57 “a little arid” Reggie, 159.
58 “charming, full of kindness” Hugh Walpole ms diary, HRHRC.
59 “You cannot think how impatient I am” WSM to Bert Alanson, July 25, 1922, Stanford.
60 “Another piece of work like this” Spectator, September 9, 1922.
61 “We have got quite an arsenal with us” WSM to Bert Alanson, October 25, 1922, Stanford.
62 “cherishing and fortifying” Burmese Days (Penguin, 1989), 69.
63 “I cock a snook” The Gentleman in the Parlour, 9.
64 “narrow alleys [and] devious ways” Ibid., 21.
65 “the staple sweets” Ibid., 93.
66 “I trusted that after he left me” Ibid., 93.
67 “A great deal of course was exquisitely boring” Ibid., 62.
68 “the harsh, the impetuous, the flamboyant” Ibid., 105.
69 “I felt extraordinarily happy” Ibid., 127.
70 “looming gigantic and black” Ibid., 159.
71 “I am often tired of myself” Ibid., 9.
72 “I guess Egbert would like” Ibid., 144.
73 “the bamboos, the Chinese bamboos” On a Chinese Screen, 41.
74 “[I used] to catch minnows” The Gentleman in the Parlour, 159.
75 “Never was Mr. Maugham more readable” New York Herald Tribune, April 20, 1930.
76 “sombre and beautiful” William Somerset Maugham: The English Maupassant, 16.
77 “Will you invest $5,000” WSM to Bert Alanson, May 25, 1923, Stanford.
CHAPTER 10: SEPARATION
1 “middle age has its compensations” Vanity Fair, December 1923.
2 “It is simply magnif” Arnold Bennett’s Letters to His Nephew (Heinemann, 1936), 141.
3 “so roomy and spacious” WSM to Bert Alanson, October 6, 1923, Stanford.
4 “You must expect to pay something” WSM to M. L. Fleming, nd, Jenman.
5 “charming but very naughty” Norman Douglas, Robin Maugham unpublished diaries, Beinecke.
6 “He was a naughty boy” A Case of Human Bondage, 147.
7 “[Haxton] was probably the only person” Rebecca West to Beverley Nichols, May 4, 1966, Delaware.
8 “the handsome young man” A Case of Human Bondage, 144.
9 “Willie’s sex life was not necessarily” Glenway Wescott interview with Ted Morgan, Jenman.
10 “Gerald Haxton was wonderful for Willie” George Cukor unpublished interview with Jesse Hill Ford, Margaret Herrick Library.
11 “I personally had much affection” WSM to Bert Alanson, August 27, 1923, Stanford.
12 “a very substantial, comfortable sum” WSM to Alanson, October 25, 1923, Stanford.
13 “It was quite an experience” Ibid., October 6, 1923.
14 “Take your freedom” The Gentleman in the Parlour, 137.
15 “I cannot tell you how much” Ibid., January 14, 1924.
16 “a perfectly amazing letter” The Letters of Carl Van Vechten, ed. Bruce Kellner (Yale University Press, 1987), 72.
17 “I must confess that I am disappointed” WSM to Edward Knoblock, October 16, 1924, Berg.
18 “I feel that two such literary Englishmen” D. H. Lawrence to WSM, October 24, 1924, Jenman.
19 “Damn his eyes” D. H. Lawrence to Willard Johnson, October 25, 1924, Letters of D.H. Lawrence, vol. 5, eds. James T. Boulton and Lindeth Vasey (Cambridge University Press, 1989), 155.
20 “He answered crossly” Not I, but the Wind, Frieda Lawrence (Heinemann, 1935), 139.
21 (“just like Atlantic City”) WSM to Edward Knoblock, February 1, 1925, Berg.
22 “[I have] arrived at the conclusion” Ibid.
23 “I am not so anxious” WSM to Charles Towne, November 23, 1924, Beinecke.
24 “He just sent it out like a parcel” Ibid., September 25, 1925.
25 “My father was fifty years old” Somerset and All the Maughams, 172.
26 “Needless to say I could not work” WSM to Golding Bright, March 18, 1925, HRHRC.
27 “I do not of course know” WSM to Edward Knoblock, nd, Berg.
28 “Don’t expect us to be two roses” Letters of D. H. Lawrence, vol. 5, 445.
29 “she did desperately mind” Liza Maugham conversation with Pat Wallace, Frere Family Archive.
30 “I realized that what she was chiefly” The Scandal of Syrie Maugham, 122.
31 “[Syrie] was incapable of realising” Frank Swinnerton to Robert Calder, September 28, 1976, Jenman.
32 “Did you have a nice day” Liza Maugham conversation with Pat Wallace, Frere Family Archive.
