Patrick O'Brian

by Nikolai Tolstoy

  I know I’m supposed to probe my subject thoroughly on all things private and professional, but frankly, in this case, I’d be content with a brief tour of the vineyard, a glass of Collioure and a few moments of browsing in your library.

  This was not entirely candid, since during his stay he made several not very subtle attempts to uncover something of Patrick’s origins and upbringing. That was natural enough, of course, given that any professional interviewer is likely to be concerned to discover more than his subject may be prepared to concede. At one point he pressed Patrick with the leading question: ‘Can I say you were born in Ireland?’ Patrick was plainly irritated by this, but does not record his response. I suspect that he avoided any direct answer. The proof version of his interview which Horowitz submitted to him for comment states that Patrick ‘was born in 1914 into a family of some distinction’, and it was only in the published version that Horowitz altered this to ‘was born in 1914 into an Irish [italics inserted] family of some distinction’. The omission in the proof can scarcely have been accidental, and since Patrick makes no claim to Irish birth in his contribution to the British Library Festschrift (a copy of which he showed Horowitz), it seems likely that the latter inferred the assumption on the basis of Patrick’s surname.[fn9]

  The point would be trivial, but for the belated melodramatic public ‘discovery’ that Patrick was not in fact Irish. As I showed in my earlier volume, he selected the unusual spelling O’Brian when changing his name by deed poll in 1945 for a chance reason, which had nothing to do with any assertion of Irish origin.[3] At the same time, he had become deeply enamoured of Ireland during his lengthy stays in Belfast and Dublin in 1933 and 1937. Overall, he was generally careful to avoid any claim to Irish origin. There can be little doubt that the motive for his change of name was to establish a total break with his generally unhappy and unsatisfactory early life, which he sought to repudiate with a mixture of shame and disgust. His marriage to my mother in 1945, which coincided with his change of name, marked the great watershed of his life.

  Thus he strongly wished to consign his life prior to 1945 to oblivion. Unfortunately, however, as a successful author his personal life became more and more subjected to scrutiny. When from time to time a publisher or reviewer assumed him to be of Irish origin, he could not easily correct them without revealing his original name, and in turn his earlier life – which he was desperately concerned to suppress. If (as sometimes happened) he was tempted into claiming an Irish connection, he did so only with evident reluctance – followed, more often than not, by considerable regret. Over the years, as has been seen, he had developed a romantic dreamlike affinity with Ireland and the Irish, which seems at times to have attained an illusion of imaginative reality.

  Returning to Horowitz’s lengthy article, Patrick was angered that the writer (who had after all been his guest) appeared to accuse him of being ‘a liar, a snob (both intellectual & social) & one who flaunts his learning’. Although his indignation did eventually dissipate, he was persuaded not to react directly, but to ensure for the future that ‘stringent conditions’ be imposed in advance of further interviews – as though that could ensure compliance!

  Before receiving the final version, Patrick acknowledged to Horowitz that ‘I agree the imprecision that I imposed upon you does give some degree of uncertainty here and there: but if you like to pin France by stating that I was at the Sorbonne, please feel free to do so.’

  At one time I would frankly have questioned this assertion, but since my belated discovery that I was wholly wrong in the first volume of this biography in doubting his claim to have attended a Devonshire preparatory school, I have become increasingly wary of rejecting out-of-hand assertions relating to that early period of Patrick’s life where evidence is markedly sparse. As a young man before the War he certainly travelled to Italy and Ireland,[fn10] and it can only be said that it is not impossible that at some point he undertook researches at the great Paris university (note the cautious ‘I was at the Sorbonne’) for his projected book on medieval bestiaries.[fn11]

  Horowitz’s interview did not appear in the New York Times until May, following which he sent Patrick a copy, accompanied by what the latter described as ‘a letter from which it appears that he is absolutely unaware of having given the least offence. Q. difference of usage between US and UK?’ In his secluded refuge at Collioure, Patrick remained wholly unaware of the pressures under which journalists operate. However, he was sharply reminded that opening the door on his early life even a little could invite the attention of prying eyes. Shortly afterwards his agent at Sheil Land irritated him by pertly confessing that: ‘I actually know so little about you that what’s in this article is interesting …’

