The Razor's Edge

by W. Somerset Maugham

The man I am writing about is not famous. It may be that he never will be. It may be that when his life at last comes to an end he will leave no more trace of his sojourn on earth than a stone thrown into a river leaves on the surface of the water. Then my book, if it is read at all, will be read only for what intrinsic interest it may possess. But it may be that the way of life that he has chosen for himself and the peculiar strength and sweetness of his character may have an ever-growing influence over his fellow men so that, long after his death perhaps, it may be realized that there lived in this age a very remarkable creature.

It is very difficult to know people and I don’t think one can ever really know any but one’s own countrymen. For men and women are not only themselves; they are also the region in which they were born, the city apartment or the farm in which they learnt to walk, the games they played as children, the old wives’ tales they overheard, the food they ate, the schools they attended, the sports they followed, the poets they read, and the God they believed in. It is all these things that have made them what they are, and these are the things that you can’t come to know by hearsay, you can only know them if you have lived them. You can only know them if you are them. And because you cannot know persons of a nation foreign to you except from observation, it is difficult to give them credibility in the pages of a book. Even so subtle and careful an observer as Henry James, though he lived in England for forty years, never managed to create an Englishman who was through and through English. For my part, except in a few short stories, I have never attempted to deal with any but my own countrymen, and if I have ventured to do otherwise in short stories it is because in them you can treat your characters more summarily. You give the reader broad indications and leave him to fill in the details. It may be asked why, if I turned Paul Gauguin into an Englishman, I could not do the same with the persons of this book. The answer is simple: I couldn’t. They would not then have been the people...

Anyhow he had enough to live in what he considered was the proper style for a gentleman without trying to earn money,

They were afraid he was a snob. And of course he was. He was a colossal snob. He was a snob without shame. He would put up with any affront, he would ignore any rebuff, he would swallow any rudeness to get asked to a party he wanted to go to or to make a connection with some crusty old dowager of great name. He was indefatigable. When he had fixed his eye on his prey he hunted it with the persistence of a botanist who will expose himself to dangers of flood, earthquake, fever, and hostile natives to find an orchid of peculiar rarity. The war of 1914 gave him his final chance. When it broke out he joined an ambulance corps and served first in Flanders and then in the Argonne; he came back after a year with a red ribbon in his buttonhole and secured a position in the Red Cross in Paris. By then he was in affluent circumstances and he contributed generously to the good works patronized by persons of consequence. He was always ready with his exquisite taste and his gift for organization to help in any charitable function that was widely publicized. He became a member of the two most exclusive clubs in Paris. He was ce cher Elliott to the greatest ladies in France. He had finally arrived.

During the years that followed our acquaintance became fairly intimate without ever developing into friendship. I doubt whether it was possible for Elliott Templeton to be a friend. He took no interest in people apart from their social position.

“People in America are so inconsiderate in the way they give letters. It’s not that I’m not delighted to see the people who are sent to me, but I really don’t see why I should inflict them on my friends.”

“They want to meet you so much,” he wrote to flatter me. “Mrs. So-and-so is a very cultivated woman and she’s read every word you’ve written.” Mrs. So-and-so would then tell me she’d so much enjoyed my book Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traill and congratulate me on my play The Mollusc. The first of these was written by Hugh Walpole and the second by Hubert Henry Davies.

He had a pleasantly malicious tongue and there was no scandal about these exalted personages that did not reach his ears.

Now and again her glance rested on him for a moment and I seemed to see in her expression not only love but fondness. Their eyes met and there was in his a tenderness that was beautiful to see. There is nothing more touching than the sight of young love, and I, a middle-aged man then, envied them, but at the same time, I couldn’t imagine why, I felt sorry for them.

We had now arrived at the museum and our attention was directed to the pictures. Once more I was impressed by Elliott’s knowledge and taste. He shepherded me around the rooms as though I were a group of tourists, and no professor of art could have discoursed more instructively than he did. Making up my mind to come again by myself when I could wander at will and have a good time, I submitted; after a while he looked at his watch. “Let us go,” he said. “I never spend more than one hour in a gallery. That is as long as one’s power of appreciation persists. We will finish another day.”

“Why are you reading this?” I asked. “I’m very ignorant.” “You’re also very young,” I smiled.

After what I’d been through I felt I couldn’t go back to school. I learned nothing at my prep school anyway. I felt I couldn’t enter into a freshman’s life. They wouldn’t have liked me. I didn’t want to act a part I didn’t feel.

When you’re eighteen your emotions are violent, but they’re not durable.”

