The Magician

The Magician, by Somerset
Maugham

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Title: The Magician
Author: Somerset Maugham
Release Date: December 4, 2004 [EBook #14257]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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The Magician
A NOVEL By SOMERSET MAUGHAM

TOGETHER WITH A FRAGMENT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY
1908

A FRAGMENT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY
In 1897, after spending five years at St Thomas's Hospital I passed the
examinations which enabled me to practise medicine. While still a
medical student I had published a novel called Liza of Lambeth which
caused a mild sensation, and on the strength of that I rashly decided to
abandon doctoring and earn my living as a writer; so, as soon as I was
'qualified', I set out for Spain and spent the best part of a year in Seville.
I amused myself hugely and wrote a bad novel. Then I returned to
London and, with a friend of my own age, took and furnished a small
flat near Victoria Station. A maid of all work cooked for us and kept
the flat neat and tidy. My friend was at the Bar, and so I had the day
(and the flat) to myself and my work. During the next six years I wrote
several novels and a number of plays. Only one of these novels had any
success, but even that failed to make the stir that my first one had made.
I could get no manager to take my plays. At last, in desperation, I sent
one, which I called A Man of Honour, to the Stage Society, which gave
two performances, one on Sunday night, another on Monday afternoon,
of plays which, unsuitable for the commercial theatre, were considered
of sufficient merit to please an intellectual audience. As every one
knows, it was the Stage Society that produced the early plays of
Bernard Shaw. The committee accepted A Man of Honour, and W.L.
Courtney, who was a member of it, thought well enough of my crude
play to publish it in The Fortnightly Review, of which he was then
editor. It was a feather in my cap.
Though these efforts of mine brought me very little money, they
attracted not a little attention, and I made friends. I was looked upon as
a promising young writer and, I think I may say it without vanity, was
accepted as a member of the intelligentsia, an honourable condition
which, some years later, when I became a popular writer of light
comedies, I lost; and have never since regained. I was invited to literary

parties and to parties given by women of rank and fashion who thought
it behoved them to patronise the arts. An unattached and fairly
presentable young man is always in demand. I lunched out and dined
out. Since I could not afford to take cabs, when I dined out, in tails and
a white tie, as was then the custom, I went and came back by bus. I was
asked to spend week-ends in the country. They were something of a
trial on account of the tips you had to give to the butler and to the
footman who brought you your morning tea. He unpacked your
gladstone bag, and you were uneasily aware that your well-worn
pyjamas and modest toilet articles had made an unfavourable
impression upon him. For all that, I found life pleasant and I enjoyed
myself. There seemed no reason why I should not go on indefinitely in
the same way, bringing out a novel once a year (which seldom earned
more than the small advance the publisher had given me but which was
on the whole respectably reviewed), going to more and more parties,
making more and more friends. It was all very nice, but I couldn't see
that it was leading me anywhere. I was thirty. I was in a rut. I felt I
must get out of it. It did not take me long to make up my mind. I told
the friend with whom I shared the flat that I wanted to be rid of it and
go abroad. He could not keep it by himself, but we luckily found a
middle-aged gentleman who wished to install his mistress in it, and was
prepared to take it off our hands. We sold the furniture for what it could
fetch, and within a month I was on my way