Yet again – and probably for the last time, I present a talk on Somerset Maugham and The Painted Veil
And so it was off once again to Hanover PA, this time for a Somerset Maugham Festival of sorts, focusing on the author’s life, and works, and in particular, the novel The Painted Veil.
So, this being my third discussion of this novel – and my fourth reading of it – was there anything more to be gleaned from yet another Somerset Maugham immersion experience? Amazingly, there was. It’s not so much that I unearthed any new information, but rather that facts already known to me took on a slightly different coloration. This was in part due to my revisiting Selina Hastings’s The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham, a masterful recounting of the long and eventful life of a singularly fascinating and gifted individual.
Once again, while revisiting the story of Maugham’s abruptly destroyed childhood happiness, I felt pangs of empathy for the lonely, bewildered boy he must have been. Ted Morgan, another Maugham biographer, likens the writer to “… one of Dickens’ youthful heroes who are tempered by misfortune at an early age.”
I can hardly believe that the two other times I’ve led discussions of The Painted Veil, I’ve made no mention of the one novel by Maugham that has most consistently made it onto lists of greatest novels of the twentieth century: Of Human Bondage. It’s been years – decades, actually – since I read this book, and I was surprised to find, when reading a summary of the plot, that it contained so many autobiographical elements especially, in its early chapters. Here’s what Random House says of it:
It is very difficult for a writer of my generation, if he is honest, to pretend indifference to the work of Somerset Maugham,” wrote Gore Vidal. “He was always so entirely there.”
Originally published in 1915, Of Human Bondage is a potent expression of the power of sexual obsession and of modern man’s yearning for freedom. This classic bildungsroman tells the story of Philip Carey, a sensitive boy born with a clubfoot who is orphaned and raised by a religious aunt and uncle. Philip yearns for adventure, and at eighteen leaves home, eventually pursuing a career as an artist in Paris. When he returns to London to study medicine, he meets the androgynous but alluring Mildred and begins a doomed love affair that will change the course of his life. There is no more powerful story of sexual infatuation, of human longing for connection and freedom.
“Here is a novel of the utmost importance,” wrote Theodore Dreiser on publication. “It is a beacon of light by which the wanderer may be guided. . . . One feels as though one were sitting before a splendid Shiraz of priceless texture and intricate weave, admiring, feeling, responding sensually to its colors and tones.”
In England, Of Human Bondage was not an immediate hit. The country was one year into the First World War, and the novel was deemed too grim for the times. But in America, it was immediately hailed as a masterpiece. Before long, similar acclaim appeared in Britain.
(I mentioned that one of my few vivid memories of this novel is Maugham’s description of Mildred’s complexion as possessing a greenish tinge. A member of the Hanover audience commented that there’s a type of anemia that can give rise to this phenomenon.)
As the First World War got under way in 1914, Maugham was already too old to enlist as a soldier. But he was able to serve in France and Belgium in the Ambulance Corp, work for which he was well suited, with his medical degree and fluent knowledge of the French language. He was then recruited by British intelligence. For this work, he was based primarily in Switzerland, though he later did a stint in Russia. The work required that he be both self-effacing and cunning. Once again, he seemed ideal suited for the job. (Observing how much Maugham enjoyed being immersed in espionage, Lord Kenneth Clark commented: “I suppose he liked the light that it shed on human nature.”
Maugham distilled this experience, with its numerous subtle aspects and its tendency to be at once suspenseful and tedious, into a series of stories that comprise a volume called Ashenden, or the British Agent. Once again, I lamented the fact that this book remains out of print. These stories are riveting and not at all dated. Today, technology has provided us with new and astonishing ways to convey information and to carry out surveillance, but the moral conundrums that are ever present in the so-called ‘secret world’ remain essentially the same. (In a post entitled “Somerset Maugham: the great teller of tales,” I have more to say about Ashenden and some of Maugham’s other stories.)
