Patrick O'Brian

by Nikolai Tolstoy

  Regular visits to my mother’s family in Somerset continued to afford Patrick lively images of aspects of English rural life, which were not difficult to extrapolate into his image of late Georgian England. Both my grandparents at Barton St David, and their neighbours the Slack family (Joan Slack was my grandmother’s younger sister), belonged to the old school of country gentry in speech, manner and tastes. Patrick appreciated the fact that no more than three generations or so stood between them and their Regency ancestors, while the material contents of their homes were readily assimilated into his evocative image of rural England in the opening decades of the nineteenth century. Thus, the elegant furniture from Jack’s mother-in-law’s house, crammed into Ashgrove Cottage in The Mauritius Command, echoes almost exactly that found in my grandparents’ home at Barton St David, even to the graceful satinwood ‘cane settle’ in their drawing room whose fragility prevented its practical use.

  It was my eccentric uncle Austin Slack who unwittingly supplied one of Jack Aubrey’s endearingly familiar traits. Readers will recall the latter’s contortions and ill-suppressed guffaws when repeating one of his well-worn jokes. Just so Uncle Austin, a benignly simple soul, in manner and appearance a bluff nineteenth-century squire straight from the pages of Surtees, would shake with pleasure when erupting into a prized (frequently salacious) witticism, his broad ruddy features dissolving into a delighted grin that suffused his face. One lunchtime at the Rose and Portcullis in Butleigh, Uncle Austin and I were seated with Patrick and my mother’s old friend and admirer from Lundy days, George Turner. George was a classical scholar, and he and the rather prim (in company) Patrick were plunged deep in some abstruse philological discussion. All at once Uncle Austin felt inspiration arise within him. Winking at me, and grinning with anticipatory delight, he cryptically blurted out ‘FART!’ A startled Patrick was halted in mid-flow. He himself rarely swore, resented interruption, and was as I could see uncertain how to react. However, when George smiled and I burst out laughing, his apprehensive expression changed, and he too chuckled good-naturedly. Now, when I read of Jack Aubrey’s jejune attempts at wit – ‘The spreading merriment, the relish, the thunderous mirth … Jack … wiping the tears from his scarlet face’[8] – I see again my dear old Uncle Austin’s ruddy features float before me.[fn9]

  Uncle Austin and Aunt Joan, summer 1960

  Finally, I cannot help wondering whether the circumstances of Jack Aubrey’s initial meeting with Stephen Maturin at the celebrated concert in Port Mahon may not have owed something to Patrick’s and my initial unhappy encounter at Collioure in 1955. Our disparate natures had then aroused mutual resentment, which however evolved into a lifetime’s affection – albeit marred at times by testy exchanges.

  During their return to London in mid-December, my mother and Patrick called at Portsmouth to see Nelson’s flagship: ‘A wonderful morning aboard the Victory, great kindness from CO; entrancing museum.’ Back in town he conducted researches in the Public Record Office. From his literary agent, Richard Scott Simon, he received further encouraging news. Not only was Macmillan now offering a contract for British rights to the naval novel, but they wished in addition to republish The Golden Ocean! On New Year’s Day Patrick was invited to lunch by Marni Hodgkin, the editor at Macmillan’s Puffin imprint who had commissioned ‘The Centurion’s Gig’. She was delighted by the prospect, subsequently writing to him: ‘Reading slowly and carefully through THE GOLDEN OCEAN, cover to cover, has been an experience of purest enjoyment. Law, how I did laugh! I do think it’s the best novel of this period that I have ever read.’

  Contracts (which continued to categorize the novel as ‘Juvenile’) were exchanged in May.

  Patrick’s own judgement of his earlier work was more measured. On 4 June 1969 he recorded his tentative misgivings:

  I finished my revision of the Ocean, & really with all its faults I am quite pleased with it. There is a richness of texture, a multiplicity of incident, & a strength of narrative (not mine, of course) that carries its sometimes embarrassingly false notes & curiously smug (almost mouthing) righteous conformity. And its clichés too, I hope. Lord, how little I knew of maritime life then! At least I have cut out a great many shameful errors.

