Did Aldous Huxley ever visit Lake Chapala?

 Other  1 Response »
May 082025
 

Did the great English author Aldous Huxley ever visit Lake Chapala? Let’s take a look at the evidence.

A single sentence of Ruta de la Ribera de Chapala, suggests that he did. The book is one in a series of guides to tourist routes in the state of Jalisco, published more than a decade ago by the State government. The single sentence (page 79) is, in translation:

Foreigners as diverse as the famous Werner von Braun—founder of NASA—or the renowned English writer Aldous Huxley, spent time in the region, attracted by the climate, which is said to be one of the best in the world.”

[Original: “Extranjeros tan dispares como el célebre Werner von Braun —fundador de la NASA— o el reconocido escritor inglés Aldous Huxley, pasaban temporadas en la región, llamados por el clima, que se dice es uno de los mejores del mundo.”]

Aldous Leonard Huxley (1894-1963), writer and philosopher, author of dozens of books, certainly spent some time in Mexico, as evidenced by Beyond the Mexique Bay, his book of travel essays published in 1934. That book was based, according to his biographer Sybille Bedford on five months in the Caribbean, British Honduras (now Belize) and Southern Mexico in 1933.

The final essay in Beyond the Mexique Bay is about D. H. Lawrence (a friend and mentor of Huxley) and The Plumed Serpent, the novel Lawrence drafted at Lake Chapala in 1923. Perhaps it is this final chapter that has led casual readers to suppose that Huxley was also in Chapala?

Unfortunately for anyone claiming Huxley ever visited Chapala, his life and movements are well documented and he never came anywhere near the Lake Chapala region.

The sentence quoted above does get two things correct: Werner von Braum did live for a short time (in the mid-1970s) in Chula Vista, the residential subdivision between Chapala and Ajijic, and the area does indeed have one of the best climates in the world! On the other side of the ledger, alongside the (false) claim that Huxley ever lived in Ajijijc, von Braum was not a founder of NASA, even though he did direct its Marshall Space Flight Center and was the architect of the Saturn V launch vehicle which sent Apollo spacecraft into orbit and to the moon.

Huxley’s only link to Lake Chapala is vicariously, via the travels and writing of biographer Sybille Bedford. Bedford, born in Germany in 1911, grew up in southern France, in Sanary-sur-mer, a town visited by D.H. Lawrence, which in the 1930s attracted intellectuals fleeing from central Europe, including Aldous and Maria Huxley, who became Sybille’s mentors and inspiration. Bedford’s travels in Mexico in 1946-47, which included an extended stay at Lake Chapala, were the basis for her fictionalized travel book, The Sudden View, first published in 1953 and re-issued later as A Visit to Don Otavio.

Huxley’s visit to Lake Chapala is a myth. Yet, despite lacking evidence—and like so many other Lake Chapala-related myths—it continues to re-surface periodically from the depths of cyberspace.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offer more details about the history of the artistic community in Ajijic.

Related posts

Sources

  • Arabella González Huezo (ed). 2006. Ruta de la Ribera de Chapala. (Rutas Culturales Jalisco #4). Gobierno de Jalisco: Secretaría de Cultura.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

A Christmas Potpourri of Lake Chapala Links

 Other  1 Response »
Dec 232024
 

Many of the artists and authors associated with Lake Chapala have clear links to Christmas. Admittedly, some links are more tenuous than others. Here, in no particular order, are some that come to mind:

German-born photographer Hugo Brehme, who is credited with having introduced the first photographic Christmas cards into Mexico. Brehme photographed Lake Chapala more than once; many of his superb black-and-white postcard images are hauntingly beautiful.

Toni Beatty. Christmas Cheer, Mesquite, NM. Print on metal.

Toni Beatty. Christmas Cheer, Mesquite, NM. Print on metal.

Another photographer, Toni Beatty, found creative freedom while living in Ajijic in 1976. The image above (reproduced with her kind permission) is an example of her more recent, extraordinary, work which involves digitally-enhanced photographs printed on metal to emphasize their vivid colors and luminescence.

Both Eunice (Hunt) Huf and Peter Huf, who met and married in Ajijic in the 1960s, were regular exhibitors for many years at Munich’s Schwabing Christmas Market. In 1994, Peter Huf founded the market’s Art Tent, and oversaw its operation until 2014.

