Collected Short Stories: Volume 2
Somerset Maugham (W.)
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Back Cover Blurb

  1. The stories in this collection move from Malaya to America and England, and include some of Maugham's most famous tales; 'Flotsam and Jetsam1', the story of an old woman trapped for years in a loveless marriage in the remote rubber plantations; 'The Man with the Scar2', and notably the opening story 'The Vessel of Wrath3', a tale of the unexpected love that grows between a devout missionary nurse and a drunken reprobate.
  2. In this second volume of his collected stories, Maugham illustrates his characteristic wry perception of human foibles and his genius for evoking compelling drama from an acute sense of time and place.

Preface
  1. There is one point I want to make about these stories. The reader will notice that many of my stories are written in the first person singular. That is a literary convention which is as old as the hills. It was used by Petronius Arbiter in the Satyricon and by many of the story-tellers in The Thousand and One Nights. Its object is of course to achieve credibility, for when someone tells you what he states happened to himself you are more likely to believe that he is telling the truth than when he tells you what happened to somebody else. It has besides the merit from the story-teller's point of view that he need only tell you what he knows for a fact and can leave to your imagination what he doesn't or couldn't know.
  2. Some of the older novelists who wrote in the first person were in this respect very careless. They would narrate long conversations that they couldn't possibly have heard and incidents which in the nature of things they couldn't possibly have witnessed. Thus they lost the great advantage of verisimilitude which writing in the first person singular offers.
  3. But the I who writes is just as much a character in the story as the other persons with whom it is concerned. He may be the hero or he may be an onlooker or a confidant. But he is a character. The writer who uses this device is writing fiction and if he makes the I of his story a little quicker on the uptake, a little more level-headed, a little shrewder, a little braver, a little more ingenious, a little wittier, a little wiser than he, the writer, really is, the reader must show indulgence. He must remember that the author is not drawing a faithful portrait of himself, but creating a character for the particular purposes of his story.
Book Comment

Vintage Classics; New Edition (3 Jan. 2002)


"Somerset Maugham (W.) - Collected Short Stories: Volume 2"

Source: Somerset Maugham (W.) - Collected Short Stories: Volume 2

  • See this Note1 for my thoughts.
  • The above Note uses Sub-Notes which - rather than the Paper or the Note - should be updated if the Write-up is to be updated.

Write-up2 (as at 30/10/2025 18:31:41): Somerset Maugham Short Stories - Volume 2

Introductory Note
  • I have now written up these comments on "Somerset Maugham (W.) - Collected Short Stories: Volume 2" – now that I’ve finished reading the book – in a Note analogous to those on "Somerset Maugham (W.) - Collected Short Stories: Volume 1" and in particular on "Somerset Maugham (W.) - Short Stories".
  • As the bulk of these stories didn’t find their way into the “Greatest Hits” selection, some may not have been worth such close attention, though the book’s cover blurb highlights ‘Flotsam and Jetsam3’ and ‘The Man with the Scar4’ as being especially famous.
  • However, while this book is basically “holiday reading”, I have annotated the stories in enough detail to provide the framework for any further thoughts.
  • I have summarised the stories only to the degree strictly necessary to provide the context for whatever I have to say, so anyone other than me reading these accounts probably won’t fully understand what I’m on about unless they’ve read – and can recall – the stories. But take this as a “spoiler alert”.
  • I have provided links to the various summaries of the stories on Wikipedia where these are available but have only read these after making my own summaries, so they may not always agree.
  • My intention has always been merely to reflect on – and remind myself of – various “ethical5” or more generally philosophical issues that arise. Occasionally, I found none, or few, but you can only find this out by reading the stories.
  • I don’t claim to be a literary critic, though I have occasionally added a comment reflecting my appraisal of the stories. I’ve almost always enjoyed them and found them worth the investment of time.

Contents
    Preface – 1
  1. The vessel of wrath6 – 3
  2. The force of circumstance7 – 46
  3. Flotsam and jetsam8 – 75
  4. The alien corn9 – 103
  5. The creative impulse10 – 148
  6. Virtue11 – 187
  7. The man with the scar12 – 228
  8. The closed shop13 – 232
  9. The bum14 – 242
  10. The dream15 – 250
  11. The treasure16 – 254
  12. The colonel's lady17 – 272
  13. Lord Mountdrago18 – 293
  14. The social sense19 – 320
  15. The verger20 – 328
  16. In a strange land21 – 336
  17. The taipan22 – 341
  18. The consul23 – 349
  19. A friend in need24 – 355
  20. The round dozen25 – 360
  21. The human element26 – 390
  22. Jane27 – 431
  23. Footprints in the jungle28 – 460
  24. The door of opportunity29 – 495

Commentary
    Preface – i
  1. The vessel of wrath – 3
  2. The force of circumstance31 – 46
    • This tale – while atmospheric and well-written – is a little too long for the rather simple plot.
    • The action takes place in Sembulu32 and features the Resident, Guy – a short, fat, pimply and rather ugly man now aged nearly 30 – but one with – it seems – many redeeming qualities, including his wit and good humour.
    • Guy has recently married an English woman, Doris, who has come out to live with him after they met when Guy was on vacation in England and Doris – the secretary of an MP – was on holiday for a month with her parents in the same hotel.
    • Guy was born in Sembulu. His father had been in the service of ‘the second Sultan’ for 30 years and Guy considers it his home. He’d come out again aged 19 straight from school, originally as an assistant, but when the Resident became ill and returned home he took his place. At the time there were few alternative appointees ‘given the war33’, so he was appointed despite his youth because he had the right background and ‘spoke the language34 like a native’.
    • It is obvious very early on in the tale that Guy has a guilty secret is – and what it is. A native woman causes a series of scenes and three ‘half-caste’ children make an appearance. Eventually Guy ‘comes clean’ and tells Doris the truth. Like the vast majority of the Europeans (he says) he’d been effectively married35 for 10 years to a native woman – by whom he had had these three children –and had recently ‘put her away’ in order to get married to a European. Unfortunately, he didn’t get a new posting – as he’d expected – when he returned from England, having been on leave with the purpose of finding an English wife – and so he couldn’t hide what he had done, at least when his former native wife tries to blackmail him.
    • Anyway, Doris just cannot come to terms with this – she’s revolted at the thought of Guy being intimate with a ‘black36’ woman. She thinks about things for 6 months – having effectively separated from Guy – and then returns to England. It’s not clear if she will divorce Guy, not that it makes much difference to him. He thinks the situation is irrecoverable, and – following prompting37 from his elder son – allows his native wife to return.
    • This tale raises a lot of ethical issues which – as usual – Somerset Maugham leaves for the reader to raise and address, to ignore, or not to notice. I don’t attempt to pontificate on their resolution. There are at least the following:-
      1. The first is what might be called ‘conventional immorality’. It’s commonly accepted that the young European men would take native wives for ‘comfort’, despite not being committed to them, with the intention of paying them off when the opportunity to marry a European comes along. The native wife’s parents are complicit in this arrangement.
      2. Then there is the casual assumption of a racial hierarchy, both by the participants in the story and by Somerset Maugham himself.
      3. There’s Guy’s attitude towards his children. Because they are ‘black’, he doesn’t feel as though they are his, and feels no more for them than for any other children. He is, however, willing to ‘provide for them’ to some degree.
      4. Again, there’s his attitude towards his native wife – he just turfs her, and his children by her, out of the house when Doris arrives, though with financial provision of some sort.