  The period 1967–69 was to prove the major turning-point of Patrick’s career. The plot and leading characters of Master and Commander had been germinating ever since he received the invitation from Lippincott, and his researches over Christmas at Greenwich, the Public Record Office and the London Library provided him with a wealth of material relating to life at sea in Nelson’s time, which he was now preparing to bring to life with a matchless authenticity and vigour.

  Soon after their return to Collioure, Patrick was offered by Collins a new translation by Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed. He appears to have worked on this during February and March, after which he launched himself into the delayed novel.

  It is clear that he sensed something momentous stirring within him. Soon after his return from England at the beginning of 1968, he began for the first time since 1945 keeping a regular diary. Previously, he had jotted intermittent memoranda into pocket diaries and notebooks, but now he evidently decided that a detailed sequential record of his activities and thoughts was required. I doubt whether it be coincidence that he makes Stephen Maturin a diarist: certainly, the justification for his activity in the novels reflects Patrick’s own viewpoint:

  For many, many years he had been unable to open his mind fully to any man or woman at all, and at times it seemed to him that candour was as essential as food or affection: during most of this period he had used his diary as a kind of surrogate for the non-existent loving ear – a very poor surrogate indeed, but one that had become so habitual as to be almost necessary.[9]

  In Master and Commander Stephen’s journal is carefully inscribed in code: a precaution necessitated by crowded life aboard ship, and in subsequent books by his function as an intelligence agent. This precaution was superfluous to Patrick’s own requirement, since there could be no difficulty in concealing his diary in a home visited only by close friends and family. I am at times inclined to think that it was not read even by my mother, whom Patrick occasionally criticized to an extent I imagine he would not have wished her to discover. On the other hand, it is possible that he employed it on occasion as an oblique means of alerting her to issues provoking his irritation or distress. Apart from a lacuna for the three years 1971 to 1973,[fn10] he continued to record his activities every day up to the eve of his death thirty-one years later.

  It is deeply regrettable, therefore, that journals for what were possibly the most significant years of this period have been stolen. They are the first and last of the series: those covering 1968 and 1999. As their disappearances occurred in distinct circumstances, I leave aside for the moment the fate of the diary for 1999.

  There can be no doubt that each was independently stolen. In the case of the 1968 diary, the theft occurred many years after its compilation, and was planned with considerable ingenuity. Obviously I know much more about this than may safely be published (I have some experience of English libel law), and here confine myself to recording the fact.

  The first theft was most likely motivated by the diary’s exceptional interest and financial value as a collectors’ item, describing as it does the genesis of Master and Commander. As first of the series, too, its disappearance might have been hoped to pass unnoticed. This could indeed have proved to be the case, but for the fact that the thief was clearly unaware that Patrick employed his diaries as journals of record, to which he regularly referred when checking information ranging from dates for planting orchids or vegetables, to previous levels of medication and records of tax returns. Like most diarists, too, he occasionally found himself browsing through earlier numbers from general interest. Nor had the thief reason to anticipate the care with which I have been obliged to sift the diaries when preparing this biography.

  What has been lost to literary appreciation by the
disappearance of the 1968 diary is indicated by this chance allusion on 4 July 1989:

  It was our [wedding] anniversary, which I tend to forget: & looking back into my diary of 68 to see what we did then I found the whole history of M[aster] & C[ommander] & many other things – how we swam & walked! Some I had quite forgotten such as the whiteness of Jean le blanc preening himself somewhere up by the Astrabol,[fn11] others are as lively as though they had happened yesterday.

  For the foreseeable future, therefore, we possess only fragmentary indications of the fervour of inspiration which gripped him at this time. In April he and my mother sailed to Minorca, where Patrick built up that unforgettable picture of Port Mahon and its environs which affords one of the most celebrated openings in the annals of fiction. So far as I am aware, the sole accessible evidence for this expedition survives in two chance references.

  My mother’s accounts for April include this terse entry: ‘Voyage … Barcelona-Port-Mahon boat 13,994 [fr]’. And in a letter written in 1974 to my uncle Ivan, she mentioned: ‘Minorca. It is such a beautiful island, so unspoiled compared to the other Balearics. We took an archaic steamer to Port-Mahon at the time of Master and Commander, and absolutely loved it.’

