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Of Human
Bondage
by

Somerset
Maugham

A Penn State
Electronic Classics Series
Publication
Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham is a
publication of the Pennsylvania State University. This
Portable Document file is furnished free and without
any charge of any kind. Any person using this document
file, for any purpose, and in any way does so at his or
her own risk. Neither the Pennsylvania State University
nor Jim Manis, Faculty Editor, nor anyone associated
with the Pennsylvania State University assumes any
responsibility for the material contained within the
document or for the file as an electronic transmission, in
any way.

Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham, the

Pennsylvania State University, Electronic Classics Series,
Jim Manis, Faculty Editor, Hazleton, PA 18202-1291 is
a Portable Document File produced as part of an ongo-
ing student publication project to bring classical works
of literature, in English, to free and easy access of those
wishing to make use of them.

Cover Design: Jim Manis

Copyright © 2007 The Pennsylvania State University

The Pennsylvania State University is an equal opportunity university.

 W Somerset Maugham

Of Human Bondage
by

W. Somerset Maugham
I
THE DAY BROKE GRAY AND DULL. The clouds hung heavily, and there
was a rawness in the air that suggested snow. A woman servant came
into a room in which a child was sleeping and drew the curtains.
She glanced mechanically at the house opposite, a stucco house with
a portico, and went to the child’s bed.
“Wake up, Philip,” she said.
She pulled down the bed-clothes, took him in her arms, and car-
ried him downstairs. He was only half awake.
“Your mother wants you,” she said.
She opened the door of a room on the floor below and took the
child over to a bed in which a woman was lying. It was his mother.
She stretched out her arms, and the child nestled by her side. He
did not ask why he had been awakened. The woman kissed his eyes,
and with thin, small hands felt the warm body through his white
flannel nightgown. She pressed him closer to herself.
“Are you sleepy, darling?” she said.
Her voice was so weak that it seemed to come already from a great
distance. The child did not answer, but smiled comfortably. He was
very happy in the large, warm bed, with those soft arms about him.
He tried to make himself smaller still as he cuddled up against his

3
Of Human Bondage

mother, and he kissed her sleepily. In a moment he closed his eyes

and was fast asleep. The doctor came forwards and stood by the
bed-side.
“Oh, don’t take him away yet,” she moaned.
The doctor, without answering, looked at her gravely. Knowing
she would not be allowed to keep the child much longer, the woman
kissed him again; and she passed her hand down his body till she
came to his feet; she held the right foot in her hand and felt the five
small toes; and then slowly passed her hand over the left one. She
gave a sob.
“What’s the matter?” said the doctor. “You’re tired.”
She shook her head, unable to speak, and the tears rolled down
her cheeks. The doctor bent down.
“Let me take him.”
She was too weak to resist his wish, and she gave the child up. The
doctor handed him back to his nurse.
“You’d better put him back in his own bed.”
“Very well, sir.” The little boy, still sleeping, was taken away. His
mother sobbed now broken-heartedly.
“What will happen to him, poor child?”
The monthly nurse tried to quiet her, and presently, from exhaus-
tion, the crying ceased. The doctor walked to a table on the other
side of the room, upon which, under a towel, lay the body of a still-
born child. He lifted the towel and looked. He was hidden from the
bed by a screen, but the woman guessed what he was doing.
“Was it a girl or a boy?” she whispered to the nurse.
“Another boy.”
The woman did not answer. In a moment the child’s nurse came
back. She approached the bed.
“Master Philip never woke up,” she said. There was a pause. Then
the doctor felt his patient’s pulse once more.
“I don’t think there’s anything I can do just now,” he said. “I’ll call
again after breakfast.”
“I’ll show you out, sir,” said the child’s nurse.
They walked downstairs in silence. In the hall the doctor stopped.
“You’ve sent for Mrs. Carey’s brother-in-law, haven’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”

4
 W Somerset Maugham

“D’you know at what time he’ll be here?”

“No, sir, I’m expecting a telegram.”
“What about the little boy? I should think he’d be better out of
the way.”
“Miss Watkin said she’d take him, sir.”
“Who’s she?”
“She’s his godmother, sir. D’you think Mrs. Carey will get over it,
sir?”
The doctor shook his head.

5
Of Human Bondage

II
IT WAS A WEEK LATER. Philip was sitting on the floor in the drawing-
room at Miss Watkin’s house in Onslow gardens. He was an only
child and used to amusing himself. The room was filled with mas-
sive furniture, and on each of the sofas were three big cushions.
There was a cushion too in each arm-chair. All these he had taken
and, with the help of the gilt rout chairs, light and easy to move,
had made an elaborate cave in which he could hide himself from
the Red Indians who were lurking behind the curtains. He put his
ear to the floor and listened to the herd of buffaloes that raced across
the prairie. Presently, hearing the door open, he held his breath so
that he might not be discovered; but a violent hand piled away a
chair and the cushions fell down.
“You naughty boy, Miss Watkin will be cross with you.”
“Hulloa, Emma!” he said.
The nurse bent down and kissed him, then began to shake out
the cushions, and put them back in their places.
“Am I to come home?” he asked.
“Yes, I’ve come to fetch you.”
“You’ve got a new dress on.”
It was in eighteen-eighty-five, and she wore a bustle. Her gown
was of black velvet, with tight sleeves and sloping shoulders, and
the skirt had three large flounces. She wore a black bonnet with
velvet strings. She hesitated. The question she had expected did not
come, and so she could not give the answer she had prepared.
“Aren’t you going to ask how your mamma is?” she said at length.
“Oh, I forgot. How is mamma?”
Now she was ready.
“Your mamma is quite well and happy.”
“Oh, I am glad.”

6
 W Somerset Maugham

“Your mamma’s gone away. You won’t ever see her any more.”
Philip did not know what she meant.
“Why not?”
“Your mamma’s in heaven.”
She began to cry, and Philip, though he did not quite understand,
cried too. Emma was a tall, big-boned woman, with fair hair and
large features. She came from Devonshire and, notwithstanding her
many years of service in London, had never lost the breadth of her
accent. Her tears increased her emotion, and she pressed the little
boy to her heart. She felt vaguely the pity of that child deprived of
the only love in the world that is quite unselfish. It seemed dreadful
that he must be handed over to strangers. But in a little while she
pulled herself together.
“Your Uncle William is waiting in to see you,” she said. “Go and
say good-bye to Miss Watkin, and we’ll go home.”
“I don’t want to say good-bye,” he answered, instinctively anxious
to hide his tears.
“Very well, run upstairs and get your hat.”
He fetched it, and when he came down Emma was waiting for
him in the hall. He heard the sound of voices in the study behind
the dining-room. He paused. He knew that Miss Watkin and her
sister were talking to friends, and it seemed to him—he was nine
years old—that if he went in they would be sorry for him.
“I think I’ll go and say good-bye to Miss Watkin.”
“I think you’d better,” said Emma.
“Go in and tell them I’m coming,” he said.
He wished to make the most of his opportunity. Emma knocked
at the door and walked in. He heard her speak.
“Master Philip wants to say good-bye to you, miss.”
There was a sudden hush of the conversation, and Philip limped
in. Henrietta Watkin was a stout woman, with a red face and dyed
hair. In those days to dye the hair excited comment, and Philip had
heard much gossip at home when his godmother’s changed colour.
She lived with an elder sister, who had resigned herself contentedly
to old age. Two ladies, whom Philip did not know, were calling, and
they looked at him curiously.
“My poor child,” said Miss Watkin, opening her arms.

7
Of Human Bondage

She began to cry. Philip understood now why she had not been in
to luncheon and why she wore a black dress. She could not speak.
“I’ve got to go home,” said Philip, at last.
He disengaged himself from Miss Watkin’s arms, and she kissed
him again. Then he went to her sister and bade her good-bye too.
One of the strange ladies asked if she might kiss him, and he gravely
gave her permission. Though crying, he keenly enjoyed the sensa-
tion he was causing; he would have been glad to stay a little longer
to be made much of, but felt they expected him to go, so he said
that Emma was waiting for him. He went out of the room. Emma
had gone downstairs to speak with a friend in the basement, and he
waited for her on the landing. He heard Henrietta Watkin’s voice.
“His mother was my greatest friend. I can’t bear to think that she’s
dead.”
“You oughtn’t to have gone to the funeral, Henrietta,” said her
sister. “I knew it would upset you.”
Then one of the strangers spoke.
“Poor little boy, it’s dreadful to think of him quite alone in the
world. I see he limps.”
“Yes, he’s got a club-foot. It was such a grief to his mother.”
Then Emma came back. They called a hansom, and she told the
driver where to go.

8
 W Somerset Maugham

III
WHEN THEY reached the house Mrs. Carey had died in—it was in a
dreary, respectable street between Notting Hill Gate and High Street,
Kensington—Emma led Philip into the drawing-room. His uncle
was writing letters of thanks for the wreaths which had been sent.
One of them, which had arrived too late for the funeral, lay in its
cardboard box on the hall-table.
“Here’s Master Philip,” said Emma.
Mr. Carey stood up slowly and shook hands with the little boy.
Then on second thoughts he bent down and kissed his forehead.
He was a man of somewhat less than average height, inclined to
corpulence, with his hair, worn long, arranged over the scalp so as
to conceal his baldness. He was clean-shaven. His features were regu-
lar, and it was possible to imagine that in his youth he had been
good-looking. On his watch-chain he wore a gold cross.
“You’re going to live with me now, Philip,” said Mr. Carey. “Shall
you like that?”
Two years before Philip had been sent down to stay at the vicar-
age after an attack of chicken-pox; but there remained with him a
recollection of an attic and a large garden rather than of his uncle
and aunt.
“Yes.”
“You must look upon me and your Aunt Louisa as your father
and mother.”
The child’s mouth trembled a little, he reddened, but did not
answer.
“Your dear mother left you in my charge.”
Mr. Carey had no great ease in expressing himself. When the news
came that his sister-in-law was dying, he set off at once for London,
but on the way thought of nothing but the disturbance in his life

9
Of Human Bondage

that would be caused if her death forced him to undertake the care
of her son. He was well over fifty, and his wife, to whom he had
been married for thirty years, was childless; he did not look forward
with any pleasure to the presence of a small boy who might be noisy
and rough. He had never much liked his sister-in-law.
“I’m going to take you down to Blackstable tomorrow,” he said.
“With Emma?”
The child put his hand in hers, and she pressed it.
“I’m afraid Emma must go away,” said Mr. Carey.
“But I want Emma to come with me.”
Philip began to cry, and the nurse could not help crying too. Mr.
Carey looked at them helplessly.
“I think you’d better leave me alone with Master Philip for a mo-
ment.”
“Very good, sir.”
Though Philip clung to her, she released herself gently. Mr. Carey
took the boy on his knee and put his arm round him.
“You mustn’t cry,” he said. “You’re too old to have a nurse now.
We must see about sending you to school.”
“I want Emma to come with me,” the child repeated.
“It costs too much money, Philip. Your father didn’t leave very
much, and I don’t know what’s become of it. You must look at every
penny you spend.”
Mr. Carey had called the day before on the family solicitor. Philip’s
father was a surgeon in good practice, and his hospital appoint-
ments suggested an established position; so that it was a surprise on
his sudden death from blood-poisoning to find that he had left his
widow little more than his life insurance and what could be got for
the lease of their house in Bruton Street. This was six months ago;
and Mrs. Carey, already in delicate health, finding herself with child,
had lost her head and accepted for the lease the first offer that was
made. She stored her furniture, and, at a rent which the parson
thought outrageous, took a furnished house for a year, so that she
might suffer from no inconvenience till her child was born. But she
had never been used to the management of money, and was unable
to adapt her expenditure to her altered circumstances. The little she
had slipped through her fingers in one way and another, so that

