During the following month Maugham made an extensive tour. Beginning at Nancy in the east, he went first to the headquarters of General de Lattre de Tassigny, commander of the Fifth Army, where “I was entertained by generals13 whose composure terrified me.” From there he moved up to the Maginot Line, “driving through a fog at night with no lights in a military car with a driver who doesn’t know the way and goes at fifty miles an hour,” he told Juliet Duff. Here he was shown over one of the massive, and reputedly impregnable, fortresses that stretched along France’s border with Germany. It was an impressive sight. “The officer in command told me14 he could hold out for six months if he were besieged,” Maugham reported. “It came as something of a shock to me to see in the paper some months later that this particular fortress had been captured after four days.” He was taken down a coal mine at Lens, and was conducted around several munitions factories, both in the east and near Paris; during the third week he traveled to the Charente, in the southwest, to inspect the resettlement there of half a million evacuees, French nationals, from Alsace and Lorraine. The final week was spent at sea on board two naval vessels based at Toulon. Privately, Maugham was horrified by much of what he witnessed, by the innate corruption, the lack of morale, the deep and bitter divisions between the social classes, and he found it an enormous struggle to conceal his personal reactions while for propaganda purposes presenting as positive a picture as he could. “I was determined to write15 nothing that was untrue,” he said later, “[and] it would have caused a useless scandal to relate the facts as I saw them.” To his masters at the Ministry, however, the facts were sent back unvarnished, one of the subjects of most concern the resentful attitude of the French toward British forces on French soil, regarded as insufficient in number and shockingly licentious in behavior:
The impression I received16 was that there was widespread dissatisfaction with the inadequacy of British support and with the behaviour of British troops, and that such cordiality as the French thought fit to display to their allies was due to policy rather than to friendliness…. There was a lot to be done in the direction of improving the feeling between the B.E.F. [British Expeditionary Force] and the French.
It was as a step in this direction that Maugham wrote a series of newspaper articles, later published as a pamphlet, France at War,* specifically designed to foster in Britain respect and fellow feeling for her ally across the Channel. In a tone of heartfelt admiration, these articles present an unstintingly heroic picture—a picture that was to be devastatingly undermined when less than two years later Maugham in his book, Strictly Personal, produced his true impressions, written to set the record straight. Considered together, France at War and Strictly Personal make an interesting study in contrasts. After touring a munitions works, for instance, Maugham in his article reverently exclaims, “I cannot attempt to describe17 the wonderful things I saw … the pains that are taken … every part is quite exquisitely finished. The machines that are used for the manufacture of all these lethal weapons are miracles of ingenuity”; whereas in the book he makes plain how disturbing it was to find signs in every factory of seething dissatisfaction, attempted sabotage, and frequent incidents of revolt. Similarly, he reveals two very different perspectives in his visit to the Charente, where he witnessed the meanness and hostility shown to French families who had been living near the German border and were now forcibly removed and resettled. Arriving in a strange part of the country with almost nothing, these people were deeply resented and given little help by the locals, their fellow countrymen. Straining to shine as favorable a light as possible, Maugham concentrates in his article on the industry and courage shown by the displaced persons. “There are plenty of empty houses18 and abandoned cottages … in a sad state of dilapidation [but] the refugees set to with a will to make them habitable. It is wonderful with what spirit these people, snatched away from comfortable homes, bear their lot.” In fact the conditions were disgraceful.
These wretched people19 had been hustled out of their houses at two hours’ notice … put in cattle trucks and had spent three days and sometimes more, in the heat of day, in the cold of night, till they reached Poitiers and Angoulême…. Some fell dangerously ill on the way and not a few died…. They learnt after a few weeks that their houses had been looted by the soldiers who had been entrusted with their care…. They were miserably housed … in broken-down hovels in which you wouldn’t have put a pig.
For the last leg of his tour Maugham visited the naval base at Toulon, where he was invited to witness routine exercises at sea. Dividing his time between two vessels, a warship and a torpedo boat, he was struck by the casual attitude displayed by both officers and crew. In the article this relaxed deportment is tactfully described as “pleasantly democratic…. Orders are given20 in a less peremptory fashion than in our own ships [and] officers and men smoke where and when they please on board, during working hours and out of them.” In Strictly Personal, however, Maugham confesses himself shocked: “I had not been able to help21 noticing the slovenliness of the men’s appearance, which contrasted in so marked a manner with the trim cleanliness so conspicuous in British and American vessels, and I had been taken aback by something that looked very like lack of discipline.”
