The Oldest Party

By Gerald Clarke

CONVERSATIONS WITH WILLIE by Robin Maugham Simon & Schuster; 188 pages; $10

When he died in 1965, William Somerset (Willie) Maugham was the most famous writer in the world. Eighty million copies of his books had been sold, his plays were performed worldwide, his work had led to several memorable movies, and some 80 of his short stories had been adapted for television. At his famous Villa Mauresque, he employed one of the best cooks on the Riviera, dined off silver plates and entertained royalty. Yet he was miserable. What was wrong? Everything. Or so this instructive and melancholy memoir by Nephew Robin Maugham would have us believe.

"My success means nothing to me," Willie said not long before he died, in one of the many cries of anguish that fill this book. "All I can think of now are my mistakes. I can think of nothing else but my foolishness ... I wish I'd never written a single word. It's brought me nothing but misery."

The author's greatest regret was his marriage. The disastrous union had taken place half a century before, to a woman he felt had tricked him into an alliance that violated his basically homosexual nature. "You see, I was a quarter normal and three-quarters queer, but I tried to persuade myself it was the other way round. That was my greatest mistake. It flattered me that Syrie should throw herself at my feet. She told me that she cared for me more than anyone else in the world ... I was so vain and stupid I believed her . . . But she ruined my life."

It is hard to see how. During most of the twelve-year marriage, Maugham was hardly a husband. He was most frequently off with Gerald Haxton, a handsome young American he had met during World War I. Full of charm and liquor, in nearly equal measure, Haxton was difficult but necessary, an ideal complement to Maugham, whose lifelong stutter made him shy and withdrawn. In their travels through the Far East, Haxton would spend the night drinking with the local planters and lawyers and then repeat their tales to Willie, who would fashion them into stories. When his lover died of tuberculosis in 1944, Maugham was incurably stricken. "For 30 years he had been my chief care, my pleasure, and my anxiety," he told Robin. "Without him I am lost and lonely and hopeless ... I am too old to endure so much grief. I have lived too long."

And so he kept saying, on and off, for the next 20 years. He tried to prolong his life with injections of goat hormones, and at the same time lamented his longevity. As he reached toward 90, Willie was constantly lionized, and he just as constantly complained, "Why can't they let me die?" On one occasion he compared his life to a party. It was "very nice to start with, but has become rather noisy as time has gone on. And I'm not at all sorry to go home."

As Robin notes, he wrote down his Uncle Willie's conversations with full knowledge of their historical value, and there is no reason to doubt his accuracy.

But there is a reason to doubt Maugham's own memories, tinctured by old age and ill health. A man as intensely unhappy as he claims to have been when he was 90 or 91 could not have written so much for so long. At the tired end of a long party, it is hard to remember how much pleasure it gave most of the way.

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