Patrick O'Brian

by Nikolai Tolstoy

  A few days later they were rewarded with a letter, bubbling over with enthusiasm:

  Thank you very much for a wonderful holiday; the boys will not believe my experiences, especially the golden-eagles. What a good time we all had. Thank you so much.

  Andorra was about the most marvellous country that I have ever been to. What fishing it was! What fun it was in the camp …

  Very [sic] thing was in tact and whole when I got home: even to scorpion and flying-fish and mostofall my porron.[fn9] I have a huge collection now dominated by my banderilla. Every-body shrinks from the scorpion, believing it to be alive. My precious [Andorran] flag is now the envy of all the boys at school who are extremely jelous …

  The whole form, one and all and dumbfounded when I produced the [clasp] knife.[fn10] One boy produced a ‘sharp knife’, he skinned his arm but did not cut hair, all he succeeded in was cutting himself.

  In addition, Patrick had concealed a sophisticated fishing reel in his luggage at departure, which further excited his friends’ admiration. As Richard explained, this was ‘a pleasant and exciting surprise’, especially as ‘Finn and Atkins, both seized with fishing mania have reels, not of my superior type … I am very much envied in that way to.’

  With the reticence characteristic of schoolboys in those distant unsentimental days, Richard omitted to report a distressing aspect of his otherwise triumphant return to Cardinal Vaughan School. As before, I am indebted to his friend Bob Broeder for this revealing account:

  When we returned to school for the autumn term, our English teacher set us the task of writing a composition about what we did in the summer holidays. Most of us wrote the usual mundane contents but Richard wrote a masterpiece, describing his journey to the South of France and how he and his father met and spent some time with El Cordobes a renowned Spanish bullfighter.[fn11]

  Having read it myself I admired his descriptive narrative, his English was marvellous, remarkable and interesting, his father had taught him well. The next time we had English, the teacher handed all the exercise books back to all the pupils except Richard. In front of the whole class the teacher made the announcement that he had asked for a factual essay, not an imaginary one – holding Richard’s up to the class. This, he declared, was the work of a fertile imagination without an ounce of reality. I stood up to protest – saying I had postcards to prove that in no way did imagination play any part in his beautiful essay but was told in no uncertain terms to shut up and to sit down, if I didn’t obey the outcome would be a trip to the Discipline master with the inevitable thrashing. It goes without saying that Richard was distraught and very angry. I clearly remember that both I and several classmates tried to console him but the anger had never left him during the rest of his time at the school. I remember his mother was also very upset.

  Richard’s indignation was fully justified, but his exceptional capacity to harbour resentment may also be noted.

  Back in Collioure, Patrick and my mother had resumed their daily struggle. There were compensations to their existence, however. Much of the physical structure of the town stems from medieval times, and among the population there breathed memories of a picturesque past. While most of the inhabitants are Roman Catholics, there has long been a sizeable Protestant minority, who congregate at their Temple above the Château Royal. Relations between these two branches of the Christian religion have traditionally long been cordial. The only hint of disparagement I heard of occurred in the name of a local pastry, known as a jésuite. Gazing through the window of the pâtisserie in the Port d’Avall, Patrick explained to me that when you bite into one – it proves to be hollow!

  At the time he and my mother arrived in the town, there survived numerous customs and practices redolent of beliefs older even than the conversion to Christianity. Popular theology could be a trifle speculative – as this exchange recorded by my mother on May Day 1954 attests:

  When I arrived at Mimi Choux’s this morning she was in the middle of condemning someone for stating that angels are bald. ‘N’est-ce pas, Madame O’Brian, que dans toutes les reproductions les anges ont toujours les cheveux bouclés?’[fn12]

  A generally equable syncretism between the Church and pagan practices and beliefs survived locally well into the middle of the twentieth century. It was quite common for brides to appear in an advanced state of pregnancy at their weddings. ‘About the number of marriages with the girl pregnant’, my mother was told, it is ‘quite natural, people rigole [laugh] and joke but are not méchants with the girl; there is no onus [blame] on the man at all.’

