THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 J. M. BARRiE
 
 ^ J. M. BARRIE 
 
 AND HIS BOOKS 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL STUDIES 
 
 BY 
 
 J. A. HAMMERTON 
 
 LONDON 
 
 HORACE MARSHALL & SON 
 1900
 
 College 
 Library 
 
 P/l 
 
 FREDERICK A. ATKINS, 
 
 MY IDEAL EDITOR 
 
 AND 
 MY VERY GOOD FRIEND, 
 
 I INSCRIBE 
 THIS LITTLE BOOK
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTORY ..... i 
 
 COLLEGE DAYS . . . . . 9 
 
 EARLY DAYS IN JOURNALISM . . -31 
 
 BEGINNINGS IN LITERATURE 53 
 
 His FIRST BOOK 75 
 
 SOME LITERARY CHARACTERISTICS . .,. 93 
 
 His KNOWLEDGE OF WOMANKIND . 119 
 
 MOTHER AND SON . . . . .137 
 His KNOWLEDGE OF BOYS . . . -151 
 
 PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS . . . 165 
 
 THE STORY OF "THE AULD LIGHTS" . . 181 
 
 "THRUMS" . . . . . .207 
 
 BARRIE AND His CONTEMPORARIES . . 219 
 
 THE SCOTS TONGUE IN BARRIE'S BOOKS . 233 
 
 BARRIANA ...... 253 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..... 258
 
 INTRODUCTORY
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 THE purpose of this little book is perhaps sufficiently 
 evident on the face of it ; yet the author may be 
 allowed to state briefly what he has aimed at supply- 
 ing, in case it should be that he has not succeeded 
 in the task which he set himself. 
 
 In the first place, I have carefully avoided any 
 attempt at a formal biography of Mr Barrie, although 
 there is no phase of his career, so far as that interests 
 the reading public, which is not touched upon in the 
 course of the following chapters. I have as care- 
 fully refrained from attempting a comprehensive 
 critical survey of all his works. My aim has been 
 to produce a volume which admirers of Mr Barrie's 
 books may read with interest and perhaps with some 
 degree of profit, while those who are only imper- 
 fectly, or not at all, acquainted with his contribu- 
 tions to the library of contemporary literature may 
 find herein an introduction to a delightful field of 
 study. 
 
 The idea of the book came to me some four years 
 ago, when, as Editor of the Nottingham Express 
 and Journal and following the contribution of an 
 article describing " J. M. Barrie's Early Days in 
 Journalism " to the Temple Magazine (then admirably 
 edited by Mr F. A. Atkins), I received so many re-
 
 4 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 quests for biographical and bibliographical data con- 
 cerning Mr Barrie that it occurred to me some such 
 work as that now presented to the reader would at 
 least fulfil a useful office if it did no more than supply 
 young men and women with material for " Literary 
 Society" essays on Barrie and his Books. Thus, it 
 was with no ambitious purpose I began and it is 
 with no ambitious aim that I have ended these 
 " Biographical and Critical Studies." 
 
 Naturally enough Mr Barrie's sharpest critics 
 have been they of his own country. He has from 
 the first encountered singularly little adverse 
 criticism, but the bulk of that with which he has 
 met has come from Scottish writers. Even in 
 " Thrums " he is not a hero to all his townsfolk. 
 An old woman there was asked what she thought 
 of his books. "Perfect buff," she replied; "the 
 work of an impident young smatchet." But, of 
 course, we don't go to the sweetie-wife for literary 
 criticism. The present writer, however, is at once 
 a devoted admirer of Mr Barrie, a " brither Scot," 
 and a journalist whose fate it has been to spend a 
 part of his editorial life in the interesting old town 
 where Barrie first practised journalism for a living, 
 and, indeed, on the newspaper which perpetuates 
 the title of that on which the novelist was engaged. 
 In my moments of sinful ambition I am even tempted 
 to regard myself as having been in Nottingham one 
 of Barrie's successors, just as Mattie was a cousin 
 to the Laird of Limmerfield " seeven times 
 removed."
 
 INTRODUCTORY 5 
 
 I have seen it argued that the publication of 
 such a book as this is a reprehensible practice, in 
 that it implies the elevation of its subject to the 
 rank of a classic. " This treatment of contemporary 
 writers as classics should not be encouraged," quoth a 
 weighty critic in one of the Saturdays. A sufficient 
 answer to the charge would seem to be that in such 
 writers as J. M. Barrie, Thomas Hardy, " Ian Mac- 
 laren," Rudyard Kipling, and several others, the 
 public that reads books is vastly more interested 
 than it is in the mighty dead. It is true, no doubt, 
 that we are better able to catalogue as classics the 
 books that were written a hundred years ago than 
 those new from their authors, and a hundred years 
 hence Posterity may, with its usual obtuseness, have 
 docketed in oblivion the great books of to-day. We 
 cannot anticipate the judgment of Posterity any more 
 than we can make it respect our own. But he were 
 a foolish man who wrote with the ghost of Posterity 
 ever at his elbow, and since the great passions of the 
 human heart have been the same in all ages, it is 
 a wiser plan to appeal to the heart of living man, 
 for surely if an author is once admitted there he 
 may have small concern for his standing in the 
 ages yet to come. Thinking thus, it seems to me 
 that a contemporary author of Mr Barrie's acknow- 
 ledged eminence is a worthy subject for any writer, 
 be the medium a newspaper, a magazine, or a book. 
 The only doubt in my mind is that this little effort 
 of mine may be voted unworthy of its subject. 
 
 It will be noticed that I do not deal in any place
 
 6 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 with Mr Barrie as a playwright. As an old student 
 of the acted drama I have no compunction in express- 
 ing the opinion that, despite the wonderful success 
 of "The Little Minister" on the stage, Mr Barrie 
 is not, and is not likely to be, a serious factor in the 
 contemporary drama. Indeed, " The Little Min- 
 ister," as it is known to playgoers, is a very sorry 
 production compared with the book, compared with 
 anything the author has written, and therefore one 
 could not honestly write in praise of it. Though 
 he may have received from the stage ^looo for 
 every 100 which his books have produced, that 
 does not prove him a dramatist, and indeed both 
 " The Little Minister " and " Walker, London," 
 were popular for reasons which lay quite outside 
 of the playwright's art. His more serious effort 
 at play-writing, " Richard Savage" (in collaboration 
 with Mr H. B. Marriot Watson), produced on the 
 1 6th April, 1 80 1, was a failure. It is as the 
 author of " Auld Licht Idylls" and "A Window 
 in Thrums" that he is loved by the English- 
 reading public throughout the world ; his genius 
 can best be shaped in books and not in plays. 
 Hence my reason for ignoring his stage-work. I 
 may be blamed for this, but I fancy the weight of 
 opinion will be with me, though I have a shrewd 
 suspicion that Mr Barrie himself is as " sinfully 
 puffed up " about his plays as T'nowhead was about 
 his pig ; for his early newspaper writings show a 
 strong taste for things theatrical. 
 
 As I do not give a chronological account of Mr
 
 INTRODUCTORY 7 
 
 Barrie's career, I should here state that James 
 Matthew Barrie (he says it is so long since he 
 spelt his middle name that he can't remember 
 whether or not there are two t's in it) was born 
 at Kirriemuir, N.B., on the pth of May, 1860. 
 He married Miss Mary Ansell, a charming actress 
 who made her mark in his own "Walker, London," 
 at Kirriemuir, in July, 1894. The match was quite 
 a little romance. 
 
 It should be added that several of the chapters 
 which follow appeared originally in magazines, but 
 all have been revised and in some cases considerably 
 extended since their first publication. 
 
 My thanks are due to Mr R. K. Dent, the 
 accomplished Librarian of the Aston Manor Public 
 Library, Birmingham, and the historian of the Mid- 
 land city, for his valuable assistance in compiling 
 " Barriana " and the Bibliography, also to Messrs 
 Hodder & Stoughton, and to Messrs Cassell & Co., 
 Ltd., for their kind permission to make extracts 
 from Mr Barrie's books published by them.
 
 COLLEGE DAYS
 
 J. M. BARRIE 
 
 COLLEGE DAYS 
 
 THE early life of those who achieve greatness in any 
 of the arts is always the most interesting to the 
 readers of biography ; and naturally so, for it is in 
 their younger years that great authors great artists 
 of all kinds are formed. The accident of early 
 environment has much to do with the shaping and 
 directing of genius. True, genius, which is ante- 
 cedent to knowledge and experience, rises in the 
 end above all circumstances ; but the man who has 
 genius is probably more influenced by the surround- 
 ings of his early life than he who boasts nothing 
 worthier than talent ; the artistic temperament is 
 always the most keenly sympathetic. Hence, if life 
 be indeed what Herbert Spencer terms " correspond- 
 ing to environment," the man of genius lives to the 
 full and awakens to life earlier than common men. 
 For this reason the early years of our great authors 
 must always be a source of profound interest to 
 students of their works, and from their demeanour 
 during so critical a period we may learn many things 
 to assist us in the fuller understanding of their 
 subsequent work.
 
 12 COLLEGE DAYS 
 
 Among the literary men of the present day there 
 is none who has been more personal in his writings 
 than Mr Barrie : he is as personal in prose as Byron 
 was in poetry. His own heart, his own experiences, 
 the lives of his " ain folk" : these have been the sub- 
 jects out of which his genius has made literature. 
 In a sense, every book he has written has been a 
 further instalment of a masterly autobiography. Even 
 in his smallest efforts he is writing only of the things 
 he knows, the things he has seen and felt. Yes, 
 even in the whimsical mood of his early journalistic 
 writings there was still in his literary clowning a 
 touch of sober self-revelation. So it is no difficult 
 task in his case to get at the man through his work. 
 But to those early days with which, for the moment, 
 we are particularly concerned, we have a ready guide 
 in his little brochure, An Edinburgh Eleven, and his 
 newspaper contributions. 
 
 An Edinburgh Eleven was published in the days 
 when Mr Barrie still occasionally used the nom de 
 plume of " Gavin Ogilvy," and although it is only 
 a trifle it is by no means destitute of those brilliant 
 qualities of style which in later years were to be so 
 distinguishing a feature of all his finest work. Its 
 sub-title is Pencil Portraits from College Life "pencil" 
 being used, I suppose, to suggest the sketchy nature 
 of the likenesses and it is chiefly interesting to-day 
 as introducing us to the men who influenced the 
 author in his college career, while the frequent 
 glimpses of his life in venerable Edinburgh are also 
 valuable to the biographer.
 
 COLLEGE DAYS 13 
 
 Aberdeen is the University to which the young 
 men of Thrums who dream dreams and strive man- 
 fully for their fulfilment generally make their way. 
 Many a tale has been told of the desperate straits of 
 the students at that temple of learning, and many 
 a story of plain living and high thinking there has 
 never been told beyond the poor walls of the 
 struggling student's little " bed - sitting - room." 
 Barrie makes frequent allusions in his books to 
 Aberdeen as the University town to which all 
 ambitious youths in his countryside turned their 
 eyes, and the hardships of those who fought poverty 
 bravely in their determination to secure a University 
 training naturally impressed his young mind. One 
 of his favourite stories, which has crept into more 
 than one of his books if I am not mistaken, is given 
 as follows in a contribution of his to the Nottingham 
 Journal : 
 
 " I knew three undergraduates who lodged to- 
 gether in a dreary house at the top of a dreary street, 
 two of whom used to study until two in the morning, 
 while the third slept. When they shut up their 
 books, they woke number three, who arose, dressed, 
 and studied till breakfast-time. Among the many 
 advantages of this arrangement, the chief was that, 
 as they were dreadfully poor, one bed did for the 
 three. Two of them occupied it at one time, and 
 the third at another. Terrible privations ? Frightful 
 destitution ? Not a bit of it. The Millennium was 
 in those days. If life was at the top of a hundred 
 steps, if students occasionally died of hunger and
 
 14 COLLEGE DAYS 
 
 hard work combined, if the midnight oil only burned 
 to show a ghastly face ' weary and worn,' if lodgings 
 were cheap and dirty, and dinners few and far be- 
 tween, life was still real and earnest, in many cases 
 it did not turn out an empty dream." 
 
 Together with another distinguished native of 
 Kirriemuir (Dr Alexander "Whyte, of Free St 
 George's, Edinburgh), Mr Barrie's brother studied 
 at Aberdeen, but it was to Edinburgh that the 
 novelist went when the time and the means for 
 entering upon his college career had arrived. He 
 was then eighteen years of age. Only a part of 
 his boyhood had been spent in Kirriemuir. At an 
 early age he had gone south to Dumfries, where 
 his brother was then inspector of schools. At the 
 Dumfries Academy he had a very ordinary course 
 of training, the only one of his teachers who is said 
 to have impressed him perceptibly being Dr Cran- 
 stoun, well-known for his translations of the Latin 
 poets. Even thus early his journalistic instinct was 
 at work, as one of his first published articles was 
 on Gretna Green in the English Illustrated Magazine. 
 But at Dumfries the youthful Barrie had the good 
 fortune to see in the flesh Thomas Carlyle, who 
 often came to the town in those days on visits to his 
 sister, Mrs Aitken, and his friend Thomas Aird, the 
 editor and poet. No doubt this local connection with 
 the sage had something to do with sending the youth 
 to the study of Carlyle's works, and he forthwith 
 became a perfervid disciple. He told the following 
 story of Carlyle in an early St James's article a
 
 COLLEGE DAYS 15 
 
 story, by the way, which is further testimony to the 
 dour, unlovable nature of the grim philosopher : 
 
 " There are many pretty villas in Dumfries, but 
 none more charming than that where Mrs Aitken, 
 Carlyle's sister, resides. Here we have seen him 
 of a forenoon, wide-awake firmly planted on his head 
 and a sturdy staff in his hand, taking no more notice 
 of the passers-by who uncovered their heads than of 
 the irreverent ones who whistled. It is told in 
 Dumfries that, taking a solitary walk one day near 
 his sister's house, he encountered two disciples who 
 thirsted to hold communion with the master. They 
 knew that Carlyle loved not to hold intercourse with 
 such as they, but, being men of quick invention, ac- 
 costed him as one who would perhaps kindly tell 
 them how far distant they were from Locharbriggs. 
 * Tarn,' as he is still called in Ecclefechan, lifted his 
 staff, and, referring them with it to a milestone in the 
 near vicinity, silently passed on." 
 
 With the Carlyle fever on him at one time he 
 asserted that Carlyle was the only author who in- 
 fluenced him he left Dumfries and went to Edin- 
 burgh University, where he almost immediately 
 came under the influence of Professor Masson (now 
 Emeritus). Young Barrie bringing with him a love 
 of literature and a reverence for its makers, Masson 
 was precisely the man to foster these tastes in his 
 student, for never was a Professor of Literature 
 more imbued with the duties of his office and 
 enthusiasm for the subject which he taught. Barrie 
 himself confesses that Masson sent his life off at a
 
 1 6 COLLEGE DAYS 
 
 new angle : " Though a man might, to my mind, be 
 better employed than in going to College, it is his 
 own fault if he does not strike on someone there 
 who sends his life off at a new angle." So he says, 
 and that someone in his case was Masson. " I seem 
 to remember everything Masson said, and the way 
 he said it." Surely no higher compliment could be 
 paid to a master by an old scholar. How truly 
 Masson's winning personality got hold of this 
 student's heart may be gathered from the following 
 passage : 
 
 "There are men who are good to think of, and 
 as a rule we only know them by their books. 
 Something of our pride in life would go with their 
 fall. To have one such Professor at a time is the 
 most a University can hope of human nature, so 
 Edinburgh need not expect another just yet. . . . 
 The test of a sensitive man is that he is careful 
 of wounding the feelings of others. Once, I re- 
 member, a student was reading a passage aloud, as- 
 suming at the same time such an attitude that the 
 Professor could not help remarking that he looked 
 like a teapot. It was exactly what he did look like, 
 and the class applauded. But next moment Masson 
 had apologised for being personal. Such reminiscences 
 are what make the old Literature class-room to thou- 
 sands of graduates a delight to think of." 
 
 Naturally to one of Barrie's mind, sitting at the 
 feet of such a Gulliver in criticism as he describes 
 Masson the only thing in the world worth living 
 for seemed to be Literature, and to that end he let
 
 COLLEGE DAYS 17 
 
 his hair grow ! But perhaps that is only his little 
 joke. It affords him an excellent opportunity, how- 
 ever, for further testimony to Masson's popularity. 
 As witness : 
 
 "The students in that class liked to see their 
 Professor as well as hear him. I let my hair grow 
 long because it only annoyed other people, and one 
 day there was dropped into my hand a note contain- 
 ing sixpence and the words : * The students sitting 
 behind you present their compliments, and beg that 
 you will get your hair cut with the enclosed, as it 
 interferes with their view of the Professor.' " 
 
 In Masson's class our distinguished student took 
 a high place, being proxime accessit for the Vans Dun- 
 lop Scholarship in English Literature. 
 
 He had the good fortune to get his Greek from 
 that most picturesque of Edinburgh Professors the 
 late John Stuart Blackie. To come under the in- 
 fluence of that breezy character was like a breath of 
 moorland air to any student, but Barrie was evidently 
 wide awake to the little weaknesses of this great 
 scholar. " I think I remember the Professor's say- 
 ing that he had never made five shillings by his 
 verses. To my mind they are worth more than 
 that." Here is the finest pen portrait of Blackie 
 ever drawn in so few words : 
 
 " Did you ever watch him marching along Princes 
 Street on a warm day, when every other person was 
 broiling in the sun ? His head is well thrown back, 
 the staff, grasped in the middle, jerks back and for- 
 ward like a weaver's shuttle, and the plaid flies in 
 
 B
 
 1 8 COLLEGE DAYS 
 
 the breeze. Other people's clothes are hanging 
 limp. Blackie carries his breeze with him." 
 
 Blackie's kindness of heart is well illustrated in an 
 anecdote which Barrie gives. " When the Professor 
 noticed any physical peculiarity about a student, such 
 as a lisp, or a glass eye, or one leg longer than the 
 other, or a broken nose, he was at once struck by it, 
 and asked him to breakfast. They were very lively 
 breakfasts, the eggs being served in tureens ; but 
 sometimes it was a collection of the maimed and 
 crooked, and one person at the table not the host 
 himself used to tremble lest, making mirrors of 
 each other, the guests should see why they were 
 invited." Blackie used to advise his students to 
 take a cold bath every morning at six o'clock. " In 
 winter you can break the ice with a hammer." Only 
 one enthusiast was known to take this advice. He 
 died. 
 
 There were lively times in the Greek class. 
 When Blackie would mention the name of " a dis- 
 tinguished politician," there was always a racket. 
 " ' I will say Beaconsfield,' he would exclaim 
 (cheers and hisses). ' Beaconsfield ' (uproar). 
 Then he would stride forward, and, seizing the 
 railing, announce his intention of saying Beacons- 
 field until every goose in the room was tired of 
 cackling. ('Question.') 'Beaconsfield.' ('No, 
 no.') ' Beaconsfield.' (' Hear, hear,' and shouts 
 of ' Gladstone.') ' Beaconsfield.' (' Three cheers 
 for "Dizzy."') Eventually the class would be dis- 
 missed as (l) idiots, (2) a bear garden, (3) a
 
 COLLEGE DAYS 19 
 
 flock of sheep, (4) a pack of numskulls, (5) hiss- 
 ing serpents." Again, " he would knock a map 
 down as if overcome with emotion, and at critical 
 moments a student in the back benches would 
 accompany him on a penny trumpet." But, these 
 little diversions notwithstanding, his scholars 
 learnt Greek from him, and perhaps something of 
 manliness, which was even more valuable. 
 
 A bright sketch of Henry Calderwood, who 
 was Professor of Moral Philosophy, and died in 
 1897, follows the memories of Blackie and his 
 class-room. Calderwood is commended especially 
 for his method of getting into touch with the 
 mass of his students. The humorous side of the 
 subject would appear to have appealed especially 
 to Mr Barrie at least it is this side of the class 
 he presents to us. He strikes the bull's eye every 
 time he picks out a typical incident illustrative of 
 the humours of the class-room. One year there 
 was in the class a youth with a squeaky voice and 
 a stammer. " He sat on the back bench, and what 
 he wanted to know was something about the in- 
 finite. Every discussion day he took advantage 
 of a lull in the debate to squeak out, ' With regard 
 to the infinite,' and then could never get any 
 further. No one ever discovered what he wanted 
 enlightenment on about the infinite. He grew de- 
 spondent as the session wore on, but courageously 
 stuck to his point. Probably he is a soured man 
 now." 
 
 The picture of that youth with the squeaky voice
 
 20 COLLEGE DAYS 
 
 who always stuck in his question is one that sticks 
 in the memory. 
 
 Calderwood in Barrie's time was foolish enough 
 to play into the hands of his students by expressing 
 the opinion that there was a great deal of moral 
 philosophy in " The Dead March in Saul." After this 
 many a budding philosopher would absent himself 
 from the class and send a letter to say he was away 
 listening to " The Dead March in Saul." The. same 
 amiable Professor was also in the habit of asking his 
 students to his house, and would have his ladies' 
 class to meet them. He saw the ladies into the cabs 
 himself. "It is the only thing I ever heard against 
 him," says the witty Barrie. 
 
 Professor Tait now one of the Edinburgh 
 veterans, for he accepted the chair of Natural 
 Philosophy in 1 860 was another of his teachers 
 who commanded the sincere respect of Barrie the 
 student. " Never, I think, can there be a more 
 superb demonstrator." Again : "It comes as 
 natural to his old students to say when they meet 
 ' What a lecturer Tait was ! ' as to an English- 
 man to joke about the bagpipes." But one would 
 gather from Barrie's reminiscences that it was Tait 
 the superb lecturer rather than Tait the man who 
 impressed him most, as he soon leaves the Pro- 
 fessor to pursue other memories. On the corner of 
 one of his college books he found a pencil note, 
 which read, "Walls got 2s. for T. & T. at Brown's, 
 1 6 Walker Street." He goes on to explain: "I 
 don't recall Walls, but T. & T. was short for
 
 COLLEGE DAYS 21 
 
 'Thomson & Tait's Elements of Natural Philosophy ' 
 (Elements !), better known in my year as the 
 ' Student's First Glimpse of Hades.' Evidently 
 Walls sold his copy, but why did I take such note 
 of the address ? I fear T. & T. is one of the 
 Books Which Have Helped Me." 
 
 We are left in some doubt as to whether our 
 student was greatly engrossed with the study of 
 Natural Philosophy, but there is ample evidence that 
 he was busy studying human nature. His sketch of 
 Lindsay, who assisted Tait in his experiments, is 
 capital. What a splendid Scot, of the dour, dogged 
 kind, he must have been ! When an experiment 
 would not come off, Tait would instruct Lindsay to 
 take the apparatus to an anteroom; but Lindsay 
 would take it to his seat, and in moments when he 
 was not within range of the Professor's eye he would 
 potter away with the mechanism until whiz, bang, 
 the thing was working the experiment successful ! 
 Yet, when the class broke into a cheer Lindsay was 
 sitting with folded arms. Then Lindsay would re- 
 move the machine to the anteroom, and no one ever 
 knew whether he executed a little dance of triumph 
 on the other side of the door. Good old Lindsay ! 
 
 In Logic and Metaphysics Barrie studied under 
 Professor Campbell Fraser now an octogenarian 
 and Emeritus Professor, so that even in Barrie's day 
 his was a venerable figure. He is very amusing in 
 describing the struggles which his contemporaries 
 had with the meshes of metaphysics. " The Pro- 
 fessor glanced round slowly for an illustration," he
 
 22 COLLEGE DAYS 
 
 says. " Am I a table ?' A pained look travelled 
 over the class. Was it just possible that they were 
 all tables ? It is no wonder that the students who 
 do not go to the bottom during the first month of 
 metaphysics begin to give themselves airs strictly so 
 called. In the privacy of their room at the top of 
 the house they pinch themselves to see if they are 
 still there." 
 
 He tells us a good deal about his own achieve- 
 ments in metaphysics. " As a metaphysician I was 
 something of a disappointment. I began well, stand- 
 ing, if I recollect aright, in the three examinations, 
 first, seventeenth, and seventy-seventh. ... I was 
 like the fountains in the quadrangle, which ran dry 
 towards the middle of the session." Eraser is the 
 editor of the great Berkeley that runs to so many 
 ponderous volumes. Barrie confesses that he never 
 tackled this magnum opus, but he read the small edition. 
 " There was one man in my year who really began 
 the large Berkeley, but after a time he was missing, 
 and it is believed that some day he will be found 
 flattened between the pages of the first volume." 
 But Barrie had one metaphysical triumph. He con- 
 vinced a medical student that he had no existence 
 strictly so called. " He got quite frightened, and 
 I can still see his white face as he sat staring at me 
 in the gloaming. This shows what metaphysics can 
 do." 
 
 Professor Chrystal came to the University in 
 Barrie's time, and the novelist had his mathematics 
 from him during his first year. Chrystal was a
 
 COLLEGE DAYS 23 
 
 terror to slow coaches. He set the pace with a 
 vengeance, and many were they who failed to keep 
 up with him. Barrie illustrates this characteristic 
 by a little parable. There was once an elderly 
 gentleman who read the Times every day from title 
 to imprint. He was stricken with fever for a fort- 
 night. When he recovered, he started reading the 
 Times where he had left off, and struggled valiantly 
 but unsuccessfully to catch up with the current issue. 
 "This is an allegory for the way these students 
 panted after Chrystal." One day a student dropped 
 a marble, and it rolled down the class-room steps to 
 the floor, where Chrystal stood with his back to 
 the class, writing on the blackboard. " ' Will the 
 student at the end of bench ten, who dropped that 
 marble, stand up ? ' All eyes dilated. He had 
 counted the falls of the marble from step to step. 
 Mathematics do not obscure the intellect." 
 
 But Barrie was evidently no more a success in 
 mathematics than in metaphysics. He makes the 
 following confession : 
 
 "I had never a passion for knowing that when 
 circles or triangles attempt impossibilities it is absurd ; 
 and x was an unknown quantity I was ever content 
 to walk round about. To admit to Chrystal that we 
 understood x was only a way he had of leading you 
 on to y and z. I gave him his chance, however, by 
 contributing a paper of answers to his first weekly 
 set of exercises. When the hour for returning the 
 slips came round, I was there to accept fame if so 
 it was to be with modesty ; and if it was to be
 
 24 COLLEGE DAYS 
 
 humiliation, still to smile. The Professor said there 
 was one paper, with an owner's name on it, which 
 he could not read, and it was handed along the class 
 to be deciphered. My presentiment that it was mine 
 became a certainty when it reached my hand ; but I 
 passed it on pleasantly, and it returned to Chrystal, 
 a Japhet that never found its father. Feeling that 
 the powers were against me, I then retired from the 
 conflict, sanguine that the teaching of my mathemati- 
 cal schoolmaster, the best that could be, would pull 
 me through. The Disowned may be going the round 
 of the class-room still." 
 
 The late Professor Sellar, who occupied the 
 Chair of Humanity in Barrie's college days, is the 
 only other University Professor who figures in his 
 group, and the sketch of him is very slight. The 
 others who go to make up the team of eleven are 
 Lord Rosebery (" The first time I ever saw Lord 
 Rosebery," says the imaginative Barrie, " was in 
 Edinburgh when I was a student, and I flung a 
 clod of earth at him. He was a peer ; those were 
 my politics "), the late Joseph Thomson, well-known 
 as an African explorer, R. L. Stevenson, and the 
 Rev. Walter C. Smith, D.D. So that of his eleven 
 heroes, only six are now alive. 
 
 Referring to Dr Walter Smith, the author of 
 0/rig Grange, Barrie gives us this interesting re- 
 miniscence : 
 
 "During the four winters another and I were 
 in Edinburgh we never entered any but Free 
 churches. This seems to have been less on account
 
 COLLEGE DAYS 25 
 
 of a scorn for other denominations than because we 
 never thought of them. We felt sorry for the 
 ' men ' who knew no better than to claim to be on 
 the side of Dr Macgregor. Even our Free kirks 
 were limited to two, St George's and the Free 
 High. After all, we must have been liberally- 
 minded beyond most of our fellows, for, as a 
 rule, those who frequented one of these churches 
 shook their heads at the other. It is said that Dr 
 Whyte and Dr Smith have a great appreciation of 
 each other. They, too, are liberally-minded." 
 
 Dr Whyte, of course, is his famous townsman. 
 Indeed, it is a moot question whether Kirriemuir folk 
 are not more proud of having produced Dr Whyte 
 than Dr Barrie for, thanks to St Andrews Univer- 
 sity, Barrie is an LL.D., though the prefix does not 
 commend itself to writers who have grown used 
 to plain Mr Barrie, or Barrie without the Mr one 
 does not care to talk of Mr Kipling or Mr Hardy, 
 any more than of Mr Shakespeare or Mr Dickens. 
 Barrie was a member of Dr Whyte's Bible-class 
 during his Edinburgh years. 
 
 Having thus briefly sketched the men who influ- 
 enced the future novelist in his college days, we 
 must not take leave of him at this interesting period 
 of his life without learning from himself just a little 
 more about the way in which some of his time was 
 spent outside the classes. He was a member of the 
 Debating Society. " We were the smallest society 
 in the University (he writes), and the longest- 
 winded, and I was once nearly expelled for not
 
 26 COLLEGE DAYS 
 
 paying my subscription. Our grand debate was, 
 ' Is the policy of the Government worthy the con- 
 fidence of this Society ? ' and we also read about six 
 essays on ' The Genius of Robert Burns ' ; but it 
 was on private business that we came out strongest. 
 The question that agitated us most was whether the 
 meetings should be opened with prayer, and the 
 men who thought they should would not so much 
 as look at the men who thought they should not." 
 
 He has a stringent memory for every quaint story 
 of those delightful days. One of the best tells how 
 a student outwitted the terrible Chrystal by a piece 
 of splendid audacity. " It was in an M.A. exam., 
 and the affrighted student found that he could not 
 read his neighbour's notes. Trusting to fortune, he 
 enclosed them with his own answers, writing at the 
 top, ' No time to write these out in ink, so enclose 
 them in pencil.' He got through j no moral." 
 
 Although the degree of comfort among the 
 students at Edinburgh was considerably higher than 
 at Aberdeen, there was a great amount of honest 
 poverty then and may be still. Hence, the de- 
 vices to keep "in funds" were sometimes more 
 ingenious than successful. A scheme which was 
 commended to Barrie's attention is thus humorously 
 described by him : " In the beginning of the session 
 you join the library, and soon you forget about 
 your pound (the entrance fee, which may be with- 
 drawn at any time) : you reckon without it. As 
 the winter closes in, and the coal-bunk empties j or 
 you find that five shillings a week for lodgings is
 
 COLLEGE DAYS 27 
 
 a dream that cannot be kept up ; or your coat 
 assumes more and more the colour identified with 
 spring ; or you would feast your friends for once 
 right gloriously ; or next Wednesday is your little 
 sister's birthday j you cower, despairing, over a 
 sulky fire. Suddenly you are on your feet all 
 aglow once more. What is this thought that sends 
 the blood to your head ? That library pound ! 
 You had forgotten you had a bank. Next morn- 
 ing you are at the University in time to help the 
 library door to open. You ask for your pound ; 
 you get it. Your hand mounts guard over the 
 pocket in which it rustles. So they say. I took 
 their advice and paid in my money ; then waited 
 exultingly to forget about it. In vain. I always 
 allowed for that pound in my thoughts. I saw it 
 as plainly, I knew its every feature as a schoolboy 
 remembers his first trout. Not to be hasty, I gave 
 my pound two months, and then brought it home 
 again. I had a fellow-student who lived across the 
 way from me. We railed at the library theory at 
 open windows over the life of the street ; a beautiful 
 dream, but mad, mad." 
 
 Ah ! these were glorious days of hard living and 
 golden dreams. Lodgings did not quite supply even 
 the simplest comforts of home. A friend of those 
 days met Barrie in Fleet Street in after years, and 
 asked him if he remembered the landlady with 
 whom they quarrelled because she wore the novelist's 
 socks to church of a Sunday. " We found her out 
 one wet afternoon."
 
 28 COLLEGE DAYS 
 
 " As the M.A. drew nigh, students on their 
 prospects might have been farmers discussing the 
 weather," he tells us. And then he draws for us 
 this diverting but essentially truthful picture of 
 the student's hour of triumph : " Who has thrilled 
 as the student that with bumping heart strolls into 
 Middlemass's to order his graduate's gown ? He 
 hires it five shillings but the photograph to 
 follow makes it as good as his for life. Look at 
 him, young ladies, as he struts to the Synod Hall 
 to have M.A. tacked to his name. Dogs do not 
 dare bark at him. His gait is springy ; in Princes 
 Street he is as one who walks up stairs. Gone 
 to me are those student days for ever, but I can 
 still put a photograph before me of a ghost in 
 gown and cap, the hair straggling under the cap 
 as tobacco may straggle over the side of a tin 
 when there is difficulty in squeezing down the lid. 
 How well the little black jacket looks, how vividly 
 the wearer remembers putting it on ! He should 
 have worn a dress coat, but he had none. The 
 little jacket resembles one with the tails ofF, and, 
 as he artfully donned his gown, he backed against 
 the wall so that no one might know." 
 
 When Barrie left the University the only thing 
 clear to him was his determination to take to litera- 
 ture as a profession ; but the opportunity was not 
 yet at hand, though, as we shall presently see, it 
 was well on the way. The year before going to 
 Edinburgh he had written a three volume novel, 
 which a kind publisher offered to bring out if the
 
 COLLEGE DAYS 29 
 
 author paid him 100. Barrie had about sixpence 
 to spare at the time, but the fact which stabbed him 
 was that the publisher innocently referred to him as 
 a " clever lady." 
 
 " The malignancy of publishers, however, could 
 not turn me back," he says. " From the day on 
 which I first tasted blood in the garret my mind 
 was made up ; there could be no hum-dreadful- 
 drum profession for me ; literature was my game. 
 It was not highly thought of by those who wished 
 me well. I remember being asked by two maiden 
 ladies, about the time I left the University, what I 
 was to be, and when I replied brazenly, ' an author,' 
 they flung up their hands, and one exclaimed re- 
 proachfully, * and you an M.A. ! "
 
 EARLY DAYS IN JOURNALISM
 
 EARLY DAYS IN JOURNALISM 
 
 THE main distinction of Nottingham journalism lies 
 in the fact that it is associated with the name of Mr 
 J. M. Barrie. But to-day the famous author is only 
 a tradition in this pretty Midland town. His press 
 days take us back to a past era of local journalism, 
 and save for the old files of the Nottingham Journal 
 and his own novel, " When a Man's Single," there 
 is little or no evidence of his sojourn in Laceland. 
 There are one or two men still engaged on the 
 Nottingham Press, who were so employed during 
 Mr Barrie's brief connection with the Journal, but 
 they never met him, never even heard of him while 
 he was a fellow-labourer in the same field, and only 
 know him by his subsequent fame. This is readily 
 accounted for, as he led a very retired and secluded 
 life, meeting nobody outside his own office and 
 familiarising with few within. Writing on this 
 point to a Nottingham clergyman, who was lectur- 
 ing on his works nearly four years ago, Mr Barrie 
 says : " I thank you for your letter and wish you 
 had a better subject for your lecture. I don't 
 know of any personal article about myself that 
 is not imaginary and largely erroneous. But there 
 is really nothing to tell that would interest anyone. 
 Yes, I was in Nottingham for a year, and liked it 
 r 33
 
 34 EARLY DAYS 
 
 well, though I was known to scarce anyone. If 
 you ever met an uncouth stranger wandering in the 
 dark round the castle, ten or twelve years ago, his 
 appearance unimpressive, a book in each pocket, and 
 his thoughts three hundred miles due north, it might 
 have been the subject of your lecture." 
 
 The newspaper on which Mr Barrie was engaged 
 was discontinued and incorporated with a more suc- 
 cessful rival shortly after he went to London ; so 
 that his old colleagues have been scattered far and 
 wide. Mr Gilmour, now a successful barrister-at- 
 law, and private secretary to Lord Rosebery, was 
 formerly a reporter on the Journal, and he is the only 
 one with whom the old friendship seems to have 
 been maintained. Thus it is that you may ask in 
 vain of any on the local Press for a souvenir of the 
 distinguished author whom Nottingham once enter- 
 tained unawares. 
 
 Mr Barrie had graduated in 1882, and was in 
 Edinburgh for several months waiting, like Mi- 
 cawber, for something to turn up. The something 
 did turn up in the shape of an offer of the post of 
 leader-writer on the Nottingham Journal, this result- 
 ing from an application which Mr Barrie had made 
 in reply to an advertisement, which his sister, Jane 
 Ann, had discovered in some newspaper. The 
 salary offered was not princely : three guineas a 
 week, in fact. But it was a splendid opportunity 
 for putting his journalistic ability to the test, and in 
 February of 1883 he commenced his brief career as 
 a journalist in Nottingham.
 
 IN JOURNALISM 35 
 
 He writes as follows of this important event in 
 his career : " At the moment I was as uplifted as the 
 others, for the chance had come at last, with what 
 we all regarded as a prodigious salary, but I was 
 wanted in the beginning of the week, and it sud- 
 denly struck me that the leaders were the one thing 
 I had always skipped. Leaders ! How were they 
 written ? what were they about ? My mother was 
 already sitting triumphant among my socks, and I 
 durst not let her see me quaking. I retired to 
 ponder, and presently she came to me with the daily 
 paper. Which were the leaders ? she wanted to 
 know, so evidently I could get no help from her. 
 Had she any more newspapers ? I asked, and after 
 rummaging, she produced a few with which her 
 boxes had been lined. Others, very dusty, came 
 from beneath carpets, and lastly a sooty bundle was 
 dragged down the chimney. Surrounded by these 
 I sat down and studied how to become a journalist." 
 In some respects Nottingham is an ideal town for 
 a literary man j it presents so many interesting phases 
 of life that one who is a student of character cannot 
 fail to profit by a stay in it. Neither a great city 
 nor yet a sleepy town, it is something of both. 
 The bustle of commerce and money-making is seen 
 in its busy streets and its frequent factories ; but it 
 retains much of the old-fashioned village or parochial 
 spirit. The city and the village seem to be mixed 
 up in Nottingham, and though the village predomi- 
 nates it is slowly succumbing. The town is really 
 a congeries of large villages which have put their
 
 36 EARLY DAYS 
 
 arms around each other's necks and made the modern 
 Nottingham. The new and the gaudy mingle with 
 the old and the historic, the rude rustic lingers 
 beside the smart "city" man, the factory and the 
 warehouse fight an unequal battle with the orchard 
 and the garden, even to the very heart of the town. 
 Here, in a place of many beauties and not a few 
 blemishes, in a town with some intellectual aspira- 
 tions, and with tendencies in other directions, there 
 is much food for the mind of the novelist, and it is 
 evident that Nottingham has left its impress on Mr 
 Barrie. 
 
