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Then there’s the secondary
source material – stuff than can be found
elsewhere and is therefore not technically unique
to this collection. However, in the case of Barrie’s
notebooks, although the originals are in the Beinecke
Rare Book & Manuscript Library, housed at
Yale, they remain unpublished. The BBC generously
paid to have them all microfilmed on my behalf
in 1976 (I'd wanted to use Barrie’s notes as voice-over
in the TV trilogy as a way of letting the audience
inside his mind). I already knew that JMB’s
handwriting was almost illegible, but was determined
to venture where no one had thus far trod (except
possibly Denis Mackail, but he was under strict
surveillance from Cynthia Asquith). Nico helped
with some of the harder notebook scrawls, but
even he
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| Nico
in 1975 with one of the family photograph
albums. |
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was baffled at times,
as indeed was Barrie himself who often gave up on
attempts to read his own notes. Thus I spent the
sweltering summer of 1976, buried in a dark basement
with an enormous microfilm viewer, gradually transcribing
every note I thought I might conceivably need, and
wound up transcribing roughly two-thirds of all
his notebooks. This was far more than could ever
possibly be used in a single film (or biography,
thank God), but it was time well spent as far as
I was concerned – only through those interminable
hours deciphering his spontaneous scribbles did
I really come to know JMB.
The 'Fairy' Notes to
Peter Pan I found in 1988, as a result of
David Puttnam (while running Columbia/TriStar) asking
me to write a screenplay of Peter Pan. For
various copyright reasons the project never even
made it to the script stage, but at least I got
to make my first visit to Yale, and started sifting
through uncharted regions in the vaults of the Beinecke
Rare Book and Manuscript Library - a bunker-like
building on the Yale campus. The Head Librarian
in those days was the much-loved Marjorie Wynne,
with whom I spent many hours pouring over the originals
of all those notebooks and letters I’d only
ever seen on microfilm. In fact I thought I'd read
their entire JMB collection, but no, it turned out
there was more material still. |
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| Opening
page of Barrie's 'Fairy' notes for the first
draft of Peter Pan. |
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I knew from Denis Mackail's
1942 biography that in October 1903 "the
fairy play was taking most
of Barrie’s time - and with almost unbelievable
thoroughness. There are nearly 500 notes on it
in one continuous series, and almost as many again,
on separate sheets, as the work went on."
Roger Lancelyn Green searched for these notes
in 1954 while compiling his Fifty Years of
Peter Pan, the definitive history of the play
to that date. He concluded that "Barrie’s
notes have not survived from the end of 1902 till
the middle of 1904, by which time the first draft
of the play was written, and its revision called
only for the most fragmentary notes." Janet
Dunbar had also presumed them lost or destroyed
... and I suddenly realised that I was holding
them in my hands.
Marjorie had the sheets enlarged,
and I took them back to Wales and began deciphering.
It was clear by now that the Columbia movie was
going nowhere, but I was still fascinated to browse
once again browse through Barrie's mind. And the
more I transcribed, the more I found myself on his
roller-coaster of thoughts and ideas as the play
of Peter Pan began to take shape. A few of
his words still remain indecipherable to my eyes,
so that by publishing them on the website, with
the original reproduced alongside the transcript,
anyone can have a guess at the illegible words -
and all feedback will be most gratefully received.
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This site has been on the back burner
of my mind ever since our family discovered the
internet in 1995. My son Anno was just getting
into the stride of his poetry and music, and saw
the net as “one last chance for the small
voice.” He had the idea of creating a site
that would act as a forum for his art, and that
of his friends. As I too saw the internet as the
solution to my Barrie collection, we both sought
the help of Nao Yoshino, a friend of Anno’s
from the American School in London. But since
republication of my book was still some years
off, Anno’s KJD site took priority, and
in August 2001, Nao and he hoisted it onto the
net. Three months later, Anno was killed in Italy
with Lee and Alberto, and the site immediately
took on a function for which it was never designed:
a forum for those far-flung friends and family
who were grieving the loss of their boys. It also
gave enormous comfort knowing that their songs
- and anno's words - were far from dead, as the
KjD Remember page testifies. [For more on this,
see
Jessamy Calkin’s article in the Telegraph
Magazine (May 3rd, 2003.)]
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| Anno
by George’s grave in 1984 |
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The past eighteen months has been largely
spent working on the Anno/KjD site, but in April we
received generous funding from Universal Pictures, thanks
to Lucy Fisher and Doug Wick, who are producing
Peter Pan for Columbia/Tri-Star/Universal/et
al. Thus the long process of scanning, transcribing,
and uploading the database finally began in earnest.
This will take many more months, but
by Christmas 2004 we hope to have the full site up and running.
It will consist of three levels: static, rotary, and
database. Parts of the static are already up: a series of picture galleries,
The Boy Castaways slide-show (and short movie, with Anno's "Isis" for music), the
400 'Fairy' notes for Peter Pan, as well as several
audio/video clips and a few other goodies.
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| Barrie
in his Adelphi study in 1933. The sole surviving
copy of The Boy Castaways is on the
third bookshelf from the bottom (in red).
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Once the database is finished, there will
be an on-line subscription (around $5 a month)
which will allow full access to the entire database
- over 7,000 entries - with a powerful search
engine to speed up navigation - something I wish
to God I'd had when I wrote the original book!
On any given person (or topic), you’ll be
able to read/see/hear whatever the database contains
on the subject. For example, if you want to know
more about Barrie’s sister Maggie (unlikely),
a quick search will throw up a choice of Nico
writing about her in one of his letters to me
or Sharon, relevant quotes from Margaret Ogilvy
(thanks to the Gutenberg project), an eerie reminiscence
from Neville Cardus, and several audio clips of
Nico talking about Maggie. Peter Pan (more
probable) will of course throw up hundreds of
links, as will topics such as "ghosts"
or "death" - even 'cricket' will access
numerous references from Nico and others ... there's
even a brief video clip of Barrie wielding a bat.
We're also working on the rotary
aspect of the website, whereby J M Barrie &
the Lost Boys will be uploaded one chapter
at a time every fortnight, Dickens-style, with
additional material associated with that chapter
(photos, documents, Peter’s Morgue
etc) available on the Photo/Video/Audio/ Works
pages alongside the current static selection.
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We’ve tried to keep the website
as simple as possible. If you'd like to join our mailing
list, we'll keep you posted of any major
updates, while guaranteeing not to pass on your details
to any third party, or hassle you with emails. Finally, if you have any comments, please add them to the feedback page, or email me: andrew@jmbarrie.co.uk.
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