Peter Llewelyn Davies
| Peter Llewelyn Davies | |
|---|---|
| Born |
25 February 1897 London |
| Died | 5 April 1960 (aged 63) London |
| Occupation | publisher |
| Known for | foster son of J. M. Barrie |
| Parent(s) |
Arthur Llewelyn Davies Sylvia du Maurier |
| Military career | |
| Allegiance |
 United Kingdom
|
| Service/branch |
 British Army
|
| Battles/wars | World War I |
| Awards | Military Cross |
Peter Llewelyn Davies MC (25 February 1897 – 5 April 1960) was the middle of five sons of Arthur and Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, one of the Llewelyn Davies boys befriended and later informally adopted by J. M. Barrie. Barrie publicly identified him as the source of the name for the title character in his play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up. This public identification as "the original Peter Pan" plagued Davies throughout his life, which ended in suicide. He was the first cousin of the English writer Daphne du Maurier.
He was awarded the Military Cross after serving as an officer in World War I, and in 1926 founded the publishing house Peter Davies Ltd.
Davies was an infant in a pram when Barrie befriended his older brothers George and Jack during outings in Kensington Gardens, with their nurse Mary Hodgson. Barrie's original description of Peter Pan in The Little White Bird (1902) was as a newborn baby who had escaped to Kensington Gardens. However, according to family accounts, his brothers George and Michael served as the primary models for the character as he appeared in the famed stage play (1904) and later novel (1911), as a pre-adolescent boy.
In 1904, the year when Barrie's play, Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, debuted at London's Duke of York's Theatre, the Davies family moved out of London and went to live at Egerton House, an Elizabethan mansion house in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire. Their time there lasted only three years; in 1907, Davies's father died of cancer and his mother took Davies and his brothers George, Jack, Michael, and Nico back to London. She too developed cancer and died in 1910. In her will, she named Barrie, the boys' uncles Crompton Llewelyn Davies and Guy du Maurier as well as her mother, Emma, as guardians to her sons. Hodgson continued to serve as nurse and surrogate mother for him and his brothers, with Barrie taking on the duties of the main guardian and supporting them financially. Davies, like his brothers (apart from Jack), attended Eton College.
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