Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/92

66 66 THE AMBITIONS OF SIR JAMES BARRIE London is threatened, and this demure dame's-school in the shires, apparently so innocent, is an ambush where the ringleader gathers his forces and perfects his final preparations. Quality Street, in other words, is part of the Great North Road, half-way between Thrums and Kensington Gardens. And down it the discerning eye detects with a thrill a small shy figure pounding determinedly South. The figure's name does not appear among the dramatis personse. But there is a certain red light in his eye that betrays him. It is the author of Senti- mental Tommy running to write The Little White Bird. Like his famouig hero, he has once more " found a way." II It is a fascinating thing, this progress of Tommy — I mean Barrie : the way he has diffidently (but oh, how obstinately !) worked and wriggled along his form until at length he reached his proper place. The fashionable thing to say about him now is that he has " never grown up." It is intended for praise, but it is a terribly tame version of the actual process which lies behind his career. The amazing thing about him is that he has grown, grown incessantly ; but instead of growing up, has grown down. His case is like Alice's. When first he set up his easel on the banks of the Quharity his intention was to paint the simple truth : if the reader will glance back at his earliest canvases, the opening studies in the Auld Licht IdijllSy he will see that their manner is the sober circumstantial one of Gait, with perhaps just a touch of Thoreau, the Thoreau of the Winters Walk and a trace of the Stevenson of Pastoral. They are not " idylls " at all : the word was surely used ironically. The artist's idea was to show us, with a dogged Dutch fidelity, the dour reality of