  A curious custom which might have suggested anticlericalism or simple hooliganism was evidently neither, and bore a significance now possibly lost:

  Also asked Rimbaud about the bands of youths banging on curé’s door. He says it is ‘sans méchanceté’ & has always been done (he was v. active in his time) & nobody really minds. They bang on the doors of their young women. If dégâts [damage] result, complaints are made to mayor & youths pay up, but it doesn’t go to the police.

  A practice of having a sprig of hawthorn blessed by the curé taken to the fields to ensure a good harvest presumably reflected the archaic folk belief that its prickles repel witches, ever prowling abroad with the malign intent of blighting the crops of honest Christians.[3]

  Not all magic was benign, however:

  Mme Rimbaud’s tale: yesterday, she alone in the house, a woman selling lace. I don’t want any lace. And why don’t you want any lace? Because I don’t want any lace. Then the woman said if she would not buy any lace, she, who knew how to tell the cards, would put a ‘malédiction’ on her. That evening she had such a head she did not know whether it was the result of the malediction, or what.

  Fortunately there existed magical cures, as well as curses. The Rimbauds ‘had an old woman in to cure [their daughter] Martine with a herb cataplasm’. An interesting ritual efficaciously removed headaches. On 10 July 1953, completion of a difficult piece of writing left Patrick with an acute migraine. Next day their landlord, M. Germa:

  told us Georgette [his wife] was having the sun taken out of her head by her mother, with water in a bottle, & prayers. We demurred, & he said he believed it because Jaquie had had it done (bubbles rose in the bottle of water) & three days after his sick headache had gone.

  On another occasion Mme Rimbaud similarly had the sun removed from her head by a cousin. When my mother enquired how this was done, she mentioned not only the bottle, but ‘a handkerchief folded in a certain way, “et certainement qu’elle en a dit des prières. Je ne sais pas, moi.”’ The disclaimer suggests that the ‘prières’ may not have been altogether Christian in character.

  A particularly potent author of cures was the martyr St Blaise, who, as a consequence of his miraculous survival of strangulation or decapitation (accounts differ), specialized in healing sore throats.[4] When my mother was confined to bed with a severe cold, ‘Mimi Chou kindly gave me a packet of lump sugar & pastilles blessed on St Blaise’s day.’ On another occasion she regaled her with a detailed account of the healing process. Saint Blaise being outside Collioure for a stroll one day with Our Lord, the pair bumped into Satan, who coolly informed them: ‘I’m off to strangle someone.’ ‘Nong, Nong, Nong!’ exclaimed Jesus and Blaise together, in pronounced Catalan accents: ‘You’re not doing that!’ This pious narrative acted as preface to the charm that effected the cure: a formula strongly characteristic of pagan ritual, in which Christian figures were frequently substituted for their heathen predecessors.[5]

  The calendar year was marked by a succession of colourful festivals. On 27 February 1952 Patrick was delighted by the Mardi Gras carnival, which he observed from their balcony winding joyously along the rue Arago, and then descended to follow it to the Place de la Mairie. There were fine floats, followed by men disguised as bears and monkeys:

  I saw them pass down the boulevard and then arrive in the Place: immense crowd, charmed: Diego lost in delight. Music – a band to each float. Fun
ny remarks on floats all written in French. Attention Ours méchants et singe vicieu [‘dangerous bears and vicious monkey’] … Remarkable dancing of 2 pairs of mariés [married couples]. Immobility of masks: singe (sacking? young Germa) probably making singe faces underneath; but quite invisible – vast addition to general effect. Mlle Margot convulsed by bears – pointing, laughing, red in the face with pleasure. M. le Curé not visible – no wonder – Ash Wednesday. Religious aspect quite lost to view … Many children dressed up – rouged, powdered – some in Catalan dress – attractive – some as F[airy]. Queens or some such – less attractive.

  Each year on Ascension Day an assemblage of small children, beautifully dressed, gathered outside the church to attend their first Communion. The quatorze juillet was in contrast a comparatively modest bucolic occasion. ‘Procession has just passed up the rue,’ noted my mother, ‘small boys carrying torches or tricolors, with the garde-champêtre [local policeman], followed by local band.’ In the evening there was dancing in the Place, and a display of fireworks in and around the bay. The cheerful informality of the occasion delighted Patrick, who another year was gratified to record: ‘Fête Nationale: very scruffy procession except [Dr] Delcos in his tricolore sash.’