It was a dull landscape, but the sunshine and the glowing tints of the waning year gave it that day an intimate loveliness. There was an exhilaration in the great space that was spread before you. Cold, bleak, and dreary as it must have been in winter, dry, sunbaked, and oppressive as it may have been in the dog days, just then it was strangely exciting, for the vastness of the view invited the soul to adventure.

Then I strolled in the gardens, recapturing the memories of my youth. Nothing had changed. They might have been the same students who walked along the gravel paths in pairs, eagerly discussing the writers who excited them. They might have been the same children who trundled the same hoops under the watchful eyes of the same nurses. They might have been the same old men who basked in the sunshine, reading the morning paper. They might have been the same middle-aged women in mourning who sat on the free benches and gossiped with one another about the price of food and the misdeeds of servants.

“I can’t, darling. It would be death to me. It would be the betrayal of my soul.” “Oh, Larry, why d’you talk in that way? That’s the way hysterical, highbrow women talk. What does it mean? Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.” “It happens to mean exactly what I feel,” he answered, his eyes twinkling.

he found himself now in the agreeable situation of being able to do what was best for others and at the same time what was convenient to himself.

Of course I know that I’m not playing the star part in this. Larry’s got that. He’s the idealist, he’s the dreamer of a beautiful dream, and even if the dream doesn’t come true, it’s rather thrilling to have dreamt it. I’m cast for the hard, mercenary, practical part. Common sense is never very sympathetic, is it? But what you forget is that it’s I who’d have to pay. Larry would sweep along, trailing clouds of glory, and all there’d be left for me would be to tag along and make both ends meet. I want to live.”

It’s a toss-up when you decide to leave the beaten track. Many are called but few are chosen.”

“Will you be awfully shocked if I tell you something?” “I think it very unlikely.”

“Then my better nature must take the consequences. I trust in the future it’ll be more careful.”

“You know, when one’s in love,” I said, “and things go all wrong, one’s terribly unhappy and one thinks one won’t ever get over it. But you’ll be astounded to learn what the sea will do.” “What do you mean?” she smiled. “Well, love isn’t a good sailor and it languishes on a sea voyage. You’ll be surprised when you have the Atlantic between you and Larry to find how slight the pang is that before you sailed seemed intolerable.” “Do you speak from experience?” “From the experience of a stormy past. When I suffered from the pangs of unrequited love I immediately got on an ocean liner.”

One night, after we’d been playing for a while, he looked at me with that rather cruel, sarcastic smile of his which was the only way he knew how to smile, and said: “ ‘Shall I show you a few tricks?’ “He took the pack of cards and asked me to name one. He shuffled them and he told me to choose one; I did, and it was the card I’d named. He did two or three more tricks and then he asked me if I played poker. I said I did and he dealt me a hand. When I looked at it I saw I’d got four aces and a king. “ ‘You’d be willing to bet a good deal on that hand, wouldn’t you?’ he asked. “ ‘My whole stack,’ I answered. “ ‘You’d be silly.’ He put down the hand he’d dealt himself. It was a straight flush. How it was done I don’t know. He laughed at my amazement. ‘If I weren’t an honest man I’d have had your shirt by now.’ “ ‘You haven’t done so badly as it is,’ I grinned. “ ‘Chicken feed. Not enough to buy a dinner at Larue’s.’ “We continued to play pretty well every night. I came to the conclusion that he cheated not so much for the money as for the fun of it. It gave him a queer satisfaction to know that he was making a fool of me, and I think he got a lot of amusement out of knowing that I was on to what he was doing and couldn’t see how it was done.

There was more to it than that. The first time he talked in that way he said something that I’ve never forgotten, because it horrified me; he said that the world isn’t a creation, for out of nothing nothing comes; but a manifestation of the eternal nature; well, that was all right, but then he added that evil is as direct a manifestation of the divine as good. They were strange words to hear in that sordid, noisy café, to the accompaniment of dance tunes on the mechanical piano.”

“I’ve always said that eight was the perfect number,” said Elliott, determined to look on the bright side of things. “It’s intimate enough to permit of general conversation and yet large enough to give the impression of a party.”

He said he was disappointed with the way his fellow-countrymen had reacted to the depression; he would have expected them to take their misfortune with more equanimity. Knowing that nothing is easier than to bear other people’s calamities with fortitude, I thought that Elliott, richer now than he had ever been in his life, was perhaps hardly entitled to be severe.

The ten years that had passed had reduced the gulf that separated the young girl from the middle-aged man and I was no longer conscious of the disparity of age between us. With the delicate flattery of a woman of the world she treated me as if I were her contemporary, and in five minutes we were chatting as frankly and as unconstrainedly as though we were playmates who had been in the habit of meeting without interruption. She had acquired ease, self-possession, and assurance.

