The Land of Promise is a strong piece of drama, courageous in its treatment of sexual dominance and submission, particularly at a time when female suffrage and emancipation were much in the news. As Maugham realized, conveying the play’s message depended enormously on how the two main characters were interpreted. In Norah, as well as courage and passion there is a deep hidden sadness rooted in an unexpressed terror of facing a future as a penurious spinster; and it is important that Frank, although unmannered, is basically decent and kind. We know from the scene played out between them when they first meet that there is a strong mutual attraction, and it is this, and Frank’s good-heartedness despite his tough talk, that prevents the climax from appearing brutal and unpleasant. In the scene leading up to what virtually amounts to marital rape, the subtext must reveal that Norah’s fury with Frank comes as much from fury with herself for physically desiring him. If this is not made evident, then the play fails.
The Land of Promise opened in Washington in November 1913 before transferring to New Haven, Connecticut, finally coming into New York on Christmas Day. Billie Burke as Norah was a guaranteed draw. As Maugham told Gerald Kelly, “the audience of course knew nothing33 of the play, they just came to see the star.” Unfortunately, Miss Burke, blind to the troubling complexities of Norah’s character, saw the piece as a straightforward romantic comedy and Norah as a feisty little firebrand who by perkiness and pouting finally gets her man. Needless to say, this made nonsense of the role: “the leading part loses34 by being played as a romantic ingénue,” Maugham complained, cross that his play was being “[so] rottenly acted … by that little slut.” That Billie Burke herself was unhappy is made clear in her memoirs. “The Land of Promise,” she recalls,
was a beautifully written but dreary35 kind of play for me. My costumes were not fetching—one black dress and another of a particularly ugly blue—and the problems of Canadian farmers did not interest New York audiences. It was full of integrity and all that … but the change of character was perhaps too sudden for me…. Some other established dramatic actress could have carried this play, but I could not.
In the States the notices were generally good, although there was a certain amount of umbrage taken north of the border. “No Canadian man would dream36 of ordering his wife about,” protested the Daily Bulletin in Edmonton. “If there is one thing Canadian men do well, it is the way they treat their wives.” By March the following year, indignation had reached such a pitch that the planned tour of Canada had to be canceled.
IN ORDER TO OVERSEE the American production of The Land of Promise, Maugham had arrived in New York on November 15, 1913. But on this, his third visit to the United States, he had had an additional purpose in mind. Sue Jones was also due to arrive in America, having landed a small part, obtained for her by Maugham, in Ned Sheldon’s play Romance, which had had a successful run on Broadway and was now playing at the Princess Theatre in Chicago. Maugham had missed saying good-bye to Sue before he left England and was determined not to miss her again, for he had finally made up his mind to make her his wife. In a telling passage in The Summing Up he describes his attitude toward marriage at this stage in his life:
If I meant to marry37 and have children it was high time I did so…. It seemed a necessary motif in the pattern of life that I had designed, and to my ingenuous fancy (for though no longer young and thinking myself so worldly wise, I was still in many ways incredibly naïve) it offered peace … peace that would enable me to write all I wanted to write without the loss of precious time or disturbance of mind; peace and a settled and dignified way of life.
In terms of society, Maugham could have married well above his station: such an attractive and successful man was considered a good “catch,” and by no means only in theatrical circles. But Sue was the woman he wanted: he loved her, and he knew despite her promiscuity that she loved him. When not on tour, Sue sometimes discreetly stayed at Chesterfield Street, and Maugham had grown used to the safe haven of her warm and welcoming presence.
