Patrick O'Brian

by Nikolai Tolstoy

  Both my mother and Patrick suffered at times from sudden irrational premonitions of disaster. ‘M shocked me extremely by speaking of her illogical morning anxiety, sometimes so great that she can hardly walk,’ Patrick recorded. A fortnight later he was gripped by the same uneasiness: ‘Quite often I wake with a sense of some undefined catastrophe – a catastrophe that I shall remember in a minute or two. Perhaps it is this that gives my face its habitually anxious expression.’

  The prevailing sense of impending doom was alleviated next day by the arrival of the first copies of Picasso. His first reaction was one of pleasure and satisfaction, and that night they dined regally at Les Antiquaires on the biggest lobster Patrick had ever seen, washed down with a bottle of champagne. Next day he slept late, and on waking ‘looked at Pic: so familiar/unfamiliar’. However, even if there was no real diminution in his natural vigour, at the end of May Patrick suffered one of those terrifying mishaps to which he and my mother were oddly prone.

  On 24 May the couple drove over the Pyrenees into Spain, exploring and observing birds and plants. After two days of satisfactory discoveries,

  we took the car almost to the rock barrier & walked perhaps ½m. Seeing a bright blue flower on the inward side of the road I climbed up the unsafe, blasted-rock side – found it (a gentian), crept along for an easier way down, passing some perhaps lilies of the valley, made my way to a series of rock steps: the penultimate yielded & we fell curiously mingled to the road, where I found I had broken my left leg a little above the ankle. This was at about 5.30 M[ary] went down to Saldes & came back in 2 hrs with the excellent woman & blankets – v welcome, as the cloud was coming down.

  An ambulance followed surprisingly quickly, together with a helpful man from Saldes with his Land Rover and a Spanish Guardia Civil whom Patrick described as ‘both civil and kind’. They carried him painfully down the steep slope and into the ambulance. At Berga a solicitous French-speaking surgeon set his leg, but for the next forty-eight hours the pain remained unremittingly acute. Patrick was X-rayed twice, and while being trundled about on a trolley his foot became caught and bent backwards: ‘the night was horrible’. The X-rays showed jagged ends to the fractured bones, and an attendant nun stressed that an operation was unavoidable.

  It being impossible to return in the deux chevaux, a driver was summoned from Collioure. The journey home proved unexpectedly comfortable, and Patrick found it a great relief to be in his own bed at last. However, the pain continued extreme, and there was the ‘added horror of the quite forgotten bed-pan’. After three exceedingly unpleasant nights he was taken to hospital, where under local anaesthetic his leg was straightened and reset with screws. The operation was long and intricate, and recovery proved slow. A fortnight later he was released, during which time he had slept little and read much. ‘Watching television,’ he found on the other hand, ‘is, upon the whole, a melancholy/dreary pastime.’

  His recovery was accompanied by constant bouts of pain and sleeplessness. Unable to write or work in the garden, Patrick chafed at his confinement. ‘Collioure already sadly crowded, & more squalid than one could wish,’ he lamented after venturing into the town. Even at home annoyances plagued him: ‘Huns in the lotissement howled until 3 am, jigging up & down to a sardana [the Catalan dance]. O for a rifle.’ ‘Tempers grow short in this weather,’ he acknowledged ruefully.

  Not until the end of June did he contemplate resuming work, and then only to find he could do little more than stare at the manuscript. Inspiration seemed to have evaporated:

  I re-read VII & VIII, not much impressed with VII, & assembling my ideas tried to work: but my mind seems to have weakened – flabby, sponge-like, with no grip, no resistance. It is really frightening. Superficially bright enough, but incapable of tackling anything without distress.

  As ever, he concealed his mental and physical troubles from the outside world. To me, he blithely wrote that:

  I saw fit to fall off a 9000 foot mountain. I did not fall quite to the bottom, but far enough to break a leg in two or three places. And if you or Georgina ever feel the need to do the same, I do beg you to choose a place nearer than eight hours from any hospital, and to avoid, at all costs, the attentions of a drunken Spanish surgeon.

