Rain By W. Somerset Maugham

It was nearly bed-time and when they awoke next morning land would be in sight. Dr. Macphail lit his pipe and, leaning over the rail, searched the heavens for the Southern Cross. After two years at the front and a wound that had taken longer to heal than it should, he was glad to settle down quietly at Apia for twelve months at least, and he felt already better for the journey. Since some of the passengers were leaving the ship next day at Pago-Pago they had had a little dance that evening and in his ears hammered still the harsh notes of the mechanical piano. But the deck was quiet at last. A little way off he saw his wife in a long chair talking with the Davidsons, and he strolled over to her. When he sat down under the light and took off his hat you saw that he had very red hair, with a bald patch on the crown, and the red, freckled skin which accompanies red hair; he was a man of forty, thin, with a pinched face, precise and rather pedantic; and he spoke with a Scots accent in a very low, quiet voice.

Somerset Maugham: Jane

 

I remember very well the occasion on which I first saw Jane Fowler. It is indeed only because the details of the glimpse I had of her then are so clear that I trust my recollection at all, for, looking back, I must confess that I find it hard to believe that it has not played me a fantastic trick. I had lately returned to London from China and was drinking a dish of tea with Mrs. Tower. Mrs.Tower had been seized with the prevailing passion for decoration; and with the ruthlessness of her sex had sacrificed chairs in which she had comfortably sat for years, tables, cabinets, ornaments, on which her eyes had dwelt in peace since she was married, pictures that had been familiar to her for a generation; and delivered herself into the hands of an expert. Nothing remained in her drawing-room with which she had any association, or to which any sentiment was attached; and she had invited me that day to see the fashionable glory in which she now lived. Everything that could be pickled was pickled and what couldn`t be pickled was painted. Nothing matched, but everything harmonised.

"Do you remember that ridiculous drawing-room suite that I used to have?" asked Mrs. Tower.

The curtains were sumptuous yet severe; the sofa was covered with Italian brocade; the chair on which I sat was in petit point. The room was beautiful, opulent without garishness and original without affectation; yet to me it lacked something and while I praised with my lips I asked myself why I so much preferred the rather shabby chintz of the despised suite, the Victorian water-colours that I had known so long, and the ridiculous Dresden china" that had adorned the chimney piece. I wondered what it was that I missed in all these rooms that the decorators were turning out with a profitable industry. Was it heart? But Mrs. Tower looked about her happily.

The Creative Impulse by Somerset Maugham

I suppose that very few people know how Mrs Albert Forrester came to write

The Achilles Statue; and since it has been acclaimed as one of the great novels

of our time I cannot but think that a brief account of the circumstances that

gave it birth must be of interest to all serious students of literature; and indeed,

if, as the critics say, this is a book that will live, the following narrative, serving a

better purpose than to divert an idle hour, may be regarded by the historian of

the future as a curious footnote to the literary annals of our day.

Everyone of course remembers the success that attended the publication of

The Achilles Statue. Month after month printers were kept busy printing,

binders were kept busy binding, edition after edition; and the publishers, both

in England and America, were hard put to it to fulfil the pressing orders of the

booksellers. It was promptly translated into every European tongue and it has

been recently announced that it will soon be possible to read it in Japanese and

in Urdu. But it had previously appeared serially in magazines on both sides of

the Atlantic and from the editors of these Mrs Albert Forrester’s agent had

wrung a sum that can only be described as thumping. A dramatization of the

work was made, which ran for a season in New York, and there is little doubt

that when the play is produced in London it will have an equal success. The

film rights have been sold at a great price. Though the amount that Mrs Albert

Forrester is reputed (in literary circles) to have made is probably exaggerated,

there can be no doubt that she will have earned enough money from this one

book to save her for the rest of her life from any financial anxiety.