In 1917, Maugham married Syrie Wellcome. They’d been lovers off and on for several years, and the relationship had already produced a daughter, Liza. But the marriage proved disastrous; Maugham’s single goal thereafter seemed to be to put as many miles between himself and Syrie as was humanly possible. His insatiable lust for travel served the purpose well. In 1919, along with his lover Gerald Haxton, Maugham sojourned to China. (He and Gerald had previously traveled together to the South Seas, a journey which produced one of his most famous short stories, “Rain.” This tale of passion both sacred and profane features one of Maugham’s most memorable protagonists, the free living prostitute Sadie Thompson.)
At the time that Maugham and Gerald Haxton were in China, the country was unstable and conditions for tourists were dire. As usual, Maugham did not let these factors deter him. He was fascinated by the place. China, he declared, is a country that “gives you everything.” For the first time in his peripatetic life, Maugham found himself in a place whose language was impenetrable to him. But reliance on interpreters posed no great obstacle, for Maugham was not so much interested in the Chinese people themselves as in the Westerners living in their midst. Selina Hastings tells us:
As before in Polynesia, The Americans and Europeans he encountered, the lives of doctors, diplomats, traders, missionaries, and their women, were the subject of his closest scrutiny, and his notes are full of their stories: the consul, the taipan, the desperate-to-be-married spinster, the missionary who had come to hate his calling, the agent of British-American Tobacco driven half mad by homesickness, the saintly mother superior in her white-walled convent who talked nostalgically of her family home in the south of France.
Ah, the saintly mother superior! And so we come to The Painted Veil.
In his preface to a later edition (possibly in 1952 or 1953, when the copyright was renewed), Maugham states that the idea for this novel came to him from a story told by Dante in the Purgatory section of The Divine Comedy. He quotes seven lines of verse in the original Italian, then translates them thus:
“‘Pray, when you are returned to the world, and rested from the long journey,’ followed the third spirit on the second, ‘remember me, who am Pia. Siena made me, Maremma unmade me: this he knows who after betrothal espoused me with his ring.'”
When Maugham a young medical student, he took advantage of a break in his schedule and traveled to Italy. He acquired a language teacher, and together they were working their way through Dante’s masterpiece. When they came to the passage alluded to above, his instructor offered him the following explanation:
…Pia was a gentlewoman of Siena whose husband, suspecting her of adultery and afraid on account of her family to put her to death, took her down to castle in the Maremma the noxious vapors of which he was confident would do the trick; but she took so long to die that he grew impatient and had her thrown out of the window.
Now, Maugham’s Italian tutor was a somewhat feckless young woman, and he had trouble imagining from whence she’d gleaned this strange tale. Nevertheless, it haunted him: “I turned it over in my mind and for many years from time to time would brood over it for two or three days. I used to repeat to myself the line: Siena mi fe; disfecemi Maremma.”
In a footnote, Selina Hastings confirms the story of Pia, though not the part about the defenestration. Hastings adds that Maugham had an addition source of inspiration for The Painted Veil. This had to do with the scandalous behavior of an Englishwoman in Hong Kong. She doesn’t elaborate, and I’ve not been able to find out anything further about who this person was or what she did.
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One of the things that made Selina Hastings’s biography such fun to read was the vast number of celebrities whose paths crossed with Maugham’s at one time or another. Politicians, statesmen, writers, actors, and many others appear at various points in his long and varied life story. I kept a running list; here are some of the names on it: Eric Ambler, Kingsley Amis, Tallulah Bankhead, Bernard Berenson, Isaiah Berlin, Anthony Blunt, Charlie Chaplin, Rudyard Kipling, Winston Churchill, Queen Elizabeth, Ian Fleming, Bette Davis, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, H.G. Wells, Graham Greene, Christopher Isherwood, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Eleanor Roosevelt, Cary Grant, Virginia Woolf.
As I said, that is only a partial list.
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Shortly before the Hanover date, my husband and I had the pleasure of viewing once again the 2006 film of the novel. What a sumptuous production! Gorgeously photographed and with an exceptionally lovely soundtrack , and stellar performances by Naomi Watts and Edward Norton in the lead roles and Diana Rigg as the Mother Superior – a class act from beginning to end.
