Patrick O'Brian

Captain Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are sent on a decoy mission to the lagoons of the Gulf of Guinea to suppress the slave trade, and ultimately head to Ireland, where the French are building an invasion force

The Commodore (Vol. Book 17) (Aubrey/Maturin Novels)

Gavin

Pretty slow, but seeing Jack tearing into the slave trade is worth a lot.


  Drier it might have been, but not for those who habitually stood on the lowest of the steps on the ship's side, holding on to the entering ropes and pondering until she rolled and the sea rose, soaking him, this time farther than the waist. Stephen came aboard the Surprise dripping, as usual; and as usual Killick, worn thin and old and preternaturally shrewish by the task of looking after both the Captain and the Doctor, a feckless pair with their clothes and their limbs...


—

On the treatment of language delay in young children (not to say autism):

  'Am I not to see my own flesh and blood? My own grandniece? Believe me, Dr Maturin,' cried Mrs Williams, her voice reaching its metallic, dominant ring, 'these childish, self-willed, stubborn, obstinate fancies are best dealt with firmly: a good shaking, the black hole, bread and water and perhaps the whip answer very well and at no cost: though to be sure you are a physician and everything in that line is free.'
'I should be sorry to forbid you my house,' said Stephen.'


—

O’Brian has slowly given Jack depth: his bruising by institutions, his mathematical awakening, and

  'Now, in the warm night, there was no one to be comforted, kept in countenance, no one who could scorn him for virtuosity, and he could let himself go entirely; and as the grave and subtle music wound on and on, Stephen once more contemplated on the apparent contradiction between the big, cheerful, florid sea-officer whom most people liked on sight but who would never have been described as subtle or capable of subtlety by any one of them (except perhaps his surviving opponents in battle) and the intricate, reflective music he was now creating. So utterly unlike his limited vocabulary in words, at times verging upon the inarticulate'


  he was quite remarkably defenceless when it came to dealing with jealousy. It was an emotion he had apparently never known, at least not in its present consuming state, and it was one whose nature and development he scarcely seemed to recognize at all, so that he was unable to call upon intelligence for what help it can bring in these cases.

Stephen was well acquainted with this blindness where health was concerned - 'It is only a lump: it will soon go away' - and affections - 'She has certainly not received my letter. The posts are so slow these days, and very far from sure' - yet even so it surprised him in Jack Aubrey, a much more intelligent man than he seemed to those who did not know him well. With great concern he had watched the progress of the disease, the changes in the atmosphere at Ashgrove Cottage, where Mr Hinksey continued to call with the most unlucky regularity, often appearing a few moments before Jack left, and the beginning of a change in the Bellona. Jack was still very kind to him...

'I had been on the point of unbosoming myself... foolish, discreditable thoughts.'

'I rejoice you did not, brother. The closest friendship cannot stand such a strain: the results are invariably disastrous.'


—

Conversely, Stephen’s wisdom and serenity lessens. The two men are roughly equal stature in their middle years, where in youth Jack was foolish, cockbrained, naive.

  [Stephen] had some faults, and one was a habit of dosing himself, generally from a spirit of inquiry, as in his period of inhaling large quantities of the nitrous oxide and of the vapour of hemp, to say nothing of tobacco, bhang in all its charming varieties in India, betel in Java and the neighbouring islands, qat in the Red Sea, and hallucinating cacti in South America, but sometimes for relief from distress, as when he became addicted to opium in one form or another; and now he was busily poisoning himself with coca-leaves, whose virtue he had learnt in Peru.



  Stephen's dislike for killing his fellow-men often embarrassed Jack, whose profession it was, and he quickly added 'Of course, that is only the ideal course of events. A thousand things could throw it out


—

One of the many interesting things about these books is the sustained depiction of people who like their jobs, their dangerous, difficult, uncomfortable, highly regimented jobs. Who can’t function very well at leisure, in normal free society, who flee into risky duty.

Another is the sheer number of cockups, spoonerisms, brainfarts and bullshit:

  'My [pulse] is one hundred and seventeen to the minute.'
'That is the luckiest number in the world, I believe; a prime number, to be divided or multiplied by no other.'
'You are in the right of it, Stanislas Roche'

(117/3 = 39) These still rule our lives, but at least computers mean that they could be corrected, if we noticed, if we cared.

—

I was surprised at Maturin telling the peasants that Napoleon had converted to Islam - spy and assassin he might be, but I don’t remember him lying before - but it seems that he was just repeating one of Boney’s lies.

The Commodore (Vol. Book 17) (Aubrey/Maturin Novels)

Reviews