I look at this enigmatic photograph and wonder …
Not every sitter liked Graham Sutherland’s portrait but Maugham called his “magnificent” and it established Sutherland’s reputation. Willie, he hated Somerset, was a colossal literary figure in the last century. He had four plays running concurrently in the West End before the First World War. He wrote thirty-two plays, nine novels and goodness knows how many short stories. Over the years I have read a lot of his output – never seen a play – are they still put on?
Along with Noël Coward and PG Wodehouse he briefly lived in an Art Deco house in Le Touquet. I don’t know but I can guess, double taxation by the US and Britain may have been his reason as it was for Plum. At the end of this post there is an interview with Willie filmed in 1955 when he was eighty. He makes a good impression while revealing nothing. Alan Pryce-Jones talks to him mainly about his writing and other authors. At one point he says the worst fate for a writer is to be forgotten after their death. He never mentions Wodehouse, a peculiar omission, so it is ironic that Plum’s reputation today eclipses Maugham’s. Wodehouse did, however, deliver his verdict on Maugham in a letter to Evelyn Waugh.
“I’ve been re-reading a lot of his stuff, and I’m wondering a bit about him. I mean, surely one simply can’t do that stuff about the district officer hearing there’s a white man dying in a Chinese slum and it turns out that it’s gay lighthearted Jack Almond, who disappeared and no-one knew what had become of [him] and he went right under, poor chap, because a woman in England had let him down.”
Waugh admired Maugham but had reservations.
“He is never boring or clumsy, he never gives a false impression; he is never shocking; but this very diplomatic polish makes impossible for him any of those sudden transcendent flashes of passion and beauty which less competent novelists occasionally attain.”
Maugham portrays himself as a highbrow consumer of literature. I find I have more in common with Plum. Tad Boehmer, Curator of Rare Books at Michigan State University, discovered the 895 books Plum borrowed from the New York Society Library, 1951 – 1955. For the long read go to Wooster Sauce or here is the short version.
Maugham and Wodehouse (alphabetical order) are superficially similar but beneath the surface very different. Maugham undoubtedly tells a good tale but without a glimmer of humour and in a style criticised even at the time he was writing. Both were best sellers and now you know who won the race for recognition by posterity and he didn’t even know he was competing.
Maugham’s legacy: the Somerset Maugham Award, a literary prize given each year by the Society of Authors. Established by Maugham in 1947, the awards go to writers under the age of thirty-five; non-fiction, fiction or poetry. Many of the winners are household names.
Wodehouse’s legacy: (almost) all his books in print, thriving Wodehouse Societies around the world, multiple adaptations of his work on stage, screen and radio.
I’m often drawn to the underdog and Maugham deserves a bit more recognition.
I remember an excellent production of S M’s “The Letter” at the lyric Hammersmith in autumn 1995(before performances there became unpalatable). It was directed by the acclaimed Neil Bartlett, and the cast included Joanna Lumley and Tim Pigott-Smith.
It is great to hear that Wodehouse and Waugh were on good terms. They worked in similar terrains. They bear comparison as novelists of the upper classes.
But is it fair to compare Wodehouse and Maugham? The latter maybe bears comparison with Graham Greene, VS Naipaul, Anthony Burgess and even Jean Rhys in often being novelists of Empire. All, perhaps with the exception of Maugham, were often LoL satirical. So Maugham and Wodehouse are not on the same territory, except perhaps in being mocked by bien pensant opinion, which doesn’t apply to the other comparitors I very tentatively suggest.
I can imagine Wodehouse remaining successful (not least, because I really only know him from TV and would cheerfully watch repeats). But like you I have an affection for Maugham who does verge on the forgotten now. He seemed to so long to address spiritual matters, and never forgets to root them in close and even cynical observation of the world, at least as I recall him.