Of Human Bondage is generally considered W. Somerset Maugham’s masterpiece, but The Razor’s Edge was his most successful novel (economically). Maugham is a character in the story — the first-person narrator — and he assures the reader that it is a true story, with nothing embellished (surely, at the very least, an over-simplification: even assuming this is a true story, Maugham has undoubtedly embellished it). Whether the novel is based on real events has been a topic of debate since the novel’s publication, but I find it difficult to believe it is a true-life story. Similar plots occur in at least three other works of his (The Hero (1901), The Fall of Edward Barnard (1921), and The Road Uphill (1924)). I suspect that the plot intrigued him and, after his visit to India in 1938 when he met Ramana Maharshi (the inspiration for Shri Ganesha in the novel), he finally got it the way he wanted in The Razor’s Edge. Of course, as all authors do, he populated the novel with characters that had similar characteristics to those that he met in real life.
He undoubtedly wrote the novel in the five years during WW II that he lived in Beaufort County, on Bonny Hall Plantation, which was owned by Nelson Doubleday, who just happened to have been in charge of Doubleday, which published the novel in 1944.
It is probable that Gray Maturin’s character was based on Doubleday, a very tall, soft-spoken businessman. And it is almost certain that Elliot Templeton was inspired by Sir Henry ‘Chips’ Channon. It becomes less clear, however, whether Larry Darrell (who took The Road Not Taken) was modeled on a real person; some have suggested Guy Hague, others Christopher Isherwood (who wanted nothing to do with the connection), but neither real-life person fits the story well if we are to believe Maugham’s assertion that nothing in the novel was embellished. It is quite conceivable that Larry is based on a type of person; an amalgam of Maugham’s imagination and the people the he had met (there is an interesting site devoted to the identification of Darrell).
Whatever the inspiration for the novel was, it is a good read, particularly the way Maugham juxtaposes the upper-class, the poor, and the saintly Larry Darrell. As usual, Maugham’s characterizations are brilliant, and the descriptions of the different strata of society are wonderful period pieces. Maugham’s female characters are generally not as likeable as their male counterparts, and I found that to be the case in this novel as well. The male characters, although flawed, are presented in a much more sympathetic manner.
Recommended.
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db johnston
almost falling 