Patrick O'Brian

by Nikolai Tolstoy

  Now Richard Temple had been completed after some ten years’ gestation, being of all his books that which he experienced most difficulty in writing. It is also the most profoundly autobiographical. It was rare for him to acknowledge his faults to others (even, I suspect, to my mother), so that a literary approach provided his sole effective means of confronting and exorcizing what he considered unpalatable aspects of his past.

  The novel is couched in the form of a protracted confession, throughout which Temple excoriates his former ‘silly’ and ‘weak’ self. All this takes place within the symbolic confines of a Nazi prison in France, where he is constantly bullied and tortured by his gaolers. Finally, his internal confession completed, he is freed by forces of the French Resistance:

  … with his blind white face straining towards the door he cried out, ‘What? What is it?’

  ‘Come out, come on out,’ they bawled. ‘This is the liberation.’

  With hindsight, Patrick’s two brilliant historical novels The Golden Ocean (1956) and its sequel The Unknown Shore (1959) appear as bright precursors of his greatest literary achievement. However, while he continued to express pride in both works, at the time Patrick does not appear to have accorded them the esteem they deserved. They were commissioned and marketed as children’s books, a category which he had come to regard with some embarrassment as a phase in his literary life he was now concerned to supersede. Only later does it appear that he came fully to accept that the best children’s literature transcends the genre. Besides, he had exhausted the possibilities provided by Anson’s great voyage in the 1740s, to which his naval researches had largely been confined.

  Patrick was certainly not alone among talented authors in being regularly tormented by fears that he had ‘written himself out’. Fortunately, this relatively infertile phase of his career coincided with continuing commissions to undertake translations. He prided himself on rendering the original French of his translations into fluent English, while adhering as closely as possible to the style and approach of the original. He was deeply conscientious in his approach, being also a stickler for meeting contractual deadlines. In consequence, he became widely regarded as a model translator. Reviewing his translation of Soustelle’s Daily Life of the Aztecs, Geoffrey Gorer wrote in the Observer: ‘The translation, by Patrick O’Brian, is impeccable, so fluent that for pages at a time one forgets that this is a translation.’

  Calculating ahead how many words in a working day were required to achieve this goal, he would settle down contentedly to his daily task.[fn1] Since publishers could be confident of receiving texts of a high standard promptly delivered, he rarely found himself short of a commission. This also ensured that he was well paid for his labours. With translation providing a respectably predictable income, he was relieved of much destructive worry. Thus, in 1963 Patrick earned £20 1s 4d in royalties from his fiction – and £1,765 19s 3d from translations!

  Such royalties were well earned. Working rigorously to a structured daily programme, between 1960 and 1966 Patrick completed no fewer than fifteen translations. Some, like Louis Aragon’s A History of the USSR, a turgid apologia for Soviet Communism, must have appeared wearisome indeed. Its companion volume, André Maurois’s From the New Freedom to the New Frontier, a history of the United States over the same period, although in contrast accurate and enlightening, required much additional research, chiefly arising from the need to track down the original texts of passages translated by the author from English into French.

  I saw much of Patrick and my mother at this time. On completion of my honours degree in Modern History and Political Theory at Trinity in the autumn of 1961, I entered upon an in some ways unproductive period of my life. Initially I returned to live with my ever-generous grandparents in Somerset, where I had obtained a post at nearby Millfield School. I naively anticipated spending all my spare time completing my magnum opus on King Arthur, a solitary scholar surrounded by an already substantial library. A brief romance with another attractive Trinity graduate had led me still more misguidedly to break off my longstanding love affair with Susan Gregory. Not long after, I belatedly came to realize that the life of an eremitical scholar was not for me, and I abruptly abandoned Millfield for London, where many of my university friends were living. On my journey I called at Sue’s home to try to mend bridges with her. To my dismay I found that she had had enough of my shilly-shallying, and sweetly but firmly explained that all was over. The rift proved permanent: she married a more reliable spouse, bore two children – and was eventually tragically drowned while deep-sea diving in the West Indies.[fn2] Although I experienced a couple of further fairly serious (if unfortunate) romances during my bachelor years, I could not get over my longing for darling Sue. It was not until I met and married my equally beautiful and clever wife Georgina a decade later that I eventually found happiness.

