J.M. Barrie and the Lost Boys

by Andrew Birkin

  Sylvia (JMB)

  Peter wrote in his Morgue: ‘On the morning of the day Sylvia died, … Nurse Loosemore told us she was not well enough to see us, as she usually did before we went off on our various activities, but that she sent us all her love and would see us in the evening. Jack went off in the car to Minehead with Lloyd [a golfing friend] to play golf, George and I set out on our usual all-day fishing expedition. I question whether any of us, even George, the eldest and much the most intimate with J.M.B., felt more than a vague sense of oppression – certainly no clear forebodings.’ Denis Mackail related how Sylvia, ‘as she lay there in bed, … asked for a hand-mirror. She looked in it, and laid it down. “Don't let the boys see me again,” she said.’14 Sylvia's last moments were recounted by Emma du Maurier in a letter to her daughter May, written on the afternoon of August 27th, 1910:

  ‘At ¼ to 2 [Nurse Loosemore] called me, and the doctor was holding dear Sylvia's hands and asked me to fan her, but I didn't know the end was so near. She was breathing with great difficulty and I couldn't bear to look at her, then they called in Mr Barrie and I saw what it was and it was all over in about a ¼ of an hour. It was her breathing that was exhausted, not heart failure. The doctor, nurse, Mr Barrie and I were the only ones in the room. … Darling Sylvia looked perfectly lovely – so calm and happy, and those who love her can only be thankful she is at peace.’

  After spending that morning fishing with George, Peter decided to walk home alone:

  ‘It was a grey, lowering, drizzly sort of day, and I walked fast, and was pretty blown, I remember, by the time I reached the top of the steep footpath which led from the river-valley up to the house. As I went in at the gate, it struck me that there was something peculiar in the aspect of the house: in every window the blinds had been drawn. Somehow or other the dreadful significance of this sombre convention conveyed itself to my shocked understanding, and with heart in boots and unsteady knees I covered the remaining thirty or forty yards to the front door. There J.M.B. awaited me: a distraught figure, arms hanging limp, hair dishevelled, wild-eyed.

  ‘In what exact words he told me what I had no need to be told, I forget; but it was brokenly, despairingly, without any pretence of philosophy or resignation or the stiff upper lip. He must have been sunk in depths far below all that, poor Jimmy; I think it was I that propelled him, as much as he me, into the room on the left of the little entrance hall, where we sat and blubbered together. Good cause for blubbering too, for both of us; but I remember, and wish I didn't, sobbing out “Mother! Mother!” at intervals during the sad and painful scene, and realising, even as I did so, that this wasn't altogether natural in me – that, though half involuntary, it was also a half-deliberate playing-up to the situation. I can forgive myself now, after thirty-five years, for this rather shameful bit of nervous reaction: the rest of it, the tears and misery and desolation, were genuine enough. … I am almost sure … that I went in to look my last on Sylvia as she lay dead in the room on the ground floor which had been made into her bedroom. … All I retain … is a dream-like, cloudy sense of going in and standing for a matter of seconds, confused, unhappy, frightened, looking and yet not looking at the pale, lifeless features, and then of escaping to I know not what limbo in some remote corner of the house … Nico, then aged six and three quarters, has a memory of approaching the door of Sylvia's room, meaning to go in as had been his habit after tea each day, and of being shooed away with significant gruffness by one of his kind brothers, probably Michael. … He very well remembers Mary Hodgson trying to explain things to him, and how she laid the responsibility on God, adding hopelessly enough, to soften the blow, that sometimes people who were so spirited away were brought back, and it might be that she would come back at Christmas. And he remembers, thereupon, crying out in misery, half hysterically, “Cruel God! Cruel God!”

