Delphi Collected Works of W. Somerset Maugham (Illustrated) Read online

  The Collected Works of

  W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

  (1874-1965)

  Contents

  The Novels

  LIZA OF LAMBETH

  THE MAKING OF A SAINT

  THE HERO

  MRS CRADDOCK

  THE MERRY-GO-ROUND

  THE BISHOP’S APRON

  THE EXPLORER

  THE MAGICIAN

  OF HUMAN BONDAGE

  THE MOON AND SIXPENCE

  The Short Stories

  INTRODUCTION TO THE SHORT STORIES

  THE SHORT STORIES IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

  THE SHORT STORIES IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

  The Plays

  A MAN OF HONOUR

  LADY FREDERICK

  JACK STRAW

  MRS DOT

  PENELOPE

  THE EXPLORER

  THE TENTH MAN

  LANDED GENTRY

  THE LAND OF PROMISE

  THE UNKNOWN

  THE CIRCLE

  CAESAR’S WIFE

  EAST OF SUEZ

  Selected Non-Fiction

  THE LAND OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN

  ON A CHINESE SCREEN

  The Delphi Classics Catalogue

  © Delphi Classics 2017

  Version 1

  The Collected Works of

  W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

  By Delphi Classics, 2017

  COPYRIGHT

  Collected Works of W. Somerset Maugham

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by Delphi Classics.

  © Delphi Classics, 2017.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

  ISBN: 9781786560698

  Delphi Classics

  is an imprint of

  Delphi Publishing Ltd

  Hastings, East Sussex

  United Kingdom

  Contact: [email protected]

  www.delphiclassics.com

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  The Novels

  Hôtel de Charost, the official residence of the British Ambassador, Paris — Maugham’s father, Robert Ormond Maugham, was a lawyer that handled the legal affairs of the British embassy in Paris. Since French law declared that all children born on French soil could be conscripted for military service, his father arranged for Maugham to be born at the embassy, technically on British soil.

  Central Paris, c. 1900

  Maugham as a young man

  LIZA OF LAMBETH

  Originally entitled A Lambeth Idyll, this novel was written in response to advice given to Maugham after he submitted two short stories to publisher Thomas Fisher Unwin. Unwin rejected the stories on the advice of expert reader Edward Garnett (a critic and literary editor), but did advise Maugham that if he chose to write a longer piece of fiction he would be happy to receive it.

  Maugham therefore wrote his first novel whilst working as a medical intern at St. Thomas’ hospital in Lambeth, which was to provide rich source material for the story. This time Garnett was impressed by the realistic setting and storyline and Unwin published it in September 1897. For a first novel it attracted a pleasing amount of attention and the respectable initial sum of £20 in royalties.

  Maugham described the novel as “the story of a nine days wonder in a Lambeth slum” and confessed to being influenced by the great authors of realistic novels, such as Maupassant; however, Maugham was also accused of being overly influenced (to the point of plagiarism) by other gritty novels set in the slums, such as Child of the Jago by Arthur Morrison, published in 1896. Some themes are bound to recur in such novels — descriptions of living conditions, the brutality of relationships, the dangers of living and working in such insanitary districts — so the critics that accused Maugham of copying were perhaps being unduly harsh, as his characters and settings are as unique to this novel as they can be. It is tempting to think that the doctor who appears briefly towards the end of the story is a “walk on” part for Maugham himself in his professional role as a community hospital doctor. In later life, Maugham presented the manuscript for this novel to his old school, King’s School Canterbury, the establishment that was so unflatteringly portrayed in Maugham’s later novel Of Human Bondage.

  This story unfolds over about four months in the late summer and early autumn of 1887. Eighteen-year-old Liza Kemp is a factory worker and the youngest of thirteen children. She lives in cramped, unpleasant conditions with her siblings and her widowed, alcoholic mother. A strikingly attractive, cheerful and sociable girl, who makes the best of her appearance and life in general, Liza is popular with neighbours and local boys alike and it is not long before she receives (and rejects) a proposal of marriage from Tom, a respectable lad, who is besotted with her. Liza is instead drawn to the socially unacceptable — an affair with Jim Blackston, a forty year old man, who is married, has several children and a pregnant wife. Their courtship begins right under the noses of their neighbours on a bank holiday outing and develops into a full blown affair – after Jim rapes her. This is a gruelling scene which, while not sexually explicit, will more than likely upset many modern sensibilities, but is especially uncomfortable as the rape is the trigger for the start of the affair, not something that ends it.