 The newspaper to which Mr Barrie had become 
 attached in 1883 was a very old-fashioned specimen 
 of journalism, yet during its long career as an inde- 
 pendent publication it was conducted with consider- 
 able ability, and would compare not unfavourably 
 with many existing dailies of the same class. Mr 
 Barrie was not editor-in-chief, but he was editor de 
 facto. He was allowed to write as much as he 
 liked and whatever he liked, his safety valve being 
 the foreman compositor, whose setting power that 
 is, the capacity of his men for putting into type the 
 matter produced by the literary staff seems to have 
 dictated the contents of the paper. 
 
 But the young leader-writer, or editor, or what- 
 ever we may term him, must have had a prodigious 
 capacity for work, as the columns of the Journal in 
 1883 and 1884 bear witness. In addition to writing 
 his daily editorial contributions, which often panned 
 out to two or three columns, he also contributed
 
 IN JOURNALISM 37 
 
 every Monday a special article signed " Hippo- 
 menes," and every Thursday the same signature 
 was appended to a column of sparkling notes headed 
 "The Modern Peripatetic." Of these various writ- 
 ings the most interesting to-day are, of course, the 
 special articles, many of which would bear republi- 
 cation. The range of topics to which the young 
 author turned his pen seems to have been without 
 limit ; he was equally at home discussing " The 
 Marriage Knot," or " The Midnight Oil," " An 
 Old Morality Play," or " Tom, Dick, and Harry." 
 A distinct interest in the stage is shown, his longest 
 and most amateurish production being cast in dra- 
 matic form, "The Complete Playgoer" (see Biblio- 
 graphy). These articles have all a rich literary 
 flavour, and prove their author a man of wide 
 reading. The notes of "The Modern Peripatetic" 
 are of unequal merit. Taken in the bulk they are 
 excellent journalism, and occasionally they rise to 
 the height of literature. Such little reflective 
 passages as this are above the usual newspaper 
 standard : 
 
 "The glue that keeps the world together is self- 
 esteem. It is terrible to think of what might happen 
 did Smith some time take it into his head that it was 
 not worth his while to try to out-do Robinson, or 
 Brown that life would still be worth living though 
 his income was fifty pounds per annum short of 
 Jones's. Self-esteem takes the form of a vehement 
 desire to rise superior to our neighbours, and in all 
 Great Britain there is not in all probability a single
 
 38 EARLY DAYS 
 
 street which does not contain at least one superior 
 family. A superior family is one that esteems itself 
 so very much that it cannot avoid looking down on 
 its surroundings, and it is perfectly happy in the 
 knowledge that its drawing-room is one foot by one 
 and a half larger than any other in the vicinity." 
 
 Or this : 
 
 " The candid critic is a gentleman of whom all 
 authors approve when he praises their last volume. 
 ' What I wanted,' they explain, ' is no gush of praise, 
 as from a friend, but simply a calm, just review, 
 slating my work if it deserves slating, commending 
 it if it deserves commendation.' Noble fellows ! 
 Then when the critic, who is very young in this 
 case, observes that the work bears distinct traces 
 of genius, is Shakespearian without Shakespeare's 
 coarseness, reminds one of Milton in his best 
 moments, and suggests Tennyson before the Poet 
 Laureate's hand lost its cunning, the author smiles 
 gently to himself, and repeats that what he wanted 
 was an honest criticism, and he thinks he has got it. 
 
 " But perhaps the candid critic is not young, or 
 has been eating lobster the night before the book 
 comes in for review, what then ? He quotes a 
 poetaster, maybe : 
 
 ' There is no sacred fire in it, 
 
 Nor much of homely sense and shrewd, 
 Imperfect lines, imperfect rhymes, 
 False quantities, mistaken chimes, 
 Yet all the feeling good.' 
 
 When this is the kind of criticism offered, the in-
 
 IN JOURNALISM 39 
 
 dignant poet, before hanging himself, writes a letter 
 to the editor pointing out that his critic is a scoundrel, 
 who, etc., etc. In short, with ninety-nine out of 
 every hundred authors, ' simple justice ' means * in- 
 discriminate praise.' " 
 
 This is characteristic : 
 
 "People with blood in their veins no doubt look 
 upon a reception at Court as a much more serious 
 thing than the rabble, who have to be content with 
 water, but even after that is taken into consideration 
 it does seem a trifle ridiculous that the possibility of 
 royal displeasure should be sufficient to break off a 
 match. For my own part, I am very ready to admit 
 that England has seldom had a better Sovereign than 
 the present one, but as for there being any honour 
 in being received by her at Court, I don't see it. If 
 I saw the whole Royal Family coming up one street 
 I should glide into another, and mean no disrespect 
 to them." 
 
 Here is an echo of his college days : 
 
 " I remember being invited, with a batch of other 
 undergraduates, once to assist at a banquet given 
 by a college professor to his private lady students. 
 When I know that I am expected to talk to young 
 ladies, I prepare some half-dozen suitable remarks 
 to fire off at intervals, and I was on the point of 
 commencing number one, which was no doubt of a 
 frivolous nature, to the genius who was placed by 
 my side, when she raised her saucer eyes, and asked 
 me eagerly whether I did not think that Berkeley's 
 Immaterialism was founded on an ontological mis-
 
 40 EARLY DAYS 
 
 conception. I contrived to whisper that such had 
 always been my secret impression, then quietly 
 fainted, and was sent home to be bled." 
 
 There is subtle humour in the following : 
 
 " A great deal of nonsense will be talked over 
 the Queen's book for the next nine days. It is said 
 that too many benefits were showered upon John 
 Brown, but that is nonsense. In the new book the 
 Queen tells how she presented her attendant on one 
 occasion with an oxidised silver biscuit-box, which 
 drew tears from his eyes and the exclamation that 
 this was too much. * God knows it is not,' is Her 
 Majesty's remark, and I cannot see that it was." 
 
 This is also a good specimen of Mr Barrie's 
 capacity for delicately exaggerating a story in a 
 semi- Yankee fashion, and yet without the boister- 
 ousness of the American humorist. His effects, 
 though striking and laughter-compelling, are always 
 attained with a delicacy of touch which no trans- 
 Atlantic " funny-man" can ever hope to equal : 
 
 " A public-meeting friend of my acquaintance 
 used to attend every meeting in his neighbourhood 
 for the purpose of calling out * Hear, hear,' ' Ques- 
 tion,' ' Order,' and ' No, no,' and always turned to 
 the newspapers of the next day with anxiety to see 
 if his share in the proceedings had been reported. 
 Where they were attended to he carefully pre- 
 served copies of the newspapers, and there can 
 be little doubt that this is the most singular case 
 of literary vanity known since the introduction of 
 printing."
 
 IN JOURNALISM 41 
 
 One more extract from these early writings of 
 our distinguished author is worth quoting : 
 
 " The scene was a law court in Paris, and an 
 eloquent young advocate was pleading the cause of 
 his client in a way that brought tears to the eyes of 
 many of his hearers. The speech was recited from 
 memory, and the pleader had taken the precaution 
 of distributing printed copies among the reporters, 
 so that his speech should read properly in the morn- 
 ing's newspapers. * And now,' he exclaimed, ' I feel 
 myself wholly unworthy to occupy the proud posi- 
 tion I hold this day. The onerous nature of the 
 task makes me tremble lest I should not do my 
 unhappy client justice, and I would to God that 
 an abler advocate would take my place.' Here he 
 faltered, put his handkerchief to his eyes, and seemed 
 overcome with emotion. Unfortunately one of the 
 reporters did not understand, and fearing that the 
 lawyer had forgotten what came next, he hurriedly 
 looked up the place in his copy of the speech to 
 prompt him. ' But the tears I see now,' he ex- 
 claimed in a loud whisper, ' in the eyes of my 
 unhappy client, nerve me to the task.' Of course, 
 the tables were dissolved in laughter, and the elo- 
 quent pleader found that untimely interruption had 
 been sufficient to rob him of a reputation." 
 
 In these columns of obiter dicta, Mr Barrie occa- 
 sionally attempted verse, and even endeavoured to 
 give renderings of Horace ; but it would be wrong 
 to say that he wooed the tuneful Muse with any 
 measure of success. Although these early efforts
 
 42 EARLY DAYS 
 
 would make excellent " copy " if reproduced to- 
 day, we shall not seek to disturb their repose in the 
 forgotten files of the old Journal. 
 
 I cannot agree with Dr Robertson Nicoll that 
 Mr Barrie's hand is not traceable in the " leaders " 
 which he wrote for the Journal. One could scarcely 
 fail to recognise it in such a passage as this, which I 
 take from the " first leader" in the Journal of 1 2th 
 January 1884 : 
 
 " There are optimists and pessimists all over this 
 miserable world. The optimists believe that every- 
 thing is on the road to being better, and take a 
 cheerful view of civilised society. They know that 
 men have made serious mistakes in the past, and 
 will continue to make them to the end of the 
 chapter, but, taking one thing with another, they 
 are firmly convinced that mankind is advancing, and 
 that this wretched world is not a bad place to live 
 in especially after dinner. The pessimists take the 
 gloomiest view of matters. Everything is awry and 
 out of joint. Property is not diffused as it ought to 
 be, nor is wealth. Providence will persist in ram- 
 ming round men into square holes and square men 
 into round holes. The rich have it all their own 
 way, the poor are nowhere. [I have always under- 
 stood they were everywhere !] Society is sitting on 
 a powder magazine which some fine morning will go 
 off with a crash and wreck the work of ages. No- 
 thing is as it ought to be. Men are not fed as they 
 should be, nor housed, nor taught. The earth is an 
 ante-chamber to hell, and the sons of man are whirled
 
 IN JOURNALISM 43 
 
 through space at the rate of 60,000 miles an hour, 
 with their God's face averted from them." 
 
 Mr Barrie seems to have had two pet subjects 
 for editorial treatment : Mr Chamberlain and Mr 
 Henry George. Russel of the Scotsman told a 
 lady once that when he was hard up for a topic 
 he just had another " dirl at Dr Chalmers." Mr 
 Barrie returns again and again to the consideration 
 of various phases of the political protagonist, and 
 he is never tired of denouncing Mr George's Single 
 Tax. They seem to have been as useful to him as 
 Dr Chalmers was to Russel. But, withal, Barrie's 
 editorial work, from his first week onward, shows a 
 remarkable ripeness of judgment and an easy jour- 
 nalistic style the " we "-ing not being overdone, 
 as is so often the case with young editors for 
 one who suddenly found himself a leader-writer 
 with only a week's preparation for the work. 
 There is nothing very surprising in this, however, 
 as the production of " leading articles " is one of 
 the most absurdly easy things to a man of common 
 sense. It is more difficult to write a bright para- 
 graph than a leader that would pass muster even 
 in the Times ; and I am glad to think that Barrie 
 like many another who has turned out hundreds of 
 editorial columns seems to have entertained some 
 measure of contempt for the work. " A devout 
 lady," he writes, " to whom some friend had pre- 
 sented one of my books, used to say when asked 
 how she was getting on with it, * Sal, it's dreary, 
 weary, uphill work, but I've wrastled through with
 
 44 EARLY DAYS 
 
 tougher jobs in my time, and, please God, I'll 
 wrastle through with this one.' It was in this 
 spirit, I fear, though she never told me so, that my 
 mother wrestled for the next year or more with 
 my leaders, and indeed I was always genuinely sorry 
 for the people I saw reading them." He remarks 
 elsewhere that Margaret Ogilvy gratefully gave 
 up reading leaders the day her son ceased to write 
 them. She was a woman of unfailing good sense. 
 
 It is well known, of course, that " When a Man's 
 Single " is the result of Mr Barrie's stay in Notting- 
 ham. With the merits of the book as a novel I 
 am not dealing, for the moment, and will only say 
 that it strikes me as rather juvenile, the character 
 of Rob Angus quite failing to convince. Its real 
 value lies in the more or less accurate glimpses it 
 affords behind the scenes of literary life; for, though 
 the author's journalistic experience at the time he 
 wrote the book was inconsiderable and very cir- 
 cumscribed, he has the true novelist's genius for 
 typifying, and, if we exclude Rob Angus, the 
 literary characters of the story may be described 
 as studies from life. One might say this is like 
 criticising " Hamlet " with the Prince left out ; but 
 I believe that what I state will be endorsed by those 
 who are familiar with literary life behind the scenes. 
 The Silchester of the book is Nottingham, and the 
 Daily Mirror is the old Nottingham Journal; but 
 beyond the incidents relating to the experiences of 
 Rob Angus on the Mirror staff, there is practically 
 no attempt at " local colour." The description of
 
 IN JOURNALISM 45 
 
 the Mirror headquarters is very much in keeping 
 with the reality. 
 
 " The Mirror's offices," writes the author, " are 
 nearly crushed out of sight in a block of buildings 
 left in the middle of a street for town councils to 
 pull down gradually. This island of houses, against 
 which a sea of humanity beats daily, is cut in two 
 by a narrow passage, off which several doors open. 
 One of these leads up a dirty stair to the editorial 
 and composing rooms of the Daily Mirror, and down 
 a dirty stair to its printing-rooms. It is the door at 
 which you may hammer for an hour without any- 
 one's paying the least attention." 
 
 The block of buildings still remains, and there is 
 no reason to suppose that the Corporation will seek 
 to pull it down any time within the life of the pre- 
 sent generation, as it is an exaggeration to say that 
 it stands in the middle of a street, and the ocean bed 
 which carries the " sea of humanity " on either side 
 is wide enough for all practical purposes. "The 
 dirty stair" is still there, though a recent coat of 
 paint has temporarily falsified the adjective, and the 
 narrow passage where Rob Angus lingered so long 
 still cuts the island of houses in two. 
 
 The interior of the old office is more interesting, 
 if less imposing than its elevation. All the fittings 
 and appliances used in the production of the Mirror 
 have vanished long since, but in Mr Barrie's pages 
 these have found something like immortality. 
 
 "The editor's room had a carpet, and was chiefly 
 furnished with books sent in for review. It was
 
 46 EARLY DAYS 
 
 more comfortable, but more gloomy-looking than 
 the reporters' room, which had a long desk running 
 along one side of it, and a bunk for holding coals 
 and old newspapers on the other side. The floor 
 was so littered with newspapers, many of them still 
 in their wrappers, that, on his way between his seat 
 and the door, the reporter generally kicked one or 
 more into the bunk. It was in this way, unless an 
 apprentice happened to be otherwise disengaged, 
 that the floor was swept. 
 
 " In this room were a reference library and an old 
 coat. The library was within reach of the sub- 
 editor's hand, and contained some fifty books which 
 the literary staff could consult, with the conviction 
 that they would find the page they wanted missing. 
 The coat had hung unbrushed on a nail for many 
 years, and was so thick with dust that John Milton 
 (the junior reporter) could draw pictures on it with 
 his finger. According to legend it was the coat 
 of a distinguished novelist, who had once been a 
 reporter on the Mirror, and had left Silchester 
 unostentatiously by his window." 
 
 The slight touch of obvious caricature in this 
 description does not interfere with its truth. Any- 
 one who has had experience of journalistic life 
 in the office of a newspaper of the standing of 
 the Mirror will immediately recognise the fidelity 
 of the picture. That reporters' room, with the long 
 desk running along one side of it, its old news- 
 papers, and the economical method of sweeping its 
 floor, are all familiar to the scribe who has toiled
 
 IN JOURNALISM 47 
 
 on provincial newspapers, and on the London press 
 for that matter. And where is the journalist who 
 has not experienced over and over again the delight 
 of turning to the scanty reference library, to find 
 that the page he requires in one or other of its 
 books has been destroyed, to light a pipe, perhaps, 
 or through a mishap to the junior reporter when 
 he has been trying how many volumes he could 
 balance on his nose ? The coat, too : where is 
 there a reporters' room without that coat, and its 
 tradition ? 
 
 The charm of the Mirror staff, who, for the most 
 part, belong to a bygone Bohemian era, is only 
 heightened by the artistic touch of caricature with 
 which the author rivets them in our memory. Chief 
 amongst them stands Penny, the foreman compos- 
 itor. He was the most important man in the office, 
 not excepting Mr Licquorish, the editor (an entirely 
 fictitious character), and Barrie depicts him as " a 
 lank, loosely-jointed man of forty, who shuffled 
 about the office in slippers, ruled the compositors 
 with a loud voice and a blustering manner, and was 
 believed to be in Mr Licquorish's confidence. His 
 politics were respect for the House of Lords, because 
 it rose early, enabling him to have it set before 
 supper time." Penny is a wonderfully typical char- 
 acter, he might serve for any foreman compositor ; 
 and his scenes with Protheroe, the sub-editor, are 
 pictures of events which are happening in hundreds 
 of newspaper offices every day and every night. 
 For your true foreman believes he is autocrat of
 
 48 EARLY DAYS 
 
 the press, and will not alter the time of getting 
 his stereo plates ready for the machines though the 
 heavens should fall. I know of one of the fraternity 
 who actually refused to correct the proof of his 
 editor's leader because it had not been returned in 
 time and that editor was the proprietor of the 
 paper, a baronet and a member of Parliament to 
 boot ! 
 
 Penny not only ruled the Mirror compositors, he 
 domineered the sub-editor, and, if the truth must 
 be told, Mr Barrie, the nominal editor of the paper, 
 was at the mercy of this picturesque tyrant. There 
 were occasions, however, when Penny's nature under- 
 went a change. " Sometimes about two o'clock in 
 the morning Penny would get sociable, and the sub- 
 editor was always glad to respond. On these occa- 
 sions they talked with bated breath about the amount 
 of copy that would come in should anything happen 
 to Mr Gladstone ; and the sub-editor, if he was in 
 a despondent mood, predicted it would occur at 
 midnight. Thinking of this had made him a con- 
 servative." Mr Gladstone held on with remarkable 
 tenacity to the silver thread of life for many years 
 after the Journal had disappeared. 
 
 The original of Penny, who, in person, is not to 
 be recognised in the novelist's fancy portrait, is, 
 I believe, still alive ; but he gave up the struggle 
 with editors, sub -editors, and smaller newspaper 
 fry, long ago, and is now spending an age of ease 
 as the proprietor of a neat little hotel in one of 
 the suburbs of Nottingham. He is about the only
 
 IN JOURNALISM 49 
 
 one in Nottingham who remembers anything of 
 Barrie, and in the course of a chat with him a 
 year or two ago he told me that in those far-off 
 days Barrie gave him the impression of one who, 
 behind a shyness of manner, had the capacity for 
 winning success. Though others, who might have 
 been expected to appreciate the literary talent of 
 which Barrie gave unmistakable evidence during 
 his connection with the Journal, were blind to his 
 qualities, or not sufficiently interested in his work 
 to recognise its promise, the living representative 
 of Penny assured me that he always felt Barrie 
 would make his mark ! Depend upon an old comp 
 for nosing out literary talent especially after it has 
 been discovered. But Penny can claim some slight 
 share in Barrie's early literary labours, as one of 
 the first articles which our novelist managed to 
 " place" in London was the description of a descent 
 of a coal mine in the neighbourhood of Clifton 
 Grove which Kirk White's muse has rendered 
 famous and on this expedition Penny (so he told 
 me) acted as guide, philosopher and friend to the 
 young journalist. Penny's devotion to literature, 
 however, had not, when I met him, extended so 
 far as " When a Man's Single," which he confessed 
 he had not read ! But he meant to read it some 
 day when he got time and he would like to see 
 Barrie again, "before I peg out"; for the snows 
 of many winters were gathering on the old com- 
 positor's head. 
 
 Billy Kirker, the chief reporter of the Mirror,
 
 50 EARLY DAYS 
 
 represents a journalistic type which is not yet extinct. 
 He was a thorough Bohemian, " his ring, it was 
 noticed, generally disappeared about the middle of 
 the month, and his scarf-pin followed it by the 
 twenty-first. With the beginning of the month they 
 reappeared together. The literary staff was paid 
 monthly." And, oh ! how many Billy Kirkers I 
 have known ; always " talking shop," drawing lurid 
 pictures of the inadequacy of their own staffs as 
 compared with their rivals', in order to show how 
 much more and how much better work they can 
 produce with their limited resources. " Enterprise 
 without outlay is the motto of this office," were 
 among the first words of Billy's greeting to Rob 
 Angus when he had summoned the courage to 
 mount that dirty stair and face his fate inside the 
 Mirror office. Here again Barrie is absolutely faithful 
 to fact. These words might well have been sub- 
 stituted for the legend " Pro Rege, Lege, Grege," 
 which adorned the editorial page of the old Journal. 
 But Billy Kirker had no ill-will to his deadly rival 
 on the opposition paper, as he explained with charm- 
 ing naivete to Rob. "Oh, no," said Kirker, " we 
 help each other. For instance, if Daddy Walsh, the 
 Argus chief, is drunk, I help him, and if I am drunk, 
 he helps me. I am going down to the ' Frying Pan ' 
 to see him now." 
 
 Before going to the " Frying Pan " he borrowed 
 five shillings from the new recruit from Thrums. 
 The " Frying Pan " is the fictitious name for a 
 small public-house of very uninviting aspect, which
 
 IN JOURNALISM 51 
 
 at a recent date still stood near to the Daily Express 
 office, but latterly frequented by a class to whom 
 Barrie is a closed book. Time was when a con- 
 vivial crew, known as the Kettle Club, whose chief 
 delights were spinning yarns and hard drinking, had 
 their headquarters there. Rumour says that Barrie 
 was once induced to visit this home of intellectual 
 refinement ; but rumour could have given even the 
 members of the Kettle Club points and a beating. 
 To-day, the so-called "Press House" is a tavern 
 a few yards removed from the " Frying Pan," and 
 there penny-a-liners and half-fledged reporters drink 
 beer and fancy themselves full - blown journalists, 
 carrying down traditions of Billy Kirker and that 
 bright Bohemian band. But there are no Barries 
 among them.

 
 BEGINNINGS IN LITERATURE
 
 BEGINNINGS IN LITERATURE 
 
 IT is well known that Mr Barrie's start was like 
 that of so many others who have won their way to 
 greatness in the Republic of Letters : a brief spell of 
 Journalism, and then the plunge into Literature. 
 It is strange that Journalism, the faithful handmaiden 
 of Literature, should be contemned by those rare 
 ones who have managed to find a footing in the 
 literary world without her valuable assistance. And 
 there are even those who, having sneaked into the 
 upper storey by the stairway from the basement, 
 so to say, affect to despise the means by which they 
 mounted. 
 
 Barrie, however, is not of these ; he frankly and 
 thankfully records his indebtedness to Journalism, 
 which he so happily describes as " that grisette of 
 Literature, who has a smile and a hand for all be- 
 ginners, welcoming them at the threshold, teaching 
 them so much that is worth knowing, introducing 
 them to the other lady whom they have worshipped 
 from afar, showing them even how to woo her, and 
 then bidding them a bright God-speed he were an 
 ingrate who, having had her joyous companionship, 
 no longer flings her a kiss as they pass." 
 
 He even goes on to say : " But though she bears 
 no ill-will when she is jilted, you must serve faith- 
 
 55
 
 56 BEGINNINGS 
 
 fully while you are hers, and you must seek her out 
 and make much of her, and, until you can rely on 
 her good-nature (note this), not a word about the 
 other lady. When at last she took me in, I grew 
 so fond of her that I called her by the other's name, 
 and even now I think at times that there was more 
 fun in the little sister." 
 
 From this we gather that Barrie considers that a 
 man who determines to become a struggler after liter- 
 ary fame through the gateway of Journalism must win 
 his spurs as a journalist before attempting the greater 
 things beyond. This is a proposition which most 
 journalists will concede. It might also be thought 
 to carry with it another proposition : that the man 
 who is a journalist should, so long as he continues in 
 that occupation, serve none other than the " grisette." 
 In other words, the journalist should be one who 
 does not sigh to see his ephemeral writings re- 
 printed with wide margins and bound in art-linen, 
 but is content each day, each week, to devote his 
 pen to whatever the voice of the flying day may call 
 for. 
 
 When Rob Angus, the hero of " When a Man's 
 Single," secures an editorial post on the Daily Wire, 
 the editor says, " You suit me very well, Angus. 
 You have no lurking desire to write a book, have 
 you ? " " No," Rob answered ; " since I joined the 
 Press that ambition seems to have gone from me." 
 So this idea is evidently no new thing in the mind 
 of Mr Barrie. I remember his friend Dr Robertson 
 Nicoll saying that no really busy journalist has tim e
 
 IN LITERATURE 57 
 
 to produce books which are anything more than 
 reprints of his worthiest journalism. 
 
 But there is no rule without its exception, and 
 Barrie himself furnishes a brilliant example of the 
 journalist who was an author, in the best sense of 
 the word, from the very outset, and an able jour- 
 nalist at the same time. I do not believe that he 
 was ever one day, during his period of leader-writ- 
 ing on the Nottingham Journal, without a thought of 
 seeing his name on the back of a book. He was 
 using Journalism as the bridge across that brawling, 
 abysmal stream which swirls past the fair realms of 
 Literature, that stream which has drowned so many 
 who have sought to cross without the bridge. Yet 
 he did not scramble over as though the bridge were 
 a structure of which he was afraid, a thing he 
 despised ; he strode boldly and confidently, even 
 enjoying the passage, arriving unruffled and in 
 excellent condition for the conflict on the other 
 side. 
 
 It was during his quiet days or nights, rather 
 of conscientious leader-writing on a provincial daily 
 paper that he was pluming his wings for the flight 
 to London (if I may be permitted one more meta- 
 phor). For then he sent forth to appreciative editors 
 in the Mecca of Letters some little sketches which 
 Fate had willed to be the foundations of his fame. 
 It is scarcely necessary to remind the reader that it 
 was largely owing to the encouragement of Mr 
 Frederick Greenwood, then editing the St James's 
 Gazette, that the young leader-writer set resolutely
 
 58 BEGINNINGS 
 
 to work on that rich vein he had struck in the first 
 "Thrums" sketch which Mr Greenwood accepted 
 and published in his paper. That was entitled 
 " An Auld Licht Community," and appeared in the 
 St James's of November 17, 1884. 
 
 He sent some articles on other subjects to the 
 same editor, but these were declined. A second 
 Auld Licht sketch was, however, immediately wel- 
 comed, and Barrie already began to feel he was 
 making good progress across that aforesaid bridge. 
 Should he come up to London and venture on a 
 journalistic career ? he asked Mr Greenwood. Note 
 that he was still far from being done with Journalism. 
 The editor replied that as he did not know whether 
 his contributor could do good work on anything but 
 Auld Lichts he could not advise him to desert his 
 humble desk in the provincial newspaper office. 
 But, like so many who ask for advice and then 
 disregard it, he took the bold step, and early in 
 1885 h e was another unit added to the vast throng 
 of London's men of the pen. 
 
 He tells the story himself in this way : " I wrote 
 and asked the editor if I should come to London, 
 and he said no, so I went, laden with charges from 
 my mother to walk in the middle of the street (they 
 jump out on you as you are turning a corner), never 
 to venture forth after sunset, and always to lock up 
 everything (I who could never lock up anything, 
 except my heart in company)." 
 
 There is a passage in "When a Man's Single" 
 that has all the appearance of autobiography, and I
 
 IN LITERATURE 59 
 
 cannot but think that Rob Angus's impressions of 
 London are nothing other than the thoughts which 
 Fleet Street awakened in the mind of J. M. Barrie 
 when he fared forth from the North determined to 
 make it, and all that it stands for, listen to him : 
 
 " A certain awe came upon Rob as he went down 
 Fleet Street on the one side, and up it on the other. 
 He could not resist looking into the faces of the 
 persons who passed him, and wondering if they 
 edited the Times. The lean man who was in such a 
 hurry that wherever he had to go he would soon be 
 there, might be a man of letters whom Rob knew 
 by heart, but perhaps he was only a broken journalist 
 with his eye on half-a-crown. The mild-looking 
 man whom Rob smiled at because, when he was 
 half-way across the street, he lost his head and was 
 chased out of sight by half-a-dozen hansom cabs, 
 was a war correspondent who had been so long in 
 Africa that the perils of a London crossing unmanned 
 him. The youth who was on his way home with a 
 pork chop in his pocket edited a society journal. 
 Rob did not recognise a distinguished poet in a little 
 stout man who was looking pensively at a barrowful 
 of walnuts, and he was mistaken in thinking that the 
 bearded gentleman who held his head so high must 
 be somebody in particular. Rob observed a pale 
 young man gazing wistfully at him, and wondered 
 if he was a thief or a sub-editor. He was merely an 
 aspirant who had come to London that morning to 
 make his fortune, and he took Rob for a leader- 
 writer at least. The offices, however, and even the
 
 60 BEGINNINGS 
 
 public buildings, the shops, the narrowness of the 
 streets, all disappointed Rob. The houses seemed 
 squeezed together for economy of space, like a 
 closed concertina. Nothing quite fulfilled his ex- 
 pectations but the big letter-holes in the district 
 postal offices. He had not been sufficiently long in 
 London to feel its greatest charm, which has been 
 expressed in many ways by poet, wit, business man, 
 and philosopher, but comes to this, that it is the only 
 city in the world in whose streets you can eat penny 
 buns without people's turning round to look at 
 you." 
 
 He had done work for others than Mr Green- 
 wood before coming to London, as he said in later 
 years at a dinner to Mr F. W. Robinson, the talented 
 novelist, who edited the now defunct Home Chimes, 
 in which not a few celebrated writers made early 
 appearances, that when he came to London it was 
 to him the place where Home Chimes was published. 
 But during those early days in London the St James's 
 was his mainstay, Mr Greenwood his patron saint. 
 He wrote hundreds of articles on all sorts of subjects 
 for its pages ; " My Lady Nicotine," " Auld Licht 
 Idylls," " A Window in Thrums," were largely re- 
 prints much revised from these contributions, and 
 there still remain buried in its old files the potential 
 contents of several other books. These, if he cared 
 to resuscitate them, would be most valuable pro- 
 perties to him, and though they would not enhance 
 his reputation I do not think they would in any 
 measure detract therefrom.
 
 IN LITERATURE 6r 
 
 As a good specimen of his journalistic humour I 
 should like to quote a few paragraphs from a very 
 diverting sketch entitled "The Strange Case of Sir 
 George Trevelyan and Mr Otto," which appeared 
 in the St James's Gazette on July 29, 1887, as a 
 jeu ffesprit on the occasion of Sir George Otto 
 Trevelyan's successful contest of the Bridgeton 
 Division of Glasgow, following upon his return to 
 the Gladstonian.fold, which he had quitted with Mr 
 Chamberlain and others in 1 886. It is seldom that 
 a political contest calls forth such delicate satire. 
 
 " Some curious stories," Mr Barrie wrote, " are 
 afloat in Glasgow about Sir George Trevelyan. 
 While he was speaking at a certain temperance 
 institute on Monday an elderly lady, whose position 
 near the platform gave her a good view of him, 
 suddenly flung up her hands and fainted. At the 
 hotel where Sir George is staying it is said that 
 three of the servants have left already one in con- 
 vulsions. It is also stated that the Gladstone com- 
 mittee are in a very perturbed state of mind." 
 
 A reporter is said to have interviewed the lady 
 who fainted, the three servants, Sir George's valet, 
 and a Mr Otto, and had gathered strange informa- 
 tion. Tagg, the boots at the hotel, had seen Mr 
 Otto in the house, but was certain that he never 
 arrived. 
 
 '"Sir George and Mr Otto are very like each 
 other ? ' 'I suppose so ; but you can easily dis- 
 tinguish them. Mr Otto is smaller and meaner- 
 looking, and his clothes are too large for him.'
 
 62 BEGINNINGS 
 
 "'Will you tell me why you left the hotel so 
 hurriedly ? ' 'I was frightened.' 
 
 " Why ? ' 'I don't know. Yes, it was Mr Otto 
 who frightened me.' 
 
 "'Tell me how.' 'I don't like to. Sir George 
 had told me to knock him at eight and bring him 
 his letters. One morning I took them as usual. I 
 gave them to him and retired. When I got down- 
 stairs I found that I had forgotten one, so I ran back 
 and gave it to him no, not to him, to Mr Otto.' 
 
 '"Then Mr Otto was in the room? I thought 
 you had never seen them together ? ' ' Mr Otto was 
 in the room, but Sir George had disappeared.' 
 
 " The last person interviewed was Bolton, Sir 
 George's valet. On my way downstairs I met 
 Bolton, and mentioned that I had just left Mr Otto. 
 ' Not in No. 27 ?' he cried anxiously. ' Yes,' I 
 said. He looked curiously at me, and then ex- 
 plained, in some excitement, that he would not 
 enter the room. Bolton is an intelligent man, and 
 has the reputation of being very reserved. He 
 seemed glad, however, to have someone to talk to. 
 
 '"I won't stand it any longer,' he said ; ' I shall 
 leave.' 
 
 " ' But Sir George is a good master, is he not ? ' 
 ' He is the best of masters, but as for that Otto ' 
 
 "'When did you see Mr Otto first?' 'About 
 six months ago. That was at the time Sir George 
 was unwell.' 
 
 " What was the matter with him ? ' ' The doc- 
 tors said it all came of drinking too much water.'
 
 IN LITERATURE 63 
 
 " ' Did Mr Otto visit him at that time ? ' ' Visit 
 him ? I thought you knew all about it. How can 
 a man visit himself ? ' 
 
 " ' But Sir George and Mr Otto are not the same 
 persons ? ' 'I don't know about that. All I can 
 say is that another week of this will drive me mad. 
 But that is Sir George calling ; I must go.' 
 
 " ' It cannot be Sir George ; he is not in the 
 hotel.' 'Yes, he is, in No. 27. Did you not see 
 the water on the table ? ' 
 
 " ' Stop a moment. You can tell me, perhaps, 
 what Sir George's politics are ? ' ' He is a staunch 
 Unionist.' 
 
 " ' And Mr Otto ? ' 'He is an out-and-out Glad- 
 stonian.' " 
 
 The squib caused Sir George some annoyance, as 
 it was quoted by the Glasgow Herald the day before 
 the election, and some Glasgow folk didn't quite see 
 the humour of it. The local Mail, it is alleged, 
 seriously stated that "there is not an atom of fact 
 in it." 
 
 One of the earliest friendships which Barrie 
 formed after coming to London was that of Mr 
 Alexander Riach, then one of the " young lions " 
 of the Daily Telegraph, a Scotsman who, unlike the 
 majority of his race that come " sooth," went back 
 to the auld country to edit the Scotsman's offspring, 
 the Edinburgh Evening Dispatch one of the smartest 
 evening newspapers ever produced. It was soon 
 after their London friendship was formed that Mr 
 Riach went north and he enrolled Barrie amongst
 
 64 BEGINNINGS 
 
 the contributors who were to stamp the Dispatch 
 with a distinct individuality from its first issue. For 
 several years, Barrie's pen was in weekly evidence 
 in the pages of the Dispatch, his " specials" appear- 
 ing usually on Wednesdays >and Fridays. For the 
 most part his contributions were of topical, and 
 sometimes purely local, interest ; but many were of 
 the same type as his work in the St James's, worthy 
 of preservation. They were always marked by his 
 shrewd knowledge of humanity and his unfailing 
 humour. A few extracts may be appropriately 
 introduced here. 
 
 There is much humour and a considerable degree 
 of truth in these " Rules for Carving" : 
 
 Rule I. // is not good form to climb on to the table. 
 There is no doubt a great temptation to this. When 
 you are struggling with a duck, and he wobbles 
 over just as you think you have him, you forget 
 yourself. The common plan is not to leap upon the 
 table all at once. This is the more usual process. 
 The carver begins to carve sitting. By-and-by he 
 is on his feet, and his brow is contracted. His face 
 approaches the fowl, as if he wanted to inquire 
 within about everything except that the duck is 
 reluctant to yield any of its portions. One of his 
 feet climbs on to his chair, then the other. His 
 knees are now resting against the table, and, in 
 his excitement, he, so to speak, flings himself upon 
 the fowl. This brings us to 
 
 Rule II. Carving should not be made a matter of brute 
 force. It ought from the outset to be kept in mind
 
 IN LITERATURE 65 
 
 that you and the duck are not pitted against each 
 other in mortal combat. Never wrestle with any 
 dish whatever ; in other words keep your head, and 
 if you find yourself becoming excited, stop and 
 count a hundred. This will calm you, when you 
 can begin again. 
 
 Rule HI. // ivill not assist you to call the fowl 
 names. This rule is most frequently broken by a 
 gentleman carving for his own family circle. If 
 there are other persons present, he generally man- 
 ages to preserve a comparatively calm exterior, just 
 as the felon on the scaffold does ; but in privacy he 
 breaks out in a storm of invective. If of a sarcastic 
 turn of mind, he says that he has seen many a duck 
 in his day, but never a duck like this. It is double- 
 jointed. It is so tough that it might have come over 
 to England with the Conqueror. 
 
 Rule IV. Don't hast when it is all over. You 
 must not call the attention of the company to the 
 fact that you have succeeded. Don't exclaim ex- 
 ultingly, " I knew I would manage it," or "I never 
 yet knew a duck that I couldn't conquer somehow." 
 Don't exclaim in a loud gratified voice how you did 
 it, nor demonstrate your way of doing it by pointing 
 to the debris with the carving knife. Don't even be 
 mock-modest, and tell everybody that carving is the 
 simplest thing in the world. Don't wipe your face 
 repeatedly with your napkin, as if you were in a 
 state of perspiration, nor talk excitedly, as if your 
 success had gone to your head. Don't ask your 
 neighbours what they think of your carving. Your
 
 66 BEGINNINGS 
 
 great object is to convince them that you look upon 
 carving as the merest bagatelle, as something that 
 you do every day and rather enjoy. 
 
 The following humorous observations on running 
 after a hat are in the same style as the above and 
 very characteristic of the author : 
 
 Some don't run. They pretend to smile when 
 they see their hat borne along on the breeze, and 
 glance at the laughing faces around in a way imply- 
 ing " Yes it is funny, and I enjoy the joke although 
 the hat is mine." Nobody believes you, but if this 
 does you good you should do it. You don't attempt 
 to catch your hat, as it were, on the wing. You 
 walk after it, smiling, as if you liked the joke the 
 more you think of it, and confident that the hat will 
 come to rest presently. You are not the sort of 
 man to make a fuss over a hat. You won't give the 
 hat the satisfaction of thinking that it can annoy you. 
 Strange though it may seem, there are idiots who 
 will join you in pursuit of the hat. One will hook 
 it with a stick, and almost get it, only not quite. 
 Another will manage to hit it hard with an umbrella. 
 A third will get his foot into it or on it. This does 
 not improve the hat, but it shows that there is a 
 good deal of the milk of human kindness flowing in 
 the street as well as water, and is perhaps pleasant to 
 think of afterwards. Several times you almost have 
 the hat in your possession. It lies motionless just 
 where it has dropped after coming in contact with a 
 hansom. Were you to make a sudden rush at it 
 you could have it, but we have agreed that you are
 
 IN LITERATURE 67 
 
 not that sort of man. You walk forward, stoop, 
 
 and . One reads how the explorer thinks he 
 
 has shot a buffalo dead, and advances to put his foot 
 proudly on the carcase, how the buffalo then rises, 
 and how the explorer then rises also. I have never 
 seen an explorer running after his hat (though I 
 should like to), but your experience is similar to his 
 with the buffalo. As your hand approaches the hat, 
 the latter turns over like a giant refreshed, and 
 waddles out of your reach. Once more your hand 
 is within an inch of it, when it makes off again. 
 There are ringing cheers from the audience on the 
 pavement, some of them meant for the hat, and the 
 others as an encouragement to you. Before you get 
 your hat you have begun to realise what deer- 
 stalking is, and how important a factor is the wind. 
 
