Audrey Burck
Pfeiffer
Eng 401
Fall 2007
The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.
J.M. Barrie
J.M. Barrie and the Lost Boys: a Postmodernist Biography
“All children, except one, grow up,” begins the timeless story of Peter Pan, the boy who refused to grow up. The whimsical play Peter Pan chronicle his adventures with the Darling children, beginning when he wakes them while searching for his rogue shadow. Out of this, the mischievous little boy has evolved from the star character of a beloved play into multiple bestselling novels, popular musical productions, and eventually the star of multiple move adaptations. While the character Peter Pan is widely known and loved, the creator behind the boy has become a mere shadow. Although he was author and playwright of dozens of plays and novels, Peter Pan has become the sole legacy of the Scottish writer, J.M. Barrie. Not only was Barrie one of the top playwrights of the early twentieth century, but he was also a popular lecturer, socialite, investor, and London character. There have been only a few biographies written about Barrie since his death in 1939, literary or otherwise, and the handful which have been written focus on unflattering aspects of Barrie’s largely tumultuous and tragic life. Recently, there has been a flurry of interest in the man behind Peter Pan, partially due to the centennial anniversary of the play in 2004, and the multiple movies which have been released, including a live-action adaptation of Peter Pan, and the Oscar-winning Finding Neverland. Andrew Birkin’s postmodernist approach to the genre of biography serves as a fascinating representation of Barrie as a man consumed with the goal of capturing the perfect childhood. First published in 1979 and reissued under Yale University Press in 2003, J.M. Barrie and the Lost Boys is an unconventional study of Barrie and his relationship with the Llewelyn Davies family. Birkin’s narrative is limited, and the majority of the book consists of extracts from primary sources, including letters, journal entries, photographs, and documents. By weaving together this treasure-trove of primary sources, Birkin brings Barrie’s story and his relationship with the Llewelyn Davies boys out of the shadows and onto the page in a fascinating account of their relationship and its product – Peter Pan.
The coming of Birkin’s biography was fortuitous, to say the least. In the mid 1970s, Birkin first became acquainted with James Matthew Barrie while working as a co-adaptor for an American version of Peter Pan, the Musical, starring Mia Farrow (Birkin, Introduction to the Yale Edition 1)[i]. His knowledge of Barrie and the story behind Peter Pan expanded quickly, and he was hired by the BBC to put together a short documentary piece on Barrie’s life. By 1977 the documentary had morphed into a four part miniseries, The Lost Boys, which depicted Barrie’s relationship with the Llewelyn Davies siblings and catapulted Birkin’s career as an award winning screenwriter. “This book was something of an afterthought,” writes Birkin in the forward of the 2003 Yale University Press edition of his biography, “written two years later in the far-too-brief span of the six months between completion and transmission [of The Lost Boys]” (Yale Edition Introduction 2). Birkin decided to take the extensive amount of information he had amassed while researching the documentary and turn it into a separate book which only took a few months to pen, but had unknowingly been in the works for nearly a decade. In the same way that the story of Peter Pan followed Barrie and the Llewelyn Davies boys for the remainder of their lives, Birkin was destined to become a keeper of the flame for both Barrie and his creation.
Before I even lifted the cover of J.M. Barrie and the Lost Boys, it was clear that I would not be dealing with a traditional biography. The familiar image of a young boy dressed in a primitive and tattered costume, stared defiantly up from the cover in the place where a traditional biography would have showcased a generic picture of its subject. Although the biography begins with the birth and childhood of Barrie, this portion of the writer’s life is narrated briefly in order to set up the main focus of the biography – Barrie’s relationship with the Llewelyn Davies siblings and their parents. In 1897, Barrie met George and Jack Llewelyn Davies (ages five and four) in Kensington Gardens (41). The two eldest sons of Sylvia Du Maurier and Arthur Llewelyn Davies were charming, and Barrie was immediately enraptured by their childhood games and imagination. He had found kindred spirits and a lifelong friendship began. Sylvia and Arthur were to have three more sons – Peter, Michael, and Nicholas – the latter of which became an indispensable source to Birkin’s research. Although Nicholas, or Nico, was not born until 1903 and therefore was absent for the first few years of Barrie’s relationship with the Llewelyn Davies family, he survived his older brothers and lived until 1980. Through Nico, Birkin gained an exceptional source to learn about the Llewelyn Davies family and J.M. Barrie and was able to create a unique and postmodern biography and lens through which to understand Barrie and his boys.
