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I was somewhat disconcerted when reading p190 of THD to find Stephen saying to Jacob:
'"I presume lions do not climb trees, but I should be obliged if you would confirm it with this amiable youth."
"He confirms it. Leopard, yes; lions, no."'
Now, this is quite untrue: I myself have seen lions in trees upon at least 4 occasions. In all cases it was at the scene of a kill. The lions did not climb very high (unlike leopards) nor did they drag any of the meat up into the trees (unlike leopards): but they did climb up onto branches about 7 or 8 feet above the ground and sprawled upon them, two legs dangling down upon either side.
In this position, they are amazingly hard to spot: on one occasion in Umfolozi Game Reserve in Natal, South Africa, a game ranger told the folk in our camp that lions had killed a giraffe not far away. I drove out and spotted the dead giraffe - but not a lion was there to be seen. However, the absence of scavengers convinced me that they could not be far away, so I hung around, waiting to see what would happen. Another car arrived and its driver, a man who had imbibed not wisely but too well, decided to walk over to the carcass. He spent some time there, shooting videos and taking photographs and then staggered back to his car - just in time - a game ranger came along right then and would have fined him had he still be out of his car. Anyway, the ranger said: "look at them - you can see their bellies bulging." "What?" said we "Where are they?" "In those trees," was the reply and he pointed to three or four large trees overhanging the giraffe's corpse - lions were sprawled out along all the heavy branches. The drunken sot's face turned an interesting variety of colours as he contemplated upon the fact that he had been disporting himself directly below them!
London Lois
In this position, they are amazingly hard to spot: on one occasion in Umfolozi Game Reserve in Natal, South Africa, a game ranger told the folk in our camp that lions had killed a giraffe not far away. I
Lovely story, Lois. I had thought that giraffes were too big and dangerous for lions; think I saw it on one of those African lion wildlife programs on TV. Not true?
Nick
Nick wrote: "I had thought that giraffes were too big and dangerous for lions; think I saw it on one of those African lion wildlife programs on TV. Not true?"
I really couldn't say: certainly this is the only giraffe kill I ever saw but I know of others from camp tales (which are not the most reliable of sources). But I think that an old, and not very agile giraffe would be hard put to it to defend against a pride of lions; it is usually the less fleet of foot of all species that get run down and attacked, the poor things.
Re giraffes and their defensive powers: my sister was in a game reserve in the Eastern Transvaal (Mpumalanga as it is now called) in one of those VW minibuses that seat about 10 people or so. She was in the front seat, holding her youngest son in her lap. They came upon a herd of giraffe in the road and one nutter decided to get out of the minibus to video in close-up. He walked towards the herd as the giraffes all stood staring and blinking their long eyelashes in that seemingly mild and vaguely affectionate manner that they have. Then suddenly one of them sprang forward and charged him. He fled back to the minibus but had no time to do more by way of taking shelter than fling himself underneath it. The giraffe reared up and smashed its front hoofs through the windscreen. My sister had twisted herself over her son to protect him and had her shoulder broken in multiple places by the impact of the hoof on it - she was also badly cut by flying glass as was the driver. Then the giraffe plucked its front legs back, delivered a swiping kick with a rear leg that all but demolished the front fender of the minibus, and sauntered back to the herd, which resumed its mild blinking and browsing of the trees and bushes there.
A game ranger later told my sister that giraffe are actually quite aggressive and it is well to be wary of them. Who would have thought it?
London Lois, who did all her natural philosophising from a car, having a most uncommon hatred of sweat, flies, thorns, dust and bugs
Two questions, in reverse order. Would they have ben lionesses, at all; and would this be the norm? I'm sure this has come up before, but were / are lions common in the far north of Africa anyway?
Gary in Dallas
Fine questions, Gary! and from this you correctly collect that I am puzzled to answer 'em, not being in any sort a natural philosopher.
1. were they lionesses?
The pride at the giraffe kill, the most recent 'lions in trees' sighting of mine, were definitely lionesses: as for the other three sightings, my dear, they were long ago and in another land, to coin a felicitous phrase. And besides the wench's memory is almost dead, and is refusing to come up with detailed recollections. My gut feeling though is that there WERE lions on one occasion: I have this fleeting, unpin-downable impression of a dry river bed with huge old trees growing by it and the sight of a magnificent dark-maned head resting upon a branch: but I would not swear to it, sir, I would not swear to it.
2. prevalence of lions in far north Africa:
not a clue on this, I fear.
POB does a wonderful job of describing the lion's so-called roar, the best description of this sound that I've ever read. It is a truly impressive, strange and chilling sound (not at all well rendered by the MGM lion). Despite living for 20 or more years near the Johannesburg Zoo and hearing the lions roaring every single night, I never did get used to the sound - it remained always a marvel. Heard out in the bush, it raises the hair on the back of your neck.
Though as to hair-raising, the hyaena's maniacal screech just can't be beat, believe me. It's an interesting and little-known fact that lions scavenge hyaena kills as much as vice versa, by the way. Your hyaena is a sullen, dogged, froward beast, unlike the lion: many and many a child has been yanked out of tents in game reserve camps by hyaenas, and their jaws are so uncommon powerful for crunching bones that being grasped by one of these beasts does fearful damage.
I had a close encounter of the unpleasant kind with a hyaena in the small wee hours of the morning when I was obliged to leave the shelter of my hut to visit the necessary house, a visit almost made a work of supererogation by the sudden appearance of ghostly greeny-yellowy eyes in the torchlight; an instant later I made out a hyaena's unattractive visage. We stared at one another for an endless moment before I screamed and hurled the torch at him, hitting him by the greatest good fortune directly on the nose (the first time in my life that I ever hit anything I aimed at - thus doth adrenaline make marksmen of us all). He retreated, but then turned again as though to come at me: I shrieked and leapt up and down and drew my arm back as though to hurl another missile and he decided that discretion was the better part and withdrew in good order, unlike me for my legs were so unsteady I was obliged to crawl to my torch and then crawl to the ablution block.
London Lois, recalling days of long ago
Lois wrote.....
I screamed and hurled the torch at him, hitting him by the greatest good fortune directly on the nose (the first time in my life that I ever hit anything I aimed at - thus doth adrenaline make marksmen of us all).
Which brings to mind an old technique for dealing with intrusive lions.
Q. What should I do if I am suddenly confronted by a lion?
A. Scoop up some of the manure from the ground and hurl it into its eyes.
Q. What if there is no manure on the ground?
A. Oh there will be, there will be.
Peace,
John
I have been roared at, close up. I was in the Kruger Park with a bunch of colleages, hurtling our mini-bus tolerably fast over the dirt roads in order to get back to camp for the 6.00pm curfew (a hefty fine awaited the tardy). We had enjoyed a wonderful and full day's viewing - but no lions. As we hurtled, one of the guys piped up, 'Er, guys, that was a lion just now'. I braked hard, and glanced round the wallet-keen faces. All nodded. I flung our chariot into reverse, and crept back 50 yeards or so. Not a lion in sight. Then just as we were saying that the sighter was mad, hallucinating, up stood the beast, not 20 feet from us. And, as we cranked down the windows to get a better look and raised every camera to our eyes, the lion leant forward and let rip - a combined roar, snarl, spit and fang-baring. There was a lioness lying near the great beast too, who snarled like a good 'un. Seven brave guys all jolted upwards a foot or so in their seats; I stalled the van, and couldn't get it to restart. After a few moments we just had to go, to avoid the fine. A few dyas later we all got our photos developed, and the 'jolt moment' was well-recorded - pics of the sky, the ground, the roof of the van, the back of someone's neck........ And by the time anyone had re-focused, the lion had sat back down in the scrub, and moved behind a bush ..... a good 'spot the lion' contest ensued.
Gary
in Dallas, whose Erik the Abby looks very like that lion, though
mane-less......
Lionesses, being smaller and lighter than the males, probably are the better climbers. I would think that the North African lion is extinct in the wild, though I haven't tried to confirm this.
Gerry Strey
Madison, Wisconsin (back form three days vacation, and overwhlemed with
everything
In this position, they are amazingly hard to spot: on one occasion in Umfolozi Game Reserve in Natal, South Africa, a game ranger told the folk in our camp that lions had killed a giraffe not far away. I
You should see how hard it is to spot a =giraffe= that's climbed up in a tree.
Shady camouflage, you know.
savage, explosive, obstinate and cantankerous [HMSS 78]
Mary S
35° 58' 11" N
86° 48' 57" W
Well, May is almost over, yet I just started a re-read of _The Hundred Days_ a few days ago while between other books.
It strikes me how unconvincing are Jack's efforts to persuade Stephen, upon recommending Poll Skeeping as a new loblolly 'boy,' that women were not at all rare aboard RN ships, and that only Stephen's lack of attention to things which didn't interest him had kept him from noticing them before.
It's almost as though POB had become aware of women on board, and decided to work the detail in late in the series. At any rate, Jack's discourse seem a bit disingenuous.
This books seems to rank as many people's least favorite of the series, but it does have that wonderful line by Queenie, upon being asked by Jack how the newly peered Admiral Keith wished to be addressed:
Queenie: "Oh, just plain Lord, I think."
Marshall Rafferty
___
At, or about:
47°40'54"N. 122°22'8"W.
In a message dated 5/25/03 10:38:38 PM Eastern Daylight Time, rafferty@DRIZZLE.COM writes:
It's almost as though POB had become aware of women on board, and decided to work the detail in late in the series. At any rate, Jack's discourse seem a bit disingenuous.
There was a recognition on POB's part that at least women married to warrant officers were aboard, shown in "Master and Commander" and "The Far Side of the World" to name two volumes which quickly come to mind, but I do know what you mean about that particular passage in THD.
