One of the many stories emanating from the Villa Mauresque is that of a Welsh guest who, at the dinner table, embarked on an anecdote that had to do with a stammer. Perhaps he had for the moment forgotten that his host was afflicted by such an impediment; or, as often happens, nervousness steered him towards the very reef he must at all costs steer clear of; at any rate the reaction from the other diners fell short of unconfined hilarity. At the end of the meal, Somerset Maugham stopped by his chair and said, gently but crushingly: "I'll say goodbye now. For of course you wuh-won't be here tomorrow."
This is the archetypal picture one has of Maugham: queening it, in every sense of the word, over the villa. He was the wealthiest author of his time. To be a house guest at the Mauresque was to embrace disciplines which would daunt a Trappist. At exactly 12.45 each day, cocktails were served, with luncheon at one. Maugham's biographer Ted Morgan tells us that if a guest ordered another drink, the host would say in a voice of withering disapproval: "Mr So-and-so seems to want a second martini".
The villa had 13 servants. Before the war, Maugham's lover Gerald Haxton was Jill-of-allwork, acting as secretary, looking after the everyday running of the household and cruising the Villefranche bars in search of sailors, just as a cook-general might go out looking for the choicest Sunday joint. Haxton died in America in 1944, and his postwar successor was Alan Searle, who, although more biddable, was perceived to be common. (When Maugham was on the brink of senility, he attempted to adopt Searle as his son, inspiring a cartoon in the Daily Express showing a wrinkled Maugham in a dressing gown declaring: "Nurse, he's just said `Dada'.")
From the outset, Maugham knew precisely what he wanted: to be rich, to be envied, to travel the world, to go about in society, to be admired by the great and near-great, to hold court, to have young men in his bed. He achieved all this, and, of course, as Shaw observed; "There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire; the other is to gain it." To the end, he was unhappy, bitter and angry.
The Morgan biography took 700 pages to do justice to the Old Party. Bryan Connon, in less than 400 pages, attempts a biography not only of Maugham, but of his brother Frederic and nephew Robin, with several other mini-Maughams on the sidelines (The word "Dynasty" in the title is nonsense, with its connotations of power and kingship). So what, one wonders, is in one book and necessarily omitted from the other? The answer, I think, is that Morgan achieved a portrait in depth, if that is not a contradiction in terms, whereas Mr Connon pays no more than lip-service to the stories, novels and plays.
Often, a writer will drain his finer qualities into his work to the detriment of his perceivable self. Among Maugham's virtues were his craftsmanship and, now and then, something more. There is wisdom and a not unkindly knowledge of the world, a passion for literature (one should revisit his Twelve Novels and Their Authors), a fascination with the nature of goodness, and, once in a while, a Swiftian indignation - his play For Services Rendered is a stunning polemic against war. What was left on the surface was the bitchy misanthrope of the Villa Mauresque.
Mr Connon's book, enjoyable as it is, reminds one of the story of the stage-struck lady who, on walking into a room and discovering Noel Coward, Ivor Novello, John Gielgud and Robert Helpmann, declared "Oh my goodness, it's fairyland!" There are gays here as far as the reader's eye can see, and not a bonk goes un-noted.
Much of the ground is already well-trodden, although Mr Con non will have none of the accepted idea that his subject was in the beginning a stammering innocent, slow to discover the true nature of his sexuality.
LATE in life, Maugham said that when he was young he thought that he was "a quarter queer and three-quarters normal", but discovered that the reality was the other way round. Mr Connon pooh-poohs this and will not believe, for instance, that the author had an affair with the novelist Violet Hunt. And yet it is hard to dismiss Maugham's infatuated pursuit of and rejection by Sue Jones, who would become his "Rosie" in Cakes and Ale. Still less does it explain away the entire Syrie Wellcome disaster.
Syrie was the daughter of the philanthropist, Dr Thomas Bar nardo. Separated from her husband, a wealthy American named Henry Wellcome, she became the mistress of Gordon Selfridge, the founder of the Oxford Street store. When he tired of her, she took up with Maugham, who was by then the most fashionable author in London - he had already had four plays running simultaneously in the West End, and Of Human Bondage was only a few years in the future. When Syrie met Maugham - in 1911, according to Ted Morgan, although Mr Connon says 1913 - it was on her part a coup de foudre. Probably she remained in love with him all her life.
