The Real Peter Pan

by Piers Dudgeon

  The medical condition was cramp in his right hand, his writing hand. He wrote to Charles Whiblet, also a writer:

  My dear Charles … It isn’t so difficult as you might fancy to write with the left hand but ’tis the dickens to think down the left side. It doesn’t even know the names of my works. Also it seems to have a darker and more sinister outlook on life, and is trying at present to egg me on to making a woman knife her son [Mary Rose]. Always love, J. M. B.

  To the actress Mrs Campbell:

  My right hand has gone on strike – writer’s cramp – and I have had to learn to indite with the left. We scarcely know the right hand nowadays – we pass the time of day and so on, but nothing more. At first the left was but an amanuensis. I dictated to it, but I had to think down the right arm. But now the left is my staff. Also I find the person who writes with his left is quite another pair of shoes from the one who employs his right; he has other standards, sleeps differently, has novel views on the ontology of being, and is a more sinister character. Anything curious or uncomfortable about the play of Mary Rose arises from its having been a product of the left hand.

  Later he would backdate the influence of the release of the sinister side of himself upon the world to the writing of Dear Brutus (1917), as Darlington noted. ‘Nobody seemed to see till later that Dear Brutus was, as Barrie himself described it many years later, an uncomfortable play such as he could only have written with his left hand.’

  Of course, the left-hand/right-hand business was another piece of Barrie nonsense. But the trouble was that once this fanciful, sinister side started operating in the real world, people could get hurt. It was this tension that he needed in his life in order to create. And Michael was the key.

  Nanny became increasingly concerned. But what could she do? Her loyalty to Arthur and Sylvia remained as strong as ever, she could not bring the family into disrepute by taking her fears to someone outside. Anyway, who would listen? But something had to be done.

  When Nico went as a boarder to Eton in 1916, she had decided to offer her resignation. Barrie saw immediately that that would not do. He did all in his power to persuade her to stay. She agreed reluctantly.

  Then all of a sudden, on 24 June 1917 – Midsummer’s Day – he moved from his flat on the third floor of Adelphi Terrace House (fifth if you looked at it from the Embankment side) to a studio apartment on the top floor of the same building, large enough to accommodate Michael and Nico.

  No expense was spared in its redesign by Edwin Lutyens. A large study room ran the length of the apartment to huge casement windows looking out over the Thames, making it even more like the Captain’s bridge than the flat below.

  The walls were mahogany-panelled. Large brown wooden bookshelves were installed. The overall impression was one of brown-ness. Immediately to the right on entry was a large inglenook fireplace, into which Barrie, at just over five feet, could wander without bending and tuck himself away on a hard settle, to read in the light of a log fire. The floor of the room was covered with matting, and later rugs chosen by Michael. In one corner stood a polished iron stove, where Barrie liked to brew tea when his manservant was not in attendance.

  ‘Somehow the apartment seems just like him,’ wrote a visitor.51 Dark, bookish, imposing, hard, it would not be out of place in the opening scene of Faust as the ‘high-vaulted, narrow Gothic chamber’ where we first see the scholar sitting restless at his desk.

  Without consulting Nanny, Barrie arranged for Jack and his new wife, who were married in September, to take over the running of Campden Hill Square.

  When the young couple arrived, Nanny, unprepared and piqued at the assault on her authority, turned her back on the young couple and refused to speak to Gerrie, who was to take her place. Jack was furious, but Nico and Michael wouldn’t have a word said against her.

  Nanny refused to talk to Gerrie. Tensions ran wild between the two factions. Matters became fraught.

  Then one night Nanny pushed a note under the door of Jack’s bedroom, which read: ‘Things have been going on in this room of which your father would not have approved.’

  It is not known what Jack made of it, but the response within the family was shameful. Gerrie later recalled that Edward Coles, husband of May du Maurier, and therefore Michael’s uncle, read the note and quipped: ‘She probably heard the bed squeaking.’

