Пироги и пиво, или скелет в шкафу

W. Somerset MAUGHAM





                CAKES AND ALE: OR THE SKELETON IN THE CUPBOARD







CLASSICAL LITERATURE








ИЗДАТЕЛЬСТВО

Санкт-Петербург

2009

УДК 372.8
ББК 81.2 Англ-93
    М74










     Моэм У. Сомерсет
М 74    Пироги и пиво, или скелет в шкафу: Книга для чтения
     на английском языке. — СПб.: Антология, КАРО, 2009. — 256 с. — (Серия «Classical Literature»).

     ISBN 978-5-9925-0403-3

       Уильям Сомерсет Моэм (1874-1965) всемирно известный английский писатель.
       Роман «Пироги и пиво, или скелет в шкафу», вышедший в свет в 1930 году, был объявлен критикой одним из «высочайших достижений британской романистики». В центре произведения - жизнь талантливого писателя и его жены. Автор блестяще рисует атмосферу литературной среды, ее нравы, а также пытается найти ответы на такие вопросы, как смысл жизни, любовь, смерть, назначение искусства...
       В книге представлен неадаптированный текст на языке оригинала.

УДК 372.8
ББК 81.2 Англ-93



ISBN 978-5-9925-0403-3

© Антология, 2005
© КАРО, 2005

        AUTHOR’S PREFACE

   It was as a short story, and not a very long one either, that I first thought of this novel. Here is the note I made when it occurred to me: “I am asked to write my reminiscences of a famous novelist, a friend of my boyhood, living at W.¹ with a common wife, very unfaithful to him. There he writes his great books. Later he marries his secretary, who guards him and makes him into a figure. My wonder whether even in old age he is not slightly restive at being made into a monument.” I was writing at the time a series of short stories for the Cosmopolitan. My contract stipulated that they were to be between twelve hundred and fifteen hundred words, so that with the illustration they should not occupy more than a page of the magazine, but I allowed myself some latitude and then the illustration spread across the opposite page and gave me a little more space. I thought this story would do for this purpose, and put it aside for future use. But I had long had in mind the character of Rosie. I had wanted for years to write about her, but the opportunity never presented itself; I could contrive no setting in which she

   ¹ W. - имеется в виду город Whitstable

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W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

found a place to suit her, and I began to think I never should. I did not very much care. A character in a writer’s head, unwritten, remains a possession; his thoughts recur to it constantly, and while his imagination gradually enriches it he enjoys the singular pleasure of feeling that there, in his mind, someone is living a varied and tremulous life, obedient to his fancy and yet in a queer wilful way independent of him. But when once that character is set down on paper it belongs to the writer no more. He forgets it. It is curious how completely a person who may have occupied your reveries for many years can thus cease to be. It suddenly stuck me that the little story I had jotted down offered me just the framework for this character that I had been looking for. I would make her the wife of my distinguished novelist. I saw that my story could never be got into a couple of thousand words, so I made up my mind to wait a little and use my material for one of the much longer tales, fourteen or fifteen thousand words, with which, following upon Rain, I had been not unsuccessful. But the more I thought of it the less inclined I was to waste my Rosie on a story even of this length. Old recollections returned to me. I found I had not said all I wanted to say about the W. of the note, which in Of Human Bondage I had called Blackstable. After so many years I did not see why I should not get closer to the facts. The Uncle William, Rector of Blackstable, and his wife Isabella, became Uncle Henry, vicar, and his wife, Sophie. The Philip Carey of the earlier book became the I of Cakes and Ale.
   When the book appeared I was attacked in various quarters because I was supposed in the character of

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Edward Driffield to have drawn a portrait of Thomas Hardy. This was not my intention. He was no more in my mind than George Meredith or Anatole France. As my note suggests, I had been struck by the notion that the veneration to which an author full of years and honour is exposed must be irksome to the little alert soul within him that is alive still to the adventures of his fancy. Many odd and disconcerting ideas must cross his mind, I thought, while he maintains the dignified exterior that his admirers demand of him. I read Tess of the D’Urbervilles when I was eighteen with such enthusiasm that I determined to marry a milkmaid, but I had never been so much taken with Hardy’s other books as were most of my contemporaries, and I did not think his English very good. I was never so much interested in him as I was at one time in George Meredith, and later in Anatole France. I knew little of Hardy’s life. I know now only enough to be certain that the points in common between his and that of Edward Driffield are negligible. They consist only in both having been bom in humble circumstances and both having had two wives. I met Thomas Hardy but once. This was at a dinner-party at Lady St. Helier’s, better known in the social history of the day as Lady Jeune, who liked to ask to her house (in a much more exclusive world than the world of today) everyone that in some way or another had caught the public eye. I was then a popular and fashionable playwright. It was one of those great dinner-parties that people gave before the war, with a vast number of courses, thick and clear soup, fish, a couple of entrees, sorbet (to give you a chance to get your second wind),

