3/1/24
Somerset Maughan( 1874 to 1965) is in Penang visiting his old school friend and has just lost his money and needs to write another best seller. He finds the answer in Lesley, his host's wife, who relates a tale of love, hate, and betrayal. The hypocrisy of the British colonialists, the hypocrisy of Sun Yet Sen, who turns up to collect money for the Chinese revolution, the hypocrisy in marriage and friendship, and above all, the hypocrisy of love.‘The Letter’, one of the short stories in ‘The Casuarina Tree’.1921
This is a work of fiction but I have checked the historical facts given.
1947 The book starts in Doornfontein in East Cape, South African in the Karoo dessert, Lesley gets a letter from B.M.A .Maylaya She is called Tant Elsie and after 25 years is still an outsider there. This is a sheep farm 15 miles from Beaufort West. The book is The Casuarina Tree by Somerset Maughan. The book is about the 2 weeks that Willie Maughan and Gerald Huxton his secretary but also his gay lover, were guests of Robert and Lesley Hamlyn in Penang .March 1921 In Penang the Chinese speak Hokkien language spoken in Taiwan and FuJian Province. Gerald Huxton can't go back to England as he was caught "cottaging "- soliciting men in public toilets.
They mentioned that they had taken the writer Herman Hesse around when he visited Penang. The natives teeth are blood stained with beetle nut juice. Penang Island belonged to the Sultan of Kedah and Captain Francis Light obtained a lease for the East India Company, this was the first British outpost in S E Asia in.1786. From here they extended the company s reach to Malacca and Singapore. Tin mining here attracted workers from Southern China and indentured Indians were brought from India to work the rubber plantations.
Willie gets a proof copy of his latest book On a Chinese Screen he had left England after delivering the manuscript. Willie had travelled 1000 miles on the Yangtze in a rice barge, the longest river in China. He also receives a letter that he has lost his savings in America. During WW1 Maughan had been in the Secret Service running a network of agents from Geneva? Difference between a stammer and stutter
The Hamlyns have 2 sons at boarding school in England. Willie has a daughter 6 years old in England with his wife Syrie. Robert suffers from "asthma" and they talk of moving to the Karoo to his cousins.. They had copies of Willies 10 novels and 2 short story collections, as well as books on the Opium Wars(1839 -1860) Taiping Rebellion, (1850–64), Boxer Rebellion (1900)
Leslies brother Geoffrey Crosby wrote a short book of notes on Dr. Sun Yat Sen " A Man of the Southern Seas" ( Nanyang is the name for that part of the world) about his stay in Penang for 6 months
Willie and Syrie had attended First Nights in theater together, rode horses at Hyde Park but he resisted her demands for sexual contact and liked being at the Garrick Club or writing. He had married her as he had his reputation to preserve. Syrie had divorced Henry Welcome American pharmaceutical entrepreneur.
Lesleys brother Geoff owned and ran the Penang Post. Willies itinerary had been announced in Singapore in the Straits Times.
William Daniell RA (1769–1837) was an English landscape and marine painter, and had travelled in these places.
They found a Gaguan painting on a glass door of a hut and paid the peasant double the cost of a door. The other 2 glass doors had been smashed.
We all have power to change our past.. Robert got back from WW1 changed" shell shock" and Lesley had to cope with this. Willie was a doctor but wanted to give it up to write and Robert encouraged him to and gave him money.to tide him over. Willie now wanted to buy a villa and eventually settle in the South of Europe as he needed Gerald with him.
Willie said he loathed boarding school.- beating bullying imbecillic rules. Willie was born in Paris, he was a small kid when his mother died of tuberculosis. He was brought up by a childless uncle and aunt.
The trembling leaf is short stories of the South Seas 1921 Willie liked writing plays but earned better from books..
James Brook founded a European royal family in the East Rajah of Sarawak KCB (29 April 1803 – 11 June 1868),
Both Conrad's Lord Jim and Kipling Man who would be King are based on this.
A life without love is not worth writing about. I don't just write about adulatory I write about human weaknesses.
1910 Penang. Dr Sun Yat Sen(Sun Wen) was a revolutionary and the Chinese Government put a bounty on his head.
Ethel Proudlock the school Headmaster's wife who shot and killed William Steward.as he tried to rape her.. Robert had been introduced to the Proudlocks in Kuala Lumpur. Geoff had interviewed the President of the anti Opium Campaign. There were less than 800 Europeans in KL.
Leslie discovers that her husband Robert is having an affair, is it with some bored and unhappy wife? In Penang everyone knew everyone's business. A divorced woman was usually left destitute. She was 20 and Robert 40 when they married and were very compatible. With the Boxer Rebellion many fled Peking for Hong Kong
Romance of the three kingdoms 14th-century historical novel attributed to Luo Guanzhong. It is set in the turbulent years towards from 184 AD the end of the Han .Dynasty.
