SIR JAMES BARRIE IS BROUGHT BACK AGAIN.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19108, 28 June 1930, Page 24 (Supplement)

SIR JAMES BARRIE IS BROUGHT BACK AGAIN.

Celebrates Seventieth Birthday And Speaks At Dinner In London.

Sir James Barrie has just celebrated his seventieth birthday. He was born in a four-roomed cottage at Kirriemuir, a small town which he has immortalised as Thrums. To-day he is among the most famous, and is the wealthiest literary man of his time. Few writers are more self-revelatory. The story of his boyhood, youth and early manhood are told in his books “ Auld Licht Idylls,” “ When a Man’s Single,” “Sentimental Tommy,” “Tommy and Grizel,” and, above all, in the remarkably beautiful study of his mother, “ Margaret Ogilvy.”

For years Sir James Barrie has lived in the Adeiphi, London, his self-efface-ment gaining for him the title of" the hermit,”’ but he spoke at the dinner of the Royal Literary Fund on his birthday night.

He spoke of a recent stay at his old London lodgings, “ Number Six, Bloomsbury ” —but whether it was fact or fantasy, he alone could tell—and, characteristically he did not do so. When he rose to propose “ Prosperity •&> the Royal Literary Fund ” Sir James was given a great reception. He said he had been asked to be reminiscent.

"YVell, all right. It was our president who found me, but he promised not to say where. (Laughter). He dusted me and brought me back.

The Charge. “ It is years and years since I have written anything. It is rather sad to find that nobody seems to have noticed that except myself. (Laughter). I do not notice anything much nowadays. I .cannot find my way about, even among my own characters. . .

“In my notebooks all my women are real women so long as they are just in the notebooks, but it would scarify you if you knew th§ things I intended my ,heroines to say. But they utterly turn away from me and that ghastly word—respectable. “ It is not that I don’t know about women; Heavens no! The Badgered Lion. “ Let us deal in more summary manner with children and fairies. “ In reading a book if I come across any word beginning with C or F I toss it aside. I don’t know, but some of you may have seen a lion in the Zoo utterly unable to chase from its cage a> handful of sparrows. I have sometimes thought children and fairies are my sparrows, and I am that badgered lion. “ % thought I would have a shot at the drama ... I gave up literature and went to that strangely mysterious and delicious place from which the president (Lord Crawford) when be found me dragged me back to the hurly burly.

“ That v was several weeks ago, and then I found the world very bustling and changed. The air you breathe just because you breathe it brought some exhilaration to me. “ The hankering came over me to be one of you again. I searched for my old lodgings, the first I ever had in London, in Bloomsbury—to be absolutely accurate, No 6. (Laughter). I found even my old table there, and the hole my foot had made in the 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' the days and nights I had spent long ago in the same place. The Visitation. “ You know what the feeling is. The little room as night advances gets smaller and more kindly. The inkpot hopes to goodness it won’t give out; the candle and the lamp come closer to serve your poor eyes. All of them are on your side peeping, whispering,. ‘You have done it this tipie, listen to the nightingale.’ They are ready to drop next morning a lodginghouse tear when it turns out only to be a sparrow. “ My subject you cannot think how sordid it was; the best of all, a story used to end in dots, not merely dots here and there, but a whole row at the end. “ They never will let me have dots; and then one night—ldon’t know if I can go on with this—l heard a female voice—a cooing voice they always make me give them—and then I saw her, and I said with a sinking. 4 Who are you?’ And she replied, *1 am you seventieth mistake.’ “ I think she was a little sorry for me, for she said, 4 lt is no use your trying to get rid of me, for I am inside you.’ ** I clutched my manuscript and cried, 4 At any rate, it is going to end with dots,’ and she said, 4 Yes, darling, dots.’ ” Into Sir James speech crept a Cockney street arab. “You know wdiatr he says,” said Sir James, holding out his hand in a supplicating manner. 44 Come on, guv’nor, come on, nice lady; the toast is the Royal Literary Fund.”