Complete Works of J. M. Barrie Read online

  The Complete Works of

  J. M. BARRIE

  (1860–1937)

  Contents

  The Peter Pan Works

  The Novels

  AULD LICHT IDYLLS

  BETTER DEAD

  WHEN A MAN’S SINGLE

  A WINDOW IN THRUMS

  THE LITTLE MINISTER

  SENTIMENTAL TOMMY

  TOMMY AND GRIZEL

  THE LITTLE WHITE BIRD

  PETER PAN IN KENSINGTON GARDENS

  PETER AND WENDY

  The Novellas

  A TILLYLOSS SCANDAL

  FAREWELL MISS JULIE LOGAN

  The Short Story Collections

  A HOLIDAY IN BED AND OTHER SKETCHES

  TWO OF THEM

  ECHOES OF THE WAR

  The Short Stories

  LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

  LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

  The Plays

  IBSEN’S GHOST

  WALKER, LONDON

  JANE ANNIE

  THE PROFESSOR’S LOVE STORY

  THE LITTLE MINISTER

  THE WEDDING GUEST

  QUALITY STREET

  THE ADMIRABLE CRICHTON

  LITTLE MARY

  PETER PAN

  ALICE SIT-BY-THE-FIRE

  WHAT EVERY WOMAN KNOWS

  OLD FRIENDS

  WHEN WENDY GREW UP – AN AFTERTHOUGHT

  PANTALOON

  THE TWELVE-POUND LOOK

  ROSALIND

  THE WILL

  HALF AN HOUR

  THE NEW WORD

  A KISS FOR CINDERELLA

  SEVEN WOMEN

  DER TAG (THE TRAGIC MAN)

  THE OLD LADY SHOWS HER MEDALS

  DEAR BRUTUS

  A WELL-REMEMBERED VOICE

  MARY ROSE

  SHALL WE JOIN THE LADIES?

  BARBARA’S WEDDING

  THE BOY DAVID

  The Non-Fiction

  AN EDINBURGH ELEVEN

  MY LADY NICOTINE

  THE BOY CASTAWAYS OF BLACK LAKE ISLAND

  CHARLES FROHMAN: A TRIBUTE

  NEITHER DORKING NOR THE ABBEY

  M’CONNACHIE AND J. M. B.

  PREFACE TO THE YOUNG VISITERS

  The Memoirs

  MARGARET OGILVY

  THE GREENWOOD HAT

  © Delphi Classics 2013

  Version 1

  The Complete Works of

  J. M. BARRIE

  By Delphi Classics, 2013

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  The Peter Pan Works

  THE LITTLE WHITE BIRD

  The character Peter Pan first appeared in the sub-plot of this 1902 novel.

  PETER PAN IN KENSINGTON GARDENS

  An illustrated reprinting of the Peter Pan chapters in ‘The Little White Bird’.

  PETER PAN

  The 1904 stage play that provided the foundation of the Peter Pan story.

  WHEN WENDY GREW UP – AN AFTERTHOUGHT

  This 1908 epilogue was written to accompany the 1904 stage play.

  PETER AND WENDY

  The 1911 novelised account of the stage play.

  THE GREENWOOD HAT

  The posthumous memoir written, in part, to explain the origins of the Peter Pan story.

  The Novels

  9 Brechin Road, Kirriemuir, Angus — Barrie’s birthplace

  The birthplace, c.1900

  The Peter Pan statue at Barrie’s birthplace, which is now a museum dedicated to the author’s life and works.

  The Peter Pan statue, in Barrie’s birth town, commemorating the author’s most famous creation

  AULD LICHT IDYLLS

  From a young age Barrie wished to pursue a career as an author, but was initially dissuaded by his family, who wished him to have a profession in the ministry. However, Barrie worked out a compromise, attending university at Edinburgh, but opting to study literature. An extremely introverted young man, Barrie was shy about his small size of five feet. Nevertheless, he succeeded in his studies, going on to graduate with his M.A. on April 21, 1882.