“Biographers are not in the business of protecting the cherished image of a cultural hero,” asserts Martin Stannard, “They are concerned with the truth” (Stannard 33). Unlike many contemporary biographers who aim to “sleuth out” revelations by which they can garner acclaim and fortune, Birkin’s motivation was merely to share the story he had unearthed, and to add to the portrait of Barrie.
Notwithstanding my own evident partiality for Barrie’s writing, I have endeavoured to leave this account tolerably free of opinion and judgement. It is not a scholarly work, though I have striven to ensure the accuracy of its content … Knowing that I was a scriptwriter, [Nico] no doubt suspected that I was after a ‘good story’ – which I was – and that truth might take second place to dramatic license – which it did, frequently, until he cajoled me back onto the right path; but never under pressure.
(Birkin, Introduction 1)
Nevertheless, Birkin’s portrayal of Barrie is overall positive and equally fascinating. The majority of the text is made up of excerpts from primary sources, including Barrie’s notebooks and letters sent to and from the Llewelyn Davies family. The engaging format he employs is similar to the piecemeal, puzzle-like qualities of Julian Barnes’ postmodern historical fiction, Flaubert’s Parrot (Barnes). Of the few biographies of J.M. Barrie which are still read today, most are geared toward adolescent audiences. Susan Bivin Aller’s biography published in 1994 is the singular Barrie biography published between the two printings of J.M. Barrie and the Lost Boys, and it is far from scholarly. Birkin’s narrative is mature, brief, and seemingly unbiased; used only to weave together the many different types of sources which create their own narrative and allow Barrie and the boys to tell their story in their own words.
Due to the fact that Barrie is considered by many modern-day critics and scholars to be merely an unimportant children’s author, only a small amount of research has been conducted concerning his life and works. Although his is known almost solely for Peter Pan, Barrie was a journalist and popular author in Edwardian England, as well as an innovative, successful playwright. Unfortunately, his previous successes are greatly overshadowed by the unprecedented success of Peter Pan, which after beginning in 1904 became so popular that it returned to London stages for over twenty consecutive years. Barrie continuously edited the play and changed lines, even adding a line explaining to his young fans that “’no one [is] able to fly until the fairy dust had been blown on him; so many children having gone home and tried it from their beds and needed surgical attention’” (Birkin 162). Birkin’s far-reaching research and his resulting documentary and biography contain numerous anecdotes concerning Barrie and the Llewelyn Davies boys, which range from humorous to horrifying. Much of these anecdotes, along with a myriad of documents, letters, and photographs, were shared with Birkin by Nicholas “Nico” Llewelyn Davies while he was researching Barrie for the BBC documentary. In fact, the discovery that Nico was still alive was serendipitous, and Birkin was unaware that such a phenomenal source even existed until his research assistant, Sharon Goode, traced the youngest Llewelyn Davies brother to Kent, England (Birkin, Introduction 3). Although Birkin was not chosen by Nico, the youngest Llewelyn Davies son was more than willing to work with him after being disappointed by the 1970 Barrie biography, Janet Dunbar’s J M Barrie: The Man Behind the Image. Nico expressed to Birkin his unhappiness with Dunbar for not understanding Barrie’s “macabre” sense of humor – a problem which many outsiders and critics seemed to have with Barrie (Llewelyn Davies). Due to Nico’s willingness to share stories and information, Birkin approached the worry that Nico’s influence affected the position of the biography. “I am reluctant to praise his contribution too fully, since an element of coercion may be suspected,” wrote Birkin (Introduction 1). Other important sources and institutions which Birkin lists in his Introduction include many Llewelyn Davies descendents, and the Walter Beinecke collection, “the largest Barrie collection in existence” (2), which include nearly fifty of Barrie’s private papers and notebooks. Another portion of research which required much time and dedication was sifting through the massive amounts of unpublished, unorganized primary sources. Since Birkin was one of very few to study Barrie, he spent many months studying and transcribing Barrie’s nearly illegible shorthand script and organizing his growing collection into a cohesive and helpful compilation of voices.