  My kind grandparents were too far removed in their generation to be able to advise and console me in intimate matters of the heart, and it was to Patrick and my mother that I regularly turned for comfort and advice during this troubled period. I remember once, when telephoning my mother with news of my latest daunting setback, she laughed and said: ‘You always ring us when you’re in trouble!’ When I began muttering an apology, she interrupted: ‘But of course we like that!’ I think it was partly because their own romance remained fresh in their hearts, that they were able to empathize so closely with lovelorn youth.

  In January 1962 they drove for a holiday in the Ariège, unusually without (so far as I know) any accompanying literary purpose. Returned to Collioure, the most exciting event of that year was the long-hoped-for acquisition of the strip of land adjacent to their southern boundary. As my mother wrote at the end of the year:

  I only started the accounts again from September inclusive. We had a very rich, very spending year, and spent a thousand pounds on new property. We end the year with practically nothing at all in France and minus one penny in England, though for three weeks now Hart-Davis has owed for the Tazieff translation.[1]

  In June 1963 Patrick came to London for a short stay, when he treated me to a splendid lunch at Prunier’s, then the best fish restaurant in London. He was in high spirits, and I remember his delight on overhearing a middle-aged businessman inform his young female companion: ‘My wife doesn’t understand me.’ Hitherto, he explained, he had assumed that this line only occurred in bad novels and music-hall patter.

  That summer Patrick’s elder brother Bun brought his wife Fifi and two children Elizabeth and Charles from their home in Canada for a four-month tour of Europe. Elizabeth later recalled the occasion for me:

  My first meeting with Uncle Pat in 1963 was arranged by my Dad. He and I and my birth mother and brother were travelling through England and parts of Europe that summer. I remember meeting Dad’s [and Patrick’s] stepmother Zoe at her home (in Ealing – what a place! Small but unbelievably cluttered. You had to wind your way through piles of books and newspapers and such like to get about). She, by then, was quite deaf and rather feeble minded, altho very sweet and kind. She gave me an antique coin which, sadly, I lost. When we reached Paris Dad and I stayed in a hotel and Pat came up alone to meet and visit with us, have a meal and a ‘walk about’. The photo in Dad’s book was taken during that visit altho King got the year wrong. Mind you, I don’t mind being mistaken for 10 years younger now! I believe Pat stayed in the same hotel as us but, sorry, I don’t remember the name of it. I do remember him being very formal and polite, dressed nicely, but friendly and smiling and genuinely glad to see my Dad and to meet me. I was very impressed with his fluent French. My mother and brother had gone on to Italy and were not present.

  Bun and Patrick in Paris

  I went to stay at Collioure for four weeks in August and September. I was accompanied by my old friend Jonah Barrington, whose family had since childhood provided me with a happy welcoming home at Morwenstowe on the rocky coast of north Cornwall. Jonah had in due course joined me at Trinity, but, f
inding the academic workload somewhat of an imposition, and the pubs of Grafton Street and its environs too much of an attraction, he was politely invited by the University to pursue a career elsewhere. Although not a very assiduous student, Jonah was in every other respect lively and intelligent, his principal forte lying strongly in sport.

  After pleasant days spent at his parents’ home in Cornwall, Jonah and I made our way to my parents’ home in the south of France. We hitchhiked all the way, our passage to Southampton being facilitated by an accommodating lorry-driver. On being informed of the country of our destination, he remained silent for a few miles, then mused laconically: ‘I been there once – excitable lot.’ Our days were spent in swimming and walking, while Patrick joined us for energetic tennis matches under a baking sun in the court set in the dry moat of the Château Royal. Casting an expert eye, Jonah was admiring of Patrick’s natural skill and energy at the game.