The work of several Lakeside artists was included in the “Collective Christmas Exhibition” in December 1968 at Galeria 1728 (Hidalgo #1728) in Guadalajara. These artists included Gustel Foust, Peter Huf, Eunice (Hunt) Huf and José María Servín and Guillermo Chávez Vega.

In California, two Lake Chapala-related artists—Bruce Sherratt and Robert Clutton—had works in the 1971 Christmas Show at the prestigious Vorpal Gallery.

New Orleans poet Mary Ashley Townsend was given a magnificent Christmas present—the Villa Montecarlo in Chapala—by her daughter, Cora, in 1895. Mary Ashley and her husband enjoyed several lengthy stays there over the next few years.

Architect George Heneghan and his wife Molly Heneghan, a graphic designer, first visited Ajijic in 1970 to spend Christmas with Molly’s parents. They liked what they saw, stayed for several years and George designed the Danza del Sol hotel in the village.

Prolific non-fiction author Joseph Cottler (1899-1996), an accomplished guitarist and violinist who visited Ajijic on numerous occasions, co-wrote (with Nicola A. Montani) a musical score entitled “Lovely babe : Christmas carol for three-part chorus of women’s voices with piano or organ accompaniment” (1946).

Illustration by Regina and Haig Shekerjian

Illustration by Regina and Haig Shekerjian from A Book of Christmas Carols.

More Christmas carols came from Regina Tor (deCormier) Shekerjian and her husband, photographer Haig Shekerjian, who were frequent visitors to Ajijic from the early 1950s to the 1980s. They co-wrote A Book of Christmas Carols (1963) and illustrated Nancy Willard’s book The merry history of a Christmas pie: with a delicious description of a Christmas soup (1974).

Numerous artists contributed their work over the years to the annual fundraising greetings cards sold to benefit Amigos de Salud, a non-profit started in 1974 by novelist Joan Frost. They included Daphne Aluta, Jean Caragonne, Gustel Foust, Bill Gentes, James Marthai, Bob Neathery and Georg Rauch. Amigos de Salud supported the Lakeside School for the Deaf and in 1993 merged into the Programa Pro Niños Incapacitados del Lago, whose worthy efforts continue to make a difference to this day.

Enterprising Hollywood actor and artist Todd “Rocky” Karns retired to Ajijic with his wife and family in 1971 to paint, and produce and direct shows at the Lakeside Little Theater. Karns’ best-known movie role was as “Harry Bailey” in the classic Christmas holiday movie It’s a Wonderful Life (1946).

American author Garland Franklin Clifton lived in the Chapala area in the 1960s. He wrote Wooden Leg John. Satire on Americans living in Mexico, a series of 20 letters dated from Christmas Day 1967 to Christmas Day 1968.

Charles Pollock was born in Denver, Colorado, on Christmas Day 1902. He painted for a year in Ajijic on the shores of Lake Chapala in 1955-56, producing his Chapala Series, exhibited in New York in 2007. Charles’s younger brother Jackson Pollock became an icon of the American abstract art movement in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Also born on Christmas Day (but in 1906) was American journalist Edgar Ellinger, who wrote about “the small, captivating town of Ajijic” in 1953 for the Arizona Republic under the title, “Mexican Town Offers Peaceful Way of Life.”

Frieda Hauswirth Das (1886-1974) painted in Ajijic in the mid-1940s and spent Christmas 1945 in Monterrey, Mexico.

American anthropologist Frederick Starr (1858-1933) attended a performance of the Pastores (Shepherds), a Passion Play, in Chapala in December 1895 and wrote the experience up for an article published in The Journal of American Folklore.

Anthropologist George Carpenter Barker is noteworthy for his editing and translation of a copy of a manuscript found in Chapala in 1948 after a performance of a nativity play on Christmas morning in the village churchyard. The manuscript was apparently committed to paper, from older oral sources, by Aristeo Flores of El Salto, Jalisco, around 1914.

Dudley Kuzell, husband of Betty Kuzell, was a baritone in the Ken Lane Singers and The Guardsmen quartet. The Kuzells lived at Lake Chapala for many years, from the early 1950s. The Ken Lane Singers accompanied Frank Sinatra on his 1945 recording of America the Beautiful; Silent Night, Holy Night; The Moon was Yellow; and I only Have Eyes for You, and on his 1947 recording that included It Came Upon the Midnight Clear; O little Town of Bethlehem; and the iconic White Christmas.