33 “I had a great feeling of insecurity” Ibid.
34 “S-S-Syrie d-d-didn’t really imp-p-prove matters” Rebecca West to Beverley Nichols, May 4, 1966, Delaware.
35 “Willie took this without protest” Ibid.
36 “writing like a chambermaid” A. S. Frere interview with Ted Morgan, Jenman.
37 “She had a miniature, rather touching dignity” Childhood at Oriol, 177.
38 (“I think I should warn you”) A Case of Human Bondage, 82.
39 “[Syrie] for a time” A Little Love and Good Company, Cathleen Nesbitt (Faber 1975), 142.
40 “She was tricky in business” H. K. Kelland conversation with WSM, March 13, 1906.
41 “I knew Syrie slightly” “Angus” to Ted Morgan, nd, Jenman.
42 “a tough old rogue” The Scandal of Syrie Maugham, 159.
43 “I don’t know how to tell you” Looking Back, 92.
44 “I knew them both” Ibid., 105.
45 “a disaster from the start” Liza Maugham conversation with Pat Wallace, Frere Family Archive.
46 “is really a very charming little place” WSM to Bert Alanson, May 17, 1925, Stanford.
47 “Gerald makes the best sidecars” A Case of Human Bondage, 73.
48 “She’ll pickle it” Ibid., 20.
49 “Mon cher ami, il paraît” Ibid., 21.
50 “He caught my eye and shouted” Ibid., 27.
51 “I am so thrilled at getting [away]” WSM to John Ellingham Brooks, October 3, 1925, HRHRC.
52 “He could cook, he could valet” Ah King, 2.
53 “I seemed to develop the sensitiveness” The Summing Up, 200.
54 “I felt that all the depictions” WSM to Klaus Jonas, July 3, 1951, HRHRC.
55 “The width of observation” Listener, December 23, 1965.
56 “Maugham achieves an unspoken ferocity” 100 Key Books, 73.
57 “The journey on a French boat” WSM to Bert Alanson, March 15, 1927, Stanford.
58 “I cannot but think” WSM to Edward Knoblock, nd, Berg.
59 “I have made a very agreeable arrangement” WSM to Bert Alanson, May 20, 1926, Stanford.
60 “I will not conceal from you” WSM to Charles Towne, July 2, 1926, NYPL.
61 “You seem now to have bound me hand and foot” Ibid., April 24, 1926, Beinecke.
62 “I am sure you will make an excellent editor” Ibid., July 2, 1926, NYPL.
63 “Twenty minutes before starting” WSM to Bert Alanson, nd, Stanford.
CHAPTER 11: THE VILLA MAURESQUE
1 “I have at last found a place” WSM to Gerald Kelly, nd, HGARC.
2 “I hadn’t reckoned on the temptation” Strictly Personal, 3.
3 “The great luxury on the Riviera” Ibid., et seq.
4 “I place Somerset Maugham” Gladys Cooper (Hutchinson, 1931), 245.
5 “The majority of authors” Ibid.
6 “[We] have to content ourselves” The Letters of Nöel Coward, ed. Barry Day (Methuen, 2007), 227.
7 “Maugham lacked genuine enthusiasm” Seven Ages, Basil Dean (Hutchinson, 1970), 177.
8 “I’m tired of being the modern wife” Plays, vol. IV, 157.
9 “Constance: Are you as great a fool” Ibid., 180.
10 “Refuse to speak to him” Ibid., 146.
11 “I suffered agonies” WSM to George Cukor, nd, Margaret He
rrick Library.
12 “Quite early in rehearsals” Seven Ages, 304.
13 “Maugham and his wife” Ibid., 304.
14 “Mr. Maugham was out of form” Saturday Review, April 16, 1927.
15 “nice enough but it had the disadvantage” Looking Back, 108.
16 “Crowds and crowds at the party” Arnold Bennett’s Letters to His Nephew, 188.
17 “spent three whole nights in Central Park” unpublished ms, copyright the literary estate of the late Sir Cecil Beaton.
18 “My mother had a very bad nervous breakdown” Liza Maugham conversation with Pat Wallace, Frere Family Archive.
19 “I always hated Gerald Haxton” Ibid.
20 “I was hysterical” Ibid.
21 “We lunched tête à tête” Looking Back, 108.
22 (“Your mother dragged me through the mud”) Liza Maugham conversation with Pat Wallace, Frere Family Archive.
23 “Everything is absolutely finished” WSM to Barbara Back, May 16, 1929, HRHRC.
24 “I made a mistake” Looking Back, 110.
25 “She made my life utter hell” Robin Maugham unpublished diaries, Beinecke.
26 “abandoned liar” WSM to Barbara Back, April 22, 1929, HRHRC.
