The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham by Selina Hastings
John Murray, £25
It is not until page 422 of this hugely entertaining biography that we learn of the “socialist beliefs” of the multi-millionaire writer Somerset Maugham and, even then, without elaboration. A little further on, in the context of his role as a wartime propagandist, there is a second reference to his “mildly socialist values” and then a third to his “socialist views”.
Now this comes as news to me, as it might well have done to the great man himself. He studiously avoided political commitment in his work, preferred the company of the rich and famous – including the Duke of Windsor, Lord Beaverbrook and Winston Churchill – and was beastly to Alan Searle, his secretary-cum-lover of working class origins. True, he did have a brief love affair with a Russian woman with revolutionary connections, but even she was a princess, daughter of Prince Peter Kropotkin, the anarchist intellectual. Perhaps he was subconsciously rehearsing for “new” Labour.
The only convincing evidence for leftie Maugham advanced by Selina Hastings is a quotation from his autobiography, Strictly Personal, published in 1941, where he wrote that the crisis of war was “destroying the class consciousness which has been one of the evils of British life… [after the war] the country shall be much more democratic than ever before. Some accept it with resignation, some with joy. I myself accept it with joy.” Yet this is the man who was miffed at being awarded the rare CH on the grounds that it wasn’t an OM, like Thomas Hardy’s, an inferior artist who wrote about milkmaids. And during the General Strike of 1926, Maugham enjoyed “sleuthing” for Scotland Yard.
It is difficult to understand why his biographer should try to shoehorn Maugham into a political mould in which he clearly did not, and does not, belong. Not when his wide experience of London’s poor as a junior doctor at St Thomas’ Hospital, and his travels across the world, made him such an acute and sympathetic observer of the human condition. Enough can be a feast without forcing the point. Maugham was justifiably the most famous (and wealthy) writer in English of the 20th century. He was the master of the short story, wrote some fine novels, dozens of plays that charmed audiences in London and New York, and books of autobiography and criticism, too.
But even he recognised that he was not a genius, despite being a compulsive writer and the best storyteller of his time. “Writing was not just what he did, it was where he lived”, observes Hastings. Her biography suggests his real genius was his life. It was a very long life, lived to (and often beyond) the limit.
Born in the British Embassy in Paris (to avoid the French call-up) in 1874, the son of a well-to-do lawyer, he was devoted to his mother who died when he was eight. He never got over the shock, nor a grim upbringing with relatives in Kent. A determined young man, he qualified as a doctor and wrote at night – when he wasn’t sampling the delights of late Victorian London. Highly sexed, and attracted to both sexes, he played the field with voracity, and much of his experience later found its way into his work. Indeed, friends and acquaintances often complained at recognising themselves on the stage or in his stories. He was wholly unrepentant.
The clandestine nature of sexuality drew him naturally into the world of espionage and stealth diplomacy. The British government sent him on a secret mission to Petrograd in 1917 with the aim of bolstering Kerensky’s faltering Menshevik regime. He gained Kerensky’s confidence, but had no confidence in him or his ability to achieve Allied war aims. In his coded reports back to London, Lenin was “Davis” and Trotsky was “Cole.” Sensing the coming victory of the Bolsheviks, Maugham’s spymasters recalled him after three months, sending a destroyer to Christiana to pick him up after his discreet departure – from the Finland station. This episode is worth a book in itself.
Hastings’ method of writing the life via the books and Maugham’s “secret” lives (secret only in his lifetime, and then not very) is deliciously wicked and diverting. The story of his disastrous marriage to Syrie is recounted in lurid detail. We could perhaps do without some of the long lists of visitors to Villa Mauresque, his famous villa in the south of France, but she pursues her quarry round the world, in every hotel and bedroom where he indulged his staggering sexual appetite. Beverley Nichols, the gay journalist, described him as “the most sexually voracious man I’ve every known” and even in very old age he was still belabouring poor Searle in the bedroom.
All exquisite fun, no doubt. But what about the literary output? Compared with Hardy, of whom he was so de haut en bas, Maugham is little read these days, though a modern film of The Painted Veil screened over the holiday showed what a wonderful storyteller he remains. Hastings offers a confident verdict that “it is safe to say now he will hold future generations in thrall”. I’m not so sure about that, but it is safe to say that this biography held this reader in thrall.
Paul Routledge
