Patrick O'Brian

by Nikolai Tolstoy

The 1st of January 1987:

  was as beautiful a New Year’s day as can be imagined, probably as good as our first. It was warm (67°) but there was a little breeze, & M was much smoked by her bonfire in the kitchen garden & then by another at Manay, where we spent the afternoon … I also began the twelfth naval tale (? A Return to Grace) & wrote 1000 words, starting perhaps mistakenly with SM (Blue Breeches & bustard), perhaps out of proportion). Again poor M’s inwards were troublesome (though not very as it turned out) & she slept upstairs.

  It was not until September, after completing her typing of chapter IV, that my mother thought of an alternative title The Letter of Marque, which Patrick promptly approved.

  At first the writing went slowly, with his experiencing customary doubts about the approach to the new novel. A reviewer had recently (unfairly, in Patrick’s opinion) objected to what he regarded as the excessive length of his recapitulation of the situation at the conclusion of the preceding novel in the series. This of course was a problem intrinsic to compilation of the huge roman fleuve which the novels represent: one which nevertheless required resolution.

  Reading, as ever, was a joy – although it too could on occasion provoke personal misgivings: ‘I read [Chekhov’s] Oncle Vania [in French] with immense pleasure (perhaps “keenest attention” is the better expression), & admiration. My own work is painfully thin & trifling in comparison – lacks the overflowing life, too.’

  Nostalgic immersion in their own past, when they were still young and vigorous, afforded occasional consolation:

  I read the diary of our [1953] Iberian journey (lost, found, lost & found again) with great pleasure: how some things have stayed in my memory, thoroughly embedded, others only just present when stirred (e.g. my only cranes), & others quite gone (Lisbon cathedral). What a journey it was, & how the powers protected us, thanks be.

  Continuing contact with his family brought added comfort. On 10 February his brother Bun wrote to their sister Joan: ‘I had lately had a pleasant letter from Pat including a photo which I shall send on showing his vintage in its barrels. He says nothing about his poor wife who was sadly injured again a year or so ago. I am afraid she is going to be a permanent invalid.’

  My mother’s continuing attacks of ill-health would indeed provide a melancholy leitmotif to the remainder of their life together. ‘How terribly vulnerable we are: misere nobis.’

  Lesser irritations included the by now familiar but still unaccountable difficulties presented by their perverse little television set. A troublesome day was capped by ‘a pretentious, artistic, invisible & inaudible film only redeemed in part by J. Fonda …’ Nevertheless, persistence being one of his great virtues, a few days later Patrick patiently watched another ‘largely invisible’ programme: this time a rugby match between France and Wales.

  The novel continued to fret Patrick: ‘1000 words + but I am filled with anxiety about the 80000 odd to come. Can I make a coherent tale out of the 2 naval incidents I have in mind + SM & DV? Has not my once overflowing imagination chilled?’

  Shortly afterwards he became convinced that ‘This is not an inspired book.’ In fact the expedition of the Surprise covered by the first hundred pages is surely as vivid and brilliant as anything Patrick wrote. This gradually dawned on him, and he wrote a couple of days later: ‘Almost my only work was correcting yesterday’s & adding to it. I feel a little happier about the book: yesterday it seemed to me that I had wasted the tail-end of my life in translations & the like, & that I no longer had the lively imagination of these tales.’

  In early March the first copies of Joseph Banks arrived, a book which had required exceptional labours of research. Unfortunately the initial impression was disappointing:

  Banks came in the morning. This is the 1st book in 50 & more that we really could not rejoice about. The red of the jacket is hopelessly poor, the illustrations thin, mean & badly even mistakenly captioned, the type-face thin too & cold, the blurb has the piece about Collioure that I particularly asked to have left out, & the whole thing looks high-shouldered & meagre. It was only when I was in bed, gasping with much congested tubes [asthma], that I remembered that I had called most vehemently for a map on the end-papers, that it had been promised, & that it was not there.

  Later in the month their old friend Jacques Théodor, an experienced underseas explorer, called for lunch. Patrick, as was liable to occur when his writing was proceeding unsatisfactorily, found him somewhat didactic and contrary, but was touched by the gift of a Roman amphora, brought up from the seabed off Campania by Théodor’s colleague Jacques Cousteau.

