Mary Ansell's Deception and J. M. Barrie's play, Rosalind

In my book 'It Might Have Been Raining', which I published in 2005, I revealed for the first time that official records showed that the Victorian London stage actress Mary Ansell continually deceived people, perhaps even her husband, author and playwright J. M. Barrie, about her age.



I also indicated briefly how Barrie made use of this deception in the writing of his play Rosalind within three years of his divorce from Mary.

Now, the recent release of the England census for 1911 has enabled me to augment the details of Mary's deception, and has prompted me to write this piece.

First, a background by way of a Mary Ansell timeline:

1861, March 1: Mary Ansell is born*. Here is her birth certificate:



1861 census: Mary's age correctly stated as one month.

1871 census: Mary's age correctly stated as 10 years.

1881 census: Mary's age correctly stated as 20 years.

1891 census: (I couldn't find an entry for Mary).




1891: Mary meets J. M. Barrie. Her real age is 31.

1892: Mary is given her first part in one of Barrie's, Walker, London.




1894, July 9: Mary marries J. M. Barrie. Marriage certificate incorrectly states her age as 27. Her real age is 33. (Difference: 6 years).





1901 census: Mary's age incorrectly stated as 34. Her real age is 40. (Difference: 6 years).

1908, August: Mary meets Gilbert Cannan, an aspiring young writer, appointed as secretary to Barrie's Committee campaigning for the abolition of the Censor.



1909, October 13: Mary and J. M. Barrie divorce hearing; Decree nisi granted as a result of Mary's adultery with Cannan. (Decree absolute granted in April 1910).

1910, April 28: Mary marries Gilbert Cannan. Marriage certificate states her age as 41. Her real age is 49. (Difference: 8 years).


From this information we can see that, in common with many actresses, at some time during her twenties or early thirties Mary Ansell had decided to 'reduce' her age so as to remain in her twenties for as long as possible in order to prolong her prospects of securing acting roles on the stage. Further, we may conclude that, having possibly deceived Barrie from the time of their meeting in 1892 to the time of their marriage - and presumably having successfully deceived Barrie's minister uncle, David Ogilvy, who officiated at the marriage - Mary chose to maintain the 6-year difference throughout their marriage.

Many biographies of Barrie, and articles, talk about him falling for, and marrying, the lovely young actress, implying that everybody believed that Mary was at least a few years younger than him, but, with Barrie having been born on 9th May, 1860, the age difference was actually only nine months (as was known at least by Barrie's friend and biographer, Denis Mackail).

Their marriage ended in divorce in October 1909 following the discovery of Mary's adultery with Gilbert Cannan, a man who had come into the Barries' life in 1908 when aged just 23.

The occasion of her second marriage gave Mary an opportunity to shed a couple more years, although her reason for doing this seems unclear, for she had given up the stage upon marrying Barrie sixteen years earlier. In my book, I suggested that she may have done this to deceive Cannan into believing that there was a prospect of their having at least one child, for Cannan was only 25 when they married.


And, now, an addition to Mary's timeline:

1911 census: Mary's age incorrectly stated as 40. Her real age is 50. (Difference: 10 years).



It will be another ten years before the 1921 census will show whether Mary continued to shed years, but time may have caught up with her, and we know that Mary bore Cannan no children and that she divorced him in 1918 following his adultery with Gwen Wilson.



I contend that J. M. Barrie either knew Mary's real age from the outset - in which case he must have been content to allow false information to be entered on their marriage certificate as well as on the 1901 census return - or, more likely in my view, he discovered it at some stage during their marriage or soon afterwards.



It is well-known that Barrie frequently used personal knowledge or experience of events close to him as the inspiration for his fictional works, and, with the benefit of hindsight and research, we can identify people in his life veiled in some of his fictional characters. In 1912 it seems he put both Mary's age deception and her relationship with Cannan to good use when he wrote his play Rosalind. I am not aware of anybody else coming to this conclusion but there clues are there:

In the lead role, Mrs Beatrice Page, a woman of London well into her forties and an actress, is lodging at a seaside cottage and is about to be asked to return to London to play once more the part of Rosalind, a young woman, in Shakespeare's As You Like It. There are numerous references to middle-age, and Mrs Page makes various comments concerning age, such as: "... you should never, never ask an actress's age", and "Have you noticed there are no parts in them (plays) for middle-aged ladies?"

