J.M. Barrie and the Lost Boys

by Andrew Birkin

  On Monday, May 23rd, 1921, Michael was buried in Hampstead Churchyard, close to the graves of his mother and father. A few weeks before, Barrie had written in his notebook:

  Death. One who died is only a little ahead of procession all moving that way. When we round the corner we'll see him again. We have only lost him for a moment because we fell behind, stopping to tie a shoe-lace.

  The Llewelyn Davies grave in Hampstead Cemetery

  Barrie after Michael's death. ‘For ever and ever I am thinking about him.’

  * i.e. Prep-School.

  * *Janet Dunbar gives a much fuller account of Cynthia Asquith's role in Barrie's life in her 1970 biography, J. M. Barrie: The Man Behind the Image. Cynthia herself wrote Portrait of Barrie in 1954.

  * Nico disagreed with this view. He wrote, ‘I am quite unable to admit that J.M.B.'s influence was “unhealthy”: oppressive maybe and over-constant – and I can believe that Michael was relieved to get away from the flat, as many many undergraduates have felt as they were speeding from their home with a friend back to Oxford. But so far as I am concerned, speaking as the fifth brother, I'm glad I lived with that odd little man rather than living in poverty, or, for that matter, with virtually any other person I have ever known.’

  Epilogue

  Michael's death had a profound effect on virtually everyone who had known him. ‘I am sure if he had lived he would have been one of the remarkable people of his generation’, wrote Lytton Strachey to Ottoline Morrell on hearing of his death. ‘The uselessness of things is hideous and intolerable.’1 Lord Boothby recalled in 1976, ‘When Michael died, I received a number of hysterical letters from friends, the most hysterical being from Edward Marjoribanks, the brilliant half-brother of Quintin Hailsham. I'm convinced that Edward's own suicide a few years later was motivated by Michael's death. I remember, too, the devastating effect it had on Roger Senhouse: I can see him now, being led away from Michael's funeral, sobbing. I don't think Roger would have ever taken up his unhealthy life with Lytton Strachey had Michael lived. As for myself, I've made a pretty good mess of my life, which would have been very different if Michael had lived. He had a great influence over me, more than anyone else I've ever known. He would have stopped me doing many foolish things. He would have kept me on the rails.’

  Barrie being carried aloft by the students of St Andrews University after delivering his address, Courage, in May 1922. He later wrote to Michael's Oxford tutor, Robin Dundas, ‘It was not St Andrew's students I was seeing on that occasion, but an Oxford one’

  But the grief of Michael's friends was all but eclipsed by the intensity of Barrie's despair. ‘All the world is different to me now’ he wrote to Elizabeth Lucas in December 1921; ‘Michael was pretty much my world.’ To Michael's Oxford tutor, Robin Dundas, Barrie wrote a year later, ‘It may seem strange to you that I did not write to you long ago, but what happened was in a way the end of me, and practically anything may be forgiven me now. He had been the one great thing in my life for many years, and though there are little things to do, they are very trivial.’2 On the eve of the anniversary of Michael's death, Barrie wrote to Elizabeth Lucas, ‘Do you know that this day a year ago Michael was alive and as well as any of us and that next day he was dead. That is really why I am writing to you to-day. I feel that he is at Oxford to-day in his rooms and that tomorrow he is going out to be drowned, and doesn't know it.’ A similar theme occurred in other letters: in November 1922 he was corresponding with Robin Dundas about putting up a memorial to overlook ‘that terrible place’ which, he told him, ‘I see every night of my life’; on November 7th he wrote to another friend, F. S. Oliver, ‘I go looking for him there … pretty well every night of my life.’ That night Barrie had a dream, which he recorded in his notebook:

  Memorial to Michael and Rupert Buxton overlooking ‘that terrible place’, Sandford Pool

  Michael, aged 12, standing against an idyllic Scottish landscape. The picture was the most prominent of those hanging in Barrie's flat. ‘It is as familiar an expression to me as if he himself had come into this room to quiz me, not at all conscious of what was to befall, … while some photographs seem to foretell the whole tragic story,’ wrote Barrie to Robert Boothby. ‘We know that because such have been there will be such again, though not for us.’