  A joke in bad taste, but the likelihood was that sex was the last thing going on in that room. Much more likely, given Nanny’s choice of phrase and the plays Barrie and Michael were now engaged in – one about George coming back from the dead, and the other about Sylvia – is that the ‘things’ going on in the room of which Arthur would not have approved, were séances. Would Nanny have stood by for so long had Barrie and Michael been having sex? I think not!

  But why did no one do anything? ‘Because they were intimidated,’ said Gerrie to Andrew Birkin in 1975. ‘All the other relations said they were intimidated.’

  Certainly, Barrie could be intimidating if it suited him. We have already met with Dolly Ponsonby’s wariness of him, the alarming way he ‘sees right through one’. Mackail recalled that he would meet your conversation with an expression ‘horribly like a sneer … Oh, yes, we have suffered. No, don’t let’s remember … the faint, Caledonian grunt with which our desperate observations are received.’

  There’s a wonderful description by the cricket writer Neville Cardus in his autobiography52 of a weekend he spent in Barrie’s Adelphi apartment a couple of years after Michael’s death, interesting because it gives us Barrie as he was at his most intimidating. Nico described it as ‘vividly true and to me extremely funny’.

  Cardus had written to Barrie about Kathleen Kilfoyle, a young actress he had seen playing Mary Rose. When Barrie replied, he told Cardus he had for years been reading his books and articles on cricket and invited him to Adelphi Terrace. Cardus accepted. By this time, Barrie’s butler, Harry Brown, had been replaced by Frank Thurston.

  Cardus arrived on a Friday evening and was shown to his bedroom by Thurston.

  This Thurston I have subsequently found out was a grand and sterling character, he spoke various languages, and would correct any loose statements about Ovid that he chanced to overhear while he was serving dinner. He had a ghostly face; he was from a Barrie play – so was Barrie, and the flat, and everything in it; the enormous cavern of a fireplace, the wooden settle and old tongs and bellows, and the sense the place gave you that the walls might be walked through if you had been given the secret. Barrie trudged the room smoking a pipe; on the desk lay another pipe already charged, ready for immediate service; he coughed as he trudged and smoked, a cruel cough that provoked a feeling of physical pain in my chest; and his splutterings and gaspings and talk struggled on one from the other.

  At last he came to sit facing me in front of the smouldering logs, and for a while the silence was broken by groans only to be heard in our two imaginations – the groans of men separated for ever by a chasm of shyness and uneasiness. Until midnight we lingered on. He offered me no refreshment. Thurston apparently went home to sleep each night. Or perhaps he merely dematerialised. Barrie knew I had dined on the train, but a nightcap would have been fortifying to me, I am sure; for already the spell of the flat high amongst the roofs of Adelphi was gripping me.

  Next morning, having been given the information, ‘unnecessarily as I still think’, that it was Michael’s room he’d been sleeping in, Thurston came into his bedroom with tea and showed Cardus the bathroom, ‘the most unkept I have ever known’.

  The towels were damp and soiled; and round about the shelves were one or two shaving brushes congealed in ancient soap. A rusty razor blade on a window ledge was historical. Barrie had his private bathroom; the unclean towels puzzled me. Was it the custom to bring your own towels when staying with distinguished people for a weekend? I dried myself as best I could, and now Thurston directed me to the breakfast-room, where he attended to me in complete silence.

  On t
he Sunday, after a dinner party the previous night enlivened occasionally by E. V. Lucas’s ‘low chuckles’, Thurston again served tea in his bedroom and informed him that Barrie had gone away until Monday. Cardus spent the day in the parks, dined in Soho and let himself into the flat just before midnight.

  Not a sound. A cold collation had been laid for me on the table, with a bottle of hock and a silver box of cigarettes. I explored the bookcases, almost on tiptoe; there was a row of volumes of the Scottish philosophers – Hume, Mackintosh, Hamilton. I sat at Barrie’s desk but got up immediately for fear I might be caught in the act. The great chimney corner, with no fire in it, glowered at me.

  At breakfast, to his surprise, he was met by Barrie’s sister Maggie, who invited him in her boudoir on the Tuesday evening to take part in a little musical ‘conversazione’.