Bruce Trinque
41°37'52"N 72°22'29"W
Unless I'm much out with my time-line, just before THD POB had reviewed a couple of Joan Drout's spendid books on the association of women and the navy; so such issues might have been to the front of his mind.
Also, just at the time, the Suaanne Stark book 'Female Tars' had just come out, and I've ofte wondered if the THD passages were something of a dig at this book - a book which raises many interesting issues and then fails to ask any interesting questions about them....
Gary
in Dallas
I hope the answer to this isn't embarrassingly obvious, but in the following passage:
"At first the roar of gunfire on the Ardent's side had been much increased by the shore-batteries, firing eighteen pounders; but even in the tumult of battle the Surprises caught the rapid decline, and those with the odd seconds to spare nodded to one another, smiling, and said, 'The Jollies.'" (Norton Hardback: Chapter 5, page 128.)
I'm puzzled by the reference to "The Jollies."
Marshall
Uh, the very next paragraph says: "And scarcely had the Marines silenced the last of the batteries' guns than three well-directed shot, fired from Surprise's aftermost guns on the downward roll, pierced the Ardent's side, striking her light-room."
Jollies = Marines.
Bruce Trinque
41°37'52"N 72°22'29"W
On Wed, 28 May 2003 21:23:53 EDT, Bruce wrote:
Jollies = Marines.
Uh, that I didn't know. The line is suddenly clear. Thanks, Bruce.
Marshall
As a former Marine, and one who served aboard ship (USS New Jersey (BB-62)) I enjoy the many passing references to the "Jollies" - Marines - in the Canon. Their life aboard ship wasn't that much different from mine - I even guarded the Captain's hatch (and eavesdropped). And the standard drill manual in my time was the "Landing Party Manual" - exactly what the "Jollies" did in the passage cited. But we didn't have to put down mutinies, which was the primary purpose of the Marines aboard in JA's time. Also cf Kipling's " Soldiers and Sailors Too".
As to "con". The person "conning" the ship is the one giving orders directly to the person(s) actually steering. In the sailing-ship days, steering was a tough job. I was astonished at the lack of significant mechanical advantage in the steering mechanism of Victory, which I inspected very closely during my recent tour of the vessel - and this is a BIG ship! I sometimes have to really wrestle with the helm of my little vessel! So there were usually at least two and often more men on the wheel, with a master's mate or quartermaster directing them. (In JA's time, the officer of the watch would speak to the quartermaster who would actually give the helm orders, although Jack himself often speaks directly to the helmsman ("Dyce" - "Luff and touch her" - "Thus and no more" - Captain's privilege, I guess). A quartermaster in today's Navy does exactly what a master's mate or quartermaster in JA's navy did - navigates, takes bearings, makes weather observations, keeps the rough deck log, etc., sometimes actually steers. Today, the helmsman can only take orders from the person "with the con" - when that person changes (say, when the captain takes over from the OD) he (or nowadays, perhaps "she") formally announces (so the helmsman will know the new conning officer's voice) "I have the con" . (The helmsman is often in an enclosed wheelhouse so can't visually identify the conning officer).
O'Brien uses the term "timoneer" at times to mean the conning officer, although the Oxford Companion defines "timoneer" as an archaic (even in the 19th cent.) term for "helmsman".
---------------------------------------------
Ed Mini
Master & Commander, S/V Margalo
To further Bruce's comments, Kipling wrote a wonderful poem about HM's "soldiers and sailors too", using the term jollies repeatedly.
You could google for it.
I love Kipling more each time I browse the massive pile of his work.
* * * * J B K * * * *
San Francisco
How I love this exchange between Stephen and Jacob, concerning Mona and Kevin:
(With some snippage):
Stephen: "Do you think that kind woman by the Gate of Woe would wash these children, clothe them in modest decency, and even brush their hair?"
Jacob: "Fatima? I am sure of it. She might find them shoes, too."
Stephen: "Those shoes we call espardenyas, made of sailcloth with soft cord soles and ribbons to attach them. Are they to be had, do you think?"
Jacob: "Certainly they are to be had. At the southern corner of this very square they're to be had."
Stephen: "They are brisker by far," said Stephen, "-do you notice that the sound of the wind is less? - but they will never walk up all those infernal steps. Would there be carriages to be had, do you suppose?"
Jacob: "Certainly there are carriages to be had, and I will send Achmet for one, if you wish."
There's something very stage-like, and extremely satisfying about this routine.
Compared to the canon as a whole, and to other individual books, The Hundred Days may seem poor to many, but I think that taken alone it is simply a wonderful story, filled with gems.
Marshall Rafferty
________
At, or about:
47°40'54"N. 122°22'8"W.
I'd forgotten this almost nasty exchange between Stephen and Amos, after a right good lurch sent their backgammon set flying:
__________________________________
"It was the all-dreaded thunder-stroke," said Stephen.
"I am in no position to contradict you, colleague, being your subordinate," said Jacob, "but in my opinion it is the first blast of a levanter. And I believe Shakespeare said thunder-stone."
"I do not set myself up as an authority on Shakespeare,' said Stephen.
"Nor I. All I know of the gentleman is that he had a second-best bed."
"I was aware that being gammoned twice running had vexed you, but to this degree. . . I wonder that competitive games have survived so long, such intense resentment do they breed. Even I dislike being beaten at chess."
Jacob, having picked up the last of the dice, was about to say something very cutting indeed, when Somers walked in.
(Norton HB, Chapter Six, page 151)
_______________________________
I wonder what that cutting remark might have been?
Marshall
I wonder what that cutting remark might have been?
POB couldn't think it up, so he cut it off.
leering like a mole with the palsy,
Mary S
35° 58' 11" N
86° 48' 57" W
I wonder what that cutting remark might have been?
We'll never know will we? Having but docked - sorry - curtailed presumably in the dog-watch?
Tony Davison
in the land of the Zulu
I wonder what that cutting remark might have been?
POB couldn't think it up, so he cut it off.
Or he bit his tongue and chewed up the remark at the same time.
John B
I have just finished THD for the first time. My first journey through the canon has taken nearly 10 years to finish (with a long hiatus from about 1994 to 2000). I've perused many older posts regarding the deaths of Di and Bonden, and while I know it's been much debated in the past, I thought I'd throw in my 2 cents from the perspective of one who just read through 19.
I am no literay expert, and with this being my maiden voyage through the canon, I read the novels mostly for their entertainment value and rely on the Gunroom for analysis and insight. As a reader and a fan who was very much attached to the two characters, it was very difficult to simply dismiss them they way POB seems to. With the whole book focusing mostly on Stephen, I was expecting a lot more in the way of how he dealt with it. Rather, Stephen seems to be just fine and goes about his business. For Bonden, the only thought POB attributes to Jack is that he was a "Fine Seaman." Is that all we get??? Is that all that Jack though of Bonden? Not even a record of a proper burial at sea for our beloved Coxswain? After reading through some of the old posts about this subject, there seems to be two schools of thought:
As an American, maybe I'm expecting too much? I want a very open dialogue about the feelings of grief and what it is like to lose loved ones. But that is just not POB. He is "Old World" and chose not to write so personally. Knowing that his wife had just passed away, some have noted that Stephen's sadness is illustrated in the way he merely goes through the motions, with no real joy in his activities. Maybe that is true, and perhaps I'll see that more in a second read. But for now, I have to say I'm not convinced. As for Bonden, I'm just pissed. I feel that he was just thrown away for some spiteful reason...
There are many posts that suggest POB killed off these characters in response to a poor review of TYA in the New York Times. I guess it suggested that if POB was a truly great novelist he wouldn't pander to his fans and would've killed off some of these folks long ago. Well, that's fine to think I suppose. However, if POB didn't write for the fans, why then write for a critic?
In the end, all I can say is that if you want to kill them, fine. However, I would've liked the chance to say goodbye. But then, I guess that is just how death goes...
Thoughts?
Jordan McCall
It was quite a loss, wasn't it? POB didn't give you closure - he just left you with grief. That's what it's like when a loved one dies - you keep going on. There's no one to talk it out with who really knows how you feel, so you just keep it inside. That's Stephen. Well done, says I.
On Tuesday 17 of June 2003 17:15, Jordan McCall wrote:
There are many posts that suggest POB killed off these characters in response to a poor review of TYA in the New York Times.
Frankly, I don't believe it. Stephen's meeting with Christine, with all they had in common and the understanding they reached upon their first conversation suggests, that POB already had her in mind as Stephen's new love interest, which also means that he had plans to eliminate Diana even before he started on TYA.
With Bonden, I don't know, but I do see a lot of Jack's grief in the description of his feelings following Bonden's death. What surprised me more was the apparent lack of reaction from Stephen. In the days immediately after Bonden's death Jack is descriebed as still grieving, while Stephen chats with Jacob as if nothing had happened. And Stephen seemed deeply attached to Bonden, perhaps even more than Jack. Moreover, Stephen is not bound by the rank and command and can allow himself a more free expression of feelings than Jack, who still has a ship to command and all the other men to look after. Perhaps this is an indication of how Stephen became "burned out" after the loss of Diana, and simply couldn't grieve any more. All this is food for thought (was grief, loss and different ways different people cope with them a main theme underlying THD?) and proves that, IMHO, THD cannot be dismissed as a weaker volume in the Canon (IMHO the only really weaker spot is TYA, BATM has some great moments - like the night Stephen spends with Christine, their conversation ad the description of his feelings).
Pawel
--
Pawel Golik
At 52°12'09"N 21°02'03"E
http://zguw.ibb.waw.pl/~pgolik/
I've spent a lot of time thinking about it, as I read THD several years ago. In some ways THD is more true to life in its presentation of grief than the earlier books. I think both deaths reflect POB's personal experience and feelings after the death of Mary, and wrote about these to express his own grief.
