Somerset Maugham Stories
LOOKING BACK ON EIGHTY YEARS By William Somerset Maugham
In my long life I have seen many changes in our habits and customs. The world I entered when at the age of eighteen I became a medical student was a world that knew nothing of planes, motor-cars, movies, radio or telephone. When I was still at school a lecturer came to Canterbury and showed us boys a new machine which reproduced the human voice. It was the first gramophone. The world I entered was a world that warmed itself with coal fires, lit itself by gas and paraffin lamps, and looked upon a bathroom as a luxury out of the reach. On Sundays the muffin man made his rounds ringing his melancholy bell and people came out of their door to buy muffins and crumpets for afternoon tea. It was a very cheap world. When I entered St Thomas's Hospital I took a couple of furnished rooms for which I paid 18s a week. My landlady provided me with a solid breakfast before I went to the hospital and high tea when I came back at half-past six, and the two meals cost me about 12s a week. I was able to live very comfortably, pay my fees, buy my necessary instruments, and clothe myself. I had enough money to go to the theatre at least once a week. The pit, to which I went, was not the orderly thing it is now. There were no queues. The crowd collected at the doors, and when they were opened there was a struggle, with a lot of pushing and elbowing and shouting to get a good place. But that was part of the fun. Travelling was cheap, too, in those days. When I was twenty I went to Italy by myself' for the six weeks of the Easter vacation. I went to Pisa and spent a wonderful month in Florence; then I went to Venice' and Milan' and so back to London. I spent five years at St Thomas's Hospital. I was an unsatisfactory medical student, for my heart was not in it. I wanted, I had always wanted, to be a writer, and in the evening, after my tea, I wrote and read. I wrote a novel, called Liza of Lambeth,
In my long life I have seen many changes in our habits and customs. The world I entered when at the age of eighteen I became a medical student was a world that knew nothing of planes, motor-cars, movies, radio or telephone. When I was still at school a lecturer came to Canterbury and showed us boys a new machine which reproduced the human voice. It was the first gramophone. The world I entered was a world that warmed itself with coal fires, lit itself by gas and paraffin lamps, and looked upon a bathroom as a luxury out of the reach. On Sundays the muffin man made his rounds ringing his melancholy bell and people came out of their door to buy muffins and crumpets for afternoon tea. It was a very cheap world. When I entered St Thomas's Hospital I took a couple of furnished rooms for which I paid 18s a week. My landlady provided me with a solid breakfast before I went to the hospital and high tea when I came back at half-past six, and the two meals cost me about 12s a week. I was able to live very comfortably, pay my fees, buy my necessary instruments, and clothe myself. I had enough money to go to the theatre at least once a week. The pit, to which I went, was not the orderly thing it is now. There were no queues. The crowd collected at the doors, and when they were opened there was a struggle, with a lot of pushing and elbowing and shouting to get a good place. But that was part of the fun. Travelling was cheap, too, in those days. When I was twenty I went to Italy by myself' for the six weeks of the Easter vacation. I went to Pisa and spent a wonderful month in Florence; then I went to Venice' and Milan' and so back to London. I spent five years at St Thomas's Hospital. I was an unsatisfactory medical student, for my heart was not in it. I wanted, I had always wanted, to be a writer, and in the evening, after my tea, I wrote and read. I wrote a novel, called Liza of Lambeth,