The Luncheon – Class 11 English Chapter 8 Notes & NCERT PDF

About the Author

William Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) was a distinguished British author. He was born in Paris and spent his childhood in a French-speaking society. After his father's death he returned to England at the age of 10. He studied at Heidelberg and at St. Thomas's Hospital, London, and qualified as a doctor, but he preferred writing to practising medicine. He wrote many novels, plays and short stories; his best novels include Of Human Bondage, The Moon and Sixpence and Cakes and Ale. The book praises his skill in revealing a situation and the essentials of a character "with a few touches", and his lucid, economical style.

Summary

The meeting at the play

The narrator catches sight of a woman at a play. She reminds him that, many years ago, he had asked her to luncheon. "Did I remember?" he asks — and the story becomes a flashback.

Twenty years ago in Paris

Twenty years earlier the narrator was a poor young writer living in a tiny apartment in the Latin quarter, overlooking a cemetery, "earning barely enough money to keep the body and soul together". The woman had read his book and written to him. She was passing through Paris and asked him to give her "a little luncheon" at Foyot's, a restaurant where French senators ate and which was "so far beyond my means". Flattered, and "too young to have learned to say no to a woman", he agreed. He had eighty francs to last the rest of the month; a modest lunch should cost fifteen, and he planned to cut out coffee for two weeks.

The lunch

She turned out to be a woman of forty, "imposing rather than attractive", with more teeth "than were necessary for any practical purpose". She kept declaring:

"I never eat anything for luncheon." … "I never eat more than one thing."

Yet she ordered, one after another:

The narrator chose the cheapest dish, a mutton chop, and drank only water. She lectured him for eating heavy meat. His "heart sank" at each order and "panic seized" him: would he have enough to pay? He even planned to pretend his pocket had been picked, or to leave his watch.

The bill and the ending

He paid, and had only enough left for a tip of three francs, which made her think him mean. He walked out with "the whole month before me and not a penny in my pocket". Her parting advice: "never eat more than one thing for luncheon." He replied that he would "eat nothing for dinner tonight", and she laughed: "You're quite a humorist!"

The last line gives his revenge:

"Today she weighs twenty-one stone."

Characters

Themes

Literary Devices & Style

Word Power

Exam Focus

Questions from Understanding the Text, Talking about the Text, Appreciation and Language Work:

Common Mistakes