Of course, the excuse immediately forthcoming from Dr. Barrie’s friends and admirers will be “the lesson.” It is the only excuse that can possibly be raked up, and, like the majority of excuses, it is a poor stick to lean upon. For “the lesson” of _Margaret Ogilvy_ simply amounts to this, that conceit and self-advertisement may bring a man to the silliest and least dignified of passes. In point of fact Dr. Barrie’s “little study” is just as much a study of himself as of his mother. If it shows Margaret Ogilvy in the figure of an excellent mother, it also shows J. M. Barrie in the figure of a preternaturally excellent and dutiful son. If it shows that Margaret Ogilvy was a simple, unsophisticated woman of the people, it shows also that J. M. Barrie had compassion on her intellectual shortcomings and was ever ready to humour the poor body and to twinkle tolerantly on her whimsies, when he might, had he so chosen, have withered her with a word. To take a sample passage: “Now that I was an author, I must get into a club. But you should have heard my mother on clubs! She knew of none save those to which you subscribe a pittance weekly, and the London clubs were her scorn. Often I heard her on them—she raised her voice to make me hear, whichever room I might be in, and it was when she was sarcastic that I skulked the most: ‘Thirty pounds is what he will have to pay the first year, and ten pounds a year after that. You think it’s a lot o’ siller? Oh, no, you’re mista’en—it’s nothing ava’. For the third part of thirty pounds you could rent a four-roomed house, but what is a four-roomed house, what is thirty pounds, compared to the glory of being a member of a club?’ … My wisest policy was to remain downstairs when these withering blasts were blowing, but probably I went up in self-defence.
“‘I never saw you so pugnacious before, mother.’
“‘Oh,’ she would reply, promptly, ‘you canna expect me to be sharp in the uptake when I am no’ a member of a club.’
“‘But the difficulty is in becoming a member. They are very particular about whom they elect, and I daresay I shall not get in.’
“‘Well, I’m but a poor crittur (not being member of a club), but I think I can tell you to make your mind easy on that head. You’ll get in, I’se uphaud—and your thirty pounds will get in, too.’”