Relationship With Barrie
The boys' relationships with Barrie varied. George and Michael were very close to him, and their deaths affected him strongly. Jack harbored some resentment towards Barrie for taking his father's place during and after Arthur's illness. Peter's relationship with Barrie was ambivalent, but Nico adored him.
Although there has often been suspicion about the nature of Barrie's relationship with the boys, there is no evidence that he engaged in any sexual activity with them, nor that there was any suspicion of such at the time. Their father Arthur was troubled by Barrie's relationship with them, but that was based on its interference with his own relationship with them as their father, and he didn't care for the man personally. As an adult, Nico flatly denied any inappropriate behavior or intentions by Barrie. 'I don't believe that Uncle Jim ever experienced what one might call "a stirring in the undergrowth" for anyone — man, woman, or child,' he wrote to biographer Andrew Birkin in 1978. 'He was an innocent — which is why he could write Peter Pan.' In an interview taped in 1976, Conservative Party politician Robert Boothby, who had been a close friend of Michael during their teens, described Michael's relationship with Barrie at that time as 'morbid' and 'unhealthy', but dismissed the notion that there had been a sexual aspect to it.
Read more about this topic: Llewelyn Davies Family
Famous quotes containing the words relationship with and/or relationship:
“Every man is in a state of conflict, owing to his attempt to reconcile himself and his relationship with life to his conception of harmony. This conflict makes his soul a battlefield, where the forces that wish this reconciliation fight those that do not and reject the alternative solutions they offer. Works of art are attempts to fight out this conflict in the imaginative world.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“When any relationship is characterized by difference, particularly a disparity in power, there remains a tendency to model it on the parent-child-relationship. Even protectiveness and benevolence toward the poor, toward minorities, and especially toward women have involved equating them with children.”
—Mary Catherine Bateson (20th century)