As previously mentioned, J.M. Barrie and the Lost Boys is not a typical biography, nor does it pretend to be one. Originally published for general audiences, the publishing company restricted Birkin’s page count, which resulted in over 100 pages being removed from the initial manuscript, mostly chronicling the story of Barrie and the Llewelyn Davies boys following the death of Michael, who was Barrie’s obvious favorite out of the five brothers. The unusual format Birkin utilizes to tell his story allows Barrie and all others involved to speak for themselves through pictures and writings and is neatly tied together with Birkin’s knowledgeable narrative. Rather than acting as a supplement to the text, the pictures number over three hundred and fifty, and offer another way of looking into Barrie’s world. Although Birkin possessed the power of choice and was able to filter the sources, thus weaving the story together in the ways he saw fit, this peek into the personal lives of the subjects also invites the reader to analyze the sources an evidence for themselves. “I have tried to limit my role to that of an editor, allowing [the sources] to unfold the narrative with a minimum of editorial interference,” explains Birkin in the introduction. “ There is, of course, no such ting as a totally objective documentary, for were I to withhold my opinion throughout , a degree of subjectivity would still be evidenced by what I had chosen to include or omit” (Birkin, Introduction 1). Birkin’s attempt at allowing the sources to tell the story was, in my opinion, successful. I often found myself spending more time staring into photographs and flipping back and forth through the pages, piecing the story together on my own. Birkin’s fundamentally unbiased narrative acted more as an informal tour guide, allowing the story to unfold on its own.
Within Birkin’s focus on the relationship between Barrie and the Llewelyn Davies boys is the creation of Peter Pan. The story of the little boy who refused to grow up and instead ran away to be with the fairies was just as magical to the five young brothers as it is to children today. Barrie pieced together the ideas and even the script itself from what the Llewelyn boys presented to him, and he achieved his goal of creating the ultimate emblem of childhood. In much the same way, Birkin’s biography reflects Barrie’s format for creating Peter Pan. The character Peter emulates the personalities and experiences of Barrie and the five boys. Barrie wrote in his foreword to the publication of his play, “’I made Peter by rubbing the five of you violently together, as savages with tow sticks to produce a flame. That is all Peter is – the spark I got from you’” (Birkin, Introduction to the Yale Edition 1). The same approach is used by Birkin, who pulls from a wide range of sources and finds the most important parts. These pieces are woven together into the story of how Peter Pan, Barrie, and the Llewelyn Davies boys all came to be. All of this was, of course, researched in-depth by both Birkin and Goode, and also submitted Nico for continuity and truth. In some aspects, reading Birkin’s retelling of how Peter Pan came to be is like reading a story book, complete with illustrations and more than enough room for imagination.
The story itself is fascinating. Barrie, childless and supposedly asexual husband to actress Mary Ansell, met and immediately became friends with the Llewelyn Davies boys by chance in 1897. In Barrie’s wide circle of affluent and talented London socialites, Barrie was already known as peculiar and gruff, but easily made friends with the young children of his acquaintances. He finally found a ready-made family into which he could become immersed, and within only a few months Barrie had become “Uncle Jim” to the Llewelyn Davies boys. Their mother, Sylvia, was amused and accepting of Barrie. Their father, Arthur, was skeptical and remained so until just before his unexpected death, brought on by cancer. Arthur and Barrie shared many conversations as Barrie tended the ailing man in 1907, and the two grew quite fond of one another (Birkin 137-153). Birkin’s account of Arthur’s death is based on not only Barrie’s journal, but also letters written by Arthur, Sylvia, and family friends. In areas where Birkin could have taken many liberties and tweaked the story to make Barrie appear heroic or manipulative, the sources again speak their own story – one of complexity and sadness. In other portions of the book, Birkin’s dramatic flair is evident. When describing Michael’s grief over his mother’s worsening health in 1910, Birkin describes the scene in detail. “He noticed Michael sitting at a small desk in the corner of [Sylvia’s] bedroom, doing his homework, the tears rolling down his cheeks and splashing onto the paper” (184). The source Birkin that attributes this to is a conversation held between Sylvia’s brother, Gerald Du Maurier, and his daughter. However, his descriptive narrative affectively pulls at the heart strings and demands emotion from the reader. Throughout the biography, I noticed similar passages. Although this could be deemed inappropriate, Birkin states in the opening lines of the book’s introduction:
This is not a biography of Barrie; nor is it a critical assessment of his works; nor a psychological dissection of his mind – ‘an attempt to dig up the dead and twist a finger in the sockets’, as he put it. It is, rather, a love story told through the words and images of the dramatis personae concerned.