Charles Roche, a well-educated young man, aged - yes - 23, calls at the cottage quite by chance and recognizes a picture of a young-looking woman, a woman by whom he had been recently smitten. The woman is Beatrice, made-up and in her performance as Rosalind. Charles is initially led to believe that Mrs Page is Beatrice's mother, and Mrs Page speaks to him as if she were, but, after having actresses' age deceptions explained to him, as in these telling lines: -
"There is nothing for them between the ages of twenty-nine and sixty. Occasionally one of the less experienced dramatists may write such a part, but with a little coaxing we can always make him say, 'She needn't be more than twenty-nine.' And so, dear Charles, we have succeeded in keeping middle-age for women off the stage. Why, even Father Time doesn't let on about us. He waits at the wings with a dark cloth for us, just as our dressers wait with dust-sheets to fling over our expensive frocks; but but we have a way with us that makes even Father Time reluctant to cast his cloak; perhaps it is the coquettish imploring look we give him as we dodge him; perhaps though he is an old fellow he can't resist the powder on our pretty noses. And so he says, 'The enchanting baggage, I'll give her another year.' When you come to write my epitaph, Charles, let it be in these delicious words, 'She had a long twenty-nine.'" - Charles comes to accept that Mrs Page and Beatrice are really one and the same person, falls in love with her, proposes to her, and the two go off happily to London.


In real life, in August 1908, on the day after he had met Mary Barrie, and at age 23, Gilbert Cannan had written to sculptress Kathleen Bruce: '... Mrs Barrie suddenly began to talk to me like a mother. She really is a dear thing, and she seems to need a good deal of me - I feel the need and give - gladly.'

It is surely no coincidence, either, that Barrie chose Beatrice as the name of the character in his play, for, in the light of his play and his knowledge of his former wife, it is interesting to compare and contrast the characters of Shakespeare's comedic heroines: Rosalind, in As You Like It, and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. (See here, for example)

Barrie's Rosalind is doubly interesting because not only does the play seem to reveal that, by the time of its creation, the playwright knew that Mary had deceived both him and Cannan over her age, but also it was amazingly prophetic: At one point in the play we are told that Beatrice is at Monte Carlo, “a place where people gamble,” and later we learn that she was supposed to be spending a month in Biarritz. How strange that in February 1921, nine years after the play was written, D. H. Lawrence* should write to Mary Cannan, by then his friend of about five years, expressing disapproval of her gambling and advising her that she should not let it become a habit. Strange, also, that some time around 1925 Mary should leave England permanently to live the rest of her life in Biarritz!

Finally, it seems Mary deceived the authorities even in death. She died in Biarritz on 30th June, 1950. Her death certificate** gives the year of her birth incorrectly as 1st March 1869, not 1861. She had evidently continued to live the lie and had deceived those close to her late in her life, for Barrie had long predeceased her, Cannan had had a mental breakdown in 1923 and had spent the rest of his life in mental hospitals, and no adult contact with her three brothers seems to have been evident.


* Nottingham University's collection of D. H. Lawrence letters has reference to Mary Cannan's birth year erroneously as 1867, seemingly matching Mary's 6-year age discrepancy throughout the duration of her marriage to J. M. Barrie. My attempts to persuade Nottingham University to correct their mistake have failed.

** A scan of Mary Cannan's death certificate was kindly supplied by my friend Céline-Albin Faivre, leading French authority on J. M. Barrie and published translator of Barrie's The Little White Bird: Le Petit Oiseau blanc (Terre de Brume, 2006), website: www.sirjmbarrie.com

I gratefully acknowledge reference to the mine of information that is Andrew Birkin's exhaustive study of J. M. Barrie: J. M. Barrie and the Lost Boys (Constable and Company, 1979; Yale University Press, 2003), and his splendid website: www.jmbarrie.co.uk
Also Denis Mackail's The Story of J.M.B. (Peter Davies, 1941).

The Maidstone Music Festival Syllabus is now available

The Syllabus for our inaugural festival - mmf 08 - is now available.

