Here unmistakably may be glimpsed Maturin’s erudition, unworldliness, and ignorance of sailing. Yet to come are his character as doctor, intelligence agent, disenchanted outsider, uneasily married man, and duellist. The amiable extrovert Jack Byron provides but a pale premonition of the full-blown Jack Aubrey, but again the genesis is nonetheless evident.
Marni Hodgkin received the tale with enthusiasm: ‘One thing I am certain of – The Centurion’s Gig is the best story in my collection by quite a long chalk … In fact an almost embarrassing chalk.’ As the other contributors included such well-known writers as Richard Garnett, Leon Garfield, Ted Hughes and Noel Streatfeild, this was invaluable praise.
Although she later sent him a photocopy of the published story, Patrick neither preserved it, nor included any reference to it in the list of his published works he provided for Arthur Cunningham’s Festschrift in 1994. I can only suppose the omission to have been deliberate. The writing is well up to the standard of The Unknown Shore, a book to which he remained attached. On rereading the latter ‘not without pleasure’ in January 1995, he remarked: ‘It is not a v good book, but not discreditable either – perhaps rather dull.’ These moderate strictures were in any case provoked less from disparagement of its literary merit, than by his consciousness of the extent of the novel’s dependence on the historical record for its plot.
It is possible that Patrick’s reticence arose from concern that the public should not nurture any suspicion of the genesis of his magnum opus in his earlier writing for children – a misgiving he expressed openly at the time. Like many of his fears, it appears groundless, but for him it presented jeopardy.
Reverting to Patrick’s state of mind in 1967, with the beginning of summer developments fast combined to suggest that the world was becoming a better place. On 21 May he rejoiced that the weather was ‘Warm, warm, for the first time almost’, while within the week: ‘The tax is all right Joy / I was irrationally worried.’ (In fact, Patrick appears ultimately to have proved more than a match for both British and French tax authorities.)
On 5 July he received the American publisher’s reaction to his draft: ‘Lippincott want book – amazed & rather cross, put out.’ Whatever the cause of these reservations, two days later he ‘Wrote to C[urtis]-B[rown] accepting Lippincott’s offer of $7,500.’ The contract was signed on 15 September, the book being described simply as ‘Untitled novel about an 18th Century naval adventurer’.
A delighted Patrick plunged into preparatory reflection and research for a work perfectly attuned to his tastes and talent.[fn3] His two earlier naval novels had employed Anson’s celebrated voyage around the globe in 1740–44 as their setting. Having exhausted the possibilities of that momentous theme, he now fastened on the apogee of the Royal Navy’s achievement, Britain’s twenty-year struggle against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France. Conditions of shipping and seamanship at that time were not radically different from those obtaining in the 1740s, so that his extensive researches provided him with a solid grounding for the work.
As a model for his ‘18th Century naval adventurer’, he required a young and enterprising officer, exercising an independent roving command. Browsing through William James’s six-volume Naval History of Great Britain (1837), which he had bought during the War, Patrick at some point fastened upon the striking figure of Lord Cochrane. One of the most dashing and resourceful frigate commanders of the Royal Navy during the war with France, his deeds and (in part) character provided an exemplary prototype for a fictional hero.
Further to Cochrane’s skill and daring, as also his recurrent conflicts with higher authority, Patrick appropriated a succession of his exploits in the brig Speedy in 1801, throwing in for good measure his capture of a battery on the Spanish coast in 1808. As he pointed out in his introduction: ‘When one is writing about the Royal Navy of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries it is difficult to avoid understatement; it is difficult to do full justice to one’s subject; for so very often the improbable reality outruns fiction.’