  Meanwhile Patrick himself privately conceded something to public interest, when his editor at Norton advanced ‘thoughts on the legitimacy of personal interest, citing me on Pic[asso], which is a point’.[fn12] A point it undoubtedly is, for when we read Patrick’s own words in his biography of the artist, we find that:

  The relationship between father and son is obviously of the first importance for an understanding of Picasso’s character; but like everything else to do with him it is immensely complex and full of apparent contradictions … Picasso dropped his father’s name, a most unusual step in Spain …[4]

  My overriding impression is that Patrick’s banishment of his past was fundamentally instinctive rather than measured. Throughout his voluminous diaries his formative early years are accorded sparse mention (it should be remembered that he did not expect the diaries to survive his death, let alone be made public), and in the few instances that occur it is interestingly the happier interludes that receive glancing allusion.[fn13] Furthermore, I think it likely that, having decided to suppress and, as an inevitable consequence, to some extent doctor his past, in later years he found himself saddled with a burden which, like Pilgrim’s, could not readily be shed.

  In April Patrick and my mother repaired to London to conduct another significant interview, this time for the Daily Telegraph. The interviewer was the Cambridge polymath and Pepys Librarian Dr Richard Luckett, and the occasion was altogether more satisfactory. Their conversation was conducted in Patrick’s bedroom at Brooks’s, business transactions being forbidden in the public rooms of the principal London clubs. Patrick was delighted with the gentlemanly and erudite Luckett, who confined the discussion entirely to his writing, for which he expressed huge admiration. (As Richard Ollard remarked to Patrick: ‘What a thoroughly nice man he is as well as a very learned & sensitive one.’) Afterwards they resorted to Wheeler’s celebrated fish restaurant, where the Cambridge scholar entertained Patrick to ‘fish & chips (glorious cod) & bread & butter pud’.

  Although Luckett was a little dismayed by inevitable editorial cuts to the published version of his interview, they fortunately did not include this amusing anecdote:

  I met O’Brian when he was in Ireland earlier this year, correcting proofs. He had just been accommodating an editorial objection to one passage, in which a motley group of seamen is being treated by Maturin in the sickbay of HMS Surprise, at sea off the coast of Peru in 1814. The chief ailments of seamen at the time were occupational (hernia) or nearly so (the pox), and Maturin was treating a seaman called Douglas Hurd for the latter.

  One should remember that O’Brian’s stepson is Nikolai Tolstoy, and that the present Foreign Secretary [Douglas Hurd] was indirectly involved in the Aldington affair, which left Tolstoy with immense damages and costs. O’Brian, on reflection, agreed with his editor and changed the sailor’s name to ‘Douglas Murd’.[fn14]

  Further pleasure was afforded Patrick by Norton’s republication of his early novel Three Bear Witness in the United States. Objection had been raised to the British title, which it was feared might suggest a forensic disquisition, and it had been with Patrick’s approval that it was renamed Testimonies for the American market when originally published by Harcourt Brace in 1952. He was delighted with Norton’s
move, as the semi-autobiographical work conjured up memories of the adventurous (if impoverished) time my mother and he enjoyed in North Wales after the War.

  Furthermore, Patrick gained immense pleasure from the fresh dustjacket that adorned the HarperCollins publication. Geoff Hunt had been commissioned to paint the tiny house in the wild valley of Cwm Croesor where Patrick and my mother had struggled to eke out a rural idyll. My mother conceived of the scene, suggesting that it might be copied from a photograph. However, with his customary painstaking attitude towards his work, Geoff travelled to the spot to recreate the setting from nature. His painting depicts their cottage Fron Wen beneath the towering peak of the Cnicht mountain. Five years later, he sent the original to Patrick, explaining that:

  I’m not sure that I have captured the sense of place at all, but I hope something will come through to you. I was lucky to be there on a wonderful day – it had been raining for about a day and a half, but this cleared in the early afternoon as I arrived, and the mountains were spouting water-streams, jewelled and bright in the sunshine. The other thing I remember was the fascination of the sheep-flocks, the way they made endlessly-changing patterns as they moved.

