Maugham and French Literature

Somerset Maugham (1874-1965), British playwright, novelist, essayist, and short story writer, opted to live in France, in fact, on the French Riviera. In his nonfiction Points of View, the last book he wrote (1958) he praises the French for their eloquent literature and suggests a possible reason for it: the French do not have many children. I wonder if Maugham checked out the number of children the great Russian writers of the 19th century had.

Well, I checked, and learned the Russian quiver did not contain many arrows. Some of those great writers did not marry; one had a child by a serf. But Tolstoy had 13 children, 10 of whom survived infancy. And it’s Tolstoy whom the world credits for writing the best novel ever written, War and Peace. Most of these writers had dreadful childhoods and wrote about that subject in their fiction.

Therefore, Maugham might have been right in praising the French for their eloquent prose. But I proffer this question: Can’t a low population of a civilized country get too low, for, as an example, in time of war? ♥