Bonden: He was close to us, but only one of many favorites of Jack. I think I can say without spoiling much that Bonden comes up again in BATM, with Jack having additional signs of his grief over the loss, however. But I think the real message is that death happens. When no one is expecting it. With no reason. I'm sure that's the way he felt about the loss of Mary.
Diana: POB had been setting us up for Diana's death for several books. This one WAS planned. Think of all the references to her reckless lifestyle, from the balloon ascents to repeated comments about her horsemanship and riding style. It was a (cheap) way for POB to get Stephen out of a less-than-perfect marriage. That aside, however, to me THD is a book primarily about Stephen's (and POB's) grief. There are symbols of it everywhere; I won't point them out here (yet), but read it with that in mind and you will find them. The one that I have put forward that has engendered the most discussion (and disagreement) in the old Norton board is the Narwhal tusk. At the beginning of the book it is broken; a symbol of Stephen's mental state. Stephen (and it) travel to the end of the book, where it is repaired, so cunningly that it takes a close examination to find where the repairs were made, just as it takes a close examination to see where Stephen still hurts.
Larry
--
Larry Finch
N 40° 53' 47"
W 74° 03' 56"
***SPOILERS***
At 08:15 AM 6/17/2003 -0700, Jordan McCall wrote:
There are many posts that suggest POB killed off these characters in response to a poor review of TYA in the New York Times. I guess it suggested that if POB was a truly great novelist he wouldn't pander to his fans and would've killed off some of these folks long ago. Well, that's fine to think I suppose. However, if POB didn't write for the fans, why then write for a critic?
I think that I might have been the one to suggest a few years ago that POB might have killed off Diana and Bonden just to spite the NY Times reviewer. I was wrong about Diana; it seems apparent to me now that Diana's death had been long planned and even foreshadowed. But imagine how it must have irked POB to read the reviewer's criticism when all along he had been planning to do just that.
But regarding Bonden, I don't know. I think that POB was very sensitive to reviews, particularly from major newspapers. He frequently expressed his great appreciation for critics who had praised his work. I have to think that he took to heart the negative ones. Perhaps POB did just toss Bonden to the sharks to prove the NYT reviewer wrong.
To clear up a bit of confusion, POB began writing THD a year and a half before Mary's death, completing the manuscript at about the same time.
Don Seltzer
I certainly think the NYT review could have had an influence in Bonden's death, but I don't think PO'B would do it just to satisfy the critics: Bonden's death serves artistic purpose, showing the suddenness and randomness of death, and also the way Stephen reacts (or not) to Bonden's death (v. good point - thanks, I hadn't spotted it).
Unfortunately I've been too busy to get stuck into THD this time, so I can't contribute much, but for my money it's one of the top - let's say - five of the series, certainly, although I've not ranked them, and I think PO'B really handles several subjects very well (esp. ageing). The numb brittleness of the book is very striking. I'm defiantly in the Wenger camp regarding PO'B's later work for this book. I'm looking forward to Blue: I've read it only once, I think, so comparing it with THD will be interesting.
Sam.
Jordan McCall wrote:
With the whole book focusing mostly on Stephen, I was expecting a lot more in the way of how he dealt with it. Rather, Stephen seems to be just fine and goes about his business.
There are some of us who believe that THD actually well depicts how a character like Stephen (someone who prides himself in keeping his emotions tightly in check) deals with the death of someone close to him, apparently little affected on the surface and yet numb with loss within. The seeming lack of emotion in the narrative may be instead be a subtle artistic treatment about suffering great pain. While reading THD for the first time, I had a similar sensation as when listening to a piece of music that is very carefully, very precisely played, deliberately constrained against erupting into any overt emotional display.
For Bonden, the only thought POB attributes to Jack is that he was a "Fine Seaman." Is that all we get??? Is that all that Jack though of Bonden? Not even a record of a proper burial at sea for our beloved Coxswain? As for Bonden, I'm just pissed. I feel that he was just thrown away for some spiteful reason...
Or perhaps delivering this sudden shock to the reader was POBs goal? Our deprivation of proper mourning for this character works to heighten our sense of loss. In "Blue At the Mizzen", Bonden's death is again mentioned, this time with a little additional commentary that more clearly shows the depth of lost.
In the end, all I can say is that if you want to kill them, fine. However, I would've liked the chance to say goodbye. But then, I guess that is just how death goes...
Which just might have been the point ...
Bruce Trinque
41°37'52"N 72°22'29"W
Because I had hoped to discuss this with Rick some day, I saved the following message from him. The title is such that Jordon may not have found it in the archives, but I think it will be of interest to all.
Jill
--------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Rick Ansell
To: GUNROOM@HMSSURPRISE.ORG
Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2002 02:26:40 +0000
A QUICK, PRETENCIOUS, ESSAY
I recently came across an article (since lost) that lamented the effect that reading fiction had on people.
It lamented the fact that people these days seek 'closure', as if their life followed narrative rules. Every life event now has to have an end. Loose ends are an anathema.
To a lesser extent every person we meet has to have a 'motivation', a clear, 'streamlined' motivation, just like on TV. People are bad, good, greedy, altruistic etc. and they stay that way, never growing or acting 'out of character', lest the reader or viewer be confused.
We all know that life isn't like that (I have a saying, 'there are no endings, only fadings'). Yet we, or at least a lot of people, expect life to work like that. I _know_ that I have never done something for a simple, uncomplicated, reason. Why should I expect others to be different.
One of the charms of POB is that characters appear and disappear, without us learning 'what happened in the end'. There is, for many characters, no 'Closure'. the loose ends are left to dangle. Of course no (readable) author has every event neatly rounded off but POB breaks the 'rules' more than most. Similarly his characters are complex and grow. Witness Stephen, lover of the freedom of peoples, feeling loyalty to the instrument of British conquest. Witness Rev Martin growing and changing.
The net effect is to provide what, in the Science Fiction context, I call The Backdrop of Stars. There is a living, moving, background to the story rather than it being sealed in some craft or taking place on some thinly peopled world outside the context of society.
We are not in some enclosed story, shut in some tin can (or wooden tub) hermetically sealed from the outside. Things are happening 'out there', time is passing. The story is set _in_ the early 19th centenary world, rather than the world being scenery flats carefully crafted to avoid intruding on the actors space.
There is detail and 'cruft', not a 'sliming down' to avoid distractions (or more likely, revealing the authors shallow knowledge). We don't feel that the world beyond the main players is out of focus, that things only exist when the principle players gaze upon them. We can, in our minds eye, zoom out and play 'Where's Wally' (or rather Aubery), following our man as he plays his part in the intricate dance of everyday life. When Jack and Sophie sit in the parlour we feel there is a garden beyond the window, and then fields beyond which lies a hill, the horizon and a sea-tinged sky. This is no studio set.
Finally these are actors, not people in funny costumes speaking lines. They are of their time and place, they fit. They are not modern minds in 19th century bodies. Just as in every time and place peoples faces have a 'look' that a casual renactor can never mimic the 'casual' historical novelist will struggle to get the 'feel' of the times and minds right. POB succeeds admirably where so many fail, anachronisms, the smallest of which could 'break the spell' are so rare as be almost unimaginable.
In short, POBs books feel as real, maybe, given the drive to make life emulate the rules of narrative. _more_ real, than life today.
Rick
--
Still no .sig other
Wow
Well done for saving that Jill. I remember reading it at the time saying to myself 'wouldn't it be great to have insight like that and be able to write it down so well.'
The next day I forgot about it.
alec
When I read of Diana's death, and then later of Bonden's I wondered about the treatment as well. With Bonden, we know what was happening immediately around the event, and we see that there is little time for Jack to think about it at the moment. But it seemed to me that Stephen would have been in a much different situation, and I wondered how he heard, who had to tell him, what his reaction would have been THEN, not weeks in the future, as we see him in THD. This led to my entry in the second Flowing Sheets, which shows another view of the event, and which you may enjoy.
http://hmssurprise.org/Fiction/flowing_sheet2/The_End_of_Time.htm
As I was writing it I became convinced that POB DID treat it much as Stephen would have done, and indeed as many people grieve: internally, privately, intensely, but eventually allowing the 'real world' to demand one's presence and simply turning off thoughts of things one doesn't want to think about. I also was convinced that POB would NEVER have written anything dealing with such private grief in any public way. It's only in movies and fiction that we have characters who can focus their lives (and our attention) on grieving "aloud" for extended periods of time. Of course, we all know that the Canon isn't "fiction"! In "real life, people just have to go on with life and let time work.
Rowen
Brilliant, maam, damn brilliant. Every word true and to the point and Pobian. I am dazzled. Please give up all else and write more. More fill-ins that give us the scenes that POB left out.
Charlezzzzz, issuing a whole full day of glorious temporary Eternal Fame, and yearning to find out what Sophie did and thought after her conversation with Diana and Clarissa about you-know-what. Hoo!
At 12:02 AM 6/19/2003 -0400, Charles Munoz wrote:
Think of the scene in THD when the British army officer tells the Gunroom about Waterloo
I'm trying to, but can't, because it ain't there. But it shoulda been.
I think that the last chapter of THD reads like a term paper due on a Friday, and completed very late Thursday night. I think that once again POB was rushed by a publishing deadline and just threw his ideas down on paper in the briefest manner.
I haven't seen his notes for THD, but I can imagine that his planning outline looked something like this:
*********
return to Gib. - bonfires - dinner with B & K - news of battle - JA & Isobel
flirt, Lord B displeased - 'Aubrey, I have just been thinking that now you have
nothing to do with the Navy, you might be well advised to slip your moorings
and sail off'
Disposition of prize money - sailors drunk - elegant woman waving, waving,
waving
********
The deadline is pressing, so POB scribbles down a few paragraphs that barely cover these points, with little elaboration.
