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.
Dolly Ponsonby and her husband Arthur, who was now a leading M.P. in Asquith's Liberal Government, visited Barrie in February 1911:
‘Record of Breaks’ between Barrie and Michael. Barrie had presented the boys with their first billiards table in 1907: ‘Ask Nico not to break the billiard table absolutely until next half!’ implored George from Eton
‘Thurs. 23rd Feb. 1911. A[rthur] & I to lunch with Barrie in his little flat in Adelphi Terrace. He was so dear & wonderful. He is really profound & every word he speaks is full of pure gold & so human & kind & true. He always a little frightens me because his insight is so acute. He told us much of the boys & their characters & of George [who] though at Eton is still a strong Liberal. He says they write one another long letters on politics. The little ones too he says are Violent Radicals & at one moment would hardly consent to a Tory entering the house. When I asked him what they really understood about it, he explained so charmingly & simply his method. “I tell them that the dirty little raggamuffins are as good as they, & why shouldn't they have the same advantages” – or words to that effect. He talked of the differences between Lloyd George & Winston, how L.G. lost his head & said rash things, & how Winston never did but made his mistakes on purpose. … I had tea with him too at Campden Hill Sqre & the children with Michael & Nicholas. Margaret [Llewelyn Davies] came in & was rather depressed & unnatural. … J.M.B. described much to the children's amusement how he flew on the stage at “Peter Pan”. The Company, hearing he was going to fly, all rushed round to the front to see him – & J.M.B. had the safety curtain let down as promptly!’
On March 7th, Barrie was writing to his old friend Quiller-Couch from Adelphi Terrace:
‘I have not much concern now with literature and the drama, which both have flowed me by. I have in a sense a larger family than you now. Five boys whose father died four years ago and now their mother last summer, and I look after them, and it is my main reason for going on. The Llewelyn Davies boys. However, I do a little writing also and do it here, tho' mostly I am with them.’
The boys went down to stay with Emma du Maurier at Ramsgate for Easter while Barrie remained in London, making his final revisions on Peter and Wendy. Nico wrote to him from Ramsgate on April 22nd:
Dear Mr Barrie thanks for the letter you sent me yesterday Buck up buck up what are you doing having your dinner then push it away and read my letter
FROM NIC-O
With the boys' summer holiday already on his mind, Barrie wrote to the Duchess of Sutherland: ‘I wonder whether you would in the goodness of your heart set some factor in Sutherland searching for a house for me up there for August and September. I bring four boys with me; what they yearn for is to be remote from Man and plenty of burn trout fishing, of which they never tire from the rising to the setting of the sun. The rate would not so much matter but there should be space for about ten of us including maids.’ The Duchess duly responded with Scourie Lodge, a small manor house on the north-west coast of Scotland. Barrie wrote to his cricketing friend Charles Turley Smith on July 10th: ‘We are going for seven weeks or so beginning of August to Scourie in the west of Sutherland. 630 miles rail, then a drive 44 miles. The nearest small town is farther than from here to Paris in time. Nothing to do but fish, which however is what they want. … I have been teaching Michael to bicycle, running up and down the quieter thoroughfares of Campden Hill and feeling what it must be like at the end of a Marathon race. Have also taken him to a garden in St John's Wood where an expert teaches him fly fishing on a lawn. … I have nearly finished my P. Pan book.’ Barrie's extravagance on the boys' behalf was beginning to cause concern among their relatives, particularly Margaret Llewelyn Davies, who had strong socialist principles, and spent much of her time working in London's slums. Dolly Ponsonby's diary records a visit from her while Barrie was in Scotland with the boys:
‘Monday Aug 7th, Bank Holiday [1911] M[argaret] & I talked all morning of Sylvia & Arthur's boys – & Jimmy Barrie. M is very desperate at moments about them & I too have felt the pity of their easy luxurious lives. In fact it has been on my tongue to say to J.M.B. does he want George to be a fashionable gentleman? Of course in principle he doesn't. In principle he is all for the ragged raggamuffins & says he wants the boys to be for them too. But in his desire to make up to the boys for all they have lost, he gives them every material pleasure. Nothing is denied them in the way of amusement, clothes, toys, etc. It is very, very disheartening, & when one thinks of Arthur their father – almost unbearable. … J.M.B. takes the boys to very grand restaurants in their best evening clothes & they go on to stalls or box at the theatre. They buy socks costing 12/6 a pair & Michael, aged 11, is given very expensive lessons in fly fishing.’
Barrie wrote to Nurse Loosemore from Scourie Lodge on September 17th:
Barrie with the Duchess of Sutherland and four of ‘my boys’ at Scourie Lodge in 1911. Back row, 1 to r: George (aged 18), the Duchess of Sutherland, Peter (14); front row: Nico (7), Barrie (51), Michael (11)
Dear Miss Loosemore,
…We have been here since the last week of July, and return to London in about a week's time. It is a remote place, nearly 50 miles from a railway, and when you want food you have to kill a sheep. It is very beautiful with sea & lochs, all as blue as the Mediterranean, and in the course of their wanderings the boys see eagles, otters, whales, seals, &c. The wanderings are all in search of fish, and it is a great place for fishing. Michael has caught a salmon & nearly a hundred sea-trout. … His first sea-trout had a tragic history. It weighed 2½ lbs & he went to bed with it on a chair by his side. Next day it was sent to England to be stuffed & arrived on Bank Holiday. The shop was closed so it was taken to the gardener's cottage of one of the firm. The gardener's wife thought it was a gift from some anonymous friend and ate it. I didn't dare tell Michael until he got the salmon.