10
 W Somerset Maugham

now, when all expenses were paid, not much more than two thou-
sand pounds remained to support the boy till he was able to earn his
own living. It was impossible to explain all this to Philip and he was
sobbing still.
“You’d better go to Emma,” Mr. Carey said, feeling that she could
console the child better than anyone.
Without a word Philip slipped off his uncle’s knee, but Mr. Carey
stopped him.
“We must go tomorrow, because on Saturday I’ve got to prepare
my sermon, and you must tell Emma to get your things ready to-
day. You can bring all your toys. And if you want anything to re-
member your father and mother by you can take one thing for each
of them. Everything else is going to be sold.”
The boy slipped out of the room. Mr. Carey was unused to work,
and he turned to his correspondence with resentment. On one side
of the desk was a bundle of bills, and these filled him with irrita-
tion. One especially seemed preposterous. Immediately after Mrs.
Carey’s death Emma had ordered from the florist masses of white
flowers for the room in which the dead woman lay. It was sheer
waste of money. Emma took far too much upon herself. Even if
there had been no financial necessity, he would have dismissed her.
But Philip went to her, and hid his face in her bosom, and wept as
though his heart would break. And she, feeling that he was almost
her own son—she had taken him when he was a month old—con-
soled him with soft words. She promised that she would come and
see him sometimes, and that she would never forget him; and she
told him about the country he was going to and about her own
home in Devonshire—her father kept a turnpike on the high-road
that led to Exeter, and there were pigs in the sty, and there was a
cow, and the cow had just had a calf—till Philip forgot his tears and
grew excited at the thought of his approaching journey. Presently
she put him down, for there was much to be done, and he helped
her to lay out his clothes on the bed. She sent him into the nursery
to gather up his toys, and in a little while he was playing happily.
But at last he grew tired of being alone and went back to the bed-
room, in which Emma was now putting his things into a big tin
box; he remembered then that his uncle had said he might take

11
Of Human Bondage

something to remember his father and mother by. He told Emma

and asked her what he should take.
“You’d better go into the drawing-room and see what you fancy.”
“Uncle William’s there.”
“Never mind that. They’re your own things now.”
Philip went downstairs slowly and found the door open. Mr. Carey
had left the room. Philip walked slowly round. They had been in
the house so short a time that there was little in it that had a par-
ticular interest to him. It was a stranger’s room, and Philip saw noth-
ing that struck his fancy. But he knew which were his mother’s things
and which belonged to the landlord, and presently fixed on a little
clock that he had once heard his mother say she liked. With this he
walked again rather disconsolately upstairs. Outside the door of his
mother’s bed-room he stopped and listened. Though no one had
told him not to go in, he had a feeling that it would be wrong to do
so; he was a little frightened, and his heart beat uncomfortably; but
at the same time something impelled him to turn the handle. He
turned it very gently, as if to prevent anyone within from hearing,
and then slowly pushed the door open. He stood on the threshold
for a moment before he had the courage to enter. He was not fright-
ened now, but it seemed strange. He closed the door behind him.
The blinds were drawn, and the room, in the cold light of a January
afternoon, was dark. On the dressing-table were Mrs. Carey’s brushes
and the hand mirror. In a little tray were hairpins. There was a pho-
tograph of himself on the chimney-piece and one of his father. He
had often been in the room when his mother was not in it, but now
it seemed different. There was something curious in the look of the
chairs. The bed was made as though someone were going to sleep in
it that night, and in a case on the pillow was a night-dress.
Philip opened a large cupboard filled with dresses and, stepping in,
took as many of them as he could in his arms and buried his face in
them. They smelt of the scent his mother used. Then he pulled open
the drawers, filled with his mother’s things, and looked at them: there
were lavender bags among the linen, and their scent was fresh and
pleasant. The strangeness of the room left it, and it seemed to him
that his mother had just gone out for a walk. She would be in pres-
ently and would come upstairs to have nursery tea with him. And he

12
 W Somerset Maugham

seemed to feel her kiss on his lips.

It was not true that he would never see her again. It was not true
simply because it was impossible. He climbed up on the bed and
put his head on the pillow. He lay there quite still.

13
Of Human Bondage

IV
PHILIP PARTED from Emma with tears, but the journey to Blackstable
amused him, and, when they arrived, he was resigned and cheerful.
Blackstable was sixty miles from London. Giving their luggage to a
porter, Mr. Carey set out to walk with Philip to the vicarage; it took
them little more than five minutes, and, when they reached it, Philip
suddenly remembered the gate. It was red and five-barred: it swung
both ways on easy hinges; and it was possible, though forbidden, to
swing backwards and forwards on it. They walked through the gar-
den to the front-door. This was only used by visitors and on Sun-
days, and on special occasions, as when the Vicar went up to Lon-
don or came back. The traffic of the house took place through a
side-door, and there was a back door as well for the gardener and for
beggars and tramps. It was a fairly large house of yellow brick, with
a red roof, built about five and twenty years before in an ecclesiasti-
cal style. The front-door was like a church porch, and the drawing-
room windows were gothic.
Mrs. Carey, knowing by what train they were coming, waited in
the drawing-room and listened for the click of the gate. When she
heard it she went to the door.
“There’s Aunt Louisa,” said Mr. Carey, when he saw her. “Run
and give her a kiss.”
Philip started to run, awkwardly, trailing his club-foot, and then
stopped. Mrs. Carey was a little, shrivelled woman of the same age as
her husband, with a face extraordinarily filled with deep wrinkles,
and pale blue eyes. Her gray hair was arranged in ringlets according to
the fashion of her youth. She wore a black dress, and her only orna-
ment was a gold chain, from which hung a cross. She had a shy man-
ner and a gentle voice.
“Did you walk, William?” she said, almost reproachfully, as she

14
 W Somerset Maugham

kissed her husband.

“I didn’t think of it,” he answered, with a glance at his nephew.
“It didn’t hurt you to walk, Philip, did it?” she asked the child.
“No. I always walk.”
He was a little surprised at their conversation. Aunt Louisa told
him to come in, and they entered the hall. It was paved with red and
yellow tiles, on which alternately were a Greek Cross and the Lamb of
God. An imposing staircase led out of the hall. It was of polished
pine, with a peculiar smell, and had been put in because fortunately,
when the church was reseated, enough wood remained over. The bal-
usters were decorated with emblems of the Four Evangelists.
“I’ve had the stove lighted as I thought you’d be cold after your
journey,” said Mrs. Carey.
It was a large black stove that stood in the hall and was only lighted
if the weather was very bad and the Vicar had a cold. It was not
lighted if Mrs. Carey had a cold. Coal was expensive. Besides, Mary
Ann, the maid, didn’t like fires all over the place. If they wanted all
them fires they must keep a second girl. In the winter Mr. and Mrs.
Carey lived in the dining-room so that one fire should do, and in
the summer they could not get out of the habit, so the drawing-
room was used only by Mr. Carey on Sunday afternoons for his
nap. But every Saturday he had a fire in the study so that he could
write his sermon.
Aunt Louisa took Philip upstairs and showed him into a tiny bed-
room that looked out on the drive. Immediately in front of the
window was a large tree, which Philip remembered now because the
branches were so low that it was possible to climb quite high up it.
“A small room for a small boy,” said Mrs. Carey. “You won’t be
frightened at sleeping alone?”
“Oh, no.”
On his first visit to the vicarage he had come with his nurse, and
Mrs. Carey had had little to do with him. She looked at him now
with some uncertainty.
“Can you wash your own hands, or shall I wash them for you?”
“I can wash myself,” he answered firmly.
“Well, I shall look at them when you come down to tea,” said
Mrs. Carey.

15
Of Human Bondage

She knew nothing about children. After it was settled that Philip
should come down to Blackstable, Mrs. Carey had thought much
how she should treat him; she was anxious to do her duty; but now
he was there she found herself just as shy of him as he was of her.
She hoped he would not be noisy and rough, because her husband
did not like rough and noisy boys. Mrs. Carey made an excuse to
leave Philip alone, but in a moment came back and knocked at the
door; she asked him, without coming in, if he could pour out the
water himself. Then she went downstairs and rang the bell for tea.
The dining-room, large and well-proportioned, had windows on
two sides of it, with heavy curtains of red rep; there was a big table
in the middle; and at one end an imposing mahogany sideboard
with a looking-glass in it. In one corner stood a harmonium. On
each side of the fireplace were chairs covered in stamped leather,
each with an antimacassar; one had arms and was called the hus-
band, and the other had none and was called the wife. Mrs. Carey
never sat in the arm-chair: she said she preferred a chair that was not
too comfortable; there was always a lot to do, and if her chair had
had arms she might not be so ready to leave it.
Mr. Carey was making up the fire when Philip came in, and he
pointed out to his nephew that there were two pokers. One was
large and bright and polished and unused, and was called the Vicar;
and the other, which was much smaller and had evidently passed
through many fires, was called the Curate.
“What are we waiting for?” said Mr. Carey.
“I told Mary Ann to make you an egg. I thought you’d be hungry
after your journey.”
Mrs. Carey thought the journey from London to Blackstable very
tiring. She seldom travelled herself, for the living was only three
hundred a year, and, when her husband wanted a holiday, since
there was not money for two, he went by himself. He was very fond
of Church Congresses and usually managed to go up to London
once a year; and once he had been to Paris for the exhibition, and
two or three times to Switzerland. Mary Ann brought in the egg,
and they sat down. The chair was much too low for Philip, and for
a moment neither Mr. Carey nor his wife knew what to do.
“I’ll put some books under him,” said Mary Ann.

16
 W Somerset Maugham

She took from the top of the harmonium the large Bible and the
prayer-book from which the Vicar was accustomed to read prayers,
and put them on Philip’s chair.
“Oh, William, he can’t sit on the Bible,” said Mrs. Carey, in a
shocked tone. “Couldn’t you get him some books out of the study?”
Mr. Carey considered the question for an instant.
“I don’t think it matters this once if you put the prayer-book on
the top, Mary Ann,” he said. “The book of Common Prayer is the
composition of men like ourselves. It has no claim to divine author-
ship.”
“I hadn’t thought of that, William,” said Aunt Louisa.
Philip perched himself on the books, and the Vicar, having said
grace, cut the top off his egg.
“There,” he said, handing it to Philip, “you can eat my top if you
like.”
Philip would have liked an egg to himself, but he was not offered
one, so took what he could.
“How have the chickens been laying since I went away?” asked
the Vicar.
“Oh, they’ve been dreadful, only one or two a day.”
“How did you like that top, Philip?” asked his uncle.
“Very much, thank you.”
“You shall have another one on Sunday afternoon.”
Mr. Carey always had a boiled egg at tea on Sunday, so that he
might be fortified for the evening service.

17
Of Human Bondage

V
PHILIP CAME gradually to know the people he was to live with, and
by fragments of conversation, some of it not meant for his ears,
learned a good deal both about himself and about his dead parents.
Philip’s father had been much younger than the Vicar of Blackstable.
After a brilliant career at St. Luke’s Hospital he was put on the staff,
and presently began to earn money in considerable sums. He spent
it freely. When the parson set about restoring his church and asked
his brother for a subscription, he was surprised by receiving a couple
of hundred pounds: Mr. Carey, thrifty by inclination and economi-
cal by necessity, accepted it with mingled feelings; he was envious of
his brother because he could afford to give so much, pleased for the
sake of his church, and vaguely irritated by a generosity which seemed
almost ostentatious. Then Henry Carey married a patient, a beauti-
ful girl but penniless, an orphan with no near relations, but of good
family; and there was an array of fine friends at the wedding. The
parson, on his visits to her when he came to London, held himself
with reserve. He felt shy with her and in his heart he resented her
great beauty: she dressed more magnificently than became the wife
of a hardworking surgeon; and the charming furniture of her house,
the flowers among which she lived even in winter, suggested an ex-
travagance which he deplored. He heard her talk of entertainments
she was going to; and, as he told his wife on getting home again, it
was impossible to accept hospitality without making some return.
He had seen grapes in the dining-room that must have cost at least
eight shillings a pound; and at luncheon he had been given aspara-
gus two months before it was ready in the vicarage garden. Now all
he had anticipated was come to pass: the Vicar felt the satisfaction
of the prophet who saw fire and brimstone consume the city which
would not mend its way to his warning. Poor Philip was practically