Sun Wen was born near Macau and lived with his brother on Honolulu.. He later studied further in Honk Kong. In China he led an uprising in Canton.. The Manchus are not Chinese. They are a separate ethnic group. Sun Wen had 2 wives but stood for equality of the sexes and freedom to modernize China.
Ethel and William Proudlock after their wedding left for London where she soon gave birth to their daughter. She was now to be tried for murder and put into the Pudoh jail. No European women had been tried in Malaya of murder. Ethel claimed that William had tried to rape her and she shot him. Lesley gave evidence that Ethel was not William Stewards mistress it was all gossip.
During WW1 Willie had been in the ambulance corp as a doctor. to get away from his wife Syrie. After Oscar Wilde's trial many men fled across the channel. Why were his stories frequently about unhappy marriage and adulatory. Robert had gassed in WW1 and returned a different person and suffered his damaged lungs his whole life.
1910Sun Wen had set up a Reading Club but this was really a front for his party. He had been deported from every place he had set foot in Hong Kong, Japan , Siam, and Singapore. 7 times he had tried to bring down the Manchu's and thousands had died as a result. Arthor father is president of the Chinese Anti- Opium Association. Arthor got involved as he was shocked to see the poverty.
1644 The Manchus vanquished the Ming emperors, and 1839 the English went to war to enforce opium on the Chinese.
1850 Taiping Rebellion, This was started by Hong Stu Chan who failed his civil service exam and though he was brother to Jesus. Missionaries set up in his conquered Nanking where he proclaimed himself Heavenly King and there were half a million Christians till the Imperial Army in 1864 conquered and executed him his son and followers.
. Arthor take her to his house where he has a collection of doors he bought up that were from old temples, and covered every wall, yet the houses front doors were bare. The house had belonged to his grandmother who fled from Nanking in 1864 to haven in Penang. Leslie would betray her husband but not his secret.
They had a very good social and sexual relationship and when he went of with Sun Wen he left her the key as a symbol, but she would not have him writing to her.
Sun Wen and 2 wives live under the same roof and he tells her "every marriage has its own rules".
She discovered that Roberts affair was with a Chinaman Peter Ong who she called his catamite (boy kept for homosexual purposes) Robert had watched Oscar Wilde's trial. Leslie knows that she is not at fault for the failure of their marriage. Willie had 4 plays running at the West End
At the Penang cemetery they see stones of early missionaries mostly in English but also French, German Dutch.
Frances Light had leased the land from the Sultan of Kedah to build a victualing station. James Scott was Francis Lights business partner and was a cousin to the writer Walter Scott. The settlers, nutmeg planter and missionaries , sailors , soldiers , traders and scoundrel's followed, including Thomas Leonowens. He was a low level clerk but his widow became governess to king Mongkut of Siam's brood. . The English governess and the Siamese Court by Anna Leonowens 1870.
Sun Wen saw overseas Chinese as a source of money to be milked.
Gerald had been deported from England as an undesirable alien. Leslie askes" Why do you marry us when you would rather hop into bed with a man" Willie says you don't know what the fear is like, what choice do we have.. Lesly answers "we are wives not martyrs"
Willie tells the story of a middle aged doctor whose wife has a lover and to punish her becomes Medical Officer in a remote Cholera area in China . He got Cholera and died and she was able to go back to Hong Kong and marry her lover. Cealum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt. by Horace (They change their sky, not their soul, who rush across the sea.)
When Sun Wen attacked British rule in Penang he was expelled from there. He travelled to England and then to American. His deportation resulted in great support of he followers in Penang and they collected money for him. An insurrection broke out in Canton, then Wuchang and flared across China.
Author left to Canton.
2012Jan. President Sun Yat Sen of the Republic of China had replaced the Ching dynasty and Chinese men everywhere snipped of the hair queues.. Lesley thus had a part in the Chinese Revolution and Chinese history. Here relationship to Arthur had given her the strength to remain in her marriage.
1911 The Sultan of Selangor announced that he would pardon Ethel but she had to leave Malaya , but the whites said they would never forgive her. Her husbands made her kill William? Ethel had to hide that her mother was Eurasian. She moved to England.
Lesley lied not to betray Ethel as she was in the same situation married to a gay man.
Penang has temple for Chinese , Javanese, Bengalis Siamese and Tamils as well as a synagogue.
She comments to Willie that he had never written about homosexuals' in his books.
1925 June Sun Wen died of liver cancer, he had divorced his wife and married the daughter of one the richest men in China. Willie had divorced Syrie . He was able to own a house by the sea in southern Europe.
1938 Lesley’s husband Robert died. Her son James was posted to Malaya in WW2 and is buried in the land he was born in. Lesley had prevented Ethel from being erased from history by telling the story to Willie. When Lesley gets the book she knows that Arthur is around and will she go and join him.
No comments:
Post a Comment