  At this time Patrick was gratified to learn that his registration for Public Lending Right (PLR) in Britain resulted in the information that 236,000 copies of his books had been borrowed from public libraries. One happy consequence of his spectacularly burgeoning income was its enabling him to achieve an ambition nurtured over the past quarter-century. This was completion of the cloister on the south side of their property, which would provide them with an enclosed space in which to dine, read, and relax, as well as shielding them from the gaze of passers-by mounting the public track that ran past their front door – to say nothing, too, of what Patrick termed ‘the furious tramontane’.

  A year before, Patrick wrote longingly: ‘How I hope the estimate of the full cloister will be within reach. I look at the maquette & its space & privacy with longing.’ The maquette was a plywood model he had carefully constructed some years earlier, on which he was wont to gaze with imaginative anticipation. The section screening the road had already been erected, but now that the permission de construire had finally been obtained, and sufficient funds accumulated, work began in the spring of 1993. As the walls and internal pillars supporting the ambulatory roof began to rise, my mother became fearful that they would lose their view of the Château St Elme on the ridge above, and the distant perspective of the mountains and Madeloc tower to the west. Fortunately, it emerged that the fortress could still be seen above the curved tiles of the ambulatory, while Patrick’s original plan of walling off the entirety of the western side was modified in favour of an open entrance to the iron staircase descending to the casot and vineyard below, through which the mountain view remains prominent.

  A further benefit lay in the extension of its tiled floor beyond the rocky outcrop on the western side, which not only increased the size of the cloister, but provided space beneath the overhang for construction of a dark room paralleling the gallery below the northern wing where Patrick conducted his writing. This new ‘undercroft’ (as Patrick termed it) was used to store books for which room had run out in the drawing room and gallery (they included his precious volumes of the Navy Records Society), a laundrette, and the treacherous television set that so frequently bedevilled his recreational hours.

  On 15 June the triumphant couple ‘went up to the General’s [above the railway tunnel] to look & the new brilliantly white piece was quite charming: undercroft too, though I cannot but regret the stupidity all round in the matter of floor & headroom.’ A month later their pleasure remained undimmed: ‘How we enjoy sitting in the cloister! But M has just discovered that in the turmoil we forgot our wedding day.’

  Patrick had briefly contemplated creating a fountain at the heart of the terrace, but more practically contented himself with his original plan of an orange tree, from which my mother made her delicious marmalade.

  Early in the year Patrick had received a telephone call from his editor at Norton, inviting him to visit the United States in order to promote his books. He was apprehensive, since his previous visit in 1973 had been conducted for the purpose of researching his biography of Picasso, which did not involve any lectures or interviews:

  … I demurred – no good at public speaking, hate QQ. [questioning] personalities – he said lunches, book-signing might do … I said I should send him tape (BBC)[fn15] to show the limit of my powers and would brood over the letter he was sending – everything depended on book [The Wine-Dark Sea] anyhow. He agreed. Most happily M had listened to most of this (at least ½ hour) on the upstairs phone – knew all – was firm for acceptance.

  Although my mother’s support for the project was fortunately decisive, Patrick remained apprehensive – particularly in view of what he (although I rather fancy nobody else!) regarded as the disastrous Horowitz article. It was personal questioning that he dreaded, and he pondered such possibilities as ‘an alternative address beginning with answer to “how did you come to write about sea?”’

  At home climatic conditions were grim. Dreadful rains lashed the Côte Vermeille, at one stage subjecting Collioure to a fortnight’s unceasing deluge, and Patrick feared the grape harvest had been obliterated by vines being utterly soaked and beaten down. Not only this, but their embanked road had been rendered virtually impassable. This made their forthcoming departure the more acceptable.