But now comes the next book, BATM, and POB decides to go back and redo the last chapter of THD properly. So, inexplicably, the book opens with Surprise back at Gibraltar, and POB gets to rewrite what he had no time for previously. We now get the full dinner scene with Charlezzzz's mentioned account of Waterloo, and the budding affair between Jack and Isobel, now developed over several days. The sharing out ceremony, and the subsequent drunken riots ashore. POB also remembers that he needs to have Surprise sufficiently damaged in a collision so that a return to England is necessary (the original collision had also been in THD, but had been forgotten). And again the departure,with the elegant woman on the mole waving, waving, but this time identified.
And also the chance to have Jack reflect a bit on the loss of that admirable seaman, Bonden, whose death got lost in the rush to finish THD.
Don Seltzer
A new candidate for PO'B's shortest sentence: "On." (THD, p. 184, Norton hc).
The sentence after is a more usual POBian length: "Up and up, ths time to the very top of the ridge, where the forest began, a fine open forest, and although the trees were somewhat wind-stunted on the brow itself, the road had not descended five minutes before it was winding through noble oaks, with beeches here and there, and chestnuts and sometimes an incongruous yew."
Jack Aubrey comments on the above: 'This is the most 'On' topic posting of the year! Oh, ha, ha, ha!'
John Finneran
As both the first and last letter in 'On.' are preceded by the first and second letter in 'Ah?'
I deem that 'Ah?' remains in the lead!
And don't you please tell me that a question mark is longer than a mere fullstop!
Ah?
page 197 M&C
In a message dated 7/12/2003 5:18:29 PM Central Daylight Time, John.Finneran@PILEOFSHIRTS.COM writes:
sometimes an incongruous yew."
Why are yew so incongruous? As opposed to, say, me?
Struggling to understand our author,
Mary S
35° 58' 11" N
86° 48' 57" W
Jack to Christy-Palliere in Post Captain (p. 95, Norton pb):
'Ha, ha, ha,' he laughed, his big voice full of intense amusement, 'to think of poor good old Stephen being laid by the heels for a spy! Oh, ha, ha, ha!'
Christy-Palliere to Jack in The Hundred Days (p. 108, Norton hc):
'Not a word,' cried Christy-Palliere, laughing at so wild a notion. 'Richard speak English? Oh dear me no. Wonderfully fluent in Latin, but English ... oh, ha, ha, ha!'
John Finneran
I wonder about this Richard, secretary to Christy-Palliere, who was writing a comparative study of the different nations' naval economies, disciplines, ceremonies and the like. Was he a real person?
Actually, THD seems to have quite a few interesting secondary characters who might just be real historical figures, or perhaps modern acquaintances of POB.
Mr. Dee
James Wright, the engineer who repairs the narwhal tusk
John Daniel, whose childhood reading habits are curiously similar to POB's (wonder if POB was as interested in mathematics?)
'In an early bestiary,' said Stephen after a long pause, 'an antiquarian of my acquaintance once showed me a picture of an amphisbaena, a serpent with a head at each end. ' A sly reference to POB's own Bestiary, written at a young age?
Don Seltzer
This sounds like a case for (drumroll please)
. . .
Dr. Gary Brown!
Followed by a damp squib, I'm afraid. All I have to say about these chaps in in PASC already - and there's precious little. The way POB makes the references to Dee, Richard, Wright and even Daniel (though less so with the latter) is typical of how POB earlier make reference to real, historical characters, and I fully expected to be able to track them down either under their own names or similar (or to be able to track down differently named people who produced the works with which the POB characters are associated). No luck at all I'm afraid. We've here previously discussed that Wright is very like some other industrialists and inventors of the time - but isn't identical to any one of them. Dee, whose reference is so very precise, remains a mystery to me (the only John Dee of note was a mathematician of an earlier age; nothing of great significane on Persia was published by anyone else in the year POB specifies); Richard is really too vague to have much hope of being found, (no Richard that I can find ever published or researched anything like his supposed oeuvre in POB).
But, but, but - those references are *so* very vivid and precise. Maybe they'll turn up yet.
Gary
in Dallas
On Sunday, July 13, 2003, at 12:57 PM, Anthony Gary Brown wrote:
the only John Dee of note was a mathematician of an earlier age
Dee? Doctor Dee? The official astrologer to Queen Elizabeth? The man who put a hex on the Spanish Armada? And it worked, didn't it just?
Dee? The man who worked up a plan for the RN? Far more than a mathematician, he, Dee.
If only he had been born later, in time to ship with Jack and Maturin. Hark! You can hear them in your imagination, playing away far into the night. A violin, a cello, and a fiddle Dee Dee.
Charlezzzzz, and just ask any Rosicrucian about Dee
Charles Munoz wrote:
Dee? The man who worked up a plan for the RN? Far more than a mathematician, he, Dee.
Yes, a prodigious fine polymath: but no Persian, I collect.
Gary
in Dallas
MORE
About Dr. John Dee
Outline:
1. Visionary of the British Empire; coined the word Brittannia and developed a plan for the British Navy.
2. The first to apply Euclidean geometry to navigation; built the instruments to apply Euclid; trained the first great navigators; developed the maps; charted the Northeast and Northwest Passages.
3. An angel conjuror with his sidekick Kelley; the angels told him what Britain would have in their eventual empire; used an obsidian show stone which came from the Aztecs/Mayans and rests in the British Museum along with his conjuring table which contains the Enchain Alphabet he used as angel language.
4. Philosopher to Queen Elizabeth; did her horoscope; determined her coronation date astrologically; she came to visit him on her horse.
5. Founder of the Rosicrucian Order, the protestant response to the Jesuits.
6. An alchemist; hermeticist, cabalist, adept in esoteric and occcult lore.
7. Translator of Euclid and wrote the famous Mathematical Preface, mapping mathematical studies for the future, a kind of system of the sciences based on math.
8. Put a hex on the Spanish Armada which is why there was bad weather and England won.
9. Commissioned by Elizabeth to establish the legal foundation for colonizing North America; went back to Madoc, a Welsh Prince who took a group over to New England in the middle ages and established the first colony, and intermarried with the Indians, but with little or no historical trace but for the legend.
10. Instrumental in theatre arts and architecture.
11. Shakespeare depicted him as Prospero, and King Lear.
12. Sold the Voynich Manuscript, the most mysterious, a cipher as yet to be deciphered--"the Everest of cipher studies"--to the Holy Roman Emperor--Rudolph II--for a lot of gold. Resides at Yale in the Beineke Library. Probably an herbal and an almanac by Anthony Askham.
13. Had the greatest library in England over 4,000 books.
14. Biography by Peter French and everything by Francis Yates, his greatest advocate: cf. especially THE ROSICRUCIAN ENLIGHTENMENT.
Maybe, growing older, he couldn't be bothered with the research anymore. So he made up his own 'historical' characters?
Is this plausable, or would HD have required a lot of research anyway (on all those Muslim states for example)?
Sam.
In the past, we have discussed our favorite first chapters of the Canon. I now suggest THD is one of the worst opening chapters.
Not because of the opening scene, with the Greek chorus of the RN lieutenants doing the obligatory recap of past books, or even the way that a shocking event is casually introduced. I think that part was done fairly well. But everything that follows in chapter 1 was well below POB's usual standards.
As the title suggests, POB has constrained his story to fit within the historical events of Napoleon's escape from Elba in early March 1815 and his ultimate defeat at Waterloo on June 18. We have joked before about POB's expansion and contraction of time in the never ending year of 1813, but those books had only the loosest connections to any real events. But with THD, POB for the first time attempted to write a book tightly bound to an historical timeline, and he pretty much failed before he even began. He inexplicably has news and ships traveling at 21st century speeds.
Consider the time elapsed before the opening scene in which Commodore Aubrey's squadron arrives at Gibraltar. Starting with Napoleon's landing in France on March 1, we must allow for the news to travel to Admiral Keith in Gibraltar (1 week?), and then several more days to reach Madeira. We then have Sophie, Diana, and the children taking passage back to England, a 2 week voyage under good conditions with another 2 days or more to reach Woolcombe. We must then figure in time for the accident, a message to be sent to a fast packet just about to leave for Madeira, Stephen's journey back to England to arrange affairs, and his subsequent return to Madeira. Even assuming that a very fast ship is ready to leave on a moments notice and that the wind is always favorable, it is hard to figure on less than 12 weeks elapsed out of the 3+ months available. And even then, we have to also wait for an overland courier (more nonsense) to leave Gibraltar with a message for the Ringle laid up in Shelmerston, and await for Reade and crew to arrive before any action can begin.
I don't expect that most readers will be as upset with the chronology as I am. It is no secret that I am more than a little interested in proper time lines. But did anyone really buy into the overall premise of the plot as introduced in the opening chapter, that within a few weeks of Napoleon's escape, a vast Muslim conspiracy/plan was negotiated involving Balkan mercenaries, the court of the Dey of Algiers, a gold-hoarding Sheik in some remote region of Morocco, and a monstrous sum of money?
Throughout most of the Canon, POB prided himself on using little known but well-researched minor naval actions, even boasting of the 'ring of authenticity' it lent to his stories. Unlike other authors, notably Alexander Kent, he rarely created situations in which the fate of England and the outcome of the war seemed to depend upon the actions of his heroes. But in THD, POB has tossed that philosophy aside. He has poorly researched the state of the Royal and French navies at that period, he has wholly created some implausible naval actions, and he has made the fate of Britain dependent upon the success of the mission.
Don Seltzer
Don Seltzer wrote:
he has made the fate of Britain dependent upon the success of the mission.