In the week beginning 16 June we distributed over 200 copies to music teachers and schools in Maidstone and the surrounding area, and also to music directors and other interested people. Copies are also available to the public at selected locations, and from the Festival Secretary (ie. me).





The booklet contains a detachable Entry Form, and all entries for the Festival must be received by the Festival Secretary by 13 October.

The Syllabus and the Entry Form are also accessible via the Festival website.

My ancestors include John of Gaunt, William the Conqueror, Alfred the Great and Charlemagne ... and the Norse Gods know who else!

How many of us have wondered how far back we might be able to trace our ancestry? Or whether we are descended from royalty? Or even from the gods?

An Alsatian acquaintance of mine has just died. In her touching, penultimate 'Poetic Sanctuary' Blog post, and knowing she had but a few weeks of life remaining, la douce Marie-Louise Schneider of Colmar explained her sadness at never having known any of her grandparents. Having not long lost my father at the time, Marie's words made me appreciate how fortunate I was that I at least knew my two grandmothers (both my grandfathers having died before I was born), and that my father had fostered my interest in family history.

Every genealogist, amateur or professional, will offer this initial piece of advice to beginners: Start by talking to your grandparents and learn all you can from their knowledge and thoughts, the implication being that these invaluable sources of knowledge will not be available indefinitely and, further, that they may not have troubled to write it all down.

Thank goodness my father did just that, and that I picked up from where he left off while he was still with us and able to guide me. Every advance that I was able to make, and every new related contact - even two 1st cousins of mine he knew nothing about! - was of great interest to him.

The big difference between undertaking family history research now, and when my father embarked on it, is, of course, that modern genealogists have the huge advantage of the Web at their fingertips. Data supplied by established professional sources, as well as by amateurs, is readily searchable to be either relied upon or adopted with caution. Making contact and sharing knowledge with previously unknown relatives, however distant and geographically remote, is now remarkably easy - provided they, too, are playing the same game.

My father's efforts by traditional methods, used periodically over about twenty years, produced sound results, ancestral trees for both himself and my mother comprising a few hundred names. My efforts by modern methods, used over eight years, to extend those trees has resulted (so far) in a tree of about 23,000 names. But whereas my father came to feel he knew each and every person on his trees, I certainly will never gain such intimate knowledge. The vast majority on mine are just names to me, and will remain so. I admit that my father probably gained more satisfaction from his painstaking work, often necessitating exploratory journeys and visits, than I ever will.

All the same, dangle enough bait, or cast the net wide enough and for long enough, and you never know what you might catch. As sometimes happens, a chance contact via Genes Reunited enabled me, very recently, to make an unexpected link with a line descending from royalty. I shall be seeking independent verification of the link.

I imagine that a large proportion of the UK population has a few drops of royal blood in them but, even so, actually finding a link with one of the 'houses' - in my case the Plantagenets - is quite exciting for an amateur genealogist. And from there the rest is easy because the royals have been well researched and documented. What a pity my father didn't live long enough to share my pleasure in making this discovery. All of a sudden the ascertainable number of one's ancestors extending from one particular line makes a giant leap, and any number of famous, and infamous, historical people may be added. But rather than incorporate the 'closest' ones, I set about trying to find the longest ancestral line through the tree. Would you believe 67 generations, back to Geat, "the son of a god", born in about 50 AD in Asgard?

No?

Well, neither might I, because back there we seem to be more in the realms of Norse mythology than reality but, hey! who knows?

Maidstone Music Festival logo: mmf 08

We have been using our mmf 80 logo for some weeks now - in black on white for correspondence, and in black on yellow for posters and flyers. The font Sue chose for this is Zapfino.

Colours may change according to use of the logo but there'll be no mistaking its stylish, elegant form. Here, for example, is how one side of our business cards looks:




The musicians among you will immediately notice that, unlike most fonts available these days, the appearance of this 'f' resembles the dynamics symbol for 'forte' in musical notation. This is, of course, the reason why Zapfino appealed to Sue.

For the benefit of those who are not musicians, 'forte' means 'loudly' or 'strong'.

