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From J M Barrie & the Lost Boys
... Sylvia wrote to Mary again on June 16th [1901], Michael's first birthday, to make arrangements for the summer holidays: "We have taken a charming cottage at Tilford, near Mr Barrie's, instead of Burpham. When you come back I will go down and settle about rooms [...] Of course I shouldn't take more than 4 maids away to a cottage," Peter Davies later commented in his family Morgue:
4 Maids to Tilford"! It's uncanny! One has no notion of what Arthur's average income from the Bar may have been at this stage, but it certainly can't have been large. What made this enormous gang of servants possible was, I think, not only the almost non-existent taxation and the cheapness of servants themselves and of things in general, but also the simplicity of the way the family lived: hardly any drink (an occasional bottle of claret [...] and a glass of beer or so for Arthur), no car or carriage, practically no restaurants to eat and drink expensively in [...] and no serious school bills. I think Arthur always had lunch at an A.B.C. [café] for about 6d, and I take it Sylvia made most of her own lovely clothes.
The cottage at Tilford was less than a five-minute walk along the dusty, winding road to Black Lake Cottage, where the Barries had taken up residence for the summer. Apart from the Allahakbarries' annual cricket match, Barrie had spent most of June and July writing Maude Adams's next vehicle, Quality Street, and by the time the Davieses arrived at Tilford at the end of July, he was posting off the finished manuscript to Frohman in New York. He was now able to devote all his energies to introducing the Davies boys to a world of pirates, Indians, and "wrecked islands': bloodthirsty sagas not merely described but enacted to the full in the "haunted groves" of Black Lake forest. The lake itself became a South Seas lagoon, the setting for numerous adventures in which an old punt was variously utilized as a long boat, a rakish pirate ship, and "the ill-fated brig, Anna Pink". Their escapades followed the approximate storyline of Barrie's favourite book as a boy - The Coral Island - in which Jack, Ralph and Peterkin are wrecked on a desert island. Porthos obliged his master by representing a whole host of characters, from the pirates' dog to a ferocious tiger in a papier-maché mask, while Barrie created a role for himself as the pirate Captain Swarthy, a dark and sinister figure who displayed despicable cowardice in the face of his young antagonists, frequently forcing the four-year-old Peter to walk the plank into the murky waters of Black Lake. Fortunately the lake was only a few feet at its deepest, but on more than one occasion Sylvia and Arthur had to restrain the high degree of realism in the acting by disallowing the use of real arrows and long-bladed knives. Occasionally Barrie would step aside from the adventures and view them objectively, photographing the boys in action, or jotting down observations for use in The Little White Bird or his new play, The Admirable Crichton. What is genius? It is the power to be a boy again at will [...]" Denis Mackail observed that "if Barrie is besotted with these boys and his games, if sometimes his single-minded concentration on them is really a little excessive and alarming, no one again can stop him, and he is obviously so gloriously happy, too. And so kind. So funny. And only juggling with his own age." Certainly Mary Barrie had no wish to stop him; on his own he habitually sank into black depression, but the boys brought him alive again, trans-forming him into a warm and witty companion, both for themselves and for Mary. Nor did Arthur attempt to break the spell; he had precious little in common with the man, but he no longer looked upon him as a rival. Just as Barrie commanded an area of affection entirely to himself, Arthur was equally confident of his family's needs for the particular love and devotion that only he could provide. It was, perhaps, this mutual recognition of each other's territory that allowed the curious ménage to continue without serious disruption. A sign in the garden at Black Lake summed up the situation:
PERSONS WHO COME TO STEAL THE FRUIT ARE REQUESTED NOT TO WALK ON THE FLOWER BEDS.
