The play, coproduced by Messmore Kendall and Gilbert Miller, opened in New York on November 19, 1928, where, largely due to the last-minute substitution of an understudy in the part of Stella, it was given a poor reception: according to The New York Times, it was no more than “another of Mr. Maugham’s46 highly cultivated shilling shockers.” Maugham was taken aback, and more than usually apprehensive about its staging in London. However, on the evening of February 8, 1929, well before the final curtain it was clear he had another hit on his hands. Gladys Cooper excelled as Stella, while Mary Jerrold and Clare Eames as Mrs. Tabret and Nurse Wayland, reprising the parts they had played in New York, reached new heights under Raymond Massey’s direction. After several weeks of sold-out performances, Flame was given a further boost when the Bishop of London denounced it as shockingly immoral, thus ensuring, as Gladys Cooper delightedly recalled, “[that] our business went up47 by leaps and bounds, people besieging the box office for seats, and instead of the play coming off it got a new lease of life.”*
IT WAS TO BE a year before Maugham set himself to writing another play, a year spent mainly in travel—Denmark, Germany, Austria, Greece, Cyprus, and Egypt—and in enjoying a long summer on the Riviera. It was only since the mid-twenties that the Riviera had become fashionable in the warmer months. For over fifty years the British, in the footsteps of Queen Victoria, had regarded the south of France as a winter resort, but recently, following the example set by a high-profile American contingent, people such as Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, the Cole Porters, and Gerald and Sara Murphy, growing numbers of the smart set had begun to colonize the Côte d’Azur during July and August. The grand hotels in Nice and Cannes were now staying open all year, and at the end of 1922 a new fast train service was launched, the Calais-Méditerranée express, universally known as Le Train Bleu, after its smartly painted blue coaches.† Richly paneled, velvet-upholstered, famous for its luxury and haute cuisine, the first-class-only Blue Train left from Calais, stopped in Paris, then, speeding through the night, arrived the following morning in the south, letting off passengers at stations along the coast—Juan-les-Pins, Antibes, Monaco—before reaching its final destination at Menton near the Italian border. Maugham was often on the Blue Train, disembarking at Beaulieu, only a short drive from Cap Ferrat. In September 1928, at the end of his first full summer at the Mauresque, he described to Bert Alanson the busy social season just ended:
For some reason (chiefly I suppose48 the wretched climate of the north of Europe) the Riviera has suddenly become the fashion; the hotels have been packed & the casinos making money hand over fist. There have been parties every day & everywhere, & it really looked as though all the world were assembled here. It has been amusing, but a trifle tiring. Now it is over; the smart world vanished as though by magic on the 1st of September & betook themselves in a vast body, with their motor-cars, maids & valets, to Biarritz. Sheep!
If hardly one of the great showplaces, like the Fiorentina at Saint-Hospice or the Château de l’Horizon near Cannes, the Villa Mauresque had nonetheless been transformed into a dwelling of impressive luxury. Approached along a narrow road bordered by pine trees and winding up to the top of the Cap, the Mauresque stood within gates on whose white plaster posts the familiar sign against the evil eye was picked out in red. A short drive led up through terraced gardens to the white-painted house with its green shutters and tall green double doors. Immediately inside the front door was a black-floored, high-ceilinged hall, dominated by a Chinese figure of the goddess Kuan-Yin, brought back by Maugham from Peking. A large dark-green drawing room was given a somewhat baroque flavor by heavy Spanish furniture, blackamoor figures, gilded wooden chandeliers, and Savonnerie carpets; there were comfortable chairs, a couple of sofas, and a round table piled high with new books. The whitewashed dining room was comparatively small, the walls adorned with four paintings of white-skinned, coal-eyed girls by Marie Laurencin. Up the marble stairs with their white and yellow walls were the bedrooms and dressing rooms, these plainly but beautifully appointed, with muslin curtains, white silk bedspreads, and Chinese prints on the walls; each had a desk with a good supply of sharpened pencils, as well as books, fruit and flowers, bottles of mineral water, and a carved glass box of cookies beside the bed. The bathrooms were modern and luxurious, well stocked with piles of thick towels and with new soaps, oils, and essences from Floris.
Maugham’s own quarters were simple to the point of austerity. In his bedroom a narrow bed jutted out crosswise from a corner near the window so he could see the garden from his pillow; behind it stood the effigy of a Spanish saint, and built into one wall was a bookcase filled with the works of favorite authors such as Hazlitt, Samuel Butler, and Henry James; there were also Grimm’s Fairy Tales, the journals of Gide, Edward Lear’s letters, poems by Yeats, and the sonnets of Shakespeare. On the bureau beside his bed, among the books, lacquered cigarette box, matches, paper knife, and spectacles, he kept the photograph of his mother. Above the bedroom floor was the flat roof reached by a wooden stairway, and here, a structure standing alone, was Maugham’s study. A large square room full of light, with windows on all sides, it had an open fireplace, bookcases, a comfortable sofa on which to read, and for a desk a big seventeenth-century Spanish refectory table, lowered by several inches to accommodate the writer’s short stature; the window immediately above it, looking toward Nice and the Mediterranean, had been blocked up so that there would be no distraction by the view. There were only two paintings in the room: a head of Sue Jones by Gerald Kelly, and, forming the middle panel of a triple window, Gauguin’s beautiful Tahitian Eve.
