Patrick O'Brian

by Nikolai Tolstoy

  Patrick in turn was as ever generosity itself. Concerned by my Georgina’s responsibilities in having a house to run, a husband working at home, a two-year-old child, and now the imminent arrival of a second baby, he offered to pay for a cleaner – an offer she gladly accepted, and which Patrick and my mother continued to provide for the next couple of years.

  The only irritations in his life during the early part of the year were as ever idiosyncratic: ‘Hordes of vile sex-cats in the garden: how they anger me.’

  A few days later another mishap aroused his ire: ‘Absurd trouble with a lost button-shank, & now having found it I have dropped it again. Hot, sweaty hot with rage.’

  With the approach of spring he decided the time had come for further researches in Paris, where their kindly friends Pierre and Monique de Saint-Prix offered their flat as a base. The day after their arrival Patrick and my mother visited the Musée Nationale d’Art Moderne, where he ‘was amazed by the Pic’s, particularly by a black & brown still life with a bust (white line scratched on black) & melon, & by a 1929 piece as calm as anything he ever did … Many of my ideas are upset, above all those of steady chronological flow.’

  Next, Patrick conducted extensive researches at the Bibliothèque Nationale, in what appears to have been his first visit: ‘Here I am in the Bib. nat. Much the same atmosphere as the B Mus, the old round Reading-room, but smaller, less nobly domed. And the catalogue is much harder to handle. But on the other hand what active kindness from the middle-aged erudite at Renseignements.’

  There he toiled for successive days making copious notes, breaking off occasionally to indulge in a smoke:

  Yesterday I grew v tired of my restless neighbour & stopped work early – stuffed & stupid anyhow by an excess of food & wine (turbot, eaten in a modest little place where people nevertheless pay 2000 + In my smoking walks about the Bourse the gold coins awakened my cupidity, & some marvellous high-relief Greek silver.

  He also inspected various houses where Picasso had lived and painted, despite his ‘Back destroyed by street-walking’.

  The highlight of the visit came on Sunday, when they visited Marguerite and Claude Duthuit. Marguerite was the daughter of Matisse, and had known Picasso well. Patrick and my mother struck up an instant strong rapport with the couple, and Marguerite provided him with a fund of valuable information and anecdotes:

  Relation of Mat & Pic far subtler than ordinary jealousy (which was fermented by others, particularly literary gents). Made to understand one another. During the war Picasso came to have his papers stamped near Mat’s house Quai St Michel always called, waited late. Though not cowardly had a blue dread of the gendarme.

  A close friendship with the Duthuits ensued, from which Patrick gained much of that insight into Picasso’s complex character which represents so marked a factor of his biography.

  Next month he and my mother returned to a snowbound Paris for further study in the Bibliothèque Nationale and galleries. While these expeditions were intensely rewarding, as ever they were relieved and happy to be back in their little white house in the valley.

  Its comforting atmosphere of familiarity and security inspired him to compose a verse in French extolling its qualities as a safe haven in a treacherous world:

  J’occupe seul cette demeure

  blanche

  ou rien ne contrarie le vent

  si nous sommes ce qui a crié

  et le cri

  qui ouvre ce ciel

  de glace

  ce plafond blanc

  nous nous sommes aimés sous ce plafond.

  I alone occupy this white dwelling,

  Where nothing impedes the wind.

  If we are those that have cried out,

  And the cry

  Which opens the sky

  Of ice.

  This white ceiling –

  We loved each other beneath this ceiling.

  Inevitably a biographer’s estimate of his subject’s character fluctuates with continuing absorption of fresh evidence. At the beginning of March Patrick noted: ‘I made a tentative attempt at a piece on P’s developing often worsening (from point of view of his own happiness) character. Do not know whether it will come off.’ While his enthusiasm for Picasso the painter was enormous, he frequently questioned whether his personal nature was altogether admirable. In particular he was concerned by the artist’s promiscuity, neglectful and even at times contemptuous attitude towards his successive wives and mistresses, and the bully in him which vied with generous and kindly aspects of his character.