  — Michael. On 7th Nov 1922 I dreamt that he came back to me, not knowing that he was drowned and that I kept this knowledge from him, and we went on for another year in old way till the fatal 19th approached again & he became very sad not knowing why, and I feared what was to happen but never let on – and as day drew nearer he understood more & thought I didn't – and gradually each knew the other knew but still we didn't speak of it – and when the day came I had devised schemes to make it impossible for him to leave me yet doubted they could help – and he rose in the night and put on the old clothes and came to look at me as he thought asleep. I tried to prevent him going but he had to go and I knew it and he said he thought it would be harder if I didn't let him go alone, but I went with him, holding his hand and he liked it and when we came to the place – that pool – he said goodbye to me and went into it and sank just as before. At this point I think I woke but feeling that he had walked cheerily into my room as if another year had again begun for us.

  — The above was all the dream and the notes to follow come out of thinking about it, all except this that I knew from the moment of his return I must never let him know that anything had happened to him — that this so to speak was vital to his life. All must go on as if he had returned from some ordinary outing.

  — If I write about this I should picture the old life going on so precisely as before that often for a length of time I cease to have uneasiness. I have no idea till the fatal day is approaching that he will again be taken from me then.

  — I give details of his our time together during the extra year, lived quite ordinarily tho' strangely close to each other.

  — I do some things that he had wanted before and tht then I had not done.

  — Fears of spoiling him, and fight not to do it.

  — How in agony I had to let him go away sometimes to live ordinary life of young youth.

  — It is not necessary to make him nearly 21 – He could be younger if I like.

  — Perhaps sinister hostile powers like clouds in M. James's fairy book.

  — His gallant fear of water which he confides to me in the extra year. (How this affects me.

  — He might write from school of fear of water when learning to swim, so tht this vague shadow haunts the story.

  — It might be called ‘Water’ – (or The Silent Pool) or ‘The 19th’.

  — Mary Hodgson coming back?

  — He can't get past the fatal date.

  — Our real letters in it?

  — In some strange ways his tastes – disposition – are different. Also he seems to know vaguely some new strange things and to have forgotten other things.

  — Fatal night coming to me light pressed lips says going to bathe – must go – must.

  — In dream did he return like one so much older or just as had left me – or a year younger? – In last case it would mean he can't get past a certain age as well as a certain day. In the other cases it is only the day tht is the obstacle.

  — Trying to lock in, guarded by others – he is in such agony of mind tht I have to let him out. He goes to pool.

  — To go with him on the fatal day is as sad as Ch[arles] Lamb ‘crossing fields’ with his sister taking her to asylum.

  — His hand on my shoulder.

  — Must be clear tht there is nothing suicidal about it.

  — I make him become an accomplished swimmer to help him fight the fatal day. (Day better than night?)

  — When he reappears it is as suddenly as from the next room, and in as matter-of-fact way. He never knows he has been away.

  — Effect on my own life. Give up ordinary work – he chides me for laziness – His joy of living greater t
han ever – ecstasy of childhood comes back.

  — It is as if long after writing ‘P. Pan’ its true meaning came to me – Desperate attempt to grow up but can't.

  — Enquiring back I find he had always had great difficulty to pass the 19th Illness – once lost, &c.

  — I dry the pool – water comes back. Or build high wall yet he is found drowned in it. (We try going far away – a similar pond is there. Terrible when he vaguely knows it is, must be a dreadful day for him.

  — This as if pond followed.

  — A love affair? (How would I treat it seeing I think he will go again?

  Notebook entry on Michael

  Although the story suggested in these notes never emerged, the ‘true meaning’ of Peter Pan found its way into the stage directions of the play when it was finally printed in 1928:

  PETER (passionately) I don't want to go to school and learn solemn things. No one is going to catch me, lady, and make me a man. I want always to be a little boy and to have fun.