 It may be that the following whimsical trifle is not 
 without an element of truth as applied to its author ; 
 for Mr Barrie has always been remarkable for his 
 youthful appearance : 
 
 If I were to go back to the place of my boyhood, 
 and find that it had forgotten me, I would probably 
 fling my hat into the air for joy. I have no such 
 
 luck. Every other summer or so I return to B 
 
 for a few days, and there are very few persons who 
 know that I have ever been away. My greatest trial 
 
 in B is to meet the two Miss F.'s, two old 
 
 maiden ladies, who do not seem to realise that the 
 
 years glide on. It was near B that I was at 
 
 school, and the Miss F.'s thought I was still there 
 when I had been for years at Edinburgh University.
 
 68 BEGINNINGS 
 
 Always, when we met in High Street of B , they 
 
 asked me how I was getting on at the Grammar 
 School this year, and for a time I explained that 
 I was now in Edinburgh. They expressed surprise 
 at my going there so young, at which I flushed ; and 
 then the next time we met they asked again how I 
 was liking the Grammar School. In time I gave 
 them up, and when they inquired how I was getting 
 on at the Grammar School, I merely said that I was 
 liking it very well. All this has led to complications, 
 for in my last year at Edinburgh the Miss F.'s dis- 
 covered that I really was at the University, and 
 resented my not telling them that I was going. They 
 have always felt sure that this last year was my first 
 year at the University, and so they puzzle their 
 friends considerably by saying that I took my degree 
 after only being at Edinburgh for a few months. 
 How I did it no one can make out ; but I have been 
 told that at the tea-parties which the Miss F.'s give 
 the affair is frequently discussed, the hostesses going 
 into full details about remembering me quite well 
 as a schoolboy, precisely ten months before I gradu- 
 ated. The general impression, I understand, is that 
 I must be exceedingly clever ; indeed, the local paper 
 had a paragraph about my being the only case on 
 record of a student who had taken his M.A. in 
 one session. 
 
 It is interesting to observe how important this 
 connection with the Edinburgh Dispatch proved to 
 Barrie, illustrating as it does the oft-forgotten fact 
 that out of things which at the time seem trifling
 
 IN LITERATURE 69 
 
 and unimportant to ourselves, God may be forging 
 one of the most essential links in the chain of our 
 life. Barrie at this time was comparatively unknown, 
 but his work in the Dispatch had been designed to 
 bring him into relationship with one who was to 
 become an important factor in his career Dr 
 Robertson Nicoll. This brilliant journalist had 
 founded the British Weekly about six months before, 
 and was casting around for "a man who could write 
 in a lively way on Scottish ecclesiastical affairs," when, 
 lo ! he found in the Dispatch one day a burlesque 
 account of the Inverness Assembly of the Free 
 Church. As he himself has told, he lost no time 
 in putting himself into communication with the 
 writer, and on July 1 8th, 1887, an article entitled 
 " The Rev. Dr Whyte, By an Outsider," and signed 
 " Gavin Ogilvy " appeared on the front page of the 
 journal. This immediately drew attention to the 
 writer both north and south, and " Gavin Ogilvy " 
 forthwith became a weekly contributor whose pro- 
 ductions were eagerly looked forward to by a large 
 circle of intellectual readers. 
 
 But at this time the possibilities of Thrums were 
 only seen by Barrie as in a glass darkly, and he 
 had a vague fear that he might soon exhaust his 
 subject "an' syne whar wad he be?" we might 
 ask in his well-loved Doric. His mother, to whom 
 he owed his inspiration, and with whom he was 
 now able to live at Kirriemuir six months of the 
 year, was particularly apprehensive on this point. 
 "When I sent off that first sketch," he confesses,
 
 70 BEGINNINGS 
 
 " I thought I had exhausted the subject, but our 
 editor wrote that he would like something more of 
 the same, so I sent him a marriage, and he took 
 it, and then I tried him with a funeral, and he 
 took it, and really it began to look as if we had 
 him." But, farther on, he tells us that so long as 
 he confined himself to Auld Licht sketches his 
 mother " had a haunting fear that, even though the 
 editor remained blind to his best interests, some- 
 thing would one day go crack within me (as the 
 mainspring of a watch breaks), and my pen refuse 
 to write for ever more. * Ay, I like the article 
 brawly,' she would say timidly, ' but I'm doubting 
 it's the last.'" It was therefore a great relief to 
 Margaret Ogilvy when she found that her son, far 
 away there in London, was managing to diddle 
 his editor into publishing lots of contributions that 
 hadn't a word of the Scots tongue or a mention 
 of Thrums in them. But brilliant though much 
 of his other work may be, J. M. Barrie without 
 Thrums would have stood no great chance of fame. 
 When he was a boy, an old Thrums tailor "one 
 of the fullest men I have known, and quite the best 
 talker: he was a bachelor (he told me all that is 
 to be known about woman) " gave him these lines 
 of Cowley 
 
 " What can I do to be for ever known, 
 And make the age to come my own ? " 
 
 He found the answer to this momentous question 
 quite unexpectedly, as indeed all such riddles are 
 solved for us. It had never occurred to him that
 
 IN LITERATURE 71 
 
 his task lay so near his hand ; that to turn the lives 
 of his fellow-townsmen into literature was the way 
 that God had chosen for him to make the age 
 to come his own. Nearly eighteen months had 
 elapsed from the commencement of his career as 
 a writer for his daily bread, "before there came 
 to me, as unlocked for as a telegram, the thought 
 that there was anything quaint about my native 
 place." 
 
 In the introduction to the fine American edition 
 of his works Mr Barrie gives us the following valu- 
 able bit of autobiography, referring to " Auld Licht 
 Idylls " : " Many of the chapters," he says, " ap- 
 peared in a different form in the St James 1 Gazette, 
 and there is little doubt that they would never 
 have appeared anywhere but for the encouragement 
 given to me by the editor of that paper. It was 
 pressure from him that induced me to write a second 
 ' Idyll ' and a third after I thought the first com- 
 pleted the picture ; he set me thinking seriously of 
 these people, and, though he knew nothing of them 
 himself, may be said to have led me back to them. 
 It seems odd, and yet I am not the first nor the 
 fiftieth who has left Thrums at sunrise to seek the 
 life-work that was all the time awaiting him at home. 
 And we seldom sally forth a second time. I had 
 always meant to be a novelist, but London, I thought, 
 was the quarry. 
 
 " For long I had an uneasy feeling that no one 
 save the editor read my contributions, for I was 
 leading a lonely life in London, and not another
 
 72 BEGINNINGS 
 
 editor could I find in the land willing to print the 
 Scotch dialect. The magazines, Scotch and Eng- 
 lish, would have nothing to say to me I think I 
 tried them all with ' The Courting of T'nowhead's 
 Bell,' but it never found shelter until it got within 
 book-covers. In time, however, I found another 
 paper, the British Weekly, with an editor as bold as 
 my first (or shall we say he suffered from the same 
 infirmity ?). He revived my drooping hopes, and I 
 was again able to turn to the only kind of literary 
 work I now seemed to have much interest in. He let 
 me sign my articles, which was a big step for me, 
 and led to my having requests for work from else- 
 where, but always the invitations said ' not Scotch 
 the public will not read dialect.' By this time I had 
 put together from these two sources and from my 
 drawerful of rejected stories this book of ' Auld 
 Licht Idylls,' and in its collected form it again went 
 the rounds. I offered it to certain firms as a gift, 
 but they would not have it even at that. And then, 
 on a day came actually an offer for it from Messrs 
 Hodder and Stoughton. For this, and for many 
 another kindness, I had the editor of the British 
 Weekly to thank." 
 
 There is much in the above that should be en- 
 couraging to the beginner in letters, who only 
 knows as yet of the struggle, and to whom suc- 
 cess may seem a long way off. 
 
 The reading public has many prejudices, but it 
 is always willing to be conquered, and when the 
 " masterful man " comes along in the shape of a
 
 IN LITERATURE 73 
 
 master-author the conquest is sure to follow soon 
 or later. In Barrie's case it was comparatively a 
 short struggle, and two or three years after the 
 time when he found that Scots dialect was enough 
 to damn a book, he had succeeded in making it an 
 attraction ; presently its charms became the most 
 striking feature of contemporary letters, and what 
 we may call the Barrie school arose, to accomplish 
 feats unique in the literary history of the nineteenth 
 century.
 
 HIS FIRST BOOK
 
 HIS FIRST BOOK 
 
 MR BARRIE, more than any other Scottish writer, has 
 assisted in removing Sydney Smith's absurd stigma 
 about the necessity of a surgical operation to the 
 introduction of a joke into the head of a Scotsman 
 I suppose Smith wrote " Scotchman," a solecism of 
 which even Barrie is frequently guilty. For Mr 
 Barrie is not only humorous, which the Scots as a 
 people are, but he is also witty, which the Scots as 
 a people are not. There is a very subtle distinction 
 between wit and humour ; yet it is easy of illus- 
 tration. Sydney Smith was witty, so too was 
 Sheridan ; Dickens was a humorist ; Hood, like 
 Barrie, was at once a wit and a humorist ; even 
 Carlyle was a humorist. The difference lies here : 
 wit concerns more the outwardness of things, 
 humour lies deeper. The dictionary definitions of 
 the two qualities are very happy. Thus, wit is 
 described as " the association of ideas in a manner 
 natural but unusual and striking, so as to produce 
 surprise joined with pleasure," while humour is 
 defined in these words: "a deep, kindly, playful 
 sympathy of feeling and fancy, with all kinds of, 
 especially lowly, and even outcast, things." If 
 we accept these definitions as correct, and they so 
 appeal to me though I do not know how they
 
 78 HIS FIRST BOOK 
 
 would strike the author of that ponderous work, 
 " A Theory of Wit and Humour " then it may be 
 said that while the Scots are humorous the English 
 are witty ; and the Scots have the worthier quality. 
 It was this very fact which led to Sydney Smith's 
 mental confusion ; being a mere wit he could not 
 appreciate true humour. There is more " heart " 
 in humour and more "head" in wit. So it results 
 that while you may admire the wit and laugh with 
 him at his merry thoughts, you never grow to love 
 him as you do the humorist. Who that has read " A 
 Window in Thrums "or " Auld Licht Idylls" could 
 fail to love the gentle, true-hearted man that wrote 
 these peerless studies in the humours of lowly life ? 
 Yet, as I have indicated, Barrie has written other 
 books which are of a totally different class, and 
 while being eminently amusing are only witty. 
 These are "Better Dead" and "My Lady Nico- 
 tine." He might have produced a dozen such 
 works, and we should have welcomed them gladly, 
 but we should only have voted their author a 
 brilliant wit, " a man with a style," we should never 
 have learned to love his books as we love " A 
 Window" and the "Idylls." 
 
 "Better Dead" we must regard as Barrie's first 
 book; for although "An Edinburgh Eleven" was 
 written about the same time, and parts of " My 
 Lady Nicotine " even earlier, the former was merely 
 a collection of character studies, bearing the author's 
 nom de plume, "Gavin Ogilvy," and the latter was 
 mainly published in order to assert the author's
 
 HIS FIRST BOOK 79 
 
 right to a series of newspaper articles the credit of 
 which had been claimed by more than one unprin- 
 cipled scribbler. It was in the winter of 1887 that 
 " Better Dead " went trembling into the critics' den 
 in the shape of a little shilling book with a coloured 
 cover very suggestive of a " shilling shocker," the 
 device containing a sanguinary sword, a revolver, 
 and an anarchical creature with a dagger in his 
 hand, the silhouettes of Sir William Harcourt 
 and Lord Randolph Churchill being the only 
 inkling of the diverting nature of the pages 
 within. It was the first book that carried on 
 its cover the words, "by J. M. Barrie," which in 
 1887 meant so little and a few years later signified 
 so much. 
 
 I have ceased to be surprised when people tell me 
 they have never read this book of Barrie's ; indeed, 
 it is not astonishing to hear a well-read man declare 
 he has never heard of it. Why this should be I am 
 at a loss to understand, since it is well worth reading 
 and is a little effort of which the distinguished 
 author has no reason to be ashamed. After all, Mr 
 Barrie was not such a juvenile when it appeared. 
 He was then twenty-seven years old, and in these 
 days of early success that is not remarkably young. 
 There are few to-day who will subscribe to the 
 dictum that a man cannot write well until he is 
 forty years of age. Barrie is only now in his 
 fortieth year; his two finest books were published 
 twelve and eleven years ago, and I make bold to say 
 he will never do better work than " A Window in
 
 8o HIS FIRST BOOK 
 
 Thrums" or " Auld Licht Idylls" though he have 
 an innings of a century. I can only attribute the 
 comparative neglect of his first book to the fact that 
 its vein is wit and not humour ; it lacks heart, and 
 in the long run 'tis heart that tells. 
 
 If I were asked to set down in a sentence my 
 opinion of " Better Dead " I should say : " It is one 
 of the best sustained pieces of fooling I have read." 
 True, it is only a tiny book it does not contain 
 more than twenty-four thousand words but the 
 subject is so delicate, the root idea so difficult of 
 treatment, that I am persuaded few writers of this 
 age could have expended so many words on it with- 
 out unpleasantness. To make assassination the sub- 
 ject of a jeu <f esprit and to write about it to the 
 extent of ten chapters with never a suspicion of 
 offence is to carry through triumphantly a somewhat 
 risky undertaking. This is precisely what Mr 
 Barrie has done in " Better Dead," and this is why 
 I do not hesitate to write of it in those terms of 
 praise. 
 
 Although not appearing until the winter of 1887, 
 the germ of " Better Dead " had been born more than 
 two years earlier, as it is to be found in a paper 
 published in the St James's Gazette for April 2 1st, 
 1885, wherein is suggested the formation of a 
 society for getting rid of people who would be 
 better out of the way, Mr Mallock being proposed 
 as a good beginning, though in the book his name is 
 only mentioned casually, and he receives no place of 
 prominence.
 
 HIS FIRST BOOK 81 
 
 The story introduces us without parley to Andrew 
 Riach (a name probably suggested by that of the 
 editor of the Edinburgh Dispatch, who, as we have 
 seen, was one of Mr Barrie's early friends in the 
 world of journalism), a young Scotsman who has 
 " come to town " intending to become private secre- 
 tary to a member of the Cabinet, and "if time per- 
 mitted, he proposed writing for the Press." Then 
 forthwith we are whisked away to " Thrums," but 
 here we find the now famous village endowed with 
 the less happy name of " Wheens." Andrew is at 
 the manse with the Rev. Mr Eassie and his daughter 
 Clarrie, who is in love with Andrew, though he, 
 since his return from Aberdeen University with 
 M.A. at the end of his name, has become a slave 
 to logic, and makes a strange wooer. Andrew 
 possesses in fullest measure that dominant charac- 
 teristic of the Scots people, the bump of argument, 
 abnormally developed by his study of logic. He 
 is arguing the love question with Mr Eassie, 
 cleaning his pipe the while with a hairpin " that 
 his quick eye had detected on the carpet " a 
 favourite fancy of the author. Andrew reasons 
 love to be folly, and for the moment seems to 
 have routed Mr Eassie, as the author turns again 
 to describe his hero. 
 
 Andrew had a very long neck, a fact which is of 
 importance in the story. His face was " as inex- 
 pressive as book-covers " one of those happy 
 similes which abound in all Barrie's writings. " A 
 native of Wheens and an orphan, he had been
 
 82 HIS FIRST BOOK 
 
 brought up by his uncle, who was a weaver, and 
 read Herodotus in the original. The uncle starved 
 himself to buy books and talk about them, until 
 one day he got a good meal, and died of it. Then 
 Andrew apprenticed himself to a tailor." When 
 his time was out he walked to Aberdeen and got a 
 bursary. He was nearly rusticated for praying at a 
 debating society for a divinity professor who was in 
 the chair. " ' O Lord ! ' he fervently cried, ' open 
 his eyes, guide his tottering footsteps, and lead him 
 from the paths of folly into those that are lovely 
 and of good report, for lo ! his days are numbered, 
 and the sickle has been sharpened, and the corn is 
 not yet ripe for the cutting.' " All of which is 
 gross exaggeration, of course, but the germ of 
 truth to be found in it suggests a very characteristic 
 Scot of the " dour," argumentative kind. 
 
 Mr Eassie had at Andrew again in a different way, 
 hinting that if he didn't become engaged to Clarrie 
 before leaving for London he might find her the 
 banker's wife when he came back. " The banker 
 was unmarried, and had once in February and again 
 in June seen Clarrie home from the Dorcas Society. 
 The town talked about it." So Andrew lingered 
 with Clarrie at the gate that night. " The only 
 objectionable thing about Clarrie was her long hair. 
 She wore a black frock, and looked very breakable. 
 Nothing irritates a man so much. Andrew gathered 
 her passionately in his arms, while a pained puzzled 
 expression struggled to reach his face. Then he 
 replaced her roughly on the ground and left her.
 
 HIS FIRST BOOK 83 
 
 It was impossible to say whether they were en- 
 gaged." 
 
 Andrew took lodgings at the top of a house 
 in Bernard Street, Bloomsbury. He immediately 
 set about the task of finding a Cabinet Minister 
 in need of a secretary, and was disappointed every- 
 where, although he latterly " offered to take a 
 pound a week less than any other secretary in 
 London.',' He had fifty-eight testimonials with 
 him, but couldn't get anybody to read them j so he 
 spent a great part of his time reading them over to 
 himself. " He had a yearning to stop strangers in 
 the streets and try a testimonial's effect on them." 
 With the Press, it was no better. " One of the 
 finest things that was ever written on the * Ontology 
 of Being ' " he couldn't induce any editor to publish, 
 by fair means or foul. Eventually he supplied the 
 dailies with mendacious " anecdotes" of great people 
 who were dying, but " as often as not the invalid 
 got better, and then Andrew went without a dinner." 
 This is a habit of great ones for which all journalists 
 will vouch ; those whose obituaries are pigeon-holed 
 generally live so long that the notices have to be 
 largely re-written at the end. Those for whom the 
 editor has not prepared always die suddenly. 
 
 But Andrew's ingenuity found other means of 
 raising the wind : 
 
 " Once he offered his services to a Conservative 
 statesman ; at another time he shot himself in the 
 coat in Northumberland Street, Strand, to oblige an 
 evening paper (five shillings).
 
 84 HIS FIRST BOOK 
 
 " He fainted in the pit of a theatre to the bribe of 
 an emotional tragedian (a guinea). 
 
 " He assaulted a young lady and her aunt with a 
 view to robbery, in a quiet thoroughfare, by arrange- 
 ment with a young gentleman, who rescued them 
 and made him run (ten shillings). 
 
 "It got into the papers that he had fled from a 
 wax policeman at Tussaud's (half-a-crown)." 
 
 Riach was now fairly in the blues, and his non- 
 success embittered him against everybody, but 
 Queen Logic still held court at the back of his 
 brain. " Even in his worst days his reasoning 
 powers never left him. Once a mother let her 
 child slip from her arms to the pavement. She 
 gave a shriek. ' My good woman,' said Andrew 
 testily, ' what difference can one infant in the world 
 more or less make ? ' ' While prowling about the 
 streets in this condition of despair there was a man 
 whom he encountered frequently, and who began to 
 exercise a nameless fascination on him. Rounding 
 the upper end of Chancery Lane one evening he 
 ran into him. " Andrew had been dreaming, and 
 the jerk woke him to the roar of London. It was 
 as if he had taken his fingers from his ears " 
 another of Barrie's striking similes. The stranger 
 was evidently hurrying somewhere, and Andrew in- 
 voluntarily hurried after him. In Arundel Street 
 he discovered that the stranger was also shadowing 
 some one. Along the deserted Embankment went 
 the trio, each at some distance from the other. 
 The first leant over the Embankment and gazed
 
 HIS FIRST BOOK 85 
 
 on the flood beneath, " the next moment the 
 stranger had darted forward, slipped his arms 
 round the little man's legs, and toppled him into 
 the river." Andrew bounded forward, but the 
 stranger exercised a mesmeric spell over him. 
 " ' He was a good man,' he said, more to himself 
 than to Andrew, ' and the world has lost a great 
 philanthropist ; but he is better as he is.' " Thus 
 Andrew became acquainted with the President of 
 the Society for Doing Without Some People. 
 
 Andrew told him his story, they had many ideas 
 in common, the president was most considerate ; 
 " only once an ugly look came into his eyes. 
 That was when Andrew had reached the middle 
 of his second testimonial." He was willing to 
 assist Andrew to become a probationer of the 
 society, whose noble aim was to punctuate with 
 a full stop the lives of famous people who had 
 reached the goal of their legitimate ambitions, 
 lest they might live to recede from their greatness. 
 Some of the most distinguished men of the time 
 were associated with the organisation, and the 
 far-seeing ones got themselves elected honorary 
 members, as these were free from the atten- 
 tions of the society, only ordinary members 
 being eligible for " removal." Gladstone in " a 
 very kind letter " to the president hoped that 
 Salisbury would not be admitted an honorary mem- 
 ber. It was a dangerous thing to admit one so 
 young as Andrew to the society even as a proba- 
 tioner. The president mentioned the case of an ex-
 
 86 HIS FIRST BOOK 
 
 cellent young man, " discreet beyond his years," 
 who came to them for a time. " It went to his 
 head. He took a bedroom in Pall Mall, and sat 
 at the window with an electric rifle picking them 
 off on the doorsteps of the clubs. It was a noble 
 idea, but of course it imperilled the very existence 
 of the society. He was a curate." 
 
 But Andrew is duly admitted a probationer, 
 thanks to the good offices of the president. He 
 attends a meeting of the committee at its house in 
 Bloomsbury. The description of the locality is in 
 Barrie's most characteristic vein. " The London 
 cabman's occupation consists in dodging thorough- 
 fares under repair. Numbers of dingy streets have 
 been flung about to help him. There is one of 
 these in Bloomsbury, which was originally dis- 
 covered by a student while looking for the British 
 Museum. It runs a hundred yards in a straight 
 line, then stops, like a stranger who has lost his 
 way, and hurries by another route out of the 
 neighbourhood." 
 
 The long-neck aforesaid is now a trial to Andrew, 
 as the members of the committee can't keep their 
 eyes off it, and even the president insists on his 
 muffling it up. Mrs Fawcett came and lectured to 
 the society, and protested against their debarring 
 women from its benefits. " You call yourselves a 
 society for suppressing excrescences. Your pre- 
 sident tells me," she said, "you are at present 
 inquiring for the address of the man who signs 
 himself ' Paterfamilias ' in the Times ; but the letters
 
 HIS FIRST BOOK 87 
 
 from ' A British Matron ' are of no account." She 
 also reminded them of a recent paper by Mrs 
 Kendal on the moral aspect of the drama in the 
 country and went on : "I do not know how the 
 paper affected you. But since reading it I have 
 asked in despair, how can this gifted lady con- 
 tinue to pick her way between the snares with 
 which the stage is beset ? " Mrs Lynn Linton 
 she likewise commended to the attention of the 
 S.D.W.S.P. 
 
 Andrew's first subject was -Mr Labouchere, and 
 the chapter in which his first interview with the 
 Editor of Truth is recorded is one of the funniest in 
 the book. Andrew " argued " with him one Sun- 
 day, but used in vain the logic he had learned at 
 Aberdeen. He pointed out that Mr Labouchere 
 was at the pinnacle of his fame, and now was the 
 time to avail himself of the good offices of the 
 Society. "Think of the newspaper placards next 
 morning ! " he urged, " some of them perhaps 
 edged with black ; the leaders in every London 
 paper and in all the prominent provincial ones ; 
 the six columns obituary in the Times ; the para- 
 graphs in the World ; the motion by Mr Gladstone 
 or Mr Healy for the adjournment of the House ; the 
 magazine articles j the promised memoirs ; the pub- 
 lication of posthumous papers ; the resolution in the 
 Northampton Town Council ; the statue in Hyde 
 Park. With such a recompense where would be 
 the sacrifice ? " But Mr Labouchere refused ; he 
 ordered Andrew to leave his house. "Think of
 
 88 HIS FIRST BOOK 
 
 the public funeral !" cried Andrew in despair. 
 Andrew was shown to the door by the footman, 
 but as he was leaving he put his head in at the 
 doorway again : " Would you mind telling me," he 
 said, " whether you see anything peculiar about my 
 neck ? " " It seems a good neck to twist," Mr 
 Labouchere answered a little savagely. 
 
 His attempt to assassinate Lord Randolph Churchill 
 was no more successful. It was to be his great effort, 
 as he had failed with Sir George Otto Trevelyan and 
 several other celebrities. He shadowed Lord Ran- 
 dolph for days, and finally decided to do the deed 
 between the Grand Hotel and the House. His lord- 
 ship left the hotel and wandered through the small 
 thoroughfares lying between Upper Regent Street 
 and Tottenham Court Road, stopping curiously to 
 make notes at every tobacconist's window. After 
 an hour of this he hailed a cab, and as he stepped 
 into it Andrew rushed forward and snatched the 
 notepaper from his hand. He wanted to read it 
 before he slaughtered his victim. This is what 
 he read when he found himself safe from pursuit 
 up a back alley : 
 
 "'Great Titchfield Street Branscombe, 15; 
 Churchill, 1 1 ; Langtry, 8 ; Gladstone, 4.' 
 
 " 'Mortimer Street Langtry, 1 1 ; Branscombe, 9; 
 Gladstone, 6; Mary Anderson, 6j Churchill, 3.' 
 
 "'Margaret Street Churchill, 7; Anderson, 6 ; 
 Branscombe, 5 ; Gladstone, 4 ; Chamberlain, 4.' 
 
 '"Smaller streets Churchill, 14; Branscombe, 
 13 j Gladstone, 9; Langtry, 9. Totals for to-day:
 
 HIS FIRST BOOK 89 
 
 Churchill, 35 ; Langtry, 28; Gladstone, 23; Brans- 
 combe, 42 ; Anderson, 12; Chamberlain, nowhere.' 
 Then followed, as if in a burst of passion, ' Brans- 
 combe still leading confound her.' " 
 
 Andrew saw that Lord Randolph had been calcu- 
 lating fame from vesta boxes ! In the end he only 
 managed to get a cut at his lordship's heels as he 
 entered his hotel after the adjournment of the 
 House. 
 
 At the next meeting of the S.D.W.S.P., Riach 
 was a candidate for admission to full membership, 
 and read his thesis, in the course of which he said, 
 " What shall we do, Society asks, with our boys ? 
 I reply, Kill off the parents. There can be little 
 doubt that forty-five years is long enough for a man 
 to live. Parents must see that. Youth is the time 
 to have your fling." But Andrew had to flee from 
 the committee, his neck had told against him, and 
 while he was waiting election in a side-room they 
 were drawing lots for him. The president came to 
 his aid, hustled him away in a cab to King's Cross, 
 and took a ticket for him to Glasgow. It was 
 Andrew's only chance the president assured him, 
 his own fingers itching. The committee were only 
 human, he exclaimed. " Your neck," he cried, 
 " cover it up ! " And Andrew only understood 
 when the president's fingers met round his throat, 
 and "he murmured in a delirious ecstasy, 'what a 
 neck, what a neck !' Just then his foot slipped. He 
 fell. Andrew jumped up and kicked him as hard as 
 he could three times. . . . Andrew never thought
 
 90 HIS FIRST BOOK 
 
 so much of the president again. You cannot respect 
 a man and kick him." 
 
 In the end, of course, Andrew Riach went back 
 to Wheens, where the master of the Grammar School 
 having conveniently died, Andrew got the post and 
 married Clarrie : "He was humbler now than he had 
 been, and in our disappointments we turn to woman 
 for solace." " Domesticated and repentant, he has 
 renounced the devil and all her works. . . . For 
 Andrew has told Clarrie all the indiscretions of his 
 life in London, and she has forgiven everything. 
 Ah, what will not a wife forgive ! " 
 
 Here then is a brief outline of this most diverting 
 trifle ; from which it will be seen that the root idea 
 is as whimsical as any ever conceived by Mr W. S. 
 Gilbert, while the manner in which it is worked out 
 is characteristic of no one but Barrie himself, the fun 
 being sustained without effort from first to last, and 
 every page scintillating with wit. 
 
 Yet we find its author, in his preface to the 
 volume of the American edition of his works in 
 which it appears, almost on the point of disowning 
 it; "weighted with 'An Edinburgh Eleven,' it would 
 rest very comfortably in the mill-dam," says he. But, 
 after all, there is a little corner in his heart for it, as 
 he goes on to say : " This juvenile effort is a field 
 of prickles, into which none may be advised to pene- 
 trate. I made the attempt lately in cold blood, and 
 came back shuddering. . . . And yet I have a senti- 
 mental interest in ' Better Dead,' for it was my first, 
 published when I had small hope of getting anyone
 
 HIS FIRST BOOK 91 
 
 to accept the Scotch ; and there was a week when I 
 loved to carry it in my pocket, and did not think it 
 a dead weight. Once I almost saw it find a pur- 
 chaser. She was a pretty girl, and it lay on a 
 bookstall, and she read some pages and smiled, and 
 then retired, and came back and began another 
 chapter. Several times she did this, and I stood 
 in the background trembling with hope and fear. 
 At last she went away without the book, but I am 
 still of opinion that, had it been just a little bit 
 better, she would have bought it."
 
 SOME LITERARY 
 CHARACTERISTICS
 
 SOME LITERARY CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 " MR BARRIE is a man with a style," said the 
 Saturday Review in noticing " When a Man's Single." 
 " Barrie is without any pretention to ' style,' " said 
 a sapient critic in a literary journal recently. Thus 
 may men differ ; and, after all, what is called literary 
 " criticism " is largely a question of personal liking 
 or loathing. A man starts by liking a book, and 
 then he tries to tell you why you should like it also ; 
 another hates it, and struggles to furnish forth 
 reasons for doing so. True, there be critics who 
 valiantly endeavour to like what they admire and 
 know to be good craftsmanship, rather than admire 
 what they like; but they only muster a small minority 
 in the Republic of Letters. Of course two men may, 
 in all sincerity, arrive at quite different estimates of 
 another's work -, yet, if criticism is to have any value 
 whatever, it ought to be possible to avoid such a 
 clash of opinion as I have just recorded. For my 
 own part, immediately I found a man saying Barrie 
 had no style I wrote that man down an ass and 
 promptly forgot him, and even the paper in which 
 he wrote, though I recall the fact that at the time I 
 was surprised to find such nonsense in an important 
 organ of literary opinion. 
 
 What is " style " ? This is a question that has 
 
 95
 
 96 SOME LITERARY 
 
 been asked much oftener than it has been answered, 
 and it is not for me to venture any formal reply. 
 But I would advance the opinion indeed, it is a 
 fixed canon of belief with me that style is simply 
 individuality. It is that which distinguishes the 
 artist from the talented craftsman. It is the actor's 
 " personality " that lifts his performance from the 
 ruck of clever impersonations to the higher plane 
 of creative art ; the painter's "method" is the same 
 thing, and literary " style " is the author's person- 
 ality. " The style is the man," says Buffon. Thus, 
 what gives distinction to all great artists is something 
 that is above art and comes direct from nature. Mr 
 Rudyard Kipling is credited with saying at a gather- 
 ing of literary men that such power as he possessed 
 " came from the outside." That is where " style " 
 comes from. Though by "playing the sedulous ape" 
 to great authors, as R. L. Stevenson confessed he 
 had done, one may evolve a certain grace of manner 
 in composition, it is only by giving judicious free- 
 dom to one's own individuality that a characteristic 
 style may be established. Although Stevenson's 
 manner was chiselled and polished to a risky degree, 
 his style was essentially his own, and in the works 
 where he had a collaborateur the passages from his 
 pen may be as easily distinguished as though they 
 bore his signature. 
 
 Well, if style be individuality, there is no contem- 
 porary author more of a stylist than J. M. Barrie. 
 Nearly everything he has written contains evidence 
 of his hand ; even when he was using the editorial
 
 CHARACTERISTICS 97 
 
 "we" he could not hide his personality, and naturally 
 so, since that is the indestructible part of man. We 
 have all seen a dozen different actors playing Hamlet. 
 They have all spoken Shakespeare's words, and pro- 
 bably half a dozen of them have been " great," yet 
 no two of that half-dozen have been alike : the as- 
 sertive personality of each has shone through the 
 spoken words. So is it with the author ; he whose 
 individuality is weak is inevitably a writer whose 
 work lacks character, without which distinction 
 is impossible. Barrie has shown himself a writer 
 of remarkable individuality, and that is to say, the 
 Saturday Reviewer who hailed him as " a man with 
 a style " spoke truly. 
 
 The chief features of Barrie's style are a quaint- 
 ness of expression, a simple directness of narrative, 
 and an unfailing sense of humour 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. Indeed he tells us that we shall find very 
 little descriptive writing in his books, because his 
 mother did not like it, and he wrote to please her. 
 I don't think this is altogether a compliment to 
 Margaret Ogilvy's literary discrimination. Here and 
 there in his books we see in a flash what wonderful 
 pen pictures he might have drawn for us if he had 
 occasionally chosen a landscape rather than a char- 
 acter study ; his feeling for nature is so keenly 
 correct. Take, for example, the opening chapter 
 of " Auld Licht Idylls," in which winter in Glen
 
 98 SOME LITERARY 
 
 Quharity is so beautifully described. Note this 
 little passage : " Through the still air comes from 
 a distance a vibration as of a tuning fork : a robin, 
 perhaps, alighting on the wire of a broken fence." 
 Of all the sights and sounds of a winter day, could 
 one more typical, more eloquently suggestive, have 
 been selected ? Again, in a description of Thrums : 
 " This night the snow must have fallen as if the 
 heavens had opened up, determined to shake them- 
 selves free of it for ever." This latter is peculiarly 
 characteristic of Barrie : his fondness for impressing 
 a scene on the memory by means of a little exaggera- 
 tion. Sometimes, in sooth, he is tempted to step 
 beyond the lines of legitimate exaggeration, and his 
 lusty sense of humour inclines to outrun his dis- 
 cretion occasionally. Now and again, in " The 
 Little Minister," in " Sentimental Tommy," and in 
 the sequel to the latter, we see him fighting this 
 temptation. Thus when he pushes the difficulties 
 which Gavin had in disposing of the Egyptian's 
 cloak to the point of introducing a dog to scrape 
 it out of the hole in the garden where the Little 
 Minister had buried it, we cannot but feel that 
 here exaggeration has gone beyond bounds. It 
 seems to me, too, that Tommy's prayer at the 
 supper of the S.R.J.C. touches absurdity, and 
 leaves one with the feeling that the oddity of 
 Tommy's nature has for a moment been so greatly 
 stretched that we find ourselves saying, " This is 
 just a bit too much." Again, when Mr M'Lean is 
 introduced amongst "the Jacobites" in the Den,
 
 CHARACTERISTICS 99 
 
 and actually takes part with Tommy, Corp, and the 
 rest in their juvenile drama of " Stroke," we protest 
 that Barrie has given his whimsical fancy too free a 
 head : it is carrying the joke too far. This pro- 
 pensity is still obvious in " Tommy and Grizel," 
 where Corp's behaviour after Gavinia had accepted 
 him is represented as reaching a point of ludicrous- 
 ness which challenges belief. He was going round 
 the countryside telling all his friends and acquaint- 
 ances the great news, when, " Six miles from home 
 he saw a mudhouse on the top of a hill and ascended 
 genially. He found at their porridge, a very old 
 lady with a nut-cracker face, and a small boy. We 
 shall see them again. ' Auld wifie,' said Corp, * I 
 dinna ken you, but I've just stepped up to tell you 
 that Gavinia is to hae me.' " We do see them again, 
 and useful they prove to the working of the story, 
 but we should have preferred to make their acquaint- 
 ance elsewise than at the expense of Corp Shiach's 
 sanity. The ankle episode in the early chapters of 
 " Tommy and Grizel " also taxes one's credulity 
 severely. 
 
 It would naturally be said that his gift for char- 
 acter is far greater than for descriptive did we not 
 know that he has chosen to keep the latter in re- 
 serve. Still, if he had never written any other 
 descriptive passages than those in " The Little 
 Minister," which tell of that terrible night and 
 day in the Glen, and through which the mighty 
 rush of waters and wailing of the winds are heard 
 with eerie reality, he would have been marked as
 
 ioo SOME LITERARY 
 
 a descriptive writer of rare power. But character 
 portraiture is unquestionably the back-bone of all 
 his books ; and his capacity for this is superlative. 
 How quickly he touches the essentials that typify ; 
 a few words, a line or two at most, perhaps just a 
 sentence telling of a quaint action, and a character 
 stands revealed before us. It is a great gift this. 
 "When he tells us in " When a Man's Single" that 
 Mr Meredith dated his advances in prosperity by his 
 chairs first they were horse-hair, then plush, and 
 latterly leather we know the man at once. Or 
 take " Cree Queery," who, a day or two before 
 he died, paid a debt he had owed for nearly 
 twelve years a debt for which he had never 
 been asked, but which through all his poverty had 
 weighed on his simple mind, so that in sixpences 
 and coppers, which he had slowly saved, together 
 with a half-sovereign he had been given, he 
 managed at the eleventh hour to discharge his 
 obligation, and left this world clear of debt. We 
 know all his life in the knowledge of this alone. 
 Exaggeration is a frequent habit with Barrie even 
 in character sketching, but it seldom exceeds the 
 limit to which it may safely be used as an effectual, 
 and withal artistic, method of fixing a character 
 in the reader's mind. One typical illustration will 
 suffice. Take this of the Auld Licht minister from 
 the " Idylls " : 
 
 " Mr Dishart in the pulpit was the reward of his 
 upbringing. At ten he had entered the university. 
 Before he was in his teens he was practising the art
 
 CHARACTERISTICS i o i 
 
 of gesticulation in his father's gallery pew. From 
 distant congregations people came to marvel at him. 
 He was never more than comparatively young. So 
 long as the pulpit trappings of the kirk at Thrums 
 lasted he could be seen, once he was fairly under 
 weigh with his sermon, but dimly in a cloud of dust. 
 He introduced headaches. In a grand transport of 
 enthusiasm he once flung his arms over the pulpit 
 and caught Lang Tammas on the forehead. Leaning 
 forward, with his chest on the cushions, he would 
 pommel the Evil One with both hands, and then, 
 whirling round to the left, shake his fist at Bell 
 Whamond's neckerchief. With a sudden jump he 
 would fix Pete Todd's youngest boy catching flies 
 at the laft window. Stiffening unexpectedly, he 
 would leap three times in the air, and then gather 
 himself in a corner for a fearsome spring. When he 
 wept he seemed to be laughing, and he laughed in 
 a paroxysm of tears. He tried to tear the devil out 
 of the pulpit rails. When he was not a teetotum he 
 was a windmill. His pump position was the most 
 appalling. Then he glared motionless at his 
 admiring listeners, as if he had fallen into a 
 trance with his arm upraised. The hurricane 
 broke next moment. Nanny Sutie bore up under 
 the shadow of the wind-mill, which would have 
 been heavier if Auld Licht ministers had worn 
 gowns, but the pump affected her to tears. She 
 was stone-deaf." 
 