In addition to attentive study of the narrative chronology provided by James, Patrick acquired invaluable material from Cochrane’s autobiography, as well as the works of Frederick Marryat, who served under Cochrane and introduced his heroic commander’s exploits into his fiction.[fn4]
From Cochrane, Jack Aubrey derived his exemplary seamanship, tactical cunning, courage, and resentment of higher authority, wherever he sensed (rightly or wrongly) incompetence or injustice. In the previous volume of this biography, I advanced reasons for believing that Patrick’s depiction of Jack’s qualities of leadership in action also owed much to his admiration for the skills of Captain Jack Jones, Gallipoli veteran and Master of the Ynysfor Hunt, which Patrick and my mother had followed enthusiastically among the mountains during their time in North Wales.[fn5]
Other aspects of Captain Aubrey’s character and his physical appearance owe nothing to Cochrane or Jack Jones. A shrewd conjecture comes from Keith Wheatley, in his account of an interview with Patrick:
Might not ‘Lucky’ Jack Aubrey, hugely strong and fit, a superb shiphandler, and brave as a lion and a natural if unreflective leader, be seen as the author’s aspirational alter ego? Stephen Maturin is half-Irish, slight, clever, a gifted linguist (O’Brian is fluent in French, Spanish and Gaelic and has won praise for his translation of Colette’s letters)[fn6] and an obsessive amateur naturalist. He is also a spy and O’Brian reluctantly concedes to having spent the second world war working in British intelligence. Are the parallels not obvious?[2]
There is little doubt in my mind that Jack Aubrey did indeed represent in significant respects the man Patrick would have liked to be. As a child, he was small, nervous, prone to occasional bouts of debilitating illness, alternately neglected and harshly treated by his bullying giant of a father. How many in such circumstances have not longed to become a physically impressive leader of men?
In addition, his elder brother Mike provided just such a figure for emulation: tall, strongly built, and supremely self-assured. He had emigrated to Australia as a young man, where he pursued an adventurous life in the outback. Like the rest of his family, Patrick followed his adventures with avidity, which were transmitted home in regular correspondence. He was only twelve when Mike departed, and he met him again in profoundly affecting circumstances. In 1941 Mike joined the Royal Australian Air Force, and early in 1943 he was posted with his squadron to England. One day he called on Patrick and my mother in Chelsea, on whom he left an indelible impression of a bold, genial giant of a man. His impressive height actually required the cockpit roof of his bomber to be raised. A few weeks later he was killed in a bombing raid over Germany.
In another interview Patrick denied any projection of himself into the characters of Jack or Stephen: ‘I am fond of them both, but I am in no way identified with either.’[3] This is true up to a point, since like all rounded literary characters they reflect a compound of elements, and, once created, independently evolve personality traits. Nevertheless, the substantial debt Jack owes to Patrick’s own outlook and experience must be plain to those who knew him intimately.
Thus, we learn that Jack Aubrey’s mother died during his early childhood, while his reprobate father plunges from one reckless financial disaster to another, causing Jack himself to fear and shun the taint of poverty. Jack’s brief and unsatisfactory schooling is marked by bouts of flogging (which Patrick also endured while at school in Lewes), and such learning as he possessed was largely self-induced. His preferred pursuits include enthusiastic riding to hounds, a pronounced taste for good music, and astronomy. All these factors find close echoes in Patrick’s own experience.
If substantial aspects of Jack Aubrey derive from Patrick himself, there can be no questioning the extent of his parallel identification with Stephen Maturin. The latter’s physical appearance represents an amusingly unflattering image of Patrick, while their shared obsessive interest in natural history and other aspects of the exact sciences
are too evident to require comment. His medical practice almost certainly derives from Patrick’s father’s profession, and his scientific enthusiasm doubtless owed something to his uncle Sidney, Professor of Physics at the Middlesex Hospital Medical School. Thus, it is a work of supererogation to emphasize the resemblances between Stephen Maturin and Patrick. I cannot resist evoking Maturin’s physical stance on being harangued by a troublesome bore: ‘His voice ran on, low and urgent, and Stephen stood with his hands behind his back, his head bowed, his face gravely inclined in a listening attitude. He was not, indeed, inattentive; but his attention was not so wholly taken up that he did not hear Jack cry …’[4]
So minutely does this posture correspond to one regularly adopted by Patrick himself, that to me at least it provokes the question how far Maturin reflected Patrick, and to what extent Patrick in turn came to model himself on his creation.