NB 'mf' indicates 'mezzo-forte', meaning 'medium-loud' or 'moderately-strong', but I've never come across an 'mmf' symbol in music. For the next step down in loudness from 'mf' composers traditionally write 'mp' ('mezzo-piano', meaning 'medium-quiet' or 'moderately-quiet'). Maybe it's time someone introduced 'mmf' into musical notation, standing for 'hum loudly'! :-)

Maidstone Music Festival is launched

In 2007 my wife decided to boldly go (oh, all right - she decided to go boldly) where no woman has gone before! After years of contemplation she finally embarked on setting up an educative music festival for Maidstone, the county town of Kent. Excited at the prospect I pledged Sue my support for this. A committee was set up, with Sue as chairman. I am the secretary.

Preparations for our new music festival for Maidstone are now hotting up. Last year we registered the name Maidstone Music Festival with the umbrella body for festivals of the performing arts in the UK and beyond, the British and International Federation of Festivals for Music, Dance and Speech .

We set up a bank account in this name, and also a website: www.maidstonemusicfestival.org.uk. The website is under development but, for now, it offers basic information including contact details.

Then, in November, with still just over a year to go until the inaugural festival, we started publicising the festival by writing to many music teachers in the Maidstone and Medway area. It is through music teachers that we hope to attract the majority of participants. This drew some keen interest, as expected, and some of those teachers are now 'on board' as volunteers.

Throughout the weekend festival five categories of music classes will run simultaneously in halls and rooms within the venue. These will be: Piano; Keyboards (electronic keyboards); Strings (excluding guitar); Wind (woodwind and brass); Voice (vocal and choral).

Here is Sue's initial November 2007 announcement:


Introducing Maidstone Music Festival 2008

I am writing to you to tell you about an exciting development in music-making in Maidstone.

I have taught piano in Maidstone for many years and I have always thought it ridiculous that the county town of Kent is one of the few large towns lacking its own educative festival for amateur musicians. Many other music teachers, I know, feel the same way. It is for this reason that I decided to organise one myself.

Preparations are well under way. I have booked the venue and secured the services of some highly regarded adjudicators. The syllabus is already drawn up.

This festival will be totally different from anything already occurring in Maidstone in that it will provide opportunities for amateur musicians of all ages and levels of ability to perform individually to an audience and to receive educative adjudication from highly qualified musicians. All entrants will be awarded a certificate, classified according to merit, and a personal written adjudication on their performance.

The element of competition will be kept to a minimum in order to encourage performers to learn from one another. Thus the festival will provide a friendly and supportive platform for musicians to share in the excitement of making music. Maidstone Music Festival, a non-profit organisation, aims to promote a prestigious annual event which gives pleasure and real value to performers and listeners alike.

The pioneering Maidstone Music Festival 2008 will be held at Invicta Grammar School on the weekend of 29/30 November, 2008, with a concert on the evening of Saturday 6 December. I ask you to note these dates, and I hope you will wish to encourage your pupils to participate in the festival. The syllabus will be available in June 2008.


Since making this original announcement, however, we were asked to make some changes in order to help prevent any confusion with other local music initiatives, in particular with the 'Maidstone International Festival of Music and Dance' which has been held annually, in the summer, for 15 years. While maintaining our official name of 'Maidstone Music Festival' we decided on an eye-catching logo which, for the first festival, states simply 'mmf 08'. This is supplemented with the explanatory words 'Maidstone's new festival of adjudicated musical performances', thus making a clear distinction between our educative festival and the other town festival which is essentially a month-long programme of varied performance entertainment in several locations.

Elijah and his fiery chariot

The choir of which I am currently chairman, East Malling Singers, will perform Mendelssohn's splendid oratorio Elijah at the Church of St James the Great, East Malling, Kent, on Saturday June 30. We will be joined by four vocal soloists, many guest choral singers and a full concert orchestra, conducted by our music director, Benjamin Rous. Rehearsal will start at 11.15am and the concert will start at 7.30pm. It promises to be an exciting, if exhausting day.

I mention this event here because the biblical text of one part of Elijah - No. 38 - was part of the inspiration for the name of this weblog:

"Then did Elijah the prophet break forth like a fire; his words appeared like burning torches. Mighty kings by him were overthrown. He stood on the mount of Sinai, and heard the judgments of the future; and in Horeb, its vengeance. And when the Lord would take him away to heaven, lo! there came a fiery chariot, with fiery horses; and he went by a whirlwind to heaven."



