Donante de Sangre

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f In her will Sylvia had left £500 to Mary Hodgson, to which Barrie offered to add - another £500 of his own,but Mary refused to accept either amount. She suffered | such guilt over her behaviour to Gerrie that in later life she refused to meet any i of the boys' wives in case her jealousy got the better of her. Both Barrie and | Mary Hodgson were strong characters, both tended to be over-possessive - perhaps ? because they did not have a natural link with the children and felt they had to ^ work harder at their relationship with them. However, between them they made a

satisfactory job of bringing up the boys^which is ultimately what matters. It is i reassuring to know that Peter and Nico wrote to Mary Hodgson frequently until her J death in 1962 and that Barrie left her £500 in his will when he died in 1937. #

How far did Mary Hodgson resemble the servants at Adelphi Terrace and those

others in Barrie's works? Good sense she certainly had but she was not always | good-humoured. Her jealousy of Gerrie is proof of this but she was strongly pro-

vokedj Nico said she terrified everyone but the boys loved her. What of her social '% aspirations? Difficult to define, but the standards set for the boys were those

of their parents. Here is a fortunately rare example of her romantic imagination; on Sylvia's death she told Nico that his mother might be back at Christmas. Her courage and loyalty were never in doubt but those can be negative qualities in some­ one when we wish to dispense with his services. Like the servants at Adelphi Ter­ race, the servants in Barrie's works, with the exception of Nurse in Alice-Sit-by- the-Fire , are devoted to their employers. In his life and works Barrie shows great respect for servants, beginning with his childhood awe of them; Jean, Tweeny, Patty and Gavinia all exhibit qualities of character superior to those of their employers on occasions. Barrie does not underestimate his own servant. Brown, and does not grudge him a laugh at his master's expense. Mary Hodgson was devoted to the Davies family and could not hide her resentment of the intruder, Barrie, who threatened her authority. Hers was not a nature which could be kept 'in its place' unless motivated by love, and,with their opposing viewpoints on the upbringing of children, Barrie and Mary Hodgson were clearly totally incompatible.

CHAPTER 6 : LADIES OF TITLE

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lïi dealing with ladies of title I shall begin by refuting the charge of snobbery which has been made against Barrie. He had friends from all walks of life and was always a great support to his own family, but for him the aristocracy had a romantic appeal and in his old age it gave him great satisfaction to compare his early and his present life. It is important to note that Barrie lived through a time of great social change. His life spanned forty years of Queen Victoria's reign; the reigns of Edward VII and George V; the First World War and the abdication of Edward VIII. The matter of his own title is interesting; he accepted a baronetcy in 1913, having refused a knighthood in 1909, in my opinion because he did not want his wife to have a title.

There is a vast difference between the ladies of title who actually befriended Barrie and those whom he depicts in his works. There is no titled lady in Barrie's prose works or plays who is admirable or even likeable, with the exception of the

Comtesse de la Briere in What Every Woman Knows (1908)^ and she is a foreigner like -5? Lady Lewis,^ the only titled lady with whom Barrie was on intimate terms before 1906, # who was a native of Mannheim. There are several possible reasons for this. Mackail refers to an incident which none of my other sources elucidates. When the Barries were house-hunting in 1895, "A titled lion-huntress ... swept them both off beneath

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her roof." Barrie thought he had made a social conquest and then she drew back.

In self-defence Barrie regarded all members of the aristocracy as false and treach- | erous. We can make the excuse that Barrie did not really begin to mix with the

aristocracy until 1906^when, as an established playwright, he cultivated the friend­ ship of Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland, who was interested in writers and the arts, and an important social contact, but this does not explain his portrayal of Lady - Caroline Laney in Dear Brutus (1917). Another possibility is that in his heart

Barrie remained true to his origins, considered no man his superior on the strength of birth, wealth or position and thought that those who claimed social superiority should be cut down to size. In A Window in Thrums (1889) he shows this attitude to a patronising member of the middle class. The minister's bride was "a grand lady from Edinburgh":

On bringing home his bride, the minister showed her to us^ and we thought

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she would do when she realised that she was not the minister,

I suggest that all thÔse reasons shaped Barrie's attitude towards ladies of title in his works. Lady Sims in The Twelve-Pound Look (1910) is a different case; Barrie's treatment of her is coloured by the bitterness of his own divorce and his disgust with materialism.