I recalled the way in which the ending of The Painted Veil was changed in the film, but on this viewing, with the novel fresh in my mind, I detected a number of other, lesser changes as well. Yet I feel that in the main, the film remains true to the spirit of the novel. They’re two different entities, and both are wonderful.
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There’s much more that could be said, but since I’ve already blogged quite a bit about Somerset Maugham, I’m going to close here with a heartfelt thanks to my friends in Hanover for once again making me part of this book discussion series. I also owe thanks to my friends from Howard County who drove up to Hanover to attend this presentation and also to shop – two very worthy aims!
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Portions of my talk were captured on video by my husband. Click here to view.
Quelle belle surprise! Google pays tribute to Claude Debussy
First: here’s today’s Google Doodle:
On this date one hundred fifty-one years ago in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France,, Claude Debussy was born.
Debussy is one of my favorite composers. This is one of my favorite recordings of his music: 
Nijinsky
In this video, Rudolf Nureyev is the lead in the Joffrey Ballet’s production of L’Apres-midi d’un Faune (Afternoon of a Faun). Choreography by the brilliant and doomed Vaslav Nijinsky.
Debussy’s piano music is full of magic and mystery:
In keeping with the theme of French music, here is one of my all time favorite YouTube videos. I give you little Naomi singing two beloved folk tunes, “Au Clair de la Lune” and “Frere Jacques:”
Bravo Naomi, et merci mille fois à vous, Google!
Portrait of William Smith by Gilbert Stuart
Dr. William Smith by Gilbert Stuart, circa 1800
After reading “A Nation on the Horizon” by John Wilmerding, this splendid painting meant much more to me. (Click to enlarge)
I’m fascinated by the way in which high art flourished in our fledgling nation.
“Nobody would have an orange juice with Oliver Twist if they could share a beer with Fagin.” – How To Read Literature, by Terry Eagleton
This is a hard book to write about. I’m not sure that anything I say about it will be sufficient to convey its virtuosity and the engaging style of its author. But the biggest, and pleasantest, surprise I got from reading it is that it was funny – I mean laugh out loud funny.
Terry Eagleton ranges far and wide across the classics of world literature. The scope of his knowledge is vast. He’s made me want to read, or reread, innumerable works of literature.
In the book’s preface, Eagleton offers the following rueful observation: “Like clog dancing, the art of analysing works of literature is almost dead on its feet.” However, nothing daunted, he plunges right in, beginning, appropriately enough, with a chapter entitled “Openings.” He then proceeds to examine the element of character in fiction. The overriding point that he strives to bring home in this section is addressed in the first sentence: “One of the most common ways of overlooking the ‘literariness’ of a play or novel is to treat its characters as though they were actual people.” He goes on to provide numerous examples. Here’s one of my favorites:
When Heathcliff disappears from Wuthering Heights for a mysterious stretch of time, the novel does not tell us where he runs off to. There is a theory that he returns to the Liverpool where he was first discovered as a child and grows rich in the slave trade there, but it is equally possible that he sets up a hairdressing salon in Reading.
In other words, it’s impossible to deduce anything definite about his whereabouts or activities during this period because Emily Bronte, the author, offers us no relevant information. That is her prerogative. Heathcliff is her creation; she will tell you what she believes you need to know of him and not a bit more.
Later in this chapter, Eagleton states: “Literary figures have no pre-history.” Neither is there any use in trying to figure out what happens to them after the play or novel has ended:
Emma does not survive the conclusion of Emma. She lives in a text, not a grand country mansion, and a text is a transaction between itself and a reader. A book is a material object which exists even if nobody picks it up, but this is not true of a text. A text is a pattern of meaning, and patterns of meaning do not lead lives of their own, likes snakes or sofas.
(I love that last bit. Such whimsical language serves to preserve the book from stuffiness.) Presumably you could also say that although your physical book and your Kindle are vastly different technologies, both deliver a text which is essentially the same in both media.
