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From Denis Mackail’s The Story of JMB (Peter Davies Ltd, 1941):
He still had his camera with him this summer, and used it a great deal. As he studied the prints, when the holiday was all over, another idea was seized; and just as, seven years ago, he had made that little book with the photographs of Bevil Quiller-Couch, now he was going to do the same thing, but far more thoroughly, in honour of the Davies boys. Once more W. B. Blaikie of Constable's was called in for printing and binding, and two copies of The Boy Castaways o f Black Lake Island were prepared by the end of the year. Peter is again the alleged author, but this time Barrie allows himself to be the publisher. The cover exactly resembles the kind of work that was also being burlesqued; there is a frontispiece, a dedication “To Our Mother, In Cordial Recognition of her Efforts to Elevate Us above the Brutes,” a preface in in mock-imitation of other adventure-stories, and then follow the sixteen chapter headings. But no chapters. Just thirty-five more photographs - of little boys in berets, linen breeches, and long stockings, or of the same little boys bathing, and of Porthos, alone or beside them - each with an apparent fragment of the missing text, in the same style as the preface. So that it is a tantalising as well as an elaborate sort of joke. As the volume is described at some length in the dedicatory introduction, seventeen years later, to the published version of Peter Pan, there is no need for any further account of it here; except perhaps to add that for all its foreshadowings of the Never, Never, Never Land (a name which was gradually reduced until only one Never remained), there is no mention of Peter Pan himself. His spirit is somewhere in every picture and between every line, but his story, it seems, was still being reserved for The Little White Bird. Lucky little Davieses again, whether they were beginning to realise that their playfellow was a famous figure or not. They pored over this tribute to their importance; they still weren’t quite sure whether the pirates and all the rest of it had been real or not; but here they were in a real book, and what could be more exciting or flattering than that? Nothing. And of course this was the actual author’s intention, quite as much as to amuse himself and their parents, and at the same time to feel a secret triumph over all the faithful readers and playgoers, not to mention the newspapers, who would never catch so much as a glimpse of the work at all. However, one doesn’t absolutely know about that, for almost the first thing that happened was that Arthur Davies left one of the two copies in a train, and no word has been heard of it from that day to this. Did the finder take it away, keep it, sell it, or what was its fate? It just vanished. Only the remaining copy is known to have survived, and now the photographs have begun fading, or shadows seem to be creeping over them from the sides. The little boys look so happy, and intent, and absorbed in the magic which they only partly understood; and somehow, also, so very, very far away. “Chapter XVI. Concluding Remarks - Advice to Parents about the bringing up of their Children.” The last joke in that table of non-existent contents. But the advice, whatever it might have been, could hardly have bettered the fascinating experiences of George, Jack, and Peter Davies in the summer of 1901. So again they all returned to London. The Davieses to their new house, across the street from the old one, at 23 Kensington Park Gardens; George to his daily toil at Wilkinson's; and the Barries, once more, to Gloucester Road. Once more, also, Porthos - who was nearly seven and a half now - watched from the sofa in the study over the front door, as his master made more and more notes for the play about the island, and smoked his way through-the fairy chapters of The Little White Bird. ...
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