At the same time, Patrick drew on appropriate historical characters for his portrayal. First, and most obvious, is the ship’s surgeon James Guthrie, with whom Cochrane enjoyed a close friendship, and who served on every ship he commanded as captain.[5] At the beginning of 1979 Patrick further noted ‘Byam Martin’s secret agent, a gentlemanlike man, P Cummings’.[6] He remained on the lookout for real-life models, commenting in 1988: ‘Humboldt tends to be rather absolute & he is something of a bore, but he is the true natural philosopher through & through. I wish I had read him before, for SM.’
In the summer of 1967 I paid my customary visit to Collioure. Together with Michael Brereton, an old university friend, I had visited Greece, camping on the islands of Tinos and Mykonos. There we parted, I having booked a passage on what the Turkish owners assured Thomas Cook’s in London was a pleasureboat, on which I had reserved what was described as a ‘deck berth’. The description proved to be quite literal, and for three nights I lay alone in my sleeping bag under the stars, woken before sunrise each morning by the sailors’ assemblage on deck for prayers towards Mecca, following which I had to keep shifting my resting place to dodge powerful hoses employed in swabbing the decks. The other passengers, who at least possessed the luxury of cabins, were outraged by the primitive conditions, and a petition to the captain was got up. In the event the Turkish passengers declined to sign, while the French and Spaniards could not agree on which was the language of high culture appropriate to such a measure. In fact this would have proved wholly immaterial, since the captain as I learned was a monoglot Turk. No food was provided for the solitary deck passenger, and when eventually the ship docked at Barcelona on 29 August I was consumed with hunger.
Patrick and my mother had arrived to collect me, and promptly plied me lavishly with fine food and wine, which swiftly restored my spirits almost to excess. Three days later Patrick confessed in his pocket diary: ‘Too much bouillabaisse at Port Vendres Too much white wine.’ We spent the days swimming, walking in the mountains, and working in the vineyard. As ever, there were long and stimulating conversations, and they displayed lively interest in my experiences in the Aegean.
We naturally talked much of Patrick’s exciting commission from Lippincott. Regrettably, almost all that I now recall of those distant discussions was his concern to discover what, if any, conspiratorial activity by United Irishmen is recorded to have occurred aboard King George’s men-of-war during the French Revolutionary wars. I had studied Irish history at Trinity College Dublin (which Maturin likewise attended), and well before that had succumbed to a lifelong fascination with every aspect of the late Georgian period. Despite the substantial number of Irishmen serving in all ranks of the Royal Navy at the time, there is in fact scant evidence of seditious activity among them.[7] In the event, Patrick relegated this factor to Maturin’s abandoned past experience, and currently that of the Sophie’s First Lieutenant, James Dillon.
We also canvassed a suitable name for the Irish protagonist of his story. Patrick explained that he wanted an Irish name, but not one that was too self-evidently so. Years later he noted that ‘S Maturin was called Martin Joyce for the 1st few chapters’, but this evidently left him dissatisfied. He envisaged a character standing largely outside national and social stereotypes, so that Stephen was finally cast as a half-Irish, half-Catalan bastard, not ostentatiously attached to the Roman Catholic faith of his upbringing: indeed, an opponent of religious and political bigotry of any kind – like Patrick himself.[fn7]
I recall suggesting the name Considine, featured in one of Lever’s novels, but eventually Patrick came to prefer that of Maturin. I do not now remember his telling me where he originally found the name, which already features in his novel Three Bear Witness (1952), but Dean King’s suggestion that he adopted it from a reference in Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge may well be correct. Patrick held Maugham’s work in high regard, and in the context the latter’s reference to ‘a bishop in the family, and a dramatist and several distinguished soldiers and scholars’ would undoubtedly have appealed.
