Selected Works Sixty-Five Short Stories

944 Pages·1985·3.72 MB·english

by  W. Somerset Maugham

W. SOM E R S ET
MA U G H A M

♦

SI XT Y- F IVE
SHORT STORI ES

Heinemann/Octopus
This edition first published in Great Britain in 1976 by
William Heinemann Limited
and
Octopus Books Limited
Michelin House
81 Fulham Road
London SW3 6RB

ISBN 0 905712 69 2

Reprinted 1988

Compilation copyright © 1976 by Gordon Stanley Blair,
Kenneth Marr–Johnson, Alan Frank Searle as Executors of
the Estate of W. Somerset Maugham

Printed and bound in Great Britain by
William Clowes Limited, Beccles and London
CONTENTS

Rain / 13
The Fall of Edward Barnard / 40
Honolulu / 62
The Ant and the Grasshopper / 78
The Pool / 81
Mackintosh / 106
The Three Fat Women of Antibes / 128
The Facts of Life / 138
Gigolo and Gigolette / 151
The Voice of the Turtle / 163
The Unconquered / 174
The Escape / 192
Mr Know-All / 195
The Romantic Young Lady / 200
A Man From Glasgow / 207
Before the Party / 214
The Vessel of Wrath / 231
Louise / 256
The Promise / 261
The Yellow Streak / 266
The Force of Circumstance / 284
Flotsam and Jetsam / 301
The Alien Corn / 317
The Creative Impulse / 342
Virtue / 365
The Closed Shop / 389
The Dream / 395
The Colonel’s Lady / 398
Miss King / 410
The Hairless Mexican / 432
The Traitor / 456
His Excellency / 479
Mr Harrington’s Washing / 500
Lord Mountdrago / 525
Sanatorium / 541
The Social Sense / 557
The Verger / 563
The Taipan / 568
The Consul / 573
A Friend in Need / 577
The Round Dozen / 581
The Human Element / 599
Jane / 622
Footprints in the Jungle / 639
The Door of Opportunity / 659
The Book-Bag / 681
French Joe / 705
The Four Dutchmen / 708
The Back of Beyond / 713
P. & O. / 734
Episode / 755
The Kite / 769
A Woman of Fifty / 785
The Lotus Eater / 797
The Wash-Tub / 808
A Man with a Conscience / 814
Winter Cruise / 827
A Marriage of Convenience / 839
Mirage / 848
The Letter / 861
The Portrait of a Gentleman / 883
Raw Material / 887
Straight Flush / 890
A Casual Affair / 894
Neil MacAdam / 908

I NTRODUCTION
William Somerset Maugham was born in 1874 and educated at the King’s
School, Canterbury and Heidelberg University. He spent some time at St
Thomas’s Hospital as a medical student but was attracted from medicine to
letters by the success of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897), in which he
drew on what he had seen in the district served by his hospital. He also drew on
his medical experience in his first masterpiece, Of Human Bondage (1915).
Upon the appearance of The Moon and Sixpence (1919) his reputation as a
novelist was established. He was at the same time a successful playwright, his
last play, Sheppey, appearing in 1933. Apart from short stones, his work
included essays, criticism, autobiography and travel books.
A widely travelled man, he spent much of the 1914–18 war abroad in the
intelligence service–the time in which he laid the basis of the ‘Ashenden’
stories. In the ’twenties he took up residence in the south of France and, but for
the last war, lived there until his death in December 1965.
The stories published here were largely written in the three decades
following the First World War. Although Maugham had written short stories
early in his career, preoccupation with his other writing led to a long interval
before he next took up the form, on a voyage in the South Seas in 1919,
originally as a relief from other work. It is consequently an irony which he
would have appreciated that many consider him to be at his best in his short
stories. When he stopped writing them he made a collection of those that he
wished to preserve and arranged them in the order felt to be most agreeable to
the reader. This edition as far as possible preserves that arrangement.
A good part of the success of his stories derives from the technique that
Maugham used. He discussed this in the preface to the first American edition