THE HETEROGENEOUS MAGIC OF MAUGHAM
=i=
Now, I don't know where to begin. Probably I shall not know where to leave
off, either. That is my usual misfortune, to write a chapter at both ends.
It is a fatal thing, like the doubly-consuming candle. Perhaps I might
start with the sapience of Hector MacQuarrie, author of _Tahiti Days_. I
am tempted to, because so many people think of W. Somerset Maugham as the
author of _The Moon and Sixpence_. The day will come, however, when people
will think of him as the man who wrote _Of Human Bondage_.
This novel does not need praise. All it needs, like the grand work it is,
is attention; and that it increasingly gets.
[Illustration: W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM]
=ii=
Theodore Dreiser reviewed _Of Human Bondage_ for the New Republic. I
reprint part of what he said:
"Sometimes in retrospect of a great book the mind falters, confused by the
multitude and yet the harmony of the detail, the strangeness of the
frettings, the brooding, musing intelligence that has foreseen, loved,
created, elaborated, perfected, until, in the middle ground which we call
life, somewhere between nothing and nothing, hangs the perfect thing which
we love and cannot understand, but which we are compelled to confess a
work of art. It is at once something and nothing, a dream of happy memory,
a song, a benediction. In viewing it one finds nothing to criticise or to
regret. The thing sings, it has colour. It has rapture. You wonder at the
loving, patient care which has evolved it.
"Here is a novel or biography or autobiography or social transcript of the
utmost importance. To begin with, it is unmoral, as a novel of this kind
must necessarily be. The hero is born with a club foot, and in
consequence, and because of a temperament delicately attuned to the
miseries of life, suffers all the pains, recessions, and involute self
tortures which only those who have striven handicapped by what they have
considered a blighting defect can understand. He is a youth, therefore,
with an intense craving for sympathy and understanding. He must have it.
The thought of his lack, and the part which his disability plays in it
soon becomes an obsession. He is tortured, miserable.
"Curiously the story rises to no spired climax. To some it has apparently
appealed as a drab, unrelieved narrative. To me at least it is a gorgeous
weave, as interesting and valuable at the beginning as at the end. There
is material in its three hundred thousand or more words for many novels
and indeed several philosophies, and even a religion or stoic hope. There
are a series of women, of course--drab, pathetic, enticing as the case may
be,--who lead him through the mazes of sentiment, sex, love, pity,
passion; a wonderful series of portraits and of incidents. There are a
series of men friends of a peculiarly inclusive range of intellectuality
and taste, who lead him, or whom he leads, through all the intricacies of
art, philosophy, criticism, humour. And lastly comes life itself, the
great land and sea of people, England, Germany, France, battering,
corroding, illuminating, a Goyaesque world.
"Naturally I asked myself how such a book would be received in America, in
England. In the latter country I was sure, with its traditions and the
Athenæum and the Saturday Review, it would be adequately appreciated.
Imagine my surprise to find that the English reviews were almost uniformly
contemptuous and critical on moral and social grounds. The hero was a
weakling, not for a moment to be tolerated by sound, right-thinking men.
On the other hand, in America the reviewers for the most part have seen
its true merits and stated them. Need I say, however, that the New York
World finds it 'the sentimental servitude of a poor fool,' or that the
Philadelphia Press sees fit to dub it 'futile Philip,' or that the Outlook
feels that 'the author might have made his book true without making it so
frequently distasteful'; or that the Dial cries 'a most depressing
impression of the futility of life'?
"Despite these dissonant voices it is still a book of the utmost import,
and has so been received. Compact of the experiences, the dreams, the
hopes, the fears, the disillusionments, the ruptures, and the
philosophising of a strangely starved soul, it is a beacon light by which
the wanderer may be guided. Nothing is left out; the author writes as
though it were a labour of love. It bears the imprint of an eager, almost
consuming desire to say truly what is in his heart.