John Maybra Kilpatrick who painted a WPA mural in Chicago in 1947, retired to Ajijic with his wife Lucy in 1964 and lived there until his death in 1972. Kilpatrick had been a commercial artist for the H. D. Catty Corporation of Huntly, Illinois. In 1952, the corporation copyrighted colored Christmas wrapping paper designed by Kilpatrick, entitled “Merry Christmas (Snow scene with 3 figures in front of houses)”.

Novelist, playwright and travel writer David Dodge settled in Ajijic with his wife Elva in 1966. Early in his career, Dodge co-wrote (with Loyall McLaren) Christmas Eve at the Mermaid, which was first performed as the Bohemian Club’s Christmas play of 1940.

Award-winning novelist Glendon Swarthout, whose short story entitled “Ixion”, set at Lake Chapala, was later turned into a screenplay by his son Miles Swarthout as Convictions of the Heart, spent six months in Ajijic with his wife and son in 1951. Among his many successful novels was A Christmas Gift (also known as The Melodeon), published in 1977.

Guadalajara poet Idella Purnell frequently visited Lake Chapala, where her dentist father owned a small home, in the 1920s and 1930s. Her short story “The Idols Of San Juan Cosala“, which we have used as our Christmas post some years, was first published in the December 1936 issue of American Junior Red Cross News and reprinted in 2001 in El Ojo del Lago.

– – – – – – –

Happy Christmas! – ¡Feliz Navidad!

Note: This is a revised version of a post first published in December 2016.

Sombrero Books welcomes comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios. Please email us or use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts.

Canadian artists and authors associated with Lake Chapala

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Jun 292024
 

For Canadians, who celebrate 1 July as Canada Day, here is a list of Canadian artists and authors who have historical connections to Lake Chapala and who have been profiled on this site. Enjoy!

Visual artists

Henry Sandham (1842-1910), a well-known Canadian illustrator of the time, illustrated Charles Embree‘s historical novel, A Dream of a Throne, the Story of a Mexican Revolt (1900), the earliest English-language novel set at Lake Chapala. Embree, who published several novels and numerous short stories, was a genuine Mexicophile if ever there was one, but died in his early thirties.

Way back in the 1940s, painter Hari Kidd (1899-1964), who had served in the Royal Canadian Air Force, lived in Chapala. This is when he first met and fell in love with fellow artist Edythe Wallach, his future wife, who was then living in Ajijic.

Love was in the air at Lake Chapala in the 1940s. In Ajijic in 1949, Canadian writer Harold Masson (1915-2011) met and married English nurse Helen Rigall, who was in Ajijic visiting her uncle, Herbert Johnson, and his wife, Georgette.

American artist Gerry Pierce (1900-1969), who painted several watercolors in Ajijic in the mid-1940s, began his art career in Nova Scotia, Canada, in the late 1920s.

Canadian artist Clarence Ainslie Loomis painted Ajijic in the early 1990s. I would love to learn more about this elusive character whose paintings are very distinctive.

Loomis was following in the footsteps, so to speak, of Canadian artist Eunice Hunt and her husband Paul Huf who spent many years working in Ajijic in the 1960s and 1970s. The couple married in Ajijic and their two sons were both born in Mexico. The family subsequently moved to Paul’s native Germany to continue their artistic careers.

In the 1950s, a young Canadian woman, Dorothy Whelan, became the partner of artist and photographer Ernest Alexander (1921-1974) who ran the  Scorpion Club in Ajijic. “Alex” led an extraordinary life but, sadly, things spiraled out of control after the couple left Ajijic and moved to San Francisco.

Swedish-American visual artist Carlo Wahlbeck (born in 1933) studied at the Winnipeg School of Art in Canada and lived in Chapala for two or three years in the mid-1970s.

Multi-talented Mexican guitarist and artist Gustavo Sendis (1941-1989) lived many years in Ajijic and had an exhibition on Vancouver Island at Malaspina College (now Vancouver Island University) in Nanaimo, B.C., in July 1980. If anyone knows any details of this exhibit, then please get in touch!

Toronto muralist and painter John Russell Richmond (1926-2013) lived and painted in Ajijic for several years in the 1990s. In Ajijic, he became known (and signed his work) as Juan Compo.

Margaret Van Gurp (1926-2020), a well known artist from eastern Canada, sketched and painted in Jocotepec in 1983, while living with her daughter Susan, then working at the Lakeside School for the Deaf. One of the founders of that school was Jackie Hartley, a retired Canadian teacher who had taught in Canada, and who took some excellent photographs of Jocotepec in the 1980s.

