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William Somerset Maugham was born in the British Embassy in Paris, on January 25, 1874 to Robert Ormond Maugham and Edith Mary Snell. William’s father was a wealthy solicitor. He worked for the Embassy in France. William was the sixth and the youngest child. His father and grandfather were prominent attorneys and his eldest brother was England’s Lord Chancellor.
Childhood
Though destined to be a lawyer, Maugham was unable to follow the family tradition. Moreover, at the age of 10, he unfortunately became an orphan. He was later sent to England to live with his uncle, Henry Maugham. All these circumstances made him shy and introvert. It resulted in making him a passive observer, rather than an active participant.
He was raised in France for the initial years of his life and that had an impact on his upbringing. He was more familiar with French than English and his first introduction to literature was also to fables of La Fontaine. When William was three years old, his elder siblings were sent to boarding schools, leaving William to enjoy total attention of his parents. Later, Robert Ormond Maugham rented a house at Deauville for his family to enjoy the sea air. In France, little Willie had a normal childhood, playing with neighborhood kids at Champs-Elysées where he was taken regularly by his French nurse. He was enrolled into a school for French children. Willie had inherited shortness from his father - at 5.7 foot he felt alienated form the normal world of men of 6.2 foot.
On his seventh birthday, he was given 20 Francs and asked what would he do with the money. The future playwright expressed his desire to see Sarah Bernhardt, a highly popular theatre actress of the time. One of his elder brother took him to see a play that night.
Soon after his eighth birthday, Willie received the first wound of his life - death of his beloved mother. The event left an incurable scar on the young heart from which he perhaps never recovered. Willie was taken away from the French school and was put under a clergyman. Willie was left alien with his ailing father. The bliss of parental shelter was snatched away completely from his head two years later. Robert Ormond Maugham died of cancer in 1884.
The Fatherland
The event uprooted the 10 year old from the land of his birth. He had to travel to England to live rest of his life in England with his uncle at Whitstable. The bewildered Willie sobbed uncontrollably when his French nurse was dismissed. He was admitted to a school in Canterbury, from where he used to come to his uncle's place for holidays. The change from happening Paris-life to conventional Victorian English province was a drastic one for Willie. He developed dislike for his uncle for his various idiosyncrasies. The nephew and his wife were put to suffer from biting cold but the stove was not lit until the clergyman had cold. His harsh treatment to his wife and nephew left an impression of a hypocrite and almost villainous clergyman.
Willie had developed good reading habits, finishing off Walter Scott by the time he was 12. He found solace in the dreamland of Alice in Wonderland and Arabian Nights. But Uncle Henry would not allow him to read or even to play on Sundays. Willie's memory was strewn with many stories of greediness of his uncle.
He used to share the newspaper with two other neighbor, and he never shared his collection of whiskey with any of the visitors. Willie was well provided for from what what he inherited from his father. But the fatherly love and affection was what he longed for at that tender age.
Another dent in his fortune was caused by a physical disability he encountered after coming to England. In this land of strangers and strange tongue, he began to stammer. It was a kind of reflection of his physical environment, his insecurities and want of affection. This handicap remained with him all through his life and he never cared to cure it even in his later life, till he was in his 60s. Some believe it to be his way of winning sympathy and attention, something he was deprived of at the time of his mother's death. His handicap made him a loner. Even at his school, he hardly participated in the games.
Education
His uncle thought it fit for Willie to switch over school to King's School, considered to be one of the oldest schools of England. Here, he became very studious, compensating for his physical disability to join in sports. He learnt Greek and Latin and stood first in his class. He also earned scholarship to Senior School, further winning prizes for music, divinity, history and French.
At King's School he found a sympathizer in form of his new headmaster, Thomas Field. He also acquired the popularity and fame to boost up his little ego with the help of his sharp wit. He also struck friendship with a boy called Rose and they enjoyed their school days happily. Some scholars trace Maugham's homosexual urge back to his King's School days. He always tried to find out company of the boys who had all the qualities that he himself lacked.
