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I - not quite shamelessly - am jumping the gun. I will be away this weekend and the frustration I feel about missing the starting gun is very like Peter Palafox's when he couldn't see South America. However, I am a bit ashamed and will point out that lissuns can wait until tomorrow to read this:
"The music-room in the Governor's House at Port Mahon, a tall, handsome, pillared octagon, was filled with the triumphant first movement of Locatelli's C major quartet."
This opening fills me with _intense_ pleasurable anticipation now, but despite deep searching in the halls of my memory, I cannot recall my exact feeling upon reading that the first time. Knowing myself as I do, I would not imagine that I was hooked at that point.
The very next line, while I still don't remember my initial feeling with any precisement, I am sure I enjoyed. I love the "passionate conviction" phrase. By the time you get to the end of the page, when the lieutenant (not yet identified) slaps his leg and is reproached by his neighbor, I was hooked.
Of course, in the first read, without any knowledge of book or author, one doesn't know throughout the entire 1st pg whether this passage is introducing two of the books characters or just recording a passing incident. It is not until the second page, when the name Jack Aubrey is assigned to the lieutenant, that we know that they are real identities.
Interestingly, the first passage that I can still clearly remember reading during my Canon baptism is found on page 51: "at almost the same time the sun popped up from behind St. Philip's fort - it did, in fact, _pop_ up, flattened like a sideways lemon in the morning haze and drawing its bottom free of the land with a distinct jerk."
For some reason that description, that beautifully artful, exact description struck me. I have _seen_ the sun do that. It is an event that I have experienced and when I read this I remember thinking, "how perfectly described" and it stuck with me.
Beautiful book and possibly my favorite because of the anticipation it breeds in me for those to follow.
Nathan
I can clearly remember, as I've mentioned before, that this opening filled me with delight. Here was another writer--another "frigate story"--but this one was directly challenging the tone-deaf Hornblower. And doing it with lovely prose. CSF's prose, much as I enjoyed his well-told stories had always struck me as a bit tone-deaf itself.
Charlezzzz
You know, Charlezzzz, I do remember your saying this about the opening line and your comparing it to Hornblower. I considered referring to it as a contrast to my experience, but figured I was long-winded enough.
Nathan
At 9:00 AM -0400 8/31/2001, Nathan Varnum wrote:
"The music-room in the Governor's House at Port Mahon, a tall, handsome, pillared octagon, was filled with the triumphant first movement of Locatelli's C major quartet."
For those who are interested in such things, POB's first handwritten draft read:
"The music-room in the Governor's House at Port Mahon, a handsome octagonal room with gilt pilasters, was filled with the triumphant ending of the first movement of Locatelli's C major quartet..."
From the Lilly Library POB collection, Bloomington, IN
Don Seltzer
One thing I noticed about the opening few pages this time is how nicely O'Brian links Jack with violin and Stephen with cello. Jack's eye follows the bow of the lead violin, naturally enough since that's his instrument, but soon after Stephen speaks for the first time, a movement starts with the cello, and the adjectives used to describe it (don't have MAC here, sorry) nicely foreshadow Stephen's character -- quieter, more subtle, someone who operates (literally, oops) in the background. I think there's a bit more of this in that opening scene --- as things go back and forth between Jack and Stephen, the references to violin and cello loosely follow, with one red-herring viola reference thrown in once for good measure but nevermind that.
(Possible PC spoiler in the next paragraph.)
The way violin and cello fit Jack and Stephen is doubtless a tired old topic in the Gunroom, but I do like the way the foreground, star instrument, prominent leading qualities of the violin (all so fitted to Jack) and the characteristics of the cello mentioned above (to Stephen) are counterbalanced by the violin being small and high pitched, fun to imagine being played by big, buoyant, goldenhaired, bear-paw handed Jack; while the big, bass-voiced sensuous-bodied cello is played by scrawny, homely, wheeze-and-creak laughtered Stephen.
Please excuse all the adjectives.
In re: Charlezzzz'z post -- I don't know about Forester being prosaically tone deaf, but certainly O'Brian hits a wider range of notes.
More this weekend,
-Jerry
In a message dated 8/31/01 9:54:51 AM, NVarnum@ARKAYINDUSTRIES.COM writes:
I was long-winded enough.
Never! Go right at 'em. Everything you put in makes it better.
Charlezzzz
I see we've begun M&C, and not a moment too soon.
Surely this question has been covered before. Could some Mowettly creature explain to this lubber yet again.
The first time Jack takes Sophie out, he lays on too much sail and her mainmast breaks? fishes? sprungs? warps? I should have thought the sails would tear before the mast breaks. What happened in English?
Then Jack brings Sophie back to the yard and tricks the supplier into giving him a bigger mast than he deserves. How? And if this mast is bigger than the sloop is designed to carry, won't it overcarry or tip over or do something bad? What happened in English?
Not the mast - the main yard.
=====
Gregg
Sailing Master, Artillery Capt., Glover's Marblehead Regiment (GMR)
See my replicas of ancient nautical navigational instruments:
http://people.ne.mediaone.net/saville/backstaffhome.html
First, it was the main yard - the horizontal bit - not the mast; and the original was, in Jack's opinion too small and weak for its job. Knowing that there were extra spars available in the dockyard, Jack accidentally-on-purpose overstressed the yard and caused it to crack.
Normally, one would think a wooden spar would be stronger than the cloth and rope, but since there are lots of lines and only one yard, the stresses added up so the yard took on more stress than any individual line. Also, a wooden spar was often not a single piece of wood, but two or more smaller pieces "fished" together. This made the spar less strong and Jack took advantage of this.
Of course, the spar he wanted was too large according to the experienced Captain of the dockyard, so Jack acted the brash young commander and said effectively, "Let me try it, and if it's too much, I'll cut it down." The yard was just what he wanted, but he had the carpenter shave the arms (ends of the yard) to make it appear that he had cut it down, and make the dockyard Captain happy.
All this, POB took directly from Cochrane's memoirs, IIRC.
--
Bill Nyden
a Rose by another name
37° 25' 15" N 122° 04' 57" W
======================================================
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3825 Fabian Way, Z-02 | ph (650) 852-4333
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"Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction?
Fiction after all, has to make sense."
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I am sorry for not remembering who wrote about this, but in three trips through the canon, I never twigged the justaposition of Aubrey (and Maturin) vs. Hornblower in terms of music. Sure, from our discussions here I remembered that Hornblower was tone-deaf, and Aubrey certainly is not, but never did it occur to me that Himself used his very first sentence to show that A&M were NOT just another Hornblower.
Among the many good things about this list, this is a new one for me: I'm about to embark on a reading of the entire canon, and won't end up reading faster, faster, faster, until I'm done. I might actually catch some of these nuances myself, this time.
--
David Phillips sasdvp@unx.sas.com SAS Institute, Inc., Cary, NC
If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much room.
RKBA! DVC 35* 46.53'N 078* 48.89' W
I am sorry for not remembering who wrote about this, but in three trips through the canon, I never twigged the justaposition of Aubrey (and Maturin) vs. Hornblower in terms of music.
Charlezzzz wrote it
Among the many good things about this list, this is a new one for me: I'm about to embark on a reading of the entire canon, and won't end up reading faster, faster, faster, until I'm done. I might actually catch some of these nuances myself, this time.
That's my goal for this reading, too. Sloooowwww dooowwwnn and try to catch these nuances.
Nathaaaaannnnnn
In message Fri, 31 Aug 2001 15:48:18 -0400, David Phillips wrote:
> through the canon, I never twigged the justaposition of Aubrey (and
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Oh, fiddlesticks. Don't attribute to poor spelling what might just be poor typing. Bletch.
--
David V. Phillips sasdvp@unx.sas.com SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC
If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much room.
RKBA! DVC 35* 46.53'N 078* 48.89' W
Nathan Varnum quoted the M & C opening:
"The music-room in the Governor's House at Port Mahon, a tall, handsome, pillared octagon, was filled with the triumphant first movement of Locatelli's C major quartet."
And Don Selzer quoted POB's draft version (I at first wrote "daft" version!):
For those who are interested in such things, POB's first handwritten draft read: "The music-room in the Governor's House at Port Mahon, a handsome octagonal room with gilt pilasters, was filled with the triumphant ending of the first movement of Locatelli's C major quartet..."
I guess it doesn't matter whether POB decided the last movement or the first movement was "triumphant," as the piece itself is a fiction -- as has been mentioned here before once or twice.
I still wonder about that, though. Given O'Brian's occasional nods, did he actually know that there is no Quartet in C Major by Locatelli? Did he simply mis-write the key? Or *think* he knew Locatelli wrote a C Major quartet and didn't bother to check?
Or did he have some secret reason for, right from the start, pulling our legs -- or at least the legs of us lovers of slightly esoteric chamber music in his audience? Why would he do that, I'm wondering, when so few would appreciate the joke? -- barring its being discussed in groups like this one (whose eventual existence and commitment level would no doubt have stunned and presumably delighted him had he known then). If the reference is a kind of music lovers in-joke and not an inadvertent mistake, does it have any significance for later? None that I've discovered. But maybe others have.
Marian
Please excuse all the adjectives.
Well, *I* for one love adjectives and your post was great. Trust a mathematician to be musical! And I'm glad that Nathan jumped the gun and am sorry that you'll be away this weekend from the fun, but you can catch up. I loved that description of the sun popping up, too.
I have an opus all ready and waiting to be posted tomorrow but shall probably have some shots fired across my bows and retreat because of the usual excellence of the group. (Translated, I may be too awed by the postings to post mine. But I doubt it, even the midshipmen speak up from time to time.)
~~ Linnea
As I came across the series in a public library which didn't have MAC, my first encounter was in HMS Surprise. By the time I got hold of MAC I was already familiar with Jack and Stephen and possibly enjoyed the book more than if I had come to it cold. (That is another reason why I think that the fear of spoilers are a bit over done).
I would be willing to bet that he did know there was no such quartet, and that the joke was for himself if no one else. I remember this M&C passage being read by Richard Kapp, musical director of Philharmonia Virtuosi and producer of the Musical Evenings with the Captain series (does sea-room have these? have not checked, but if not they are at http://www.essaycd.com/). He spoke at the Smithsonian seminar last November and I believe will be at the event in Newport on Nov. 3, along with violinist Mela Tenenbaum who is simply amazing in her virtuosity.
His group has recorded just about the entire body of Locatelli's work, but he is a fairly obscure and little known composer, so Richard was amazed and delighted to discover his name in the first paragraph of the series. He said he had opportunity to speak with Patrick O'Brian during his visit to the Rose, and that he was further astounded at the depth of his musical knowledge in general. He said they discussed at length an equally obscure composer (can't remember the name now) and how he admired O'Brian's "casual familiarity with things that most of us hold at arm's length." It seems like I almost recall him saying that he mentioned the fabricated C major quartet to O'Brian and got a small smile in response - but I could be fabricating that myself! Something for the group going to Newport to follow up on and report back to us!
Kathryn Guare
I remember this M&C passage being read by Richard Kapp, musical director of Philharmonia Virtuosi and producer of the Musical Evenings with the Captain series (does sea-room have these?)
Yes, and the two sequels.
John
Just a small suggestion, and one which may be echoed in, I think, The fortunes of war. Perhaps Locatelli really did write such a C major quartet, which was subsequently lost? We have lost something like two thirds of the Victorian novels (small print runs, bad paper and binding, sold cheap and thrown in the trash) and well over half the movies before, say, 1960 due to deteriorating film. POB was a deep old file and his research may have led him to the truth--Locatelli wrote it, Molly Harte was careless with the manuscript, and since he was an obscure composer, no one else saved the music....and his publisher did not think, based on previous failures of his sheet music to sell, that he wanted to put out yet another piece.
Spoiler space unless you've read the entire canon
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Doesn't Jack have a music by a previously obscure composer, papa Bach, which he buys in manuscript form at a London musicseller's, and the paper ends up going up in flames during the fire on the Java? Who knows what it was--Brandenburg concerto material? We have lost so much, and Jack and Stephen don't seem to have helped the situation! HMMMMPH!
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Sue Reynolds, occasional musician and often grouchy, though not the list anything.
I thought the literary allusion to the opening of the Three Musketeers is extremely obvious. That was, in fact, one of the things that made me happily declare forty pages into M&C that "I want all the rest of the books in this series, and I want them right NOW!" I like an author who is not afraid to retell a tale, especially one of my favorites.
OTOH, my husband, who is not anywhere near as fond of POB as I am, regards the book as, "boy wants ship, boy gets ship, boy loses ship," and wonders what I ever saw in it. My eldest daughter, a child of rare literary insight and voracious reading habits, has not yet started POB, but when she does, I expect many complaints about not having been told she was missing something very fine indeed. The second daughter has managed to read most of the canon and is trying to persuade me to buy her another set so we don't have to share. Not likely, though we do have some duplicates. The Ionian Mission tends to go a-wandering....
Sue Reynolds, who kinda sees Stephen as an antiheroical Athos, with the body of Aramis, and Jack as a cross between Porthos and d'Artagnan. further parallels possible, but I need to get back to work....
In a message dated 08/31/2001 6:58:43 PM Central Daylight Time, nyden@HERMES.SSD.LORAL.COM writes:
he had the carpenter shave the arms (ends of the yard) to make it appear that he had cut it down,
I'll ask another. Which way, and how much, would the yardarms be shaved? Like (shades of Buffy) making them =pointy=? or like orange sticks? or what? Shaving them off flatter or shorter =would= be cutting them down, seems to me.
gluppit the prawling strangles, there, [FoW8]
Mary S
35° 58' 11" N
86° 48' 57" W
He was just taking the surface wood off to show bright, unweathered wood, as it would have appeared if he HAD cut the ends off.
