Still Waters ....
A
commentary on Dean King's
Patrick O'Brian: A Life Revealed
(New York: Henry Holt and Company, March 2000)
by
Anthony Gary Brown
© 20th
March 2000, 17th February 2004, 4th August 2005
Here's heresy for you, shipmates. After a
decade or so of reading largely tiresome interviews with, or articles on, the
reticent and reclusive Patrick O'Brian, I confess to hearing with some relief
the news of his death in January at the age of 85. At least two books, and
perhaps three or four, past the height of his considerable powers, O'Brian
latterly seemed content to bask in the largely uncritical adulation of his many
fans, trotting out his catch-phrase 'that, if I may say, is a very personal
question' like a 1950s BBC radio comedy character: steadfastly - more-or-less -
fending off intrusions into his private self and history, but all too often,
revealing nothing of interest about his public self, the books, either.
Selfishly, demandingly even, I wanted O'Brian to pipe down - if you don't like
being interviewed, then 'just say no' - and either get back to producing the
novels and short stories that had entranced and elevated me since my first
encounter in 1975 or to retire to a life of gentlemanly leisure, hard-earned
and long overdue. If the latter, then left to us, his devotees, would be
several collections of dark short stories, a few early novels of relatively
minor interest and, best of all, the Aubrey - Maturin series, a very
substantial roman fleuve (begun, for all love,
not a day before his 52nd birthday) on that most delightful of all
mysteries, human friendship.
But it was of course inevitable that
O'Brian's twin successes - as late-blooming literary phenomenon and
high-quality writer - would attract prying eyes and prying minds. Although the
man himself piously hoped that it would be the work not the self - the 'what'
not the 'who' - that would attract critical attention (if he must endure
intrusion at all), dropped hints of a lonely Irish childhood and wartime
exploits in British intelligence were nuggets - albeit often both vague and
contradictory - too tempting for many of his admirers to resist. Nor perhaps
was it wise for a public artist to decry the notion of being the subject of
biographical enquiry whilst himself producing accounts of the lives and careers
of Pablo Picasso and Sir Joseph Banks. Still, so strong did his high-minded,
old-fashioned notions of courtesy and decency seem to be, that any potential
candidate as literary sleuth could surely expect a wall of resistance from both
O'Brian and his circle of intimates, together with the possible opprobrium of
the author's own dedicated readers, of course the main target market for an
exposition of the artist's life.
Thankfully it was no tabloid
journalist - a fungus that has crept from Britain's shores to these in recent
years - that decided to toe the (unauthorized) mark, but rather Dean King, an
enthusiastic American reader and proselytizer who had already written an number
of successful companion books elucidating the more obscure aspects of O'Brian's
nautical terminology and geography. In his biography, which in an unhappy
co-incidence has appeared within weeks of O'Brian's death, King makes an
arduous and valiant attempt to steer between the 'who' and the 'what' by asking
'what sort of' man could produce such works of art.
It's often said that all biographers,
whatever their starting positions, will end up loathing their subjects. Even
though King has ferreted out much that appears loathsome about O'Brian the man,
he clearly retains his love - not just admiration, but the full-blown thing -
for O'Brian the artist. Yet, as King himself says (p.226), all biographers
necessarily filter the subject's life through their own eyes. In attempting as
a reader (and myself an author on O'Brian's imaginary world) to be sure what
spectacles King had donned, I was amused to read (p.183) this extract from a
notice of O'Brian's 1962 novel Richard Temple in, of all things, the South
China Morning Post: the reviewer compliments O'Brian on his directness in
style in handling "a theme an American writer would have buried in rococo
enthusiasms (psychiatrist's couch to the fore)." Although the rococo is
here mercifully absent (yet King's section headings - Green, Red, Slate, Azure,
Deep Blue, Gold - smack of stylistic ambitions largely unachieved), the leather
on the psychiatrist's couch is positively worn thin by King's attempts to link
and account for rather limited source material on the tortured soul that he has
decided O'Brian must needs have been.
