Best known for her prose poem, “By Grand Central Station I sat down and wept“, Elizabeth Smart came from a wealthy Canadian family who visited England regularly. Elizabeth was 19 in 1933. Her favourite writers were D H Lawrence (she’d just finished “Lady Chatterley’s lover“ and declared it a work of genius), Katherine Mansfield, Virginia, Woolf – and J M Barrie. She determined to meet Barrie when next in London, and managed to get a letter of introduction from a distinguished Canadian family friend, Bill Herridge. She wrote up her account of their meeting in her diary:
April 5 [1933]
I had nightmares all night that it would be after 12.30 when I woke up. Too late to go to Barrie! So I was up what I would call betimes though the sun was pouring in my window. I took a bath and put on my best clothes. I felt scared and elated by turns and inadequate and unspeachable by turns. Too late and too sudden - all unbeknownst and unprepared. …
I didn’t look very nice – still sleepy, and pale and hair too undisciplined - but O well – and I put on my new Worth coat and my hat – and left the flat in fear and elation – I thought I would walk a bit towards Hyde Park Corner to kill the time and wake me up.
The Sun was glorious. I hailed a taxi and gave the address.… We got to Adelphi Terrace and drove along it – but no Adelphi terrace House – we drove around the block – asked several people – and finally found it – just before you come to the terrace – on the corner going down. … In fear and trembling, I entered No 3. It looked a deserted place – a big bare stone or marble cold hall with firms’ names written up on the glass doors. I saw no flat names anyway, so I rang a bell that was labelled Housekeeper and asked which was James Barrie. She said “fourth floor“ in a very hardened voice – what was a mere great man to the likes of her? And as there was no one to run the lift – which seemed automatic or self-lift – I avoided it and chose the stone stairs - up - up. And I was out of breath from fear and anticipation at the bottom, so I didn’t think I could bear the way my heart was dropping about to my tummy inside me – at the top. I saw a sturdy, small figure pass across inside – just a shadow through the translucent glass. I lay my music case down against the wall, took three breaths and with a trembling hand rang the bell.
A shortish-sturdy secretary, middle-aged but younger with an ordinary face, opened the door - and it opened right into a small, square room with windows. I said nothing, but raised my eyebrows in query, and he said “Miss Smart?“ And I said “Yes“ – feeling thankful towards him for helping me out. Then I didn’t feel scared, just apprehensive. The time has arrived but I was unprepared.
I followed the man into a big yellow room (on the right) whose windows look out over the Thames. It was beautifully used-looking and warm, with a big tall thing of used-looking and warm books on the left wall and a small old-fashioned piano of a yellowish colour in front of it – and it had all an air of books and papers and tobacco. Then the secretary announced me, and I shook hands with Barrie. He seemed to have small, stumpy hands, and for a minute I thought he was deformed – but No No. He had a big patch of iodine on his left cheek and he didn’t look as fragile as I expected him to. He was more the build of Ralph Strauss, but not so robust or cruel. He had those distinctive eyes small with pouches under them and they are sort of triangular because the flesh above them falls in a sort of tent. I think he had on a smoking coat.
On the right as I came in were books and non-descript things and a screen, and behind the screen was his big desk – and behind that an alcove – quite big with seats in it and it had a fireplace and a lower ceiling than anywhere else. It was all brown wood – oak? Something of that kind. It was all sunny and an open Times was lying across a stool. He walked up and down – sometimes with his back to me. He said he had forgotten who Mr Herridge was, but he was sure he must have liked him extremely from the tone of his (Barrie’s) letter. (I had sent it with my note.) He asked me who he was – he couldn’t remember him – couldn’t place him. I said, “I think you met him down at Lord Byngs – he was a lawyer and is now a diplomat. He gets on very well with people etc.” He said, “Oh yes, I remember in the garden. Lady Byng was very fond of gardening.“
We looked out of his window from where you can see the Thames actually bend and wind in the distance – and seven bridges crossing it. There is a big patch of green grass in front of Adelphi Terrace too. He said to me, “Do you mind if I smoke?“ and I said “No” emphatically. I sat on a little sofa under a window at the end of the room and he sat on the arm of the sofa and walked about the room smoking his pipe. He showed me Bedlam in the distance and said I was “obviously about sixteen.”He said, “Tell me something about yourself – what are you doing over here?“ I just said I was studying music. He then showed me his piano and said he was not musical in fact. I asked him – he couldn’t even play God Save the King. I said “Neither am I they tell me.”
He made conversation – about skiing – about the heat of London bringing out the trees and flowers sooner – about a girl’s school in the USA where they had asked him to give an address to 900 girls, and he said he couldn’t possibly give an address to 900 girls at once, but if he could be in a room and see each girl separately, he would give 900 speeches. “Unfortunately,“ he said, “they took me seriously and we’re actually starting to carry it out. However I escaped from that place just in time.”
He said Edinburgh was the most beautiful city in the world. He said he admired anyone who wanted an education and didn’t think it spoiled anyone. He thought girls that went were better to talk to. He said, “But a clever woman never lets on she is clever. Whenever you hear anyone say ‘That woman is clever’ you know that she is stupid. A clever woman doesn’t let you know.“
He said he had sent his sons. “They aren’t really my sons, but I educated them and brought them up“ to Eton and Oxford. He said “I never had a daughter, but if I had, I should like to keep her at home to pour out my tea for me, and I wouldn’t have this iodine all over my face if I had a woman around (except my housekeeper) to do it for me . But if she wanted to go I would send her.“ Oxford – Cambridge – Edinburgh – he didn’t seem to mind which. He said you couldn’t get a better man than his friend, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, and at Cambridge now they had a lot of swells.
He said university didn’t make any difference to writing – that just came out of yourself. Perhaps you wrote all wrong according to the rules – but that was your way and right for you.
I went, and he called me back just as I got to the bottom in the elevator and gave me Farewell Miss Julie and in it, then I left and waved but just as I got to the bottom again I remembered my music case and had to go up again.
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