James Matthew Barrie (1860-1937), the beloved Scottish playwright who created one of literature's iconic characters, Peter Pan, formed an unlikely friendship with Arthur Conan Doyle that survived many years and vast differences between two of the most popular writers of their time.
Conan Doyle was a sportsman. Fond of skiing, he has been credited with introducing that vigorous activity to Switzerland. An aficianado of pugilism, he was praised for his skills as a boxer and wrote two books with boxing themes: Rodney Stone (1896), which focused on bare-knuckle fighting during the Regency era, and The Croxley Master: A Great Tale of the Prize Ring (1907), about a boxing medical student. Famously, Conan Doyle was asked to referee the racially charged Jack Johnson-Jim Jeffries heavyweight championship fight in 1910. Johnson, the new champion, was an arrogant black man, so Jeffries, the old former champion, was called out of retirement in the interest of white supremacy. Conan Doyle declined the offer, stating that it was more likely to foster bigotry than combat it.
Barrie, on the other hand, stopped growing when he was still quite small (5'3" according to his passport), was extremely introverted, and though he was married, his relationship was apparently uncomssumated. "Boys can't love," he explained to his wife.
Nonetheless, Barrie and his friends, Jerome K. Jerome, Conan Doyle, P.G. Wodehouse, and others, founded a cricket club, called Allahakbarries. Conan Doyle was the only member who could actually play cricket.
- from Otto Penzler's introduction to J.M Barrie's Sherlock Holmes pastiche, "The Late Sherlock Holmes", in The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories.
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