Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-01-11
By c. PATRICK THOMPSON.

TOR the twenty-sixth year in sue
- ce6s1on they are reNving Peter
Pan In London. Theater history
Il offers no parallel to this revival
phenomenon. The wonderful boy
will not grow up; neither will he die.
His attraction seems undiminiShed in
new age and a world which Is en-
tirely unacceptable from that enrap-
tured one to which he made his first
bow. He is Barrie's land McCon-
nachteO greatest triumph.
II Is As years now since those two
young Scots came south from their
grim, wild, barren kingdom north of the
Tweed, In accordance with the national
policy Of conquest by peaceful pene-
tration. England and her empire are
now largely in the predatory hands Of
the raiding scots)
Economical as one would expect.
Barrie ana McConnachie inhabited the
same human envelope. Odd? No
doubt; but we are here dealing with
oddly and world (as those who know
their Barrie-and McConnachie-are
aware Tin which things happen that
are often inexplicable by the standards
Of reality.
Was Fine Partnership.
II was q fine partnership. Barrie
was the def observer, the firm-willed
worker, shrewd in Judgment and care
fm in the management Of career. Nc
Connachte, on the other hand, was q
creature OF fancy, not of thought;
dreamer of queer and delicate dreams
which seem for. q moment in the thea
ter or by Preside after dinner to be
more real than the things of ones
waking life. Without McConnachie,
Barrie would have lived and died a
good journalist and a competent novel;
iSt. But without Barrie, McConnachie
would have been as much lost to the
world as bed OF Snowdrops hidden in
a fairy wood.
Forgetting McConnachie Barrie him
self would tell you that he doesn't
mind from now on, we may observe
that the unique partnership has made
Barrie what he Is today-the most dis
ttnguished living British man Of let
tiers, baronet, the only living writer
to hold the Order Of Merit (linited
to % individually, so rich that he can
afford to rest on his oars and play
fairy godmother in real life a celebrity
whose every rare public utterance Is
front-page news whose letters and
manuscripts and first editions fetch
fabulous prices, whose play REVEALS are
an event Of the season, whom the uni
versities of Scotland elect their lord
rector, the friend OF premiers, princes
and peasants, man whose presence in
the greatest houses in the three king
doms is regarded by the owners as q
considerable honor.
Wrote 1900 Wocds.a Week.
The young Scot who arrived in Lon
don in 1885 scarcely looked such a con-
queror. He was very little man with q
ragged black mustache, a notably bulg-
ing brow, a large, reflective, luminous
eye; shy, sensitive, chaste, q dry, max
ing his first tentative experiments with
pipe But at school and at Edin-
burgh University (where he planned a
great work on the Restoration Satirists
and q romance about Mary Queen of
Scots, which luckily never material
led, and as q 415-a-week leader and
miscellaneous writer on q newspaper in
the English midlands lae did 1900
words q week, working till 2 am and
sleeping till noon, and was not at all
happy, he had learned the manage
ment Of words and acquired formidable
powers Of WORK.