      5. Doris objects to the violent treatment of Guy’s native wife, before she knows who she is, but doesn’t in any way try to make the best of the situation once she finds out. She just finds the whole affair disgusting.
      6. Finally, there’s Doris’s racially-motivated repugnance at the intimate elements of Guy’s previous marriage. Would she have felt the same way had he been divorced from a white woman?
      7. I suppose it also raises the question of just what the Europeans were doing in these regions. Not from a political point of view (colonialism had many pluses and minuses) but from a personal point of view. Why did they choose this sort of life?
    • As is often the case in Somerset Maugham’s writing, human instincts lead to a situation that is much worse than could have been the case had reason prevailed. So, in the end, we have two people who love one another living apart and two who don’t love one another living together.
    • Finally, a reflection on Somerset Maugham’s choice of title ‘The force of circumstance’. Circumstances – his youth and isolation and the conventional wisdom of his class – ‘compel’ Guy to act as he did, and having done so, to seek to hide his actions. Then, the circumstance of his return posting then mean that he cannot hide what he has done. Finally, Doris’s psychological make-up and the prejudices of the time mean that she cannot find a way to resolve the situation to mutual satisfaction but has to choose the worst of all possible worlds.
  3. Flotsam and jetsam38 – 75
    • This is a very well-written tale, though I have some doubts about its coherence at one point, noted later.
    • The story is split into two parts: the long introduction, which has three main characters, and the denouement, which introduces a fourth. It doesn’t immediately say where it is located, but it seems it’s in north Borneo like The Yellow Streak39 & The Force Of Circumstance40. As an aside, it mentions ‘brunch41’, which I’d thought was a modern locution. It also reports that it’s best for native-born Europeans to marry native (Malay) girls – as discussed in The Force Of Circumstance42.
    • The first part concerns Skelton, an anthropologist who has been in the country for two years to study the tribes who have been without European contact, and who has caught malaria and is near death. The local Dyaks don’t want him to die while enjoying their hospitality and send him, his Chinese servant Kong43, and a Dyak guide downriver by canoe to seek hospitality with the local planters, Mr & Mrs Grange.
    • The Granges are desperately poor because Norman Grange bought the plantation before the bottom fell out of the rubber market and subsequently had to mortgage the estate to some Chinese businessmen. Now – while things have picked up somewhat – any profits go in interest payments.
    • Norman Grange is a robust but taciturn character and his wife is a well-meaning but ill-educated retired C-list actress. She is 46 but looks 60 and has a couple of terrible tics: she shakes her head involuntarily and appears to be trying to wipe something off her dress. Norman reads and re-reads some of the classics of English literature but appears to have learnt nothing humane from them. Mrs Grange reads pulp fiction. The Granges scarcely communicate and evidently hate one another.
    • While Norman is out at the plantation, Mrs Grange unburdens herself to Skelton. She describes her career with a group of travelling actors that had had some success in a tour of the Far East but ultimately went bankrupt and the owners left them all in the lurch. Norman was evidently in Singapore on holiday and proposed to Mrs Grange44 when they scarcely knew one another, but she liked him well enough and marrying him gave her a way out of her immediate predicament since she had no means of returning to England.
    • They were happy for a year while she got used to the estate and the life, but she eventually got bored. Norman had promised her a trip back to England, but nothing came of it, and he admitted that England was foreign to him and he never wanted to go there again. He’d been born in Sarawak, Borneo, where his father had been in government service, went to school in England, but returned to Sarawak aged 17 and had lived there ever since apart from a tour of duty in Mesopotamia in WWI.
    • Skelton recovers in a few days, and Norman encourages him to get going. Skelton lets him have one of his guns as rather excessive payment for his bed and board. Mrs Grange says she has something further to say to him that would set ears burning in the clubs for a few days. Skelton offers Mrs Grange the opportunity to unburden herself further, promising never to reveal what she says, but she’s unwilling to do so. So, Skelton departs none the wiser, but glad to leave.
    • We now move on to the second part of the story. It is effectively a soliloquy by Mrs Grange in front of the mirror on the dressing table that Norman had had made to her exact specifications soon after they were married. She recounts the incident that happened 15 years ago.
    • A company with cash to spare had set up a plantation on the other side of the river to that of the Grange’s, and Jack Carr – the planter installed there – was an educated man from a public school and university, who (unlike Norman) looked good in evening wear. Soon after they met, they seem to have fallen passionately in love. Jack had a motor launch, so it was easy for them to meet and conduct an affair. Mrs Grange falls pregnant and she’s sure it is Jack’s child. Jack has to go away for a few weeks to Singapore on business but is back before her confinement, scheduled to be in Kuching45.
    • She is desperate to see Jack and, when she hears he has returned, says she will go to see him first thing the following morning to collect some things he has got for her. She chatters rather too much and doubtless makes Norman suspicious.
    • After she’s been rowed over, and while she and Jack are in a passionate embrace, Norman shoots and kills Jack. His warm blood spurts over Mrs Grange, leading to the tic that stays with her thereafter. She has a miscarriage that night but – while it was touch and go for a few days – lives on.
    • Norman claims the shooting was an accident – which of course it was not – but Mrs Grange cannot tell the truth – or (she thinks) she would starve – and he cannot divorce her or he would incur suspicion and hang. Mrs Grange had earlier revealed to Skelton that she and her husband would like to kill one another (without revealing the reason) but they can’t; she can’t kill him because – even were she to get away with it by poison – ‘the Chinks’ would foreclose on her and ‘she doesn’t have a friend in the world’. He can’t kill her either because suspicion would fall on him and – though she’s often thought of suicide – she intends to live as long as her husband as it’s the only way she can get back at him.
    • The ‘accident’ is investigated by the District Officer, but the natives are afraid of Norman so the DO – while he thinks the episode ‘damned fishy’ – in the absence of evidence to the contrary has to accept Norman’s account, which is that there had been a problem with Norman’s gun and that it had gone off while Jack was looking at it.
    • Mrs Grange ends her soliloquy by covering her nose with lipstick like a clown and exclaiming, with hysterical laughter, ‘to hell with life’.
    • Having taken the trouble to write all this up, I’m not sure I’ve much to say. I didn’t find the infatuation between Jack and the younger Mrs Grange very convincing, but that’s a plot detail. Otherwise, the tale is just another that shows the isolation and pressures the planters and administrators – and especially their wives – were under. It would have been good to have had some philosophical reflection from Somerset Maugham on what it was all for – either for the British Empire or for its servants – but Maugham leaves any such reflection to his readers46.
    • I have no idea why the title of the story is ‘Flotsam and Jetsam47’.
  4. The alien corn – 103
  5. The creative impulse49 – 148
    • At 39 pages, this tale – while amusing and possibly instructive – is far too long and maybe not worth the time either reading or analysing. I intended but failed to be brief in the latter even though it’s a way of recouping the investment hitherto.
    • The story is basically a lampoon of a London literary set led by a large and robust lady styled ‘Mrs Albert Forrester’. She’s referred to by this title throughout (sometimes shortened to ‘Mrs Forrester’) even though Mr Albert Forrester is marginalised both by his wife and by the ‘set’. He is – however – important to its running and provides everything to support his wife’s literary endeavours and her set’s get-togethers at his flat, in which he occupies a poky bedroom in contrast to his wife’s lavish one.
    • Mrs Albert Forrester has a high aesthetic style in her writings which – though critically acclaimed – do not sell and her agent admits that they are published at a loss.