  Patrick’s stoical courage was such, that I fear I did not always take his setbacks as seriously as they deserved, and I am relieved to find that I wrote him a ‘sweet letter’. Ever concerned for my welfare, he was delighted to learn that after a long delay Hodder wanted no more than extensive cuts in my grotesquely overlong manuscript of Victims of Yalta, and promised publication in the spring. He noted in his diary that he urged me ‘to attempt a biography (Custine or Camelford) rather than an historical novel. He could probably do it quite well.’

  Patrick had come across the aberrant Lord Camelford during his researches for The Mauritius Command.[fn6] A cousin of Prime Minister William Pitt, he pursued an extraordinarily picaresque and melodramatic life, ranging from shooting dead a fellow naval officer in Antigua to attempting the life of Napoleon with a repeating pistol, before being killed in a duel in 1804. The suggestion proved apt, and two years later my book was published under the title The Half-Mad Lord. Not only did Patrick provide me with the idea, but at every stage he proffered invaluable advice, ranging from details of naval life and practice to effective prose style. He was always a perfect mentor, and until I read his diaries after his death I had little idea of the problems he repeatedly encountered with his own writing. Readers may share my astonishment at the extent to which he triumphed over obstacles, so that it is rarely possible to distinguish passages written in the full flow of happy inspiration, from those composed under extreme mental or physical distress.

  Friends called regularly, generally to Patrick’s pleasure. However, the Collioure painter Willy Mucha was unfortunate to arrive just as Patrick was getting back into his stride with chapter 9. ‘Whitish-haired, fat, sweating, loquacious, ill-at-ease. His flow of talk is kept up by the repetition of the same words several times & the use of phrases such as vous comprenez ce que je veux dire.’

  Whether the ebullient Willy was really uneasy I do not know: if so, it is not impossible that Patrick’s evident irritation made him so.

  Throughout this painful time work on The Mauritius Command proceeded fitfully, with constant expressions of self-doubt. Finally, on 22 July:

  I finished Ch X & with it the book in a strong burst of work (3/4000). I doubt the value of some parts (SM’s wanhope[fn7]) & the credibility of others (Cl[onfert]’s death), & the attempted bang at the end – indeed the knowing cynicism of these last 20 pp or so. But at least I have time to put it by & read it again objectively in a month.

  A week later Patrick explained some of his misgivings to his agent Richard Scott Simon:

  I do not want to be definitively labelled as a writer of sea-tales, because apart from anything else the scope and the material are limited, and I doubt whether I could produce above two or three more without repeating myself. Then again, the characters are likely to grow threadbare with use: and I do not know whether new people could take their place. I have just finished the present tale, The Mauritius Command, and I think I will keep it by me to re-read it with a fairly fresh eye before sending it to you in September.

  Fortunately, these gloomy misgivings were not shared by those who approached the book from a fresh standpoint. On receipt of the finished typescript Richard Scott Simon responded enthusiastically:

  Many more thanks for The Mauritius Command, which arrived extraordinarily promptly one day before your letter. I have enjoyed myself very much with it and I’m sure the other Richard [Ollard – Patrick’s editor at Collins] will feel the same. I shall get it round to him by hand tomorrow. I must say, I do find Stephen a delightful character. However, I must admit I had to skip the details of the operations as I am afraid I am not strong enough for that sort of reading unless I have a glass of gin or brandy by me.

  A few days later Richard Ollard confirme
d Simon’s encouraging judgement: ‘I have just finished THE MAURITIUS COMMAND and must congratulate you on a really splendid performance …’

  The novel is unusual, in that it is the only one in the series whose central plot closely follows significant historical events. Relying principally upon William James, it adheres with a few changes to the remarkable succession of combined operations which enabled Britain in 1810 to seize France’s chief island strongholds in the Indian Ocean. Four powerful French frigates had escaped the British blockade, and used Mauritius as a base from which to conduct a series of damaging raids on convoys of East Indiamen rounding the Cape. An inferior British squadron sailed from the Cape, and in combination with troops transported from the neighbouring British island of Rodriguez managed to retake the islands, and reduce the French squadron after a succession of hard-fought actions at sea and on land.[2]

  As Patrick explains in his Introductory Note, he adhered closely to contemporary accounts throughout the main part of his narrative. He substituted Jack Aubrey for the historical Commodore Josias Rowley on the Boadicea, and introduced his fictional Irish peer Lord Clonfert as commander of the 18-gun sloop Otter, together with his drink-prone Scotch surgeon McAdam. The handful of fictional characters is merged with consummate skill with historical figures such as the able Colonel Keating, commander of land forces on Rodriguez, Governor Farquhar, and the brutal Captain Corbett of the Africaine. Patrick’s initial misgiving on discovering that the Commodore’s labours were to some extent eclipsed by the arrival of Admiral Bertie’s fleet from the Cape was countered by converting him into an acquisitive old rogue with an eye to prize money. Stephen Maturin’s intelligence role is happily slotted into the real-life suborning of the French militia through Captain Willoughby’s distribution of inflammatory proclamations.

  Since he was writing fiction and not history, Patrick happily created characters for his protagonists loosely or even unrelated to those of their real-life prototypes. The incisive Keating behaves as might be inferred from his gallant actions. Although imaginatively concocted, Admiral Bertie’s genial greed is such as not seldom presented a frustrating obstacle to a deserving subordinate. Occasionally Patrick transferred a trait or incident from one character to another. Thus, Corbett’s possible suicide (mentioned by James) is ascribed to the fictional Lord Clonfert. Overall, the marriage of fact and fancy is so skilfully interwoven as to make the distinction imperceptible throughout, historical and fictional characters freely intermingling in a memorable panorama.

  While much of The Mauritius Command adheres faithfully to historical events, like its predecessors it includes themes and incidents reflecting Patrick’s own life at the time of writing. Readers have been concerned to identify Jack’s home, where he is visited by Stephen at the opening of the novel. Dean King suggests that: ‘The house’s name was inspired perhaps by the Ashgrove Cottage belonging to Susanna Thrale, the sister of the real-life Queeney Thrale, later Lady Keith.’[3] While this possibility cannot be discounted, another also seems feasible. In the 1930s some cousins of Patrick lived in a pretty cottage in the village of Ashgrove, by Peasedown St John near Bath. While there is no evidence that he maintained contact with them, the fact that he visited Somerset at the time of writing may have brought the name to mind.

  However this may be, the description of Jack’s cottage reflects a combination of Patrick’s and my mother’s cramped quarters in their tiny home in North Wales, and the modest former vicarage where my grandparents were living at Barton St David in Somerset. From the latter Patrick appropriated their handsome satinwood furniture, as well as the unkind caricature of my grandmother intended by Jack’s tiresome mother-in-law Mrs Williams.[fn8]

  The year 1977 began with Patrick subjected to constant extremes of mood. In January: ‘Black depression all day: no work apart from reading. This may or might be my door into madness.’ Fortunately, by 1 February: ‘These are good days. Mild steady work, more light, spring coming, wealth, 2 books in my head.’ In April he further contemplated an ocean voyage of his own: ‘I thought much about an advertisement by a man who offers to sail one across the Atlantic from Martinique to Port-Vendres by way of the Azores btween April 28 & June 6. With leg & book & hand, alas, it will not do.’

  Not only this, but sufficient perils lay closer by. Patrick and his car invited danger at almost every turn. Thus on 28 April, on the road to Perpignan, ‘we were v nearly killed by a car that rushed out of an obscure turning on our left without looking, but the good brakes held.’ A few days later in Port-Vendres, ‘a disagreeable old man backed into the car – I had thought he was leaving, but apparently he was only parking pretty. The inevitable & oh so useless fury and flood of blame [Patrick’s own, I take it] depressed me …’ There were two consistent factors in Patrick’s driving mishaps: they recurred with alarming regularity, and were almost invariably the fault of the other driver.

  On 10 June Georgina and I arrived for a fortnight’s holiday, bringing with us (at my mother’s warm insistence) our little daughters Alexandra and Anastasia. Next day Patrick noted ominously: ‘play (M’s store of toys a v great success) shrill piping of enormous volume. M however states that these are remarkably well brought-up little girls.’

