LISA CHANEY’S “HIDE-AND-SEEK WITH ANGELS: A LIFE OF J M BARRIE
AB’S RESPONSE
From the review in The Spectator:
“The central episode in Barrie’s life is his relationship with the Llewellyn Davies family. This, of course, has been the subject of a terrific book by Andrew Birkin, and Lisa Chaney’s own account so conspicuously comes to life only when she is covering the same ground that she needs to justify herself by criticising what she calls Birkin’s inaccuracy.”
Chaney criticises my book in her Sources by saying that "one must be wary of the accuracy of [Birkin's] quotes from sources such as Barrie's notebooks" – then proceeds to quote my own selections from his notebooks, word for word, inaccuracies and all! I might add that these amount to no more than omitting Barrie's numbering system before each note, occasionally omitting elipses or altering punctuation, and once or twice transposing the order of notes for the sake of clarity. Yet having taken me to task for inaccuracy, Chaney blithely copy/pastes many of her Barrie notebook quotes from my book verbatim! An early example:
On p29 of my book, I ended my chapter on Barrie's marriage to Mary Ansell with the following notes from his notebook:
- Our love has brought me nothing but misery.
- Boy all nerves. 'You are very ignorant.'
- How? Must we instruct you in the mysteries of love-making?
On p119, Chaney quotes precisely the same three notes, with the same punctuation and in the same order. Had she bothered to look at Barrie's notebooks herself (or checked them on my website), she would have found:
Our love has brought me nothing but misery.
Your love has put me into this clock.
He: We see someone coming.
Girl: Hm! If it is Tom I can tell by looking at him whether he is in love.
He: Fudge.
[Crossed out:] Boy all nerves ... You are very ignorant.
P.W.L: How? Must we instruct you in the mysteries of love-making?
In other words, I was inaccurate as follows:
I condensed 5 notes into 3 without ellipses. On the whole I avoided using elipses (...) in quoting from Barrie's notebooks at the urging of my editor at Constables – he felt too many dot-dot-dots distracting - and confusing, since Barrie uses them himself, as in the 4th note. I enclosed "you are very ignorant" within quotes as without the ellipsis the two sentences would have run together, and removed Barrie's strike-out. I also omitted the "P.L.W" in the last as I wasn't sure who Barrie had in mind (probably the Painted Lady in "Sentimental Tommy"). Finally, I added a little dash at the beginning of each note – as I did throughout my book.
I have spelled this all out at such tedious length simply to prove my point: that Chaney simply copy/pasted my own selections - not just on this occasion but on dozens of others.
What I find particularly irritating is that Chaney gives the appearance of scholarship by adding source notes - but on a totally ad hoc basis. She cites my book when she has no other choice - for instance when quoting from Nico's letters to me - but in dozens of other instances she blithely lifts my quotes without any acknowledgement whatsoever. For example, on p342 she quotes a letter from Barrie to Michael's Oxford tutor, Robin Dundas - precisely the same extract as I used on p295 of my book:
"It may seem strange to you that I did not write to you long ago, but what happened was in a way the end of me, and practically anything may be forgiven me now. He had been the one great thing in my life for many years, and though there are little things to do, they are very trivial."
Until last Christmas, I was the only person in possession of that particular letter - I'd had to pay £400 for it (along with a few other letters) from Dundas' nephew back in 1978. But instead of noting in her sources, "as quoted by AB in his book" or whatever, she sails churlishly on without any reference to it at all. This is not only bad manners but bad scholarship. On the subject of which, her book ends with the startling statement that Nico lived on for a further 26 years after Peter, dying in 1986. For her information, Nico died 20 years later, in October 1980 ....
As if all this wasn't galling enough, Chaney has lifted half a dozen photographs and reprinted them without any credit to me, or the Great Ormond Street Hospital who have owned them ever since I gave them the library rights back in 1992. In her "list of illustrations" she sources these photos as "Courtesy of Laura Duguid". Well I just spoke with Laura (Nico's daughter), who tells me Chaney persuaded her to lend some of the B&W copy prints I had enlarged for Nico back in 1978. But does not account for ones of Mary Ansell and Mary Hodgson - also credited to Laura - as Laura never had them! A close look at the latter reveals that it's been lifted my Barrie website - you can virtually count the pixels....
