Maugham - The Gentleman In the Parlour

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
Paul Theroux

VINTAGE BOOKS

London

Preface

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Epub ISBN 9781409088028

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Published by Vintage 2001

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W. Somerset Maugham has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

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First published in Great Britain by William Heinemann in 1930

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THE GENTLEMAN IN THE PARLOUR

William Somerset Maugham was born in 1874 and lived in Paris until he was ten. He was educated at Kings School, Canterbury, and at Heidelberg University. He spent some time at St. Thomas Hospital with the idea of practising medicine, but the success of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, published in 1897, won him over to letters. Of Human Bondage, the first of his masterpieces, came out in 1915, and with the publication in 1919 of The Moon and Sixpence his reputation as a novelist was established. At the same time his fame as a successful playwright and short story writer was being consolidated with acclaimed productions of various plays and the publication of The Trembling of a Leaf, subtitled Little Stories of the South Sea Islands, in 1921, which was followed by seven more collections. His other works include travel books, essays, criticism and the autobiographical The Summing Up and A Writers Notebook.

In 1927 Somerset Maugham settled in the South of France and lived there until his death in 1965.

OTHER WORKS BY W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Novels

The Moon and Sixpence

Of Human Bondage

The Narrow Corner

The Razors Edge

Cakes and Ale

The Merry-Go-Round

The Painted Veil

Catalina

Up at the Villa

Mrs Craddock

The Casuarina Tree

Christmas Holiday

Liza of Lambeth

The Magician

Theatre

Then and Now

Collected Short Stories

Collected Short Stories Vol. 1

Collected Short Stories Vol. 2

Collected Short Stories Vol. 3

Collected Short Stories Vol. 4

Ashenden

Short Stories

Far Eastern Tales

More Far Eastern Tales

Travel Writing

On a Chinese Screen

Don Fernando

Literary Criticism

Ten Novels and their Authors

Points of View

The Vagrant Mood

Autobiography

The Summing Up

A Writers Notebook

In 1922, when William Somerset Maugham was hugely successful as a playwright, short story writer and novelist, and even something of a socialite, he dropped off the map to take the long and occasionally rigorous journey recorded in this book. He had gone by ship from Britain to Ceylon where he met a man who told him of the joys of Keng Tung in the Shan States of remote northeastern Burma. This provoked him to travel via Rangoon to Mandalay, where he embarked by mule for this supposedly enchanted place. Twenty-six days later he arrived. He recorded its virtues in his notebook and then plodded on to the Thai frontier, where a Ford car awaited, to take him to Bangkok. After that, a ship to Cambodia, a trek to Angkor, another river trip to Saigon and a coastal jaunt via Hue to Hanoi. The book finishes there, though in fact, he traveled onward to Hong Kong, crossed the Pacific, crossed the United States, crossed the Atlantic and, back in London, resumed his writing career and his socializing. But he did not get around to writing this book until seven years later, and I think this fact needs to be taken into account when evaluating this oblique and selective travel narrative.

He wrote a great deal in the interval after the trip, The Painted Veil (1925), and after another voyage to Singapore and Malaya the powerful stories in The Casuarina Tree (1926), Ashenden and its stories of espionage (1928), and at least two full-length stage plays. In this time he made at least one more visit to the United States, and in 1927 bought the grand house on the Riviera he named the Villa Mauresque. Here, in luxury, he finished his novel Cakes and Ale and at last wrote The Gentleman in the Parlour. Both these books were published in the same year, 1930, at what one of his biographers called the peak of his career. The Gentleman in the Parlour received the mixed, not to say envious, reviews that Maugham habitually got from critics who, well-aware that Maugham was wealthy, successful as a writer, socially connected, something of a snob, and living in style, saw little reason to praise him.

Maugham was given no credit for enduring difficult travel, yet parts of the trip were arduous. He toured the extensive complex of temples at Pagan in Burma, necessitating a trip down the Irrawaddy, and spent almost a month on the mule on the trip to Keng Tung. In Cambodia he sailed up the Tonle Sap River and crossed the wide lake to view the then remote precincts of Angkor, at the time just a fantastic set of uninhabited ruins in the jungle.

But the delay between the trip and the book interests me. Invariably a person who wishes to write a travel book goes on a journey and writes the book immediately afterwards. The notable exception is Patrick Leigh Fermor who walked across Europe from Holland to Constantinople in 1933-34, but did not write his account of the trip until many decades later A Time of Gifts (1977) and Between the Woods and the Water (1986). These books are so fresh and full of detail youd hardly know that such a long period of time had elapsed.

In Maughams case, the hiatus made a difference, both for good and ill. I dont think it would have been the same book if hed written it on his return home. The books tone and structure is the result of this passage of time. The book is less detailed but more reflective, more deliberate, more artful and even contrived as a result; it summarizes, it avoids divulging much about the travelers true personality and predilections. The high points are the mule ride through upper Burma, the period of time in Bangkok, and the description of Angkor.