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Collected Short Stories: Volume 3

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With this volume I finish reading Maugham's collected short stories in four volumes, an astonishing body of work that should be regarded, in its entirety, as a major piece of literature. It was fortunate that I read the third volume at the end, after volume IV, since its characters, themes, and locations are very different from the other three volumes. In fact, this single piece could be read as a novel. Apparently it would be a spy novel, since that is the second trade of the central character, Ashenden (the first is, of course, writer). But in reality, it is coherent with the rest of the volumes in that the plot is no other thing than the means to disaggregate the most intimate and unexpected aspects of each character's personality, and not necessarily in objectively defined crises, since frequently these are determined by the psyche itself. The seven stories follow a sonata-like structure with altered rhythms: they begin with a deceitful exposition, then take the melody to its climax, and then resolve in an anti-climax which reveals the tiny but decisive emotional muscles of gthe characters.

Set against the background of dear old First Wolrd War, the writer Ashenden is recruited by the MI-6 (the British Foreign Intelligence Service), and in that capacity gets to meet a wide spectrum of marginal players, each one with his or her peculiar story to unravel: the British governess of two Egyptian princesses, an unlikely Mexican general acting as gun for hire, a gypsy prostitute, a traitor to the Crown, an ambassador addicted to brothels, a good and stupid American, a resentful and troubled TB sufferer...

Each one of them amplifies the casting of Maugham's literature: a world where nothing is at it seems, although sometimes the characters just can't help revealing their true nature. And everything is seen thorugh the eyes of a Maugham-impersonation (Maugham himself having been at some point a writer-spy): the asexual, ghost-like Ashenden, almost without a personal life, but capable of empathy with each companion and of laughing, even sadly, at the absurd situations sometimes life puts us in.

Collected Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham, Vol. 3

Vintage Classics, Paperback, 2002
8vo. [vii], 280 pp. Preface [p. vii] by the author.

First published as ''The Complete Short Stories'' in 3 volumes in 1951. New prefaces by the author.
First published as ''Collected Short Stories'' in 4 volumes in 1975.*

Table of contents:
Preface**
Miss King
The Hairless Mexican
Giulia Lazzari
The Traitor
His Excellency
Mr. Harrington's Washing
Sanatorium

* This is what you will find if you open any of the four Vintage Classics volumes. But it does not seem to be true. Apparently, Maugham's short stories in four volumes and under the title Collected Short Stories were first published in 1963 by Penguin.

** To be exact, the preface to volume 2 of the The Complete Short Stories is split between vols 2 and 3 of Collected Short Stories, obviously because the former consists of three volumes and the latter of four. Otherwise, there are only very few minor differences between the texts in the prefaces that are necessary because of the splitting.

-------------------------------------------------'

This third volume of Somerset Maugham's short stories is quite different from the other three, although it too contains a special preface by the author and he chose the order in which the stories appear. There are only seven of them here and they all include the famous character of Ashenden: the spy who was so fine a gentlemen that he inspired the very Ian Fleming and hence the creation of the most famous spy of all times.

As is well known Maugham based these stories on his own experience as a spy during the First World War. For some time he worked for the British intelligence in Switzerland under cover pretending to be what he really was - a writer. It is even better known that Maugham based the character of Ashenden on himself. Well, the similarities between the two cool, detached, cynical and quite charming men could hardly fail to be noticed by anybody who can read English. However, one important thing should be pointed out immediately - in both cases the most important word is based. As Maugham wrote in the preface for Ashenden (first published in 1928, the preface written for The Collected Edition in 1934), where these stories originally appeared albeit in slightly different way as to look like a novel, he dramatized the work of the spy a great deal because in reality it is uncommonly boring and a lot of it is perfectly useless. The same is quite true for Ashenden's character. He may share this or that trait with Maugham himself but he is no less a fictional character than any other created by Maugham. He is result of elaboration, invention and applying of imagination which are simply based - note: based - on a real person or persons; in this case, Maugham himself.

Having said that, Ashenden is quite a charmer in his own way. He has few if any illusions about his fellows and is not intimidated to be quite frank and candid with them. Yet, he is not at all an insensitive man. Who could describe him better than Somerset Maugham himself?

