Addenda to It Might Have Been Raining

[Robert Greenham]

I hope Andrew and the members will not mind my using this forum to announce two addenda to my book 'It Might Have Been Raining'. The information will probably not be 'news' to regular members, however.

I have attempted to mail addenda slips to all known purchasers of my book, but as some copies have been purchased through Amazon worldwide, and through other suppliers, there will be some unknown readers who will not have received the information. The addenda slip reads as follows:


ADDENDA

My research into J. M. Barrie was restarted a few weeks following the publication of my book and revealed some unexpected facts not mentioned in any of the biographies of J. M. Barrie. Further, such facts contradict what has previously been written by some of his biographers. I do not anticipate being able to afford to produce a revised edition of this book and so I must use this opportunity to state these significant findings:

1 Contrary to Barrie's account in his Margaret Ogilvy, the young David Ogilvy Barrie did not die within hours of his skating accident. Examination of David's death certificate reveals that he died of “inflamation of the brain” a week after the accident. This may or may not have been precipitated by his head striking the ice when he fell. Also, meteorological records show that by the time David died the weather at Bothwell had been above freezing for a few days. Members of ANON, The J. M. Barrie Society, were advised of this by a Dutch Barrie devotee, Hans Kuyper, in September 2005, and an interesting online discussion followed.

2 Barrie's mother-in-law, Mrs Mary Ansell, did not move to St Giles, London, before her death. I was misled by two matching trails which, in July 2005, I proved to be false: (i) Biographer Denis Mackail's statement that Mary Barrie was summoned from Paris to be with her dying mother in the spring of 1906, and (ii) a doubly coincident civil registration record of the death in St Giles of a Mary Ansell, who was of the right age, and whose husband was George Ansell (deceased).

The fact is that Mary's mother died over a year earlier. She was seriously ill at her home in Hastings at the time Peter Pan opened for its first run at the Duke of York's Theatre, and on the day after its opening acute bronchitis was diagnosed. Mrs Ansell died at her home (45 Cornwallis Gardens, a lodging house) just eleven days later, on 8 January 1905. She died from “exhaustion and cardiac failure”, and her death certificate also reveals that her daughter, Mary Barrie, was present at the death and registered it on the following day.

It is possible that Barrie was with his wife at the time of her mother's death, and it is known that they attended the funeral together, travelling in their chauffeur driven car, just two days later, on 10 January. Mrs Ansell's body was buried at the Hastings Borough Cemetery, where the grave was purchased by Mary Barrie. On 19 January the Hastings Advertiser reported, somewhat strangely: “Everybody will hope that in coming on a visit to Hastings the great novelist and playwright, Mr J. M. Barrie, has got what he had been looking for – rest, recreation and renewed vigour. We hope to see him here frequently on the same errand.”* I found no mention in the newspaper of the death or funeral of Barrie's mother-in-law.

Robert Greenham
October 2005


* Would JMB have gone to Hastings had it not been for the death of his mother-in-law, I wonder?

Thanks, everybody, and may I be the first, hopefully, to wish you all a very Happy and Preposterous New Year!