Lisa Chaney mentions my book twice - once in the "Select Bibliography" at the end (where she fails to mention Roger Lancelyn Green's superb 1955 study, "Fifty Years of Peter Pan" - despite nicking three photos from his book), and once at the beginning under "Acknow-ledgements", where my name is bundled with five other "earlier biographers" in her acknowledgements - two of whom (Leonee Ormond and R S D Jack) wrote critical assessments, not biographies at all.
Of course there's no legal obligation to mention me favourably - but there IS a legal requirement under the Copyright Act to obtain an author's written permission before ransacking their book left right and centre. In my day the law required written permission from the publisher as well, yet Chaney never bothered to get in touch with either Constables or Yale University Press. I do remember getting some message back in 2002 that a new biographer wanted to talk to me, but as my son Anno had just been killed, I cried off. Instead I sent word that all my additional research material would be on line, free of charge, by the end of 2003 and that they were welcome to use it, subject to acknowledgement.
All this may seem very trivial on my part, but I do feel somewhat aggrieved. If my book were out of print, there'd be no financial loss to GOSH, but as I see it, Lisa Chaney's book now stands in direct competition with mine - or rather, theirs. Since she has pillaged it so blatantly, I think the least she - and her publishers - can do is donate part of their royalties to the hospital, and properly acknowledge those passages that have been lifted from my book in any future edition of hers.
My gripe against Chaney's book has nothing to do with its merit as a biography – I'm only half way through, and skimming it at that, but Barrie's early life prior to the meeting the Davies family seems well researched in the mai, though occasionally sloppy on specifics.
Thus far I haven't come across anything new of great interest that can't be found in one of the earlier biographies, but for those who have only read my book and Janet Dunbar's - and are still curious to discover more - I would say Chaney's is worth a read. To be candid, I dislike her judgemental style and (presumably amateur) psychiatric speculations, but that's just my taste. Anyone who's read my book will know that I shy away from both, not because I don't have an opinion, but because it seems out of place in a book about a man that I never personally knew. Here's a random example of what I mean. On p159 of her book, Chaney quotes Barrie's first surviving letter to Sylvia, which I also quote (on p56 of mine), in which Barrie whimsically pre-dates it by ten years:
Dear Miss du Maurier,
And so you are to be married tomorrow! And I shall not be present. You know why. Please allow me to wish you great happiness in your married life. And at the same time I hope you will kindly accept the little wedding gift I am sending you ... It reaches you somewhat late, but that is owing to circumstances too painful to go into.
With warmest wishes to you and Mr Davies
Believe me dear Miss du Maurier
Yours sincerely
J. M. Barrie
But before quoting it, Chaney has already biased the reader's opinion by stating that "a bewilderingly eccentric yet clear indication of Barrie's urge to bind himself to the Llewelyn Davieses is revealed in a letter of dubious taste..." Having quoted the letter (inaccurately, as it so happens), she then informs us that "by constructing this complex fantasy [Barrie] implies not only that he knew Sylvia before her wedding, but also perhaps that he knew her better than Arthur did and that there existed between them a greater intimacy, both then and at the time of the Llewelyn Davieses' marriage, one of the most important events in their lives." Why is this letter so "bewilderingly eccentric"? It's the sort of thing I might well have written myself in his place! What Chaney has missed in her clunky manner is the subtle sting in the letter – the fact that Barrie actually wrote "With warmest wishes to you and Mr Davis".
My own comment on the letter was as follows:
This “characteristic whimsicality” (as Peter Llewelyn Davies later described it) is dated one day prior to Sylvia and Arthur’s wedding date, the address being Barrie’s at that time. It was, in fact, written some time in 1898, on the back of a piece of 133 Gloucester Road writing paper, and delivered to Sylvia by hand. The mis-spelling of “Davies” was probably unintentional, but both the slip and the letter itself — not to mention the gift — must have proved mildly irritating to Arthur.
Of course even "mildly irritating" is speculation on my part, but it seems a reasonable guess. Now that I think about it, this letter has me puzzled. Chaney sources the letter as "Beinecke Library, Barrie Mss, A3", giving the impression that she went back to the original to check it – but in which case, how come she missed the mis-spelling of "Davies"? And how come we both chose to omit the same sentence (indicated by the ellipsis)? Coincidence? In fact the omitted sentence is rather revealing: "It is not a hinge, but if you wear it, it will be part of one." Hmmm...