Before leaving England, Maugham made his preparations with care. He bought an expensive engagement ring, two large pearls encircled by diamonds, and planned his schedule so that after fulfilling his commitments in New York he could stay in Chicago with Sue during the obligatory fortnight she would need to work out her notice with the company. After this there would be a quiet registry office wedding, and then the two of them would leave at once for a long honeymoon voyage to Tahiti and the South Seas. On the day that Sue’s ship was due to arrive in New York, Maugham went down to the pier to meet it. Amid the noise and bustle of disembarkation he caught sight of her almost at once, talking to a tall, handsome young man who quickly disappeared. Sue was delighted to see him and kissed him warmly but was unable to linger, as the train for Chicago was leaving within the hour. For the next couple of weeks Maugham was kept busy with his play, but at the beginning of December he went up to Chicago, taking a room at the same hotel in which Sue was staying. He telephoned to arrange a time to meet and she sounded delighted to hear him, agreeing to have supper with him after the performance. At about half past ten Sue rang to say she was ready, and Maugham went to her small suite. Looking wonderfully beautiful, she gave him her usual loving embrace and started to tell him about the play, but something was wrong: she seemed restless, uneasy, at moments almost on the edge of hysteria. She barely touched the supper that had been ordered, and soon Maugham rang for the waiter to take it away. Deciding this was the moment, he said quietly, “I’ve come to ask you38 to marry me.”
[Sue] paused for what seemed to me quite a long time. Then, “I don’t want to marry you,” she said. I was taken aback…. “D’you mean it?” I asked. “Yes.” “Why not?” I asked. “I just don’t want to.” … I took out of my pocket the engagement ring I had bought and handed it to her. “I got this for you.” She looked at it. “It’s very pretty,” she said…. She handed it back to me…. “If you want to go to bed with me you can,” she said, “but I won’t marry you.” I shook my head: “No, I won’t do that.” We sat in silence for a while. I broke it by saying, “Well, there’s nothing more to be said, is there?” “No,” she answered. I could see that she wanted me to go. I put the ring back in my pocket, got up, kissed her and bade her goodnight.
Although the above description was written nearly fifty years later, fifty years during which the memory had remained ineradicably etched in Maugham’s mind, it tallies closely with the letter he sent to Gerald Kelly from New York immediately after his return there from Chicago:
My schemes for going round the world39 have come to nothing. I went up to Chicago to see Susan & found her in a very hysterical condition, & I can do nothing with her, I will tell you more in detail when we meet; poor thing, her nerves, her digestion, everything has gone wrong; it is an effect America often has on people, & the only thing for her is a rest cure, but I cannot induce her to be sensible & get back to England & have me.
In his memoir, Looking Back, Maugham depicts himself walking down Piccadilly soon after his return to London and catching sight of an Evening Standard placard on which in large capitals were the words ACTRESS MARRIES EARL’S SON. “I guessed at once40 who the actress was and bought a paper. I was right.” In fact Sue had married in Chicago on December 13, while Maugham was still in New York and less than a fortnight after rejecting his proposal. Her new husband was Angus McDonnell, a younger son of the Earl of Antrim, and Maugham guessed that McDonnell had been the good-looking fellow passenger to whom he had seen her talking when disembarking from the ship; he also guessed, rightly, that McDonnell had made her pregnant (“I knew how careless she was41 in these matters”), which would explain Sue’s nervousness and the so-called digestive disorders that he had attributed to stress.
Apart from Kelly, Maugham told almost no one what had happened. Adept at concealment, he gave little sign of his disappointment, although in fact the loss of Sue Jones was a blow from which he took a long time to recover and never ceased regretting: eve
n after many years, the mention of her name never failed to stir deep emotion. He had loved her truly, believing that he and she could have made a happy, if not wholly conventional, life together. Of course he would have strayed, and probably so would she, but still they might have made it work. Fortunately he could not foresee that with the loss of Sue Jones all hope of such contentment was gone for good.
HEAVYHEARTED, MAUGHAM IMMEDIATELY set about driving himself harder than ever. The Land of Promise was doing excellent business, and Frohman was urging him to deliver four more plays for the following season. His life was not all work, however, for it was now that he encountered again a woman he had met shortly before leaving for America. He had found her amusing and attractive, but thought little more about her until chance again brought her into view. A brief lighthearted affair with no ties attached seemed the ideal prescription to alleviate his sadness over Sue. Little did he know that he was about to enter the longest, most miserable, and most bitterly destructive relationship of his life.
