Liza of Lambeth. 1897. The First Novel of W. Somerset Maugham

Somerset Maugham is by far the most sucessful physician turned author of all time.  More movies have been made from his works than any other writer.  

Liza of Lambeth is the first novel of Somerset Muagham, published just after he graduated from medical school.  It draws on his experience working as a physician for a few months in a working class section of London.  While there he saw the harsh lives of women, often with ten or more children beaten by their husbands in rages brought on by alcohol.  

Liza is about twenty, works in a factory and lives with her widowed mother.  Alcohol, especially beer fuels all social life, before we judge to harshly there was no clean water to be had.  The novel does a good job of letting us see the inevitable ruin of Liza when she takes up with a married man twice her age with six children.  Liza has a decent suitor but he just a bit dull.  Her mother is kind of a chain puller and a serious drinker also.  

There is a very well done exciting rather brutal fight between Liza and the wife of the man she is involved with. There are several scenes of spousal battery, which was considered more or less normal, though it was illegal.

                  A Street in Lambeth, in the 1890s

The down fall of Liza is very melodramatic and comes as no surprise.  

Liza of Lambeth reminded me of the works of Balzac and Zola  set in the poor quarters of Paris.  

It is a short work, estimated reading time under two hours.  I found it interesting to experience the first work of Maugham.  I have so far read his master work, On Human Bondage, The Moon and Sixpence, The Magician and a few short stories.  

The Magician by Somerset Maugham (1908)

I offer my thanks to Max u for the Amazon Gift Card that allowed me to read this book.  Maugham's work is still under copyright.  A number of his novels can be bought as Kindle editions for $1.95 or less. 

          I like the old covers from the days

          When a classic was just book

          

Recently I read and posted on Selina Hasting's wonderful biography The Many Lives of Somerset Maugham.  After reading this I wanted to read more of Maigham than just his acknowledged masters works On Human Bondage and his short story "Rain".  I read his novel about a painter, The Moon and Sixpence a few days ago and throughly enjoyed it.  I wanted to read at least one more of his novels so I picked his 1908 novel, The Magician.

I picked The Magician as my next, and perhaps last for a while, Maugham novel as the central character in the novel, the magician, is based on Alister Crowley. In the long ago I read Crowley's very long autobiography and am interested in the influence of occult teachings on English writers. Maugham met Crowley and did not like him.

Oliver Habbo is from an old wealthy family, he was once very handsome and imposing at six foot three.  He has when we meet him become tremendously obese. Maugham goes on and on about this.  Habbo has a  reputation for having sinister powers and is deeply into occult lore.  In the period in England occult doctrines were thought to be derived from the teachings of the Kabbalah and the findings of alchemists. From the novel you can garner the popular perception of this.   Before we meet Habbo we learn of his evil reputation.  Animals are frightened of him.  In a critical scene Habbo is having tea with a man and his fiancé.  An alercation ensues in which the other man throughly trounces Habbo over a slight to his fiancé and her dog.  Habbo makes no resistance and the fiancé dismisses him as a fraud and a coward.  The plot action of the novel unfolds based on the terrible revenge Habbo takes.  

There are about six characters in the novel, all but Hebbo your standard upper class English types. All are skillfully developed.   To me the best part of The Magician is the dark visions Hebbo erouses in the ex-fiancé of the man who beat him, after he makes her fall in love with and marry him, leaving her fiancé heartbroken. These visions were very well done.  The weakest part of the novel for me was the close in which we learn of Hebbo's experiments.  Maybe it was shocking but it seemed almost unintentionally silly to me. 

I am glad I read The Magician.  My next Maugham novel will be Lisbeth, based on his medical work in the slums of London.   He wrote it right after he graduated from medical school.  

Please share your experience with Maugham with us.

The Moon and Sixpence by Somerset Maugham (1919)

Literary trivial pursuit questions

Who is the most sucessful doctor turned writer of all time?

What writer's fiction has been the basis for the most movies?  

