J. M. BARRIE’S PORTRAIT OF HIS MOTHER.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCVII, Issue 11180, 30 January 1897, Page 3

J. M. BARRIE’S PORTRAIT OF HIS MOTHER.

[Correspondent “ Canterbury Times.”] LONDON, Dec. 4. - As the hook came out hut .yesterday J cannot claim' myself more than the most superficial acquaintance with " Margaret Ogilvy.” But unless all the reviewers have gone mad together this wonderful portrait of his mother 'is J. M. Barrio’s . masterpiece. Writing it one can see must have heen a : labour of love to the author, and into it he,, has poured his best, his brightest Readers, says Mr Norman in fche Chronicle, v/ill close the volume £} lo conviction that neither in history nor j n literature has the mother of a, man of genius ever been made so''real B 0 tender and beautiful as this. Mrßr tells us that bis mother wanders th ro ugh a n his books ; ’ but, bero be o*iveu her a definite place, a memorial so exquisite that we shall not be surprise'' x t o £ n( j “Margaret Ogilvy '” regarded h .encoforward as the best of his His mother, indeed, is the heroine wb pm he has drawn to the life. 1 . • ; We had somewhere (he says) that a 1 novelist is better equipped than most of his trade if lie knows himself And one woman ; ; and' niy mother said,'“ You know yourself, for everybody must know himself (there ne yer was a woman who knew less about herself than she), and she would add dole- ' fully, “ But I doubt Fm the only woman you know well.” “Then I must make you my heroine,” I said lightly. “ A gey aiild- ' farrant-like heroine/’sho said, and we both i laughed at the notion—so’little did we read the future.

_ She was the earliest source of her son’s literary inspiration. When he was writing the “Auld Liclife” sketches, it was te her that he turned for the hints and threads that made the “copy.” There was a wonderful editor in London who had taken a strong Fancy to the articles about; Mr Barrie’s native place. The mother could not understand what the “ editor-man ” saw in thes a compositions, and she was anxious to kn ow whether the writer was paid as , muqli for them as for “ real articles.” Reassured on this head, she “ had them out of the band-box for re-reading, and it cannot. he denied that she thought the London editor a fine fellow, but slightly soft.” She wondered whether it might not ho easy to bribe him with shortbread. Alt this time she feared that the editor’s singular delusion ’ was too good to last. Londoners could not want to go on . reading “ blethers ” about the Auld Licht community. Then there was the danger that the material would be exhausted, and that she would have to seek her son by night amongst the iron seats in Hyde Park, where she supposed ® that, struggling authors commonly slept and starved. Meanwhile she went on sending the “ right details ” for these wondrous 'articles, together with, messages to that incredible editor. “I was fifteen when I got my first pair of elasticside boots. Tell him my charge for , this important news is two pounds ten.” After ' her death Mr Barrie found “in a little box, with a photograph of me as a child, the envelopes which had contained my first cheques. There was a little ribbon round them.” ,i

Happily there are mothers without end who show this proud devotion; but the distinction of Margaret Ogilvy is that she is always an independent mind and soul stimulating her son, chastening him with humour, as in the delightful passage on London clubs, which she believed to be 1 designed for the purpose of extracting thirty pounds entrance-fee from the new member, and of dividing the same ' amongst the committee. When she finds Mr Barrie with most of his day’s work in the waste-paper basket, and' address- - inga torn page, says,' “Poor thing, and you would have liked so fine to be printed ! ” we do not feel that this is the commonplace overflow of motherly sympathy. There is a delicious story of ; the dawn of her sorrowful suspicion that Robert Louis Stevenson, was a greater, writer than her boy. She fought against it; fora long time she would not hear of “E. L. 5.,” who was wont 4 co say that when, his ears tingled he ‘knew that Mrs Bams had been “ miscalling ” him again. But at last the “ Master of BaJlantrae ” thrust itself into her regard j she read it surreptitiously, and wou\d stoutly deny , that she was deliberately hiding it under . her apron when the acc/using eye of tha household was upon her. But I lifted the apron, “ Why, it’s the e Master of Ballantrne 5 T” I exclaimed, shocked. . • "So it is!” sair'i my mother, equally surprised. But I looked sternly at her, and perhaps she 1 flushed. “ Well, what do you think: *not nearly equal to mine I'” said 1 with humour. “Nothing like, them,” she said deter- . minedly. One'Of her endearing traits was a conscious capacity t for mothering remarkable men in general. She' took a deep interest in Carlyle, but would rather have been his , mother than his wife. She was heard to affirm “I would have liked fine to be that Gladstone’s mother.” There was a certain , magnanimity in this, for she was not specially drawn to Mr Gladstone, though. , she had “a profound faith in him as ah aid to conversation, and, if there were silent men in the company, would give him ' to them to talk about, precisely as she. divided a cake among children.” She had a yearning for . the classics, thought nothing of turning to . account “ten minutes to spare before the ‘ starch was ready” by starting on the “Decline and "Fall,” and was 'fond of : getting scraps of Horace by heart, and astounding a visitor with, “Mr So-and-so, my lassie is thriving well, but would it no’ ■be more to the point to. say, O matre pulchra Jilia, pulchrior ?” When her son was about twelve years old she read storybooks with him, delighted in “Kobinson Crusoe, arid shared his contempt for the “Arabian 1 Nights,” they had been bought in mistake for “ Knights.” ' And so, with many touches of pathos and humour, the portrait of Margaret Ogilvy is drawn for us, and with it, too, a pretty close likeness of the artist who has given ,to it such loving care. So intimate, indeed, becomes dhr knowledge of the pair, that when Mr Barrie'takes us into the house where his mother and sister are lying dead we do not feel like strangers to this sorrow. On her death-bed, when she was almost speechless, Margaret Ogilvy made a gesture which was understood, and the “old christening robe” was brought to her. In this all her children had been christened, t It had\q£ten been lent to neighbours for the and. when .;. she received it back again. “ she took; it in ; her arms so softly, as if it might lie asleep, and unconsciously pressed, it to" her breast.” And.now at the end she embraced it for the last time. Suddenly she said, “ Wha’s bairn’s dead ? . Is a bairn of mine dead ?” But those watching dared not speak, and then slowly, as if with an effort «f memory, she repeated • our names loud in the order in which wo were born. ' Only one, who should have come third among the ten, did she omit, . the one in the next room. But at the end, • after a pause, she said her name, and repeated it again and . again, lingering over it as if it were the most exquisite musio, and this her dying song. And yet it was .a very commonplace name. There are passages in English literature which we repeat to ourselves in moments of rare emotion,’just as Margaret Ogilvy repeated the names of her children. And * amongst those immortals her dying song may fitly dwell.