  In June Georgina and I came to stay for a week. Ominously, ‘N told me of an alarming libel suit brought by Ld Aldington.’ The stay was a successful one for all, with much walking, talking, and swimming. Patrick believed he had ‘never seen him [me] look fitter or calmer in mind’; but, being considerably more perceptive than I in such matters, he concluded on the evening of our departure: ‘I fear for him in this Aldington business. Win or lose he cannot but be distracted from Merlin, and if he loses it must be something like ruin … I think it could be called a successful visit, but it left M quite exhausted & cost her a kilo.’

  Two days later Patrick received a further letter from Bun, announcing that he would be in London during the latter part of June, and suggesting a meeting. Having been over as recently as May, Patrick had to explain that his work did not permit a return at this time.

  Joan’s illusion, cited earlier, that writers enjoy unfettered time and facility for engaging in regular correspondence may also account for her equally erroneous assumption about this time that Patrick had deliberately rebuffed her.[fn1] Nevertheless, his diary shows that he and Bun continued their correspondence throughout the remainder of the year. Sadly, however, it transpired that Patrick had unwittingly missed his last opportunity of seeing the brother to whom he had been closest. In later years time flits by at fearful speed.

  In September Stuart and Kate Bennett again visited Collioure, returning to Richard Scott Simon in England with the typescript of The Letter of Marque – a novel which cost him more worry and misgivings than most. Despite this, I imagine I speak for many readers in finding its quality in no way inferior to others in the series. Fortunately he resisted his earlier idea that ‘SM & DV (or at least DV) should have floated away in the balloon’.

  His editor, Stuart Proffitt, was delighted with the book, writing on 22 October:

  I have never felt a storm in print as yours here; or so intense an action as the capture of the Diane (and in so short a space – I could not believe, on first reading, that all the actual fighting was compressed into no more than two and a half pages); or so desperate a delirium as Stephen’s at the close; or quite so much delight as with his recovery and reconciliation with Diana. Its colours, lighter and more playful than those of The Reverse of the Medal, are quite wonderful; and throughout there is that sense that somehow it is telling you more than it is ostensibly telling you. I do not know what they will be comparing it to in a hundred years’ time, or what they will be saying about it, but assuredly they will be saying something. And to think that I am probably only the third or fourth person to read it.

  Meanwhile, Patrick had begun pondering the book’s sequel: ‘Some days ago I noted a possible beginning to XIII [The Thirteen-Gun Salute] & today I rather idly added to it, feeling the pleasant old atmosphere – raison d’être, after all. I think of summarizing the rest before going back to Lacouture.’

  Translating the biography of Lacouture’s De Gaulle appeared as much drudgery as ever, but true to form Patrick persisted: ‘I think I can do 2000 words a day without pressing, & I do need time for garden, hedge & Manay [their mountain vineyard]’. It was perhaps in part the deprivation caused by his temporary separation from the novels that lay behind gloomy reflections on ‘death, loneliness, heartbreak & the remark in Braudel about the poor walking about like the dead in the land of the living & grew v low indeed’ – a reflection in turn provoked b
y his encountering a middle-aged man, ‘usually accompanied by young woman & dog, now alone’. A few weeks earlier, my mother’s Aunt Joan, to whom she and all the family were devoted, had died – a sad event that undoubtedly added to Patrick’s troubled state of mind.

  In February 1988 Stuart Proffitt sent Patrick detailed discussion of a new dustjacket design for the series:

  Fifteen years is a long time for such a large number of books to continue with the same cover style; and additionally we thought it about time to distinguish your books from those of your supposed rivals. The aim, of course, (which I do not think the old covers do) is to convey the quality of what is inside the covers and so to sell more …

  As The Letter of Marque has been read and talked about within the house, a number of experienced sales and marketing people have said to me that they do not think the Barbosa jackets on the hardbacks have particularly helped our sales on that side either.