  (So perhaps he thinks, but it is only his greatest pretend.)

  The death of Michael was a considerable blow to Jack and Peter; for Nico, it was devastating. ‘Nicholas is sometimes overwhelmed by what he has lost’ Barrie wrote to Elizabeth Lucas, ‘and is a touching boy at such times’.3 When Nico went up to Oxford in 1922, Barrie wrote to Michael's former tutor, Robin Dundas:

  ‘I heard from Nicholas with uncommon pleasure of how you have had him out, and I may add that he wrote so enthusiastically about you that I feel confident you will get more out of him as he settles down more to Oxford. He is not of course a Michael, life has so far presented no problems to him, nothing terrible and nothing thrillingly joyous such as Michael saw. He is thoroughly the Eton child as yet, to whom Eton standards and ways are the sum of his outlook. Apparently it is not easy to step out of that last year at Eton into the world – and least easy to those who have been conspicuous in the athletic circle. He will never probably be ‘intellectual’ in any prominent way, but he is able I think in the sense that he has a powerful brain, and he is very lovable and a true admirer of the fine things. … He has not read greatly but has good taste in poetry especially and likes to hear it talked of by those who care for it. Most of his reticence is owing to his passionate regard for Michael. He has a sort of childish fear of breaking down when that name is mentioned. Nevertheless the more it is mentioned to him the better I am pleased. He is very emotional and frightened thereat.’4

  Stanway, 1922: l to r—Michael Asquith, Barrie, Simon Asquith, Queen Mary

  Barrie with a new generation of Davieses: Nico's daughter, Laura

  Nico continued to live with his guardian in the holidays, but he knew he could not replace Michael. ‘Uncle Jim told me that I understood him better than anyone else alive, yet I realized I could never be a substitute for all that he had lost. When Michael died, the light of his life went out.’ Nico ‘left the nest’ in 1926 to marry Mary James, and in 1931 Peter announced his engagement to one of the Ruthven twins, Margaret. ‘The event is one I have long hoped for’, Barrie wrote to Mrs Oliver, ‘and when it is accomplished I suppose I shall feel that my task is over and, as Henley wrote, the long day done.’5 Apart from the occasional visits of ‘my boys’, and his friendship with Cynthia Asquith, Barrie lived alone, the ‘Hermit of the Adelphi’, roosting high in his eyrie above the Thames. Like Margaret Ogilvy, he gradually emerged from his grief. He entertained again: Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, the Archbishop of Canterbury; dabbled in politics again, befriending Michael Collins, speaking out against Hitler, hosting luncheon parties for Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin and Winston Churchill. He made numerous speeches – despite his maxim that there is ‘no surer sign of mediocrity than being accepted as a successful after-dinner speaker’,6 became Chancellor of Edinburgh University, received the Freedom of half a dozen cities, and was awarded the Order of Merit. His friendships with children continued unabated, from Cynthia Asquith's two sons, Michael and Simon, to the young Princess Margaret, who, at the age of three, proclaimed that Sir James ‘is my greatest friend, and I am his greatest friend’.7 Barrie went so far as to draw up a contract with the Princess, an echo of his Agreement with Jack a quarter of a century before, awarding her a penny a night for two lines contributed by her to his last play, The Boy David. In March 1937, King George VI sent Barrie a message informing him that if the debt was not paid in full, he would be hearing from His Majesty's solicitors. Barrie, delighted, prepared a large sack of pennies with the intention of taking them to Buckingham Palace in person; but on June 19th, at the age of seventy-seven, he died, the pennies undelivered. Peter and Nico were with him. ‘He was tired’, said Nico. ‘He wanted to go.’

