No. 551: The winners
Trevor Grove reports: It was announced a fortnight ago that seventeen previously un- published short stories by the late Somerset Maugham are to appear in America later this year. Competitors were invited to submit the opening passage from one of these up till now so elusive stories, hinting in the process at some reason why it didn't see the light of day at an earlier occasion. Maugham is notoriously difficult to parody. Cyril Connolly, in Enemies of Promise, saw him as something of a realist, an apostle of 'the new vernacular.' Maugham himself liked to imagine that writing prose 'is an affair of good manners' and that it should look on enthusiasm 'with a critical glance.' Parody, of course, depends on rather opposite virtues—ergo any blatant fun-poking in this particular direction is bound to seem a trifle inappropriate. But other characteristics —Maugham's insistence on the qualities of `lucidity, euphony, simplicity,' on a story's having a beginning, a middle and an end, the use of words and phrases that have inevitably dated : 'chaff' as a verb, `rotter,"feller,"1 simply must bolt,' I have a great tenderness towards you' etc—are available to parody of a subtle kind. Four guineas to W. J. Webster: I am not altogether sure that I like my Aunt Maud. There is much, it is true, to be said in her favour. She provides an excellent tea; her conversation, though gushing and loud, is not wholly demeaning; and I bever leave her home in Bayswater.without a gift of some kind. But in return for her hospitality she makes demands that strike me as a trifle excessive. It was not always so. Once, there was the merest ruffling of my hair to set against hot crumpets succulent with butter, meringues as light and fragile a, bubbles, thick wedges of cake, and afterward, five shillings (ten, when I wore my sailor suit) pressed into my politely reluctant palm. But as time passed, her pudgy fingers took to tweak- ing my cheeks. Her powdered face, drooping with fat under its loose, lined skin, was pre- sented more frequently for kissing. I bore up. thinking of crumpets, but worse was to come.
Four guineas to Martin Fagg: Regaining the day-room, his ears still burning with the deft mimicry of his stammer with which Prothero had just been delighting the history class, Edward found himself quivering in such fury that he could hardly slot hi. scuffed and faded textbooks back on to their drab deal shelf. The barbaric room, epitomic of everything that was chill, philistine am] cheerless, echoed his mood with intolerable fidelity. How could he punish his tormentor? Lampoon him in a story submitted to some London magazine? A dim awareness of laws of libel warned him that this might not be the surest way . Then it came to him The occasion when he had unexpectedly caught sight of Mrs Prothero with an unfamiliar man in a Folkestone tea-shop. Something almost impalpable in their manner hinted at what might prove his history master's Achilles' heel. He would watch, contrive some exquisite occasion of ignominy . . .
Three guineas to John Digby: Cynthia always thought in terms of the sweeter magazine titles and the less lurid headlines. Yet
I confess that I was more than ordinarily charmed by her happy coup on the evening of the twentieth anniversary of our engagement. There, nestling among the roses, the twinkling candles of our dining-table, was the legend— printed pink on a lilac background—of the occasion: 'Idyll in Kuala Lumpur.'
We were already arm-in-arm when I made my tender discovery; and I turned, moist-eyed, to kiss the perpetrator. Dreamily, she mur- mured, `You haven't forgotten ... the verandah of the bungalow . .. the sun's great orb sinking redly into the rubber-trees . . . this, never from my finger for one second . . .?' and she dis- played our momentous emblem of betrothal.
`Never!' I, too, declared stoutly.
`Some men do,' she suggested teasingly. `Such cynicism,' I returned, my severity not totally feigned, 'is best left to book-writers
And three to George van Schaick:
Lawson Barlow lit his pipe and strolled to the rail at the edge of the boat-deck to search the heavens for the great Square of Pegasus. It shone serenely in the northern night, and clearer still were Orion, Cassiopeia and the Plough. Soon, he reflected, these constellations would be as familiar to him as the Southern Cross had become on his journeys to Apia.
Isabel would forgive him. There was no doubt of that. Her present coldness was to be expected after the unfortunate affair at the Hotel Metropole, but gradually her letters would become intimate, humorous, tender, all that a lover's letters should be, and all that they had been before. That it could be otherwise was as unthinkable as that this great new liner on its maiden voyage should strike an iceberg and founder.
Finally, honourable mentions to Hilary Temple, Adam Khan and T. Griffiths.
Previous page