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 W Somerset Maugham

penniless, and what was the good of his mother’s fine friends now?
He heard that his father’s extravagance was really criminal, and it
was a mercy that Providence had seen fit to take his dear mother to
itself: she had no more idea of money than a child.
When Philip had been a week at Blackstable an incident hap-
pened which seemed to irritate his uncle very much. One morning
he found on the breakfast table a small packet which had been sent
on by post from the late Mrs. Carey’s house in London. It was ad-
dressed to her. When the parson opened it he found a dozen photo-
graphs of Mrs. Carey. They showed the head and shoulders only,
and her hair was more plainly done than usual, low on the forehead,
which gave her an unusual look; the face was thin and worn, but no
illness could impair the beauty of her features. There was in the
large dark eyes a sadness which Philip did not remember. The first
sight of the dead woman gave Mr. Carey a little shock, but this was
quickly followed by perplexity. The photographs seemed quite re-
cent, and he could not imagine who had ordered them.
“D’you know anything about these, Philip?” he asked.
“I remember mamma said she’d been taken,” he answered. “Miss
Watkin scolded her.... She said: I wanted the boy to have something
to remember me by when he grows up.”
Mr. Carey looked at Philip for an instant. The child spoke in a
clear treble. He recalled the words, but they meant nothing to him.
“You’d better take one of the photographs and keep it in your
room,” said Mr. Carey. “I’ll put the others away.”
He sent one to Miss Watkin, and she wrote and explained how
they came to be taken.
One day Mrs. Carey was lying in bed, but she was feeling a little
better than usual, and the doctor in the morning had seemed hope-
ful; Emma had taken the child out, and the maids were downstairs
in the basement: suddenly Mrs. Carey felt desperately alone in the
world. A great fear seized her that she would not recover from the
confinement which she was expecting in a fortnight. Her son was
nine years old. How could he be expected to remember her? She
could not bear to think that he would grow up and forget, forget
her utterly; and she had loved him so passionately, because he was
weakly and deformed, and because he was her child. She had no

19
Of Human Bondage

photographs of herself taken since her marriage, and that was ten
years before. She wanted her son to know what she looked like at
the end. He could not forget her then, not forget utterly. She knew
that if she called her maid and told her she wanted to get up, the
maid would prevent her, and perhaps send for the doctor, and she
had not the strength now to struggle or argue. She got out of bed
and began to dress herself. She had been on her back so long that
her legs gave way beneath her, and then the soles of her feet tingled
so that she could hardly bear to put them to the ground. But she
went on. She was unused to doing her own hair and, when she
raised her arms and began to brush it, she felt faint. She could never
do it as her maid did. It was beautiful hair, very fine, and of a deep
rich gold. Her eyebrows were straight and dark. She put on a black
skirt, but chose the bodice of the evening dress which she liked best:
it was of a white damask which was fashionable in those days. She
looked at herself in the glass. Her face was very pale, but her skin
was clear: she had never had much colour, and this had always
made the redness of her beautiful mouth emphatic. She could not
restrain a sob. But she could not afford to be sorry for herself; she
was feeling already desperately tired; and she put on the furs which
Henry had given her the Christmas before—she had been so proud
of them and so happy then—and slipped downstairs with beating
heart. She got safely out of the house and drove to a photogra-
pher. She paid for a dozen photographs. She was obliged to ask for
a glass of water in the middle of the sitting; and the assistant,
seeing she was ill, suggested that she should come another day,
but she insisted on staying till the end. At last it was finished, and
she drove back again to the dingy little house in Kensington which
she hated with all her heart. It was a horrible house to die in.
She found the front door open, and when she drove up the maid
and Emma ran down the steps to help her. They had been fright-
ened when they found her room empty. At first they thought she
must have gone to Miss Watkin, and the cook was sent round. Miss
Watkin came back with her and was waiting anxiously in the draw-
ing-room. She came downstairs now full of anxiety and reproaches;
but the exertion had been more than Mrs. Carey was fit for, and
when the occasion for firmness no longer existed she gave way. She

20
 W Somerset Maugham

fell heavily into Emma’s arms and was carried upstairs. She remained
unconscious for a time that seemed incredibly long to those that
watched her, and the doctor, hurriedly sent for, did not come. It
was next day, when she was a little better, that Miss Watkin got
some explanation out of her. Philip was playing on the floor of his
mother’s bed-room, and neither of the ladies paid attention to him.
He only understood vaguely what they were talking about, and he
could not have said why those words remained in his memory.
“I wanted the boy to have something to remember me by when
he grows up.”
“I can’t make out why she ordered a dozen,” said Mr. Carey. “Two
would have done.”

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Of Human Bondage

VI
ONE DAY was very like another at the vicarage.
Soon after breakfast Mary Ann brought in The Times. Mr. Carey
shared it with two neighbours. He had it from ten till one, when the
gardener took it over to Mr. Ellis at the Limes, with whom it re-
mained till seven; then it was taken to Miss Brooks at the Manor
House, who, since she got it late, had the advantage of keeping it.
In summer Mrs. Carey, when she was making jam, often asked her
for a copy to cover the pots with. When the Vicar settled down to
his paper his wife put on her bonnet and went out to do the shop-
ping. Philip accompanied her. Blackstable was a fishing village. It
consisted of a high street in which were the shops, the bank, the
doctor’s house, and the houses of two or three coalship owners; round
the little harbor were shabby streets in which lived fishermen and
poor people; but since they went to chapel they were of no account.
When Mrs. Carey passed the dissenting ministers in the street she
stepped over to the other side to avoid meeting them, but if there
was not time for this fixed her eyes on the pavement. It was a scan-
dal to which the Vicar had never resigned himself that there were
three chapels in the High Street: he could not help feeling that the
law should have stepped in to prevent their erection. Shopping in
Blackstable was not a simple matter; for dissent, helped by the fact
that the parish church was two miles from the town, was very com-
mon; and it was necessary to deal only with churchgoers; Mrs. Carey
knew perfectly that the vicarage custom might make all the differ-
ence to a tradesman’s faith. There were two butchers who went to
church, and they would not understand that the Vicar could not
deal with both of them at once; nor were they satisfied with his
simple plan of going for six months to one and for six months to the
other. The butcher who was not sending meat to the vicarage con-

22
 W Somerset Maugham

stantly threatened not to come to church, and the Vicar was some-
times obliged to make a threat: it was very wrong of him not to
come to church, but if he carried iniquity further and actually went
to chapel, then of course, excellent as his meat was, Mr. Carey would
be forced to leave him for ever. Mrs. Carey often stopped at the
bank to deliver a message to Josiah Graves, the manager, who was
choir-master, treasurer, and churchwarden. He was a tall, thin man
with a sallow face and a long nose; his hair was very white, and to
Philip he seemed extremely old. He kept the parish accounts, ar-
ranged the treats for the choir and the schools; though there was no
organ in the parish church, it was generally considered (in
Blackstable) that the choir he led was the best in Kent; and when
there was any ceremony, such as a visit from the Bishop for confir-
mation or from the Rural Dean to preach at the Harvest Thanks-
giving, he made the necessary preparations. But he had no hesita-
tion in doing all manner of things without more than a perfunctory
consultation with the Vicar, and the Vicar, though always ready to
be saved trouble, much resented the churchwarden’s managing ways.
He really seemed to look upon himself as the most important per-
son in the parish. Mr. Carey constantly told his wife that if Josiah
Graves did not take care he would give him a good rap over the
knuckles one day; but Mrs. Carey advised him to bear with Josiah
Graves: he meant well, and it was not his fault if he was not quite a
gentleman. The Vicar, finding his comfort in the practice of a Chris-
tian virtue, exercised forbearance; but he revenged himself by call-
ing the churchwarden Bismarck behind his back.
Once there had been a serious quarrel between the pair, and Mrs.
Carey still thought of that anxious time with dismay. The Conser-
vative candidate had announced his intention of addressing a meet-
ing at Blackstable; and Josiah Graves, having arranged that it should
take place in the Mission Hall, went to Mr. Carey and told him that
he hoped he would say a few words. It appeared that the candidate
had asked Josiah Graves to take the chair. This was more than Mr.
Carey could put up with. He had firm views upon the respect which
was due to the cloth, and it was ridiculous for a churchwarden to
take the chair at a meeting when the Vicar was there. He reminded
Josiah Graves that parson meant person, that is, the vicar was the

23
Of Human Bondage

person of the parish. Josiah Graves answered that he was the first to
recognise the dignity of the church, but this was a matter of politics,
and in his turn he reminded the Vicar that their Blessed Saviour
had enjoined upon them to render unto Caesar the things that were
Caesar’s. To this Mr. Carey replied that the devil could quote scrip-
ture to his purpose, himself had sole authority over the Mission
Hall, and if he were not asked to be chairman he would refuse the
use of it for a political meeting. Josiah Graves told Mr. Carey that
he might do as he chose, and for his part he thought the Wesleyan
Chapel would be an equally suitable place. Then Mr. Carey said
that if Josiah Graves set foot in what was little better than a heathen
temple he was not fit to be churchwarden in a Christian parish.
Josiah Graves thereupon resigned all his offices, and that very evening
sent to the church for his cassock and surplice. His sister, Miss Graves,
who kept house for him, gave up her secretaryship of the Maternity
Club, which provided the pregnant poor with flannel, baby linen,
coals, and five shillings. Mr. Carey said he was at last master in his
own house. But soon he found that he was obliged to see to all sorts
of things that he knew nothing about; and Josiah Graves, after the
first moment of irritation, discovered that he had lost his chief in-
terest in life. Mrs. Carey and Miss Graves were much distressed by
the quarrel; they met after a discreet exchange of letters, and made
up their minds to put the matter right: they talked, one to her hus-
band, the other to her brother, from morning till night; and since
they were persuading these gentlemen to do what in their hearts
they wanted, after three weeks of anxiety a reconciliation was ef-
fected. It was to both their interests, but they ascribed it to a com-
mon love for their Redeemer. The meeting was held at the Mission
Hall, and the doctor was asked to be chairman. Mr. Carey and Josiah
Graves both made speeches.
When Mrs. Carey had finished her business with the banker, she
generally went upstairs to have a little chat with his sister; and while
the ladies talked of parish matters, the curate or the new bonnet of
Mrs. Wilson—Mr. Wilson was the richest man in Blackstable, he was
thought to have at least five hundred a year, and he had married his
cook—Philip sat demurely in the stiff parlour, used only to receive
visitors, and busied himself with the restless movements of goldfish in

24
 W Somerset Maugham

a bowl. The windows were never opened except to air the room for a
few minutes in the morning, and it had a stuffy smell which seemed
to Philip to have a mysterious connection with banking.
Then Mrs. Carey remembered that she had to go to the grocer,
and they continued their way. When the shopping was done they
often went down a side street of little houses, mostly of wood, in
which fishermen dwelt (and here and there a fisherman sat on his
doorstep mending his nets, and nets hung to dry upon the doors),
till they came to a small beach, shut in on each side by warehouses,
but with a view of the sea. Mrs. Carey stood for a few minutes and
looked at it, it was turbid and yellow, [and who knows what thoughts
passed through her mind?] while Philip searched for flat stones to
play ducks and drakes. Then they walked slowly back. They looked
into the post office to get the right time, nodded to Mrs. Wigram
the doctor’s wife, who sat at her window sewing, and so got home.
Dinner was at one o’clock; and on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednes-
day it consisted of beef, roast, hashed, and minced, and on Thurs-
day, Friday, and Saturday of mutton. On Sunday they ate one of
their own chickens. In the afternoon Philip did his lessons, He was
taught Latin and mathematics by his uncle who knew neither, and
French and the piano by his aunt. Of French she was ignorant, but
she knew the piano well enough to accompany the old-fashioned
songs she had sung for thirty years. Uncle William used to tell Philip
that when he was a curate his wife had known twelve songs by heart,
which she could sing at a moment’s notice whenever she was asked.
She often sang still when there was a tea-party at the vicarage. There
were few people whom the Careys cared to ask there, and their par-
ties consisted always of the curate, Josiah Graves with his sister, Dr.
Wigram and his wife. After tea Miss Graves played one or two of
Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words, and Mrs. Carey sang When
the Swallows Homeward Fly, or Trot, Trot, My Pony.
But the Careys did not give tea-parties often; the preparations up-
set them, and when their guests were gone they felt themselves ex-
hausted. They preferred to have tea by themselves, and after tea they
played backgammon. Mrs. Carey arranged that her husband should
win, because he did not like losing. They had cold supper at eight. It
was a scrappy meal because Mary Ann resented getting anything ready