    • Her close friends are all literati but the attendees at her teas, soirees and dinners include members of high society.
    • Mrs Albert Forrester has (rather absurd) political aspirations – intending to stand for the Labour Party if a safe seat can be found – though this aspiration doesn’t lead anywhere. She is painted as a self-obsessed person who never has to do anything for herself – not even pour the tea at her soirees – so her connection to the struggling masses is obscure.
    • Maugham spends numerous pages describing the style of her literary output. I dare say it would be more amusing if you were in tune with the times in which Maugham was writing. Her ‘comic use of the semi-colon’ is mentioned on a few occasions, but it is hard to see how this would work, which is doubtless part of the point.
    • Mr Albert Forrester is increasingly mentioned as the narrative progresses, but always in a condescending way and Mrs Albert Forrester is commended by her set for putting up with him.
    • Well, everything continues happily for many a page when – all of a sudden - Albert – who now appears as a fully rounded person – elopes with the cook. The faceless lady who pours out the tea (and acts as Mrs Albert Forrester’s unpaid amanuensis) collapses with uncontrollable mirth on hearing the departure note read out. Mrs Albert Forrester’s set point out that this would be the public’s reaction.
    • Mrs Albert Forrester’s world is at risk of falling apart as Albert not only supplies the finances, but also organises the provisions for the dinners that the cook produces. One suspects that the public figures that attend do so as much for the excellent food, wine and cigars as for the erudite company.
    • Mrs Albert Forrester is persuaded to go to visit Albert and insist that he comes back, agreeing to whatever his conditions might be. For some reason she goes to Kennington by public transport and finds the small and somewhat decrepit rented flat in which Albert and the cook (Mrs Corinne Bulfinch) now live.
    • Albert has no intention of coming back. He and his wife had nothing in common, he’s getting older and wants someone to look after him. Corinne seems happy with this arrangement, being an expert who had spent 3 years nursing her now deceased husband. She has a property in Clacton to which they intend to retire. Albert has indeed just retired – having been bought out of his partnership in the currant marketing business50 in the City – and now has £900 a year, only £300 of which he can contribute to the maintenance of Mrs Albert Forrester. This will not be enough as previously his earnings had been £1,200, shared only with his wife
    • To cut a long story short, it is suggested that Mrs Albert Forrester writes a popular novel – a detective story – of which Albert has read ‘hundreds and hundreds’, passing them on to Corinne. Mrs Albert Forrester will have none of it, but on the tram home takes the idea to heart and announces the idea to her agent and ‘set’ on returning to her flat, making out that was all her own idea and that she’d never actually made it to see Albert. Thus was born the book (the Achilles Statue) that made her name – and fortune – in popular culture.
    • So much for the story. Has it any useful message? Probably not; it’s just a jolly tale.
    • Still, I could see some analogy – as far as a subliminal message is concerned – with Educating Rita51. Maybe, we (as distinct from Mrs Albert Forrester and her set) are supposed to see the failure of aestheticism in the absence of genuine human contact. In Educating Rita, Dr. Frank Bryant comes to see that his own over-aestheticized poetry is just rubbish, and Trish’s attempted suicide demonstrates that the aesthetic life is ‘not enough’.
    • In Somerset Maugham’s story, Mrs Albert Forrester and her set don’t learn this lesson from Albert and Corinne but carry on as before.
    • It was unclear to me just why – given the literary insignificance of Mr Albert Forrester – Mrs Albert Forrester so styled herself. It’s not like Shirley Williams retaining her married name after her divorce from Bernard Williams, nor sundry female academics retaining their maiden names for publication-continuity purposes. Nor – while he’s a moderately successful business manager – has he a famous name. Maybe it shows Mrs Albert Forrester’s tacit acknowledgement of just how much she owes to him.
  6. Virtue – 187
    • This is an interesting – if rather long – tale with some ethical commentary by the narrator himself.
    • Most of what I have to say ought to concern the introduction and the story’s conclusion, but I’ll briefly describe the main thrust of the story itself first.
    • The narrator is invited to stay with a young administrator – Gerry Morton – of a remote area of Borneo. He finds him fairly congenial and – as is usual – says if he is ever in London he should look him up.
    • Well, one day he’s about to enter Sotheby’s when he meets Morton in the street. He takes pity on him and invites him out with a devoted middle-aged couple (Charlie and Margery Bishop) he was due to dine with. Margery likes dancing and she and the Morton dance the night away, innocently enough.
    • The narrator spends many pages describing the Bishops’ relationship. They live in a small flat: Charlie is a microbiologist, rather assertive – maybe controlling – but ‘good company’. They do everything together, so don’t mind their cramped conditions. They have a reputation for being devoted to one another.
    • However, Morton and Margery become infatuated with one another, but do not have an affair (Margery won’t allow it). When Morton returns to Borneo, Margery remains obsessed with him.
    • Charlie, her husband, is initially amused but ultimately irritated and hits her, after which she leaves him, staying with a friend, Janet. Charlie takes this really badly and turns to drink, shortly dying of an overdose of a sleeping draught.
    • Margery cables Morton to let him know, with the intention of joining him in Borneo, However, Morton cables back to say she must await his letter which is already in the post. There’s an interlude until the letter arrives which – as most had expected – says that she should not join him (she wouldn’t fit in, it’s lonely, she’d be a laughing-stock, …).
    • The story ends with Margery still intending to go out to Borneo, but being strongly advised against it.
    • Outside ‘the story’ as such – there are two sections of ethical reflection.
      1. The first is an introductory couple of pages
        • Therein the narrator reflects on the good things of life (some of which – like fine cigars – are no longer considered so good) and the interrelatedness of society and the evolutionary and personal histories that enables their provision. Also, of the contribution of animals to our pleasure and our indebtedness to them.
        • It’s not immediately clear what the relevance of this is to the story as a whole, but suspect it’s a bit of groundwork for Maugham’s ethical Consequentialist thesis. The good things of life are not to be thrown away by the ‘selfish’ polishing of our virtues without regard to the consequences of such actions.
        • He then introduces the dramatic element of chance in human affairs, whereby the universe looks like a ‘A tale told by an idiot52’ and where an accidental meeting can have incalculable consequences. His Tale is an example of this.
      2. The second is the narrator’s conclusion:
        • This a discussion between the narrator and Janet, a mutual friend of his and Margery.
        • We must not forget that the title of the story is ‘Virtue’. I think Maugham’s argument – or suggestion, maybe – is that we should forget Virtue Ethics and accept some form of Consequentialism.
        • Margery has been ‘virtuous’ in refusing to go to bed with Morton, but just look at the disaster that has ensued as a direct consequence! If they had had an ‘affair’ – the narrator claims – they’d have got it out of their system – Morton was after was sex, after all – and Margery would have gone back to Charlie and all would have lived happily ever after (subject to the usual vagaries of life).
        • Janet will have none of this, but is happy that Margery can collect the insurance money. The narrator accuses her of hypocrisy – given that (one supposes) the presumed suicide was hushed up so that the money could be paid out. Or, rather cynicism to match his own, as she alleged.
        • The narrator ‘prefers a loose woman to a selfish one and a wanton to a fool’.
        • I tend to go along with Consequentialism (if only because it’s the expected consequences that underscore the virtues). It’s not just a brute fact that murder or lying are vicious but because life goes the worse if they are practised.
        • One could doubt – however – that the consequences of infidelity – given our jealous natures – are as benign as Maugham supposes. The alternative ending to the story might have been – had he found out – Charlie shooting the ‘lovers’ and then himself.
