Gerald was a twenty-two-year old from San Francisco, in 1914, and was serving in the same ambulance unit in Flanders with W. Somerset Maugham.
Gerald became his lover, secretary and companion for 29 years, and from 1914 onwards, Maugham spent a great deal of his time travelling with his lover Gerald from the South Seas to China and South America. On these travels Maugham and the extroverted Haxton picked up innumerable stories which the former used to fuel his writing.
Gerald Haxton was deported from Britain in 1919 as an undesirable alien. Then, Somerset Maugham and Gerald Haxton went to live on the French Riviera in the villa "Mauresque".
Somerset Maugham's character Tony Paxton in Our Betters (1917), and also Maugham's character Rowley Flint in Up at the Villa (1941) represent Gerald Hxton.
But at the end of their relationship, Gerald grew to resent Maugham deeply and died in an alcoholics' ward in a hospital in New York.