  ‘P the painter is more important than P the prick – though indeed the 2 are inextricably mingled,’ he noted. More serious doubts arose from the danger of ‘presenting P as injured innocent when some pages back he [Picasso] said what a tough Spanish beast he was in his trampling [on women?]’. In the completed book Patrick tended to opt for charitable interpretations where possible, which seems the fairest approach for a biographer – provided there be no suppression of relevant evidence. There is so much one person can never know about another, however familiar the relationship, that cautiously generous interpretations must generally be more appropriate than the alternative.

  Although there were many marked similarities between their early lives and characters, the social milieus inhabited by Picasso and Patrick could hardly have been more different. While the painter was a hugely gregarious and sexually promiscuous figure who revelled in his public image, his biographer concerned himself with women other than my mother only in a playfully amorous way (and that rarely), largely confining his society to a limited circle comprising my mother, a handful of local acquaintances, me and my increasing family, and his publishing contacts in England.

  Towards the end of 1974 he had received welcome news. ‘Such an agreeable Post. Georgina is to have another baby’, and now in April he recorded: ‘Such a pleasant letter from Georgina in hospital with Anastasia, who was born on the 17th.’

  Local characters afforded him moments of wry amusement:

  Henri Doublier came to lunch, mute & overwhelmed at first, but more confident quite soon. He appreciated the Noah’s ark animals: drew in chalk on the floor: told extravagant tales about a boa that approached a cooked chicken & was slain by his mama with an arrow that happened to be lying about – one of the Collioure boas.

  While Patrick was often ill at ease with children, he was also capable of actions of much kindness and sympathetic consideration towards them. The allusion to the Noah’s Ark provides a striking example of his warmer nature. In the spring of 1974 he had begun an ambitious project on his lathe in the garage, and by 21 April reported with satisfaction: ‘I finished turning Ham, Shem & Japhet, 2 hippopotamuses & 1 general-purpose animal, all on the same piece of wood – thoroughly wooden & stupid they look, too.’

  The project was the construction of an ark for our two children, on which he toiled during intervals of work on Picasso.[fn7] The wood came from an old apricot tree in the garden, and the task proved a lengthy labour of love. Each month the numbers and quality of its crew and animal cargo grew. In May ‘Hippopotamus legs, fine work indeed’ appeared, and the next month ‘A fat tiger, larger than the lion alas’. By September he had completed ‘A stumpy animal designed to be a leopard: so like the bear however that painted both brown, & that answered fairly well’. A week later ‘Idleness & sleep, though I did rough out what I meant to be a pair of leopards’: ‘The leopards, which I began to paint, are pitiful things like mice’. As with his writing Patrick was meticulous, and in the New Year of 1975 he completed ‘Noah’s daughters in law’, and next month ‘after infinite labour, I glued the 2d camel. This morning I undid the cramps & dreamily sliced off one layer too many from its head: I may possibly be able to recover it by giving the beast a sideways posture.’ Patrick was nothing if not resourceful, and by the end of February could report: ‘Camels, one, the colour of anchovy sauce, looks flayed: the other is better.’

  So the work continued, until at the end of S
eptember, after almost as much time and trouble as may have occupied Noah himself, he wrote to me to announce the imminent arrival:

  The ark is on its way, borne by Charles and Mary de Salis.[fn8] They were staying with us until a few days ago, have returned to England by car … and (if they can ever find Parbrook) will bring it over. You will like Charles, I think. We first met him some twenty-five years ago, when he was first secretary in Paris; and since then he has flitted about the world, ending up as something very grand in Rio. If plied with red wine he grows uncommon droll. Noah’s family will be found in the deckhouse (the three female figures that are not Mrs Noah are daughters-in-law) and the animals in the hold – the deck lifts off. Please let Georgina take care not to throw away two very small creatures, possibly guinea pigs, it may easily escape her unwarned mind, by reason of their exiguity: there are also some barely-perceptible though necessary doves. The dull purple quadrupeds are bears, and the squat yellow things with green eyes leopards.