25
Of Human Bondage

after tea, and Mrs. Carey helped to clear away. Mrs. Carey seldom ate
more than bread and butter, with a little stewed fruit to follow, but
the Vicar had a slice of cold meat. Immediately after supper Mrs.
Carey rang the bell for prayers, and then Philip went to bed. He
rebelled against being undressed by Mary Ann and after a while suc-
ceeded in establishing his right to dress and undress himself. At nine
o’clock Mary Ann brought in the eggs and the plate. Mrs. Carey wrote
the date on each egg and put the number down in a book. She then
took the plate-basket on her arm and went upstairs. Mr. Carey con-
tinued to read one of his old books, but as the clock struck ten he got
up, put out the lamps, and followed his wife to bed.
When Philip arrived there was some difficulty in deciding on which
evening he should have his bath. It was never easy to get plenty of
hot water, since the kitchen boiler did not work, and it was impos-
sible for two persons to have a bath on the same day. The only man
who had a bathroom in Blackstable was Mr. Wilson, and it was
thought ostentatious of him. Mary Ann had her bath in the kitchen
on Monday night, because she liked to begin the week clean. Uncle
William could not have his on Saturday, because he had a heavy day
before him and he was always a little tired after a bath, so he had it
on Friday. Mrs. Carey had hers on Thursday for the same reason. It
looked as though Saturday were naturally indicated for Philip, but
Mary Ann said she couldn’t keep the fire up on Saturday night:
what with all the cooking on Sunday, having to make pastry and
she didn’t know what all, she did not feel up to giving the boy his
bath on Saturday night; and it was quite clear that he could not
bath himself. Mrs. Carey was shy about bathing a boy, and of course
the Vicar had his sermon. But the Vicar insisted that Philip should
be clean and sweet for the lord’s Day. Mary Ann said she would
rather go than be put upon—and after eighteen years she didn’t
expect to have more work given her, and they might show some
consideration—and Philip said he didn’t want anyone to bath him,
but could very well bath himself. This settled it. Mary Ann said she
was quite sure he wouldn’t bath himself properly, and rather than he
should go dirty—and not because he was going into the presence of
the Lord, but because she couldn’t abide a boy who wasn’t properly
washed—she’d work herself to the bone even if it was Saturday night.

26
 W Somerset Maugham

VII
SUNDAY was a day crowded with incident. Mr. Carey was accus-
tomed to say that he was the only man in his parish who worked
seven days a week.
The household got up half an hour earlier than usual. No lying
abed for a poor parson on the day of rest, Mr. Carey remarked as
Mary Ann knocked at the door punctually at eight. It took Mrs.
Carey longer to dress, and she got down to breakfast at nine, a little
breathless, only just before her husband. Mr. Carey’s boots stood in
front of the fire to warm. Prayers were longer than usual, and the
breakfast more substantial. After breakfast the Vicar cut thin slices of
bread for the communion, and Philip was privileged to cut off the
crust. He was sent to the study to fetch a marble paperweight, with
which Mr. Carey pressed the bread till it was thin and pulpy, and then
it was cut into small squares. The amount was regulated by the weather.
On a very bad day few people came to church, and on a very fine one,
though many came, few stayed for communion. There were most
when it was dry enough to make the walk to church pleasant, but not
so fine that people wanted to hurry away.
Then Mrs. Carey brought the communion plate out of the safe,
which stood in the pantry, and the Vicar polished it with a chamois
leather. At ten the fly drove up, and Mr. Carey got into his boots.
Mrs. Carey took several minutes to put on her bonnet, during which
the Vicar, in a voluminous cloak, stood in the hall with just such an
expression on his face as would have become an early Christian about
to be led into the arena. It was extraordinary that after thirty years
of marriage his wife could not be ready in time on Sunday morning.
At last she came, in black satin; the Vicar did not like colours in a
clergyman’s wife at any time, but on Sundays he was determined
that she should wear black; now and then, in conspiracy with Miss

27
Of Human Bondage

Graves, she ventured a white feather or a pink rose in her bonnet,

but the Vicar insisted that it should disappear; he said he would not
go to church with the scarlet woman: Mrs. Carey sighed as a woman
but obeyed as a wife. They were about to step into the carriage
when the Vicar remembered that no one had given him his egg.
They knew that he must have an egg for his voice, there were two
women in the house, and no one had the least regard for his com-
fort. Mrs. Carey scolded Mary Ann, and Mary Ann answered that
she could not think of everything. She hurried away to fetch an egg,
and Mrs. Carey beat it up in a glass of sherry. The Vicar swallowed
it at a gulp. The communion plate was stowed in the carriage, and
they set off.
The fly came from The Red Lion and had a peculiar smell of stale
straw. They drove with both windows closed so that the Vicar should
not catch cold. The sexton was waiting at the porch to take the
communion plate, and while the Vicar went to the vestry Mrs. Carey
and Philip settled themselves in the vicarage pew. Mrs. Carey placed
in front of her the sixpenny bit she was accustomed to put in the
plate, and gave Philip threepence for the same purpose. The church
filled up gradually and the service began.
Philip grew bored during the sermon, but if he fidgetted Mrs.
Carey put a gentle hand on his arm and looked at him reproach-
fully. He regained interest when the final hymn was sung and
Mr.Graves passed round with the plate.
When everyone had gone Mrs. Carey went into Miss Graves’ pew
to have a few words with her while they were waiting for the gentle-
men, and Philip went to the vestry. His uncle, the curate, and Mr.
Graves were still in their surplices. Mr. Carey gave him the remains
of the consecrated bread and told him he might eat it. He had been
accustomed to eat it himself, as it seemed blasphemous to throw it
away, but Philip’s keen appetite relieved him from the duty. Then
they counted the money. It consisted of pennies, sixpences and
threepenny bits. There were always two single shillings, one put in
the plate by the Vicar and the other by Mr. Graves; and sometimes
there was a florin. Mr. Graves told the Vicar who had given this. It
was always a stranger to Blackstable, and Mr. Carey wondered who
he was. But Miss Graves had observed the rash act and was able to

28
 W Somerset Maugham

tell Mrs. Carey that the stranger came from London, was married
and had children. During the drive home Mrs. Carey passed the
information on, and the Vicar made up his mind to call on him and
ask for a subscription to the Additional Curates Society. Mr. Carey
asked if Philip had behaved properly; and Mrs. Carey remarked
that Mrs. Wigram had a new mantle, Mr. Cox was not in church,
and somebody thought that Miss Phillips was engaged. When they
reached the vicarage they all felt that they deserved a substantial
dinner.
When this was over Mrs. Carey went to her room to rest, and Mr.
Carey lay down on the sofa in the drawing-room for forty winks.
They had tea at five, and the Vicar ate an egg to support himself
for evensong. Mrs. Carey did not go to this so that Mary Ann might,
but she read the service through and the hymns. Mr. Carey walked
to church in the evening, and Philip limped along by his side. The
walk through the darkness along the country road strangely im-
pressed him, and the church with all its lights in the distance, com-
ing gradually nearer, seemed very friendly. At first he was shy with
his uncle, but little by little grew used to him, and he would slip his
hand in his uncle’s and walk more easily for the feeling of protec-
tion.
They had supper when they got home. Mr. Carey’s slippers were
waiting for him on a footstool in front of the fire and by their side
Philip’s, one the shoe of a small boy, the other misshapen and odd.
He was dreadfully tired when he went up to bed, and he did not
resist when Mary Ann undressed him. She kissed him after she tucked
him up, and he began to love her.

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Of Human Bondage

VIII
PHILIP had led always the solitary life of an only child, and his lone-
liness at the vicarage was no greater than it had been when his mother
lived. He made friends with Mary Ann. She was a chubby little
person of thirty-five, the daughter of a fisherman, and had come to
the vicarage at eighteen; it was her first place and she had no inten-
tion of leaving it; but she held a possible marriage as a rod over the
timid heads of her master and mistress. Her father and mother lived
in a little house off Harbour Street, and she went to see them on her
evenings out. Her stories of the sea touched Philip’s imagination,
and the narrow alleys round the harbour grew rich with the ro-
mance which his young fancy lent them. One evening he asked
whether he might go home with her; but his aunt was afraid that he
might catch something, and his uncle said that evil communica-
tions corrupted good manners. He disliked the fisher folk, who were
rough, uncouth, and went to chapel. But Philip was more comfort-
able in the kitchen than in the dining-room, and, whenever he could,
he took his toys and played there. His aunt was not sorry. She did
not like disorder, and though she recognised that boys must be ex-
pected to be untidy she preferred that he should make a mess in the
kitchen. If he fidgeted his uncle was apt to grow restless and say it
was high time he went to school. Mrs. Carey thought Philip very
young for this, and her heart went out to the motherless child; but
her attempts to gain his affection were awkward, and the boy, feel-
ing shy, received her demonstrations with so much sullenness that
she was mortified. Sometimes she heard his shrill voice raised in
laughter in the kitchen, but when she went in, he grew suddenly
silent, and he flushed darkly when Mary Ann explained the joke.
Mrs. Carey could not see anything amusing in what she heard, and
she smiled with constraint.

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 W Somerset Maugham

“He seems happier with Mary Ann than with us, William,” she
said, when she returned to her sewing.
“One can see he’s been very badly brought up. He wants licking
into shape.”
On the second Sunday after Philip arrived an unlucky incident
occurred. Mr. Carey had retired as usual after dinner for a little
snooze in the drawing-room, but he was in an irritable mood and
could not sleep. Josiah Graves that morning had objected strongly
to some candlesticks with which the Vicar had adorned the altar.
He had bought them second-hand in Tercanbury, and he thought
they looked very well. But Josiah Graves said they were popish. This
was a taunt that always aroused the Vicar. He had been at Oxford
during the movement which ended in the secession from the Estab-
lished Church of Edward Manning, and he felt a certain sympathy
for the Church of Rome. He would willingly have made the service
more ornate than had been usual in the low-church parish of
Blackstable, and in his secret soul he yearned for processions and
lighted candles. He drew the line at incense. He hated the word
protestant. He called himself a Catholic. He was accustomed to say
that Papists required an epithet, they were Roman Catholic; but the
Church of England was Catholic in the best, the fullest, and the
noblest sense of the term. He was pleased to think that his shaven
face gave him the look of a priest, and in his youth he had possessed
an ascetic air which added to the impression. He often related that
on one of his holidays in Boulogne, one of those holidays upon
which his wife for economy’s sake did not accompany him, when
he was sitting in a church, the cure had come up to him and invited
him to preach a sermon. He dismissed his curates when they mar-
ried, having decided views on the celibacy of the unbeneficed clergy.
But when at an election the Liberals had written on his garden fence
in large blue letters: This way to Rome, he had been very angry, and
threatened to prosecute the leaders of the Liberal party in Blackstable.
He made up his mind now that nothing Josiah Graves said would
induce him to remove the candlesticks from the altar, and he mut-
tered Bismarck to himself once or twice irritably.
Suddenly he heard an unexpected noise. He pulled the handker-
chief off his face, got up from the sofa on which he was lying, and

31
Of Human Bondage

went into the dining-room. Philip was seated on the table with all
his bricks around him. He had built a monstrous castle, and some
defect in the foundation had just brought the structure down in
noisy ruin.
“What are you doing with those bricks, Philip? You know you’re
not allowed to play games on Sunday.”
Philip stared at him for a moment with frightened eyes, and, as
his habit was, flushed deeply.
“I always used to play at home,” he answered.
“I’m sure your dear mamma never allowed you to do such a wicked
thing as that.”
Philip did not know it was wicked; but if it was, he did not wish
it to be supposed that his mother had consented to it. He hung his
head and did not answer.
“Don’t you know it’s very, very wicked to play on Sunday? What
d’you suppose it’s called the day of rest for? You’re going to church
tonight, and how can you face your Maker when you’ve been break-
ing one of His laws in the afternoon?”
Mr. Carey told him to put the bricks away at once, and stood over
him while Philip did so.
“You’re a very naughty boy,” he repeated. “Think of the grief you’re
causing your poor mother in heaven.”
Philip felt inclined to cry, but he had an instinctive disinclination
to letting other people see his tears, and he clenched his teeth to
prevent the sobs from escaping. Mr. Carey sat down in his arm-
chair and began to turn over the pages of a book. Philip stood at the
window. The vicarage was set back from the highroad to Tercanbury,
and from the dining-room one saw a semicircular strip of lawn and
then as far as the horizon green fields. Sheep were grazing in them.
The sky was forlorn and gray. Philip felt infinitely unhappy.
Presently Mary Ann came in to lay the tea, and Aunt Louisa de-
scended the stairs.
“Have you had a nice little nap, William?” she asked.
“No,” he answered. “Philip made so much noise that I couldn’t
sleep a wink.”
This was not quite accurate, for he had been kept awake by his
own thoughts; and Philip, listening sullenly, reflected that he had

