What drew me to pick up The House of Doors to read was that one of the main characters in the book was the novelist, Somerset Maugham, who is one of my all-time favorite authors. (I wrote about one of his books, The Razor’s Edge, on this blog after re-reading it a few years ago.) It’s been decades since Maugham died so there are no more books by him that I can enjoy, which is why it was intriguing to me to be reading a novel — rather than a biography or a non-fiction book — in which he has a starring role. As himself.

In addition to Maugham, the other main character in The House of Doors is Lesley Hamlyn, an Englishwoman married to a close friend of Maugham’s who he visits for two weeks in 1921 in Penang, Malaya (currently Malaysia). Maugham was legendary for his travels all over the world, especially in the Far East, and many of his novels and stories are set there. He actually did visit Malaya in 1921 for six months, so that part is not fictionalized. However, it is not part of historical records as to exactly who he lived with while he was there, and this is where fiction in The House of Doors comes in.

The book imagines a two-week time period in which Maugham, accompanied by his secretary (who was also his secret lover — Maugham’s closeted homosexuality was real and not made up), stays in the house of his close friend, Robert Hamlyn, and his wife, Lesley. Maugham has just lost most of his savings in a bad investment and is desperate for a good story that he can use to write a bestselling book and recoup his losses. Lesley is cordial but aloof with her famous guest at first, but she soon warms to him, becomes more open, and eventually tells him not about a shocking real-life scandal but also more about herself, about Robert, and about their extra-marital relationships.

The scandal she tells Maugham about is one that actually happened in real life: an Englishwoman in Kuala Lumpur (in what was still called Malaya at that time) murdered an acquaintance, and while she was arrested and tried, it was widely expected that the trial was only a formality and that she would be freed — she claimed that the man had tried to rape her and she shot him only in self-defense. However, this didn’t happen: she was found guilty as there were inconsistences in her story and evidence pointing to the fact that the man had actually been her lover — she had killed him in a fit of jealous rage because he had started a relationship with a native woman and broken off with her. She was eventually pardoned after an appeal to the Sultan (the ruler of Malaya at that time) and forced to return to England.

Maugham made the story of this real-life scandal, narrated to him by the fictional Lesley in The House of Doors, as the basis for the story “The Letter,” in his book, The Casuarina Tree. This is an actual book by Maugham that was published in 1962, and it is a collection of six short stories, all set in Malaya in the 1920s. The fictional The House of Doors makes it seem like the title of Maugham’s book came from an actual casuarina tree in Lesley’s house where he and Lesley had their many conversations that resulted in the book. Also, the fictional Lesley in The House of Doors is a close friend of the real-life woman who was tried and found guilty; Lesley had attended the trial which is why she knows so much about it. (I did find it somewhat confusing to separate fact from fiction in The House of Doors and had to resort to some online research to understand what was real and what was not.)

The trial, however, was not the only thing that (the fictional) Lesley tells (the real-life) Maugham about in The House of Doors. She also tells him about the affair she had with a Chinese man, Arthur, whom she met while connecting with an exiled Chinese revolutionary living in Malaya, Sun Yat-Sen. (This again, is a real person — he overthrew the dynasty ruling China at that time and became the first president of the Republic of China.) Lesley and her husband, Robert, are married in name only, as it turns out that Robert is also a closeted homosexual, which leaves Lesley emotionally free to fall in love with Arthur. Their secret meeting place is Arthur’s house, which Lesley refers to as the “House of Doors” — this is where the title of the book comes from — as it has a large number of doors that Arthur likes to collect as artifacts. Their relationship, which happens in 1910 (the same year as the trial scandal that Lesley has told Maugham about), is cut short when Arthur is forced to go back to China for the revolution following Sun Yat-Sen’s arrest in Malaya. Also, Arthur is married as well, so there wasn’t a future in their relationship anyway without resorting to divorce, which was considered very scandalous at that time.

It is only towards the last few pages of the book, when Lesley is her in her sixties, living in South Africa where she and Robert had moved on account of his health, and with Robert having died several years ago, that she gets a cryptic message — through one of Maugham’s books in fact, specifically The Casuarina Tree — to return to the House of Doors. It was presumably sent by Arthur who has returned to Penang and is waiting for her at the House of Doors. I found it such a heart-warming finale to the story of Lesley and Arthur. Because that is ultimately what The House of Doors was about, even though it did not feel like that for most of the book.

In addition to the love story that is so understatedly romantic, I found it fascinating — and utterly unique — how artfully The House of Doors combined fact and fiction: I had a hard time figuring out what was real and what was not until I looked it up. It also led me to re-read Maugham’s The Casuarina Tree — I had not read it for years and hardly remembered it — and focus on the story, “The Letter,” based on the real-life trial described in The House of Doors. I actually found Maugham’s story a lot better than the actual event, and it once again recalled for me his brilliance as an author, at how he could masterfully take an idea and craft an amazing story from it. It’s no wonder that he is one of my favorite authors. And with regard to The House of Doors, in addition to it being so unique and bringing me back to Somerset Maugham, I found it to be a beautifully written book. The quality of the prose was exceptional, and it captured the time period and the place – early 1900s in Malaya – so evocatively, it made me feel like I was there. I am so happy to have discovered another author whose work I can wholeheartedly enjoy.

The House of Doors
Author: Tan Twan Eng
Publisher: ‎ Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication Date: October 2023

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Contributor: Lachmi Khemlani is a fan of the written word.