Books & Poetry

William Somerset Maugham was the epitome of the professional writer. After the runaway success of his first novel, ‘Lisa’ (1897), he would write for a living for a further 65 years. He is important as much for his popularity (which was vast) as his longevity (his final book of memoirs appeared in 1962). At a conservative estimate he wrote some 55 books, often two or three a year. They were immensely popular and sold hugely. Maugham said himself that he was ‘in the very first row of the second-raters’, though this modesty belies his ability to write directly and with such assurance. Maugham is significant because of his eye for detail, his clipped prose and his cynical, aloof authorial voice.

‘Cakes and Ale’ is a delightfully tart, meandering meditation on what it means to be an author, and its comments on the fickleness of literary celebrity are prescient and amusing. Maugham sees clearly that books are famous because of who tells you to like them, and that authors are ‘good’ because they are said to be. The narrator, a minor novelist called William Ashenden, is asked to lunch by a more significant (or critically acclaimed) writer Alroy Kear. Kear has been asked to write the biography of Edward Driffield, an eminent novelist who has recently died (Driffield is generally assumed to be a portrait of Thomas Hardy, though Maugham denied this strenuously). Ashenden had known Driffield in his youth, and the occasion of the memoirs prompts him to think back to his experiences with the eminent writer and, more importantly, with his vivacious muse (and first wife) Rosie. Driffield wrote vigorous realist novels in his youth and stuffier books in his later period and, after he stopped writing, became acclaimed as the best writer in English. His status as the grand old man of English letters is mainly due to the influence of various tasteful women, and particularly his second wife. She forces him to act the part (even though he really doesn’t want to). He is banned from the local pub and forced to have dinner with wealthy aristocrats, as befits his station.

‘Cakes and Ale’, then, counterpoints Ashenden’s memories of the reality of events with the creation of a literary myth. When told that Driffield enjoyed singing music-hall songs, Kear comments that, ‘When you’re drawing a man’s portrait you must get the values right; you only confuse the impression if you put in stuff that’s all out of tone.’ Ashenden writes his own version of events in order to prick the particularly pompous reputation that Kear is creating for Driffield.

The novel demonstrates Maugham’s contempt for this obscuring of reality and the construction of a ‘tasteful’ author to worship. The ‘skeleton in the closet’ – Rosie Driffield – represents the raucous, vital, festive spirit of England (she is something of a caricature) which is being stifled by the good taste of the contemporary critic and novelist. There is also something wistful in the writing which suggests that, in looking back to former lives, one realises that, yes, such time has been lost and can never be reclaimed.

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