James Matthew Barrie was born in the small weaving town of Kirriemuir, Scotland on 9 May 1860, the ninth of ten children of a handloom weaver and his ambitious wife, Margaret Ogilvy.
For the first six years of his life, James lived in the shadow of his mother’s love for his older brother David. Tragically, on the eve of his 14th birthday, David was gravely injured in a skating accident and died shortly afterwards. While his mother derived some consolation from the notion that David would remain a boy forever, Barrie drew inspiration. In his desperate attempt to be loved and to replace David in his mother’s life, Barrie virtually became David.
Trying so hard to be his brother stunted his own development, coincidentally at the same age at which his brother had died. At 14 – and only five foot high – he stopped growing and never grew any taller.
Inspiration
The notion of the everlasting childhood stayed with Barrie and became one of the defining reasons for his lifelong love of children, as well as the inspiration for his most famous play, Peter Pan. It would be another 33 years before that inspiration emerged in the shape of Peter Pan, but here was the germ, rooted in his mind from the age of six.
Barrie married Mary Ansell, an actress, in 1894 and although they had no children, he had many as friends. He had previously known a little girl, Margaret Henley, who died at the age of six. She called him 'my friendy', which she lisped as 'fwendy' or 'wendy', and thus a new girl’s name was born. Barrie immortalised her in Peter Pan by calling his heroine Wendy.
Llewelyn Davis boys
In Kensington Gardens in 1897, Barrie met the eldest three Llewelyn Davis boys, George (five), Jack (four) and Peter, who was still in his pram. Two more sons, Michael and Nico, joined the family in the next few years. Barrie developed a strong friendship with the children and their parents, Sylvia and Arthur. When Sylvia and Arthur both tragically died of cancer, when the boys were still young, Barrie became their guardian and although now divorced from Mary, brought them up as his own children. His life with the boys has been explained as the strongest inspiration for the creation of Peter Pan in 1904. Barrie himself once said:
