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fn9. Had Patrick’s correspondence with Horowitz not survived, it would have been natural to assume that it was he who advanced the claim to be Irish. The American writer subsequently suggested to Dean King that Patrick had intimated as much to him during their discussions, but that was several years later, by which time his change of name had become widely known and discussed.
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fn10. His early visits to Ireland were doubted by Dean King (Patrick O’Brian: A Life Revealed (London, 2000), p. 75).
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fn11. It may be noted that in order to have joined the French section of PWE (Political Warfare Executive) in 1941, Patrick must surely have been fluent in French to an extent far in advance of that required for his matriculation seven years earlier.
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fn12. On 30 June the editor wrote suggesting that: ‘When an artist’s work – I do not mean a single naval painting or symphony – becomes important enough to us, we long to know how it has happened, where it comes from; and satisfying this curiosity about the artist’s life may lead to important perceptions about our own lives. Think of the book, the quite wonderful book, you have written about Picasso.’
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fn13. During a subsequent visit to London at the end of June, Patrick found ‘Baker St almost unrecognizable; George St wholly so’. His exploration of the area was once again clearly undertaken in order to evoke poignant memories of the generally happy year he spent with his brother Bun at Marylebone Grammar School in 1925–26.
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fn14. The quick-witted Patrick had of course fastened on the French merde.
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fn15. His wireless interview with Alan Judd.
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XV Epinician Acclaims
fn1. In April 1995 Goldwyn had considered starring Mel Gibson as the film’s protagonist.
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fn2. Patrick had apparently forgotten that he possessed a source much more apt to his need than the Hammonds’ dated works. Beside the desk where he wrote, on the floor beneath the bottom bookshelf, lay a handsome green vellum-bound ledger he had picked up in the 1930s. This contains a contemporary register of depositions concerning Essex enclosure acts in the reign of King George III.
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fn3. Among them were Terry Zobeck, compiler of the forthcoming authoritative bibliography of Patrick’s works, and his wife Sandy.
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fn4. Dr Maturin was likewise ill at ease before making a public speech (The Surgeon’s Mate, pp. 125, 127–30). Similarly Pugh, another alter ego of Patrick, confessed he ‘was unsuited for my teaching duties [at Oxford]; I performed them badly and with a great deal of pain, and to the end I could never stand up to lecture without dying a little private agony’ (Three Bear Witness, p. 33).
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fn5. Subsequently Kapp produced an excellent CD of music familiar to Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, entitled ‘Musical Evenings with the Captain: Music from the Aubrey/Maturin Novels of Patrick O’Brian’.
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fn6. I feel sure this fantastic odyssey represents a specimen of Patrick’s sardonic sense of humour. He was after all more familiar than most with sailing times and distances in the Mediterranean.
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fn7. The contrast between the enthusiastic attitude of his generous American host and an unfortunate specimen of British philistinism is illustrated by the BBC’s circulation (16 August 2004) of a belated commentary by James Landale on Perkins’s article. For Landale its sole significance lay in his claim that ‘fresh evidence suggests the legendary writer couldn’t even sail’. No more, it may safely be asserted, had Shakespeare fought at Agincourt or Homer accompanied the wooden horse within the windy walls of Troy. With regard to Perkins’s reflection, it must be recalled that any sailing experienced by Patrick would have occurred over sixty years earlier!
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fn8. The amiable singer Cliff Richard was knighted on the occasion Patrick received the inferior award.
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fn9. Chief of the Imperial General Staff.
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fn10. It is curious that Patrick must surely have known that his hero Dr Johnson expressed disapproval of the term ‘prodigious’! (James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (London, 1793), iii, p. 89 – Patrick’s own oft-perused copy).
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XVI Triumph and Tragedy
fn1. The house situated above the entrance to the railway tunnel emerging from the mountainside beyond their home.
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fn2. In fact the divorce rate in Britain doubled during the Second World War.
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fn3. In order to avoid interrupting the narrative, I examine this contentious issue in Appendix B.
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fn4. I assume the interviewer had in mind the Aubrey–Maturin series, with which his interview was exclusively concerned. As I have shown, much fuller autobiographical material is to be found in his novels Three Bear Witness, The Catalans, and Richard Temple, as well some of the short stories, published and unpublished.
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fn5. ‘He had written the scene as Mary lay dying …’ (Dean King, ‘The secret life of Patrick O’Brian’, Daily Telegraph, 1 March 2000).
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fn6. In 1988 Patrick explained to his brother Bernard that he was much sustained by my mother’s ‘affectionate, intelligent family’. In particular, he expressed pride in Alexandra’s completion of a pilgrimage to Santiago, and concern for Anastasia’s safety in Moscow. Subsequently, in February 1998 he recorded his delight in Dmitri’s progress: ‘Such an encouraging letter from Dmitri, labouring on (I think) a building-site near home & earning £5 an hour: an extraordinary change from a schoolboy to an articulate young man.’ Our youngest, Xenia, who was still at school, he described as ‘a poppet’: ‘A dear little Easter card from Xenia.’ Such reflections might readily be multiplied, markedly contradicting ill-informed claims that Patrick was uniformly averse to children. He also followed with close interest the careers of my sister’s sons Michael and Robert.