  In reply, Patrick concurred that a dramatic change was necessary, going on, however, to make the jocular suggestion of avoiding depiction of ships almost entirely. In a burst of enthusiasm, he instead envisaged ‘vast orchids, flame-trees, scarlet spoonbills, huge colonies of penguins on the ice with sea-elephants, the Georgian houses and – why not? – a levee at St James’s …’

  Fortunately, Collins had fixed upon the perfect illustrator, whose magnificent maritime scenes would grace all forthcoming volumes in the series, as well as reprints of the earlier tales. This was Geoff Hunt, a brilliant marine artist, who combined exhaustive technical understanding of sailing vessels of the period with evocative depiction of their splendours. On 29 February Hunt wrote to Patrick, expressing his enthusiasm for the project, which would result in a collaborative achievement comparable in some degree to the creation of Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin. His meticulous approach to the work meant that preliminary sketches were only submitted to Collins two months later. While Patrick’s initial reaction was that ‘They are so very sketchy that I can make little of them as they stand’, he sensed that ‘Mr Hunt’s use of light and space may very well, as you say, lift them out of the commonplace ruck.’ By June the artist submitted transparencies of paintings for the covers of the first four novels, which evoked the enthusiastic delight of editor and author alike.

  Throughout this time my mother’s ill-health continued a constant trial. That spring, Patrick found that:

  What pleases me less is M’s great weariness. She is quite bent [i.e. debilitated] with it & she is v weak. As we were coming home I saw a villager & said ‘surely we know that man.’ He was the Banyuls lotissements concierge, changed within perhaps 3 months into an old tottering man, by cancer of liver & pancréas.

  While his translation proceeded haltingly and without enthusiasm, he as ever gained great consolation from his favourite authors: ‘I read Lizzy Bennet’s words to Darcy with even greater admiration. JA must have been in a splendid flow for those pages.’

  Again: ‘much bent by the end of the day. Still, I did read the Nuns’ Priest’s tale with great pleasure – greater than ever, I believe … what a dear man Chaucer must have been.’[fn2]

  On the other hand, during a visit to London he experienced in Harrods an upset familiar to many authors: ‘Depression began when I passed through the book dept & saw not a single one of my own – a whole row of [Dudley] Pope, no O’B.’

  Back home he pushed on doggedly with the Lacouture translation, occasional consolation being provided by memories it aroused of his wartime service with Political Warfare Executive, which had involved close contact with the Free French in London: ‘I have returned to Churchill & although to be sure he had immense faults & sometimes wrote horrid English, the de Gaulle seen by Lacouture is a little silly yapping dog in comparison with him. Roosevelt was obviously a wrong un.’

  Odd dreams continued to trouble or amuse him. On St Patrick’s Day:

  By night one of those not uncommon dreams of nakedness, but the circumstances were unusual: we were at Monique’s party – beforehand I had asked what to wear – Monique [de Saint-Prix] had said, no doubt facetiously, ‘Nothing’ – I alone took her literally – we sat down, & when Rirette & 2 more women (said to be her sisters) came in I felt unable to stand up & greet them.

  A month later found his routine labour if anything more depressing. ‘The change of pill did not answer: it was not enough to begin with – there were dreams, to be sure, but precious little sleep (& such gloom).’

  Next morning (18 April) brought one of those miraculous shifts in fortune which occasionally transform an author’s laborious task:

  However, the post brought v good news from R[ichard]S[imon]. Harvill [the UK publisher] says they have to have Lacouture by Feb 89 – if I cannot do it, will I release them from their contract?[fn3] And not only that, but Collins want to contract for 2 more naval tales in order to relaunch the new-jacketed paperbacks (ready in about Oct) on a large scale: they will pay a total advance of £20,000 (though book 1 must be ready by end March 89). Then there were royalties of about £3,000. R[ichard]S[imon] advised dropping the translation & writing the tales, if I felt capable of delivering them. I telephoned to agree …