  Jonah and I fulfilled (to our own satisfaction at least) the singularly pointless ambition of becoming the two brownest men in Collioure. On the beach he fell passionately in love with curvaceous Christine, a charming young friend whom my parents had tutored before her admission to university. Unfortunately Jonah could speak no French, but like many of his compatriots was persuaded that speaking loudly and emphatically in English with a foreign accent facilitated understanding. Once, desperate to communicate, he held up a pebble on the beach, explaining ponderously: ‘In Eengleesh we call thees “stone”.’ To which the Sorbonne student responded brightly: ‘Yes – in Old English it is declined stan, stanes, stanum’! On another occasion Jonah nearly floated off the beach, when Christine with true French insouciance confided her fear lest the lapping waves remove the top half of her decidedly skimpy bikini.

  A nocturnal mishap provided further cause for mirth in our little household. Whether it was the wine or the grapes, Jonah awoke one night in the small hours with an acute stomach problem. Not wishing to disturb anyone’s slumbers, he made his way swiftly out of the house and up the lane, where at a respectable distance from the house he squatted down to do his business. Next moment, however, a car came winding unexpectedly up the hill, whose headlights became swiftly focused on the bare buttocks of the naked Jonah. All he could do was flee up the hill, but the drystone walls on either side obliged him to race ahead for a hundred yards or so before he found a gap through which he could scramble into protective darkness. The car was that of an amiable neighbour, who lived in the only house above us. A couple of evenings later we were invited up for drinks, after which Jonah was much teased by Patrick, who wondered whether General Sobestre had recognized whose backside it was that his headlights had so embarrassingly illumined.

  Sadly, romance with Christine failed to materialize, and Jonah and I returned to England. With my parents I had often discussed my ambition to become a professional historian, and with characteristic generosity Patrick now offered to fund an academic course. I was accordingly enrolled to study for a doctorate at London University, where he paid the fees.

  That November Patrick followed in my mother’s footsteps with a visit to Russia, that mighty and mysterious country which fascinated them both. Violent seasickness marred his faring forth, but on arrival he was delighted by almost everything he saw. At the Novodevichy Convent in Moscow: ‘I set up candles (pure bee’s wax, surely) for M[ary], N[ikolai], aunts M & L [my great-aunts Maroussia and Lily], & with a general intention towards F[athe]r George: though with an uneasy feeling that they might not be pleased.’[fn3]

  Like my mother four years earlier, Patrick was intensely moved by the Russian Orthodox service, this time at the Nikolsky Cathedral in St Petersburg (as he firmly termed the city):

  Enormous crowd, mostly middle-aged & elderly women, but with many young & men. Several carried babies, mostly over on the corner of the trancept ready to be brought forward at the end (perhaps for some particular blessing). Very moving service – candles passing up continually – chanting by congregation – my neighbour in tears. Ancient beautiful white-bearded priest.

  In the Hermitage Patrick particularly admired the Cézannes and Matisses: ‘a Matisse Collioure was almost the first thing I saw – oh for reproductions’.[fn4]

  Throughout Patrick’s visit to Russia my mother remained in England, visiting our family in the West Country, and comforting me in my latest crise d’amour. It was not only in matters of the heart that she and Patrick retained their empathy for the young. For a year I had lived in a large Kensington flat at 34, Redcliffe Gardens with close friends from Trinity. After a cheerfully irresponsible year, this admirable arrangement concluded in the summer of 1962, when two of my closest friends departed: David Robertshaw to be married, Jo Xuereb to lecture at the University of Benghazi. After a glorious summer spent once again with Jonah in Cornwall and Collioure, I returned to settle in London.

