The Books: “Post Captain” (Patrick O’Brian)

Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction:

Post Captain , by Patrick O’Brian

Second in the Aubrey Maturin series. The book spends much of its time on land (and I’m jumping ahead of myself, but whatevs – ) One of the reasons I am LOVING this series is because it is always a surprise. The characters are the same. But what is going on (so far) has changed RADICALLY from book to book. Patrick O’Brian is not afraid to shake things up a bit. There may be readers who are only in it for the war battles. That’s great – but Patrick O’Brian isn’t writing ONLY for them (It’s kinda like The Sopranos viewers who were pissed when there weren’t any “whackings” in an episode) … Desolation Island (which I am almost done with) has only one battle. The series is not monotonous. Each book has its own thread. The thread of Post Captain is basically Jack Aubrey being on the run from debt – hiding out at Stephen’s house – war breaking out all around them … Oh yes, and suddenly there are GIRLS in the book – and romances start popping up. Naturally because we’re talking about Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, their romances are rather complicated (especially Stephen’s, poor guy). These are vibrant difficult sometimes prickly men – who have overriding passions for other things (the sea, medicine, music) – and so to see them putting these elements of themselves aside to go courting is FASCINATING. I’m already just hooked in to the psychologies of these men – so it’s just so much fun to see them in all different kinds of situations. There’s a family of women (with a terrifically awful mother) – and she’s trying to marry them all off. There’s a cousin – named Diana Villiers – who is a widow, although she’s very young – and she’s kind of the black sheep. Gorgeous, too. And not like a woman, or not like a coy simpering 19th century kind of woman. She’s sassy. She gallops her horse. She speaks frankly. Both Jack and Stephen start pursuing her – much to the chagrin of the family of women who treat Diana as though she’s a wild animal. The fact that Jack and Stephen are both interested in the same girl puts a little kink in their relationship and suddenly there are things they cannot talk about. It’s agony. You just yearn for them to be good friends again. One of the daughters in the family is Sophia, a sweet gentle girl – who also is “in the running” for the affections of the two men … she starts to read up on war and ships and the sea, so she can seem educated when she talks to Jack. And etc. There’s just SO much happening in the book. Not to mention the fact that Stephen becomes an intelligence agent. Post Captain is a rich detailed book, and the women are drawn with just as much sensitivity and specificity as the men. O’Brian is a master. A master of the human element. He can describe the ebbs and flows of a conversation, the jostling for position, the underlying motivations – better than anyone else I can think of. You just “get it” – and sometimes what he is describing is so subtle, something that is never spoken or acknoweldged – but that we all know, we’ve all experienced. So I’ll read some passage and think, excitedly, “YES. That is exactly what it is like when you are talking to such a person …” Oh, and as a woman – I very much appreciate the fully drawn female characters – who are just as full of potential for nastiness, or selfishness, or idiocy as the men … They are not cardboard cutouts, O’Brian doesn’t just stay on the surface with them – telling us what they DO – he examines them, in the same way everyone is examined – even minor characters. Diana comes to life. Mrs. Whatshername (it escapes me right now – the awful mother) TOTALLY comes to life. She’s a silly horrid woman, but she is totally real. Sophia comes to life – and is vibrantly different than Diana. I don’t mean to belabor this point but so many male authors can’t write women, or they THINK they can but no – I am here to tell them they cannot. It’s annoying. And disappointing. Because it pulls me out of the story, and I also experience such things as a betrayal, a little bit. That might be silly, but whatever, it’s true. I don’t like to experience my gender, my entire gender, as a caricature. It’s annoying. But O’Brian never falters. He remains, at all times, specific, true, clear, and precise. Insightful. How did he do it?? He just had a damn good eye, first of all – he could see people.

Here is an excerpt. Jack and Stephen are hiding out in a cottage. They are roommates. How will THAT go? I picked this excerpt because I absolutely adore Stephen’s thoughts about Jack and music. It’s stuff like that that hooks me in to these books, over and over and over. Almost every page has a jewel on it … like the one below about why “there was no greater proof of their friendship” …. Yes, yes, yes. I know JUST what he is talking about there.

EXCERPT FROM Post Captain , by Patrick O’Brian

At present they were lodging in an idyllic cottage near the Heath with green shutters and a honeysuckle over the door – idyllic in summer, that is to say. They were looking after themselves, living with rigid economy; and there was no greater proof of their friendship than the way their harmony withstood their very grave differences in domestic behaviour. In Jack’s opinion Stephen was little better than a slut: his papers, odd bits of dry, garlic’d bread, his razors and small-clothes lay on and about his private table in a miserable squalor; and from the appearance of the grizzled wig that was now acting as a tea=cosy for his milk-saucepan, it was clear that he had breakfasted on marmalade.

