[2] Syrie's Irish-born father had converted at age 16 to Protestant evangelicalism and believed in daily Bible reading, obedience, strict punctuality and the forgoing of worldly pleasures including drinking (alcohol), smoking and visiting the theatre.

For the grand unveiling of her all-white room, Maugham went to the extreme of dipping her white canvas draperies in cement.

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

[4][9] After Maugham closed her New York shop in 1932, someone suggested that Rose Cumming fill the gap and design white furniture of her own.

After finishing it, she sold her own house and travelled to India with Elsie de Wolfe "to paint the Black Hole of Calcutta white".

Her clients included Wallis Simpson, Marie Tempest, Oveta Culp Hobby, DeWitt Wallace, Elsa Schiaparelli, Capt.

The Wellcomes' marriage was not happy, and Syrie reportedly had numerous affairs, including with the department store magnate Harry Gordon Selfridge, Brig.

[12] 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.

After Maugham's death in 1965, Beverley Nichols wrote in rebuttal a defence of her called A Case of Human Bondage (1966).