At the senior school he was once put into the Black Book by a senior bully for stammering in the classroom. The humiliation was too much for him to handle. But he was helpless. He left King's School in 1889 for good as he was not interested in going to Oxford to continue his study. He wanted to 'get out in to the world'. He also left vicarage and took lodgings with two other boys, one Chinese, a Frenchman and a New Englander. He was very happy with his new surroundings. When the New Englander was replaced by an Englishman, John Ellingham Brooks, this ex-Cambridgeman turned writer attracted adolescent Willie the most. He had his first sexual experience at the age of 16, with 26 years old Brooks. Willie traveled to Heidelberg, away from the Victorian England, he found the budding writer within himself. He could not express his desire to pursue a career in writing to his uncle, but deep within he was sure that he could contribute best there. While at Heidelberg, he had drafted out his first book, a biography of a German composer, Meyerbeer. Though he knew little about Meyerbeer's music, he wrote the script, which was turned down. He threw the script into fire.
It was through Uncle Henry's friend, Albert Dixon, Willie found his first job in an accountant's office. He joined the firm, but he hated his work and office. Disgusted, he returned to Whitstable, where his uncle took him to a doctor for he wanted to cure William's instability of mind and thoughts. The doctor suggested William to take up medicine as a profession. He got himself registered at St Thomas's Hospital in London in 1892.
Medical School
At the medical school, he learnt a lot about human body and human nature. Once, while dissecting a human body, he was searching for a nerve. His demonstrator opened up the doors of wisdom to this dismayed student by saying, "The normal is the rarest thing in the world". The words truck William and almost became the maxim of his life-work. It was at London, that this shy youngman had his sexual experience with a prostitute, his first with opposite sex. Later on, he used to take up his friend Walter Payne's former girlfriends. He, actually, could never bring himself to trust a woman totally. He always found her difficult to manage. His homosexual inclination was very clear and obvious to himself. But he was always shy to accept it. It was further made into a taboo, as Oscar Wilde - Alfred Douglas scandal became headlines for days in 1895. Undoubtedly, he sympathized with Wilde, but the punishment inflicted upon Wilde made homosexuality a matter of fear and punishment into the young mind of this artist in his early 20s.
At the medical school he revived his writing habits. He wrote, in bits and pieces, passages and dialogues in his diary. He also cultivated his interest in traveling during this time. His creative urge is reflected in the case where he cried over the death of a patient, a mother who died after giving birth to a healthy baby. She was warned against the possibility of the potent danger to her life, but she was determined to have the baby. Perhaps, this was the determination he saw in his own mother, who died after giving birth to a stillborn child. He could also associate himself with the strong will of the mother to create. By the end of the century, Maugham had started to publish his work.
Emergence Of An Author
His shyness and withdrawn nature stimulated him to become a writer. He pursued his writing career religiously, but with practicality. He was very much particular about his payments and was ready to make any changes required by the publishers. His first agent was William Morris Colles. Next followed two major agents of the time - Alexander Pollock Watt and James brand Pinker. His first published work was Liza of Lambeth.
He considered traveling and visiting places to gather first-hand experience of the culture and people essential to writing. He visited Spain and learnt Spanish, and wished to visit Greece and Italy too. However, he could not materialize these plans. He wrote The Making of a Saint based on Italian history narrated in Machiavelli's History of Florence. During his visit to Spain, he enjoyed the spirit and skill with which the bullfights were fought, though he found the concept 'vicious and degrading'. One night he visited a brothel in Granada and picked up a young girl. Soon he came to know that she was too young, almost a child, to be at such a place. The tender-hearted Maugham discovered that the girl was there because of hunger. Maugham gave her some money and left the place.
The Edwardian era (1901-1910) stamped Maugham's existence with a profound sense of putting up a facade. He remained a typical Edwardian assumptive person all his life. The social prominence of the person was all important at the time and Maugham maintained that social side of his life with utmost care. He mingled with the right kind of company the society wished him to meet. With his carefully chosen and prepared dressing, he tried to compensate for his disabilities. Beneath all these pomp and facade lived a boy of less privileged childhood. The fact was reflected in his works again and again. The Lion's Skin, Mr. Know-All and The Yellow Streak are such examples.
Though he is widely known for his novels and short stories, his first major success was a play, A Man Of Honor (1903).
