1947 No writer of modern times has been more peripatetic than Somerset Maugham. Born in Paris, he was bi-cultural. Bi-sexual as well, it was usually more convenient for him not to stay for long periods in Britain or America but in places more tolerant of diversity – famously the French Riviera.
He was, however, obliged to stay in the UK or – at a pinch – America during the Second World War. The alternative was to suffer the indignities visited on that other pre-war south of France resident, P.G. Wodehouse. The Nazis were not tolerant.
After the war, an economically devastated Britain imposed strict exchange controls. The limits on currency that the country’s citizens were allowed to ‘export’ were minimal – £10 per annum in the late 1940s. Enforced insularity had a cramping effect, Maugham believed, on the author’s mind: particularly the young author. Could he have written as he did, had he remained (as he began professional life) a doctor in Lambeth?
A world-wide bestselling author who had made other fortunes from his plays and film adaptations, the 70-year-old Maugham was well placed to set up a prize, named after himself. ‘Millionaires and such like’, he once sourly observed, ‘are always ready to give money to universities and hospitals … but will never do anything for the arts.’
The Somerset Maugham prize was endowed to be administered by the Society of Authors. There were strict conditions attached to it. Eligible authors had to be under 35 years old and the £500 cash stipend was to be spent on at least three months’ travel abroad, in places felt to be useful to the writer’s future work.
The winner of the first award was announced on 1 September 1947: A.L. Barker for her collection of short stories, Innocents. There was universal praise for Maugham’s enlightened philanthropy. There was, however, one dissenting voice – that of Evelyn Waugh, who thought it wrong to encourage the young, and tantalise the elderly, in this way. He wrote in protest to the Daily Telegraph:
Does Mr Maugham realize what a huge temptation he is putting before elderly writers? To have £500 of our own – let alone of Mr Maugham’s – to spend abroad is beyond our dreams … What will we not do to qualify for Mr Maugham’s munificence? What forging of birth certificates, dyeing of whiskers and lifting of faces? To what parodies of experimental styles will we not push our experienced pens?
Maugham’s prize survives and has an excellent record in picking winners (Doris Lessing, Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis, V.S. Naipaul, Julian Barnes, among others). The cash amount, £12,000 currently, has risen with inflation and can still, with a little scrimping, yield a valuable foreign experience.