27 “[the] tart who ruined my life” Robin Maugham unpublished diaries, Beinecke.
28 “[opening] her mouth as wide” WSM to Kate Bruce, January 16, 1931, Berg.
29 “For those who seek a moral” Harold Acton, Washington Post, March 2, 1980.
30 “He wrote it at my request” A Case of Human Bondage, 102.
31 “help one up one’s little ladder” Ibid., 70.
32 “With drink Beverley’s tongue” unpublished ms, copyright the literary estate of the late Sir Cecil Beaton.
33 “I have been very fortunate” The Infirm Glory, Godfrey Winn (Michael Joseph, 1967), 92.
34 “that Willie had fallen for him” A Lion in the Bedroom, Pat Cavendish O’Neill (Jonathan Ball, 2004), 295.
35 “Don’t be a fool” Last Words, Anton Dolin (Century, 1985), 74.
36 “a delicious creature” Continual Lessons: The Journals of Glenway Wescott 1937–1955, ed. Robert Phelps (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1990), 91.
37 “You don’t know the kind of life” Hugh Walpole to Virginia Woolf, Letters of Virginia Woolf, vol. 4 (Hogarth Press, 1978), 250.
38 “a modified version of rough trade” Glenway Wescott interview with Ted Morgan, Jenman.
39 “He was wonderful with elderly gentlemen” Raymond Mortimer interview with Robert Calder, Jenman.
40 “my starry eyed little friend” Guy Little to Alan Searle, January 16, 1934, HGARC.
41 “but if you’ll have dinner with me” Alan Searle interview with Robert Calder, Jenman.
42 “the less Syrie knows” Ibid.
43 “Mr. Maugham wouldn’t have” Liza Maugham conversation with Pat Wallace, Frere Family Archive.
44 “Perhaps we should all look” Plays, vol. V, 298.
45 “Stage dialogue has been simplified” Ibid., x.
46 “another of Mr. Maugham’s” New York Times, November 20, 1928.
47 “[that] our business went up” Gladys Cooper, 270.
48 “For some reason (chiefly I suppose” WSM to Bert Alanson, September 15, 1928, Stanford.
49 “I was prepared to spend the rest of my life there” Strictly Personal, 3.
50 “the raffinement de luxe” A Leaf from the Yellow Book: The Correspondence of George Egerton, ed. Terence de Vere White (Richards Press, 1958).
51 “a haven of comfort” Ann Fleming, Spectator, May 17, 1980.
52 “The arms would drop back again” The Golden Riviera, Roderick Cameron (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1975), 42.
53 “I am silent with pleasure” Clever Hearts, Hugh and Mirabel Cecil (Gollancz, 1990), 294.
54 “[Willie] always had a genius for food” Christabel Aberconway to Alan Searle, September 2, 1964, HGARC.
55 (“He had about him”) A Case of Human Bondage, 19.
56 “It was Gerald Haxton” Escape from the Shadows, Robin Maugham, 96.
57 “Fundamentally Maugham was a formal man” The Golden Riviera, Roderick Cameron (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1975), 45.
58 “I have never been able to persuade myself” The Summing Up, 229.
59 “word followed word” Looking Back, 5.
60 “[As Darwin] never worked” article by Kenneth Allsop, Daily Express, nd.
61 “I have always had more stories in my head” Ibid., 80f.
62 “Then I go over very carefully” WSM to Paul Hackbest, November 15, 1930, Lilly.
63 “the most enthralling of human activities” The Summing Up, 222.
64 “the useful little imp” Plays, vol. 5, viii.
65 “I am no longer interested” WSM to Klaus Jonas, May 14, 1956, HRHRC.
66 “who had lingered in my mind” WSM to Paul Dottin, January 1, 1931, HRHRC.
67 “I swear I never thought of Hardy” Daily Telegraph, September 29, 1930.
68 “Oh, I don’t know” Remembering Mr. Maugham, 101.
69 “I am just finishing a novel” WSM to Gerald Kelly, May 30, 1929, HGARC.
70 “I have noticed that when someone asks” Cakes and Ale, 7.
71 “[Her] manner with Mrs. Driffield” Ibid., 128.
72 “She told me the hardest job she had” Ibid., 178.
73 “I had long had in mind” Ibid., 1.
74 “the yellow hair of a girl” The Gentleman in the Parlour, 46.
75 “who neither read the books” Cakes and Ale, 41.
76 “was very amiable to the authors” Ibid., 154.
77 “in which he showed quite definitely” Ibid., 123.
78 “viceroy of the literary world” My World of Theatre, Peter Daubeny (Cape, 1971), 34.
