W. Somerset Maugham
 W. Somerset Maugham       (spook, author, playwright) | |
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| Born | William Somerset Maugham 25 January 1874 UK Embassy, Paris, France |
| Died | 16 December 1965 (Age 91) Nice, Alpes-Maritimes, France |
| Nationality | UK |
| Alma mater | The King's School (Canterbury), Heidelberg University, St Thomas's Hospital Medical School |
| Children | • Mary Elizabeth Maugham • Alan Searle |
| Spouse | Syrie Wellcome |
English writer, known for his plays, novels and short stories. He also was an intelligence operative during World War 1 and the Russian Revolution. | |
William Somerset Maugham was an English writer, known for his plays, novels and short stories. He also was an intelligence operative during World War 1 and the Russian Revolution.
Writing career
Born in Paris, where he spent his first ten years, Maugham was schooled in England and went to a German university. He became a medical student in London and qualified as a physician in 1897. He never practised medicine, and became a full-time writer. His first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897), a study of life in the slums, attracted attention, but it was as a playwright that he first achieved national celebrity. By 1908 he had four plays running at once in the West End of London. He wrote his 32nd and last play in 1933, after which he abandoned the theatre and concentrated on novels and short stories.
Maugham's novels after Liza of Lambeth include Of Human Bondage (1915), The Moon and Sixpence (1919), The Painted Veil (1925), Cakes and Ale (1930) and The Razor's Edge (1944). His short stories were published in collections such as The Casuarina Tree (1926) and The Mixture as Before (1940); many of them have been adapted for radio, cinema and television. His great popularity and prodigious sales provoked adverse reactions from highbrow critics, many of whom sought to belittle him as merely competent. More recent assessments generally rank Of Human Bondage − a book with a large autobiographical element − as a masterpiece, and his short stories are widely held in high critical regard.
Although primarily homosexual, he attempted to conform to some extent with the norms of his day. He became a father and husband, marrying Syrie Wellcome in 1917, three years into an affair that produced their daughter, Liza. The marriage lasted for twelve years, but before, during and after it, Maugham's principal partner was a younger man, Gerald Haxton. Together they made extended visits to Asia, the South Seas and other destinations; Maugham gathered material for his fiction wherever they went. They lived together in the French Riviera, where Maugham entertained lavishly. After Haxton's death in 1944, Alan Searle became Maugham's secretary-companion for the rest of the author's life. Maugham gave up writing novels shortly after the Second World War, and his last years were marred by senility. He died at the age of 91.
Intelligence activities
During the First World War Maugham worked for the British Secret Service, later drawing on his experiences for stories published in the 1920s.
After the birth of his daughter in September 1915, Maugham moved to Switzerland. His fluency in French and German was an advantage, and for a year he worked in Geneva − at his own expense − as an agent for the British Secret Service.[1] He was recruited by Sir John Wallinger, a friend of Syrie, portrayed as the spymaster "R" in the Ashenden stories Maugham wrote after the war. Syrie and Liza were with him for part of the year, providing a convincing domestic cover, and his profession as a writer enabled him to travel about and stay in hotels without attracting attention.[2] His covert job, which was in violation of Switzerland's neutrality laws, was to coordinate the work of British agents in enemy territory and dispatch their information to London. In his overt capacity as an author he wrote Caroline, a three-act comedy, which opened in February 1916 at the New Theatre, London, with Irene Vanbrugh in the title role.[3]
The following year he became involved in events in Russia. Mansfield Smith-Cumming, the head of MI6, decided that the British government should do everything possible to keep the government of Alexander Kerensky in power. He contacted William Wiseman, their man in New York City and supplied Wiseman with $75,000 (approximately $1.2 million in modern prices) for Kerensky's Provisional Government. A similar sum was received from the Americans. Wiseman now approached Somerset Maugham (to whom he was related by marriage) in June 1917, to go to Russia. Maugham was "staggered" by the proposition: "The long and short of it was that I should go to Russia and keep the Russians in the war."[4]
Maugham reached Petrograd in early September 1917. With him went a group of four Czechoslovak refugees headed by Emanuel Voska, Director of the Slav Press Bureau in New York City. Maugham described Voska as the perfect spy: "Ruthless, wise, prudent and absolutely indifferent to the means by which he reached his ends... There was something terrifying about him... he was capable of killing a fellow creature without a trace of ill-feeling." Voska made contact with Tomáš Masaryk in the hope of mobilizing Czech and Slovak elements in Russia to work for the Allied cause. Maugham was impressed by his "good sense and determination" and helped set up a press bureau to disseminate anti-German propaganda.[4]
While in Petrograd Maugham met a former mistress, Sasha Kropotkin, the daughter of Peter Kropotkin, who had a good relationship with Alexander Kerensky and the Provisional Government. Maugham entertained Kerensky or his ministers once a week at the Medvied, the best restaurant in Petrograd, paying for the finest vodka and caviar from the funds supplied by Wiseman. Maugham later recalled "I think Kerensky must have supposed that I was more important than I really was for he came to Sasha's apartment on several occasions and, walking up and down the room, harangued me as though I were at a public meeting for two hours at a time".[4]
Somerset Maugham worked closely with Major Stephen Alley, the MI1(c) station chief in Petrograd. On 16th October Maugham telegraphed Wiseman recommending a programme of propaganda and covert action. He said that Voska and Masaryk could both conduct "legitimate propaganda" and act as a cover for "other activities" in support of the Mensheviks and against the Bolsheviks. He also proposed setting up a "special secret organisations" recruited from Poles, Czechs and Cossacks with the main aim of "unmasking... German plots and propaganda in Russia".[4]
On 31st October 1917 Maugham was summoned by Kerensky and asked to take an urgent secret message to British PM David Lloyd George appealing for guns and ammunition. Maugham left the same evening and transmitted the message, but the request was declined.[4]
References
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