Another factor in choosing the name Fiery Chariot was my fascination by powerful jet aircraft and rockets, the most astonishing of which, in terms of sheer size, weight, power and speed, was the Saturn V launch vehicle, a gigantic 3-stage rocket, employed in the United States' 1960s/1970s Apollo Project for landing men on the moon and bringing them back safely. At launch the Saturn V was 110 metres high, 10 metres diameter, 3,000 tonnes weight, over 4,000 tonnes thrust; and ultimately it had a 40,000 km/hr maximum speed in space. Mind boggling? Well, in English money that's as high as St Paul's Cathedral, as wide as a 3-line motorway carriageway, as heavy as 2,000 large cars, 60 times more powerful and noisy than Concorde at take off; and at maximum speed an equivalent journey time for London to Paris of about 35 seconds! OK, it's still mind boggling. It's also the ultimate fiery chariot. Photos and videos simply cannot convey its audacity but, for the record:




After my little digression, back to Mendelssohn's Elijah. First, the composer:

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn was born in Leipzig in 1809, the grandson of a famous Jewish philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn, and the son of a banker. The family took the name 'Bartholdy' when they converted from Judaism to Christianity, but Felix insisted on keeping both names. He belonged to the class of educated people in easy circumstances: his musical genius was quickly recognised and encouraged - before he was 15 he had written as many symphonies and an opera, all of which were discarded! In his early twenties, Mendelssohn travelled the world becoming a great favourite in England. He had a penchant for making and keeping friends, among them Queen Victoria, and in rehearsals he was described as being modest and charming, with unfailing tact and politeness. As Director of Music at Düsseldorf and in Leipzig, with its famous Gewandhaus concerts, Mendelssohn was influenced in his composing by Handel and Bach, and their musical styles are evident in Elijah.

Mendelssohn can be said to be a classical Romantic composer in that he used the classical forms, but belonged, with Liszt, Berlioz and Chopin, to the composers of the new music coming from Europe with its exciting virtuosity and exotic harmonies. His appeal to the English was the result of a number of circumstances. England's new concert halls, fulfilling the Victorian philosophy of moral and social improvement for the middle and working classes, were built to house large choral concerts usually accompanied by the organ, and could satisfy the Victorian's love of contrasts in volume and sound. But music and morals were closely tied in Victorian England. Here the oratorio came into its own - a drama, usually based on a Biblical or other sacred subject, but without the limitations of an operatic staging. It could, therefore, have an epic or contemplative breadth not possible in an opera and could be staged in the new concert halls around the country.

So, when Mendelssohn stood on the rostrum of Birmingham Town Hall on 26 August 1846 to conduct the first performance of Elijah, success was assured. The Times wrote: "Never was there a more complete triumph". From the daring harmonies of Thanks be to God to the anger of the mob in Woe to him, the audience enjoyed the 500 voices and the mighty organ, happy in the knowledge that they were improving their minds and their morals!

Mendelssohn's death followed shortly afterwards. He returned to England the following year with a revised Elijah and gave four performances. But he had been shocked and depressed by the death of his older sister Fanny and in October 1847 was himself dead at the age of 38.

(EMS programme notes courtesy of Christine Hide of Daventry Choral Society)


Some more video excerpts:

Introduction: 'As God the Lord of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word'
Overture
No. 1: 'Help, Lord! wilt Thou quite destroy us?'

Oh, by the way, this performance is sung in Korean, but don't let that put you off. They're very good. And anyway, there are subtitles. (These are in Korean also, but don't let that put you off either).



These South Koreans like to take this work at a good pace, as can be seen and heard with No. 29, 'He watching over Israel slumbers not nor sleeps'. Well, at this speed he wouldn't:



Now for a piece of history. Ernest Lough sings 'Hear ye, Israel!', the aria which launches the Second Part of Elijah. As you will hear, this was a 'scratch' performance given when Lough was aged 16 (although he sounds more like he was half that age):



And a 'moving' performance by the accompanist's page turner:



Anyone wanting more of the same need only explore


Here's the story of Elijah:

As told in the Old Testament (1 and 2 Kings), Elijah is characterised as a stern, unyielding prophet of God called to lead the Israelite people back to worship of their one true God. He has a pivotal role in acting between the true, just God and the Israelites, called to serve God as His loyal interpreter to a fickle and wayward people. They are swayed first one way in response to God's miracles and then the other by Queen Jezebel as she incites them to crowd violence. The mainspring of the drama is the tension between the Israelites and Elijah: a series of powerfully dramatic choral movements convey the role of the population while Elijah's response to them is vividly portrayed in his three main arias - his opposition to them (Lord God of Abraham), his winning back of the people's trust (Is not His word like a fire) and his desertion by them (It is enough). Mendelssohn's music shows his effective use of the dramatic Handelian sweep of the oratorio, interpolated with Bachian-style meditations on the story.

Elijah takes centre stage from the beginning, calling down a drought upon the land as punishment for the people's deserting the true God and worshipping Baal. (Queen Jezebel had brought her heathen Baal gods with her to Israel and King Ahab had allowed their infiltration into the people's beliefs and worship.) The theme of drought and God's ultimate sending of rain takes up the first half of the oratorio, with two side plots in which God shows his mercy and his power. He shows his care by bringing back to life the widow's son and promising that her food supply will not run out. He provides dramatic evidence of his power to the Israelites in the contest on Mount Carmel between God and the prophets of Baal. The first half of the oratorio ends with the crowd acknowledging God's mercy and omnipotence.

The second part opens with God's words of reassurance to his people. Then Elijah confronts King Ahab. This gives Jezebel the chance to incite the people against Elijah and Elijah despairs of his mission. Angelic care and his witnessing the glory of the Lord at Mount Horeb restore his courage. The people describe the vigour with which Elijah returns to proclaim God's power and the miraculous consummation of his life as he is taken up into heaven in a 'fiery chariot'. Mendelssohn sees Elijah's life in its scriptural context as the forerunner of the Messiah, and in the final chorus he looks to the completion of Elijah's mission in the coming of the Christ.

(EMS programme notes courtesy of Christine Hide of Daventry Choral Society)


Here are some fiery chariot paintings (I couldn't find any featuring the Saturn V):

Ascension of Elijah by Juan de Valdés Leal

Information found here

Elijah Taken up in a Chariot of Fire by Giovanni Battista

Russian Icon: The Prophet Elijah and the Fiery Chariot

Russian icon: The Fiery Ascension of Elijah the Prophet - Northern School

Russian icon of unknown name - Novgorodian 16th century

For further information on these last two paintings take a look at The Fiery Ascension of Elijah the Prophet

For a comprehensive collection of Elijah paintings you cannot do better than look at The Elijah Project


Finally, the Overture from Elijah fits remarkably well over this Flight to the Ford scene from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Both the audio and the video are completely un-cut. It was a miraculous coincidence the way the music fit the video.

J. M. Barrie and George Meredith

J. M. Barrie, the Scottish author and playwright, died on June 19, 1937.

Today, 70 years later, perhaps a handful of people will write something in commemoration of his death. For my part, I should like to show you a place which was very special to Barrie from the age of 25, and to give you part of his memoir on it, including a piece which he wrote in commemoration of the passing of one of his literary friends, the English poet and novelist, George Meredith. Were it not for Meredith, Barrie might never have visited Box Hill, in Surrey.

Composite picture of Barrie and Meredith

From an early age, Barrie had been a great admirer of Meredith, perhaps his greatest. In 1886, when still a London-based journalist for the St James's Gazette, his employer, Frederick Greenwood, instructed him to visit Meredith at his home on Box Hill and write an article about him; that visit was to spark a mutual friendship which lasted until Meredith's death 23 years later, and Barrie was to pay many visits to Flint Cottage. In fact, Barrie had already been there of his own accord about a year earlier, as he explained, writing in the third person, in 1930 in The Greenwood Hat, Being A Memoir Of James Anon 1885-1887:

'He [Meredith] was royalty at its most august to Anon [Barrie], whose very first railway journey on coming to London was to Box Hill to gaze at the shrine' 'There is a grassy bank, or there was (for I go there no more), opposite the gate, and the little royal residence is only some twenty yards away. Even to Anon that day it seemed small but very royal. He sat on the grassy bank and quivered. Presently he saw a face at the window of a little sitting-room he was to be very familiar with in the hereafter. He knew whose face it was. Then the figure stood in the doorway, an amazing handsome man in grey clothes and a red necktie. He came slowly down the path towards the gate. It was too awful for Anon. He ran away'. 'Something I wrote made him ask me to visit him, and after that I was often at Flint Cottage for stretches of time until he died in 1909. I loved this man more every time I saw him. The last time, when he was very frail, I said I thought he had a better colour, and he replied with a smile, 'Yes, a pretty green.'

