Letters of James M. Barrie

BARRIE’S letters add little to the picture one forms of him from his novels and plays. The picture is of a quiet, shy, lovable man, observant and canny, self-effacing, interested in persons rather than things, and living by affections more than by ideas. The letters are called by the editor “private,”but apparently Barrie wrote nothing else. He avoided controversy, wrote protests to the papers only to tear them up, and was so artful in dodging publicity that, as Miss Meynell says, his letters of excuse “would in themselves fill a volume — called Please Excuse Me,”while this volume might be entitled Please Use Me. But he wanted to be used only by his friends and worthy causes, and from them he never withheld time, money, or effort. For a man so famous to remain so inconspicuous was in itself an art that in our age of boom and blurb seems distinctly quaint.

A reader looking for information about Barrie the author will find little here, for beyond an occasional brief reference to one of his own works or an equally brief one to somebody else’s (almost always complimentary), there is little that an official biographer could make use of, except perhaps to fix a date. Few of the letters are addressed to famous persons. Famous persons, except Hardy, impressed him hardly at all. He writes with simplicity and naturalness, with little of that whimsicality or pawkiness that distresses some readers of his novels and plays, and with still less of that journalistic smartness that Stevenson objected to at one time. He is at his easiest and happiest in letters to women, and women must have preserved them lovingly, if one is to judge by the great preponderance of such letters here.

To tell the truth, one would have to be a very devout Barrie-lover indeed not to find the pages of homely detail occasionally tiring. One brightens a little in reading about his cricket team which included Conan Doyle, E. W. Hornung, Owen Seaman. A. E. W. Mason, and himself and which played a team of which Mary Anderson the actress was captain; and almost shouts for joy in coming upon this petite but most significant correspondence between Peter Pan and a Shropshire Lad:—

DEAR PROFESSOR HOUSEMAN
I am sorry about last night, when I sat next to you and did not say a word. You must have thought I was a very rude man: I am really a very shy man.
Sincerely yours,
J. M. BARRIE

DEAR SIR JAMES BARRIE
I am sorry about last night, when I sat next to you and did not say a Word. You must have thought I was a very rude man: I am really a very shy man.
Sincerely yours,
A. E. HOUSMAN

P.S. And now you’ve made it worse for you have spelt my name wrong.

R. M. GAY