Explore "25" by Beverley Nichols on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
William Somerset Maugham has no public personality. Although _Lady Frederick_ has been prancing about the stages of the world for nearly twenty years -- dear thing -- although the ‘leaves' still ‘tremble,' and although ‘Rain' is apparently never going to cease showering golden drops into the pocket of its creator, William Somerset Maugham remains William Somerset Maugham. He does not, like other successful authors, suddenly develop piercing eyes, or a villa in Capri, or a pony, or a rose garden, or any of the usual accompaniments of fame.
Why there are so few tales about him, I can't imagine, for his life abounds in the sort of ‘copy' which would bring a flush to the cheeks of even the weariest Press agent. The story of his early struggles, for example. He told it to me on one evening full of hope, when the first adolescent strawberries had been discovered in the Café Royal, and were blushing at the last oysters, the like of which they would never see again, it being the last of April's days.