Maugham through gossipy eyes

Press, 3 February 1979, Page 15

Maugham through gossipy eyes

Conversations with Willie: Recollections of W. Somerset Maugham. By Robin Maugham. W. H. Allen and Co. 184 pp. $13.55.

(Reviewed by John Wilson)

Somerset Maugham's greatness as a writer is, at least, arguable — he thought himself only at the top of the second league. But there is no argument about Robin Maugham’s standing. He is second-rate. Adept and facile, but not in tthe same league as his uncle. The reader will find this record of conversations which the nephew had with the uncle in the last 20 years or so of the uncle’s life fascinating for its material, but disappointing for iU style. Robin Maugham has the ability to pick unerringly on the flat, conventional descriptive word which a good writer would instinctively shun. Meals, in this memoir, are •'delicious” and noises are “ghastly” or ••horrible.” Robin Maugham also falls

into the trap of believing that inconsequential detail is an adequate substitue for insight. But it is not very revealing to learn, recurrently, what Somerset Maugham ate where, or that on one partciular occasion in a restaurant they were served a champagne ice that none of the party had ever tasted before.

The substance of the portrait of Somerset Maugham in the years of his decline may also give readers cause to dislike the book. Maugham is revealed as a querulous, maudlin, selfpitying, vindictive old man. He was no doubt all of these, but he was surely more, at least earlier in his career. Robin Maugham has declined so far to write Somerset’s biography, although he has been circling round his prey for some years. In his defence, he makes no attempt to pass this book of recollections over as a definitive portrait of Maugham. He would certainly, were he to labour over such a portrait, produce a much

less readable book than this one. For setting aside the strictures against his style and his incomplete treatment, the book reads excellently. It does so f Or all the wrong reasons — because it flits from topic to topic, skitters, like Robin Maugham’s novels, over the surface, making no requirements of the reader beyond having a taste for camp, sometimes bitchy, gossip. Only at the end will the reader be likely to look back with regret at the gaps and the stories left dangling. What magnificent use a competent biographer could make, for example, of Maugham’s relations with his brother Harry. To have that explored would mean far more than a moment’s titillation at Robin’s recounting with relish the demeaning treatment Maugham meted out to his wife, Syrie.