HMS Surprise

As promised, the suitably long and enthusiastic review of HMS Surprise by Patrick O’Brian. While I can’t claim it had the same effect as Post Captain, which absolutely took my breath away because it was better than Master and Commander, and I couldn’t have fathomed a book could be better than Master and Commander, it was certainly as good as those two books. O’Brian is a god.

Like the other two books, this one is as rich as ever in wonderful characterization, impeccable historical detail, thumping good nautical chases, laugh-out-loud humor, and engrossing atmosphere. Like Post Captain, it covers the romantic aspect, ergo some female characters, and is even more to my taste because I like to follow Jack Aubrey’s and Stephen Maturin’s love lives. What this novel adds is resolution to the love pursuits of both, in a way, and also the setting, of Bombay, is so far unmatched (I’m sure when I read the next book in the series the next setting will be even better). Not to mention a daring section of intrigue in Portugal where Stephen is kidnapped and tortured by the French. Of course, being the hero that he is, he never cracks under the pressure.

The opening for this book is daring, and I think anyone who felt equivocal about the first two books (though how could they?!) might have been turned off by its apparent dryness. It begins at an Admiralty Board meeting, crucial to the financial situation of Captain Aubrey, but in point of fact a chance for O’Brian to show his skill at describing political situations. Of Jack’s father, ‘He quoted his son in his speech on corruption, I remember. He often quotes his son. Yes, yes.’ Later, the action moves to Jack Aubrey captaining (you guessed it) the HMS Surprise. The trip takes them way down south on their way to India. After the Portuguese event, Stephen gets to survive a black squall and then a white squall: ‘Tell me, Stephen, what did you drink on that infernal rock?’ ‘Boiled shit.’ Stephen was chaste in his speech, rarely an oath, never an obscene word, never any bawdy: his reply astonished Jack . . .

I am continually amazed in reading the book by O’Brian’s skill in characterization. An idle remark about a pagoda tree is an excellent way of summarizing the Diana/Stephen/Sophie/Jack triangle from the last book while still remaining true to character and is so elegantly written. And it isn’t just these four who are well-written; O’Brian’s criticism of Sophie’s mother is scathing: ‘You would not credit, Doctor,’ she said, turning towards her guest with a polite look; for although Dr Maturin was scarcely to be compared [physically] with his friend Captain Aubrey, he was known to be the possessor of a marble bath and of a castle in Spain—a castle in Spain!—and he might very well do for her younger daughter: had Cecilia been sitting in the dark with Dr Maturin she would never have burst in.

Speaking of which, the triangle to which I refer is for Sophie Williams, to whom Jack is engaged but has been prevented to marry because of the fact he is wanted for debt, and her cousin, the widowed Diana Villiers, who is being kept by the extremely wealthy Mr Canning in India. (Both Jack and Stephen at one time were keen on Diana, to the point they were going to fight a duel over her.) Stephen is still in love with Diana, we find in this book, as his journey to Bombay to see her proves. A sample of Stephen’s activities when they refit in Bombay is a good cross-section of the wondrous world O’Brian conjures up in his faraway place, replete with Mahrattas, Bengalis, Rajputs, Persians, Sikhs, Malays, Siamese, Javans, Philippinoes, Khirgiz, Ethiopians, Parsees, Baghdad Jews, Sinhalese, Tibetans . . . Indeed, the scene of Diana’s alighting from an elephant in the middle of an Indian festival while Stephen and his youthful companion Dil look on was so picturesque I had to illustrate it. There were several incidents in the book so visual I was moved this way.

I’ve said before I’m head-over-heels for Stephen, and this book only confirms my feelings. Sophie has good insight into him and maybe why I like him so much: his mother was a Catalan, his father an Irish officer, and Catalan, English, French, Castlilian came to him as naturally as breathing . . . ‘He really is not fit to wander about the world alone; it is so hard to unworldly people . . . Not that she [Diana] would have ever made him happy, the . . .’ Bitch was the word that struggled to make itself heard . . . Though it is Jack’s opinion that Stephen’s only defect is his inability to understand anything nautical, the more I read the more I think it is an act on Stephen’s part. If it is, though, it’s a consummate performance: ‘Jack Aubrey was just the same. “I do not pretend to teach you to sail your sloop or poop or whatever you call the damned machine . . .”’

I know very little about O’Brian himself, other than he considered the Aubrey/Maturin novels “fun” and wrote other novels he considered more literary. Also that he represented quite a bit of himself in Stephen. I think their dry sense of humor is probably the same: the opening scene of Stephen and Sophie toasting crumpets is so beautifully-written, but immediately funny: ‘my dear, a trifle less butter, if you please. I am already in a high state of grease.’ The heartbreaking thing about the Diana/Stephen confrontation, however, is that Stephen proposes and is rejected. ‘I have never made a woman an offer of marriage—am ignorant of the accepted forms. But I beg you will have the goodness, the very great goodness, to marry me . . . It would oblige me extremely, Diana.’ Interestingly, it is a wealthy American Diana ends up with; Stephen cries a bit on a mountain top and is then off again on adventures. I quite agree with Stephen here: ‘I should never voluntarily add to the unhappiness of the world by bringing any more people into it . . .’ However, Stephen has a moment of imposed weakness on the voyage back from India during which he rants and is very ill—a less secret man might not be so communicative: it poured out of Stephen’s unconscious mouth in a torrent—and includes the very memorable scene that was actually in the film of the eleventh book, The Far Side of the World, when Stephen operates on himself.

Like Diana, though, I’m drawn to Jack as well as Stephen, who has his own sense of humor: ‘If the Judge Advocate of the Fleet were to tell me to hang an able seaman, I should tell him to—I should decline.’ ‘—they have chosen their cake, and must lie on it.’ ‘You mean, they cannot have their bed and eat it.’ ‘No, no, it is not quite that, neither.’ I know after the film came out there was a flood of Stephen/Jack homo-erotic fan fiction, but I seriously don’t see them ever feeling that way for each other, though I’m in no doubt relationships of the kind happened aboard ship in one way or another: Stephen said, ‘Have you ever contemplated upon sex, my dear?’ ‘Never,’ said Jack. ‘Sex has never entered my mind, at any time.’ Jack continues to be the epitome of the British tar in this book, commanding a nail-biting sequence of ship-to-ship warfare that rakes the Surprise by pitting it against several French frigates captained by his nemesis Linois. How O’Brian can get so much excitement into these naval battles is quite beyond me.

Of course, the author also gets all the ship characters correct in habit and description, down to a very amusing incident in which Lieutenant Babbington eats one of Stephen’s pet rats (apparently a custom for midshipmen to catch and eat rats on board ship when the diet was down to biscuits and grog). Perhaps the funniest moment of the whole book is when Stephen brings a baby sloth on board from the coast of Brazil, which can tolerate everyone but Jack, who called it a vampire (having never seen a sloth before). Later, Jack offends Stephen by getting the sloth drunk. Oh, Jack.

Despite all the humor in the book, however, I’m stuck sometimes by O’Brian’s seeming insistence on the random nature of conflict; he kills off three characters pretty much without warning or apology. The most poignant of these is that of Dil, Stephen’s young Urdu disciple. However, the book ends happily for the crew and especially for Jack, who’s off to marry his bonny lass. I see in the next book they have two daughters. That should be interesting.