 All this, of course, is very obvious exaggeration ; 
 but does it not leave us with a very real grip of
 
 102 SOME LITERARY 
 
 Mr Dishart's pulpit manner? And that is its 
 justification. 
 
 There is scarcely a character in all Barrie's books 
 that we are likely to forget ; even those who only 
 " cry in, in the bye-gaein," so to say. This is due 
 to the novelist's extraordinary power of portraiture. 
 He has only one failure that I can think of, and that 
 is Lord Rintoul in " The Little Minister." Here for 
 once the portrait is somewhat nebulous, and probably 
 this should be set down to the fact that the novelist 
 is less at home in the " big house " than in the but- 
 and-ben less in sympathy at all events. As against 
 Rintoul, take the inhabitants of the London building 
 in which Jean Miles lived with her children. Shovel, 
 his mother, who smelt of gin, his father, " who fol- 
 lowed many professions, among them that of finding 
 lost dogs," and the other dwellers in that mean 
 house are all vividly portrayed in a few rapid strokes, 
 so that we know them far better than we ever get 
 to know Rintoul ; but " Sentimental Tommy " is, in- 
 deed, among all the author's works, the one in which 
 every character stands out clear and unmistakable. 
 
 Scots character is that which Barrie knows best of 
 all, though his genius for character study is by no 
 means purely local, as he has shown us in " My 
 Lady Nicotine," "When A Man's Single," "Senti- 
 mental Tommy," and "Tommy and Grizel." But 
 the Scot he knows as only a " brither Scot " can 
 know him ; and, on the whole, he is very just in 
 his interpretation of the Scots character. That 
 strange cosmopolitan Scot, Mr R. B. Cunninghame
 
 CHARACTERISTICS 103 
 
 (be careful of that " e," Mr Printer) Graham, 
 has recently been writing in his usual clever but 
 abominably cynical style about the " Kail-yarders." 
 "If it pleases them," says he, "to represent that 
 half of the population of their native land is imbecile, 
 the fault is theirs. But for the idiots, the precentors, 
 elders of churches, the ' select men/ and those land- 
 ward folk who have been dragged of late into 
 publicity, I compassionate them, knowing their lan- 
 guage has been distorted, and they themselves been 
 rendered such abject snivellers, that not a henwife, 
 shepherd, ploughman, or anyone who thinks in 
 ' guid braid Scots,' would recognise himself dressed 
 in the motley which it has been the pride of kailyard 
 writers to bestow. Neither would I have English- 
 men believe that the entire Scotch nation is com- 
 posed of ministers, elders, and maudlin whiskified 
 physicians, nor even of precentors who, as we know, 
 are employed in Scotland to put the congregation 
 out by starting hymns on the wrong note, or in a 
 key impossible for any but themselves to compass." 
 
 No criticism could be more grossly unfair than 
 this. The most ignorant English ridicule that .has 
 been poured forth on the Barrie school of writers 
 has not been more unjust. None of our contem- 
 porary Scots writers claim to depict national char- 
 acter ; they have dealt with essentially local types, 
 and herein lies their strength. The "Thrums" 
 folk are different in many ways from those of 
 " Drumtochty," just as they do not always pair with 
 the inhabitants of "Glenbruar," " the Folk Carglen,"
 
 104 SOME LITERARY 
 
 or yet the " Meggotsbrae " bodies, though in them 
 all certain national traits are clearly to be seen. The 
 whisky bottle figures far less in kailyard books 
 there is scarce a whiff of it in Barrie than it does 
 in the alleged humour of England ; and if the 
 minister, the precentor, the beadle, and the "eediot" 
 are much in evidence, it is because in village life 
 they fill most picturesque parts. Moreover, if one 
 will only read the anecdotes of village " loonies " 
 with which Scots literature abounds especially 
 Dean Ramsay's " Reminiscences " and " The Laird 
 o' Logan " he will find that the average Scots idiot 
 was a creature of considerably more humour than 
 the average Englishman, than the average Scot for 
 that matter. There are dull, uninteresting folk in 
 Thrums lots of them but Barrie's business was 
 to leave them alone and deal with those of real 
 literary value. This he has done with infinite good 
 taste and with all justice. He is no more blind to 
 the faults of the average Scot than he is alive to his 
 many excellent qualities. Only once have I felt 
 inclined to wince in reading anything of Barrie's and 
 that was the chapter entitled " Making the best 
 of it" in "A Window in Thrums"; for here it 
 seemed to me he was dwelling on an unworthy 
 element of character, which is more typical of the 
 English rural and working classes than of the Scots. 
 I mean the flattering of wealthy fools with a view 
 to largess. The whining beggar and the sneak are 
 less common in the north than in the south ; but 
 they are to be found for all that, and although
 
 CHARACTERISTICS 1 05 
 
 " Making the Best of It" leaves a bad taste in the 
 mouth, I cannot pretend that it is false to life ; yet 
 I do say that the spirit of it is more frequently to be 
 met with in England than in Scotland. 
 
 That said, it seems to me Barrie's countrymen owe 
 him nothing but gratitude for the genuine sympathy 
 with which he has portrayed some of their finest 
 national traits. He has revealed the Scot in no un- 
 pleasant light, and though it be true that for the 
 most part his characters belong to a generation that 
 has passed away, only their outward form has dis- 
 appeared, their qualities are abiding and still remain 
 even if garbed in different guise. "That we are 
 all being reduced to one dead level, that * character ' 
 abounds no more and life itself is less interesting, 
 such things I have read, but I do not believe them," 
 he says. " I have seen them given as my reason 
 for writing of a past time, and in that at least there 
 is no truth. In our little town, which is a 
 sample of many, life is as interesting, as joyous as 
 ever it was ; no group of weavers was better 
 to look at or think about than the rivulet of 
 winsome girls that overruns our streets every time 
 the sluice is raised. The comedy of summer even- 
 ings and winter firesides is played with the old 
 zest, and every window-blind is the curtain of a 
 romance." 
 
 Elsewhere I deal at some length with his use of the 
 Doric, and here it is not necessary to do more than 
 remark that Barrie has never been guilty of " distort- 
 ing " the Scots tongue, unless it be wrong of him to
 
 106 SOME LITERARY 
 
 use it with such discrimination that his passages in 
 dialect may be understanded of the Sassenach. 
 
 Humour, of course, is one of Barrie's strongest 
 literary qualities ; and if the more educated Scot 
 may charge him with depicting folk in whom 
 humour is conspicuous by its absence, who shall 
 say that even here he does his townsfolk an in- 
 justice? People of the standing of Tammas Hag- 
 gart and Snecky Hobart in an English town as 
 parochial as Thrums would not be chosen as types 
 of English wits, nor would they compare very 
 favourably with the old-fashioned folk of Thrums in 
 intellectual capacity or range of knowledge. Tammas 
 was really a ponderous blether. He is made to 
 say : " A humorist would often no ken 'at he was ane 
 if it was na by the wy he maks other fowk lauch. 
 A body canna be expeckit baith to mak' the joke an' 
 to see't. Na, that would be doin' twa fowks' wark." 
 
 " Weel, that's reasonable enough, but I've often 
 seen ye lauchin'," said Henry, " lang afore other 
 fowk lauched." 
 
 " Nae doubt," Tammas explained, " an' that's 
 because humour has twa sides, juist like a penny 
 piece. When I say a humorous thing mysel' I'm 
 dependent on other fowk to tak note o' the humour 
 o't, bein' mysel' ta'en up wi' the makin' o't. Aye, 
 but there's things I see an' hear 'at maks me lauch, 
 an' that's the other side o' humour." 
 
 From which one might fairly conclude that Tam- 
 mas "joked wi' deeficulty," but I am sure nobody 
 would more quickly repudiate such a charge being
 
 CHARACTERISTICS 1 07 
 
 levelled at the Scottish people than Mr Barrie himself. 
 Doubtless there are many Tammas Haggarts, but 
 assuredly they are not typical of Scotland's humorists. 
 The humour of the North is not deficient in what 
 can only be described as "unconscious humour," and 
 this was evidently the kind that Tammas Haggart 
 dealt largely in, since he was accustomed to make 
 jokes which he didn't see himself; but Scottish 
 humour is less characterised by this form of fun than 
 any other. English humour abounds in it. Irish 
 humour is little else. 
 
 We are not greatly concerned whether or not the 
 folk of Thrums "had humour," since their author 
 it is worthy of note by the way, that Mr Barrie 
 describes all his characters as "purely imaginary" 
 has it in such abundance and even if we are fre- 
 quently laughing with him at their expense we think 
 none the less of the quaint, leal-hearted bodies for 
 all that. In "the courting of T'nowhead's Bell" 
 and " How Gavin Birse put it to Mag Lownie," two 
 of Barrie's most successful humorous sketches, the 
 fun is all with the reader and the writer. 
 
 " A Window in Thrums " is much richer in 
 humour than " Auld Licht Idylls," and in that deeper 
 feeling which we all call pathos for the two are 
 but degrees of the same thing : a stirring of the 
 heart. To my mind, small though the book of 
 "Idylls" is it might with advantage have been re- 
 duced ; " David Lunan's Political Reminiscences " is 
 a "gey dreich" chapter that could well be spared, 
 while " A Home for Geniuses" is quite out of place
 
 io8 SOME LITERARY 
 
 in " A "Window in Thrums," and is indeed consider- 
 ably below the level of the papers which go to make 
 up " My Lady Nicotine." Let him try never so 
 bravely no man can always write up to his own 
 standard, and Barrie cannot be more severely judged 
 than by the standard of his own best work. 
 
 His humour has this peculiarity, that it is often so 
 apparently serious that readers lacking the sense of 
 humour are misled into taking in earnest what was 
 meant in jest. We have an instance of this in 
 "The Strange Case of Sir George Trevelyan and 
 Mr Otto," referred to in the chapter on "Beginnings 
 in Literature." There is another worthy of men- 
 tion. You will remember that in " Better Dead " 
 the author describes Andrew Riach as being in such 
 straits that he contrived to earn an occasional dis- 
 honest shilling by inventing original anecdotes about 
 famous people who were at death's door. In the 
 Fortnightly Review for September 1890, Barrie ex- 
 panded this idea into an article entitled " Pro Bono 
 Publico" which contains the copy of an imaginary 
 circular from an imaginary " Society for Providing 
 Materials for Volumes of Reminiscences." This, it 
 is alleged, has been addressed to every person over 
 fifty years of age, and specimens of the reminiscences 
 together with prices of the same are given. Let us 
 take one example : 
 
 " I saw a great deal of Carlyle in those days, and 
 what days they were ! If in a genial mood (as was 
 not always the case) Carlyle was the best of com- 
 pany, and, strange to say, I never think of Cheyne
 
 CHARACTERISTICS 1 09 
 
 Row now without hearing his loud guffaws. Ah, 
 sage, gone into the night since the days when you 
 and I and F and K smoked our church- 
 wardens by the warm fireplace, to know you best 
 was to love you most. He who can quote you as 
 a cynic forgets the hearty laugh that took all the 
 malice from your vehement utterances. It was not 
 a laugh at the expense of those you were speaking 
 of, but at your grand honest self. That guffaw 
 was the blast with which you blew over the fabrica- 
 tion that your imagination had built riotously. And 
 that word blast reminds me of Carlyle's love for it. 
 ' No. I'm not smoking,' he said to me on the day I 
 had the memorable pleasure of meeting him for the 
 first time. This put me in a predicament, for there 
 was a pipe in his mouth as he spoke, and he was 
 puffing vigorously. Nevertheless, how could I con- 
 tradict him while I sat, awed, under the shadow of 
 his personality ? Carlyle saw my embarrassment, and, 
 like a true gentleman, at once put me at my ease. 
 * Ay, sir, you're a grand sample of the complete idiot,' 
 he said, in the winning phraseology that has been so 
 much misunderstood ; ' we dinna have the marrows 
 of you in Scotland, I'm thinking.' And then he 
 went on to explain that in his young days people 
 did not speak of smoking, but of blasting * a far 
 more expressive word.' He then launched into a 
 magnificent panegyric of tobacco, declaring that to 
 look back to the days when he did not smoke was a 
 humiliation. ' Smoke as hard as a man may,' he said, 
 dejectedly, ' he can never make up for those lost
 
 no SOME LITERARY 
 
 days ! ' Then handing me my hat in the courtliest 
 manner, he said, ' And now, young man, be off to 
 your mother. Always be thoughtful of your 
 mother. I guarantee she would miss you more 
 than I would do ! ' Thus ended my first meeting 
 with Carlyle." (308.) 
 
 Soon after the appearance of this amusing con- 
 tribution a German gentleman wrote to the office 
 of the Fortnightly, saying that he had been engaged 
 for some time on a volume of reminiscences of 
 German authors, but was short of material, and 
 would be very glad indeed to place an order with 
 the Society to supply as much as would complete 
 his book ! 
 
 Barrie's humour is essentially his own. It is not 
 of the Mark Twain order ; it seldom makes us laugh 
 consumedly, but it keeps us in that constant mood 
 of pleasure described as " chuckling." It is quiet, 
 reserved, never by any chance boisterous ; appeals 
 to the intellect and the heart, rather than to the 
 sense of the purely ludicrous or the love of 
 buffoonery the last of which is so characteristic 
 of English humour and especially of that poor brand 
 known as Jerome's. 
 
 Like all true humorists he touches the tenderest 
 chords of pathos with consummate ease and effect. 
 In many of his sketches his fingers sweep the minor 
 chords alone and under his sympathetic touch they 
 vibrate with exquisite sadness. Never the sadness 
 of dull, dismal sorrow ; but of sweet melancholy in 
 which hope still lingers. The tragedy of " Jamie's
 
 CHARACTERISTICS 1 1 1 
 
 Home Coming" in " A Window in Thrums" is as 
 sad as anything that was ever written, yet the pathos 
 of it is absolutely unstrained, and we are left with 
 the hope that Jamie did not go from bad to worse, 
 that the awfulness of the very common-place sin he 
 had committed came home to him when he found 
 Jess, and Leeby, and Hendry all his tiny world 
 had ceased to be, and though he "was never again 
 seen in Thrums " he left it resolved to live as Jess 
 would have had him, though atonement was no 
 longer possible. Indeed, we are sure of this; for 
 to the strange woman who now lived in the house 
 where he had first toddled to the joy of Jess and 
 Hendry, where he had played so long with Leeby, 
 and where he had found all that is best on this earth 
 if he had only the sense to keep it, to that woman 
 he said, " I'll ask one last favour o' ye : I would like 
 ye to leave me here alane for juist a little while." 
 So into the kitchen he went, and was there " a lang 
 time," on his knees we can well believe, nor were 
 the spirits of Jess or Leeby absent ; and they would 
 whisper to Jamie out of their bountiful love that he 
 was forgiven, and he would know it, though he could 
 never forgive himself. Such a chapter as this is 
 enough to give any book distinction, and " A 
 Window in Thrums " contains several quite as 
 masterly, so that its enduring popularity is no 
 surprise, but rather eloquent testimony to the 
 healthy taste of the better-class reading public. 
 
 What then are the characteristics which make for 
 greatness in Barrie's books ? To my mind, they are
 
 ii2 SOME LITERARY 
 
 these : his quaint humour, his unstrained pathos, 
 his gift for character portrayal, and, above all, his 
 lack of self-consciousness. He is not a great master 
 of the novel in the sense that his admired Stevenson 
 was. Some discriminating critics regard " Senti- 
 mental Tommy " as his masterpiece, others are 
 equally certain that distinction belongs to " The 
 Little Minister." For my poor part I can agree 
 with neither, as it seems to me Barrie's limitation 
 affects him precisely in that talent which prevents 
 his producing a great novel : his constructive ability, 
 so essential to a long sustained narrative, is by no 
 means conspicuous. For the same reason he is not 
 likely to produce a great play. 
 
 To start with his first attempt at a novel, " When 
 a Man's Single." Would it be difficult to specify a 
 dozen books produced any year (and forgotten six 
 months after) which are not better constructed ex- 
 amples of the novel than this ? I don't think it 
 would ; but it would be difficult to find in these 
 more evenly workmanlike productions, so much 
 individuality, so many cameos of character, such 
 ebullient humour. Nor is " The Little Minister," 
 considered merely as a novel, a shining example 
 of the art which less gifted men have developed 
 more successfully : it hangs somewhat loosely to- 
 gether, yet its charm lies in this very fact. We 
 do not find ourselves regarding it as a continuous 
 story, but rather as a portrait gallery in which the 
 author exhibits to us a group of masterly studies. 
 We are interested in the characters of the story
 
 CHARACTERISTICS 1 1 3 
 
 more keenly than in the story itself. So, too, with 
 " Sentimental Tommy," in which there are few of 
 the elements usually regarded as essential to the 
 making of a great novel. It is not a great novel. 
 But it is something as priceless, something rarer. 
 It abounds in revelations of character, in sketches 
 of humble life, in humorous interludes, all so true, 
 tender, and sympathetic, that the constructive faults 
 of the book are greatly outweighed. 
 
 In brief, the qualities which give distinction to 
 "The Little Minister," to "Sentimental Tommy," 
 and to its sequel, are precisely those that won all 
 our hearts to " Auld Licht Idylls " and " A Window 
 in Thrums," and I make bold to say that Barrie 
 has nowhere surpassed and never will excel the 
 best chapters of the last-mentioned book. In all 
 his works since "Auld Licht Idylls" there are 
 passages in which he is at his best ; but if any 
 one book of his may be called his masterpiece, that, 
 in my humble judgment, is " Margaret Ogilvy." 
 The most notable characteristic of all great artists 
 poets, painters, actors, authors is the lack of 
 self-consciousness. The moment a man is self- 
 conscious he destroys his art, dispels the illusion 
 which captivates the reader or the listener. Only 
 an entire absence of this defect could make such 
 a book as " Margaret Ogilvy " possible. 
 
 The absence of self-consciousness means the pre- 
 sence of the artistic temperament, and no one has 
 written on this with such deep insight as Barrie 
 himself. There is a brilliant passage in " Senti- 
 
 H
 
 ii 4 SOME LITERARY 
 
 mental Tommy" which illustrates it to perfection. 
 You remember how Tommy undermines Cathro's 
 popularity as a deputy letter-writer for the un- 
 lettered folk of Thrums (nowadays that class 
 does not exist) by producing epistles which had 
 far more effect on their recipients than any the 
 schoolmaster had ever written. Tommy's master- 
 piece in the epistolary art was a letter from Betsy 
 Grieve to Mrs Dinnie in returning thanks for a 
 wedding gift. Mrs Dinnie's daughter Janet had 
 long ago entered into a romantic compact with 
 Betsy that both should marry on the same day, 
 " but Janet died, and so it was a sad letter 
 Tommy had to write to her mother." Cathro 
 caught Tommy gloating over a draught of the 
 fateful letter in the schoolroom to the neglect of 
 his studies, and bringing him before the class, to 
 whom he read over the letter, he proceeded with 
 mixed feelings of envy, admiration, and indignation, 
 to " unbottle Tommy for the details." 
 
 " ' You little sachet,' cried the Dominie, how 
 did you think of it ? ' 'I think I thought I was 
 Betsy at the time,' Tommy answered, with proper 
 awe. 
 
 " ' She told me nothing about the weeping-willow 
 at the grave,' said the Dominie, perhaps in self- 
 defence. ' You hadna speired if there was one,' 
 retorted Tommy jealously. 
 
 " ' What made you think of it ? ' 'I saw it might 
 come in neat.' (He had said in the letter that the 
 weeping-willow reminded him of the days when
 
 CHARACTERISTICS 1 1 5 
 
 Janet's bonny hair hung down kissing her waist 
 just as the willow kissed the grave). 
 
 " ' Willows don't hang so low as you seem to 
 think,' said the Dominie. ' Yes they do,' replied 
 Tommy ; ' I walked three miles to see one to make 
 sure. I was near putting in another beautiful bit 
 about weeping-willows.' 
 
 " 'Well, why didn't you ? ' Tommy looked up 
 with an impudent snigger. ' You could never guess,' 
 he said. 
 
 " ' Answer me at once,' thundered his preceptor. 
 
 ' Was it because ' ' No,' interrupted Tommy, 
 
 so conscious of Mr Cathro's inferiority that to let 
 him go on seemed waste of time. ' It was because, 
 though it is a beautiful thing in itself, I felt a servant 
 lassie wouldna have thought o't. I was sweer,' he 
 admitted with a sigh ; then firmly, ' but I cut it out.' 
 
 " Again Cathro admired, reluctantly. The hack 
 does feel the difference between himself and the 
 artist. Cathro might possibly have had the idea, 
 he could not have cut it out. But the hack is 
 sometimes, or usually, or nearly always, the artist's 
 master, and can make him suffer for his dem'd 
 superiority. 
 
 " ' What made you snivel when you read the 
 pathetic bits ? ' asked Cathro, with itching fingers. 
 ' I was so sorry for Peter and Mrs Dinnie,' Tommy 
 answered, a little puzzled himself now. ' I saw 
 them so clear.' 
 
 " And yet until Betsy came to you, you had never 
 heard tell of them ? ' No,'
 
 n6 SOME LITERARY 
 
 " ' And on reflection you don't care a doit about 
 them ? ' N no.' 
 
 " ' And you care as little for Betsy ? ' ' No now, 
 but at the time I a kind of thought I was to be 
 married to Andrew.' 
 
 " ' And eVen while you blubbered you were say- 
 ing to yourself, " What a clever billie I am." ' 
 
 This is the scene which, as the reader will 
 remember, ends with the Dominie picking up a 
 charred stick and branding his amazing pupil on 
 the forehead with the letters " S.T." one of the 
 rare forced or artificial incidents to be met with in 
 Barrie's pages. You feel the author has said at this 
 juncture, " Now, or never, I must work in some- 
 thing to fit my title," and you heartily wish your 
 favourite had let Cathro " end the scene with the 
 strap." But this in no degree detracts from the 
 great merit of the scene as the keynote to Tommy's 
 character ; it only goes to support the assertion that 
 Barrie lacks the gift which many very ordinary 
 novelists possess that of " jining their flats." 
 
 It is in no grudging spirit I register here, along- 
 side of his great gifts, the qualities in which, as it 
 seems to me, Mr Barrie is somewhat ill-favoured ; 
 for an admirer who can see no speck of failure in 
 his hero may safely be regarded as blind in one eye. 
 The greatest of artists have their limitations ; per- 
 fection is not of this world or its inhabitants, and 
 the great are only distinguished from the small in 
 the distance that separates them from their lines of 
 limitation. In other parts of this little book I dwell
 
 CHARACTERISTICS 1 1 7 
 
 in ampler detail on the more outstanding character- 
 istics of its subject, and here I would only add one 
 more sentence, which touches also one of the tiny 
 flaws in Mr Barrie's marble. To anyone who has 
 read all his books and most of his uncollected writ- 
 ings, a curious frequency of repetition will appear : 
 if he has once used an especially happy simile, a 
 more than usually striking phrase, he has evidently 
 wagged his head, like Tommy, with sheer pleasure 
 at his own conceit, and remembered it long after- 
 wards, so that the same thought will come to him 
 again and yet again, and he will be so proud of it 
 that he will use it with the old pleasure and the 
 old wagging of the head, we may suppose not 
 twice, but three or four times over.
 
 HIS KNOWLEDGE OF 
 WOMANKIND
 
 HIS KNOWLEDGE OF WOMANKIND 
 
 ONE of the strongest points of difference in the 
 characteristics of Scots and English is concerned 
 with love and womankind. The Scottish mother 
 who will talk about love to her daughters and dis- 
 cuss sweathearts with them is a rarity ; in England, 
 the love stories of their daughters are the commonest 
 gossip of mothers. When a Scottish lad and lassie 
 are in love it is a question for themselves, and they 
 take it too seriously to chatter at large about their 
 feelings ; even in their own home circles they neither 
 care to speak of it, nor to hear the subject discussed. 
 There are scores of instances in which the Scots are 
 reticent where the English are communicative ; but 
 this contrast is particularly marked in the matter of 
 love. 
 
 Barrie confesses to the embarrassment occasioned 
 by merely writing a love-passage. He says: "They 
 tell me the Sassenach tell me that in time I shall 
 be able without a blush to make Albert say, * darling,' 
 and even gather her (the heroine) up in his arms, but 
 I begin to doubt it. The moment sees me as shy as 
 ever ; I still find it advisable to lock the door, and 
 then no witness save the dog I ' do ' it dourly with 
 my teeth clenched, while the dog retreats into the far
 
 122 HIS KNOWLEDGE OF 
 
 corner and moans. The bolder Englishman (1 am 
 told) will write a love chapter and then go out, quite 
 coolly, to dinner ; but such goings on are contrary 
 to the Scotch nature ; even the great novelists dared 
 not. Conceive Mr Stevenson left alone with a hero, 
 a heroine, and a proposal impending (he does not 
 know where to look). Sir "Walter, in the same cir- 
 cumstances, gets out of the room by making his love 
 scenes take place between the end of one chapter and 
 the beginning of the next, but he could afford to do 
 anything, and the small fry must e'en to their task, 
 moan the dog as he may." 
 
 In this amusing bit of autobiography the novelist 
 is only using his happy knack of exaggeration to 
 emphasise a truth which is apparent to those who 
 have seriously studied the subject. But, despite this 
 whimsical description of his diffidence when approach- 
 ing the tender passion, pen in hand, no one who has 
 been a close student of Barrie's writings can have 
 failed to be struck with his remarkable insight into 
 woman's heart, his grip of female character. I well 
 remember that one of the first questions I put to 
 myself, when reading his early works, was, "How 
 does this young bachelor know so much about 
 women ? " It puzzled me for a time, but the day 
 came when I understood perfectly. Of that I shall 
 have something to say further on. 
 
 There is scarcely any phase of woman which we 
 do not find illustrated in Barrie's books : the holy 
 joys of motherhood, the beauties of wifely love, 
 the little meannesses of the sex, their frequent
 
 WOMANKIND 123 
 
 superiority, their occasional inferiority to man, 
 their love of show and gossip, their power of 
 self-sacrifice. All these, and more, does Barrie 
 interpret, and always with absolute fidelity. But, 
 above all, is he insistent on the nobility of 
 womankind. In "The Little Minister" he ob- 
 serves : " The most gladsome thing in the world 
 is that few of us fall very low , the saddest that, 
 with such capabilities, we seldom rise high. Of 
 those who stand perceptibly above their fellows, 
 I have known very few, only Mr Carfrae (one of 
 the Auld Licht ministers) and two or three 
 women." And again : " There are those who 
 say that women cannot love each other, but it is 
 not true. Woman is not undeveloped man, but 
 something better." Here is the keynote of his 
 conception of woman, and if any doubt its truth, 
 let them turn to " Margaret Ogilvy." 
 
 Where in fiction have we a more lovable portrait 
 of a good woman than Margaret Dishart ? Where 
 a finer picture of heroism in lowly life than dear old 
 Jess, who looked out on her little world so long a 
 prisoner behind that window in Thrums ? Nor would 
 it be very easy to mention a heroine more bewitching 
 than Babbie ; while Jean Myles, in another and very 
 different way, is as true a type of Scots character as 
 I have ever met in books. Even that pathetic, if 
 slightly unreal, figure, " The Painted Lady," is a 
 tiny masterpiece, in which the author has symbolised 
 and exalted, not unduly, the saddest of all woman- 
 kind she who loves not wisely, but too well, and
 
 i2 4 HIS KNOWLEDGE OF 
 
 whose first sin is often next-door to innocence. 
 One shudders to think what an ugly character 
 the "Painted Lady" might have been, fashioned by 
 the hands of a less skilful writer. Through the 
 pages of his books many kinds of women flit, but 
 the mother of Grizel is the only one whose skirts 
 are soiled ; and she is pictured so delicately that no 
 true-hearted woman nor clean-hearted man can re- 
 gard her as other than a good woman wasted by a 
 base deceiver. 
 
 Dear old Jess we all love ; her long years of 
 thankfulness to God through all her infirmities 
 teach a lesson in the nobility of Scots character 
 and the solace of religion to those of simple faith ; 
 for assuredly Jess and Leeby McQumpha had rich 
 store of that which is " more than Norman blood." 
 And where is there a more poignant little tragedy 
 than the story of poor Nanny Coutts ? It is essenti- 
 ally typical of Scots character ; yet I am persuaded 
 it is equally true to womankind the world over, as 
 the leading traits of woman are universal. Poor 
 Nanny had a worthless man, who was a general 
 favourite in the town how often is this the case 
 with worthless men ! and while he was hob-nobbing 
 with his cronies, she was working her life out at the 
 loom to keep the creature in the same rude comfort 
 as his friends obtained by their own efforts. No 
 wonder Nanny was sour and unfriendly with her 
 neighbours, who all too readily misjudged her. 
 " What a little story it is," says our author, " and 
 how few are the words required to tell it ! He
 
 WOMANKIND 125 
 
 was a bad husband to her, and she kept it secret. 
 That is Nanny's life summed up. It is all that was 
 left behind when her coffin went down the brae. 
 Did she love him to the end, or was she only doing 
 what she thought her duty ? It is not for me even 
 to guess. A good woman who suffers is altogether 
 beyond man's reckoning. To such heights of self- 
 sacrifice we cannot rise. It crushes us ; it ought to 
 crush us on to our knees. For us who saw Nanny, 
 infirm, shrunken, and so weary, yet a type of the 
 noblest womanhood, suffering for years, and mis- 
 understood to her end, what expiation can there 
 be ? " 
 
 I have known Scots folks who have denied that 
 Jean Myles, the mother of Tommy Sandys, was a 
 true portrait, and have scouted the idea of any 
 woman sending such letters to Thrums as those 
 which Barrie writes for her during her days of 
 terrible poverty in London ; but they who question 
 the fidelity of the character revealed in those letters 
 are no true students of Scottish characteristics. 
 Independence is Scotland's national trait ; and it is 
 especially marked in the women folk in all matters 
 that relate to their social standing, where, indeed, 
 independence becomes pride. Jean Myles was mis- 
 led by a masterful man, and found herself after his 
 miserable death in the direst straits ; but she had 
 left in Thrums the tradition of marrying a man of 
 means, and I hold that she would have been no true 
 Scotswoman if, when she sat in her London hovel with 
 gaunt despair on her hearthstone, she had done any-
 
 126 HIS KNOWLEDGE OF 
 
 thing but what she did determine to struggle 
 bravely on and write to Thrums about her " silks 
 and satins," and her son being clothed in his 
 " velvets." This was very foolish pride, perhaps ; 
 but it was very like a Scotswoman ; and I like Jean 
 Myles the better for it. Do we not all admire those 
 whose spirit of independence impels them to hide 
 their poverty no matter what the motive may be 
 and fight the bitter fight unaided, rather than 
 write whining letters, begging friends for assist- 
 ance ? I think we do ; and it is this very spirit of 
 dour, dogged independence that has made the Scots 
 what they are. 
 
 The tragedy of Jean Myles is really one of 
 Barrie's most powerful studies. She married a 
 "magerful" man because the man she really loved 
 proved a coward at the wooing, though he turned 
 out a humble hero in the sad after-years. As Jean, 
 on her death-bed, said to Tommy : " All decent 
 women, laddie, has a horror of being fought about. 
 I'm no sure but what' that's just the difference 
 atween good ones and ill ones, but this man had 
 a power o'er me ; and if Aaron had just struck 
 him. Instead o' meddling he turned white, and I 
 couldna help contrasting them, and thinking how 
 masterful your father looked. Fine I kent he 
 was a brute, and yet I couldna help admiring 
 him for looking so magerful. . . . Laddie, it doesna 
 do for a man to be a coward afore a woman that's 
 fond o' him. A woman will thole a man's being 
 anything except like hersel'. When I was sure
 
 WOMANKIND 127 
 
 Aaron was a coward, I stood still as death, waiting 
 to ken wha's I was to be." 
 
 I fear that woman, superior though she be in 
 many respects to the male sex, will always fall a 
 victim to the " magerful man"; for both men and 
 women are strangely prone to admire in each other 
 the qualities least worthy of admiration. Our author 
 never says this in so many words ; but I think he 
 gives evidence of believing it. When Babbie allows 
 Gavin to reprimand her, Barrie writes : " Now (but 
 perhaps I should not tell this), unless she is his wife, 
 a man is shot with a thrill of exultation every time a 
 pretty woman allows him to upbraid her." On the 
 other hand, that man may be teased by the woman 
 he has upbraided, and only experience pleasure in 
 the process. " At twenty-one," says the novelist, 
 " a man is a musical instrument given to the other 
 sex, but it is not as instruments learned at 
 school, for when she sits down to it she cannot 
 tell what tune she is about to play. That is 
 because she has no notion of what the instru- 
 ment is capable. Babbie's kind-heartedness, her 
 gaiety, her coquetry, her moments of sadness, 
 had been a witch's fingers, and Gavin was still 
 trembling under their touch. Even in being taken 
 to task by her there was a charm, for every pout 
 of her mouth, every shake of her head, said, ' You 
 like me, and therefore you have given me the 
 right to tease you.' Men sign these agreements 
 without reading them. But, indeed, man is a 
 stupid animal at the best, and thinks all his life
 
 128 HIS KNOWLEDGE OF 
 
 that he did not propose, until he blurted out, 
 ' I love you.' " 
 
 Curiosity is, I suppose, the common heritage of 
 the daughters of Eve, but a trait which is peculiar 
 to Scotswomen of the peasant class is a strange 
 shyness in the company of their social betters. 
 They will go with fear and trepidation on a visit 
 to the manse, or the house of some well-to-do 
 person, sit in the drawing-room " like a stookie," 
 with never a word to say in the conversation, appear 
 helplessly embarrassed, and quite unobservant, yet 
 they will go back to their own little homes with 
 sufficient gossip about their visit to So-and-so's 
 " grand hoose " to last them for months, not a 
 sentence of the conversation having been lost on 
 them, not a tiny detail of the house furniture having 
 been omitted in their mental inventory. Barrie 
 knows this well and he never wrote a truer passage 
 than that (from "Visitors at the Manse" in "A 
 Window in Thrums ") wherein he describes how 
 Leeby went with Hendry to call on Mrs Dishart 
 and came home with an amazing fund of information 
 about the manse, although she had appeared to be 
 noticing nothing all the time her visit lasted. Let us 
 quote a few sentences from the chapter mentioned : 
 
 " I sat down to a book by the kitchen fire ; but 
 as Leeby became communicative, I read less and less. 
 While she spoke she was baking bannocks with all 
 the might of her, and Jess, leaning forward in her 
 chair, was arranging them in a semicircle round the 
 fire.
 
 WOMANKIND 129 
 
 "'Na,' was the first remark of Leeby's that 
 came between me and my book, 'it is no new 
 furniture.' 
 
 " ' But there were three cart-loads o't, Leeby, 
 sent on frae Edinbory. Tibbie Birse helpit to lift 
 it in, and she said the parlour furniture beat a'.' 
 
 " ' Ou, it's substantial, but it is no new. I sepad 1 
 it had been bocht cheap second-hand, for the chair I 
 had was terrible scratched like, an', what's mair, the 
 airm-chair was a heap shinier than the rest.' 
 
 " ' Ay, ay, I wager it had been stuffed. Tibbie 
 said the carpet cowed for grandeur ? ' 
 
 " ' Oh, I dinna deny it's a guid carpet ; but if it's 
 been turned once it's been turned half a dozen times, 
 so it's far frae new. Ay, an' forby, it was rale 
 threadbare aneath the table, so you may be sure 
 they've been cuttin't an' puttin' the worn pairt whaur 
 it would be least seen.' 
 
 " 'They say 'at there's twa grand gas-brackets i' 
 the parlour, an' a wonderfu' gasoliery i' the dinin'- 
 room ? ' 
 
 " ' We wasna i' the dinin'-room, so I ken naething 
 about the gasoliery ; but I'll tell ye what the gas- 
 brackets is. I recognised them immeditly. Ye 
 mind the auld gasoliery i' the dinin'-room had twa 
 lichts ? Ay, then, the parlour brackets is made oot 
 o' the auld gasoliery.' 
 
 " ' Weel, Leeby, as sure as ye're standin' there, 
 that passed through my head as sune as Tibbie 
 mentioned them ! ' ' 
 
 1 See note on this word under " The Scots Tongue in Barrie's Books." 
 
 I
 
 130 HIS KNOWLEDGE OF 
 
 Touching the appearance of the bedroom, Jess 
 was inquisitive. 
 
 " * The room lookit weel, ye say ?' 
 
 " * Yes, but it was economically furnished. There 
 was nae carpet below the wax-cloth ; na, there was 
 nane below the bed either.' 
 
 " ' Was't a grand bed ? ' 
 
 '"It had a fell lot o' brass about it, but there 
 was juist one pair o' blankets. I thocht it was gey 
 shabby, hae'n the ewer a different pattern frae the 
 basin j ay, an' there was juist a poker in the fire- 
 place, there was nae tangs.' " And so on. 
 
 In Thrums, as elsewhere, lasses grow up naturally 
 into women who expect to be " asked" and married 
 some day, and the tragedy is sometimes that they 
 are never asked again, that they have given their 
 consent. With the men thought of marriage comes 
 suddenly. Barrie thus describes love's awakening 
 in Thrums: "Into the life of every man, and no 
 woman, there comes a moment when he learns 
 that he is held eligible for marriage. A girl gives 
 him the jag, and it brings out the perspiration. Of 
 the issue elsewhere of this stab with a bodkin let 
 others speak : in Thrums its commonest effect is to 
 make the callant's body take a right angle to his 
 legs, for he has been touched in the fifth button, 
 and he backs away brokenwinded. By-and-by, 
 however, he is at his work among the turnip- 
 shoots, say guffawing and clapping his corduroys, 
 with pauses for uneasy meditation, and there he ripens 
 with the swedes, so that by the back-end of the
 
 WOMANKIND 131 
 
 year he has discovered, and exults to know, that the 
 reward of manhood is neither more nor less than 
 this sensation of the ribs. Soon thereafter, or at 
 worst, sooner or later (for by holding out he only 
 puts the women's dander up), he is led captive to 
 the Cuttle Well. This well has the reputation of 
 being the place where it is most easily said." 
 