  Patrick made notes on customs and other items of local interest, such as this recipe for ridding a child of worms: ‘Le bon vermifuge[:] frot the child’s bosom with garlic and hang a necklace of garlic round the child’s neck ça les étouffe.’ He further compiled a list of ‘Sobriquets’ of local families, some of which feature in his novel The Catalans. Thus one bore the surname ‘L’Empereur – because when he was a baby the Emperor dandled him’. Patrick told me this occurred when Napoleon III was passing through Collioure. At the other political extreme was the family Cravatrouge (Catalan En cravat rougt), one of whom had been ‘le premier radical’ of the town. Another is of mysterious provenance: Piétine dans la boue (‘Trample in the Mud’): Catalan Pitg a fangc.

  The French Republic being a relative newcomer in Collioure’s ancient history,[fn13] the town’s major annual celebration is the Feast of St Vincent, Collioure’s patron saint, on 16 August. Until the beginning of the last century, when it was prohibited by the atheist administration of President Émile Combes, a boat bearing the saint’s relics plied from his little chapel on the rock across the harbour, to be ceremonially received on the beach by the curé with a ritual exchange conducted in Catalan.[6] A bullfight in the town’s arena by the railway station was one of many celebrations marking the festive occasion. In 1953 my mother passed ‘Picasso visible in café des Sports – merry, pink, active. He was président of this year’s corrida.’ The evening’s firework display is especially magnificent, usually surpassing that of the quatorze juillet. On one such occasion in the early 1960s, we ascended the ridge above the house to obtain a panoramic view of cascades of fire erupting high into the night sky from the beach, as also from fishing boats moored about the harbour. The highlight of the evening occurred when the French Army, then occupying the Château Royal, blew up with one mighty roar what appeared to be their entire reserve of high explosive. From an invisible vineyard above us echoed an answering primitive bellow of approval from a solitary enthusiast, which greatly pleased Patrick.

  It was not just innate curiosity which led him to conduct careful observation and recording of traditional ways in Collioure. Just before he left England in September 1949, it was seen earlier that he had agreed to write a book about Southern France for submission to his publishers, Secker & Warburg. Although he kept the project in mind, over two years were to pass before he hit on the idea of utilizing the knowledge he had acquired for the alternative purpose of writing a novel. Before that, the indications are that he planned a descriptive account of the life and landscape of the Côte Vermeille, and it was to that end that he noted its more colourful aspects, and encouraged my mother to record observations in her diary. Naturally gregarious, consorting daily with shopkeepers and neighbours, and being more proficient in French and Catalan than Patrick, she was the more productive worker in this field.

  It was during the summer of 1951 that the idea of writing a novel with Collioure as its picturesque setting had germinated in Patrick’s mind. He and my mother had become concerned with, and to some extent involved in, the divorce of their good friend Odette. On 2 March 1951 my mother accompanied her and her father to lend support in a hearing at the court in Céret. Odette’s husband François Bernardi, a successful sculptor and painter, had deserted her for an older but extremely beautiful woman. Next day Patrick sketched a plot based around the affair. Although his initial plan seems to have been to produce a short story, the scheme is sufficiently detailed to suggest the possibility of fuller treatment.

  His initial reaction was one of indecision:

  It sounds a commonplace little romance. Perhaps I could lift it out of the rut by showing the gradual development of Odette’s character – she should be mature at the end, and at last spiritually free of the [her] family’s domination – and the parallel development of François’ to something like unselfishness and honesty. The moral being that you have got to be free of domination (by cant or by family) before you are any good.

  A great difficulty would be the presentation: it could hardly be done from outside (the all-knowing observer) and I hardly know whether I could manage it from inside each character.

