Education, Early Adulthood, Late Years, & Death
Education
James attended a private school run by two sisters when he was seven. In 1873, when he was thirteen, he left his hometown to study at Glasgow Academy and also went to Dumfries Academy for five years. James Matthew Barrie had always loved to write, stemming from his mother telling him stories as a child and reading adventures to him from R.L. Stevenson. He wrote his first novel as a child, while attending Dumfries Academy, called A Child of Nature. At Dumfries Academy, he also played football, took part in the debating society, and frequently visited the local theater. In 1878 James attended Edinburgh University where he received his Masters degree in 1882. The next year, James began writing for the Nottingham Journal on various topics, and was also writing novels and plays on the side. In 1885 he moved to London to do freelance work. He sold these works to fashion magazines to get his start. He got his big break in 1888 with Auld Licht Idylls, sketches of Scottish life, which the critics loved.
Early Adulthood
Throughout his career, James tended to write from personal experience. Most of his works can be related to some moment, place, or close person in his life. The most important and cherished relationship in his life blossomed one such story about his mother, the person whom he most adored and admired. She died in 1895 and a year later he wrote her biography, Margaret Ogilvy, as a tribute to her. His mother's characteristics are found in his female characters.
A year before his mother passed away, however, James married Mary Ansell, a stunning actress who played opposite Irene Vanburgh in Barrie's second play, "Walker, London". He fell in love with the young starlet who had run her own touring company. Despite their mutual attraction, the marriage floundered. Barrie the writer expressed some of the most delicate emotions one person could have for another, but Barrie the husband was rigid and unemotional. This malaise, together with the couple's inability to have children due to James' impotence -- both Mary and James desperately longed for a family and lavished love on Porthos, their dog -- ultimately led Barrie to seek affection from other people's children and created a distance between him and his wife. They lived in London near Kensington Gardens, where he met George, Jack, and Peter Llewellyn-Davies. Their mother, Sylvia, was the daughter of novelist George du Maurier. James and Sylvia became friends who often met in Kensington Gardens and at the Llewellyn-Davies' house to tell the boys stories. Sylvia's husband, Arthur, did not approve of this and was reluctant to have James visit or interfere with his family. Sylvia bore two more boys, Michael, and Nico, for a total of five boys who James developed a close relationship with.
Barrie could be described as small and shy. As a man he stood a little more than five feet, was quiet and awkward around women. Like Peter Pan himself, Barrie was a boy who refused to grow up. Barrie took such elements of life as his awkwardness with, yet dependence upon women, his love of children, and his own longing for childhood and shaped them into one of the best-loved characters of all time.
The character that would become Peter Pan appeared first in the novel The Little White Bird in 1902. This was an adult novel written in first-person narrative about a wealthy bachelor clubman's attachment to a little boy, David.
Inspiration for Peter Pan
The characteristics of the five Llewellyn-Davies brothers were combined to make Peter Pan, with Michael being the primary model for the character. Although Michael was the true source for Peter Pan's character, it was named after Peter Llewellyn-Davies, and Michael was the name of the youngest Darling child in the story.
The name Wendy was created by Margaret, a four-year-old friend of James Barrie, who called James "my fwendy" because she could not pronounce the "fr" in friendly, which she called him. Margaret died when she was six, but James commemorated her as the character, Wendy. Other aspects of the Wendy character stemmed from his mother.
Late Years/Death
"To die will be an awfully big adventure."
-- Sir James Barrie, "Peter Pan"
James and Mary's marriage lasted until 1908, when she had an affair with writer Gilbert Cannan. The marriage had never been a happy one, based more on romance than on love. Not too long after, Arthur Llewellyn-Davies died of cancer and his wife soon after of the same disease. James Barrie became the unofficial guardian for the Llewellyn-Davies boys. James Barrie grew to love the boys he looked after and was heartbroken to lose two of them at young ages. The oldest boy, George, died in 1915 in World War I, while Michael, Barrie's favorite, drowned at Oxford in May of 1921.
In 1913 James became a Baronet and in 1922 was appointed to the Order of Merit. He was elected Lord Rector of St. Andrew's University and in 1930 was elected Chancellor of Edinburgh University until he died June 3rd, 1937 at the age of 77.
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