INIMITABLE BARRIE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18174, 21 August 1922, Page 9

INIMITABLE BARRIE.

A CHARACTERISTIC LETTER,

A let'er written by Sir James Barrie last November forms part of the forthcoming volume of "My Life and Some Letters," by Mrs. Patrick Campbell, the actress. In reply to a request for permission to publish some letters which he had written to her years before, Sir James Barrie wrote:

"There i 3 no proof nowadays that they ■were written by me, for the handwriting 's entirely different from that of this letter. I am trusting that my new superb penmanship is amazing you, even as jou gaze at it through blinding tears. "The explanation is that since the days of these two letters ray right hand has gone on strike—writer's cramp —;and I have had to learn to indite with the left. Perhaps these letters did it: the hand that wrote them then grandly destroyed its powers, as the true loyalist smashed his glass when he had drunk a royal health. At all events, scarcely know the right hand nowadays—we pass the time of day and so on, nothing more. At first the left was ""t an amanuensis. I dictated to it, but I had to think down the right arm. ''But now the left is my staff. Also I find that the person who writes with his l®ft is quite another pair of shoes from the one who employs his right; he has other standards, sleeps differently, has Hovel views on the ontology of being, and a more sinister character.

" AncLnow the question inevitably pops *p: What justification has my left to give permission to publish letters written hy tliat other fellow, my right? They don't agree about you aft all (right says you make people love and writhe). They don t agree about me, they even bold contrary opinions as to what the letters We about.

' But enough of this. I can't pretend ®ny more—not for long. Left likes yon ®very whit as much as right does, as does the somewhat battered frame to which he.v are for the moment still attached And wo all send you our lefve, and wiish ,or yoo. the beet kind of happiness and for any evil hour, and may the "°°k be worthy of you."