Shabby little shocker
Remembered today mostly as a novelist, W Somerset Maugham was also a highly regarded essayist and enormously successful dramatist. When he wrote his final will, he had a French villa and plenty of antiques and dosh to dispose of, and he left most of his estate to two people: his daughter and only child Liza, Lady Glendevon; and his lover, Alan Searle.
No muss, no fuss, no nasty headlines. His will disposed of his estate clearly, cleanly, legally - and quietly.
This was in sharp contrast to the fiasco a few years earlier when Maugham mangled the final act of his own life. He engaged in some ugly legal razzle dazzle in a failed and very public attempt to disown his daughter. The celebrated writer starred in a melodrama of his own making, and he was booed off the stage.
The son of a wealthy British solicitor, Maugham was born in Paris and enjoyed an idyllic childhood cut short by the untimely deaths of his mother, when he was eight, and his father two years later.
He returned to England, where he was raised by an uncle in Kent (Maugham and his three brothers shared £5,000 left by their father). Before becoming a writer, Maugham practiced medicine, but writing was in his blood, and his first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897), was based on his experiences as a doctor. He soon abandoned medicine and devoted himself entirely to writing.
As a dramatist, he was phenomenally successful: in one year alone (1918) he had four plays simultaneously in London's West End. He then wrote his great novels: Of Human Bondage (1915), Moon and Sixpence (1919), Painted Veil (1925), Cakes and Ale (1930) and Razor's Edge (1945).
Many became films; three versions were made of his story "Rain" (with its famous central character Sadie Thompson). The well-known Joseph Losey film The Servant may also have been altered by some suggestions that Maugham made to the author of the novel on which the movie was based, his nephew, Robin Maugham.
Courting disaster
The young dramatist fell in love with an actress, Sue Jones, but it was unrequited and he later married Syrie Wellcome. Marriage may not have been in the cards for them but she had become pregnant by Maugham - and she divorced her husband, pharmaceuticals magnate Henry Wellcome (1853-1936).
Maugham and Wellcome alike loathed her. In his will Wellcome left £500 to Dr Barnardo's and nothing to Syrie, who was the daughter of Thomas John Barnardo, the orphanage founder. Syrie died in 1955.
Fundamentally homosexual, Maugham was promiscuous but also had a permanent partner, Gerald Haxton (they were lovers while Maugham was married to Syrie). Maugham and Haxton remained together for 30 years and was terminated only with Haxton's death in 1944. Maugham then became close to Alan Searle, and this relationship too continued for two decades until the death of one of the parties - this time, Maugham's.
Shooting from the hip - into your own foot
Domiciled in France, Maugham shrewdly minimised his eventual death duties. He arranged for his home, Villa Mauresque, to be owned by a company with his daughter a majority shareholder. Liza was also the legal owner of nine valuable paintings, including works by Picasso and Renoir. Maugham auctioned the collection in 1962 and promised some of the proceeds to Liza. She got her share, but only only after taking him to court.
Worse was to come. Instigated by Searle, Maugham sought to disown and disinherit his daughter and legally adopt his 57-year-old male lover, who could then inherit everything. Maugham found himself back in court, in two countries.
The French court said non to both the disinheritance and the adoption. Costly proceedings in England were settled out of court, with Liza keeping her share of the French villa and other assets, but losing royalties and other considerable assets to her father, who then willed them to Searle.
Maugham spilled all of these beans in Looking Back (1962), a spiteful work that appalled many of his British friends - appalled by the lack of chivalry both in the book and in the behaviour and attitudes it depicted. Maugham returned to France, never to step foot back in Britain.
The final act
Maugham gave modest cash gifts to his cook and his chauffeur, and he bequeathed a portrait of himself to the City of Nice. He also provided for his nephew Robin, who had earlier extorted a handsome bit of cash from his uncle by threatening to write his biography. At the time Robin claimed poverty, asserting that he had already gone through the £9,000 left to him by his father.
Searle's inheritance was substantial but only for his lifetime. After he died in 1985, the assets reverted to the Royal Literary Fund in London to help writers in financial need.
The writer was cremated in France, and his ashes were scattered outside the Maugham Library at King's College, Canterbury. Maugham's alma mater had hit a rough financial patch some years earlier, and he had bailed it out.