  Following his graduation, Barrie worked for a year and a half as a staff journalist on the Nottingham Journal. He then returned to his beloved home town Kirriemuir, which he liked to call ‘Thrums’, where he wrote one of his mother’s stories about the town. When he submitted the piece to the St. James’s Gazette in London, the editor ‘liked that Scotch thing’ so much that Barrie was encouraged to write a series of similar pieces, serving as the basis for his first published books, Auld Licht Idylls (1888), A Window in Thrums (1890) and The Little Minister (1891). The stories concern the Auld Licht, a strict religious sect that the author’s grandfather had once belonged to. A majority of critics attacked these early works of Barrie, tending to ridicule them as sentimental and nostalgic depictions of a parochial Scotland far from the realities of the industrialised nineteenth century. Nevertheless, they were surprisingly a commercial success, being popular enough with readers to establish Barrie as a successful writer.

  The first edition

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I

  THE SCHOOLHOUSE

  CHAPTER II

  THRUMS

  CHAPTER III

  THE AULD LICHT KIRK

  CHAPTER IV

  LADS AND LASSES

  CHAPTER V

  THE AULD LICHTS IN ARMS

  CHAPTER VI

  THE OLD DOMINIE

  CHAPTER VII

  CREE QUEERY AND MYSY DROLLY

  CHAPTER VIII

  THE COURTING OF T’NOWHEAD’S BELL

  CHAPTER IX

  DAVIT LUNAN’S POLITICAL REMINISCENCES

  CHAPTER X

  A VERY OLD FAMILY

  CHAPTER XI

  LITTLE RATHIE’S “BURAL”

  CHAPTER XII

  A LITERARY CLUB

  The original title page

  CHAPTER I

  THE SCHOOLHOUSE

  Early this morning I opened a window in my schoolhouse in the glen of Quharity, awakened by the shivering of a starving sparrow against the frosted glass. As the snowy sash creaked in my hand, he made off to the waterspout that suspends its “tangles” of ice over a gaping tank, and, rebounding from that, with a quiver of his little black breast, bobbed through the network of wire and joined a few of his fellows in a forlorn hop round the henhouse in search of food. Two days ago my hilarious bantam-cock, saucy to the last, my cheeriest companion, was found frozen in his own water-trough, the corn-saucer in three pieces by his side. Since then I have taken the hens into the house. At meal-times they litter the hearth with each other’s feathers; but for the most part they give little trouble, roosting on the rafters of the low-roofed kitchen among staves and fishingrods.

  Another white blanket has been spread upon the glen since I looked out last night; for over the same wilderness of snow that has met my gaze for a week, I see the steading of Waster Lunny sunk deeper into the waste. The schoolhouse, I suppose, serves similarly as a snowmark for the people at the farm. Unless that is Waster Lunny’s grieve foddering the cattle in the snow, not a living thing is visible. The ghostlike hills that pen in the glen have ceased to echo to the sharp crack of the sportsman’s gun (so clear in the frosty air as to be a warning to every rabbit and partridge in the valley); and only giant Catlaw shows here and there a black
ridge, rearing its head at the entrance to the glen and struggling ineffectually to cast off his shroud. Most wintry sign of all, I think as I close the window hastily, is the open farm-stile, its poles lying embedded in the snow where they were last flung by Waster Lunny’s herd. 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.

  In the warm kitchen, where I dawdle over my breakfast, the widowed bantam-hen has perched on the back of my drowsy cat. It is needless to go through the form of opening the school to-day; for, with the exception of Waster Lunny’s girl, I have had no scholars for nine days. Yesterday she announced that there would be no more schooling till it was fresh, “as she wasna comin’;” and indeed, though the smoke from the farm chimneys is a pretty prospect for a snowed-up schoolmaster, the trudge between the two houses must be weary work for a bairn. As for the other children, who have to come from all parts of the hills and glen, I may not see them for weeks. Last year the school was practically deserted for a month. A pleasant outlook, with the March examinations staring me in the face, and an inspector fresh from Oxford. I wonder what he would say if he saw me to-day digging myself out of the schoolhouse with the spade I now keep for the purpose in my bedroom.

