QPMPA Journal September 2011 - Qualified Private Medical ...

fiction or real
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William Somerset Maugham was
born in Paris. By the time he was ten
both his parents were dead and he was
sent to live with an uncle in UK.
Maugham graduated from St. Thomas
Hospital, London where he started his
professional life. He had a practice in
the slums of the East End where from
he found materials for his rather lurid
first novel Lisa of Lambeth and the acclaimed
autobiographical novel Of Human
Bondage. He decided to quit medicine
after the remarkable success of his
first novel.
At the outbreak of war, Maugham, aged
40 and 5’ 6" tall was too old and too short
for army. Therefore, he joined British Red
Cross as a driver in France. There,
Maugham was recruited by Sir John
Ballinger, head of Britain’s MI6 in France
as a spy. He was the link between MI6
and its agents in Europe. In Russia, he
was given the rather mammoth job of
preventing Russian Revolution to start.
His novel Ashen Den drew from these
eclectic experiences.
In 1915, Mrs. Syrie Welcome gave birth to
his child. Her husband cited Maugham
as co-respondent in divorce proceedings.
Maugham married her. He led a fascinating
life as a spy of ‘Her Majesty’s Secret
Service’. He became famous for his mastery
of short evocative stories that were
often set in obscure and remote geographical
areas of the British Empire.
Continuing his adventures, Maugham
took to South Seas, where he visited Tahiti
on which he based The Moon and
Sixpence on the life of painter Paul
Gauguin. Sickness forced him to return
and remain in a Scottish sanatorium.
On recovery, he returned to Far East and
collected information and experiences
that would form the basis of many short
stories, plays and novels. By now, he was
immensely rich and bought a villa on the
French Rivera in 1928. An invitation to
spend few hours or weekends in his villa
dr. venugopala pillai
dr. somerset maugham
was highly prized by the literary and social
elite. There he wrote his satirical
masterpiece Cakes and Ale, a novel that
examined the private sins that accompanied
public success.
In 1939, Hitler reached Paris. He was
forced to flee with nothing but a suitcase.
Although he rarely describes the
full nature of this escape, it was far more
harrowing than passages in his novels.
Maugham sought refuge aboard a coal
barge. His escape turned out to be a horrific
twenty-day voyage to England.
Onboard the vessel that was not designed
for passengers, he was crammed
together with 500 other escapees. Many
children as well as older and weaker people
died of malnutrition and thirst. Following
a short layover in England, he
settled in US.
Dr. Maugham was a master of short, concise
novels that conveyed human relationships,
greed and ambition with a startling
reality. The remote locations of the
quietly magnificent yet decaying British
Empire offered him beautiful canvasses
to write his stories. His English was clear
and lucid and this made his books easy
to come to terms with. His works are full
of the basest, and yet more interesting, of
the human vices but can still evoke the
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QPMPA.JMS . Vol. XXV . No. 3 . June-Sept. 2011