  Patrick proudly displays his completed Noah’s Ark, its crew and passengers[fn9]

  As may be imagined the delivery was greeted with delight by two-year-old Alexandra. Despite Patrick’s derogatory comments, the ark is an impressive piece of work for a self-taught carpenter. While some of the creatures are a trifle quaint, such as the tubular hippos and tigers, the giraffes, elephants, and camels in particular are skilfully rendered.

  In his letter Patrick expressed warm pleasure at the news that I had at last completed my book on the forced repatriation of Russian prisoners and refugees – now entitled Victims of Yalta – commiserated (no doubt with particular feeling) over extensive cuts required by my sensible editor, and provided invaluable advice and information for my next book. He had earlier suggested my compiling a biography of the second Lord Camelford, episodes in whose short but lurid life he had come across in Marshall’s Naval Biography. Although my initial researches showed that Camelford was a much more colourful character even than we had suspected, my current publisher proved unreceptive to the project. Eventually, by the New Year of 1977 Patrick reported: ‘A long affectionate letter from Nikolai – ark v well received – but we are worried by his underlying anxiety, by Hodders not taking Camelford.’ Fortunately it was commissioned by Jonathan Cape shortly afterwards.

  Reverting to Patrick’s work on Picasso throughout 1975: in May and June he travelled with my mother to Barcelona and Antibes in search of material. At the beginning of July they visited the Comte and Comtesse de Lazerme at their ancestral home in Perpignan. They had been long-standing friends of Picasso, who stayed with them in August 1953. They took him to Collioure to see the bullfights and the town’s splendid fireworks display honouring the feast day of the Assumption.

  The artist was greatly taken with the beauties of the Roussillon, and on revisiting the Lazermes a year later decided to find a house suitable for use as a studio. Unfortunately there proved to be few houses in Perpignan comparable to the Hôtel de Lazerme, and the painter extended his search to Collioure, whose attractions had struck him during his first visit. Like so many other painters, the more he saw of the town the more he loved it. But the houses were small, and the streets narrow and intolerably noisy.

  However, above the Faubourg, on the summit of the last shoulder of the Pyrenees overlooking the Mediterranean, is perched the Château Saint-Elme. The castle had been built by the Emperor Charles V when the Roussillon continued part of the kingdom of Aragon, and was after the French conquest provided with star-shaped outworks by Louis XIV’s great military engineer Vauban. Together with Madame Lazerme, Picasso ascended the hill and inspected the castle with increasing delight. Here was the perfect combination of a magnificent historic building in a beautiful setting, extraordinary vistas of mountain and sea, space and privacy. Regrettably, every effort to secure it proved unavailing: the castle belonged to the state, whose bureaucratic apparatus apparently blocked each attempt.[fn10]

  Picasso’s visits naturally aroused great excitement in Collioure. On 16 August 1953 my mother noted in her diary: ‘Picasso visible in café des Sports – merry, pink, active. He was président of this year’s corrida.’ A few days later: ‘Picasso comes on plage, looks quiet & pleasant’, and subsequently ‘Picasso solemnly swam about.’ Patrick and my mother possessed a close mutual friend in the form of the ebullient émigré Czech artist Willy Mucha. Mucha’s relationship with Picasso had its ups and downs, and on 23 September my mother recorded:

  Saw poor Willy – in bed (comme ça) poor Willy having been knocked down by one we think to be Esperiquette by the petit pont last night in front of 20–30 people. Poor W. terribly upset, also because Picasso was cynical & publicity-seeking & generally base, when dining with W. & Pignon etc. two days ago.

  Mary Burkett, who saw much of my parents at the time, described to me what appeared to have been Patrick’s initial contact with the great artist:

  As to the Mucha episode. I distinctly remember being told by Patrick & Mary. At the time, as I was an art teacher & rather obsessed with Picasso, it was of great interest to me. Picasso used to come to Collioure at least once a year. I know, coz I met him there. The children [from the school where Mary taught] were at the castle & we suddenly saw him walking along the main street with his blonde girl friend. We all, naively thought autographs! and bounded across the road to surround him. He took it in good part & signed all their bits of paper, my sketchbook still bears mine! also a sketch I did of him in the next few minutes, as he continued his perambulation. At that point Patrick & M. had not met him. It must have been a year or so later when they told me their story. Picasso had come to visit Mucha & he had asked Mary & Patrick to go round to see Picasso. When they arrived Willy Mucha said that they must not disturb him as he was still finishing a piece in Willy’s autograph book, but that they could get around to the back of his studio where the land rose steeply and they could watch him through the skylight window. They all three went round and watched him as he scribbled & scrubbed. He worked so hard on the central part that when eventually Willy inspected it closely, Picasso had made a hole right through the page! They were greatly amused and I think just left. I certainly can’t remember their saying they met him to speak to … So I can’t confirm or deny, but think it’s highly likely that Patrick was too shy to meet.

  Patrick himself asserts that: ‘Even in 1952, when I first met him and when by the calendar he was over seventy, there was nothing at all of the old man about him: he was trim, compact, well-made, his round head burned brown in the sun – age was irrelevant.’[fn11] At one time I was myself inclined to question whether Patrick did indeed meet the artist, but in a recent conversation Odette Boutet, who was far better placed than Mary Burkett to know the facts, confirmed to me emphatically that the two met frequently at JoJo Pous’s Café des Sports (now Les Templiers). The initial introduction was presumably effected through the good offices of their mutual friend, the affable Willy Mucha.

  In the high summer of 1976 Patrick’s prodigious labours drew to a close. True to form, he had completed his mammoth task within the stipulated two years. Such authorial punctiliousness was customary with him, and further ensured that the family finances were maintained in a healthy state. For the first time they were able to afford a regular cleaner (it is typical of his and my mother’s generosity that they had provided us with one long before themselves). Ana, a Portuguese immigrant, proved a faithful support for the remainder of their lives.

  Understandably, completion of his task brought flutterings of worry. In August Richard Ollard wrote suggesting that he undertake ‘another naval tale after Pic’. Given the wounding rebuff he had received three years earlier this should have been encouraging, but a month later found Patrick assailed by doubt: ‘Unpleasant dreams these nights. This one was that Collins liked neither Pic nor a new naval tale: there was nothing to be done. They were indifferent & I was a nuisance. Too logical for nightmare.’

  His dreams were frequently disturbing. ‘A beautiful dream of a house
in a tree, uninhabited since 1925, but habitable. A cross father – dog tamed & loving.’ Furthermore: ‘I have an odd feeling of playing a role these days, & as if the unconvincing stage on which I play it were all that was left to me. A falsity runs through everything: but I do not mind v much.’

  The irate father, recourse to affectionate animals, and an incurable sense of detachment from the world, suggest that even now Patrick could find no complete escape from the daunting shadow of Dr Charles Russ.

  On 8 August the task was completed: ‘Well. I wrote the end, feeling quite moved: but whether it is adequate, whether it will do or not I do not know. It seems rather slight, & the anti Pic words about the drawings may outweigh the pro-Pic about the paintings.’

  First as ever came the judgement of his most valued critic: ‘M has read right thro the MS – repetitions, notes, usage etc. Speaks kindly of the book as a whole: encouraging.’

  After both had carefully read it through again, the bulky manuscript was despatched to Richard Scott Simon. Patrick found his reaction and that of Richard Ollard initially dampening. Their praise appeared in part to be an emollient designed to stress that the book was too long, and in places too detailed. Ollard strongly advised fewer descriptions of the artist’s paintings, and Patrick’s initial half-hearted resistance was overcome by Richard Scott Simon’s recommendation that he comply.

  One cannot help feeling that the publishers were largely to blame in not having decided at an early stage on the question of illustrations. If reproductions of Picasso’s work were included, then description would have become largely supererogatory. Equally, the publishers’ difficulty is understandable. In the case of so prolific an artist, which works should be included? Given that it was emphatically not designed as a coffee-table book, illustrations must necessarily be few, rendering them in that case so selective as to be effectively arbitrary. In the end, probably wisely, it was decided to have none. At the same time Patrick was persuaded to pare down his perceptive but too detailed comments until they provided a delicate compromise between laborious description and apt analytical detail, allowing the reader to appreciate the intent and effect of Picasso’s achievement.