Jack took off his coat, covered his waistcoat and breeches with an apron, and carried the dishes into the scullery. ‘My plate and saucer will serve again,’ said Stephen. ‘I have blown upon them. I do wish, Jack,’ he cried, ‘that you would leave that milk-saucepan alone. It is perfectly clean. What more sanitary, what more wholesome, than scalded milk? Will I dry up?’ he called through the open door.

‘No, no,’ cried Jack, who had seen him do so. ‘There is no room – it is nearly done. Just attend to the fire, will you?’

‘We might have some music,’ said Stephen. ‘Your friend’s piano is in tolerable tune, and I have found a German flute. What are you doing now?’

‘Swabbing out the galley. Give me five minutes, and I am your man.’

‘It sounds more like Noah’s flood. This peevish attention to cleanliness, Jack, this busy preoccupation with dirt,’ said Stephen, shaking his head at the fire, ‘has something of the Brahminical superstition about it. It is not very far removed from nastiness, Jack – from cacothymia.’

‘I am concerned to hear it,’ said Jack. ‘Pray, is it catching?’ he added, with a private but sweet-natured leer. ‘Now, sir,’ – appearing in the doorway with the apron rolled under his arm – ‘where is your flute? What shall we play?’ He sat at the little square piano and ran his fingers up and down, singing,

‘Those Spanish dogs would gladly own
Both Gibraltar and Port Mahon

and don’t they wish they may have it? Gibraltar, I mean.’ He went on from one tune to another in an abstracted strumming while Stephen slowly screwed the flute together; and eventually from this strumming there emerged the adagio of the Hummel sonata.

‘Is it modesty that makes him play like this?’ wondered Stephen, worrying at a crossed thread. ‘I could swear he knows what music is – prizes high music beyond almost anything. But here he is, playing this as sweetly as milk, like an anecdote: Jesus, Mary and Joseph. And the inversion will be worse … It is worse – a sentimental indulgence. He takes pains; he is full of good-will and industry; and yet he cannot make even his fiddle utter anything but platitudes, except by mistake. On the piano it is worse, the notes being true. You would say it was a girl playing, a sixteen-stone girl. His face is not set in an expression of sentimentality, however, but of suffering. He is suffering extremely, I am afraid. This playing is very like Sophia’s. Is he aware of it? Is he consciously imitating her? I do not know: their styles are much the same in any case – their absence of style. Perhaps it is diffidence, a feeling that they may not go beyond certain modest limits. They are much alike. And since Jack, knowing what real music is, can play like a simpleton, may not Sophia, playing like a ninny-hammer …? Perhaps I misjudge her. Perhaps it is a case of the man filled with true poetic feeling who can only come out with ye flowery meads again – the channels blocked. Dear me, he is sadly moved. How I hope those tears will not fall. He is the best of creatures – I love him dearly – but he is an Englishman, no more – emotional, lachrymose. Jack, Jack!’ he called out. ‘You have mistook the second variation.’

‘What? What?’ cried passionately. ‘Why did you break in upon me, Stephen?’

‘Listen. This is how it goes,’ said Stephen, leaning over him and playing.

‘No it ain’t,’ cried Jack. ‘I had it right.’ He took a turn up and down the room, filling it with his massive form, far larger now with emotion. He looked strangely at Stephe, but after another turn or two he smiled and said, ‘Come, let’s improvise, as we used to do off Crete. What tune shall we start with?’

‘Do you know St. Patrick’s Day?’

‘How does it go?’ Stephen played. ‘Oh, that? Of course I know it: we call it Bacon and Greens.’

‘I must decline to improve on Bacon and Greens. Let us start with Hosier’s Ghost, and see where we get to.’

The music wove in and out, one ballad and its variations leading to another, the piano handing it to the flute and back again; and sometimes they sang as well, the forecastle songs they had heard so often at sea.

Come all you brave seamen that ploughs on the main
Give ear to my story I’m true to maintain,
Concerning the Litchfield that was cast away
On the Barbary shore by the dawn of the day.

‘The light is failing,’ observed Stephen, taking his lips from the flute.

‘On the Barbary shore by the dawn of the day,’ sang Jack again. ‘Oh, such a dying fall. So it is but the rain has let us, thank God,’ he said, bending to the window. ‘The wind has veered into the east – a little north to east. We shall have a dry walk.’