by Unknown
A sense of humor sat with him through every vicissitude like a faithful consort.
“How is it going?” a French author cabled to him on the first night of a new play.
“It has gone,” he genially cabled back.
Of a Scotch play of my own that he was about to produce in New York, I asked him what the Scotch would be like.
“You wouldn’t know it was Scotch,” he replied, “but the American public will know.”
He was very dogged. I had only one quarrel with him, but it lasted all the sixteen years I knew him. He wanted me to be a playwright and I wanted to be a novelist. All those years I fought him on that. He always won, but not because of his doggedness; only because he was so lovable that one had to do as he wanted. He also threatened, if I stopped, to reproduce the old plays and print my name in large electric letters over the entrance of the theater.
A very distinguished actress under his management wanted to produce a play of mine of which he had no high opinion. He was in despair, as he had something much better for her. She was obdurate. He came to me for help, said nothing could move her unless I could. Would not I tell her what a bad play it was and how poor her part was and how much better the other parts were and how absolutely it fell to pieces after the first act? Of course I did as I was bid, and I argued with the woman for hours, and finally got her round, the while he sat cross-legged, after his fashion, on a deep chair and implored me with his eyes to do my worst. It happened long ago, and I was so obsessed with the desire to please him that the humor of the situation strikes me only now.
For money he did not care at all; it was to him but pieces of paper with which he could make practical the enterprises that teemed in his brain. They were all enterprises of the theater. Having once seen a theater, he never afterward saw anything else except sites for theaters. This passion began when he was a poor boy staring wistfully at portals out of which he was kept by the want of a few pence. I think when he first saw a theater he clapped his hand to his heart, and certainly he was true to his first love. Up to the end it was still the same treat to him to go in; he still thrilled when the band struck up, as if that boy had hold of his hand.
I n a sense he had no illusions about the theater, knew its tawdriness as he knew the nails on his stages (he is said to have known every one). He would watch the performance of a play in some language of which he did not know a word and at the end tell you not only the whole story, but what the characters had been saying to one another; indeed, he could usually tell what was to happen in any act as soon as he saw the arrangement of the furniture. But this did not make him blasé — a strange word, indeed, to apply to one who seemed to be born afresh each morning. It was not so much that all the world was a stage to him as that his stage was a world, a world of the “artistic temperament” — that is to say, a very childish world of which he was occasionally the stern but usually indulgent father.
His innumerable companies were as children to him; he chided them as children, soothed them, forgave them, and certainly loved them as children. He exulted in those who became great names in that world and gave them beautiful toys to play with; but, great as was their devotion to him, it is not they who will miss him most, but rather the far greater number who never “made a hit,” but set off like the rest to do it and fell by the way. He was of so sympathetic a nature, he understood so well the dismalness to them of being “failures,” that he saw them as children with their knuckles to their eyes, and then he sat back cross-legged on his chair with his knuckles, as it were, to his eyes, and life had lost its flavor for him until he invented a scheme for giving them another chance.
A uthors of to-day sometimes discuss with one another what great writer of the past they would like most to spend an evening with if the shades were willing to respond, and I believe (and hope) that the choice most often falls on Johnson or Charles Lamb. Lamb was fond of the theater, and I think, of all those connected with it that I have known, Mr. Frohman is the one with whom he would most have liked to spend an evening. Not because of Mr. Frohman’s ability, though he had the biggest brain I have met with on the stage, but because of his humor and charity and gentle chivalry and his most romantic mind. One can conceive him as often, sitting at ease, far back in his chair, cross-legged, occasionally ringing for another ice, for he was so partial to sweets that he could never get them sweet enough, and sometimes he mixed two in the hope that this would make them sweeter.
I hear him telling stories of the stage as only he could tell them, rising now and roaming the floor as he shows how the lady of the play receives the declaration, and perhaps forgetting that you are the author of the play and telling you the whole story of it with superb gesture and gleaming eyes. Then back again cross-legged to the chair. What an essay Elia might have made of that night, none of it about the stories told, all about the man in the chair, the humorous, gentle, roughly educated, very fine American gentleman in the chair!
J. M. Barrie.
London, 1915.
Charles Frohman
NEITHER DORKING NOR THE ABBEY
NOTE
In England recently there died a great man — the greatest of his day. Immediately there arose much vain contention as to whether or no his dust should be given resting place among that of his peers in Westminster Abbey. Finally came the decision that Westminster was not to be so honored; and the urn containing all of him that had outlived the fire was placed in the sunny graveyard of Dorking village. Looking down toward it from the long level summit of Box Hill — his hill, — with the sunlight glinting from its marbles and along the silver Mole that winds threadlike beside it, the little cemetery seems almost a living cheerful thing in the dark green of the surrounding landscape. Surely here, if anywhere, was appropriate resting-place for this great lover of life and joy.
The tribute to Meredith contained in the following pages, perhaps the most fitting and beautiful of any inspired by his death, was originally published in the London “Westminster Gazette” for May 26, 1909.
