Reviews

Patrick O’Brian
by Marilyn Green Faulkner

Learn some interesting points about Patrick O’Brian that may help you navigate the rather difficult waters of his works.

In his essay on Patrick O’Brian, actor Charlton Heston laments, “The trouble with writing about Patrick O’Brian’s books is that they are so engrossing. Dipping into one to find hooks to hang your comments on, you are mesmerized anew by his storyteller’s spell through twenty, thirty pages, simply for the sheer pleasure he gives you. Instead of writing about his novels, you read them again for the third time. Though rewarding, this is an inadequate response to your publisher’s deadline.” (Arms and the Man, Patrick O’Brian: Critical Essays, p.43) I am in total agreement with Mr. Heston. O’Brian engages my interest to such a degree that I find it difficult to put down the volume and write! However, there are some interesting points about Patrick O’Brian that may help you navigate the rather difficult waters of his works.

The Aubrey-Maturin series covers a period in history, approximately 1795-1815, when Napoleon’s attempt at world domination threatened the security of Europe. Though England attempted to remain neutral for several years, she eventually joined with several nations fighting against the French. Some of the confusion in the novels comes from the shifting alliances of nations, as the Spanish, Russian, Portuguese and Scandinavian fleets move in and out of treaties with the French. Bonaparte himself is the constant enemy, however, deeply hated by the British and the focus of perhaps the greatest sustained naval war in history. N.A.M. Roger estimates that at its height, the Royal Navy had as many as 150,000 men on its rolls, serving throughout the world. The Napoleonic Wars attracted the interest of society at large, and heroes such as Lord Nelson became larger-than-life through endless retellings of their exploits. Curiously, very few of the great fictional sea stories deal with naval battles. O’Brian has remedied this lack by supplying us with twenty volumes of historical fiction based on factual accounts of real engagements by real ships. Though Jack Aubrey and Steven Maturin are purely fictional characters, the world they inhabit is based upon careful research and reflects an accurate portrayal of life aboard a ship in Her Majesty’s Navy. Many of the characters in the novels, such as Lord Keith and Joseph Blaine, are real people whose lives have been meticulously researched.

One of the great treasures in these novels is the portrait of a medical practitioner in the years just preceding the great advancements in modern medicine. Steven Maturin still believes in humoral medicine, the theory that the four humors in the body must be kept in balance in order for the body to thrive. Thus, he bleeds his patients in order to release harmful humors and prescribes nasty remedies designed to pull these into balance: “‘Take this bolus,’ he would say. ‘It will rectify the humours amazingly,’ and they, holding their noses (for often he used asafoetida) would force the rounded mass down, gasp, and feel better at once.” (The Wine-dark Sea, 7.) He is, however, modern in his understanding of infection and contagious diseases, and a remarkably astute psychoanalyst. Like all physicians through the ages, Maturin also understands the value of medical mystique. During a particularly difficult case he speaks in Latin to one of his colleagues and the sailors take it as a mark of his super-human capabilities: “this was to the great satisfaction of the sick berth, where heads turned gravely from one speaker to the other, nodding from time to time, while the patient himself looked modestly down, and Dr. Maturin’s Irish servantwore his Mass-going reverential face.” (The Wine-dark Sea, 10) Maturin uses opium and its derivative laudanum freely for pain, and eventually becomes addicted to his own medicines in a time of emotional crisis.

Many commentators agree that the greatest quality in these fine books is the relationship between Aubrey and Maturin, one of the most fully developed friendships in all fiction. Their personalities, though completely different, balance each other beautifully. Aubrey refers to Maturin as his ‘particular friend,’ and we all might wish to have such a loyal and honest companion as these two find in each other. Charlton Heston contends that their friendship is the “most appealing and interesting I know of in literatureEven that famous pair, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, which I have experienced as an actor, do very little as friends beyond pursuing Conan Doyle’s plots together. With Aubrey and Maturin, the readers come to understand and cherish their friendship perhaps as much as they do themselves.” (Arms and the Man, Patrick O’Brian: Critical Essays, 47.) The late Iris Murdoch compared Aubrey and Maturin to figures in the Iliad, and they do seem to possess the stuff from which great legends are made.

With the wealth of detail about ships and sailing that is jammed into every page of these books, it is hard to believe that O’Brian himself was not a sailor. He was not. Neither was he a physician, an ornithologist, nor a spy for the British, as he sometimes hinted to friends. In fact the publishing world was shocked after O’Brian’s death when it was revealed that he was not even Irish! He was born Patrick Russ in England, and grew up a neglected child in a large family. During World War II he left his wife and two children and disappeared entirely, only to reemerge later in a new country under a new name. He remarried and lived quietly in the south of France, researching and writing his novels, until his growing fame caused certain members of his original family to reveal his long-kept secret. Even then his careful concealment of everything to do with his former life largely succeeded until after his death, when reporters divulged the details of his double existence in the press. O’Brian’s portrait of Steven Maturin is often considered to be based upon himself, a man with no family and a strangely secretive nature, fiercely loyal to friends and more interested in science than in society. We now know O’Brian had reason to be secretive, for he was hiding a very great deal as he passed himself off as an educated Irishman to his public.

The great novelist and scholar A.S. Byatt praises Patrick O’Brian for “the completeness with which he invents a world which is our own and not our own.” Though his personal choices may leave one disappointed, it only increases my admiration of O’Brian’s gifts to know that the world he created was also not his own, but completely the result of careful research and a fertile, far-reaching imagination. Admirals, generals, and literary figures that fawned over him toward the end of his life could not imagine that such a world could be completely invented without personal experience, but it could, and it was. For Patrick O’Brian turned out to be more than just a talented author, he was an equally talented actor who invented a life story to complement the fictional world he had created.

Note: Two reference books to help you understand the world of Patrick O’Brian are: A Sea of Words: A Lexicon and Companion for Patrick O’Brian’s Seafaring Tales and Harbors and High Seas: An Atlas and Geographical Guide to the Aubrey-Maturin Novels, both by Dean King with John B. Hattendorf.

2001 Meridian Magazine.  All Rights Reserved.