Well! It's a good thing he had Russell Cr . . . I mean Jack Aubrey to make it all come out right : }
Excellent points, sir. I, for one, also tend to get disturbed by POB's "flexible" timeline. It throws a whole lot of things out of whack, including aspects of characters' relationships. This is not the only book in the series which caused me some problems. I've read it twice, and I'll read it again when I reach that point in my current re-read (I'm finishing *The Nutmeg of Consolation*), but mostly because it's there.
Currently I'm contemplating the astonishing degree to which last three books I've read in the canon have particularly shown up the differences between Jack and Stephen, and not generally to Stephen's advantage. But more of that later.
Marian
In a message dated 7/21/03 1:16:35 PM Eastern Daylight Time, dseltzer@DRAPER.COM writes:
But did anyone really buy into the overall premise of the plot as introduced in the opening chapter, that within a few weeks of Napoleon's escape, a vast Muslim conspiracy/plan was negotiated involving Balkan mercenaries, the court of the Dey of Algiers, a gold-hoarding Sheik in some remote region of Morocco, and a monstrous sum of money?
I do agree that this is far from the finest moment of the Canon, one of the few cases where concerns of the 20th Century so obviously intruded into the books. (There was another case when the Falklands War gave rise to some pointed comments about Argentine leaders of the early 19th Century, but there the effect was humous more than anything else).
Bruce Trinque
41°37'52"N 72°22'29"W
On Mon, 21 Jul 2003 19:48:21 EDT, Batrinque@AOL.COM wrote:
...but there the effect was humous more than anything else).
Well, you know, for all his sophisticationg sometimes O'Brian could be an earthy fellow.
Marian
Now that I have started my rant, I will nominate THD for Worst Final Chapter in the canon. Almost everything about the chase scene is implausible, and the whole chapter seems dashed out in a rush to meet a publisher's deadline.
Begin with Jack's deployment of his vessels to trap the galley. He asks the carpenter which is the fastest, most weatherly boat. The carpenter? He might comment on the state of repair of the boats, but he would hardly be expert about their relative sailing qualities. More astonishingly, the carpenter suggests John Daniel to command the cutter. This is clearly a role for one of the ship's three lieutenants, yet Jack goes along with the selection of a mere master's mate who has only been with the ship a matter of weeks, and has not yet recovered from a serious collarbone fracture.
Next comes the thoroughly unsatisfactory, brief account of Bonden's death, and the even less adequate passing mention of Jack's reaction:
'He was, of course, very thoroughly acquainted with sudden death, but this time he felt the loss of Bonden, an admirable sailor, and of young Hallam, the son of an old shipmate, very deeply indeed.'
Then we are treated to an unlikely chase between three vessels as different as can be imagined; a lateen rigged xebec galley, a ship rigged frigate, and a topsail schooner. And yet these three vessels with vastly different sailing characteristics sail day after day after day, all the while remaining in sight of each other.
And now, hundreds of miles westward into the Atlantic, we come across a strange island. Jack is baffled, but fortunately he has Master Navigator Maturin at his side:
'[Jack] I do not know that island. But then we are right off any known tract of the sea.'
'I believe I have seen it on an old Catalan map in Barcelona,' said Stephen. 'And as I recall its name is Cranc, a crab.'
But more astonishing events are ahead, upon their return to Gibraltar. Somehow the news of the chase and capture has preceded them, reaching all the way to Algiers and back, with the latest Dey of the Week claiming the prize.
But no problem, because another day means another Dey, this one having prior notice of Napoleon's defeat, 'since the news of the French defeat reached Algiers earlier than Spain' (how is this possible?).
These final few pages, with Isobel and Jack flirting, the jealousy of Lord Barmouth, the sharing out of the prize money, and the departure to Chile are simply thrown down on paper in the sketchiest manner. I think that POB was sufficiently embarassed by this lackluster effort that he completely rewrote this section in his next book, down to the waving, waving, waving scene.
End of rant.
Don Seltzer
I had a strong feeling while reading the chase scenes that there was an intended effect of somehow removing the action from the everyday world to somewhere between dream and myth, what with the mysterious island in the West. I wonder if there are any parallels to be found in ancient Irish tales ...
Bruce Trinque
41°37'52"N 72°22'29"W
On Monday, July 21, 2003, at 09:13 PM, Don Seltzer wrote:
End of rant.
And a remarkable effective rant it was. Oh dear. I have red-flagged all the postings relating to these books, in order to --what?-- in order to read through them again.
My current theory is that POB neglected to ell us that represent Maturin's laudanum-induced *dream* of the events, in wch he conflates death and riches and time and space and hatred of Napoleon and love of Diana, all goombled up in Maturin's tragic-heroic fantasy.
It never happened. It was a bad dream. And in volume 21 Maturin was to awaken, find that all is well, and that the real true ending is still to come.
Charlezzzzz, because surely Christine is Maturin's dream-woman, and lions and leopards are symbols of female feline love and destructiveness as experienced by Dr M and transposed into his long dream
On Monday, July 21, 2003, at 09:13 PM, Don Seltzer wrote:
I think that POB was sufficiently embarassed by this lackluster effort that he completely rewrote this section in his next book, down to the waving, waving, waving scene.
Is not perhaps this whole ending the supreme example of the POB duple duple technique? Perhaps, as a hint to us, he triple-upped on the "waving"?
Charlezzzzz, theorizing as fast as poss poss poss
In a message dated 7/22/03 4:15:39 AM Pacific Daylight Time, Charlezzzzz@COMCAST.NET writes:
It never happened. It was a bad dream. And in volume 21 Maturin was to awaken, find that all is well, and that the real true ending is still to come.
whatever you say.
Marion
In a message dated 7/21/2003 8:48:53 PM Central Daylight Time, Batrinque@AOL.COM writes:
the mysterious island in the West. I > wonder if there are any parallels to be found in ancient Irish tales ...
Do ye be meanin' St. Brendan's Isle, then?
leering like a mole with the palsy [MC 309]
Mary S
35° 58' 11" N
86° 48' 57" W
Do ye be meanin' St. Brendan's Isle, then?
'Tis a remarkable dear hint that Stolzi gives us. Note this statement, which came through Google:
"St. Brendan and 17 other monks set out on a westward voyage in a curragh, a wood-framed boat covered in sewn ox-hides. The monks sailed about the North Atlantic for seven years, according to details set down in the Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis in the tenth century.
Eventually, they reached "the Land of Promise of the Saints," which they explored before returning home with fruit and precious stones found there. Had Brendan reached Newfoundland, using the islands of the North Atlantic as stepping-stones? "
So...
Here is POB giving us another one of his hints. Did Jack really chase the gold all the way to Newfoundland? If so, he is conflated with St. Brendan. (A point wch Charlezzzzz made in his very first posting to the Gunroom many years ago.)
And also if so, a magical "seven years" can easily pass during the time of The Hundred Days, putting to rest many of the chronological difficulties pointed out by certain hyperprecise Lissuns in recent days. There is ample time, plenty of time, for all the events between X and Y (absit spoilers) to happen.
And, if time be a variable, then all three ships can travel the same distance together despite their different rigs.
Is proof needed? Maturin thinks the "island" is Crab Island. Or Crac. Now, who can tell us: are there crabs lurking in the waters off Newfoundland? (If not crabs, then surely lobsters will suffice.) In that case, there need be no more worry about POB's infallability, though sometimes it be densely wrapped up in symbol and myth.
Charlezzzzz, and if the "North Atlantic" reference shd be a poser, consider that neither St Brendan nor Dr Maturin was likely to be certain wch ocean is wch -- they both look amazing alike.
I now suggest THD is one of the worst opening chapters.
The second chapter is a little weak too. I didn't care for the revelation that women had served on Jack's commands all along, while Stephen had somehow failed to notice them -- which doesn't say much for his competence as an intelligence agent or an anatomist. I'm sure some interesting stories could have been told regarding women sailors, but none of them are told here, and their retroactive introduction doesn't serve any purpose that I can see.
Katherine
And now, hundreds of miles westward into the Atlantic, we > come across a strange island. Jack is baffled, but > fortunately he has Master Navigator Maturin at his side:
But of course Stephen has become a master navigator - he has acquired another vessel, and evidently intends to sail it himself.
When the Surprise returns to Gibraltar, Admiral Lord Barmouth, preparatory to demoting Jack from his position as Commodore, asks: "What is that schooner you have in company?"
"She belongs to my surgeon, sir. and she acts as our tender."
Now why on earth would Jack say that? There is some ambiguity about the ownership of the Surprise from time to time, but the Ringle? And after Jack has just encountered Heneage Dundas, in case his memory needed refreshing? Or did I miss a game of backgammon somewhere along the way, or a busted flush, perhaps?
Katherine
Busted Flush??? Yahoo - I haven't thought of Travis McGee in years!! Wonder if he and Meyer are still working their magic down in Fort Lauderdamndale.
Buck
At 06:40 PM 7/28/2003 -0400, Katherine Tharp wrote:
The second chapter is a little weak too. I didn't care for the revelation that women had served on Jack's commands all along, while Stephen had somehow failed to notice them
I think that we speculated at the time that POB had recently read Suzanne Stark's 'Female Tars' or one of Joan Druet's books, and felt the need to emphasize the quite common presence of women aboard RN ships. But it is strange as you suggest, since wives of warrant officers had often been aboard Jack's ships in the past.
Don Seltzer
Re: bad endings: the Ringle
Jack would have known the propensity of the Admiralty to ignore verbal bargains [unless they suited] - he would have known the Admiralty would have claimed the Ringle as Crown property if they could, pretending a gift to Jack was made purely in his capacity as a representative of the Crown... and if you don't believe this, read the biography of Cochrane: Britannia's Sea Wolf by Donald Thomas; after which you will know that nothing POB might have imagined could have matched the truth!
By claiming the Ringle belonged to Stephen, Jack was making sure it was not snatched. There are many instances of such subtlety in the novels. The which are often unclear on first reading... but a marinading in the canon causes them to surface.