Having completed his tour of inspection, Maugham returned to the Mauresque shortly before Christmas to write his articles, which were so well received that he was immediately recalled to London to discuss a parallel series, about the Home Front, to be translated into French. For the first time in his life Maugham made the journey by air, flying in extremely bad weather from Le Bourget, outside Paris, on an RAF transport plane. After long delays they finally took off, keeping low over the Channel so as not to be mistaken for enemy aircraft, finally landing at a military aerodrome somewhere in Sussex. From here he was driven by truck to the nearest town, where he managed to hire a car, as there were no trains, and “arrived in London22 cold, tired and hungry, but in time for late dinner at the Café Royal.”
During the next three months, the spring of 1940, Maugham was forced to endure the hanging about and time wasting that was an inevitable part of the wartime experience, with the men at the Ministry unable to make up their minds exactly how to employ him. “I was like a performing dog in a circus,” he wrote, “whose tricks the public would probably like, but who somehow couldn’t be quite fitted into the programme.” During this period two of his books were published, Books and You, a gathering together of three essays on favorite classics, and a collection of short stories, The Mixture as Before (the phrase used by doctors when writing a repeat prescription). This included some vintage Maugham, including “The Three Fat Women of Antibes,” “The Lion’s Skin,” “The Facts of Life,” but his readers expressed dismay at the author’s pronouncement in his preface. “I have now written between eighty and ninety stories,” Maugham states. “I shall not write any more.” In fact, as he was later to make clear, the typesetter had left out an m and the line should have read, “I shall not write many more.”
Meanwhile, his diary was filled with the usual social engagements, with weekends in the country and catching up with the family in town: Syrie had closed down her business and was temporarily living in Paris, Liza was spending as much time as she could with Vincent before he was sent overseas, and F.H. had finally been awarded the hereditary peerage for which Maugham had so fervently hoped (F.H. had enjoyed only a brief period on the woolsack, however, as to his bitter disappointment Chamberlain had replaced him as lord chancellor the day after war was declared). Robin would now inherit the title, and Maugham, anxious to make appropriate provision for his beloved nephew, arranged with Bert Alanson for a generous allowance to be paid him—“It means that the second Viscount23 will be able to pursue the political career on which he has set his heart,” he told Alanson—as well as leaving him a large sum in his will. Regarding the latter, Maugham wrote, “Robin dear,
I am settling $25000 on you24 which will be paid you immediately & without further
formalities on my death. But I very strongly advise you to leave it in the care of Bert, who is both clever & honest…. If you die without issue I should like you, if you will, to leave the money (if you have not already squandered it) in some way that may be to the advantage of English literature; but of course I shall turn in my grave if you don’t have issue….
Recently Robin had been the subject of some concern to his uncle, who had heard worrying reports of the young man’s heavy drinking, destructive bouts which had obliged the family doctor to forbid any alcohol at all for a while. “I am very glad,”25 Maugham scolded him. “You were quite obviously drinking a great deal too much [and] I have had too much to do with soaks not to look with dismay upon the prospects of anyone I know becoming one.” But on the outbreak of war Robin redeemed himself by immediately enlisting, joining the Inns of Court regiment. The news pleased Maugham, who wrote fondly, “I am told on all sides26 … that your buttons are brighter than any buttons in the British Army.”