  ‘Of how the word of death was spoken to George, when he came back that evening from his day's fishing, I know nothing; or to Michael, then a little over ten years old, and the most highly strung and impressionable of us.’*

  Jack recalled his own memories in 1952:

  ‘When the car fetched … me back from Minehead, I was taken into a room where [Barrie] was alone and he told me she was dead. He also told me, which angered me even then, that Mother had promised to marry him and wore his ring. Even then I thought if it was true it must be because she knew she was dying. I was then taken in to see her and left with her for a bit. She looked quite natural, as she'd always been so pale, very lovely and asleep.’16

  Sylvia's ‘engagement’ ring

  When Nico married in 1926, Barrie gave his wife some of Sylvia's jewellery, including a diamond and sapphire ring which, he told Nico, he had given to Sylvia ‘as we would have been married had your mother lived’. The abortive betrothal, if true, was never made known to Sylvia's family in her lifetime, and there is no mention of it in any surviving correspondence. Peter was sceptical that such an engagement had ever taken place:

  ‘J.M.B. was quite capable of imagining, and of coming in the end to believe, such a might-have-been. … No doubt there must have been conversations between them during those [last] months about the future, and about what they were to be to each other; and she may well have given him the thought of marriage – if it could be called that – to play with. But by then … he already had reason to suspect that her disease might prove fatal, and I guess that she too, though never told, suspected it also. At any rate that's how I see it. Others may well say, and doubtless did, that it would have been the most natural thing in the world: that she was already more intimate with him than with any other living being, that he had adored her for years and loved her children, that she was taking so much from him that she could scarcely refuse if that was what he wished, and in fact it was much the best solution. All this is true enough. But I think that to Jack … the thought was intolerable and even monstrous; so much so that he could not refrain from expressing himself in the most forcible manner to that effect when J.M.B. in an unguarded moment spoke to him of it. To me too, I confess, the idea of such a marriage is repugnant. Up to a point, perhaps, this is mere sentimentality. The two sublime creatures of one's childhood die when one is too young to have much sense of reality, and the naïve impression remains, so that in after life no one who survives to meet the more calculating glance of one's maturity can ever move in the same dimension as the enchanted dead. … But it does seem to me that a marriage between Sylvia, the widow, still so beautiful in her forty-fourth year, of the splendid Arthur, and the strange little creature who adored her and dreamed, as he surely must have dreamed, of stepping into Arthur's shoes, would have been an affront, really, to any reasonable person's sense of the fitness of things. And I do not believe that Sylvia seriously contemplated it. … Let me not be thought unmindful, in writing what I have written, of the innumerable benefits and kindnesses I have received, at one time and another, from the aforesaid strange little creature, to whom, in the end, his connection with our family brought so much more sorrow than happiness.’

  The morning after Sylvia's death, George and Peter were dispatched to the nearest village with a sheaf of telegrams addressed to relatives and friends:

  ‘As we walked down the hill on this gloomy errand, … George remarked to me, perhaps merely speaking his thoughts aloud, … that in spite of the tragedy that had come upon us, we seemed to have got up and washed and tied our ties and put on our boots and eaten our breakfast all right: that it wasn't, in fact, the end of the world. Life went on. Physically speaking, we were much as before. … For an instant I was shocked, … but further reflection persuaded me that there was something in what he said. … It was not indifference or resignation or fatalism that George, aged seventeen, was expressing, but a sort of rough-and-ready working philosophy, based on an instinctive sense of proportion. … I knew quite well that he was feeling things at least as deeply as I was myself. But he was the eldest brother, and felt his responsibility.’

  Mich
ael fishing (JMB)

  As there were still another three weeks of the summer holidays left to the boys, it was decided that Michael, Nico and Mary Hodgson should remain at Ashton Farm while George, Jack and Peter accompanied Barrie and their mother's coffin back to London for her funeral. Jack later told his wife of the ‘hideous five-hour train journey, and how every time the train stopped at a station, Barrie got out of the carriage and stood with bowed head in front of the guard's van where the coffin was, draped in purple cloth, as if he was on sentry-duty’.17 Peter remembered virtually nothing of the funeral, writing in his Morgue:

  ‘Grotesque that one should retain so little of all that, and yet that one should clearly remember going with J.M.B. and George, presumably the morning after the funeral, to an old-fashioned … shop in the Haymarket … to purchase exciting, slender 8-ft fly-rods, and fine casts and flies, with which to divert ourselves during the remainder of the holidays! For it had been decided, by those who took charge of our destinies, that George and I should go back with J.M.B. [to Devon], there to fish till Eton and Wilkinson's claimed us. … And I dare say it worked well enough, and that the new rods helped, as no doubt J.M.B. with generous cunning knew that they would, to do the trick. At any rate one seems to remember quite enjoying oneself, flogging the little upland streams and hauling out the little trout, and putting the lowly worm behind one for ever.’