 The proposal among the Auld Lichts was a 
 ticklish business, as witness those delightful hum- 
 orous sketches, " How Gavin Birse put it to Mag 
 Lownie," and " The Courting of T'nowhead's Bell." 
 A photo of the swain slipped into his sweetheart's 
 hand was generally the beginning of the ordeal. 
 " Some night Bell would have ' seen him to the door,' 
 and they would have stared sheepishly at each other 
 before saying good-night. The parting salutation 
 given, the grieve would still have stood his ground, 
 and Bell would have waited with him. At last, 
 ' Will ye hae's, Bell ? ' would have dropped from his 
 half-reluctant lips ; and Bell would have mumbled, 
 * Ay,' with her thumb in her mouth. ' Guid nicht 
 to ye, Bell,' would be the next remark ' Guid 
 nicht to ye, Jeames,' the answer ; the humble door 
 would close softly, and Bell and her lad would have 
 been engaged." 
 
 But after the marriage the question of manage- 
 ment arises, and perhaps it is not only in Thrums 
 that the husband must have " the knack o't " if 
 there's to be peace and happiness around the 
 fireside. Tammas Haggart is Barrie's charac- 
 ter who is always honoured with the observations
 
 132 HIS KNOWLEDGE OF 
 
 on this head. Let me quote from " Auld Licht 
 Idylls": 
 
 " ' They're kittle cattle, the women,' said the 
 farmer o' Craigiebuckle, a little gloomily. 'I've 
 often thocht maiterimony is no onlike the lucky bags 
 th' auld wifies has at the muckly (the fair). There's 
 prizes an' blanks baith inside, but, losh, ye're far 
 frae sure what ye'll draw oot when ye put in yer 
 han'.' 
 
 " ' Ou, weel,' said Tammas complacently, 
 ' there's truth in what ye say ; but the women 
 can be managed if ye have the knack.' 
 
 " 'Some o' them,' said Craigiebuckle woefully. 
 
 " ' Ye had yer wark wi' the wife yersel, Tammas, 
 so ye had,' observed Lang Tammas, unbending to 
 suit his company. 
 
 < Ye're speakin' aboot the bit wife's bural,' said 
 Tammas Haggart with a chuckle ; * ay, ay, that 
 brocht her to reason.' " 
 
 Tammas, who was ever a diplomatist, had gained 
 the "upper han'" of his wife by ostentatiously 
 holding her " wake," in the old Thrums fashion, 
 when she was not dead but had only quarrelled with 
 him and taken up her abode at a friend's house 
 across the street, whence she witnessed the pro- 
 ceedings ! 
 
 "'She's gone this fower year,' Tammas said, 
 when he had finished his story, ' but up to the end I 
 had no more trouble wi' Chirsty. No, I had the 
 knack o' her.' 
 
 " ' I've heard tell, though,' said the sceptical
 
 WOMANKIND 133 
 
 Craigiebuckle, ' as Chirsty only cam back to ye 
 because she cudna bear to see the fowk makin* sae 
 free wi' the whisky ! ' " 
 
 Tammas, presumably, became so sinfully puffed 
 up about his knack of managing women that when 
 we meet him again in " A Window in Thrums" he 
 is openly boasting of his belief that he could have 
 managed even Mary Queen of Scots. 
 
 " * Ah, they can be managed/ said Tammas com- 
 placently. ' There's naebody nat'rally safter wi' a 
 pretty stocky o' a bit wumany than mysel' ; but for 
 a' that, if I had been Mary's man I would hae stood 
 nane o' her tantrums. " Na, Mary, my lass," I 
 would hae said, " this winna do ; na, na, ye're a 
 bonny body, but ye maun mind 'at man's the 
 superior ; ay, man's the lord o' creation, an' so ye 
 maun juist sing sma'." That's hoo I would hae 
 managed Mary, the speerity crittur 'at she was.' 
 
 " ' Ye would hae haen yer wark cut oot for ye, 
 Tammas.' 
 
 " ' Ilka mornin',' pursued Tammas, ' I would hae 
 said to her, " Mary," I would hae said, ** wha's 
 to wear thae breeks the day, you or me ? " Ay, 
 syne I would hae ordered her to kindle the fire, 
 or if I had been the king, of coorse I would hae telt 
 her instead to ring the bell an' hae the cloth laid for 
 the breakfast. Ay, that's the wy to mak the like o' 
 Mary respec' ye.' " 
 
 All this proves pretty plainly, I think, that Mr 
 Barrie has studied woman to some purpose, and is 
 intimately acquainted with all her varying moods, as
 
 134 HIS KNOWLEDGE OF 
 
 well as the influence she exercises on, and the 
 feelings she arouses in, the other sex. Yet, as I 
 have already said, he had attained to this knowledge 
 while still a very young man, and a bachelor to boot. 
 Well he has revealed the secret himself in that 
 classic of filial love, " Margaret Ogilvy." For there 
 he writes : " We had read somewhere that a novelist 
 is better equipped than most of his trade if he knows 
 himself and one woman, and my mother said, ' You 
 know yourself (there was never a woman who 
 knew less about herself than she), and she would 
 add dolefully, ' But I doubt I'm the only woman you 
 know well.'" And he admits the truth of this. 
 His mother is his heroine in all his stories, and his 
 mother was a typical Scotswoman, full of the 
 nobility of character for which her race and sex are 
 distinguished, and possessing also, we are glad to 
 know, their little weaknesses. " In one of my 
 books," he says (it is The Little Minister), " there is 
 a mother who is setting off with her son for the 
 town to which he had been called as minister, and 
 she pauses on the threshold to ask him anxiously if 
 he thinks her bonnet ' sets ' her. A reviewer said 
 she acted thus, not because she cared how she 
 looked, but for the sake of her son. This, I 
 remember, amused my mother very much." The 
 incident referred to throws a vivid sidelight on 
 woman's character, and it is one of her most lov- 
 able sides that it illumines ; for the woman who 
 is not mindful of looking well is not altogether 
 feminine, and it is the feminine woman that men
 
 WOMANKIND 135 
 
 love. Barrie found in his mother a good woman, a 
 woman of strongly marked character, yet essentially 
 typical. That he knew her well there can be no 
 doubt, and here was a fund of knowledge which in 
 the hands of an artist was sure to prove inexhaust- 
 ible. For, after all, one good woman is very like 
 another.
 
 MOTHER AND SON
 
 MOTHER AND SON 
 
 THE mother of a great author, of a great man in 
 any walk of life, is, next to that man himself, 
 worthy of study. Certainly more deserving of our 
 consideration than his father, as it would be idle 
 to deny that the influence of the mother over her 
 son is invariably stronger than that of the father: 
 it is the mother who always succeeds in getting 
 nearest to the heart of her child. It would be an 
 easy task to gather instance upon instance where 
 our greatest men have gloried in the power they 
 derived from their mothers, to mention women who 
 have unmistakably endowed their sons with the 
 qualities which have won them fame and fortune. 
 But our present concern is with a particular case, 
 and there is neither the occasion nor the opportunity 
 for generalisations. 
 
 There need be no doubt in the mind of anyone 
 familiar with the writings of J. M. Barrie that if 
 he were asked to name the one influence that has 
 guided, quickened, inspired his whole life, his simple 
 answer would be : " My mother." Long ago at 
 least it seems so to those of us who were young 
 then, but perhaps it was no more than ten years 
 back the Scotsman, which has never been a hearty 
 friend to Barrie or the so-called " Kailyard" school, 
 
 139
 
 1 40 MOTHER AND SON 
 
 said that the author of "A Window in Thrums" 
 was a man who would make "copy" of the bones 
 of his grandmother, or passed some such sinister 
 remark. What this oracle of Auld Reekie said when 
 " Margaret Ogilvy " appeared I know not ; but doubt- 
 less it would be the familiar journalistic " I told you 
 so." Yet I venture to assert that the noblest book 
 which Barrie had given to the world is none other 
 than that in which to use the vile and vulgar 
 phrase he has made " copy " of his mother. 
 
 " Made copy ! " What an abominable shallowness 
 of heart the phrase betrays in the one who uses it 
 seriously against anything Barrie has written. He 
 has made a whole "toon" of quiet, humble, God- 
 serving men and women live again, that all the 
 world may know them and be the better for their 
 acquaintance. He has raised to the memory of his 
 mother the most enduring memorial, the most beauti- 
 ful monument, that ever sprung from filial love. If 
 he had done nothing more than draw that sweet 
 picture of a good woman's humble, happy life, he 
 would have deserved well of his generation. It 
 was a delicate, almost an impossible, task to take 
 up, and only an artist of the first order could 
 have dared to hope for success in it. That he has 
 succeeded no one who knows Scottish character or 
 can appreciate the humour and pathos of lowly life 
 is likely to doubt. 
 
 Margaret Ogilvy the custom of calling married 
 women by their maiden names obtains to this day 
 in some parts of rural Scotland was a typical Scots-
 
 MOTHER AND SON 141 
 
 woman. I have heard it said by people who knew 
 her as a neighbour that she was " naething by 
 ord'nar' grand to hae a book written aboot her." 
 I am willing, nay glad, to believe she was no rarer 
 a creature than the good Scotswoman of the cottage 
 class, whose name is legion. Had Margaret Ogilvy 
 been sharply different from the class to which she be- 
 longed, then her life were less worthy of an artist's 
 portrayal, even though that artist were her son. 
 For the everlasting value of "Margaret Ogilvy" 
 is that here we have the intimate life of a woman 
 whose like might be found in many thousands of 
 Scottish homes. And the fact is not the least of 
 Scotland's glories. The only thing and no small 
 thing that gives her distinction above her class, is 
 that she was the mother of J. M. Barrie. The 
 instinct of motherhood is strong amongst Scots- 
 women. Margaret Ogilvy often said she would 
 have liked fine to be the mother of this great man 
 or that ; never the wife, mark you, but the mother 
 the difference is immense. She even admitted 
 she would have liked to be the mother of R. L. 
 Stevenson ; though she vainly pretended to think 
 nothing of his works, in order to reserve her admira- 
 tion for the efforts of her own boy. Many a Scots- 
 woman would " like fine " to have been the mother 
 of J. M. Barrie. 
 
 If Margaret Ogilvy differed from her class in any 
 particular, it was in her close comradeship with her 
 children, and especially with her author son. Com- 
 radeship is the only word I can think of to suggest
 
 142 MOTHER AND SON 
 
 my meaning. Margaret Ogilvy seems to have been 
 a chum to all her children. And it is precisely this 
 that the average Scottish mother is not. I may be 
 wrong, but I have formed the opinion, based on a 
 good deal of observation, that the English mother is 
 far more intimate with her family ; she will hear 
 their confidences, spread their praise, with a readi- 
 ness, a glibness, that is utterly foreign to the Scot- 
 tish mother. Nor do I think the English race is 
 the better for this : there are far more spoilt children 
 south of the Tweed than north of it. As a rule 
 the Scottish mother is undemonstrative to and about 
 her children; we all know she "likes fine" to hear 
 them spoken well of, but she often pretends to take 
 pleasure in denouncing them for feckless bairns, of 
 whom she is "black affronted" ryet, let anyone 
 else miscall them, and her tune is changed ! The 
 Scots mother, in a word, is more of a Spartan in 
 the rearing of her family than her sister of the 
 south. And it seems to me that, although her son 
 tells us the kissing of her hand to him as he looked 
 back from the road to the window where she stood 
 was the only English custom Margaret Ogilvy ever 
 learned, the warmth of her family affection was so 
 great that its outward manifestations but only 
 these were almost more English than Scottish. 
 This may be mere supposition, but it is an impres- 
 sion which I do not feel justified in suppressing. 
 
 Margaret Ogilvy was poor in worldly gear until 
 that fine day when her son's success brought to the 
 modest home wealth undreamed of. But had she
 
 MOTHER AND SON 143 
 
 been born to riches and reared in luxury, her nature 
 was such that she would still have been, in all the 
 goodness of heart, the Margaret Ogilvy we know 
 and admire. Still, it was best, I am persuaded, that 
 she was precisely as she was. To have had wealth 
 in those days would have been to lose the pure 
 uncloyed delight that came when she got her six 
 hair-bottomed chairs, for which she had saved up 
 in three-penny bits. These humble triumphs of the 
 poor are joys to which the wealthy cannot aspire, 
 and many an unknown Scotswoman has lived such 
 golden hours. The altering of worn*clothes to fit 
 one member of the family after another, so charm- 
 ingly described by Barrie, is another of the many 
 little things in which Margaret Ogilvy's life was 
 the counterpart of her neighbours'. But we cannot 
 suppose that her largeness of heart, her nai've hum- 
 our, her grown-up girlishness, were so common ; 
 and these are characteristics which endear her mem- 
 ory to all who know her through the books of her 
 son. 
 
 I say books, for it is not in " Margaret Ogilvy " 
 alone that we meet her ; she finds her way into 
 almost everything Mr Barrie has written about 
 women. She is the very heart and soul of dear 
 old Jess M'Qumpha, she is all that is most precious 
 in Margaret Dishart, there are some of her qualities 
 in Jean Myles, and even in Grizel there are touches 
 of her girlhood a girlhood which the author says 
 he seems to know as though it were coeval with 
 his boyhood, so "far ben" had he crept into his
 
 144 MOTHER AND SON 
 
 mother's heart. " The reason my books deal with 
 the past instead of with the life I myself have 
 known," he writes, "is simply this, that I soon 
 grow tired of writing tales unless I can see a little 
 girl, of whom my mother has told me, wandering 
 confidently through the pages. Such a grip has 
 her memory of her girlhood had upon me since I 
 was a boy of six. Those innumerable talks with 
 her made her youth as vivid to me as my own, 
 and so much more quaint, for, to a child, the oddest 
 of things, and the most richly-coloured picture-book, 
 is that his mother was once a child also, and the 
 contrast between what she is and what she was is 
 perhaps the source of all humour. My mother's 
 father, the hero of her life, died nine years before 
 I was born, and I remember this with bewilder- 
 ment, so familiarly does the weather-beaten mason's 
 figure rise before me from the old chair on which I 
 was nursed and now write my books." 
 
 There is no passage in all that Barrie has written 
 more essentially Scottish in character than the de- 
 lightfully humorous account of his mother on the 
 prospect of his election to a well-known London 
 club, for which he had been nominated by the good 
 fairy of his literary life Frederick Greenwood. 
 Thirty pounds for admission to a club seemed to a 
 woman who had scraped along most of her life on 
 shillings " terrible wasterfu'," and she had naturally 
 much to say on the subject, while the candidate for 
 election had to plead his case against a withering 
 fire of sarcasm.
 
 MOTHER AND SON 145 
 
 " If I get in it will be because the editor is sup- 
 porting me." 
 
 " It's the first ill thing I ever heard of him." 
 
 " You don't think he is to get any of the thirty 
 pounds, do you ? " 
 
 "'Deed if I did I should be better pleased, for he 
 has been a good friend to us j but what maddens me 
 is that every penny of it should go to those bare- 
 faced scoundrels." 
 
 " What bare-faced scoundrels ? " 
 
 " Them that have the club." 
 
 " But all the members have the club between 
 them." 
 
 " Havers ! I'm no' to be catched with chaff." 
 
 " But don't you believe me ? " 
 
 " I believe they've filled your head with their 
 stories till you swallow whatever they tell you. If 
 the place belongs to the members, why do they have 
 to pay thirty pounds ? " 
 
 " To keep it going." 
 
 "They dinna have to pay for their dinners, 
 then?" 
 
 " Oh yes, they have to pay extra for dinner." 
 
 *' And a gey black price, I'm thinking." 
 
 "Well, five or six shillings." 
 
 " Is that all ? Losh, it's nothing, I wonder they 
 dinna raise the price." 
 
 How like the Scotswoman is that little bit of 
 sarcasm. And later on when she hears that there 
 are about twelve members of committee, she 
 observes : " A dozen ! Ay, ay, that makes two 
 
 K
 
 146 MOTHER AND SON 
 
 pound ten a-piece." Yet we know all this was 
 only banter, though it arose from the pathetic fact 
 that " money meant so much to her." But we can 
 well believe that "even at her poorest she was the 
 most cheerful giver." In the early days of his 
 London work his mother and sister, he tells us, used 
 to reckon the length of his articles and calculate 
 what he got for them before reading them. " I 
 remember once overhearing a discussion between 
 them about whether that sub-title meant another 
 sixpence." How mercenary ! says the shallow 
 reader. How human ! says the student of char- 
 acter. If Barrie had chosen to dissemble here and 
 tell us that his mother and sister cared only for 
 the fame he was making, only for the glory of 
 seeing his words in print, he might readily have 
 been believed, but I for one rejoice in his trueness. 
 To the mother who has only known poverty all her 
 life, the amazing thing is not that a son of hers can 
 get his writings published, but that he can earn so 
 much by means that to her simple mind seem little 
 less than magic. 
 
 But with*the son it was otherwise. It is said 
 with truth that every man at one period of his life 
 writes or works mainly to please a woman. That 
 woman may be either his mother or his sweetheart 
 sometimes his wife. In Barrie's case it was his 
 mother : " I weaved sufficiently well to please her," 
 he says, " which has been my only steadfast ambition 
 since I was a little boy." To him the payment for 
 his writings was important only as it would assist
 
 MOTHER AND SON 147 
 
 him to add to the comforts of his mother's life. It 
 was a constant wonder to her that any London editor 
 could be so " doited" as to think the stories of the 
 Auld Lichts sufficiently interesting to the grand folk 
 who read his paper. Nor is this surprising, since 
 all the sketches which founded Mr Barrie's early 
 fame were the merest commonplaces to her. In- 
 deed, but that Margaret Ogilvy in her early days had 
 been a member of the Auld Licht congregation she 
 attended the South Free Church with her husband 
 during most of her married life the world might 
 never have known the pleasure which " Auld Licht 
 Idylls" and the other Barrie masterpieces have 
 brought into it, as it was largely from his mother's 
 recollections that the novelist wrote. Probably her 
 simple heart never permitted her to realise this. 
 
 So potent is the influence which J. M. Barrie's 
 mother has exercised on him, so intimately is she 
 revealed to us in all his work, we can scarcely 
 think of him without thinking of her. Her child- 
 like faith in God, the youthful humour which she 
 never lost, and which remained strong even in her 
 days of sickness and trial, her ever evident sympathy 
 with and absorbing interest in all forms of lowly 
 life : all these good and precious things we recognise 
 in her gifted son and in his books. She was and is 
 his inspiration, of her he wrote and for her ; so that 
 we are tempted when reading some of his finest 
 things to ask ourselves, "How much of this do 
 we owe to Margaret Ogilvy ? " His whole life 
 seems to have been bound up with hers in a way 

 
 148 MOTHER AND SON 
 
 that was as uncommon as it was beautiful ; they 
 understood each other perfectly. Writing of his 
 call to her death-bed he says : " They told her that I 
 was on my way home, and she said with a confident 
 smile, ' He will come as quick as trains can bring 
 him.' That is my reward, that is what I got for 
 my books. Everything I could do for her in this 
 life I have done since I was a boy : I look back 
 through the years and I cannot see the smallest 
 thing left undone." Now, that is a daring thing for 
 any man to say. I have seen these words quoted 
 by those who understood not, and used as a peg 
 whereon to hang a jeer at the author's expense. I 
 knew that paragraph before ever I read a word of 
 " Margaret Ogilvy," and it prejudiced me against 
 the book, but I had only read the volume once 
 when, on reaching this, one of its closing pages, 
 I could say with all my heart, " I believe it." I 
 believe he did all that lay in his power to please 
 and serve his mother, and yet I believe he did 
 nothing more for her than she deserved. 
 
 One of the most beautiful passages in his story of 
 his mother's life is the following : " She brings the 
 Testament again ; it was always lying within her 
 reach ; it is the lock of hair she left me when she 
 died. And when she has read for a long time she 
 ' gives me a look,' as we say in the north, and I go 
 out, to leave her alone with God. She had been but 
 a child when her mother died, and so she fell early 
 into the way of saying her prayers with no earthly 
 listener. Often and often I have found her on her
 
 MOTHER AND SON 149 
 
 knees, but I always went softly away, closing the 
 door. I never heard her pray, but I know very well 
 how she prayed, and that, when that door was shut, 
 there was not a day in God's sight between the 
 worn woman and the little child." This displays an 
 insight into his mother's character that is almost 
 uncanny. 
 
 Another noble passage may appropriately close 
 this brief sketch : "In her happiest moments and 
 never was a happier woman her mouth did not of 
 a sudden begin to twitch, and tears to lie on the 
 mute blue eyes in which I have read all I know and 
 would ever care to write. For when you looked 
 into my mother's eyes you knew, as if He had told 
 you, why God sent her into the world it was to 
 open the minds of all who looked to beautiful 
 thoughts. And that is the beginning and end of 
 literature. Those eyes that I cannot see until I was 
 six years old have guided me through life, and I 
 pray God they may remain my only earthly judge 
 to the last. They were never more my guide than 
 when I helped to put her to earth, not whimpering 
 because my mother had been taken away after 
 seventy-six glorious years of life, but exulting in 
 her even at the grave."
 
 HIS KNOWLEDGE OF BOYS 

 
 HIS KNOWLEDGE OF BOYS 
 
 IT is always a good test of a man's heart to find out 
 whether the memory of his boyhood remains fresh 
 and green. If you know a man who loves to talk 
 of his boyhood and his boy friends, and seems to 
 remember every harmless prank, every foolish little 
 episode, as clearly as though it had happened yester- 
 day, you know a man whose heart remains as healthy 
 and happy as it always is in the radiant morning of 
 life. In these days of problem novels and " sunless 
 hearts " it is a fortunate thing that amongst our 
 popular authors we have a noble band whose writ- 
 ings betray their keen sympathy with boyhood, their 
 possession of the healthy, boyish heart. 
 
 But there is no contemporary author whose love 
 and knowledge of boys, whose delight in his own 
 boyhood, are so strongly marked as those qualities 
 are in the books of J. M. Barrie. It is one thing to 
 be able to write books for boys, and another thing 
 to be able to write books about boys. The art of 
 pleasing the youthful reader of fiction is a com- 
 paratively easy one, but the art of entrancing 
 adult readers with the story of a boy is given 
 only to the few. Indeed it is something more than 
 art ; it is a gift that comes direct from Nature. 
 
 153
 
 154 HIS KNOWLEDGE OF BOYS 
 
 Barrie is one of the few who have it in most liberal 
 measure. In " Tommy and Grizel," he says : 
 " What is genius ? It is the power to be again a 
 boy at will." And this power is his. 
 
 His works abound in references to boys and boy- 
 hood ; but in the first instance one is probably 
 anxious to know something from himself concerning 
 his own young days, and he has not been shy of 
 telling us about these. In " Margaret Ogilvy " we 
 have frequent glimpses of Barrie the boy revealed to 
 us by Barrie the man. And what a quaint little boy 
 he must have been ! Think of his absurdly pathetic 
 attempts to bring laughter to his mother's face when 
 an elder brother died and Margaret Ogilvy was 
 stricken with grief : " I suppose I was an odd little 
 figure," he writes. " I have been told that my anxiety 
 to brighten her gave my face a strained look and put 
 a tremor into the joke (I would stand on my head 
 in the bed, my feet against the wall, and then cry, 
 excitedly : ' Are you laughing, mother ? '), and per- 
 haps what made her laugh was something I was 
 unconscious of, but she did laugh suddenly now and 
 then, whereupon I screamed exultantly to that dear 
 sister who was ever in waiting to come and see the 
 sight, but by the time she came the soft face was 
 wet again." 
 
 His childish joy when he got his mother to laugh 
 is one of the most beautiful things in a beautiful 
 book. He told her that he had been keeping count 
 of how often she laughed, the doctor having sug- 
 gested to him that to tell her of this quaint idea
 
 HIS KNOWLEDGE OF BOYS 155 
 
 would be to add another laugh to the list. " Not 
 only did she laugh then, but again when I put the 
 laugh down, so that, though it was really one laugh 
 with a tear in the middle, I counted it as two." 
 
 I suppose that the boyhood of the most ordinary 
 mortal has some features which are identical with 
 that of the genius. Though there is distinct indi- 
 viduality shown in the incident which Barrie has 
 thus described for us, a point on which he dwells 
 more than once concerns a feature of boyhood 
 which I believe to be very general the delusion 
 of having participated in events which happened 
 before our birth. We have all, I fancy, experi- 
 enced this. There were things in our very young 
 days when our minds were blank tablets on which 
 not a line had yet been engraved things that have 
 been told us by our parents, stories of facts, and 
 fables also, that have stuck in our memories and 
 grown up with us, so that in later years we seem to 
 have lived them instead of having only heard them, 
 the occasion of their telling being quite forgotten. 
 
 There were stories that Barrie heard as he sat by 
 his mother's knee when a little boy, and the features 
 of these tales were so implanted in his memory that 
 as he grew he seemed to recollect their happening 
 more clearly than events that had really taken place 
 in his own boyhood. " I have seen many weary 
 on-dings of snow," he says, " but the one I 
 seem to recollect best occurred nearly twenty 
 years before I was born." This is the virgin 
 imagination of the child which enables the young
 
 156 HIS KNOWLEDGE OF BOYS 
 
 to actualise the simple stories told them by their 
 mothers. 
 
 So strong a hold did his mother's stories take on 
 his nascent mind that the lives of the " Auld Lichts," 
 who fought their quiet battles and sank into their 
 humble graves before he was born, were, in a sense, 
 more real to Barrie the boy, and far more interesting, 
 than the lives of his contemporaries. That is why, 
 as he tells us himself, his books deal mainly with the 
 past instead of with the time in which he lives. 
 
 How lovingly he remembers his boyhood, and 
 how highly he exalts it above all other periods of 
 life, we may gather from such a notable passage as 
 this, which occurs in " Margaret Ogilvy " : " She 
 ("his mother] told me everything, and so my memories 
 of the little red town are coloured by her memories. 
 I knew it as it had been for generations, and suddenly 
 I saw it change, and the transformation could not fail 
 to strike a boy, for these first years are the most 
 impressionable (nothing that happens after we are 
 twelve matters very much) ; they are also the most 
 vivid when we look back, and more vivid the further 
 we have to look, until, at the end, what lies between 
 bends like a hoop, and the extremes meet." 
 
 Here is another passage which illustrates his ever- 
 jreen sympathy with boyhood : " The horror of my 
 >oyhood was that I knew a time would come when I 
 also must give up the games, and how it was to be 
 lone I saw not (this agony still returns to me in 
 Ireams, when I catch myself playing marbles, and 
 ook on with cold displeasure). I felt that I must
 
 HIS KNOWLEDGE OF BOYS 157 
 
 continue playing in secret, and I took this shadow to 
 her, when she told me her own experience, which 
 convinced us both that we were very like each other 
 inside." 
 
 I have seen it stated in a sedate and usually well- 
 informed literary organ that " Sentimental Tommy " 
 is a study of R. L. Stevenson ; Mr A. T. Quiller 
 Couch has actually expressed the opinion that the 
 original in Barrie's mind was Robert Burns ! Both 
 ideas are too absurd to be entertained for one moment. 
 Tommy is obviously a study of the artistic tempera- 
 ment, and if there ever lived a real Tommy and 
 most of us have known at one time or another just 
 such a "queer little deevil" he was surely none 
 other than J. M. Barrie. 
 
 Tommy Sandys became famous, as we now know, 
 through writing a book which was entirely in keep- 
 ing with his dominating characteristic the power of 
 vicarious suffering and feeling. He was not married, 
 he was a perfect " sumph " in the presence of a 
 woman, when he made a great reputation with his 
 " Letters to a Young Man about to be Married." 
 This was precisely in line with one of Barrie's pranks 
 when a boy living with his brother at Dumfries. 
 He is said to have written letters to the local papers 
 signed "Paterfamilias," urging the desirability of 
 schoolboys having longer holidays! 
 
 But we have only to turn again to the memoir of 
 his mother for the keynote of Tommy's character. 
 Writing of his boyish companionship with his mother, 
 he says: "We read many books together when I
 
 158 HIS KNOWLEDGE OF BOYS 
 
 was a boy. ' Robinson Crusoe ' being the first (and 
 the second), and the 'Arabian Nights' should have 
 been the next, for we got it out of the library (a 
 penny for three days) ; but on discovering that they 
 were Nights when we had paid for Knights, we sent 
 that volume packing, and I have curled my lips at it 
 ever since. ' The Pilgrim's Progress ' we had in the 
 house (it was as common a possession as a dresser- 
 head), and so enamoured of it was I that I turned 
 our garden into Sloughs of Despond, with pea-sticks 
 to represent Christian on his travels, and a buffet- 
 stool for his burden ; but when I dragged my 
 mother out to see my handiwork she was scared, 
 and I felt for days, with a certain elation, that I had 
 been a dark character. Besides reading every book 
 we could hire or borrow, I also bought one now and 
 again, and while buying (it was the occupation of 
 weeks) I read, standing at the counter, most of the 
 other books in the shop, which is perhaps the most 
 exquisite way of reading." 
 
 The stories which he read with fascination in a 
 certain periodical of that time suggested to him an 
 idea that was to help his mother in her task of 
 making a clouty (rag) rug. " The notion was 
 nothing short of this," he tells us, "why should 
 I not write the tales myself? I did write them in 
 the garret but they by no means helped her to get 
 on with her work, for when I finished a chapter 
 I bounded downstairs to read it to her, and so short 
 were the chapters, so ready was the pen, that I was 
 back with a new manuscript before another clout had
 
 HIS KNOWLEDGE OF BOYS 159 
 
 been added to the rug. Authorship seemed, like her 
 bannock-baking, to consist of running between two 
 points. They were all tales of adventure (happiest 
 is he who writes of adventure), no characters were 
 allowed within if I knew their like in the flesh, the 
 scene lay in unknown parts desert islands, enchanted 
 gardens, with Knights (none of your Nights) on 
 black chargers, and round the first corner a lady 
 selling water-cress." 
 
 If such passages as these were put into the third 
 person, and the circumstances slightly altered, they 
 might be taken into " Sentimental Tommy," where 
 they would stand essentially characteristic. 
 
 Mr Barrie does not merely retain the memories of 
 his own boyhood clear and unsullied j he displays 
 an insight into the mind of the boy which, to my 
 thinking, is only equalled amongst contemporary 
 writers by the late Professor Henry Drummond's 
 knowledge of " the human boy." In his earliest 
 writings this is to be noticed, and it was inevitable 
 that some day a book of his should be consecrated 
 to boyhood. Mr Quiller Couch confesses that 
 " Meade Primus to his Proud Parent," an unsigned 
 Barrie article in the St James's Gazette sometime in 
 the winter of 1887-88, was "my introduction to 
 the most romantic of all my literary loves " ; and 
 I fancy all who love boys will declare that Chapter 
 xx. of " My Lady Nicotine," entitled " Primus to 
 His Uncle," is their favourite in that book. It is 
 practically a re-cast of the article which first fas- 
 cinated " Q," and is the most accurate interpreta- 

 
 160 HIS KNOWLEDGE OF BOYS 
 
 tion of a boy's thoughts that I have ever read. 
 Some people think it is a pity that Mr Barrie has 
 never carried out his intention to reprint some of 
 those delightful " Views of a Schoolboy" which lie 
 buried in the pages of the St Jamts's. 
 
 As an example of his wonderful insight into boy's 
 character a passage from " Sentimental Tommy " 
 may be here " put in." It is that describing the 
 sensation which Tommy experienced on venturing 
 into the presence of Reddy's papa why was Barrie 
 so cruel as to create Reddy and let us just know 
 sufficient of her to begin to love her, when he 
 snatched her away for ever ? Here is the extract 
 to which I refer : 
 
 " You think that Tommy is to be worsted at last, 
 but don't be too sure ; you just wait and see. 
 Mama and Reddy (who was chuckling rather heart- 
 lessly) first took him into a room prettier even than 
 the one he had lived in long ago (but there was no 
 bed in it), and then, because some one they were in 
 search of was not there, into another room without 
 a bed (where on earth did they sleep ?) whose walls 
 were lined with books. Never having seen rows of 
 books before except on sale in the streets, Tommy 
 at once looked about him for the barrow. The 
 table was strewn with sheets of paper of the size 
 they roll a quarter of butter in, and it was an amaz- 
 ing thick table, a solid square of wood, save for 
 a narrow lane down the centre for the man to put 
 his legs in if he had legs which unfortunately 
 there was reason to doubt. He was a formidable
 
 HIS KNOWLEDGE OF BOYS 161 
 
 man, whose beard licked the table while he wrote, 
 and he wore something like a brown blanket, with 
 a rope tied round it at the middle. Even more 
 uncanny than himself were three busts on a shelf, 
 which Tommy took to be deaders, and he feared 
 the blanket might blow open and show that the 
 man also ended at the waist. But he did not, for 
 presently he turned round to see who had come in 
 (the seat of his chair turning with him in the most 
 startling way), and then Tommy was relieved to 
 notice two big feet far away at the end of him. . . . 
 Ever afterwards he remembered papa as the man 
 that was not sure whether he had a shilling until he 
 felt his pockets a new kind of mortal to Tommy, 
 who grabbed the shilling when it was offered to 
 him, and then looked at Reddy imploringly he 
 was so afraid she would tell. But she behaved 
 splendidly, and never even shook her head at him. 
 After this, as hardly need be told, his one desire 
 was to get out of the house with his shilling before 
 they discovered their mistake." 
 
 Is not this precisely as a boy of Tommy's tempera- 
 ment as any boy indeed would have felt under 
 the circumstances ? We can all recognise such 
 masterly interpretations of character as true to life, 
 but the trick of putting them on paper is that in 
 which most of us miserably fail. 
 
 Another vivid sidelight which Barrie throws on 
 the boy nature is his description of the manner in 
 which Tommy heard of Reddy's death when he paid 
 his last visit to the man who found unknown shillings
 
 1 62 HIS KNOWLEDGE OF BOYS 
 
 in his pocket : " When Tommy knew that Reddy 
 was a deader he cried bitterly, and the man said, 
 very gently ' I am glad you were so fond of her.' 
 
 " ''Tain't that,' Tommy answered with a knuckle 
 in his eye, ' 'tain't that as makes me cry.' He looked 
 down at his trousers, and, in a fresh outburst of 
 childish grief, he wailed * It's them.' 
 
 " Papa did not understand, but the boy explained 
 ' She can't not never see them now,' he sobbed, 
 ' and I wants her to see them, and they has pockets.' 
 
 " It had come to the man unexpectedly. He put 
 Tommy down almost roughly, and raised his hand to 
 his head, as if he felt a sudden pain there. 
 
 " But Tommy, you know, was only a little boy." 
 
 And what a happy description of boyhood's excit- 
 ing delusions is this, descriptive of the gang of which 
 Tommy was a rather precarious member : "It was 
 a point of honour with all the boys he knew to pre- 
 tend that the policeman was after them. To gull 
 the policeman into thinking all was well they black- 
 ened their faces and wore their jackets inside out. 
 Their occupation was a constant state of readiness 
 to fly from him, and when he tramped out of sight, 
 unconscious of their existence, they emerged from 
 dark places and spoke in exultant whispers." 
 
 One more instance may be quoted in this connec- 
 tion a very subtle touch indeed. It is Micah Dow's 
 proposed sacrifice for Gavin Dishart's sake or, 
 rather, for his own father's sake when he urges 
 Babbie to go away and leave the Minister : " ' I'll 
 gi'e you my rabbit,' Micah said, ' if you'll gang awa'.
 
 HIS KNOWLEDGE OF BOYS 163 
 
 I've juist ane.' She shook her head, and, misunder- 
 standing her, he cried, with his knuckles in his eyes 
 * I'll gi'e you them baith, though Fm michty 
 sweer to part wi' Spotty.' " 
 
 One might go on at any length illustrating with 
 the author's own words Barrie's keen sympathy with 
 boys and his intimate knowledge of their character : 
 but perhaps enough has been said to show that 
 this love of boys is one of his most noteworthy 
 qualities.
 
 PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS
 
 PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 IT is the good fortune of the writer who has Mr 
 Barrie for his subject that the personality of the 
 man is almost as interesting as his books. In the 
 author of " A Window in Thrums" we have one of 
 those rarer mortals whom world-wide fame has left 
 unspoilt. To win fame while one is yet a young 
 man is a crucial test of character, and it is eloquent 
 testimony to the sterling qualities of Barrie the man 
 that he is still the modest, unassuming, " cannie " Scot 
 who came to London fifteen years ago to conquer 
 the world with his magic pen. 
 
 In an age when life was more sluggish than it is 
 to-day literary reputations were of more gradual 
 growth, and probably, when the struggle was not so 
 keen minds were less alert and ripened more slowly. 
 Whatever may have been, nowadays the period of 
 literary puberty is on the sunny side of forty. All 
 the chances are against a writer who has not made 
 his mark before that age ever succeeding in doing 
 so. True, cases might be mentioned to which this 
 rule does not apply, but it will be readily granted, I 
 think, that these are the exceptions. Still for an 
 author to be able at forty to look back on a decade, 
 during which he has been one of the greatest literary 
 
 167
 
 1 68 PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 forces of the time, is a remarkable achievement even 
 in these days of quickly earned fame. 
 
 One of the evils of the modern fever for " dis- 
 covering " new authors is the strong temptation to 
 make his hay while the sun shines which it presents 
 to the young writer suddenly acclaimed. It would 
 almost seem that every gentleman who fills the role 
 of critic to any paper of standing has made up his 
 mind that the next best thing to being a great 
 author himself is to play the prophet to some un- 
 known scribbler in whom he has discerned the germ 
 of genius. As a result, one is appalled to think 
 how many geniuses are so proclaimed each year. 
 It would be no difficult matter to name twenty or 
 thirty men and women who have been ranked one 
 morning with Thackeray, Dickens, or even Sir 
 Walter Scott ; pestered the next with demands 
 from publishers for their new books, which, re- 
 viewed a few months later, are dismissed as " not 
 justifying the high expectations held out by the 
 author's first work," and then the genius retires 
 to the chill obscurity from which, to fill a critic's 
 yawning columns, he or she has been ruthlessly 
 dragged forth. It is the brutal commercialism of 
 the publishing business that is to blame, as much 
 as the injudicious and perfervid critic. The reason 
 why so many second books fall short of the promise 
 which the first one bears is simply because the 
 newly-found author, anxious to get as much money 
 as he can when his little " boom" is booming, falls 
 back on some of his juvenile trash which has escaped
 
 PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 169 
 
 the flames, and it is quickly bought at a high price 
 by some speculative publisher who, a few months 
 ago, wouldn't have wasted his precious time looking 
 at any of the same writer's " stuff." 
 
