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fn5. This shows that Taaffe survived the War.
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fn6. Letter of 9 September 2002.
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Notes
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Preface
1. David Mamet, ‘The Humble Genre Novel, Sometimes Full of Genius’, New York Times, 17 January 2000.
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I Collioure and Three Bear Witness
1. Nikolai Tolstoy, Patrick O’Brian: The Making of the Novelist (London, 2004), pp. 469–73, 483–9. Twenty years later he wrote in his diary: ‘I had a great go of timor mortis conturbat me when I was 35’, i.e. in 1949.
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2. Patrick O’Brian, Richard Temple (London 1962), pp. 62 –6.
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3. Daily Mail, 3 November 2003.
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4. PRO.J77/3990.
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5. Mail on Sunday, 16 January 2000. In a court petition dated 18 June 1949, Elizabeth Russ deposed that ‘the Respondent [Patrick] then arranged for him [Richard] to go to the Southey Hall Preparatory School, which was his own choice, and he proceeded there without any break whatsoever in his schooling. The Respondent paid the School fees but ceased to pay me maintenance by mutual agreement. He was then nearly eight years old [February 1945] and he remained at that school for two and a half years, when the Respondent took him away to teach him personally’ (PRO J77/3990).
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6. O’Brian, Richard Temple, p. 48.
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7. Mail on Sunday, 16 January 2000.
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8. PRO J77/3990,77.
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9. Patrick O’Brian, The Catalans (New York, 1953), p. 26.
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10. Country Contentments: Or, The Hvsbandmans Recreations. Contayning the Wholsome Experiences in which any man ought to Recreate himselfe, after the toyle of more serious business (London, 1649).
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11. I am grateful to my friend Terry Zobeck for supplying me with this reference. My own copy of Hussein lacks the dustjacket.
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12. A.E. Cunningham (ed.), Patrick O’Brian: Critical Appreciations and a Bibliography (Boston Spa, Wetherby, 1994), p. 18.
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13. Patrick O’Brian, Three Bear Witness (London, 1952), pp. 11–12.
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14. Dana Goodyear, ‘Sailing Upon Ancient Seas’, Publishers Weekly (20/12/99), p. 51.
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II The Catalans
1. O’Brian, Three Bear Witness, pp. 44–6.
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2. Tolstoy, Patrick O’Brian: The Making of the Novelist, pp. 235–8.
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3. Sir James George Frazer, The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings (London, 1911), i, p. 55.
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4. Claude Gaignebet and Jean-Dominique Lajoux, Art profane et religion populaire au Moyen Age (Paris, 1985), p. 159. It is thought that the Feast of St Blaise on 3 February replaced pagan commemoration of a divine bear (ibid., pp. 254–8).
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5. J.H.C. Grattan and Charles Singer, Anglo-Saxon Magic and Medicine: Illustrated Specially from the Semi-Pagan Text ‘Lacnunga’ (Oxford, 1952), pp. 54–5, 62–3.
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6. Ibid., p. 114; Jacques Ruffié, Histoire de la Louve (d’après les notes d’Émile Dateu) (Paris, 1981), pp. 265–6.
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7. Michel Brunet, Le Roussillon: Une société contre l’État: 1780–1820 (Perpignan, 1990), pp. 177–232.
8. Isabel Savory, The Romantic Roussillon: in the French Pyrenees (London, 1919), p. 109.
9. Chapter IV was published earlier as a free-standing tale in William Phillips and Philip Rahv (eds), The Avon Book ofModern Writing (New York, 1953), pp. 98–124.
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10. O’Brian, The Catalans, pp. 110–12.
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11. Patrick O’Brian, The Commodore (London, 1994), p. 93.
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12. O’Brian, The Catalans, pp. 112–20.
