My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke

James Matthew Barrie

• Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9783849628727
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Literarische Biographien

My Lady Nicotine "—a book that suggests but is very unlike " The Reveries of a Bachelor." The former is urban: the latter is provincial. A briar pipe filled with Arcadia Mixture starts the reveries in the one; a hearth fire, in the other. The five bachelors in " My Lady Nicotine " seem to be utterly dissimilar in tastes and feelings—and have only one bond of union, their common love for the famous Arcadia Mixture. The solemnity with which they treat their pipes; their assured superiority to everybody outside of the circle which knows and appreciates that mysterious brand of tobacco; the sentimental selfishness of their bachelor existence, and the delicate humor with which the quiet episodes are narrated—these are some of the charming qualities of the book. But the crowning humor of it is that the story is told by one of their number who boldly announces in the first chapter that he has married, and his wife has won him from his pipe and his comrades. He cheaply moralizes on their enslavement, and then in reveries calls up the happy days when he smoked with them. The closing chapter is a most subtle piece of writing. The narrator praises his constancy to his promise never to smoke again, and adds: " I have not even any craving for the Arcadia now, though it is a tobacco that should only be smoked by our greatest men." Then he confesses that when his wife is asleep and all the house is still, he sits with his empty briar in his mouth, and listens to the taps of a pipe in the hands of a smoker (whom he has never seen) on the other side of the wall. " When the man through the wall lights up I put my cold pipe in my mouth and we have a quiet hour together."

My Lady Nicotine

A Study In Smoke

J. M. Barrie

Contents:

James Matthew Barrie – A Personal Sketch By Hattie Tyng Griswold

My Lady Nicotine

Chapter I. Matrimony And Smoking Compared.

Chapter Ii. My First Cigar.

Chapter Iii. The Arcadia Mixture.

Chapter Iv. My Pipes.

Chapter V. My Tobacco-Pouch.

Chapter Vi. My Smoking-Table.

Chapter Vii. Gilray.

Chapter Viii. Marriot.

Chapter Ix. Jimmy.

Chapter X. Scrymgeour.

Chapter Xi. His Wife's Cigars.

Chapter Xii. Gilray's Flower-Pot.

Chapter Xiii. The Grandest Scene In History.

Chapter Xiv. My Brother Henry.

Chapter Xv. House-Boat "Arcadia."

Chapter Xvi. The Arcadia Mixture Again.

Chapter Xvii. The Romance Of A Pipe-Cleaner.

Chapter Xviii. What Could He Do?

Chapter Xix. Primus.

Chapter Xx. Primus To His Uncle.

Chapter Xxi. English-Grown Tobacco.

Chapter Xxii. How Heroes Smoke.

Chapter Xxiii. The Ghost Of Christmas Eve.

Chapter Xxiv. Not The Arcadia.

Chapter Xxv. A Face That Haunted Marriot.

Chapter Xxvi. Arcadians At Bay.

Chapter Xxvii. Jimmy's Dream.

Chapter Xxviii. Gilray's Dream.

Chapter Xxix. Pettigrew's Dream.

Chapter Xxx. The Murder In The Inn.

Chapter Xxxi. The Perils Of Not Smoking.

Chapter Xxxii. My Last Pipe.

Chapter Xxxiii. When My Wife Is Asleep And All The House Is Still.

My Lady Nicotine, J. M. Barrie

Jazzybee Verlag Jürgen Beck

86450 Altenmünster, Loschberg 9

Germany

ISBN: 9783849628727

www.jazzybee-verlag.de

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JAMES MATTHEW BARRIE – A PERSONAL SKETCH BY HATTIE TYNG GRISWOLD

IAN MACLAREN recently related the following incident, illustrating the pride of the common people of Scotland in their most popular author. He said :

" Not long ago, I was travelling from Aberdeen to Perth. A man sitting opposite studied me for a minute, and then, evidently being convinced that I had average intelligence, and could appreciate a great sight if I saw it, he said, ' If you will stand up with me at the window, I will show you something in a minute ; you will only get a glimpse suddenly and for an instant.' I stood. He said, ' Can you see that ? ' I saw some smoke, and said so. ' That 's Kirriemuir,' he answered. I sat down, and he sat opposite me, and watched my face to see that the fact that I had had a glimpse of Kirriemuir, or rather of its smoke, was one I thoroughly appreciated, and would carry in retentive memory for the rest of my life. Then I said, ' Mr. Barrie was born there.' ' Yes,' he said, ' he was ; and I was born there myself.' "

This intense loyalty to every thing Scotch, this pride in the achievements of any countryman, this appreciation of the national element in literature, is one of the most pleasing traits of the Scotch character, though it has. its humorous side, and has roused inextinguishable laughter in its day. Much as the outside world praises and prizes the best work of such men as Stevenson, Barrie, Ian MacLaren, and others, it is only people who have lived with and loved the bracken and the heather, who feel its subtlest charm. This fragrance is in every leaf of these Scottish stories, and it cannot stir the alien heart as it does that of the native. What a classic land its writers have made of Scotland, the wild and rugged, and barren little spot ! The land touched by the pen of Scott is as classic as Greece, that connected with the life of Burns no less so, and the home and haunts of Carlyle, if loved by a lesser number, are loved just as passionately. And now we have a new Delphian vale in Thrums or Kirriemuir, and still another in Drumtochty. Time will test the fame of these new men, and prove their staying qualities, but at present they really seem to have made a high bid for continued favor, in the hearts of so steadfast a people as the Scotch.