-------------------------------
After briefly outlining O'Brian's alleged
lies about his early life as Richard Patrick Russ (his given name), his
abandonment of his first wife and two children, one terminally ill, his
ruthless estrangement from kith and kin (symbolized in the 1945 change of name
to Patrick O'Brian) and his frequent prickly and unfeeling arrogance, King sets
out his own analytical stall (xvi-xvii):
"Though strange, none of this would be noteworthy if it were not for
the fact that O'Brian, who failed in the most basic male relationships - son
and father, father and son - was writing arguably the most profound literature
of the century on the subject of male friendship ... [t]he ability of Aubrey
and Maturin to overcome personal differences and to find and respect the
boundaries of friendship creates an ideal relationship, something O'Brian
sorely missed in his own family."
Later we hear that, for O'Brian, "fiction writing involved a welling up
of one's life experience into a separate entity, a child of sorts"
(p.195): a life experience of "loneliness and introspection" (p.35)
stemming from "excruciating pain" (p.152) to the sources of which he
was "blind" (p.143), but which led to "an inability to feel
love" (p.156), mostly arising from his "father's aloofness"
(p.152). Repeatedly, "inability to express emotion, to work through anger,
to swallow pride, and then to heal" (p.186) catches up with the author and
(what I guess we must call) his dysfunctional family.
Whilst it seems clear that the Russ
family, over not far short of a century, failed to live up to the standards of
modern parenting and sibling-relationship best-practice (the standards by which
King often seems to measure them: eg, pp.32, 58, 118,
124), to my eye it was young Pat who, of all his many brothers and sisters,
enjoyed a pretty decent relationship with father Charles Russ, albeit in family
circumstances of some disruption and difficulty. King repeated makes the case
for Pat (the name by which he was known in the family) having been the most
alienated of all the Russ children (p.32) by assertion rather than by anything
that I would call evidence. Indeed, such evidence as exists rather tends to
point the other way: after his mother's death, Pat is one of the few children
to remain in Charles' home (pp.23 ff; or, rather, succession of homes), is the
only one to 'bond' with his new step-mother (pp.31, 39), is the only one to
have Charles actively promote his career (p.41), in consequence of which he
dedicates an early novel 'To My Father' (p.55). Shortly after this, in 1934,
Pat leaves home at age 19 to make his way in the adult world, first, and
unsuccessfully, joining the Royal Air Force as a trainee pilot (he had been
rejected for officer training in the Royal Navy on health grounds) before
moving to London to make a fist of a literary career (pp.59 ff). After this
there seems to be a dearth of evidence of what, if any, relationship was
maintained between father and son (none? occasional? frequent? - we are not
told).
Readers' own views on all this will no
doubt be colored by what they think should have happened: but they
should also surely bear in mind that any distancing that occurred was between
an elderly Charles and the mature, adult Pat (note, at p.69, the precociously
sophisticated insight of his Hussein of 1936-8), a married man from
1936, living in a country at war from 1939 to 1945. It does seem that, by the
time of Charles' death in 1955, the two may not have been "very good
friends" (p168, quoting from Maturin's observations on the relationship between Jack Aubrey and
his father the General): regrettable perhaps, the cause of searing pain I rather
doubt. King further remarks that the news of the death "must have"
released "a flood of confusing emotions" in O'Brian, whose
"overall feelings are clear" on the event (pp. 167-8). No supporting
evidence for these insights is offered and indeed we are told that the man
never once discussed the issue with any of King's informants, nor in any other
public forum. That one of these uninformed informants, indeed the principal
one, was O'Brian's son Richard may be red-meat to 'dog that didn't bark'
psychiatrists ('Ah, but why did he never discuss it ....'), but will
seem thin gruel to the skeptical.
Dependent as King is on making the
case that O'Brian's relationship with his father was not only a failure, but a
failure of later literary significance, he resorts to some purple passages of
analysis. Especially heavy weather is made of an albeit
remarkable section of O'Brian's 1953 novel The Catalans:
I should have been satisfied with a manly boy even if he had been
affected, untruthful, hypocritical, unaffectionate, cruel, and of course
grossly ill-mannered and undisciplined ... I locked into his shallow little
soul, and I found that in addition to all those disagreeable qualities it had
an epicene namby-pambyness that filled me with
despair.