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III New Home and New Family
1. Ben Verinder, I Felt Like an Adventure: A Life of Mary Burkett (Durham, 2008), pp. 14–18. While Mary’s reminiscences of her visits to Collioure are authentic and useful, her general account of Patrick’s career is drawn from inaccurate printed accounts. Perhaps her oddest assertion is that Patrick did not drive an ambulance during the War, but had in fact been a taxi-driver! (p. 18). I have also obtained a vivid account of their Collioure holiday from one of the schoolgirls in her party. Anne Louise Cantan (afterwards Moore), later my contemporary at Trinity College Dublin, kindly sent me a copy of her diary of their holiday at Collioure.
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2. Patrick O’Brian, Lying in the Sun and Other Stories (London, 1956), pp. 189–202.
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3. Dean King, Patrick O’Brian: A Life Revealed (London, 2000), p. 177.
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IV Voyages of Adventure
1. Tolstoy, Patrick O’Brian: The Making of the Novelist, pp. 209–10, 229.
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2. Maria Callcott, Little Arthur’s History of England (London, 1835).
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3. Tolstoy, Patrick O’Brian: The Making of the Novelist, pp. 100–101, 205–7.
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4. Ibid., pp. 202–4.
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5. ‘An Epitome of Commodore Anson’s Voyage’ (Robert Beatson, Naval and Military Memoirs of Great Britain from 1727 to 1783 (London, 1804), i, pp. 232–49).
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6. Rev. Richard Walter, A Voyage Round the World, In the Years MDCCXL, I, II, III, IV. By George Anson, Esq.; Now Lord Anson (London, 1762).
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7. O’Brian, Lying in the Sun and Other Stories, pp. 116–22.
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8. William Burney, A New Universal Dictionary of the Marine (London, 1815).
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9. Cunningham (ed.), Patrick O’Brian: Critical Appreciations and a Bibliography, p. 19.
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10. Tolstoy, Patrick O’Brian: The Making of the Novelist, pp. 132–3.
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V In the Doldrums
1. The list of Patrick’s translations featured in Cunningham (ed.), Patrick O’Brian: Critical Appreciations and a Bibliography, pp. 127–33, omits only Francis Mazière, The Mysteries of Easter Island, which was published in 1969.
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2. Patrick O’Brian, Desolation Island (London, 1978), p. 84.
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VI A Family Man
1. Haroun Tazieff, When the Earth Trembles (Hart-Davis, 1964).
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2. Guardian, 27 July 2003. ‘He was very strict and beat me if things got very bad. But I wasn’t the easiest child in the world to teach’ (Daily Telegraph, 26 November 2003).
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3. King, Patrick O’Brian: A Life Revealed, p. 197.
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4. Guardian, 27 November 2003.
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5. King, Patrick O’Brian: A Life Revealed, p. 213.
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6. Daily Telegraph, 8 January 2000.
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7. King, Patrick O’Brian: A Life Revealed, pp. 197–8.
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8. Ross Reyburn and Michael Emery, Jonah: the official biography of Jonah Barrington (London, 1983), pp. 43–6. This entertaining book inadvertently telescopes Jonah’s two vis
its to Collioure into a single one in 1963, and it was in fact during his second visit in 1964 that the fateful decision was made.
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9. Françoise Mallet-Joris, The Uncompromising Heart: a Life of Marie Mancini, Louis XIV’s First Love; Maurice Goudeket, The Delights of Growing Old; Simone de Beauvoir, A Very Easy Death – all three published in 1966.
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VII Master and Commander
1. Bernard Fay, Louis XVI (1967); Francis Mazière, The Mysteries of Easter Island (1969).
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2. Keith Wheatley, ‘The Long Life of O’Brian’, Financial Times, 11–12 January 1997. The same suggestion had been made earlier by Mark Horowitz (New York Times Magazine, 16 May 1993, p. 40).
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3. Stephen Becker, ‘Patrick O’Brian: The Art of Fiction CXLII’, George Plimpton et al. (eds), Paris Review (New York, 1995), p. 117.