--
Bill Nydenbr
a Rose by another name
37° 25' 15" N 122° 04' 57" W
Thank you to Gregg and Bill for the answers. One was more helpful than the other and I understand it now.
Bill Nyden wrote:
Of course, the spar he wanted was too large according to the experienced Captain of the dockyard, so Jack acted the brash young commander and said effectively, "Let me try it, and if it's too much, I'll cut it down." The yard was just what he wanted, but he had the carpenter shave the arms (ends of the yard) to make it appear that he had cut it down, and make the dockyard Captain happy.
Bless you Bill!
I've read MAC maybe 10 times. I've been a lissun for 2 years. Only today did I learn the reason for the carpenter's curious behavior. I'm with child to discover what else I don't know. It's going to be a great 20 months.
Claude, enlisted for drink
In a message dated 8/31/01 4:20:51 PM, rxbach@EARTHLINK.NET writes:
I still wonder about that, though. Given O'Brian's occasional nods, did he actually know that there is no Quartet in C Major by Locatelli?
Oh, that sly, ever so sly, POB, peering out at us from his almost perfect camouflage. Of course he knew. And he knew that we didn't know. But what else he knew that we didn't know is that there was no Patrick O'Brien either. So here was the most in-joke of all possible in-jokes, bang at the beginning of his book.
Charlezzzz, thinking that by the ending of his opus he was indeed triumphant
Just a small suggestion, and one which may be echoed in, I think, The fortunes of war. Perhaps Locatelli really did write such a C major quartet, which was subsequently lost?
Good one, Sue! I like it!
I must protest though (the esteemed Richard Kapp of Philharmonia Virtuosi notwithstanding -- Kathryn Guare referred to him) that Locatelli is not all that obscure a composer, and though he's undoubtedly better known today than he was when O'Brian wrote Master and Commander, he wasn't so very obscure then, either.
Here's one for you: a scenario in which an obscure English writer passing himself off as Irish discovers a long-lost string quartet by a an 18th century Italian violin virtuoso and composer before all the world's musicologists/music historians do, and manages to keep it quiet until he refers to its presence in the first of what would be a long series of novels about two string players who also happen to be in the Royal Navy....
Marian
Patrick O'Brian does an excellent job of establishing Stephen Maturin and Jack Aubrey as the two main characters of the novel by the close of chapter 1 of Master and Commander. However, he then goes on to introduce us to a third important figure: James Dillon. In Chapter 2, Jack makes reference to Dillon, bringing Stephen's attention to him for the first time. Stephen (naturally) denies knowing Dillon.
Fast forward a bit to page 49, Norton paperback edition:
"'Christ,' said Jack, as the shattering din of the carpenter's hammer prised him from his hold on sleep."
Then on to Stephen at page 52. O'Brian begins by making connections to Jack:
"The sun had reached Dr. Maturin ten minutes earlier, for he was a good deal higher up: he, too, stirred and turned away, for he too had slept uneasily."
A paragraph or so down:
"'Christ,' he said at last. 'Another day.'"
The Dillon, page 54.
"'Christe,' hummed James Dillon under his breath, shaving the red-gold bristles off his face in what light could make its way through the scuttle of the Burford's number twelve gunport." He continues to sing and shave.
I didn't notice that O'Brian uses the same way of "waking up" each character to us until my second read-through of M&C, and even now I'm not sure what he intends us to think of it. Is Dillon to be another main character? Something supporting this would be the fact that O'Brian chooses to follow his actions the same way he does for Stephen and Jack, but for no other characters (that I can remember). He lets us peek over Dillon's shoulder, as it were, while he prepares to go aboard the Sophie. But Dillon is out of the running before the end of MC, of course.
This has probably been noted before, but I thought I'd share it anyway. Thoughts?
--Jessey, back on Gunroom for a bit before school starts, and jumping the gun for the group read out of pure excitement.... *grins*
Welcome back aboard, Jessey; hopefully, it will be for more than a bit.
Doug Essinger-Hileman
Drowsy Frowsy List Greeter, Rated Able
39°51'06"N 79°54'01"W
Very astute piece of analysis! Critics have complained that POB never kills off his main characters. Maybe that's because he killed them off too subtly for the critics to notice that they were main characters.
- Susan
=====
To learn about "The Port-Wine Sea," my parody of Patrick O'Brian's wonderful Aubrey-Maturin series, please see
http://www.ericahouse.com/browsebuy/fiction/wenger/index.html
Starting a new book, without any experience of the characters:
at the very beginning, we don't know whether Jack Aubrey was off on his timing when he beat the music, or if Stephen was mistaken, or cranky, or spoiling for a fight. We are disposed in Jack's favor by several clues: on page 8, when his face changes from friendly ingenuous communicative pleasure to an expression of somewhat baffled hostility, and his acknowledgment to himself that he'd been in the wrong for beating the time: also, Stephen is already wearing a rusty coat, he's small, ill-looking. We don't care for him at this point. As O'Brian later points out in "The Yellow Admiral, "one has an innate, wholly disinterested kindness for beauty." Yet: O'Brian has a way of showing the reader both sides of the issue. There was a steady hum of low conversation in the back of the room: a soldier exploded in a stifled guffaw and Jack looked angrily round. We accept Jack's anger at the distraction, therefore we can understand Stephen's somewhat different response to a distraction. Jack was already disturbed by Stephen's behavior, but again, Stephen was already disturbed by something - we find out later more about his circumstances, but we can already see the reverse of the situation. We like Jack and accept his angry glare at the soldier, so we are mollified at Stephen's response as well.
Nicely written: right from the very start se see that this book is different from run-of-the-mill fiction.
This is as good a time as any to remind lissuns of the wealth of resources available for your enjoyment of the canon. I particularly commend you to:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/3774/pob-tr.htm
where a devoted group of POB fans have translated all the foreign phrases in the canon into English, and to
where you can look up characters, animals, places, and where you can find several other good documents to aid your enjoyment, and to
http://www.io.com/gibbonsb/pob/
where you can find just about anything POB-ish
and OF COURSE to
where you can find links, resources, and whatever makes your enjoyment of POB complete.
- Susan, reminding
I began reading a few days ago and was amazed anew at the world I was plunged into. On this reading, though, I was aware of the devices that POB used to describe that world: the officer stranded without a ship on shore and the physician stranded, as well--their personalities clear at the outset and their complete grounding in the etiquette and habits of their time; the port setting, the sparkling air, the local people all come alive immediately. There is no dreary description to slog through; it just appears like magic, as does the humor.
We are indoctrinated into the mysteries of the Royal Navy of those times, with a depth that exceeds anyone's expectations: the descriptions of the different ships and their men in throwaway lines and seamen's jargon, the inter-rivalry of ships, how familiar each ship's history is to the men, the professionalism and jealousy, the graft and corruption in the shipyards and suppliers, agents, the ordnance wharf-- the entire intricate world summoned up in about 40 pages (up to page 51, but the story really begins on page 7).
During Jack's visit to the sick lieutenant Baldick, late of the "Sophie," there is the device of laying a ship's company and its various occupations before us in a few paragraphs of conversation, and Jack's tour of his new command gives us yet more information, as does Stephen's visit to the hospital, where we learn of the surgeon's mate's profession.
We are soon well grounded in the natural world, too, of water, winds, currents, clouds, and light that make up Jack's realm, and the rocks, earth, and animals that Stephen takes account of. And we learn it is the year 1800, because the winter of 1799-1800 was so dry. We even know the day Jack assumes command, as the Logbook notes that Lt. Baldick was discharged 18 April 1800 to join "Pallas" per order Lord Keith (p. 73).
I was struck by the acute professionalism of Jack, whose long years of experience in many ships finally converge as he attains the command of his sloop. (Although Jack and Stephen are described as being in their 20's, he's been aboard a ship since 12.) We are immediately swept into his mind with its concerns about manning the ship, whom can he rely upon, how does she sail, what can he do to bolster her armament; and we are made intensely aware that he's not just interested in rank-- he wants prizes. The importance of prizes and money and powerful interest (influence and connections) in one's career are set out very early. As is his hope that Stephen can join the ship--not only does the "Sophie" need a surgeon's mate, but Jack realizes, as he sits in his cabin for the first time, that it is going to be lonely at the top, and such a friend will be a comfort, if such a friend he proves to be.
Well, of course I am preaching to the converted, and I've only read up to page 69 (Norton paperback 1990) so far, but I had to share; I just marveled at the mastery and the humor after a long time away from the books. And how did POB do it? How did he leap from The Unknown Shore, with the nascent characters he barely sketched for us, with its episodic events (and the grinding sail around Cape Horn), skimming along on the surface, to the deeps of M&C?
From Dean King's biography, I remember only the impression that POB had never ever sailed in a real ship, except perhaps once; his absolute portrayal of a tour of the "Sophie," and her first venture to sea under Jack, is another marvel.
I loved the Introduction-- I didn't remember that and can't remember if POB speaks again in the later books, but here he is, in a page and a half, speaking to us directly in a clear, intelligent voice, explaining how he did it; but no, there is no way to explain how he did it!
Linnea Angermuller
Afloat somewhere in the Mediterranean
Yes, I noticed that--POB has Stephen being very polite on one hand, removing himself while Jack attends to his papers, but on the other hand picking up Jack's violin and playing it! Perhaps he did already feel a friend (he was invited aboard, after all, to share the Captain's cabin), or perhaps he just did this absentmindedly, as Stephen often seems to be in his own world. But he must have felt he was already a trusted friend and we are touched that he's finally found a safe place to be.
I'm with you--I could never pick up anyone's instrument without asking! (Not that I can play anything but the piano.)
Thank you for the Reminders, Susan!
Linnea
There is a wonderful paragraph on pg 22 of my Norton edition that really struck me when I first read M&C. I had not been reading Hornblower or any other nautical fiction, so the character of the Man of War's Man was unknown to me until:
"A party of seamen went by on the other side, some wearing broad striped trousers, some plain sailcloth; some had fine red waistcoats and some ordinary blue jackets; some wore tarpaulin hats, in spite of the heat, some broad straws, and some spotted handkerchiefs tied over their heads; but they all of them had long swinging pigtails and they all had the indefinable air of man-of-war's men. They were Bellerophons, and he looked at them hungrily as they padded by, laughing and roaring out mildly to their friends, English and Spanish."
There it all is in just a few lines. The individuality of the seamen, their pride, their good humor. Their somewhat piratical air. And these are the sort of fellows that Jack longs to man his little command with. POB's humor is in this paragraph too:
..."his first serious wound had been inflicted by a woman in Deal with a flat-iron who thought her man should not be pressed".
Mary A
That was great--I loved that, too, and I remember reading it twice just to savor it--like rewinding a video that was showing a very vivid scene. Can you imagine the Hollywood hordes who would have to set such a scene, and POB gives it to us in our mind's eye.
Linnea
I was a CS Forrester fanatic before discovering POB starting with M&C. The thing that really convinced me that I was dealing with a serious sailor and a better dose of reality than Hornblower, was Jack having an affair with the port captain's wife. Hornblower is too damn pure. Jack is a down and dirty seafaring man.
But nice. :-)
=====
James McPherson
33* 47' 30" N
116* 32' 10" W
675' above sea level
a message dated 8/31/01 8:14:53 PM Eastern Daylight Time, kguare@ADELPHIA.NET writes:
I would be willing to bet that he did know there was no such quartet,
I certainly wouldn't bet my life on whether there was or wasn't such a work as the Locatelli quartet C Major quartet. Not having it in hand doesn't mean that there never was one. Remember the Baroque Era was a time when works were written to be played there and then and often to be disposed of just as readily. Locatelli was a traveling virtuoso with a reputation rivaling that of Paganini. He lived in Amsterdam working with the publisher Le Cene publishing work of "gentlemen amateurs." In 1757 he went to Russia to work with the musicians who wanted to receive a hearing in the open atmosphere brought in by Peter the Great. He may well have written such a quartet, perhaps first as one of his concerto grossi. Why not--C Major is a good key. Someday someone may go through his attic and find a Locatelli quartet in C Major dedicated to his dear friend Patrick O'Brian since I sometimes suspect O'Brian was really a man of the 18th century whose novels were found by some unnamed descendant.
Faith feeling whimsical today...
Anyone struck by the description of the music and the concert that comprises the establishing sequence of M and C mimics a similar passage involving one of the Bach suites -- D minor, I believe, which Huxley uses in POINT COUNTERPOINT. Another self-promoter and concealer, was Aldous. And the novel itself has not a few devious characters. Just free associating. But I believe such subterfuges are threaded throughout the canon, witness the deliberate insertion of the verse by HOuseman, placed in the mouth of the manic diplomat, as if it were of the period. The identification of which, by the way, opened by association with this group many years ago in one of those contests.
"Though Huxley, Aldous
Has enthralled us
The Bhagavad Gita
Puts it nita..."
Michael Goldman (poet friend of mine in my mispend youth)
HR Greenberg MD ENDIT
O'Brian never simply SAYS "they got to be good friends." He shows it in a trifle, and it is much more involving for the reader to see it in a casual action such as playing the other person's violin than to just be told about it. I LOVE these books.
- Susan
I like this theory too, and Marian I'm sure you are right that Locatelli ain't so very obscure, but I can't resist this little tale:
I was on a package tour this summer and there was one particular gentleman who tended to drone on to pedantic and pompous excess, considering himself an expert in everything. At one meal he was yammering on about this violin composer and that one and enlightening us as to what they really meant. At one short break in the monologue I asked something like "And do you feel the same of Locatelli?" A vast silence, and then finally "Well, you have me there. Never heard of him." "Ah?" I replied. "Some consider him one of the greatest virtuosos that ever lived." I confess to a small triumphant smugness. Short-lived, since with that comment I had entirely expended my reservoir of knowledge of Locatelli!
