Maugham on Old Nick

THEN AND NOW (278 pp.)--W. Somerset Maugham--Doubleday ($2.50).

The current historical-novel bug has bitten even Somerset Maugham. With Then and Now he leaves the 19th and 20th Centuries for the first time since his Making of a Saint (1898), retreats 400-odd years to the Italy of Cesare Borgia and Niccolo Machiavelli. Then and Now is a talky, occasionally witty costume piece about Machiavelli in love and Borgia in his glory. It is also an ironical sermon on the unchanging wonders of human nature. Novelist Maugham, now 72, denies that he preaches sermons of any kind. Said he recently: "I think it is an abuse to use the novel as a pulpit or a platform. . . . Fiction is an art, and the purpose of art is not to instruct, but to please."

The 16th Century had its bastards, and Borgia was one of them, with particularly illegitimate and realistic political ideas. Quite probably he picked up some from his father, Pope Alexander VI,* who was realistic enough to shock even Renaissance Italy. Borgia made a great impression on Europe while he lasted (he died at 31). He made a greater one still on Machiavelli, who spent a few months at his headquarters, as envoy from the Signory of Florence.

Then and Now is a story built around the events of those few months. His Machiavelli is by no means the wicked Old Nick after whom the Devil himself is said to be named. He is a wary, humorous, thoughtful lecher with stomach trouble, who spends most of his free time worrying about how (and if) he is going to keep an assignation with a lady named Aurelia. During business hours he proves to be an astute, hard-working Florentine spy. He admires Borgia's ruthless audacity, but always from a diplomatic distance.

Borgia finally offers Machiavelli a job, at much better pay than he will ever earn in Florence. Machiavelli turns it down, partly out of loyalty to Florence, partly because he has seen what happens to Borgia's henchmen. When he returns home at the end of his mission, he realizes that he has had an education in statecraft and princely behavior, also in the behavior of women. He drafts a saucy play about a woman like Aurelia, hints that he may some day write a book about a man like Borgia. "My dear Niccolo," says a friend, "you're so impractical. Who d'you think would read it? You're not going to achieve immortality by writing a book like that." The play, Mandragola, was finished about 1514. The Prince came out some nine years later.

* Cardinal-Bishop of Porto when Cesare was born, became Pope Alexander VI in 1492. Other children (all by Mistress Vannozza Cattani): Giovanni, Lucrezia, Goffredo.

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