(p.152, quoting from p.113 of the original)
"The scene seems born of an excruciating pain - the author's. The
parallels to his life are clear .." says King
(p.155). Yet not a jot of evidence of such active contempt for Pat by his
father is offered; not a jot of evidence is offered that anyone else considered
the boy to hold these awful qualities. True, he had been often ill as a young
child, but it is to this recurrent physical sickliness (perhaps asthma or some
such bronchial complaint) that O'Brian ascribes his own loneliness and
introspection, not to any related contempt or aloofness from his various
guardians (p.35).
---------------------------------
Perhaps, rather, we are intended to read
this troubling passage as a comment on O'Brian's other significant 'failure',
that of his relationship with his son Richard, a 15 year-old when The
Catalans was published? But, although the boy clearly regarded his father
as a stern-taskmaster and a somewhat reserved man (pp.119, 170), his later
resentment of Patrick seems based entirely on events and realizations that only
unfolded in the 1960s, when Richard was an independent young man on the verge
of marriage.
[Regarding the 'failed' relationship with Charles, in an earlier purple
moment King also notes, "[O'Brian] later .. certainly came to understand the sad but laughable irony in
the fact that his intelligent, creative, and determined father continued to
pour his efforts into a series of useless inventions and impractical medical
treatments ... instead of finding a practical method providing for the
well-being of this family." (p.58). Again, no
source or evidence is given for these speculations: indeed, reading them, I was
stuck with the thought that the biographer doth perhaps protest too much.]
Turning to the other key to O'Brian's
literary concerns - the transition from failed son to failed father - King is
clearly on more secure ground. Whatever the reasons for the break-up of
O'Brian's first marriage, to Elizabeth Jones (of which more below), few people
would dispute that scars of some sort are the near-inevitable consequence,
especially on young children (the union was effectively over when Richard was
3, though the legal marriage lingered on for a few more years). However, in
these difficult circumstances, young Richard seems to have spent much of his
time between ages 9 and 17 in his father's households in Wales and southern
France (with extended periods at boarding school, and some time with his
mother). Indeed, although the two clearly did not quite share Patrick's love of
formal study of the classics (the boy preferred engineering), in many cases it
was 'like father, like son': Richard bonds with his new step-mother, Mary (the
former Miss Wicksteed and Countess Tolstoy), enjoys a
strenuous outdoor life and develops a love of nature and exploration. For these
years, I certainly do not get the sense of a perfect father-son relationship -
does such exist? - but at least that of a fairly
normal one, in the overall context of a disrupted family in a rather grey
post-War Europe. Indeed, Richard's chief problems during
this period seem to stem not from father Patrick, but from his new stepfather -
Elizabeth having married an abusive drunkard in 1949 (pp.127, 139) - and from
his mother's obtaining a court-order to prevent the boy from moving to France
with Patrick and Mary (p.127).
The first signs of a falling out
between Patrick and Richard really do not come until 1963, when they are aged
about 50 and 26 respectively (scarcely the ages to develop childhood-related
angst). And, at first, they are rather hum-drum, if regrettable. Patrick does
not take to Richard's intended, Mimi, nor she to him.
In 1964, Mimi and Richard marry in England:
Elizabeth, the mother, will not attend if Patrick, the father, does so. Caught
in such awfulness (been there, done that....), Richard and Mimi do not invite
Patrick and Mary. As part of the same overall process, Richard has also decided
to change his name back to Russ from the adopted O'Brian. Richard and Patrick
never meet or speak again (pp 185-6; as a follow up, we now know that Patrick
and Mary's considerable estate has gone entirely to her side of the family).
-----------------------------
This sad tale - which in and of itself
does not seem to me to quite bear the interpretive weight King wishes to give
it in relation to his 'failure' thesis - occurs in the very centre of the book,
and is intertwined with the central mystery of Patrick O'Brian's early life:
how and why did he come to separate from his first wife Elizabeth, their infant
son and their dying baby? By King's own proclaimed explanatory scheme, this
mystery can only be noteworthy to O'Brian's readers if it is either the cause
of father-son agonies or is directly related to the literary output. The second
contention is somewhat easier to deal with than the first.