I did not hesitate to put the question that came to the tip of my tongue. After all, if you want to know something the best way is to ask. “D’you wish now that you had married him?” She smiled engagingly. “I’ve been very happy with Gray. He’s been a wonderful husband. You know, until the crash came we had a grand time together. We like the same people, and we like doing the same things. He’s very sweet. And it’s nice being adored; he’s just as much in love with me now as when we first married. He thinks I’m the most wonderful girl in the world. You can’t imagine how kind and considerate he is. It was quite absurd how generous he was; you see, he thought nothing was too good for me. D’you know, he’s never said an unkind or harsh thing to me all these years we’ve been married. Oh, I’ve been very lucky.” I asked myself if she thought she’d answered my question. I changed the conversation.

The events of my life have led me at one time and another to dwell transitorily in pretty well all the worlds of Paris, even (through Elliott) in the closed world of the Boulevard St. Germain; but that which I liked best, better than the discreet circle that has its center in what is now called the Avenue Foch, better than the cosmopolitan crew that patronize Larue’s and the Café de Paris, better than the noisy sordid gaiety of Montmartre, is that section of which the artery is the Boulevard du Montparnasse. In my youth I spent a year in a tiny apartment near the Lion de Belfort, on the fifth floor, from which I had a spacious view of the cemetery. Montparnasse has still for me the tranquil air of a provincial town that was characteristic of it then. When I pass through the dingy narrow Rue d’Odessa I remember with a pang the shabby restaurant where we used to foregather to dine, painters and illustrators and sculptors, I, but for Arnold Bennett on occasion, the only writer, and sit late discussing excitedly, absurdly, angrily, painting and literature. It is still a pleasure to me to stroll down the boulevard and look at the young people who are as young as I was then and invent stories for myself about them. When I have nothing better to do I take a taxi and go and sit in the old Café du Dôme. It is no longer what it was then, the meeting place exclusively of Bohemia; the small tradesmen of the neighborhood have taken to visiting it, and strangers from the other side of t...

He came at last. It was a rainy day and Gray hadn’t gone to Mortefontaine. The three of us were together, Isabel and I drinking a cup of tea, Gray sipping a whisky and Perrier, when the butler opened the door and Larry strolled in. Isabel with a cry sprang to her feet and throwing herself into his arms kissed him on both cheeks. Gray, his fat red face redder than ever, warmly wrung his hand. “Gee, I’m glad to see you, Larry,” he said, his voice choked with emotion. Isabel bit her lip and I saw she was constraining herself not to cry. “Have a drink, old man,” said Gray unsteadily. I was touched by their delight at seeing the wanderer. It must have been pleasant for him to perceive how much he meant to them. He smiled happily. It was plain to me that he was, however, completely self-possessed.

“Why didn’t you come and see us at once, you horror?” cried Isabel, with a pretense of indignation. “I’ve been hanging out of the window for the last five days to see you coming and every time the bell rang my heart leapt to my mouth and I had all I could do to swallow it again.” Larry chuckled. “Mr. M. told me I looked so tough that your man would never let me through the door. I flew over to London to get some clothes.” “You needn’t have done that,” I smiled. “You could have got a reach-me-down at the Printemps or the Belle Jardinière.” “I thought if I was going to do it at all, I’d better do the thing in style. I haven’t bought any European clothes for ten years. I went to your tailor and said I wanted a suit in three days. He said it would take a fortnight, so we compromised on four. I got back from London an hour ago.” He wore a blue serge that nicely fitted his slim figure, a white shirt with a soft collar, a blue silk tie, and brown shoes. He had had his hair cut short and shaved off the hair on his face. He looked not only neat, but well-groomed. It was a transformation. He was very thin; his cheekbones were more prominent, his temples hollower, and his eyes in the deep sockets larger than I remembered them; but notwithstanding he looked very well; he looked, indeed, with his deeply sunburnt, unlined face, amazingly young. He was a year younger than Gray, they were both in their early thirties, but whereas Gray looked ten years more than his age, Larry looked ten y...

one thing leading to another, with airy laughter, my impression persisted that in Larry, though his laughter was frank and he listened with evident pleasure to Isabel’s breezy chatter, there was a very singular detachment. I didn’t feel that he was playing a part, he was too natural for that and his sincerity was obvious; I felt that there was something within him, I don’t know whether to call it awareness or a sensibility or a force, that remained strangely aloof.

so I let myself be persuaded to do what I wanted to.

