"A Well-Remembered Voice" is a one-act play by J.M. Barrie first performed in June of 1918, just a few months before the end of the Great War. It's about a father coming to terms--or not--with the loss of his son in the war.
As anyone familiar with my blog will know, I'm deeply interested in J.M. Barrie and the brothers who inspired him to write Peter Pan and, in fact, inspired him to write this play. Much of what Barrie wrote was highly autobiographical, and this play was no exception. Here, the son, Dick, is clearly George Llewelyn Davies, the original spark for Peter Pan and Barrie's foster son. George was killed March 15, 1915 in the war. The father, Mr. Don, is, of course, Barrie himself. The scenes that take place between the bereaved father and the recently deceased son are plainly wish-fulfillment, and they echo with a sense of deep longing.
The story begins with a seance performed by Dick's mother, his fiancee, and some friends. Mr. Don isn't interested in taking part and reads a newspaper. His wife and the fiancee get angry with him after his disbelief seems to "scare away" Dick's spirit, who's been "tapping out messages" on the table. The spirit having fled, the seance breaks up. But as soon as everyone else has left, Mr. Don start's hearing Dick's voice, and then Dick appears. Dick can only appear to one person, and he can't stay for long. He describes what it's like to be dead and assures his father in various ways that it isn't so terrible, and he isn't lonely. He reminds his father of things they've done and places they've seen and tells his father to be brighter. Mrs. Don comes down from bed, and then the fiancee comes down, too. They can't see Dick, but Dick can see them. But once they leave again, Dick has to go, and Mr. Don is left alone in an empty room.
It's a rather somber little piece. I wouldn't say it's overwhelmingly brilliant, but I can feel Barrie's raw grief. The saddest bit, of course, is that Dick can't stay, and there's no happy resolution, no smile and no assurance that Mr. Don will be any happier after this visitation than he was before it. An underlying theme, as well, is that Mr. Don doesn't give much outer sign that he's been devastated by the loss of his son. He went on reading his newspaper during the seance, after all. But it was to him that Dick chose to appear rather than his mother, because it was his father who needed him more. Likewise, like any good Edwardian gentleman, Barrie wasn't likely to have been overtly demonstrative about his grief. Apparently, Barrie had an outburst when he received the telegram--"wires" are mentioned a few times during the play--and was in a state of stunned quiet for a while, but no doubt his grief went very deep. In a character like Mr. Don, he could show on stage how much deeper his own pain went than it appeared to from the outside. Barrie must have wished desperately he could have George come back and assure him that dying hadn't been do bad, that there was something beyond death, and that he, Barrie, had to keep going.
Several details here struck me: George had a fiancee, just like the fictional Dick. Young Dick mentions being a Second Lieutenant, just like George. Dick says that he doesn't remember dying; George was shot in the head, and there's a good chance he never really knew what hit him. Mr. Don is a painter, where Barrie was, of course, a writer. Dick noticed the fishing rods; George was an avid fisher.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect to me is the idea of the "veil" between life and death and how thin it is, especially in a time of war. Dick says that when he woke, he wasn't sure which side of the veil he was on, and neither were most the men around him, living and dead. It's a vertiginous thought, that the living aren't quite sure they're alive, and the dead aren't quite sure they're dead.
Perhaps this, as much as Lincoln in the Bardo, was what helped spark the idea for my novel about the Llewelyn Davies family (sadly, it's not published at this point). There are spoilers here, but I'm going to forge ahead since the stakes seem pretty low at this point. First, I'll note that I didn't read the whole play until after finishing the manuscript for Proud and Insolent Youth; I knew of the play and had read bits of it, quoted in other sources. The core concept behind my novel is that each narrator--four member of the family--are telling their story from just the other side of death. They're on the other side of the "veil", but they don't know it. Here, Dick isn't sure which side he's on but realizes it pretty quickly. In my manuscript, George takes a little longer to realize--long enough to tell his whole story to a German soldier nearby who is, it turns out, also dead. Interestingly, in the play, Dick mentions that there were German soldiers on the other side of the veil, and there was no animosity. I hadn't read that part before writing my novel. It just seemed right.
The idea of the seance itself and the autobiographical nature of the play inspired me to write a scene where Barrie holds a seance for George. In this scene, it's George's younger brother Michael who's the sceptic that breaks up the party, and it's Barrie's secretary Cynthia Asquith who leads the seance. Barrie participates but more or less repents of it. And it's Michael who thinks he hears George's voice--though he doesn't get to have a full conversation with his brother.
Here, I'm linking a summary from greatwartheatre.org.uk. It includes the Examiner of Plays' Summary. There was still censorship at this point, so this is essentially a censor's summary. You can also download the full script: https://www.greatwartheatre.org.uk/db/script/2653/
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