I've now skimmed Chaney's book as far as page 250, and it isn't just the summer heat that's making my blood boil! I would say that at least 70% of her quotes - whether from letters, notebooks or Peter Pan itself - are virtually identical with mine. Yet with so much material to choose from, why didn't she cast her net wider? One of my great regrets was that I only discovered Barrie's 700 notes to Peter Pan six years after writing my book. I quoted extensively from them in a long introduction I wrote for the Hospital to the Folio Society's special edition of Peter Pan in 1992, and (as visitors to the jmbarrie.co.uk will know) posted them up on the web early last year.... yet Chaney never even mentions their existence! She merely regurgitates my version of events relating to Barrie's commencement of "Anon: A Play" on the eve of Nico's birth - Nov 23rd 1903. But of the 700 notes that preceeded it she makes no mention at all!
I'm almost beginning to think Ms Chaney must bear some personal grudge against me. I've only just seen that she publicly criticised me for giving my Barrie/Davies collection to Great Ormond Street Hospital and allowing it to be bought by Yale:
"Although the sale is expected to raise more than £80,000 for the hospital, there is concern among experts that the auction will split up the archive and that much of it may go to America. "I think it will be a great shame if much of it leaves England," said Lisa Chaney, whose biography of Barrie will be published next April. "It should have been given to a library or institution in his native Scotland."
And this from an author who expresses grovelling gratitude to Beinecke at the beginning of her book - though why she bothered to visit the library is far from clear as she quotes virtually no new notes from Barrie's notebooks at all - 90% are copy/pasted from my book! As to giving my collection to an institution in Scotland, I actually offered it to the National Trust of Scotland years ago, but they said they had no room at the birthplace.
So keen is Chaney to keep me under wraps that in her Select Bibliography she cites my book as being published by Constables in 1979 (= out of print), but fails to mention that it was republished by Yale University Press in 2003 on behalf of GOSH (= very much in print!). This she knows perfectly well as she quotes Nico's comment about Barrie never experiencing a "stirring in the undergrowth" from my new Yale introduction... yet sources it simply as "Nico Llewelyn Davies quoted by Birkin". In every other instance when she bothers to source my book (less than 50% of the time) at least she supplies a page number. Here there is none, and of course no nention that it comes from the new edition.
But at least my book does get mentioned - poor Roger Lancelyn Green's magnificent "50 Years of Peter Pan" gets none at all, despite being sourced half a dozen times (not to mention lifted photos). These quotes are simply noted as "Green, p. 13" "Green, p.115" etc, with no other clue as to who "Green" is. The title of his book is never mentioned (nor his full name) either in the acknowledgements, the text, the source notes, or the "Select Bibliography" ... talk about sloppy ingratitude to perhaps the greatest Peter Pan expert of them all - and an incredibly generous man to boot.
One final moan: not only has Chaney pillaged my book (and others) largely without credit, but she's also raided my website as well! On p292 she writes that "a contemporary later recalled that George had 'absolutely no vanity' - 'no conceit whatsoever. It was quite extraordinary ... for someone quite so successfu ... He wasn't a great talker, but he had great charm. He was rather shy, rather reserved, but his sense of humour was exquisite.'" For once this quote does not come from my book - it's been taken from an interview I did with the sister of George's fiancee, Norma Douglas Henry, in 1978, which can be heard on the audio section of www.jmbarrie.co.uk (= this webiste).
I find this particularly hurtful as in sharing all my unpublished research material free of charge, the very least I expected was a credit to the site, if only to spread the word of its existence. But in her typical mean-spirited manner, Ms Chaney never mentions it. This is completely contrary to the spirit of the internet, as well as a blatant breach of copyright, and is precisely the kind of selfishness that will deter others from sharing their material on the web. This is not a matter of money. Every penny generated from the royalties of my book - and the BBC TV trilogy - and reproduction fees from the website - go to the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, so that Ms Chaney is not only ripping off my work without credit - she's also cheating the Hospital.
The 2003 Yale edition of my book clearly states: Copyright (c) 2003: The Special Trustees of Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity. My website carries a similar statement. Chaney has quoted from both, yet in her Acknowledgements she merely thanks the Hospital for giving her permission to quote from Peter Pan, Peter & Wendy and The Little White Bird. I would ask both Lisa Chaney and her publishers, Hutchinson (Random House Group) to make amends as soon as possible.
Relevant reviews:
http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=648190&host=5&dir=497
http://www.spectator.co.uk/archive_books.php?id=2876
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