(Birkin, Introduction 1)
Birkin’s retelling of the events between Barrie and the Llewelyn Davies boys has drawn criticism, which is to be expected when the subject is such an odd character and the story is so unlike what modern society is used to. “Obviously, there are shadows and not a few sinister implications lurking behind this curious story,” states John Tibbetts in a book review for the American Historical Review. “While … Birkin concludes that Barrie remained an innocent in all this (an opinion bolstered by the testimony of Nico …), the historical record – and the play – remain fraught with troubling, if never overtly stated, implications” (Tibbetts 2). While Tibbetts’ opinions are shared with multiple other skeptics, it is difficult to determine which side of the story, if either, is correct. The historical record Tibbetts alludes to is never clarified, giving his dissenting voice no secure foundation. Birkin’s claims that Barrie remained “an innocent” are founded in the assertion of Nico, who told Birkin’s research assistant in 1975, “I am entirely devoted to Barrie’s memory, by which I mean that you will hear little but praise from me” (Birkin, Introduction 3). Matter-of-factly, it is unknown whether Barrie harbored feelings for any of the Llewelyn Davies brothers which transgressed the father-and-son appearance. Although one brother in particular, Jack, appears less than fond in the sources which Birkin includes in the book, there is no evidence that Barrie mistreated any child. In essence, he is ‘innocent until proven guilty’. In fact, after the death of Sylvia Llewelyn Davies in 1910, Barrie became the adoptive father of the five Llewelyn Davies brothers. Since the original 1979 publication, the few Barrie biographies which have been published suggest varying levels of innocence, but there is no evidence of wrongdoing. Birkin’s focused and well documented depiction of Barrie is not only fascinating, but well balanced.
In the twenty years which elapsed between the 1979 edition and the Yale University Press edition in 2003, Birkin’s life changed drastically. He became a husband and also a father to his son, Anno, just a few weeks after the death of Nico Llewelyn Davies. Birkin continued as a screenwriter, never again foraying into the field of written biography. Birkin recounts in his introduction that as he watched Anno grow and mature, he found himself comparing his own son to Barrie’s adopted sons – specifically George, Michael, and Nico. Anno possessed personality traits similar to each of the brothers, including a magnetic charisma and talents as both a poet and musician. In 2001, Anno died in a tragic car accident at the age of 20. Birkin threw himself into the preservation of his son’s music and message. When asked to edit J.M. Barrie and the Lost Boys for the Yale University Press edition, Birkin drew eerie parallels between the life of Michael Llewelyn Davies[ii] and his own son in the additional foreword. Although the text of the biography did not change between the 1979 and 1986 editions, the final picture of a gravestone in Kensington Gardens was swapped out for a picture of a young Michael Llewelyn Davies. Although the book is peppered with photographs of Barrie and all five sons (as well as many other people), the coupling of the front cover’s image of Michael dressed as Peter Pan and the chilling story of Birkin’s own lost son give the 2003 edition of the biography an inescapable theme of untimely loss and tragedy which greatly affects how I perceived the message of the biography when contrasted with the 1979 edition. By ending the biography at the time of Michael’s death, as opposed to following Barrie through the remaining sixteen years of his life, Birkin’s biography remains centered and focused on the extraordinary relationship between Barrie and Michael, and also Barrie and the other Llewelyn Davies boys. Although the biography ends shortly after 1921, the tragic story of the Llewelyn Davies family does not. George, the eldest, died on the front lines in WWI. Peter, who became a publisher, committed a gruesome suicide in 1960. While Barrie died of natural causes, he eventually lost the ability to write. “Uncle Jim told me that I understood him better than anyone else alive, yet I realized I could never be a substitute for all that he had lost,” reminisced Nico in the epilogue. “When Michael died, the light of his life went out” (Birkin 298). Nico survived the rest by twenty years, and the story presented by Birkin exists solely because Nico chose to help others understand.
