The Great Pretender
Barrie : The Story of a Genius. By J. A. Hammel-ton. (Sampson Low. 1Gs.) IN an article in the Evening Standard, 11127, Mr. Arnold Bennett wrote " Impartial biographies of the living would do genuine service to the public. Some are published, but too few. The trouble is that biographies of the living are generally 7 conceived in a sentimental and highly misleading. spirit of adulation. They need not be. HoneSty, while difficult,, is by no means impossible." These words provide the text for Mr. Haxnmerton's prefatory chapter, which contains a statement that is rather startling to those whO believe that even eminent .; personages should possess the copyright of their own lives. He says : " I am so cordially 'in agreement with Arnold Bennett's dictum on biographies of the living, which I have =-; set at the .head of this chapter,-that I deliberately offer this new , work of mine as an unauthorized biography, to indicate that in the long and arduous task of its documentation and writing I have in no -least detail applied to its living hero for information, nor in any way sought his approval of my labours. It is published without his knowledge or consent." He goes on to say, truly enough, that when a biographer places himself in the hands of his subject he raises the chief barrier to honesty, and he expresses his determination to write .of his ' hero as a literary phenomenon rather than as a living celebrity, to write of-him moreover " with as much detachment as if he had lived a century ago."
Now an unscrupulous recorder might try to add value to the impertinence, of an unauthorized biography by including in it a mass of little impertinences, which would please those sensation-mongers who are for ever scratching about in the waste-paper baskets of the great. But Mr. Hammerton is not unscrupulous : he has confessed to " Barrieolatry " in the past, and now, while admitting "-a certain- partiality " to his subject, he has pledged himself to honesty. Truly he has set himself a difficult task : in laying one barrier he has raised another, has walled in his subject behind a pile of little truths : " this is what so-and-so said of him "—" this is what he wrote on such-and-such an occasion "—" this is what he did at such- and-such a time " I The result is that the one great truth of the subject's personality does not emerge with any clarity from above the conscientious structure so laboriously builded. As the " story of a genius "—of any genius—the book lacks that instinct of authorship which alone can transmute a second-hand chronicle into a living truth, though it has value as a painstaking and honest record.
The writer follows hard on Sir James' trail from Kirriemuir to the Adelphi : he traces his dramatic pilgrimage from the days when he wrote The Complete Playgoer for the Nottingham Journal to the last triumph of Mary Rose, the germ of whose plot first took growth in The Little White Bird. He has, too, -0Pc .ErrAt merit as a. biographer, he never, obtrudes his own
Personality, 4:at-gives us.Barrie, so far as his method allows, through the medium of his friends, his correspondents and his reporters. :None the less those who are in search of their author will find that Dr. Hammerton leads them down a winding road and they will have to look for themselves behind the hedges and over the gates if they would find their quarry. _ Perhaps the most amusing anecdote in a book that is packed full of stories, is one relating to his only meeting with R.L.S.
that Sir James himself told at a public dinner. It happened in .Edinburgh when the young student was bumped into by
a man wearing a velvet jacket :—
" I glared -coritemptuousrir after Min. He must have grown conscious of this because he turned around and looked at me. I continued to glare. He went on a little bit and turned round again. I was still glaring, and he came back and said to me, quite nicely : ' After all God made me.' I said : He is getting careless.' He lifted his cane, and then, instead, he said : ' Do I know you ? ' He said it with such extraordinary charm that I replied wistfully : ' No, but I wish you did.' He said ' Let's pretend I do,' and we went off to a tavern at the foot of Leith Street where we drank what we said was the favourite wine of the Three Musketeers.",
It is characteristic of the biographer that he takes particular delight in this meeting of two pretenders on such happy ground. He evidently regards Sir James as a very great pretender indeed : over and over again in the course of the book, he refers to " his picturesque exaggeration," to his " incurable leg-pulling when telling stories of himself," to his knack of becoming a fellow-actor with the creatures of his imagination, and to his attempt to regard himself as an idolator of his Lady Nicotine at a time when he disliked tobacco. An interesting story is told of how Barrie's testi-
monial to the worth of a certain tobacco, mentioned in his I book, brought fortunes to several persons.
We are told a great deal about the dramatist's feelings , towards his relations and friends, of his dealings with Frohman and of his affection for Sir William Robertson Nicoll to whom he owed so much, and of whom he said, " He was_ so fond of books that I am sure he never saw a lonely one without wanting to pat it and give it sixpence." ' There are many pleasant stories of his friendship with the Llewellyn Davies family and his kindliness to other children, but there is a great silence regarding his methods of work and his attitude towards it : only one reference is made to " the loathly lovely pen." The author seems to find a difficulty in saying : " this
so " without seeking to add further value to his points bS, adding : " and - this is not So." Too much space is taken
up by criticisms of other people's opinions, statements, and prejudices, and these are not usually significant enough to merit so much attention.
As a collection of anecdotes and episodes the book is inter- esting, but it has too much of Who's Who about it and too little of How and Why to give it value as an important biography.
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