This Week In Cigar History: December 10–16

Acclaimed English novelist, and cigar smoker, William Somerset Maugham died on December 16, 1965 at 91 years old. His devotion to his smokes can be observed with the quip:

"I promised myself that if I had some money that I would savor a cigar each day after lunch and dinner. This is the only resolution of my youth that I have kept, and the only realized ambition which has not brought disillusion."

Maugham was too old to serve in the armed forces at the onset of World War I in 1914. Instead, he volunteered in France with the British Red Cross’s Literary Ambulance Drivers, which included another cigar lover, Ernest Hemingway. It was during this time that Maugham managed to proofread his semi-autographical novel, Of Human Bondage . The main character, Philip Carey, ended a satisfying meal, by “…throwing economy to the wind, smoked a three-penny cigar.”

His novella The Moon and Sixpence, based on the life of Paul Gauguin, features two homeless protagonists, Tough Bill and Captain Nichols who “…slept where they could…[but] What they felt the lack of most bitterly was tobacco, and Captain Nichols, for his part, could not do without it; he took to hunting the “Can o’ Beer,” for cigarette-ends and the butt-end of cigars which the promenades of the night before had thrown away.”

Maugham’s literary genius continues to influence modern writers. Notably, Of Human Bondage is often referenced in the 1995 film Se7en in which real life cigar loving actor Morgan Freeman played a character named Lt. William Somerset.

news@doubledownmedia.com

12/10/07

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