The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham by Selina Hastings

Author:Selina Hastings [Hastings, Selina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-679-60371-9
Publisher: Random House Inc.
Published: 2010-05-24T16:00:00+00:00

THE ARRANGEMENTS HAVING BEEN MADE, Maugham did his best to feel optimistic about the proposal. Le Touquet “is really a very charming little place46 … and all kinds of amusing people go there for the summer so that I think we ought to have a very pleasant time,” he wrote tentatively to Bert Alanson. Meanwhile he fortified himself for the ordeal by taking Gerald off for a couple of weeks’ holiday on Capri to stay at the Villa Cercola with John Ellingham Brooks. The island was as seductive as ever, and Maugham, not for the first time, was much taken with the idea of buying a house there, a refuge to which he could retreat to work in peace; he asked Brooks to look for one in his absence, arranging access to his bank for any necessary deposit. From Capri he and Haxton went on to a spa at Brides-les-Bains in the French Alps, where they followed a strict teetotal regime and took vigorous exercise on the golf course and tennis court.

Fit and rested, Maugham and Haxton arrived at the Villa Eliza in the second week of August 1925 to find a house party in progress: Noël Coward and his handsome American lover, Jack Wilson; the former musical comedy star Gertie Millar, now the Countess of Dudley; Barbara Back; the glamorous Delavignes, brother and sister; Frankie Levesson, a Danish decorator whom Syrie was shortly to take on as manager of her shop; and Beverley Nichols, a good-looking young man with literary ambitions, very much on the make. As soon as the two newcomers entered the house the tension in the air became almost tangible. Syrie, dressed in white and heavily made up, was overvivacious, trying to conceal her nervousness by gushing embarrassingly—“darlings!” she greeted the couple, dramatically flinging up her arms. Maugham, in blue blazer and pale blue trousers, remained courteous but remote, while Gerald in open shirt and shorts made a point of being elaborately relaxed, lounging about smoking and picking his teeth or hovering absorbedly over the cocktail tray. “Gerald makes the best sidecars47 in the world!” Syrie complimented him anxiously, blowing him a kiss that he ostentatiously disregarded. After tea, Syrie, accompanied by Beverley Nichols, Haxton, and Liza, drove off to see an antiquaire who had a Provençal armoire she had her eye on. “She’ll pickle it48 before you can say knife,” Noël joked. Arriving back at the house, Haxton, accidentally on purpose, gave Liza a sharp push as she climbed out of the car, causing her to fall and scrape her knee.

In the evening several people came in for dinner, including the Swedish multimillionaire industrialist Ivar Kreuger, who had founded his vast fortune from matches. Watching Kreuger fumble with his lighter, Maugham made everyone laugh by saying as he proffered a matchbox, “Mon cher ami, il paraît49 qu’il vous manque une allumette?”* After dinner Noël, much relied on to make the party go, entertained at the piano, then at around midnight Haxton, already fairly drunk, took

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