"Personally, I found myself aching with pain when, yearning for sympathy,
Philip begs the wretched Mildred, never his mistress but on his level, to
no more than tolerate him. He finally humiliates himself to the extent of
exclaiming, 'You don't know what it means to be a cripple!' The pathos of
it plumbs the depths. The death of Fannie Price, of the sixteen-year-old
mother in the slum, of Cronshaw, and the rambling agonies of old Ducroz
and of Philip himself, are perfect in their appeal.
"There are many other and all equally brilliant pictures. No one short of
a genius could rout the philosophers from their lairs and label them as
individuals 'tempering life with rules agreeable to themselves' or could
follow Mildred Rogers, waitress of the London A B C restaurant, through
all the shabby windings of her tawdry soul. No other than a genius endowed
with an immense capacity for understanding and pity could have sympathised
with Fannie Price, with her futile and self-destructive art dreams; or old
Cronshaw, the wastrel of poetry and philosophy; or Mons. Ducroz, the
worn-out revolutionary; or Thorne Athelny, the caged grandee of Spain; or
Leonard Upjohn, airy master of the art of self-advancement; or Dr. South,
the vicar of Blackstable, and his wife--these are masterpieces. They are
marvellous portraits; they are as smooth as a Vermeer, as definite as a
Hals; as brooding and moving as a Rembrandt. The study of Carey himself,
while one sees him more as a medium through which the others express
themselves, still registers photographically at times. He is by no means a
brooding voice but a definite, active, vigorous character.
"If the book can be said to have a fault it will lie for some in its
length, 300,000 words, or for others in the peculiar reticence with which
the last love affair in the story is handled. Until the coming of Sallie
Athelny all has been described with the utmost frankness. No situation,
however crude or embarrassing, has been shirked. In the matter of the
process by which he arrived at the intimacy which resulted in her becoming
pregnant not a word is said. All at once, by a slight frown which she
subsequently explains, the truth is forced upon you that there has been a
series of intimacies which have not been accounted for. After Mildred
Rogers and his relationship with Norah Nesbit it strikes one as
strange....
"One feels as though one were sitting before a splendid Shiraz or
Daghestan of priceless texture and intricate weave, admiring, feeling,
responding sensually to its colours and tones. Mr. Maugham ... has
suffered for the joy of the many who are to read after him. By no willing
of his own he has been compelled to take life by the hand and go down
where there has been little save sorrow and degradation. The cup of gall
and wormwood has obviously been lifted to his lips and to the last drop he
has been compelled to drink it. Because of this, we are enabled to see the
rug, woven of the tortures and delights of a life. We may actually walk
and talk with one whose hands and feet have been pierced with nails."
=iii=
I turn, for a different example of the heterogeneous magic of Maugham,
including his ability to create and sustain a mood in his readers, to the
words of Mr. MacQuarrie, who writes:
"It was Tahiti. With a profound trust in my discretion, or perhaps an
utter ignorance of the homely fact that people have their feelings, a
London friend sent us a copy of _The Moon and_ _Sixpence_. This friend,
actually a beautiful, well set up woman of the intelligent class in
England (which is more often than not the upper fringes or spray of the
_bourgeoisie_), wrote: 'You will be interested in this book, since quite
the most charming portion of it deals with your remote island of Tahiti. I
met the author last night at Lady B----'s. I think the landlady at the
end, Mrs. Johnson, is a perfect darling.'
