J M Barrie to Peter Llewelyn Davies - 1904

Description

Letter from Barrie to Peter, 3 November 1904: "Sometimes when I am walking in the Gardens with Luath I see a vision and I cry, Hurray, there’s Peter..."

Transcription

Leinster Corner,
Lancaster Gate, W.
3 Nov. 1904

My dear Peter,
Sometimes when I am walking in the Gardens with Luath I see a vision and I cry, Hurray, there’s Peter, and then Luath barks joyously and we run to the vision and then it turns out to be not Peter but just another boy, and than I cry like a water cart and Luath hangs his sorrowful tail.
Oh dear, how I wish you were here, and then it would be London again.
Goodbye.
Write soon.
Your loving godfather
J.M.B.

Peter's comments:

Ah, me! as Uffa Fox (my G.Ll.D's godfather) sometimes I exclaims, and you don't always exactly know what he means by it, and no one need know exactly what I mean by it here.

Luath, the Newfoundland, had replaced the dead Porthos in 1902, and so reached immortality as Nana in Peter Pan, which was in rehearsal at the time of this letter.

J.M.B. was never technically my godfather, perhaps because I was never christened, and I dare say this is the only occasion on which he so signed himself.