There are many different types of unseen influences to be investigated. Of particular interest to me are cases of creative people who have a bad effect on those around them.
I have listed some ‘sacrificed sons’ in one article; I have highlighted the early deaths of Louisa M. Alcott’s brother-in-law and younger sister and the convenient death of Jane Austen’s future brother-in-law in another.
From the latter article:
“…Cassandra became engaged to a military chaplain who was sent overseas and died of yellow fever somewhere in the Caribbean. His patron said that he would never have taken the young man out there if he had known that he was an engaged man. Why didn’t he ask, and why did no one tell him? The end result was that Jane Austen kept her chosen companion: Cassandra never considered marrying anyone else...”
I have just read something about J. M. Barrie that has brought the Jane and Cassandra Austen case very much back to mind.
I learned a little about Barrie and the Llewelyn Davies boys a very long time ago, from a book called J. M. Barrie and the Lost Boys by Andrew Birkin. I intended to investigate this further when I got the chance but have only just got around to it. I found a book called Captivated aka Neverland by Piers Dudgeon which goes very deeply into Barrie’s malign influence not only on the Llewelyn Davises but also on the du Maurier family. This book contains information - and/or speculation - that is very disturbing indeed.
For me, one of the most significant incidents in the book is the death of the Reverend James Winter. This man was engaged to J. M. Barrie’s younger sister Maggie; he died after being thrown from a horse. The horse was a wedding present: ‘by chance’, it had been bought with money that was a gift from Barrie.
It seems that Barrie was very attached to Maggie, who worshipped him, and would not have wanted to lose her – at least until he himself became engaged. They lived together for a while.
Unlike Cassandra Austen, Maggie did not remain single: despite her initial devastation she married her dead fiancé’s brother the following year. Barrie approved of this new alliance, and may even have helped to engineer it.
Denis Mackail in The Story of J. M. B. has given me some ideas about what might have happening below the surface.
Perhaps Barrie had come to regret his promise to take care of Maggie and stay with her for the rest of her life, so the announcement of her engagement saved him from having to tell her that having her around had become an imposition.
Perhaps recent developments in his life caused him to wish her out of the way and off his hands. Maybe he was happy to let her go because he had no further use for her now that Mary Ansell was becoming increasingly significant in his life.
The highly convenient deaths of first the father then the mother of the Llewelyn Davies boys make me wonder whether there was more to the death of the Reverend James Winter than a simple riding accident. Could these deaths all be examples of Barrie’s ‘fatal touch’?