The approach taken in creating J.M. Barrie and the Lost Boys ensured that the research done by Birkin and his assistant, Sharon Goode, is still relevant and impeccable today. Their work with oral history, organization of the extensive collection of papers, and even the transcribing of Barrie’s journals, opened doors for future Barrie scholars. Out of personal interest, Birkin bought Nico’s collection of family papers and memorabilia before his death “for the princely sum of a few cases of malt whiskey” (Birkin, Introduction to the Yale Edition 4). Other interesting mementos and papers surfaced concerning Barrie, including the long-lost original notes for Peter Pan, which he discovered in the Beinecke Library in the 1980s (3). In a personal email with Birkin, he explained that following the 2003 edition of his biography, the bulk of his assortment of Barrie papers were sold to the Beinecke Library through Sotheby’s (Birkin, “Re:JMB”). At the same time, Birkin donated the copyright of his biography to the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children's Charity, mirroring Barrie’s donation of the copyrights to Peter Pan in 1929. Today, Birkin is not the only Barrie scholar. In 2006, Lisa Chaney published a scholarly, literary biography of the life of J.M. Barrie entitled Hide-and-Seek with Angels: a Life of J.M. Barrie. The relationship between Barrie and the Llewelyn Davies boys, Birkin’s focus, is largely glossed over in one chapter. Although I was only able to selectively read Chaney’s biography, the differences between these two biographies are illustrative of the many different ways in which a life can be portrayed.
J.M. Barrie and the Lost Boys is an exceptional example of what the genre of biography can put forth under the right circumstances. When not limited to crumbling papers and the scholarship of those who came first, works like Birkin’s interpretation of the relationship between Barrie and the Llewelyn Davies family can come to life. Birkin continues to be a ‘keeper of the flame’ for Barrie, Nico, and Anno. In 2004, he began the website JMBarrie.co.uk. He continuously uploads images, film and audio clips, documents, and even original scans of Barrie’s notebooks – all with the goal of keeping the memory of Barrie alive and to promote further scholarship. This online archive of all things Barrie is an example of the new directions in which the genre of biography is headed. Unlike other “fan sites”, JMBarrie.co.uk is a trustworthy source for scholars, and also an entertaining website for those who are merely curious. Unlike books, the website continues to grow as Birkin uploads newly acquired bits of information. It is not completely unbiased, since in the end Birkin still has the ability to provide some materials and not others, but the ability for any interested person to see primary sources up-close allows for a multiple equally-important interpretations and understandings. The launch of the website was well-timed, and flourished amid the new interest in Peter Pan at his 100th birthday, and with the release of multiple Pan-themed movies and books[iii]. Although he currently has no plans to add to the scholarship himself, in my personal contact with him I have found Andrew Birkin is a gracious, friendly, and supportive Barrie enthusiast.
In some ways, it is better to have a fresh and unassuming biographer, such as Birkin. He easily could have fallen into the trap of painting Barrie as a laughable character much like the boy who wouldn’t grow up, mesmerized by childhood and an outsider in his own world. However, Birkin’s objective research and the format he chose to use as a hanger for his array of sources worked beautifully and showed Barrie as a misunderstood man, not a manipulative monster. Although Barrie is considered by many to be a lost boy, himself, Birkin allowed Barrie’s own voice and thoughts to permeate throughout the biography. By falling into the world of Barrie, Birkin came without presumptions and biases, which is clear in his charming and thought-provoking biography of a man few understood during his own lifetime, and few remember at all today. The shadow of a man that was James M. Barrie has become, to me, an individual apart from the sprite-like boy he created. Birkin’s biography supplies a better understanding of the man, his life, and the role that the Llewelyn Davies family played in creating one of the 20th century’s most famous icons – the boy who wouldn’t grow up.
[i] Unless otherwise noted, all citations of Birkin’s J.M. Barrie and the Lost Boys will be taken from the 2003 Yale University Press edition. Because this is a new edition of an older biography, there are three separate forewords before the actual biography begins. I refer to them by Birkin’s subtitles, in the order in which they appear in the book, as the Introduction to the Yale Edition, the Introduction, and the Prologue – each with their own, independent pagination.
[ii] Michael Llewelyn Davies, a very charismatic and intelligent young man, drowned at the age of 20 in 1921. Birkin suggests that Michael was Barrie’s favorite, and that the loss of his ‘son’ forever changed the lives of Barrie and the remaining brothers.
[iii] Recent additions to the Peter Pan legacy include but are not limited to the 2004 fictionalized adaptation of Barrie’s story (Finding Neverland), 2003 Universal Studios adaptation (Peter Pan), and the 2002 Disney cartoon sequel, (Return to Neverland). Geraldine McCaughrean and Scott M. Fischer’s successful 2006 sequel novel, Peter Pan in Scarlet, is also evidence of the surge in popularity.