32
 W Somerset Maugham

only made a noise once, and there was no reason why his uncle
should not have slept before or after. When Mrs. Carey asked for an
explanation the Vicar narrated the facts.
“He hasn’t even said he was sorry,” he finished.
“Oh, Philip, I’m sure you’re sorry,” said Mrs. Carey, anxious that
the child should not seem wickeder to his uncle than need be.
Philip did not reply. He went on munching his bread and butter.
He did not know what power it was in him that prevented him
from making any expression of regret. He felt his ears tingling, he
was a little inclined to cry, but no word would issue from his lips.
“You needn’t make it worse by sulking,” said Mr. Carey.
Tea was finished in silence. Mrs. Carey looked at Philip surrepti-
tiously now and then, but the Vicar elaborately ignored him. When
Philip saw his uncle go upstairs to get ready for church he went into
the hall and got his hat and coat, but when the Vicar came down-
stairs and saw him, he said:
“I don’t wish you to go to church tonight, Philip. I don’t think
you’re in a proper frame of mind to enter the House of God.”
Philip did not say a word. He felt it was a deep humiliation that
was placed upon him, and his cheeks reddened. He stood silently
watching his uncle put on his broad hat and his voluminous cloak.
Mrs. Carey as usual went to the door to see him off. Then she turned
to Philip.
“Never mind, Philip, you won’t be a naughty boy next Sunday,
will you, and then your uncle will take you to church with him in
the evening.”
She took off his hat and coat, and led him into the dining-room.
“Shall you and I read the service together, Philip, and we’ll sing
the hymns at the harmonium. Would you like that?”
Philip shook his head decidedly. Mrs. Carey was taken aback. If
he would not read the evening service with her she did not know
what to do with him.
“Then what would you like to do until your uncle comes back?”
she asked helplessly.
Philip broke his silence at last.
“I want to be left alone,” he said.
“Philip, how can you say anything so unkind? Don’t you know

33
Of Human Bondage

that your uncle and I only want your good? Don’t you love me at
all?”
“I hate you. I wish you was dead.”
Mrs. Carey gasped. He said the words so savagely that it gave her
quite a start. She had nothing to say. She sat down in her husband’s
chair; and as she thought of her desire to love the friendless, crippled
boy and her eager wish that he should love her—she was a barren
woman and, even though it was clearly God’s will that she should
be childless, she could scarcely bear to look at little children some-
times, her heart ached so—the tears rose to her eyes and one by
one, slowly, rolled down her cheeks. Philip watched her in amaze-
ment. She took out her handkerchief, and now she cried without
restraint. Suddenly Philip realised that she was crying because of
what he had said, and he was sorry. He went up to her silently and
kissed her. It was the first kiss he had ever given her without being
asked. And the poor lady, so small in her black satin, shrivelled up
and sallow, with her funny corkscrew curls, took the little boy on
her lap and put her arms around him and wept as though her heart
would break. But her tears were partly tears of happiness, for she
felt that the strangeness between them was gone. She loved him
now with a new love because he had made her suffer.

34
 W Somerset Maugham

IX
ON THE FOLLOWING SUNDAY, when the Vicar was making his prepa-
rations to go into the drawing-room for his nap—all the actions of
his life were conducted with ceremony—and Mrs. Carey was about
to go upstairs, Philip asked:
“What shall I do if I’m not allowed to play?”
“Can’t you sit still for once and be quiet?”
“I can’t sit still till tea-time.”
Mr. Carey looked out of the window, but it was cold and raw, and
he could not suggest that Philip should go into the garden.
“I know what you can do. You can learn by heart the collect for
the day.”
He took the prayer-book which was used for prayers from the
harmonium, and turned the pages till he came to the place he wanted.
“It’s not a long one. If you can say it without a mistake when I
come in to tea you shall have the top of my egg.”
Mrs. Carey drew up Philip’s chair to the dining-room table—
they had bought him a high chair by now—and placed the book in
front of him.
“The devil finds work for idle hands to do,” said Mr. Carey.
He put some more coals on the fire so that there should be a
cheerful blaze when he came in to tea, and went into the drawing-
room. He loosened his collar, arranged the cushions, and settled
himself comfortably on the sofa. But thinking the drawing-room a
little chilly, Mrs. Carey brought him a rug from the hall; she put it
over his legs and tucked it round his feet. She drew the blinds so
that the light should not offend his eyes, and since he had closed
them already went out of the room on tiptoe. The Vicar was at
peace with himself today, and in ten minutes he was asleep. He
snored softly.

35
Of Human Bondage

It was the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany, and the collect began
with the words: O God, whose blessed Son was manifested that he
might destroy the works of the devil, and make us the sons of God,
and heirs of Eternal life. Philip read it through. He could make no
sense of it. He began saying the words aloud to himself, but many
of them were unknown to him, and the construction of the sen-
tence was strange. He could not get more than two lines in his head.
And his attention was constantly wandering: there were fruit trees
trained on the walls of the vicarage, and a long twig beat now and
then against the windowpane; sheep grazed stolidly in the field be-
yond the garden. It seemed as though there were knots inside his
brain. Then panic seized him that he would not know the words by
tea-time, and he kept on whispering them to himself quickly; he
did not try to understand, but merely to get them parrot-like into
his memory.
Mrs. Carey could not sleep that afternoon, and by four o’clock
she was so wide awake that she came downstairs. She thought she
would hear Philip his collect so that he should make no mistakes
when he said it to his uncle. His uncle then would be pleased; he
would see that the boy’s heart was in the right place. But when Mrs.
Carey came to the dining-room and was about to go in, she heard a
sound that made her stop suddenly. Her heart gave a little jump.
She turned away and quietly slipped out of the front-door. She
walked round the house till she came to the dining-room window
and then cautiously looked in. Philip was still sitting on the chair
she had put him in, but his head was on the table buried in his
arms, and he was sobbing desperately. She saw the convulsive move-
ment of his shoulders. Mrs. Carey was frightened. A thing that had
always struck her about the child was that he seemed so collected.
She had never seen him cry. And now she realised that his calmness
was some instinctive shame of showing his fillings: he hid himself
to weep.
Without thinking that her husband disliked being wakened sud-
denly, she burst into the drawing-room.
“William, William,” she said. “The boy’s crying as though his
heart would break.”
Mr. Carey sat up and disentangled himself from the rug about his legs.

36
 W Somerset Maugham

“What’s he got to cry about?”

“I don’t know.… Oh, William, we can’t let the boy be unhappy.
D’you think it’s our fault? If we’d had children we’d have known what
to do.”
Mr. Carey looked at her in perplexity. He felt extraordinarily helpless.
“He can’t be crying because I gave him the collect to learn. It’s not
more than ten lines.”
“Don’t you think I might take him some picture books to look at,
William? There are some of the Holy Land. There couldn’t be any-
thing wrong in that.”
“Very well, I don’t mind.”
Mrs. Carey went into the study. To collect books was Mr. Carey’s
only passion, and he never went into Tercanbury without spending
an hour or two in the second-hand shop; he always brought back
four or five musty volumes. He never read them, for he had long
lost the habit of reading, but he liked to turn the pages, look at the
illustrations if they were illustrated, and mend the bindings. He
welcomed wet days because on them he could stay at home without
pangs of conscience and spend the afternoon with white of egg and a
glue-pot, patching up the Russia leather of some battered quarto. He
had many volumes of old travels, with steel engravings, and Mrs.
Carey quickly found two which described Palestine. She coughed
elaborately at the door so that Philip should have time to compose
himself, she felt that he would be humiliated if she came upon him in
the midst of his tears, then she rattled the door handle. When she
went in Philip was poring over the prayer-book, hiding his eyes with
his hands so that she might not see he had been crying.
“Do you know the collect yet?” she said.
He did not answer for a moment, and she felt that he did not
trust his voice. She was oddly embarrassed.
“I can’t learn it by heart,” he said at last, with a gasp.
“Oh, well, never mind,” she said. “You needn’t. I’ve got some
picture books for you to look at. Come and sit on my lap, and we’ll
look at them together.”
Philip slipped off his chair and limped over to her. He looked
down so that she should not see his eyes. She put her arms round
him.

37
Of Human Bondage

“Look,” she said, “that’s the place where our blessed Lord was
born.”
She showed him an Eastern town with flat roofs and cupolas and
minarets. In the foreground was a group of palm-trees, and under
them were resting two Arabs and some camels. Philip passed his hand
over the picture as if he wanted to feel the houses and the loose
habiliments of the nomads.
“Read what it says,” he asked.
Mrs. Carey in her even voice read the opposite page. It was a
romantic narrative of some Eastern traveller of the thirties, pomp-
ous maybe, but fragrant with the emotion with which the East came
to the generation that followed Byron and Chateaubriand. In a
moment or two Philip interrupted her.
“I want to see another picture.”
When Mary Ann came in and Mrs. Carey rose to help her lay the
cloth. Philip took the book in his hands and hurried through the
illustrations. It was with difficulty that his aunt induced him to put
the book down for tea. He had forgotten his horrible struggle to get
the collect by heart; he had forgotten his tears. Next day it was
raining, and he asked for the book again. Mrs. Carey gave it him
joyfully. Talking over his future with her husband she had found
that both desired him to take orders, and this eagerness for the book
which described places hallowed by the presence of Jesus seemed a
good sign. It looked as though the boy’s mind addressed itself natu-
rally to holy things. But in a day or two he asked for more books.
Mr. Carey took him into his study, showed him the shelf in which
he kept illustrated works, and chose for him one that dealt with
Rome. Philip took it greedily. The pictures led him to a new amuse-
ment. He began to read the page before and the page after each
engraving to find out what it was about, and soon he lost all interest
in his toys.
Then, when no one was near, he took out books for himself; and
perhaps because the first impression on his mind was made by an
Eastern town, he found his chief amusement in those which de-
scribed the Levant. His heart beat with excitement at the pictures of
mosques and rich palaces; but there was one, in a book on
Constantinople, which peculiarly stirred his imagination. It was

38
 W Somerset Maugham

called the Hall of the Thousand Columns. It was a Byzantine cis-

tern, which the popular fancy had endowed with fantastic vastness;
and the legend which he read told that a boat was always moored at
the entrance to tempt the unwary, but no traveller venturing into
the darkness had ever been seen again. And Philip wondered whether
the boat went on for ever through one pillared alley after another or
came at last to some strange mansion.
One day a good fortune befell him, for he hit upon Lane’s trans-
lation of The Thousand Nights and a Night. He was captured first
by the illustrations, and then he began to read, to start with, the
stories that dealt with magic, and then the others; and those he
liked he read again and again. He could think of nothing else. He
forgot the life about him. He had to be called two or three times
before he would come to his dinner. Insensibly he formed the most
delightful habit in the world, the habit of reading: he did not know
that thus he was providing himself with a refuge from all the dis-
tress of life; he did not know either that he was creating for himself
an unreal world which would make the real world of every day a
source of bitter disappointment. Presently he began to read other
things. His brain was precocious. His uncle and aunt, seeing that he
occupied himself and neither worried nor made a noise, ceased to
trouble themselves about him. Mr. Carey had so many books that
he did not know them, and as he read little he forgot the odd lots he
had bought at one time and another because they were cheap. Hap-
hazard among the sermons and homilies, the travels, the lives of the
Saints, the Fathers, the histories of the church, were old-fashioned
novels; and these Philip at last discovered. He chose them by their
titles, and the first he read was The Lancashire Witches, and then
he read The Admirable Crichton, and then many more. Whenever
he started a book with two solitary travellers riding along the brink
of a desperate ravine he knew he was safe.
The summer was come now, and the gardener, an old sailor, made
him a hammock and fixed it up for him in the branches of a weep-
ing willow. And here for long hours he lay, hidden from anyone
who might come to the vicarage, reading, reading passionately. Time
passed and it was July; August came: on Sundays the church was
crowded with strangers, and the collection at the offertory often

39
Of Human Bondage

amounted to two pounds. Neither the Vicar nor Mrs. Carey went
out of the garden much during this period; for they disliked strange
faces, and they looked upon the visitors from London with aver-
sion. The house opposite was taken for six weeks by a gentleman
who had two little boys, and he sent in to ask if Philip would like to
go and play with them; but Mrs. Carey returned a polite refusal.
She was afraid that Philip would be corrupted by little boys from
London. He was going to be a clergyman, and it was necessary that
he should be preserved from contamination. She liked to see in him
an infant Samuel.