        • I dare say more could be said, but that will do.
  7. The man with the scar – 228
    • This is a succinct – it’s only 4 pages long – and highly entertaining tale, so it’s no surprise that it gets a mention in the Volume’s ‘Cover Blurb’.
    • What to say about it though? The plot is simple. The narrator is drinking dry Martinis with a friend in a hotel bar in Guatemala City when the eponymous ‘man’ comes in. He’s an exiled General from neighbouring Nicaragua having led a failed revolution. He’s now on his uppers, unsuccessfully hawking lottery tickets but enjoying the occasional free drink. The narrator’s friend describes him as a ‘ruffian and a bandit, of course’, but he helps him out from time to time. The history is related. After the failure of the revolution the General and four comrades are up before the firing squad. The general commanding the government troops allows the condemned men a last wish – and our hero asks to say good-bye to his wife, who is outside. This is granted: she – young, beautiful and passionate – rushes in. They embrace, but to the horror of all present our hero produces a knife and stabs her in the neck. She promptly dies and the commanding general asks our hero why he did it. ‘Because I loved her’ is the reply. The general is impressed, considering it ‘a noble gesture’. He reprieves him – ‘offering the homage due from one brave man to the other’ – and has him driven to the border. Back in Guatemala City we learn that the disfiguring scar wasn’t gained in battle but from an exploding ginger ale bottle (opened by the narrator’s friend).
    • What to make of this?
      • It’s all rather implausible, especially the revelation about the scar. If the tale is supposed to illustrate the madcap ways of the Hispanics, why has the General not murdered the narrator’s friend in revenge. Maybe it’s a reflection on accepting one’s fate: there’s an account in the story of the night before the execution being spent playing poker for matchsticks, when the general lost every hand.
      • Maybe it’s a further reflection on the randomness of life – as in the previous story – ‘a tale told by an idiot’. It’s all absurd – the General is described as a ‘brave man’, but his act of bravery is murdering his wife and his ‘battle scar’ is caused by a sordid random event – it wasn’t even an exploding champagne bottle.
      • But why was his passionate killing of his wife considered a ‘noble gesture’ and how was his loving her supposed to be a justification – both in his own eyes and those of his captors?
      • No doubt this does reflect the standards of ‘The Patriarchy’ through the magnifying Hispanic lens. Women as men’s property. Think ‘Carmen’; but there the murder is for jealousy rather than love. Maybe it’s the same here; the General doesn’t want her to fall into another’s arms?
      • As usual, Maugham leaves us to make up our own minds.
  8. The closed shop – 232
    • Only mildly entertaining. It’s a satire on two – or maybe three – things – South American tin-pot dictatorships, trades unions (hence the title), and – maybe – how respectability and religiosity co-exists with immorality. There’s no significant ethical dimension (indeed, rather the reverse), so I’ll be brief.
    • There are numerous repeated tropes – that the President (really a dictator) had been elected (at the point of his gun) to serve his country (ie., himself). That a statue will one day be erected to him (when, like his predecessor, he will doubtless be hanged from a lamp-post). And so on.
    • Basically, the President’s predecessor came up with a wheeze whereby foreigners (mostly rich American women) could obtain a divorce in return for a month’s residence without the agreement – or even knowledge – of their husbands and without the usual legal and financial obstacles. This provided a huge fillip to the country’s economy, but sounded a little implausible to me – while ‘foreign’ marriages might be recognised in the US, I doubt ‘foreign’ divorces of marriages legalised in the US would be.
    • This had the unforeseen consequences of undermining the business models of the three brothels in the capital, whose customers consorted with the soon-to-be divorcees during their month of boredom. The madams of these establishments needed the profits to educate their daughters at convents in the US and a son at Harvard.
    • Picking up on the ‘trades union’ aspect, the divorcees are described as ‘blacklegs’ and ‘unskilled labour’ who take bread out of the mouths of the locals. I’m surprised that such – still current – ideas were present when Somerset Maugham was writing53. It is – however – an amusing variant on the complaint against cheap, unskilled foreign labour!
    • The solution to this problem is to allow the divorcees to be accompanied by male friends – liberally described as ‘husbands’. The locals therefore have to satisfy their needs as before and the madams’ offspring can complete their education.
  9. The bum – 242
    • This is a sad but somewhat implausible and overly enigmatic tale. I considered the end a little lazy. It is well-told, however.
    • The narrator is stuck in Vera Cruz, Mexico54, briefly but indefinitely (about a week as it turns out) as the result of a dock strike. In the introductory section, the author imagines taking a complete break involving idleness rather than some other activity to the normal, but thinks that writers cannot eschew reading so imagines himself reading the complete works of Nick Carter55.
    • I couldn’t quite see how this tied in with the rest of the story, which is how the author responds to various beggars as he spends his week of enforced idleness in the city’s plaza. Maybe his idleness allows him to attend to them more than he otherwise might.
    • Most of the beggars are of the usual uninteresting type - though doubtless with tragic tales to tell. But one – an extremely emaciated silent and despondent man in his early forties with red hair and blue eyes that the author presumes to be English or American.
    • As the man reappears each day – though not at the author’s table after his rejection of him once his spare change is exhausted – it dawns on the narrator that he has seen the man before, but he cannot initially remember where.
    • Eventually he remembers him as a young man 20 years ago as a member of a group of young writers in Rome. He had been somewhat arrogant and sure that his native abilities exceeded those of the others in the group.
    • The author decides to connect to him and asks if he remembers Rome. The man, however says nothing. The author wants to help him and gives him a high-denomination note, but the man screws it up into a ball and flicks it away, whereon it is carried away by one of the black buzzards that congregate in the square, picking up offal. No doubt they are symbolic of something.
    • The author cannot fathom what has led to the man’s condition and despair. I thought it might be a slow suicide, contrasting somewhat with the rapid end the failed pianist in The Alien Corn56 chose for himself. I suppose the man’s silence is symbolic.
  10. The dream – 250
    • This is another intentionally ambiguous story. The author has to travel from New York to Petrograd in August 1917 and ‘for safety’s sake’ via Vladivostok and the Trans-Siberian Railway. While awaiting his train he has a meal in a crowded restaurant with a stranger – an aristocratic but corpulent Russian lawyer who speaks excellent English.
    • The Russian complains that ‘since the Revolution’ the quality of restaurant service has declined. Politics is not otherwise mentioned, but this is slightly odd and requires a bit of unpacking.
    • The Bolshevik ‘October’ revolution didn’t happen until later that year, but ‘St. Petersburg’ had been renamed ‘Petrograd’ in WWI to make its name sound less Germanic. After the Revolution it was further renamed to Leningrad in 1924 after Lenin’s death. See Note57. So, the presumed ‘danger’ is that caused by WWI rather than revolution, and ‘the revolution’ referred to by the Russian must be an earlier one58.
    • Well, the story revolves around an autobiographical tale told by the Russian. His wife is now deceased and he tells our author of the difficulties in his marriage. She was educated and intelligent but something of a scold. They lived in an apartment fairly high up an open stairwell with a low balustrade. His wife starts having the eponymous ‘dream’ – which is that her husband had murdered her by pushing her over the edge.
    • The Russian denies – to her and to the narrator – that he’d had any such thoughts, but admits that ‘the thoughts of men are incalculable and ideas enter our minds that we would be ashamed to confess’, which strikes me as very true to life. While the Russian had entertained the notions that his wife might run away or die some painless natural death he didn’t think himself capable of actually murdering her.
