83. the PAINTED VEIL

W. Somerset Maugham 1925

A quiet, uncluttered, straightforward book in its rendition of the pitfalls of adultery. When Walter Fane discovers his wife Kitty's involvement with another man Charles, he takes her to Mei-tan-fu, a far off place in China during a cholera epidemic. Kitty, brought up never wanting, raised to marry well, shallow and ignorant of sacrifice and devotion discovers what and how it is to be compassionate as she faces unimaginable poverty, hardship and death in this 'painted veil called life'.

'Kitty, coming to Hong Kong on her marriage, had found it hard to reconcile herself to the fact that her social position was determined by her husband's occupation... she has understood quickly that as the wife of the Government bacteriologist she was of no particular consequence. It made her angry.'(15)

'A bird in the hand was worth two in the bush, he told her, to which she retorted that a proverb was the last refuge of the mentally destitute.'(21)

'Her beauty depended a good deal on her youth, and Mrs. Garstin realized that she must marry in the first flush of her maidenhood. When she came out she was dazzling: her skin was still her greatest beauty, but her eyes with their long lashes were so starry and yet so melting that it gave you a catch at the heart to look into them.'(23)

'Kitty in a panic married Walter Fane.'(25)

'But through all these day-dreams ran a current of apprehension. It was funny; it was as though the wood and the strings of the orchestra played Arcadian melodies and in the bass the drums, softly but with foreboding, beat a grim tattoo.'(47)

'Well, you know, women are often under the impression that men are much more madly in love with them than they really are.'(55)

'His tone was so contemptuous that she flushed with anger. And perhaps her anger was greater because she had never before heard him say to her any but sweet, flattering, and delightful things. She had been accustomed to find him subservient to all her whims.'(65)

'He loves me with all his heart and soul. He loves me passionately as I love him. You've found out. I'm not going to deny anything. Why should I? We've been lovers for a year and I'm proud of it. He means everything in the world to me and I'm glad that you know at last. We're sick to death of secrecy and compromise and all the rest of it. It was a mistake that I ever married you, I never should have done it, I was a fool. I never cared for you. We never had anything in common. I don't like the people you like and I'm bored by the thing that interests you. I'm thankful it's finished.'(65)

'I had no illusions about you,' he said. 'I knew you were silly and frivolous and empty-headed. But I loved you. I knew that your aims and ideals were vulgar and commonplace. But I loved you. I knew that you were second-rate. But I loved you... I knew that you'd only married me for convenience. I loved you so much, I didn't care.'(66)

'What most husbands expect as a right I was prepared to receive as a favor.'(66)

'Wounded vanity can make a woman more vindictive that a lioness robbed of her cubs.(67)

'One can be very much in love with a woman without wishing to spend the rest of one's life with her.'(77)

'She was silent. Vaguely, as when you are studying a foreign language and read a page which at first you can make nothing of, till a word or a sentence gives you a clue; and on a sudden a suspicion, as it were, of the sense flashes across your troubled wits, vaguely she gained an inkling into the workings of Walter's mind. It was like a dark and ominous landscape seen by a flash of lightning and in a moment hidden again by the night. She shuddered at what she saw.'(82)

'But the magician who built worked swiftly and now a fragment of colored wall crowned the bastion; in a moment, out of the mist, looming vastly and touched here and there but a yellow ray of sun, there was seen a cluster of green and yellow roofs. Huge they seemed and you could make out no pattern; the order, if order there was, escaped you; wayward and extravagant, but of an unimaginable richness. This was no fortress, nor a temple, but the magic place of some emperor of the gods where no man might enter. It was too airy, fantastic, and unsubstantial to be the work of human hands; it was the fabric of a dream.'(97)

'You know, my dear child, that one cannot find peace in work or in pleasure, in the world or in a convent, but only in one's soul.'(138)

'Beauty is also a gift of God, one of the most rare and precious, and we should be thankful if we are happy enough to possess it and thankful if we are not, that others possess it for our pleasure.'(148)

'The dog it was that died.'(191)

'I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.'(196)

'Each member of the orchestra plays his own little instrument, and what do you think he knows of the complicated harmonies which unroll themselves on the indifferent air? He is concerned only with his small share. But he knows that the symphony is lovely, and though there's none to hear it, it is lovely still, and he is content to play his part.'(197)
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First Vintage International Edition, February 2004
246 pages
Book owned
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Personal note: This is a souvenir book bought from the Strand, New York City, February, 2010. For a great review check out Patricia's Particularity.