''Ashenden admired goodness, but was not outraged by wickedness. People sometimes thought him heartless because he was more often interested in others than attached to them, and even the few to whom he was attached his eyes saw with equal clearness the merits and the defects. When he liked people it was not because he was blind to their faults, he did not mind their faults but accepted them with a tolerant shrug of shoulders, or because he ascribed to them excellencies that they did not possess; and since he judged his friends with candour they never disappointed him and he seldom lost one. He asked from none more than he could give.''

Sometimes his candour is almost brutal:

''Though he had both esteem and admiration for the sensibility of the human race, he had little respect for their intelligence: man has always found it easier to sacrifice his life than to learn the multiplication table.''

And, most remarkable of all, he is never bored:

''Ashenden was in the habit of asserting that he was never bored. It was one of his notions that only such persons were as had no resources in themselves and it was but the stupid that depended on the outside world for their amusement.''

Although the spy stories of Maugham are somewhat slower in pace than his others works in this genre (which are not the most dynamic ever written, anyway), they make a wonderful reading, mostly because Maugham's great skill to describe certain scenes with growing tension, to construct effective climaxes and to penetrate deep into human character. One of the main tendencies in all of his works is especially marked here: nothing ever is so simple as it might look at first glance, least of all the human nature. Take for example the main character in ''The Traitor'', Grantley Caypor:

''How much easier life would be if people were all black or all white and how much simpler it would be to act in regard to them! Was Caypor a good man who loved evil or a bad man who loved good? And how could such unreconcilable elements exist side by side and in harmony within the same heart?''

Interestingly, two of the short stories have nothing to do with espionage and intelligence agencies except that Ashenden is present again. But one time he tries to establish a peaceful relationship between an American and a British ambassador (''His Excellency''), and in the other case he is treated as a convalescent in a sanatorium in Scotland (''Sanatorium''). These happen to be, perhaps, the best short stories here, admittedly because Maugham is absolutely free to focus his talents entirely on his favourite subject - the human nature - without being somewhat inhibited by the espionage stuff. ''Sanatorium'' gives him a wonderful opportunity to add some finishing touches on Ashenden, namely two of Maugham's favorite attitudes:

''People often said he had a low opinion for human nature. It was because he did not always judge fellows by the usual standards. He accepted, with a smile, a tear, or a shrug of the shoulders, much that filled others with dismay.''

(If this is not a thinly disguised reference of cynicism, I don't know what it is.)

''There are some people who say that suffering ennobles. It is not true. As a general rule it makes man petty, querulous, and selfish;''

(Maugham never had any patience with that theory about ennoblement by suffering.)

When all is said and done, Ashenden is a man of exceptional common sense, as his words can prove:

''You're not the first rake who's fallen to innocence. It's merely the sentimentality of middle age. ''

In ''His Excellency'' Ashenden is almost transformed in a minor character who listens to the heart-rending story of a wretched man whose great success in life has been a complete sham:

''I am not sure if a man isn't wiser to do what he wants very much to do and let the consequences take care of themselves.''

''There is always something a little absurd in success.''

And yet, even with so little time to express himself, Ashenden manages to say almost everything there is to say about the most complex feature of the human nature in just one paragraph. Maugham rarely if ever wrote with more elan than in this famous passage which, I think, is the best way to finish this so called review:

''All sensible people know that vanity is the most devastating, the most universal, and the most ineradicable of the passions that afflict the soul of man, and it is only vanity that makes him deny its power. It is more consuming than love. With advancing years, mercifully, you can snap your fingers at the terror and the servitude of love, but age cannot free you from the thraldom of vanity. Time can assuage the pangs of love, but only death can still the anguish of wounded vanity. Love is simple and seeks no subterfuge, but vanity cozens you with a hundred disguises. It is part and parcel of every virtue: it is mainspring of courage and the strength of ambition; it gives constancy to the lover and endurance to the stoic; it adds fuel to the fire of the artist's desire for fame and is at once the support and the compensation of the honest man's integrity; it leers even cynically in the humility of the saint. You cannot escape it, and should you take pains to guard against it, it will make use of those very pains to trip you up. You are defenseless against its onslaught because you know not on what unprotected side it will attack you. Sincerity cannot protect you from its snare nor humour from its mockery.''