  Buoyed by my mother’s consistent advocacy of the expedition, Patrick eventually agreed to go, and on 16 October they flew to London. There they spent a busy fortnight’s preparation for their journey, during which Patrick completed purchase of a suit and hire of a dinner-jacket, looked in on a state occasion at the House of Lords (where he found ‘peers, & above all peeresses dowdy, dusty’). After that he made another brief excursion to Ireland, from which my mother excused herself. There he was taken on a visit to County Cork by the Irish journalist Kevin Myers, his wife Rachel, and their dog. Patrick was probably in a tense state, since at one point he sharply rebuffed what he perceived as offensively personal questions posed by Myers. However, Rachel managed to calm things down, and when they flew back from Cork next day, Patrick found them ‘Perfectly civil & pleasant – no personal QQ – but I think they had quarreled & it seemed that my yarns were not cordially received.’

  Encouraging news on the eve of their departure for the States was that Patrick’s book sales in the US were now 560,184, which amounted to total proceeds of $3,391,000. As the weeks passed by, the figures continued to mount spectacularly.

  It was probably with some relief, therefore, that Patrick and my mother flew to New York on 31 October, where it had been arranged for them to stay at the celebrated Knickerbocker Club. There followed the next day a swift succession of interviews, and the day after that Patrick was invited to a dinner at the New York Yacht Club hosted by John Lehman Jr, formerly President Reagan’s Secretary of the Navy. The next day Patrick gave his long-dreaded first formal address at the Princeton Club. For this it might be said that he slightly cheated, delivering instead of an extempore talk a reading from The Wine-Dark Sea.

  After some adjustments to microphone I began with at least an appearance of confidence. In fact I did not mind v much & carried on quite brassily. SM[aturin] to me rather slow, JA[ubrey] rather BOP [Boys’ Own Paper] but on the whole it was well enough – no strong emotion – & I dealt with questions. When it was over we had dinner & although I had little appetite I was pleased with myself enough to feel disappointed at lack of praise.

  His editor had suggested omitting Maturin’s role, possibly reflecting the fact that Patrick was ill-equipped for imitating accents, including Irish.

  At a press interview the next day, Patrick tried to secure a draft copy of the Horowitz article before printing, which was naturally refused. His editor managed to allay Patrick’s apprehension somewhat by ‘agreeing that if the article were still obnoxious I should not be asked to give a
ny more’. Each day Patrick signed quantities of his new novel at Barnes and Noble and other major bookshops, occasions from which my mother’s constant ill-health generally barred her attendance. On 6 November the party set off by train to Philadelphia and then Washington, where Patrick was compensated for conducting further huge book-signing gatherings by visits to the splendid museums and art galleries. Particularly impressive, he told me afterwards, were visits to a debate in the Senate and attendance at a judgment in the Supreme Court – appropriate, as it happened, since the judges were hearing a case of infringement of copyright.

  One unfortunate evening occurred when he was entertained to dinner by his enthusiastic admirer Ken Ringle, whose name Patrick bestowed upon a Baltimore clipper in his novels. Eleven sat down to dine, but he found ‘the noise might have been for 50. Poor R & Roberta his companion had worked v hard & did work v hard, but it was a dreadful party & I grieve to say the loudest, most domineering man was probably my interviewer [not Ringle].’

  It would be in poor taste to record this, but for the fact that Ringle himself subsequently lamented the unanticipated brouhaha:

  … as O’Brian fans know, his knowledge and appreciation of cuisine is one of the hallmarks of the books. I fed him venison, which he liked (‘A white-tailed deer, you say? Very good.’) as he did two of the four wines, including – to both my surprise and his – a midnight cuvee pink champagne from California.

  But the party cannot, in retrospect, be called a success. He was stooped and frail, straining to be polite in a noisy dining room. His silver head was bowed and his hooded eyes looked weary. He only came to life the next day in an appearance at the National Archives, where he seemed staggered by the size and enthusiasm of the crowd and their intimate knowledge of, and passion for, each of his books.