It began harmlessly enough one evening in the autumn of the previous year, 1913, shortly before Maugham sailed for New York. He had been sitting reading in his top-floor study on Chesterfield Street when a neighbor, Mrs. Carstairs, telephoned to ask him a favor: she and her husband had invited a couple of friends to dine and go to the theater, and at the last minute one had dropped out: would Maugham take his place? “It happened that I had nothing42 to do and hadn’t seen the play,” Maugham recalled, “so I said I would be glad to come.” At the Carstairs’ house he was shown into the drawing room and introduced to his fellow guest. Mrs. Wellcome, in her mid-thirties, was striking rather than conventionally pretty, with a wide mouth, slightly prominent nose, creamy complexion, and big brown eyes. It was obvious she found him attractive, and consequently during dinner he was at his wittiest and most entertaining. As they prepared to leave for the theater, Mrs. Wellcome whispered flatteringly, “I wish we didn’t have to go43 to this play. I’d like to listen to you talking all night.” The next afternoon, during the obligatory call on his hostess, Maugham mentioned that he had found her friend very charming. Syrie Wellcome was the wife of the enormously wealthy Henry Wellcome, the American pharmaceutical manufacturer, Mrs. Carstairs told him; the marriage had not been happy, and the couple were now living apart.
A few days later at the opera Maugham caught sight of Syrie Wellcome sitting in the stalls and went to speak to her. She was obviously pleased to see him, explaining that she was sorry she was unable to invite him to visit her as she was temporarily living in an “odious” flat near Marble Arch while her new house in Regent’s Park was being decorated. “She hoped I would come44 to the housewarming party she intended to give as soon as she moved in.” It was shortly after this that Maugham left for America to oversee rehearsals of The Land of Promise and to ask Sue Jones to marry him.
The London production of The Land of Promise opened at the Duke of York’s Theatre on February 26, 1914, by coincidence the same night that Syrie had chosen for her housewarming. Maugham sent her two seats in the front row of the stalls, intending to go to her reception as soon as he could get away from the theater. Tense and nervous as always on a first night, Maugham was irritated to see Syrie slide into her seat late, several minutes after the curtain had gone up, and he almost decided to cut her party, but having refused other invitations in order to accept this, he had nothing else to do, and so he made his way up to 4 York Terrace in Regent’s Park. It was a good party, with an orchestra and a crowd of lively, fashionably dressed people, many of whom congratulated him on the play. Maugham, high on his success, thoroughly enjoyed himself, dancing several times with his hostess and not returning home until the small hours. “After that,” he said, “I saw Syrie45 almost every day.”
Syrie Wellcome was not quite the conventional society woman that she appeared. Born in 1879, five years younger than Maugham, Syrie was a daughter of the great reformer Thomas Barnardo, founder of the Dr. Barnardo’s Homes for destitute children. The eldest girl in a family of six, Gwendoline Maud, in adult life always known as Syrie, had had an unusual upbringing. Both Barnardo and his wife, also called Syrie, although within the family referred to as “the Begum,” were members of an American religious sect, the Open Plymouth Brethren. Devoutly evangelical, an ardent member of the temperance movement, Dr. Barnardo laid heavy emphasis on daily Bible readings and prayers, on strict punctuality and obedience, and on the spurning of worldly pleasures: drinking, smoking, and visits to the theater were all forbidden. Barnardo was a brilliant businessman and made a great deal of money, but spent it faster than it accrued, mainly on his various charities. A flamboyant personality, aggressive, obstinate, arrogant, and overbearing, he was also capable of considerable charm and personal kindness: he was treated warily by his children, but he was also loved, particularly by his elder daughter, who inherited a number of her father’s traits, notably a hot temper, a steely determination to have her own way, and a talent for commerce that was to stand her in remarkably good stead later in life.
