My Brother Evelyn & Other Profiles (1967) - Plot & Excerpts
I saw Somerset Maugham for the last time in Nice, in January 1965. We were strolling in opposite directions along the Promenade des Anglais. It was a warm, sunny day, freshened by a breeze. We paused for a brief gossip. He said to my companion, ‘The wind in your cape makes you look like a bird.’ He had a quick eye for women’s clothes. He was smiling; he looked brisk and cheerful. It was one of his good days. As I watched him walk away, ‘I said, I wonder if that’s the last time we’ll see him.’ I hoped for his sake it was. His good days were now rare; his faculties were failing; living had become a burden. Yet in his general appearance, he had changed very little from the distant summer when I had begun to know him well. That was in 1931, when I was spending a couple of quiet months in Villefranche, working upon a novel, and he invited me to lunch at the Villa Mauresque. But I had met him before, once, briefly in the early spring of 1922 at a lunch organized for the contributors to Georgian Stories by its editor Arnold Lunn, the elder brother of Hugh Kingsmill of whom I have written in an earlier chapter.
What do You think about My Brother Evelyn & Other Profiles (1967)?