Hungarian-Canadian artist Michael Fischer (?-2018), based outside Toronto, taught illustration and composition at George Brown College, and painted at Lake Chapala several times, staying in San Juan Cosalá.

The body of work completed by Duncan de Kergommeaux during his visit of several weeks to San Juan Cosalá in 2006 was included in his solo show in Ottawa the following year.

Highly regarded painter, collage artist and violinist Leonard Brooks (1911-2011) and his wife, Reva, an award-winning photographer, made their home in San Miguel de Allende for more than fifty years. Brookes’ interesting collage acrylic on canvas titled “Chapala” was sold at auction in 2020.

Poets, authors, writers and playwrights

Several Canadian poets have been inspired by Lake Chapala. For example, Earle Birney visited Ajijic in the 1950s and Canadian performance poet Canadian performance poet Leanne Averbach visited the lake many years later. The great Al Purdy first visited Chapala on a quest to explore the haunts of D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930) and later produced a limited edition book based on his trip. [Lawrence wrote his novel “The Plumed Serpent” while staying in Chapala in 1923.] Purdy also wrote a travel piece about Ajijic.

Prominent Canadian folklorist Helen Creighton (1899-1989) was teaching at the American School of Guadalajara when she visited and photographed Lake Chapala at about the same time as D. H. Lawrence was there.

Canadian historian and non-fiction writer Ross Parmenter (1912-1999) only ever spent a few days at Lake Chapala, in 1946, but has left us detailed descriptions of the local villages and of what life was like at the time. His accounts of the difficulties of traveling from Chapala to Ajijic,  first by car, and then by boat, in the 1940s are interesting reading.

The enigmatic Maxwell Desmond Poyntz, who was born in British Columbia on 4 January 1918 and died in Canada, at the age of 81, on 29 November 1999, is known to have visited Jocotepec while working on a “proposed trilogy”. It is unclear if he ever finished this magnum opus; there is no record of its publication.

Former CBC war correspondent and author Captain William (“Bill”) Strange (1902-1983) and his wife Jean Strange, one of Canada’s earliest female architects, lived in Chapala for decades and, in the 1960s, produced several radio documentaries about Mexico.

US-born author and diplomat José de Olivares, who wrote an account of a perilous boat trip on Lake Chapala in 1901, held a US consular position in Hamilton, Ontario, from 1915-1924.

The famous Canadian playwright and novelist George Ryga (1932-1987) had a holiday home in San Antonio Tlayacapan for many years in the 1970s and 1980s and frequently visited and wrote while staying there. His play “Portrait of Angelica” is set in Ajijic. Several literary friends and relatives of Ryga also visited or used his holiday home. They include Ryga’s daughter Tanya (a drama teacher) and her husband Larry Reece, a musician, artist and drama professor; Brian Paisley, and the multi-talented Ken Smedley and his wife, the actress, artist and model, Dorian Smedley-Kohl. Ken and Dorian Smedley were instrumental in mounting the first (and only) Ajijic Fringe Theatre – “El Fringe” – in 1988.

Canada was a safe haven for Scottish Beat novelist Alexander Trocchi (1925-1984), who worked on his controversial novel Cain’s Book (1960) in Ajijic in the late 1950s. The group of friends that helped smuggle Trocchi into Canada to escape prosecution in the U.S. included American novelist Norman Mailer (who first visited Ajijic in the late-1940s).

American Buddhist author Pema Chödrön, known at the time as Deirdre Blomfield-Brown, lived with her then husband, the poet and writer Jim Levy, for about a year in Ajijic from mid-1968 until May 1969. Chödrön moved to Canada in 1984 to establish Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia, Canada. She became the Abbey’s director in 1986 and still holds that position today.

Additional profiles of Canadian artists and authors associated with Lake Chapala are added periodically. This post was last updated on 29 June 2024.

Comments and corrections welcomed, whether via the comments function or email.

Álvaro Ochoa Serrano’s history of “La Ciénega de Chapala”

 Other  2 Responses »
Apr 182024
 

When not writing about mariachi, historian Dr Álvaro Ochoa Serrano has dedicated much of his life to writing about Lake Chapala. His latest book, titled La Ciénega de Chapala, published in 2023, is an extraordinarily well-researched account of the history of the eastern end of Lake Chapala, told through four detailed and elegantly written case studies.