    • When the narrator asks how the Russian’s wife died, it turns out that she did indeed die ‘of a broken neck’ as a result of falling down the stairwell. The Russian ‘breaks out in a sweat’ at this point and seems to the narrator to be full of ‘malicious cunning’. He claims that he was out with a friend when his wife died and only found out about it an hour later.
    • The author – and therefore the reader – is in a quandary as to whether the Russian did or did not murder his wife.
    • I suppose the question is why the Russian should have told this tale in the first place.
    • Also, whether you can tell just by looking at someone whether they are capable of some awful crime. I suspect that almost anyone is capable of a ‘crime of passion’, but – thankfully – few are capable of premeditated crimes of violence59.
  11. The treasure – 254
    • I’m not sure what to make of this, if anything. It’s a comparatively long tale with little content. I’m uncertain what lessons, if any, can be drawn from it.
    • The plot is simple. Richard Harenger, a comfortably-off senior civil servant, approaching fifty and amicably separated from his wife, is in need of a housekeeper to go along with the cook in his flat close to Whitehall (an ample apartment with a couple of servant’s rooms). He’s very exacting as to his requirements and holds out until the perfect candidate – Mrs. Pritchard, a widow in her mid-thirties -who’s late husband had been useless – turns up. ‘Prichard’ is the eponymous ‘treasure’ and fulfils her obligations – which include those of valet and butler – to perfection, intuiting his every need, though in a very impersonal and robotic way.
    • The narrator introduces Richard Harenger as a ‘happy man’, in that he aims for the ‘golden mean’ rather than risking all for some form of risky self-fulfilment.
    • After four years, Harenger discovers that ‘Pritchard’ has not been going out on her evening off because she has no-one to go out with. He’d been intending to see a film on his own, but invites her along. She really enjoys the film and this pleases him so he invites her along to a restaurant and they dance together. Somehow, when they get back to the flat they kiss and end up in bed together. In fact, he deduces this in the morning from the fact that one of his pillows isn’t in its usual place and had been slept on. It seems implausible that much could have happened other than sleeping as Harenger – who wasn’t legless – doesn’t recall anything (this isn’t spelled out).
    • Anyway, Harenger becomes – temporarily – an unhappy man as he imagines that he will have to let Pritchard go. But she just resumes her duties as if nothing had happened, so Harenger returns to his happy state.
    • This is all rather implausible.
  12. The colonel's lady – 272
  13. Lord Mountdrago – 293
    • This is a really excellent story – but I’m not sure how to categorise it. It’s quite long, but a page-turner. It’s half-way between a ghost story – better than most of those by MR James (in my view) – and half a morality tale. Not that it has any ghosts in it, but it relies on what are inexplicable – if not supernatural – events.
    • In brief, Lord Mountdrago is a Tory Foreign Secretary who will – in the normal course of events – inherit his father’s Earldom. He is of great ability and conscientiousness – thought of very highly in that side of his personality – but is an overbearing snob with no time for those of lesser intelligence or lower social standing. Consequently, he has many enemies.
    • He comes to see a psychiatrist – Dr. Audlin – who is somewhat bland and understated and who thinks of himself as something of a quack – but has a considerable reputation for providing psychological cures for those otherwise beyond help.
    • It takes Lord Mountdrago a good while to open up to this contemptible underling, but he eventually sees it as his only hope. His problem is that over the last month he has had virtually no sleep because of a succession of dreams in which he appears in ridiculous escapades – either embarrassing or immoral – that are totally out of character.
    • Worse, there seems to be an interaction – both in the dreams and in real life – between himself and his counterpart on the Labour benches – a Welsh socialist – a grubby little man named Owen Griffiths. This man seems to share his dreams and appears to snigger knowingly at him when their paths cross the next day, In one dream Lord Mountdrago hits his nemesis over the head with a beer bottle and Owen Griffiths turns up the next day with a headache ‘as though someone had hit him over the head with a beer bottle’.
    • After much probing – which Lord Mountdrago finds insulting and nearly walks out after a tirade – it is revealed that Lord Mountdrago had ruined Owen Griffiths’ career during a speech in the House in front of the man’s parents who had come up to listen to what was to have been his career-defining speech. But Lord Mountdrago had torn him to shreds with ridicule so that even some of those on the Labour benches laughed.
    • Lord Mountdrago admits that – had he known that the man’s parents were in the Gallery – he might have been less vindictive. However he refuses to consider Dr. Audlin’s earnest recommendation that the only way out of his predicament is to apologise to Owen Griffiths and to try to make amends in some way.
    • Earlier, Lord Mountdrago had admitted that he wished Owen Griffiths dead, but that he’d never consider killing him. However, he wondered if he might kill him in one of his dreams, and that this might carry over into real life like the ‘beer bottle’ episode.
    • Well, at the sixth (or so) consultation Lord Mountdrago doesn’t turn up, but when Dr. Audlin asks for the evening paper he reads the banner headline that Lord Mountdrago had fallen under a train. Also, on an inside page, that Owen Griffiths had that afternoon succumbed to some mystery illness.
    • Dr. Audlin is dumb-struck and – while allowing that all this might be an odd set of coincidences – wonders whether Lord Mountdrago had indeed managed to kill Owen Griffiths in a dream as he had hoped.
    • Dr. Audlin is certain that Lord Mountdrago died by suicide, but the question is why. This isn’t really spelled out, but Dr. Audlin worries that Owen Griffiths had somehow managed to continue to torment Lord Mountdrago beyond the grave.
    • This part of the story is a little unsatisfying. Since their interaction is via dreams, how has Owen Griffiths managed to ‘get at’ Lord Mountdrago during his waking hours? The text is slightly unclear – Dr. Audlin had often expected Lord Mountdrago to seek release by suicide – but why now, until he knows whether the dreams will continue? He further wonders whether Owen Griffiths will continue to torment Lord Mountdrago ‘beyond the grave’.
    • All this is taking things too far. The ‘sting’ of Lord Mountdrago’s dreams has been public humiliation, loss of status, ruin of career and the like – all of which are presumably of no consequence after death.
    • Apart from these caveats about the ending, the story is very well told. If we abstract away from the supernatural elements the message of living peaceably with all men, of respecting people for their positive qualities and of seeking reconciliation are of timeless importance.
  14. The social sense – 320
    • This was the fourth short story I’d read and reviewed on holiday and I felt somewhat jaded. There’s only so much Somerset Maugham I can cope with in one go and I didn’t find this very interesting, though on another occasion I might have.
    • The story is about a couple where the wife has been in love with someone else for the last 25 years and her lover has just died. She read about his death in the paper just before coming out to a dinner party with her husband.
    • The wife, Mary, married her husband, Tom, because she thought he was a rising star as a portrait painter, but it turned out that he had no real talent, though could make a living thereby. As a result, she rather despised him, though he continued to be in love with her.
    • Her lover, Gerrard, was a brilliant writer, though physically unattractive (which didn’t seem to bother her). While she respected him and despised her husband, she felt a duty towards Tom.
    • The story’s title comes from the final page as a way of explaining how she managed to come out to the party and not show her distress. She has a ‘social sense’.
    • It strikes me as a life wasted – she should either have made a go of it with her husband and supported him emotionally or left him and had a more fulfilled life with her lover.
    • There’s something rather unsettling about loving a person for their talent rather than for their other qualities.
  15. The verger – 328
    • A brief and entertaining tale, one that seems to have left quite a trail on-line.