"Knowing Somerset Maugham as a dramatist, the author of that kind of play
which never bored one, but rather sent one home suffused with
pleasantness, I opened the book with happy anticipation. Therefore--and
the title of the book, _The Moon and Sixpence_, gave a jolly calming
reaction--I was surprised and frankly annoyed when I found myself
compelled to follow the fortunes of a large red-headed man with mighty sex
appeal, who barged his way through female tears to a final goal which
seemed to be a spiritual achievement, and a nasty death in a native
_fare_. I was alarmed; here was a man writing something enormously strong,
when I had been accustomed to associate him with charming London
nights--the theatre, perfect acting, no middle class problems, a dropping
of one's women folks at their doors and a return to White's and whiskey
and a soda. And furthermore, in this book of his, he had picked up Lavina,
the famous landlady of the Tiare Hotel, the uncrowned queen of Tahiti, and
with a few strokes of his pen, had dissected her, and exposed her to the
world as she was. Here I must quote:
"'Tall and extremely stout, she would have been an imposing presence if
the great good nature of her face had not made it impossible for her to
express anything but kindliness. Her arms were like legs of mutton, her
breasts like giant cabbages; her face, broad and fleshy, gave you an
impression of almost indecent nakedness and vast chin succeeded vast
chin.'
"This may seem a small matter in a great world. Tahiti is a small world,
and this became a great matter. I read the book twice, decided that
Somerset Maugham could no longer be regarded as a pleasant liqueur, but
rather as the joint of a meal requiring steady digestion, and suppressed
_The Moon and Sixpence_ on Tahiti. The temptation to lend it to a kindred
spirit was almost unbearable, but the thought of Lavina hearing of the
above description of her person frightened me and I resisted. For kindred
souls, on Tahiti as elsewhere, have their own kindred souls, and slowly
but surely the fact that a writer had described her arms as legs of mutton
(perfect!) and her breasts as huge cabbages (even better!) would have
oozed its way to Lavina, sending her to bed for six days, with gloom
spread over Tahiti and no cocktails.
"All of which is a trifle by the way. Yet in writing of Somerset Maugham
one must gaze along all lines of vision. And it seemed to me that Tahiti
in general, and Papeete in particular should supply a clear one; for here,
certainly, in the days when Maugham visited the island a man could be
mentally dead, spiritually naked and physically unashamed. I therefore
sought Lavina one afternoon as she sat clothed as with a garment by the
small side verandah of the Tiare Hotel. (Lavina was huge; the verandah was
a small verandah as verandahs go; there was just room for me and a bottle
of rum.)
"'Lavina,' I remarked; 'many persons who write come to Tahiti.'
"'It is true,' she admitted, 'but not as the heavy rain, rather as the few
drops at the end.'
"'Do you like them?' I enquired.
"One makes that kind of remark on Tahiti. The climate demands such, since
the answer can be almost anything, a meandering spreading-of-weight kind
of answer.
"'These are good men,' said Lavina steadily, wandering off into the old
and possibly untrue story of a lady called Beatrice Grimshaw and her
dilemma on a schooner in mid-Pacific, when the captain, a gentle ancient,
thinking that the dark women were having it all their own way, offered to
embrace Miss Grimshaw, finding in return a gun pointing at his middle,
filling him with quaint surprise that anyone could possibly offer violence
in defence of a soul in so delightful a climate.
"After which and a rum cocktail, I said: 'Lavina, did you see much of
M'sieur Somerset Maugham when he was here?'
"'It is the man who writes?' she inquired lazily.
"'It is,' I returned.
"'It is the _beau garçon-ta-ta, neneenha roa?_' she suggested.
"'Probably not,' I said; 'I suspect you are thinking, as usual, of Rupert
Brooke. M'sieur Maugham may be regarded as _beau_, but he is not an
elderly waiter of forty-seven, therefore we may not call him a _garçon_.'
"'It is,' Lavina admitted; 'that I am thinking of M'sieur Rupert, he is
the _beau garçon_.'
"'But,' I said, 'I want to know what you thought of M'sieur Somerset
Maugham?'
"Once started on Rupert Brooke, and Lavina would go on for the afternoon!
"'I respect M'sieur Morn,' said Lavina.
"'Oh!' thought I; 'if she respects him, then I'm not going to get much.'
"'His French is not mixed,' she continued, referring to Maugham's Parisian
accent; 'I speak much with him, and he listen, with but a small question
here, and one there. It is the pure French from Paris, as M'sieur _le
Governeur_ speak, who is the pig. But when he speak much, then it is like
the coral which breaks.'
