Cakes And Ale by W Somerset Maugham is a profoundly surprising book. Written in 1930, the novel begins its story in the Edwardian era before the First World War. It comes, therefore, with the unavoidable expectation that it will portray English society as a somewhat suffocating, perhaps dusty, entity full of flocked wallpaper and aspidistras, tired after so many years of Victoria, but not yet awakened to the new world than the war so painfully introduced. But this is precisely where expectations could be wrong. Indeed, Cakes And Ale takes a fairly liberal view of the values ​​of British society, flouts rigid convention, and generally fails to offer moral judgment where other writers would surely rely on conceit.

Cakes And Ale is subtitled The Skeleton In The Cupboard, without it being absolutely clear whose skeleton is being described, while the book certainly doesn’t list many cupboards. Presumably what he is referring to is the relationship between the privileged character William Ashenden and Mrs. Rosie Driffield, the wife of a novelist. Their time together begins when Ashenden is a child, at least in his own eyes, and ends many years later, by which time both characters have reinvented themselves multiple times. It’s a relationship that begins with platonic fascination, graduates to physical adulthood, and concludes with apparent admiration from a distance.

But, by and large, this relationship is allowed to flourish without the judgment it is expected to receive, so the skeletons remain difficult to account for or identify. Also, it could be Mrs. Driffield’s long-standing obsession with a certain Lord George, but it ultimately turns out to be sincere and lasting. Mrs. Driffield certainly bonded with enough men to create several skeletons, but they wouldn’t have been in the closets.

We follow William Ashenden from a self-identified childhood through adolescence and adulthood. He too wants to become a writer and, initially at least, it is Mr. Driffield, the novelist he is interested in. At one point, Ashenden laments the burden of having to describe his own experience in the first person. All writers are supposed to love inhabiting that special heaven that allows convenient detachment and can put words into anyone’s mouth and feelings into anyone’s experience. Simply being yourself can be completely limiting.

We first encounter this life while visiting his uncle on the south coast, in Kent to be precise, where the writer Driffield and his wife Rosie have relocated and are in the process of causing quite a local stir. The general opinion is that Mrs. Driffield is quite ordinary, a barmaid or something, and the suggestions are that she doesn’t need anatomy lessons.

The moral indignation of the quack classes is apparently unanimous. Mrs. Driffield moves, especially in the direction of Lord George, who is not a lord, and the judgment is that anything wearing trousers is considered to be in her interest. And the outrage has nothing to do with class, since the servants at the house where Ashenden is staying are just as vocal in their opinions as the boss, until they meet sad Rosie, that is, and then her tone changes, for some reason.

Maugham has such a low-class people who lower the age and modify the vowels to such an extent that one wonders how they manage to say so many apostrophes. But Rosie Driffield completely captivates the young man. He falls in love with her although he doesn’t notice her at first. For him, it’s just growing up.

But the relationship changes from one of curiosity and interest to one of physicality and sex, but Somerset Maugham never makes either Ashington or Rosie regret what they’re doing. Guilt does not seem to be a destiny in the London where they meet. They are just human beings being human. And this is what is surprising about the book.

Rosie eventually runs off with Lord George to the United States, where he makes a fortune and she becomes as respectable as possible, first in New York and then in Yonkers, atop a significant fortune, which at least shows something.

Although not explicitly stated, the United States is presented in the book as a land where moralizing attitudes and gossip have no place. Both Lord George and Rosie have moved there and lived their lives unaffected by social judgment. Back home in England, where one hopes judgment is available for the stone, physical life is still denied, but not in Cakes And Ale. The point is that Rosie has overcome criticism, but it must be assumed that she can only continue in that life outside of Albion. Perhaps it was her skeleton after all.