One of the many things I love about O'Brian is the freshness of his writing. He doesn't repeat the imagery and mental associations of other authors, but sees things with his own eyes and writes about them so vividly that the reader is drawn into his vision.
This same trait carries over into his readers. Huzzah times three to Sara, for writing new insights and calling on new resources to describe the same books this list has been discussing for years, in fresh and vibrant style.
HUNDRED DAYS SPOILER BELOW:
*
*
(Post Captain spoiler too)
*
*
*
In PC, Maturin challenges Jack to a duel when Jack calls him a bastard and a liar. The situation fills Maturin with anguish.
Now, in Hundred Days, Maturin is called a bastard and a liar again. This time he seems to welcome the idea of fighting. Indeed, he seems to have been looking for a fight.
Herešs the situation. The dog Naseby has eaten the hand of glory. Maturin, in Hobden's (the dog's master's) presence says: 'I must either cut him and recover my hand or give him a very strong emetic: and if the emetic does not work, then it must be the knife.'
The scene continuesS
'It was your own silly fault for leaving it about,' cried Hobden. 'You shall not touch my dog, you pragmatical bastard.'
'Will you stand by those words, sir?' asked Stephen after a short pause, his head cocked to one side.
'Until my dying day,' said Hobden, rather too loud. Stephen left the room, smiling.
[Smiling? Why smiling? He didnšt smile when Jack had called him bastard and liar. So why smiling? What is POB telling us?]
He found Somers, the second lieutenant, standing on the forecastle (snip) 'I have had a disagreement with Captain Hobden, who used, and stood by, a very blackguardly insult, made in public - in the galley itself, for God's sake. May I beg you to be my second?'
'Of course you may, my dear Maturin. How very much I regret it. I shall wait upon him at once.'
'Come in,' cried Jack Aubrey, looking up from his desk.
'I beg pardon for interrupting you, sir,' said Harding, the frigate's first lieutenant, (snip)
'Well, sir,' Harding went on, obviously disliking the role of informer, 'Dr Maturin has challenged Hobden, Hobden's dog having eaten a preserved hand; and Hobden, having been told that the hand must be recovered by knife or purge, gave Maturin the lie. (snip)
Thank you for telling me all this, Harding: it was very proper in you. Now pray be so good as to tell Hobden that I wish to see him at once. (snip)
'Captain Hobden,' said Jack in a tone of the deepest displeasure, 'I understand that your dog ate Dr Maturin's preserved hand, and that when he checked you with the fact you gave him the lie or something worse. You must either withdraw the insult and let him retrieve the hand as best he may, or you must leave this ship at Malta. I cannot give you more than five minutes to reflect, dogs' powers of digestion being what they are. But while you are reflecting, remember this: in the heat of the moment any man may blurt out a blackguardly expression: yet after a while any man worth a groat knows he must unsay it.˛
[How odd! Jack in PC did exactly the same, and though he later withdrew the ŗbastard˛ he did not unsay the ŗlie.˛ (We have discussed this non-duel at some length.) We can wonder whatšs going on in Jackšs mind as he lays down the law to Hobden POB never tells us.]
[But, more important, POB never tells us why Maturin was so pragmatical as to tell Hobden that he intends to use the knife on Naseby. For all love, why does he say this? Later on, when Hobden apologizes to Maturin the scene goes:]
Captain Hobden came stooping under the lintel. 'I beg pardon for interrupting you, Doctor Maturin. I beg your pardon. Here is my apology' - handing his letter - 'and here is my dog.'
'You are very good, sir,' cried Stephen, starting up and shaking his hand. 'Do not fear for Naseby: these are very simple operations, and I would not hurt him for the world.'
[You canšt say fairer than that. Wch brings me back to Maturinšs earlier speech about using the knife. Was he deliberately trying to draw out Hobden? Was he, perhaps, considering suicide by marine? Remember, he is still, under the surface of his mind, suffering the deepest grief for Diana.]
[So here we have a scene where both Jack and Stephen appear to have hidden motives, and POB stays on the surface. What are we to make of this?]
Charlezzzzz
P.S. This was not the first time a pragmatical bastard was mentioned in the book:
Dr Maturin, holding his visiting-card in his hand, was about to knock at the door of Mr Wright's house when it flew open from within and an angry voice cried, 'What do you want with me? Eh? What do you want with me?'
'Mr Wright?' asked Stephen, with a hint of smiling recognition. 'My name is Maturin.'
'It might just as well be Beelzebub,' said Mr Wright. 'Not a brass farthing will you fork out of me before the end of the month, as I told that pragmatical bastard, your chief.' [Maturin, in Desolation Island, uses the work "firk" in a similar sense.]
Subject: Pragmatical Bastard (Hundred Days spoiler)
To add a note to Charlezzzzz's as ever masterly textual glosses on the subject of the duels and non-duels in PC and THD:
- Yes I do think Maturin's mind is still disordered with grief; and he is partly indulging, if unwittingly, in what we might call "displacement activity". [Is there any evidence he dislikes Hobden by the way?]. He is perhaps doubly angry over the loss of the hand, as Hobden doen't seem to be taking his loss seriously, which he takes as adding insult to injury...
- I am sorry not to have reported yet on the book "Rebels and Informers: Stirrings of Irish Independence" by Oliver Knox, as I have not had time to get more than half way; but even in the introduction, giving background to the story, Knox goes to pains to make it clear that the Irish were then [ahem, no comments on now] a very touchy race, very quick to see a slight, and very much given to DUELLING at the slightest hint of an offence. I think POB used this characteristic to emphasise Maturin's Celtic character [some Scots btw are similarly likely to pick a fight!].
- I think Jack's response differers from that in PC mainly because he is older and wiser, and a better and more compassionate judge of men [as well he should be after nearly 10 yrs in command]; but also because he realises that SM is bottling up his grief which is leading him to act unpredictably and rashly.
- Yes I do think Maturin's mind is still disordered with grief; and he is partly indulging, if unwittingly, in what we might call "displacement activity".
I agree - his minute dissection of the hand was one of the few activities in which he had been able to become fully involved, so it had a significance to him which made his reaction disproportionate to the offense.
I don't think Stephen was suicidal. And I don't think that at this stage of his life, he was unduly disturbed by being called a bastard, or believed that Hobden was aware of his ancestry. This situation doesn't carry anything like the emotional charge of his tangled relationships with Jack and Diana in PC. His behavior here seems more petulant than anguished.
Somehow Stephen's demeanor here reminds me of his reaction to the midshipmen who ate his madder-infused rats. Knowing that Jack will back him up, he exacts his revenge on the perpetrators by making them uncomfortable for a time, but not doing them any real harm.
I don't know. It's a strange little scene.
Katherine
In a message dated 9/9/03 9:33:13 AM, s.waterson@UKONLINE.CO.UK writes:
Knox goes to pains to make it clear that the Irish were then [ahem, no comments on now] a very touchy race, very quick to see a slight, and very much given to DUELLING at the slightest hint of an offence. I think POB used this characteristic to emphasise Maturin's Celtic character [some Scots btw are similarly likely to pick a fight!].
As are some of every nationality. :-)
I believe there is a discussion between Stephen and Dillon (when Dillon is thinking that Jack is "shy") that emphasises this very point mentioned above. Dillon says something like, "the English have been known not to go out (duel) for an entire year, whereas when he was in Dublin he was involved every week.) (Apologies - this is a very poor paraphrase, but I don't have time just now to hunt it up.)
Rowen
- Yes I do think Maturin's mind is still disordered with grief; and he is partly indulging, if unwittingly, in what we might call "displacement activity".
By Katherine T 9/9/03:
. . .his minute dissection of the hand was one of the few activities in which he had been able to become fully involved, so it had a significance to him which made his reaction disproportionate to the offense.
I don't think Stephen was suicidal. . . . This situation doesn't carry anything like the emotional charge of his tangled relationships with Jack and Diana in PC. His behavior here seems more petulant than anguished.
By Katherine T a little later in the day:
Maybe I was a little off there. In SM, in Paris with Diana before presenting his paper to the Institut, Stephen performed three dissections of the calcified palmar aponeurosis with Dupuytren. Perhaps some old memories had been painfully stirred up, with or without his conscious knowledge.
Katherine
One of the basic world myths is the Hero's visit to the underworld. POB uses it, well-hidden, in some of his short stories. I want to argue that there's a curtailed version of it in The Hundred Days.
But first, a warning. If you haven't read the book yet, you'll be wise to quit reading this message now. Big spoilers ahead.
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Did POB really adapt parts of both the Odyssey and the Aenead for this section?
That's what this posting tries to show. The story of the "Hero's visit to the underworld" is one of the major world myths: it's told in many different ways, depending on the writer's purpose. (1) In the Odyssey, Homer has Odysseus visit the underworld of Hades. Our closest parallel is Hell, but though there is some torment in Hades, it is mainly a world of vast boredom. (2) More than a thousand years later, Virgil, writing about Aeneas, has his hero make a similar visit. Both Odysseus and Aeneas lose one sailor en route. (3) Two thousand years after Virgil, POB plays with themes from both Homer and Virgil. He has Jack lose two sailors.
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We can start with the death of two sailors:
One death is in Virgil. As part of an arrangement among the gods, Nuptune requires that one sailor must die if Aeneas is to succeed in his journey. Aeneas' fine sailor, his bosun Palinurus, steering through the night, is forced by the god of sleep (Somnus) to fall asleep and goes overboard, taking the steering oar with him. Here's a bit of the Aenead translated by John Dryden: Jack wd have known this version.
"Then wakeful Palinurus rose, to spy
The face of heav'n, and the nocturnal sky;
And listen'd ev'ry breath of air to try;
Observes the stars, and notes their sliding course,
The Pleiads, Hyads, and their wat'ry force;
And both the Bears is careful to behold,
And bright Orion, arm'd with burnish'd gold.
