So here we are again.
Reading each successive Aubrey/Maturin novel is a source of extreme
pleasure, but it also marks the passing of another year. I am about halfway
through the books, and while I have much to look forward to, I have fond
memories of every single book. It’s
difficult to believe I deserve the joy of experiencing this each year, or that
a genius like O’Brian could consistently produce these books one after another. It boggles the mind and makes me eternally
grateful that I lived after O’Brian rather than before.
Treason’s Harbour is
very enjoyable, perhaps not in my top two or three in the series, but extremely
pleasurable and full of all the elements that endear the series to me. As is often the case, the book opens on
shore. Jack and his crew, after the
hair-raising adventures of The Ionian
Mission, are waiting for the repair of Surprise
in Malta, the men getting dissolute and idle, and the officers not much
better. Living vicariously through them,
however, sunny Valletta sounds good to me.
Pullings has at last achieved captaincy (something the film fudged a
bit, by offering it to him at the end of The
Far Side of the World), though he is soon to find its bittersweet
nature. Stephen is reunited with
linguist, naturalist, and chaplain, Mr Martin.
Now, each of the books opens magnificently, with both Jack and Stephen
written as tour-de-forces, but what Treason’s
Harbour offers is the most cinematic openings of the books thus far, and
something whose tension belongs in the category of Vertigo:
‘Some of my best
friends are Englishmen,’ continued Maturin.
‘Yet even the most valuable have this same vicious inclination to make a
confused bellowing when they are happy.
It is harmless enough in their own country, where the diet deadens the
sensibilities, but it travels badly: it
is perceived as a superabundancy of arrogance, and is resented more than many
worse crimes. The Spaniard is a vile
colonist, murderous, rapacious, and cruel; but he is not heard to laugh. His arrogance is of a common, universal kind,
and his presence is not resented in the same way as the Englishman’s.’
Unbeknownst to him, a pair of spies, bent on Stephen’s
destruction, are echoing the same sentiments from their bell-tower vantage
point (hence my Vertigo reference) which adds a time-bomb type quality to the
whole novel, especially given that Stephen is unaware of the nature of the
pursuit (his instinct proves infallible but not quick enough). Meanwhile, Jack is indeed making a
semi-intoxicated spectacle of himself by flashing his chelengk, a mechanical
diamond bauble for his hat given by the Sultan of Turkey in thanks for services
rendered. ‘Ain’t I elegant?’ Much as I
love Stephen, a love that is to you now well-known, I do love Jack, too, and feel
great affection for his human foibles as much as for his strengths. Although one of the spies describes Jack as ‘the great fat yellow-haired post-captain
with that sparkling thing in his hat? . . . That red-faced ox of a man?’, the
other is more perceptive and picks up on Jack’s love for music and opera (if
not anticipating his hobby of star-gazing).
And the more perceptive of the spies, in fact a most dangerous opponent
of Stephen’s back from The Fortune of
War, has the snare that will appeal to both Jack and Stephen.
Stephen, it must be said, has a type. And the type is Diana-lookalike. Not just lookalikes, though; that’s
unfair. They must be well-bred, cultured
women, and Laura Fielding is no exception.
In fact, she far better fits this pedigree than her counterpart, the
rather vulgar Mrs Wogan in Desolation
Island. Stephen seems particularly susceptible on Malta, at least according
to him, as he was sexually starved
and that recently his amorous propensities
had been stirred, having been separated from his recently-wed wife Diana in
the last book. Laura Fielding is a Sicilian woman who
has married Charles Fielding of the Navy, who is at this point in prison;
Stephen’s spymaster rivals have a hold on her, getting her to spy for them, and
now with a particularly evil goal in mind:
to seduce Stephen and gain information from him. Although O’Brian has written Sophie and Diana
very well in the past, neither of them appear in this book. The reader might therefore come away with a
first impression of Laura’s depiction with a whiff of chauvinism. Like the heroine in Notorious, because she is a woman and because she is honorable, she
is made to do dishonorable things. Yet
the book is told from Stephen and Jack’s points of view, which make her seem
decidedly less heroic than she would if she had been telling the story herself. By the end of Treason’s Harbour, however, I decided that Laura was much more
complex than she initially seemed and that O’Brian had been deliberately
holding back on us in order to build her character up slowly.
A gifted music teacher, Laura is also beautiful and worldly,
but in a quite different sense than Diana.