"Lavina now wandered off permanently; it was impossible to bring her back.
Her image of the brittle coral branches was a mild personality directed at
Maugham's stutter, which seldom escapes the most sophisticated observer.
For those who interview him always find well cut suitings, clean collars
and the stutter, and very little else that they can lay hold of with any
degree of honesty. Which only goes to prove my own opinion that Maugham,
as an observer, refuses to have his own vision clogged by prying eyes at
himself.
"I expect that if my French had been better, I might have got some
information about Maugham in Tahiti from the bland and badly built French
officials who lurk in the official club near the Pomare Palace. I was
reduced, in my rather casual investigation, to questioning natives and
schooner captains. Once I felt confident of gaining a picture, I asked
Titi of Taunoa. (Titi is the lady who figures a trifle disgracefully in
Gauguin's _Noanoa_, the woman he found boring after a few weeks, her
French blood being insufficiently exotic to his spirit.)
"Said Titi: 'M'sieur Morn? Yes, him I know; he speak good French, and take
the door down from the _fare_ on which is the picture done by Gauguin of
the lady whose legs are like thin pillows and her arms like fat ropes,
very what you call strained, and funny.'
"After which her remarks centred around a lover of her sister, who had
just died at the age of seventy, and Titi considered that the denouement
made by Manu, the sister, was uncalled for at the death bed, since the
true and faithful wife stood there surrounded by nine children, all safely
born the right side of the sheet. She did mention that the removal of the
door from the _fare_ caused the wind to enter. And although I often made
inquiries, I never gained much information. Tahiti, as a whole, seemed
unaware of Maugham's visit.
"They may have adored him; but I suspect he was a quiet joy, the kind
native Tahiti soon forgets, certainly not the kind of joy she embodies in
her national songs and _himines_. Such are the merry drunkards,
inefficient though earnest white hulahula dancers and the plain (more than
everyday) sinners who cut up rough with wild jagged edges and cruel
tearings.
"His occasional appearance at the French club would raise his status,
removing any light touches with his junketings, perhaps turning them into
dignified ceremonies. Which, for the Tahitian, approaches the end. The
Tahitian never quite understands the white man who consorts with the
French officials, although many do. 'For are not these men of Farane,'
says the native, 'like the hen that talks without feathers?'--whatever
that may mean, but it suggests at once the talkative Frenchman denuding
himself on hot evenings, and wearing but the native _pareu_ to hide
portions of his bad figure.
"But although, in some ways, Maugham hid himself from the natives and
pleasant half-castes, he saw them all right, and clearly, since the
closing pages of the _The Moon and Sixpence_ display a magical picture of
that portion of Tahiti he found time to explore."
=iv=
Mr. Maugham now offers us _On a Chinese Screen_, sketches of Chinese life,
and _East of Suez_, his new play.
There are fifty-eight sketches in _On a Chinese Screen_, portraits
including European residents in China as well as native types. Here is a
sample of the book, the little descriptive study with which it closes,
entitled "A Libation to the Gods":
"She was an old woman, and her face was wizened and deeply lined. In her
grey hair three long silver knives formed a fantastic headgear. Her dress
of faded blue consisted of a long jacket, worn and patched, and a pair of
trousers that reached a little below her calves. Her feet were bare, but
on one ankle she wore a silver bangle. It was plain that she was very
poor. She was not stout but squarely built and in her prime she must have
done without effort the heavy work in which her life had been spent. She
walked leisurely, with the sedate tread of an elderly woman, and she
carried on her arm a basket. She came down to the harbour; it was crowded
with painted junks; her eyes rested for a moment curiously on a man who
stood on a narrow bamboo raft, fishing with cormorants; and then she set
about her business. She put down her basket on the stones of the quay, at
the water's edge, and took from it a red candle. This she lit and fixed in
a chink of the stones. Then she took several joss-sticks, held each of
them for a moment in the flame of the candle and set them up around it.