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fn7. By curious chance, my wealthy father similarly declined to pay for my university education, which I was only enabled to achieve through the generosity of my maternal grandfather Howard Wicksteed. At that time access to student grants was (surely unjustly) barred to candidates whose parents’ income was adversely affected by a means test, but who at the same time declined to pay for their offspring’s tuition.
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fn8. In February 1997 Patrick noted in his diary: ‘A day memorable only for sadness & a profound depression, caused I think by … a flow, in an all too familiar voice, of false reminiscence.’
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fn9. The letter is dated 27 May 1998.
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fn10. His subsequent loan of the diaries to his literary agent shows that he continued in two minds about the issue of their disposal. I suppose, too, that I may be allowed greater familiarity with Patrick’s state of mind than outsiders excluded from his private concerns.
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fn11. When Patrick died, his London lawyer hastened to Collioure accompanied by a young woman from his office, where in my presence they conducted a painstaking search of the house, having declined my invitation to stay in the house in order to lodge at the expense of the estate in a neighbouring hotel. Bemused by the suddenness of Patrick’s death, I did not think to question their actions. This I should have done, since the lawyer was fully aware that the house and contents belonged exclusively to my mother’s estate, which on her death passed into the possession of my sister and myself. Subsequent enquiries failed to elicit any satisfactory explanation of this unaccountable int
rusion.
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fn12. Proffitt himself had assured Patrick in June of the previous year: ‘Now, as to Dean King, we have neither seen nor heard anything from him; if he shows up here he will be turned away immediately and I will do my best to make sure he is run over on the Fulham Palace Road. But I am in one way not surprised that he is doing what he is: you may recall my feeling a year or more ago that at least one of these creatures would be bound before long to embark on such an enterprise. I only hope that he is not only first but also last.’ Proffitt diffidently suggested the advantages of appointing an authorized biographer, hinting that William Waldegrave might be approached.
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fn13. When approaching John Saumarez Smith, director of the Heywood Hill bookshop, in search of information about Patrick, Dean King described himself as ‘an American bookseller’.
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fn14. The slur proved effective. The Daily Telegraph Television & Radio reported that the interviewer ‘finds no evidence for an elder brother on which O’Brian tells him Aubrey is based’. The point was ponderously emphasized by Andrew Alderson: ‘O’Brian under fire for “fictional” life’, Sunday Times, 27 September 1998. Patrick was mortified by the smear, noting the same day that ‘100 Days goes on sale, so malignance could hardly have been better timed, & sadness & depression returned in full force or even worse.’ The BBC’s justification provides a nice example of specious prevarication: ‘Kerr said he had not gone back to the author with the results of the inquiries because O’Brian had made it clear that he did not want to answer “personal questions”.’
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fn15. After Patrick’s death, the Irish journalist Kevin Myers criticized him harshly on grounds that my mother, had she been alive, would have advised him against co-operation with the BBC. Not only was Myers in no position to know the facts, but in fact the opposite was the case. When the project was first broached, Patrick noted in his diary for 1 June 1994: ‘Letter from BBC, who would like to do a 50' programme about my work – I recoiled, but M[ary], V[ivien]G[reen] & S[tuart]P[roffitt] were v much in favour …’
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fn16. There is no indication in the article of his having consulted Patrick’s estranged son Richard, who had long distanced himself from all his family. On the other hand, the detail of my mother’s being accompanied by her dachshund Miss Potts when driving her ambulance during the Blitz can, I imagine, only have derived from me. Today I have no recollection of being consulted at the time by Mr Fenton, although it seems I must have been.
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fn17. Walter Scott and Jane Austen even had the impudence – horribile dictu – to publish novels anonymously!
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fn18. Lehman also wrote an encomiastic review of The Wine-Dark Sea in the Wall Street Journal.
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fn19. Although it did not occur to me at the time, Patrick was clearly feeling the loss of my mother, for whom I may have provided a natural substitute at this distressing time.
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fn20. Our discussion took place before the internet changed everything, with its unfortunate policy of indiscriminately perpetuating errors and falsehoods in what amounts to perpetuity. In addition, Wikipedia and similar sources are not seldom given to censoring rebuttals of factual error.
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XVII Melmoth the Wanderer
fn1. Blue at the Mizzen must have been signed on its publication later in the year.
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fn2. On 24 August 1993 Patrick had responded to the editor’s request: ‘But as for the early novels, no: I am sorry to disappoint you, but I should much rather leave them in their decent oblivion.’
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fn3. Patrick is fourth from left in the back row.