Maugham was pleased with this secluded refuge, as he was pleased with the whole house, which was at last exactly as he had envisaged it. “I was prepared to spend the rest of my life there,”49 he wrote, “and I was prepared to die in the painted bedstead in my bedroom. I sometimes crossed my hands and closed my eyes to imagine how I should look when at last I lay there dead.”
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FROM THE VERY BEGINNING, Maugham was the most hospitable of hosts. Among the earliest visitors to the Villa Mauresque were Max Beerbohm, now living in Rapallo; H. G Wells, who also had a house in the south of France; Arnold Bennett, sailing along the coast on his luxurious yacht; Walter Payne and his first wife, Phil; Desmond MacCarthy; the Gerald Kellys; Maugham’s American publisher, Nelson Doubleday; and his play agent, Golding Bright. It was Bright’s wife, Mary Chavelita Bright, who described the experience of staying at the villa as “the raffinement de luxe50 [with] perfect unfussed service,” an opinion endorsed by many others, that the Mauresque was “a haven of comfort,51 good food, beauty and entertaining talk.” And indeed Maugham knew exactly how he wanted his household run and was prepared to go to considerable trouble and expense to achieve the highest standards. With a well-trained staff of thirteen—a butler, two footmen, a femme de chambre to look after the ladies, a chef, kitchen maid, chauffeur, and six gardeners—the attention to detail was immaculate, the impression of ease and informality maintained by means of a discreet but tightly disciplined order behind the scenes. If guests arrived, as most of them did, by train, they were met at Beaulieu by Jean with the limousine and driven the short distance to the house. As the car drew up on the gravel, the front doors were opened by Ernest, the butler, and there in the hall would be Maugham, smiling, his arms outstretched in greeting. “The arms would drop back again52 to the sides without contact,” as one of his neighbors, Rory Cameron, shrewdly observed, “but it was meant as a welcoming gesture.”
For visitors the days were leisurely and relaxed. Ladies breakfasted in bed, awakened by the light filtering through the mosquito net and a cooing voice—“Bonjour, Madame. Madame a bien dormi?”—that accompanied the arrival of an exquisitely arranged breakfast tray with coffee, croissant, fruit, and fresh orange juice. Downstairs the men enjoyed a more substantial meal in the dining room, often preceded by an early swim or game of tennis. Mornings were spent reading on the terrace, the air fragrant wi
th the scent of orange and lemon blossom, or strolling in the garden, or basking on linen mattresses by the pool while watching the brilliant blue dragonflies skim the surface. The pool on one side was backed by a thick hedge of pink and white oleanders behind which was a dense screen of rock and pine trees, and on the other gave onto a glorious view over Villefranche Bay. It was here that most people congregated and where much of the day was spent, swimming and sunbathing, or, if the sun became too hot, lying in the shade provided by a little natural grotto formed in the rock. Nearby was a bronze gong brought back from the East that was sounded twice a day to announce the serving of cocktails—an ice-cold Gibson, perhaps, or a very dry mint-flavored martini. During the summer lunch and dinner were usually on the terrace, both rather formal meals of several courses served by the white-coated footmen supervised by Ernest. Wines and champagne were always plentiful and excellent, and the food delicious, classic French with an interesting American accent, most of the salads and vegetables grown in the garden. Lunch might be a clear white tomato broth, followed by chicken Maryland and pêche Melba; for dinner there might be eggs in aspic, a fillet of beef with sauce béarnaise, and an exquisite brie en gêlée, followed by fresh figs, peaches, or fraises du bois. One of Maugham’s favorite dishes was corned beef hash, the same corned beef hash he had taught to his drunken cook when in Burma; and in later years a great spécialité de la maison was an avocado ice cream, a rich concoction of crushed avocado, Barbados rum, sugar, and cream, the pears picked from trees grown from cuttings which Maugham had smuggled back in his golf bag from California, reputedly the first avocados to be grown in France. With such cuisine, it is no wonder Maugham’s guests enjoyed themselves. “I am silent with pleasure53 at almost every dish that is put before me,” Desmond MacCarthy wrote to his wife during a stay at the Mauresque.