  ‘Sylvia … leaves with us an image of such extraordinary loveliness, nobleness and charm – ever unforgettable and touching’, wrote Henry James to Emma du Maurier on hearing the news of her death.

  ‘Mrs Darling was now dead and forgotten’, wrote J. M. Barrie in Peter and Wendy, watching her boys fishing the summer streams.

  * Guy's original ending gave triumph to the Germans (thinly disguised as the ‘Nearlanders’), but Barrie and Gerald, catering for the box-office, replaced it with a last-minute British victory.

  * Diana Farr states that Mary later told Cannan's sister, in a moment of bitterness, that ‘he had not been the only lover, but simply the one who was “unlucky enough to be caught.”’

  * The 3rd ‘lie’ refers to Barrie's ‘Yes’ in answer to the question, ‘Did you live happily with your wife?’ Mary's point that ‘it is seven years since we separated’ would seem to indicate some sort of marital happiness prior to the autumn of 1902 (the publication of The Little White Bird and Barrie's trip to Paris with Sylvia).

  * Mary Hodgson's sister.

  † A reference to the fear that Michael might be suffering from tuberculosis.

  * Barrie told a later friend, Mrs Hugh Lewis, that Michael had ‘broken into a rage and stamped his feet in a fury of words’ upon hearing the news of his mother's death.15

  13

  1910–1914

  When Sylvia's second Will was found several months after her death, Barrie made a careful, hand-written copy and sent it to Emma du Maurier, adding: ‘The above is an exact copy, including the words “Sylvia's Will”, of paper found by me at 23 Campden Hill Square. … It is undated, but I do not doubt it to be the will written by her at Ashton, Exmoor, a few days before her death, of which all she told me was “I thought I was dying and I began to write a will.”’ Part of the second paragraph, as transcribed by Barrie, read: ‘What I would like would be if Jimmy would come to Mary, and that the two together would be looking after the boys and the house and helping each other. And it would be so nice for Mary.’ In fact Sylvia had not written ‘Jimmy’ but ‘Jenny’ – Mary Hodgson's sister. The mistranscription was no doubt unintentional, although the word ‘Jenny’ is clear enough, and Barrie can have had no illusions that his presence at Campden Hill Square would be ‘nice for Mary’. In the event, Jenny's services were not called upon, and Mary was obliged to tolerate Barrie's omnipresence at Campden Hill Square, in accordance with Sylvia's supposed last wishes. Even before the discovery of the will, it was clear to all concerned that only Barrie had both the time and the means to assume full responsibility for the boys. The alternative was to divide them up among relatives, but Sylvia had expressly stated to Emma du Maurier that she wanted them to remain together as a family. Any lingering objections to Barrie's official adoption of the Five were overruled when he produced Sylvia's Will, confirming ‘Jimmy's’ right to look after the boys with Mary.

  Sylvia's 2nd Will and Barrie's transcription for Emma du Maurier, in which ‘Jenny’ has become ‘Jimmy’. The error, if noted at the time, would have changed little. Emma du Maurier had written to Henry James in September 1910: ‘I, & Crompton Davies & Mr Barrie are guardians & think it is pretty certain that Mr Barrie will live with them. I am too old to really be of any use to them. He is unattached & his one wish is to look after them in the way Sylvia would have wished. His devotion to Arthur during his illness & his friendship & affection ever since to all the family makes us all feel that he has a good claim’

  It was an imperfect solution to all but Barrie and the boys themselves. George, at seventeen, regarded him as a close and intimate friend. Jack, a year younger, was showing signs of resentment, but nevertheless preferred the relative independence of Campden Hill Square in the holidays to any of the other alternatives. Peter, at thirteen, had confused emotions: he shared a degree of Jack's resentment, but worshipped George, and allowed himself to be led by George's trust in Barrie. Michael, ‘the mysterious boy of the so open countenance … with the carelessness of genius’1, was now ten. His love for ‘Uncle Jim’ amounted to adoration, and the complexity of their relationship far exceeded that of Barrie's with George in the days of The Boy Castaways. Denis Mackail, who knew both Barrie and Michael at this time, wrote:

  ‘Michael … looks like his mother, and hasn't escaped her charm. … Not wax for Barrie by any means – but you can steer or lead little boys of ten in a way that you can't do afterwards. [Barrie's] spell is still irresistible when it chooses, and here is the boy – quick, sensitive, attractive, and gifted – who is to be everything else that the magician most admires. There is no cloud between them. From Barrie … Michael has no secrets. You can call him the favourite … He and Barrie draw closer and closer, and perhaps it isn't always Barrie who leads or steers. He has given his heart to Michael … and has transferred an enormous part of his ambition. Is it dangerous? No answer.’

  Picture-letter from Nico to Barrie

  Sylvia's ‘darling doodle Nico’ would be seven in November. Being so young, he was the least affected by the early deaths of his parents, and his demonstrative, extrovert personality was a great asset in lifting occasional periods of gloom in the household. Like Michael, Nico regarded Barrie not as a father, nor as a brother, ‘just the person I always hoped most would be coming in to see me’. As for Barrie, all five boys were ‘my boys’, though even he must have perceived the irony of his guardianship as he continued his labours on Peter and Wendy:

  ‘Then [the lost boys] went on their knees, and holding out their arms cried, “O Wendy lady, be our mother.”

  ‘“Ought I?” Wendy said, all shining. “Of course it's frightfully fascinating, but you see … I have no real experience.”

  ‘“That doesn't matter,” said Peter, … “What we need is just a nice motherly person.”

  ‘“Oh dear!” Wendy said, “you see I feel that is exactly what I am. … Very well, … I will do my best.”’

  Peter at Eton

  Unfortunately there were two contenders for the role of the ‘nice motherly person’ to the five orphans at Campden Hill Square. Mary Hodgson, by now a confirmed spinster, looked upon herself as the boys' substitute mother. Barrie, however, considered that he was in loco parentis to the boys, as both father and mother. The inevitable conflict that arose from their rivalry was only held in check by the boys themselves, particularly Michael and Nico, whose devotion to Mary was unshakeable.

  The bizarre story of ‘Barrie and his Lost Boys’, and their inevitable parallel with Peter Pan, made excellent fodder for society gossip and speculation. It was all fairly harmless, except to Peter, who had
begun his first term at Eton a few weeks after Sylvia's death, and was mercilessly ragged as ‘the real Peter Pan’. Being a scholar, Peter slept in ‘College’ – a special house reserved for scholarship boys – and he saw little of George, so much his senior, and living in Macnaghten's House. The teasing he received at Eton led to a phobia so passionate that in after life he came to loathe his association with the play, referring to it only as ‘that terrible masterpiece’. He revealed his feelings briefly in the Morgue: ‘What's in a name? My God, what isn't? If that perennially juvenile lead, if that boy so fatally committed to an arrestation of his development, had only been dubbed George, or Jack, or Michael, or Nicholas, what miseries would have been spared me.’ Barrie made frequent visits to Eton, but Peter lacked George's intimacy with him, and confided little of his unhappiness.

  Barrie had always harboured a curious fascination for the English public school system, perhaps because his own education at Dumfries Academy was so entirely of another world. In a later speech he told his audience, ‘Your great English public schools! I never feel myself a foreigner in England except when trying to understand them. I have a great affection for one at least of them, but they will bewilder me to the end; I am like a dog looking up wistfully at its owner wondering what that noble face means, or if it does have a meaning. To look at, these schools are among the fairest things in England; they draw from their sons a devotion that is deeper, more lasting than almost any other love.’2 Eton became a source of romance for him, like the aristocracy – an institution which he could tease and flirt with, but never fully embrace – and it was not long before the stage Captain Hook was proclaiming ‘Floreat Etona!’ as he projected himself into the mouth of the crocodile.