The reason O’Brian perhaps belittles her virtues at first is because we
are seeing her through the lens of Stephen Maturin. He sees friendliness and the flirtation that
comes from being admired, her childish
delight when the chelengk was put through its paces and her frank greed when
she had it in her hands. He also
notices her particular regard of him, and is under no self-illusion. He knew
that no one could possibly admire him for his looks; he had no illusions about
his social charms or his conversation; and although he felt that his best
books, Remarks on Pezophaps Solitarious and
Modest Proposals for the Preservation of Health in the Navy, were not without merit, he did not believe
that either would set any female bosom in a blaze[1]. Even his wife had not been able to get through
more than a few pages, in spite of her very real good will. So while as an intelligence-agent tended to see spies everywhere, rather as certain
lunatics saw references to themselves in every newspaper, Stephen feels
pretty certain that Laura is favoring him falsely, and while this is true, it
is not presented as a quality for which he admires her.
When Laura makes a desperate move to seduce Stephen, and
fortunately for the both of them succeeds only as far as getting to the door of
the bedroom, he behaves like a friend and a gentleman. However, at the party beforehand he rather chauvinistically
disapproves of her low-cut gown—he thought
it cruelly unfair in a woman to excite desires that she had no intention of
satisfying. As Stephen finds out
exactly what Laura has to deal with, and as we get to know her better, he
struggles with a very real regard for her—we would say he fancies her like mad—despite
the fact he of course wants to be true to Diana and furthermore because Jack to
a degree also fancies Laura (I’m sorry to say women are a source of potential
conflict between these two friends). In
fact, an unknowing public in Malta believe, due to Laura’s dog Ponto’s
friendliness to Jack and because of Jack’s obvious regard for Laura, that the
two are lovers. A part of Jack would
certainly like this to be true; he proved himself quite an ass back in The Surgeon’s Mate (a fantastic book), though
a crafty but not altogether unkind Laura nips this in the bud[2].
But Stephen fears Laura’s husband—whom she deeply loves and
talks about way too much for Stephen to ever believe he has a chance with her—is
already dead and his notes to her are being forged. If this is true and Laura finds out, she will
become worthless to the spies. Things
become even more complicated when, away from Malta, Stephen and Jack meet
Charles Fielding. There are also hints that there may be trouble at home. Stephen said in HMS Surprise, after Diana had rejected him, that he did not wish to
people the world with ill-favored bastards (or words to that effect); the
silence of Diana in this book suggests, perhaps, that there is either discord
over this self-regulation or that Diana is pregnant and hasn’t seen fit to tell
him yet. Stephen cannot believe that Diana is having an affair with Jagiello
from the previous book and hopes the events that bring Laura aboard the Surprise—too delightful to spoil for
you, so I won’t—will not cause Diana to think he’s been untrue. It also remains to be seen whether the gossip
about Jack and Laura in Malta will reach Sophie (although on a basis of reciprocity he deserved a whole hall-full of antlers);
certainly Sophie and the children remained on Jack’s mind even when he was with
Laura. Yet his own daughters were not outstandingly meek: he thought of their shrill bawling ‘Oh Papa,
Papa, do come on, Papa. We shall never
get up the hill at this rate. Pray,
Papa, do not be such a slug.’ Early it
would have been ‘goddamn slug,’ they having caught a free way of speaking from
the seamen who formed part of the household.
There is more than just the beginning which recommends this
book to the seriously cinematic; once Jack and the Surprise are off on their mission to the Red Sea[3], Stephen
decides to bring along his Halley’s diving bell, at first to Jack’s
chagrin. But Stephen is obviously
anticipating Chekhov as this is one gun on the mantelpiece that is going to go
off in a big way. I won’t spoil it for
you, but it’s a wonderful, wonderful scene.
Stephen takes his friend Martin with them, and they make a wonderful
double act—the return of Martin also means the return of choral music to the Surprise, though Martin’s longed-for
sermon is not necessarily what is desired.
There is a heated sea battle
when the Surprise finally catches up
with the galley they’ve been chasing to the harbour of Mubara (no idea where this
is). While Stephen has been well-served
in the book by his instinct if not always his intellect, Jack also proves that
his nautical instinct is sound in both his battles aboard ship and his not
always subtle but usually quite sound diplomacy with Britain’s Eastern allies. Furthermore, while Jack and Stephen have had
hair-raising adventures on land (climes exotic and more familiar) before, nothing
quite prepared me for the Surprises trekking through what I think is the
Tunisian desert, barely making it back alive, though Jack and Stephen are able
to enjoy cups of tea, wine and water with lemon juice, and pints of sherbet on
their return. I appreciate now, more
than ever, what a great job the film Master
and Commander did of taking elements from (probably) all of the books and
ensuring a true-spirited panoramic impression of the books; one could call it a
collage, given what elements are arranged around the loose plot taken from The Far Side of the World, but that
wouldn’t really do it justice.
