The Real Peter Pan (19 page)
Read The Real Peter Pan Online
Authors: Piers Dudgeon
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 ghillie) 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 â rather like the lady who passes round her necklace.
But the diplomatic manoeuvring between Austria-Hungary, Germany, Russia, France and Britain following the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo at the end of June left everyone with a sense of foreboding, of unease of what was to come, and indeed of uncertainty as morning papers only occasionally arrived on the date of issue at Auch.
Barrie wrote in his notebook: âThe Last Cricket Match. One or two days before war declared â my anxiety and premonition â boys
gaily playing cricket at Auch, seen from my window â I know they're to suffer â I see them dropping out one by one, fewer and fewer.'
Even on 4 August, the day Britain declared war on Germany, which Barrie noted was âvilely wet & windy' in Auch, he was writing anxiously to Nan Herbert, ignorant of when war would come:
We are so isolated from news here, that when I wrote last I was quite ignorant that Europe was in a blaze. We occasionally get the morning paper in the evening, and there may be big news today. I don't see myself how we can keep out of it long in any case, and if so, probably the sooner the better. You will be terribly far from the centre if you go to Servia, and I should think you ought to wait, but you know best. 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.
The news reached Auch the following day. Wrote Mackail: âWe know now that it was the end of a world which can never return again.'
Barrie, George and Peter left at once for London, both boys joining up with the Special Reserve at Sheerness, beside the mouth of the Medway in Kent. Jack of course was already in the navy, somewhere unknown. Michael, Nicholas and Nanny Hodgson alone remained at the Lodge, where at least the fishing was good.
Towards the end of the month George and Peter returned for a few days' fishing until 9 September, when George wrote in his diary: âIn the morning I threw a farewell Jock Scott, Blue Doctor, & Silver Doctor over the Orchy. Not a rise. The fish were very lively, evidently owing to the rain that came after lunch. Fini'
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Lytton Strachey.
T
HE FIRST WORLD
War marked a terrible frontier between innocence and adult worldliness. For Peter, first-hand experience of the horrors would consign blissful childhood visions to doubtful memory and shatter his nerves so that he would never truly recover.
Damage went deep into the very culture of Britain. The war broke the continuity of life and of ancient custom. âNot all the good will in the world could construct the fabric of the old ways; in the years immediately after the war, they vanished like snows touched by the sun, like a dream “remembered on waking”,' as the historian A. L. Rowse put it in his memoir,
A Cornish Childhood
.
Poets, such as Edmund Blunden, would return from the horrors and explore country life again looking for confirmation of their
early childhood experiences, which had formed them and seemed to have disappeared into thin air. Nothing would be quite the same again. The war drew a line between the Old World and the New.
In January 1915, professional soldier Guy du Maurier, who had gone out to France to fight with 900 men and had only 200 left, wrote to his wife:
The trenches are full of dead Frenchmen. When one is killed they let him lie in the squelching mud and water at the bottom; and when you try and drain or dig you unearth them in an advanced state of decomposition ⦠There are many dead Highlanders just in front â killed in December I think â and they aren't pleasant. One gets used to smells ⦠Two hundred of my men went to hospital today â mostly frost-bitten feet; bad cases are called gangrene and very bad cases the toes drop off ⦠When we've done our four days I'll try and go over to see George who I think is only two miles off. I haven't seen anyone I know lately. I fancy most of the Army I know are killed or wounded.
George's letters to Barrie, two miles up the Line from Guy, show less of the ghastly realities of trench warfare in a brave and touching attempt not to worry his guardian. On 27 January he wrote to Barrie to reassure him that
There's nothing for you to be anxious about. Of course, there's always the chance of stopping an unaimed bullet, but you can see it's a very small one. And I am far too timorous a man (I am a man now, I think) to run any more risk than I must.
George's first calamity was to be wounded in the leg two weeks later, but he made no mention of it to Barrie.
On 3 March, Michael, who was laid up in bed at Eton âwith a belly-ache' wrote a nine-page letter to his eldest brother, telling him in minute detail what was going on at home, having been on leave from school the previous weekend. Barrie had been rehearsing plays with a bad cold and took Michael and Nico to some sort of musical evening at the Coliseum in London, typical of the sort of undemanding fare he selected for the boys' attention, with, as ever, no expense spared.
