004.
8 Interview with Andrew Birkin, 5 December 1975.
9 Peter Llewelyn Davies, among loose papers found by Andrew Birkin.
10 In Daphne du Maurier, Myself When Young (1977).
11 Letter from Jack Llewelyn Davies to his brother Peter, January 1950.
12 Ibid.
13 Letter from Mary Ansell to Peter Llewelyn Davies, 14 April 1941.
14 Letter from Nico Llewelyn Davies to Andrew Birkin, 29 December 1975.
15 Ibid.
16 James Harding, Gerald du Maurier (1989
Chapter Two
What is the secret?
1 Judith Cook, Daphne (1991).
2 Letter from Nico Llewelyn Davies to Andrew Birkin, 29 January 1976.
3 Flavia Leng, Daphne du Maurier (1994).
4 Oriel Malet, Letters from Menabilly (1993).
5 Letter from Daphne du Maurier to Nico Llewelyn Davies, 12 April 1960.
6 Malet, Letters.
7 Letter from Daphne du Maurier to her publisher, Victor Gollancz in 1955.
8 Margaret Forster, Daphne du Maurier (1993).
9 Letter from Daphne du Maurier to Maureen Baker-Munton, 4 July 1957, the full text of which is published in Daphne du Maurier by Margaret Forster (1993).