40
 W Somerset Maugham

X
THE CAREYS made up their minds to send Philip to King’s School at
Tercanbury. The neighbouring clergy sent their sons there. It was
united by long tradition to the Cathedral: its headmaster was an
honorary Canon, and a past headmaster was the Archdeacon. Boys
were encouraged there to aspire to Holy Orders, and the education
was such as might prepare an honest lad to spend his life in God’s
service. A preparatory school was attached to it, and to this it was
arranged that Philip should go. Mr. Carey took him into Tercanbury
one Thursday afternoon towards the end of September. All day Philip
had been excited and rather frightened. He knew little of school life
but what he had read in the stories of The Boy’s Own Paper. He had
also read Eric, or Little by Little.
When they got out of the train at Tercanbury, Philip felt sick with
apprehension, and during the drive in to the town sat pale and si-
lent. The high brick wall in front of the school gave it the look of a
prison. There was a little door in it, which opened on their ringing;
and a clumsy, untidy man came out and fetched Philip’s tin trunk
and his play-box. They were shown into the drawing-room; it was
filled with massive, ugly furniture, and the chairs of the suite were
placed round the walls with a forbidding rigidity. They waited for
the headmaster.
“What’s Mr. Watson like?” asked Philip, after a while.
“You’ll see for yourself.”
There was another pause. Mr. Carey wondered why the headmas-
ter did not come. Presently Philip made an effort and spoke again.
“Tell him I’ve got a club-foot,” he said.
Before Mr. Carey could speak the door burst open and Mr. Watson
swept into the room. To Philip he seemed gigantic. He was a man of
over six feet high, and broad, with enormous hands and a great red

41
Of Human Bondage

beard; he talked loudly in a jovial manner; but his aggressive cheer-

fulness struck terror in Philip’s heart. He shook hands with Mr.
Carey, and then took Philip’s small hand in his.
“Well, young fellow, are you glad to come to school?” he shouted.
Philip reddened and found no word to answer.
“How old are you?”
“Nine,” said Philip.
“You must say sir,” said his uncle.
“I expect you’ve got a good lot to learn,” the headmaster bellowed
cheerily.
To give the boy confidence he began to tickle him with rough
fingers. Philip, feeling shy and uncomfortable, squirmed under his
touch.
“I’ve put him in the small dormitory for the present.... You’ll like
that, won’t you?” he added to Philip. “Only eight of you in there.
You won’t feel so strange.”
Then the door opened, and Mrs. Watson came in. She was a dark
woman with black hair, neatly parted in the middle. She had curi-
ously thick lips and a small round nose. Her eyes were large and
black. There was a singular coldness in her appearance. She seldom
spoke and smiled more seldom still. Her husband introduced Mr.
Carey to her, and then gave Philip a friendly push towards her.
“This is a new boy, Helen, His name’s Carey.”
Without a word she shook hands with Philip and then sat down,
not speaking, while the headmaster asked Mr. Carey how much
Philip knew and what books he had been working with. The Vicar
of Blackstable was a little embarrassed by Mr. Watson’s boisterous
heartiness, and in a moment or two got up.
“I think I’d better leave Philip with you now.”
“That’s all right,” said Mr. Watson. “He’ll be safe with me. He’ll
get on like a house on fire. Won’t you, young fellow?”
Without waiting for an answer from Philip the big man burst into a
great bellow of laughter. Mr. Carey kissed Philip on the forehead and
went away.
“Come along, young fellow,” shouted Mr. Watson. “I’ll show you
the school-room.”
He swept out of the drawing-room with giant strides, and Philip

42
 W Somerset Maugham

hurriedly limped behind him. He was taken into a long, bare room
with two tables that ran along its whole length; on each side of
them were wooden forms.
“Nobody much here yet,” said Mr. Watson. “I’ll just show you
the playground, and then I’ll leave you to shift for yourself.”
Mr. Watson led the way. Philip found himself in a large play-
ground with high brick walls on three sides of it. On the fourth side
was an iron railing through which you saw a vast lawn and beyond
this some of the buildings of King’s School. One small boy was
wandering disconsolately, kicking up the gravel as he walked.
“Hulloa, Venning,” shouted Mr. Watson. “When did you turn
up?”
The small boy came forward and shook hands.
“Here’s a new boy. He’s older and bigger than you, so don’t you
bully him.”
The headmaster glared amicably at the two children, filling them
with fear by the roar of his voice, and then with a guffaw left them.
“What’s your name?”
“Carey.”
“What’s your father?”
“He’s dead.”
“Oh! Does your mother wash?”
“My mother’s dead, too.”
Philip thought this answer would cause the boy a certain awk-
wardness, but Venning was not to be turned from his facetiousness
for so little.
“Well, did she wash?” he went on.
“Yes,” said Philip indignantly.
“She was a washerwoman then?”
“No, she wasn’t.”
“Then she didn’t wash.”
The little boy crowed with delight at the success of his dialectic.
Then he caught sight of Philip’s feet.
“What’s the matter with your foot?”
Philip instinctively tried to withdraw it from sight. He hid it be-
hind the one which was whole.
“I’ve got a club-foot,” he answered.

43
Of Human Bondage

“How did you get it?”

“I’ve always had it.”
“Let’s have a look.”
“No.”
“Don’t then.”
The little boy accompanied the words with a sharp kick on Philip’s
shin, which Philip did not expect and thus could not guard against.
The pain was so great that it made him gasp, but greater than the
pain was the surprise. He did not know why Venning kicked him.
He had not the presence of mind to give him a black eye. Besides,
the boy was smaller than he, and he had read in The Boy’s Own
Paper that it was a mean thing to hit anyone smaller than yourself.
While Philip was nursing his shin a third boy appeared, and his
tormentor left him. In a little while he noticed that the pair were
talking about him, and he felt they were looking at his feet. He grew
hot and uncomfortable.
But others arrived, a dozen together, and then more, and they
began to talk about their doings during the holidays, where they
had been, and what wonderful cricket they had played. A few new
boys appeared, and with these presently Philip found himself talk-
ing. He was shy and nervous. He was anxious to make himself pleas-
ant, but he could not think of anything to say. He was asked a great
many questions and answered them all quite willingly. One boy
asked him whether he could play cricket.
“No,” answered Philip. “I’ve got a club-foot.”
The boy looked down quickly and reddened. Philip saw that he
felt he had asked an unseemly question. He was too shy to apologise
and looked at Philip awkwardly.

44
 W Somerset Maugham

XI
NEXT MORNING when the clanging of a bell awoke Philip he looked
round his cubicle in astonishment. Then a voice sang out, and he
remembered where he was.
“Are you awake, Singer?”
The partitions of the cubicle were of polished pitch-pine, and
there was a green curtain in front. In those days there was little
thought of ventilation, and the windows were closed except when
the dormitory was aired in the morning.
Philip got up and knelt down to say his prayers. It was a cold
morning, and he shivered a little; but he had been taught by his
uncle that his prayers were more acceptable to God if he said them
in his nightshirt than if he waited till he was dressed. This did not
surprise him, for he was beginning to realise that he was the crea-
ture of a God who appreciated the discomfort of his worshippers.
Then he washed. There were two baths for the fifty boarders, and
each boy had a bath once a week. The rest of his washing was done
in a small basin on a wash-stand, which with the bed and a chair,
made up the furniture of each cubicle. The boys chatted gaily while
they dressed. Philip was all ears. Then another bell sounded, and
they ran downstairs. They took their seats on the forms on each side
of the two long tables in the school-room; and Mr. Watson, fol-
lowed by his wife and the servants, came in and sat down. Mr. Watson
read prayers in an impressive manner, and the supplications thun-
dered out in his loud voice as though they were threats personally
addressed to each boy. Philip listened with anxiety. Then Mr. Watson
read a chapter from the Bible, and the servants trooped out. In a
moment the untidy youth brought in two large pots of tea and on a
second journey immense dishes of bread and butter.
Philip had a squeamish appetite, and the thick slabs of poor but-

45
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
 Sure enough the first heat come off and About Ben Ahem went off
his stride, up the back stretch, and looked like a wooden horse or a
sick one, and come in to be last. Then this Wilbur Wessen went
down to the betting place under the grand stand and there I was
with the two girls, and when that Miss Woodbury was looking the
other way once, Lucy Wessen kinda, with her shoulder you know,
kinda touched me. Not just tucking down, I don’t mean. You know
how a woman can do. They get close, but not getting gay either. You
know what they do. Gee whizz.
And then they give me a jolt. What they had done, when I didn’t
know, was to get together, and they had decided Wilbur Wessen
would bet fifty dollars, and the two girls had gone and put in ten
dollars each, of their own money, too. I was sick then, but I was
sicker later.
About the gelding, About Ben Ahem, and their winning their
money, I wasn’t worried a lot about that. It come out O.K. Ahem
stepped the next three heats like a bushel of spoiled eggs going to
market before they could be found out, and Wilbur Wessen had got
nine to two for the money. There was something else eating at me.
Because Wilbur come back, after he had bet the money, and after
that he spent most of his time talking to that Miss Woodbury, and
Lucy Wessen and I was left alone together like on a desert island.
Gee, if I’d only been on the square or if there had been any way of
getting myself on the square. There ain’t any Walter Mathers, like I
said to her and them, and there hasn’t ever been one, but if there
was, I bet I’d go to Marietta, Ohio, and shoot him tomorrow.
There I was, big boob that I am. Pretty soon the race was over,
and Wilbur had gone down and collected our money, and we had a
hack down-town, and he stood us a swell supper at the West House,
and a bottle of champagne beside.
And I was with that girl and she wasn’t saying much, and I wasn’t
saying much either. One thing I know. She wasn’t stuck on me
because of the lie about my father being rich and all that. There’s a
way you know.... Craps amighty. There’s a kind of girl, you see just
once in your life, and if you don’t get busy and make hay, then
you’re gone for good and all, and might as well go jump off a bridge.
They give you a look from inside of them somewhere, and it ain’t no
vamping, and what it means is—you want that girl to be your wife,
and you want nice things around her like flowers and swell clothes,
and you want her to have the kids you’re going to have, and you
want good music played and no rag time. Gee whizz.
There’s a place over near Sandusky, across a kind of bay, and it’s
called Cedar Point. And after we had supper we went over to it in a
launch, all by ourselves. Wilbur and Miss Lucy and that Miss
Woodbury had to catch a ten o’clock train back to Tiffin, Ohio,
because, when you’re out with girls like that you can’t get careless
and miss any trains and stay out all night, like you can with some
kinds of Janes.
And Wilbur blowed himself to the launch and it cost him fifteen
cold plunks, but I wouldn’t never have knew if I hadn’t listened. He
wasn’t no tin horn kind of a sport.
Over at the Cedar Point place, we didn’t stay around where there
was a gang of common kind of cattle at all.
There was big dance halls and dining places for yaps, and there
was a beach you could walk along and get where it was dark, and
we went there.
She didn’t talk hardly at all and neither did I, and I was thinking
how glad I was my mother was all right, and always made us kids
learn to eat with a fork at table, and not swill soup, and not be noisy
and rough like a gang you see around a race track that way.
Then Wilbur and his girl went away up the beach and Lucy and I
sat down in a dark place, where there was some roots of old trees,
the water had washed up, and after that the time, till we had to go
back in the launch and they had to catch their trains, wasn’t nothing
at all. It went like winking your eye.
 Here’s how it was. The place we were setting in was dark, like I
said, and there was the roots from that old stump sticking up like
arms, and there was a watery smell, and the night was like—as if
you could put your hand out and feel it—so warm and soft and dark
and sweet like an orange.
I most cried and I most swore and I most jumped up and danced,
I was so mad and happy and sad.
When Wilbur come back from being alone with his girl, and she
saw him coming, Lucy she says, “we got to go to the train now,” and
she was most crying too, but she never knew nothing I knew, and
she couldn’t be so all busted up. And then, before Wilbur and Miss
Woodbury got up to where we was, she put her face up and kissed
me quick and put her head up against me and she was all quivering
and—Gee whizz.