In the Aubrey-Maturin series, a theme
for several of the later books is the strained relationship between Stephen
Maturin (supposed by many, though not by all -O'Brian himself included - to be
the author's alter ego), his wife Diana Villiers and
their remote and uncommunicative young daughter, Brigid.
I do not in fact recall reading comment on the authenticity of this depiction
by anyone who has faced a similar challenge in their own family, but obviously
to some extent O'Brian had 'lived his own story'. However, the differences are
so marked that no easy parallels can be drawn (and, to be fair, are not so
drawn by King). For example, in the novels, Stephen is largely absent from the
whole domestic problem (largely away on sea-duties, some of which he could have
declined to accept). In fact it is Diana, at home, who cannot bond with the
child and soon abandons her to a friend (whom she part-suspects to have
recently had an affair with Stephen). The child's dysfunction is of the mind and
soul, not the body and is able, eventually, to be wholly relieved. The family re-unite, into something like domestic bliss. Now, if
there are clues here to the real events of little Jane Russ's short life (she
died of her spina bifida at age 3), or vice-versa,
then they so many-layered as to invite more quiet reflection than open
discussion (King, I think, takes the same view).
However, the events in which Jane's
brief life were embedded are tied by King directly and
centrally to O'Brian the artist: for Richard, the surviving son, came in later
life (though exactly when is maddeningly vague in the text) to believe that his
father "had been very, very bad to my mother ... you just don't do this to
a woman. And you hope like hell it does not happen in your family."
Furthermore, he and Mimi had even delayed their own marriage for a few years
specifically to try and ensure that 'it' would not happen to them (p.185). King
observes that " .. as he
matured, Richard had come to better understand the nature of the breach between
his parents and, in the absence of any conversation with Patrick regarding it,
he had drawn his own conclusions." (pp. 185-6). Most curiously, we are
never told what these conclusions in fact were.
A little earlier in the book, in 3
paragraphs separated off from the rest of the narrative, King had stated,
"whether Patrick walked out of [the marital home] after an argument or
failed to return after a research trip to London
is unknown. What exactly caused him to leave the family in that summer of 1940
is also unclear ... Regardless of the reason or the method, in a moment of weakness, he left his helpless family, causing permanent
bitterness ....." (p.76). Whatever had happened,
it later (but when?) led Elizabeth
to say of Patrick "may that bastard rot in hell." (p.140). This is by far the most directly controversial material in
the book, and has already started a fierce debate in both private and public
media. But I hope I am not being unduly dense, or unduly protective of
O'Brian's reputation, when I say that, after several readings, I am not sure
exactly what King and Richard Russ are alleging here.
Firstly, there is some suggestion that
the couple had separated briefly at around the time of Jane's birth (whether
before or immediately after is unclear), with Elizabeth doing the moving out
this first time, taking the infants with her (p.73). This, coupled with the
unstated conclusions later drawn by Richard, immediately suggests there is more
here than meets they eye. And is Richard's "you just don't do this to a
woman" a simple reference to abandonment, or to something more? How could Richard and Mimi work in advance of marriage to head
off the chance of cruel abandonment, or was something both more concrete and
complex on their minds? Given that the biography was intended for publication
in O'Brian's life-time, I strongly suspect that the publisher's English lawyers
had thrown a fire blanket over much of what King and Russ may have wanted to
say here: for the onerous English libel laws require an author to prove that
what he says is true, rather than requiring a living, and perhaps
litigious, O'Brian to prove it false. And if there is a cherchez la femme
(or even l'homme) mystery at the bottom of
this - a theme in the later naval books, to be sure, and illicit love is at the
dark heart of Testimonies - libel laws may even now be the controlling
factor.