  Judging by the plenitude of detail provided in successive descriptions of the port and its narrow entrance from the sea, he made extensive diary notes at the time. It was not until 1995 that he paid a brief return visit to the island.

  Driven by an inspired enthusiasm which seemingly never flagged, Patrick wrote the novel during the summer months of 1968. Although the theft of his diary for that year appears not to have occurred in his home, it is ironical that in July the peace of the little household was disturbed by a burglary. For convenience my parents occasionally stored sums of money at home, often hidden inside a hollowed-out copy of The Golden Ocean, ranked unobtrusively among other books on the shelves. Wherever it was stored on this occasion, the raiders helped themselves to 65,000 francs (£55). Ancillary beneficiaries were the voluble Collioure guardians of security: ‘We gave the police a dozen vin vert,’ noted my mother. Given the then isolated situation of the house, and extended periods when it was left empty, it is surprising that this was the only burglary experienced from its initial construction in 1955 to the present day. A burglar would in any case have been unlikely to have discovered the diaries, which were carefully hidden. Even had he chanced on them, it is unlikely that a French thief would have been able to read them, nor in any case would he have any means of appreciating the financial value of a particular volume among so many.

  In October and November Patrick and my mother drove across France for a month’s stay in England, where once again they spent much of the time with my grandparents and the Slacks in Somerset. As the novel was not yet completed, the visit may in part have been for the purpose of conducting final researches.

  Many intimations in Master and Commander attest to the extent to which it represents an intensely personal work. Patrick enjoyed introducing familiar material objects from his home into his tales, such as the whale’s tooth young Babbington was concerned to save should the Sophie be sunk.[fn12] His friends were likewise granted brief appearances. The American ship John B. Christopher, which Aubrey is ordered to search for two fugitive United Irishmen, bears the name of Patrick’s colleague during his wartime service in London and continuing friend, the historian Jack Christopher. An American sailor, Plimpton, punished for drunkenness during Thanksgiving at Port Mahon, is named after Sarah Plimpton, another longstanding American friend. It has been seen that Patrick similarly fastened on the name of our Somerset friend Timothy Heneage as that of Jack Aubrey’s intimate friend Heneage Dundas.

  Patrick’s extraordinarily painstaking preparations for the book are apparent from his detailed notes in my possession, covering chapters 1 to the start of 5. These comprise a melange of material, ranging from details of ships (a sketch of the interior of the Sophie[10] illustrates how very small she was) to extracts from conversations between the principal characters. The latter echo Patrick’s long-established practice of interrogating himself in mental soliloquies, extensively recorded in his diaries, notebooks, and even odd slips of paper used as bookmarks or posted around the house.

  From his notes we learn that Jack was born in 1773, and was accordingly twenty-seven in 1800. Martin Joyce (as Stephen Maturin is initially named in Patrick’s notes – he only becomes ‘Stephen’ by chapter 5) is described as ‘unbelieving, disseminated sense of sin, at the most a deist, unaccepted outside’; ‘MJ a detached spectator’ – just like, of course, Patrick himself. In a snatch of dialogue, on explaining that he is ‘nominally Protestant’, he is asked by Jack: ‘What do you mean nominally?’ Martin: ‘Just as you people are nominally abs [able seamen] with 5 yrs sea-experience – so as to get the post. Just the same. Is it – dubiously?’ The disparate outlooks of Jack, ‘Martin’ and James Dillon are carefully established: ‘the thing is that they are all (though they think themselves so old) malleable & still forming their definitive personalities’. A common bond is established between the otherwise markedly differing personalities of ‘Martin’ and Jack: ‘they both perceive order in music’.

  The indications are that these notes were compiled before, during, and after Patrick’s stay in England at the end of 1967. Following those for chapter 5, they become very cursory. It was some time after his return to Collioure in early 1968 that he set down, with what it is hard not to believe was a gratified flourish, the title ‘MASTER & COMMANDER’.