    • The eponymous verger – Albert Edward Foreman – is conscientious and effectively runs an upper-class (fictitious) London Church. However a new ‘modernising’ vicar arrives and discovers that Albert is illiterate. He was early in service and rose through the ranks before becoming a verger, but had never really had the opportunity – or aptitude – for literacy.
    • The vicar – abetted by two upper-crust churchwardens – considers his illiteracy a disgrace in the context of his church and gives him 3 months to learn to read and write or he’s out.
    • Albert says he’s too old for such things and so resigns. While he has some savings, he hasn’t enough to live on but on his way home to tea with his wife he’s on the lookout for a tobacconist and notices that there is a ‘gap in the market’, so he sets himself up in a vacant shop. He has an aptitude for this line of work and builds up a small empire of ten shops.
    • Eventually, his bank manager calls him in and suggests that he invests the £30k he’s built up in gilts. He’s reluctant to do so as he wouldn’t know what he was putting his name to.
    • The bank manager is astonished that he’s made so much money despite being illiterate and asks what he might have been had he been literate. The punch line is ‘the verger at St. Peter’s, Neville Square’.
    • I was a little sceptical of the verger’s success – if he didn’t know what he was agreeing to with the bank, how did he manage to agree the commercial contracts he had to enter in to. Maybe his wife helped him out.
    • As for the message, I doubt there’s anything very subtle.
  16. In a strange land – 336
    • Another brief and entertaining tale. After a general introduction about finding solitary English matrons scattered around the world in obscure places, the story settles on one such.
    • The case in point is of the owner of a hotel somewhere in Anatolia where the language is Turkish. Her name is Signora Niccolini, but she’s an English Cockney. She had been a lady’s maid in a great house in England and Signor Niccolini had been the chef. They had had ‘an understanding’ and when they retired they had got married and used their savings to set up in the hotel in Anatolia.
    • The twist in the tale is where she introduces her two sons. It turns out that – having no children of her own – she had adopted them. Signor Niccolini had had them with a Greek girl – a former employee. Rather than assigning blame to him she was really rather proud, describing him as ‘a very full-blooded man’.
    • I presume the story’s title ‘In a strange land’ – and the general moral of the tale – is an inverse parody of Ps. 137:4 (‘How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?’). Like the other ex-pat dames, our heroine carries on in Anatolia just as she would have in England. She rules the hotel just as she would her department of the great house she had known in England, ‘knowing her place’ but lording it over the under-servants.
    • Incidentally, I learnt a new word – ‘dragoman’ – meaning ‘interpreter’; essential then in Anatolia for tourists who knew no Turkish.
  17. The taipan – 341
    • This appears to be a simple morality tale about hubris and nemesis.
    • Wikipedia credits this short story from 1922 as being instrumental in popularising the term ‘taipan’ (meaning literally ‘top class’). See Wikipedia: Taipan (Corporate Title).
    • The (unnamed) Taipan is head of an important branch of an important British firm in China – presumably Hong Kong as he’d been to an excellent lunch with HSBC when the pivotal episode took place.
    • The Taipan is remarkably smug and satisfied with his rise from the London middle classes (though educated at St Paul’s School). He has hopes of having a final promotion to run the whole firm from Shanghai when the present head retires in 6 years’ time. He has no intention of returning to London but expects to live out his days in luxury in China.
    • As always, the story is well written and includes lots of interesting detail of the ex-pat life in China in the 1920s. The Taipan is contemptuous of the Chinese and has made no attempt to learn the language.
    • His denouement commences after his HSBC lunch when he decides to walk home after having eaten and drunk well (but followed by his chair and bearers should he need them) and wanders through a cemetery chortling at the thought of the young men he has drunk into their early graves. Then, he sees a large grave being dug (for someone of his build, though he doesn’t immediately recognise this).
    • He’s unable to ascertain who the grave is for – neither he nor his subordinates know of any recent deaths – and those responsible for the cemetery deny that any such grave has been dug.
    • Initially he’s OK, but later that night he takes fright and decides to resign and return to England.
    • He’s found the next morning, dead with his resignation letter in his hand.
    • It’s unclear whether this is a supernatural tale, whether the grave was all in his imagination (unlikely) or whether there’s foul play (also unlikely). It’s probably just one of Somerset Maugham’s morality tales. He certainly got his comeuppance.
  18. The consul – 349
    • This is a strange tale, and not one of Maugham’s best, in my view.
    • It considers the role of a particular bachelor Consul – oddly named ‘Mr Pete’ – in some Chinese city and the sort of cases he has to deal with. The majority seem to irritate him, and one on-going case in particular.
    • It deals with the situation of Miss Lambert (aka Mrs Yu). Miss Lambert had been deceived by Mr Yu, a tenant at her lodging house while he was studying at London University. He had led her to believe that he was a person of some importance, so she had married him and accompanied him to China expecting a life of luxury. Unfortunately for her, he was nothing of the sort and was in any case already married.
    • Bigamy, it seems, was legal in China, but under English law she was not legally married. She didn’t get on at all well with Mr Yu’s other wife, nor with his mother and complained repeatedly to the Consul. His advice was always that – as she was not legally married – she should just return to England, but she repeatedly refused.
    • Eventually, she turned up claiming that she was being poisoned, and came with food as evidence. The consul could well believe this and repeated his usual advice in the expectation that it would be followed, but Mrs Yu said that she couldn’t return to England for a completely absurd reason – that she liked the way Mr Yu’s hair grew out of his forehead.
    • This exasperates the Consul beyond words and he walks off bemoaning the irrationality of womankind.
    • According to Wikipedia (Wikipedia: On a Chinese Screen) this is one of 58 stories in a travel book. I suspect I’ve not got all these as they don’t look as though61 they have all been collected in the 4-volume compendium of Short Stories. I doubt I’m missing much if this is one of the better ones.
  19. A friend in need – 355
    • This is a disconcerting tale with an ironic title. It is ostensibly about our inability to really know another person even after decades of close contact.
    • It picks up on a case in point. Edwad Hyde Burton – a rich merchant based in Kobe, Japan – has recently deceased. He was universally respected as a kindly man of ability. However, he tells the author a story that astonished him as it is so much out of character.
    • Triggered by a passing ’remittance man’ (an idler or playboy with an annuity from back home) who is a good bridge-player, EHB relates the story of his own namesake – Lenny Burton – who was also a remittance man and an even better bridge player. It seems he supplemented his annuity with his winnings at the rubber bridge table, including from EHB (though he didn’t resent him on that account). He wasn’t a ‘card sharp’ as such, but was a likeable university-educated, well-dressed handsome chap in his mid-thirties, though – because he drank too much, especially lately - by the time of the incident to be related he looked fifty.
    • Well, eventually his annuity stopped and Lenny tried to supplement his income from poker, but this was a disaster and both his savings and his credit ran out. He came to EHB asking for a job, saying his only alternative was suicide. EHB asked what he had done for a living, and Lenny said he’s done nothing. Initially, EHB told him to come back after another 35 years when he had some work experience, but when Lenny persisted he asked whether he had any skills other than bridge. Lenny said he swam for his University.
    • EHB – while short and slight – had himself been a strong swimmer in his youth, so he set him a challenge that he had himself undertaken in his youth – a three-mile swim around a headland that should take about an hour and a quarter, though there were dangerous currents. If successful, he’d be given a job.
    • Well, Lenny started off OK, but his dissipation meant that he couldn’t cope with the currents and was carried out to sea and drowned. His body wasn’t recovered until 3 days later.
