BARRIE'S TRIBUTE

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 128, 1 June 1936, Page 15

BARRIE'S TRIBUTE

MOTHER'S WISDOM AND LOVE ( It is apt that the birthday of Sir James Barrie on May 9 should almost coincide with "Mother's Day," for so ] many of his characters are rich in i mother love, while liis book,"Margaret ■ Ogilvy," is surely the loveliest tribute that has been paid to any mother, states the "Sydney Morning Herald." Barrie once said that any good work he ever did he owed to his mother. , Margaret Ogilvy was his mother's maiden name, and the book gives us a picture of a "wee Scotch body" who brought up her large family in the religion of the Auld Licht Kirk, a religion which was certainly a restricted one, but deep and full of sincerity. His mother's wisdom and love, and her tender, sweet simplicity made her queen of little Jamie's heart at an early age. There she remained enthroned through his first ventures in journalism—when she used to struggle bravely through his leaders—and long after in the times of his great successes. Barrie's women are unique, and there can be-little doubt that it was Margaret Ogilvy who inspired him, directly or indirectly, to endow Grizel, Cinderella, and Wendy with their capacity for mothering folk. He has a rare insight into the soul and mind of a woman. Maggie Shand could do. what every woman knows she cm do —manage a man as as if he were a child without his realising it. Maggie is without charm. The click of her knitting needles might irritate a comtesse, but it is she who wins an election for John, the dour, humourless politician, and even makes him laugh. TIRED LITTLE GHOST. I No one has ever given us anybody j like Mary Rose, whose mother love for her baby keeps her hovering as a tired little ghost till that baby, how a grown man, comes back and takes her on his knee as though to fulfil her words on that enchanted island: "The loveliest time of all will be when he is a man and takes me on his knee > instead" of my putting him on mine. . Oh, gorgeous!" In "Quality Street" there is a passage 1 which contains so much of the beauty 1 with which Barrie endows his women i that one cannot refrain from quoting i it here. 1 Valentine Brown is bidding ; farewell to Phoebe Throssel: "You i have to me, Miss Phoebe, like a quiet, ' old-fashioned garden full of the flowers ; that Englishmen love best because ' they have known them longest—the , daisy, that stands for innocence, and • the hyacinth for constancy, and the : modest violet and the rose. When I i am far away, ma'am, I shall often think i of Miss Phoebe's pretty soul, which - is her garden, and shut my eyes and , walk in it." Let us thank God for a man who has bestowed on his characters such womanly graces, who has given us mo- . ments, too, when our eyes were misty 3 because we were beholding that nob--1 lest and most constant of all things— T a mother's love.