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4. Patrick O’Brian, Master and Commander (London, 1970), p. 160.
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5. David Cordingley, Cochrane the Dauntless: The Life and Adventures of Admiral Thomas Cochrane, 1775–1860 (London, 2007), pp. 55, 216, 217–18, 259, 339–40.
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6. Patrick Cumming operated as an intelligence agent, slipped ashore by Rear-Admiral Martin on the Baltic coast at the time of the French invasion of Russia in 1812 (Sir Richard Vesey Hamilton (ed.), Letters and Papers of Admiral of the Fleet Sir Thos. Byam Martin G.C.B. (London, 1898–1903), ii, pp. 187–8, 203, 262–4, 299–309).
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7. Cf. Christopher Doorne, ‘A Floating Republic? Conspiracy Theory and the Nore Mutiny of 1797’, in Ann Veronica Coats and Philip MacDougall (eds), The Naval Mutinies of 1797: Unity and Perseverance (Woodbridge, 2011), pp. 184–7.
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8. Patrick O’Brian, Post Captain (London, 1972), p. 358.
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9. Patrick O’Brian, The Fortune of War (London, 1979), p. 170.
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10. Reproduced in Brian Lavery and Geoff Hunt, The Frigate Surprise: The Complete Story of the Ship Made Famous in the Novels of Patrick O’Brian (London, 2008), p. 7.
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11. Boat U.S. Magazine, March 2000.
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VIII The Green Isle Calls
1. Richard Hill, The Prizes of War: The Naval Prize System in the Napoleonic Wars, 1793–1815 (Stroud, 1998), p. 94.
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2. Alec Guinness, My Name Escapes Me: The Diary of a Retiring Actor (London, 1997), p. 30.
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IX Pablo Ruiz Picasso
1. A Journey through the Crimea to Constantinople. In a Series of Letters from the Right Honourable Elizabeth Lady Craven, to His Serene Highness the Margrave of Brandebourg, Anspach and Bareith. Written in the Year MDCCLXXXVI (London, 1789); Memoirs of the Margravine of Anspach. Written by Herself (London, 1826).
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2. Cf. the admirable study by Gertje R. Utley, Picasso: The Communist Years (New Haven and London, 2000). Richard Ollard’s initial reactions to Patrick’s biography included ‘Pic let off too lightly for being Communist’. In 1988 Patrick implicitly approved the artist Tom Phillips’s defensive assertion that it was necessary to take into account ‘the attitude of a Spaniard committed to the fight against fascism’. This defence appears weak in the extreme. In the first place, many thousands of Spaniards fought ‘against fascism’ without having the least desire to endorse the far more brutal ideology of Communism. In the second, Picasso remained a devoted apologist for Stalinist cruelties long after the Spanish Civil War was over.
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X Shifting Currents
1. William James, The Naval History of Great Britain, from the Declaration of War by France in 1793, to the Accession of George IV (London, 1837), v, pp. 261–326.
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2. Ibid., v, pp. 192–200, 261–313, 324–6.
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3. Dean King, Harbors and High Seas: An Atlas and Geographical Guide to the Aubrey–Maturin Novels of Patrick O’Brian (New York, 1999), p. 84.
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4. Nikolai Tolstoy, The Half-Mad Lord: Thomas Pitt 2nd Baron Camelford (1775–1804) (London, 1978), pp. 14–16, 205.
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5. Tom Pocock, A Thirst for Glory: The Life of Admiral Sir Sidney Smith (London, 1996), pp. 43–63; Tolstoy, The Half-Mad Lord, pp. 150–7; Michael Lewis, Napoleon and his British Captives (London, 1962), pp. 91–6.
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XI Muddied Waters
1. Simone de Beauvoir, Quand prime le spirituel.
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2. Patrick O’Brian, The Far Side of the World (London, 1984), pp. 246–8.