Kathryn
There have been several responses to this question, but I read the text differently.
What I think was going on is as follows: the shipyard guy, Mr. Brown, was far away, onshore.
(Page 78: Jack says, "Let my ment take it out, sir...Come along now. Look alive."
" 'Tis only on trial, rmember, Captain Aubrey, CALLED [emphasis mine] Mr. Brown. "I will watch you sway it up."
Page 79: "It will never do, Captain Aubrey," called Mr Brown, hailing over the quiet evening air through his trumpet...")
What Jack does is raise the yard once, lower it, attach little dealies at at the end so with the help of ropes it can be raised a second time still horizontal but ROTATED so that in profile it looks shorter to Mr Brown, even though he has kept it at full length! Mr Brown goes away happily convinced that Jack has shortened the yard and Jack gets the big long yard that he wants.
(Page 80, "Sway her up again, bracing her around easy all the time square with the quay.")
Am I misunderstanding?
-Jerry
On Fri, 31 Aug 2001, Linnea wrote:
Translated, I may be too awed by the postings to post mine. But I doubt it, even the midshipmen speak up from time to time.)
Dear Linnea,
Please do post, and I hope that everyone with comments or observations will do the same. I am with child to hear what people have to say.
-Jerry, smiling uncontrollably as the canon group read begins
On Fri, 31 Aug 2001, sue reynolds wrote:
Just a small suggestion, and one which may be echoed in, I think, The fortunes of war. Perhaps Locatelli really did write such a C major quartet, which was subsequently lost?...
This fits perfectly with all the endangered and extinct species teeming through the canon. It definitely feels to me that O'Brian is doing this on purpose, to take us somewhere different from our living rooms as we read and to tease us a bit.
-Jerry
On Fri, 31 Aug 2001, sue reynolds wrote:
OTOH, my husband, who is not anywhere near as fond of POB as I am, regards the book as, "boy wants ship, boy gets ship, boy loses ship,"
Hmmm, and some later books would be "Doctor wants potto, doctor gets potto, doctor dissects potto"?
-Jerry
Okay, back to that opening.
Jack is gazing fixedly at the bow of the first violin. Stephen speaks, Jack's attempt to respond is interrupted by the "ruminative" cello. Jack refocuses on the last movement, the "single whispering of a fiddle." The cello comes in, Jack hums along, Stephen elbows him. Nice job of linking each man to his instrument.
Another thing that struck me this time too is that more than other books in the canon, this one features long lists of terms, e.g., on page 23: "Hundreds of feluccas, tartans, xebecs, pinks, poleacres, poleacre-settees, houarios and barca-longas...bean-cods, cats, herring-busses." The first time I read M&C this charmed me, and this time I see O'Brian savoring all the words he has found reading through old documents but at times, now that I've already immersed myself in the canon, this gets to be a bit forced. Later O'Brian would use just one or two nicely chosen words to greater effect instead of a long list.
Page 36: "How..." began Jack, looking at Stephen with candid affection...But finding that he was on the edge of questioning a guest...
Does this really reflect a point of etiquette from those days or does it reflect O'Brian's personal views about privacy?
Page 56: Do any lissuns know if Cochrane's _Speedy_ had the elm-tree pump described here?
More in a bit.
-Jerry
Page 144, the admiral says, "And some of them are very mere rakes." Well, you can't have rakes without hoes.
-Jerry, understanding if he gets kicked off the list for this one
Vile, sir. But your penance is holystoning the quarterdeck.
Bill Nyden
a Rose by another name at Home
37° 23' 28" N 122° 04' 09" W
Kicked off the list? Kicked off the list? My dear man, with this post you are most firmly entrenched on the list!
I can have nothing to say about the elm-tree pump, but while I was skimming my copy of "Lord Cochrane Seaman,Radical,Liberator" by Christopher Lloyd, looking for elm-tree pump info, I found this in the second chapter, entitled "The Cruise of the Speedy"
'"A burlesque on a vessel of war" was Cochrane's description of his new ship. Though she appears on the Navy List as a sloop of war, she was really nothing but a converted coastal brig of 158 tons, mounting an armament of only fourteen 4-pound guns, "a species of gun little larger than a blunderbuss." Indeed, he claims to have walked her deck with a broadside of her shot in his pocket. He tried to get the authorities to mount two 12-pounders, but it was clear that the discharge of even these moderate-sized guns would dangerously strain the timbers of his little ship; so he decided that what he lost in gun-power he would make up in speed. His task would be to harry the coasting trade, and a fast sailingship would achieve his aims almost as well as a heavier armed vessel. With this aim in view he rigged a spare fore-topgallant yard from the Genereaux as the Speedy's mainyard.'
And so the chapter continues, full of lots of familiar good stuff, right up to Cochrane's breakfast with Captain Pallière and on to his parole on Gibralter while and action is fought off the coast.
Mary A
You know, I'm not sure why a lissun, after being on this list for a while and reading posts such as Mary Arndt's, couldn't come to the conclusion that POB was an out-and-out plagiarist.
But he was.
Does his thieving of history, esp. other men's histories, glories and ignominies, for his books detract or lessen the voyages of Jack and Stephen? I think not.
Yvonne
I also think not. The retelling of a good story is not the act of a cad. When the story is good and the retelling is done with wit and artistry we have literature which brings as pleasure.
Mary A
At 01:25 PM 9/1/01 -0700, you wrote:
You know, I'm not sure why a lissun, after being on this list for a while and reading posts such as Mary Arndt's, couldn't come to the conclusion that POB was an out-and-out plagiarist. But he was.
Well, I am not sure that "plagiarist" is the term. After all, by the same definition, so then was Shakespeare a plagiarist. Or the author of "Amadeus". The use of history, especially in historical novels, is hardly thievery.
Does his thieving of history, esp. other men's histories, glories and ignominies, for his books detract or lessen the voyages of Jack and Stephen? I think not.
Hardly.
What really is plagiarism?
I don't think we can really accuse O'Brian of it. Patrick O'Brian was writing historical fiction and he closely based his plots on real history and events. Much good historical fiction does. Where would Cornwall and Sharpe be without all the historical writings and memoirs of the Peninsular War?
O'Brian's genius is to make these historical events come alive and entrance us with the interplay of HIS characters performing historically accurate and yet amazing deeds. Aubrey is not Cochrane and Maturin does not bear much resemblance to any other historical figure. They come from O'Brian himself. O'Brian also puts his own spin on the real historical figures who appear in his books. He may base this on contemporary writings, but no one can write about someone in such great detail as to bring them alive as O'Brian does.
O'Brian does once admit to more than just using the events described by contemporary authors but also plagiarizing the words of another writer. In FSOTW he tells us in the foreword that he has copied William Hickey's description of the onset of a typhoon almost directly. He did, I found the passage last year and O'Brian's almost word for word what Hickey wrote, but it is only a few sentences, the rest is O'Brian again.
--
Adam Quinan
'Grab a chance and you won't be sorry for a might-have-been'
Commander Ted Walker R.N.
Somewhere around 43° 46' 21"N, 79° 22' 51"W
For some of my family history see
http://www.cronab.demon.co.uk/quin.htm
Here's a more contemporary line from the Irish band U2 that I agree with:
"Every poet is a thief"
Any person who creates does so from the influence of some other creator/artist. The difference between the great creator/artist and a lesser one is that the great artist takes something ordinary and known and makes that something better, if not downright more wonderful and beautiful, that also resonates with a universal truth that the majority of us can comprehend and enjoy.
Indeed if art equates with truth, then any artist who is not as original as, say, Homer (who was, after all, recounting history that nobody else had written), Plato, da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Dickens (who used his early life as the bases for his stories) would likely admit he is a thief.
And if a creator/artist bases his art on somebody else's, isn't that plagiarism and thievery? Copyright laws came into being in the mid-1800's to combat fiction writing plagiarism, you know (Dickens championed it).
Did Shakespeare acknowledge he was a plagiarist? Dunno. But I wouldn't be surprised if he did, since he borrowed so freely from Italian writers.
And if he were alive and someone were to pose the question to him, would POB himself acknowledge he was a wholesale "borrower" of other people's lives and historical events? Or would he just smile and say, "Next question"? Certainly modesty would have precluded him from acknowledging himself as an "artist".
Cornwall is still alive. Betcha he would give a resounding Yes! to the question and use my words above. (Besides, Cornwall acknowledges his sources in his fictional histories (i.e., the Sharpe books) but POB did not.) (And regarding Shakespeare, POB and Cornwall, copyright laws wouldn't restrict them from borrowing from dead authors whose copyrights, if they had gotten them, would no longer be enforced.)
All of us know what the consequences would be if in school or in our employment we used some other person's work and passed it on as our own.
Still let us make one thing clear: I love and enjoy POB's Aubrey/Maturin books. I do not love them less for knowing that POB borrowed so freely from Cochrane and other real men's lives. It's just that now, knowing what I do, I no longer think of POB as an original writer. However, as fictional characters go, his Jack and Stephen seem as real to me as, well, let us say the people with whom I have daily contact. I'm only sorry that I cannot know them in my real life. But at least I have my imagination, where they live and breathe freely.
Yvonne
We know that Haydn wrote more than a hundred symphonies but after his death his wife burnt some of them before the publisher/printer could set them to type.
Still, as most composers of Locatelli's time had patrons as well as publishers, it is conceivable that the majority of his compositions were preserved.
According to some websites, Locatelli wrote one piece in C major (or do maggiore) -- a concerto for violin and ensemble. As Stephen tended to transpose music compositions for violin and cello, isn't there the possibility that the so-called Locatelli Quartet in C Major was really the Concerto for Violin in Do Maggiore rescored by Stephen for four instruments?
As to Locatelli's virtuosity as a violinist, it is acknowledged that he was a gifted player. But of Paganini's caliber? I would have to disagree. Certainly he had the technical expertise that Paganini later demonstrated (as Locatelli's Art of the Violin compositions show). (Besides, Locatelli died in 1764 and Paganini was born in 1782, so what one generation noted, the following one or two never knew.) But Paganini had personal magnetism and natural charisma, and great showmanship and technical wizardry. Paganini also influenced many of the composers of his time, who wrote challenging music for his violin that they also dedicated to him. As a violinist, he made the violin the great playing instrument it is, as Segovia would much later with the classical guitar, and introduced many of the violin techniques still used today.
It is also acknowledged that after Paganini, Pablo Sarasate is considered the world's next greatest violinists. Where Spohr, Ysaye, Heifetz, Francescatti (my favorite), and many, many others come in on the greatest violinists rank, don't know.
Yvonne
I love and enjoy POB's Aubrey/Maturin books. I do not love them less for knowing that POB borrowed so freely from Cochrane and other real men's lives. It's just that now, knowing what I do, I no longer think of POB as an original writer.
I don't agree with the last sentence, maybe because - for me - the actual events are not why I read the canon. I read it for the characters, major and minor, and while some parts of their lives may have been drawn from historical figures, their essence is pure POB. And original.
Greg
42º32'34.5" N
71º20'13.2" W
I'm sure someone has mentioned this previously (and I apologize in advance for not being able to find the specific message and so keep things grouped), but what an amazing contrast there is between the two "prequels" and M&C. I found the two prequels engaging and well written, but the gulf that seperates the POB who wrote TUS and the POB who wrote M&C is simply breathtaking. M&C is written with the light hand that I so enjoy, and is so much more subtle - scenes and characters are described with just the right amount of detail, allowing the reader to fill in the gaps.
What did POB write between TUS and M&C? Is there a progression that can be followed, or was it simply a matter of a writer finding his characters at last?
Greg
42º32'34.5" N
71º20'13.2" W
Yvonne, you should re-read the forewords to several of the books where POB directly acknowledges in many places that he has taken many of the incidents in his novels from the accounts of officers and men of the Royal Navy. On the other hand, he doesn't just cut and paste their words, he re-tells historical incidents in his own manner and voice with his own characters. I don't know why you should think him a less "original" writer, except possibly in the case of plotting, he writes his own books about his own characters. Even in the case of the turn of events, he did not write a direct slavish copy of history he added his own episodes and left out others to suit his artistic needs.
Each author who takes an old story or historical event and puts his own stamp on it is adding to our supply of good and interesting things to read. I think I enjoy reading these sorts of novels more than any other kind. That is probably why I have a row of novels based on the King Arthur story. Some really entertaining novels are based on old legends or fairy tales told in a new way. Consider what has been done with "Romeo and Juliet". "West Side Story" is another version of it. Tanith Lee wrote a delightfully creepy version called "Sung in Shadow". The bones of the story may be the same, but each author uses his own imagination and talent to flesh it out in a different way. That isn't really plagiarism as the law would define it (at least not as I understand the term) and I wouldn't really call it theft of an idea either, since theft implies a kind of wickedness. I would rather use the term "borrow". The artist takes the concept, makes of it what he can and then throws it back into the cauldron for someone else to use at will.
Mary A
Doesn't Jack have a music by a previously obscure composer, papa Bach, which he buys in manuscript form at a London musicseller's, and the paper ends up going up in flames...
IIRC, he also had a bit of Johnson or somebody that wasn't published and is unknown to us today, though Stephen Maturin was certainly familiar with it.
There is the passage when Stephen meets his cousin in Australia (NOC) and they discuss a passage by Johnson about Kevin Fitzgerald which is nowhere else recorded.