Green, the healthy kind, is all around Flint Cottage. Trees of many species, including rare box trees (after which Box Hill was named), stand on the upper levels of the expansive, steeply sloping hills here. Low-growing grasses and herbs bedeck the downland much of which is grazed by sheep. I'm very pleased to say that Barrie's 'grassy bank' remains intact and ungrazed to this day. Not only that, but also it is now marked on the local National Trust map as 'Barrie's Bank', and its survival well into the future seems assured. Situated on the lower slopes of the North Downs it supports typical chalk downland flora and fauna, and to sit knowingly on this bank, among the orchids, the bees and Chalkhill Blue butterflies, is to wear Barrie's suit for a while – the suit of a young writer who has yet to make his name as an author and playwright.

Extract of The National Trust's current map of Box Hill

Barrie's Bank

Barrie's Bank
View from the road outside entrance to Flint Cottage

Flint Cottage
Barrie's seated view of 'the shrine' perhaps?

Flora on Barrie's Bank in June

Meredith moved to Flint Cottage in 1867. He lived there with his second wife, Marie, and their children, and he entertained many visitors, including George Gissing, Henry James, Robert Louis Stevenson and, of course, James Barrie; and the critic and caricaturist Max Beerbohm lived there for a time during the Second World War.

Flint Cottage still retains its 'round'

George Meredith loved nature and kept fit by walking the Surrey countryside regularly, usually with his dogs. He probably knew every inch of Box Hill and every tree thereon: 'I am every morning at the top of Box Hill - as its flower, its bird, its prophet. I drop down the moon on one side, I draw up the sun on t'other. I breathe fine air. I shout ha ha to the gates of the world. Then I descend and know myself a donkey for doing it.' Meredith kept a donkey, named Picnic, which had its own shed.

Picnic's shed

As I wrote in my previous post, Meredith was envious of the Barries because at their summer home at Black Lake Cottage they were surrounded by pine woods. He loved all trees ... but pines had a special place in his heart. Today, not at all expected on the chalk downs, we can see a few mature pines growing in the garden of Flint Cottage, including one either side of The Chalet which was built by Meredith and was where Meredith did his writing. I judge these pines to be about 100 years old, and I'm prepared to wager that Meredith not only planted them there but that their origin was within sight of Black Lake Cottage.

Flint Cottage and part of garden, including The Chalet

The Chalet
Note the pine trees on either side

The timber-boarded chalet was used not only for writing but also occasionally for relaxing and sleeping: 'Anything grander than the days and nights in my porch you will not find away from the Alps: for the dark line of my hill runs up to the stars, the valley below is a soundless gulf. There pace like a shipman before turning in. In the day with the south west blowing I have a brilliant universe rolling up to me.'

Upon hearing of Meredith's rather sudden death on May 18, 1909, Barrie made straight for Flint Cottage to be with Meredith's relatives. As we read in Denis Mackail's The Story of J. M. B., he 'stood by, mourning and helping, in the unmistakable character of the hero's closest surviving friend.'

Barrie also busied himself in two significant ways. Again quoting Mackail: 'It was he, also, who joined in organising the request – which is said to have had royal support – that the hero's ashes should be laid in Poet's Corner. The Dean [of Westminster Abbey], however, had strange but dogged doubts, and refused. So Meredith was buried, by the side of his second wife, in Dorking Cemetery, and the world of literature must gather to honour him there. Barrie amongst them; and three days later the well-known tribute - presently to be published by Constable's, and again, long afterwards, in The Greenwood Hat – appeared on the green pages of the Westminster Gazette. Neither Dorking nor the Abbey was its heading, and the skill that went into it has seldom been equalled – by this or any other author – and never surpassed. It was terrific, and Barrie knew it. In the midst of his grief he could still see, and more than appreciate, the perfection of his own art.'