  The next day began well, however, with Patrick amused on learning that ‘Anastasia, on being shown the sea, asked “Where is the tap?”’

  Sadly, however, this equanimity did not last. That I suffered throughout our stay from severe backache probably did not help, and ‘a tedious wrangle’ about the implications of the Official Secrets Act developed at supper. Next morning Patrick’s ill-humour continued, and I regret to say worsened as the days passed by. Unfounded complaints about the children abounded, to be recorded nightly in his diary. Inevitably my mother came to side with Patrick, and we gloomily realized that bringing the children had proved the direst of errors. I continued in pain, while Patrick’s irritation made it hard for him to work, even in the inviolate privacy of his gallery below. On successive days he recorded ‘A single page’ and ‘No work today’. However, he was not entirely without self-awareness, noting at one point: ‘My conscience reproaches me.’

  I am afraid neither my mother nor Patrick was attuned by nature to the carefree insouciance of little children. My sparse memories of my mother before she left me and my sister include almost nothing that was warm or affectionate. My wife suggests that this might explain why my mother and Patrick apparently decided to have no children of their own. (Equally, they may well have decided that they could not afford it.) It was generally only when infants had attained years of discretion in their teens that they gradually became tolerable: indeed, as occurred in the case of both Patrick’s son Richard and me, subjects of genuine affection and interest.

  It also occurs to me that a major factor in Patrick’s mounting ill-temper lay in the fact that having very small children living in the very small house was a unique experience in his life – at least, since those distant days before the War, when as a young man he was married to his first wife Elizabeth. And my mother, doubtless with the best of intentions, had persuaded us to stay for nearly three weeks! The distraction made it impossible for him to work, and without work his life swiftly appeared meaningless.

  As a fellow writer, I feel that much may be excused him on the grounds of an author’s overriding need for peace of mind – a factor perhaps difficult for others to comprehend fully. Besides, there can be little point in resenting a trait that was clearly so deeply entrenched as to be ineradicable.

  Nonetheless, never again did we repeat the experience of coming to stay en famille, and when eventually our son Dmitri and youngest daughter Xenia were invited to Collioure as adolescents, they were treated handsomely – if at times eccentrically. This applied also to my sister Natasha’s sons when they in turn came to visit the house.

  Two days after our departure Patrick received a welcome fillip:

  Such a gratifying review in T[imes]L[iterary]S[upplement], surveying the naval tales
from the G. Ocean on – brilliant achievement – astonishing erudition – & (which gave me a good deal of ignoble pleasure) saying that my rivals were punk (which I thoroughly believe).

  As in many a writer’s life, the uplift deriving from a flattering review tends to be short-lived: ‘Alas, I am afraid that my natural state is one of disapproving gloom, if not of positive crossness. And I have almost forgotten how to do anything but work: slow, day-long bodging.’

  Precautions had to be adopted against interruption, sometimes of an irregular nature. ‘Manuel came, with presents alas … I did not see him, having concealed myself in the bath.’

  A welcome visitor was Matisse’s daughter Marguerite Duthuit, who came to stay for the month of August, when she regaled Patrick with many anecdotes of her father. Regrettably, the biography of the painter which Patrick contemplated writing never materialized.

  In October he and my mother came once again within an ace of ending their lives. At the end of the month they drove to England to attend the wedding of Philippe Jonquères d’Oriola, son of close friends whose family château lies beside the road to Perpignan. The ceremony took place in the beautiful old Romanesque church of Tickencote in Rutland.

  On their return journey, Patrick and my mother spent a night with their old friends Charles and Mary de Salis at Appledore in Kent, whence they set off next morning to catch the ferry at Southampton. What prevented this was recalled by Patrick on his initial recovery a week or so later:

  At about 11 or 11.30 we were quite near Lewes – too early – & seeing a sign to Alfriston I said let’s go & see the church. And I think I also said let’s change [seats] – indeed I am sure I said it, but whether we did change or not I do not know. Vague recollections of the ambulance – M & I holding hands across the aisle – a policeman asking me what I remembered of the accident – nothing – casualty department – nurses hurting M – words about a catheter – a nurse begging me to be reasonable – men sewing up my scalp and eyebrow.