AT THE BEGINNING OF MAY, less than a week before the German invasion of the Low Countries, Maugham returned to the south of France. “It was very quiet on the Riviera,”27 he recalled. Permission was received to bring the Sara back from Bandol to her old berth at Villefranche, but no yachts were allowed outside the harbor. There were shortages of food, of coffee in particular, a blackout was enforced, and gasoline was severely rationed, which drastically curtailed the opportunities for social life. As the Phony War, the period of relative military inactivity, continued, people grew restless and resentful. “Everyone is bored28 & more or less irritable,” Maugham told Ellen Doubleday. “Not me! I am delighted that it is impossible to go out to dinner & if only I could afford the gas to go & play golf two or three times a week I should have nothing to complain of.” But then the end came with startling suddenness. On May 28, Belgium surrendered, and in northern France the British Expeditionary Force was routed and forced to flee, the remnant rescued from the beaches at Dunkirk during the first few days of June. On June 10 Italy entered the war, four days before the Germans marched into Paris. Immediately the entire Côte d’Azur was thrown into turmoil: within a few hours 50 percent of the population of Monaco had fled and Menton and the area around it was evacuated. If, as seemed probable, the Italians occupied the Riviera, all British residents would be interned, a fate that Maugham was not prepared to contemplate: with typical sangfroid he had planned in such an event to kill himself with the sleeping pills he kept by him for just such an emergency. In order to find out what was happening he drove into Nice, where he found the consul general surrounded by a panicking crowd begging for information. After an anxious wait a message came through from the British embassy, hastily relocated to Bordeaux, that all British subjects were advised to leave the country as quickly as possible, and that two ships, now at Cannes, had been requisitioned to take them off. Passengers were to be on the quay at eight o’clock the following morning, each person permitted one small bag of personal belongings, a blanket, and enough food for three days.
That evening over a hurried dinner, plans were made for the immediate future. It was decided that Gerald, protected by the immunity conferred by his American passport, should stay on at the Villa for a few days to save what he could of the pictures and the most valuable possessions, including Maugham’s notebooks and the unfinished manuscript of his new novel. Annette and Nina, both Italian, would remain where they were for as long as it was safe to do so, Maugham giving instructions that if the house had to be abandoned, his favorite dachshund, Erda, should be killed. Reckoning that the roads would be impassable by morning, he decided to leave at midnight, hurriedly packing a few clothes, three books, a blanket, and a pillow, and filling a basket with lump sugar, tea, a couple of packets of macaroni, a jar of marmalade, and a loaf of bread. “It never struck any of us,”29 he later remarked, “that I should want a tin opener, a plate, a knife and fork, a glass and a cup.” Having said good-bye to the maids, he and Gerald left the Mauresque. “We drove in silence. I was unhappy,” Maugham wrote. “Every few miles a lantern was waved at us and we stopped to have our papers examined by a picket of soldiers.” In Cannes, Gerald dropped Maugham at the Carlton Hotel on the Croisette, and the two men took leave of each other; as in the first war, neither knew how or when they would meet again.
The Carlton, one of the grandest hotels on the Riviera, was thronged with people, most of them in evening clothes, many of them drunk, a few hysterical. Sleep was out of the question. Early the next morning, Sunday, June 23, Maugham walked down to the harbor, where he found a scene of indescribable chaos. On the quay a dense mass of more than three thousand people, all laden with luggage, was pushing forward toward a counter where a couple of customs officers were inspecting bags. There were all types and classes, men, women, and children, some invalids come straight out of the hospital, even a few on stretchers who, refused entry, were forced to turn back. From time to time a large car would drive up and the well-dressed occupants alight to join the queue, the driver having no choice but to abandon his vehicle and toss the keys into the little crowd of locals looking on. The sun blazed overhead and the heat grew intense. In the harbor the two ships could be seen moored to bollards, not the spacious vessels envisaged but a couple of small colliers, the Saltersgate and the Ashcrest, en route to Algeria after discharging their cargoes of coal at Marseilles. It was four hours before Maugham was directed on board the Saltersgate, where he was told to join eighty others allotted a small space in the hold. When that evening they were finally ready to sail, there were five hundred passengers, many of them wealthy, owners of fine villas, accustomed to first-class hotels, now jammed into accommodations intended for a crew of thirty-eight. Every surface was covered in coal dust, there was hardly room to move, and Maugham, finding unbearable the crowding and stuffiness below decks, decided to sleep in the open; but the iron deck was painfully hard and it grew cold before dawn, so on the following night and thereafter he slept below.