In his fanciful essay Barrie imagined the old man sitting on the crest of the hill which rises from Barrie's Bank, in front of Flint Cottage, chuckling at the sight of his own funeral cortege solemnly accompanying an empty coffin to the cemetery at Dorking.

_____________________

Neither Dorking nor the Abbey

later published as

George Meredith 1909

by J. M. Barrie



GEORGE MEREDITH
BOX HILL
May 22, 1909

All morning there had been a little gathering of people outside the gate. It was the day on which Mr. Meredith was to be, as they say, cremated. The funeral coach came, and a very small thing was placed in it and covered with flowers. One plant of the wall-flower in the garden would have covered it. The coach, followed by a few others, took the road to Dorking, where, in familiar phrase, the funeral was to be, and in a moment or two all seemed silent and deserted, the cottage, the garden, and Box Hill.

The cottage was not deserted, as They knew who now trooped into the round in front of it, their eyes on the closed door. They were the mighty company, his children, Lucy and Clara and Rhoda and Diana and Rose and old Mel and Roy Richmond and Adrian and Sir Willoughby and a hundred others, and they stood in line against the box-wood, waiting for him to come out. Each of his proud women carried a flower, and the hands of all his men were ready for the salute.


In the room on the right, in an armchair which had been his home for years – to many the throne of letters in this country – sat an old man, like one forgotten in an empty house. When the last sound of the coaches had passed away he moved in his chair. He wore gray clothes and a red tie, and his face was rarely beautiful, but the hair was white and the limbs were feeble, and the wonderful eyes dimmed, and he was hard of hearing. He moved in his chair, for something was happening to him, and it was this, old age was falling from him. This is what is meant by Death to such as he, and the company awaiting knew. His eyes became again those of the eagle, and his hair was brown, and the lustiness of youth was in his frame, but still he wore the red tie. He rose, and not a moment did he remain within the house, for “golden lie the meadows, golden run the streams,” and “the fields and the waters shout to him golden shouts.” He flung open the door, as They knew he would do who were awaiting him, and he stood there looking at them, a general reviewing his troops. They wore the pretty clothing in which he had loved to drape them; they were not sad like the mourners who had gone, but happy as the forget-me-nots and pansies at their feet and the lilac overhead, for they knew that this was his coronation day. Only one was airily in mourning, as knowing better than the others what fitted the occasion, the Countess de Saldar. He recognized her sense of the fitness of things with a smile and a bow. The men saluted, the women gave their flowers to Dahlia to give to him, so that she, being the most unhappy and therefore by him the most beloved, should have his last word, and he took their offerings and passed on. They did not go with him, these, his splendid progeny, the ladies of the future, they went their ways to tell the whole earth of the new world for women which he had been the first to foresee.

Without knowing why, for his work was done, he turned to the left, passing his famous cherry-blossom, and climbed between apple-trees to a little house of two rooms, whence most of that noble company had sprung. It is the Chalet, where he worked, and good and brave men will for ever bow proudly before it, but good and brave women will bow more proudly still. He went there only because he had gone there so often, and this time the door was locked; he did not know why nor care. He came swinging down the path, singing lustily, and calling to his dogs, his dogs of the present and the past; and they yelped with joy, for they knew they were once again to breast the hill with him. He strode up the hill whirling his staff, for which he had no longer any other use. His hearing was again so acute that from far away on the Dorking road he could hear the rumbling of a coach. It had been disputed whether he should be buried in Westminster Abbey or in a quiet churchyard, and there came to him somehow a knowledge (it was the last he ever knew of little things) that people had been at variance as to whether a casket of dust should be laid away in one hole or another, and he flung back his head with the old glorious action, and laughed a laugh “broad as a thousand beeves at pasture.” Box Hill was no longer deserted. When a great man dies – and this was one of the greatest since Shakespeare – the immortals await him at the top of the nearest hill. He looked up and saw his peers. They were all young, like himself. He waved the staff in greeting. One, a mere stripling, “slight unspeakably,” R. L. S., detached himself from the others, crying gloriously, “Here's the fellow I have been telling you about!” and ran down the hill to be the first to take his Master's hand. In the meanwhile an empty coach was rolling on to Dorking.