  At one fell swoop the dispiriting prospect of struggling with uninspired translation work for another year was dismissed, while he could now revert exclusively to uninterrupted concentration on the ‘naval tales’ which inspired and delighted him above all things. He replied by return, enthusiastically accepting the enticing terms. At the time volume 1 of Lacouture was nearing completion: two days later: ‘The rest of the day was spent struggling with Lacouture, sometimes with absurd little difficulties such as the right rendering of en principe & on verra bien’; a week later: ‘Today I just looked at Lacouture & then turned away’; by the beginning of June: ‘If ever I do a translation again, which God forbid (at least of this kind) …’ Finally, on 5 June: ‘We finished de Gaulle & packed him up …’ In the event, the dreaded volume 2 was translated by another, and in this satisfactory way Patrick’s impressive twenty-eight years’ translation work came to a close. It was only latterly, with a particularly long, difficult and often uninspiring work, that what had hitherto proved a lucrative and in large part constructive task had evolved into a more and more insupportable burden.

  The day after his literary agent’s cheering announcement, Patrick found that: ‘Simon’s good news sinks in (though I must admit I am afraid of book 14 [of the naval tales]: conceivably I might cut 13 in 2). Yesterday & the day before I failed in the last stage of my [Rubik’s] cube – could not tell why … Qu. a connection?’ Even the good news bore yet another unwelcome admonition of mortality, with the contract on its arrival including ‘disagreeable clauses’ providing that: ‘Within 180 days of the incapacity or the death of the Owner … the Publishers and the Owner or his executor will select jointly a writer to complete the Work …’ Nevertheless, even while he struggled to finish Lacouture, Patrick permitted himself to direct his mind towards the forthcoming adventures of Captain Aubrey and Dr Maturin. ‘In the Sc[ientific]. American I read about the platypus, astonished at her poisonous spine – should like to use it in a tale. SM to NSW to see (? rescue) Padeen.’

  Used in a tale it was – as the memorable conclusion to The Nutmeg of Consolation.

  As in the previous year, Georgina and I came to stay for a week, in June 1988. Patrick found me ‘very jolly, affectionate & in excellent form, though his trial with Aldington comes up next June – he has some most impressive people on his side, but I wish it were over. Morally A[ldington] has not a leg to stand on, but that is neither here nor there.’

  As may be seen from The Reverse of the Medal, Patrick possessed an instinctive appreciation of less savoury niceties of the English legal system of which I at this stage continued happily ignorant.

  On the 23rd we celebrated my birthday, at which we were regaled with ‘Exceptionally good grapefruit [from the garden] … the 1st fresh ones G had eaten’. Next morning Patrick and I bottled thirty litres of w
ine from 1986 and a sixty-litre barrel of 1987. I felt an unanticipated pang, as he calmly intimated that I needed to understand the process in case of their sudden demise. ‘I am so glad he knows about these necessary details,’ he wrote matter-of-factly that evening.

  We shared in the excitement next day on the beach, when Patrick produced a copy of a letter received that morning from Charlton Heston: ‘a film star who likes my tales and who would like to talk about making them into films – the young [i.e. Georgina and I] say he is v well known’. Our stay passed pleasantly, with the customary animated conversations, swimming and walking. Patrick participated in the latter, although much afflicted by a severe cold.

  Not the least melancholy aspect of my protracted battle with the British Establishment, which continued until the close of the century, was that this unexpectedly proved to be the last of my family holidays with my parents, after so many long and happy years, in the homely familiar Correch d’en Baus which I had helped to build more than thirty years previously.

  Throughout the summer my mother continued painfully weak, while Patrick suffered constant attacks of what at times he suspected to be a recurrence of the asthma that afflicted his early childhood. Unfortunately his dauntless stoicism led him to underplay or omit this factor in correspondence, which may have affected an unfortunate family misunderstanding which arose at this time. Although it has been seen that Patrick had over the years maintained regular correspondence with several of his Russ relations (in particular his brother Bun and sister Joan), his overriding commitments remained his writing, constant attendance on my invalid mother, extensive correspondence with publishers, literary agent and innumerable admirers of his books, gardening, viticulture, and ornithology – to say nothing of entertaining local friends and occasional visitors from abroad. When Bun and Joan at times sought to increase their correspondence, Patrick was obliged to explain that his commitments did not permit any great expansion of their existing exchanges.