  Patrick does not appear to have been at all troubled by the possibility that informed readers might identify the protagonists. (His friend Walter Greenway was similarly concerned lest people in Cwm Croesor discover the extent of their potentially embarrassing portrayal in Three Bear Witness.) Nor, more surprisingly, does this thought seem to have worried my mother. It seems they generally espoused the view that Patrick’s literary work stood apart from the material world: connections between them hardly mattered. Equally, they may not unreasonably have assumed that no one in Collioure was likely to read the book.

  In October my parents assisted in bringing in the grape harvest. ‘Vendanged for Vincent Atxer’, noted my mother. ‘Too long, did not like the V[incent].A[txer].s. O[dette]. was there, objectionable. Told us the équipe [working party] in the plains was very grossier [coarse]. Youths rolled women in the dust, took girl’s trousers off.’[fn14] Next day there was a further vendange, at which my mother was evidently annoyed by ‘O[dette]. horseplay moustissing the men.’[fn15] On the third day my mother and Patrick ‘Worked from 8.30 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. Beastly children. Very, very fatigued.’ My mother was far from being a prude, and it is possible that she objected to Patrick’s observing their beautiful friend behaving in so wantonly provocative a manner. The sultry Odette was a lissom creature of the South, who amid the grape harvest under the burning sun appeared almost an elemental being.[fn16]

  Four days later, Patrick ‘sketched out vendange tale’. It seems likely that this was the basis of chapter VIII of The Catalans, with its vivid depiction of the exhausting physical labour and pain incurred in gathering the grapes, together with the erotically charged relationship between the intellectual outsider, Alain Roig, and the lovely Catalan girl Madeleine, who has been deserted by her painter husband Francisco. The episode builds up to a heated climax, with Alain’s symbolic rape of Madeleine:

  With a quick pace he was up to her. He knocked her to the ground. She fell on her knees, and crouching over her he gripped her hair and ears, pressed his teeth hard against her forehead, and in the surrounding cries and laughter he crowed three times, loud like a cock.

  Patrick appears at first to have remained undecided precisely what use he might make of these possibilities, until on 18 December he took my mother for a walk up to the Madeloc tower. It was a beautiful day: passing the old barracks (which at one point they envisaged as a permanent refuge from the town), with partridges flying around, they collected wild daffodil bulbs to plant in their window box. Buddug cavorted, madly hunting and catching nothing. As they walked, Patrick for the first time unfolded his idea for a novel on the the
me of life among the local Catalans.

  Patrick, toying with various approaches to his novel, was struck down yet again by one of his nervous attacks and retired to bed, where he received the usual medication. So bad was the bout on this occasion, that he had to force himself not to think of the book lest the pangs recur. Not until 9 January 1952 did he recover sufficiently to begin working on it. At the end of the month my mother called on Odette to collect information about the social structure of the town, a factor which was to be vividly delineated in the novel. On 6 February ‘P. showed me first chapter of novel: terribly impressed & happy.’ With my mother’s enthusiasm buoying him up, Patrick now found the book advancing with increasing satisfaction. Despite intermittent setbacks and misgivings, he worked throughout the summer, until he finally laid down his pen on 12 September. ‘Much fatigued & terribly pale, kept lying on bed feeling faint,’ as my concerned mother noted.

  However, the task was completed, and both were enthusiastic over the result. In May Patrick had toyed with the title Interested Motives, but eventually settled on The Catalans. My mother threw herself into typing the text, and on 2 October copies were sent to Harcourt Brace in New York, and Rupert Hart-Davis in London.

  No sooner were the parcels despatched, than an anticlimactic reaction set in. On 5 November ‘Nervous tension over Catalans suddenly overwhelming. It matters so hideously.’ Might it suffer the same distressing fate as the collection of short stories, on which such high hopes had been pinned?

  Three weeks passed by, during which they attempted to distract themselves with household improvements. ‘Wait, wait, wait, for post.’ Finally, on 26 November 1952, came news as good as might be hoped for. A telegram arrived from Naomi Burton at Curtis Brown in New York, announcing that Harcourt Brace had offered to take The Catalans at the same rate as Testimonies. Since the book was complete, they would shortly receive a second time within the year the princely sum of $750, tax-free!