Defending Barrie
Sir: What is it about J.M. Barrie that makes Benny Green write of him with such scorn?
So Barrie could not consummate his marriage because of early psychological wounds? Deeply sad for him and his wife, but it does not seem to justify contempt. 'Nothing was too private to shove into a play or book.' This seems such a common sin among writers as to be entirely unremarkable; would Mr Green object if the material of Barrie's life were more congenial to him? Barrie led off the loves of others.' Which of us, even with a luckier sexual history, has not sometimes done that?
Barrie, because of his own childishness, 'knew how to charm other children . Parents allowed the crime to proceed because of the money in Barrie's dusty coffers.' But what crime? It is not recorded that any harm was done to the children concerned, quite the contrary, and if it involved 'the supply of a deficiency which Barrie by his very nature was powerless to remedy in any other way' then so much the better for everyone. How does Mr Green expect people to remedy their deficiencies?
Finally, why such withering comments about the Oedipal fantasy in Mary Rose? There are far more hair-raising fantasies abroad in our own time than one in which a man holds a woman on his lap, and some of them far more 'blatant' in the way they are written about. And why comical? Unless Mr Green finds all relationships between mothers and sons comical.
Personally, I find Mr Green's knowingness and lack of compassion for Barrie's wounds far sicker and more 'distasteful' (to use his own word) than anything in Barrie. Monica Furlong.
40, St Lawrence Terrace, London W10
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