  Barrie with Elisabeth Bergner, for whom he wrote The Boy David, the last play of his life. Ostensibly about the young King David of the Bible, the play was an echo of an old, old theme: the boy David who had died in childhood, the boy David of The Little White Bird, the eternal lost boy: Peter Pan. Barrie remembered Elisabeth Bergner's performance as David in his Will as being ‘the best performance ever given in a play by me.’

  Michael's death had, in Mackail's phrase, ‘altered and darkened everything for the rest of his life’. Yet there remained for him one unfailing consolation. When he delivered his address to the students of St Andrews University in 1922, he read them the sonnet Michael had written during his last summer on Eilean Shona. Barrie did not mention Michael by name. He spoke of him simply as ‘the lad that will never be old’.

  Sources

  UNPUBLISHED SOURCES

  1. Some Davies Letters and Papers, 1874–1915, compiled in six volumes by Peter Llewelyn Davies between 1945 and 1951. Peter outlined the purpose of what he referred to as the family Morgue in a series of notes found after his death: ‘Intention: To show, by extracts from letters & diaries, with short notes, the sort of Davies and du Maurier people we are sprung from…. To “lay a ghost” in my own case, and free myself to either destroying all documents or dispersing them between Jack & Nico’. In a letter sent to his two surviving brothers to accompany the first instalment of the Morgue, Peter wrote: ‘If you think the whole thing is a mistake, you can always tear it up and throw it away, as I shall now proceed to tear up and throw away the letters, some of which are here copied’. Peter's original plan had been to take his compilation up to the death of Michael in 1921, but his process of destruction overtook the speed of his transcription, and by 1952 he had abandoned the task at George's death, consigning all further material in his possession to the incinerator. In every sense the Morgue is a tragic document, since its compilation was, in Nico's opinion, a contributory factor towards Peter's suicide.

  2. The Walter Beinecke Jnr Collection, housed at Yale University as part of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The collection contains the major part of Barrie's letters and manuscripts extant (including much Davies material not transcribed in the Morgue), as well as the surviving copy of The Boy Castaways of Black Lake Island, and Barrie's forty-eight notebooks. These notebooks were made available to me on microfilm, and some of my transcriptions differ from the same extracts printed in earlier biographies; similar discrepancies occur with many of Barrie's letters in the Beinecke Collection, particularly when compared with those in The Letters of J. M. Barrie (Peter Davies Ltd, 1942). While making no claim to infallibility, I believe my transcriptions to be accurate, thanks to Nico's help in deciphering the more illegible passages of Barrie's handwriting.

  3. The Barrie Birthplace Collection, administered by the National Trust for Scotland, which contains unpublished drafts of Barrie's works, as well as a number of early photographs.

  4. Material owned by Nicholas Llewelyn Davies, including the majority of photographs reproduced here. Many of the letters and documents in his possession do not appear in Peter's Morgue.

  5. The Margaret Ogilvy Sweeten Collection, which includes letters and photographs associated with Barrie's childhood, and with the Barrie and Ogilvy families.<
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  6. The Mary Hodgson Collection, made available by her niece, Mrs Mary Hill. It contains various photographs, mementoes and letters from the Davies boys, particularly Peter and Nico, who wrote to her frequently until her death in 1962.

  7. The Pauline Chase letters in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

  8. The Roger Lancelyn Green Collection. As author of Fifty Years of Peter Pan (Peter Davies Ltd, 1954), Roger Lancelyn Green has amassed a wealth of Barrie knowledge and material. His collection includes Nina Boucicault's 1904 rehearsal script of Peter Pan.

  9. The Lillie Library Collection, University of Indiana. In his Dedication to Peter Pan, Barrie implied that the original draft of the play had been lost. In fact he had given it to Maude Adams, who in turn presented it to the Lillie Library.

  10. Dolly Ponsonby's unpublished Diaries, 1890–1914, made available by the Dowager Lady Ponsonby.

  11. Material owned by Geraldine Llewelyn Davies, including several hundred letters from Barrie to Jack and herself, as well as personal correspondence with her husband.