Alvaro-Ochoa-portada-1

The first, centered on the settlement near Jiquilpan named Tototlán (Totolán), walks readers through its development from early colonial times, with an accessible account of how the population, land tenure and economy were influenced by demographic factors, disease, banditry, land transfers and disputes, against a backdrop including the numerous political upheavals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The second part, about how the War of Independence played out in the wider region, provides an insightful analysis of the insurgents’ defense of Mezcala Island, and of how the war impacted the existing haciendas and settlements east and south of the lake.

Guaracha, the largest of these haciendas, is the subject of the book’s third part, which looks at the changing and sometimes violent relationships between the hacienda and its neighboring settlements from the mid-nineteenth century to modern times. Guaracha lost its proximity to the lakeshore after the first decade of the twentieth century, when the eastern end of the lake was drained for agricultural use.

The fourth part is a masterful account of the area around Briseñas, Buenavista, Cumuato and Maltaraña, haciendas on a deltaic area formed, over thousands of years, by the Río Lerma where it enters the lake. This section skillfully incorporates details of land transactions, ownership, and reclamation while explaining the significant influence of the Castellanos family in the nineteenth century, and the short-lived meteoric rise to political power of Manuel Cuesta Gallardo at the end of the Porfiriato.

Ochoa is a consummate, award-winning historian. His text includes detailed footnotes, a selection of photographs and maps, an extensive bibliography and a full index for names of people and places. His books are available via Spanish-language bookstores and online via http://www.libreriacolmich.com/ amazon.com.mx and bookstore sites such as https://www.gandhi.com.mx (tip: search using “Alvaro Ochoa Serrano”)

La Ciénega de Chapala: un cuarteto de textos a flote is currently available only in Jiquilpan and in Morelia:
– Jiquilpan: Librería del Portal frente a la Plaza; and from Tere Sánchez, Unidad Académica de Estudios Regionales de la UNAM (9 to 3, and 5 to 7).
– Morelia: Librería “La Galaxia de Gutenberg,” calle Ortega y Montañez, casi esquina con Martínez de Lejarza en el barrio de Capuchinas.

Book: Álvaro Ochoa Serrano. 2023. La Ciénega de Chapala: un cuarteto de textos a flote. Tlalpujahua: Editorial Morevalladolid.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Chapter 6 of Lake Chapala: A Postcard History is an English-language account of some of the major changes that occurred in this general area during the twentieth century.

Comments, corrections or additional material are welcomed. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.

The centenary of D H Lawrence’s visit to Chapala in 1923

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Jun 292023
 

To honor the centenary of D H Lawrence’s visit in 1923 to Chapala (where he wrote the first draft of The Plumed Serpent) here are links to posts about his time and work in Chapala, as well as links to short profiles of his immediate literary entourage and others closely associated with him:

D. H. Lawrence and his wife Frieda, Chapala, 1923

D. H. Lawrence and his wife, Frieda. Chapala, 1923

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village (2022) and of If Walls Could Talk: Chapala’s Historic Buildings and Their Former Occupants (2020), translated into Spanish as Si las paredes hablaran: Edificios históricos de Chapala y sus antiguos ocupantes relate to other artists and authors associated with Lake Chapala.

Comments, corrections and additional material welcome, via comments feature or email.

26 novels set largely or entirely at Lake Chapala

 Other  1 Response »
Jun 012023
 

Two decades ago, when I first began to document the artists and authors associated with Lake Chapala, I knew of only three or four twentieth century novels set at the lake. To my astonishment, many more (some long forgotten) have since emerged.

Ignoring, for simplicity’s sake, any attempt to define the precise limits of what does or does not constitute a Lake Chapala novel, a strong case can be made for the inclusion of the following twenty five books, the oldest dating back to the final years of the nineteenth century.

novel covers

These nineteenth and twentieth century novels set largely or entirely at Lake Chapala include, in approximate chronological order:

21st century novels set at Lakeside include:

  • Ruth Ross-Merrimer. 2001. Champagne & Tortillas.
  • William Schrader. 2002. Kiss My Tears Away.
  • T. M. Spooner.2006. Notes from Exile.
  • Dionicio Morales López. 2010. Santos Rico – Animas de Axixic.
  • John Hoopes. 2011. The Spy in Love (Lake Chapala Serenade).
  • Carolena Torres. 2013. Dust on Their Hearts.
  • Carolena Torres. 2017. Castles by the Lake.
  • Jan Dunlap. 2017. Dilemma.