She took three tiny bowls and filled them with a liquid that she had
brought with her in a bottle and placed them neatly in a row. Then from
her basket she took rolls of paper cash and paper 'shoes' and unravelled
them, so that they should burn easily. She made a little bonfire, and when
it was well alight she took the three bowls and poured out some of their
contents before the smouldering joss-sticks. She bowed herself three times
and muttered certain words. She stirred the burning paper so that the
flames burned brightly. Then she emptied the bowls on the stones and again
bowed three times. No one took the smallest notice of her. She took a few
more paper cash from her basket and flung them in the fire. Then, without
further ado, she took up her basket, and with the same leisurely, rather
heavy tread, walked away. The gods were duly propitiated, and like an old
peasant woman in France, who has satisfactorily done her day's
housekeeping, she went about her business."
=v=
W. Somerset Maugham was born in 1874, the son of Robert Ormond Maugham. He
married Syrie, daughter of the late Dr. Barnardo. Mr. Maugham has a
daughter. His education was got at King's School, Canterbury, at
Heidelberg University and at St. Thomas's Hospital, London.
Mr. Maugham's father was a comparatively prominent solicitor, responsible
for the foundation of the Incorporated Society of Solicitors in England.
Somerset Maugham, after studying medicine at Heidelberg, went to St.
Thomas's, in the section of London known as Lambeth. He obtained his
medical degree there. St. Thomas's just across the river from Westminster
proved his medical ruin, and his literary birth. The hospital is situated
on the border of the slum areas of South London where much that is
hopeless, terrible, and wildly cheerful can be found. Persons are not
wanting who hold that the slums of Battersea and Lambeth contain more
misery and poverty than Limehouse, Whitechapel and the dark forest
surrounding the Commercial Road combined. To St. Thomas's daily comes a
procession of battered derelicts, seeking attention from the young men in
white tunics who hope to be doctors on their own account some day. To St.
Thomas's came Eliza of Lambeth, came Liza's mother, came Jim and Tom. Here
is the genesis of Maugham's first serious work, _Liza of Lambeth_.
It will be simpler and less confusing to deal with Somerset Maugham in the
first instance as a maker of books rather than as a playwright. One cannot
help believing that, while not one of his plays can be regarded as a pot
boiler, they yet but seldom display that fervent purpose found in his
books. Yet in his plays, one finds a greater attention to conventional
technique and "form" than one finds in books like _Of Human Bondage_ and
_The Moon and Sixpence_.
The first book launched by Somerset Maugham, _Liza of Lambeth_, could
hardly have been, considering its slight dimensions, a clearer indication
of the line he was to follow. It came out at a time when Gissing was still
in favour, and the odour of mean streets was accepted as synonymous with
literary honesty and courage. There is certainly no lack of either about
this idyll of Elizabeth Kemp of the lissome limbs and auburn hair. The
story pursues its way, and one sees the soul of a woman shining clearly
through the racy dialect and frolics of the Chingford beano, the rueful
futility of faithful Thomas and the engaging callousness of Liza's
mother.
Somerset Maugham's next study in female portraiture showed how far he
could travel towards perfection. _Mrs. Craddock_, which is often called
his best book, is a sex satire punctuated by four curtains, two of comedy
and two of tragedy. This mixture of opposites should have been enough to
damn it in the eyes of a public intent upon classifying everything by
means of labels and of making everything so classified stick to its label
like grim death. Yet the unclassified may flourish, and does, when its
merit is beyond dispute. _Mrs. Craddock_ appeared fully a decade before
its time, when Victorian influences were still alive, and the modern idea
for well to do women to have something to justify their existence was
still in the nature of a novelty. Even in the fuller light of experience,
Maugham could hardly have bettered his study of an impulsive and exigent
woman, rising at the outset to the height of a bold and womanly choice in
defiance of social prejudice and family tradition, and then relapsing
under the disillusions of marriage into the weakest failings of her class,
rising again, from a self-torturing neurotic into a kind of Niobe at the
death of her baby.
