A Portrait Of Maugham

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29016, 3 October 1959, Page 3

A Portrait Of Maugham

VV. Somerset Maugham. A Candid Portrait. By Karl G. Pfeiffer. Gollancz. 214 pp. Index.

Mr Maugham’s character has never been thought to be a particularly ingenious one, and when after a discussion of the biographers who had failed to do him justice he “announced in a mock pontifical tone. ‘After my death Dr. Pfeiffer will write the authoritative work on Maugham’,” it sounds as if he said it just to tease. If he did, he may have regretted it. Dr. Pfeiffer did not see the joke. “Amazed and embarrassed,” he writes, “I tried to find words to express gratitude, but Maugham cut me short. He likes you to be grateful to him, but he doesn't want to hear about it. Had he guessed it had long been my ambition to write a book about him some day?” It was a case of the biter bit. The biographer-elect began to wait, notebook in hand—(“Now I could takes notes openly”)—for flashes of wit from his victim’s lips. Mr Maugham had to accept the situation—“he is courteous, frank, and kind to dumb animals.” He travelled most of the time, and Dr. Pfeiffer was no doubt occupied for some part of the year with his duties as professor of English in New York University. But at last after 10 years had passed, “Maugham did an about-face. At any rate he announced that he didn’t want a Somerset Maugham biography. He wrote me that Sam Behrman and several other top-flight professionals wanted to do the job and since he had refused to help them, he must refuse to help me.” Dr. Pfeiffer explains that, in consequence, this book is not a biography, “and it is certainly not the ‘authoritative’ work which in 1941 Maugham suggested I should write.” Naturally Dr. Pfeiffer felt frustrated, and he must have had at least a 10year accumulation of notes. Notwithstanding the setback he had received, he resolved to press on. This candid portrait is the fruit of his labours.

What has he in fact accbmplished? Would it be too unkind to say—a series of gossip columns in hard covers? He is often entertaining, and he has probably missed few of the stories that have ever circulated round London and New York about “Willie Maugham.” But his critical faculty is shallow, as two sentences taken at random may show. Writing of “Cakes and Ale,” he remarks, “I have a notion Maugham intended Alroy Kear to be recognised as Hugh Walpole.” Dr. Pfeiffer has stumbled upon an important truth. It has, however, been common knowledge since 1930, when “Cakes and Ale” was first published. The bloom, so to speak, is off it.

Later, discussing Rosie, another character in the same novel, he cheerfully remarks, “Like many Maugham heroines, she fornicates at the drop of a hat, yet nevertheless retains her essential purity and innocence.” There is a charm about this judgment which makes it hard to forget; but can the author really be serious? Towards the end of his book he is compelled to make the wry comment that “Maugham has fared badly at the hands of the* critics.” Readers of Dr. Pfeiffer may wonder if the statement goes far enough.