  The kail grows brittle from the snow in my dank and cheerless garden. A crust of bread gathers timid pheasants round me. The robins, I see, have made the coalhouse their home. Waster Lunny’s dog never barks without rousing my sluggish cat to a joyful response. It is Dutch courage with the birds and beasts of the glen, hard driven for food; but I look attentively for them in these long forenoons, and they have begun to regard me as one of themselves. My breath freezes, despite my pipe, as I peer from the door; and with a fortnight-old newspaper I retire to the ingle-nook. The friendliest thing I have seen to-day is the well-smoked ham suspended from my kitchen rafters. It was a gift from the farm of Tullin, with a load of peats, the day before the snow began to fall. I doubt if I have seen a cart since.

  This afternoon I was the not altogether passive spectator of a curious scene in natural history. My feet encased in stout “tackety” boots, I had waded down two of Waster Lunny’s fields to the glen burn: in summer the never-failing larder from which, with wriggling worm or garish fly, I can any morning whip a savoury breakfast; in the winter-time the only thing in the valley that defies the ice-king’s chloroform. I watched the water twisting black and solemn through the snow, the ragged ice on its edge proof of the toughness of the struggle with the frost, from which it has, after all, crept only half victorious. A bare wild rosebush on the further bank was violently agitated, and then there ran from its root a black-headed rat with wings. Such was the general effect. I was not less interested when my startled eyes divided this phenomenon into its component parts, and recognized in the disturbance on the opposite bank only another fierce struggle among the hungry animals for existence: they need no professor to teach them the doctrine of the survival of the fittest. A weasel had gripped a water-hen (whit-rit and beltie they are called in these parts) cowering at the root of the rosebush, and was being dragged down the bank by the terrified bird, which made for the water as its only chance of escape. In less disadvantageous circumstances the weasel would have made short work of his victim; but as he only had the bird by the tail, the prospects of the combatants were equalized. It was the tug-of-war being played with a life as the stakes. “If I do not reach the water,” was the argument that went on in the heaving little breast of the one, “I am a dead bird.” “If this water-hen,” reasoned the other, “reaches the burn, my supper vanishes with her.” Down the sloping bank the hen had distinctly the best of it, but after that came a yard of level snow, and here she tugged and screamed in vain. I had so far been an unobserved spectator; but my sympathies were with the beltie, and, thinking it high time to interfere, I jumped into the water. The water-hen gave one mighty final tug and toppled into the burn; while the weasel viciously showed me his teeth, and then stole slowly up the bank to the rosebush, whence, “girning,” he watched me lift his exhausted victim from the water, and set off with her for the schoolhouse. Except for her draggled tail, she already looks wonderfully composed, and so long as the frost holds I shall have little difficulty in keeping her with me. On Sunday I found a frozen sparrow, whose heart had almost ceased to beat, in the disused pig-sty, and put him for warmth into my breast-pocket. The ungrateful little scrub bolted without a word of thanks about ten minutes afterwards to the alarm of my cat, which had not known his whereabouts.

  I am alone in the schoolhouse. On just such an evening as this last year my desolation drove me to Waster Lunny, where I was storm-stayed for the night. The recollection decides me to court my own warm hearth, to challenge my right hand again to a game at the “dambrod” against my left. I do not lock the schoolhouse door at nights; for even a highwayman (there is no such luck) would be received with open arms, and I doubt if there be a barred door in all the glen. But it is cosier to put on the shutters. The road to Thrums has lost itself miles down the valley. I wonder what they are doing out in the world. Though I am the Free Church precentor in Thrums (ten pounds a year, and the little town is five miles away), they have not seen me for three weeks. A packman whom I thawed yesterday at my kitchen fire tells me, that last Sabbath only the Auld Lichts held service. Other people realized that they were snowed up. Far up the glen, after it twists out of view, a manse and half a dozen thatched cottages that are there may still show a candle light, and the crumbling gravestones keep cold vigil round the grey old kirk. Heavy shadows fade into the sky to the north. A flake trembles against the window; but it is too cold for much snow tonight. The shutter bars the outer world from the schoolhouse.