CAKES AND ALE: OR THE SKELETON IN THE CUPBOARD

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W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

joint, game, sweet, ice, and savoury; and there were twenty-four people all of whom by rank, political eminence, or artistic achievement, were distinguished. When the ladies retired to the drawing-room I found myself sitting next to Thomas Hardy. I remember a little man with an earthy face. In his evening clothes, with his boiled shirt and high collar, he had still a strange look of the soil. He was amiable and mild. It struck me at the time that there was in him a curious mixture of shyness and self-assurance. I do not remember what we talked about, but I know that we talked for three-quarters of an hour. At the end of it he paid me a great compliment: he asked me (not having heard my name) what was my profession.
   I am told that two or three writers thought themselves aimed at in the character of Alroy Kear. They were under a misapprehension. This character was a composite portrait: I took the appearance from one writer, the obsession with good society from another, the heartiness from a third, the pride in athletic prowess a fourth, and a great deal from myself. For I have a grim capacity for seeing my own absurdity and I find in myself much to excite my ridicule. I am inclined to think that this is why I see people (if I am to believe what I am frequently told and frequently read to myself) in a less flattering light than many authors who have not this unfortunate idiosyncrasy. For all the characters that we create are but copies of ourselves. It may be of course also that they really are nobler, more disinterested, virtuous, and spiritual than I. It is very natural that being godlike they should create men in their own image. When I wanted to

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draw the portrait of a writer who used every means of advertisement possible to assist the diffusion of his works, I had no need to fix my attention on any particular person. The practice is too common for that. Nor can one help feeling sympathy for it. Every year hundreds of books, many of considerable merit, pass unnoticed. Each one has taken the author months to write, he may have had it in his mind for years; he has put into it something of himself which is lost for ever, it is heartrending to think how great are the chances that it will be disregarded in the press of matter that weighs down the critics’ tables and burdens the booksellers’ shelves. It is not unnatural that he should use what means he can to attract the attention of the public. Experience has taught him what to do. He must make himself a public figure. He must keep in the public eye. He must give interviews and get his photograph in the papers. He must write letters to The Times, address meetings, and occupy himself with social questions; he must make after-dinner speeches; he must recommend books in the publishers’ advertisements; and he must be seen without fail at the proper places at the proper times. He must never allow himself to be forgotten. It is hard and anxious work, for a mistake may cost him dear; it would be brutal to look with anything but kindliness at an author who takes so much trouble to persuade the world at large to read books that he honestly considers so well worth reading.
   But there is one form of advertisement that I deplore. This is the cocktail party that is given to launch a book. You secure the presence of a photographer. You invite the gossip writers and as many eminent people as you

CAKES AND ALE: OR THE SKELETON IN THE CUPBOARD

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W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

know. The gossip writers give you a paragraph in their columns and the illustrated papers publish the photographs, but the eminent people expect to get a signed copy of the book for nothing. This ignoble practice is not rendered less objectionable when it is presumed (sometimes no doubt with justice) to be given at the expense of the publisher. It did not flourish at the time I wrote Cakes and Ale¹. It would have given me the material for a lively chapter.

   ¹ Cakes and Ale - это выражение заимствовано из пьесы Шекспира «Двенадцатая ночь», где оно означает «веселая жизнь», «веселье»

        I

   I have noticed that when someone asks for you on the telephone and, finding you out, leaves a message begging you to call him up the moment you come in, and it’s important, the matter is more often important to him than to you. When it comes to making you a present or doing you a favour most people are able to hold their impatience within reasonable bounds. So when I got back to my lodgings with just enough time to have a drink, a cigarette, and to read my paper before dressing for dinner, and was told by Miss Fellows, my landlady, that Mr. Alroy Kear wished me to ring him up at once, I felt that I could safely ignore his request.
   “Is that the writer?” she asked me.
   “It is.”
   She gave the telephone a friendly glance.
   “Shall I get him?”
   “No, thank you.”
   “What shall I say if he rings again?”
   “Ask him to leave a message.”
   “Very good, sir.”
   She pursed her lips. She took the empty siphon, swept the room with a look to see that it was tidy, and went out.

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Miss Fellows was a great novel reader. I was sure that she had read all Roy’s books. Her disapproval of my casualness suggested that she had read them with admiration. When I got home again, I found a note in her bold, legible writing on the sideboard.
   Mr. Kear rang up twice. Can you lunch with him tomorrow? If not what day will suit you?
   I raised my eyebrows. I had not seen Roy for three months and then only for a few minutes at a party; he had been very friendly, he always was, and when we separated he had expressed his hearty regret that we met so seldom.
   “London’s awful,” he said. “One never has time to see any of the people one wants to. Let’s lunch together one day next week, shall we?”
   “I’d like to,” I replied.
   “I’ll look at my book when I get home and ring you up.”
   “All right.”
   I had not known Roy for twenty years without learning that he always kept in the upper left-hand pocket of his waistcoat the little book in which he put down his engagements; I was therefore not surprised when I heard from him no further. It was impossible for me now to persuade myself that this urgent desire of his to dispense hospitality was disinterested. As I smoked a pipe before going to bed I turned over in my mind the possible reasons for which Roy might want me to lunch with him. It might be that an admirer of his had pestered him to introduce me to her or that an American editor, in London for a few days, had desired Roy to put me in touch with him; but I could not do my old friend the injustice of supposing him

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