Childhood
Davies and his elder brother George first met the writer on their regular outings in Kensington Gardens with their nurse Mary Hodgson and infant brother Peter in 1897. He and George were the audience for the fantastic stories in which Barrie conceived of the character of Peter Pan. They took part in play adventures with Barrie which provided much of the inspiration for the adventures in the 1904 stage play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up and its subsequent adaptations. Shortly before writing the play, Barrie made a photo book titled The Boy Castaways, featuring the three oldest brothers pretending to be shipwrecked on an island and fighting pirates, themes that later appeared in the Peter Pan story. The character of John Darling, the older of Wendy's brothers, was named after him.
In 1906 Davies was recommended by Barrie to Captain Robert F. Scott for a position at Osborne Naval College, which was unlike his brothers, who all attended Eton College. Following the deaths of his parents Arthur (1907) and Sylvia (1910), Barrie assumed guardianship of him and his brothers. He reportedly harboured some resentment of Barrie, at times believing the writer was trying to take his father's place (especially after his father died). He was not as close to the writer as were his brothers, especially George and Michael.
Read more about this topic: Jack Llewelyn Davies
Famous quotes containing the word childhood:
“The childhood shows the man,
As morning shows the day.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“If a child were kept in a place where he never saw any other but black and white till he were a man, he would have no more ideas of scarlet or green, than he that from his childhood never tasted an oyster, or a pineapple, has of those particular relishes.”
—John Locke (1632–1704)
“When you have really exhausted an experience you always reverence and love it. The two things that nearly all of us have thoroughly and really been through are childhood and youth. And though we would not have them back again on any account, we feel that they are both beautiful, because we have drunk them dry.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)