Parallel histories have always been prized by lovers of speculative fiction. Why should one take umbrage at POB for inventing a parallel history of music not ever written. More to the point, POB, in the context of his extraordinary ability to evoke a period, is repeatedly reminding us throughout the canon of the elusiveness of history, of what is forever lost to us of the past.
I saw an intriguing theatrical piece at La MaMa in NYC earlier in the year -- theatrical troup, multinational, was trying to recreate the actual theater of the Greeks from fragments. Director told a story about a nightwatchman who fell in love with a particularly valuable and beautiful and complete urn. He fell to picking it up, holding it in his arms, eventually dancing with it -- and the inevitable happened -- he dropped it, it smashed into a thousand shards, and then the restorers came in to put it back together again.
History, he said, is like that vase. Only the fragments are even more scattered, and we piece it together with inevitable poignant gaps and fissures. POB reminds us of the always already disappearing nature of his characters' history, and indeed of our own, I would submit.
HR Greenberg MD ENDIT
"Soy, Yvonne M." wrote:
And if he were alive and someone were to pose the question to him, would POB himself acknowledge he was a wholesale "borrower" of other people's lives and historical events? Or would he just smile and say, "Next question"? Certainly modesty would have precluded him from acknowledging himself as an "artist".
Cornwall is still alive. Betcha he would give a resounding Yes! to the question and use my words above. (Besides, Cornwall acknowledges his sources in his fictional histories (i.e., the Sharpe books) but POB did not.)
At 6:12 PM -0400 9/1/1, Adam Quinan wrote:
Yvonne, you should re-read the forewords to several of the books where POB directly acknowledges in many places that he has taken many of the incidents in his novels from the accounts of officers and men of the Royal Navy. On the other hand, he doesn't just cut and paste their words, he re-tells historical incidents in his own manner and voice with his own characters. I don't know why you should think him a less "original" writer, except possibly in the case of plotting, he writes his own books about his own characters. Even in the case of the turn of events, he did not write a direct slavish copy of history he added his own episodes and left out others to suit his artistic needs.
I couldn't disagree more with Yvonne's statements. Adam has already replied with precisely my own thoughts, but I would like to just add POB's own words from the Author's note on the first page of M&C,
"...the Cochranes, Byrons, Falconers, Seymours, Boscawens and the many less famous sailors from whom I have in some degree compounded my characters, are best celebrated in their own splendid actions rather than in imaginary contests; that authenticity is a jewel; and that the echo of their words has an abiding value."
POB was far from the first to borrow from Cochrane's exploits; Marryat and Forester also did so extensively. And consider what he did with Cochrane's simple, bald accounts. The episode of the Speedy's mainyard is related by Cochrane in just these brief words,
"The spar was accordingly sent on board and rigged, but even this appearing too large for the vessel, an order was issued to cut off the yard-arms and thus reduce it to its proper dimensions. This order was neutralized by getting down and planing the yard-arms as though they had been cut, an evasion which, with some alteration in the rigging, passed undetected on its being swayed up; and thus a greater spread of canvas was secured. The fact of the foretopgallant-yard of a second rate being considered too large for the mainyard of my "man-of-war" will give a tolerable idea of her insignificance."
Compare that to the little drama in the dockyard that POB created!
Don Seltzer
I think there is a great deal to be said for the idea proposed earlier that the opening scene of "Master and Commander" was written as a deliberately non-Hornblower moment. In a good many ways, Jack Aubrey is the antithesis of Horatio Hornblower, and I find it difficult to believe that Patrick O'Brian was not conscious of this when creating the character. Hornblower's painful personal reserve is set against Aubrey's exhuberant good-fellowship. While Hornblower second guesses himself continually, agonizing over questions of his own motivations, Aubrey blithely plunges ahead. Hornblower has more than a little air of the Puritan about him; Aubrey avidly enjoys -- and pursues -- wine, women and song. In giving his hero these anti-Hornblower attributes, O'Brian created a figure who, frankly, is a lot more fun to be around than old Horatio. I mean, who would you rather sit around with to share a glass of wine or two?
And at the same time as O'Brian avoided duplicating Hornblower, he escaped the more subtle trap of cloning Cochrane, the historical figure whose exploits served as the template for the plot action in this first novel. Anyone who has read a biography of Thomas, Lord Cochrane (or Cochrane's autobiography) knows that Jack Aubrey and the Scottish aristocrat are worlds apart in background and have markedly different personalities. Those who might think that O'Brian lacked originality because of this connection to Cochrane should perhaps give greater attention to the book's characters than incidents of battle. Aubrey, Maturin, Dillon, Marshall, Captain Harte ... they are originals, not copies.
Bruce Trinque
41*37'53"N 72*22'51"W
And speaking of "Romeo and Juliet", William Shakespeare is a superb example of a writer who borrowed his plots from existing sources and then transformed them into something truly original.
Bruce Trinque
41*37'53"N 72*22'51"W
I think that POB or his editor nods on page 9 of M&C (W.W. Norton 1994):
"Saturn was rising in the south-south-east, a glowing ball in the Minorcan sky"
Actually, I don't believe that a disk is visible unaided of any of the planets and stars, except the sun and the moon. In 1801 Jack's eyesight hadn't been destroyed, but still it wasn't _that_ good.
Claude, enlisted for drink
Well, I dunno. When objects are close to the horizon, there is a magnifying effect - the full moon is huge when rising, for instance. Planets don't twinkle, so there is a perceptible optical difference visible to the unaided eye. It is barely possible, I suppose, that if Saturn were tilted so that the rings were most visible and was on a close approach, then a disk would be perceptible in certain conditions to those with excellent eyesight.
Mars, I might point out, is currently at its closest to Earth, a very close approach indeed as these things go, and when I look up at it, even with my weary old eyes it is quite plain that it is more than a point of light. It is, in fact, apparent as a glowing ball in the Australian sky.
Not only are the planets not visible as discs to the unaided eye, but Saturn would not even be visible in that position, it would be setting in the West a little after midnight in mid April 1801. Have a look at this site to check.
http://www.fourmilab.to/cgi-bin/uncgi/Yoursky
You may have to set up the latitude and longitude of Minorca and the check box for the moon and planets. then enter any date and see the positions of the stars.
Due to their relative brightness and the fact that they are a disc as opposed to a true point source, the naked eye planets are more steady than stars. But unless you have telescopic vision all of them subtend an angle that is too small for the unaided human eye to see (except possibly for Venus when its in the daytime sky closest to the earth when some people claim to have seen a crescent shape).
Peter's experience may be psychological due to the steadiness and brightness or, not to his exceptionally good vision, but to a little blurring of the focus perhaps.
While crossing Pacific in 1951 on a destroyer as an Ensign, we were carrying a mustang CDR (ex-CQM) back to West Coast. I mentioned at lunch I'd always heard Venus visible in daytime, but had never seen it. Shortly thereafter our passanger called me to the bridge, lined a pelorus up carefully, said raise it about 30 degrees and squint along the tube. And there it was! -- on a bright sunny afternoon.
He explained; easy enough, providing you worked out bearing and altitude first, but you would never see it by just looking around. It wasn't a "disk," but a steady white point-spot. And Venus was the only planet that could be seen in daylight.
DRM
____________________________________________
Donald R. Morris
E-Mail: drmorris@airmail.net
URL: www.tridentsyndicate.com
Tel & FAX: (713) 668-8665
The first months of 1800 were a very good period for the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean. A year and half earlier, Nelson had crushed the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile. Napoleon escaped back to France, but his army remained stranded in Egypt, cut off by the RN. Minorca had fallen to the British, giving them the strategic base at Port Mahon. Malta was still held by the French, but the naval blockade was starving them out, and surrender of the fortress of Valletta was seen as likely. In Italy, the Austrian army with strong British naval support was winning against the French, who were driven back to the northern city of Genoa.
Rear Admiral Nelson, recuperating at the court of King Ferdinand of Naples and the Two Sicilies, found the situation much to his liking. Constant adulation to feed his ego, a dukedom to increase his prestige and fatten his purse, and Emma Hamilton to tend to other needs. Lord St. Vincent, Commander in Chief for the Mediterranean, based himself at Gibraltar, giving Nelson free rein in the central Mediterranean. Nelson chose to spend his time personally protecting King Ferdinand, his court, and especially Lady Hamilton.
The situation was upset when Lord St. Vincent resigned his command because of poor health. Lord Keith was appointed to replace him, much to Nelson's disappointment. Keith and St. Vincent mapped out a strategic plan that gave first priority to protecting Port Mahon and capturing Malta. Keith accordingly ordered Nelson to redeploy his ships to support that plan.
Nelson openly disobeyed Keith's orders, writing that he felt that protecting Naples was more important. Keith ultimately sailed to Naples and personally ordered Nelson to join the blockade of Malta. In a bit of incredible timing, Nelson arrived just in time to capture the Genereux which was attempting to break through the blockade to resupply Valletta.
The 74 gun ship was particularly marked as one of only two to escape Nelson at the Nile. After the 1798 battle of the Nile, Nelson had sent his flag captain Berry with the dispatches aboard the 50 gun Leander, for want of frigates. The Leander ran afoul of the Genereux, surrendering after a furious battle in which one third of the Leander's shorthanded crew were killed or wounded. Capt. Thompson of the Leander would later be knighted for his gallant efforts in losing his ship. The French treated the officers and crew of the Leander badly, even robbing the surgeon of his instruments.
So there was great satisfaction when Nelson's Foudroyant helped capture the Genereux off Malta on February 18, 1800. As was customary in such victories, Nelson appointed the 1st Lt. of his ship as prizemaster, and recommended him for promotion.
Keith arrived on the scene the following day and began the game of musical commands. Capt. Manley Dixon (the model for Capt. Harte) of the 64 gun Lion requested a transfer to the Genereux once it had been surveyed and bought into the navy. His spot on the Lion was filled by Capt. Lord William Stuart, creating a Post vacancy given to the very deserving Commander Jahleel Brenton of the Speedy. And now Keith had a small measure of revenge for Nelson's insubordination. Over-ruling Nelson's recommendation of promotion for his 1st. Lt., Keith instead turned to his ship, promoting a very junior Lt. who had never distinguished himself in action, but was the son of a Scottish Earl.
The early careers of Lord Thomas Cochrane and Jack Aubrey could hardly have been more different. Cochrane had gone to sea at a relatively late age, and had served primarily on ships of his uncle, Alexander Cochrane. Serving in the North Sea and then on the American station, midshipman Cochrane saw no action other than frequent hunting parties ashore, but rapidly advanced to the rank of lieutenant. Influence won him a spot on Lord Keith's flagship, where he made himself a nuisance, nearly provoking a duel with the 1st. Lt., for which he was court-martialed. At the time that he was promoted and appointed prizemaster of the Genereux, he was either 4th or 5th lieutenant of Keith's Queen Charlotte.
Jack Aubrey, by contrast, followed a more traditional career path, going to sea at an early age. A review of the entire canon shows that he served in more than two dozen ships before the start of M&C (made possible by serving on multiple ships simultaneously). He was wounded aboard the Leander at the battle of the Nile, and again when the Genereux captured his ship. It was only fitting that he be appointed prizemaster of Genereux and promoted to Master and Commander.
And that is how Cochrane and Aubrey merged identities for the span of one book.
Don Seltzer
I venture to sugest that Mars is bright enough at the moment to be visible in daylight if you knew where to look. However, as it is opposite the sun, it can only be seen at twilight, which makes it easier.
Venus is never too far from the sun, so it's a bit tricky to spot - I find that by observing the position relative to the moon the preceding evening or morning I can then work from that visible point and see Venus, allowing a little for relative motion of the Moon along the ecliptic.
I'm still waiting for the day when Venus is close enough to the Moon in daylight that I can look up at it, scream out "Ohmigod! Space Aliens!" and have unsuspecting folk join in the panic massteria.
Amateur astronomy was not one of POB's strong suits. His celestial observations throughout the canon are riddled with errors, and are better accepted as poetic license.
Neither Saturn nor any other planet could ever be described as rising in the SSE at Port Mahon in April. And the observations of Saturn a few chapters later are totally inconsistent in terms of time and direction.
Don Seltzer
My favorite scene in the early parts of the book is Jack's glorious happiness as he shares it with the giggling Mercedes.
"Not teniente ... Capitano!"
gluppit the prawling strangles, there, [FoW8]
Mary S
35° 58' 11" N
86° 48' 57" W
I also wondered what role the long twelves and Mr Brown's music played in the whole main yard affair. The accounts of Cochrane's doings I've just read here would seem to give some credence to Jack's insistence on trying the twelves out. However, in hindsight, I had thought that it was somewhat foolish of an experienced naval officer to try them considering the resultant wera and tear on the sloop. Was this POB's way of showing us that Jack wasn't quite as experienced as he thought? Alternatively, did Jack, from the start, think of using the long twelves as a trade for the spar he really wanted. And what role did the request for the music from Mr. Brown play? Did he genuinely want it, or was he just buttering up the cantankerous Mr. Brown?
Phil
When Jack offers Stephen advance pay, telling hiom that it was quite usual to do so and almost invariably taken, was he being truthfull or was he just offering Stephen a loan in the only way he thought Stephen would accept it? Was it indeed a long-standing custome of the service?
Phil
I have always taken it that he was offering Stephen a loan. Volunteer recruits might have received a bounty which I don't think was an advance against their pay, but I don't think this would apply to the afterguard.
Martin @ home:
50° 44' 57" N
1° 58' 34" W
What exactly is the nature of the recital at which Jack and Stephen meet? Would it have been a formal event sponsored by the military authorities or a "public" concert? I'm asking because I've always wondered how Stephen comes to attend it.