Spanish language novels in 1951

As they say about buses, “You wait a long time for one to come along, and then three arrive at once.” It is exactly the same with Spanish language novels about Lake Chapala. Of the five or six lake-related novels that were published during the 20th century, three of them arrived in the same year: 1951.

Of the three, perhaps the most powerful is El gran Chapa, the first published work of Guadalajara author Juan Pablo Guzmán Alemán. This novel won the inaugural Jalisco prize for literature in 1950 and was published by the state government the following year. Coincidentally, that was when another Guadalajara author, Ramón Rubín, published his wonderful—and deservedly popular—novel, La canoa perdida: Novela mestiza, and when Salomón Zepeda (about whom little is known) published a fun, lowbrow romance novel, La Ondina de Chapala.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offer more details about the history of the artistic and literary community in Ajijic.

Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcomed. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.

Attn: Michael Parrott, Ajijic in the 1950s

 Other  No Responses »
Mar 312023
 

Hello Michael,
You emailed me two photos earlier today (31 March 2023) taken in Ajijic in the early 1950s, and asking me about your parents.
Unfortunately, my email responding to you was returned as undeliverable.
Please can you contact me – via this email – and let me know your correct email and, if you wish, a phone number where I can reach you.
Thanks,
Tony

 Posted by at 10:02 am

Art Mystery: Who is the artist of this silkscreen?

 Other  1 Response »
Apr 192018
 

This interesting picture recently came to light in Ajijic. It is (to the best of my knowledge) unsigned and undated. It appears to be a silkscreen rather than a painting. Does anyone recognize this work or have suggestions as to who the artist might be?

Mystery image

Thanks, in advance, for any help you can offer.

Previous art mysteries:

Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcomed. Please email us or use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts.

Did Somerset Maugham ever visit Lake Chapala?

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Jan 152018
 

Did the great British author W. Somerset Maugham ever visit Lake Chapala? A number of writers and websites, extolling the literary connections of Ajijic, have claimed that W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) has connections to the village. Some of these writers add that he lived in Ajijic for several months in the 1930s where he supposedly completed his novel, The Razor’s Edge (1944).

The Razor’s Edge is the story of Larry Darrell, an American pilot psychologically damaged by the First World War who seeks some meaning for his life. It was turned into a screenplay which was nominated for four Academy Awards in 1946, including Best Picture, with Anne Baxter winning Best Actress in a Supporting Role.

While I have been unable to ascertain when or how the myth about Maugham at Lake Chapala began, I am now completely convinced that he never ever visited the area. The closest he ever came was when he was in Mexico City in 1924.

It is possible that the idea of Maugham being in Ajijic originated from the fact that while in Mexico City he did actually meet (albeit briefly) D. H. Lawrence, who does have a close association with Lake Chapala. However, during the time Lawrence was living in Chapala (from May to July 1923), Maugham was traveling in Burma (Myanmar), Siam (Thailand) and Indonesia, a trip that lasted from October 1922 until July 1923.

On the occasion when the two men met in Mexico, on 5 November 1924, it was at an uncomfortable lunch at the home of archaeologist Zelia Nuttall in Mexico City.  It was during Maugham’s one and only trip to Mexico.

Lawrence later used this lunch meeting as the basis for his description of the memorable tea party hosted by “Mrs Norris” in Chapter 2 of The Plumed Serpent. For his part, Maugham later based his character sketch of the dying poet “Francesco” in A Writer’s Notebook on a passage by Frieda Lawrence about her husband (“Lorenzo” to his friends) in her autobiography. Maugham’s only other connection to Mexico is a later short story, set in Europe, entitled “The Hairless Mexican”, the original version of which appeared in 1928.

Even though Lawrence and Maugham met over lunch, there was no love lost between them. As Jeffrey Meyers writes in Somerset Maugham, a life, the two men were very different:

“Maugham always returned to his permanent home; Lawrence never had one. Frequently pressed for money, Lawrence traveled simply; Maugham usually journeyed in luxury. Lawrence loathed Capri, where Maugham felt entirely at home. Always in delicate health, Lawrence had to be more cautious, and died young. Maugham was much tougher. He’d risked his life as a spy in Switzerland and Russia, survived tuberculosis, traveled in remote and dangerous places.” (Meyers 156)

Moreover, in terms of their writing abilities:

“Lawrence thought Maugham was a superficial, commercial scribbler who catered to the establishment that had suppressed his own novel, The Rainbow, in 1915. A far greater writer, but living from hand to mouth, he bitterly resented Maugham’s popularity, financial success and self-indulgent way of life… For his part, Maugham considered Lawrence “a pathological case”. “ (Meyers 156-157)

In addition, as Robert Calder has pointed out, Maugham was decidedly underwhelmed by Mexico and disappointed that it had not given him the literary stimulus he was seeking:

“Maugham and Lawrence were unlikely to have enjoyed each other’s company under the best conditions, and by the time that they met, Maugham was depressed by the realization that Mexico was not providing the kind of material for his writing that he had anticipated… Maugham found little inspiration and produced nothing from the trip.” (Calder 182)

Shortly after their brief meeting at Zelia Nuttall’s home, Lawrence continued on to Oaxaca where he completed the final draft of The Plumed Serpent, while Maugham left Mexico City for the Yucatán Peninsula, from where he and his secretary-companion sailed to Havana, Cuba. Maugham never returned to Mexico but found his inspiration elsewhere.

Despite Maugham’s lack of empathy for Mexico, his novels and plays were popular in the country and several of his plays were performed at the Degollado theater in Guadalajara during the 1930s.

Even if Maugham never did work on The Razor’s Edge at Lake Chapala, the novel does have one very tenuous link to the area. According to literary critics, “Larry Darrell”, the novel’s central character, is based on the English-born novelist and playwright Christopher Isherwood. Isherwood himself, in an interview with David Lambourne, once referred to Lake Chapala when he credited D. H Lawrence with having taught him that, for best effect, you don’t need to describe things as they are, but as you saw them:

“Lawrence… was so intensely subjective. I mean his wonder at the mountains above Taos, you know, and then his rage at Lake Chapala. And the characteristic methods of his attack were so marvelous. I mean, he was in a bad temper about Lake Chapala, so he just said, ‘The lake looks like urine.’ He meant, ‘It looks like urine to me,’ you see…”

Conclusion

Unlike many other great writers and artists over the years, Somerset Maugham never did visit Lake Chapala. Some would say “his loss”, given that the area attracted and nurtured so many famous names and such a range of talents over the years. Even without staking any claim to Maugham, Lake Chapala residents can still justifiably be proud of the area’s rich literary and artistic heritage.

Sources:

  • Robert Calder. 1989. Willie, the life of W. Somerset Maugham. London: Heinemann.
  • David Ellis. 1998. D.H. Lawrence: Dying Game 1922-1930: The Cambridge Biography of D. H. Lawrence, p 205.
  • David Lambourne. 1975. “A kind of Left-Wing Direction”, an interview with Christopher Isherwood in Poetry Nation No. 4, 1975. Manchester: C.B. Cox & Michael Schmidt. 152pp.
  • Frieda Lawrence (Frieda von Richthofen). 1934. Not I, But the Wind... (New York: Viking Press)
  • W. Somerset Maugham. Collected Short Stories, Volume 3.
  • W. Somerset Maugham. 1938. The Summing up. London: Heinemann.
  • Jeffrey Meyers. 2004. Somerset Maugham, a life. Vintage.
  • Harry T. Moore (ed). 1962. The Collected Letters of D. H. Lawrence (two volumes). Heinemann.

Sombrero Books welcomes comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.

Dilemma, a novel by Jan Dunlap

 Other  No Responses »
Oct 182017
 

Sombrero Books is pleased to announce that Jan Dunlap’s debut novel – Dilemma – is now available for Kindle readers at the very attractive price of US$2.90. A regular print version (real books are nice!) is also available. Perfect for Christmas gifts!

In her exciting debut novel, Dilemma, Jan Dunlap weaves a page-turning tale of international romance, drugs and intrigue, loosely based on events and characters from her past.

The novel, set mainly at Lake Chapala in Mexico, takes us back to the 1970s. Natalie, a beautiful young DEA agent, is sent to investigate an alleged king-pin in the drugs world who lives in Ajijic. Her life soon becomes far more complicated than she bargained for.

Jan Dunlap, the author, was born and raised in small-town Texas and has a formal background in sociology.

She spent ten years in Puerto Rico – where she met Fidel Castro – and more than twenty years in Mexico, where she owned a restaurant-art gallery and bar. Completely bilingual, Jan has always loved to write and has completed several novels and screenplays.

The cover artwork is by Oliver Rivas, one of the author’s grandsons.

The Kindle edition of Dilemma can be purchased on all Amazon sites, via

After reading the book, please consider leaving a review on Amazon, Goodreads or similar site.

