SIR JAMES BARRIE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20602, 28 June 1930, Page 8 (Supplement)

SIR JAMES BARRIE.

BIRTHDAY REMINISCENCES.

The 70th birthday of Sir James Barrio on May 9, synchronised with tho 140 th anniversary dinner of tho Royal Literary Fund. Sir James was tho cbiof guest, and received a birthday gift in tho shape of a painting by Sir David Cameron, R.A., of " Tho House in Thrums." Sir James proposed tho toast of the fund. Ho said ho had been instructed to bo reminiscent; " Well, all right," he went, on, " but you see this will bring us with jiwful quickness to woman. Wopien, take heed, for the devil is unchained. That, I think, is the message that was sent onco by Richard Coeur do iLion, a figure in history wijom I feel I must resemble. It is years and years since I have written anything. It is rather sad to find that nobody 6cems to have noticed that except myself. I do not notice anything much nowadays. I cannot'find my way about, even among my own characters. ' '

" Instead of talking postscripts to you, I should like to wander up and down those tables of half familiar faces, putting a hand on a shoulder hero and there, and asking the kindliest-looking ones among you to tell mo who we all are. This brings us, of course, to woman. lam not bringing a charge against women in general. It is only against seventy women—tho seventy women and children and fairies who havo done for me by coming into my works uninvited and giving themselves qualities the very opposite to those with which I had labelled them. " You may have taken the greatest care and pains with a woman, and then you find her being quite civil * to her father. It is so dampening. You want her to be a real woman. You all know what a real woman is. On my seventieth birthday will all real women stand up? (None "of tho women present did so). , " You see," Sir James commented, " they are heroines of mino, and so will not do what I tell them. It would scarify you if you knew tho things I intended my heroines to say. But they utterly turn away from me and remainthat ghastly word—respectable. It is not that I do not know about women. Heavens, no! Somo one who has not written novels might say, ' Why-don t yon lassoo them out of_ your pages ? My good man, do you think I uavo not tried ?" > • Sir James wont on to describe liow recently ho was "dragged back to the hurly-burly " to appear at the Literaly Fund dinner. " Tho hankering camo over me to bo one of you again," ho acklcd. "I searched for my old lodgings, tho first I ever had in London, in Bloomsbury—to bo absolutely accurate, No. 6. " 1 found even my old table thero and tho holo my foot had mado in tho mat. There I sat down in the old joyous way to fight it out again with the stars. I think the days and nights that followed were about the happiest in my life, unless I except tho days and nights f I had spent long ago in tho same place.