Word: haxton
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...women for his readers' supposed benefit as well as his own protection. Morgan reconstructs Maugham's process of transforming personal experience into convincing literature in lengthy and detailed accounts of Maugham's yearly trips to exotic places like Thailand or alligator-infested jungle rivers. His secretary-companions, Gerald Haxton, his lover for 30 years, and Alan Searle, who was living with him when he died, almost always accompanied him. None of Maugham's works is purely autobiographical, but he seems to have come closer than almost any other writer to basing all specifics in his work on personal experience. Morgan...
When he and Syrie divorced in 1929, Maugham had already established residence on the Riviera with his secretary-lover. Gerald Haxton was a sociable charmer, but he was also unscrupulous, a gambler and a drunk. "Their relationship," writes Morgan, "had a dark, unpleasant side in which the roles of master and servant were interchanged and each tried to make the other suffer." When Haxton died in 1944, his place was taken by Alan Searle, a lower-keyed companion who enjoyed reading muscle magazines...