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The traffic of the river ceased and only now and then did you hear the soft spash of a paddle as someone silently passed on his way home. When I awoke in the night I felt a faint motion as the houseboat rocked a little and heard a little gurgle of water, like the ghost of an Eastern music travelling not through space but through time. It was worth while for that sensation of exquisite peace, for the richness of that stillness, to have endured all that sight-seeing.
Somerset Maugham,The Gentleman in the Parlour, Signet Classic Books, London, 1967, p. 96.
PLACE: Ayudha, former capital of Siam
TIME: early 1920's
A leisurely tram crowded with passengers passes down the whole length of the street, and the conductor never ceases to blow his horn. Gharries and rickshaws go up and down ringing their bells, and motors sounding their claxons. The pavements are crowded and there is a ceaseless clatter of the clogs the people wear. Clopperty-clop they go and it makes a sound as insistent and monotonous as the sawing of the cicadas in the jungle.
Along the streets, uttering the raucous cry of China, coolies lollop swiftly bearing loads....
Somerset Maugham,The Gentleman in the Parlour, Signet Classic Books, London, 1967, p. 98.
PLACE: Bangkok, Siam
TIME: early 1920's
On each storey, four to each, are large sunken basins in which was water for purification, and the water at those strange heights must have added strangely to the silence and the awe . .... It is the home now of innumerable bats and the air is fetid with them; in each dark passage and sombre chamber you hear their twitterings.
Somerset Maugham,The Gentleman in the Parlour, Signet Classic Books, London, 1967, p. 138.
PLACE: The Angkor Wat, Cambodia
TIME: early 1920's
...the dancers trod their strange measure. Musicians, hidden by the darkness, played on pipes and drums and gongs, a vague and rhythmical music that troubled the nerves. My ears awaited with a sort of tremor the resolution of harmonies strange to me, but never attained it.
Somerset Maugham, The Gentleman in the Parlour, Signet Classic Books, London, 1967, p. 141.
PLACE: Angkor Wat, Cambodia
TIME: early 1920's
CIRCUMSTANCES: A troupe of Cambodian dancers give a performance on the terrace of the temple.
Bugles blew and we, the Europeans, crowded into the throne-room. A band began to play and singers burst into song. This was the signal for the two Princes of the blood and for the mandarins in the courtyard to turn and face the Emperor. The chorus was silent and the Princes and the mandarins knelt down and touched the ground with their foreheads, They moved as one. A huge gong sounded from the tower over the palace gateway and the chorus again began to sing.
Somerset Maugham,The Gentleman in the Parlour, Signet Classic Books, London, 1967, p. 150.
PLACE: Hue, South Vietnam, (was the capital of Annam province, French Indo-China)
TIME: early 1920's
The courtyard was lit with innumerable little oil lamps and a native orchestrs played lustily.
Then the Imperial ballet, a large number of boys and youths in beautiful old-fashioned costumes that reminded one of the eighteenth-century pictures of the Far East, danced and sang.
They gave place to other dancers, men dressed up as huge cocks, emitting fire from their beaks, or as buffaloes and fearful dragons, and they cut fantastic capers; then came fireworks and the courtyard was filled with smoke and the noisiness of crackers.
This ended the native part of the entertainment.... The court pages, on European instruments, began to play a one-step. The foreigners danced.
Somerset Maugham,The Gentleman in the Parlour, Signet Classic Books, London, 1967, p. 151.
PLACE: Hue, South Vietnam
TIME: early 1920's
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