    • The narrator asked EHB whether he had expected this outcome. His response – ‘with a mild chuckle’ – was that he didn’t have a vacancy.
    • The title tells us that Maugham thinks that EHB’s action deserves our condemnation. I’ve given this a little thought and I’m sure he’s right. In a way, EHB is giving Lenny an honourable way out (though if he’d refused the challenge he’d have been even more wretched). Doubtless if Lenny had succeeded EHB would have given him a job, but he knew he wouldn’t survive and that he was sending him to his death (though he had warned him of the difficult currents). I suppose dying with dignity and initial hope is better than suicide in despair. But there were doubtless other options than suicide that a rich man with connections could have dreamt up. EHB was therefore both cruel and lazy.
    • I’m not sure whether we are supposed to think that these critical episodes reveal the ‘real man’ or are aberrations. The former, I suppose, given that EHB doesn’t seem to have been ashamed of his actions.
  20. The round dozen – 360
  21. The human element – 390
    • This is too long a ‘short’ story for its subject matter. Also, the tendenz of the story becomes obvious about 20 pages before the end, and the outworking is rather tedious.
    • Basically, it concerns a senior diplomat – Humphrey Carruthers – also a rather woolly – and recently lauded, if not popular – author that the narrator doesn’t like – either as an author or as a man.
    • They meet in a hotel in Rome and Carruthers – very much out of character – unloads his woes on the narrator. They are caused by his disillusionment following a failed love affair.
    • The object of his unrequited desire is Lady Betty Welldon-Burns – the daughter of a relatively impecunious Cornish duke who – as a young woman – takes London society by storm but unaccountably marries a rich bore for his money and then retires to Rhodes when he dies young of TB brought on by his drinking.
    • Carruthers has been infatuated by her for years and proposed marriage multiple times. She thinks of him as ‘a sweet’ but – no.
    • Eventually, Carruthers decides to rescue her from her ‘exile’ and travels to Rhodes to have another go, staying with her for 2 weeks. Eventually, he learns that she has been living with a man who was her aunt’s second footman and is now ostensibly her chauffeur and the mechanic on her yacht and other boats.
    • Carruthers is broken by this revelation because his idealisation of her is shattered. He makes one last attempt to rescue her and bring her back to London, but she says she will never marry him – he is too much of an old woman.
    • There’s a brief cod-philosophical comment by Maugham’s narrator that virtue has to be grounded in mud, or words to that effect.
    • The narrator suggests that Carruthers exorcise his grief by using his literary talents to write it all up as a short story. He says he couldn’t – it’d be caddish and – anyway – ‘there’s no story there’. Very droll.
    • I’ve not thought of a good reason for the story’s title. The tale is full of interesting insights into the upper-class society of the time (it was published in 1930). I suppose the moral is that you should follow the life path that suits you rather than what society expects. All well and good if you are stinking rich. Also, that you must take people as they are and not idealise them.
  22. Jane – 431
  23. Footprints in the jungle – 460
    • This is another long story – though it is very well told (what I have to say below omits almost all of interest). The problem with it is that it’s a whodunnit and who done it is rather obvious 20 pages before the final reveal-all.
    • In brief – there’s a game of bridge at the club in Tanah Merah64 in the Malay States involving a middle-aged couple – the Cartwrights, local planters – as one pair, and the Narrator and the local chief of police – Gaze, with whom the Narrator is staying – as the other.
    • Until recently – when he took up his current post – Gaze had not met the Cartwrights since 20 years earlier in Alor Lipis65 where they had had a rubber plantation. They have come to the club so that their 20-year-old daughter can enjoy herself at the weekly dance.
    • This is an over-simplification. When their paths crossed 20 years earlier, Mrs Cartwright was then married to Reggie Bronson and the daughter – who looked the image of Theo Cartwright – was born 4 months after Bronson’s untimely death. Theo Cartwright was staying with the Bronsons – he’d been to school with Reggie – as he had been ruined by a collapse in the price of rubber.
    • Well – spoiler alert – it turns out that Mrs Bronson had been having an affair with Theo Cartwright and – finding herself pregnant – had persuaded Theo Cartwright to murder her husband. They had shortly thereafter sold up, got married and moved to their current location.
    • Bronson had been shot in the head with a shotgun while cycling through the jungle with the week’s pay for his coolies that he’d collected from the bank in a neighbouring town. The story’s title relates to Bronson’s footprints at the scene of the crime that indicate that he’d stopped to talk to someone just prior to his death. Theo Cartwright had been in the area allegedly shooting pigeons.
    • Gaze had investigated the case and been the one to break the news to Mrs Bronson. He had decided to do so gently, so had initially only said that her husband had been badly injured. She and Cartwright seemed unduly perturbed at this (because – we are to assume – if Bronson recovered consciousness, he would reveal the awful truth) though the reason wasn’t understood at the time. The loot that was supposedly stolen by robbers eventually turned up a year later hidden close to the murder scene.
    • While the case against the Cartwrights is morally clearcut, all the evidence is circumstantial. So, Gaze neither charged them nor revealed his suspicions.
    • There is an interesting philosophical coda that’s worth discussing. The Narrator suggests that the Cartwrights ‘can’t be very nice people’, but Gaze says that – on the contrary – they are amongst the nicest around. Gaze’s philosophy after all his years as a policeman is that – on the whole – people who commit crimes can be perfectly decent people both before and after – if the crime has to be committed to get them out of an impossible situation. If a policeman cannot prevent a crime then it is his job to catch the criminal and to ensure they are punished, but not to judge them – that’s God’s job. It’s not what people do that matters but what they are. Actions do not always reveal the essential man.
    • I’d largely go along with this – though it does somewhat fly in the face of the Dominical saying ‘by their fruits shall ye know them’.
    • There’s much philosophical discussion about free will and determinism. Even if our actions are determined it is necessary to punish them as this goes into the matrix of cause and effect that prevents or deters future crimes. But there can be many mitigating factors that should restrain the judge from moral outrage. Except – no doubt – in the case of some particularly nasty criminals where the moral outrage itself goes into the matrix ….
  24. The door of opportunity – 495



In-Page Footnotes ("Somerset Maugham (W.) - Collected Short Stories: Volume 2")

Footnote 2:
  • This is the write-up as it was when this Abstract was last output, with text as at the timestamp indicated (30/10/2025 18:31:41).
  • Link to Latest Write-Up Note.
Footnote 5:
  • In the widest sense, including matters of life-choice and self-evaluation.
Footnote 31: Footnote 32:
  • The background is rather similar to that in The Yellow Streak in "Somerset Maugham (W.) - Collected Short Stories: Volume 1", which is located in the same (fictional) place.
  • Somerset Maugham doesn’t attempt to provide a detailed location for the story, which the other tale describes in some detail: it’s – I deduce – in the north of Borneo. See my Note there (via the link above) for further information on Sembulu, Dyaks, prahus, Kuala Solor and the like.
  • The frequent reference to ‘Malays’ is confusing as it tends to suggest a location in Malaya, but this is not the case. The Malay Archipelago (see Wikipedia: Malay Archipelago) seems to include everywhere – more or less – south of Thailand and north of Australia – except the Malay Peninsula (Wikipedia: Malay Peninsula).
Footnote 33:
  • I presume this is the First World War, given that the action of the story takes place 10 years after his appointment.
Footnote 34:
  • The linguistic situation is complex. Presumably the language is Malay since Doris is said to have been studying a Malay grammar in order to learn ‘the language’.
