When Winter Comes to Main Street Part 20

"'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 t.i.ti of Taunoa. (t.i.ti 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 t.i.ti: '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 t.i.ti 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, ent.i.tled "A Libation to the G.o.ds":

"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, fis.h.i.+ng 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 c.h.i.n.k 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 G.o.ds 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 s.e.x satire punctuated by four curtains, two of comedy and two of tragedy. This mixture of opposites should have been enough to d.a.m.n it in the eyes of a public intent upon cla.s.sifying everything by means of labels and of making everything so cla.s.sified stick to its label like grim death. Yet the uncla.s.sified 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 cla.s.s, 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 pa.s.sage 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 ma.n.u.script.

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 ma.n.u.scripts 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 circ.u.mstances 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 Ap.r.o.n THE EXPLORER THE MAGICIAN OF HUMAN BONDAGE THE MOON AND SIXPENCE THE TREMBLING OF A LEAF ON A CHINESE SCREEN

PLAYS: SCHIFFBRuCHIG 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.

CHAPTER XVIII

BOOKS WE LIVE BY

=i=

_The Parallel New Testament_ is by Dr. James Moffatt, whose _New Translation of the New Testament_ has excited such wide admiration and praise. _The Parallel New Testament_ presents the Authorised Version and Professor Moffatt's translation in parallel columns, together with a brief introduction to the New Testament.

I suppose there is no sense in my expending adjectives in praise of Dr.