  By Christmas 1968 the completed typescript was sent to Richard Scott Simon at Curtis Brown. As inevitable days followed by less explic able weeks went by without attracting any reaction from the publishers, Patrick became increasingly disquieted. From Lippincott across the Atlantic delay was to be expected. However, Simon had agreed a British contract at the beginning of the year with Macmillan, which included the substantial advance of £1,000, to be paid in customary instalments.

  On 10 January 1969 Patrick began to express concern: ‘I expect Lippincotts, Macmillans’ response (I am probably very anxious about these).’ By the 16th: ‘I am beginning to armour my mind for a thumping disappointment about M&C.’ Nothing seemed to be going well. On the 29th he learned that ‘There is a post-office strike in England. This has happened before just when we have been very anxious for news.’ Next day, however, came the great breakthrough:

  Such a pleasant letter from Lippincott. We were charmed having (I find) been very much afraid; but it ruined our digestion & put us into such a hurry of spirits that we were obliged to go early to bed, with a pill. It would have been morally & financially disastrous if Lippincott had disliked the book – a really blushing crow.[fn13]

  Patrick need not have worried. As his editor at Lippincott, Tony Gibbs, later recalled:

  the publishing house I worked for signed up Patrick O’Brian, on the basis of his highly regarded historical novel for teenagers, The Golden Ocean. I’d never heard of O’Brian, but I was asked to take a look at his new manuscript because I was the only editor on staff who owned a boat.

  So Master and Commander landed on my desk. I picked it up without enthusiasm. I was a confirmed aficionado of Forester – a skillful weaver of plots and a careful scholar with personal experience of sailing vessels and the sea. In Horatio Hornblower he had created a seafarer with whom readers could empathize: a cerebral hero (aren’t we all?) who was prey to the same fears that weekend mariners recognized all too well.

  Long before I’d finished Master and Commander, I realized that O’Brian had leapfrogged over Forester. O’Brian wasn’t writing about the early 19th century; he seemed to be writing from within it – and with a sense of humor entirely lacking in historical novelists. Further, O’Brian peopled his universe with delightful, three-dimensional characters, especially his two protagonists – Captain Jack Aubrey, a skillful lion afloat though nearly helpless ashore, and Dr. Stephen Maturin, physician, secret agent, and unhappy lover.[11]

  Thus f
ar, all was as good as might be, but a fortnight later Patrick received:

  A most disappointing letter from Macmillan. ‘Book delightful, but’ & that but includes lack of drama & ‘tension between the characters’ – presumably J[ack]A[ubrey] & J[ames]D[illon]. We had expected a series of more or less piddling objections, but nothing like this fundamental taking apart. Qu. is he right? If so to what degree? Walking very swiftly in the freezing wind to the milestone … I decided to wait for Simon, Cushman & above all [?]; & if they concur to go to London & talk to James Wright [at Macmillan]. Even if they do not I probably ought to do something if I want to stay with Macmillan. Do I? They have been the book’s bane. But I am very vulnerable.

  Racked with doubts, Patrick began to wonder whether:

  the book (M & C) might concentrate more on the disagreement between JA & JD, omit the voyage to Alexandria, & end with the (enhanced) Cacafuego action – no capture, Algeciras, court-martial. It would be more of a piece, better from the point of view of construction & thus perhaps of atavistic tension: less episodic, less rich, too. But then I should have those remaining chapters as a dash-away start for an eventual 2d vol.

  Fortunately, these authorial misgivings were brushed aside almost at once by a renewed intimation of his American publisher’s enthusiastic endorsement:

  Lippincott’s total of changes required is that I should identify Port Mahon. As for Macmillan, Richard Simon is showing MS to Collins with the idea of changing publishers … A curious feeling of great relief. Why? The situation in London is still quite tense.

  As ever, the natural world served to soothe Patrick’s frayed nerves:

  We went to see whether there were snowdrops yet – yes, just beginning. Snowy forest road with innumerable tracks, boar, genet, fox, badger. Heavy going, but the alp was delightful. A probably golden eagle, 2 uncertain falcons. I think lanner & merlin & a buzzard. Home very tired, & M did not sleep … She said I snored too, but this was an illusion, for I did not – was awake.