son of a farmer. He made his first appearance on the stage at Halifax in 1864, and then played in the provinces alone and with his wife, Caroline Heath, in East Lynne. After managerial experiences at Leeds and elsewhere, in 1879 he took the management of the old Court theatre, where he introduced Madame Modjeska to London, in an adaptation of Schiller’s Maria Stuart, Adrienne Lecouvreur, La Dame aux camélias and other plays. It was not till 1881, however, when he took the Princess’s theatre, that he became well known to the public in the emotional drama, The Lights o’ London, by G. R. Sims. The play which made him an established favourite was The Silver King by Henry Arthur Jones, perhaps the most successful melodrama ever staged, produced in 1882 with himself as Wilfred Denver, his brother George (an excellent comedian) in the cast, and E. S. Willard (b. 1853) as the “Spider,”—this being the part in which Mr Willard, afterwards a well-known actor both in America and England, first came to the front. Barrett played this part for three hundred nights without a break, and repeated his London success in W. G. Wills’s Claudian which followed. In 1884 he appeared in Hamlet, but soon returned to melodrama, and though he had occasional seasons in London he acted chiefly in the provinces. In 1886 he made his first visit to America, repeated in later years, and in 1898 he visited Australia. During these years the London stage was coming under new influences, and Wilson Barrett’s vogue in melodrama had waned. But in 1895 he struck a new vein of success with his drama of religious emotion, The Sign of the Cross, which crowded his theatre with audiences largely composed of people outside the ordinary circle of playgoers. He attempted to repeat the success with other plays of a religious type, but not with equal effect, and several of his later plays were failures. He died on the 22nd of July 1904. Wilson Barrett was a sterling actor of a robust type and striking physique, not remarkable for intellectual finesse, but excelling in melodrama, and very successful as the central figure on his own stage.
BARRHEAD, a police burgh of Renfrewshire, Scotland, situated on the Levern, 712 m. S.W. of Glasgow by the Glasgow & South-Western railway. Pop. (1901) 9855. Founded in 1773, it has gradually absorbed the villages of Arthurlie, Dovecothall and Grahamston, and become a thriving town. The chief industries include bleaching, calico-printing, cotton-spinning, weaving, iron and brass founding, engineering and the manufacture of sanitary appliances. Neilston (pop. 2668), about 2 m. S.W., has bleachfields and print-works, and 2 m. N. by E. lie Hurlet, where are important manufactures of alum and other chemicals, and Nitshill (pop. 1242) with chemical works, quarries and collieries.
BARRICADE, or Barricado (from the Span. barricada, from barrica, a cask, casks filled with earth having been early used to form barricades), an improvised fortification of earth, paving-stones, trees or any materials ready to hand, thrown up, especially across a street, to hinder the advance of an enemy; in the old wooden warships a fence or wooden rail, supported by stanchions and strengthened by various materials, extending across the quarter-deck as a protection during action.
BARRIE, JAMES MATTHEW (1860–), British novelist and dramatist, was born at Kirriemuir, a small village in Forfarshire, on the 9th of May 1860. He was educated at the Dumfries academy and Edinburgh University. He has told us in his quasi-autobiographical Margaret Ogilvy that he wrote tales in the garret before he went to school, and at Edinburgh wrote the greater part of a three-volume novel, which a publisher presumed was the work of a clever lady and offered to publish for £100. The offer was not accepted, and it was through journalism that he found his way to literature. After a short period of waiting in Edinburgh, he became leader-writer on the Nottingham Journal in February 1883. To this paper he contributed also special articles and notes, which provided an opening and training for his personal talent. He soon began to submit articles to London editors, and on the 17th of November 1884 Mr Frederick Greenwood printed in the St James’s Gazette his article on “An Auld Licht Community.” With the encouragement of this able editor, more Auld Licht “Idylls” followed; and in 1885 Mr Barrie moved to London. He continued to write for the St James’s Gazette and for Home Chimes (edited by Mr F. W. Robinson). He was soon enlisted by Mr Alexander Riach for the Edinburgh Evening Dispatch, which in turn led to his writing (over the signature “Gavin Ogilvy”) for Dr Robertson Nicoll’s British Weekly. Later he became a contributor to the Scots (afterwards National) Observer, edited by W. E. Henley, and also to the Speaker, upon its foundation in 1890. In 1887 he published his first book, Better Dead. It was a mere jeu d’esprit, a specimen of his humorous journalism, elaborated from the St James’s Gazette. This was followed in 1888 by Auld Licht Idylls, a collection of the Scots village sketches written for the same paper. They portrayed the life and humours of his native village, idealized as “Thrums,” and were the fruits of early observation and of his mother’s tales. “She told me everything,” Mr Barrie has written, “and so my memories of our little red town were coloured by her memories.” Kirriemuir itself was not wholly satisfied with the portrait, but “Thrums” took its place securely on the literary map of the world. In the same year he published An Edinburgh Eleven, sketches from the British Weekly of eminent Edinburgh students; also his first long story, When a Man’s Single, a humorous transcription of his experiences as journalist, particularly in the Nottingham office. The book was introduced by what was in fact another Thrums “Idyll,” on a higher level than the rest of the book. In 1889 came A Window in Thrums. This beautiful book, and the Idylls, gave the full measure of Mr Barrie’s gifts of humanity, humour and pathos, with abundant evidence of the whimsical turn of his wit, and of his original and vernacular style. In 1891 he made a collection of his lighter papers from the St James’s Gazette and published them as My Lady Nicotine. In 1891 appeared his first long novel, The Little Minister, which had been first published serially in Good Words. It introduced, not with unmixed success, extraneous elements, including the winsome heroine Babbie, into the familiar life of Thrums, but proved the author’s possession of a considerable gift of romance. In 1894 he published Margaret Ogilvy, based on the life of his mother and his own relations with her, most tenderly conceived and beautifully written, though too intimate for the taste of many. The book is full of revelations of great interest to admirers of Mr Barrie’s genius. The following year came Sentimental Tommy, a story tracing curiously the psychological development of the “artistic temperament” in a Scots lad of the people. R. L. Stevenson supposed himself to be portrayed in the hero, but it may be safely assumed that the author derived his material largely from introspection. The story was completed by a sequel, Tommy and Grizel, published in 1900. The effect of this story was somewhat marred by the comparative failure of the scenes in society remote from Thrums. In 1902 he published The Little White Bird, a pretty fantasy, wherein he gave full play to his whimsical invention, and his tenderness for child life, which is relieved by the genius of sincerity from a suspicion of mawkishness. This book contained the episode of “Peter Pan,” which afterwards suggested the play of that name. In the meantime Mr Barrie had been developing his talent as a dramatist. In 1892 Mr Toole had made a great success at his own theatre of Barrie’s Walker, London, a farce founded on a sketch in When a Man’s Single. In 1893 Mr Barrie married Miss Ansell (divorced in 1909), who had acted in Walker, London. In this year he wrote, with Sir A. Conan Doyle, a play called Jane Annie. He found more success, however, in The Professor’s Love-Story in 1895; and in 1897 the popularity of his dramatized version of The Little Minister probably confirmed him in a predilection for drama, evident already in some of his first sketches in the Nottingham Journal. In 1900 Mr Bourchier produced The Wedding Guest, which was printed as a supplement to the Fortnightly Review in December of the same year. After the publication of The Little White Bird, Mr Barrie burst upon the town as a popular and prolific playwright. The struggling journalist of the early 'nineties had now become one of the most prosperous literary men of the day. In 1903 no fewer than three plays from his hand held the stage—Quality Street, The Admirable