Not long ago t read The Many Lives of Somerset Maugham by Selina Hastings, a first rate literary biography that has motivated me to expand my reading of Maugham beyond On Human Bondage and his great set on a tropical island short story "Rain".  Maugham was a very prolific writer, more movies have been based on his novels than any other writer (per Selina Hastings).  

The Moon and Sixpence is the first person narrative centering on an account of the narrator's acquaintanship with a Charles Strickland.  The narrator is an affluent English gentleman.  He receives an invitation to have tea with a Mrs. Strickland and gradually they become close.  He is shocked to learn her husband has deserted her and their children, moving to Paris to pursue his artistic ambitions.

Mrs Strickland and her brother in law are convinced Mr. Strickland is with a woman in Paris and asks the narrator to go to Paris and report back.  He finds Strickland living alone in a shabby hotel.  We then follow his developing relationship to Strickland, who seems a throughly unlikeable blaggard with no artistic skill the narrator can see.  Mrs Strickland is at first churched, she has been left with no means of support.  She begins to type manuscripts for authors and in time has four typists working for her.

Strickland has little success as a painter and does not much care.  He does an occasional odd job to get by.  Maugham is a great creator of characters.  I loved it when the narrator said as he walked the rougher quarters of Paris he wondered  how Balzac would describe the people he encountered.  

There is an interesting development in which Strickland gets deathly ill and is taken in by another painter and his wife.  Something shocking happens, many secrets in the Balzacian streets of Paris.

Strickland decides to go to a tropical island in the Pacific to paint. He works his way there on tramp steamers.  I don't want to give away the action of the novel as it is very interesting. They"white man in the tropics" segment of the novel might offend the hyper anti-colonial readers but it for sure lets us see how people thought and makes us feel the power the island had for Strickland. After his death Strickland has become world famous, with his work of great value to collectors and is proudly displayed in museums.  

Strickland is very much a cypher.  The Moon and Sixpence is very much worth reading, very perceptive.  I enjoyed it a lot.

I have begun his novel The Magician, based loosely on Aleister Crowley.  Upon completing it, maybe tommorow, I hope to read his first novel, Lisbeth, based on his work as a doctor in the slums of London.

Please share your experiences with Somerset Maugham with us.

Mel u

The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham by Selina Hastings (2009)

My great thanks to Max u for the Amazon Gift Card that enabled my reading of this book.

Having recently completed  Rosamond Lehmann A Life by Selina Hastings, I was eagerly looking forward to reading her biography of the author of On Human Bondage, The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham.  Maugham (1874 to 1965) was the first superstar author, making himself very wealthy from his writings.  More movies have been made from his novels, many plays and short stories than from works by any other writer.  Three movies have been made from his most famous short story, "Rain".    Maugham described himself as not a writer of tne first rank but very high in the second rank.  This is the judgement of literary history.    

I don't wish to give a micro recap of Maugham's fascinating life in this post.  I will say say at once that this is a fabulous book, providing much more than in depth look at the life of Maugham, including a very detailed account of his sex life, but a literary history of much of the period. Maugham would have been, if we can speculated, happier had he lived in an era when homosexual acts were not a crime.  The greatest misery of his life  after a difficult growing  he had up until he entered into dementia toward the end a life most would envy, was a marriage he was bullied into and which I think he acquised to inorder that he might cover up his  homosexual activities.   Hastings tells us a great deal about the love life of Maugham.  He liked younger than he slender handsome men and had several long term relationships.  He also liked having sex with rent boys.  While at his villa in the French Rivera, he cruised the bars for sailors. Maugham was very generous to his lovers, he was  predatory at times but he was also exploited.  

I loved this book.  I was so happy for Maugham, who graduated from medical school, as his literary career began to have one triumph after another.  His first significant wealth came from  from London and Broadway plays.  He also made a lot from book sales and movies.  Just from one short story, "Rain", he made, from sales and the three movies based on it, over three million dollars.  Maugham traveled the world, especially in South East and South India, where he got the inspiration for many of his stories. Maugham traveled in style, normally with his long term companion Gerald Haxton.  

