ABSTRACT
J. M. Barrie’s was the most insistent and pervasive of all, the kind which is found only in those whom the Victorians called ‘mother’s darlings’, and who are nowadays said to be suffering from a mother-complex. David Barrie, James’s father, was a working-man, he had a large family, and his wife’s favourite child was James, in whom she recognized talents through which she would be able to enjoy, if only vicariously, a better life than she had known as the wife of a poor Scotch weaver. What Barrie and his mother were really like together must be a matter of conjecture. The mood of the prosperous classes in the decade of Barrie’s stage triumphs was uncomfortable and apprehensive. Barrie had a dog he was fond of, so the nurse has to be a dog.
