SIR JAMES BARRIE

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 118, 14 November 1929, Page 23

SIR JAMES BARRIE

CHALLENGES H. G. WELLS "CAN YOU WAG YOUR EARS?" Peter Pan challenging Kipps to wag his ears is one of those incidents of the borderland where the famous figures/of fiction move and have their being that ought really to be true, saya a writer in the "Daily Mail." xind apparently it is, according to Mr. J. A. Hammerton, whose "Barrie; the Story of a Genius" (Sampson Low) was published' recently. In this it is reported that Sir James Barrie once said to Mr. 11. G. Wells: — "It is all very well to be able to ■writ© books, but can you wag your ears?" "This charming accomplishment," adds the writer, "had been one of Barrie Js as a boy, and he straightway gave evidence that he could still boast what the evolutionists hold to be one of the many signs of our Simian origin." Nor is that the only accomplishment that would make him a useful man in any nursery:— "One of the most exciting games which he (Barrie) invented consisted of flicking up to the coiling a moistened postage stamp, laid upon a penny, in the hope of getting it to stick there. Barrie held the record of getting three to adhere permanently." END OP MAEEIAGE ROMANCE. . The story of Sir James's life is told from his birth at Kirriemuir, on 9th May, 1860, to the present day. It includes a romantic marriage that had an unhappy ending. "In a serious attack of pleuro-pneu-monia," ' Mr. Hammerton writes, "Barrie was nursed back to health by the talented'actress who had made a notable hit as Nannie O'Brien in. '"Walker, London' (one of Barries early plays):—/ "For Mary Ansell (this actress), a lady of great personal charm, joined with high qualities of mind, the playwright had conceived the warmest admiration, and a, romantic attachment between the two culminated soon after his convalescence in their marriage. "The ceremony took place privately *t Strathview, Kirriemuir, and for many a. summer thereafter the graceful figure of Mrs. J. M. Barrie was a familiar one about the braes of Kirriemuir. When the novelist and his wife used to take their walks abroad, they had a devoted companion in a massive St. Bernard dog, which was fated, after certain transformations, to have a prominent Diche in the gallery of his master's immortal characters." The end came on 13th October, 1909, when Barrie "had to sustaine the ordeal, terrible to. one of his extreme sensitiveness, of bearing witness in a case before the President of the' Divorce Division, which resulted in the dissolution of his marriage." Mr. Hammerton continues:— "But this I would venture to add, that in the later development of the cir-

cumstances which *d to so unhappy an ending, the attitude of the lady was not altogether unworthy of respect. "In later years that lady wrote a little book entitled, 'Dogs and Men,' which . . . sends some other iigures to join the throng of those already haunting the region of the Round Pond through the creative genius of J. M. Barrie." The present revival of "Dear Brutus" in the London Playhouse gives interest to a disclosure made regarding the play when it was first produced in America:— "It required the ingenuity of the author himself to discover that 'Dear Brutus' was a play witli a purpose designed to promote Anglo-American friendship and co-operation. Tho fact that he made this discovery after ho had written the play, and only when it came to be produced before an American audience, makes it the more interesting." In a letter, Barrie wrote: — " 'Dear Brutus' is an allegory about a gentleman called John Bull, who, years and years ago, missed Sle opportunity of his life. "Tho Mr. Dearth of the play is really John Bull. The play shows how on the fields of France father'and daughter get a second opportunity. Are now the two to make it up permanently, or for ever drift apart? "A second chance comes to few. As for a third chance, whoever heard of it? It|s now or never. ' If it is now, sonething will have to be accomplished greater than war itself. Future mankinds are listening to our decision. If we cannot rise to this second chance ours will be the blame, but the sorrow will be posterity's." WHAT THETTMS THOUGHT. Tho production of "The Little. Minister" in Kirriemuir caused doubts to arise among the old folk about the good taste of their young fellowtownsmau-. Mr. Hammerton has rescued from a newspaper file the opinion of an Aul Lieht elder, who said to an interviewer:— As a work of art it has great defects, but it s wi' the roleegious aspecks that I fin' fault. The elders can dae nae quid. Eowk tell me Mr. Barries din a lot o' good for Thrums, but in view o' this thing, mon, Am. dootin' it. Am sairly dootin' it. In am o' his books he maks Auld Licht elders sweer. Am thinkin' if the real Aul Licht elders cud rise frao their graves an' see '<The Little Minister," that wad mak them sweer. The dramatist ia ambidextrous. When his right arm was attacked by neuritis he wrote with his left hand—and wrote a neater and more legible script. In a letter Barrie himself confessed that: . "After 'The Old Lady Shows Her Medals' was written my right hand (probably horrified at the sight of my caligraphy) gave out, and I have ever since had to writ© with my left, to the joy of my correspondents." Barrie has not always known success. One of his earliest efforts, a collaboration with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on the libretto of a comic opera, was a terrible failure.