Sometimes I hope I have cancer and die. I guess you know what I
mean. We went in the launch across the bay to the train like that,
and it was dark, too. She whispered and said it was like she and I
could get out of the boat and walk on the water, and it sounded
foolish, but I knew what she meant.
And then quick we were right at the depot, and there was a big
gang of yaps, the kind that goes to the fairs, and crowded and
milling around like cattle, and how could I tell her? “It won’t be long
because you’ll write and I’ll write to you.” That’s all she said.
I got a chance like a hay barn afire. A swell chance I got.
And maybe she would write me, down at Marietta that way, and
the letter would come back, and stamped on the front of it by the
U.S.A. “there ain’t any such guy,” or something like that, whatever
they stamp on a letter that way.
And me trying to pass myself off for a bigbug and a swell—to her,
as decent a little body as God ever made. Craps amighty—a swell
chance I got!
 And then the train come in, and she got on it, and Wilbur Wessen
he come and shook hands with me, and that Miss Woodbury was
nice too and bowed to me, and I at her, and the train went and I
busted out and cried like a kid.
Gee, I could have run after that train and made Dan Patch look
like a freight train after a wreck but, socks amighty, what was the
use? Did you ever see such a fool?
I’ll bet you what—if I had an arm broke right now or a train had
run over my foot—I wouldn’t go to no doctor at all. I’d go set down
and let her hurt and hurt—that’s what I’d do.
I’ll bet you what—if I hadn’t a drunk that booze I’d a never been
such a boob as to go tell such a lie—that couldn’t never be made
straight to a lady like her.
I wish I had that fellow right here that had on a Windsor tie and
carried a cane. I’d smash him for fair. Gosh darn his eyes. He’s a big
fool—that’s what he is.
And if I’m not another you just go find me one and I’ll quit
working and be a bum and give him my job. I don’t care nothing for
working, and earning money, and saving it for no such boob as
myself.
THE TRIUMPH OF A MODERN
OR, SEND FOR THE LAWYER
 THE TRIUMPH OF A MODERN
OR, SEND FOR THE LAWYER

INASMUCH as I have put to myself the task of trying to tell you a

curious story in which I am myself concerned—in a strictly
secondary way you must of course understand—I will begin by
giving you some notion of myself.
Very well then, I am a man of thirty-two, rather small in size, with
sandy hair. I wear glasses. Until two years ago I lived in Chicago,
where I had a position as clerk in an office that afforded me a good
enough living. I have never married, being somewhat afraid of
women—in the flesh, in a way of speaking. In fancy and in my
imagination I have always been very bold but in the flesh women
have always frightened me horribly. They have a way of smiling
quietly as though to say——. But we will not go into that now.
Since boyhood I have had an ambition to be a painter, not, I will
confess, because of a desire to produce some great masterpiece of
the arts, but simply and solely because I have always thought the
life painters lead would appeal to me.
I have always liked the notion (let’s be honest if we can) of going
about, wearing a hat, tipped a little to the side of my head, sporting
a moustache, carrying a cane and speaking in an off-hand way of
such things as form, rhythm, the effects of light and masses,
surfaces, etc., etc. During my life I have read a good many books
concerning painters and their work, their friendships and their loves
and when I was in Chicago and poor and was compelled to live in a
small room alone, I assure you I carried off many a dull weary
evening by imagining myself a painter of wide renown in the world.
 It was afternoon and having finished my day’s work I went
strolling off to the studio of another painter. He was still at work and
there were two models in the room, women in the nude sitting
about. One of them smiled at me, I thought a little wistfully, but
pshaw, I am too blasé for anything of that sort.
I go across the room to my friend’s canvas and stand looking at it.
Now he is looking at me, a little anxiously. I am the greater man,
you understand. That is frankly and freely acknowledged. Whatever
else may be said against my friend he never claimed to be my equal.
In fact it is generally understood, wherever I go, that I am the
greater man.
“Well?” says my friend. You see he is fairly hanging on my words,
as the saying goes; in short, he is waiting for me to speak with the
air of one about to be hanged.
Why? The devil! Why does he put everything up to me? One gets
tired carrying such responsibility upon one’s shoulders. A painter
should be the judge of his own work and not embarrass his fellow
painters by asking questions. That is my method.
Very well then. If I speak sharply you have only yourself to blame.
“The yellow you have been using is a little muddy. The arm of this
woman is not felt. In painting one should feel the arm of a woman.
What I advise is that you change your palette. You have scattered
too much. Pull it together. A painting should stick together as a wet
snow ball thrown by a boy clings to a wall.”
When I had reached the age of thirty, that is to say two years ago,
I received from my aunt, the sister of my father to be exact, a small
fortune I had long been dreaming I might possibly inherit.
My aunt I had never seen, but I had always been saying to myself,
“I must go see my aunt. The old lady will be sore at me and when
she dies will not leave me a cent.”
And then, lucky fellow that I am, I did go to see her just before
she died.
 Filled with determination to put the thing through I set out from
Chicago, and it is not my fault that I did not spend the day with her.
Even although my aunt is (as I am not fool enough not to know that
you know) a woman I would have spent the day with her but that it
was impossible.
She lived at Madison, Wisconsin, and I went there on Saturday
morning. The house was locked and the windows boarded up.
Fortunately, at just that moment, a mail carrier came along and,
upon my telling him that I was my aunt’s nephew, gave me her
address. He also gave me some news concerning her.
For years she had been a sufferer from hay-fever and every
summer had to have a change of climate.
That was an opportunity for me. I went at once to a hotel and
wrote her a letter telling of my visit and expressing, to the utmost of
my ability, my sorrow in not having found her at home. “I have been
a long time doing this job but now that I am at it I fancy I shall do it
rather well,” I said to myself.
A sort of feeling came into my hand, as it were. I can’t just say
what it was but as soon as I sat down I knew very well I should be
eloquent. For the moment I was positively a poet.
In the first place, and as one should in writing a letter to a lady, I
spoke of the sky. “The sky is full of mottled clouds,” I said. Then,
and I frankly admit in a brutally casual way, I spoke of myself as one
practically prostrated with grief. To tell the truth I did not just know
what I was doing. I had got the fever for writing words, you see.
They fairly flowed out of my pen.
I had come, I said, on a long and weary journey to the home of
my only female relative, and here I threw into the letter some
reference to the fact that I was an orphan. “Imagine,” I wrote, “the
sorrow and desolation in my heart at finding the house unoccupied
and the windows boarded up.”
It was there, sitting in the hotel at Madison, Wisconsin, with the
pen in my hand, that I made my fortune. Something bold and heroic
came into my mood and, without a moment’s hesitation, I
mentioned in my letter what should never be mentioned to a
woman, unless she be an elderly woman of one’s own family, and
then only by a physician perhaps—I spoke of my aunt’s breasts,
using the plural.
I had hoped, I said, to lay my tired head on her breasts. To tell
the truth I had become drunken with words and now, how glad I am
that I did. Mr. George Moore, Clive Bell, Paul Rosenfeld, and others
of the most skillful writers of our English speech, have written a
great deal about painters and, as I have already explained, there
was not a book or magazine article in English and concerning
painters, their lives and works, procurable in Chicago, I had not
read.
What I am now striving to convey to you is something of my own
pride in my literary effort in the hotel at Madison, Wisconsin, and
surely, if I was, at that moment an artist, no other artist has ever
had such quick and wholehearted recognition.
Having spoken of putting my tired head on my aunt’s breasts
(poor woman, she died, never having seen me) I went on to give
the general impression—which by the way was quite honest and
correct—of a somewhat boyish figure, rather puzzled, wandering in a
confused way through life. The imaginary but correct enough figure
of myself, born at the moment in my imagination, had made its way
through dismal swamps of gloom, over the rough hills of adversity
and through the dry deserts of loneliness, toward the one spot in all
this world where it had hoped to find rest and peace—that is to say
upon the bosom of its aunt. However, as I have already explained,
being a thorough modern and full of the modern boldness, I did not
use the word bosom, as an old-fashioned writer might have done. I
used the word breasts. When I had finished writing tears were in my
eyes.
The letter I wrote on that day covered some seven sheets of hotel
paper—finely written to the margins—and cost four cents to mail.
 “Shall I mail it or shall I not?” I said to myself as I came out of the
hotel office and stood before a mail box. The letter was balanced
between my finger and thumb.
“Eeny, meeny, miny, mo,
Catch a nigger by the toe.”

The forefinger of my left hand—I was holding the letter in my

right hand—touched my nose, mouth, forehead, eyes, chin, neck,
shoulder, arm, hand and then tapped the letter itself. No doubt I
fully intended, from the first, to drop it. I had been doing the work
of an artist. Well, artists are always talking of destroying their own
work but few do it, and those who do are perhaps the real heroes of
life.
And so down into the mail box it went with a thud and my fortune
was made. The letter was received by my aunt, who was lying abed
of an illness that was to destroy her—she had, it seems, other things
beside hay-fever the matter with her—and she altered her will in my
favor. She had intended leaving her money, a tidy sum yielding an
income of five thousand a year, to a fund to be established for the
study of methods for the cure of hay-fever—that is to say, really you
see, to her fellow sufferers—but instead left it to me. My aunt could
not find her spectacles and a nurse—may the gods bring her bright
days and a good husband—read the letter aloud. Both women were
deeply touched and my aunt wept. I am only telling you the facts,
you understand, but I would like to suggest that this whole incident
might well be taken as proof of the power of modern art. From the
first I have been a firm believer in the moderns. I am one who, as
an art critic might word it, has been right down through the
movements. At first I was an impressionist and later a cubist, a post-
impressionist, and even a vorticist. Time after time, in my imaginary
life, as a painter, I have been quite swept off my feet. For example I
remember Picasso’s blue period ... but we’ll not go into that.
What I am trying to say is that, having this faith in modernity, if
one may use the word thus, I did find within myself a peculiar
boldness as I sat in the hotel writing room at Madison, Wisconsin. I
used the word breasts (in the plural, you understand) and everyone
will admit that it is a bold and modern word to use in a letter to an
aunt one has never seen. It brought my aunt and me into one
family. Her modesty never could have admitted anything else.
And then, my aunt was really touched. Afterward I talked to the
nurse and made her a rather handsome present for her part in the
affair. When the letter had been read my aunt felt overwhelmingly
drawn to me. She turned her face to the wall and her shoulders
shook. Do not think that I am not also touched as I write this. “Poor
lad,” my aunt said to the nurse, “I will make things easier for him.
Send for the lawyer.”
“UNUSED”
 “UNUSED”