The next morning the two ships reached Marseilles, where, after waiting all day, they received instructions to join a French convoy headed for Oran. They were at sea for a week, and the conditions on board were frightful. It was very hot, water was in short supply, the few lavatories were filthy and hopelessly inadequate, and rations were extremely limited; most of the day was spent queueing in the sun either for food (four sweet biscuits and a cube of bully beef) or for the chance of a quick wash in a bucket in which fifty people had washed before; everyone was covered in a thick paste of sweat and coal dust. Ill-equipped for the circumstances, Maugham was grateful when a kind lady gave him a scrap of towel and someone else a jam jar to hold his drinking water. As the days passed, fear of attack by torpedo and the misery caused by overcrowding intensified: four people went out of their minds and one elderly woman died. As there were neither rafts nor life belts and U-boats were known to be in the area, it occurred to Maugham to ask one of his neighbors, a retired doctor, how best to drown quickly; ever since his experience in Burma when he had nearly lost his life in a tidal wave he had had a horror of drowning. “Don’t struggle,” was the advice. “Open your mouth,30 and the water pouring into your throat will bring on unconsciousness in less than a minute.” Spirits rose as the coast of Algeria came into view: word had gone around that a liner would be waiting to take everyone on to England. But after they docked at Oran a wireless message was received that there was no liner and that the captain should quickly take on what stores he could and proceed immediately under escort to Gibraltar.
Accordingly, the Saltersgate left that night, a Sunday, arriving in Gibraltar the following Tuesday. Rations had slightly improved as bread, fruit, and cigarettes had been brought on board, and the prospect of disembarking on British soil, of a bath, a drink, a good meal before transferring to more comfortable accommodation for the last leg of the voyage, cheered everybody up. Hopes were dashed, however, when after reaching port they were refused permission to land: thousands of refugees were already on the Rock and
there was no room for more, nor was there another vessel; they would have to sail to England in the ship they were in. “Many broke down then,”31 Maugham wrote, “[for] it was a cruel disappointment.” The Saltersgate remained in port for three days, and eventually passengers were allowed ashore, in parties of fifty for two hours at a time. Maugham was in the last batch, and he hurried off to buy a quilt, sardines, tinned fruit, whisky, and rum. Conditions had improved by the time they were ready to leave, as more than two hundred passengers—children, the sick, and those over seventy—had been taken off, and Maugham was able to move out of the hold and into the slightly more spacious fo’c’sle, where in a corner he constructed a bed for himself by laying a couple of planks over three baskets and covering it with his quilt.
In a convoy of twelve ships, Saltersgate and Ashcrest left Gibraltar on June 28, finally reaching Liverpool on July 8. With the ship less crowded, Maugham had been able to pass the time in relative ease. Sitting cross-legged on the hard iron deck, he read Plato in the morning, and in the afternoon played patience and continued with one of the two novels he had brought with him, Thackeray’s Esmond and Charlotte Brontë’s Villette; after a meager supper at seven he told stories, despite his stammer, to anyone who cared to listen. Eventually the convoy came in sight of the coast of Lancashire and the mouth of the Mersey, “the blessed shores of England.” After twenty days on the ship Maugham was haggard, dirty, weak, and exhausted. Arriving by train that night in London he was surprised to learn that his whereabouts had been a matter of some concern to the British press. “Among well-known people still missing in France are Mr. Somerset Maugham,” the Daily Telegraph had reported on June 24, thus causing considerable disquiet to his family. “The telephone went all day from reporters about Willie, who has disappeared,” Nellie Maugham wrote anxiously in her diary, adding on the following day, June 25, “Still no news of Willie and I do hate not knowing. The American embassy say they can’t get any news from Paris, nor can the Red Cross.” She was therefore relieved to read in the Daily Mail on July 2 that at last he had been sighted. “Somerset Maugham’s countless admirers will be happy to hear that he has appeared in Gibraltar … E. Phillips Oppenheim, too, has escaped…. Only P. G. Wodehouse of our leading authors remains, as far as one can assume, in German hands.” Finally, on the night of July 8, Maugham himself telephoned from the Dorchester Hotel. “Willie got home!”32 Nellie wrote. “He is coming to dinner tomorrow, but is too tired to speak tonight, poor darling.” And on the evening following, “Willie dined here. He looks terribly tired & thin but not so bad as might be expected after his awful experiences…. He didn’t take off his clothes for 3 weeks … !”
The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham Page 50