That "Something"

Radio Record, Volume III, Issue 39, 11 April 1930, Page 28

That "Something"

"THE bluntest and most pungent comment on my sex that I have seen in literature is that of Somerset Maugham. In his "On a Chinese Screen" he tells a story of a Consul encountering an Englishwoman who, as the landlady’s daughter, had married a Chinese student in London and returned with him to the land of his fathers. There she found that he already had the customary native wife. and, moreover, that she was to live with her husband’s mother and obey her in all things. The household was not a happy one, and the illiterate, blowsy Englishwoman speedily deteriorated. Appealing to the Consul, she was advised that under English law she was not legally married to her Chinese husband, and the advice was given that she should return to England. This she consistently refused to do. At the end of two years she burst one morning into the Consul’s domicile, dishevelled and unkempt, bearing an evil-smelling mess of pottage, with the story that effort was being made to poison her-quite an understandable procedure on the part of the two native women, with whom she would be quite out of harmony. Once more the Consul pleaded with her to leave. "What on earth makes you stay with the man?’ he cried. She hesitated for a moment, but finally, with a curious look in her eyes, replied: "There’s something in the way bis hair grows on his forehead that I cannot help liking." This was the end. Ina cold fury the Consul walked off, and though a man not often using bad language, could not restrain himself from the summing up: "Women are simply bloody !’-Antoinetie.