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3. Cf. Cordingley, Cochrane the Dauntless: The Life and Adventures of Admiral Thomas Cochrane, 1775–1860, pp. 235–54.
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XII Travails of Existence
1. Patrick O’Brian, ‘The Great War’, in Philip Ziegler and Desmond Seward (eds), Brooks’s: A Social History (London, 1991). Patrick describes Brooks’s as ‘not so much an eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century world as a wholly traditional place untied to any of the set periods and surviving them all’.
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2. Richard Burn, The Justice of the Peace, and Parish Officer (London, 1776), ii.
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3. N.A.M. Rodger, The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy (London, 1986).
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4. Charles de Gaulle. 1, Le rebelle, 1890–1944 (Paris, 1984). Patrick’s dislike of de Gaulle stemmed in large part from his wartime service with the French Department of Political Warfare Executive (PWE).
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XIII Family Travails
1. A.B. Russ, Lady Day Prodigal (Brentwood Bay, D.C., 1989), p. 66.
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2. King, Patrick O’Brian: A Life Revealed, pp. 301–5.
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3. Ibid., pp. 303–4.
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4. Encyclopaedia Britannica; or, a Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Miscellaneous Literature (Edinburgh, 1810). When transportation of the twenty bulky volumes from England was delayed, Patrick suffered frustration in the progress of his current novel: ‘I want to see what they have on Kerguelen, icebergs, Amsterdam Island before going on.’
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XIV The Sunlit Uplands
1. William Austen-Leigh, Richard Austen-Leigh and Deirdre Le Faye, Jane Austen: A Family Record (London, 1989).
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2. Tolstoy, Patrick O’Brian: The Making of the Novelist, pp. 326–9. One serious error, however, requires correction. In my account I cited Patrick’s confession that ‘I was odious’ as applying to a conversation between him and Horowitz on the day of his arrival. I now find that I had misread the diary passage, reference being exclusively to Patrick’s mood when alone with my mother, after returning home exhausted from his troublesome journey.
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3. Tolstoy, Patrick O’Brian: The Making of the Novelist, pp. 319–22.
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4. Patrick O’Brian, Picasso: Pablo Ruiz Picasso (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1976), p. 19. As John Raymond wrote in his review: ‘Thus it is the first eighty pages of this book that the ignorant general reader is likely to find most absorbing and exciting’ (Sunday Times, 19 September 1976).
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5. Washington Post, 8 January 2000.
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XV Epinician Acclaims
1. Brian Lavery, Jack Aubrey Commands: An Historical Companion to the Naval World of Patrick O’Brian (London, 2003). Another maritime scholar, David Lyon, began preparations for a prosopographical Companion, but the project was regrettably brought to a halt by his death. I am grateful to him for having sent me a manuscript copy.
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2. Patrick O’Brian, The Commodore (London, 1994), p. 102.
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3. Ibid., pp. 78–9, 142, 235–41. Patrick nicknamed their Chelsea home ‘Potto Grange’.
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4. Ibid., p. 238. The book’s full title is Philip Junta (ed.), POMPONIVS MELA. IVLIVS SOLINVS. ITINERARIVM ANTONINI AVG. VIBIVS SEQVESTER. P. VICTOR de regionibus urbis Romae. Dionysius Aser de Situ orbis Prisciano Interprete (Florence, 1519).
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5. ‘Cruising with Patrick O’Brian – The Man and the Myth’, Latitude 38 (August 2000).
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6. Becker, ‘Patrick O’Brian: The Art of Fiction CXLII’, Paris Review, p. 130. Oscar Wilde was similarly gratified by American enthusiasm for his lectures, together with the good manners of his audiences (Rupert Hart-Davis (ed.), More Letters of Oscar Wilde (London, 1985), pp. 42–3).
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7. Becker, Paris Review, p. 128. Becker’s interview provides a perceptive account of Patrick the writer, his use of sources, and approach to writing.
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