Playing Hide-and-Seek With the Angels

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 156, 3 July 1937, Page 45 (Supplement)

Playing Hide-and-Seek With the Angels

The Story of Sir James Barrie

In Kensington Gardens, London, where the Peter Pan statue stands, little boys and laughing girls will be skipping to and fro playing their carefree games in the corner of the gardens where "the little boy who wouldn't grow up" watches with smiling eyes.

It is summer in England, and it may be that the sun is shining and the little birds singing in the trees; the laughter of tiny children will float over the flower beds and across the lawns, but the bronze heart of Peter Pan must surely be sorrowing, for Sir James Barrie, his beloved creator, is dead. Still the little bronze boy play» hit fairy pipe and his eyes smile down on the children, for he knows that in the hearts of little, folk the story of Peter Pan will live for ever, and he likes to think how this would have gladdened the heart of his creator.

Sir James Barrie was born at Kirriemuir, in Forfarshire, Scotland, on May 9 in the year 1860. He was a quiet, shy little lad, and even, in those early days showed a love of writing. He would write for hours In the attic of his parents' home — little tales of the Scottish village he knew and loved. In later years he was to immortalise his native village in several of hie hooks which have Scotland as a setting. The time came when he was sent away to school, but even in the midst of a busy academic life his writing was not neglected. Returning home when his school days were over, he began his literary career. Many of his books are extremely beautiful. "Margaret Ogilvy" he wrote as a lovely tribute to his mother, of whom he once said that it was "the aim and object of my life, ever since I have felt the throb of conscious desire, to please her." "Sentimental Tommy" is believed to contain an autobiographical element. It is about a young Scot with an "artistic temperament." But it was "Peter Pan," both as a story and a play that was to endear him to little children the whole world over. And very fittingly it was a little child who inspired Sir Jamee to create his lovable character.

side. Wendy, who shares in all quaint and .exciting adventures of Peter Pan, received her name from the lips of a little girl. She was the daughter of Barrie's publisher and her baby lips pronounced "Friendy" (her pet name for Sir James) as Wendy. Barrie has been likened to Han* Andersen on the one hand and Dickens on the other. An English writer has written: "Like flans Andersen, ha mixes the everyday world with fairyland, and like Dickens he entices us to that borderland of laughter where w« suddenly find ourselves in tears." Many of his plays and stories take us to the remoter regions of dreamland, as in "Mary Rose," "A Kiss for Cinderella" and "Dear Brutus." These are grownup stories, of course, and yet mixed with them is something fantastic and fairylike. Sir James loved little children and ho gave the full rights of "Peter Pan" tcr the Great Ormond Street Hospital for children. It seems particularly fitting that this delightful book for children should year by year be helping other little people who are ill and weak and crippled back to strength and happiness. Throughout Barrie's life and traceable in his works can be found an underlying appeal to make life as far as possible a game with angels—to become as little children and to prefer a heavenly failure to a too worldly success. Many years ago in an address on "Courage" Barrie described his business in life°as "playing hide and seek with angels." No worldly writer he—no man of business striving for success, but a shy and kindly Scottish gentleman, loving and well beloved, who sought the angeli as his playmates. °

One day 35 years ago Barrie was walking in Kensington Gardens when he came across a email boy, Peter Davies, playing with his three brothers. They became' his firm friends and Peter it was who inspired him to ereate the "little hoy who would not grow up." Later the author adopted the brothers, and when he died Mr. Peter Davies, the original "Peter Pan," was at his bed-