Le Jour de Maugham

Paris street scene by American impressionist painter Childe Hassam, 1859-1935

The English novelist and playwright Somerset Maugham was, according to biographer Ted Morgan, a mutely lonely man whose distance from others helped sharpen his acute powers of observation. Sounds chilly, yet it’s hard not to be warmed by Maugham’s era and milieu, particularly Paris in 1905 — a time and place made particularly cozy by the fact that French was Maugham’s first language. He had been born in the British Embassy in Paris.

“It was the Paris of La Belle Epoque, of small crafts, good living and low prices, of silk-blouse shops, goat-milking in the streets, Caran d’Ache cartoons and gas lamps,” Morgan wrote. “The English pound yielded 25 francs and a good dinner cost 2 francs 50. It was the Paris of music halls and café chantants, Lautrec’s Paris, Degas’ Paris. You went to the Concert Rouge to hear a chamber music quartet and ordered cerises au cognac. There were still horse-drawn buses and yellow fiacres whose drivers wore shiny white top hats and would take you anywhere within the city limits for a franc and a half.”

Paris was poised between eras and central to them, its 19^th century charms were charged with excitement by 20^th century innovation. Morgan noted that “…1905 was also the year of the automobile exposition at the Grand Palais. The first line of the Metro, Nation-Porte Dauphine, had been completed in 1901. There were electric lights, and in phonograph booths one could listen to Caruso records.”

“Maugham’s routine, which he would follow to the end of his life, was to write in the morning until about 12:30,” Morgan wrote. “After lunch he went out, often to museums. (Painter Gerald) Kelly took him to see the Impressionists, whose pictures had recently been accepted by the Luxembourg. Maugham, who would one day own an important collection of Impressionists, admitted, to his shame, that he could not make head or tail of them. In the evening Maugham often went to the theater (he admired the actress Dorziat). He particularly liked the Grand Guignol and his favorite sketch was a graphic display of sadomasochism called La Derniere Torture.”

Sounds wonderful, minus the ultimate torture. I can always do without the ultimate torture, thanks.