 There is one Scottish author who, to my mind at 
 least, has thus made himself a bond slave of the 
 publisher, and for the sake of the glittering reward 
 of the moment has willingly endangered his chance 
 of a permanent reputation. I know of no case where 
 a man of letters, a man of splendid parts, has more 
 clearly sold himself into Egypt than the one I have 
 in my mind. Now it is just here that one can't help 
 admiring J. M. Barrie even those who think his 
 reputation exaggerated cannot but confess the man 
 an artist to his finger tips. The only book of his 
 representing early work which he put on the literary 
 market after having made a very distinct advance up 
 the ladder of fame was " My Lady Nicotine," and 
 this was so largely rewritten that it practically 
 became a new work. Even so, it is doubtful if it 
 would ever have appeared but for the fact that un- 
 scrupulous scribblers had laid claim to the chapters 
 of which it consisted while the bones of these were 
 still buried in the pages of the St James's Gazette. If 
 Barrie had the slightest commercialism in his nature, 
 he could at the cost of a few evenings' work place 
 on the market at least three more books composed 
 of newspaper reprints whose sales would bring him 
 in thousands of pounds. But he is too much of an 
 artist to succumb to this vulgar temptation. I have 
 heard it said he must be a lazy beggar to let years
 
 170 PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 pass without producing a new book ; but I prefer to 
 think my view of his character is correct. He has 
 shown from the very outset of his surprising career 
 that his single aim as an author is to do the best 
 that is in him, to be known and judged by his worthiest 
 work. This ought to be the ambition of every true 
 artist. 
 
 Of all the personal traits of J. M. Barrie there is 
 none I would place higher than the modesty of the 
 man. In his character we can see some of the very 
 finest features of the Scot. Few are the men who, 
 having risen by sheer strength of genius and industry 
 to the very highest pinnacle of literary fame, would 
 glory as Barrie glories in recalling and describing his 
 early days of comparative poverty. 
 
 Of all contemporary authors he is the least self- 
 conscious in his writings, and yet in his own life one 
 cannot but think that the reverse is the case. For 
 he is the very personification of shyness and reserve. 
 Those who may consider this retiring disposition is 
 not altogether lacking in affectation can scarcely be 
 familiar with true Scottish character. I am per- 
 suaded there is not an atom of affectation in the 
 man ; there is no contemporary of his so free from 
 that affliction which often waits upon success and is 
 vulgarly called " swelled head." 
 
 A story is told of him which gives an index to 
 his character. In the early days of his fame as a 
 humorist, a certain countess sent for him in the ex- 
 pectation that he would enliven her party with his 
 wit. But, hating to be either lionised or used as an
 
 PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 171 
 
 instrument of drawing-room amusement, he went 
 with a plan of action already determined upon. He 
 drove to the castle on the box seat and put the foot- 
 man inside the carriage. Silently he dined with the 
 great ones present, and in the drawing-room he slunk 
 into a corner where he twirled his thumbs in silence. 
 It takes some courage and strength of will to enter 
 such a mute protest against the vanities of aristo- 
 cratic dinner-parties, and whether the anecdote be 
 true or false it is quite consonant with the dour 
 independence which bulks so largely in his character. 
 Another story illustrating this side of his character 
 refers to one of those banquets with which literary 
 London is so fond of entertaining the men who con- 
 quer it. Six or seven years ago he was the guest of 
 a literary coterie, and had to meekly endure the ordeal 
 of listening to the usual fulsome eulogies of his work 
 which mark such occasions. The chairman, in the 
 course of his speech, proposing the health of the 
 guest, suggested that Mr Barrie might tell them 
 how to pronounce the title of his first Thrums book, 
 that being a matter of some difficulty to the English 
 tongue. The rising of the guest was the signal for 
 a storm of cheers, and when his perfervid entertainers 
 had cooled down, the hero of the evening quietly 
 said : " Mr Chairman, it's ' Auld Licht,' " and then 
 resumed his seat. I do not doubt that some people 
 will regard this behaviour as savouring of boorish- 
 ness, but those who understand the man will put it 
 down to that far rarer quality a dislike to being 
 fussed about. It is essentially a Scots characteristic.
 
 172 PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 He touches on the subject himself in " Margaret 
 Ogilvy," where we find him writing : " You only 
 know the shell of a Scot until you have entered his 
 home circle ; in his office, in clubs, at social gather- 
 ings, where you and he seem to be getting on so 
 well, he is really a house with all the shutters closed 
 and the door locked. He is not opaque of set pur- 
 pose, often it is against his will it is certainly 
 against mine ; I try to keep my shutters open and 
 my foot in the door, but they will bang to. In 
 many ways my mother was as reticent as myself, 
 though her manners were as gracious as mine were 
 rough (in vain, alas ! all the honest oiling of them), 
 and my sister was the most reserved of us all ; you 
 might at times see a light through one of my chinks ; 
 she was double-shuttered." 
 
 By the way, the simile of the light through a 
 chink is one of the occasional indications that Barrie 
 has read his Dean Ramsay. The Rev. Walter 
 Dunlop, an old South country divine, once asked a 
 local wag, who had been to Dumfries to hear a 
 lecture by the celebrated Edward Irving, " Weel, 
 Willie, man, an' what dae ye think o' Mr Irving ? " 
 " Oh, the man's crack't," said Willie. To which 
 the old minister quickly replied, " Willie, ye'll aften 
 see a licht peepin' through a crack." 
 
 As one writer has very happily observed, Barrie 
 has really found the ideal way of safeguarding 
 himself from ridicule or intrusion ; he has frankly 
 ridiculed himself. With qualities of imagination 
 precisely the same as those with which he has
 
 PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 173 
 
 endowed that drolJ creation Tommy Sandys, he has 
 assumed various characters in a way so realistic that 
 the man has positively been influenced in some 
 degree by the elements of the character assumed. 
 Thus anyone who reads " My Lady Nicotine " would 
 quite suppose that its author was an inveterate 
 devotee of the weed ; nay, so instinct is the book 
 with the love of smoking that we might easily per- 
 suade ourselves that none but an old smoker could 
 have written it. Yet, listen to what its author says 
 on that point : " When I began to write this book 
 I was no smoker. Instead of having given up the 
 practice most reluctantly as described in these un- 
 truthful papers, I was smoking my first pipe 
 gingerly, not because I liked it, but because all 
 my friends smoked, and.it seemed unsociable not to 
 smoke with them. I had no pleasure in smoking, 
 my highest ambition was to be able to smoke now 
 and again without apparent effort. How I drifted 
 into writing a book on the subject I cannot remember, 
 but the desire to know both sides was doubtless the 
 reason why I wrote as a slave to tobacco. Oddly 
 enough this assumed character obtained an influence 
 over me. I read his views with attention, and began 
 to see that there must be something in them. By 
 the time he had clearly demonstrated the folly of 
 smoking I was a convert to the practice." 
 
 Is not the above quite in line with Tommy 
 Sandys' writing his " Letters to a Young Man 
 About to Marry " when he was still a gawky 
 youth ?
 
 174 PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 Barrie has laughed so heartily at himself and 
 joked so frankly at his own expense that he has left 
 his enemies if any such there be quite without 
 slings or arrows. In the now defunct National 
 Observer, during the heyday of Mr Henley's editor- 
 ship, there once appeared an article in which Mr 
 Barrie was mercilessly, but still humorously, chaffed 
 for a speech which he had ventured to make at a 
 Burns Club dinner. Many of his admirers were 
 indignant, and one indiscreet fellow, hailing from 
 Sheffield, threatened to horsewhip the editor. For- 
 tunately Mr Henley was rescued from this indignity 
 by Mr Barrie's timely confession to the authorship of 
 the objectionable article. 
 
 Asked to contribute an account of his life to a 
 volume of " living celebrities " he began a mock 
 biography thus : " On arrival in London it was Mr 
 Barrie's first object to make a collection of choice 
 cigars. Though the author of ' My Lady Nicotine ' 
 does not himself smoke, his grocer's message boy 
 does. Mr Barrie's pet animal is the whale. He 
 feeds it on ripe chestnuts." Could a happier plan of 
 protest against the prevalent vice of self-advertise- 
 ment be imagined ? 
 
 Another story, which illustrates a pleasant trait 
 of his character, may be given in the words of a 
 Glasgow journalist : "The landlady of the under- 
 graduate shares with the conventional mother-in-law 
 the not quite pleasant distinction of being the butt of 
 traditional aspersion. But the aspersion is not always 
 deserved in the case of either; and a story which
 
 PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 175 
 
 reaches us from a private source shows that Mr 
 J. M. Barrie had the good luck to meet in his under- 
 graduate days with a very meritorious specimen of 
 her class. This landlady, according to the story, 
 was so much respected and beloved by those students 
 under her care that after her death one of them wrote 
 to Mr Barrie suggesting that a memorial be placed 
 over her grave. He received a letter enclosing a 
 cheque for ^15, and warmly praising the old lady. 
 Mr Barrie's interest did not stop here ; he inquired 
 if anyone was looking after her cat, as the last time 
 he had seen her the thought that she might pass 
 away first had troubled her not a little. This is 
 worthy of the author of * A Window in Thrums.' " 
 
 Despite his amazingly brief speech on the occasion 
 already referred to, Mr Barrie is no trembling tyro 
 when he considers the occasion a suitable one for 
 him to appear as a speaker, and several very success- 
 ful public appearances stand to his credit ; notably 
 when he spoke at the Edinburgh meeting in support 
 of the Stevenson Memorial. Then, although Lord 
 Rosebery, one of the most accomplished orators of 
 the day, was among the speakers, J. M. Barrie's 
 modest effort was considered the success of the 
 meeting. Indeed, when occasion serves, as his inti- 
 mate friends will tell you, he is a most engaging 
 talker, his speech being almost as brilliant as his 
 writings. Nor is he troubled with nervousness ; 
 "as a matter of fact," says a friend, "he has the 
 nerve and coolness of a successful barrister." 
 
 If ever novelist possessed the " artistic tempera-
 
 176 PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 ment," J. M. Barrie does. Thomas Sandys is, first 
 and last, a study of the artistic temperament, and as 
 such I am persuaded he is a study of Barrie's inner 
 self. The strange faculty is admirably described 
 by Talma, the great tragedian, who said : "I have 
 suffered cruel losses, and have often been assailed 
 with profound sorrows ; but after the first moment, 
 when grief vents itself in cries and tears, I have 
 found myself involuntarily turning my gaze inwards 
 (Jefaisais un retour sur mes souffrances), and found the 
 actor was unconsciously studying the man, and catch- 
 ing nature in the act." It is this condition of mind 
 which enables its possessor to enter vicariously into 
 the feelings and emotions of others, and when con- 
 joined with exceptional imagination it can do more, 
 it can conjure up emotions which ought to be exer- 
 cised even in circumstances where they are lying 
 dormant ; as, for instance, Tommy's arrangement 
 with his schoolmate, Lewis Doig, to relieve the 
 latter of the irksome task of mourning for his 
 lately deceased father. 
 
 " It is my contemptible weakness," Barrie himself 
 confesses, " that if I say a character smiled vacuously, 
 I must smile vacuously j 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 writ- 
 ing 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 as- 
 tounding versatility of an actor who is stout and lean
 
 PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 177 
 
 on the same evening, but what is he to the novelist, 
 who is a dozen persons within an hour ? Morally, I 
 fear, we must deteriorate but this is a subject I may 
 wisely edge away from." 
 
 It is just possible that some horribly learned people 
 may be able from this confession to elaborate a thesis 
 of Barrie's failings of character, on the ground that, 
 as a great actor should never lose his own individu- 
 ality in that of the imaginary person he is portraying, 
 so the truly great writer should never give way to 
 such " contemptible weakness " as mimicking in very 
 act the creatures of his fancy ; but it is precisely out 
 of this capacity for self-subordination that sympathetic 
 authors are made, and the novelist who cannot awaken 
 our sympathy for his fictitious folk is certain to be 
 numbered with the great unread. 
 
 Barrie refers on various occasions to the power 
 exerted over him by his fictional characters once he 
 has started these on the road that leads to some 
 destination of which he may not know. Of Rob 
 Angus he says : " I expect that when I started Rob 
 Angus I meant him to have a less strenuous time, 
 but he fell in love, and once they fall in love there 
 is no saying what your heroes will do." Again, he 
 observes : " There are writers who can plan out their 
 story beforehand as clearly as though it were a rail- 
 way journey, and adhere throughout to their original 
 design they draw up what playwrights call a scen- 
 ario 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 
 
 M
 
 178 PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 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.' But they seldom come, 
 and it ends with my plodding after them. Unless I 
 am the one to yield, they and I do not become friends, 
 which is fatal to the book." 
 
 Here again we see the spirit of the true artist who, 
 despising the mechanism of the story-teller, relies on 
 no traditions of his craft for guidance, but goes direct 
 to Nature: "When the English publishers read 'A 
 Window in Thrums ' in manuscript, they thought it 
 unbearably sad, and begged me to alter the end. 
 They warned me that the public do not like sad 
 books. Well, the older I grow and the sadder the 
 things I see, the more do I wish my books to be 
 bright and hopeful ; but an author may not always 
 interfere with his story, and if I had altered the end 
 of ' A Window in Thrums,' I think I should never 
 have had any more respect for myself. It is a sadder 
 book to me than it can ever be to anyone else. I 
 see Jess at her window looking for the son who 
 never came back as no other can see her, and I knew 
 that unless I brought him back in time the book 
 would be a pain to me all my days, but the thing 
 had to be done." 
 
 Nothing has been said, thus far, about the personal 
 appearance of the man, and as this chapter concerns 
 his personal qualities, this little note from an article 
 by Sir George Douglas may be appropriately intro- 
 duced here. It is slight, but sufficient : " To the
 
 PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 179 
 
 bodily eye, as he appears in London drawing-rooms 
 and at London dinner-tables, Mr Barrie has little, 
 nothing, of the typical Scot. The high pale brow, 
 the dark hair and eye, the chiselled refinement of the 
 profile, suggest Italy rather than the North. To me 
 the face bears a certain resemblance to portraits of 
 Edgar Allan Poe. The expression is shy, absorbed. 
 There is as little trace of affectation in the manner as 
 in the writing. It is only in a touch of brusquerie in 
 the address that the Northerner is revealed." 
 
 Yet, in every attribute of character his fervent 
 religious feeling, his unquenchable love of home and 
 country, his genuine modesty, his sympathy with the 
 poor and lowly in all these he is a typical Scot. 
 Professor G. A. Smith, in his beautiful " Life of 
 Henry Drummond," justly remarks that the author 
 of " Natural Law," as a man, was greater than his 
 books ; but of Barrie I do not think this can be said. 
 Indeed, if it be not a paradox, Barrie, the man with 
 all his conspicuous qualities is rather less than his 
 books his greatest books, I mean.
 
 THE STORY OF 
 " THE AULD LIGHTS "
 
 THE STORY OF "THE AULD LIGHTS" 
 
 THANKS to the genius of Mr Barrie, the " Auld 
 Lichts" are known to the English reading public 
 throughout the world. But it has been not altogether 
 unjustly observed that Mr Barrie's is a somewhat 
 one-sided picture of this sect a picture in which 
 their little angularities and, to some eyes, their less 
 worthy features are exhibited more fully than the 
 great qualities which they undoubtedly possess. 
 We may be sure, however, that it was no lack of 
 sympathy for them that led Mr Barrie to paint his 
 partial pictures of their lives, but rather the artist's 
 sense which guided him in his selection of just those 
 characteristics that were likeliest to interest the 
 reader in his subjects. Thus, while we may dis- 
 miss any suggestion of unreality in his portraits 
 of an " Auld Licht" community, we cannot pretend 
 that they are more than half-lengths. In any case, 
 there is a large number of readers of Mr Barrie's 
 books who, though quite familiar with the term 
 " Auld Licht," have but a mere inkling of the long 
 story that lies behind it, and to these some slight 
 sketch of the religious struggles in which the Old 
 Lights have engaged is likely to be of interest. 
 
 There is a story which, while obviously untrue, 
 touches in a very happy way one of the principal 
 
 183
 
 1 84 THE STORY OF 
 
 features of the Scottish people. A certain Scots- 
 man on his death-bed was ill at ease, and one of 
 his friends watching by him suggested that they 
 might send for a minister to pray, or that a hymn 
 might be sung, whereupon the dying Scot exclaimed, 
 " A'm wanting neither hymns nor prayers, I want 
 to argy." The Scots are truly a race of arguers, 
 and this propensity for disputation is especially 
 marked in their religious affairs ; for in no country 
 in the world has a race of people, agreed almost to 
 a man on the great essentials of religion, been so 
 broken up into sects over minor questions, and often 
 over questions of purely academic import. The 
 whole story of religion in Scotland is full of quar- 
 rellings and bickerings, and yet withal the story 
 of Presbyterianism is one of the finest in the annals 
 of Christianity. 
 
 To properly appreciate the position held by the 
 Auld Lichts it is necessary for us to retell a part 
 of that story. The years which intervened between 
 the signing of the first Covenant in 1580 and the 
 coming of the Prince of Orange in 1688, followed 
 by the crowning of William and Mary in 1689, 
 " the first year of a freed Israel," were the years 
 that made Scotland what it is. These days of the 
 Covenanters did for Scotland what the days of the 
 Puritans did for England. When the Assembly of 
 the Scottish Kirk met in 1690, after having been 
 prohibited for thirty years, there were only sixty 
 members who could legitimately claim to be old 
 Presbyterians, and the rest were, for the most part,
 
 THE AULD LIGHTS 185 
 
 poor, unprincipled clericals, who had been placed in 
 their charges by the prelatic bishops. It was morally 
 certain, therefore, that those sixty good men and 
 true would have a poor time at the hands of the 
 hundreds of bishops' creatures who now readily 
 turned Presbyterians to save their livings. But the 
 first signs of a rupture are not noticed until 1717, 
 when Professor Simson was accused of heresy by 
 the orthodox members of the Assembly, but by the 
 inert majority was permitted to go on teaching. 
 Then came the publication of that famous work 
 which sounds the first note of secession, "The 
 Marrow of Modern Divinity." 1 This book, which 
 was speedily condemned by the Assembly, caused a 
 great controversy, and the ministers who endorsed 
 its theology were solemnly " rebuked " by the 
 Assembly. Chief amongst them were Boston of 
 Ettrick and Henry Erskine of Chirnside, who, in a 
 sense, were the real secession fathers, although they 
 were not spared to take part in the actual secession. 
 Some idea of the abominable conditions created 
 by the prelatic Presbyterians, who maintained a 
 great majority in the Assembly, is gathered from 
 the fact that at this time, in placing new ministers 
 in charges to which they had not been called by 
 
 1 The story of this book is of singular interest. Written by 
 an English Puritan, a copy of it, which one of Cromwell's 
 soldiers had taken with him to Scotland, came into the hands of 
 Mr Boston of Ettrick, who was so struck with its teaching 
 that he had it reprinted and circulated. It thus came about that 
 one of the strongest factors in the creation of Scottish Dissent 
 was supplied by Puritan England.
 
 1 86 THE STORY OF 
 
 the people, and where the parishioners objected to 
 their coming, it was frequently necessary to send a 
 force of soldiers to assist at the solemn ceremony 
 of Induction. A permanent committee of the 
 Assembly, commonly known as the Riding Com- 
 mittee, actually existed for no other purpose than 
 to assist at the induction of unpopular ministers who 
 were being forced upon unwilling congregations by 
 the Synod (the Church Court next in importance to 
 the Assembly). For often it happened that the local 
 Presbytery was in sympathy with the parish. But 
 this very travesty of Christianity was playing an 
 invaluable part in Scottish history, bracing the Sons 
 of the Covenant more strongly than ever to that 
 simple noble faith for which their fathers had fought 
 and died, and for which many of the older genera- 
 tion then existing had also suffered. Denied the 
 slightest voice in the conduct of their church affairs, 
 forced to accept ministers of no character, or worse, 
 the people throughout the length and breadth of 
 Scotland excepting always some parts of the 
 remoter Highlands were rebelling against this 
 religious tyranny, which in the guise of Presby- 
 terianism, was nothing but prelacy continued. The 
 faithful remnant of the Assembly gathered great 
 congregations around them, since, rather than " sit 
 under" men whom they could not respect, the 
 sturdy country folk of those days would walk twenty 
 miles to church, and twenty back again to hear 
 a minister who was " sound," and at communion 
 times a journey of forty miles each way was not
 
 THE AULD LIGHTS 187 
 
 considered too much to undertake. Boston would 
 have 800 to communion at Ettrick, while as many 
 as 2000 would travel great distances to take the 
 Sacrament at Erskine's little church at Portmoak, 
 Kinross-shire. These ceremonies resembled nothing 
 so much as the Boers' Nachtmaal of the present 
 day ; the services often continued for two or three 
 days. 
 
 Although on the 1 6th November 1733, l ^ e 
 Commission of the Assembly "expelled" Ebenezer 
 Erskine, then minister of Stirling, William Wilson 
 of Perth, Alexander Moncrieff of Abernethy, and 
 James Fisher of Kinclaven, for their persistent 
 objection to patronage, and their firm stand for 
 Christian liberty, it was not until 1740 that these 
 four ministers were formally ejected from the Estab- 
 lished Church, and from this latter year the real 
 history of Scottish Dissent begins. But on the 6th 
 of December 1733 the four ministers had formed 
 themselves into " The Associate Presbytery," and in 
 
 1739 they were joined by four others, so that in 
 
 1740 the Associate Presbytery consisted of eight 
 congregations, and many a hard battle now ensued 
 between the Assembly and the dissenting ministers, 
 whom the former sought to turn out of manse and 
 church ; as, indeed, in most cases they succeeded in 
 doing. 
 
 Meanwhile other agencies were at work for the 
 promotion of dissent from the Established Church. 
 A very small sect, known as the Cameronians or 
 MacMillanites, who followed John MacMillan, a
 
 1 88 THE STORY OF 
 
 disciple of the founder of that body in Covenanting 
 days, was already in existence ; but, while sym- 
 pathising with the seceders, the Cameronians dis- 
 covered they could not join their Presbytery, and in 
 1743 l ^ e y created the first "Reformed Presbytery," 
 which was joined by Thomas Nairn, a minister who 
 had seceded with the second four to the Associate 
 Presbytery in 1739. The historic Porteous Riots 
 had also taken place, and exercised an important 
 influence on the Established Church. A Captain 
 Porteous, who had fired with fatal effect on a mob 
 that attempted to rescue a smuggler condemned to 
 death, was forcibly taken from Edinburgh gaol, and 
 publicly hanged by another mob when the populace 
 had reason to believe that the Government had no 
 intention of punishing him severely for his offence. 
 A reward of 200 was offered for information 
 which would lead to the conviction of the ring-leaders, 
 and every minister in Scotland was ordered by 
 Government to read from his pulpit once a month 
 the official proclamation. The majority of them 
 blithely enough carried out this instruction, but a 
 large minority saw that they were being made mere 
 Government officials, that the civil authority was 
 raising itself above the spiritual head of the Church, 
 and the cause of Dissent was thus further assisted 
 by its enemies. 
 
 Already there were in existence a large number 
 of '* praying societies," which consisted of godly 
 men and women who could find no spiritual food 
 amongst the husks and tares which the Established
 
 THE AULD LIGHTS 189 
 
 Church had to offer them, and these societies looked 
 to the Associate Synod, as the seceders were now 
 called, for assistance, many of them becoming the 
 nuclei of secession churches j so that in March 1745 
 there were no fewer than twenty-six placed seces- 
 sion ministers, and seventeen vacant congregations, 
 Presbyteries having been formed for Glasgow, Dun- 
 fermline, and Edinburgh. 
 
 But this very year was fated to see a cleavage 
 amongst the seceders themselves, and on a subject 
 so small that in these broad-minded days it is 
 difficult to conceive earnest men condescending to 
 quarrel about it ; yet so strongly opinioned were 
 these secession fathers, and so dear to them were 
 their convictions on even the smallest religious 
 questions, that they never hesitated at a rupture 
 when they felt their conscience dictated it. What 
 was known as the Burgess Oath Controversy arose 
 from the fact that at that time burgesses in Edin- 
 burgh, Glasgow, and Perth were called upon to 
 sign the following declaration : " Here I protest 
 before God and your Lordships that I profess, and 
 allow with my heart, the true religion presently 
 professed within this realm, and authorised by the 
 laws thereof; I shall abide thereat, and defend the 
 same to my life's end, renouncing the Roman re- 
 ligion called papistry." Some of the seceders saw 
 in this a subtle attempt to make all burgesses 
 acknowledge the Church as by law established, but 
 others did not take this view of the oath, and could 
 not regard a burgess who signed it as being unfitted
 
 190 THE STORY OF 
 
 for their communion. So the Associate Synod split 
 into two sections (1747), the one calling itself the 
 General Associate Synod, and the other the Associate 
 Synod, but they were popularly known as Anti- 
 burghers and Burghers respectively ; and for no less 
 than seventy-three years this small matter kept them 
 apart. Indeed, so strong was the feeling between 
 the two secession bodies that in many instances a 
 husband might be a Burgher and his wife an Anti- 
 burgher, and they would spend their religious lives 
 apart. The session records of the period abound in 
 the most extraordinary charges against members of 
 the one body countenancing the work of the other. 
 In the meantime the Established Church was steadily 
 going from bad to worse in the matter of patronage, 
 and on the 22nd October 1761, another fragment 
 broke away from the Assembly, calling itself the 
 Relief Church, the first Relief Presbytery being 
 formed by Mr Gillespie, Mr Thomas Boston, of 
 Jedburgh (son of the great Boston), and Mr 
 Collier. 
 
 Yet, while we find those early seceders engaged 
 in what must appear to us as very paltry squabbling 
 on questions which in no wise affected the great 
 principles of Christianity, nothing would be further 
 from the mark than to suppose that these dissen- 
 sions in the least degree interfered with their religious 
 activity. It is in the Scottish nature never to be 
 more earnest nor active than when some dispute 
 is going on. Rather than paralysing their work 
 this cleavage seemed to give the seceders renewed
 
 THE AULD LIGHTS 191 
 
 impetus, and with a spirit from which sectarian 
 rivalry may not have been absent, both bodies took 
 part in missionary effort, which, as yet, had scarcely 
 been dreamed of by the effete Assembly. In 1753 
 the first Presbyterian missionary was sent out to 
 Pennsylvania by the Anti-burghers, and the Burghers 
 soon followed suit. To them is due entirely the 
 establishment in America of the Presbyterian Church, 
 which, as all are aware, is to-day one of the greatest 
 religious bodies in the United States and Canada. 
 It is even believed that the Constitution of the 
 United States was drafted by one of the early 
 Presbyterian divines, Witherspoon, whose portrait 
 hangs in the Senate at this day. Bancroft, the 
 American historian, admits that the United States 
 Constitution is Presbyterianism applied to national 
 government. The collections which were made 
 from time to time by the seceders for mission work, 
 not only in America, but in England, Ireland, and 
 the Highlands, were out of all proportion to the 
 means of the people, who gave to such purposes in 
 a way that few churches of the present day will 
 give. When we set against their internal dissensions 
 the evidence of this missionary zeal, we can see that 
 they were as great in great things as they were small 
 in small things. 
 
 Their capacity for quarrelling was truly extra- 
 ordinary, and in 1799 another question was fated 
 to effect another cleavage. This time the difference 
 of opinion arose from the desire of some to make 
 the " Solemn League and Covenant" a term of com-
 
 192 THE STORY OF 
 
 munion, together with a trumpery quarrel about 
 magistrates' powers in churches. The result was 
 that Burghers and Anti-burghers alike split up each 
 into two sections ; those who objected to the 
 Covenant being made a term of communion seced- 
 ing, and being called in the one case " Auld Licht 
 Anti-burghers," and in the other " Auld Licht 
 Burghers." Thus instead of two bodies there were 
 now four, to say nothing of the Relief Church, which 
 was working away quietly and managing to avoid 
 breakage. 
 
 An English gentleman, on a visit to Edinburgh at 
 this time, happened to ask his Scottish host for in- 
 formation as to the churches of the country, and on 
 being given the story here briefly sketched, found 
 himself so perplexed as to which was which and 
 what was what, that he wittily observed, "Well, 
 they are all Presbyterians, but as I can never hope 
 to remember the different positions I will just call 
 them the split peas." 
 
 Happily, although this Englishman's observation 
 was witty and apropos, the seceders were not exactly 
 like split peas after all ; they were not incapable of 
 being reunited, and we have practically arrived at 
 the end of the story of their ruptures ; for soon 
 influences were at work to bring about re-union of 
 the fragments, and on the 8th of September 1820 
 the United Associate Synod was formed by the 
 re-union of the Burghers and the Anti-burghers. 
 The united body, which represented a total of two 
 hundred and sixty-two congregations, was better
 
 THE AULD LIGHTS 193 
 
 known as the " United Secession Church," and in 
 another twenty-seven years (on the 1 3th of May 
 1847, to be precise), the Relief Church also joined 
 forces with them, thus establishing the United Pres- 
 byterian Church, which in the half-century that has 
 elapsed since then has been foremost in all great 
 movements for the promotion of Christ's kingdom 
 on earth. But four years previous to the founding 
 of the U.P. Church the great Disruption of 1843 
 had taken place, the Free Church of Scotland then 
 coming into existence, and it is one of the happiest 
 auguries for the future of religion in Scotland that 
 in this closing year of the nineteenth century these 
 two great Churches, 1 after long years of debate, 
 have joined hands ; so that Scottish Dissent is repre- 
 sented by one great powerful Church, which owes 
 its remote origin to the Erskines and the other 
 " Marrow Men," as the early seceders were called 
 from their approval of " The Marrow of Modern 
 Divinity." 
 
 But it is not in the nature of the Scottish people 
 to be absolutely agreed on all points of any subject, 
 they are too independent of mind and too sincere in 
 their convictions as a race to be absolutely of one 
 opinion on any given question, and above all on any 
 religious question. Hence, while the great majority 
 of dissenters joined forces in the way described, there 
 were here and there a few who could not see eye to 
 eye with the rest, and no power on earth would make 
 
 1 In 1900 the membership of the U.P. Church had grown to 
 close upon 200,000.
 
 194 THE STORY OF 
 
 these few alter their opinions simply because the 
 majority thought otherwise. 
 
 Thus it was .that when in 1820 the Burghers and 
 Anti-burghers reunited, the "Old Lights" in both 
 bodies still held out, the Old Light Anti-burghers, 
 whose most notable member was the celebrated Dr 
 M'Crie, calling themselves the Constitutional Asso- 
 ciate Presbytery, and the other the Synod of Original 
 Burghers. In 1827 there were even a few Burgher 
 and Anti-burgher ministers to be found who had 
 protested against the union of 1820 and these 
 worthies, having had ample time to consider the 
 situation, attached themselves to Dr M'Crie's 
 people, who now became known as the Synod 
 of Original Seceders. 
 
 But when we arrive at the year 1842 we begin to 
 realise the position of the churches more clearly, for 
 now it was the lot of the two branches of " Old 
 Lights " to effect a junction, and as it was scarcely 
 conceivable that there could be amongst them the 
 constituents of a new body (the " Original Old 
 Lights " would have been too absurd), the union of 
 these two sections, who now adopted the designa- 
 tion of United Original Seceders, practically meant 
 that all the sternly orthodox, unbending, conservative 
 thinkers had been gathered together in one camp. 
 
 The Original Seceders have not exactly flourished 
 like a green bay tree during the latter half of the 
 century, but despite the fact that a number of them 
 went into the Free Church after 1843, they continue 
 to this day a body of some importance and have
 
 THE AULD LIGHTS 195 
 
 received accessions to their ranks, notably in 1847, 
 when the older-fashioned thinkers of the Relief 
 Church refused to take part in the union which 
 created the U.P. body. There are now in existence 
 four presbyteries of the Original Secession Church, 
 as it is generally called to-day, these being the 
 presbyteries of Aberdeen and Perth, Edinburgh, 
 Ayr and Glasgow; Kirrietnuir ("Thrums") being 
 included in the presbytery of Aberdeen and Perth. 
 
 It will thus be seen that the "Old Lights" stand 
 for all that is uncompromising in modern religion. 
 They are the direct descendants of the men who by 
 their action in 1733 took the first practical steps for 
 securing to the Scottish people the right of Christian 
 liberty. They are likewise the descendants of those 
 who were at once the sturdiest champions of ortho- 
 dox Christianity and the most narrow-minded mem- 
 bers of the community in small domestic matters 
 which lay altogether outside of religious duty. It 
 follows then that the " Auld Lichts " of to-day, 
 while inheriting some of the more worthy character- 
 istics, cannot have escaped the less desirable heritage; 
 and even to-day, though the kirk-sessions can no 
 longer go to the extremes of former times, every con- 
 gregation of them is more or less prejudiced against 
 such worldly innovations as the harmonium, the sing- 
 ing of hymns, and even the use of the paraphrase. 
 
 Time, however, has mellowed these prejudices a 
 little, and the body is no longer so strait-laced as 
 in the days of which Mr Barrie writes. On the 
 whole its traditions, so far as its spiritual fathers are
 
 196 THE STORY OF 
 
 concerned in the great principles for which they 
 fearlessly took their stand, sacrificing generally their 
 own personal interest in so doing, entitle the present 
 day " Auld Licht " to regard his church with affec- 
 tion and some degree of pride. 
 
 As has been said, Barrie's description of the " Auld 
 Lichts " is at best a partial one, but it would indeed 
 be difficult to do full justice to the character of these 
 people in anything short of an elaborate treatise 
 which, while deeply interesting to the serious student 
 of character, would most certainly fail to find much 
 popularity amongst the mass of general readers. And 
 when one starts to search the records of the " Auld 
 Licht " sessions it is precisely on those entries which 
 accord most with Barrie's character studies that one 
 finds himself spending most time and marking for 
 quotation j it is always the angularities of character 
 that are primarily interesting. Take for instance 
 Barrie's description of Tibbie M'Quhatty, who nearly 
 split the "Auld Licht" church on the " run line." 
 You will remember how she refused to remain in 
 the church whilst a psalm was being sung according 
 to Mr Dishart's new usage, which dispensed with the 
 old practice of reading one line of the psalm and 
 then allowing the congregation to sing that line, 
 reading the next, and so on to the end. Tibbie, 
 whenever Mr Dishart gave out a psalm, used to get 
 up, leave the church, and wait outside until it was 
 over. 
 
 This is no fancy picture of Mr Barrie's, for many 
 similar cases can be given. One is worthy of mention.
 
 THE AULD LIGHTS 197 
 
 Dr William Anderson of Glasgow, a celebrated 
 Relief minister, preached in a country church one 
 day, and did precisely as Mr Dishart did, greatly to 
 the indignation of the congregation and the elders, 
 who remonstrated with him afterwards for so daring 
 an innovation. But in this church they were also 
 strong on refusing to sing "repeating tunes"; that 
 is to say, to sing the last line of a psalm twice was in 
 their eyes a religious abomination. Knowing this, 
 Dr Anderson said to them, " You wish the minister 
 to read the psalm once and the precentor to go over 
 every line twice, and you yourselves will not even 
 sing the last line twice." This was a line of argu- 
 ment which had never presented itself before to 
 these elders, but being, like all true Scots, logical 
 to a fault, they at once saw its reason and the " run 
 line " in that church became an institution. Elders 
 indeed have solemnly arisen during the service and 
 protested against both the run line and repeating 
 tunes, so that Tibbie's conduct was not exceptional 
 but typical. 
 
 They had a wonderful taste for sermons, those 
 Auld Lichts, and even to-day they love a long 
 stodgy discourse and a church where no such abomi- 
 nation as a " kist o' whustles," even in the shape of 
 an innocent little harmonium, has been introduced. 
 Barrie himself tells us that on Fast-days in Kirrie- 
 muir, in that earlier part of the century of which he 
 writes, the service began on Saturday at two and 
 lasted till nearly seven o'clock, during which time 
 two sermons were preached with no interval between.
 
 198 THE STORY OF 
 
 On Sunday the Sacrament was dispensed, and the 
 service, which included a long series of specially 
 long prayers, lasted from eleven in the morning till 
 six ; and at half-past six another two hours' service 
 began either in the kirk or on the common, " from 
 which no one who thought much about his immortal 
 soul would have dared (or cared) to absent himself." 
 Then on Monday came a four hours' service, which, 
 like Saturday's, consisted of two services in one, 
 but began at eleven instead of two. Such was an 
 example of the Auld Lichts' remarkable taste for 
 sermons, but a Fast-day in Scotland has long since 
 ceased to be a bout of worship and church-going, 
 though in most of the older-fashioned kirks to-day 
 services of some sort are still held. 
 
 Another peculiarity of the Auld Lichts, and in- 
 deed of all Scottish Dissenters, was, and is to the 
 present day for that matter, a distaste for "a paper 
 minister," by which is meant a minister who reads 
 his sermons. It will be remembered that Mr 
 Dishart's great success when he preached his trial 
 sermon at Thrums lay largely in the fact that, as he 
 was about to begin, he handed down the big Bible 
 to the precentor to give his arm freer swing. " The 
 congregation, trembling with exhilaration, probed 
 his meaning." They could not see a square inch 
 of paper, and knew that, unlike others they had 
 heard of and one they had seen, his action made 
 it impossible for him to conceal within the leaves 
 of the Bible the written pages of a sermon. A 
 certain Mr Watt, whom they had once been on
 
 THE AULD LIGHTS 199 
 
 the point of calling, had written his sermon on 
 pages precisely the size of the pulpit Bible, but 
 was undone when, preaching in the open air on 
 the common, a gust of wind blew his sermon 
 hither and thither to the sorrow and indignation 
 of his hearers. 
 