The print version will be released in early November.

Enjoy!

Help wanted: Does anyone know the whereabouts of this Sylvia Fein painting?

 1940s, Other  No Responses »
Oct 222015
 

Sylvia Fein, one of America’s foremost surrealist painters, lived and worked in Ajijic from 1943 to 1946. We would love to learn the present whereabouts of one of her favorite paintings from that time.

Sylvia Fein: Three Ladies. ca 1945.

Sylvia Fein: Three Ladies. ca 1945.

Painted in Ajijic in about 1945, the painting shows three ladies chasing idols (see image). The model for all three ladies was the daughter of one of Fein’s close friends in the village. Fein lost touch with the painting years ago, but always wondered what became of it.

It is probable that the painting was included in her first solo show in 1946, at Perls Galleries in New York, and it may have been sold at that time.

If anyone has any knowledge of where this painting is now, we would love to know! Please contact us!

Sombrero Books welcomes comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios. Please email us or use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts.

Village In The Sun by Dane Chandos (reprint by Tlayacapan Press, 1998)

 Other  No Responses »
Jan 042014
 

In the early 1940s, an Englishman Dane Chandos (the pen name for a two-man writing team) decided to settle in a small village on Lake Chapala. This is a most welcome reprint of the much sought-after, highly entertaining account of his adventures during his first year in Mexico. As he builds his home, Chandos absorbs local customs while bonding with a colorful cast of characters. A delightful book!

Village In The Sun by Dane Chandos (reprint by Tlayacapan Press, 1998)
Softcover, 259 pages. Dimensions (in inches): 8.3 x 5.45 x 0.6 Price: US$15.00 [plus shipping – contact us for details]

Written in the early 1940s, Village In The Sun is still considered to be one of the most endearing books written about Mexico to this day. Set in the area of Ajijic, Jalisco, it gives a delightful view of the Mexicans and their culture without criticism and judgment. The story is a most entertaining month-by-month account of an Englishman weathering his first year in Ajijic. It is written in a time when the road from Chapala to Jocotepec was a muddy trail and steam bed washouts were part of life during the rainy season. Ice was delivered by bus from Guadalajara, dropped off by the side of the road and left in the sun. In the process of building his house, the author gradually absorbs local customs while bonding with a colorful cast of characters.

Related books:

All three books “House in the Sun”, “Village in the Sun” and “Candelaria’s Cookbook” are delightful and essential reading for anyone who cares about the spirit of Mexico and its people. The sale of these books helps fund an educational program for young people living in the village of San Antonio Tlayacapan, where the books are set.

House In The Sun by Dane Chandos (reprint by Tlayacapan Press, 1999)

 Other  2 Responses »
Jan 042014
 

House In The Sun by Dane Chandos (reprint by Tlayacapan Press, 1999)

This is the classic account of how an expatriate Englishman Dane Chandos (the pen name for a two-man writing team) ran an hotel in a Lake Chapala village fifty years ago – “a magical place where anything can happen–and frequently does!”

house in the sun cover

Softcover, 246 pages. Dimensions (in inches): 8.3 x 5.45 x 0.6. Price: US$15.00 [plus shipping – contact us for details]

“The house which he was building in Ajijic, on Lake Chapala, south of Guadalajara, is now nearing completion and, at the time of which he writes, is converted to a small inn taking a few paying guests. Here, Dane Chandos unfolds his day-to-day adventures as “Señor of the Inn,” an amateur hotelier who is at the mercy of both his loyal, unpredictable and often maddening servants, and of his equally unpredictable and maddening – though never boring – guests. All this is set forth with tender understanding and captivating wit against the background of the primitive little village which lies “between the lake and the paws of the mountains,” where anything can happen.” (review by Alan Cogan)

House In The Sun has more descriptive details about Mexico than the previous book by Dane Chandos – Village In The Sun  – as the author occasionally takes his guests on sightseeing trips including a pilgrimage to the Virgin of Zapopan, a canoa trip around the lake, and a drive to Uruapan to see the still-erupting volcano at Paricutin.

Related books:

All three books “House in the Sun”, “Village in the Sun” and “Candelaria’s Cookbook” are delightful and essential reading for anyone who cares about the spirit of Mexico and its people. The sale of these books helps fund an educational program for young people living in the village of San Antonio Tlayacapan, where the books are set.

 Posted by at 12:26 pm