  On the Monday night he was met again with a bottle of hock and light meal, but this time, as he sipped his wine in the cold silence of the flat, he heard the lift arriving outside the flat door and the metal concertina gates opening, ‘and presently the door opened and a young man entered, in a dinner jacket’.

  Without a sign of curiosity at my presence or at the absence of others, he remarked to me that it had been a lovely day. He sat on a couch, smoked a cigarette, and talked for a few minutes about the cricket at Lord’s; he hadn’t yet been able to look in at the match himself, but he had enjoyed my account of Saturday’s play in the ‘M. C.’ I was liking him very much when he arose, and with an apology left the room and the flat. To this day I do not know who he was – probably young Simon out of Mary Rose.

  The following night Barrie was present but excused himself from his sister’s musical ‘conversazione’ as he was tone deaf. However, he took Cardus to Maggie’s boudoir, ‘remotely Victorian in fragrance and appearance [with] an upright piano with a fluted silk front’, before escaping. There followed a rendering of a work of Maggie’s own, entitled 1914–1918, ‘with a battle section in the middle and a finale of bells and thanksgiving. She next sang a number of Scotch songs in an expressive if wan voice. When the music was over she asked me about my early life and of my struggles.’

  Next morning Maggie was at breakfast waiting for him and admitted to having been ‘in communication with my mother “on the other side” and that my mother and she had loved one another at once, and that my mother was proud of me and that they, the two of them, would watch over and take care of me. I was naturally ready to perspire with apprehension.’

  Thurston then appeared and brought one scene to an end and the final one into focus. Barrie wished to say goodbye before Cardus left.

  He was in bed in a bandbox of a room, bare and uncomfortable – what little I could see of it through thick tobacco smoke, for his pipe was in full furnace as he lay there, frail in pyjamas, like a pygmy with one of those big pantomime heads. He hoped I had enjoyed my stay and would come again; the flat was open to me at any time: I had only to give him short notice. Thurston carried my suitcase down the lift cage. He got me a taxi. In my highly emotional condition – feeling I had emerged from another dimension, and only just emerged – I forgot to tip him.

  49 ‘The Archduchess’ from The Breaking Point (1959).

  50 P. B. Shelley, ‘Alastor’ (1816).

  51 Charlie Chaplin, who Barrie fancied to play Peter Pan on film.

  52 Neville Cardus, Autobiography (1947).

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  1918: Within the Gothic Chamber

  WHEN NEVILLE CARDUS’S long weekend was over he concluded: ‘I prefer my Barrie plays on the stage in front of me, where I can see what they are doing.’ But those closer to him were ‘on stage’ most of the time.

  After nothing happened when Nanny passed the note under Jack’s bedroom door, she issued an ultimatum to Gerrie to leave Campden Hill Square. She and Jack repaired to a Knightsbridge hotel, where Gerrie suffered a miscarriage. Nanny broke down, resigned and refused compensation of £1,000, made up of £500 left to her in Sylvia’s will and £500 put up by Barrie.

  On 20 January 1918, from Tillington in Sussex, where Barrie had taken Michael and Nico to stay with E. V. Lucas and Audrey (Lucas had by this time separated from his wife Elizabeth) Michael wrote to Nanny in an effort to conclude the whole dreadful business. He expressed the fear that it was a callous letter, but there is a certain maturity here, which at least wrapped the whole thing up, and before we reach judgement on his style we should remember our innocence of the often-patronising way family–staff relations were dealt with in those days.

  Michael is not disloyal to Barrie, although his hand in the whole business lurks beneath the surface of the letter. He doesn’t give the impression that it was his adoptive father’s deeply laid strategy that brought him to Adelphi Terrace, and yet he attends to Nanny’s fears of what will become of him there with telling candour: ‘As to whether going and living at [Barrie’s] flat will be worse for Nico and me, that rests with our own strength of mind, don’t it – and particularly with mine I believe.’

  My dear Mary,

  Do you mind if I try to reduce the painfulness of things by putting them down here in writing? I believe I can do it.