Affairs And Marriage
He met Mrs Syrie Wellcome, wife of Sir Henry Wellcome, a pharmaceutical manufacturer. They first met at a luncheon and again in an opera another evening. They seemed to share their Shavian idea about marriage being a contract between two intellectuals. On their second meeting, both of them found eachother attractive and interesting. At that time Maugham was having relationship with Sue Jones, a promiscuous woman. The Edwardian man within him needed him to settle down with a wife. He proposed Sue, who outrightly rejected him. Maugham immortalized her in the character of Rosie in Cakes and Ale. Sue got married soon after and this depressed Maugham a lot. During this period he again ran into Syrie Wellcome at an opera. They picked up the loose ends of their relationship and started meeting regularly. Syrie had a son through Henry Wellcome, who was taken away to his father. She desperately wanted a baby and after a lot of pleadings, Maugham yielded to her proposal to have a baby without marriage. Unfortunately, Syrie suffered from miscarriage and lost the baby. A few months later Syrie won the custody of her son. They carried on their affair during war-torn Europe in 1914.
Maugham volunteered as an interpreter with Red Cross ambulances. His war experience gave him an insight into human nature. During his war service he mat Gerald Haxton, a youngman full of vitality and adventurous spirit, who later became his secretary-companion-lover. In Haxton, Maugham found the qualities he admired and longed to possess. Scholars discovered a link between Maugham's creativity and relationship with Gerald Haxton. At the same time he was aware that Syrie was pregnant with his baby. He took Syrie to Rome to give birth to their illegitimate child. Syrie arranged for dinners and she invited an intelligence official one evening. He suggested Maugham to serve his country by being a secret agent with his knowledge of German and French, and his profession as a writer would provide a good cover for his secret activities. Maugham agreed. His first assignment was to be carried out under the nose of Swiss police. He served there for about a year. Maugham was to act as an intermediary and was to pass on information from other agents to the authority. He was unsuccessfully interrogated once by the Swiss police where he posed as a playwright, writing in the serene surroundings of Alps. After his Swiss assignment, Maugham got many more in United States and Russia. More than once he was trusted with confidential matters and messages to even the stature of the British Prime Minister, Llyod George.
Meanwhile, Syrie got divorce from her husband and Maugham was to opt for marriage with Syrie or living without her. Syrie had given birth to their daughter Liza. In 1917, he married Syrie Wellcome in Jersey City, the USA. At the time of wedding, both of them knew that each was marrying more out of social constraint rather than for love. Syrie wanted father for her child and Maugham wanted a hostess. He continued his relations with Gerald Haxton which troubled Syrie a lot. She opposed it and that began the tumbling down of their card castle. For years he lived a double life, carrying out his domestic duties at London and carrying out adventurous trips with Haxton. He felt that his trips with Haxton gave him inspiration and imagination. During one of such a trip to Sarawak, both of them survived a bore, an inrush of tidal wave in the river. Their survival was called miraculous as it was a near death experience.
However hard the Maughams tried to balance their lives, their marriage ended in 1927, as they divorced.
Maugham made many long trips to Pacific Islands and Far East and India. His trips resulted in some of his best writings. After his divorce in 1927, Maugham purchased a Villa in Cap Freat on the French Riviera. Haxton, who had been barred (deported) from England, joined Maugham. Maugham enjoyed a royal life style at the Villa, named Villa Mauresque. Inspite of his relocation, he did not stop writing for several hours a day regularly and travelling.
Later Years
Maugham lived a busy life even during his 70s and 80s. Constantly traveling and writing, he visited various places and produced some of his best known books and anthologies. Maugham visited Chicago several times. Once, he also delivered a lecture at the University of Chicago. Chicago’s settings are the base of several of Maugham’s stories. Meanwhile, his daughter had got married and given birth to a son. Maugham played the role of a grandpa enthusiastically.
In 1940, Maugham was forced to flee from France, to escape from the Nazis. Till the war ended, Maugham made the USA his home.
During the war years he wrote two very popular books, The Song of Bernadette and The Keys of the Kingdom. Both the books were well received and he was feeling great about himself. The happiness was short lived as the blow struck him in form of Gerald's fatal illness. He suffered from tuberculosis and Addison's disease. Maugham was taken aback with the news and rushed to New York to be with his beloved Gerald. He took him to the best sanatorium and wished for his quick recovery. He was operated on his damaged lungs, unsuccessfully. In the year 1944, Haxton died. Maugham was cut away from his companion for years. He was left completely devastated. But the lively spirit within him survived him even this blow. Though, ailing from the usual oldage health problems, he was quite active and productive.
