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While it might seem odd to read a novel titled Christmas Holiday in January, Maugham's book is as far removed from a feel good Christmas story as possible. That said, I loved it. Written in 1939, just before the outbreak of WWII. it was an attempt by Maugham to wake up the British to what was happening in Europe.
Charley, a 23 year old who has completed his studies at Cambridge and a year in his father's business, is given a Christmas trip to Paris by his father. It is his first trip alone and he sails off to have the time of his life in spite of the brewing political situation in Europe. He plans to meet up with his childhood friend, Simon Fenimore, who has a job in Paris as a foreign correspondent and intends to get some experience in Europe before returning to England to stand for Parliament as a Labour candidate. Simon, an orphan, has always been a surly loner but Charley finds that his has become a Communist and has no smaller goal than to take over the world. He has become contemptuous of Charley's middle-class life.
As an attempt to indulge Charley's desire for adventure, he takes him to a brothel where he introduces him to Princess Olga, a Russian immigrant, and proceeds to desert him. Charley, while wanting to stay with the girl, wants to go to the Christmas eve midnight mass. He tells her that he will be back in an hour but she begs him to take him with her. So begins a companionship that lasts for his five days in Paris.
He learns that she is really Lydia, a young Russian woman who was left homeless after the outbreak of the Bolshevik revolution and fled the country. In France she married Robert Berger, a rake who was later sentenced to fifteen years’ penal servitude for murder. Having covered the trial for the press, Simon is well aware of this, and knew exactly what he was letting his friend in for. She has since had to become a prostitute but it is not primarily in order to make ends meet but as a penance for her husband's sin. He brings her to his hotel where they live together for his stay, but the relationship is platonic. Over the course of his stay, she tells him the story of her unhappy life which fills up the greater portion of the novel.
Lydia's story and Simon's vehement radicalism disrupt Charley's complacent life and cause him to question the meaning of his life. His glimpse at a world formally unknown to him make him reevaluate his beliefs and priorities. The contrast between Charley's sheltered English life with the life of those he meets in Paris is one of the things Maugham does best. The essence of pre-war Paris is captured perfectly. The characters are also wonderfully well drawn.
What happens in Paris goes back with Charley and the cozy family he left seems shallow. The last lines of the novel are powerful and moving. I chose this novel without knowing much at all about it and it is now one of my favorite of Maugham's works.
~ Frances
2 comments:
Have not heard of this title, but it sounds wonderful. I've added to my Maugham reading list - thanks!
thanks for your review. Good thoughts on Maugham's critique of the British perspective on Hitler. Just read the book. My review:
W. Somerset Maugham
Christmas Holiday
Published 1939.
The first thing you need to know about W. Somerset Maugham’s Christmas Holiday is that it has nothing to do with Christmas.
The book was written in 1939 when Maugham was 63. It is one of his last major pieces.
Christmas Holiday tells the story of Charley Mason, a comfortably-born 24-year old, who spends a week-long holiday in Paris. (Yes, it is at Christmas.)
Charley’s father has given him the vacation and is expecting him to sow his oats a bit but this does not happen. The story that unfolds is like a set of Russian matryoshka dolls. First there’s Charley, then Charley’s cynical friend Simon, then the Russian woman he meets through Simon, Lydia, and finally Lydia’s imprisoned husband Robert Berger, who we never meet but know a fair amount about.
These people are all without the advantages Charley has in life and live an opportunistic, amoral, but passionate existence. Charley’s life, on the other hand is calculated, detached, and formulaic.
The book seems to have heavy autobiographical influences with Maugham representing himself in Charley. Charley, like Maugham is comfortably born, both have spent time in Paris, and both were encouraged into a profession that did not suit them. In Maugham’s case is was medicine, in Charley’s case it was accounting. At one point Maugham describes Charley as “taking to it as a duck to water” which is how he described his own transition from doctor to novelist.
Maugham was a homosexual and Charley never has sex with Lydia, even though they spent a week in the same hotel room and she is in the profession.
At a broader level, Charley (the Englishman) in the book is disabused of the protected naïve life he lives, well-ordered, controlled and unemotional. When it is all over and Charley returns home to England things seem just as they were a week earlier, but Charley has changed forever.
Maugham may have been making a broader characterization about the British in general. Published in 1939, the British were naïve about Hitler and what was happening on the continent. After all, Prime Minister Chamberlain had just returned (30 September 1938) from Munich proclaiming “Peace in our time.”
The characters:
Charley Mason. 24-year old comfortably born Englishman goes to Paris for a week.
Simon Fenimore. Charley’s schoolboy friend, cynic, anarchist, manipulator. Ignores Charley except to set him up with “Princess Olga”
Lydia. Russian prostitute who Charley meets at the Serail and is introduced as “Princess Olga.” Married to Robert Berger the rake, she atones for his sins by debasing herself.
Robert Berger. Imprisoned husband of Lydia, drug dealer, unscrupulous, deceitful and manipulative. Unworthy of love, but loved by Lydia all the same.
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