For forty years Maugham's primary residence was in a property , The Villa Mauresque, he owned on the French Rivera.  He entertained many writers, including Rosamond Lehmann, and lots of celebrities.  He  had a staff of twelve.  Dinners were always formal.  Maugham loved elegant meals, fine wines, collected art, (his collection of paintings would be worth billions now if intact), he was very well read.  He always traveled with a  suitcase full of books so he could have variety in reading while traveling.  He mostly traveled transoceanic by boat.  

 

         Villa Mauresque

Hastings just has put so much great stuff in her biography, everything from details on homosexual orgies in Hollywood, the ways of literary agents and publishers, an account of  how Maugham's experience working for a short time as a doctor in the poorest part of London impacted his sensibility, and so much more. Maugham was very lucky  in that he had a totally honest very astute financial genius managing his money for him.  Maugham spent much of World War Two in the United States, sometimes in New York City where at one time four of his plays were on Broadway simultaneously, some in Hollywood working on scripts.  We learn a lot about the business side of being a playwright, dealing with temperamental stars and wondering how long a play would run.  

        Just a few of Maugham's works

Toward the end of his life Maugham became dependent on one of his nephews for care.  It was so sad to read of his falling out with his daughter and his terrible decline into dementia.

The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham is a great literary biography.  Even if you have never read any Maugham, you should read at least On Human Bondage and "Rain", I think anyone with an interest In Twentieth century literary culture will enjoy this book.  

I will, I hope, read her biography of Nancy Mitford one of these days.

Mel u

 

Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham (1915, 736 pages)

My Posts on Maugham

How can you not like a novel that uses "Meredithian" as an adjective?

Over the last three years I have read and greatly enjoyed two short stories by W. Somerset Maugham (1874 to 1965-there is some background information on him in my posts).  I knew that Of Human Bondage was his undisputed master work.   The main reason I have previously not read it is basically the length.  I am so glad I overcame my hesitation.  The Manchester Guardian recently listed it as the 44th best novel of all time and that was what pushed me to go ahead and read it.  

Of Human Bondage is a coming of age story that covers about 20 years in the life of Philip Carey.  Based on current events in the story it takes place from about 1880 to 1905.  He was made an orphan by the early death of his mother and went to live with an uncle, an Anglican cleric. Philip has a club foot and this was an important factor in his life.  Philip was expected to become a cleric himself and was educated with that in mind. I totally loved the scenes in the book where Phillip first comes to read in his uncle's library of 4000 or so books.  Anybody that came to the reading life on their own at a young age will identify strongly with Philip. Phillip does not thrive at University and his uncle pressures him into a five year apprenticeship at an accounting firm.  Everywhere Philip goes Maugham does a marvelous job of making the experience come to life with marvelous minor characters and great descriptions.  Maugham lets us feel we are walking the streets of London and later Paris.

Against the advise of his Uncle, who controls his money until he is twenty one, he quits the accounting work, he was doing poorly any way, and moves to Paris to follow his dream of becoming a painter.  Much of the novel deals with his life as an art student in Paris.  Now the central villain of the novel appears, Mildred, who will be the near ruination of Philip's life.  

Compressing a lot, Philip comes to see he has no real talent as a painter and returns to England to study medicine.  His father was a doctor.  His uncle approves of this after reprimanding him for time wasted.   Maugham lets us see exactly how one became a doctor in London.  He also takes us through areas of terrible poverty.  Philip has to drop out of school for years, becomes homeless, all basically caused by his obsession with the incredibly nasty Mildred.  I don't want to tell too much but he does return to school and becomes certified as a doctor. While working in a hospital he becomes friends with a patient there and ends up almost a part of the man's extended family.   I will not say more of the plot.  You will come to hate Mildred and feel Philip is in need of a good thrashing!

The prose is elegant and simple in sentence structure.  There are lots of great literary references, this is for sure part of the reading life canon of books about people who lead reading centered lives, and artistic discussion.  

(A scene in from the movie, in Philip's quarters, with Mildred)

 I strongly endorse the reading of this book.  I downloaded it for free from Manybooks.org.  

Please share your experiences with Maugham with us

Did you like the happy ending?

What Maugham novel should I read next.

Mel u