George Llewellyn Davies
July 20th, 1893
Arthur Llewellyn Davies, a barrister, was born on 20th February, 1863 and in 1892 he married Sylvia du Maurier, the daughter of the Victorian cartoonist George du Maurier. Her brother, Sir Gerald, became a famous actor and was the father of the novelist Dame Daphne du Maurier, author of such literary masterpieces as Rebecca and Jamaica Inn.
Together, Arthur and Sylvia had five sons; George, Jack, Peter, Michael and Nicholas. In 1897, his young sons George, Jack and the infant Peter became friends with a man they met in Kensington Park, something that nowadays would ring every alarm bell between London and Cairo, but back then, in more innocent days, seemed not that unusual.
The man was a Scotsman named James Matthew Barrie. he had a big, friendly St Bernard dog named Porthos, and he would entertain the boys and their nanny, Mary, with exciting tales he made up from his imagination and his ability to wiggle his ears.
It wasn’t until a chance meeting at a dinner party later that Christmas, that ‘Uncle Jim’ met Sylvia at a party, where she invited him to visit the Davies household. Over the next few years, Uncle Jim, Sylvia and the boys became firm friends, to some disagreement from Arthur, understandably, although he didn’t forbid their friendship.
In 1901, Uncle Jim invited them to stay at his lakeside cabin for a holiday, where he produced a photographic album of the boys, starring in an adventure, dressed as pirates, entitled The Boy Castaways of Black Lake Island. He made two copies, one which Arthur lost and the other which is currently in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.
(Michael Llewellyn Davies, 1906, by Barrie)
To entertain the boys, Uncle Jim invented a character to take part in the stories he wove around their adventures. Uncle Jim told George and Jack jokingly that baby Peter could fly and all babies were birds before they were born, which is why parents put bars on nursery windows. He gave the character in their stories a name, after their baby brother.
Peter Pan.
When the boys asked what happened to babies who died, Uncle Jim told them that they flew off to a kingdom called Neverland where they would never grow old and live there with Peter Pan.
”To die will be an awfully big adventure!", exclaimed George, giving Peter Pan one of his most famous lines.
Uncle Jim wrote a novel, The Little White Bird, published in 1901, which features characters inspired by Davies' family – a boy ‘David’ of the same age as George, and the boy's mother who resembles Sylvia – who are befriended by a thinly disguised version of the author.
In 1904, Uncle Jim wrote a play, Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, inspired by the children and in 1906, parts of The Little White Bird were republished as Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, with the dedication "To Sylvia and Arthur Llewelyn Davies and their boys (my boys)".
Despite rumors to the contrary, there has never been any evidence that J.M. Barrie’s relationship with any of the boys was anything other than that of a doting uncle. His friendship with the boys continued into adulthood.
In 1907, Arthur died of bone cancer at the age of 44 and then, in 1910, Sylvia died, leaving Uncle Jim, her mother, her brother Guy and Arthur’s brother to be the trustees and guardians of the boys.
George stayed very close to Uncle Jim, writing to him regularly as he went through Eton, where he was an excellent sportsman, and then on to Cambridge where he joined the drama club, hoping to emulate his Uncles Jim and George.
At the outbreak of World War I, George and Peter enlisted. George was 21 years old. He was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the King’s Royal Rifle Corps where he served in the devastation of the trenches at Flanders.
On March 9th, 1915, George’s uncle Guy, a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Royal Fusiliers, was killed in action, also in Flanders. J.M Barrie wrote to George at the front, informing him of his uncle’s death. George never received the letter.
On March 15th, 1915, George Llewellyn Davies was resting on a bank at Ypres, awaiting further orders for an advance on the enemy positions, unaware he was in the open. He was struck once in the head by a German sniper.
Originally buried near where he fell, his remains were later moved to the Voormezeele Enclosures Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemeteries in Voormezele, near Ypres, Belgium.
George Llewellyn Davies was, like millions of other Lost Boys of 1914-1918, one of a generation who would never grow old. And one of millions for whom dying might, just, have been the start of an awfully big adventure.