Their daughter Liza - called after "Liza of Lambeth" - was born in 1915; then, to their astonishment, Henry Wellcome sued Syrie for divorce, naming her lover. Maugham had no wish to do the "honourable thing" by marrying Syrie, especially since he had by now met Gerald Haxton while serving as an ambulance driver in Flanders. Haxton, 18 years younger than Maugham, was an American who, after a prosecution for gross indecency - the details are forever lost - was deported from Britain as an undesirable alien and barred from re-entering. It was because of this that Maugham bought the Villa Mauresque and went to live in France.
Maugham made a feeble attempt to flee from Syrie, she followed, and they were married. It was, of course, doomed. Given the climate of the times, and remembering the fate of Oscar Wilde, Maugham was determined to keep up the pretence that he was heterosexual. Even so, Haxton became part of a grisly ongoing menage a trois, and Syrie finally threw in the sponge after a weekend at Le Touquet in 1925. First, there was a row when she presented their house guests with laundry bills. Then Maugham discovered Haxton lying drunk and naked in a bedroom and accused him of having sex with one of the guests, the lamentable Beverly Nichols.
Syrie had had enough, and left for London. A divorce happened in 1929, and Maugham no longer had the necessary smokescreen of marriage to conceal his homosexuality. He took his revenge on Syrie after her death by publishing a scandalous memoir, "Looking Back", which was serialised in Show magazine and caused so much anger, even among his gay apologists, that it never appeared in book form.
By then, Haxton was long dead, and his place had been taken by Searle, part Iago, part Machiavelli. Maugham had become the self-styled Old Party who claimed no more for himself than that his place in the literary world was in the front rank of the second division. Possibly he was hoping to be contradicted. Mr Cannon says that "he tells a good story in plain, unpretentious prose", but there is nothing plain about Maugham at his very best, as in the short stories, Cakes and Ale and several of the plays. In, say, "The Outstation", "The Door of Opportunity" and "The Letter", his is the art that conceals art. In fairness, Mr Connon tries to do him justice, but there are two other Maughams jostling for space.
One of these is an elder brother, Frederic; the other is the latter's son and Willie's nephew, Robin Maugham. Frederic was a model of respectability. He became Viscount Maugham and, as Lord Chancellor, Speaker of the House of Lords. He had a dry wit and a prickly relationship with Willie. He was a nicer man than his brother - he could hardly be otherwise - but niceness is not the stuff of biography. Mr Connon switches his narrative to and fro between the brothers, and then Robin appears and shoulders Frederic into the wings. And always we wait for Willie to return and take centre stage.
Like his uncle, Robin became a writer; as well, both men had an extraordinary amount of physical courage. His war record is impressive, and so was his moral bravery: he spoke out against the class divisions which permitted officers to travel and live in near-luxury, while the "other ranks" endured squalor. Even so, on at least one occasion Robin boasted that he was Viscount Maugham and on that account a person of importance.
Most of his writing was no more than rehashed bits of autobiography, and his best-known work was the short novel, The Servant, which was a source of deep embarrassment to his family. Nothing dates as risibly as what was at one time considered daring, and the film of the book, with its dark hints of a decadence that dared not speak its name, gets funnier as the years pass. And come to think of it, this Maugham had another quality in common with his uncle, apart from courage and a propensity towards literature.
This reviewer was at a club dinner in London about 30 years ago and was sitting across from a person who was in full anecdotage. Noticing that I was an appreciative audience, he gave me his full attention. Then he said that he must go and, to my astonishment, he reached out, picked up my place card from the table, kissed it, put it in his breast pocket, batted his eyes at me and departed. "Who on earth was that?" I asked, and was told "Robin Maugham".
Mr Connon's book is a brave effort, but it is a gallon poured into a quart pot.
Hugh Leonard is a playwright