A TALE OF LIFE IN OHIO

“U NUSED,” that was one of the words the Doctor used that day in
speaking of her. He, the doctor, was an extraordinarily large
and immaculately clean man, by whom I was at that time employed.
I swept out his office, mowed the lawn before his residence, took
care of the two horses in his stable and did odd jobs about the yard
and kitchen—such as bringing in firewood, putting water in a tub in
the sun behind a grape arbor for the doctor’s bath and even
sometimes, during his bath, scrubbing for him those parts of his
broad back he himself could not reach.
The doctor had a passion in life with which he early infected me.
He loved fishing and as he knew all of the good places in the river,
several miles west of town, and in Sandusky Bay, some nineteen or
twenty miles to the north, we often went off for long delightful days
together.
It was late in the afternoon of such a fishing day in the late June,
when the doctor and I were together in a boat on the bay, that a
farmer came running to the shore, waving his arms and calling to
the doctor. Little May Edgley’s body had been found floating near a
river’s mouth half a mile away, and, as she had been dead for
several days, as the doctor had just had a good bite, and as there
was nothing he could do anyway, it was all nonsense, his being
called. I remembered how he growled and grumbled. He did not
then know what had happened but the fish were just beginning to
bite splendidly, I had just landed a fine bass and the good evening’s
fishing was all ahead of us. Well, you know how it is—a doctor is
always at everyone’s beck and call.
“Dang it all! That’s the way it always goes! Here we are—as good
a fishing evening as we’ll find this summer—wind just right and the
sky clouding over—and will you look at my dang luck? A doctor in
the neighborhood and that farmer knows it and so, just to
accommodate me, he goes and stubs his toe, like as not, or his boy
falls out of a barn loft, or his old woman gets the toothache. Like as
not it’s one of his women folks. I know ’em! His wife’s got an
unmarried sister living with her. Dang sentimental old maid! She’s
got a nervous complaint—gets all worked up and thinks she’s going
to die. Die nothing! I know that kind. Lots of ’em like to have a
doctor fooling around. Let a doctor come near, so they can get him
alone in a room, and they’ll spend hours talking about themselves—
if he’ll let ’em.”
The doctor was reeling in his line, grumbling and complaining as
he did so and then, suddenly, with the characteristic cheerfulness
that I had seen carry him with a smile on his lips through whole
days and nights of work and night driving over rough frozen earth
roads in the winter, he picked up the oars and rowed vigorously
ashore. When I offered to take the oars he shook his head. “No kid,
it’s good for the figure,” he said, looking down at his huge paunch.
He smiled. “I got to keep my figure. If I don’t I’ll be losing some of
my practice among the unmarried women.”
As for the business ashore—there was May Edgley, of our town,
drowned in that out of the way place, and her body had been in the
water several days. It had been found among some willows that
grew near the mouth of a deep creek that emptied into the bay, had
lodged in among the roots of the willows, and when we got ashore
the farmer, his son and the hired man, had got it out and had laid it
on some boards near a barn that faced the bay.
That was my own first sight of death and I shall not forget the
moment when I followed the doctor in among the little group of
silent people standing about and saw the dead, discolored and
bloated body of the woman lying there.
The doctor was used to that sort of thing, but to me it was all new
and terrifying. I remember that I looked once and then ran away.
Dashing into the barn I went to lean against the feedbox of a stall,
where an old farm-horse was eating hay. The warm day outside had
suddenly seemed cold and chill but in the barn it was warm again.
Oh, what a lovely thing to a boy is a barn, with the rich warm
comforting smell of the cured hay and the animal life, lying like a
soft bed over it all. At the doctor’s house, while I lived and worked
there, the doctor’s wife used to put on my bed, on winter nights, a
kind of soft warm bed cover called a “comfortable.” That’s what it
was like to me that day in the barn when we had just found May
Edgley’s body.
As for the body—well, May Edgley had been a small woman with
small firm hands and in one of her hands, tightly gripped, when they
had found her, was a woman’s hat—a great broad-brimmed gaudy
thing it must have been, and there had been a huge ostrich feather
sticking out of the top, such an ostrich feather as you see sometimes
sticking out of the hat of a kind of big flashy woman at the horse
races or at second-rate summer resorts near cities.
It stayed in my mind, that bedraggled ostrich feather, little May
Edgley’s hand had gripped so determinedly when death came, and
as I stood shivering in the barn I could see it again, as I had so
often seen it perched on the head of big bold Lil Edgley, May
Edgley’s sister, as she went, half-defiantly always, through the
streets of our town, Bidwell, Ohio.
And then as I stood shivering with boyish dread of death in that
old barn, the farm-horse put his head through an opening at the
front of the stall and rubbed his soft warm nose against my cheek.
The farmer, on whose place we were, must have been one who was
kind to his animals. The old horse rubbed his nose up and down my
cheek. “You are a long ways from death, my lad, and when the time
comes for you you won’t shiver so much. I am old and I know.
Death is a kind comforting thing to those who are through with their
lives.”
Something of that sort the old farm-horse seemed to be saying
and at any rate he quieted me, took the fear and the chill all out of
me.
It was when the doctor and I were driving home together that
evening in the dusk, and after all arrangements for sending May
Edgley’s body back to town and to her people had been made, that
he spoke of her and used the word I am now using as the title for
her story. The doctor said a great many things that evening that I
cannot now remember and I only remember how the night came
softly on and how the grey road faded out of sight, and then how
the moon came out and the road that had been grey became silvery
white, with patches of inky blackness where the shadows of trees
fell across it. The doctor was one sane enough not to talk down to a
boy. How often he spoke intimately to me of his impressions of men
and events! There were many things in the fat old doctor’s mind of
which his patients knew nothing, but of which his stable boy knew.
The doctor’s old bay horse went steadily along, doing his work as
cheerfully as the doctor did his and the doctor smoked a cigar. He
spoke of the dead woman, May Edgley, and of what a bright girl she
had been.
As for her story—he did not tell it completely. I was myself much
alive that evening—that is to say the imaginative side of myself was
much alive—and the doctor was as a sower, sowing seed in a fertile
soil. He was as one who goes through a wide long field, newly
plowed by the hand of Death, the plowman, and as he went along
he flung wide the seeds of May Edgley’s story, wide, far over the
land, over the rich fertile land of a boy’s awakening imagination.
 Chapter I

T HERE were three boys and as many girls in the Edgley family of
Bidwell, Ohio, and of the girls Lillian and Kate were known in a
dozen towns along the railroad that ran between Cleveland and
Toledo. The fame of Lillian, the eldest, went far. On the streets of
the neighboring towns of Clyde, Norwalk, Fremont, Tiffin, and even
in Toledo and Cleveland, she was well known. On summer evenings
she went up and down our main street wearing a huge hat with a
white ostrich feather that fell down almost to her shoulder. She, like
her sister Kate, who never succeeded in attaining to a position of
prominence in the town’s life, was a blonde with cold staring blue
eyes. On almost any Friday evening she might have been seen
setting forth on some adventure, from which she did not return until
the following Monday or Tuesday. It was evident the adventures
were profitable, as the Edgley family were working folk and it is
certain her brothers did not purchase for her the endless number of
new dresses in which she arrayed herself.
It was a Friday evening in the summer and Lillian appeared on the
upper main street of Bidwell. Two dozen men and boys loafed by the
station platform, awaiting the arrival of the New York Central train,
eastward bound. They stared at Lillian who stared back at them. In
the west, from which direction the train was presently to come, the
sun went down over young corn fields. A dusky golden splendor lit
the skies and the loafers were awed into silence, hushed, both by
the beauty of the evening and by the challenge in Lillian’s eyes.
Then the train arrived and the spell of silence was broken. The
conductor and brakeman jumped to the station platform and waved
their hands at Lillian and the engineer put his head out of the cab.
Aboard the train Lillian found a seat by herself and as soon as the
train had started and the fares were collected the conductor came to
sit with her. When the train arrived at the next town and the
conductor was compelled to attend to his affairs, the brakeman
came to lean over her seat. The men talked in undertones and
occasionally the silence in the car was broken by outbursts of
laughter. Other women from Bidwell, going to visit relatives in
distant towns, were embarrassed. They turned their heads to look
out at car windows and their cheeks grew red.
On the station platform at Bidwell, where darkness was settling
down over the scene, the men and boys still lingered about speaking
of Lillian and her adventures. “She can ride anywhere she pleases
and never has to pay a cent of fare,” declared a tall bearded man
who leaned against the station door. He was a buyer of pigs and
cattle and was compelled to go to the Cleveland market once every
week. The thought of Lillian, the light o’ love traveling free over the
railroads filled his heart with envy and anger.
The entire Edgley family bore a shaky reputation in Bidwell but
with the exception of May, the youngest of the girls, they were
people who knew how to take care of themselves. For years Jake,
the eldest of the boys, tended bar for Charley Shuter in a saloon in
lower Main Street and then, to everyone’s surprise, he bought out
the place. “Either Lillian gave him the money or he stole it from
Charley,” the men said, but nevertheless, and throwing moral
standards aside, they went into the bar to buy drinks. In Bidwell
vice, while openly condemned, was in secret looked upon as a mark
of virility in young manhood.
Frank and Will Edgley were teamsters and draymen like their
father John and were hard working men. They owned their own
teams and asked favors of no man and when they were not at work
did not seek the society of others. Late on Saturday afternoons,
when the week’s work was done and the horses cleaned, fed and
bedded down for the night they dressed themselves in black suits,
put on white collars and black derby hats and went into our main
street to drink themselves drunk. By ten o’clock they had succeeded
and went reeling homeward. When in the darkness under the maple
trees on Vine or Walnut Streets they met a Bidwell citizen, also
homeward bound, a row started. “Damn you, get out of our way.
Get off the sidewalk,” Frank Edgley shouted and the two men rushed
forward intent on a fight.
One evening in the month of June, when there was a moon and
when insects sang loudly in the long grass between the sidewalks
and the road, the Edgley brothers met Ed Pesch, a young German
farmer, out for an evening’s walk with Caroline Dupee, daughter of a
Bidwell drygoods merchant, and the fight the Edgley boys had long
been looking for took place. Frank Edgley shouted and he and his
brother plunged forward but Ed Pesch did not run into the road and
leave them to go triumphantly homeward. He fought and the
brothers were badly beaten, and on Monday morning appeared
driving their team and with faces disfigured and eyes blackened. For
a week they went up and down alleyways and along residence
streets, delivering ice and coal to houses and merchandise to the
stores without lifting their eyes or speaking. The town was delighted
and clerks ran from store to store making comments, they longed to
repeat within hearing of one of the brothers. “Have you seen the
Edgley boys?” they asked one another. “They got what was coming
to them. Ed Pesch gave them what for.” The more excitable and
imaginative of the clerks spoke of the fight in the darkness as
though they had been on hand and had seen every blow struck.
“They are bullies and can be beaten by any man who stands up for
his rights,” declared Walter Wills, a slender, nervous young man who
worked for Albert Twist, the grocer. The clerk hungered to be such
another fighter as Ed Pesch had proven himself. At night he went
home from the store in the soft darkness and imagined himself as
meeting the Edgleys. “I’ll show you—you big bullies,” he muttered
and his fists shot out, striking at nothingness. An eager strained
feeling ran along the muscles of his back and arms but his night time
courage did not abide with him through the day. On Wednesday
when Will Edgley came to the back door of the store, his wagon
loaded with salt in barrels, Walter went into the alleyway to enjoy
the sight of the cut lips and blackened eyes. Will stood with hands in
pockets looking at the ground. An uncomfortable silence ensued and
in the end it was broken by the voice of the clerk. “There’s no one
here and those barrels are heavy,” he said heartily. “I might as well
make myself useful and help you unload.” Taking off his coat Walter
Wills voluntarily helped at the task that belonged to Will Edgley, the
drayman.
If May Edgley, during her girlhood, rose higher than any of the
others of the Edgley family she also fell lower. “She had her chance
and threw it away,” was the word that went round and surely no one
else in that family ever had so completely the town’s sympathy.
Lillian Edgley was outside the pale of the town’s life, and Kate was
but a lesser edition of her sister. She waited on table at the Fownsby
House, and on almost any evening might have been seen walking
out with some traveling man. She also took the evening train to
neighboring towns but returned to Bidwell later on the same night or
at daylight the next morning. She did not prosper as Lillian did and
grew tired of the dullness of small town life. At twenty-two she went
to live in Cleveland where she got a job as cloak model in a large
store. Later she went on the road as an actress, in a burlesque
show, and Bidwell heard no more of her.
As for May Edgley, all through her childhood and until her
seventeenth year she was a model of good behavior. Everyone spoke
of it. She was, unlike the other Edgleys, small and dark, and unlike
her sisters dressed herself in plain neat-fitting clothes. As a young
girl in the public school she began to attract attention because of her
proficiency in the classes. Both Lillian and Kate Edgley had been
slovenly students, who spent their time ogling boys and the men
teachers but May looked at no one and as soon as school was
dismissed in the afternoon went home to her mother, a tall tired-
looking woman who seldom went out of her own house.
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