 An old Scots story in this connection will show 
 how much importance was attached to a minister's 
 extempore speaking. Andrew Spiers, a certain well- 
 known half-wit, on one occasion went to hear a 
 minister at an Established Church, where almost 
 invariably the discourse was read, Andrew himself 
 being generally an attendant at a Dissenting place 
 of worship. It so happened that the church was 
 crowded, and Andrew had to take a seat on the 
 pulpit steps, from which he found it difficult to 
 see the minister, until he managed to shove his 
 head through the railings. But this proceeding, 
 though efficacious for a time, proved unfortunate 
 for Andrew, as on coming to withdraw his head 
 he found it held fast behind his ears. In struggling 
 to free himself, he shouted out, to the amazement 
 of the congregation: "It's a judgment, it's a judg- 
 ment on me for leaving my ain kirk and coming to 
 hear a paper minister ! " 
 
 There was certainly very little gaiety entering into 
 the lives of the Auld Lichts, and their tastes would 
 to-day, in some respects at least, be accounted rather 
 morbid. A characteristic was their propensity for 
 attending funerals, invitations to which, as Barrie 
 tells us, " were as much sought after as cards to
 
 200 THE STORY OF 
 
 my lady's dances in the South." Christenings, too, 
 were great events in their lives, and it was con- 
 sidered positively indecent to allow a Sunday to pass 
 after the birth of a child without its being carried to 
 the church for baptism. You will remember how 
 Sandy Whamond, the leading elder at Thrums, was 
 ruined for life by the ambition of his wife to beat 
 the record in this respect. She had a child born on 
 the Saturday afternoon, and it was carried to the 
 christening the next day, a fact which, with evidence 
 that was forthcoming as to a light in Whamond's 
 window after twelve o'clock on Saturday night, left 
 the congregation with nothing but the horrible con- 
 clusion that some of the child's clothes had been 
 prepared during the early hours of the Sabbath, 
 and this, above all, was an offence that could not be 
 passed over. So it came about that Mrs Whamond 
 had to be liberally prayed for, and " Lang Tammas 
 ruled in Sandy's stead." 
 
 f Yet, in their religious exercises the Auld Lichts 
 were not altogether without some occasional flashes 
 of shrewd common sense. There was the farmer 
 of Little Rathie, for instance, of whom Tammas 
 Haggart had a rare story to tell, a funeral always 
 being an occasion for the surviving cronies of the 
 dead man to exchange opinions about his life, 
 and revive stories of his doings. Mr Dishart had 
 on one occasion admonished Little Rathie for not 
 attending a special service in the kirk to pray for 
 rain during a period of drought, when two 
 adjoining farmers had both attended. " Oh,"
 
 THE AULD LIGHTS 201 
 
 said Little Rathie, " I thocht to mysel', thinks I, 
 if they get rain for praying for't on Finny an' Lin- 
 tool, we are bound to get the benefit o't on Little 
 Rathie." 
 
 There is no denying that during the first part of 
 this century, quite as much as during the latter 
 part of the previous century, the Auld Lichts were 
 especially noted for narrow-mindedness, and it is 
 simply astounding to read of the paltry offences for 
 which the minister and his kirk-session considered it 
 necessary to rebuke members of the congregation. 
 " Promiscuous hearing " was a very common offence ; 
 that is to say a member of a Burgher church may 
 have gone for one night to an Anti-burgher church 
 and woe to him for so doing, as at the next meeting 
 of the Kirk-session he was hauled before it and 
 sternly rebuked for his misconduct. Or an Anti- 
 burgher may have been so negligent of his religious 
 principles as to pause for ten minutes behind a 
 hedge alongside a field in which a Burgher service 
 was proceeding, and if he happened to be observed 
 by one of his own congregation he would have to 
 "compear" before the Session, and be duly ad- 
 monished for his sin. Actual cases of this can be 
 given. For a member of any of the secession churches 
 to be married in an Established church was a 
 cardinal sin, and the rebuke for that at the hands 
 of the Session was especially long and ponderous. 
 Irregular attendance at church, the holding of 
 " penny weddings," the borrowing of money on 
 Sabbath, fighting, family squabbling there was
 
 202 THE STORY OF 
 
 absolutely nothing too small, nothing too miserably 
 paltry for the minister and the Kirk-session to 
 consider, and if necessary to " rebuke." 
 
 The records of an Old Light church (Dunni- 
 kier) at Kirkcaldy contain some remarkable examples 
 of what the Session considered to be its duty and 
 obligation towards members of the Church. In 
 1745 it boasted a member who had been sinful 
 enough to allow himself to be united in the bonds 
 of holy wedlock by a minister of the Established 
 Church, " upon which condition his wife's master 
 did promise to give him his marriage dinner." 
 William Cran was the name of the offender, and 
 William was duly hauled before the Session, who 
 harangued him solemnly on the abomination he 
 had committed, describing the action of his wife's 
 master (she had presumably been a servant) as being 
 done no doubt " with a design to ensnaring the said 
 William Cran and that they might make a jest of the 
 said William's profession." William seems to have 
 been a bit of a wag, for we are gravely informed 
 that he confessed to being sorry for such an irre- 
 mediable step "and resolves through grace not to 
 do the like in time coming." There is no mention 
 of laughter in the record, which goes on at great 
 length to express the opinion that William had only 
 confessed and promised not to be married by an 
 Established Church minister again, in view of the 
 fact that he was now desiring " church privileges " 
 probably the baptism of a child. But for his 
 sin we learn that William was suspended "from
 
 THE AULD LIGHTS 203 
 
 sealing ordinances till he discover a more thorough 
 sense of his folly." 
 
 Another very humorous entry in the records of 
 this same church refers to a baptism in an Estab- 
 lished kirk, and the serious offence connected 
 therewith which a member of the secession body 
 had committed. She was a woman who had pro- 
 mised to carry her brother's child for baptism to 
 an Established church to which he belonged, and 
 although warned by one of her own elders of the 
 slippery path she was treading, she did actually 
 carry the child to the church, and witness its 
 baptism. For this, poor woman, she had to stand 
 before her session, and her defence was most 
 ingenious. That she had -carried her brother's 
 child into an Established church and witnessed 
 its christening was most true, but true also was the 
 fact that she had never intended to cross the 
 threshold of that place of sin, and had it not 
 been that the child was weakly, she would have 
 handed it over at the church door to another 
 woman. This she was afraid to do " lest it 
 should die," and confessed that she had entered 
 the church with the child, but further added 
 that " she did not think to err at the time, she 
 only having heard the prayer and been witness to 
 the baptism of the child." She went on, however, 
 to admit that the Moderator had laid open her sin 
 by citation of the Holy Scripture, and she came 
 to the Session " desirous to be humbled and re- 
 solving through grace to be more watchful in
 
 204 THE STORY OF 
 
 time to come." In the end she was " rebuked," 
 poor soul, and no doubt carried the memory of 
 her terrible offence with her to the grave. 
 
 Another instance of the surprising activity of the 
 Kirk-session at the end of last century, and typical 
 also of its doings during the earlier part of the 
 nineteenth century, is an entry which describes 
 the "compearing" of a young woman who was 
 questioned as to her keeping company with a 
 certain young man on Sabbath days. The girl 
 answered very simply that she had spoken to him 
 occasionally, but the Session, which seems to have 
 listened to every item of tittle-tattle that reached its 
 ears, decided that the case was one for solemn advice 
 and found " that Uphan Dry burgh had not been 
 so much on her guard as she ought to have been 
 considering the character of the said Thomas 
 Davidson, though at the same time nothing scan- 
 dalous could be proved upon her, wherefore 
 they agreed that she should be exhorted by the 
 Moderator to be more wary and circumspect in 
 her behaviour in time coming, and especially on 
 all occasions to shun the company of the said 
 Thomas ; she being called in, this was intimate 
 to her and she exhorted accordingly." 
 
 One might go on at any length making such 
 quotations from these old Session records most of 
 which would be interesting, and all of which pos- 
 sess something humorous or pathetic, but it is no 
 doubt a one-sided picture of the people which they 
 present and a side that has possibly been sufficiently
 
 THE AULD LIGHTS 205 
 
 dealt with already. It is true that this is the aspect 
 of the Auld Lichts to which Mr Barrie has de- 
 voted most of his attention, but it cannot be charged 
 against him that he has been negligent of their great 
 qualities, for these he has fittingly represented in 
 several of his sketches, and more especially in the 
 whole tenor of " The Little Minister." It happens, 
 however, that the supreme merits of the Auld 
 Lichts are precisely the least picturesque and least 
 valuable from the literary point of view, but the 
 close student of Barrie's writings will observe that 
 wherever he dwells upon some of their angularities, 
 he always manages, in a word or two, to remind us 
 of the things which ennobled them. 
 
 Take, for instance, the following passage from 
 one of his earlier sketches descriptive of an " Auld 
 Licht Community": "Scotland had not been long 
 known to me before I reached the conclusion that 
 the score of back-bent, poverty-laden natives of the 
 smaller towns, whose last years are a struggle with 
 the workhouse, almost invariably constitute an Auld 
 Licht congregation, of which a very young man is 
 the minister. The first minister ever placed in my 
 Auld Licht Kirk accepted the call 'as from the 
 mouth of hell.' According to rumour, the natives 
 had a weakness for hot dinners on Sunday ; indeed, 
 the backsliding had gone so far that only a boy 
 minister could have accomplished the work of re- 
 generation. The little girl who accompanied him 
 was his wife, and he proved himself a beardless 
 hero, an Auld Licht General Gordon. Nothing in
 
 206 THE AULD LIGHTS 
 
 the Auld Licht Kirk which I used to know so well 
 affords more food for reflection than the fact that 
 a handful of paupers contrived to make up a salary 
 for a minister." 
 
 There is a wealth of suggestion in the last sen- 
 tence. People who have convictions no matter how 
 absurd these may appear to others if they are ready 
 to make personal sacrifices to uphold these convic- 
 tions, must command our respect. That the Auld 
 Lichts as a community deserve our respect no one 
 will venture to gainsay. With all their curious little 
 shortcomings they never fail to awaken our sympathy, 
 and when we study the story of the Scottish churches 
 through the last two centuries, we cannot but be 
 deeply impressed with the sterling character, the 
 burning zeal, the devotion to their principles, which 
 has characterised the seceders from first to last.
 
 THRUMS
 
 "THRUMS" 
 
 As a rule there is no pleasanter experience than a 
 literary pilgrimage. To visit the scenes which 
 George Eliot has described so truly in her books 
 is a rare delight, so full of natural charm is her 
 part of leafy Warwickshire ; Shakespeare's country 
 abounds in landscape beauty, the Avon breathed 
 poetry long before the immortal Will dreamed by 
 its banks ; the country of Sir Walter Scott, even 
 apart from his genius, is redolent of romance ; so, 
 too, those western wilds where Alan Brek and 
 David Balfour roamed. A literary pilgrimage to 
 such scenes as these is certain to be full of pleasure 
 and profit. 
 
 But there are other places not less renowned for 
 literary associations where the pilgrim will find 
 nothing but disappointment and disenchantment. 
 These are mainly where the character of the people, 
 rather than their surroundings, has been the author's 
 study and exposition. Such places are Drumtochty 
 and Thrums. Neither is attractive for its own sake ; 
 both are commonplace to a degree that is almost 
 painful, and the visitor to either is certain to come 
 away disappointed. 
 
 Why so ? The explanation is simple enough. 
 Character is the salt, nay, the be-all and end-all 
 
 209
 
 210 "THRUMS" 
 
 of Barrie's and "Ian Maclaren's" books; the en- 
 vironment of the people figuring in them is so 
 faintly sketched that each reader for himself fills 
 in the background and fills it in so prettily (as he 
 thinks) that when he sees the real thing and finds 
 how gray and drab he should have made it he is 
 disenchanted Thrums has lost its glamour in his 
 eyes. It is the old, old story of the ideal being 
 shattered when brought into contact with the real. 
 
 Only in a sense is Kirriemuir " Thrums." It gave 
 to its most famous citizen the material wherewith 
 to shape an ideal community of interesting folk, but 
 to all appearance it still remained, as it ever was, 
 a very sleepy, unprepossessing little township. In- 
 deed, its concise description in the Encyclopedia 
 Britannica is almost too flattering: " A borough of 
 barony and a market town of Forfarshire, Scotland, 
 beautifully situated on an eminence above the glen 
 through which the Gairie flows. It lies about five 
 miles north-west of Forfar, and about sixty-two 
 miles north of Edinburgh. The special industry of 
 the town is linen weaving, for which large power- 
 loom factories have recently been built." 
 
 Barrie knows his native town as intimately as he 
 knew his mother's face, its most ordinary features are 
 to him steeped in romance, that best of all romance, 
 the memories of imaginative boyhood. None of us 
 can hope to see in its frowsy tenements and shabby 
 closes the wonders that he sees there ; few even of his 
 townsfolk can, for that would imply something of his 
 imaginative gifts, and these are extremely rare.
 
 "THRUMS" 211 
 
 It is true, we can see the window that gave the 
 author the title of his first great book, we can visit 
 the manse, we can even look into the Auld Licht 
 Kirk, but how uninteresting all these appear to be 
 when we cannot people them again with Jess and 
 Leeby, with Margaret and Babbie, with Gavin 
 Dishart and Lang Tammas. We can wander to 
 the Den ; but it is a tax on the imagination to 
 recall the last Jacobite rising, to catch glimpses of 
 the great Stroke, Corp of Corp, the proud Lady 
 Grizel and Widow Elspeth. There is the Cuttle 
 Well, and we remember with pity the Painted 
 Lady ; yet to the eye the scene is sadly lacking 
 in romance. But what a place to dream about is 
 that same Den, if we have never seen it and know 
 it only in such a passage as this ! 
 
 " Through the Den runs a tiny burn, and by its 
 side is a pink path, dyed this pretty colour, perhaps, 
 by the blushes the ladies leave behind them. The 
 burn as it passes the Cuttle Well, which stands 
 higher and just out of sight, leaps in vain to see 
 who is making that cooing noise, and the well, 
 taking the spray for kisses, laughs all day at Romeo, 
 who cannot get up. Well is a name it must have 
 given itself, for it is only a spring in the bottom 
 of a basinful of water, where it makes about as 
 much stir in the world as a minnow jumping at a 
 fly. They say that if a boy, by making a bowl of 
 his hands, should suddenly carry off all the water, 
 a quick girl could thread her needle at the spring. 
 But it is a spring that will not wait a moment.
 
 212 "THRUMS" 
 
 " Men who have been lads in Thrums sometimes 
 go back to it from London, or from across the seas, 
 to look again at some battered little house and feel 
 the blasts of their bairnhood playing through the 
 old wynds, and they may take with them a foreign 
 wife. They show her everything, except the Cuttle 
 Well ; they often go there alone. The well is 
 sacred to the memory of first love. You may walk 
 from the well to the round cemetery in ten minutes. 
 It is a common walk for those who go back. 
 
 " First love is but a boy and girl playing at the 
 Cuttle Well with a bird's egg. They blow it on 
 one summer evening in the long grass, and on the 
 next it is borne away on a coarse laugh, or it breaks 
 
 beneath the burden of a tear. And yet . I 
 
 once saw an aged woman, a widow of many years, 
 cry softly at mention of the Cuttle Well. ' John 
 was a good man to you,' I said, for John had been 
 her husband. ' He was a leal man to me,' she 
 answered with wistful eyes, ' ay, he was a leal man 
 to me but it wasna John I was thinking o'. You 
 dinna ken what makes me greet so sair,' she added 
 presently, and though I thought I knew now I was 
 wrong. * It's because I canna mind his name,' she 
 said." 
 
 With such a fairy-like picture in the mind's eye it is 
 little short of sacrilege to search out the real thing and 
 compare facts with fancy. I should certainly advise 
 no one to do so, and for myself I do not hesitate to 
 say I have deliberately kept away from Kirriemuir, 
 and from Logiealmond, even when a half-an-hour
 
 "THRUMS" 213 
 
 would have taken me thither, lest I should lose some 
 precious paintings from the picture gallery of my 
 mind. What shall it profit an enthusiast if he finds 
 Kirriemuir and loses Thrums ? 
 
 Barrie has thought so too, for when he is telling 
 us that Jean Myles always spoke as if her window 
 in London " still looked out on the bonny Mary well- 
 brae," he hastens to warn us that "it is not really 
 bonny, it is gey an' mean an' bleak, and you must 
 not come to see it. It is just a steep wind-swept 
 street, old and wrinkled, like your mother's face." 
 
 He has many descriptions of Thrums in his books, 
 but the following, which appeared in the first draft 
 of "When a Man's Single," is one of the most 
 elaborate : 
 
 " Thrums is but a handful of houses jumbled 
 together in a cup, from which one of the pieces 
 has gone. Through this outlet ran the Whunny, 
 that turned the saw-mill wheel, and a dusty road 
 twisted out of it to the south. Fifty years ago, 
 when every other room had its hand -loom, and 
 thousands of weavers lived and died Thoreaus with- 
 out knowing it, the cup overflowed and left several 
 houses on the top of the hill. The skeletons of 
 some of these shivering dwellings still stand, choked 
 in an overgrowth of weeds and currant-bushes, and 
 occasionally one is occupied by some needy person, 
 who, during the heavy snowstorms, takes a spade 
 inside with him at nights to dig himself out in the 
 morning. Then he is blown down the hill to his 
 work. There were wintry mornings when Thrums,
 
 214 "THRUMS" 
 
 viewed from the top of the ridge, was but two 
 gaunt church steeples and a dozen red stone walls 
 standing out of a snow -heap. Weavers in the 
 second storey walked out of their windows instead 
 of down the outside stair that gave them a private 
 door, and, looking about them for the quarry that 
 was their great landmark, fell into buried hen-roosts, 
 where they sat motionless till they saw what had 
 happened to them. . . . The square is Thrums's 
 heart. From it a road to the north climbs straight 
 up the bowl, as if anxious to get out of it. When 
 most of the houses near this thoroughfare were put 
 up, it had not struck the builders to take it into 
 account, and many houses were only approachable by 
 straggling paths that doubled round little gardens, 
 and became in winter tributaries of the "Whunny. 
 There were houses that were most easily reached 
 by scaling dykes. The main road comes to a sudden 
 stop at the rim of the bowl, short of breath, or 
 frightened to cross the common of whin and broom 
 that bars the way to the north, with toadstools only 
 to show that this has once been a forest, and slippery 
 roots pressing up the turf, the ribs of the earth 
 showing. Over this common, one end of which, 
 lapping into the valley, has been converted into an 
 overflow cemetery, there are many cart-tracks that 
 in combination would be a road." 
 
 The consciousness of the difference between the 
 real and the ideal which comes to the artist when he 
 is drawing an ideal picture of a rather commonplace 
 scene is often present with Barrie. We have heard
 
 "THRUMS" 215 
 
 his warning about Marywell brae, but in Tommy's 
 disenchantment after he arrived in Thrums there is 
 the very view of the subject which I have been 
 trying to enforce adroitly presented. You remem- 
 ber how Tommy had boasted to Shovel about the 
 beauties of Thrums as these had been described to 
 him by his mother and how Elspeth and he had 
 expected to find such wonders there : 
 
 " They went first into the Den, and the rocks 
 were dripping wet, all the trees, save the firs, were 
 bare, and the mud round a tiny spring pulled off 
 one of Elspeth's boots. 
 
 " ' Tommy,' she cried, quaking, ' that narsty 
 puddle can't not be the Cuttle Well, can it ? ' 
 
 " ' No, it ain't,' said Tommy, quickly, but he 
 feared it was. 
 
 " ' It's c-c-colder here than London,' Elspeth 
 said, shivering, and Tommy was shivering too, 
 but he answered, ' I'm I'm I'm warm.' 
 
 "The Den was strangely small, and soon they 
 were on a shabby brae where women in short 
 gowns came to their doors and men in nightcaps 
 sat down on the shafts of their barrows to look 
 at Jean Myles' bairns. 
 
 " * What does yer think ? ' Elspeth whispered 
 very doubtfully. 
 
 "'They're beauties,' Tommy answered, deter- 
 minedly. 
 
 " Presently Elspeth cried, * Oh, Tommy, what a 
 ugly stair ! Where is the beauty stairs as is wore 
 outside for show ? '
 
 2 i6 "THRUMS" 
 
 " This was one of them and Tommy knew it. 
 ' Wait till you see the west town end,' he said 
 bravely ; ' it's grand.' But when they were in the 
 west town end, and he had to admit it, ' Wait till 
 you see the square,' he said, and when they were in 
 the square, ' Wait,' he said huskily, * till you see the 
 town-house.' Alas, this was the town-house facing 
 them, and when they knew it, he said hurriedly, 
 Wait till you see the Auld Licht Kirk.' 
 
 " They stood long in front of the Auld Licht 
 Kirk, which he had sworn was bigger" and lovelier 
 than St Paul's, but well, it is a different style of 
 architecture, and had Elspeth not been there with 
 tears in waiting, Tommy would have blubbered. 
 ' It's it's littler than I thought,' he said desperately, 
 * but the minister, oh, what a wonderful big man 
 he is!'" 
 
 And even the minister was a disappointment. 
 
 How true all this is and how very real is Tommy's 
 last condition of disenchantment, when he sobs : " I 
 bounced so much about the Thrums folk to Shovel, 
 and now the first day I'm here I heard myself bounc- 
 ing about Shovel to Thrums folk, and it were that 
 
 what made me cry. Oh, Elspeth, it's it's not 
 
 the same what I thought it would be ! " 
 
 I'm afraid that most admirers of Barrie who are 
 rash enough to make a pilgrimage to Kirriemuir 
 thinking thus to visit Thrums will exclaim with 
 Tommy that " it's not the same what I thought it 
 would be." Yet, so strong is the modern craze 
 for identifying actual places with fictitious ones that
 
 "THRUMS" 217 
 
 we need not be surprised if the name Kirriemuir 
 should in time be superseded by Thrums. There 
 have been similar cases before. One occurs to 
 me at the moment. Sir Walter Scott in "Old 
 Mortality" christened beautiful Craignethan and 
 its castle, " Tillietudlem," and to-day you would 
 ask in vain for the former, while the latter un- 
 gainly name flares in great letters at the Railway 
 Station. So far as names go Thrums is a poor 
 substitute for Kirriemuir. Thrums means the ends of 
 webs, and as such is a very apt name for a weaving 
 community, though I remember a local poet lament- 
 ing its choice in some verses with the refrain, 
 
 "Thrums are but orras, the ends o' a wab."
 
 BARRIE AND 
 HIS CONTEMPORARIES
 
 BARRIE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 IT is Mr Barrie's good fortune that in his case the 
 critical faculty exists alongside of the creative ability. 
 To re-read his early critical articles in the reviews is 
 to realise that had he never made his mark as the 
 creator of Thrums he could scarce have failed to 
 establish an enviable reputation as a widely read and 
 penetrating critic of literature. The articles referred 
 to are chiefly valuable to-day as showing how Mr 
 Barrie esteems certain of his contemporaries, and 
 together with a series of notable passages from 
 these contributions the reader may also account it 
 interesting to have reproduced a few paragraphs 
 embodying the opinions of Mr Barrie's contem- 
 poraries on his own achievements. 
 
 This view of Mr Kipling's work, taken from an 
 article entitled " Mr Kipling's Stories," contributed 
 by Mr Barrie to the Contemporary Review of March 
 1891, is very interesting: "He owes nothing to 
 any other writer. No one helped to form him. He 
 never imitated, preparatory to making a style for 
 himself. He began by being original, and prob- 
 ably when at school learned caligraphy from copy 
 lines of his own invention. If his work suggests 
 that of any other novelists, it is by accident ; he 
 would have written thus if they had never existed.
 
 222 BARRIE AND 
 
 By some he has been hailed as a Dickens, which 
 seems mere cruelty to a young man. A Dickens 
 should never have been expected. He must come 
 as a surprise. He is too big to dream about. But 
 there is a swing, an exuberance of life in some or 
 Mr Kipling's practical jokes that are worthy of the 
 author of "Charles O'Malley." Rather let us say 
 that certain of Lever's roaring boys are worthy of 
 Mr Kipling. ' The Taking of Lungtungpen,' and 
 ' The Man who would be King,' are beyond 
 Lever ; indeed, for the second of these two stories, 
 our author's masterpiece, there is no word but 
 magnificent." 
 
 " George Meredith's Novels " was the title of a 
 critical article contributed by Mr Barrie to the Con- 
 temporary Review in October 1 888. From this we 
 take the following characteristic passage : 
 
 " Were I to pick out Mr Meredith's triumphs in 
 phrase-making I could tattoo the Contemporary with 
 them to use one of his own phrases. He has made 
 it his business to pin them to his pages as a collector 
 secures butterflies. He succeeds, I believe, in this 
 perilous undertaking as often as he fails. He must 
 have the largest vocabulary of any living man. It is 
 told of a great newspaper editor that he had a con- 
 tributor with a curious craze for introducing the latest 
 thing in felt hats into his articles. A hundred times 
 the editor struck the felt hats out, and a time came 
 when he dreamt nightly that his contributor had 
 outwitted him. Mr Meredith seems to have similar 
 nightmares about the commonplace, and undeniably
 
 HIS CONTEMPORARIES 223 
 
 the phraseology which he offers as a substitute 
 strews the reader's path with stones." 
 
 Writing on Thomas Hardy and his novels in 
 the Contemporary Review for July 1899, Mr Barrie 
 says : 
 
 "There is a public that compares Mr Hardy, 
 when he is writing of young ladies, with the con- 
 jurer who brings strange things out of an empty 
 box. 
 
 " There are clever novelists in plenty to give us 
 the sentimental aspect of country life, and others 
 can show its crueller side. Some paint its sunsets, 
 some never get beyond its pig-troughs or its ale- 
 houses ; many can be sarcastic about its dulness. 
 But Mr Hardy is the only man among them who 
 can scour the village and miss nothing ; he knows 
 the common as Mr Jefferies knew it, but he knows 
 the inhabitants as well as the common. Among 
 English novelists of to-day he is the only realist 
 to be considered, so far as life in country parts is 
 concerned." 
 
 Barrie's admiration for R. L. Stevenson rises al- 
 most to a passion, and never has any author received 
 from a contemporary, as great as himself, but in a 
 different way, so beautiful a tribute as that which 
 is dedicated to Stevenson in the chapter of " Mar- 
 garet Ogilvy" entitled " R. L. S." The chapter 
 in question is a perfect gem, and one cannot quote 
 any part of it and hope to convey an adequate sug- 
 gestion of the rare spirit with which it is written. 
 The death of Stevenson was one of the few events 
 
 \
 
 224 BARRIE AND 
 
 that have moved Barrie to poetry, and the following 
 lines from " Robert Louis Stevenson : Scotland's 
 Lament," which he contributed to the Bookman in 
 January 1895, may be aptly quoted here: 
 
 " Her hands about her brows are pressed, 
 
 She goes upon her knees to pray, 
 Her head is bowed upon her breast, 
 And oh, she's sairly failed the day. 
 
 Her breast is old, it will not rise, 
 Her tearless sobs in anguish choke, 
 
 God put his fingers on her eyes, 
 
 And then it was her tears that spoke. 
 
 ' I've ha'en o' brawer sons a flow, 
 My Walter mair renown could win, 
 
 And he that followed at the plough, 
 But Louis was my Benjamin. 
 
 ' Ye sons wha do your little best, 
 Ye writing Scots, put by the pen, 
 
 He's deid, the ane abune the rest, 
 I winna look at write again.' 
 
 The lad was mine ! ' erect she stands, 
 No more by vain regrets oppress't, 
 
 Once more her eyes are clear ; her hands 
 Are proudly crossed upon her breast."
 
 HIS CONTEMPORARIES 225 
 
 "Mr Baring-Gould's Novels" was the title of an 
 article contributed by Mr Barrie to the Contemporary 
 Review for February 1890. The following is an 
 interesting extract : 
 
 " Of our eight or ten living novelists who are 
 popular by merit, few have greater ability than 
 Mr Baring-Gould. His characters are bold and 
 forcible figures, his wit is as ready as his figures 
 of speech are apt. He has a powerful imagination, 
 and is quaintly fanciful. So enormous and accurate 
 is his general information that there is no trade or 
 profession with which he does not seem to be 
 familiar. So far as scientific knowledge is con- 
 cerned, he is obviously better equipped than any 
 contemporary writer of fiction. Yet one rises from 
 his books with a feeling of repulsion, or at least with 
 the glad conviction that his ignoble views of life are 
 as untrue as the characters who illustrate them. 
 Here is a melancholy case of a novelist, not only 
 clever but sincere, undone by want of sympathy. . . . 
 But 'Mehalah' is still one of the most powerful 
 romances of recent years." 
 
 In a charming introductory note to a very charm- 
 ing book, " The Grandissimes," by George W. 
 Cable, Mr Barrie writes in his most characteristic 
 vein. He is a warm admirer of Mr Cable's beautiful 
 stories of Creole life, but his " note" in this instance 
 refers rather to the characters of "The Grandissimes" 
 than to Mr Cable's books in general. The following 
 sentence may, however, be quoted : " Mr Cable is 
 the impassioned advocate of the rights of the black
 
 226 BARRIE AND 
 
 man, who has surely never had such an artist for 
 champion as here, in the story of Bras-Coupe ; yet 
 I like him best when his one arm protects some poor 
 wounded quadroon, and he is fighting for her with 
 the other." 
 
 Mr William Archer, writing of the letters of 
 Stevenson, says : 
 
 "The following, addressed to Mr Barrie in 1892, 
 seems to me no less admirable for insight than for 
 modesty. It reminds one of Scott's praise of Jane 
 Austen : 
 
 " ' There are two of us now that the Shirra might 
 have patted on the head. And please do not think 
 when I seem thus to bracket myself with you that 
 I am wholly blinded with vanity. Jess is beyond my 
 frontier line ; I could not touch her skirt ; I have no 
 such glamour of twilight on my pen. I am a capable 
 artist ; but it begins to look to me as if you were a 
 man of genius. Take care of yourself for my sake.' 
 
 " This is truly felt and nobly expressed. There 
 is a touch of the miraculous in Mr Barrie's endow- 
 ment that did not enter into Stevenson's. One may 
 recognise this without placing Barrie higher than 
 Stevenson, just as one may recognise Jane Austen's 
 peculiar genius without placing her higher than 
 Walter Scott." 
 
 Stevenson thought "The Little Minister" should 
 have ended badly. Writing to Mr Barrie, under 
 date of November i, 1892, he declares: 
 
 "We all know it did; and we are infinitely 
 grateful to you for the grace and good feeling with
 
 HIS CONTEMPORARIES 227 
 
 which you lied about it. If you had told the truth, 
 I for one could never have forgiven you. As you 
 had conceived and written the earlier parts, the truth 
 about the end, though indisputably true to fact, 
 would have been a lie, or what is worse, a discord 
 in art. If you are going to make a book end badly, 
 it must end badly from the beginning. Now your 
 book began to end well. You let yourself fall in love 
 with, and fondle, and smile at your puppets. Once 
 you had done that your honour was committed at the 
 cost of truth to life you were bound to save them." 
 
 Mrs Oliphant was one of Barrie's warmest ad- 
 mirers, and the esteem was mutual, as he wrote of 
 her books in terms of sincerest praise before he had 
 done anything to bring him into her notice or to earn 
 her friendship. Writing of " A Window in Thrums " 
 in Blackiuood's Magazine, Mrs Oliphant said : 
 
 " We follow the homely record with an interest 
 which the most sensational drama could not surpass. 
 We feel that something like extravagance seems to 
 steal into the words with which we describe this 
 book. But no book could be more deeply instinct 
 with the poetry of real feeling, in which no fiction 
 is, though it requires something which can only be 
 called genius to reveal it to the world." 
 
 Here is a very interesting little reminiscence from 
 an article by Mr A. T. Quiller-Couch ("Q"), 
 entitled "Mr Barrie's 'Sentimental Tommy': A 
 Causerie," contributed to the Contemporary Review : 
 
 " Matrimony by advertisement is popularly sup- 
 posed to lack glamour j and I feel a reasonable shy-
 
 228 BARRIE AND 
 
 ness in confessing that my introduction to the most 
 romantic of all my literary loves was brought about 
 by a Press cutting agency. Sometime in the winter 
 of 1887-88 I received a parcel of cuttings, which 
 included one from the St James's Gazette, entitled 
 ' Meade Primus to his Proud Parent.' The reader 
 will find something very much like it by turning to 
 chap. xx. of his copy of * My Lady Nicotine,' by 
 J. M. Barrie. At this time, however, and for a year 
 or two after, I did not know the author's name ; I 
 only knew that this man's humour differed in a 
 subtle way from other men's humour, and hoped 
 that when next he set forth to write about boys I 
 might be there to read. 
 
 " A year or two after it became a fairly common 
 experience of mine to find myself waiting for a few 
 minutes in a certain publisher's room. In the book- 
 case stood a copy of * When a Man's Single,' pub- 
 lished in the autumn of 1 888. By this time Mr 
 Barrie's name was beginning to be noised abroad, 
 and I took down the volume with curiosity. The 
 copy belonged, or had belonged to, an eminent 
 novelist, who had passed it on to the publisher, no 
 doubt with the kindly purpose of calling his atten- 
 tion to the work of this young man. I wonder how 
 often I began to read that book. ' One still Saturday 
 afternoon, some years ago, a child pulled herself 
 through a small window into a kitchen in the Kirk 
 Wynd of Thrums. . . .' It grew to a point of 
 honour to begin at the very beginning, and always 
 the interruption came before I reached the end of
 
 HIS CONTEMPORARIES 229 
 
 chap. ii. Months passed, and I read the ' Auld 
 Licht Idylls ' and ' A Window in Thrums,' and 
 underwent their spell, but still without guessing 
 that this master of our hearts, the creator of Jess 
 and Leeby and the wonderful world of Thrums, was 
 also the writer who had tickled my lungs with the 
 economics of Meade Primus. The first glimmer of en- 
 lightenment came at length with a determined perusal 
 of the book which had baffled me so often, and was 
 confirmed in April 1890 by 'My Lady Nicotine.'" 
 
 Mr David Christie Murray is a " brither Scot," 
 but evidently a whole-hearted admirer of J. M. 
 Barrie. I use " but " deliberately, for nothing is 
 more absurdly wrong than Mr Murray's assertion 
 that the fame of Barrie and Maclaren and other 
 Scottish writers is due in large degree to the great 
 number of Scotsmen on the English Press, who have 
 trumpeted their fellow-countrymen. It is no mere 
 opinion, but a matter of fact, capable of proof, that 
 Mr Barrie's severest critics have always been his own 
 countrymen. Mr Murray is also wrong in bracket- 
 ing Barrie with George Macdonald and declaring 
 the latter his master. Barrie is so essentially distinct 
 from Dr Macdonald in nearly every phase of his art 
 that it is surprising to find so shrewd a judge as Mr 
 Murray confusing the two. The following judg- 
 ment of Barrie is extracted from Mr Murray's frank 
 and unconventional volume, " My Contemporaries in 
 Fiction " : "I think his greatest charm lies in the fact 
 that he is at once old and new fashioned. He loves to 
 deal with a bygone fcrm of life, a form of life which
 
 230 BARRIE AND 
 
 he is too young to remember in all its intricacies, 
 whilst he is not too young to have heard of it plente- 
 ously at first hand, or to have known many of its ex- 
 emplars. Few things of so happy a sort can befall 
 a child of imagination as to be born on such a border- 
 land of time. About him is the atmosphere of the 
 new, and dotted every here and there around him are 
 the mementoes of the old a dying age, which in a 
 little while will cease to be, and is already out of 
 date and romantic. Steam and electricity and the 
 printing-press, and the universal provider and the 
 cheap clothing ' emporium,' have worked strange 
 changes. It was Mr Barrie's fortune to begin to 
 look on life when all these changes were not yet 
 wrought ; to bring an essentially modern mind to 
 bear on the contemplation of a vanishing and yet 
 visible past, to live with the quaint, yet to be able 
 by mere force of contrast, to recognise its quaintness, 
 and to be in close and constant and familiar touch 
 with those to whom the disappearing forms of life 
 had been wholly habitual. That the mere environ- 
 ment thus indicated was the lot of hundreds of 
 thousands makes little difference to the special happi- 
 ness of the chance, for, as I have said already, we 
 can't all be persons of genius, and it is only to the 
 man of genius that the good fortune comes home." 
 
 That shrewd literary critic, Mr Augustine Birrell, 
 wrote of Barrie in the following glowing manner in 
 one of his delightful " causeries " in the Speaker ten 
 years ago : 
 
 " What has happened so often before is happen-
 
 HIS CONTEMPORARIES 231 
 
 ing now. Everybody is reading ' A Window in 
 Thrums ' and ' Auld Licht Idylls.' The instantaneous 
 popularity of these two books is a beautiful thing. 
 The author has conceded nothing to the public taste. 
 May he never do so ! He has been inflexible and re- 
 solute, an artist from first to last. Of sentiment, that 
 odious onion, not a trace is to be found in these sweet- 
 smelling pages. But tragedy is there, and pathos 
 well-nigh unbearable, and humour abundant, inevit- 
 able, yet always surprising, so cunningly is it hid." 
 
 Sir George Douglas, Bart., contributed to Good 
 Words for March, 1899, a very pleasant appreciation of 
 Barrie and his books. The following extract from 
 this will no doubt be read with interest : 
 
 " The phenomenal success of Mr Barrie's books 
 is a healthy and hopeful ' sign of the times.' There 
 could not well be a greater contrast to all that we 
 call ' decadent,' l fin de stick] than is supplied by his 
 work. And whilst other novelists are winning their 
 successes by telling us that the ' old order ' has had 
 its day, it is somewhat reassuring to find genius of 
 the brightest enlisted on the side of that old order. 
 It is probable that, in order to be healthy, literature 
 must be catholic, experimental a free expression of 
 the workings of the human mind. It deals legiti- 
 mately with novel, even with daring, phases of 
 thought. But there are those among us who re- 
 cognise in certain tenets of the old order the very 
 rock on which our social life is founded. To these 
 tenets has Mr Barrie ever been true a fact which, 
 at a period when individualism at war with the
 
 232 HIS CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 social order has become too much a favourite subject 
 with our novelists, would suffice of itself to give to 
 works such as his an unique and special value." 
 
 We could not close this chapter without quoting 
 a few lines from the article entitled "The Novels of 
 J. M. Barrie," which Mr S. R. Crockett contributed 
 to the Bookman in November 1894. " Mr Barrie," 
 he says, " is like the King of France who kept back 
 the deluge by getting himself named the * well- 
 beloved,' with this difference that the writer of the 
 ' Window ' deserves the name. Yet I read oftenest 
 in the * Idylls,' because there is no forlorn laying 
 away of all the beloved Jess, Hendry, Leeby, 
 among the standing stones of the windy hill ; and, 
 above all, no Jimmy coming over the commonty, 
 looking behind him like a hunted thing. For, as I 
 read the ' Window ' I am haunted by the thought of 
 those two chapters at the end of the book, and they 
 are to my heart like going about a house where in 
 one of the white unentered rooms a babe lies dead." 
 
 Further on the writer advances a very interesting 
 view of Barrie's books : the fact that he seems to 
 find it no difficult task to forget much of their con- 
 tents and is as delighted when he takes them up 
 again as if he were reading them for the first time. 
 On which point he goes on to observe : "So it is 
 easy to see what a great thing it is to forget Mr 
 Barrie's books, in order that one may begin and go 
 over the whole from the beginning. It even pleasures 
 me to find that he says the same thing over and 
 over again, as though he had forgotten it himself."
 
