Collected Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham, Vol. 4

Vintage Classics, Paperback, 2002.

First published as The Complete Short Stories in 3 volumes in 1951.
First published as Collected Short Stories in 4 volumes in 1975.*

Table of contents:
Preface [written especially for the 1951 edition**]
The Book-bag
French Joe
German Harry
The Four Dutchmen
The Back of Beyond
P. & O.
Episode
The Kite
A Woman of Fifty
Mayhew
The Lotus Eater
Salvatore
The Wash-tub
A Man with a Conscience
An Official Position
Winter Cruise
Mabel
Masterson
Princess September
A Marriage of Convenience
Mirage
The Letter
The Outstation
The Portrait of a Gentleman
Raw Material
Straight Flush
The End of the Flight
A Casual Affair
Red
Neil Macadam

* This is what you will find if you open any of the four Vintage Classics volumes. But it does not seem to be true. Apparently, Maugham's short stories in four volumes and under the title Collected Short Stories were first published in 1963 by Penguin.

** Essentially, this preface is identical with the one to the third volume of The Complete Short Stories edition from 1951.

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The fourth volume of Somerset Maugham's Collected Short Stories has a lot in common with the other three. It too has a special preface by the author and the order of the stories was chosen by him again. And again and again it does demonstrate Maugham's variety of locations and characters, his amazing insight into human nature and his unmatched ability to tell a story into a straightforward way without putting on any airs (I think I've just quoted by memory George Orwell but am not quite sure about that). And just like the other three volumes, the fourth is a gem.

The volume contains everything for everybody and actually encompasses the whole period of 26 years - from Trembling of a leaf (1921) until Creatures of circumstance (1947) - during which Maugham was writing short stories. As is well-known, he dismissed all those written in his early years before the First World War as too immature to be reprinted in the collected edition.

When I have just said that the volume contains everything for everybody I have not used such an expression in vain. The diversity of style is immense indeed. There is even one fairy-tale - Princess September, which, by the way, was originally published in one of Maugham's travel books, The Gentleman in the Parlour. Here is one of his finest short stories set in the South Seas - Red. It is also one of his first mature works in the genre and brutally candid from time to time about the power and the weakness of the passionate love. In this short story, as well as word by word in one of his plays, you can find one of Maugham's most famous quotes:

The tragedy of love is not death or separation. [...] The tragedy of love is indifference.

This surely is Maugham at his best.

There is, of course, Maugham at his worst as well. But these stories are a rather small minority. I think The Portrait of a Gentleman, one of the very short stories written on a commission for Cosmopolitan, is probably the worst short story Maugham ever wrote. But it is quite readable and by no means boring. And Winter Cruise is a very fine example how Maugham could write something highly readable and quite amusing using the silliest possible plot in the world.

For those who are interested in mysterious magic rituals from the South Seas, there is P. & O.. For those who want to kill few minutes and laugh a good deal, there is the story of one remarkable woman, Mabel, and a compelling suggestion how much the successful PR can mess up your life, The Wash-Tub. Readers who want just to kill few free minutes but with something thought-provoking and moving almost to tears, are advised to meet Salvatore who possessed

a quality which is the rarest, the most precious and the loveliest that anyone can have

or to spend some time in the company of Mayhew, a gentleman whose life was a success because:

He did what he wanted, and he died when his goal was in sight and never knew the bitterness of an end achieved.

The short story The Lotus Eater actually is an extended version of Mayhew but much more complex and masterfully written. I have no doubt to rate this short story as one of greatest Maugham ever wrote. He elaborated here on one of his favorite subjects: how amazingly unusual thing can a man do who looks perfectly commonplace. Maugham executed the complex personality of Wilson with brilliance, perspicacity and succinctness that he did not always achieve in his works. Among the multitude of emotions and thoughts which this masterpiece stimulates in one's head and heart, there is a certain admiration for something for which, probably because of his simple and unaffected style, Maugham is usually not given any credit: description of scenery and creating an atmosphere that absorbs the reader completely. Consider the following short excerpt:

There is a terrace that overlooks the Bay of Naples, and when the sun sinks slowly into the sea the island of Ischia is silhouetted against a blaze of splendor. It is one of the most lovely sights in the world.
[...]
The instant of overwhelming beauty had passed and the sun, like the top of an orange, was dipping into a wine-red sea. We turned round and leaning our backs against the parapet looked at the people who were sauntering to and fro. They were all talking their heads off and the cheerful noise was exhilarating. Then the church bell, rather cracked, but with a fine resonant note, began to ring. The Piazza at Capri, with its clock tower over the footpath that leads up from the harbor, with the church up a flight of steps, is a perfect setting for an opera by Donizetti, and you felt that the voluble crowd might at any moment break out into a rattling chorus. It was charming and unreal.

It should also be noted that in this fourth volume one can find two important pairs of short stories. One pair - A man with a conscience and An official position - are the two short stories set in the penal settlement in French Guiana which Maugham visited personally. The latter contains one of the most brutal endings of all Maugham's stories as well as some of his finest and psychologically penetrating writing. The second pair of unique stories in all of his oeuvre are the two which deal with Ned Preston and his work as prisoner's confidant - Episode and The kite. They too, like the other pair, combine the comic and the dramatic with a strong accent on the latter; and Episode is another excellent example of an ending that leaves the reader dumbfounded and profoundly shocked.

But the most important part of this volume short stories by Maugham are surely his works about the English gentlemen and ladies in the Far East, somewhere in the most distant and isolated parts of the British empire. These are the stories his current fame, small as it is, chiefly rests and rightly so. Stories like the crime thriller The Letter, later turned into a successful play by the author, The outstation, perhaps the best illustration how far the human snobbishness can reach, The back of beyond, an epitome of common sense and elegant cynicism, and The book-bag, about scandalous (in Maugham's time) incestuous relationship between brother and sister, are certainly Maugham at his finest. And most brutal as well: murder, adultery, incest; extraordinary dramas between ordinary people are exposed and analysed in detail, combining acute perceptiveness and fabulous insight into human nature with readability that can hardly be matched, let alone surpassed, by any other writer. Maugham exposed mercilessly both the humdrum, monotonous lives of planters and government servants as well as their darkest, most violent passions at the same time. Small wonder that he won the everlasting hate of all British subjects in the Far East.

Maugham pays special attention to these people into his wonderful preface which, like all his prefaces and forewords, contains a lot of meat. He says that he respects and even admires the commonplace and dull people who live their commonplace and dull lives for the sake of the British Empire, but all the same they do not excite him and are not the sort of people he would write stories about. Moreover, he points out, the reader must not suppose that the tragic incidents he narrated were of common occurrence; the real facts of life, dull and commonplace as they may be, were dramatized for the purpose of fiction. And to what a great effect, I would say!

Let me finish by quoting the original of what I have just narrated, rather clumsily, with my own words. This is how Somerset Maugham ends his preface to the last volume of his Collected Short Stories:

There is one more point I want to make. Most of these stories are on the tragic side. But the reader must not suppose that the incidents I have narrated were of common occurrence. The vast majority of these people, government servants, planters, and traders, who spent their working lives in Malaya were ordinary people ordinarily satisfied with their station of life. They did the jobs they were paid to do more or less competently. They were as happy with their wives as are most married couples. They led humdrum lives and did very much the same things every day. Sometimes by way of a change they got a little shooting; but as a rule, after they had done their day's work, they played tennis if there were people to play with, went to the club at sundown if there was a club in the vicinity, drank in moderation, and played bridge. They had their little tiffs, their little jealousies, their little flirtations, their little celebrations. They were good, decent, normal people.
I respect, and even admire, such people, but they are not the sort of people I can write stories about. I write stories about people who have some singularity of character which suggests to me that they may be capable of behaving in such a way to give me an idea that I can make use of, or about people who by some accident or another, accident of temperament, accident of environment, have been involved in unusual contingencies. But, I repeat, they are the exception. ( )