“Hasn’t it struck you that when he’s with us, easy as he is to get on with, friendly and sociable, one’s conscious of a sort of detachment in him, as though he weren’t giving all of himself, but withheld in some hidden part of his soul something, I don’t know what it is—a tension, a secret, an aspiration, a knowledge—that sets him apart?”

“I suppose I know what you mean. One’s having fun, and one thinks he’s just like one of us, just like everybody else, and then suddenly you have the feeling that he’s escaped you like a smoke ring that you try to catch in your hands.

What do you think it can be that makes him so queer?” “Perhaps something so commonplace that one simply doesn’t notice it.” “Such as?” “Well, goodness, for instance.” Isabel frowned. “I wish you wouldn’t say things like that. It gives me a nasty feeling in the pit of my stomach.” “Or is it a little pain in the depth of your heart?”

“Are you very much in love with Larry?” “God damn you, I’ve never loved anyone else in all my life.” “Why did you marry Gray?” “I had to marry somebody. He was mad about me and Mamma wanted me to marry him. Everybody told me I was well rid of Larry. I was very fond of Gray; I’m very fond of him still. You don’t know how sweet he is. No one in the world could be so kind and so considerate. He looks as though he had an awful temper, doesn’t he? With me he’s always been angelic. When we had money, he wanted me to want things so that he could have the pleasure of giving them to me. Once I said it would be fun if we could have a yacht and go around the world, and if the crash hadn’t come he’d have bought one.” “He sounds almost too good to be true,” I murmured. “We had a grand time. I shall always be grateful to him for that. He made me very happy.”

I have never believed very much in women’s intuition; it fits in too neatly with what they want to believe to persuade me that it is trustworthy;

It was a good woman who counted not only her own pennies but her lover’s.

He was on the plump side, and he had a potbelly, but only to the extent of giving him an air of substance. He walked with the short fat man’s strut and it was plain that he was not displeased with himself.

“I pity any woman who falls in love with him. Oh la, la.” “Why do you say that?” She looked at me for a minute with a seriousness I had not often seen in her. “I very nearly fell in love with him myself once. You might as well fall in love with a reflection in the water or a ray of sunshine or a cloud in the sky. I had a narrow escape. Even now when I think of it I tremble at the danger I ran.”

Suzanne felt she was growing sentimental and feared (wrongly) that I should laugh at her.

My instinct told me I’d be silly to fall in love with him, you know women are very unfortunate, so often when they fall in love they cease to be lovable, and I made up my mind to be on my guard.”

I DAWDLED OVER MY work in Paris. It was very agreeable in the springtime, with the chestnuts in the Champs Élysées in bloom and the light in the streets so gay. There was pleasure in the air, a light transitory pleasure, sensual without grossness, that made your step more springy and your intelligence more alert. I was happy in the various company of my friends and, my heart filled with amiable memories of the past, I regained in spirit at least something of the glow of youth. I thought I should be a fool to allow work to interfere with a delight in the passing moment that I might never enjoy again so fully.

It was animal rather than human. The beauty was stripped from her face; the look upon it made her hideous and frightening.

Sodden with drink as she was, she had a bold-faced shamelessness that I could well imagine appealed to all that was base in men. She embraced us in a sardonic smile. “I can’t say you seem so terribly pleased to see me,” she said.

She’d lived in heaven and when she lost it she couldn’t put up with the common earth of common men, but in despair plunged headlong into hell. I can imagine that if she couldn’t drink the nectar of the gods any more she thought she might as well drink bathroom gin.”

“I do know enough Latin to understand a hackneyed quotation, Elliott,” I said tartly. “I beg your pardon, my dear fellow. I’m so accustomed to the crass ignorance of the upper classes, I forgot for the moment that I was talking to an author.”

“I’m getting on, you know, and to tell you the truth I shan’t be sorry to go. What are those lines of Landor’s? ‘I’ve warmed both hands …’ ” Though I have a bad verbal memory, the poem is very short and I was able to repeat it. “I strove with none, for none was worth my strife. Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art; I warmed both hands before the fire of Life; It sinks, and I am ready to depart.” “That’s it,” he said.

“My dear fellow, at my age one can’t afford to fall out. You don’t think I’ve moved in the highest circles for nearly fifty years without realizing that if you’re not seen everywhere you’re forgotten.” I wondered if he realized what a lamentable confession he was then making. I had not the heart to laugh at Elliott any more; he seemed to me a profoundly pathetic object. Society was what he lived for, a party was the breath of his nostrils, not to be asked to one was an affront, to be alone was a mortification; and, an old man now, he was desperately afraid.