  Liza and Jim continue with their affair, meeting in railway waiting rooms to try to avoid local prying eyes and gossips — hardly the grand romance Liza had in mind. Nor does the discretion work, as people begin to talk about them and soon Jim’s wife finds out. Jim faces strife at home and Liza feels disappointed and trapped. She cannot leave home because of her ineffectual mother and Jim makes no moves to leave home either; Liza’s work friend Sarah gives up work and marries a man that beats her and is soon also pregnant and Tom, her former admirer, is less attentive than he was. Jim’s wife has vowed to do Liza harm when she finds her. Instead of opening up into a brave new life of romance and freedom from society’s constraints, the world is closing in on Liza, who is now seen as the neighbourhood reprobate. What will become of her?

  This is an engaging story with believable characters set against an authentic backdrop and a very strong beginning to what was to become a long and illustrious career for Maugham. Like virtually all novelists of his day, Maugham attempts to reproduce in prose the dialect of the characters. To some readers this will always be irritating at best, but Maugham does manage to achieve an element of authenticity without it grating too much. He does not judge his characters and presents them as rounded people, so we see Liza as attractive, even charismatic, yet she is also amoral and
self seeking. The brutality is not sanitized, but at the same time we do see Liza and her neighbours enjoying themselves, whereas Morrison in Child of the Jago is unremittingly bleak and rather condemnatory of both his characters and of society.

  The first edition

  CONTENTS

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  The first edition’s title page

  The first edition of ‘A Child of the Jago’ (1896)

  1

  It was the first Saturday afternoon in August; it had been broiling hot all day, with a cloudless sky, and the sun had been beating down on the houses, so that the top rooms were like ovens; but now with the approach of evening it was cooler, and everyone in Vere Street was out of doors.

  Vere street, Lambeth, is a short, straight street leading out of the Westminster Bridge Road; it has forty houses on one side and forty houses on the other, and these eighty houses are very much more like one another than ever peas are like peas, or young ladies like young ladies. They are newish, three-storied buildings of dingy grey brick with slate roofs, and they are perfectly flat, without a bow-window or even a projecting cornice or window-sill to break the straightness of the line from one end of the street to the other.

  This Saturday afternoon the street was full of life; no traffic came down Vere Street, and the cemented space between the pavements was given up to children. Several games of cricket were being played by wildly excited boys, using coats for wickets, an old tennis-ball or a bundle of rags tied together for a ball, and, generally, an old broomstick for bat. The wicket was so large and the bat so small that the man in was always getting bowled, when heated quarrels would arise, the batter absolutely refusing to go out and the bowler absolutely insisting on going in. The girls were more peaceable; they were chiefly employed in skipping, and only abused one another mildly when the rope was not properly turned or the skipper did not jump sufficiently high. Worst off of all were the very young children, for there had been no rain for weeks, and the street was as dry and clean as a covered court, and, in the lack of mud to wallow in, they sat about the road, disconsolate as poets. The number of babies was prodigious; they sprawled about everywhere, on the pavement, round the doors, and about their mothers’ skirts. The grown-ups were gathered round the open doors; there were usually two women squatting on the doorstep, and two or three more seated on either side on chairs; they were invariably nursing babies, and most of them showed clear signs that the present object of the maternal care would be soon ousted by a new arrival. Men were less numerous but such as there were leant against the walls, smoking, or sat on the sills of the ground-floor windows. It was the dead season in Vere Street as much as in Belgravia, and really if it had not been for babies just come or just about to come, and an opportune murder in a neighbouring doss-house, there would have been nothing whatever to talk about. As it was, the little groups talked quietly, discussing the atrocity or the merits of the local midwives, comparing the circumstances of their various confinements.

  ‘You’ll be ‘avin’ your little trouble soon, eh, Polly?’ asked one good lady of another.

  ‘Oh, I reckon I’ve got another two months ter go yet,’ answered Polly.

  ‘Well,’ said a third. ‘I wouldn’t ‘ave thought you’d go so long by the look of yer!’

  ‘I ‘ope you’ll have it easier this time, my dear,’ said a very stout old person, a woman of great importance.

  ‘She said she wasn’t goin’ to ‘ave no more, when the last one come.’ This remark came from Polly’s husband.

  ‘Ah,’ said the stout old lady, who was in the business, and boasted vast experience. ‘That’s wot they all says; but, Lor’ bless yer, they don’t mean it.’

  ‘Well, I’ve got three, and I’m not goin’ to ‘ave no more bli’me if I will; ‘tain’t good enough — that’s wot I says.’

  ‘You’re abaht right there, ole gal,’ said Polly, ‘My word, ‘Arry, if you ‘ave any more I’ll git a divorce, that I will.’

  At that moment an organ-grinder turned the corner and came down the street.

  ‘Good biz; ‘ere’s an organ!’ cried half a dozen people at once.