Although O'Brian does mention that the crowd contains an "occasional" civilian, most of the people in attendance are either Marines or ship's officers. (After Jack lets Stephen pass, he works "through the crowds of tight-packed blue and red coats with the occasional civilian black" p. 10). The commandant's secretary is there as well. Would a civilian like Stephen, unconnected with the Navy, have required an invitation to attend?
Compared to O'Brian's description of the audience, Stephen is an outsider. He's broke, hungry, and homeless, and his appearance reflects his destitute state: (rusty coat and wiry, unpowdered wig). What a contrast he makes to the men, brilliantly uniformed, and Molly Harte, clad in pearls and pale blue satin. Is it simply Stephen's status as a physician (rather than a mere surgeon) that is his ticket to the music-room at the Governor's House?
We learn that prior to the concert, Stephen, together with Mr. Florey, the surgeon at the hospital, had performed an autopsy on Mr. Browne, Stephen's patient who died at sea (p. 37). Would Mr. Florey have been someone who could have told Stephen about the concert?
My other (very unsubstantiated) theory is that Stephen is already connected to an intelligence network that places him in Port Mahon for reasons other than caring for the supposed "Mr. Browne," and it is through these connections that he ends up at the Governor's House. All we really know is that Stephen arrives at Port Mahon with a cadaver and a story, and as we learn in later books, it's not unlikely for Stephen to come up with a spare cadaver or two, and subterfuge is not beneath him.
The already dead "Mr. Browne" is no one, really. His "everyman" name, his nondescript personal effects, his friends who "don't answer" Stephen's letters, and his decamped servant make him very difficult to trace. Even the autopsy-"to satisfy his friends"-seems a bit odd, even though Florey agrees to it (p. 37). Stephen has already diagnosed the guy-"the last stages of phthisis." Why does he need to do an autopsy, other than to prove to Florey that he is, indeed, a physician and establish his identity as such?
OTOH, I've just finished a BIG glass of wine, so perhaps it's best to take the simple approach: Stephen just wondered in to the place, lured by the music he so adores.
Jessie Matthews
--
"I hate quotations. Tell me what
you know." Ralph Waldo
Emerson
... is a very good rule in many cases. If as, in my case, you discover another volume of the canon before M&C, how does that affect your appreciation of M&C?
In my case I came to the canon via Post Captain, the only volume held in our public library (Only one of three then, and they also had TUS and "The Chian Wine" so that was probably a very good representation for the time).
After the richness of the humour in PC I found M&C a little disappointing at first (Hey, I was under 20 at the time and reading Reeman, Kent, Ramage etc). Later I came to appreciate its virtues but PC remains my favourite.
Martin @ home:
50° 44' 57" N
1° 58' 34" W
In a message Sent: Friday, August 31, 2001 Marian Van Til
I still wonder about that, though. Given O'Brian's occasional nods, did he actually know that there is no Quartet in C Major by Locatelli? Did he simply mis-write the key? Or *think* he knew Locatelli wrote a C Major quartet and didn't bother to check?
I think we can be fairly certain O'Brian is, yet again, "practising" on us.
Pietro Locatelli (1695-1764) wrote a series of 12 difficult violin concertos titled L'Art del violino op.3, which, along with a set of 12 flute sonatas, op. 2 are usually thought to be his most important contributions. Now the last concerto in the Opus 3 series is subtitled "Il Labertino Armonico, facilis aditus, difficilis exitus". So when you try to determine what Himself is up to, you fall into a harmonic maze, from which you will with difficulty extricate yourself.
With or without the knowledge of his prank he makes me think of famous C Major quartets that would have been available to Jack and Stephen. I know of only two.
The first is Haydn's "Emperor", Op. 72 (whose slow movement is the tune for Deutschland uber Alles). And didn't POB consider the Emperor Napoleon to be a bit of a Hitler.? The other is Mozart's "Dissonance" K465, dedicated to Haydn. This quartet opens with a famously controversial dissonant adagio, foreshadowing the initial and temporary dissonance between Jack and Stephen caused by Jack's enthusiastic conducting, and which is the prelude to their relationship.
The idea that such a quartet by Locatelli could have been lost is hard for me to imagine. If it were in public performance around 1800 as M&C claims, having been composed prior to 1764, it would have existed in published printed form, unlike the vulnerble manuscripts of old Bach.
Paul, always wery wary of the notion that a major author nods in an opening paragraph.
I found several POBs in a public library in the mid 1980s, they ranged from HMSS to about TH with some missing volumes IIRC. I read HMSS and loved it and returned to read the others. I tried ordering the missing and earlier ones through the system but they didn't have all of the earlier ones then. They do now! I tried to read them in order, but it wasn't until I discovered that one of my best friends was a POB reader and, as he worked for Harper Collins, had copies of all of the books that I was finally able to read them all. The first one I read spanking new and hot off hte press was probably Letter of Marque. I can't remember exactly when in the process I read M&C but it wasn't in the first two or three.
By the time I read it I was very familiar with Jack and Stephen so the interest was in seeing how they met and I never worried too much about Dillon because I knew he wasn't around later. I also remember thinking that M&C was much more based on real history than the others in how the story developed and had less of the humour of PC and HMSS.
--- "P. Richman"
Could some Mowettly creature explain to this lubber yet
again.
Nice adjective. The Mowettly tour of the "Sophie" to
show Stephen the ship bothered me in several ways, but
here's an attempt at clarification of this puzzling
segment:
To begin with, my eyes glaze over. The first time or so
that I read "M&C," I skipped over this part. By now, I
sort of understand the terms better, I have a little
background from reading the other books, I'm more eager
to learn. My eyes still glaze over. For one thing, I
don't LEARN any more about it when Mowett says "that's
the mainstays'l and that's the forestays'l for'ard:
you'll never see one, but on a man-of-war." So this tour
isn't just for the education of the reader. I think this
is POB's DEMONSTRATION rather than explanation, that
there are a lot of bewildering new terms for the new
seaman, POB WANTS the reader to glaze over, to be "at
sea," he's showing you the complexity, the depth of the
confusion of the landlubber at sea.
Also, I think that by glazing the reader, he's
introducing the feel of the insensible running together
of life at sea - one paragraph follows another in the
text, one day follows another at sea, as land patterns
fade, everything you've read in the past fades into the
past, your legs start to bow, you become part of the
endless vista of sea and sky. I think POB is showing the
reader that you don't HAVE to know your futtock-plates
and your topgallant shrouds - you just have to pull on
the end of that there rope until you gradually assume the
characteristics of the seaman, until you gradually become
part of the crew, taking on a bit more of what you need
when you're ready for a bit more. It's a jargon, you
need to know that it exists, and you need to know some of
it now, you need to know more of it later. Does the
reader really need to know that the mainstay is
ten-inches and the preventer stay seven? Not at all.
But while Mowett is eagerly explaining about fids and
top-mauls, Stephen is seeing Irish revolutionaries
hanging. The language of the ship is washing over him,
the reader's attention is flagging, but the info is going
in as deep background, and the pattern of the language is
becoming part of everyday life at sea, part of the
reader's pattern of thinking; the vocabulary is NOT being
taught as in a glossary, but is going past while being
glossed over, getting absorbed the way an infant absorbs
new languages.
Or did everybody except me learn the meanings of all the
terms from the Mowettly explanation?
I have decided that Jack really,really wanted the 12-pounders if the Sophie
could manage them, but that he also really,really wanted a more substantial
mainyard, and since he is an expert at making lemonade out of lemons, he
lost not a minute in making an adventageous trade with the dockyard. I do
not think it was an accident that Mr. Head of ordnance had just been placed
under Mr Brown's authority. He got the guns from one person, but was able
to return them to another and make the trade he wanted. The text on pgs 60
and 61 make it clear that he was by no means sure that the Sophie could cope
with the bigger guns.
As for the music, at first I thought he genuinely wanted it, but on my most
recent read I noticed the "buttering up" potential.
Mary A
And moreover: I wonder if this entire segment was
inserted after the main piece was written? I suspected
this with other pieces from time to time, and here's why
I'm suspicioning it again now:
On page 97, Stephen asks Mowett "You could not explain
this maze of ropes and wood and canvas without using
sea-terms, I suppose. No, it would not be possible."
I think this is O'Brian talking to his editor. He's
willing to explain some of his jargon, but having some
difficulty doing so. He's trying to do it all at once,
through the device of having Mowett show Stephen the
ship. But this section of the book breaks the flow of
O'Brian's tale - it goes on too long, and is too stilted.
I think he wrote it because he was asked to do so, but
he wasn't in the mood, didn't really get himself into it,
and it came out clumsy.
O'Brian was commissioned to write something for adults to
fill the gap caused when C.S. Forester died. Most of his
writing to that point was for boys: his short stories in
The Oxford Annual for Boys, The oxford Annual for Scouts,
and the two "prequels" were written with a youthful
audience in mind. With that history, the publisher who
commissioned POB would have scrutinized the author's
offerings more diligently than O'Brian would have liked
later in his career, and would have interceded more
readily than they would have done with an established
writer. So maybe someone asked O'Brian to use fewer
sea-terms, or to explain them, and he stuck in this
piece, but not in his usual flow - the language is
different, the sentence structure is different, and the
entire effort seems forced, and less enjoyable for the
reader.
- Susan, blithely opining - that's what the groupread is
for, right?
While agreeing wholeheartedly with those who have written to defend the
literary merit of those authors who use historical events as the basis for
fictional accounts, I would also suggest another benefit of such efforts.
In my school days I tended to avoid "History" because I perceived it as a
dry and uninteresting subject. In later years, after reading and enjoying
certain historical novels, I began to venture into nonfictional histories to
learn more about the actual events. Thinking back, I believe this started
for me with Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels, which led me to a self-study
of the American Civil War, a fascination which continues today. Similarly,
POB and Cornwall ignited a curiosity about the Napoleonic era, resulting in
an exploration of the written history of the times. Quite recently, I read
the excellent Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield, which has whetted my
curiosity about the Ancient World.
Would I have discovered my love of history without the gentle introduction
by great novels? Perhaps, but I am not sure. In any event, I owe a debt of
gratitude to those novelists who have led, and continue to lead me to the
joy of learning about the past. Of these, POB stands head and shoulders
above the rest.
DJD (Who often feels like tearing his hair out when contemplating the
opportunities missed in school)
I would agree about the benefits of historical fiction for whetting
people's appetite for the sometimes drier real thing. I remember reading
Ronald Welch's series of children's military historical fiction books
which dealt wth the fortunes of the Carey family from 1066 or shortly
thereafter down to the Victorian times. Each book stands alone as a
complete story, but the whole series brought English history to life in
a way that no amount of classroom teaching could.
And there's more of this. As Susan Wenger points out, O'Brian was fond of
quoting other authors. On page 176, "Don't tell _me_ about rears and
vices; I have been in the Navy all my life" is a paraphrase of
not-so-prissy-after-all Jane Austen's scatalogical joke from _Mansfield
Park_ [paraphrasing, don't have the text here with me], "Do not speak of
me of those admirals, with their rears and their vices."
Trust O'Brian to have his own followup joke waiting, the comment about
"wanting in penetration." Suddenly those rakes and hoes don't seem so bad
in comparison.
-Jerry, relieved
This time through I focused more closely on the Mowetribe, but like Susan
I still glazed over. I find it somewhere between idiosyncratic and
clunky. Flipping back and forth to the picture at the beginning of the
book as it went on helped some, but still it went on too long IMHO. The
idea that it was written by editorial decree is appealing since O'Brian
usually introduces terminology in context as he needs it.
-Jerry, still wondering if anybody else reads the yardarm incident as he
does or whether he got it wrong
Stephen (p.171) says, "With Ireland in her present state a republic would
quickly become something little better than a democracy."
Would some politics-and-history savvy lissun briefly say what those two
terms mean to Stephen?
Thanks,
From: Don Seltzer
Keith arrived on the scene the following day and began the game of musical
commands. Capt. Manley Dixon (the model for Capt. Harte) of the 64 gun
Lion requested a transfer to the Genereux once it had been surveyed and
bought into the navy
This is really interesting to me. I have been puzzled about the following
passage in TGS (pg 100-101):
"Well, sir," said Jack, "I have only two observations to make. The
first is that the third lieutenant is the son of an officer with whom I
disagreed in Minorca. I say nothing against the young man, but he is aware
of the disagreement and he takes his father's part. It is no doubt natural,
but it would not make for a happy ship."
"Dixon? His father's name was Harte until he inherited Bewley, as I
recall," said the admiral, with a look that was not easily interpreted.
Perhaps it was knowing, perhaps inwardly amused, conceivably disapproving;
in any event Satterley was obviously aware that Aubrey was one of those who
had made a cuckold of Captaine Harte at Port Mahon.
There is nothing particularly strange about this, but I stopped to wonder
why POB felt the need to introduce a second family name here. I didn't see
the point. It is interesting to see that the alternate name is the name of
the person Harte was based on.
Mary A
In any event, I owe a debt
of
gratitude to those novelists who have led, and continue to lead me to the
joy of learning about the past.
I agree with you about this entirely. Good historical fiction can spark an
interest in the real thing.
And youth is wasted on the young. ;-)
Mary A
Indeed, there is an old Pennsylvania-Dutch saying: We get too soon old and
too late smart.
Shakespeare was pretty adept at reusing plots and
characters too. POB is in good company.
=====
And Susan's eyes are so glazed over that she's quoting herself, LOL! (Nay,
I "got" it!)
I agree with your second essay that just came in my Digest--the passage does
seem clunky and forced. The only possible other explanation is that he
himself wanted to ground the reader in the jargon and get it over with, but
your editorial supposition sounds truer.
I remember really studying all that the first time, but this time I let my
eyes glaze and glaze and.....