When Syrie was seventeen the Barnardos moved from the East End of London to a large house in the suburbs, where the Begum, in many ways more practical than her husband, started giving occasional parties so that her daughter might have the chance to meet some suitable young men. It was Barnardo’s intention that Syrie should train to be a missionary and go to China, a choice of career that could not have been further from her own ambitions. Syrie loved social life and longed to leave home, where the atmosphere was gloomy and repressive; she loathed the emphasis on religion and had not the faintest interest in her father’s good works. Marriage was the obvious way out, and after a brief flirtation with a local youth, Syrie, encouraged by her mother, focused her attention on a wealthy American, a friend of Dr. Barnardo’s, who had rented a house in the neighborhood.
Henry (“Hal”) Wellcome, a handsome, well-built man of forty-six with blue eyes and a bushy ginger mustache, was immensely rich. Like Thomas Barnardo, whom he much admired, he possessed a strong instinct toward altruism and bettering the lot of his fellow man, the great goal of his life the eradication of disease in impoverished parts of the world. He had long been settled in England, and his pharmaceutical company, Burroughs Wellcome Ltd., established in London, had become hugely successful, the first manufacturers of the compressed pill, or “tabloid,” which was to revolutionize Western medicine. Wellcome enjoyed female company, although he had never had the time to seriously contemplate marriage. Syrie, however, attractive and vivacious, definitely caught his fancy, and she on her side found him good fun: he kept a canoe on the river and was always ready for a party, and she was excited by the marked attentions he paid her. Most important, she saw in Wellcome an escape route from the suffocating atmosphere of home as well as an entrée into the world of the sophisticated and well-to-do of which she longed to be part.
But at the end of the summer Wellcome left for abroad without anything having been said, and it looked as if the big fish had escaped the net. Swift action was necessary, and the wily Begum, knowing that Wellcome was bound for a research trip to the Sudan, dispatched her daughter in pursuit. No one could have been more surprised than Hal Wellcome in Khartoum to see the delightful Miss Barnardo disembark one day from a Nile steamer with a be-frilled and parasoled party of sightseeing English ladies. The ruse was successful, and Syrie returned to England engaged, becoming Mrs. Henry Wellcome at a quiet ceremony in St. Mark’s Church, Surbiton, on June 2, 1901.
The marriage was a disaster almost from the start. Wellcome was a man of the highest principle, intelligent, energetic, and sociable, if happier when dealing with large groups than with individuals. He was also set in his ways, wholly dedicated to his work, and as a powerful player in his field who was frequently consulted by governments and heads of state, he was accustomed to deference and inclined to be dictatorial. In marrying the daughter of his public-spirited old friend he believed he had found the ideal wife, high-minded, biddable, and self-denying,
eager to devote herself to pleasing him and to promoting his numerous charitable interests. This was a serious miscalculation. Syrie, frivolous and self-indulgent, envisaged a high-spending married life in which she would preside over some of the capital’s most elegant soirées, with regular vacations at fashionable Continental resorts. Her fantasy soon faded. The Wellcomes’ first married home was a rented house in Kent, where Syrie found herself acting as hostess not to gens du monde but to gray-haired professors and their dowdy wives, who sat in the garden drinking tea and discussing diphtheria. When the Wellcomes went out it was invariably to attend crowded functions in hot hotel banqueting rooms, where young Mrs. Wellcome was required to sit on a platform stupefied with boredom while distinguished scientists made lengthy speeches prior to an endless series of presentations of cups, medals, and diplomas. Worse were the trips abroad. Instead of Le Touquet or Biarritz, Wellcome, who was completely indifferent to physical comfort, took his wife rattling around little-known parts of Europe on an obsessive search for objects for his collection of medical instruments and artifacts, which was eventually to number over one million items. For months at a time they drove over terrible roads in a car that was frequently breaking down, at night putting up in primitive inns, by day trailing around dusty shops and museums or crowded, noisy bazaars. Wellcome considered these expeditions a tremendous adventure; his wife detested every minute.
The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham Page 18
