Maugham paints life at turn of century

IT IS easy to identify with the characters in Somerset Maugham's Far Eastern Tales (Vintage Classics, paperback), a recently published collection of the short stories he set in this part of the world.

He paints a picture of expatriate life that is very different from our own and yet his characters are very recognisable. They would not be out of place at a diplomatic reception in Bandar. In fact I think I met some of them at the Empire Hotel and Country Club last week.

In a few sentences Maugham can conjure up a kampung, a jungle settlement or a coastal town. The backdrops to his stories are Malaya and Borneo in the 1920s. I can find no reference to Kuala Solor, which features in a number of them, so I assume it is entirely fictional. The town has a Resident, a club and colonial dwellings. It could well be Bandar Seri Begawan.

For those of us who know Brunei, Maugham's descriptions are very vivid. We can sense the proximity of the forest, the sluggishness of wide, muddy rivers and appreciate the gentle pace of life. His stories have an immediacy for us and it is easy to draw parallels with 2008.

The clubs may have gone, but coffee shops and embassy receptions have replaced them. Expatriates have moved from the Water Village to Jalan Kebangsaan or Anggerek. They shop at Supersave rather than Tamu Kianggeh.

Of course, when they wander the paths of Tasik Lama or Bukit Shahbandar, they generally don't take a 12 bore.

Maugham describes a strange breed of men and women who left sedate English life for an existence which was altogether more feral.

Who can blame them? They followed in the wake of James Brooke, who, despite all his swashbuckling colonialist tendencies, invites our admiration. He had clearly had a bucketful of life in Bath. He needed to get back on his ship or lose his marbles.

The colonists Maugham describes came to Borneo to run an administration. In one of his most powerful stories, "The Force of Circumstance," the main character is scarcely 19 when he arrives in the colony. His quiet acceptance of life in a rural backwater for a decade is admirable and unnerving.

These chaps were made of steel and Maugham describes how the boy overcomes his loneliness and finds a deep, if unconventional, contentment. It seems unlikely that he would ever return to the spiritual desert of provincial England. Expatriates in those days stayed for decades and, according to Maugham, could all speak Malay, thereby putting us to shame. His stories are full of references to European ladies, pouring over their Malay grammars and chatting to their servants and the local headmen. The male characters are district officers and policemen and can generally handle several local dialects as well. Everyone seems to get malaria from time to time, but thinks nothing of it.

They just lie in bed and sweat for a few days, before getting back to the administration of justice and the club. Death surrounds them: the sound of a monkey being throttled by a python is the natural accompaniment to evening tiffin. His stories also describe those who can't hack it and have to return to England to a more conventional life.

He relates conversations that take place on the ship home and shows how the English are capable of recreating Hampshire or Surrey in whatever situation they find themselves. He tells the story of men who get engaged to be married in England just before their posting and whose fiancés come out East, once their prospective husbands have established a home fit to receive them — apparently a common phenomenon.

Plucky young girls, who had spent their whole lives in London society, suddenly found themselves translated to the jungle. Maugham describes how in the period of separation men sometimes acquired indelible bachelor traits and could not face the prospect of married life.

In Mabel, the eponymous hero pursues her betrothed for seven years across South-East Asia to China. He, George, eventually takes refuge in a remote province and cannot believe it, when Mabel appears on his host's doorstep.

Mabel turned to George's host.

"Are you the consul?" she asked.

"I am."

"That's alright then. I am ready to marry him as soon as I have had a bath."

And she did.

One of my favourite stories in the collection is "Neil MacAdam". Maugham describes a voracious Russian woman who falls in love with a young assistant curator. He is more interested in orchids than women. In this story Maugham gives us a convincing, if stereotypical, picture of a Russian vamp, straight out of Chekhov or Tolstoy.

The story is reminiscent of a scene from Anna Karenina, but is set in the jungle. Like all Russian heroines she dies, not by throwing herself in front of a train, but devoured by ants after losing herself in the forest. Maugham obviously acquired a taste for Russian literature during his time on secret service.

His boss, Sir William Wiseman, chief of Intelligence, had sent him to St Petersburg in 1917 to keep the Provisional Government in power and Russia in the war — something of a tall order, when you think about. He obviously spent his time productively, observing local culture, even if he failed to stem the advance of the Bolsheviks.

Maugham trained as a doctor. He practised long enough to see the seamier side of life and acquire much material for his later work. "I saw how men died. I saw how they bore pain. I saw what hope looked like, fear and relief ..." His murder stories are chilling and very plausible and display considerable psychological acuity. I have to say some of his endings are a little artificial, but he can certainly spin a convincing yarn.

Maugham was the most highly paid author of his time and remained a man of letters for 60 years until his death in 1965 at the age of 91.

Despite his ambivalent sexuality and tendency to include his hosts in his stories, he remained one of the most popular and eminent writers of his age.

The writer is the principal of Jerudong International School.

The Brunei Times