Syrie Maugham

Gwendoline Maud Syrie Maugham ( Barnardo, formerly Wellcome; 10 July 1879 – 25 July 1955) was a leading British interior decorator of the 1920s and 1930s who popularised rooms decorated entirely in white.

Early life Gwendoline Maud Syrie Barnardo was born in England on 10 July 1879. She was the daughter of Thomas John Barnardo, the founder of the Barnardo's charity for destitute children, and his wife, Sarah Louise "Syrie" Elmslie. Gwendoline was the eldest girl in a family of six. As an adult, she preferred to be known by her last christian name (Syrie).

Syrie's Irish-born father had converted at age 16 to Protestant evangelicalism, joining the Plymouth Brethren, and believed in daily Bible reading, obedience, strict punctuality and the forgoing of worldly pleasures including drinking (alcohol), smoking and visiting the theatre. In 1922 at the age of 42, Maugham borrowed £400 and opened her own interior decorating business at 85 Baker Street, London. By 1930, she had shops in London, Chicago, and New York.

Although she made her fortune and fame with her white décors, by the mid-1930s she had largely given up the white décors to create interiors with baroque accessories and colour schemes punctuated by bright green, shocking pink, and bold reds. Cecil Beaton remembered leaf-emerald wallpaper, magenta cushions, and Schiaparelli pink.

Maugham charged high prices and could be very dictatorial with her clients and employees. She once told a hesitant client, "If you don't have ten thousand dollars to spend, I don't want to waste my time."

Maugham's glamorous rooms influenced almost every designer, particularly Elsie de Wolfe, Jean-Michel Frank, and Frances Elkins.

After Maugham closed her New York shop in 1932, someone suggested that Rose Cumming fill the gap and design white furniture of her own. "No," Cumming said, "white was always Syrie's."

Marriage to Henry Wellcome In 1901, on a visit to Khartoum with her father, she met Henry Wellcome, an American-born British industrialist who had made his fortune in pharmaceuticals (his firm became Burroughs Wellcome). She was 22 and he was 48, and they married soon after. In 1903 they had a son, Henry Mounteney Wellcome. The Wellcomes' marriage was not happy, and Syrie reportedly had numerous affairs, including with the department store magnate Harry Gordon Selfridge, Brig. Gen. Percy Desmond Fitzgerald, and the bisexual novelist William Somerset Maugham. Eventually, after some years of separation, she became pregnant with Maugham's only child, Mary Elizabeth, who was known as Liza. When the child was born in Rome, Italy, in 1915, she was given Wellcome's surname. Wellcome then publicly sued for divorce, naming Maugham as co-respondent.

Marriage to W. Somerset Maugham Syrie Wellcome and W. Somerset Maugham married in 1917 in New Jersey, although he was predominantly homosexual and would spend much of his marriage apart from his wife. They divorced in 1929. Her divorce settlement from Maugham was their house at 213 King's Road, Chelsea, fully furnished, a Rolls-Royce, and 2,400 pounds a year for her and 600 pounds a year for Liza.