We had the Royal Box, which I had not been in before. There was a man attired so as to represent Nero (the Roman card) with huge legs and arms attached, and Nico has been copying him ever since ⦠Also there was a very good singer, Jack Norworth [a famous American singer songwriter and vaudeville performer]. He sings âSister Susie's saving shirts for soldiers', and also a new song which begins âMother's making mittens for the Navy, Bertha's bathing baby Belgian refugees'. He is in Uncle Jim's new burlesque. On Saturday Peter had large dinner at the Savoy with old Etonians, i.e. Pemberton & co. On Monday besides going to Uncle Jim's rehearsals we (Sir J and I) lunched at the Automobile Club with Lieut Gen Sir David Henderson, the head of the flying corps, and his wife. He was very nice. I had no idea he was so important until Nico told me that crossed swords and a star means Lieutenant General. The Automobile Club is an enormous place. I went and saw the baths and gymnasia (I feel that Aunt Margo would approve of âgymnasia'). The evening passed in the usual way:
Tea: then wait, wait, wait, wait, with futile attempts to play Rat-tat etc: books for Mary to pack: taxi comes early: wait: bag in taxi: hurried farewells, and station: crowds of boys: greetings which freeze on sight of Sir James: shouts of Good Lord here's Davies! on finding a carriage:
walk up to tutor's on arriving, to feel you haven't been to leave at all, except for the atmosphere of purses replenished and change suits: supper & prayers after which tutor comes in & asks all about George & Peter & leave in general, while doing his best to obliterate the foot of the bed. Then lights suddenly go out at ten when a new book by Wells [H G] or Bierce [Ambrose] becomes very interesting. Wake in the morning to the refrain of âNearly a quarter to seven, Mr Davies. Are you awake, sir?' To which the only possible reply is a grunt. A superhuman effort drags you to the shower-bath etc.
Yesterday I managed to aid my partner in vanquishing the first-round opponents in school-fives and as the second round people have scratched we are in the Final which is not bad. I am in the Final of Junior Fives too. As for house-fives (school) I forget if I told you this, but as Cheney & Neville stayed out O'Peake and myself had to represent the first pair as well as the second. Playing for the first pair v. Brintons IV (first courts Tuesday) we won. For the 2nd pair v. R. S. de Hs II (2nd courts ditto) we lost. It was a very strenuous day. I hope to win my tutor's junior house fives as I have not a bad partner and as good as anybody else's. I think I would have won last year's, only I got mumps in the final. Tom and Jack Bevan were down yesterday. I believe Tom was a pal of yours. I had a letter from Jack this morning in which he says he has done over 3,000 miles in the last twelve days which seems rather a lot. There is only a month till the end of the half [term] now, which seems an awful little when you say four weeks or four x seven days.
The other day, I among others was made a temporary platoon commander in G Coy [Company], & I was even more astounded than anyone else at my voice. It is awful in G Coy now because Chaffey, of all people, has been taking us lately. âSap it up, you chaps!' âDash it all you boys!' “Pon my word, you know, you are a bad Disgusting little bounder!' And the Adjutant McNeil is not much better. You
should hear the songs they sing about him, such as âWhat she we do with the acting Adjer' etc etc â
My dame has just come in and at my suggestion asks me to give you her best regards & as he is very interested to hear about you. Coupled with this is the touching information to go up to the night [meeting] only when I feel inclined thereto! And no lunch.
Again enters Mrs d'a with castor oil in Brandy, which now reposes in my belly. She has gone for a punch. The doctor (Ansler) used to live near grandfather du Maurier in Hampstead â enter my dame with Punch â and was interested in my pictures, besides pummelling my bolster and laughing at the fact that I had crumpets and fried eggs for tea yesterday.
My source of information is now beginning to dry up and I feel that you will have to be satisfied with nine pages or thereabouts. I think it is about time you got leave home. It seems ages since you were home. You will be an awful dog when you get back, and must certainly come down to play against the school, and in your uniform. You could play in pop shorts & khaki stockings. I cudgel my brain, but I can find nothing more to say. So I fear I must finish. âJ'ai fini!' Now for a letter to Jack, and then the night only.
Â
Michael
George will have loved to hear from his younger brother about home and Eton, where he'd been both successful and happy. âJ'ai fini!' was the phrase the boys used as very small children to let Nanny know they had finished on the potty.