There, he earned popularity in Hollywood. After the war came to an end, and life became normal, he left the US accompanied by his friend Alan Searle to permanently reside at the Villa Mauresque. Here, he continued writing, and entertaining the rich and famous. He died at the age of 91, in 1965
WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM [ 1874 – 1965 ]
A British novelist, playwright and short-story writer, W S Maugham was the highest paid author in the 1930’s. He wrote with wit and irony, frequently expressing a cynical attitude towards life. His extensive travelling found place in some of his works. His purpose was only to entertain his readers, and not to teach or preach. His contribution was not confined to one genre. He wrote novels, short stories, essays, plays and travel-books. Obviously, he proved his talent in all of them. He did not limit his works on any one literary figure. Maupassant, Dryden, Chekhov and others influenced him.
He based his works on his experiences he had while travelling. He was often self-contradictory in his views. He left almost no field of literature untouched. He also tried his hands at theatre, successfully. Maugham left a legacy of voluminous literature when he left the world at the age of 91.
JAN. 25, 1874 W Somerset Maugham was born in the British Embassy in Paris.
1882 Mother died of tuberculosis.
1884 Father died of cancer.
1887 Maugham entered King’s School, Canterbury. Maugham came to England to live with his clergyman uncle, Henry Maugham.
1897 Received M D degree from St Thomas’s Hospital, London.
1906 Began love affair with Sue Jones.
1913 His proposal for marriage rejected by Sue Jones.
1916 Visited South Sea island gathering information on Paul Gauguin.
1917 Married Syrie Wellcome.
1917 Served as Chief agent in Russia for the British and American Secret Services. Contracted tuberculosis and spent time in sanatorium. Met Gerald Haxton.
1927 Syrie Wellcome divorced Maugham.
1940 Spent war years in the US.
1944 Death of Gerald Haxton.
Dec 16, 1965 Maugham passed away at his Villa, at the age of 91
1898 The Makings of a Saint
1902 Mrs. Craddock
1905 The Land of the Blessed Virgin
1907 Lady Frederick
1915 Of Human Bondage
1919 The Moon and Sixpence
1921 The Circle
1928 Ashenden
1930 Cakes and Ales
1938 The Summing Up
1944 The Razor’s Edge
1962 Purely for My Pleasure
Maugham had strong views about writing. He firmly believed, like other writers, that it was impossible for a person to write well, until he observed enough humanity. To frame dialogues was very easy for Maugham, as it was a 'natural talent' according to him. However, description was his greatest difficulty. Maugham chose Oscar Wilde, Jonathan Swift and John Dryden as his models in writing.
In 1897, Liza of Lambeth was published. It was a realistic novel, which described his experiences in treating patients from the Lambeth slums of London. His contact with London slum life, through his hospital work, inspired him to write this novel. Maugham was 23 when Liza of Lambeth was published.
As his first novel was successful, Maugham decided to take up writing as a career. He did finish his medical studies, but never practiced. After Liza of Lambeth, he spent 10 years writing unsuccessful novels, short stories and plays.
After Liza of Lambeth, Maugham’s second novel Mrs. Craddock was published in 1902. The story revolves around a woman’s struggle for liberty from the traditional Victorian society.
Between the years 1897 and 1902, two minor and unsuccessful novels, The Making of a Saint and The Hero were published, in 1898 and 1901, respectively. Even, other novels like The Merry-Go-Round, (1904), The Bishop’s Apron (1906), and The Explorer (1908) did not achieve desired success.
In the year 1908, The Magician was published. This novel was based on mystic Aleister Crowley. Maugham and Crowley had taken an instant dislike for each other, when they first met. The novel, thus, depicted the same.
Of Human Bondage, published in 1915, was an autobiographical novel. Maugham had described his unhappiness and anxiety of his early life. The protagonist had a deformed foot, which symbolized Maugham’s stammer. Philip Carey, the hero of the novel, had a club-foot and various phases of his life are discussed in this book.
Maugham’s long trips to the Pacific Islands and the Far East, in 1917, resulted in some of his best writings. The novel, The Moon and Sixpence, published in 1919, was based on Gauguin’s life, a French artist. As he rejected western civilization, he departed from France to Tahiti.