  The organ-man was an Italian, with a shock of black hair and a ferocious moustache. Drawing his organ to a favourable spot, he stopped, released his shoulder from the leather straps by which he dragged it, and cocking his large soft hat on the side of his head, began turning the handle. It was a lively tune, and in less than no time a little crowd had gathered round to listen, chiefly the young men and the maidens, for the married ladies were never in a fit state to dance, and therefore disinclined to trouble themselves to stand round the organ. There was a moment’s hesitation at opening the ball; then one girl said to another:

  ‘Come on, Florrie, you and me ain’t shy; we’ll begin, and bust it!’

  The two girls took hold of one another, one acting gentleman, the other lady; three or four more pairs of girls immediately joined them, and they began a waltz. They held themselves very upright; and with an air of grave dignity which was quite impressive, glided slowly about, making their steps with the utmost precision, bearing themselves with sufficient decorum for a court ball. After a while the men began to itch for a turn, and two of them, taking hold of one another in the most approved fashion, waltzed round the circle with the gravity of judges.

  All at once there was a cry: ‘There’s Liza!’ And several members of the group turned and called out: ‘Oo, look at Liza!’

  The dancers stopped to see the sight, and the organ-grinder, having come to the end of his tune, ceased turning the handle and looked to see what was the excitement.

  ‘Oo, Liza!’ they called out. ‘Look at Liza; oo, I sy!’

  It was a young girl of about eighteen, with dark eyes, and an enormous fringe, puffed-out and curled and frizzed, covering her whole forehead from side to side, and coming down to meet her eyebrows. She was dressed in brilliant violet, with great lappets of velvet, and she had on her head an enormous black hat covered with feathers.

  ‘I sy, ain’t she got up dossy?’ called out the groups at the doors, as she passed.

  ‘Dressed ter death, and kill the fashion; that’s wot I calls it.’

  Liza saw what a sensation she was creating; she arched her back and lifted her head, and walked down the street, swaying her body from side to side, and swaggering along as though the whole place belonged to her.

  ‘‘Ave yer bought the street, Bill?’ shouted one youth; and then half a dozen burst forth at once, as if by inspiration:

  ‘Knocked ’em in the Old Kent Road!’

  It was immediately taken up by a dozen more, and they all yelled it out:

  ‘Knocked ’em in the Old Kent Road. Yah, ah, knocked ’em in the Old Kent Road!’

  ‘Oo, Liza!’ they shouted; the whole street joined in, and they gave long, shrill, ear-piercing shrieks and strange calls, that rung down the street and echoed back again.

  ‘Hextra special!’ called out a wag.

  ‘Oh, Liza! Oo! Ooo!’ yells and whistles, and then it thundered forth again:

  ‘Knocked ’em in the Old Kent Road!’

  Liza put on the air of a conquering hero, and sauntered on, enchanted at the uproar. She stuck out her elbows and jerked her head on one side, and said to herself as she passed through the bellowing crowd:

  ‘This is jam!’

  ‘Knocked ’em in the Old Kent Road!’

  When she came to the group round the barrel-organ, one of the girls cried out to her:

  ‘Is that yer new dress, Liza?’

  ‘Well, it don’t look like my old one, do it?’ said Liza.

  ‘Where did yer git it?’ asked another friend, rather enviously.

  ‘Picked it up in the street, of course,’ scornfully answered Liza.

  ‘I believe it’s
the same one as I saw in the pawnbroker’s dahn the road,’ said one of the men, to tease her.

  ‘Thet’s it; but wot was you doin’ in there? Pledgin’ yer shirt, or was it yer trousers?’

  ‘Yah, I wouldn’t git a second-’and dress at a pawnbroker’s!’

  ‘Garn!’ said Liza indignantly. ‘I’ll swipe yer over the snitch if yer talk ter me. I got the mayterials in the West Hend, didn’t I? And I ‘ad it mide up by my Court Dressmiker, so you jolly well dry up, old jellybelly.’

  ‘Garn!’ was the reply.

  Liza had been so intent on her new dress and the comment it was exciting that she had not noticed the organ.

  ‘Oo, I say, let’s ‘ave some dancin’,’ she said as soon as she saw it. ‘Come on, Sally,’ she added, to one of the girls, ‘you an’ me’ll dance togither. Grind away, old cock!’

  The man turned on a new tune, and the organ began to play the Intermezzo from the ‘Cavalleria’; other couples quickly followed Liza’s example, and they began to waltz round with the same solemnity as before; but Liza outdid them all; if the others were as stately as queens, she was as stately as an empress; the gravity and dignity with which she waltzed were something appalling, you felt that the minuet was a frolic in comparison; it would have been a fitting measure to tread round the grave of a première danseuse, or at the funeral of a professional humorist. And the graces she put on, the languor of the eyes, the contemptuous curl of the lips, the exquisite turn of the hand, the dainty arching of the foot! You felt there could be no questioning her right to the tyranny of Vere Street.

  Suddenly she stopped short, and disengaged herself from her companion.

  ‘Oh, I sy,’ she said, ‘this is too bloomin’ slow; it gives me the sick.’