Apart from a short story, called The Verger which used to appear in school collections so I shared it with students, I don’t think I’d ever read any W Somerset Maugham (1874-1965). Time to put that right.
I started with Liza of Lambeth, partly because it was Maugham’s first novel and partly because there was a copy on the whole-wall bookshelves in my sitting room – not sure how it got there. Books have lives of their own sometimes.
It was published in 1897, just two years after Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure but Maugham is about as far from Hardy, whose work he loathed, as could be. Interesting though that both books, from very different standpoints, tackle the vexed, Victorian sex- outside-marriage issue.
Liza is a cheerful South Londoner who works hard, looks after her appallingly self-centred, querulous mother and would quite like to have a good time. The prospect of marrying the decent but dull Tom, who adores her, does not appeal much. Then she meets the older Jim and there’s instant chemistry. Unfortunately he already has a wife and children and neither Liza nor Jim is very good at concealing what’s going on from their tight-knit, crowded community. So it all ends in tears.
There’s much casual violence amongst these people who are inclined to talk with their fists. Maugham trained at St Thomas’s with a view to practising medicine and the authenticity of some of the fights – along with the inevitable consequences of Liza’s affair – are testament to that. In the event he published Liza of Lambeth, achieved success with it and his career was launched on a different path.
This succinct novel, almost a novella, came as a refreshing relief after the prolixity of Herman Melville. It’s warmly readable and the characterisation is engaging, if a bit stereotyped. One of the most enlightening, horrifying and perceptive sections is the conversation between Liza’s mother and her neighbour at the end. I wish though, that Maugham hadn’t opted for crude phonetic spelling to indicate the accent his characters are using. George Bernard Shaw does it too. So does DH Lawrence. It was the custom of the day but ,over a century later, it’s tiresome to read because it forces the reader to stop and sub vocalise. You could so easily have them speak (written) standard English with the occasional signal in the speech tags.
My mother-in-law (born 1922) used to wax lyrical about W.Somerset Maugham. I suppose the novels and short stories were fairly current when she first read them or more likely her mother (another reading enthusiast) passed them on to her. I shall read Cakes and Ale (1930) soon not least because I like the title taken from Shakespeare cf Murder Most Foul, Brave New World and The Darling Buds of May.
Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: One Summer in Provence by Carol Drinkwater.
