Book Review: Lives of the Novelists: Somerset Maugham
By DAVID LEAVITT
NYT
THE SECRET LIVES OF SOMERSET MAUGHAM
A Biography
By Selina Hastings
Illustrated. 626 pp. Random House. $35
In 1962, William Somerset Maugham’s nephew, Robin, his own literary efforts having not amounted to much, informed his wealthy and famous uncle that an American publisher, Victor Weybright, had offered him an advance of $50,000 to write Maugham’s biography. “Obviously I can’t afford to turn down such a good offer,” the younger Maugham explained. “As you know, although I earn enough from my writing to keep me going each year, I haven’t a penny of capital.” The letter’s affectionate tone notwithstanding, Maugham had no trouble grasping its import and responded by sending Robin a check equal to the one he would have received from Weybright. “I give you my word that I shall not write any other biography about you — ever,” Robin replied. “I’m really awfully shy about all this, but I’m also very grateful.”
“Shy” is a peculiar adjective to use to describe blackmail, which was, as Selina Hastings makes clear in her biography, “The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham,” Robin’s intention. Himself homosexual, Robin had been privy to Maugham’s erotic and emotional involvements with other men since he was a teenager, and might well have been the object of more than avuncular interest on Maugham’s part. (“I’m not saying I think there was incest,” Glenway Wescott recalled, “but Willie was infatuated with Robin.”) Nor was Robin’s word to be trusted. Ten years later, in a memoir entitled “Escape From the Shadows,” he quoted his uncle as saying, “I tried to persuade myself that I was three-quarters normal and that only a quarter of me was queer — whereas really it was the other way round.” Fifty thousand dollars, though enough to keep Robin quiet for Maugham’s lifetime, was not enough to keep him quiet after his death.
Forty-five years later, what little remains of the fortifications with which Maugham sought to secure his posthumous reputation has been swept away. Taking advantage of the Maugham estate’s decision to allow scholarly access to the author’s correspondence, as well as the unearthing of a transcript of an interview with Maugham’s daughter, Hastings has written a biography that does not so much give us a new Maugham as add shadings to the old one. That Maugham was, to use his own terminology, three-quarters queer will most likely provoke about as much surprise as Ricky Martin’s recent announcement that he is “a fortunate homosexual man.” What we get here are the details, many of them sordid: for instance, the story of Louis Legrand, or Loulou, the “ravishing 16-year-old male whore” whom Maugham and his longtime lover, Gerald Haxton, shared and also made available to the guests at Maugham’s villa on Cap Ferrat, “Gerald afterward discreetly settling the bill. Both Harolds, Nicolson and Acton, became appreciative customers (‘Mon cher Lulu,’ wrote Nicolson from Paris, ‘merci pour la soirée délicieuse’); and so, during the course of the summer, did . . . Robin.”
(More here.)
NYT
THE SECRET LIVES OF SOMERSET MAUGHAM
A Biography
By Selina Hastings
Illustrated. 626 pp. Random House. $35
In 1962, William Somerset Maugham’s nephew, Robin, his own literary efforts having not amounted to much, informed his wealthy and famous uncle that an American publisher, Victor Weybright, had offered him an advance of $50,000 to write Maugham’s biography. “Obviously I can’t afford to turn down such a good offer,” the younger Maugham explained. “As you know, although I earn enough from my writing to keep me going each year, I haven’t a penny of capital.” The letter’s affectionate tone notwithstanding, Maugham had no trouble grasping its import and responded by sending Robin a check equal to the one he would have received from Weybright. “I give you my word that I shall not write any other biography about you — ever,” Robin replied. “I’m really awfully shy about all this, but I’m also very grateful.”
“Shy” is a peculiar adjective to use to describe blackmail, which was, as Selina Hastings makes clear in her biography, “The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham,” Robin’s intention. Himself homosexual, Robin had been privy to Maugham’s erotic and emotional involvements with other men since he was a teenager, and might well have been the object of more than avuncular interest on Maugham’s part. (“I’m not saying I think there was incest,” Glenway Wescott recalled, “but Willie was infatuated with Robin.”) Nor was Robin’s word to be trusted. Ten years later, in a memoir entitled “Escape From the Shadows,” he quoted his uncle as saying, “I tried to persuade myself that I was three-quarters normal and that only a quarter of me was queer — whereas really it was the other way round.” Fifty thousand dollars, though enough to keep Robin quiet for Maugham’s lifetime, was not enough to keep him quiet after his death.
Forty-five years later, what little remains of the fortifications with which Maugham sought to secure his posthumous reputation has been swept away. Taking advantage of the Maugham estate’s decision to allow scholarly access to the author’s correspondence, as well as the unearthing of a transcript of an interview with Maugham’s daughter, Hastings has written a biography that does not so much give us a new Maugham as add shadings to the old one. That Maugham was, to use his own terminology, three-quarters queer will most likely provoke about as much surprise as Ricky Martin’s recent announcement that he is “a fortunate homosexual man.” What we get here are the details, many of them sordid: for instance, the story of Louis Legrand, or Loulou, the “ravishing 16-year-old male whore” whom Maugham and his longtime lover, Gerald Haxton, shared and also made available to the guests at Maugham’s villa on Cap Ferrat, “Gerald afterward discreetly settling the bill. Both Harolds, Nicolson and Acton, became appreciative customers (‘Mon cher Lulu,’ wrote Nicolson from Paris, ‘merci pour la soirée délicieuse’); and so, during the course of the summer, did . . . Robin.”
(More here.)
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