Most people, the vast majority in fact, lead the lives that circumstances have thrust upon them, and though some repine, looking upon themselves as round pegs in square holes, and think that if things had been different they might have made a much better showing, the greater part accept their lot, if not with serenity, at all events with resignation. They are like train-cars travelling forever on the selfsame rails. They go backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, inevitably, till they can go no longer and then are sold as scrap-iron. It is not often that you find a man who has boldly taken the course of his life into his own hands. When you do, it is worth while having a good look at him." So begins W. Somerset Maugham's short story "The Lotus Eater" - keep reading here.
The title, of course, is a reference to an episode in Homer’s Odyssey in which the travelers encounter a land bearing lotus plants so irresistible that its visitors never leave, but the character was based on Maugham’s friend and lover, John Ellingham Brooks, who came to Capri as part of an exodus of homosexuals from England in the wake of Oscar Wilde’s conviction, in 1895, for "acts of gross indecency". Brooks, however, escaped the fate of Maugham’s character by marrying a Philadelphia heiress who, though she quickly divorced him, left Brooks an annuity that allowed him to live out his days on Capri, playing the piano and walking his fox terrier.
Maugham never approved of Brooks' indolent life in Capri, and wrote, "For twenty years he amused himself with thinking what he would write when he really got down to it, and for another twenty with what he would have written if the fates had been kinder."
I'm a fan of Maugham's writing and hope you find the story as fascinating as I did. As Maugham would have said, "Merci pour visiter mon blog!"