  • See Wikipedia: Malay Language: the official language of Brunei and elsewhere, but this is not the language of the Malay Peninsula (see Wikipedia: Malaysian Malay).
Footnote 35:
  • I’ve been uncertain how to represent this relationship. It’s official only insofar as Guy comes to a financial arrangement with the girl’s parents; it wouldn’t have been recognised by the Colonial authorities. But to save tedium and excessive scare quotes, I’ve decided to use the term ‘native wife’ (without scare quotes) hereafter.
Footnote 36:
  • The term ‘black’ is used rather loosely in this story and in others to do with the region. It’s not stated which race Guy’s native wife is. I had presumed she was a Dyak. There’s a reference to Dyaks being ‘headhunters in those days’ but being affable enough to talk to during the day. It’s only at night that Guy’s loneliness strikes.
  • Maybe the usage is influenced by a classical education, where – for example – Greek heroes are referred to as ‘black’ – that is, sun-tanned – as distinct from upper class women and stay-at-home ninnies who are ‘white’.
  • See "Whitmarsh (Tim) - Black Achilles".
  • Malays aren’t mentioned, but presumably there are Malays (and Chinese and sub-Continentals) in the towns and the girl would have been ‘sourced’ from a Malay family. I’m led to this supposition from the suggestion in the next story (Flotsam and jetsam) that the only thing for a native-born white man to do is to take up with a native girl.
  • Anyway, neither Dyaks nor Malays are ‘black’ in the Afro-Caribbean sense, but would hardly be considered white. But then upper-class Victorians had their doubts about Italians and Greeks (as do many of our lower-class contemporaries). See "Forster (E.M.) - Where Angels Fear to Tread".
  • Islanders from Melanesia and Polynesia would be considered ‘black’. See Wikipedia: Melanesia and Wikipedia: Polynesia.
Footnote 37:
  • This prompting may be significant, as Guy was originally ‘prompted’ into his native liaison by his ‘boy’ (servant) who had found an appropriate girl for him.
Footnote 38: Footnote 41:
  • In the story, the relevance is that a planter gets up early and goes out to check his estate. By the time he gets back it’s too late for breakfast but too early for lunch.
  • It seems the word was coined earlier, in England.
  • See Wikipedia: Brunch.
Footnote 43:
  • While Kong is evidently competent, loyal and useful, he’s not treated respectfully by the narrator (Maugham). He’s referred to as ‘the Chink’, and – while he has a good command of English – his speech is portrayed in a rather ‘amusing’ music-hall style.
Footnote 44:
  • We never get to know Mrs Grange’s first name. No doubt this is ironic; her life is now completely defined (and confined) by her marriage to Norman Grange.
  • Later on, we learn that her stage name had been Vesta Blaise.
Footnote 45:
  • Kuching is the capital of the State of Sarawak on the Island of Borneo. See Wikipedia: Kuching.
Footnote 46:
  • Or to other near-contemporary writers: George Orwell was an Imperial Police Officer in Burma from 1922-27 and hated both the job and the Empire and wrote about it (eg. in "Orwell (George) - Shooting an Elephant"). I should follow this up some time, for instance in his Burmese Days.
  • That said, I don’t get the impression that Somerset Maugham though there was much wrong with ‘Empire’. He seems to share the Empire’s paternalistic attitude towards ‘the natives’.
Footnote 47:
  • See:-
    → National Ocean Service: What are flotsam and jetsam?, and
    → Wikipedia: Flotsam, jetsam, lagan and derelict.
  • From the above one learns that Flotsam is marine debris – often the result of a wreck – that had not been voluntarily thrown overboard, and so remains the property of the original owner. Jetsam, however, had been thrown overboard and becomes the property of whoever finds it.
  • Maybe one could extract an allusion from these definitions relevant to our tale, but I cannot as yet think of one with any conviction.
  • My best guess would be that Norman is ‘Flotsam’ – while his life has been something of a shipwreck, he is still in control, just about. Mrs Grange is ‘Jetsam’ – she was thrown overboard by her failed troupe, and has become the property of her husband, who found her.
Footnote 49: Footnote 50:
  • I’m doubtful that there is any such thing.
Footnote 51: Footnote 52: Footnote 53: Footnote 54: Footnote 55:
  • Presumably this is the fictional detective as featured in a series of pulp books and magazines.
  • See Wikipedia: Nick Carter (character).
  • The Bum isn’t listed in Wikipedia: List of works by W. Somerset Maugham, so I don’t know when it was written; hence, how it fits into the extended sequence of works involving this character.
  • I agree with Somerset Maugham’s suggestion that complete ‘down time’ is essential occasionally. Also, that writers are inveterate readers. Ironically, my ‘down time’ reading is Somerset Maugham’s works; I write them up lest they be lost to my memory ‘like tears in the rain’.
Footnote 57: Footnote 58:
  • Maybe that of 1905.
  • See Wikipedia: Russian Revolution of 1905.
  • This tale was published in 1924, so it’s mildly surprising that Somerset Maugham didn’t make the context clearer, though maybe it would have been common knowledge then.
Footnote 59: Footnote 61:
  • There are 58 stories in only 116 pages – so they are mostly very short indeed – only 2 pages each on average.
  • Mostly too short, therefore, to be included in the collected editions.
  • An Amazon reviewer claims – in Brazilian Portuguese – that the stories are somewhat monotonous and repetitive, and therefore disappointing in comparison with his short stories in the Collections. I can well believe it.
  • To make future searches easier, the stories are:-
    1. The Rising of the Curtain
    2. My Lady's Parlour
    3. The Mongol Chief
    4. The Rolling Stone
    5. The Cabinet Minister
    6. Dinner Parties
    7. The Altar of Heaven
    8. The Servants of God
    9. The Inn
    10. The Glory Hole
    11. Fear
    12. The Picture
    13. His Britannic Majesty's Representative
    14. The Opium Den
    15. The Last Chance
    16. The Nun
    17. Henderson
    18. Dawn
    19. The Point of Honour
    20. The Beast of Burden
    21. Dr Macalister
    22. The Road
    23. God's Truth
    24. Romance
    25. The Grand Style
    26. Rain
    27. Sullivan
    28. The Dining-Room
    29. Arabesque
    30. The Consul
    31. The Stripling
    32. The Fannings
    33. The Song of the River
    34. Mirage
    35. The Stranger
    36. Democracy
    37. The Seventh Day Adventist
    38. The Philosopher
    39. The Missionary Lady
    40. A Game of Billiards
    41. The Skipper
    42. The Sights of the Town
    43. NIghtfall
    44. The Normal Man
    45. The Old Timer
    46. The Plain
    47. Failure
    48. A Student of the Drama
    49. The Taipan
    50. Metempsychosis
    51. The Fragment
    52. One of the Best
    53. The Sea-Dog
    54. The Question
    55. The Sinologue
    56. The Vice-Consul
    57. A City Built on a Rock
    58. A Libation to the Gods
Footnote 64:
  • Tanah Merah is a district of Singapore (see Wikipedia: Tanah Merah, Singapore).
  • However, if this is the place intended, Maugham would have said so. Singapore is mentioned later in the story as a different place.
  • Tanah Merah apparently means ‘red land’, and is the name of several places.
Footnote 65:
  • This looks like a confection based on combining Alor Setar with Kuala Lipis, both in Malaysia.

Text Colour Conventions (see disclaimer)
  1. Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2026
  2. Mauve: Text by correspondent(s) or other author(s); © the author(s)


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