Especially puzzling in relation to
this dark episode is the almost total lack of comment by King on his use of hitherto
unpublished remarks by O'Brian to an unnamed reporter (probably Mark Horowitz,
who made his material available to King (p.xv, 376).
This is O'Brian on the significance of the death of the street urchin Dil in HMS Surprise:
"The point of the death of Dil is that [Maturin]
has done a wholly dishonourable thing that has its
image in the death of that child ... you do something profoundly dishonourable and you've killed something, you've killed a
part of your honor." (p.213; Am. spelling sic)
(Maturin's dishonorable act was to give advice to Jack Aubrey as a
friend that, truly, was designed mostly to serve him, Maturin,
as a rival for Diana Villiers' affections).
Did O'Brian ever believe that he had
"killed part of his own honour" in
abandoning his young family in appalling circumstances? If so, how could a man
like O'Brian live with such a thing, or ever hope to expiate it in this life?
Or, alternately, are these the words of a man of honor who, taking a very
different view of past events, believes his own conscience to be clear? Is
there perhaps, in the portrayal of the Diana / Brigid
relationship in the novels - coupled with Diana's own "love in a cottage
be damned" remarks - some other version of events, now unknown to any
living person, that lay rigorously concealed in O'Brian's well-tempered heart?
As further speculation, could it even be - could it possibly be? - that Maturin's career-long struggle with opium addiction somehow
maps onto O'Brian's own life experiences in and around this time? I will not be
the only reader of King's relentlessly psychological biography to be astonished
that this possibility is utterly unexamined, or even remarked on, by the
author, given opium's centrality to Maturin's emotional life. (Nor, of course, will I be the only one
to suggest that it may merely have been borrowed and adapted from Sir Arthur
Conan-Doyle).
In any case, the link of all this to
the crucial father-son 'failure' seems to me again to be more asserted than
demonstrated by King, even if more plausibly than the supposed earlier mirror
failure. Other readers may even share my sense that these were dark roads down
which King may very much have preferred not to tread at all, had he not been so
heavily dependent on the accounts of Russ family members, all notably uneasy in
their relationships with each other and with Patrick himself. I left these
sections of the book, which dominate its first half but rather fade away in the
second, with a later delightful anecdote of Patrick and Mary O'Brian's
conversational style ringing in my head: when tempted with some interesting tid-bit, they lean over the dinner table and cry,
"What is your source for this? ... Tell us more." (p.274). But,
whilst King's sourcing technique is maddeningly vague and coy, I had anyway by now
my fill of the therapist's couch and wanted to move on. (I wonder if, too, had King's editor: the frequent, rather awkward insertion of
little "we'll see what all this means when we eventually get onto Jack and
Stephen" notes smacked of a certain exasperation).
-------------------------------
Far more successful in this
first 200 or so pages - and in itself worth the ticket price of the book
- is the extended and penetrating discussion of the 'Richard Patrick Russ'
stories and books published before the War, from age 15 or so onwards. These
are immature works to be sure - almost by definition - but astonishingly
adventurous in their conception and precocious in their insight. As so few are
easily available to the public, King has done a real service in bringing them
forward and capturing their essence: indeed, I can even forgive him the chapter
heading 'The Pen Mightier than the Pain'! Especially intriguing for fans
of Aubrey and Maturin is the
bringing to light of several tales constructed around a similarly unlikely pair
of friends, Sullivan and Ross. This early 'buddy team' first appear in a Pat
Russ story of 1936, Noughts and Crosses,
and make a last bow in an O'Brian tale of 1955, The Road to Samarcand. Appetite whetted: more please!
Similarly, I found the central parts
of the book, spanning the immediate post-war years in remote, grey Wales
and the move to remote, blue Collioure, both
engrossing and far more successful at illuminating the type of man that
O'Brian the artist eventually became. Having previously wanted less mapping of
the books onto the life and vice-versa, here I would have liked even a little
more. For example, a continual course of discussion amongst enthusiasts is the
strange contrast in Maturin between
physical and psychological competence in some fields (sword, lancet and
intellect) and utter lack of ability in others (ships and the sea for the most
part). Whilst King gives over several short passages to O'Brian's early
debilities and to outsiders' views of him as physically inept, yet we also
often see a man who is a clock enthusiast, a cook, a trainee pilot, a strenuous
physical worker in the fields, a hiker and hunter, a good shot, a maker of
longbows, and amateur veterinarian and horse-trainer, and relentless gardener
and naturalist.