Jack of course is not with us as he is still on his cruise in Canadian waters. But he writes very interesting letters and seems to be very well. They are all happy I think. It is already a year since their mother died. I took Nicholas out to fish that day, and it was a happy day for him as she would have wished. …
Yours always,
J. M. Barrie
Michael and Nico were accompanied on their fishing expeditions by a local Scots gillie, Johnny Mackay, who, according to Barrie, taught Michael ‘everything that is worth knowing (which is largely a matter of flies)’. A few months before he died in 1977, Johnny recounted with pleasure how Barrie, while fishing with the humbler worm, ‘looked so scruffy that when the Duchess of Westminster saw him she thought he was a poacher and ordered him off her land; and he was too shy to say who he was, so he went’.
Four 1911 entries in Barrie's Querist's Album. From top: George, Jack, Michael and Nico
In the spring of 1912, Nico left Norland Place and joined Michael at Wilkinson's. ‘Michael was always the cleverest of us five, he couldn't help coming top in every class. I was not bad at this and that, but Michael was always 10 times better.’ Nico may not have reached Michael's academic heights, but he made a lasting impression on a number of his contemporaries at Wilkinson's, including the future Poet Laureate, Cecil Day Lewis:
Nico in Wilkinson's uniform
‘The most remarkable boy at Wilkie's, as I remember it, was Nicholas Llewelyn Davies, … not for exceptional intelligence or prowess at games, … but because he possessed the magnetism which very occasionally distinguishes one small boy from the crowd of his fellows. … To analyse such magnetism is impossible. Nico had great charm, certainly, and poise, and a not unpleasing touch of arrogance, and a lively face with two prominent front teeth; but other boys possessed these qualifications. Nico's magnetism, however undefinable its source, was visible in its effect, for we used to follow him around like the tail following a comet. … My own incipient hero-worship, hitherto largely nourished on books, was now turned upon Nico. We had arrived at Wilkie's in the same term, but he seemed to me to be an altogether superior kind of being. … Before very long, however, we became friends, sharing our bottles of ice-cream soda on the cricket ground and lording it over the retainers whom Nico's magnetic personality attracted, myself as a sort of Grand Vizier to him. On one occasion he took me back to his guardian's house in Campden Hill Square, and introduced me to him. I remember a large, dark room, and a small dark man sitting in it: he was not smoking a pipe, nor did he receive us little boys with any perceptible enthusiasm – indeed, I don't think he uttered a single word – which was a bit out of character on his part, since the small dark man, Nico's guardian, was the author of Peter Pan. After this negative encounter, we went up to an attic and fired with an air-gun at pedestrians in the Square.’3
If Day Lewis had known Barrie better, he would have realized that his silence was not in the least out of character. Many of the boys' friends encountered the same apparent indifference. ‘The most self-confident people in the world became as if they had a raw lemon in their mouths when they met Barrie’ was how one of Michael's friends remembered him. ‘I was terrified, and didn't dare speak in his presence. He never said a word, just sat like a tombstone. I viewed him with the utmost dislike, and I think that went for most of Michael's friends, though they would never have told Michael.’4 Sylvia's sister May had a similar response to Barrie: ‘He paralyses me as much as ever’, she wrote to Emma du Maurier at about this time. The boys, of course, experienced none of these barriers. Nico wrote of him, ‘He was the most wonderful of all companions, and the wittiest man I shall ever know, and all the usual talk about his being obsessed with thoughts of his mother and with general gloom is largely distortion (I cannot recall his once talking about his mother in all the years I knew him). … A creature of moods, yes indeed: maybe to be expected of a man of genius; hours of silence, but many many more hours of humour.’
George was now in his last half at Eton: ‘In the 1st XI, Treasurer of Pop, Fives Choices, Essay Prize – a splendid performance indeed’, observed Peter. Barrie wrote to George on May 29th, 1912:
Sir George Frampton's statue of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. The statue, commissioned and paid for by Barrie, was erected in secrecy during the night of April 30, 1912, so that May morning strollers might conceive that it had appeared by magic. The response was not altogether favourable, and questions were asked in the House of Commons about an author's right to advertise his wares in such unorthodox fashion. Although Barrie's 1906 photographs of Michael had been the inspiration for the statue, Frampton had used another boy, James W. Shaw, as a model, and Barrie was dissatisfied with the results. ‘It doesn't show the Devil in Peter’, he complained
‘This confounded excitement about the XI has rather caught me and I have begun to dream about it. Mix them, curve them, swerve them, break them, and if he still hits it, kick him. I can't think of any better tip. … I wish I was as good at bowling as at the idiotic thing of flinging rings onto watches . … Do you remember how we plugged at the baskets of oranges at Olympia one Christmas? Only a few years ago, but you were no older than Michael is now.’
George in Pop at Eton
He wrote to George again on June 3rd:
‘Floreat Etona! I hope the weather is to be propitious and that you will have a perfect day … without a cloud in the sky for your last 4th of June. It is four years since the day when your mother and I were there and you made us stay on for the fireworks and were really just a small boy, impaling yourself by the waterside on railings. I did not then know even that there was such a thing as Pop. It has swum into my ken like some celestial young lady. … The great thing for me at all events is the feeling that if your father and mother were here on this 4th of June they would be well pleased on the whole with their eldest born. … Just off to 23 to cricket in the square.’