  It was when I eventually acquired a place of my own that there arose a grave crisis. The tenancy of the Redcliffe Gardens flat had passed to another set of Trinity graduates. My old flatmate Jo Xuereb had bequeathed me his bed, which I now sallied forth to recover. Accompanying me was Patrick, who offered to help me move it. However, the current owner-occupier, George Green, asserted that Jo had assigned the bed to him. We Trinity men being then a sadly pugnacious lot, I threatened to knock him down if he did not give way. ‘If you touch me, I’ll call the police!’ he exclaimed. Patrick interposed scornfully: ‘I never thought to hear a Trinity man decline a fight!’ He himself appeared ready for a fracas. However, George held a trump card in the form of my precious library, which I had left behind locked in a large cupboard. It could not readily be removed, nor could I risk any depredations on the books. In the end my parents paid for a new bed.

  In the spring of the following year, 1964, Patrick suffered a personal blow, which I feel certain affected him for the remainder of his life. Ever fearful of personal betrayal, a dread amounting at times almost to paranoia, was now fulfilled in a particularly wounding and (as will be shown) undeserved manner. In the first volume of this biography I devoted considerable space to describing Patrick’s disturbed relationship with Richard. Although Richard, by his own admission, was as a boy inclined to be idle, unresponsive, and even on occasion impertinent, it is equally manifest that Patrick was ill-equipped by nature to play the role of instructor to a growing child. Many faults, real or fancied, which he condemned in Richard when a boy, unconsciously reflected his own acknowledged inadequacies at the same age.

  It is hard not to believe that it was awareness of his own infantile failings that impelled Patrick’s desire to ‘purge’ similar lapses he perceived in Richard. I had frequent opportunity to observe how Patrick, who was often tense and apprehensive in company, was particularly susceptible to a fear of those qualities of spontaneity and unpredictability which are so marked a feature of childhood. Furthermore, in his own infancy Patrick gained solace by inwardly mocking those harsh adult figures – his father, together with a succession of inept and unsympathetic governesses – by whom his solitary existence was governed. With hindsight, I suspect that, with this experience in mind, he in turn may have come to harbour fears of being covertly ridiculed by children.[fn5]

  One or two reviewers of my previous volume, belonging to a very different generation, expressed horror at Patrick’s occasional recourse to caning as punishment for his son during his well-intentioned but misguided attempt to act as his teacher in Wales. However, there is no suggestion that this exceeded what was normal practice in almost all British schools and many families at the time.[fn6] Moreover, it will be recalled that such chastisement occurred uniquely during the relatively brief period when Patrick undertook the experiment of removing Richard from school in order to teach him at home. As Richard himself recalled:

  From my point of view he was teaching me mainly useless things. Arithmetic was OK. English was fine. But I couldn’t see the point of Latin. He was a pretty rigorous teacher. He didn’t like mistakes. If I made one, I would be told to pu
t it right, and if I went on getting it wrong, he would cane me, but not heavily – don’t run away with the idea that it was sadistic.

  I got on much better with Mary, my father’s second wife. She was a fine person – good fun, pleasant, an excellent cook and, on top of that, extremely good-looking. In the holidays I would go back to my mother, who was now living in Chelsea, and my boxer dog, Sian. I missed my mother terribly when I was away from her. The dog used to sleep on my bed, and I missed the dog hugely, too.

  This went on for two years. I was living in a very remote area, and I didn’t mix with other children, but a little boy out in the countryside can find his own entertainment. I didn’t feel that I was missing out on a more conventional upbringing because I had no yardstick. Children are very resilient.[2]

  Prevented from seeing her own son between the ages of five and twenty, my mother did indeed become deeply attached to Richard, and he to her. Without doubt, her presence considerably amelior ated what, it must be stressed, was a brief period of strained childhood relationship with his father.

  However this may be, relations between father and son undoubtedly changed radically when Richard arrived at adolescence. He was twelve when my parents left England for Collioure in 1949, following which his affinity with his father became quite suddenly warm and unstrained. For this it is not necessary to rely solely on consistently amicable sentiments expressed later on in their extensive correspondence – a medium which may after all be suspected of containing an element of pious artificiality. Richard’s eagerness to visit Collioure for regular holidays, culminating in his stay for nearly a year during 1954 and 1955, suffices to show that the family relationship had become established on an affectionate basis by both parties.