Linnea Angermuller
When I first began reading POB, Post Captain was the first volume
available--M&C was checked out and there were paltry few others on the
shelves--this was 10 years ago? I was always glad I began with PC and
sometimes advise others (mostly women) to begin with that, as I am
disappointed to find that they don't take to POB if they begin with M&C. I
think PC is my favorite, too.
What! You mean there is _more_ humor in PC than M&C? I have just
forgotten and now have that to look forward to! I am just at the part where
Stephen is asked by Mrs. Harte to lead jovial Jack away from the rout after
he's boomed out fax pax galore, and Stephen says Let us not lose a moment
(or some such.)
Such a squeaker you were, Martin.
Despite ingenious efforts to show that Stephen Maturin was already an intelligence
agent by the opening of "Master and Commander", I cannot accept such a conclusion.
Stephen's disdain at Jack's notion that the doctor could easily gather intelligence
regarding Spanish ships and convoys and cargoes seems entirely sincere: "Certainly
I could, if I chose to play the spy. It is a curious and apparently illogical
set of notions, is it not, that makes it right and natural to speak of the Sophie's
enemies, yet beyond any question wrong, dishonorable and indecent to speak of
her prey?"
To me, this seems a cousin to Stephen's disavowal of conventional patriotism:
"I have nothing to do with nations, or nationalism. The only feelings I have
- for what they are - are for men as individuals; my loyalties, such as they
may be, are to private persons alone ... [P]atriotism is a word; and one that
generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous,
or my country is always right, which is imbecile."
Despite the expression of such sentiments in "Master and Commander", of course,
by the time of "Post-Captain" Stephen is an experienced, valuable, and (one
might say) enthusiastic intelligence agent working against Bonaparte. Either
O'Brian was hiding Maturin's real loyalties and activities in "Master and Commander",
which seems to me to be wholly unacceptable given the intimate look we are given
into his thoughts, or O'Brian changed his mind about Stephen's role by the time
he wrote "Post-Captain".
The latter, I believe, is almost unquestionably what occurred. The reason appears
to be obvious: Maturin's intelligence operations would provide many opportunities
for future plot ideas and would be useful in explaining how Jack Aubrey could
be found involved in dramatic events, such as the capture of the Spanish treasure
convoy.
It is not unusual for the author of a new series of novels to make substantial
changes in character and tone after the first book so as to make the series
more viable. I would cite two cases which immediately come to mind. Fans of
Robert B. Parker's "Spenser" books will remember that the Spenser of "The Godwulf
Manuscript" is a much more of a brash loner than the detective hero of the succeeding
novels; the supporting cast of characters had not yet made an appearance and
Spenser's dialogue has not yet found its anchor. A second case would be the
humorous detective novels featuring "Stanley Hastings", written by Parnell Hall.
The first in the series, "Detective", is so different in effect that it seems
scarcely to belong to the same set of stories, being much more serious and dark;
only with the second "Hastings" book did Hall find his proper voice.
O'Brian, on the other hand, made relatively minor changes between "Master and
Commander" and "Post-Captain"; characterizations and narrative tone remained
much the same. Only Stephen's willingness to indeed be a spy was altered, all
in the name of plotting.
Bruce Trinque
I was always glad I began with PC and sometimes
advise others (mostly women) to begin with that, as
I am disappointed to find that they don't take to POB
if they begin with M&C.
That echoes my thinking. On my first read, M&C was, frankly, disapointing.
There was enough there to get me to PC, and within about 10 pages of PC I
was hooked for good, but M&C didn't work for me.
Now, on reading number five of M&C, I am amazed at all that I missed the
first time around. It captivates me from the first sentence, and each new
read of M&C moves it up in my list of favorite POB books.
You mean there is _more_ humor in PC than M&C?
This was my first impression. On this re-read, I question it.
Greg
42º32'34.5" N
Linnea
And Susan's eyes are so glazed over that she's quoting
herself, LOL! (Nay,
I "got" it!)
Well, that's why I entitled it "P.S." : }
I have to admit that I'm currently re-reading HMSS, having finished M&C and
PC recently. When I re-read M&C, however, I noticed that O'Brian never had
the two main characters referring to each other by their first names. I had
assumed that this mark of a more intimate friendship would come in M&C,
however I found it for what I took to be the first time on page 13 of PC.
Did I just miss it in Master and Commander, or is it really just not there?
And if it's not, is this an indication that Jack and Stephen are not quite
that close yet?
I brought this up because of the discussion of the (possible) loan of money
and other comments on the theme of this friendship in general.
--Jessey
In a message dated 9/2/01 11:17:45 AM Central Daylight Time, jerry@REED.EDU
writes:
Jane Austen's scatalogical joke from _Mansfield
Park_ [paraphrasing, don't have the text here with me], "Do not speak of
me of those admirals, with their rears and their vices."
I am simply unable to believe that Jane meant what people now think she
meant.
Not because I am a prude or because Jane was a prude, but because standards
of decorum were simply different in that age, and certainly very different
through the immediately succeeding Victorian age, in which Jane was still
read, if not as popular as she later became.
Of course there is a joke on "vices," and I am not sure just what she meant
by the "rears," but I don't think it was, or could have been, scatological,
even coming from the lively Mary Crawford; Jane's cheeks would have burned
red to hear such an interpretation, I think.
But I could be wrong.
Deeply, obstinately ignorant, self-opinionated, and ill-informed,
Mary S
Linnea wrote: "Yes, I noticed that--POB has Stephen being very polite on one
hand, removing
himself while Jack attends to his papers, but on the other hand picking up
Jack's violin and playing it!
I think POB was displaying Stephen's character here: how he does march to a
different drum: and though he does his best, the creature, occasionally to
comply with society's norms, he almost always instantly screws up ... But on
another level, his taking the violin shows his state of mind with regard to
Jack at this point, the state of mind you so beautifully outline.
London Lois
Jim McPherson wrote: "I was a CS Forrester fanatic before discovering POB
starting with M&C. The thing that really convinced me
that I was dealing with a serious sailor and a better
dose of reality than Hornblower, was Jack having an
affair with the port captain's wife. Hornblower is too
damn pure. Jack is a down and dirty seafaring man."
What about HH's affair with Marie de Gracay with whom he betrayed Maria
(Flying Colours) and later Barbara (Lord Hornblower)? He betrayed Maria with
Barbara, in mind at least, if not in body (The Happy Return). And what about
his fling with the highborn gal at the Siege of Riga (The Commodore)?
The thing about HH is that he agonises over these betrayals - JA is only
bothered when it seems Sophie may find out or an angry husband may be after
him. In that sense HH is "pure" in comparison with JA - and, IMO, a far
nicer human being too. As far as doses of reality go, there are people like
HH in the world and people like JA: both characters are excellent portrayals
of different types and equally real, I believe.
London Lois which I have dearly loved HH these 30 years and more and always
shall.
London Lois
Nathan wrote:
This opening fills me with _intense_ pleasurable anticipation now, but
despite deep searching in the halls of my memory, I cannot recall my
exact feeling upon reading that the first time.
I could not agree more: the first read had the whole first page of my wondering if I would read more... NOW, it is the opening gun, the start of the anticipation.
While wed are on the opening, I find that the JA presented at the concert is a totally different JA than I think we see anywhere else. He almost comes off as a buffoon... which in deed he is sometimes while ashore, but we never see it so clearly as at the concert.
Barney
On p.251, I was quite surprised when POB, a man with a wonderful turn of a phrase, simply said [starting on p. 250]
'Then I must tell you that on Sunday mornings it is the custom, in that country, for people of all ages and conditions to dance.... The dance is a particular dance a round called the sardana; and if you will reach me your fiddle I will play you the air of the one that I have in mind. Though you must Imagine I am a harsh braying hoboy.' Plays.
That one word sentence struck me as quite out of place. Almost a stage direction, not a sentence. While POB rarely uses too many words, it is with even rarer exception (I think) that he uses too few.
Barney
Being captain seems to agree with JA. In my Norton HB on p. 109, we're told that Jack is 14 weighs stone, by the time he gets to Gibraltar on page 394, SM is telling him he must weigh 16-17!
Barney
Prior to the gunboat chase, we're told:
[JA's]"heart was going with a steady, even beat, a little faster than usual. Stephen had drawn off ten ounces of blood, and he thought he felt much better for it."
what was this supposed to do, and did it (I would guess NOT as we do not practice it as much these days).
Barney
At one part in the book, JA knows that a ship is responding with the signal from six months ago. How often did these change? Certainly, in later books the voyages become longer and a signal good for six months would be so old on the return voyage that you could get yourself killed coming back into Portsmouth.
Barney
In my Norton HC , p.151, POB revamps a series that he played with in TUS to Toby, but this time with Stephen:
a sloop not a sloop, the Captain in not a Captain, the surgeon is not a surgeon, the gun-deck has no guns, etc, etc.
Barney
Barney wrote:
Being captain seems to agree with JA. In my Norton HB on p. 109, we're told
that Jack is 14 weighs stone, by the time he gets to Gibraltar on page 394, SM
is telling him he must weigh 16-17!
There have been many long arguments about how overweight Jack was at
various points in his career. Possibly Stephen has been exaggerating and he
really does weigh (only) 14 stone!
I realise some people may have difficulty with the British system of
weights and measures. Feel free to translate 14 stone to 89 kg. (grins)
Martin Watts
The recent posts about the "morning" scenes involving Jack, Stephen, and
Dillon, and Susan Wenger's (most excellent!) thoughts about the introduction
of the names of ship parts got me thinking...
All three men are given equal weight for these scenes. But this book isn't
about two Irish guys with an unpleasant shared history during an Irish
uprising: it's about the Royal Navy and Napoleon, and in order for both
Dillon and Stephen to remain on the same ship for any length of time, POB
would have had to address this animosity. One of them had to go. (I wonder
if POB at any time considered tossing Stephen and keeping Dillon...?) So,
just as POB uses the device of having Mowett explain the various ship parts
to Stephen, has he also introduced Dillon for the sole purpose of giving us
some detail of Stephen's parts?
And the denials: Dillon denies Rome yet wakes up with the Kyrie (and Miss
Smith) on his lips, Stephen denies knowing Dillon (how many times before the
cock crows?) - what does Jack deny? The ring on Molly Harte's finger?
Already we know none of these men is gold-plated perfect.
BTW, for those who started with M&C, did Stephen being left behind at the
time of the shake-down cruise cause any great anxiety? Now that I've read
the book several times it no longer bothers me, but at the initial reading, I
did not care for Jack for a while, and thought him a thorough scoundrel. Was
that the desired effect?
Alice
I've never understood why anyone would think blood-letting would be
beneficial. Suddenly removing a certain percentage of one's red blood cells
(RBCs) and their oxygen-carrying capacity would most definitely lead to a
faster heart beat, and sometimes lightheadedness - the remaining RBCs would
need to be pumped around a little faster to make up for the loss.
Alice
When were red blood cells and their function of carrying oxygen first
understood? Do we have a medico in the house to inform us?
Bruce Trinque
In a message dated 9/3/01 9:25:10 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
Ladyshrike@AOL.COM writes:
All three men are given equal weight for these scenes. But this book isn't
about two Irish guys with an unpleasant shared history during an Irish
uprising: it's about the Royal Navy and Napoleon, and in order for both
Dillon and Stephen to remain on the same ship for any length of time, POB
would have had to address this animosity. One of them had to go. (I wonder
if POB at any time considered tossing Stephen and keeping Dillon...?)
I doubt that POB ever gave much thought to an Aubrey-Dillon pairing as the
mainstay for a nautical series, with the good doctor at the bottom of the sea
sans diving bell. Jack and Stephen are very much a more adult version of
Jack and Tobias from "The Unknown Shore" and this sort of partnership seems
to maximize the potential for exploring a wider world in comparison with that
of two hell-fire naval officers (one of the weaknesses of the Hornblower
novels is that Horatio does not have a Stephen counterpart so we can do
something other than agonize for the thousandth time over whether Hornblower
did or did not do something he should have). No, I rather expect that
O'Brian was already getting James Dillon's shroud ready even as the
lieutenant was performing his first morning shave.
Bruce Trinque
I read the animosity as being between Dillon and Jack rather than Stephen.
Dillon seemed to be close to calling Jack out as a coward. That relationship
could not last. The tragedy was that Dillon dies just when all doubts would have
been resolved. OTOH if he had survived he would have been promoted out of the
Sophie, probably to a ship of his own. IF POB contemplated committing a sequel
at this point Dillon would not have been available for further use.
Martin Watts
Bloodleting was based on the theory of humors:
From Webster's Dictionary, 1913:
Hu"mor (?), n. [OE. humour, OF. humor, umor, F. humeur, L. humor, umor,
moisture, fluid, fr. humere, umere, to be moist. See Humid.] [Written also
humour.]
1. Moisture, especially, the moisture or fluid of animal bodies, as the
chyle, lymph, etc.; as, the humors of the eye, etc. &hand; The ancient
physicians believed that there were four humors (the blood, phlegm, yellow
bile or choler, and black bile or melancholy), on the relative proportion of
which the temperament and health depended.
Blood would be let to alleviate an imbalance in the 'blood humor' which I
think was called the 'sanguine humor'. All useless, of course, and very
heavily over-prescribed. It was not uncommon for a patient to die from
overenthusiastic bloodletting.
jim
Feel free to translate 14 stone to 89 kg. (grins)
For a tall man leading an active life and carrying a lot of hard muscle,
89kg seems quite moderate and the later 16-17 stone doesn't really seem all
that bad either. In fact, considering the way Jack downs the bacon and
anything else in sight, he is doing OK. (Wouldn't want to see his
cholesterol numbers though).
