It’s new years day and this means one thing. Well maybe two, a hangover (which I don’t have :D) but more importantly watching films on BBC 1. This year the culprit was Finding Neverland starring Johnny Depp. It’s the semi true story of J.M Barrie, the writer of Peter Pan, and his relationship with a fatherless family which provided the inspiration for the story of the boy who never grew up.
Now, this movie is your standard blub movie about believing in your imagination etc, in which these boys provide Barrie with the ideas for Pan. One of the children is called Peter (go figure) and is thought to be main influence for the character of Peter, funny that. The movie portrays him as a strong willful little scamp with a heart of gold, you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, it’ll change your life. You should get an idea of what I mean by watching this…
So have you a particularly vivid whimsical image in your mind of our young Peter? Good, let me bring in the wrecking crew then. Let me quote for you the latter half of the wiki entry for one Peter Llewelyn Davies…
“Davies was part of the generation of young men who participated in World War I. He was a Signal Officer in France and spent his fair share of time in the trenches; at one point he was hospitalized with impetigo. He ultimately won the Military Cross, but was scarred by his wartime experience.
In 1917, while still in the military, Davies met and began to court Vera Willoughby, which was one of the first in a series of events that would estrange him from Barrie, who still served as his financial guardian. Willoughby was married and a good deal older than Peter, which scandalized Barrie and caused a rift between the two.
Around this time, Davies suffered a series of family tragedies, beginning with the death of his brother George, who was killed at 21 in the trenches during World War I. His brother Michael drowned under suspicious circumstances at the age of 20 while at Oxford. Michael’s best friend Rupert Buxton drowned with him, causing some to speculate that they may have been lovers in a suicide pact.
Davies went on to be a publisher, and had mixed feelings about having his name associated with what he called “that terrible masterpiece”. But perhaps the worst insult was being cut out of Barrie’s will — instead of going to the surviving brothers, upon his death in 1937 Barrie’s fortune went to his secretary, Cynthia Asquith. (In 1929, Barrie gave the copyright to Peter Pan to Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London). Some have speculated that this drove Llewelyn Davies to drink — he eventually became an alcoholic.
On April 5, 1960, after lingering at the bar of the Royal Court Hotel, 63-year-old Davies walked to nearby Sloane Square and committed suicide by throwing himself under a train as it was pulling into the station. A coroner’s jury ruled he had killed himself “while the balance of his mind was disturbed”. At the time of his suicide, he had been editing family papers and letters, assembling them into a document he called the Morgue. He had more or less reached the documents having to do with his brother Michael’s possible suicide. Another factor possibly contributing to his suicide was the knowledge that his wife and all three of his sons had inherited Huntington’s disease.”
Now we shouldn’t laugh at this. But come on, Peter Pan’s brother dies in a gay suicide pact and in later years the booze hound throws himself in front of a train. It might be dark of me to find this funny. But I do, but a only a little bit.
The full wiki entry on this cheery soul can be found here
