Hide-and-Seek with Angels: A Life of J. M. Barrie (review)

Lisa Chaney offers an astute assessment of one of the most perplexing literary figures as she tries to differentiate between what J. M. Barrie says he did and what he actually did, between the iconic image he created for himself and the real man. This is a daunting task because of the many personalities, roles, masks, and characters he lived through. Still, Chaney manages to show readers aspects of his prismatic, chameleon-like nature—he was not always admirable but always interesting. This new biography is more solid than the man was; Chaney depends on past biographer/critics such as Denis Mackail, Roger Lancelyn Green, Andrew Birkin, and R. S. D. Jack, along with other biographies, but she has also done her archival research, probing Barrie's original notebooks and manuscripts and letters written by Barrie and his contemporaries. As a result, Chaney's biography is both broad and specific, a satisfying read for either a novice or an aficionado of Barrie studies.

Early on Chaney warns us that Barrie played fast and loose with facts and, later, of the lesson she herself learned: "It was always dangerous to take him too literally" (333). Unlike others who have taken Barrie at his supposedly autobiographical word, Chaney offers us a much more sympathetic portrait of the people who influenced him most—his parents. Instead of a jealous shrew, Barrie's mother is described as small and frail but strong-willed, suffering grievously from two of her children's deaths before Barrie was even born. His father, often portrayed as a pathetic and underemployed weaver, was instead industrious and foresighted, as he soon was able to employ his own weavers and later became a clerk, allowing him to move his family into much better quarters. Both parents, being devotees of their Scottish hero Thomas Carlyle, valued education highly, and all of their children attended school.

Perhaps because Chaney is fascinated but not blinded by Barrie's charm, she is able to see more clearly not just Barrie's parents but also Mary Ansell, his wife, who, if not long-suffering, was at least incredibly patient and gracious through her husband's many frequent flirtations (that is, until the 1909 divorce), especially with Sylvia Llewelyn Davies. Sylvia is brought down from her pedestal somewhat, though Chaney admits that Barrie put her into an impossible situation by intervening in her marriage and family—but she let him. Barrie's growing financial prosperity allowed him to shower his friends with gifts and money, but often there were strings attached. Although he became guardian of the Llewelyn Davies boys after first their father and then their mother succumbed to cancer, in his will Barrie declined to leave the surviving three more than a few thousand pounds, bearing a grudge against them for not completely devoting themselves to him once they were grown up. Rather, Lady Cynthia Asquith, secretary and confidante and a more independent version of Sylvia, inherited the rights to all of his published works, except those regarding Peter Pan, which were famously given to the Great Ormond Street Hospital. Barrie set the standards for all of his relationships, including his friends; those who did not abide by those standards found him to be difficult indeed, and those who stayed closest to him learned to tolerate those difficulties.

Chaney shuns psychoanalytical interpretations, not dwelling on the seminal event of his brother David's death, nor on his unresolved Oedipal problems, nor on the accusations of pedophilia (if Barrie was guilty, then all of Edwardian society was also guilty), nor on his undoubtedly asexual character. She does, however, suggest that Barrie was bipolar, evidenced by his intense headaches and long periods of dark depression, contrasted with other periods of hyperactivity, especially during his early adulthood when he wrote ceaselessly. One of the most interesting sections of the book details Barrie's literary apprenticeship, which anticipates so many of the complexities we find in Peter Pan. While a...