With anticipation already building for 2015’s Pan, there also comes renewed interest in J.M. Barrie, the man who introduced the world to Neverland. Peter was famously inspired by the Llewelyn Davies boys, a family the famous Scottish playwright stumbled upon one day at London’s Kensington Gardens in 1897. Five years later, Peter made his first appearance in Barrie’s 1902 book, The Little White Bird and went on stage as a play in 1904’s Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up. Two years later, Barrie took Peter’s story from The Little White Bird and published it separately as Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. Thanks to the success, love and celebration of the play and book, Barrie finally set down to pen the full novel Peter and Wendy in 1911. Since then, Peter’s remained a constant in movies, TV and literature.
We know a lot about how Peter Pan came to life, but not so much about the real boy the character was named after, Peter Llewelyn Davies. In the same way a deep sadness lingers over the life of the boy who never grew up, so Davies’ life and death demonstrate the truth in what author D.H. Lawrence’s asserted: “J.M. Barrie has a fatal touch for those he loves. They die.” That, at least, was the story for Davies, his parents and two other brothers.
Peter Llewelyn Davies was born in 1897, the same year J.M. Barrie entered the lives of the Llewelyn Davies family. After the famous author met the three of the boys playing at a park, Barrie quickly became attached to the family, seeing the boys almost every day and eventually becoming so close to their parents, Arthur and Sylvia, that they vacationed together for years. But the sad streak in the Llewelyn Davis’ lives began when their father died of cancer in 1906; four years later Sylvia followed. Barrie, who had provided financial support for the family since Arthur died, became one of the boys’ guardians. Thus, for better or worse, Barrie became a permanent fixture in the boys’ lives.
Sure, losing their parents at such a young age is a tragedy, but what is it that made Peter’s life particularly terrible, terrible enough to throw himself in front of a train? The exact reason will remain a mystery but one thing we do know: Peter had begun digging into thousands of family letters and documents and conducting interviews with extended friends and acquaintances to compile a full family history. Eventually, he had to give it up because it was too depressing, but the damage was already done.
Part of the hurt came from the fact his brother George, Barrie’s first favorite of the boys, was killed in battle in 1915. His other brother, Michael, died in 1921 in what many believe was a suicide pact with his possible lover, another boy at Oxford University. Reopening these wounds was surely painful, but it was the deeper layers he uncovered that possibly did the greatest damage. Peter intended his work, which he dubbed The Family Morgue, to span six volumes, but gave up when he came to Michael’s death. The work, which was never published, spans from 1840-1915.
According to one biographer, it wasn’t until he began his research that Peter realized how odd Barrie’s influence in his family’s life had been; he also learned some hard truths about various family dynamics. Peter’s father wasn’t exactly excited to welcome the famous author into their home, but Barrie still visited almost every day when Arthur was at work. His mother, though still in love with his father, seemed to undercut Arthur’s authority by keeping Barrie within the family circle. Then, his mother and father began to take separate vacations. Barrie, it seemed, drove division in his family.
Peter also discovered Barrie had written some 2,000 letters to Michael, who Barrie crowned his favorite when when George died, literally calling him “The One.” So disgusted by these letters, Peter burned them all. The letters are another oddity that fuels speculation to whether or not Barrie abused the boys, although Nico, the youngest of the boys, denied the charges against their foster father fervently. The undeniably peculiar and possibly impotent man, who played so many games and lived in alternate worlds with another family’s children, could simply have been a completely innocent man, or the accusations that followed him over his career could also be true. We will probably never know.
However, Peter was angry about Barrie’s influence in his life and family. According to his son, Ruthven, later in life Peter was openly bitter toward Barrie and felt exploited by him, especially considering Barrie cut him out of his will at the last moment. He also despised constantly being associated with the boy who never grew up. In 1940 he wrote: “What’s in a name! My God what isn’t?! If that perennially juvenile lead, if that boy so fatally committed to an arrestation of his development, had only been dubbed George, or Jack, or Michael, or Nicholas, what miseries would have been spared me!”
In April of 1963, Peter bought a train ticket at Sloane Square Underground station and paced the platform for hours. Then, finally finding the right one, he jumped in front of the train. Headlines later ran: “The Boy Who Never Grew Up Is Dead”; “Peter Pan’s Death Leap”: and “The Tragedy of Peter Pan”.
