Of Human Bondage

The dapper fellow above is one W. Somerset Maugham born this day 1874 in the British Embassy in Paris, France. It was important to his father, a lawyer who handled embassy business in France that he be born on "British" soil, so he would not be liable to be conscripted into the French army. His father and grandfather were lawyers, and it was taken for granted that he would follow in their footsteps. Lucky for us, and the law that he chose a different path. His mother died when he was six, and the experience traumatized him for life. Until his dying day, he kept a picture of his mother by his bedside. Two years after his mother's death, his father died of cancer and he was sent back to England to be raised by an uncle who was a vicar. If you have ever read Maugham's masterpiece "Of Human Bondage" you will see the biographical similarities between his and the protagonist's upbringing. He was sent to King's School in Canterbury, a place that was a bit like hell on earth to him, and where he developed the stammer that he was to keep for the remainder of his life. It was his stammer that substituted for Philip Carey's clubfoot in the book. Both Carey and Maugham are damaged, or hampered by something so obvious and so physical that their lives's are altered in deep ways. After leaving King's School he studied for a year in Germany where he had his first homosexual affair. Upon his return it was decided, by his guardian, that he was to study medicine, which he did for the next five years. It was during this time that , he late reflected, he met the "low" sort of people that he would not have met otherwise, and was able to use this interaction in his writings. His first major work Liza of Lambeth met with critical success, and convinced him to give up medicine (he had qualified as a doctor), a become a full time writer. By 1914 he was famous with 10 novels published, and 10 plays produced. He was too old to enlist in WWI, but did join up as an ambulance driver. He continued to write until the end of his long life, but his reputation has suffered. At least with "literary" people. No so with me, "Of Human Bondage" remains one of my top ten favourite books, and it had a deep impact on my as a young lad (I guess the main character's clubfoot is something that I can relate to). It is for that book, and a couple of his short stories that I admire, that W. Somerset Maugham (January 25th, 1874-December 16th, 1965, at the age of 91), you are my (154th) hero of the day.