[Note that POB, as Jack sets out to chase the galley, describes a
skyful of stars, and includes 'Orion in his glory...and both bears']
Then, when he saw no threat'ning tempest nigh,
But a sure promise of a settled sky,
He gave the sign to weigh; we break our sleep,
Forsake the pleasing shore, and plow the deep."
Palinurus doesn't die like Bonden; he goes overboard. But he dies, and dies unexpectedly. The god of sleep forces him to fall asleep despite his refusal to be spelled at the tiller.
"The god was wroth, and at his temples threw
A branch in Lethe dipp'd, and drunk with Stygian dew:
The pilot, vanquish'd by the pow'r divine,
Soon clos'd his swimming eyes, and lay supine.
Scarce were his limbs extended at their length,
The god, insulting with superior strength,
Fell heavy on him, plung'd him in the sea,
And, with the stern, the rudder tore away.
Headlong he fell, and, struggling in the main,
Cried out for helping hands, but cried in vain."
It's evident (at least to me) that in the mythic world of these trips to the underworld -- to the land of the dead -- the crew member's death can stand in for his captain's, permitting the captain to make his visit yet still come back to the surface alive.
Virgil has killed off Palinurus, a fine sailor; Homer kills off Elpenor, the youngest sailor. POB kills both Bonden and Hallam, the young midshipman.
In Alexander Pope's translation of the Odyssey:
"A youth there was, Elpenor was he named,
Not much for sense, nor much for courage famed:
The youngest of our band..."
Now lets look at Bonden's death, wch POB seems to treat almost as a throw-away scene. In his words:
"A long shot: but the combination of good aiming, excellent bore and powder, and the toss of the sea caused the twenty-four pound ball to strike the second gun of the Surprise's starboard, killing Bonden, its captain, and young Hallam, the midshipman of the division."
That's it. One of the most unsentimental treatments of death you can find in any novel. It's not an accidental treatment, either. It's a paragraph written with great skill and a feeling for what's proper in mythic treatment. Consider his use of the words "good" and "excellent " -- neither is incorrect but each is horribly out of place considering the message in the paragraph: they send a shiver through the alert reader.
Both Bonden and young Hallam are killed by the shot. Why does POB kill off the midshipman? Because if Bonden is Palinurus, then Hallam is Elpenor. Poor Hallam's death is simply thrown in so that POB can make up his own version of the myth.
Where did Hallam get his name? Consider this: the most famous elegy of the nineteenth century is Alfred Tennyson's book-length In Memoriam , written about his friend Arthur Hallam. When POB is in the referent mode, there is little that is accidental about what he chooses to make happen.
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Almost everyone, when the Gunroom discussed The Hundred Days as a group reading, noted how little grief Jack expressed outwardly. This is another semi-parallel with the two epics: neither Palinurus nor Elpenor had been properly buried -- and proper burial was highly important to their spirits. They cd not rest in Hades without it. In each epic, their spirits complained when Odysseus or Aeneas unexpectedly found them in Hades; and in each they were tardily given the appropriate rites...it wd have been possible for a truly caring captain to have taken the time to find the bodies and bury them. But both Odysseus and Aeneas were god-driven men; Jack had a different quest -- to prevent the gold from reaching Napoleon.
You can see that Virgil changed Homer when he wanted to: Palinurus is a far different character than Elpenor. POB, in turn, changed matters again by killing one of each. We don't see that either of them was ever buried -- in that hot chase in the hot weather, they were almost certainly put into the sea -- the right sailor and the insignificant mid.
So far you may feel that I am stretching matters. The parallels are far from exact. I consider them strong hints, though, wch show how POB's creative mind was working.
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What set me off on this topic was Don Seltzer's posting that, among other matters, pointed out how odd it was that Jack, the master mariner, knew nothing of the island for wch the galley was headed. And even odder that Maturin was able to give it a name.
"... after a silence [Jack says,] 'I do not know that island. But then we are right off any known tract of the sea.'
'I believe I have seen it on an old Catalan map in Barcelona,' said Stephen. 'And as I recall its name is Cranc, a crab.'"
It is not quite relevant, but we shd remember that Maturin is able, lying in fever, is able to repeat the Aeneid in its entirety. "Arma virumque cano" is the way it begins, wch might be translated: "My story is of men and weapons" -- not a bad start for the canon, by the way.
Let's look at some description of Island Cranc and of its approaches, since that appears to be its name.
Stephen and Jacob comment on the trip in terms that seem appropriate for a journey to Hades, wch POB makes into a desolate island rather than placing it in the underworld.
'This [trip] might go on for ever,' [Stephen] observed before dinner, settling down on his coil of rope.
'To be sure, these two long wakes and the infinite quantity of sea have something of the look of eternity,' said Jacob.
'Or of dream," [says Stephen.]
Then, a few paragraphs later, "Belcher looked and considered, and in time he replied that 'there was something not wholly Christian about this here weather.'" Of course, they were enroute to the classical land of the dead, and it wasn't in the least Christian.
I shd mention at this point that I imagine POB was having great creative fun in hiding these clues in his narrative. He also found his plotting problems eased, since he had a template some thousands of years old to follow.
"And so it went, burning day after burning day; and now even the moonlit night sky seemed to radiate heat"
The galley, trapped, reaches Cranc. Stephen and Jack get ashore and Stephen comments on the island's environment in terms that fit a land of the dead: 'I found something more interesting still,' said Stephen. 'A total absence of life. Well into June and not a nestling petrel even. No birds, no bird-lice, no feather mites. And I tell you what it is, brother: there is an uneasy smell in that rock, those fissures - pray thrust your nose into this one. I am no chemist, God forbid, but I very much suspect the presence of a poisonous emanation. That would account for the near-absence of vegetation, even in June.'
Let us now consider izards; a strange word wch seldom appears in the canon or anywhere else.
'In the Pyrenees I have pursued the izard, God forgive me, who dwells in the highest peaks,' said Stephen, standing with his hands behind his back, watching McLeod's ascent, 'but never have I seen such climbing. He might almost be a gecko.' Maturin's interpolated "God forgive me" has a deeper meaning than appears at first.
Because why? Because let me quote from a posting wch I wrote on POB's short story, "A Passage of the Frontier." It relates to the "izard."
The izards, or chamois. [The hero's] first indication of them is the prints of "cloven hoofs." And later he smells them--described the way some writers have described the smell of the devil. And there, in that smell, he sleeps. It's the smell of dung. This makes him, perhaps, brother to the dung beetle (and note that the dung beetle symbolized immortality to those strange-thinking ancient Egyptians)...
Enough!
Any lissun who is not yet convinced might want to read further. The strange events continue sub rosa. For instance, when the harrowing of hell is completed, the mysterious Island Crank suddenly seems to have been a rather ordinary place all along, with a "normal" name.
For the moment however [Jack] and Stephen were breakfasting in comfort, gazing with some complacency at the island Cranc. 'Jacob tells me,' said Stephen, 'that in Moorish Arabic the place is now called Fortnight Island. It had been a moderately prosperous fishing and corsair port - dates, carobs, pearl oysters, coral - hence the mole and the ruins - until the time of, I think, Mulei Hassan; but then a new eruption destroyed the few springs, broke the aqueducts and cisterns and slowly liberated that noxious vapour we observed. It seems that you can breathe it for fourteen days with nothing but headaches and gastric pains; but on the fifteenth you die.'
Charlezzzzz, who has writ enough
Charlezzzzz, who has writ enough
But don't stop there Charlezzzz. What about the final scene to the story,
"they seized Murad Reis, manhandled him along to the end of the mole nearest the cliff, tied his hands, forced him to kneel and called up, 'Our sins on his head. Our sins on his head.' With a single blow one of the corsairs cut Murad's head clean off, held it up to the watchers on the cliff and cried, 'Our sins on his head. Give us water and we shall be your slaves for ever - you shall have the galley: you shall have the gold.'"
Don Seltzer
On Monday, October 27, 2003, at 03:38 PM, Don Seltzer wrote:
But don't stop there Charlezzzz. What about the final scene to the story,
It doen't have any classical echo -- not for me, anyhow. POB has left the basic myth, just as Virgil left Homer right after the underworld scene. But it's a hellish scene. And remember, Murad has left his wife and children behind as surety for his success.
Charlezzzzz, still wondering how much gold there was, and what its value might have been. Lots: that's pozz.
Oh! Oh! Oh!
POST OF THE DAY!!!
And THD starts out like a Greek tragedy, too, with the chorus in the wings.
I am totally convinced! Speaking of devilish smells and noxious vapors, are not such emanations normally associated with the entry to the underworld, or with the River Acheron, or both?
Aeneid 6. 238-241: "tuta lacu nigro nemorumque tenebris
quam super haud ullae poterant impune volantes
tendere iter pennis: talis sese halitus atris
faucibus effundens super ad convexa ferebat."
"... defended by dark pool
and gloomy forest. Overhead, flying things
Could never safely take their way, such deathly
Exhalations rose from the black gorge
Into the dome of heaven...."
(Robert Fitzgerald translation)
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Steve Ross
30° 24' 32"N
91° 05' 28"W=
On Monday, October 27, 2003, at 03:47 PM, Steven K Ross wrote:
"... defended by dark pool
and gloomy forest. Overhead, flying things
Could never safely take their way, such deathly
Exhalations rose from the black gorge
Into the dome of heaven...."
Thanks for quoting Virgil here. Maturin several times refers to the deadly upas tree, and the ability to kill birds overhead is one of the upas tree's deadly baddities. It makes a fine hurley stick, though.