  I am assuming that matters have gone too far to turn back now, though whose fault I will not say, tho’ I shrewdly suspect it had a little to do with everybody.

  Before going any further, let me assure you with the utmost assurance that it will not be at all possible for Nico and me to continue living at 23 with Jack & his wife – as you suggested. The proof lies in the last three weeks, whatever you say. This may be hard luck on Jack, but the fact remains, & when a man marries, his family is the one he is setting up for himself. You yourself said that Jack is having too much done for him [by Barrie]. That is so, so why sh’d he be allowed to go on in this easy way, undisturbed and disturbing?

  It w’d be hardly possible for us to go on living at 23 even without Jack and Gerrie, unless you came back. As to this last it rests with your ‘pride’, & with your opinion as to the importance of maintaining 23 as a home for Nico. (I hope all this doesn’t sound callous. You know me too well to make that mistake.)

  The present scheme I believe is to let things remain undecided for a month or two, so as to see which way to turn. As to whether going and living at the flat will be worse for Nico and me, that rests with our own strength of mind, don’t it – and particularly with mine I believe.

  And of course the chief reason of 23’s importance was that you were there – & – do not say I am wrong – I am sure we shall see very nearly if not as much of you as before. Let us weigh the past with the future:

  Past. We have seen you only in the holidays, which has not been very much. We have written about once a week or so (when old Nico could be roused).

  Future. Of course we shall write as much if not more (when I can rouse old Nico). And in the holidays – mind you! – you’re to come with your gingham & take up your quarters in the attic we’ll have ready for you – if only to see my mustache grow! And besides that you will overcome yr dislike of travelling, & be dragged off in the summer holidays, or whenever we do disappear in the wilds. And – mind you! – this is absolutely serious – none of your absurd ideas of pride or absurd ideas of Uncle Jim not wanting you! That’s what I call false pride, & harmful at that. Think how glad he’ll be to get us off his hands for a time!

  This frivolousness of pen really hides the most serious inwardness I’ve ever had. I’m going to draw up a form for you to sign.

  The chief sadness this week then is the leaving of 23, & that was bound to come, so don’t let us be cowards.

  Also – & I know this is not my business at all – do take that paltry thousand to please Nico & me, if only to start a social revolution! We’d have made it a billion only that’s not a billionth part enough. I know it’s twice as hard for you as it is for us, and that’s precious hard. Nico is unaware of the state of affairs, so please Mary don’t make it harder by refusing anything.

  AU REVOIR.


  MICHAEL.

  Nine days later, Barrie wrote to Elizabeth Lucas:

  Michael’s letter to Audrey has told you of our adventures at Tillington where we had a very happy time, and M. discovered an old shop at Petworth and triumphantly bought a soap-dish for his room here. That room is not finished yet, indeed three rooms are still in confusion, which will give you some idea of the difficulties with workmen nowadays. I have got into the study now, however, and at last the chimney behaves and certainly it is a very attractive room, and the little kitchen off it is good too. I had begun to feel in my bones tho’ that it was all too fine a flat for me and that for my lonely purposes all I really needed was this room and the bedroom. Brown could have done for me so, and I had quite planned letting the rest with its own door. However the way has been cleared by trouble at Campden Hill. Mary is going sometime in February.

  Michael was now co-editing the Eton Chronicle. On 29 March, Barrie wrote a little sadly about how he was missing him:

  Dearest Michael,

  Pretty lonely here for this week-end, ‘Bank holidays’ are always loneliness personified to me, but I think that you & Nico are almost on the way [home] and rejoice with great joy. Nico said you might get off on Monday after all, but I’m not counting on it, too good to be true. I got your dressing-table out [of No. 23] all right & have been trying various plans to make the rooms nice. I have brought a few – very few – things from 23, but of course everything I’ve done is very open to re-arrangement – in fact it is wanted. The Red Cross sale catalogue is just out & is a most interesting volume as you will see. The sale begins on the 8th … We can go to Christie’s and see the things before the 8th. Your account of the boys’ musical in the Chronicle makes me want to see the M.S. thereof. Would it be possible for you to get the loan of it?