Those of us who came of age reading romantic and realistic works tend to give primacy to character in a play or novel. Eagleton points out that this view is of relatively recent vintage, bound up as it is with civilization’s increasing emphasis on individuality and corresponding de-emphasis on community. He cites Aristotle’s Poetics, a work that is largely about tragedy but is not preoccupied solely with characters in works of literature: “For Aristotle, character is one element in a complex artistic design. It is not to be ripped rudely out of context, as critics used to do when they wrote essays with titles like ‘The Girlhood of Ophelia’ or ‘Would Iago Make a Good Governor of Arizona?'”
Humans, of course, are unavoidably tied to a particular setting:
Human beings are never not in a situation. Not to be sure what situation one is in is to be in the situation known as doubt. To be outside any situation whatsoever is known as being dead.
This would certainly seem to be the last word where that concept is concerned!
Eagleton goes on to examine the question of just what makes a character distinctive and unique, both in fiction and in real life. He notes the propensity of his countrymen to make allowances for the eccentric:
The English tend to admire curmudgeonly, nonconformist types who make a point of not fitting in with their fellows. Such oddballs are agreeably incapable of being anything but themselves. People who carry a stoat on their shoulder or wear brown bags over their heads are said to be characters, which suggests that their aberrations are to be genially indulged. There is a spirit of tolerance about the word ‘character.’ It saves you from having to take certain people into protective custody.
(I want to stop here for a second to pay tribute to Terry Eagleton’s marvelous writing. Note the phraseology in “…their aberrations are to be genially indulged.” Every word is elegant and precise. I’m deeply grateful that there are still people among us who can write like this.)
I delighted especially in Eagleton’s commentary on the characters that populate the novels of Charles Dickens. What he calls the “quirkiness” of these characters “…can range from the lovable to the downright sinister.” Often that line is crossed in a subtle way, one that is initially almost invisible to the reader. By the time you realize what’s happening, you’ve been deeply drawn in to the narrative. “The problem is that if the normal characters have all the virtue, the freakish figures have all the life. Nobody would have an orange juice with Oliver Twist if they could share a beer with Fagin.”
In the chapter entitled “Interpretation,” Eagleton makes this observation:
Dickens can be funny even when he is painting some deeply unpalatable realities, which suggests that one of the alternatives he is proposing to such unpleasantness is comedy itself. Goodness is in notably short supply in his later fiction; but even if there is a dearth of it in the flint-hearted world the novels portray, a good deal of moral virtue is involved in the way they portray it. The loving sympathy, imaginative flair, benevolent humour and geniality of spirit which go into the making of these fictions mean that Dickens’s moral values are inseparable from the act of writing itself.
Last year marked the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens. A service was held in Westminster Abbey; it included a wreath laying (by Prince Charles and others, the author’s descendants I’m guessing) and a reading from Bleak House, performed by Ralph Fiennes:
In the chapter entitled “Value,” Eagleton addresses the thorny issue of how to evaluate a work of literature. He touches on such criteria as originality, realism, and universality, commenting along the way that “Shakespeare’s Cordelia, Milton’s Satan and Dickens’s Fagin are fascinating precisely because we are unlikely to encounter them in Walmart’s.”
I must stop now, or I’ll end by quoting the entire book, filled as it is with memorable gems. This is what my copy looks like right now: 
Only it’s not my copy, but the library’s, and so I must remove innumerable Post-it notes and Post-it flags, thus returning it to its pristine state, so that others may enjoy.
Of late, Terry Eagleton has been the Excellence in English Distinguished Visitor at Notre Dame University. Lucky Fighting Irish! I’d love to sit in one of his seminars.
How To Read Literature is a book for all those who cherish the reading life. Great for book clubs, great as the basis for a systematic study of literature, great for its sheer entertainment value – just plain great.
Terry Eagleton
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“Terry Eagleton: Literary and national critic” appeared in this past Wednesday’s edition of the Washington Post.
Books to the Ceiling 