Mary A
I believe it was a german scientist in the mid 19th century who first
determined that red blood cells carry oxygen (I can't remember his name).
In any event, Stephen's era did not understand this concept. The physicians
of the time thought they were letting out noxious humours, as Jim wrote. I
recall being told in one of my classes many years ago, that it was sometime
early in the 20th century that statistically, a person finally had as good
as a fifty-fifty chance of being helped by a doctor rather than harmed.
Mary A
BTW, for those who started with M&C, did Stephen being left behind at the
time of the shake-down cruise cause any great anxiety? Now that I've read
the book several times it no longer bothers me, but at the initial reading,
I did not care for Jack for a while, and thought him a thorough scoundrel.
Like the gentleman at the dock who pointed out the Sophie to Stephen, I had
a great deal of anxiety for his state of mind. I feared something dreadful
would happen to him because of the misunderstanding, but I did not blame
Jack for this because we already knew that he had left Mowett ashore to find
the doctor, give his regrets about dinner, and tell him he would send a boat
to pick him up that evening.
Mary A
It didn't bother me in the least. Jack was forced to leave by a superior,
waited as long as possible, and left a message. I did wonder whether the
doctor had served his purpose and was being written out of the story.
Greg
42º32'34.5" N
And the denials: Dillon denies Rome yet wakes up with the Kyrie (and Miss
Smith) on his lips,
Dillon's religion makes an intersting point about Jack's character. Dillon
no doubt kept his religion to himself and swore whatever oaths were
necessary to have his commission. Stephen was surprised to find out that
Dillon was Catholic. Jack often says something disparaging about the
Catholics or the Pope, but it becomes clear eventually that Jack really
doesn't care if a man is Catholic or anything else as long as he can hand
reef and steer or is a good officer. After Dillon is killed, the Irish
hands mourn their leader:
"The sound that woke him in the middle watch: a low cry mounting by
quarter tones or less and increasing in volume to a howling shriek, then a
quick series of spoken or chanted words, the mounting cry again and the
shriek - the Irish men of the crew waking James Dillon, stretched there with
a cross in his hands and lanterns at his head and feet."
Jack surely knew about the cross and what it probably meant (not that a
protestant might not carry one as well). I took this passage to mean that
Jack was finally aware that Dillon was Catholic, that he was not horrified
by the thought and that he had the decency not to interfere with the
mourning of the Irish crewmen. He never felt it was necessary to place
arbitrary restrictions on his men. I can not imagine Captain Corbett
allowing such a display.
Mary A
BTW, for those who started with M&C, did Stephen being
left behind at the
time of the shake-down cruise cause any great anxiety?
Jack Aubrey had no way of knowing that, out of funds,
unable to pay his debt to his landlord, Stephen had left
Joselito's. When they met, Stephen told him "I can be
found at Joselito's." So Jack reasonably believed that
if he sent a message there explaining that he'd be back
that evening, Stephen would receive it. Further
evidence: If Jack had intended abandonment, he would not
have ordered the carpenter to modify his cabin to
accomodate a guest.
- Susan
Martin Watts wrote:
The tragedy was that Dillon dies just when all doubts would have
been resolved. OTOH if he had survived he would have been promoted out of the
Sophie, probably to a ship of his own. IF POB contemplated committing a sequel
at this point Dillon would not have been available for further use.
I was less surprised by Dillon's death, I think, than by that of any other major
figure in the canon, right up to the two surprises near the end. With all of his
agonizing, Dillon was Tragic Character writ large, and I thought his heroic death
and self-redemption in the climactic battle was a foregone conclusion.
Bob Fleisher
I realise some people may have difficulty with the British system of
weights and measures. Feel free to translate 14 stone to 89 kg. (grins)
Um, some part of my brain is telling me that there are 14 pounds in a
stone.... So Jack weighed, at this point, 196 pounds?
--Jessey, not sure about the 14 pounds bit
Towards the end of M&C, Captain Christy-Palliere is shows Jack a watercolor
and says "Laura Place. Number sixteen, Laura Place. This is where my
Christy cousins always stay."
Anne Elliot's cousins in _Persuasion_ are also in Laura Place. I find this
interesting since I think that _Persuasion_ is the book upon which much of
the canon was modeled. Not only is there a great naval presence in the book,
there's a "not a moment to lose", Anne & Captain Wentworth's relationship is
not dissimilar to Jack and Sophies, Anne's father is nearly as loathsome as
Mrs. Williams, etc.
Greg
42º32'34.5" N
In a message dated 9/3/01 7:23:34 AM Central Daylight Time,
barneysimon.geo@YAHOO.COM writes:
Plays.
That one word sentence struck me as quite out of place.
This was discussed before sometime. Many Lissuns thought that it was an
authorial note which POB forgot to flesh out into description, and which was
then missed by the editor.
Deeply, obstinately ignorant, self-opinionated, and ill-informed,
Mary S
Lois du Toit
... In that sense HH is "pure" in comparison with
JA - and, IMO, a far
nicer human being too. As far as doses of reality
go, there are people like
HH in the world and people like JA: both characters
are excellent portrayals
of different types and equally real, I believe.
You got me, Lois. That's an excellent comparison
between JA & HH.
Maybe I am too much like HH and wish I were more of a
JA. :-)
Jim
=====
In a message dated 9/3/01 7:45:10, Batrinque@AOL.COM writes:
When were red blood cells and their function of carrying oxygen first understood?
Do we have a medico in the house to inform us?
You have a point there, Bruce.
After a little googling (actually, a lot of googling - I think I'm having
trouble with the right search words), I found this at
http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/biomed/his/blood/blood1.htm
"For many centuries, blood-letting was considered a tried and true remedy for
certain conditions. It was recommended for fevers, inflammations, a variety
of disease conditions and [ironically] for hemorrhage. Although it fell in
and out of favor, it persisted into the 20th century and was even recommended
by Sir William Osler in the 1923 edition his Principles and Practice of
Medicine."
-------------------------
And
he*mo*glo*bin (noun)
[International Scientific Vocabulary, short for earlier hematoglobulin]
First appeared *1869*
1 : an iron-containing respiratory pigment of vertebrate red blood cells
that consists of a globin composed of four subunits each of which is linked
to a heme molecule, that functions in oxygen transport to the tissues after
conversion to oxygenated form in the gills or lungs, and that assists in
carbon dioxide transport back to the gills or lungs after surrender of its
oxygen
--------------------------
So, I guess we're back to "what did he know and when did he know it?" (Have
I been watching West Wing too long?) Maybe physicians of the time did NOT,
in fact, know the interrelatedness of respiration and RBCs.
Alice
Stephen (p.171) says, "With Ireland in her present state a republic would
quickly become something little better than a democracy."
Would some politics-and-history savvy lissun briefly say what those two
terms mean to Stephen?
He might be making a wry comment on the nature of both. Britain was a
democracy - of sorts. By modern day standards most people were
disenfranchised. France was experimenting with a republic - but it was one
of terror where the mob largely ruled....
Tom
Tom Lewis, in beautiful Jervis Bay, NSW, Oz
also on the Internet at tom.lewis@defence.gov.au
Family web site: http://www.users.bigpond.com/talewis/tklr_at_home.html
My father remembers being "cupped" in Switzerland in the late 1920s or
early 1930s, he didn't remember that well! This was the idea of heated
cups being placed on the skin of the abdomenn. The air cooling in the
cups induced a vacuum which drew out the malign humours though the skin
or some such theory.
Jane Austen's scatalogical joke from _Mansfield
Park_ [paraphrasing, don't have the text here with me], "Do not speak
to me of those admirals, with their rears and their vices."
I am simply unable to believe that Jane meant what people now think she
meant.
Actually, I think she meant just what she implied. Subject to correction (or
at least an interesting debate
Our own (in the parts of the West I've known at least) is mostly ignorant of
real life, given to foolish flights of hypothetical heathenry in
consequence, and mistakes scatology for an acceptance of earthy
necessities -- while the Victorians were reminded of necessity from hour to
hour, but trying very hard to "rise above" their carnal origins.
It is unfair to capsulize entire cultures so glibly, but those probably are
as well founded as any generalization can be. Or so I believe.
Gary W. Sims, Major, USAF(ret)
While wed are on the opening, I find that the JA presented at the
concert is a totally different JA than I think we see anywhere
else. He almost comes off as a buffoon... which in deed he is
sometimes while ashore, but we never see it so clearly as at the concert.
Barney
I absolutely disagree. I see nothing of the buffoon in Jack here. That may
be how *Stephen* initially sees him, but I've never thought, and still don't
that that's how we readers are meant to see him. My sympathies were wholly
with Jack in that scene from my first reading of it. There is something
about the way it's written that has always led me to believe that Stephen
was being a cantankerous grouch (and his capacity to be such is certainly
confirmed many times subsequently) and Jack's musical "sin" was nothing so
bad as Stephen thought.
This reminds me also of the way Stephen later frequently harps on Jack's
weight which, many of us concluded in past discussions of that topic, was
generally exaggerated by Stephen, the scawny little creature.
Ah, I just discovered in reading further posts that Barney himself one found
instance which proves the point:
Being captain seems to agree with JA. In my Norton HB on p. 109, we're
told that Jack is 14 weighs stone, by the time he gets to
Gibraltar on page 394, SM is telling him he must weigh 16-17!
Marian
Mary S. replied:
I am simply unable to believe that Jane meant what people now think she
meant.
...
But I could be wrong.
I doubt that you are, Mary. I think your thinking on this is quite correct.
I think it's very hard for us who live in a time when nearly anything can be
said to anyone, and when even "polite" company doesn't inhibit that much, to
comprehend how much of what we consider "usual" conversation would have been
unacceptable or even shocking.
Marian
On Mon, 3 Sep 2001, at 13:30:49 +0100, Martin Watts wrote:
There have been many long arguments about how overweight Jack was at
various points in his career. Possibly Stephen has been exaggerating and he
really does weigh (only) 14 stone!
POB tells us "like most sailors, Jack was rather fat". I'm about Jack's
height (6'02" / 1.88 m ). When I weighed 14 stone (196 lbs / 89 kg) no one
described me that way. At 16 or 17 stone Jack might get into "rather fat"
territory but 14 was a reasonable weight for a well-muscled man his age and
height.
Bob Kegel
Others may have remarked on this already, but I'm a couple of days
behind in list postings, thanks to a bizarre ISP problem. (At my end,
not the lists! :) ).
At any rate, one thing that struck me that parallel's POB's associating
musical instruments with both Jack and Stephen is the introduction of
Sophie's
log in Chapter 5 and Stephen's diary in Chapter 6.
This, to me, presents clearly with subtlety a key difference between Jack
and Stephen. Jack is of course extroverted, with little analytical
personal reflection. (One might argue that even if he wasn't, he
couldn't put it in the Sophie's log, which is true, but why would POB
call it out
so clearly in parallel in these two chapter openings?). On the other
hand, we see Stephen often at his best after an event, alone, quiet,
ruminating and recording his observations and contemplations in his
diary.
As a personal aside, it hit me square in the face in Chapter 6 that my
own diary entries now often bear an interesting and somewhat comical
impression from
POB, and that the skilled outside reader (who, I hope, never will
decipher my wretched handwriting!) could probably tell by looking at my
journal when I was reading the Canon, and when I was less responsibly
entertained. I wonder how many others have been so afflicted?
From: Ray Rischpater
Minor spoiler...
.
.
.
.
.
.
In reading this, it hit me how much of Jack POB captured in this one
light. Looking later in the Canon, Jack often retains his jovial,
youthful nature, of course --- but when he doesn't, he certainly fits
this frighteningly well at times:
"'It would give me great pleasure,' said Stephen. Looking at Jack now he
could see what his appearance might be when the fire of his youth had
gone out: heavy, grey, authoritarian, if not savage and morose."
Fortunately, Jack's fire, while it may dwindle from time to time, is
never extinguished as we read on...
It makes me wonder how much of the larger picture POB had as he sat down
to write the first bits.
Bruce Trinque wrote:
Despite ingenious efforts to show that Stephen Maturin was already an
intelligence agent by the opening of "Master and Commander", I cannot
accept
such a conclusion. [ clear & convincing argument follows ]
This part bothered me a great deal on this read; I read it twice to get
a feel for what really might be going on. In later books, we see how
well Stephen handles those who are unaware of his involvement with My
Lords of Admiralty, yet I think I have to agree with you.
As further evidence, as M&C unfolds, he does of course touch more on
Spain's coastline and armaments, although again without the experience I
would have expected --- or Stephen himself demonstrates in later
books --- of an intelligence agent.
Ray, enjoying the squeakers' antics far more than he should
I agree that Miss Austen would never refer to
scatalogical functions. I believe that she initially
wrote stories to entertain her siblings (correct?).
What is interesting (this is jumping ahead a bit) is
that Diana is so outside of the social norm of her (I
was going to say "time", but that is not quite right)
social environment. Rural England would have rejected
her outof hand, Je pense.
Ms Ray McP
Marian Van Til
I absolutely disagree. I see nothing of the buffoon
in Jack here.
I don't think that he is a bufoon, just very YOUNG!
Ms Ray McP
I appologize--this is a repeat question. How tall was
Jack? Stephen was 5'6". It certainly makes a
difference when discussing his weight.
RMcP
In a message dated 9/3/01 21:41:17, bobkegel@SEANET.COM writes:
POB tells us "like most sailors, Jack was rather fat". I'm about Jack's
height (6'02" / 1.88 m ). When I weighed 14 stone (196 lbs / 89 kg) no one
described me that way. At 16 or 17 stone Jack might get into "rather fat"
territory but 14 was a reasonable weight for a well-muscled man his age and
height.
