Death
On 5 April 1960, after lingering at the bar of the Royal Court Hotel, 63-year-old Davies walked to nearby Sloane Square and threw himself under a train as it was pulling into the station. A coroner's jury ruled he had killed himself "while the balance of his mind was disturbed". At the time of his suicide, he had been editing family papers and letters, assembling them into a collection he called the Morgue. He had more or less reached the documents having to do with his brother Michael's possible suicide. Other possible contributing factors in his suicide were ill health (he was suffering from emphysema), as well as the knowledge that his wife and all three of their sons had inherited the usually fatal Huntington's disease. Newspaper reports of his death referred to him in their headlines as "Peter Pan".
Read more about this topic: Peter Llewelyn Davies
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“Yet always when I look death in the face,
When I clamber to the heights of sleep,
Or when I grow excited with wine,
Suddenly I meet your face.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Let those who desire a secure homeland conquer it. Let those who do not conquer it live under the whip and in exile, watched over like wild animals, cast from one country to another, concealing the death of their souls with a beggar’s smile from the scorn of free men.”
—José Martí (1853–1895)
“And yet the sun pardons our voices still,
And berries in the hedge
Through all the nights of rain have come to the full,
And death seems like long hills, a range
We ride each day towards, and never reach.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)