J.M. Barrie

James Matthew Barrie in 1890

Sir James Matthew Barrie, Bt., OM (1860-1937) was a photographer, author, and playwright most famous for creating the character Peter Pan, set on a fictional island where the characters never "grow up" (that is, become adults). Barrie is a considered a famous minor attracted (MAP) / boylove figure in the MAP community, and since he is not known to have ever participated in erotic behavior with anyone before puberty, he is generally regarded as a celibate pedophile.

Biography

Barrie was born in Scotland, on 9 May, 1860. When Barrie was six, his oldest brother David died in a skating accident at the age of 13. Their mother was devastated and Barrie tried to live up to the high expectations his mother had had for his brother. He became a successful journalist, and later a freelance writer. Through this success he began writing plays and novels. His works were critically acclaimed in his time. He married the actress Mary Ansell, although it is likely he never consummated that marriage.

In 1897 he met George and Jack Llewelyn-Davies, two boys playing in London's Kensington Gardens, and soon became a close friend of their family--especially the boys and their three younger brothers. His wife became tired of being ignored for the Llewelyn-Davieses and eventually began an affair, later divorcing Barrie. Arthur Llewelyn-Davies, father of the five boys, had some suspicion about Barrie's relationship with the family, but when he was stricken with a disfiguring cancer of the jaw which left him unable to speak, Barrie abandoned his current play in production to nurse Arthur back to health after surgery. Barrie never left Arthur's bedside, and any suspicions that were harbored were forgotten. After the death of both of their parents from cancer, Barrie became the guardian of all five Llewellyn-Davies boys.

The Author of Peter Pan was a Pedophile?

Barrie’s love of young males, which inspired him to create the timeless novel Peter Pan, is documented in a biography by Birkin (1979), later republished as Birkin & Goode (2003). In 1894, Barrie married Mary Ansell, but their relationship soured because he showed little interest in sex. He met the young sons of the Llewelyn-Davies family in 1897, and was soon spending much of his time playing with them. An associate, Dolly Ponsonby, wrote that the boys “fill his life & supply all his human interest” (Birkin & Goode, 2003, p. 168), and he became passionately attached to two of them, George and the openly homosexual Michael. He took many photographs of the boys, some of them nude, but never made any sexual passes, according to the boys themselves.

Barrie modeled the characters in The Little White Bird after himself and George; one suggestive passage about a sleepover reads (Barrie, 1902, chapter 19):

“Why, David,” said I, sitting up, “do you want to come into my bed?”

“Mother said I wasn’t to want it unless you wanted it first,” he squeaked.

“It is what I have been wanting the whole time”, said I, and then without more ado the little white figure rose and flung itself at me. For the rest of the night he lay on me and across me, and sometimes his feet were at the bottom of the bed and sometimes on the pillow, but he always retained possession of my finger, and occasionally he woke me to say that he was sleeping with me. I had not a good night. I lay thinking.

Barrie wrote the following to Michael on the eve of his eighth birthday (Birkin & Goode, 2003, p. 166):

My dear Michael,

Paris is looking very excited today, and all the people think it is because there were races yesterday, but I know it is because tomorrow is your birthday. I wish I could be with you and your candles. You can look on me as one of your candles, the one that burns badly — the greasy one that is bent in the middle. But still, hurray, I am Michael’s candle. I wish I could see you putting on the redskin’s clothes for the first time. Won’t your mother be frightened. Nick will hide beneath the bed, and Peter will cry for the police.

Dear Micheal, I am very fond of you, but don’t tell anybody.

Famous works

Michael Llewelyn Davies dressed as Peter Pan and photographed by J. M. Barrie at Rustington, August 1906

The most famous of Barrie's works is his play Peter Pan, and the associated short stories, but he was a prolific writer. One of the more interesting works to boylovers might be the book The Little White Bird, which contains vivid stories of a bachelor sharing adventures with a young boy.

See also

• Benjamin Britten
• Oscar Wilde
• Lord Alfred Douglas
• Andre Gide
• Lord Byron
• Charles Dodgson
• Norman Douglas
• Roger Peyrefitte
• Jacques d'Adelsward-Fersen
• Thomas Mann
• W.H. Hudson
• T. H. White
• John Ruskin
• Eric Gill
• M. P. Shiel
• Mark Twain

External links

• http://www.jmbarrie.co.uk/ - A vast online resource with letters, photos, audio, and more.
• An Awfully Big Adventure - A biography of J.M. Barrie, focused on Peter Pan
• Famous British Paedophiles - J.M. Barrie at Girllove Garden
• Text of selected works by J.M. Barrie at Project Gutenberg