Likewise, many readers will want to
know more of Mary O'Brian who, seemingly loved by all except her first husband,
may also have been the field agent in war-time France
that Patrick himself is sometimes supposed to have been (p.85). Although the
access problems were no doubt insuperable - neither Mary nor Patrick
co-operated with King to the slightest degree, and sought to have others do
likewise - a 53-year marriage (with only the tiniest wisp of possible scandal:
see the Electronic Telegraph of March 2, 2000), impressive in its depth
to all who saw it, would seem an uncommonly fruitful place to investigate the
nature of O'Brian's literary theme of profound, adult friendship.
----------------------------------
Before leaving this first half of the
book - by far the denser of the two - it is worth looking at the Russ - O'Brian
name change. Far from an uncommon thing for an artist to do (and, as King
reveals, rather frequent in the Russ family as a whole), it might have
attracted little controversy had it not been seen (after being revealed by Ben
Fenton in the London Daily Telegraph in 1998) as, in part, a somewhat
disreputable attempt to hide a grubby personal history. King makes a great deal
of it as being a symbolic gesture, a putting behind of those failures and inner
tortures that had supposed haunted the young Pat Russ. Almost by definition, a
name-change is a rite of passage and separation, but King doesn't consider any
reasons for it that might lie outside his analytical scheme of psychological
agony (pp.4-5, 96-7). Oddly, he makes no mention of O'Brian's own, rather
elegant stated rationale, on his former identity being revealed, that once set
on re-marrying he had no wish for there to be two ladies by the name of Mrs Russ living in the same part of Chelsea
with only one Mr Russ in evidence. Perhaps, too, the
scheme was an added politeness to the already twice-surnamed Mary: the new
couple should jointly take on an wholly new
appellation. Although a possible disadvantage to Patrick was his now cutting
himself off from his literary investment in the Russ name, it is worth noting
that in 1945, when the re-naming was done, Patrick had published nothing for 5
years, with his last work appearing in the Oxford Annual for Boys. Now a
31-year-old, twice-married veteran of war experience, he may simply -well,
perhaps not so simply - have decided that a complete fresh start offered as
good or even better a chance of success than any attempts to revive a
reputation no longer of much direct relevance to either himself or his intended
audience.
------------------------------------
Many readers will perhaps be somewhat
frustrated that the sea - O'Brian's right true end - does not really arrive in
this biography until p.157 (The Golden Ocean), with Jack and Stephen
only stepping into full view at p.190. But from thereon, with few
interruptions, they will be treated to a fairly straightforward exposition of
the growth of O'Brian's main glory, in often fascinating detail (the final two
books of the series, The Hundred Days and Blue at the Mizzen are
rather skipped over). Although perhaps these last 175 pages rely a little too
heavily on secondary material derived from editorial and print reviews (adding
more volume than fresh insight to the Arthur Cunningham-edited British Library
tribute of 1994), there is also intriguing material from O'Brian's manuscript
drafts and, especially welcome, a good analysis of the origins of the cover
illustrations, including preparatory sketches and notes by that doyen of the
art, Geoff Hunt (pp.282-3). The warm and penetrating opinions of interviewers
and commentators of the stature of Alan Judd, Ken Ringle,
Neal Conan, Max Hastings, Richard Snow, Kevin Myers, A.S.
Byatt, William Waldegrave,
Mark Horowitz, Richard Ollard, John Bayley, T.J. Binyon,
and Francis Spufford - to name but a few - are nobly
collected here. Woven into these sections is a balanced view of O'Brian the
sometimes charmer and sometimes tetchy recluse; though I read the relatively
mild accusations of misogyny (p.225) and anti-Americanism (p.295-6) as both
gratuitous and unconvincing.