 THE SCOTS TONGUE IN 
 BARRIE'S BOOKS
 
 THE SCOTS TONGUE IN BARRIE'S BOOKS 
 
 MUCH of Barrie's early success with his dialect 
 stories was due to the fact that he had, in the most 
 artistic manner, produced an Anglicised form of the 
 Scots tongue which was readily understood by 
 English readers. Some of his Scottish contem- 
 poraries have used such " braid Scots " that their 
 writings are unintelligible to the average English- 
 man. Others have confined themselves so largely 
 to a peculiar local dialect that they do not even 
 appeal to a general Scots audience. Take "Johnnie 
 Gibb o' Gushetneuk," for instance, or " Tammas 
 Bodkin's " writings j these could not be universally 
 read in Scotland ; and truth to say S. R. Crockett's 
 earlier dialect stories are difficult reading to many 
 of his own countrymen. Even R. L. Stevenson 
 occasionally introduced paragraphs so broad and 
 racy that not one in a hundred English readers can 
 be expected to guess at their meaning, and a very 
 fine book by Halliday Rogers, entitled " Meggots- 
 brae," is so full of old Scots and localisms that its 
 failure to interest English readers is not surprising. 
 It is entirely to Barrie's credit, then, that, by a 
 sparing use of Scottish idioms, and an ingenious 
 blending of common English, he has produced a 
 form of written Scots which is at once easily under- 
 
 235
 
 236 THE SCOTS TONGUE 
 
 stood by all readers, and is truthfully suggestive of 
 the mother-tongue of his characters. 
 
 Yet, scattered throughout his books, are a number 
 of words which require more than a mere guess to 
 understand their full meaning. All that the present 
 writer in this chapter has sought to do is to bring 
 together these rather unusual words and phrases, as 
 well as a few others which seem worthy of some 
 attention, and to explain them as fully as need be, 
 in the hope of thus assisting the non-Scottish reader 
 in his study of Barrie's works. The difficulty has 
 not been to find words, but rather to keep the list 
 down to the smallest limit, and wherever the con- 
 text has made the meaning of an unusual word clear 
 beyond doubt, it has not been added to this list, 
 though several here appear which, while fairly 
 obvious of meaning, are of themselves interesting 
 enough to warrant remark. 
 
 It should be pointed out to the English reader 
 and to some Scots, mayhap that the Scottish 
 tongue is no mere dialect. Unlike the dialects of 
 provincial England, it is not badly spoken English. 
 Often it is purer Anglo-Saxon than English itself, 
 and the great majority of auld-farrant Scots words 
 will be found to have a synonym, if not a deriva- 
 tive, in Anglo-Saxon. For Jamieson, perhaps the 
 greatest authority on the subject, contends that the 
 Scottish Language is not derived from Anglo-Saxon, 
 but is an individual tongue, derived, like Anglo- 
 Saxon itself, from the ancient Gothic. The ques- 
 tion is much too wide to be discussed here, but the
 
 IN BARRIE'S BOOKS 237 
 
 fact that Jamieson's " Dictionary of the Scottish 
 Language" extends to four large quarto volumes, 
 each containing seven hundred odd pages, and, at 
 that, is by no means complete, suggests that the 
 dignity of the Scots tongue is something more than 
 that of a mere dialect. 
 
 ANOWER. "Ye'll gang anower" ("The Last 
 Night," W. in T.}. 
 
 ATOWER. " To ging atower to the T'nowhead " 
 ("Courting of T'nowhead's Bell," A. L. /.). 
 
 These two words are used indiscriminately by 
 the novelist, and though it might seem they convey 
 the same idea, there is a real distinction between 
 them. "Atower" is best translated as over or 
 across. To "ging atower" is to go over; to 
 "come in atower" is to come over. A housewife 
 would say to a guest who was sitting near the door 
 on a cold night: "Come (or perhaps "come in") 
 atower to the fire, man." My impression is that, 
 properly applied, atower should mean " out-over," 
 and anower "in over." Thus "ging atower the 
 door," addressing a person inside the house, or 
 " come anower," addressing a person standing out- 
 side the door. 
 
 BASS. " Beat her bass " (chap, ii., M . 0.). 
 
 A bass is a doormat. From the name of the 
 fibre. 
 
 BESOM. " And clutched the besom" (chap, viii., 
 M. O.). 
 
 This is pure Anglo-Saxon for a broom, in which 
 sense it is here used. But an unruly girl is often
 
 238 THE SCOTS TONGUE 
 
 called a besom in Scotland, and occasionally a 
 faggot. 
 
 BEN. Ben the house (see " but"). 
 
 BILBIE and SILVENDY. " Something like * bilbie ' 
 or 'silvendy'" (chap, vi., M. O.). 
 
 BILBIE. " May find bilbie in queer places " (chap, 
 viii., L. M.}. 
 
 Bilbie and Silvendy are two " auld farrant " words 
 which Margaret Ogilvy wouldn't explain to her son ; 
 but he had no difficulty in guessing at them for all 
 that. Bilbie is a very ancient word, originally 
 meaning a residence or shelter, but subsequently 
 to give quarter or encouragement. At all events 
 " no bilbie " means no quarter, or no encourage- 
 ment. " Silvendy " means to protect oneself. Yet 
 a good coat may be "silvendy"; so, too, a strong 
 table ! Barrie is also justified in using it as " it's no 
 very silvendy" (safe). By which token it will be 
 concluded the word is rather wide in meaning. 
 
 BUCKIES. "They were as like as buckies after 
 that " (chap, x., S. T.). 
 
 Buckie is the East of Scotland name for the whelk. 
 In the West, and especially on the Clyde, " wulk" 
 is the word that serves in the vernacular. 
 
 BUT. " The gossip that was going on but the 
 house" ("On the track of the Minister," W. in T.). 
 
 "But and ben" is a very common expression in 
 all parts of Scotland, applied to houses. " A but 
 and ben" means a house of only two rooms. In 
 some parts of Scotland in the West at all events 
 you seldom hear such a phrase as that quoted, and
 
 IN BARRIE'S BOOKS 239 
 
 " ben " is used indiscriminately. Thus : " come ben 
 the hoose," or "I'm going ben the hoose," meaning 
 one is going into the other room or other side of 
 the house. Originally the but and ben parts of 
 a house were very distinct. Thus Sir J. Carr in 
 his "Caledonian Sketches": "A tolerable hut is 
 divided into three parts ; a butt, which is the kitchen j 
 a benn, an inner room ; and a byar, where the cattle 
 are housed." That is to say, the ben opened off the 
 but, and in some houses a third room opened off the 
 ben, this being called far ben. In Ross's " Helen- 
 ore " we have the following : 
 
 " Lindy, who was into the house him lane, 
 Lifts up his head, and looking butt the floor, 
 Sees Bydby standing just within the door." 
 
 Strictly speaking, the but is the first room entered 
 from the outer doorway, and any room opening off 
 it is the ben. But when the house consists of several 
 apartments, and the entrance to each is from a com- 
 mon hall or lobby, the better side of the house is 
 called the ben, and the kitchen side the but. It is 
 in this sense that Barrie uses the two words. " Far 
 ben" also means very intimate. 
 
 CA'MING. " To watch her ca'ming and sanding 
 and stitching" (chap, i., M. 0.). 
 
 A soft blue stone used by Scots housewives for 
 rubbing on doorsteps is known as " blue ca'm." 
 Hence " ca'ming." 
 
 CHIEF. "Him and the minister's chief, ye ken" 
 (" On the track of the Minister," W. in T.}. 
 
 Chief here conveys the idea of intimacy. It is
 
 240 THE SCOTS TONGUE 
 
 very commonly used in Scotland, and is varied in 
 different parts with "great" and "pack." "Jean 
 and Jock are awfu' great, I'm thinking," would in 
 the West of Scotland mean that they were very 
 friendly, very intimate. " Gey pack " would also 
 express the same idea. 
 
 CLASHES and CLAVERS. "In the Clashes and 
 Clavers of Thrums" (chap, xi., L. M.). 
 
 Clashes means idle talk, and clavers means the 
 same. A clasher is a tale-bearer, or tattler : 
 
 " As tales are never held for fack 
 
 That dashers tell." Piclen's Pttmi. 
 
 CLECKIT. "It just made me waur (worse) than 
 ever ; for when I had counted the twenty I said a 
 big damn, thoughtful-like, and syne out jumpit three 
 little damns, like as if the first one had cleckit in my 
 mouth" (chap, xix., S. T.). 
 
 Cleckit means hatched. A "clockin' hen" is a 
 hen sitting on eggs, and is applied especially to 
 broody hens. A brood of chickens is called a 
 cleckin. Thus the simile here employed by the 
 author is very striking. The word is not peculiar 
 to Scots, but occurs in Provincial English. 
 
 COUTHIE. "I mean she was couthie" (chap, vi., 
 L. M.~). 
 
 COWDIE. "A saft cowdie sweet dingon" (chap. 
 xxxi., L. M.). 
 
 Couthie and couth mean loving, affectionate, plea- 
 sant, agreeable, when applied to people. " A couthie 
 couple," for example. The negative form uncouth 
 is in current use in the English language. Cowdie
 
 IN BARRIE'S BOOKS 241 
 
 is a local form of couth, applied more particularly 
 to the weather and things inanimate. In the above 
 phrase it implies a pleasant shower (of rain). 
 
 Cow. " Oh they cow " (chap, iv., M. O.). 
 
 Possibly from the French coup, which is used in 
 Scotland as to throw down, and is pronounced cowp. 
 "Cow" means to cut, and also to outdo, as by a 
 great stroke. Thus, " cow my hair," and " that 
 cows a'." Barrie here uses it in the latter sense. 
 Cow has yet another meaning, and is good English, 
 as in this line from Burns : 
 
 " The bauldest o' them a' he co-w'J; " 
 
 where it signifies to make afraid, or to daunt. 
 
 CURRAN. "For a curran days" ("On the track 
 of the Minister," W. In T.). 
 
 This is more correctly " curn," meaning a small 
 but indefinite number or quantity. One would talk 
 of a "curn brose" as readily as a "curn folk." A 
 curn and a pickle express much the same idea of 
 quantity. The word also means a grain of corn, or 
 any grain. Manzy, mask, puckle and hantle, all 
 words suggestive of varying quantities, are explained 
 in that splendid chapter, " Of four ministers who 
 afterwards boasted that they had known Tommy 
 Sandys," in " Sentimental Tommy." 
 
 DANDER. " Was a dander through the kirkyard " 
 (" A very old family," A. L. /.). 
 
 A dander is a stroll. But dander in the vulgar 
 sense of temper is also used in Scotland, just as in 
 Ireland. " That raised the dander of M'Carthy."
 
 24* THE SCOTS TONGUE 
 
 DEVE'S. "To deve's to death aboot it" ("The 
 statement of Tibbie Birse," W. in J 1 .). 
 
 To deve is to deafen. There was an old Scots 
 lady who was a child in the days of John Knox, 
 and at her end Claverhouse (generally called Clavers) 
 was in the full tide of his career. "When I cam' 
 into the warl'," she said, " Knox was deven' us wi' 
 his clavers (talk), and noo that I'm gaen oot o't, 
 Clavers is deven' us wi' his knocks." 
 
 DIVETS. "Whose roof was of 'divets'" ("A 
 very old family," A. L. /.). 
 
 A divet, or divot as it is more generally spelt, 
 is an oblong piece of turf or sod, used for thatching 
 and other purposes. 
 
 DOITED. " Look doitedly probably " (chap, i., 
 M. 0.). 
 
 Doited means doted, or foolish. English writers 
 use the word rarely. It occurs in Lamb's essay on 
 " Rejoicings." 
 
 DREE, DREED. " I must dree my dreed " (chap, 
 xxxv., L. M.}. 
 
 To dree is to suffer, to endure. The following 
 example from " Border Minstrelsy " is a common 
 one : " According to the popular belief, he (Thomas 
 the Rhymerj still drees his weird in Fairy Land, and 
 is one day expected to revisit earth." Dreed is 
 a synonym of weird, which signifies fate. To dree 
 one's weird, or dreed, is to suffer or endure one's 
 
 fate : 
 
 " But they'll say, She's a wise wife 
 Thet kens her ain weerd." 
 
 Ross's Hclenore.
 
 IN BARRIE'S BOOKS 
 
 ETTLING. " My mother's feet were ettling to be 
 ben (the house)" (chap, i., M. O.). 
 
 To ettle is to purpose, to intend. Ettling may 
 be translated intending, or even itching. Here it 
 means itching to do a certain thing. A man is 
 ettling to change his residence, another is ettling 
 to get married. 
 
 FEIKIENESS. " Her feikieness ended in his sur- 
 render " (" Visitors at the Manse," W. in T.). 
 
 Fussiness, petty exactness about trifles. Usually 
 spelt fikieness. 
 
 FLISKMAHOY. " That has mair faith in you than 
 in a fliskmahoy" (chap, vi., L. M.). 
 
 A giddy, impulsive girl. "Flisky" signifies un- 
 settled, capricious, flighty. 
 
 GAV'LE-END. " Against the gav'le-end " (chap, 
 ii., M. 0.). 
 
 Gavle (there is no occasion for Barrie's apostrophe) 
 is simply a corruption of gable. 
 
 GEY. " Gey auld-farrant-like heroine" (chap, ii., 
 M. 0.). 
 
 Gey auld-farrant, rather old-fashioned. 
 
 HALLAN. " He crossed the hallan to the 
 kitchen" (chap, xix., T. and G.). 
 
 A wall or partition in cottages to screen the 
 occupants from the cold air when the door is closed. 
 An outside porch to a cottage, a little hall. 
 
 HOAST. " And a hoast haunts him ever" (chap, 
 ii., M. O.). 
 
 Any kind of cough, but especially suggestive of 
 a husky cough. There is a story of a Scottish
 
 244 THE SCOTS TONGUE 
 
 nobleman who was troubled with such a cough 
 while at a public dinner. " Who is that ? " asked 
 one of the party. "Oh, that's Lord So-and-So," 
 replied his neighbour. " Indeed, I thought he was 
 the Lord of Hoasts," returned the other. The 
 word occurs in provincial English as well as in 
 Scots. 
 
 HUNKERING. " Hunkering at I dree, I dree, 
 I droppit it" ("The House on the Brae," W. 
 in T.}. 
 
 Hunkers means haunches ; hence to hunker is to 
 squat on one's heels : a compromise between sitting 
 and standing out of doors, with a view to resting and 
 yet not sitting on the damp earth. In colliery vil- 
 lages especially you will see the men of an evening 
 hunkering at their door sides, or at the " close- 
 mouth." In this case Barrie uses it to describe 
 the mode of sitting down to a street game. 
 
 JALOUSED. " She jaloused the rest " (chap, 
 xxvi., L. M.). 
 
 To jalouse is to guess shrewdly. 
 
 JOUKIT. " I assure you I joukit back " (chap, 
 viii., T. and G.). 
 
 To jouk is to duck the head, to dodge. Jink 
 and jenk have nearly the same meaning in the Doric. 
 Children talk of "jenking" the playfellow who is 
 "het" in certain youngsters' games, such as "Hi! 
 Spy ! " or "I spy." The distinction between jink 
 and jouk would be that the one means to avoid by 
 getting out of the way entirely, the other by duck- 
 ing without changing ground.
 
 IN BARRIE'S BOOKS 245 
 
 KISTS. "The kists of various people" (chap 
 xxxiii., S. T.). 
 
 All over Scotland a chest is referred to in the 
 vulgar tongue as a kist. In this connection the 
 notorious objection to an organ in a church, as 
 " defying God wi' a kist o' whustles," occurs to 
 the mind. Kist is also a North English word, and 
 sometimes means a coffin. 
 
 LIPPIE. "A lippie of shortbread" (chap, iv., 
 M. 0.). 
 
 A dry measure, now nearly obsolete. It varied 
 greatly according to locality. A lippie of shortbread 
 might be about two pounds. Same as " forpet." 
 Potatoes are still sold by the lippie in the east of 
 Scotland ; meal is sold by the forpet in the west. 
 
 MAGRE. " I couldna hae moved, magre my neck " 
 (chap, xliii., L. M.). 
 
 This, meaning " in spite of," comes, of course, 
 from the old French rnaugre (spite), and should be so 
 spelt. It is common enough in Forfarshire, but is 
 seldom heard in Scots or English provincial speech. 
 
 MARROWS. " One bannock is the marrows of 
 another" (chap, vi., M. 0.). 
 
 Marrows here means neighbours, or duplicates. 
 Marrow is also used as a verb, to match, or to mate. 
 It occurs both in Scots and provincial English. 
 
 NEIFER. "You would neifer the warld" (chap. 
 iii., L. M.\ 
 
 Neaf, neif, or neive, means the hand, but the best 
 translation of neifer (or nifFer) would be to exchange. 
 There is an old Scots rhyme for children :
 
 246 THE SCOTS TONGUE 
 
 "Neivie, neivie, nick nack, 
 Which hand will ye tak'? 
 Tak' the right, tak' the wrang, 
 I'll beguile ye if I can." 
 
 Saying which one hides something in the closed 
 hand behind the back, and then presents both hands 
 closed to the child who has to guess in which is the 
 hidden coin, sweet, or trinket. 
 
 ORRA. " Gey orra put on" (a frequent phrase). 
 
 Orra means odd. "An orra man" is.; a day 
 labourer, not regularly employed. An orra visitor 
 is an occasional visitor. " Gey orra put on" means 
 rather shabbily dressed, with garments that do not 
 match each other. 
 
 " Baith lads and lasses busked brawly, 
 To glour at ilka bonny waly, 
 And lay out any ora bodies 
 On sma' gimcracks that pleased their noddles." 
 
 Ramsay's Poems. 
 
 PALAULAYS. " At the game of palaulays " (" The 
 House on the Brae," W. in J.). 
 
 Palaulays is the Forfarshire name for the game of 
 Hop-Scotch, which is called Peevers in the West of 
 Scotland. 
 
 PEERIE. "Spinning the peerie" ("The House 
 on the Brae," W. in J.). 
 
 Peerie or peery is a good English word, more 
 frequently used in Scotland than in England, and 
 means a boy's top spun with a string. 
 
 PERJINK. "Looking unusually perjink" ("Visitors 
 at the Manse," W. in T.).
 
 IN BARRIE'S BOOKS 247 
 
 Precise, trim, neat, tidy. 
 
 REDDING. "Redding up the garret again" 
 (chap, v., M. O.). 
 
 To tidy up. To red your hair means to brush 
 and comb it. 
 
 RUMELGUMPTION. " You hinna the rumelgump- 
 tion to see it " (chap, vii., L. M.). 
 
 This is another word of Anglo-Saxon origin. 
 It signifies common sense, understanding, " nouse," 
 and is sometimes spelt rumgumption or rummil- 
 gumtion. 
 
 " They need not try thy jokes to fathom, 
 
 They want rumgumtion." Ross't Helenore. 
 
 SCUNNER. "His heart took mair scunner" 
 (chap, vi., L. M.). 
 
 In Anglo-Saxon scunning signifies abomination. 
 In the Scots tongue to take a scunner of anything 
 means to take a loathing of it. An objectionable 
 man would be referred to as " a scunner." 
 
 SEPAD. "An I sepad it's there yet" ("A Mag- 
 num Opus," W. in TV). 
 
 Here is a phrase which Barrie evidently guesses 
 at, or he would not write it so. There is no such 
 word as " sepad." "What is meant is " I'se uphaud," 
 which, spoken quickly, would be precisely the sound 
 of "I sepad." "I'se uphaud" means I'll uphold, 
 and it is with that meaning that Barrie uses " sepad," 
 as he also uses the proper phrase in other places. 
 
 SKAILED. " Was skailed for ever " (chap, x., 
 5. r.). 
 
 To skail is to spill or to empty. In the above
 
 248 THE SCOTS TONGUE 
 
 connection the meaning is the latter. You can skail 
 a can of milk, but a school is said to be skailing when 
 the children are leaving for the day. 
 
 SMIT-LITTINS. " They're flied to smit their ain 
 littins " (chap, xl., L. M.}. 
 
 To smit is to infect. "Littins" is, of course, 
 merely a shortening of " little ones." Thus " They 
 are afraid to infect their own little ones." Smittle 
 is infectious : 
 
 " The covetous infatuation 
 Was smit tie out o'er all the nation." 
 
 Roots ay 't Poemt. 
 
 The word is Anglo-Saxon. 
 
 SNOD. "An very snod he is" ("On the Track 
 of the Minister," W. in T.). 
 
 Snod is common to Provincial speech, but especi- 
 ally in Scots dialect. As a verb it means to make 
 trim or neat ; as an adverb or adjective, neat, trim, 
 tidy. 
 
 SOSH. " And making a bolt for it to the ' Sosh ' " 
 (" Lads and Lasses," A. L. /.). 
 
 In many Scottish villages the Co-operative Store 
 is known as the "Sosh," presumably from the 
 occurrence of that syllable in " association," and the 
 common habit of all racy speech is to seize a short 
 word to represent a popular institution. In English 
 villages it is called " the Co-op." 
 
 STOCKY. " A tasty stocky" (chap, vi., L. M.). 
 
 A tidy-looking woman, in Forfarshire. In Fife- 
 shire a stockie is a cheese, or a fish sandwich.
 
 IN BARRIE'S BOOKS 249 
 
 TAWPIE. "The daring tawpie" (chap, ix., 
 L. M.). 
 
 As a rule tawpie or taupie signifies a foolish, 
 thoughtless, young woman, but it is often applied 
 to a spoilt child, or even a petted dog. Where a 
 Lancashire person would say, " Isn't she a maudie ? " 
 a Scot would say, " Isna she a tawpie ? " 
 
 THIEVAL. "A porridge thieval" ("Dead this 
 twenty years," W. in J 1 .). 
 
 This is a Provincial term for the stick used to stir 
 porridge or broth. It is common enough in the 
 North of England, and in Forfarshire and the East 
 of Scotland it is frequently used ; but in the West 
 few people would know its meaning, the word there 
 used being " spurtle," which is also known in some 
 parts of England. 
 
 THOLE. "I canna thole 'im " (" A humorist on 
 his calling," W. in T.). 
 
 To thole is to endure, to suffer. The word is 
 not peculiar to Scottish speech, though it is seldom 
 heard in England. In Scots law it is provided 
 that a man having " once tholed the Assize " 
 cannot be retried : that is to say that even a 
 prisoner discharged with "not proven" cannot be 
 retried though absolute evidence of his guilt is 
 forthcoming. 
 
 THRANG. "I suppose you are terribly thrang " 
 (chap, vi., M. 0.). 
 
 Thrang, of course, is simply throng, and " terrible 
 thrang " means awfully busy. Terrible is more 
 commonly used throughout the East of Scotland
 
 250 THE SCOTS TONGUE 
 
 than in the West, where gey is the word most used. 
 But gey, meaning rather, or even very, is common 
 to the whole country. 
 
 THRAWN. " To look thrawn" (chap, vii., T. and 
 G.). 
 
 To look thrawn is to appear cross, or sour. The 
 word also means twisted. It would be applied to a 
 person with a twisted mouth : e.g. Stevenson's power- 
 ful story " Thrawn Janet." 
 
 THRIP. " Thrip down the throat " (" Thrums," 
 A. L. /.). 
 
 A word very generally in use throughout Scot- 
 land, but here spelt incorrectly. It is common 
 to the Provincial speech of Britain and means to 
 assert or maintain persistently. Scott spells it 
 more accurately in "The Antiquary": "He had 
 amaist flung auld Caxon out o' the window . . . 
 for threeping he had seen a ghaist at the Humlock- 
 Knowe." It is also used as a noun. Thus: "I 
 had privately a kind of threap that the brandy 
 should be yours " (Carlyle in Froude's " Carlyle 
 in London"). 
 
 THROUGH OTHER. " He was through other till 
 the knot was tied" (chap, xxxiv., S. T.). 
 
 THRO'ITHER. " A reputation of being thro'ither " 
 (chap, xiv., S. T.). 
 
 This term, rendered by the author two ways, has 
 different meanings in the East and West of Scotland. 
 Barrie uses it as signifying that the person to 
 whom it is applied is mentally confused. In the 
 West it suggests a wild, mischief-loving nature, and
 
 IN BARRIE'S BOOKS 251 
 
 as spoken there would be rendered phonetically 
 " throother." 
 
 VENT. "The spare bedroom vent" ("On the 
 Track of the Minister," W. in T.). 
 
 This, of course, is good English for chimney ; but 
 the word is more commonly used in Scotland than in 
 England. 
 
 WEEL FAURED. *? But what she's weel faured " 
 (" The Power of Beauty," W. in T.). 
 
 Well favoured.
 
 BARRIANA 
 AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
 
 BARRIANA 
 
 J. M. BARRIE : a Literary and Biographical Study, 
 
 (illust.). Presented with British Weekly, July 
 
 2, 1891, 410, 16 pp. 
 
 J. M. Barrie (illust.). Literary Opinion, Dec. 1891. 
 Portrait of J. M. Barrie. The Bookman, Feb. 1892. 
 Portrait and Biography of J. M. Barrie. Men and 
 
 Women of the Day, July 1892. 
 Portrait and Biography of J. M. Barrie. Cabinet 
 
 Portrait Gallery, Part 26, 1892. 
 J. M. Barrie, by A. T. Q. Couch (illust.}. The 
 
 Bookman, Feb. 1892. 
 J. M. Barrie, by W. J. Dawson. Young Man, May 
 
 1892. 
 J. M. Barrie, by Louisa Chandler Moulton. Lip- 
 
 pincotfs Mag., May 1892. 
 An Auld Licht Causerie [on "Auld Licht Idylls"]. 
 
 National Review, Sept. 1892. 
 A Sketch of Barrie's " Little Minister." Review of 
 
 the Churches, Jan. 1892. 
 J. M. Barrie as a Novelist, by Colin Weird (illust.). 
 
 Great Thoughts, Aug. 1893. 
 The Realist Novel as represented by J. M. Barrie, 
 
 by Sarah Tytler. Atalanta, Oct. 1893. 
 The Journalist in Fiction [notice of Barrie]. Church 
 
 Quarterly Review, April and June 1893. 
 
 355
 
 256 BARRIANA 
 
 A Visit to Thrums, by the Rev. Geo. Jackson 
 
 (illust.). Young Man, Feb. and May 1894. 
 An Afternoon in Thrums, by Robert A. Bremner. 
 
 Scots Magazine, Dec. 1894. 
 The Novels of J. M. Barrie, by S. R. Crockett 
 
 (illust.). Bookman, Nov. 1894. 
 Biographical Notice of J. M. Barrie (illust .}. Maga- 
 zine of Music, June 1895. 
 A First Meeting with J. M. Barrie, by L. Strong 
 
 (illust.). Woman at Home, April 1895. 
 J. M. Barrie, by D. M'Kinley. Primitive Methodist 
 
 Quarterly Review, April 1895. 
 On " Sentimental Tommy," by A. T. Q. Couch. 
 
 Contemporary Review, Nov. 1896. 
 A New Boy in Fiction [on " Sentimental Tommy"]. 
 
 Blackwood's Magazine, Dec. 1896. 
 J. M. Barrie, in " My Contemporaries in Fiction," 
 
 by D. Christie Murray, /. 1897. 
 The Maker of Modern Idyllism, by Joseph Ritson. 
 
 Primitive Methodist Quarterly Review, Oct. 1897. 
 The Fiction of Scottish Life and Character [incl. 
 
 Notice of Barrie], by J. W. Butcher. Great 
 
 Thoughts, Aug. 1897. 
 Concerning Thrums, by John Geddie (illust.). Lud- 
 
 gate, Aug. 1897. 
 Kirriemuir : The Land of Barrie, by John Geddie 
 
 (illust.). Ludgate, Sept. 1897. 
 On " Margaret Ogilvy," by Mrs Annie Thackeray 
 
 Ritchie. Bookman, Jan. 1897. 
 "Babbie" in "The Little Minister," by L. A. M. 
 
 Priestley. Great Thoughts, Sept. 1897.
 
 BARRIANA 257 
 
 J. M. Barrie's Early Days in Journalism, by J. A. 
 
 Hammerton (illust.}. Temple Magazine, Oct. 
 
 1897 (also American Bookman^). 
 J. M. Barrie as a Dramatist, by Edward Morton 
 
 (illust.^). Bookman, Jan. 1898. 
 The Cream of Barrie's "Window in Thrums," by 
 
 D. Brown Anderson. Scots Magazine, Nov. 
 
 1898. 
 
 Thrums (illust.}. Ludgate, June 1898. 
 Thrums, by Margaret Bryde (illust.}. Great Thoughts, 
 
 Aug. 1898.. 
 Mr J. M. Barrie, by Sir George Douglas, Bart. 
 
 Good Words, March 1899. 
 Barrie's First Book, by J. A. Hammerton (illust.'). 
 
 Young Man, March 1900. 
 Barrie and Womankind, by J. A. Hammerton. 
 
 Young Woman, April 1900. 
 J. M. Barrie's Beginnings in Literature, by J. A. 
 
 Hammerton. Puritan, April 1900. 
 Barrie's College Days, by J. A. Hammerton (illust.). 
 
 Puritan, May 1900. 
 J. M. Barrie : Some Characteristics, by J. A. 
 
 Hammerton (illust?). Temple Magazine, May 
 
 1900.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 To include a complete Bibliography of all Mr 
 Barrie's works and miscellaneous writings would 
 be no very difficult undertaking, so far as its com- 
 piling were concerned, but the result would occupy 
 considerably more space than can be devoted to it, 
 or seems necessary. What follows is a carefully 
 prepared list of his principal writings, including a 
 complete record of his contributions to the Nottingham 
 Journal, these representing a most interesting period 
 of his career. In the case of the St Jameis Gazette 
 and British Weekly only his first contribution to each 
 is specified. 
 
 THE WORKS OF J. M. BARRIE 
 
 Better Dead, Dec. 1887. Post 8vo, is.; pub., 
 
 Sonnenschein ; 2nd edit. April 1891 ; grd edit. 
 
 Aug. 1896. 
 Auld Licht Idylls, April 1 888. Post 8vo, 6s.: 
 
 Hodder & Stoughton. (Illust. by Hole, royal 
 
 8vo, gis. 6d., May 1895); llth edit. 1897. 
 When a Man's Single; a Tale of Literary Life. 
 
 Post 8vo, 6s. : Hodder & Stoughton. Oct. 
 
 1888; 1 2th edit. 1899. Sixpenny edition, 1900. 
 An Edinburgh Eleven : Pencil Portraits from College 
 
 25 8
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 259 
 
 Life, Dec. 1888, I2mo is.: Office of British 
 
 Weekly , grd edit. 1896. 
 A Window in Thrums, post 8vo, 6s., July 1889: 
 
 Hodder & Stoughton; iyth edit. 1899. 
 My Lady Nicotine, May 1890, cr. 8vo 6s.: Hodder 
 
 & Stoughton; 9th edit. 1899. 
 The Little Minister, 3 vols., cr. 8vo, 315. 6d. : 
 
 Cassel, Oct. 1891. I vol. edit., 73. 6d., March 
 
 1892; (Must, by W. Hole R.S.A., 6s., Feb. 
 
 1894); 641!! thousand, Nov. 1898. 
 Sentimental Tommy ; the Story of his Boyhood, cr. 
 
 8vo, 6s., pp. 460: Cassell, Oct. 1896. (43rd 
 
 thousand, illust. by W. Hatherall: Cassell, Oct. 
 
 1897); 45th thousand, 1900. 
 Margaret Ogilvy, by her Son, cr. 8vo, pp. 212, 5s. : 
 
 Hodder & Stoughton, Dec. 1 896 ; 5th edit. 1 899. 
 Tommy and Grizel : Cassel, autumn, 1900. 
 Collected Edition : Novels, Tales and Sketches : 
 
 Author's Edition, 8 vols, 8vo, 755. net. 
 
 1. Auld Licht Idylls, Better Dead, pp. 290. 
 
 2. When a Man's Single, pp. 322. 
 
 3. Window in Thrums, An Edinburgh 
 
 Eleven, pp. 276. 
 
 4. The Little Minister, Part I., pp. 250. 
 
 5. The Little Minister, Part II., pp. 276. 
 
 6. Sentimental Tommy, Part I., pp. 266. 
 
 7. Sentimental Tommy, Part II., pp. 252. 
 
 Jan. 1897. 
 
 8. My Lady Nicotine, Margaret Ogilvy, pp. 
 
 366. 1896-97. 
 
 Published in America by Scribners ; in England 
 by Hodder & Stoughton. \
 
 260 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS 
 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE NOTTINGHAM JOURNAL 
 
 [His weekly column, " A Modern Peripatetic," 
 appeared every Thursday, his " special" on Monday; 
 but both were reprinted in the Weekly Supplement 
 issued with the Journal on Friday and Saturday. 
 The dates given below for the special contributions 
 published during 1883 refer to Friday's or Saturday's 
 Supplement. Very occasionally an article bearing 
 evidence of Mr Barrie's authorship appeared without 
 the familiar signature " Hippomenes." In such cases 
 a question mark has been inserted after the title of 
 the contribution.] 
 
 1883 
 
 A Modern Peripatetic (first appear- 
 ance of this feature) 
 Old Taverns ..... 
 The Complete Playgoer : A Study in 
 
 Tinsel, 1st part, \\ columns 
 Tritisms ..... 
 
 Complete Playgoer, 2nd part, 2| 
 
 columns 
 
 April ...... 
 
 Complete Playgoer (concluded) 2 
 
 columns 
 
 Lears Fool ..... 
 
 Blood 
 
 In Memoriam of the St Mary's Ward 
 Conservative Association Dinner, 
 
 March 3 
 
 17 
 
 March 31 
 
 April 
 
 *4 
 21
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 261 
 
 Tuesday, April 17, 1883. (A skit 
 
 in verse ; sixteen stanzas of six 
 
 lines each. Parody on " After 
 
 a Famous Victory.") . . . April 21 
 
 Ruts ,,28 
 
 Herring May 5 
 
 Ads ,, 12 
 
 Male Nursery Maids . . . June 2 
 The Maid Re-made (Rational Dress 
 
 Association) . . . . 1 6 
 
 The Leafy Month . . . ,, ,, 
 
 Printers' Errors .... ,, 23 
 
 Private Theatricals (?) . . . ,, 30 
 
 A Rural Cricket Match . . . July 7 
 
 Roses ...... ,,14 
 
 Ridicule ...... ,, 21 
 
 Sparrows . . . . . ,, 28 
 
 Penury Aug. 2 
 
 Bohemia . . . . . . ,, 1 1 
 
 Sportsmen in the North (?) . . 17 
 
 Literary Tea-Leaves . . . ,, ,, 
 
 Novelists (?) ,,24 
 
 Stage Tricks ..... ,, ,, 
 
 Prigs 31 
 
 The Stage (?) Sep. 8 
 The Third Sex (" They are youthful 
 
 clergymen as a rule ") . ,, ,, 
 
 The Inclined Plane . . . ... 15 
 
 On Titles (?) ... 
 
 Penny Poets ..... ,,22 
 
 Anecdotage ..... Oct. 6
 
 262 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Hobbies . . 
 
 Parasites . . y, -""' "" >*, 
 
 Surface Christianity . 
 
 The Big Bow "Wow . 
 
 The Dramatic Bud . 
 
 'Any 
 
 Heiress Hunting 
 
 The Novel of the Year 
 
 Hogmanay 
 
 Dumb Dogs 
 
 Amateurs 
 
 The Marriage Knot . 
 
 Pretty Boys 
 
 Martin Marprelate . 
 
 Mothers-in-Law 
 
 Interruptions . 
 
 Waiters . 
 
 Mrs Grundy . 
 
 Modesty . 
 
 Admirable Crichtons 
 
 Tom, Dick, and Harry 
 
 Auctioneers 
 
 The Midnight Oil . 
 
 Toddy 
 
 An Old Morality Play 
 
 Prefaces . 
 
 Better Days 
 
 Italics 
 
 Satisfaction 
 
 Mark Tapleys . 
 
 Oct. 13 
 
 20 
 
 27 
 
 Nov. 3 
 24 
 
 Dec. i 
 8 
 
 15 
 29 
 
 1884 
 
 Jan. 1 1 
 
 18 
 
 26 
 
 Feb. 2 
 
 8 
 
 16 
 
 3 
 March 7 
 
 15 
 
 22 
 29 
 
 5 
 19 
 3 
 9 
 17 
 24 
 
 3i 
 June 7 
 
 H 
 
 April 
 
 j> 
 May
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 263 
 
 Amateur Tramps ... . . June 21 
 
 Slang ;';*,-. ,,28 
 
 Drunkenness ..... July 7 
 
 Potatoe Gospel . . . . . ,,14 
 
 Anothers . . . . . . ,, 21 
 
 Etc. . ,,28 
 
 Facial Expression .... Aug. 4 
 
 The Oldest Inhabitant . . . ., 1 1 
 
 Paper Pellets ., 18 
 
 Provincial London . . . . ,, 25 
 
 Boys . . . . * . . . Sep. 8 
 
 Railway Travelling . . . . ,, 15 
 
 Letter Writing . . . . . ,,22 
 
 Startling Disclosures . . . . ,,29 
 
 Fine Writing ..... Oct. 6 
 
 Travellers' Tales . . . . ,,14 
 
 Principal Boys . . . . ,, 20 
 
 More Compositors' Freaks . . . 27 
 
 An Auld Licht Community. St James's Gazette, Nov. 
 
 17, 1884. (Other Auld Licht articles followed, 
 
 also papers afterwards collected in "My Lady 
 
 Nicotine.") 
 The Rev. Dr Whyte, by an Outsider, and signed 
 
 " Gavin Ogilvy." British Weekly, July I, 1887. 
 
 (Many other contributions followed, including 
 
 " An Edinburgh Eleven," and " When a Man's 
 
 Single.") 
 George Meredith's Novels. Contemporary Review, 
 
 October 1888.
 
 264 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Thomas Hardy : the Historian of Wessex. Con- 
 temporary Review, July 1889. 
 
 A Tillyloss Scandal. Good Words, Jan.-Feb. 1890. 
 
 Mr Baring-Gould's Novels. Contemporary Review, 
 Feb. 1890. 
 
 Brought Back from Elysium. Contemporary Review, 
 June 1890. 
 
 Pro Bono Publico [on the Society for Providing 
 Materials for Volumes of Reminiscences]. 
 Fortnightly Review, Sep. 1890. 
 
 Mr Kipling's Stories. Contemporary Review, March 
 1891. 
 
 Poem : " John Nicol." Good Words, April 1891. 
 
 Poem : " Robert Louis Stevenson : Scotland's 
 Lament." Bookman, Jan. 1895. 
 
 On " The Grandissimes," by G. W. Cable. Book- 
 man (American), July 1898. 
 
 Introductory Note to an Edition of "The Gran- 
 dissimes," by G. W. Cable. (Hodder & 
 Stoughton) May i! 
 
 TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES 
 
 COLLEGE LIBRARY 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below. 
 
 QMiege 
 ijtwaiy 
 
 4UN18193 
 
 COt Ott 
 
 JtIN 191974 
 Q '82 14 DAY 
 
 9 ?2 H DAY 
 
 APR26'82 14 DAY 
 
 FEB26'g3 1/1 H 
 
 MAR 1 2 '83 14 D 
 MARS 83RECCL 
 
 Book Slip-35-7,'63(D8634s4)4280
 
 UCLA-College Library 
 
 PR 4076 H18j 
 
 L 005 699 842 
 
 j Librar 
 
 I PR 
 
 i 
 ' 
 
 Hi8j