Amazingly accurate picture of English society! It's hilariously funny, but also painfully true!

I love this story. It's such a perfect picture of a fortune hunting man who will marry just about anything with a dowry, and I'm absolutely sure the woman he proposed to first had seen right through him and found the perfect way of dealing with him. Somerset Maugham is always wonderful, but in this story's depiction of older women there's a little touch of Saki - he was so good about aunts!

These English gentle folk are masters at sounding genteel while doing terrible things to each other.

😂Sommerset is an incredible, and timeless storyteller!

A wonderfully tongue in cheek introduction.

To say that I love these stories is an understatement.

These stories are new to me and quite good. Thankyou for posting.

She knew he was out for the money snd she enjoys her independence anyway 😅

I love the song at the end.❤

While working, listening to the short story. Just the right time / length of the story for one go!!!!!!!

Thank you for this story 😊

Thank you for yet another upload of Somerset Maugham's wonderful stories. ❤❤❤

I loved this story with its funny outcome.

Magical lovely 💕 song after story. Memory cobblestone road 🎵

The stories would be wonderful to listen to at night as one is awake in bed. However, the ads burst in and make it impossible to enjoy.

Lovely song at the end. I tried to SHAZAM it, but could not identify it. What's the title and artist?

Sperb narration and music. The late authorvwould have smiked ss much as I did listening to the audio well past midnight. I had lived >10 years in a lovely village in Kent ( Oasthouse/ small cottages/leaden windows and suoerbly looked after cottage gardens) not that far from Swale and wondered why we never considered visiting the vicarage..perhaps! Reminded me of some ladies who weren't that different from the likes of Mrs Proudfoot / Strong

Neuralsufer--you have ignighted an absolute fire for Somerset Maugham in me. I can not get enough. His characters are in my brain now. BTW - your illustrations are spot on--who does them?Thank you.

*Spoilers** This is the first of S.M.'s short stories. It was first published in Punch, 1900. It was a dry, one could say 'droll,' view of marriage in a small English village. "The Vicar of Swale," had lashings of Victorian morality thrown in for more British humor. The Rev. Robert Branscombe was a forty-year-old Oxford graduate who wanted to progress in his career. Therefore, he understood the need to marry the right wife, one with money. There were only two candidates because of class-based snobbery. Lady Proudfoot, who was always sticking her foot into other people's business, was determined it should be her friend, Mrs. Edith Strong. Although, "perilously near forty years of age," Proudfoot saw that in a positive light, Edith won't give him fifteen children. Everything about Mrs. Strong is strong, especially her teeth it would seem. Six feet tall, she had been the sporty type, but now was big as an elephant. (So, we'll understand Strong's showy teeth as a reference to an elephant's tusks.) Yet an elephant with L1,500 per annum. Branscombe assures her he'll do his duty by her, but Strong thinks that his virtually saying, 'don't worry about sex, I'll service the cow,' to not be sufficiently romantic. The other woman was the twenty-nine-year-old Jane Simpson, well-named, for she was a plain-Jane and a simpering-Simp(son). Simpering in her affection for the vicar and desperate to be married, therefore, undesirable. So much so that with a deceased father and a fortune of L100,000 in her own name, no one wanted her. The story ends with Mrs. Strong managing to palm-off Branscombe onto the simp, Jane Simpson. Maugham does throw in that in a class-based society, the gap between the haves and the have-nots was wide. So wide that the best the have-nots could reasonably hope for was that their children would die young of diphtheria or typhoid. He hints that that was their Christmas present from God "in winter."

SM’s range is wonderful!

Thank you.

Great story. Thank you.

Name of the song, please?

Cranford was never like this .

So, inhabitants are not considered sinners, but they can sin with impunity. Disgusting town.

I'd love the name of the song and artist at the end of this story.

👏👏👏👏🙏💕

👍⭐🌹

An insufferable snob in real life, Maugham was able to feign an air of plebeian brotherhood in his writing to perfection, nonetheless 😂

‘card’?! 😂 ‘cad’ …..

This is lovely. Both the story and narration. One thing. Could you read slightly slower? Just a little. Sometimes I can't tell when one sentence ends and another begins.

Why did he ask ma strong to marry him if he wanted to marry me Simpson? Was it the money?

Crazy huh?