You sail through an unimaginable silence upon a magic sea. They are the mountains of the country of your dreams. There are fleecy clouds on the horizon, and at sunset they take strange shapes so that it is impossible not to believe that you see a range of lofty mountains. The flying fish, a gleam of shadow on the brightness of a mirror, make little fountains of sparkling drops when they dip. But there are days also when the Pacific is like a lake. On such a sea as this Ulysses sailed when he sought the Happy Isles. The billows, magnificently rolling, stretch widely on all sides of you, and you forget your vanished youth, with its memories, cruel and sweet, in a restless, intolerable desire for life. The trade wind gets into your blood and you are filled with an impatience for the unknown. The sun shines fiercely from an unclouded sky.
It is not so often that it is calm and blue. Sometimes it is grey like the English Channel off Beachy Head, with a heavy swell, and sometimes it is rough, capped with white crests, and boisterous. The Pacific is inconstant and uncertain, like the soul of man. This selection first published in Great Britain byĪddresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited This electronic book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser The right of Somerset Maugham to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 'The Pacific', 'Mackintosh', 'The Fall of Edward Barnard', 'Rain', and 'Envoi' copyright © 1921 by the Royal Literary Fund 'The Casuarina Tree', 'Before the Party', 'P & O' and 'The Letter', copyright © 1926 by the Royal Literary Fund 'Sanatorium', 'The Colonel's Lady' and 'The Kite' copyright © 1947 by the Royal Literary Fund 'The Princess and the Nightingale', copyright © 1930 by the Royal Literary Fund 'The Round Dozen', 'Jane' and 'The Alien Cor', copyright © 1931 by the Royal Literary Fund 'The Door of Opportunity', 'The Vessel of Wrath' and 'The Book-Bag' copyright © 1933 by the Royal Literary Fund 'Sal-vatore' and 'The Judgement Seat' copyright © 1936 by the Royal Literary Fund 'Gigolo and Gigolette' copyright © 1940 by the Royal Literary fund 'Daisy' copyright © 1899 by the Royal Literary Fund Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly. This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. In 1927 Somerset Maugham settled in the South of France and lived there until his death in 1965. His other works include travel books, essays, criticism, and the autobiographical The Summing Up and A Writer's Notebook. At the same time his fame as a successful playwright and short story writer was being consolidated with acclaimed productions of various plays and publication of the story The Trembling of a Leaf, subtitled Little Stories of the South Sea Islands, in 1921, which was followed by seven more collections. Of Human Bondage, the first of his masterpieces, came out in 1915, and with the publication in 1919 of The Moon and Sixpence his reputation as a novelist was established. He spent some time at St Thomas' Hospital with the idea of practising medicine, but the success of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, published in 1897, won him over to letters. He was educated at King's School, Canterbury, and at Heidelberg University. William Somerset Maugham was born in 1874 and lived in Paris until he was ten. Also available in Vintage THE MOON AND SIXPENCE