NEITHER DORKING NOR THE ABBEY
All morning there had been a little gathering of people outside the gate. The funeral coach came, and a very small thing was placed in it and covered with flowers. One plant of the wallflower in the garden would have covered it. The coach took the road to Dorking, followed by a few others, and in a moment or two all seemed silent and deserted, the cottage, the garden, and Box Hill.
The cottage was not deserted, as they knew who now trooped into the round in front of it, their eyes on the closed door. They were the mighty company, his children, — Lucy and Clara and Rhoda and Diana and Rose and old Mel and Roy Richmond and Adrian and Sir Willoughby and a hundred others, and they stood in line against the boxwood, waiting for him to come out. Each of his women carried a flower, and the hands of all his men were ready for the salute.
In the room on the right, in an armchair which had been his home for years — to many the throne of letters in this country — sat an old man, like one forgotten in an empty house. When the last sound of the coaches had passed away he moved in his chair. He wore grey clothes and a red tie, and his face was rarely beautiful, but the hair was white and the limbs were feeble, and the wonderful eyes dimmed, and he was hard of hearing. He moved in his chair, for something was happening to him, and it was this, old age was falling from him. This is what is meant by death to such as he, and the company waiting knew. His eyes became again those of the eagle, and his hair was brown, and the lustiness of youth was in his frame, but still he wore the red tie. He rose, and not a moment did he remain within the house, for “golden lie the meadows, golden run the streams,” and “the fields and the waters shout to him golden shouts.” He flung open the door, as they knew he would do who were awaiting him, and he stood there looking at them, a general reviewing his troops. They wore the pretty clothing in which he had loved to drape them; they were not sad like the mourners who had gone, but happy as the forget-me-nots and pansies at their feet and the lilac over
head, for they knew that this was his coronation day. Only one was airily in mourning, as knowing better than the others what fitted the occasion, the Countess de Saldar. He recognized her sense of the fitness of things with a bow. The men saluted, the women gave their flowers to Dahlia to give to him, so that she should have his last word, and he took their offerings and passed on. They did not go with him, they went their ways to carry his glory through the world.
Without knowing why, for his work was done, he turned to the left, passing his famous cherry-blossom, and climbed between apple-trees to a little house of two rooms, whence most of that noble company had sprung. He went there only because he had gone so often, and this time the door was locked; he did not know why nor care. He came swinging down the path, singing lustily, and calling to his dogs, his dogs of the present and the past; and they yelped with joy, for they knew they were once again to breast the hill with him.
He strode up the hill whirling his staff, for which he had no longer any other use. His hearing was again so acute that from far away on the Dorking road he could hear the rumbling of a coach. There came to him somehow a knowledge (it was the last he ever knew of little things) that people had been at variance as to whether a casket of dust should be laid away in one hole or in another, and he flung back his head with the old glorious action, and laughed a laugh “broad as a thousand beeves at pasture.”
Box Hill was no longer deserted. When a great man dies — and this was one of the greatest since Shakespeare — the immortals await him at the top of the nearest hill. He looked up and saw his peers. They were all young, like himself. He waved the staff in greeting. One, a mere stripling, “slight unspeakably,” detached himself from the others, crying gloriously as he recognized his master, “Here’s the fellow I have been telling you about!” and ran down the hill to be the first to take his hand. In the meantime an empty coach was rolling on to Dorking.
G. M.
1828-1909.
Forty years back, when much had place
That since has perished out of mind,
I heard that voice and saw that face.
He spoke as one afoot will wind
A morning horn ere men awake;
His note was trenchant, turning kind.
He was of those whose wit can shake
And riddle to the very core
The counterfeits that Time will break....
Of late, when we two met once more,
The luminous countenance and rare
Shone just as forty years before.
So that, when now all tongues declare
His shape unseen by his green hill,
I scarce believe he sits not there.
No matter. Further and further still
Through the world’s vaporous vitiate air
His words wing on — as live words will.
Thomas Hardy.
May, 1909
.
M’CONNACHIE AND J. M. B.
First published in 1938, a year after the author’s death, this is a collection of thirty-six speeches made by Barrie at various functions and meetings, from 1896 until the year before his death.
CONTENTS
Preface
Acknowledgments
Publishers’ Note
Prize-Giving at Dumfries Academy
Stevenson Memorial Meeting
The Royal Literary Fund
Unveiling of Memorial to Mrs. Oliphant
The Freedom of St. Andrews
University College, Dundee
To the Critics’ Circle
To Wallasey High School for Girls
To the Printers’ Pension Corporation
The Freedom of Dumfries
Freedom of the Stationers’ Company
To the Australian Cricketers
Captain Hook at Eton
Worcestershire Association Dinner
To Rhodes Scholars
Mary Queen of Scots
The Freedom of Jedburgh
To the Incorporated Society of Authors, Playwrights, and Composers
To the Royal Scottish Corporation
To the Newspaper Press Fund
Freedom of Edinburgh
Opening the Glasgow Health Exhibition
To the Royal Literary Fund
The Freedom of Kirriemuir
Dinner to Australian Cricket Team
For the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children
Unveiling a Statue of Thomas Hardy
Opening the Edinburgh Health Exhibition
To the Grant Institute of Geology
To the Edinburgh Institute of Journalists
Lord Grey’s 70th Birthday
Authors’ Club Dinner
Opening a Bazaar at Kirriemuir
The 350th Anniversary of Edinburgh University
To the Australian Cricket Team
The Marie Tempest Jubilee
Preface
THIS is a volume of the speeches of James Barrie. The first thing to be remembered about any speeches anywhere is that they are meant to be spoken. If, when they have been spoken, they are read, the just estimate of them will depend greatly on the reader’s awareness of the speaker’s personality.