A month later, George distinguished himself in the Eton v. Harrow match at Lord's by knocking up the second highest Etonian score, bowling out Harrow's top batsman, and pulling off a sensational high left-handed catch which featured in several newspapers. ‘I am greatly delighted and rayther [sic] proud’, Barrie wrote to him on July 8th. ‘Your mother used to speak of the possibility [of playing at Lord's] with shining eyes.’ Michael, too, was showing himself to be a promising athlete at Wilkinson's: Captain of Football, in his cricket 1st XI; the only sport that defeated him was swimming – he had always been terrified of water, and was unable to swim a stroke. He was now twelve years old, enjoying the golden year between childhood and adolescence, his last summer as a boy. After recounting how ‘the dazzling creature’ had scored 26 runs in his final prep-school match against Juddy's, Barrie wrote of Michael in Neil and Tintinnabulum:
‘A rural cricket match in buttercup time with boys at play, seen and heard through the trees; it is surely the loveliest scene in England and the most disarming sound. From the ranks of the unseen dead, forever passing along our country lanes on their eternal journey, the Englishman falls out for a moment to look over the gate of the cricket field and smile. Let Neil's 26 against Juddy's … be our last sight of him as a child. He is walking back bat in hand to the pavilion, an old railway carriage. An unearthly glory has swept over the cricket ground. He tries to look unaware of it; you know the expression and the bursting heart. … [He] gathers up the glory and tacks it over his bed. “The End,” as he used to say in his letters. I never know him quite so well again. He seems henceforth to be running to me on a road that is moving still more rapidly in the opposite direction.’
George's spectacular catch at Lord's
Barrie treated his boys to an even greater extravagance for the summer of 1912: Amhuinnsuidh Castle, a vast baronial mansion in the Outer Hebrides. ‘The cost must have been fabulous’, wrote Peter. ‘The fishing was to match.’ In his Dedication to Peter Pan, Barrie recounted how he arranged for Johnny Mackay, Michael's gillie at Scourie, to spend the holidays with them in the Outer Hebrides:
‘Nothing that happens after we are twelve matters very much’ – Michael, aged 12, with Barrie in July 1912
‘The rebuffs I got from all of you! They were especially crushing in those early days when one by one you came out of your belief in fairies and lowered on me as the deceiver. My grandest triumph, the best thing in the play of Peter Pan (though it is not in it), is that long after Michael had ceased to believe, I brought him back to the faith for at least two minutes. We were on our way in a boat to fish the Outer Hebrides (where we caught Mary Rose), and though it was a journey of days he wore his fishing basket on his back all the time, so as to be able to begin at once. His one pain was the absence of Johnny Mackay, for Johnny was the loved gillie of the previous summer … but could not be with us this time as he would have had to cross and re-cross Scotland to reach us. As the boat drew near the Kyle of Lochalsh pier I told Michael and Nico it was such a famous wishing pier that they had now but to wish and they should have. Nico believed at once and expressed a wish to meet himself (I afterwards found him on the pier searching faces confidently), but Michael thought it more of my untimely nonsense and doggedly declined to humour me. “Whom do you want to see most, Michael ?” “Of course I would like most to see Johnny Mackay.” “Well, then, wish for him.” “Oh, rot.” “It can't do any harm to wish.” Contemptuously he wished, and as the ropes were thrown on the pier he saw Johnny waiting for him, loaded with angling paraphernalia. I know no one less like a fairy than Johnny Mackay, but for two minutes Michael was quivering in another world than ours. When he came to he gave me a smile which meant that we understood each other, and thereafter neglected me for a month, being always with Johnny. As I have said, this episode is not in the play; so though I dedicate Peter Pan to you I keep the smile, with the few other broken fragments of immortality that have come my way.’
‘Where we caught Mary Rose’ – the Ghost Mother, who had first appeared in Barrie's notebook for 1886, was still a long way from being named; but it was here in the Outer Hebrides, while fishing near the Castle on Loch Voshimid, that he pointed out to Nico a tiny island in the middle as being ‘the island that likes to be visited’. People had been known to vanish on such islands, he told Nico. Years went by, and then suddenly they came back; the rest of the world had grown old, but they were as young as the day they disappeared. The story began to combine with his earlier notion about ghosts, which he had written in The Little White Bird: ‘The only ghosts, I believe, who creep into this world, are dead young mothers, returned to see how their children fare.’ Perhaps it was the thought of Sylvia returning one day to find Michael so changed that she fails to recognize him that led Barrie to conclude, in a letter to Quiller-Couch: ‘No-one should come back, however much he was loved.’5 These thoughts were not restricted to the fantasy of stories and plays: he was actually writing to Sylvia once a year, ‘telling her how things now were with her children’,6 though he later destroyed these letters.
‘The island that likes to be visited’ – Mary Rose's island (left) on Loch Voshimid
Barrie's concern for Michael seemed more pronounced this summer. Nico remembered several occasions when ‘Uncle Jim turned round and found Michael had disappeared – he'd probably wandered off to fish somewhere else. And then we heard this haunting, banshee wail, “Mi-i-ichael-l-l!” It was an extraordinary sound as it echoed through the hills. And of course Michael was always perfectly all right, and wondered what all the fuss was about.’
Numerous guests came to stay at Amhuinnsuidh throughout August and September: A. E. W. Mason, Anthony Hope (Hawkins), his American wife and their children; E. V. Lucas, his wife Elizabeth and their daughter Audrey; and another Lucas, though no relation – Lord Lucas, better known as Bron Herbert, who had lost his leg in the Boer War. ‘Before Lord Lucas reached Amhuinnsuidh,’ recalled Nico, ‘everyone said, “Nico's bound to ask him about his wooden leg,” and I was most strictly told not even to be aware of it. We all gathered to meet him outside the castle when he arrived, and my very first words were “Can I see your wooden leg?” To which he immediately said “Yes. Where's my bedroom? Come upstairs and I'll take it off and show you—” And up we went and he did.’
