Maugham—lgnored Or Decried By Academics

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30938, 20 December 1965, Page 8

Maugham—lgnored Or Decried By Academics

fSpoctalls written for "The Preea" b« STVAKT HcMILLAN ) IF William Somerset Mangham, who died last week a month and a few days off the aye of 92, is referred to at all by some academics or men of letters, he is more frequently classed with the second or third-rate writers; those seeking to be more lenient talk about the “Maugham enigma.” Of those who express disappointment in Maugham, none to tills writer’s reading has put his complaint with more eloquent indignation than Gerald Sykes, writing in tiie periodical, the "Nation” in 1930:

"What metamorphisis took place? What happened to the man who wrote ‘Of Human Bondage?* Were his desires worldly from the start; was he fired with no artist's longing to see and make, but with an earthlings lust to dine well and glitter? Or was a man of genius, a virgin heart, seduced by the great world of riches and power? “Woe to thee Babylon, that mighty city." Sykes was not, of course, the first to complain. Maugham wrote “Liza of Lambeth,” a novel which was published in 1897, made little money out of it and turned to writing plays. His first financial success for the stage was “Lady Frederick,” in 1907, and in the next year he had four plays running successfully and simultaneously in London. It was during bis successful play-writing period that he wrote and had published in 1915 "Of Human Bondage”—a point Sykes, in the sweep of his eloquence, overlooked. With his rise in popularity Maugham found himself cold-shouldered by the intelligentsia and damned by tiie critics. He was, they said cuttingly, competent Extent Of Earnings

The extent of his fortune is worth examining. He estimated his earnings from writing at more than £1,300,000. He once turned down a 250,000-dollar contract from Hollywood. The novel, "The Razor’s Edge,” published in 1944, had sold 1,367,283 copies by the middle of 1950 and by then his sales throughout the world amounted to about 40,000,000 copies. There are various obvious explanations why certain persons should doubt Maugham’s seriousness. Many academics (Maugham’s name is not among the prescribed auth-

,ors in the lists of New Zealand university calendars) find symbols fruitful for study. Maugham avoids their use. "What is a symbol?” he once asked. “You say one thing and you mean another. Why the hell shouldn't you say it right out?” Nor does his matterof-factness leave a great deal to be interpreted. He was once flattered by an American GI who wrote saying he had not had to look up one word from a book in a dictionary. Other reasons for dismissing his seriousness are more complex. Maugham, it is argued, is not seeking new forms, he is not an experimenter. Nor is he. His stories and novels are largely written to a pattern. A man, usually portrayed in the first person singular, meets another in a bar, or over a game of bridge, and hears his story. The story usually has a surprise ending, revealing some quirk of human nature. They are stories with a beginning, a middle and an end. But the vogue of the short story as it was written by Chekhov and Katherine Mansfield is still with us. It relies on reading between the lines and ends, at its best, in a meaningful silence. It relies overtly on the reader being deeply involved. The reader of Maugham might be compelled to read on by the story but finish it feeling entertained. Maugham is held to be reprehensible by the yardstick of Protestant morality. Another Tradition

Maugham belongs to another tradition of short story telling: that of Guy de Maupassant More than that in the polish of his prose, the epigrams of his plays, the clarity of his thought and in much of his behaviour Maugham shows himself to be akin to the French, as French he was to all intents and purposes for his first 10 years. He was born in France to the English solicitor of the British Embassy and it was not until both his parents died that he went to Britain, unable then to speak English without mixing French words with it.

The tremendous influence on his thinking of his earty life in France seems largely tn have been ignored by those Who deal with his writings but it could be argued that in his emphasis on style, form and epigrous of his plays at least, Maugham is a French writer writing in Engtish. having all the French senes of literary tradition. Another facet of Maugham’s writing which has disturbed many is tola lack of idealism. In “Of Human Bondage” a

character to made to say: "Some of us took for the Way in ffdum and some in God. some of us in vfatoky and some to toes, ft la aM tba same Way and it leads nowtotinr.” ft is, however, no relevant part of the judgment of an author to assess the rightness or wrongness of what be makes a character say but before passing it is worth noticing that Maugham to something mon than a petty icooociest. Half-Soured

If there is one characteristic that stands out above all others in Maugham’s writing it is its flavour “the milk of human kindness, half-soured" as one writer put it It can be found in all his work and in this must lie the final answer to Sykes and all the others. The successful play, "The Circle,” is as much a part of Maugham’s work as the successful novel, “Of Human Bondage.” The ordinary reader found him cynical and told Mm so; he never changed. A writer of lesser integrity might have felt he was Jeopardising his public. Finally there is tiie testimony of Maugham, whose most unsuccessful writing was during World War H when he was writing propaganda to persuade the Americans to Join the British against the Germans.

Maugham explains Mmself in many places. The following example, recorded by a biographer Richard A. Cordell, is of an exchange of letters between Maugham and a 15-yearold schoolgirl: "Dear Mr Maugham, I have read nearly all your books and have liked them, but my daddy says I am only wasting my time because they are only a pot boiler and will be forgotten as soon as you are dead. Are you a pot boiler? Yours affectionately, Rosemary."

“Of course,” Maugham replied, “I am a professional writer—l have never made a secret of it as some people do—but I don't look upon myself as a potboiler because I have never (well hardly ever) written anything I didn’t want to write.”