My Brother Henry

J.M. Barrie’s story, ‘My Brother Henry’ demonstrates the power of the writer’s imagination to create and demolish characters and events at will. The writer suggests in the story that a lie does not necessarily have to be told to create a false representation of reality. A reluctance to contradict or oppose wrong notions can create false impressions in the minds of others. Once this false impression is made, it is strengthened by additional details. The idea gathers colour, form and vigouries of characters. Every person contributes graphically to its existence.
The narrator of the story, James, never had a brother, Henry; he had only one, Alexander. The name, Henry, came up accidentally at Pettigrew’s home in a London suburb. Pettigrew remarked that he had met a man who knew the narrator’s brother, Henry. James corrected this notion. He probably meant Alexander, but the man in question, Scudamour, had definitely mentioned Alexander as well as Henry. James had realized that Scudamour had mistaken himself to be Henry. In short, James was his “own brother, Henry”. This mistake James pointed out to Pettigrew and it seemed that the matter had been sorted out.
However, that was not the end of Henry. Scudamour wanted to meet James, the author, because he had met and knew Henry. When Scudamour and James last met, the former asked the latter where Henry was at that time. Dreading a long explanation of the mistake, James allowed Scudamour to hold on to the name, Henry. When Scudamour asked about Henry, James perpetuated the mistake by informing Scudamour that Henry was in India, “married and doing well”.
A few weeks later, Scudamour met James and asked about Henry again. Now, James was a writer who preferred to let fanciful notions be rather than remove them by reason and purpose. James was the archetypal artist, who exists on an imaginary plane. For him, the prosaic details of everyday life were both boring and redundant. Thus, he told Scudamour that he had heard from Henry by the last mail and hinted that “Henry was having trouble with his wife”. James meant the remark to mean that Henry’s wife was in ill-health. However, he was in no control over the interpretation Scudamour would make of this piece of information. It was fairly apparent to James that Scudamour concluded that Henry was having marital problems. Scudamour’s next question confirmed James’ supposition. Scudamour asked what would happen to the children if Henry and his wife separated. James strengthened this wrong notion of Scudamour by saying that the children were coming to stay with Alexander “by the middle of the next moth”. When Scudamour met James next, and asked about Henry, James replied that “Henry had gone to live in Bombay, and would not be home for years”. James’ tone was brusque, so Scudamour concluded that James was upset because Scudamour had told Pettigrew that “Henry’s wife had run away from him”. This tangle of fabricated details was due entirely to James’ habit of allowing a wrong notion to continue and grow without setting it right.
James and Scudamour didn’t meet again for a long time, but they heard, from a common friend, about each other. Peculiarly enough, the next move to add to the character and persona of Henry was made by James himself. Scudamour wrote to James requesting him to give Scudamour’s nephew, who was going to Bombay, an introductory letter to Henry. James sent the “required note of introduction” to Henry, without battling an eyelid, knowing fully well that Henry, his supposed brother existed only in the realm of imagination. A little later James heard from Pettigrew that Scudamour was in Edinburgh to see Henry’s children. A few days later, Alexander, James’ real brother, sent James a telegram urgently if he knew a man called Scudamour. James made his masterful contribution to this tissue of lies by declaring that he knew “no one of the name of Scudamour”.
Reports and snippets of information about Henry and his family continued to float around the social circles with Scudamour and James frequenting them. Rumours flew fast and being unchecked, they took on proportions beyond the imagination. James felt that he was being dragged into a quagmire of deception and, wanting to detach himself from it all, he decided to ‘kill’ Henry. It seemed to James that the character of Henry, which had begun out of an irresponsible reluctance to tell the truth, had snowballed into a person who existed and was real to many people. The time had come to terminate this fictitious character, so James spread the word that Henry had died of fever. When Scudamour wanted to know what would happen to his children, who were in Alexander’s custody in Edinburgh, James replied that “the children were both drowned in the Forth”; that, as far as James knew, was the end of Henry, whom he had created and destroyed willfully.
The story demonstrates the writer’s ability to create and annul at will. The mind is a highly creative faculty and can make a radical transformation of reality. In the small lies that human beings tell everyday, lie the seeds of their minds’ creativity. The writer’s art is composed of just this radical creativity. He creates, sketches, decorates, colours and makes associations. In the writer’s mind, lurks enormous power. His power is exercised through his pen or his speech. The story demonstrates also how a misconception can also rise, grow and magnify itself. It is similar to the writer’s art, which has the power to create something out of nothing.

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