the eyes of a public intent upon classifying everything by
means of labels and of making everything so classified stick to its label
like grim death. Yet the unclassified may flourish, and does, when its
merit is beyond dispute. _Mrs. Craddock_ appeared fully a decade before
its time, when Victorian influences were still alive, and the modern idea
for well to do women to have something to justify their existence was
still in the nature of a novelty. Even in the fuller light of experience,
Maugham could hardly have bettered his study of an impulsive and exigent
woman, rising at the outset to the height of a bold and womanly choice in
defiance of social prejudice and family tradition, and then relapsing
under the disillusions of marriage into the weakest failings of her class,
rising again, from a self-torturing neurotic into a kind of Niobe at the
death of her baby.

The ironic key of the book is at its best, in the passage half way
through--

"Mr. Craddock's principles, of course, were quite right; he had given her
plenty of run and ignored her cackle, and now she had come home to roost.
There is nothing like a knowledge of farming, and an acquaintance with the
habits of domestic animals, to teach a man how to manage his wife."

=vi=

As a playwright Mr. Maugham is quite as well known as he is for his
novels. The author of _Lady Frederick_, _Mrs. Dot_, and _Caroline_--the
creator of Lord Porteous and Lady Kitty in _The Circle_--writes his plays
because it amuses him to do so and because they supply him with an
excellent income. Here is a good story:

It seems that Maugham had peddled his first play, _Lady Frederick_, to the
offices of seventeen well-known London managers, until it came to rest in
the Archives of the Court Theatre. The Court Theatre, standing in Sloane
Square near the Tube station, is definitely outside the London theatre
area, but as the scene of productions by the Stage Society, it is kept in
the running. However, it might conceivably be the last port of call for a
worn manuscript.

It so happened that Athole Stewart, the manager of the Court Theatre,
found himself needing a play very badly during one season. The theatre had
to be kept open and there was nothing to keep it open with. From a dingy
pile of play manuscripts he chose _Lady Frederick_. He had no hopes of its
success--or so it is said--but the success materialised. At the
anniversary of _Lady Frederick_ in London, Maugham thought of a