J. M. Barrie’s The House of Fear Hints How To Unmask His Incognito Alternate Personalities

Lady Cynthia Asquith (1887-1960), an English writer, was the personal secretary and close friend of Sir James Barrie (1860-1937) for his last twenty years. His will gave her the copyright to all his works except Peter Pan, whose copyright he had given to support a hospital. Asquith described Barrie’s personality as follows:

“…an extraordinarily plural personality” (1, p. 18).

“No pen could convey how widely Barrie varies” (1, p. 22).

“As always, he was fluctuating, unpredictable” (1, p. 141).

“At…times…apparently neither consciously depressed nor annoyed, he would just fade out—perhaps tell one funny, very funny, story, and then subside into silence—Trappist silence—for the rest of the dinner” (1, p. 150).

“Barrie is unpredictable” (1, p. 163).

Of course, readers of this blog know that a person’s puzzling inconsistence may be a clue to the presence of multiple personality.

Barrie’s hint about his multiple personality, and the way Asquith could unmask it, were in one of his plays that he read to her:

“Another evening, I remember Barrie reading to me one of the very few recently ‘slung-off’ one-act plays he thought worth keeping. This was The Fight for Mr Lapraik [renamed The House of Fear], a terrifying drama about the struggle between the forces of Good and Evil for the possession of one more or less average man. At first, Barrie read dispassionately; then, suddenly kindling, dramatically, and in an utterly different voice for each character. The effect was unforgettably eerie…I can’t describe the disquieting tricks he played with face and voice, nor how both visibly and audibly he split himself into the two Mr Lapraiks…this singularly uncomfortable play had been suggested to him by a dream of his own…This nightmare sense of some sinister, furtive being lurking about his flat, determined to oust and supplant him, remained with him after he awoke…” (1, p. 26-27).

Barrie’s play, plus an article about it, are available online:

The House of Fear by J. M. Barrie

http://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl/vol27/iss1/3

"J. M. Barrie’s Jekyll and Hyde Drama: Lifting the Curtain on The House of Fear" by R.D.S. Jack

http://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl/vol27/iss1/4

In the play, Mrs. Lapraik has to distinguish between her real husband and his look-alike double. She succeeds in doing so by asking the man about things that her real husband would know, but that an impostor would not.

Therefore, when Cynthia Asquith would observe puzzling, unpredictable, distinct changes in Barrie’s behavior, she could have done something similar to what Mrs. Lapraik did. That is, when Barrie was behaving one way, she could have asked him about something that had been said or done while he had been behaving another way. If these different behaviors indicated different personalities, then he might have amnesia for what she asked him about. [But she evidently missed the hint and never questioned him in this way.]

One other episode Asquith mentions that is suggestive of multiple personality was when Barrie had “writer’s cramp,” and he had to change writing from right hand to left. Barrie told her:

“I’m going to take to writing with my left hand. It shouldn’t be as difficult for me as for others for I have really been ambidextrous all my life. In fact, I was naturally left-handed, but was compelled to use my right hand at school…It isn’t so difficult as you might fancy to write with the left hand, but it’s the dickens to think down the left side. It doesn’t even know the names of my works…” (1, p. 45).

In multiple personality, one personality may be right-handed and another personality may be left-handed.

1. Cynthia Asquith. Portrait of Barrie. New York, E. P. Dutton, 1955.