Amhuinnsuidh Castle in the Outer Hebrides, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean
Peter wrote in his Morgue:
‘George (aged 19) was much intrigued by Betty Hawkins, and I think this was his first … experience of the delights of a flirtation with an attractive femme du monde. I also doubt whether Betty Hawkins ever had a more attractive adolescent to play around with. They enjoyed themselves quite a lot, sheltering from the eternal rain in the fishing-huts by the side of those lonely romantic lochs. She was very easy on the eye, and American, which perhaps accounts for the circumstance, rare enough in those far off days, that occasional nips of whisky fed the flames of dalliance. On these occasions George forcibly taught me the elements of tact, i.e. the necessity of making myself scarce, and I envied from afar, being just at the stage when poor J.M.B. had had to give me, by the banks of the burn, a small talking to for indulging at Eton in what my tutor euphemistically termed water-closet talk. He very nearly penetrated my juvenile defences by telling me it had always been his view that a man without some element of coarseness in his nature was not a whole man, which must have disconcerted me, coming from him. But I don't think he knew what was afoot between George and Betty: not that it amounted to anything.’
If Barrie did suspect Betty's ‘little tendresse’ for George, then he doubtless looked upon it as Anthony Hope's just desert for having made his celebrated cri de cœur at the first night of Peter Pan, ‘Oh, for an hour of Herod!’
Mary Hodgson gave a characteristically prosaic account of the Scottish holiday in a letter to her sister Nancy:
Michael in Wilkinson's uniform
Amhuinnsuidh Castle
1st September 1912.
My dear Nancy,
I trust you received the salmon & served it up with mayonnaise sauce. It was one of Michael's catches. … Minnie* also sent fish to her home, also Lilian* also Bessie* also Mr Brown (J.M.B.'s butler), also Michael's ghillie – the man who accompanies him in his travels & whom I implore not to bring him back in pieces. … E. V. Lucas & his family have departed after a month's stay. A. E. W. Mason also, after 10 days. Anthony Hope Hawkins, wife, son & daughter & governess have been here five weeks & are still hanging on. Nurse Loosemore, who nursed Mrs Arthur, is also here for an indefinite period. … We have had (to use slang) the pick of the literary genius's of England, but alas – either my liver is out of order, or my ideals too high, for at close quarters they are but mortal – & very ordinary at that.
The weather has been very good for Scotland, & the fishing splendid. They (the boys) generally go on ponies & are getting quite expert at riding. Jack is not with us – his holidays do not come convenient. J.M.B. is well, & much better than I have seen him for some years. Did you realise how well George played at Lord's Cricket Ground? You would have thought someone had given Nico sixpence that day, his spirits were so high. … The school is 2 miles away. The mistress has a strap – Nicholas has seen it. We leave here about the 17th, if all goes well. Then Peter goes to Eton alone, & George to Cambridge. Michael is now top of his school, & Nico is top but one of his class. I trust mother is keeping well, my love to you all,
Dadge.*
On Barrie's return to Adelphi Terrace, he found, among the pile of mail awaiting him, a letter from an anonymous woman enclosing a drawing of Peter Pan by her four-year-old son, Peter, which he had made after listening to The Little White Bird. Numerous people sent such letters, usually as bait for an autograph, but this letter was unsigned. The boy had written his name, Peter Lewis, at the foot of the drawing, and with the aid of the postmark, Barrie tracked him down to Glan Hafren in Wales. He sent him a copy of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, with an accompanying letter:
22 September '12.
My dear Peter,
Your mother rote me a letter but she did not tell me her name (which makes me like her better …), but she sent me some fine pictyours pikturs (dash it all) u drew about P. Pan, and they are just like the picters P.P. would draw himself. … Peter's mother thinks Mr. Barrie has a lot of people admiring him, but oh, Peter's mother, u are mistaken and he is a lonely dreary person and is very pleased to hear that some one thinks him nicer than he is …
Your friend,
J. M. Barrie
The correspondence might have ended here, had it not turned out that Peter Lewis's godfather was one of Barrie's own literary heroes, George Meredith. This was their only connection with the literary world, but Barrie liked the sound of their Welsh home and family life: Peter had three sisters, contemporaries of Michael and Nico, and he saw that a friendship with the Lewises might provide the boys with friends of their own age in the land of their Llewelyn ancestors.
In February, 1913, the news reached England that Captain Scott and his fellow explorers had perished in the frozen wastes of the Antarctic. ‘Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman’, wrote Scott in his Message to the Public, found in his tent. ‘These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale, but surely, surely, a great rich country like ours will see that those who are dependent on us are properly provided for.’ The news of Scott's heroism did indeed stir the hearts of Englishmen, but not their pockets, and the Mansion House Fund set up for the benefit of ‘those who are dependent on us’ met with a poor response. Barrie set pen to paper and wrote a letter which appeared in The Times of February 19th, 1913, under the heading MR. J. M. BARRIE'S APPEAL:
‘Mr. J. M. Barrie, who is the godfather of the late Captain Scott's son Peter, has addressed the following letter to the Press:–
The Athenæum, S.W., Feb. 18.
Sir, – As a friend of Captain Scott, may I say what is in the minds of many others, that despite the fine help of the Press, things are not going too well with the various schemes started to do honour to the men who have done so much honour to us. Almost every Briton alive has been prouder these last days because a message from a tent has shown him how the breed lives on; but it seems almost time to remind him of that more practical Englishman who said of a friend in need, “I am sorry for him £5; how much are you sorry?” Of every 100 who are proud of those men in the tent some 99 have not yet said how proud they are.’
Other newspapers published his appeal, and the public responded by swelling the Mansion House Fund to almost twice its original target. At the beginning of April, Kathleen Scott sent Barrie a letter addressed to him from her husband, written while he lay dying in his tent:
Part of Scott's last letter to Barrie
My dear Barrie
We are pegging out in a very comfortless spot – Hoping this letter may be found & sent to you I write a word of farewell – It hurt me grievously when you partially withdrew your friendship or seemed so to do – I want to tell you that I never gave you cause – If you thought or heard ill of me it was unjust – Calumny is ever to the fore. My attitude towards you and everyone connected with you was always one of respect and admiration – Under these circumstances I want you to think well of me and my end and more practically I want you to help my widow and my boy your godson – We are showing that Englishmen can still die with a bold spirit fighting it out to the end. It will be known that we have accomplished our object in reaching the Pole and that we have done everything possible even to sacrificing ourselves in order to save sick companions. I think this makes an example for Englishmen of the future and that the country ought to help those who are left behind to mourn us – I leave my poor girl and your godson. … Do what you can to get their claims recognised.
