Adulthood
Davies volunteered along with his brother George to serve in World War I, and received a commission as an officer. He was a signal officer in France and spent time in the trenches; at one point he was hospitalized with impetigo. He ultimately won the Military Cross, but was emotionally scarred by his wartime experience. His brother George was killed at 21 in the trenches in 1915.
In 1917, while still in the military, Davies met and began to court Hungarian-born Vera Willoughby (a watercolour painter and illustrator, as well as a costume and poster designer), a married woman 27 years older, with a daughter older than he was. He stayed with her when on leave, which scandalized Barrie and caused a rift between the two. His former nurse and mother figure Mary Hodgson disapproved strongly as well. The relationship continued at least through the end of his military service in 1919. In 1926 he published an edition of George Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer featuring illustrations by her.
His brother Michael drowned at the age of 20 while at Oxford University in 1921 with Michael's best friend Rupert Buxton.
In 1926, Davies founded a publishing house, Peter Davies Ltd, which in 1951 released his cousin Daphne du Maurier's work about their grandfather, illustrator and writer George du Maurier, The Young George du Maurier, letters 1860–1867. He married Margaret Ruthven in 1931, and had three sons with her: Ruthven (b. 1933), George (b. 1935) and Peter (b. 1940).
He grew to dislike having his name associated with Peter Pan, which he called "that terrible masterpiece". Upon Barrie's death in 1937, most of his estate and fortune went to his secretary Cynthia Asquith, and the copyright to the Peter Pan works had previously been given in 1929 to Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London. Although Davies (and his surviving brothers) received a legacy, some have speculated that this drove Davies to drink — he eventually became an alcoholic. Davies' son Ruthven later told an interviewer:
"My father had mixed feelings about the whole business of Peter Pan. He accepted that Barrie considered that he was the inspiration for Peter Pan and it was only reasonable that my father should inherit everything from Barrie. That was my father's expectation. It would have recompensed him for the notoriety he had experienced since being linked with Peter Pan — something he hated."
Read more about this topic: Peter Llewelyn Davies
Famous quotes containing the word adulthood:
“One of the most highly valued functions of used parents these days is to be the villains of their children’s lives, the people the child blames for any shortcomings or disappointments. But if your identity comes from your parents’ failings, then you remain forever a member of the child generation, stuck and unable to move on to an adulthood in which you identify yourself in terms of what you do, not what has been done to you.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“Personal change, growth, development, identity formation—these tasks that once were thought to belong to childhood and adolescence alone now are recognized as part of adult life as well. Gone is the belief that adulthood is, or ought to be, a time of internal peace and comfort, that growing pains belong only to the young; gone the belief that these are marker events—a job, a mate, a child—through which we will pass into a life of relative ease.”
—Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)
“How deep is our desire to do better than our mothers—to bring daughters into adulthood strong and fierce yet loving and gentle, adventurous and competitive but still nurturing and friendly, sweet yet sharp. We know as working women that we can’t quite have it all, but that hasn’t stopped us from wanting it all for them.”
—Anne Roiphe (20th century)