Peter Scott Letters

[Dani1923]

I’m going to share some letters on this forum from “Letters of J.M. Barrie” (Edited by Viola Meynell and published by Peter Llewelyn Davies’ publishing house) that I find interesting and that others in this forum would find interesting. Also I’m sharing letters that don’t appear in The Lost Boys book or currently on the database. For this topic I’m sharing letters that JMB wrote to Peter Scott, his godson and son of famous Royal Navy officer and explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott, and his letters to Peter’s mother Kathleen that mention
Peter. These letters are some of my favorites in the book and they show the great relationship between Barrie and Peter!

9 April 1918
My dear Peter
Your mother thinks I do not write clearly, but I expect this is jealousy. It is funny to think of your being at a French school, parlez-vous-ing with big guns firing and bells ringing and hooters hooting. What a lot you will have to tell me when we meet again. Michael and Nicholas are here just now, and tomorrow we are going to Wales for ten days. Michael won the competition at Eton for flinging the cricket ball farthest. Peter is where the fighting is heaviest, near Amiens. I think Brown will have to go and be a fighter now as he is under fifty. It will be queer if I am the only person left in London and have to cook the food and kill the cow and drive the bus. It will be rather difficult for me to be engine-driver and guard at the same time and also take the tickets and sweep the streets and sell the balloons at the corner and hold up my hand like a policeman to stop the traffic every time a taxi comes along. Then I shall also have to be the person inside the taxi at the same as I am sitting outside driving it, and if I run over anybody it will have to be myself, and I will have to take my own number and carry myself on a stretcher to the hospital, and I will need to be at both ends of the stretcher at once. Also I will have to hurry on in front of the stretcher so as to be door-keeper when the stretcher arrives, and how can I be the door-keeper when I have to the doctor, and how can I be the doctor when I have to be the nurse? You see I am going to have a very busy time, and I expect a letter from you would cheer me up. I will have to be the postman who delivers it.

Your loving Barrie

[Dani1923]

Letter to Peter Scott from Barrie.

21 January 1923
My dear Scott
Poem excellent. Pictures superb. Go to top of class and stay there. I am expecting you in to tea tomorrow.
Yours, Barrie

[Dani1923]

Letter to Peter Scott from Barrie.

5 April 1930

I have been down here for a fortnight (Brighton) and have just had forwarded me a letter from your mother saying you are back. I am going to London early in the week, and having heard a glorious rumour that you are growing rather like your father I want very much to see you again. Could you come to lunch with me…

[Dani1923]

Letter to Peter’s mother Kathleen from Barrie.

29 December 1919

Thesiger would have been very good in the part I am sure, but it is cast and indeed the play is ‘in rehearsal’. I think Thesiger one of the best actors of the day, and hope to have him in something of mine yet.
Grand poem from Peter—only surpassed by his pictures. I hope to see you both soon.

[Dani1923]

Letter to Peter’s mother Kathleen from Barrie.

27 February 1922
Ha! I hope to be, as you put it, ‘walking by the House of Commons’ (for about the first time in my life) at eleven on Friday, but I ought to be rehearsing a play that hour which they can’t do without me, so that possibility I won’t be able to get away. In any case you know how warm are my good wishes and that I do deeply hope for you both ski the best kind of happiness. Also may I bask in it at times. I am a bit concerned over what you say of Peter’s measles and it’s complications. It would be sad if he had to go through an operation and I trust that won’t be necessary, but even though it is he will surely soon be his great self again. I am very fond of him and proud of him and if anything of the kind takes place I trust to your letting me know so that I may see him and see too whether for a last time I can regain a little of the gaiety with youth I once had and that possibly might come back if I had a patient to deal with . My love to all the three of you.

[Dani1923]

Letter to Peter’s mother Kathleen from Barrie.

22 January 1924

I am very sorry you did not bring Peter in, you would both have been welcome as flowers, but it is good that he has taken so rapturously to Oundle, which was pretty clearly the right place for him. I take off my hat to his words about my plays. Last night I had my first outing for ages, went to see the House of Commons in the throes—at least I expected it to be so, but they looked more like a jolly lot of scallywags.

[Dani1923]

Letter to Peter’s mother Kathleen from Barrie. This letter talks about a painting Peter made with two other school-boys.

14 October 1926

The ‘Adventures among Birds’ is an engaging work and I am glad to have it. I have often envied Peter, and his sketches give me another jealous stab. When at school it was my ambition to become an artist but I always lost my paint box. I see now I might have done it without a paint box but it is too late. The book of your sculpture is fine. I hope to see you soon and probably will at the Speaker’s function at which, as you are the lurer, I shall expect you to pay me marked special attention.

[Dani1923]

Letter to Peter’s mother Kathleen from Barrie. This letter talks about the famous painting Peter made of Barrie in his inglenook at Adelphi Terrace.

28 January 1934

How do I like the picture? Uncommonly well, thank you. I call it a noticeable success and hope you do also. Peter and I are rather big about it as I daresay his manner and an occasional dropped word have indicated to you. We were also agreed I think that the foreground should be toned down so as not to attract the eye and the pillows at the side made less dark, indeed of the cedar-wood colour which they are when in a stronger light. This would be playing a little with the light he had but I think justifiably. My shadow of course is not really mine but represents the intrusion of Miss Bergner. Yes, I am proud of my godson.

[Dani1923]

Letter to Peter’s mother Kathleen from Barrie. I think this is probably the last letter he ever wrote to her as it was written over three weeks before his death. The exhibition being referenced here is Peter’s art exhibition at Ackermann’s Gallery.

24 May 1937

I hope the Exhibition will be as resounding a success as ever and wish I could be at the opening especially as George Trevelyan has the doing of it, but I am at present down with sciatica and other woes, so there must be a hated pause. Alas.

[Dani1923]

The last letter is pretty heartbreaking as Barrie probably never made it to Peter’s exhibition due to his declining health.
And Barrie’s support of Peter’s artistic pursuits also makes me think that Barrie would of course had been the same with Michael had Michael had lived and become an artist. And all of the art Michael did do before his death have not survived. Shame about the art we will never see!
But of course what we did get is Peter’s magnificent nature art, which are mind blowing and I hope will survive until the end of time!!