Patrick O’Brian had immense and genuine affection for the
British tar, despite the sailor’s very real faults, and in this book he
highlights the ships’ crews more than any of the officers (though Mowett and
Rowan’s lyric wars are very funny). The
ordinary sailor (I should say able seaman, as Jack makes clear the company of
the Surprise are almost all rated
men) often is personified in Jack’s steward, Preserved Killick, or the coxswain,
Barrett Bonden[4]. Killick has a rather eventful book, trying to
preserve Jack’s “best scraper” (his hat) along with the chelengk, at last
fainting from heat-stroke in the attempt when the ship’s company is stranded in
the desert, and later smoking Jack’s hookah in anticipation of receiving
Turkish guests. The sailors on Surprise are also remarkably bashful, despite
their notorious language, one of the youngsters blushing to say the word “drawers”
and the sailors too embarrassed to relieve themselves in the middle of the
desert during the day when they can all be seen. Although a Dragoman on board
on the Surprise makes an interesting
mess-mate, the most charming episode among the men is when they meet the odabashi,
who turns out to have a Cockney mother though he is a janissary and born in
Smyrna! ‘Well, this is a hairy bugger, and no mistake,’ said the bosun,
surveying him. ‘Such a ugly cove I never
seen: more like a hape than what you
might call a human.’ ‘Hape!’ cried the odabashi, stung out of his shyness, ‘You
can put that where the monkey put the nuts.
You’re no oil-painting yourself, neither.’ . . . ‘did the obadashi speak
English?’ ‘Not a f*cking word,’ said the
odabashi. ‘No offense intended, mate,’
said the bosun, holding out his hand. ‘And
none taken,’ said the odabashi, shaking it.
Unfortunately, this meeting of mutual minds precipitates a rash of worries
about djinn in the desert for, as O’Brian notes, sailors were often
superstitious.
Though there are obvious moments of high adventure in this
book, as described above, much of it is given over to the spy game (as in The Fortune of War) which suits me fine,
except it puts me on tenterhooks. Would
Wray the Admiralty staff traitor learn that Stephen was helping Laura and not
being tricked by her? Would Stephen,
thinking Wray merely a slightly annoying fellow but not a duplicitous agent, accidentally
give him vital information? Would Leseur’s
men succeed in killing (or worse) Laura before Stephen could intervene?
There are odd interludes in this book, as well, whose
meaning is not to me completely clear; for example, when Jack has to dive into
a flooded cistern to save the life of Ponto, and later when he walks along the
island of Gozo to meet his former nemesis Admiral Harte, now father-in-law to
the dastardly Andrew Wray. On the way
there, he plans to intervene when he sees one tortoise attacking another but
eventually realizes they are mating.
However, on his way back after this decidedly depressing meeting, he
sees the same tortoises picked up and smashed by predatory hawks. I hope
this is not foreshadowing for Jack and Sophie’s, or Stephen and Diana’s,
relationships. Certainly Jack fears the
orders that will have Surprise retired,
as she is an “old” ship, and this informs the rather whimsical and joyous
arrival of Laura on board—the most hilarious moment is when the bosun shouts “Oh
you . . . unskilful fellow” when someone drops a marlin-spike in Laura’s
presence, instead of what is the normal obscene turn of phrase.
It is five months until 2014, when I can pick up the next
book in the series. Woo hoo!
[1] Except
me, darling Stephen.
[2] Jack
exacts hilarious if not really fair revenge when she asks him to take dictation
and write a letter to her husband for her.
Captain Aubrey knew very well that
she could not ply the oar. ‘Ply the oar,
ma’am?’ said Jack, looking up from his paper, his pen poised. ‘Is it not right? I was so proud of it.’ ‘Oh yes,’ said Jack. ‘Only the word is spelt
rather odd, you know,’ and he wrote she would not play the whore very carefully, so that the letters could
not be mistaken, smiling secretly as he did so, his frustration and
disappointment entirely overcome by his sense of the ridiculous.
[3] This
book really needed a map. I had no idea
where they were half the time.
[4] While I
think David Threfall who plays Killick in the film is probably exactly what O’Brian
had in mind, and the wonderful James D’Arcy, who plays Pullings, a bit less so,
I believe he would have been neutral about Billy Boyd. However, I love Billy Boyd and so he shall
forever be Bonden to me.
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