A puzzle to me, given the previous
focus on intense, psychological explanation of how adult friendship must surely
have come to be O'Brian's great theme, is the total lack of any similar
accounting for other equally salient features of the 22 sea-tales. For, as King
of course notes (p.158), they famously crackle with both wit and sheer joie de
vivre (though they are not without their dark and troubling sides too). Given that
neither of these are usually characteristics of writers haunted by tortured
childhoods and failed relationships, one might wonder from where in his inner
self O'Brian got them in such delightful plenty: perhaps his soul was more
balanced and his pure imagination more acute than those of a therapeutic turn
of mind are willing to credit.
---------------------
In interviews surrounding the launch of
this biography, Dean King has offered an alternative explanation of why it is
necessary and justified to hunt out O'Brian's Russ past. He moves from the
book's contention that this past would be only noteworthy if related tolerably
directly to central themes in O'Brian's novels to some suggestion that he, and readers generally, were cheated by O'Brian's lies
and half-truths:
"I felt that by not telling the truth to reporters and to his live
audiences in the United States
during visits here, O'Brian forfeited the right to not have a closer look
taken. There's a right way and a wrong way to go about these things. My motive
was not to bring down this man, it was simply to set
the record straight, to present an accurate record of a great writer. In a
sense, I think our reputation as readers was at stake. We look foolish if in
retrospect critics look back and say: 'Here were a group of people who thought
this guy was a sailor, who sailed on square-rigged ships. They thought he was
Irish and believed this false persona that he had created.' By presenting the
true story, the appreciation for the literature will certainly be no less than
it was before--if anything, it will be greater." (King in The Idler, 01/31/00)
Although I was at first thankful that
this 'gotcha!' avenue is left largely unexplored in the books (King shows
clearly that O'Brian wasn't Irish-born and had no Irish blood, but can only
make a few skeptical asides doubt on the - in any case rather vague - hints of
childhood time spent in Ireland or on ships, a period for which there seems no
hard evidence at all), in retrospect it seems a shame that the investment
readers themselves have made in O'Brian's characters and world - and whether
they do in fact feel cheated of that investment - was not given more of an
airing by King. The views and feelings of basic 'enlisted' devotees - and of
mystified by-standers, often spouses - scarcely seem to figure at all in the
biography, apart from dry discussions of sales figures and print-runs. Given
the enormous popularity of, especially, the Aubrey-Maturin series with
well-educated readers of 'mature interests' (to borrow a phrase from a review
of the series as a whole in the New York Times), I would have liked some
consideration of how these books fit between the twin unsatisfactory worlds of
two-dimensional pot-boilers and the arcane conceits of much modern 'literary
fiction'. This is especially so when so many people happily admit to taking
valuable and practical moral lessons from O'Brian's writings, ones often
connected to the unfashionable virtues of a sort of Spartan stoicism. O'Brian's
chief characters "bear misfortune with a decent show of unconcern"
(presented as a subtle, witty and sometime ludicrous twist on the traditional
British 'stiff upper lip') but, while often noble and upright, they are not
above financial and career chicanery, philandering and adultery, evasions and
lies, and the full host of other vices that flesh is heir to. Perhaps this lack
of the common reader's voice in the biography - O'Brian the artist as an intersection
of the private man and his public - is explained by the something like mild
contempt King expresses for such views as they have expressed in relation to
the books: "Such was the fate of an author in the Internet age. Every
reader could be a published critic." (p.355). By
not looking into such matters, it seems to me that King has curiously ducked
making the case for what he merely asserts: that O'Brian is a genuinely
important writer, with a literary significance above and beyond the surprising
profits he turned for himself and others.
---------------------------------------
The book contains a number of small slips
in relation to O'Brian's plots and characters, as well as a handful of
fascinating, if inherently minor, related revelations. The latter gleanings
first: Diana Villiers is to some degree based on
Elisabeth Anspach, Lady Craven, a dashing 18th
century beauty (who later in fact became a successful playwright) (pp.105-6).
