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:
“Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter’s honor.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“O mortal folk, you may behold and see
How I lie here, sometime a mighty knight;
The end of joy and all prosperity
Is death at last, thorough his course and might;”
—Stephen Hawes (1474–1528)
“But, when nothing subsists from a distant past, after the death of others, after the destruction of objects, only the senses of smell and taste, weaker but more enduring, more intangible, more persistent, more faithful, continue for a long time, like souls, to remember, to wait, to hope, on the ruins of all the rest, to bring without flinching, on their nearly impalpable droplet, the immense edifice of memory.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)