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fn4. Terry Zobeck writes: ‘I think you are correct. I would add that it is hard to credit that after all of the fuss created by the BBC program that Patrick would make a claim that might be proved false and raise more fuss and hurt.’
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fn5. Singula de nobis anni praedantur euntes; / eripuere iocos, Venerem, convivia, ludum; / tendunt extorquere poemata: quid faciam vis?
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fn6. Stephen is the son of Patrick’s brother Victor. After Patrick’s death I established contact with him and his mother Saidie, both of whom provided much helpful information for this biography.
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APPENDIX A Collioure: History and Landscape
fn1. He travelled ‘either by the coast road or by the easy Col de Perthus a little way inland’ (Dennis Proctor, Hannibal’s March in History (Oxford, 1971), pp. 35–6).
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fn2. During our early years at Collioure this outcrop was appropriately the Faubourg’s rubbish tip, much frequented by local rats.
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APPENDIX B Patrick and His First Wife Elizabeth
fn1. In August 1945 Elizabeth attested that ‘In 1942 he [Patrick] left me and went to London where he lived with the woman named in my Petition.’ While not impossible, it seems likely that the date 1942 rests on hindsight, Elizabeth being unable to provide evidence of adultery occurring before the autumn of 1943.
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fn2. Jane’s birth certificate attests that in March 1939 Patrick was still living in the family home at 24, Gertrude Street, while Elizabeth’s address is given as 301, King’s Road. Since they were at the time on affectionate terms, a likely explanation is that Elizabeth moved out temporarily (the two addresses are within walking distance) in order to permit her husband to continue writing in peace. They can have occupied no more than a couple of rooms in the four-storey Gertrude Street house, which was inhabited by three other unrelated individuals (Register of Electors, 1937).
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fn3. There is a hint (but no more) in one of my mother’s notebooks that they moved into shared quarters in November 1941. If so, it appears that they nevertheless succeeded in covering their tracks for a further one or two years.
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fn4. It seems that many of Patrick’s friends regarded his extramarital liaison with distaste. On 2 February 1970 he confided to his diary: ‘This time 32 (?) years ago I was in Rachel’s room & they looked at me wth wondering condemnation.’
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fn5. The protagonist of Patrick’s unpublished autobiographical story ‘George’ is depicted as nurturing a mixture of shame and lingering affection towards his abandoned wife Margaret. ‘He felt a deep movement, a revulsion, something uneasy about Margaret. They had never had any very close relationship; it had all been very immature; but was it not rather –? If another man had done it, what would he have said? A solemn pompous bubble labelled Cad eddied about his unwilling thoughts …’
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fn6. In his novel Hussein, written when he was married to Elizabeth and two years before he met my mother, Patrick included this reflection: ‘Hussein was always faithful to Sashiya, for she was more important to him than anything else, and he always guarded her memory very close to his heart; but he was, like most men, faithful in his own way’ (R.P. Russ, Hussein: An Entertainment (Oxford, 1938), p. 212).
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fn7. It is possible that Patrick saw little of my mother during the initial year he spent in Norfolk. All I have been able to discover of their relationship during 1939–40 is that they were together for his birthday in December 1939, and that she gave him some of her brother’s winter clothes, her skis, and the little .410 shotgun with which he killed game for his family’s daily subsistence. Given their impoverished near-subsistence circumstances during that year, Elizabeth could scarcely have survived any protracted absence on Patrick’s part.
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fn
8. A fragment of one such letter from Patrick to Elizabeth indicates that their son Richard also corresponded with him regularly. Given the boy’s age, this can scarcely have occurred earlier than 1941, before his and his mother’s return to London in the spring of 1942.
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fn9. Lilly Library, Patrick O’Brian collection. Thirty years later Patrick recalled a visit to the cinema in Chelsea in 1938, the year before he met my mother, when he was still living happily with Elizabeth: ‘Quai des Brumes. What simpletons we must have been in 38, to swallow such romantic crap, the tale so lame & inexpert. Good photography, no doubt, & the early Gabin was acceptable.’
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fn10. Daily Telegraph, 28 February 2000. ‘For nearly two years, they [Elizabeth and Richard] had lived in a state of limbo in the home of Patrick’s oldest brother and his wife in Thorpe-by-Norwich’ (King, Patrick O’Brian, p. 93). It has been seen that in reality they stayed at Godfrey’s home for a mere few months in 1942, before departing for London.
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APPENDIX C: Patrick’s Sailing
fn1. Patrick also alluded to his preparatory school in an interview with Peter Guttridge (Independent, 3 July 1993).
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fn2. But a note inserted in his diary indicates that he did ‘note them at the time’! And why did he copy into his diary that evening both the deleted and corrected sets of measurements? I continue to find aspects of this episode puzzling.
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fn3. That a travel firm should have employed Patrick as a courier to New York seems improbable.
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fn4. Note that Patrick avoids claiming that he actually sailed on these!
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