Charlezzzzz
At 03:49 PM 10/27/2003 -0500, Charles Munoz wrote:
still wondering how much gold there was, and what its value might have been. Lots: that's pozz.
Ŗ 120,220 in 1815
$24,000,000 today?
Don Seltzer
On Monday, October 27, 2003, at 04:30 PM, Don Seltzer estimated that the gold on Murad's galley wd have come to:
Ŗ 120,220 in 1815
$24,000,000 today?
Jack wd have got the captain's share, minus the admiral's take-out. Wd Jack then have received one-third minus one-ninth? Wch wd give him two ninths? Or .22 percent?
.22% of $24 million = $5.33 millions.
A ca'hoopit sum.
Charlezzzzz, happy for Jack
Alas, from 1808 onwards, the captain received but one-quarter with a third of that quarter going to the flag officer. So, 16.67% of $24 million = $4 million.
Bruce Trinque
41°37'52"N 72°22'29"W
Charlezzzzz, this is a very interesting theory, and has much merit I think.
The only other place in the canon you get this wierd nightmarish, mythic quality so strongly is in the opening passages of "The Wine Dark Sea" - the title an Homeric reference of course. Did POB choose this title?
On Monday, October 27, 2003, at 07:07 PM, Sara Waterson wrote:
Did POB choose this title?
Dunno for sure, Sara, but Patricia Chui, who worked at Norton and was charged with setting up the early Gunroom, told us "I would like to remind you, as I've mentioned before, that the title change of CLARISSA OAKES to TRUELOVE was made when Patrick O'Brian's books were not yet selling at anything near the volume they sell now, and when marketing nuances such as the title were much more important. Now, of course, Patrick O'Brian titles his novels pretty much whatever he pleases, and we just nod our collective heads."
I used "The Smoke of Her Burning" as my first title for my own novel. It's a quotation fm the book of Revelations, and was intended to hint at the myth underlying the story -- that the fire at the end, for instance, was the fire of the Last Judgement, and that each character judges himself by his actions in abandoning ship.
The only change made in the book by Random House's editor was to switch to the more commercial "Stowaway." Actually, he asked me to come up with several alternatives, and "Stowaway" was my favorite. Ah, well.
Charlezzzzz
Not hardly. Post of the year indeed. -RD, and didn't somebody just mention one of the rivers of Hades as the name of a ship?
Charlezzzzz, I raise my glass of sea-dark wine to you! Since the first time I read "The Hundred Days", I felt that whole sequence had an intentional "other world" air to it, but was unsure of whether it was done with a particular template in mind or if a general atmosphere alone had been in mind when POB wrote it. I think you indeed have found the underlying pattern. I've printed out your posting to stick in my copy of THD for future reference.
I confess that I am not as familiar with "The Aeneid" as I should be -- and far less familiar with Virgil than Homer -- yet it is Virgil's work that sparked my long interest in Troy and "The Iliad". Back when I was 10 or so, my parents bought me a set of books -- not an encyclopedia exactly, or at least not one of the traditional sort with alphabetized entries on every subject under the sun, but 12 or 15 volumes, each devoted to some area of learning. And one was a collection of stories, poems, and excerpts from literary classics. And the piece that most enthralled me was a prose translation of that section of the "Aeneid" describing the fall of Troy. In my mind I can yet see the accompanying illustrations of tall walls and Greek helmets. Shortly afterwards, that interest led me to a book on Schliemann's discovery of Troy and, a few years later, to the first of many translations of Homer's "Iliad". But never back to a serious look at Virgil's "Aeneid" -- one of these days I'm going to have to remedy that.
Bruce Trinque
41°37'52"N 72°22'29"W
On Monday, October 27, 2003, at 08:20 PM, Batrinque@AOL.COM wrote:
And the piece that most enthralled me was a prose translation of that section of the "Aeneid" describing the fall of Troy. In my mind I can yet see the accompanying illustrations of tall walls and Greek helmets.
May I take matters a little further? Hamlet is the story of a prince who cannot strike the king, who lets chance after chance go by, until he himself has been stabbed with deadly poison. Then, dying, he can finally act.
The play is full, jammed full, of echoes of Hamlet's situation. As, for instance, when he is rehearsing certain actors in a play about the fall of Troy, we get this, about the murderous Phyrrus hunting down the old "father of Troy," king Priam.
Anon he finds him,
Striking too short at Greeks: his antique sword,
Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls,
Repugnant to command: unequal match'd,
Pyrrhus at Priam drives; in rage strikes wide;
But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword
The unnerved father falls. Then senseless Ilium,
Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top
Stoops to his base; and with a hideous crash
Takes prisoner Pyrrhus' ear: for lo! his sword,
Which was declining on the milky head
Of reverend Priam, seem'd i' the air to stick:
So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood;
And, like a neutral to his will and matter,
Did nothing.
Charlezzzzz
Are there hints of "Allegory Wrestling" here? BTW Charlezzzzz, how are you coming on your 50-page Underworld epic? (As you can see, this thread got me rooting around in the Archives...)
My current nightstand reading is NoC, where Stephen and Jack, during their visit to the Antipodes (both literally and figuratively an "under world"), commiserate with the poor literary character who bemoans his plight, stuck in a sterile and uninspiring wilderness along the banks of a river that he calls the "Styx." How many times did POB delve into the chthonic imaginings of classical mythology for allusions?
SR/BR
At 08:23 PM 10/27/2003 -0600, Steven K Ross wrote:
Are there hints of "Allegory Wrestling" here?
Those who were not around five years ago might enjoy reading this piece.
http://mat.gsia.cmu.edu/POB/MAR1898/1553.html
Don Seltzer
Positively Olympian, Charlezzzzz!
Jean A.
Charlezzzz quoted this passage in his post and commented as below:
"A long shot: but the combination of good aiming, excellent bore and powder, and the toss of the sea caused the twenty-four pound ball to strike the second gun of the Surprise's starboard, killing Bonden, its captain, and young Hallam, the midshipman of the division."
That's it. One of the most unsentimental treatments of death you can find in any novel. It's not an accidental treatment, either. It's a paragraph written with great skill and a feeling for what's proper in mythic treatment. Consider his use of the words "good" and "excellent " -- neither is incorrect but each is horribly out of place considering the message in the paragraph: they send a shiver through the alert reader.
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I also noted the "toss of the sea" (now that Charlezzzz taught me to look) and wonder if that is accidental or means that the gods have tossed the sea to kill Bonden and Hallam. An unusual phrase.
~~ Linnea
There's a big spoiler here, and if you haven't read The Hundred Days, you'd better skip what follows:
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In the fascinating WSJ article of 10/7/03, there's a giant spoiler for anyone who has not read the first chapter of The Hundred Days, where POB follows the ancient Greek drama tradition of having violent scenes take place off stage, to be announced by messenger. And now there's a new line of speculation open:
Here's what POB himself had to say about killing off Diana:
Sir Max Hastings, quoted by the WSJ, tells us: Maturin, conscious of his lack of physical charms, is a tortured soul. His chief misery is caused by his love and eventual marriage to the tempestuous Diana Villiers, who is incapable of fidelity. I once asked O'Brian why, in the 19th book, he kills off Diana in a coaching accident with a casual brutality. He replied: "Well, I don't think poor Maturin could have been asked to wear horns for any longer, do you?"
Horns! Diana cd not have cuckolded Maturin before she married him. So here is POB saying our darker suspicions (or some of them) are correct.
Now we shd pay attention to Mrs. Williams and her gossip. For instance, from the Commodore:
'Captain, in order that you should be able to break the dreadful news gradually and gently to your poor unfortunate friend, I think it my duty to tell you that since the birth of this idiot child Diana has been drinking heavily. She has been driving about the countryside, dining with people as far as twenty miles away, sometimes fast, raffish people like the Willises, frequently going to balls and ridottos in Portsmouth, and perpetually fox-hunting sometimes without even a groom to accompany her. She is no sort of a mother to the poor little girl, and if it were not for her friend, this Mrs Oakes, the child would be left entirely to the care of the servants. And worse still,' she said, lowering her voice, 'worse still, Mr Aubrey - I say this of my own niece with the greatest reluctance, as you may imagine - worse still, there are doubts about her conduct. I say doubts, but ... Among others Colonel Hoskins has been frequently mentioned, and Mrs Hoskins no longer returns Diana's calls...
When Diana drives off that bridge, is it Colonel Hoskins who is with her?
There are a fairly large number of possibilities who are now open to suspicion, once POB himself is known to refer to Maturin's horns.
Sorry.
Charlezzzzz
When Diana drives off that bridge, is it Colonel Hoskins who is with her?
No, it is Diana's cousin Cholmondeley (pronounced in the English fashion as "Chumley" or "Smith" or somesuch) who is with her on the fatal coach. Cholmondeley is described in TYA as a fashionable and wealthy man, but I don't know that there is any obvious hint that his relationship with Diana is more than cousinly.
Bruce Trinque
41°37'52"N 72°22'29"W
More gossip at the beginning of THD, 'Some people said she was a demi-rep . . . she had some astonishing jewels . . . there was some talk of a Colonel Cholmondeley and it is said the marriage was not a happy one'
And it was Col. Cholmondeley that talked Diana into hocking her beloved Blue Peter.
Don Seltzer
"Well, I don't think poor Maturin could have been asked to wear horns for any longer, do you?"
Well, I am shocked. I had thought that, from the time of their reunion in Ireland, she and Stephen had been living in marital bliss. She had a husband who was rich, indulgent, an ardent lover, and traveled a lot. What more could any woman want? I had the impression that POB had disposed of her because uninterrupted domestic felicity would have become too boring, and he had pretty well exhausted the possibilities of infelicity. I do think that he would have been happier spending his golden years with Christine, as they would always have had something to talk about, and she didn't seem as high-maintenance as Diana somehow.
Katherine T