Books: “The Gentleman in the Parlour” by W. Somerset Maugham

With such title, I had hoped for a story of Maugham’s stamp: humorous understanding of the human heart set in the most lyrical prose. And while there are hints of just that, for the most part I found it a sentimentally guarded travel book of his journey through Burma (Myanmar), Siam (Thailand), Cambodia, and Hong Kong in 1922.

There are the usual tales of Englishmen in the East which gin-pahits loosen from tongues. Of the Missionary and his trials (which, no drink is needed to produce). Such tales of cynical wit seem flippant, and what is intriguing is left unsaid. (He traveled with his long-time lover, but there is no mention of him, for one.) But a briefly mentioned encounter with an aloof traveler in Ceylon wont escape the notice of those who hold The Razor’s Edge in high esteem. It is this Larry-like figure who persuades Maugham to travel through the remote villages of Asia. We postulate: did Maugham himself experience the holiness of the East? Are ‘Larry’s’ questions of good and evil Maugham’s own – “metaphysical speculations” that are at odds with his witty Englishness? Maugham writes almost nothing, divulging none of his own secrets.

Maugham is the author to my favourite novel, and I reach for his books as one reaches for a blanket on a cool summer’s eve. However in the midst of reckoning systemic racism, the travel through colonial Asia, shook the alter of my idolatry. I am not coming down on authors; they write of their time and we readers visit upon their worlds like travelers ourselves. But I recognized my own biased selection in reading certain narratives. I will be more conscientious and inclusive of narratives that have been marginalized, and thus visit more worlds of the imperfect and hopeful.

“The spot was so lovely and the bungalow with its lawns and trees so homelike and peaceful that for a moment I toyed with the notion of staying there not a day, but a year, not a year but all my life. Ten days from a railhead and my only communication with the outside world the trains of mules that passed occasionally between Taunggyi and Keng Tung, my only intercourse the villagers from the bedraggled village on the other side of the river, and so to spend the years away from the turmoil, the envy and bitterness and malice of the world, with my thoughts, my books, my dog, and my gun and all about me the vast, mysterious and luxuriant jungle. But alas, life does not consist only of years, but of hours, the day has twenty-four and it is no paradox that they are harder to get through than a year; and I knew that in a week my restless spirit would drive me on, to no envisaged goal it is true, but on as dead leaves are blown hither and thither to no purpose by a gusty wind.”