  CHAPTER II

  THRUMS

  Thrums is the name I give here to the handful of houses jumbled together in a cup, which is the town nearest the schoolhouse. Until twenty years ago its every other room, earthen-floored and showing the rafters overhead, had a handloom, and hundreds of weavers lived and died Thoreaus “ben the hoose” without knowing it. In those days the cup overflowed and left several houses on the top of the hill, where their cold skeletons still stand. The road that climbs from the square, which is Thrums’s heart, to the north is so steep and straight, that in a sharp frost children hunker at the top and are blown down with a roar and a rush on rails of ice. At such times, when viewed from the cemetery where the traveller from the schoolhouse gets his first glimpse of the little town, Thrums is but two church steeples and a dozen red stone patches standing out of a snow-heap. One of the steeples belongs to the new Free Kirk, and the other to the parish church, both of which the first Auld Licht minister I knew ran past when he had not time to avoid them by taking a back wynd. He was but a pocket edition of a man, who grew two inches after he was called; but he was so full of the cure of souls, that he usually scudded to it with his coattails quarrelling behind him. His successor, whom I knew better, was a greater scholar, and said, “Let us see what this is in the original Greek,” as an ordinary man might invite a friend to dinner; but he never wrestled as Mr. Dishart, his successor, did with the pulpit cushions, nor flung himself at the pulpit door. Nor was he so “hard on the Book,” as Lang Tammas, the precentor, expressed it, meaning that he did not bang the Bible with his fist as much as might have been wished.

  Thrums had been known to me for years before I succeeded the captious dominie at the schoolhouse in the glen. The dear old soul who originally induced me to enter the Auld Licht kirk by lamenting the “want of Christ” in the minister’s discourses was my first landlady. For the last ten years of her life she was bedridden, and only her interest in the kirk kept her alive. Her case against the minister was that he did not call to denounce her sufficiently often for her sins, her pleasure being to hear him bewailing her on his knees as one who was probably past praying for. She was as sweet and pure a woman as I ever knew, and had her wishes been horses, she would have sold them and kept (and looked after) a minister h
erself.

  There are few Auld Licht communities in Scotland nowadays — perhaps because people are now so well off, for the most devout Auld Lichts were always poor, and their last years were generally a grim struggle with the workhouse. Many a heavy-eyed, backbent weaver has won his Waterloo in Thrums fighting on his stumps. There are a score or two of them left still, for, though there are now two factories in the town, the clatter of the handloom can yet be heard, and they have been starving themselves of late until they have saved up enough money to get another minister.

  The square is packed away in the centre of Thrums, and irregularly built little houses squeeze close to it like chickens clustering round a hen. Once the Auld Lichts held property in the square, but other denominations have bought them out of it, and now few of them are even to be found in the main streets that make for the rim of the cup. They live in the kirkwynd, or in retiring little houses the builder of which does not seem to have remembered that it is a good plan to have a road leading to houses until after they were finished. Narrow paths straggling round gardens, some of them with stunted gates, which it is commoner to step over than to open, have been formed to reach these dwellings, but in winter they are running streams, and then the best way to reach a house such as that of Tammy Mealmaker the wright, pronounced wir-icht, is over a broken dyke and a pig-sty. Tammy, who died a bachelor, had been soured in his youth by a disappointment in love, of which he spoke but seldom. She lived far away in a town to which he had wandered in the days when his blood ran hot, and they became engaged. Unfortunately, however, Tammy forgot her name, and he never knew the address; so there the affair ended, to his silent grief. He admitted himself, over his snuff-mull of an evening, that he was a very ordinary character, but a certain halo of horror was cast over the whole family by their connection with little Joey Sutie, who was pointed at in Thrums as the laddie that whistled when he went past the minister. Joey became a pedlar, and was found dead one raw morning dangling over a high wall within a few miles of Thrums. When climbing the dyke his pack had slipped back, the strap round his neck, and choked him.