Some great speakers I see exactly before me as I read. Yes, as though I had known them — Burke, Abraham Lincoln, Bright, Gladstone. Do you, when you read these speeches, see Barrie?
What was he really like? I don’t know, and what is more, I don’t believe that anyone ever knew. Perhaps I am audacious in saying that, for I myself met him very seldom.
My first encounter with him was also my best. It was in 1910, and I was an excited young man at a famous hostess’s dinner-table. Next to me was seated a very famous American woman novelist, and on her other side was Barrie. Of all women novelists this one was the most arrogant, snobbish and self-satisfied. After she went upstairs with the other ladies Barrie turned to me and said: ‘Wasn’t she horrid?’ From that moment Barrie was enchanting. It must be remembered that he was, then, at the very peak of his fame and that I was a completely unknown young journalist. He told me about his childhood and youth, appealing to me for my opinion, flattering me, giving me his confidence. Upstairs, in the drawingroom, he would talk only to myself, and later walked all the way to St. James’s with me. How truly delighted I was! I had made the most enchanting friend in the world. But indeed I had not. Next week, under the broad wing of E. V. Lucas (Barrie had asked, I believe, that I should be invited), he never said a word to me, and when I said something gave a Scottish snap, than which there is no worse snap in the world. And so, after that, for years and years it always was. I never knew whether I should be his dearest of friends or simply not exist at all in his presence. At one luncheon-party he cut me altogether until just before we were going, when he put his arm through mine, threw a stamp into the air so that it stuck on the ceiling, and grinned at me like a selfishly successful urchin.
The last time I saw him he was walking down the Strand, secretly as it were, his head thrust forward, his hands clasped behind his back, his tie up above his collar. I never saw anyone more alone in a crowd.
I heard him make at least five of these speeches. He was an actor. He knew that his accent, although honest, was bewitching. He knew just when to pause, when to be sad, when to be gay. And, although he meant all that he said, he meant also a great deal more than he said. It has been in part his misfortune that so many people have taken him at his surface-word. The majority of us have no time, as regards other people, for more than surfaces — and so Barrie tricked nine-tenths of us, and knew well that he was tricking us. He was his own murderer, murderee and detective in his own mystery story.
Do you find any clue to his mystery in these speeches? At first it seems not. Quite frankly, the first two speeches are uncomfortable reading. The whole of the first speech, with the Dare Devil Dick business, will seem to most of us to-day the worst kind of ‘whimsey.’ What is ‘whimsey’? It is, I suppose, an attempt to catch people’s sentiments with the b
ribe of false coin. It is a sort of charlatanry. Barrie was well aware of these accusations. In his speech to the Critics’ Circle in 1922 he said: ‘Your word for me would probably be fantastic. I was quite prepared to hear it from your chairman, because I felt he could not be so shabby as to say whimsical, and that he might forget to say elusive. If you knew how dejected these terms have often made me. I am quite serious. I never believed I was any of these things until you dinned them into me. Few have tried harder to be simple and direct. I have also always thought that I was rather realistic.’
There you have it. That was in 1922, and by 1922 there had been the fashion of Wheels (how rusty they seem to-day!) of Noel Coward, of the early Arlen. Life was so nasty that we must laugh at it and show that, although it might trample us down, we could snigger to the very end. Henley had also, in the 90’s, said that life was monstrous, but declared that ‘his head was bloody but unbowed.’ That in fact was a time when people showed their feelings, and Henley, who was quite a proper man, thought The Professor’s Love Story a masterpiece of enchanting realism. In fact Barrie could say what he liked then in 1895 and be considered a genius. His fellow geniuses were Meredith, Hardy, Kipling and Stevenson. Nobody was then ashamed of emotion, and admiration of genius was one of the finest of outlets. Love for one’s mother and gratitude to her, the charm of little children, pride in one’s country — these were some more of the popular sentiments publicly stated and with no selfconscious shyness.
In 1922, and still more in 1935, how different! To believe in the Good and the True and the Noble in 1935 was to declare yourself a catchpenny hypocrite. You could not believe in such things the world being what it was. One or two fine men of letters did so believe — Conrad, Robert Bridges, Masefield, but didn’t they get it in the neck if they said so!