Goodbye. I am not at all afraid of the end but sad to miss many a simple pleasure which I had planned for the future on our long marches – I may not have proved a great explorer, but we have done the greatest march ever made and come very near to great success. Goodbye my dear friend.
Yours ever,
R. Scott
We are in a desperate state feet frozen &c, no fuel and a long way from food, but it would do your heart good to be in our tent, to hear our songs and the cheery conversation as to what we will do when we get to Hut Point.
Later. – We are very near the end but have not and will not lose our good cheer – we have four days of storm in our tent and now have no food or fuel – We did intend to finish ourselves when things proved like this but we have decided to die naturally in the track.
As a dying man my dear friend be good to my wife & child – Give the boy a chance in life if the State won't do it – He ought to have good stuff in him – and give my memory back the friendship which you inspired. I never met a man in my life whom I admired and loved more than you but I never could show you how much your friendship meant to me – for you had much to give and I nothing.
Everything about Scott appealed to Barrie, and nothing more so than the manner of his death. For years he carried Scott's letter around in his pocket, producing it at every opportunity, but never allowing the more personal references to be published. In the end he came to regard the explorer as another variation on the Peter Pan theme. ‘When I think of Scott,’ he later told an audience, ‘I remember the strange Alpine story of the youth who fell down a glacier and was lost, and of how a scientific companion, one of several who accompanied him, all young, computed that the body would again appear at a certain date and place many years afterwards. When that time came round some of the survivors returned to the glacier to see if the prediction would be fulfilled; all old men now; and the body reappeared as young as on the day he left them. So Scott and his comrades emerge out of the white immensities, always young.’7
Peter Scott with his mother
It was ironic that Scott's request to Barrie to help his widow and son should have arrived on the eve of Michael's adolescence and departure to Eton. Barrie wrote to Kathleen Scott on April 11th, 1913: ‘I have been hoping all this time that there was some such letter for me from your husband, and the joy with which I receive it is far greater than the pain. I am very proud of the wishes expressed in it. … I know a hundred things he would like me to do for Peter, and I want out of love for his father to do them all. And I want to be such a friend to you as he wished. I should have wanted to be that had there been no such letter, and now I feel I have a right to ask you to give me the chance.’ Kathleen, however, was not to be pressurized into any hasty decisions; she did not wish to become another Sylvia, with Barrie acting as a guardian to her boy, and although she skilfully retained his friendship and help, she never allowed him to take over the reins of her life.
Michael in 1913
At the end of April, Michael began his first half at Hugh Macnaghten's House. Unlike George, who had adapted to Eton within the first few days, Michael was utterly miserable, crying himself to sleep every night and refusing to make friends. Barrie wrote to George, who was up at Cambridge: ‘Michael is so far very lonely and unhappy at Eton, and I am depressed thereby’, and to Charles Turley Smith: ‘Many thanks for the bluebells and a squeeze of the hand … for the affection that made you know how sad I would be about Michael gone to school. He is very lonely there at present, and I am foolishly taken up about it. It rather broke me up seeing him crying and trying to whistle at the same time.’ The cause of Michael's unhappiness was homesickness. He missed Mary Hodgson; he missed Uncle Jim; most of all, he missed his mother. For three years, Barrie had tried to take her place; hardly a day had gone by when he had not walked him home from school, played billiards or cricket with him, or helped him through his nightmares, ‘sitting there doing something frightfully ordinary, like reading the newspaper’.8 But now that Michael was alone, with no Barrie to fill his mind with other thoughts, he began to pine for ‘the touch of vanished hands’. He had, in Peter's words, ‘the true stuff of the poet in him from birth’, and his extreme sensibility only added to the awareness of his loss. He fought hard to disguise his emotions, hiding behind a shield of reserve, or trying to mask his depressions with a dry, laconic sense of humour that owed much to his guardian. Barrie wrote later, ‘I think few have suffered from the loss of a mother as he has done.’9 In an effort to ease Michael's loneliness, he offered to write to him every day, instead of once a week as he had done to George. Michael responded by writing back to him, every single day. By the time he came to leave Eton, there were over 2,000 letters between them. These letters survived until 1952, when Peter, overcome with depression himself, decided to burn them. ‘They were too much,’10 he told Mary Hodgson. Doubtless he felt that they might be misinterpreted in a Freudian age prone to dissection and analysis. Something of Barrie's relationship with Michael may be glimpsed in the wandering pages of Neil and Tintinnabulum. In a chapter entitled ‘The First Half’, Barrie wrote:
‘The scene is changed. Stilled is the crow of Neil, for he is now but one of the lowliest at a great public school, where he reverberates but little. The scug Neil fearfully running errands for his fag-master is another melancholy reminder of the brevity of human greatness. Lately a Colossus [at his prep-school], he was now infinitely less than nothing. What shook him was not the bump as he fell, but the general indifference to his having fallen. He lay there like a bird in the grass winded by a blunt-headed arrow, and was cold to his own touch. … In that dreadful month or more I am dug up by his needs and come again into prominence, gloating because he calls for me, sometimes unable to do more than stand afar off on the playing field, so that he may at least see me nigh though we cannot touch. The thrill of being the one needed, which I had never thought to know again. I have leant over a bridge, and enviously watching the gaiety of two attractive boys, now broken to the ways of school, have wished he was one of them, till I hear their language and wondered whether this was part of the necessary cost.’