In due course I returned to England, and am glad to note that my parents enjoyed the visit as much as I did: ‘Farewell to Nikolai – sad, but never such a pleasant stay Summer’s ending.’ The auguries appeared generally good at Collioure that year. From the moment my parents bought the narrow strip of vineyard on which they built their house, they had set their hopes on acquiring the adjacent vineyard on the northern side, whose proprietor they nicknamed Naboth, after the biblical landholder whose vineyard was coveted by king Ahab. ‘Naboth’ was a proper Collioure character, who adored animals. Beside his casot he kept some much-prized rabbits in hutches, which he regularly invited me to inspect when passing up and down the lane from our house. There was also a pet fox, and, most striking of all, a handsome mule. This beautifully brushed glossy-haired creature lay luxuriantly stretched out on a bed of straw beneath an open-sided extension. We could see it from our balcony, where it reclined immobile save for an occasional languid flick of its tail. Meanwhile Naboth toiled ceaselessly under its placid gaze, bearing baskets of earth or grapes, according to the season, up the steep slope. The mule disdained any form of labour, and appeared the true owner of the vignoble.
Now, after fourteen years, Naboth had agreed to sell. On 22 September 1967 Patrick recorded: ‘M bought Naboth’s vineyard for a million [francs] We are as amazed.’ A fortnight later ‘M began weeding Naboth, at a great pace, which makes it real.’
Although their financial position did not allow further spending at this time (nor indeed for long after), their extended property now permitted expansion of the house when finances should allow. Patrick had long entertained the idea of constructing a quasi-monastic cloister on the southern adjacent vineyard, which they had bought in 1962. This would provide a comfortable outdoor space sheltered from the baking sun of high summer, while warding off the maddening force of the seasonal tramontane winds which seasonally bedevil the district. Furthermore, they would be concealed from the inquisitive stares of walkers passing on the track before their front door, which irritated Patrick beyond measure. For the present, however, he was obliged to be content with construction of a plywood model of the planned cloister, as he had done in 1952 when im agining a design for their original humble casot. I possess both models, which continue to imbue me with a melancholy nostalgia.
It was at this time too that the contract was signed with Lippincott for Master and Commander, and two months later the first instalment of $2,500 (£812) was lodged in their bank account in London. Pleasingly, this more than covered the purchase of Naboth’s vineyard.
Meanwhile Patrick was engaged in translating Joseph Kessel’s The Horsemen, a book he came to admire. It was completed by the end of October, which finally enabled him to concentrate exclusively on his naval tale. On 24 November he and my mother set off by car for England, visiting among other places Lourdes (where my mother attended vespers), La Rochelle (‘delightful’), Nantes (‘peu sympathique cruelly bored in museum. Wonderful donjon Le Gd Fougeraye’), and Mont St Michel (‘lovely green mud’). Arrived in Lond
on on the 30th, they dined with friends, and Patrick began researches at the London Library and Greenwich.
Next, they repaired to Somerset to stay for ten days near my mother’s parents, Howard and Frieda Wicksteed. On a visit to Wells, Patrick lighted on a book which more than any other was to provide an invaluable vade mecum when compiling his naval tales: ‘Rather more snow. To Wells – doubts about Faulkner’s Dic., extreme beauty of square snowy fields, bare Breughel trees – [Glastonbury] Tor.’
Patrick hesitated for a week before returning from a visit to Bath to clinch the deal at Heap’s Bookshop. He already possessed the 1815 edition (edited by William Burney) of the book in question[fn8] – William Falconer, An Universal Dictionary of the Marine (London, 1769) – but clearly the 1769 edition provided a safer guide for his purpose. Above all, it plainly could not include anachronistic allusions to matter introduced after 1801, the year in which Master and Commander is set.
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