Maugham sold many best–sellers. They were The Moon and Sixpence (1919), The Painted Veil (1925), Cakes and Ales (1930) and few others. Cakes and Ales satirized Thomas Hardy and Hugh Walpole, the well–known novelists of the Victorian society.
His other works, including The New Corner (1932); Theatre (1937); Christmas Holiday (1939); Up at the Villa (1941); The Hour Before the Dawn (1942); Then and Now (1946) and Catalina (1948) were not so important.
His novel The Razor’s Edge (1944) dealt with a young American’s search for spiritual fulfillment.
Maugham’s work was not limited to novels. He wrote many dramas, short -stories, essays and some travel books. Maugham’s first success was a play A Man of Honor, which appeared in 1903. It was a realistic drama, based on the consequences of misguided virtue.
Maugham achieved name and fame in 1907. The drama dealt with the story of a high society lady, who discouraged a young suitor. It was an immediate success. By the year 1908, he had four dramas running simultaneously in London. For the next 10 years, Maugham devoted his time writing dramas. He became a man–about–town, the successful, rich and witty satirist of British society.
In 1927, The Letter, his successful play appeared. It had a Far East setting. His earlier dramas The Unknown (1920), The Sacred Flame (1928), and For Services Rendered (1932), were not so successful. His last play Sleppey was written in 1933. The Circle (1921) was a satire on social life. Our Betters (1923) was about Americans residing in Europe. The Constant Wife, (1927) was about a wife who took revenge on her unfaithful husband.
Maugham’s works also included short stories. John Cotton and Clemence Randolph performed his Trembling of a Leaf (1921), as a play Rain in 1922. Ashenden (1928) was based on his own experiences in the secret service.
Maugham believed that "there is a true harmony in the contradictions of mankind and that the normal is in reality the abnormal." In The Ant and the Grasshopper he had juxtaposed two brothers, the irresponsible Tom, and the respectable and hard-working George. George felt that Tom would end his life in misery. But Tom’s destiny made him marry a rich old lady. She left him a fortune, and thus Tom became very rich.
Besides these short-stories, Maugham had also written The Casuarina Tree, (1926); Singular (1931), Ah King (1933), Cosmopolitans (1936), and many others.
His travel-books dealt with his long trips to the Pacific Islands and the Far East. These places were the main settings for his plays. They were The Land of the Blessed Virgin : Sketches and lmpressions of Andalusia, (1905); On a Chinese Screen (1922) and The Gentleman in the Parlour (1930).
These works did not satisfy Maugham’s thirst for writing. Some essays were also accredited to him. These essays were Don Fernando : or Variations on Some Spanish Themes (1935); The Summing Up (1938); France at War (1940); Books and You (1940); Strictly Personal (1941); Great Novelists and Their Novels (1948); A Writer’s Note-book (1949); The Writer’s Point of View (1951); The Vagrant Mood (1952) and Points of View (1958).
Maugham was indeed blessed with the innate talent of writing. The most interesting aspect in Maugham was that though his formal education gained him a medical degree, he became a renowned man of letters
o Considering how foolishly people act and how pleasantly they prattle, perhaps it would be better for the world if they talked more and did less.
o Good luck always brings merit, but merit very seldom brings good luck.
o If women exhibit less emotion at pain, it does not prove that they bear it better, but rather that they feel it less.
o How happy life would be if an undertaking retained to the end the delight of its beginning, if the dregs of a cup of wine were as sweet as the first sip.
o To the lover waiting for his love, no sound is sadder than the tardy striking of the hours.
o It is but seldom that a man loves one and for all; it may only show that his sexual instincts are not very strong.
o Human sorrow is like a child born in the night who sees the sun rise and thinks that yesterday never existed.
o The writer must be playful and serious at the same time.
o When you are in love what use it is to you if all you get in return is kindness, friendship, affection ? It is Dead Sea fruit that sticks in your throat.
o People will sometimes forgive you the good you have done them, but seldom the harm they have done you.
o Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.
o People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.
o The unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.
o Art for art’s sake makes no more sense than gin for gin’s sake.
o There are two good things in life – freedom of thought and freedom of action
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