In another chapter, Barrie recalled one of Michael's nightmares at Eton:
‘On this occasion his dame [matron] had remained with him all night, as he had been slightly unwell, and she was amused, but nothing more, to see him, without observing her, rise and search the room in a fury of words for something that was not there. The only word she caught was “seven”. He asked her not to tell me of this incident, as he knew it would trouble me. I was told, and, indeed, almost expected the news, for I had sprung out of bed that night thinking I heard [him] once again defending the stair. By the time I reached [him] it had ceased to worry him. “But when I woke I missed the newspaper,” he said with his adorable smile, and again putting … his hand deliciously on my shoulder (that kindest gesture of man to man). … How I wished the newspaper could have been there. There are times when a boy can be as lonely as God.’
The last of the Allahakbarrie teams, matched against E. V. Lucas's team at Downe House in July 1913. Back row, l to r: George, Thomas Gilmour, Will Meredith, George Meredith Jnr, Denis Mackail, Harry Graham, Dr Goffe. Centre: A. A. Milne, Maurice Hewlett, Barrie, George Morrow, E. V. Lucas, Walter Frith. Front row: Percy Lucas, Audrey Lucas, T. Wrigley, Charles Tennyson, Willie Winter
Nico was now the only boy left as a permanent resident at Campden Hill Square. On the night of June 13th, Barrie told him to look in the papers the next morning for surprising news. Nico was up betimes, and by the time Barrie came down to breakfast, had searched the cricket pages from end to end, but could find nothing of interest. What he had failed to notice was that his guardian's name was among the new baronets in the Birthday Honours List. He was no longer Mr Barrie, but Sir James Barrie, Bart. – ‘TO HAVE and TO HOLD the said name dignity state degree style and title of Baronet aforesaid on to him … and the heirs male of his body lawfully begotten.’ Barrie had rejected a simple knighthood in 1909, but was unable to resist a baronetcy – an hereditary title that none of the Five could inherit. The boys greeted the news with a mixture of pride and derision – both of which delighted Sir James enormously. Michael and Nico started calling him Sir Jazz Band Barrie, or simply Sir Jazz, but soon drifted back to plain Uncle Jim. Jack, however, picked up on ‘the Bart’ and ‘the little Baronet’, depending on his mood, though he too, somewhat reluctantly, resorted to Uncle Jim as an alternative to Sir James.
As well as writing to Michael every day, Barrie continued to keep in frequent contact with George at Cambridge, putting him in touch with young actresses who might amuse him – ‘if you have the pluck to approach’ – taking a keen interest in his work – ‘There was an essay prize your father got at Trinity that I am keen you should go in for’ – or encouraging his efforts in the Cambridge Amateur Dramatic Club – ‘I'm avid to know how you felt as well as how others thought you felt at the first A.D.C. – “Stage” fright!’ He wrote to him for his twentieth birthday on July 19th, 1913:
George in the Cambridge A.D.C.
My dear George,
Only the other day – and now you have come to twenty years. When I saw you first, I said you were a gorgeous boy, and long afterwards I discovered that your mother thought I had been singularly happy in my choice of adjectives. 20 years with nothing very heinous on your soul I think, and many hopeful traits. May all turn out as your father and mother would have wished. It rests mainly with you, but I like to try to help. …
Affectionately,
J.M.B.
Peter wrote of George in the Morgue: ‘He had turned from a boy into a young man, and must have spread his wings a little in the vacations. … He had a devoted and in many ways invaluable mentor in J.M.B., but the way cannot have been made altogether easy for him, as the first of the family to grow up against so peculiar a background.’ In the summer of 1912, George and Jack had met three sisters, the Mitchell-Innes girls, at a dance given by Sylvia's sister, May, at her house in Cheyne Walk. All three girls were ‘swept off their feet’ by the two boys, but it was Josephine, the eldest, who succeeded in winning George to herself. She was, according to her sister Norma:
Josephine Mitchell-Innes. Barrie later wrote to her (28 June 1915): ‘I knew there was one matter on which George could make no mistake.’
‘terribly gay, and absolutely the right sort of person for George. He wasn't a great talker – he was rather shy, rather reserved. He had a vein of sadness in him – we all recognised it – whereas Dophine [Josephine's pet-name] was all fun and laughter, a tremendous mimic, and full of courage if anything went wrong. … George stayed with us several times in Scotland during his Cambridge life, and a great many times at our home, Churchill, in Hertfordshire. … George never took any credit for Peter Pan whatsoever, absolutely none – he was far too modest. He always said he was George Darling in the play – climbing in and out of kennels. But I remember he gave The Little White Bird to Dophine – rather shyly – he just wrote “Josephine's” inside it – just like George to write that. … I think one or two people were rather disturbed about Barrie, though of course it was never talked about openly. There was something very sinister about him, rather shivery. But of course George was deeply fond of him, and understood him so well – saw through him a little, I think – but never said anything unkind about him. George had extraordinary understanding, which is perhaps what gave him his sadness. It was almost what the Germans call Weltschmerz – a sadness of the world, not a personal sadness about himself. He had a very clear vision of people and life, and yet a beautiful sense of humour and sans-souci charm.’11
As eldest son, George was required to sign various documents relating to Sylvia's estate, which evidently distressed him. Barrie wrote to him at Cambridge on November 18th, 1913:
‘Yes, it was all very sad, and I knew how you were feeling it. Many things besides this will remind you now of the last days at Ashton, and they will take on a new meaning to you. Your mother did not want your minds to dwell on sadness even for a moment when you were younger. She grudged every second of happiness you were deprived of. I don't know if I told you that in the paper of directions she wrote at the end, but which was not found till long afterwards, she said she did not wish her funeral day to be made long and wearisome for you, and also that she did not wish any of you to go to the funeral. It can only be afterwards that a boy realises the unselfishness of a mother's love. It is a pain as well as a glory to him.’