10 Judith Cook, Daphne (1991).
11 Interview with Andrew Birkin.
12 Letter from Nico Llewelyn Davies to Andrew Birkin, 5 January 1976.
13 Daphne du Maurier, ed., The Young George du Maurier: a selection of his letters (1951).
14 Letter from Roger Senhouse to Nico Llewelyn Davies.
Part II
Chapter One
Du Maurier dreamers
1 Introduction by Daphne du Maurier to George du Maurier, Peter Ibbetson, Gollancz 1969 edition.
2 Leonée Ormond, George du Maurier (1969).
3 George du Maurier, Peter Ibbetson (1891).
4 Daphne du Maurier’s Introduction to her grandfather’s first novel, Peter Ibbetson (1891).
Chapter Two
Peak experience
1 George du Maurier, Trilby (1894).
2 Article by Val Prinsep in The Magazine of Art.
3 Thomas Armstrong in L. M. Lamont’s A Memoir (1912).
4 Albert Vandam, The Trail of Trilby (1895).
5 After first publication, the threat by Whistler of a libel case led to the removal of his character from the story.
6 George du Maurier, Trilby (1894).
7 Vandam, The Trail of Trilby (1895).
8 Interview with Robert Sherard in McClure’s Magazine, in 1895.
9 Daphne du Maurier, The Du Mauriers (1937).
10 Papers in the du Maurier Archive, Exeter University.
11 Tatar, Spellbound.
12 Colin Wilson, New Pathways in Psychology: Maslow and the Post-Freudian Revolution (1972).
13 Felix Moscheles, In Bohemia with du Maurier (1896).
Chapter Three
The boy who hated mothers
1 W. A. Darlington, J. M. Barrie (1938).
2 Preface by J. M. Barrie to R. M. Ballantyne, The Coral Island (1913 edn).
3 Darlington, J. M. Barrie.
4 Letter from J. M. Barrie to Mrs Oliver, 21 December 1931.
5 J. M. Barrie, The Greenwood Hat (1930).
6 J. M. Barrie, Courage (1922).
7 J. M. Barrie, The Greenwood Hat.
8 J. A. Hammerton, Barrie: The Story of a Genius (1929).
9 The notebooks of J. M. Barrie (housed in The Walter Beinecke Jnr Collection at Yale University).
10 J. M. Barrie’s Preface to The Coral Island.
11 Ibid.
12 Denise Winn, The Manipulated Mind (1983).
13 J. M. Barrie, Tommy and Grizel (1900).
14 Darlington, Barrie.
15 Ibid.
16 Denis Mackail, The Story of J.M.B. (1941).
17 J. M. Barrie, Auld Licht Idylls (1888).
18 Barrie, Margaret Ogilvy.
19 Barrie, The Greenwood Hat.
20 Barrie, Margaret Ogilvy.
Chapter Four
Nervous breakdown
1 Luke Ionides, Memories (1925).
2 Daphne du Maurier (ed.), The Young George du Maurier: A Selection of his Letters (1951).
3 Thomas Armstrong in L. M. Lamont, A Memoir (1912).
4 Daphne du Maurier in the Preface to The Young George du Maurier (1959).
5 From a poem written by George du Maurier for Tom Armstrong in 1859.
Part III
Chapter One
Impotent and ambitious
1 Barrie, The Greenwood Hat.
2 Ibid.
3 Jerome K. Jerome, My Life and Times (1925).
4 Barrie, The Greenwood Hat.
5 Jerome, My Life and Times (1925).
6 Ibid.
7 Barrie, The Greenwood Hat (1930).
8 Jerome, My Life and Times (1925).
9 Barrie, The Greenwood Hat.
10 J. M. Barrie, Tommy and Grizel (1900).
Chapter Two
Gateway to Neverland
1 Philip V. Allingham, Lakehead University, Ontario, Canada. Article in ‘The Victorian Web’.
2 Introduction by Daphne du Maurier to George du Maurier, Peter Ibbetson (1969 edn).
3 David Lodge, Author, Author (2004).
4 C. C. Hoyer Millar, George du Maurier and Others (1937).
5 Introduction to George du Maurier, Peter Ibbetson and Trilby (1947 edn).
6 Journal de l’Anatomie et de la Physiologie and Revue Philosophique.
7 The Recreations of the Rabelais.
8 Jerome Schneck, ‘Henry James, George du Maurier, and Mesmerism’, International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, vol. 26, no. 2 (1978), pp. 76–80.
9 Lodge, Author, Author.
10 The Complete Notebooks of Henry James, edited by Leon Edel and Lyall H. Powers (1987).
11 Henry James, ‘The Middle Years’ (1893), in Terminations (1895).
12 Leonée Ormond, George du Maurier (1969).
13 J. B. and J. L. Gilder, Trilbyana (1895).
14 Daphne du Maurier, Enchanted Cornwall (1989).
15 John Masefield, introduction to an omnibus edition of three novels by George du Maurier, published in 1947.
16 M. H. Spielmann and L. S. Layard, Kate Greenaway (1905).
17 F. L. Marcuse, Hypnosis: Fact and Fiction (1963).
18 Denise Winn, The Manipulated Mind (1983, 2000).
19 F. L. Marcuse, Hypnosis: Fact and Fiction (1959).
20 Letters from Daphne du Maurier to Oriel Malet, 3 January 1962 and 5 August 1963.
21 Letter to Oriel Malet, 6 August 1969.
22 ‘The Archduchess’, in The Breaking Point (1960).
23 Ibid.
Chapter Three
Purloining the key
1 J. M. Barrie, The Little Minister (1891).
2 Luke Ionides, Memories (1925).
3 Notebook of J. M. Barrie.
4 Introduction to Jane Annie by Clifton Coles. Gilbert and Sullivan Archive.
5 Arthur Conan Doyle, Memories and Adventures (1924).
6 Andrew Birkin, J. M. Barrie and the Lost Boys (1979).
7 Mary Ansell, Dogs and Men (1924).
; Chapter Four
The corruption of Neverland
1 C. C. Hoyer Millar, George du Maurier and Others (1937).
2 Leonée Ormond, George du Maurier (1969).
3 Colin Wilson, Dreaming to Some Purpose: The Autobiography of Colin Wilson (2004).
4 Daphne du Maurier archive, Exeter University.
5 ‘The Historical Context of Analytical Psychology’, in The Cambridge Companion to Jung, Cambridge University Press, edited by Polly Young-Eisendrath and Terence Dawson (1997). Other writers listed are Hugo, Balzac, Dickens, Poe, Dostoevsky, Maupassant, Nietzsche, Wilde, R. L. Stevenson and Proust.
Part IV
Chapter One
Slipping into madness
1 Philip V. Allingham, Lakehead University, Ontario, Canada.
2 Elaine Showalter, Introduction to Trilby (1995 edn).
3 Jon Savage, Teenage: the Creation of Youth 1875–1945 (2007).
4 John Masefield, Introduction to the George du Maurier omnibus (1947).
5 Jacqueline Rose, The Case of Peter Pan (1984).
6 Maria M. Tatar, Spellbound: Studies on Mesmerism and Literature (1978).
7 Felix Moscheles, In Bohemia with Kicky (1896).
8 C. C. Hoyer Millar, George du Maurier and Others (1937).
Chapter Two
Predator and victim
1 J. M. Barrie, The Little White Bird (1902).
2 Letter to Tom Armstrong.
Chapter Three
Philanderings in the park
1 The Morgue.
Chapter Four
The boy in the box
1 Letter from Nico Llewelyn Davies to Andrew Birkin, 29 January 1976.
2 Letter from Nico Llewelyn Davies to Andrew Birkin, 24 March 1976.
3 J. M. Barrie, Peter and Wendy (1911).
4 Ibid.
5 ‘The Alibi’, in Daphne du Maurier, The Breaking Point (1959).
6 Ibid.
7 ‘The Little Photographer’, in Daphne du Maurier, The Breaking Point.
8 J. M. Barrie, The Little White Bird (1902).
9 Jacqueline Rose, The Case of Peter Pan (1984).
Chapter Five
Flying Uncle Jim to Neverland
1 ‘The Lordly Ones’, in The Breaking Point.
2 Mary Ansell, Dogs and Men (1924).
3 Barrie, The Little White Bird.