He writes

In 1911 , a British woman shot and killed her lover with her husband’s revolver and she was convicted of murder but subsequently pardoned by the Royal Sultan of Selangor. It had been fictionalised by William Somerset Maugham in his short story ‘The Letter’.

How William Somerset Maugham came to tell the story of Mrs Ethel Proudlock is fictionalised in The House of Doors, a historical fiction by Tan Twan Eng released in May this year.

It is 1921 and at Cassowary House in the Straits Settlement of Penang, Robert Hamlyn is a war veteran and a well-to-do lawyer. He is married to Lesley. At the invitation of Robert, the famed writer, William Somerset Maugham has come to stay. He has brought along his secretary, Gerald. He has left his wife, Syrie behind and sailed from Southampton on a grey, misty morning. Gerald met him in New York and they caught the train to California and stayed in Hollywood for two blissful months before driving up the coast to San Francisco. From there they boarded a ship bound for Honolulu then sailed to Sydney before continuing north onwards to Singapore.’ Prior to arriving in Penang, they explored the islands of the Malay Archipelago.

Due to Robert’s deteriorating health condition, to the dismay of Lesley, he has made plans to move to Karoo Doomfontein, South Africa. The humidity in Penang is not good for Robert’ health. The Hamlyns uproot themselves from Penang in 1922.

Here is a narrative in Lesley’s voice as Lesley muses about the house that had been her home since the day she married Robert.

‘Looking around me, I felt anchored by the objects in the room, objects that had become so familiar tha I scarcely noticed them any more – the William Daniell watercolours of early Penang scenes ; my Blüthner piano in the corner which Robert had bought for me; but most of all , my collection of Straits Chinese porcelain – the kamcheng and tiffin-carriers, the teapots and teacups, the plates and bowls- which I had built up over the years. Robert didn’t care for them – he thought they were gaudy – but to me they were exquisite.

The imperfections of the room were comforting to me as well: the long, thin crack in the wall above the sideboard which always appeared again no matter how many times we painted over it, the light fitting that had begun to slip out of its bracket, the corner fo a window frame that had been chipped off. I lifted my eyes to the white wooden floorboards that formed the room’s ceiling. My sons often got a good telling-off from me if they thumped across them when we were entertaining. The sitting room had the faint, medicinal scent of the old teakwood floors mingled with the fragrance of the star jasmine from the garden. All these smells, blended by time into a sillage that could never be replicated in any other house.’

I used to read fictions by Somerset Maugham in my twenties and early thirties. His prose is lucid and his fictions make engaging reads. In his third fiction, Tan has cleverly put together some traits and facts about Maugham who had lost his mother at a young age. She who had been in ill health due to tuberculosis.

Here is a snippet of the dialogue that takes place between Lesley and Maugham.
‘The photograph in my room – it’s the one my mother had taken that morning. She wanted me to remember what she looked like. She was afraid of being forgotten.’

‘All of us will be forgotten eventually. Like a wave on the ocean, leaving no trace that it had once existed.

He shook his head. ‘ We will be remembered through our stories. What was that poem? The one written on your door? A bird of the mountain, carrying a name beyond the clouds. Well. a story can carry a name beyond the clouds, beyond even time itself.’

– The House of Doors, Tan Twan Eng

The House of Doors is told in a time span between 1911 and 1947.

In 1947, one morning, a parcel arrives for Lesley who presently resides in Doomfontein, South Africa. It is a first edition of The Casuarina Tree by W. Somerset Maugham. Lesley is now transported back to Malaya. She sees the writer in her memory again.

‘ A story, like a bird of the mountain, can carry a name beyond the clouds, beyond even time itself. Willie Maugham said that to me many years ago.

He has not appeared in my thoughts in a long time, but as I gaze at the mountains from my stoep on this autumn morning I can hear his thin , dry voice, his diction precise, correct, like everything else about him.’ – Prologue, The House of Doors, Tan Twan Eng

The House of Doors is multi-layered and well crafted . It tells of the friendship between Lesley and Maugham. Lesley confides secrets of her own, including how she came to know Dr Sun Yat Sen, a revolutionary fighting to overthrow the Qing dynasty of China, when he was in Penang holding secret meetings for the Revolutionary Alliance,Tong Meng Hui at No 120, Armenian Street. While the novel features Sun Maugham and Proudlock’s murder trial, The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng is a work of fiction. The story is immensely evocative of time, era and place. Tan is one of the judges of the International Booker Prize 2023.