79 “he was mean as cat’s meat” “The Eighty Years of Mr Maugham,” Thomas Brady, New York Times Magazine, January 24, 1954.
80 “I knew Hugh Walpole” William Heinemann: A Century of Publishing, 1890–1990, John St. John (Heinemann, 1990), 358.
81 “[I had] a considerable affection” Cakes and Ale, 8.
82 “I’ll tell you the sort of book” Ibid., 98.
83 “[Alroy Kear’s] views on marriage” Ibid., 18.
84 “one of the most memorable literary dissections” Anthony West, New Yorker, August 23, 1952.
85 “Read on with increasing horror” Hugh Walpole unpublished diaries, HRHRC.
86 “I can’t see any resemblance” A. S. Frere interview with Ted Morgan, Jenman.
87 “[Cakes and Ale] contains a most envenomed portrait” Lytton Strachey, vol. 2, Michael Holroyd (Heinemann, 1968), 680.
88 “your laudable fiendishness” E. M. Forster to WSM, November 11, 1930, HGARC.
89 “I hear poor Hugh says” Francis Brett Young, Jessica Brett Young (Heinemann, 1962), 172.
90 “the red-hot poker” A Chime of Words, Edwin Tribble, ed. (Ticknor & Fields), 86.
91 “cried aloud to be caricatured” All I Could Never Be, Beverley Nichols (Cape, 1949), 232.
92 “No English writer” New York Times, October 12, 1930.
93 “supreme adroitness and ease” Graphic, October 15, 1930.
94 “a model of construction” William Somerset Maugham: The English Maupassant, 9.
95 “perfect novel” United States, Gore Vidal (Deutsch, 1993), 250.
96 “superb” Listener, December 23, 1965.
97 “[Driffield] gave you the impression” Cakes and Ale, 89.
98 “I am really very unlucky” WSM to Hugh Walpole, nd, HRHRC.
99 “piteous, writhing & wincing” The Diary of Virginia Woolf, vol. 3 (Hogarth Press, 1980), 328.
100 “[After Cakes and Ale] Maugham’s reputation” Figures in the Foreground, Frank Swinnerton (Hutchinson, 1963), 35.
CHAPTER 12: MASTER HACKY
1 “As what I have was invested” WSM to Messmore Kendall, January 13, 1929, HRHRC.
2 “He was warm,
affectionate” A. S. Frere to Anthony Curtis, December 31, 1973, private collection.
3 “[Maugham] had an inestimable gift” A. S. Frere interview with Ted Morgan, Jenman.
4 “I don’t read books” Hamilton Basso, New Yorker, December 30, 1964.
5 “but Willie … can back Nelson into a corner” Ibid.
6 “as a St. Bernard towers over a beagle” Ibid.
7 “last of the great professional writers” Enemies of Promise, Cyril Connolly (Penguin, 1961), 93.
8 “He has a sense” William Somerset Maugham: The English Maupassant, 8.
9 “I can tell you nothing” David Garnett to Ted Morgan, January 25, 1978, Jenman.
10 “I know just where I stand” Seven Friends, Louis Marlow (Richards Press, 1953), 160.
11 “If you have a snap-shot” WSM to Fred Bason, December 25, 1930, Lilly.
12 “We Cockneys try to repay” attached to WSM to Fred Bason, September 28, 1934, Lilly.
13 “No, I do not think” Ibid., November 13, 1931.
14 “You know quite well” WSM to Fred Bason, October 25, 1935, Lilly.
15 “you are at perfect liberty” Ibid., May 11, 1926.
16 “the toil and struggle” Plays, vol. VI, viii.
17 “I haven’t the desire” Ibid.
18 “[With a play] you cannot have” Ibid.
19 “Fashions change in the theatre” The Infirm Glory, 249.
20 “led by the brisk but determined form” A Traveller in Romance, 27.
21 “a picture of a gentleman on a shelf” reproduced in Noël Coward and His Friends, Cole Lesley, Graham Payn, and Sheridan Morley (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1979), 209.
22 “red-eyed and miserable” Anything for a Quiet Life, Jack Hawkins (Hamish Hamilton, 1973), 43.
23 “to see the brilliant castigator” Writers at Work, Louise Morgan (Chatto & Windus, 1931), 58.
24 “I dote really on the smell” WSM to David Horner, August 19, 1937, HRHRC.
25 “the most entertaining game” The Traveller’s Library, 1.
26 “I’ve lost hundreds” Celebrity Circus, 19.
27 “The student of human nature” The Traveller’s Library, 1.
28 “I do not flatter myself” WSM to Karl Pfeiffer, September 26, 1931, HRHRC.
29 “I wish I could make a novel” Charles Goren, Sports Illustrated, January 17, 1966.
The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham Page 65