The fate of a minor character, the balloonist Senhouse
who flew too high and vanished, is inspired by a similarly named, overweening
editor of the early O'Brian.: a delightful touch, this
(p.129). Some of the inspiration for the character of the spymaster Sir Joseph
Blaine came from Leslie Beck, an Oxford
don who was O'Brian's section head in British intelligence during the war (p.
207). We also learn that some of Lieutenant Mowett's
poetry is based on that of the Rev. William Drummond (p.279, a necessary small
addition and correction to my own O'Brian companion volume which does not have this
source recorded).
The few slips occur in relation to the
Aubrey-Maturin series. Firstly King repeats a common belief that the earlier
books are astounding in their accuracy and consistency, this only tailing off
in the final few installments (esp. at pp. 253, 355). In fact, from the first
book onwards the series is shot through with slips and errors (as my own book records in detail), uncaught by either editors , proofreaders or O'Brian himself (who may well have
been cheerfully unconcerned in any case). What is true is that, towards the
end, some of these errors seemed to suck air out of whole paragraphs, whereas
previously they had perhaps only added mischievous interest for the nit-picking
type of mind.
Turning to the characters themselves,
at p.195 King says that Stephen Maturin and Lieutenant James Dillon both played
parts in the failed United Irishmen armed rebellion of 1798, their exact roles
remaining obscure. In fact, Dillon states that he was at the Cape [of Good
Hope] on naval duty at the time of the rising and, in the same conversation,
Maturin states that he - like Dillon - was not only opposed to the rebellion,
but spent his energies in trying to persuade one of its doomed leaders, his
cousin Lord Edward Fitzgerald, to avoid that calamitous path. Both, of course,
had been sympathetic to many of the earlier purely political aims of the
movement. (Master and Commander, chapter 5).
In several times discussing that
amiable fellow Lieutenant Mowett, King shares and
repeats O'Brian and his editor's confusions over whether his first name was
William or James, the book's index even having two separate entries for what is
one and the same man.
In stating (at p.212) that Maturin
intentionally causes the death of Richard Canning in the duel of HMS
Surprise, King glosses over a subtle piece of writing. Maturin
clearly intends to miss, or only wing, his opponent: but perhaps, in truth, he
does not try quite hard enough.
The note on the 'aberration' of the Maturin
and Aubrey family outing by sea to Madeira argues that,
usually, ships provide an actual and symbolic escape from
the confines of marriage. But Jack and Sophie had joyously pledged their
futures to each other aboard an RN warship (HMS Surprise, chapter 11)
and Stephen and Diana had actually married aboard another (The Surgeon's
Mate, chapter 11).
King (at p. 235) makes something of
the fact that, when O'Brian, in his private notes, proposed a new female
character named Pake, this name had already appeared
in the distant, pre-Aubrey and Maturin Richard Temple: in fact it had
more recently appeared in a casual mention of one Kitty Pake
in HMS Surprise, chapter 6.
Finally, yet perhaps a little more
surprisingly, King makes much (xv, 93) of the parallels between O'Brian's
distaste for being interrogated and "perhaps the best-known passage in all
Patrick's writing", Stephen Maturin's
oft-repeated statement that "question and answer is not a civilized form
of conversation". Like many (though far, far from all) of O'Brian's best
lines, this is a direct borrowing, in this case from Dr. Johnson: this
charmingly literate technique usually makes me hesitant to identify O'Brian
himself too closely with the expressed views of his characters.
-----------------------------
But these are minor quibbles with which to
conclude discussion of a largely useful and enjoyable book. To Dean King we
must be thankful for his meticulous bringing to light of some undeservedly
obscure works by O'Brian the artist, and for his shedding good light on many of
his creative processes. However, the flickering and ill-focused beam cast on
O'Brian the man is, to this reader and enthusiast at least, of more doubtful
merit. That the Aubrey-Maturin series is a paean to adult friendships based on
choice - on shared interests and passions, as well as agreeable differences of
both temperament and aspiration - may simply be O'Brian's cool and deliberate
exposé of the shallowness of many supposedly fundamental blood-ties, rather
than necessarily a tortured reaction to their supposed failure.