Noël Coward as one of the Lost Boys in the 1913/14 Peter Pan revival
The boys might be growing up, but a part of their childhood would always remain the same age: Peter Pan, now in its ninth annual revival, and as firmly rooted in the Christmas tradition as Santa Claus. But if Peter grew no older, Pauline Chase, who had played him every year since 1906, was beginning to feel her age, and this was to be her final season. ‘When [the lost boys] seem to be growing up, which is against the rules, Peter thins them out,’ warned Barrie in Peter and Wendy. The actors playing the Lost Boys found that the system also applied to them. Pauline Chase wrote in Peter Pan's Postbag: ‘Every December a terrifying ceremony takes place before Peter Pan is produced, and this is the measuring of the children who play in it. They are measured to see whether they have grown too tall, and they can all squeeze down into about two inches less than they really are, but this does not deceive the management. … “It won't do, my lad. … We are sorry for you, but – farewell!” Measuring day is one of the many tragedies of Peter Pan.’ A new recruit to the Lost Boys this year was the young Noël Coward, aged fourteen, who was given the part of Slightly. Barrie made a point of attending the rehearsals of each Peter Pan revival, adding the occasional new line from the store of children's remarks jotted down in his notebook during the course of the year. Sometimes one or more of the Davies boys accompanied him, and Michael's opinion was now beginning to play an increasingly important part in his decisions.
Gaby Deslys
A letter from Barrie to Peter Scott
This year, however, Barrie's mind was on a new project, as bizarre as anything he had yet attempted. Hullo, Ragtime! had been playing for over a year to packed houses, and Barrie had taken the Five to see it some dozen or more times. In November 1913, they went to see another revue at the Palace Theatre, featuring the French music-hall star, Gaby Deslys. Gaby was a phenomenon of the decade, the first of the modern sex-symbols, whose fantastic head-dresses, semi-nudity on stage, provocative dancing and scandalous private life more than compensated for her limited acting talent. She was a discredit to the theatrical profession, and Barrie was spellbound by her. Since the boys were equally enraptured, he took immediate steps to make her acquaintance and invited her round for tea in his flat at Adelphi Terrace. She could speak very little English, but he found her to be entrancing, and determined there and then that she should become his next star. He would write her a revue. Gaby could scarcely believe her good fortune; she knew well enough that she was little more than a glorified chorus-girl, and the prospect of having England's leading dramatist at her feet was flattery indeed. Cecil Beaton wrote, Out of sheer joie de vivre, on leaving [his Adelphi flat] she ran down the many circles of staircases ringing the doorbells of each flat as she passed.’12 When the news leaked out that Sir James Barrie was proposing to write Mam'selle Gaby Deslys a revue, a number of his peers were shocked and appalled; others, who knew him better, sensed that it was just another of his unpredictable flirtations, and prayed that the infatuation would pass before he made a fool of himself in public. A few, perhaps, perceived that in tackling a ragtime revue, Barrie was attempting to keep pace with the younger generation, and in particular his boys. Certainly they gave the enterprise their full support, and Barrie began to fill Michael's Christmas present – a new notebook – with a wild assortment of ideas: ‘Combine theatre with cinematography – Cinema way of kissing. Burlesque of American titles, “Nope” & “Yep” – Gaby a chorus-girl, flirts with conductor in pit.’ Tucked away at the foot of the same page is a glimpse of the other Barrie: ‘Father & Son (Me & Michael). Mutually fond of each other – His avoidance of my sentiment – I feign hurt, hide my pride. … Michael coming to me cried one tear at Dhivach – I picture it remorsefully alone among hills & streams – Send his laugh to be friends with it & gay together. Embarrassed when I tell it of him at Eton (has long forgotten it).’ More notes on Michael were followed by a long glossary of Eton slang: ‘Tanning is by a boy, Swiped by a master (not swished) – Tug = Colleger, Scug = Dirty small boy’.
Scrawled across the fly-leaf of a novel in the producer's celebrated blue pencil: ‘Dear Michael, This will admit two to the Duke of York's Theater. Charles Frohman’
When Frohman arrived at Easter, he found that his playwright had apparently abandoned the theatre in favour of the new medium of cinematography. Barrie was fascinated by it: it was a new toy, like his early cameras and the steam-car. He was now devising an entertainment even more fantastic than Gaby's revue, though in due course it would become a part of it. His scheme was to host a ‘Cinema Supper’: half a dozen all-star sketches written by himself and performed before an invited audience at the Savoy Theatre, followed by a banquet at the Savoy Hotel. Unbeknown to the guests, who were to include the Prime Minister and members of the Government, Barrie planned to have cameras throughout the auditorium and banquet-hall, filming their candid reactions. He then intended to edit the film into short sequences, to be projected at various points throughout Gaby's revue on a huge screen at the back of the stage. A thirty-foot close-up of Prime Minister Asquith would, Barrie felt, make an original back-drop to one of Gaby's erotic dance routines. Frohman listened to the Baronet's proposal with a sense of déjà vu: he seemed to recall a similar madness of ten years ago, when the same writer had proposed a play in which people flew about the stage and crocodiles swallowed alarm-clocks. He was, however, no longer the Napoleon of Broadway: a series of box-office flops (including a recent effort from Barrie's own pen, The Adored One) had somewhat depleted his funds; moreover his health was poor, and he now had to move about with the aid of a stick. But his sense of adventure, like Hook's brain, was as gigantic as ever. He suggested that they should repair to Paris for further discussions, taking George, Peter and Michael with them. Peter Davies described the visit in his Morgue:
George aged 21 in July 1914
‘We stayed at the Meurice in the Rue de Rivoli, and … wore in the evenings tail coats and white ties. This was George's first … glimpse not only of Paris but of what might be called the cosmopolitan hotel and restaurant vie de luxe, as it existed before the First Great War. A morning wandering round the Louvre or the Latin Quarter – lunch at Armenouville – afternoon looking through the bookstalls by the river … or flinging rings over hooks with the rest of the party … or (once) placating the goddess in the Rue Pasquier* – tea at Rumpelmayer's while the band played Je sais que vous êtes jolie, followed by a game of L'Attaque with Michael – dinner at Fouquet or Larue … – a revue or a French play which none of us understood, least of all Frohman, who probably bought the English rights nevertheless – and finally supper at the Café de Paris with Irene [and] Vernon Castle dancing. George took to all this like a duck to water … and it was then that George and I first clearly saw what Jack had missed by being sent into the Navy instead of to Eton.’