James Matthew Barrie was born in Kirriemuir on May 9, 1860. Kirriemuir is sixty miles north of Edinburgh, and Mr. Barrie has made all the world familiar with the little secluded hamlet, by his descriptions of Thrums and its inhabitants. We know these people as we do our personal friends, and if we could but sit at the window in Thrums we could call many of their names as they pass by. Leeby and Jess, alas ! we should not see; they are asleep under the brachen and the moss on the hill overlooking Kirriemuir, and that little burgh seems thinly inhabited now that they are gone.

The day of James Barrie's birth was always remembered in his family by the fact that six hair-bottomed chairs were brought into the house upon that day, chairs which had been longed for, and waited and worked for, by that capable and ambitious woman, Margaret Ogilvie, his mother. He heard the description of the coming of the chairs so often afterwards, and shared in the toil and saving to get other things to place beside the chairs, for so long a time, that he feels as if he remembered the event for himself; and this is the case with many of the incidents of his mother's life which had been conned over so often in his hearing. From six years old he takes up the thread of memory for himself, and sees his mother's face, and knows that God sent her into the world to open the minds of all who looked to beautiful thoughts. His life was very closely bound up with hers from this time on, and the history of the one is that of the other. What she had been and what he should be, were the great subjects between them in his boyhood, and the stories she told him, for she was a born storyteller, took such hold on his memory, and so stirred his imagination, that they afterward laid the foundations of his fame, when he published them in his first volume of " Auld Licht Idylls." Never were such friends as he and his mother all through his youth, and her mark was indelibly set upon him by that time. She had a numerous family of children, but Jamie seemed to be different to her from the others. Some peculiar mystic grace had made him only the child of his mother," and it was a worshipful love on the part of both that held them together. This mother was a great reader, and they read many books together when he was a boy, " Robinson Crusoe ' being the first. This led to his writing stories himself, and reading them to her. She was a sharp critic, and he served his apprenticeship under her. They were all tales of adventure, he tells us ; the scene lay in unknown parts, desert islands, and enchanted gardens, and there were always knights in armor riding on black chargers at full tilt. At the age of twelve he made up his mind to be an author, and she aided and abetted him in all the ways known to a loving mother's heart. About this time, or a little later, he was sent to the Dumfries Academy, where his brother was Inspector of Schools. He was a bright scholar, and very happy there, where he made unusual progress in his studies.

At eighteen years of age he entered the University at Edinburgh, and devoted himself especially to the study of literature. He went but little into the society of the place, and made but few friends among the students, being considered " reserved." But he had opportunity for more reading than ever before, and became quite absorbed in the multitude of books to which he had access for the first time. He also began the writing of literary criticisms for the " Edinburgh Courant ' at this time. He showed a true touch even in his first writing, which may have been owing somewhat to his years of practice in the garret at home, on stories which must be made to please his mother. Carlyle, whom he had sometimes seen while at Dumfries, and who became his hero, exerted a great influence upon him at this time. He began to look upon life through the eyes of his mentor, and to value the sturdy virtues which form so large a part of his discourse. He caught some of his phrases, which were a stumbling-block to his mother, although she too was an ardent admirer of the rugged Scotchman. Sincerity, truth, courage, strength, these became his watchwords, and their influence can be seen in his writings to this day. The poetry of common life, the hardy virtues of the humble, the sweetness of the domestic life in many lowly cottages, the humorous side of petty religious controversy, these became his theme, and the world turned away from the conventional novel about Lady Arabella and Lord Vincent Vere de Vere, and the vicar and the curate, and the old family solicitor of the Tulkinghorn type, to read about " The Courting of T'nowhead's Bell." He heeded Longfellow's advice, although very likely he had never heard of it, in the verse which says,

" That is best which lieth nearest,

Shape from this thy work of art."

How many times of late we have seen the wisdom of this course exemplified ! Instead of going back to the past, or flying to the ends of the earth for some new and impossible theme, we have seen our most popular writers sitting down on their own doorsteps, and describing what actually passed before their eyes, with the result that the whole reading world wanted to see just what they saw, and with their eyes. Miss Murfree among the Tennessee mountains, Miss Wilkins in hackneyed New England, Olive Schreiner on a South African Farm, Mr. Cable among the Creoles of Louisiana, Kipling with the British army in India, Thomas Nelson Page in the New South, Mary Hallock Foote in the Western mining-camps, and many others who have achieved late successes, have done so on their own ground, in reporting the actual life of the people with whom they were familiar. That repulsive realism which concerns itself only with disease and vice and abnormal conditions will be crowded out by the better realism of the new school. While we have among the younger writers a few who follow the lead of Ibsen and of Zola, and insist upon dragging into the light all the hidden things of life, and whose writings consequently are redolent of decay, this newer group give us novels of character, and our interest lies in its development amid the varied circumstances depicted, and not in some hidden crime or adulterous amour, which is exploited with all its disgusting details, till the revolted reader throws it into the fire, which alone can purify its poisonous pages. That our presses have teemed with this kind of books for a few years past, is a well-known fact. About them we could say as Thoreau said about certain poems of Walt Whitman,

" He does not celebrate love at all. It is as if the beasts spoke. I think that men have not been ashamed of themselves without reason. No doubt there have always been dens where such deeds were unblushingly recited, and it is no merit to compete with their inhabitants."

But in the very midst of this passing phase of the gospel of dirt, were flung such books as " A Window in Thrums " and " The Bonnie Brier Bush," and their reception proved that the heart of the reading world is sound, although it is sometimes beguiled into the haunts of leprosy for a season.

Graduating from the University in Edinburgh in 1882, Barrie necessarily began to look at once for work, for his father had already done perhaps more than he was able to do for him, and there was a numerous family whose needs had to be considered. The famous managing of Mrs. Barrie had been put to many hard tests in its time,...

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• JAMES MATTHEW BARRIE – A PERSONAL SKETCH BY HATTIE TYNG GRISWOLD