On 11 March, Barrie had to inform George of the death in action of Guy du Maurier, and in his own strange way wrote of his deep concern for him:
Of course I don't need this to bring home to me the danger you are always in more or less, but I do seem to be sadder today than ever, and more and more wishing you were a girl of 21 instead of a boy, so that I could say the things to you that are now always in my heart. For four years I have been waiting for you to become 21 & a little more, so that we could get closer and closer to each other, without any words needed. I don't have any little iota of desire for you to get military glory. I do not care a farthing for anything of the kind, but I have one passionate desire that we may all be together again once at least. You would not mean a featherweight more to me tho' you come back a General. I just want yourself. There may be some moments when a knowledge of all you are to me will make you a little more careful, and so I can't help going on saying these things.
It was terrible that man being killed next to you, but don't be afraid to tell me such things. You see it at night I fear with painful vividness. I have lost all sense I ever had of war being glorious, it is just unspeakably monstrous to me now. Loving,
J. M. B.
If this was the tenor of his letters to George, we can begin to see why Peter destroyed the 2,000 he wrote to Michael because they were âtoo much'.
In the same month the Ninth Infantry Brigade, Third Division, to which George belonged, prepared for an attack at St Eloi (today known as St-Elooi), south of Ypres in Flanders. Having just received Barrie's letter about the death of Guy, George was sitting on a bank along with the rest of his Company, being addressed by his Colonel before the attack, when he was shot through the head and died almost immediately.
That same night, Nico and Nanny were awakened by a loud knocking on the door of 23 Campden Hill Square. (Michael was away at Eton.) The knocking was Barrie. Nico sat up in bed listening as a âbanshee wailing' filled the house. He then heard Barrie mount the stairs and come into his room. He then sat on Nico's bed in silence.
He sent a telegram to Peter at Sheerness to come at once. Peter recorded that the effect on Barrie of the death of George, whom âhe had loved with such a deep, strange, complicated, increasing love', was âdire'. Among George's effects was a copy of
The Little White Bird
, which he had taken with him to war, and a letter to Barrie written only hours before he was shot, exhorting him once again to âKeep your heart up, Uncle Jim ⦠carry on with your job of keeping up your courage. I will write every time I come out of action.'
With George's death Barrie lost any idea of war being heroic. No longer was he with Wendy in
Peter Pan
, when Hook brings her to see the lost boys walk the plank and she awes the pirates by saying: âWe hope our sons will die like English gentlemen.'
It fell to Barrie to write to Josephine Mitchell-Innes, Norma's sister. George and Jack had met them at a dance in Cheyne Walk thrown by Sylvia's sister, May, some three years earlier. George had stayed at the family's homes in Scotland and Hertfordshire. He and Josephine had become close.
Barrie wrote:
My dear Josephine I send you on those other letters in a box. It was very nice seeing you, and still nicer liking you as much as I wanted to do. But I was not afraid. I knew there was one matter on which George could make no mistake. I hope we shall always
be friends, though it has begun in a way so much more sad than it was planned.
Â
Yours affectionately,
J. M. Barrie
The Mitchell-Innes connection is interesting historically for Norma's insight into George's opinion of Barrie. She commented that while many people found Barrie ârather shivery', George âwas deeply fond of him, and understood him so well â saw through him a little, I think'.
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The same might have been said of Peter, Michael and Nico, whose friends likewise found him a bit weird. Michael's friend Sebastian Earl recorded:
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âI was terrified [of Barrie] ⦠He never said a word, just sat like a tombstone.' While Nico's school friend, Cecil Day Lewis, to become Poet Laureate in 1968, wrote of a similar experience:
On one occasion [Nico] 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 â indeed I don't think he uttered a single word â 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.
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It was not at all out of character. He had the same effect on many outside the
Peter Pan
inner sanctum, particularly now that he had the boys to himself, which was ultimately the most important thing to him and nullified the need ever to look over his shoulder again at anybody or anything, other than time. For time would eventually take them away from him and this war had dealt him the first irreversible, heartfelt blow.
There was genuine affection from three of the four boys who remained, who had learned to live with Uncle Jim's strangeness, respecting his space and giving any put-downs (which never applied when Michael was near) ample opportunity to disperse, not because, or solely because, he was their meal ticket, but no doubt too because, like George, they thought they saw through him a bit.
The war did undoubtedly bring them closer. 1914 was the first year in which Barrie signed himself off in letters to the boys with the word âLoving' instead of âYour affectionate'. Peter was the first to adopt the same sign-off when he replied from the Front.
For it was Peter's turn now to feel his guardian cared. On 7 August he wrote to Barrie from Sheerness that he was âsimply burning to go [to war]', although in the same letter that it was âjust the time of year when I begin to feel the desire for Scotland in my veins, and I wish I was with you'.