Barrie widened George's horizon still further by sending him off to Italy for two weeks in the summer. He wrote to him at Massa Carrara on June 29th, 1914:
‘It seems to be a little heaven below, and your first introduction to Italy something you won't forget. London is very close just now, and when evening comes I envy your roof garden and the fireflies. … Peter sends me orders to take him to the opera at Long Leave. … My [Cinema] Supper is on Friday & I have written half a dozen plays for it. I'll send you a programme.’
The Cinema Supper went according to plan, with Lillah McCarthy, Henry Ainley, Marie Löhr, Irene Vanbrugh, Marie Tempest, Gerald du Maurier and Granville-Barker taking part in Barrie's sketches. However, the Prime Minister, upon learning that his unguarded gestures and grimaces had been recorded on cellulose, hurriedly wrote a letter from 10 Downing Street, forbidding the exhibition of his likeness in a music-hall revue. A number of other guests shared Asquith's indignation and Barrie was obliged to think up alternative material for his cinematic sequences. His solution was to hire a team of film technicians, persuade Bernard Shaw, G. K. Chesterton and William Archer to dress up as cowboys, then film them in the wilds of Hertfordshire doing a Western burlesque. This too fell flat, since Barrie had omitted to tell Shaw that he intended projecting his performance on stage while another actor did a simultaneous impersonation of him. Shaw was unamused, and confiscated the film.
Barrie wrote again to George on July 13th:
‘Peter and I set out on Saturday to wire you the result of the Eton & Harrow match and forgot about it in the stress of going to the opera. Both nights of Long Leave did he drag me to the opera. … Another piece of news just arrived tonight is that Michael who went in for the College Scholarship exam came out seventh. He will stay on at Macnaghten's, but I am glad he went in and some other boy can be made happy with the scholarship. … Very near your birthday now! … I hope all is still very happy in your romantic home. It is an experience you won't forget. Write soon.’
The mention of Peter dragging his guardian to the opera prompted him to comment in the Morgue:
Barrie in his favourite fishing hat
‘Being himself totally unmusical, [Barrie] not only did not encourage such leanings, but in one way and another could not help discouraging them. … I felt obscurely then, and feel strongly now, that a little more encouragement in the artistic way would have been very good for us all; would have filled a real need in our sprouting natures. … The lighter side of life was thoroughly catered for, and for that I am duly and deeply grateful. Hullo, Ragtime! and its successors, with which J.M.B. was so oddly and closely connected, was one of our major preoccupations, and delights, and what we didn't know about revue was scarcely worth knowing. … I don't forget that Rupert Brooke went to Hullo, Ragtime! ten – or was it twenty? – times; or that Michael wrote two wonderful sonnets; or that George was good enough for anyone's money as he was, … [but] the fact is that music and painting and poetry, and the part that they may be supposed to play in making a civilized being, had a curiously small place in J.M.B.'s view of things. I think it was of far more interest to him that George and all of us should excel in games and fishing … than that we should acquire any real culture in Matthew Arnold's sense of the word.’
At the end of July 1914, Barrie took George, Michael and Nico up to Scotland for their summer holidays. Jack, now a Sub-Lieutenant in the Royal Navy, was with his ship in the North Atlantic, but Peter, who was finishing his Eton O.T.C. summer Camp, would be joining them in a few days. Barrie had rented a large shooting lodge, Auch Lodge, near the Bridge of Orchy in Argyllshire, with fishing rights to the Orchy and Kinglass rivers, and once again had arranged for Johnny Mackay to be on hand as a gillie to Michael and Nico. He wrote to Lord Lucas (of the wooden leg) from Auch Lodge on July 31st, 1914:
‘Nicholas is riding about on an absurdly fat pony which necessitates his legs being at right-angles to his body. The others are fishing. The waters are a-crawl with salmon, but they will look at nothing till the rain comes. The really big event is that Johnny Mackay (Michael's gillie) has a new set of artificial teeth. He wears them and joins in the talk with a simple dignity, not boastful, but aware that he is the owner of a good thing – rather like the lady who passes round her necklace.’
Auch Lodge, near the Bridge of Orchy in Argyllshire
He wrote again on Tuesday, August 4th, 1914:
‘We are so isolated from news here, that when I wrote last I was quite ignorant that Europe was in a blaze. … It seems awful to be up here at such a time catching fish, or not catching them, for it has rained four days and nights and is still at it, and all the world is spate and bog. … We occasionally get the morning paper in the evening, and there may be big news to-day.’
‘My Confession Book’, Nico's successor to the Querist's Album, with 1914 confessions from Barrie, Mary Hodgson, George (signed ‘Santa Claus’) and Michael
There was indeed big news, of which Barrie and the boys were blissfully unaware. At midnight on August 4th, Great Britain declared war on Germany. George wrote in his diary:
Tuesday, Aug 4.
A vilely wet & windy day. After lunch I went to the bottom of the Kinglass & fished up, but caught nothing. The burn was too big.
