BARRIE AND HIS WRITINGS
James Matthew Barrie was born at Kirriemuir (“Thrums”), Scotland, on the 9th of May, 1860. He is the son of a physician, whom he has lovingly embodied as “Dr. McQueen”; his mother and sister also will live as “Jess” and “Leeby.” He was educated at Dumfries Academy, entering the University of Edinburgh at eighteen, from which he was graduated in 1882 with the degree of M.A., taking honors in English literature. He began writing literary criticisms for the Edinburgh Courant at this period. Several months after his graduation Barrie took a position on a Nottingham newspaper, leaving that city for London in 1885, where his literary career commenced in earnest; but success did not come until after the customary struggles and hindrances to which young literary aspirants are ever subject. In 1893 he married Miss Ansell, an actress, whom he divorced in 1909. Some of his best-known books are Auld Licht Idylls; A Window in Thrums; Margaret Ogilvy; My Lady Nicotine; The Little Minister (afterwards dramatized); Sentimental Tommy; Tommy and Grizel (a sequel), and The Little White Bird. He also wrote several plays, the most notable of which are The Professor’s Love Story; Peter Pan (a partial dramatization of The Little White Bird); Quality Street; and What Every Woman Knows. It is interesting to note that Mr. Barrie did not succeed in securing the magazine publication of “The Courting of T’Nowhead’s Bell,” which is given herewith; it was first issued between book covers, in 1888.
Barrie is a versatile story-teller, though he deals mostly with Scotch characters. His early work exhibits his short-story ability at its best. The warm human interest of A Window in Thrums and Auld Licht Idylls, is matched only by Ian Maclaren’s Beside the Bonnie Briar Bush and The Days of Auld Lang Syne. A quaint character-humor, with swift flashes of pathos, pervades all his work, which for local-color and insight into the character of the Scotch rural dweller has won a place of distinction among the stories of present-day writers. With Barrie, realism is rarely unpleasant; he sees all things with a gentle eye. Even when in his keen ability to penetrate to the heart of things he discovers the weaknesses of humanity, he also finds redeeming virtues. Thus his characters are continually disclosing their true natures underneath the garb and custom of picturesque life, and we feel ourselves to be kin to them, every one. His dialect in itself is masterly and often deliciously humorous, so that actions and dialogue in themselves common-place take on an extraordinary interest. No modern writer has a greater gift of character-drawing, and none is more sympathetically human in his interpretations of the Scotch commoner.
It is my contemptible weakness that if I say a character smiled vacuously, I must smile vacuously; if he frowns or leers, I frown or leer; if he is a coward or given to contortions, I cringe, or twist my legs until I have to stop writing to undo the knot. I bow with him, eat with him, and gnaw my moustache with him. If the character be a lady with an exquisite laugh, I suddenly terrify you by laughing exquisitely. One reads of the astounding versatility of an actor who is stout and lean on the same evening, but what is he to the novelist who is a dozen persons within the hour?—J. M. Barrie, Margaret Ogilvy.
There are writers who can plan out their story beforehand as clearly as though it were a railway journey, and adhere throughout to their original design—they draw up what playwrights call a scenario—but I was never one of those. I spend a great deal of time indeed in looking for the best road in the map and mark it with red ink, but at the first bypath off my characters go. “Come back,” I cry, “you are off the road.” “We prefer this way,” they reply. I try bullying. “You are only people in a book,” I shout, “and it is my book, and I can do what I like with you, so come back!” But they seldom come, and it ends with my plodding after them.—J. M. Barrie, Introduction to When a Man’s Single.
The chief features of Barrie’s style are a quaintness of expression, a simple directness of narrative, and an unfailing sense of humor—often as though the author were chuckling to himself as he wrote. His gift for descriptive writing—probably the best test of “style”—is very marked, though he makes little of it.—J. A. Hammerton, J. M. Barrie and His Books.
Auld Licht Idylls is a set of regular descriptions of the life of “Thrums,” with special reference to the ways and character of the “Old Lights,” the stubborn conservative Scotch Puritans; it contains also a most amusing and characteristic love story of the sect (“The Courting of T’Nowhead’s Bell”), and a satiric political skit.—Charles Dudley Warner’s Library of the World’s Best Literature.
By the time “Auld Licht Idylls” appeared, he had achieved a reputation,—at least a local one. This book had an immediate success, and ran rapidly through several editions. His mother had been an Auld Licht in her youth.... Mrs. Barrie, knowing them from the inside, could tell all sorts of quaint and marvellous tales about them, whose humor was sure to please. It was from her stories that the Idylls were mainly drawn, so she was in a sense a collaborator with her son in their production.—Hattie T. Griswold, Personal Sketches of Recent Authors.
As a literary artist he belongs in the foremost rank. He has that sense of the typical in incident, of the universal in feeling, and of the suggestive in language, which mark the chiefs of letters. No one can express an idea with fewer strokes; he never expands a sufficient hint into an essay. His management of the Scotch dialect is masterly: he uses it sparingly, in the nearest form to English compatible with retaining the flavor; he never makes it so hard as to interfere with enjoyment; in few dialect writers do we feel so little alienness.—Charles Dudley Warner’s Library of the World’s Best Literature.
FURTHER REFERENCES FOR READING ON BARRIE
My Contemporaries in Fiction, by J. D. C. Murray (1897); Theology of Modern Literature, by S. Law Wilson (1899); Fame and Fiction, by E. A. Bennett (1901); J. M. Barrie and His Books, by J. A. Hammerton (1902).
FOR ANALYSIS