Although the world of fairies had been largely replaced by pirates and desert islands for George and Jack, there remained one who had faith in them, while the youngest still awaited initiation. The two elder boys therefore had to tolerate a certain among of fairy nonsense for Peter's benefit, or stand idly by and watch Barrie hypnotize Michael with his "famous manipulation of the eyebrows: [...] when the one was climbing my forehead the other descended it, like the two buckets in the well". Throughout the long summer days of August, Barrie and the Davies boys were inseparable, and he decided to honour them by turning the photographs of their exploits into a book, as he had done for Bevil Quiller-couch seven years before. However, this time Barrie resolved to produce the book in an altogether grander fashion, commissioning Constable's to print the text and bind the photographs in the style of The Coral Island. He would have had little difficulty in finding a publisher for the finished product, but wanted it to remain a private tribute. He therefore restricted the edition to two copies, one for Sylvia and Arthur, and one for himself, calling it The Boy Castaways of Black Lake Island:
Peter, aged four, "wrote" in the Preface: "I have still [...] a vivid recollection of that strange and terrible summer, when we suffered experiences such as have probably never before been experienced by three brothers [...] I should say that the work was in the first instance compiled as a record simply, at which we could whet our memories, and that it is now published for Michael's benefit. If it teaches him by example lessons in fortitude and manly endurance, we shall consider that we were not wrecked in vain." The Boy Castaways was dedicated "To Our Mother, in Cordial Recognition of her Efforts to Elevate us about the Brutes".
In his Dedication to Peter Pan, written over a quarter of a century later, Barrie described The Boy Castaways as "a now melancholy volume [...] the literary record of that summer [...] which is so much the best and the rarest of this author's works':
It contains thirty-five illustrations and is bound in cloth with a picture stamped on the cover of the three eldest of you "setting out to be wrecked". This record is supposed to be edited by the youngest of the three, and I must have granted him that honour to make up for his being so often lifted bodily out of our adventures by his nurse, who kept breaking into them for the fell purpose of giving him a midday rest. Michael rested so much at this period that he was merely an honourary member of the band, waving his foot to you for luck when you set off with bow and arrow to shoot his dinner for him. [...] The illustrations (full-paged) in The Boy Castaways are all photographs taken by myself; some of them indeed of phenomena that had to be invented afterwards, for you were always off doing the wrong things when I pressed the button [...] Though The Boy Castaways has sixteen chapter-headings, there is no other letterpress; and absence which possible purchasers might complain of, though there are surely worse ways of writing a book than this. These headings anticipate much of the play of Peter Pan [...] In The Boy Castaways Captain Hook has arrived but is called Captain Swarthy, and he seems from the pictures to have been a black man. This character, as you do not need to be told, is held by those in the know to be autobiographical [...] The dog in The Boy Castaways seems never to have been called Nana but was evidently in training for that post [...] There is [...] a touching picture, a clear forecast of the Darling nursery, entitled "we trained the dog to watch over us while we slept." [...] He was always willing to do any extra jobs, such as becoming the tiger in mask, and when after a fierce engagement you carried home that mask in triumph, he joined in the procession proudly and never let on that the trophy had ever been part of him [...] They do seem to be emerging out of our island, don't they, the little people of the play, all except that sly one, the chief figure, who draws farther and farther into the wood as we advance upon him? He so dislikes being tracked, as if there were something odd about him, that when he dies he means to get up and blow away the particle that will be his ashes. Wendy has not yet appeared, but she has been trying to come ever since that loyal nurse cast the humorous shadow of woman upon the scene and made us feel that it might be fun to let in a disturbing element. Perhaps she would have bored her way in at last whether we wanted her or not [...] Was it the travail of hut-building that subsequently advised Peter to find a "home under ground"? The bottle and mugs in that lurid picture, "Last night on the island," seem to suggest that you had changed from Lost Boys into pirates, which was probably also a tendency of Peter [Pan]'s [...] Even Tinker Bell had reached our island before we left it. It was one evening when we climbed the wood carrying Michael to show him what the trail was like by twilight. As our lanterns twinkled among the leaves Michael saw a twinkle stand still for a moment and he waved his foot gaily to it, thus creating Tink [...] The Boy Castaways is a little battered and bent after the manner of those who shoulder burdens [...] i ave said that it is the rarest of my printed works, as it must be, for the only edition was limited to two copies, of which one (there was always some devilry in any matter connected with Peter [Pan]) instantly lost itself in a railway carriage.
The copy that euphemistically "lost itself in a railway carriage" had been a present from Barrie to the boys' father. That Arthur should have been so strangely careless with it was, in Peter's opinion, "doubtless his own way of commenting on the whole fantastic affair." That strange and terrible summer" ended with the onset of September, and the Davieses set sail for London, Home and Wilkinson's — George to Wilkinson's for his second term, and the family to their new home at 23 Kensington Park Gardens ...
Barrie’s
Dediciation to Peter
Pan
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