The ironic key of the book is at its best, in the passage half way
through--
"Mr. Craddock's principles, of course, were quite right; he had given her
plenty of run and ignored her cackle, and now she had come home to roost.
There is nothing like a knowledge of farming, and an acquaintance with the
habits of domestic animals, to teach a man how to manage his wife."
=vi=
As a playwright Mr. Maugham is quite as well known as he is for his
novels. The author of _Lady Frederick_, _Mrs. Dot_, and _Caroline_--the
creator of Lord Porteous and Lady Kitty in _The Circle_--writes his plays
because it amuses him to do so and because they supply him with an
excellent income. Here is a good story:
It seems that Maugham had peddled his first play, _Lady Frederick_, to the
offices of seventeen well-known London managers, until it came to rest in
the Archives of the Court Theatre. The Court Theatre, standing in Sloane
Square near the Tube station, is definitely outside the London theatre
area, but as the scene of productions by the Stage Society, it is kept in
the running. However, it might conceivably be the last port of call for a
worn manuscript.
It so happened that Athole Stewart, the manager of the Court Theatre,
found himself needing a play very badly during one season. The theatre had
to be kept open and there was nothing to keep it open with. From a dingy
pile of play manuscripts he chose _Lady Frederick_. He had no hopes of its
success--or so it is said--but the success materialised. At the
anniversary of _Lady Frederick_ in London, Maugham thought of asking to
dinner the seventeen managers who rejected the play, but realising that no
man enjoyed being reminded of a lost opportunity he decided to forgo the
pleasure.
The circumstances in which _Caroline_ was written give an interesting
reflex on Maugham as an artist. This delicious comedy was put on paper
while Maugham was acting as British agent in Switzerland during the war.
Some of its more amusing lines were written in some haste while a spy (of
uncertain intentions toward Maugham) stood outside in the snow.
=vii=
Someone, probably the gifted Hector MacQuarrie, whom I fear I have
guiltily been quoting in almost every sentence of this chapter, has said
that Maugham writes "transcripts, not of life as a tolerable whole, but of
phases which suit his arbitrary treatment." It is an enlightening
comment.
But Maugham himself is the keenest appraiser of his own intentions in his
work, as when he spoke of the stories in his book, _The Trembling of a
Leaf_, as not short stories, but "a study of the effect of the Islands of
the Pacific on the white man."
The man never stays still. When you think the time is ripe for him
triumphally to tour America--when _The Moon and Sixpence_ has attracted
the widest attention--he insists on going immediately to China. This may
be because, though well set up, black-eyed, broad-framed and excessively
handsome in evening clothes, he is rather diffident.
BOOKS BY W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
NOVELS:
LIZA OF LAMBETH
THE MAKING OF A SAINT
ORIENTATIONS
THE HERO
MRS. CRADDOCK
THE MERRY-GO-ROUND
THE LAND OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN
THE BISHOP'S APRON
THE EXPLORER
THE MAGICIAN
OF HUMAN BONDAGE
THE MOON AND SIXPENCE
THE TREMBLING OF A LEAF
ON A CHINESE SCREEN
PLAYS:
SCHIFFBRÜCHIG
A MAN OF HONOUR
LADY FREDERICK
JACK STRAW
MRS. DOT
THE EXPLORER
PENELOPE
SMITH
THE TENTH MAN
GRACE
LOAVES AND FISHES
THE LAND OF PROMISE
CAROLINE
LOVE IN A COTTAGE
CAESAR'S WIFE
HOME AND BEAUTY
THE UNKNOWN
THE CIRCLE
EAST OF SUEZ
SOURCES ON W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Who's Who [In England].
Somerset Maugham in Tahiti: Hitherto unpublished article by Hector
MacQuarrie.
THE BOOKMAN (London).
Private information.