The infrastructure required to maintain such levels of comfort and efficiency demanded constant supervision; Maugham was the overseer, with Gerald responsible on a day-to-day basis for the smooth running of the house. It was Maugham who interviewed the cook after dinner every evening and ordered the meals for next day. Although he ate sparingly himself, he enjoyed and was interested in culinary matters and knew precisely how a dish should be. “[Willie] always had a genius for food,”54 said the very social Christabel Aberconway. The French chef at the Mauresque was superb, but after it was discovered he was supplementing his salary by selling surplus produce from the kitchen, he was sacked and the Italian kitchen maid, Annette Chiaramello, promoted to his place. Annette turned out to be an inspired cook, and she and her employer made an ideal team, he bringing back descriptions of dishes encountered elsewhere, she delighting him by her perfectionism as well as by her invention and flair. This area apart, it was Haxton, “the faithful watchdog,” who was the majordomo: like Syrie, he was an excellent organizer and knew precisely what was wanted. As Maugham’s secretary he spent part of the day in his office immediately below Maugham’s study, deciphering his employer’s not always legible hand and typing up manuscripts, as well as taking dictation for letters; he also dealt with the servants and made sure that the houseguests had everything they desired. During the siesta hour, in candy-pink shirt and shorts, he would sit peacefully playing patience on the shady side of the terrace. Sometimes if the weather was fine he took the house party out on the Sara, a comfortably converted old fishing trawler kept anchored at Villefranche; after a couple of hours’ sailing, the anchor was dropped so that everyone could swim before eating the delicious picnic loaded into hampers on board. A few of Maugham’s friends privately detested Gerald (“He had about him55 an aura of corruption,” said one), but most found him a great asset. “It was Gerald Haxton,”56 wrote Maugham’s nephew, Robin, “who was largely responsible for the atmosphere of happiness and comfort” at the Villa Mauresque.
Maugham was a genial host, a benign presence whose formidable discipline was carefully concealed beneath an apparent ease of manner. In a sense, the way of life at the Mauresque summed up the two sides of his nature, on one side luxe and warmth and sensuousness, on the other the austerity of the artist and a rigorous self-control. While his guests slept late and idled by the pool, for Maugham the daily routine was strict and unvarying, and nothing was allowed to derange it. At about nine in the morning, after breakfast in bed, he retired to his rooftop retreat, silent, solitary, and safe, and there he remained until just after 12:30, when he came downstairs to join his guests for a cocktail, never more than one, on the terrace before lunch. After lunch he retired for a nap and more reading, reappearing again about four to suggest tennis or golf, a swim or a game of cards before tea. He loved to walk along the grassy, tree-shaded paths accompanied by his beloved dachshunds, all named after characters in Wagnerian opera. (He was a great animal lover, and it always upset him, when preparing to leave for London,* to see the little dogs climb into his empty suitcases, hoping not to be left behind.) At some point in the day there would be a session with Gerald, dictating replies to his copious correspondence, although much of this he answered himself, scrupulously replying in longhand to his often enormous pile of fan mail. Dinner was always preceded by more cocktails, with everyone in evening dress, unless he and Haxton were alone or with one or two close friends, when Maugham sometimes favored more unconventional garb, for instance a black Mandarin’s robe brought back from China, a costume in which to some he appeared curiously simian, his diminutive figure swamped by the swaths of heavy silk. Conversation was usually lively, thanks to quantities of pink champagne and the host’s skill at encouraging others to talk. “Fundamentally,” said Rory Cameron, “Maugham was a formal man57 and not given to confidences”; he could tell a good personal anecdote when required, but it was usually a polished performance, rarely the result of spontaneous expression. After dinner there was a game of bridge over a cigar, following which Gerald would take a group off for some serious gambling. Maugham rarely accompanied them, retiring to bed by eleven in order to be rested for the next morning’s work.
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FOR MAUGHAM, WRITING WAS not just what he did: it was where he lived. “I have never been able to persuade myself58 that anything else mattered,” he wrote in The Summing Up. While at work he was completely in control, in a world of his own making, and in extreme old age he stated that the happiest hours of his life had been experienced while seated at his desk when his writing was going well, and “word followed word59 till the luncheon gong forced me to put an end to the day’s work.” His strict adherence to only three hours a day, no more, no less, derived, rather curiously, from the example set by Charles Darwin. “[As Darwin] never worked60 more than three hours a day and yet proceeded to revolutionise biological science,” Maugham explained, “I decided I could probably achieve what I wanted to achieve by the same amount of labour.” The tools of his trade were simple: a fountain pen specially designed with a thick collar to give added weight, a bottle of black ink, and white unlined paper purchased from the Times Bookshop, of which there was always a neat stack on his desk. He wore horn-rimmed reading spectacles, and chain-smoked as he worked; in later years he took to wearing a pink elastic mitten with zip fasteners designed to protect against repetitive strain and poor circulation. While Maugham’s productivity was unceasing, he always made a point of differentiating between invention and imagination. “I have always had more stories in my head61 than I ever had time to write,” he said, but
though I have had variety of invention … I have had small power of imagination. I have taken living people and put them into the situations, tragic or comic, that their characters suggested. I might well say that they invented their own stories. I have been incapable of those great, sustained flights that carry the author on broad pinions into a celestial sphere. My fancy, never very strong, has been hampered by my sense of probability.
The countless stories in his head meant he was never at a loss for a subject; indeed, most of his life was passed in a state of possession, with ideas for plays, novels, and stories domi
nating his thoughts, not letting him rest until he had written them down. Because he lived with his themes and characters for months beforehand, sometimes years, there was never any need for an outline, and when eventually he was ready to begin he wrote fast, not stopping for anything. While in the middle of a novel, Maugham said, his characters were more real to him than the characters of real life; he inhabited a different dimension, more vivid and more meaningful than the physical world outside.
The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham Page 38