When my son, who is also 6'2", left for basic training for his Army stint at
age 22 or so, he weighed 165 lbs. They told him he needed to be up to 203 to
finish basic. He got there, barely, and I thought he looked rather good at
that weight. Of course, he also had a short military haircut (and the dyed
parts had long since grown out) and no beard so he looked better generally
anyway. Fifteen years later, he still weighs around 180 or so, I think.
So 196 is not an unacceptable weight for someone of that height. Add two
more stone = 224? Is that too much? Not in my opinion, but in Stephen's,
perhaps.
Alice
I am enjoying the comments on the Group Read, does everyone
find - as I do - that the characters fit the period beautifully?
Not a false step anywhere, neither forard or aft.
What I really longed for halfway through the canon was for some
backtracking, stories from less well mined periods. Tantalising
hints of JA in his youth, on the Cape or in the Americas. Even
more, some equally talented writer to give me a glimpse of this
period from the lower-deck point of view.
Either would have made fascinating reading. In the vein of
Cornwell's Sharpe for example, though he became an officer
eventually.
Tony Davison
Here's the entire quote - "Certainly, my home at my uncle's brought me
acquainted with a circle of admirals. Of Rears and Vices I saw enough.
*Now do not be suspecting me of a pun, I entreat.*" (emphasis mine). The
last sentence, the denial of a pun, implies that she well knew it was a pun,
and knew exactly what she was about.
Greg
42º32'34.5" N
I don't think that he is a bufoon, just very YOUNG!
Also remember that Jack has just been promoted from lieutenant. Lt's had a
different code of conduct than commanding officers, even when ashore. Jack
hasn't learned that, yet.
--
"Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? http://sites.netscape.net/wanyden
Barney Simon wrote:
On p.251, I was quite surprised when POB, a man with a wonderful turn of a phrase, simply said [starting on p. 250]
'Then I must tell you that on Sunday mornings it is the custom, in that country, for people of all ages and conditions to dance.... The dance is a particular dance a round called the sardana; and if you will reach me your fiddle I will play you the air of the one that I have in mind. Though you must Imagine I am a harsh braying hoboy.' Plays.
That one word sentence struck me as quite out of place. Almost a stage direction, not a sentence. While POB rarely uses too many words, it is with even rarer exception (I think) that he uses too few.
Is it too few? Stage directions are considered part of the literature, e.g., "Exit, pursued by a bear" following Antigonus's last speech in Shakespeare's "A Winter's Tale". It is a convention that POB would be familiar with and would expect such familiarity in his audience. Using it in a novel is unusual, but how better to indicate the action
after Stephen has already described it?
--
Ray Rischpater
At any rate, one thing that struck me that parallel's
POB's associating
musical instruments with both Jack and Stephen is the
introduction of
Sophie's
log in Chapter 5 and Stephen's diary in Chapter 6.
A very good observation. O'Brian uses parallel
structures very well, and they are usually well enough
separated that it comes as a revelation when you find
one.
- Susan
A thought:
Jack first utterance as he wakes is, "Christ."
Odd man out. Foreshadowing?
Alice
When Captain Aubrey and Dr. Maturin dine together in
Chapter 2, they have already commenced a friendship.
O'Brian doesn't delve on this any more than he delves on
anything else - a few brushstrokes paint a few thousand
words. One touching sign of their already deep
friendship occurs when "Marine" brings Jack his orders on
page 38.
I can't imagine myself picking up someone else's
instrument without asking and walking away to play it,
unless we were good friends indeed.
Here I sit - at work, mind - with 250 more posts to go. This post
touches a question I've wondered about. Yes, indeed, Jack and Stephen
became very close friends in a short period of time. But how? What
chords were struck?
I've moved a good bit in my life and have had the opportunity to meet
and become friends with many people. I don't recall reaching such a
seemingly close relationship in such a short period... a near coming
to blows... a brief meeting over coffee... a meal together.
Understand that I'm not questioning its realism - it certainly rings
true throughout - just curious about what the common thread is
(certainly more than love of music (and Jack is already apparently
very attached to him before learning he is a physician)).
As I wrote this I began to wonder if it is not _due_ to the first
encounter. You put a strain on a rubber band, release the pressure
and it snaps together. You put a strain in an initial relationship,
remove the irritants, and... it snaps together?
Any other ideas?
Nathan, reading frantically
While wed are on the opening, I find that the JA presented at the
concert is a totally different JA than I think we see anywhere
else. He almost comes off as a buffoon
Marian, I like explanation that at the concert we are seeing JA as SM is
seeing him. I still think that the glimpse we see of JA, the view of him at
a social event, other than a dinner, and enjoying himself, in an unreserved
way, is quite unique. It is a side of JA that I do not recall seeing
anywhere else. It is certainly well written, I can picture him there and my
wanting to slap him!
and as Ms Ray McP rightly points out, this is the youngest we ever see JA,
and this might be a sign of his age.
Barney
so, i guess that my 22-1/2 stone weight at 6'-7" is indeed a bit much.
barney
I don't recall reaching such a seemingly close
relationship in such a short period... a near coming
to blows... a brief meeting over coffee... a meal together.
This has happened to me. I became *very* close friends with someone over a
few beers. That was almost fifteen years ago, and we're still the best of
friends. Jack and Stepehen's quick friendship was absolutely believable to
me.
Greg
42º32'34.5" N
After the discussion of Stephen's picking up Jack's violin at the Crown and
playing it, I went back and re-read that passage. Then I went back to where
Jack tells his bosun (?) to transport his chest and dunnage from the Crown to
the Sophie.
Why did Jack even have the violin with him in the first place? Should it not
have gone with his dunnage? (In later books there is mention that officers
should not carry their own instruments - the one with Mrs. Fielding -
Treason's Harbor?)
So what is the purpose of the violin? There is no mention that Jack has it
with him while he and Stephen are eating until Stephen picks it up and
carries it to the back of the room, playing softly. That's obviously to give
Jack privacy, but could Stephen not just as easily excused himself to go to
the little boy's room, or chase a hoopoe or something?
The violin, appearing almost out of nowhere, does tell us, the readers, two
things: one, Jack has an instrument with him and, two, Stephen can play it.
But both of these become so obvious later so it seems odd to me to put the
violin here.
What am I missing?
Alice
PS A funny thing: my first go-round with M&C was as an audiotape, and in
describing Captain Harte's house, it says, "Captain Harte lived in a big
rambling house belonging to one Martinez, a Spanish merchant..." On the
tape, I heard "Juan Martinez" and never noticed till this time around that
it's "one Martinez." A Juan in a million!
Barney wrote:
so, i guess that my 22-1/2 stone weight at 6'-7" is indeed a bit much.
Yes - you'll have to gain a few inches.
Martin - 7" shorter and currently unaware how overweight he is.
Martin Watts
Why did Jack even have the violin with him in the first place? Should it
not
have gone with his dunnage?
On page 17, when Jack first invites Stephen to dinner, he suggests that they
"might try a little music" after they have appropriately wet the swab. POB
no doubt left out the instructions to Mr Marshall, the Master, to pick up
everthing but the violin, which he would be needing later. ;-)
Mary A
Greg White
This has happened to me. I became *very* close friends
with someone over a
few beers. That was almost fifteen years ago, and
we're still the best of
friends. Jack and Stepehen's quick friendship was
absolutely believable to
me.
There is a phenomena frequently commented on by new Mensa
members which I think bears on this question.
They've never had close friends. They've always felt
"different," and they always thought it was their own
fault, some flaw in their character. They come to their
first Mensa meeting and they meet a soulmate.
Jack and Stephen are very unlike their peers. Jack SEEMS
to be just like every other sea officer of his time and
class, but wait! he plays the violin, he paws at Latin
and Greek, he teaches himself mathematics and astronomy,
and so on. He is a passionate man of enthusiastic
interests, and sometimes comes across to SOME as
immature, or crude, or overenthusiastic, or beefy, or
just "not the right sort." He has a willingness and
eagerness to listen to other ideas (but not on his
quarterdeck), discuss, examine.
Stephen is very different from anyone else of his time!
but he has enthusiastic interests, passions, beliefs, and
a willingness and eagerness to listen to other ideas,
discuss, examine.
Two such men could find something in each other that was
lacking in their interactions with others. Stephen can
share an interest with Rev. Martin, for example, but
Martin will become tiresome soon. Jack can have great
fun with Heneage Dundas, they can talk about old times,
they can talk about naval strategy, they can talk all
night long, but it's not the same kind of idea-sharing
that he gets with Stephen.
They can see the glimmer of this the first time they
talk, and they can share the kind of kindred feelings
they don't even have a word for, but they can sense that
they will be right for friendship for the long run.
Susan, remembering the first night I met Win Wenger. By
the end of the first hour, we were already talking about
"WHEN we are married we'll do such-and-such," and "after
we've been married a few years we'll do this-and-that
with our children," etc. I'd never met anyone like him
before, and for sure, he'd never met anyone like me
before.
- Susan, 33 happy years later
Barney Simon wrote:
Plays.
That one word sentence struck me as quite out of place.
Yes, we discussed this some time ago. Many of us felt it was another
example of POB's originality and humor.
Isabelle Hayes
I feel that the "stage direction" is POB's being economical. How else could he have written this passage? "Jack listened respectfully and commented (insert some musical jargon)" or a series of notes?
By the way, does any one know how musical POB was? Did he sing or play an instrument? Was he a regular concert-goer? Did he have a collection of recordings?
Gerry Strey
GREG WROTE:
This has happened to me. I became *very* close friends
with someone over a
few beers.
Believable to me to. But surely there was some _thing_, some bit
of magic which drew you and your drinking buddy together in that
first meeting (or was it just the beer :-)).
SUSAN WROTE:
Two such men could find something in each other that was
lacking in their interactions with others.
Maybe that's it. There probably are people who fit each other like
hand and glove and Jack and Stephen recognized it by feel rather than
any specific attribute. Of course, it is also much in character for
POB to paint this in behind the scenes rather than slamming it in our
face.
Nathan
Mary Arndt
BTW, for those who started with M&C, did Stephen being
left behind at the
time of the shake-down cruise cause any great anxiety?
Now that I've read
the book several times it no longer bothers me, but at
the initial reading,
I
did not care for Jack for a while, and thought him a
thorough scoundrel.
And it is a truism, not a cliche, that time and tide wait for no man, not
even so remarkable a man as Stephen. And there was no auxiliary engine on
any of Jack's ships to allow him to get out of port against a flooding tide
and head on winds. Scoundrel ain't in it.
Says Greg, Here's the entire quote - "Certainly, my home at my uncle's brought me
acquainted with a circle of admirals. Of Rears and Vices I saw enough.
*Now do not be suspecting me of a pun, I entreat.*" (emphasis mine). The
last sentence, the denial of a pun, implies that she well knew it was a pun,
and knew exactly what she was about.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that Ms Austen often wrote with a hangover, especially after a night on the tiles with Bramwell Bronte's father; and when she had a hangover, her propensity for vile jokes (usually held under control) wd sometimes overcome her chaste pen. For proof, go to Malahide Castle, look in the attic behind the croquet mallets, and find some of her "lost" first drafts. They wd make Boswell blush.
Charlezzzz, reluctantly acknowledging universal truth
Most good authors have a way to break the tension of a
tight scene with an aside, an irrelevancy, something
happening just outside, etc., just to rebuild it to a
higher pitch. On page 220, Jack Aubrey is leading an
attack on the battery at Almoraira. Stephen has told
Jack a bit about the Cape. This is a dangerous endeavor,
it's night-dark, everyone is exaggeratedly hushed. Here's
POB's art:
"With the settee alrady in the port there was no
possibility of surprise for the Sophie, and before she
anchored she would have to undergo the fire of the
battery. If there was to be a surprise it would lie with
the boats: the night was almost certainly too dark now
for the prizes to be seen crossing outside the bay to
land the boats in Stephen's cove beyond the point - 'one
of the few I know where the white-bellied swift builds
her nest.' Jack wastched her going with a tender and
extreme anxiety, torn with longing to be in both places
at once: the possibilites of hideous failure flooded into
his mind . . ."
I just LOVE that "white-bellied swift" part. It is just
so PERFECT in the middle of that paragraph.
- Susan Wenger
That line always struck me as being a perfectly Stephen-y remark to make,
too. In the middle of a conversation, he would come out with something
totally unrelated. He'd interrupt stories. He'd barge in. So I found it
quite appropriate that his white-bellied swift comment would be plunked
down in the middle of this paragraph.
another Susan (no, not that one - *that* one)
Gerry Strey wrote:
By the way, does any one know how musical POB was? Did he sing or play an instrument? Was he a regular concert-goer? Did he have a collection of recordings?
He commented in an on-line discussion that he had recently acquired a portable CD player and disks.
--
On page 99 of the Norton edition, young Mowett plods on eagerly with the
dimensions of the Sophie to Stephen:
"Well, sir, the Sophie's keel is fifty-nine feet long; her gun-deck
seventy-eight foot three inches; and she is ten foot ten inches deep. Her
bowsprit is thirty-four foot..."
1. Is the keel dimension the *length* of the ship at the keel?
2. And the same for the gun-deck - the length?
3. How do I interpret "deep" - as width (breadth?) or height (distance from
deck to bottom of ship)? (No other dimensions for the ship are given - we go
right into masts and yards and stuff.) In either case that seems awfully
small - ten foot ten inches is not but almost three feet more than the
standard eight-foot ceilings in my house. I know conditions were crowded,
but surely not THAT crowded...
4. Why is the length of the bowsprit important?
TIA,
Alice
Like Saul Panzer in a Rex Stout tale I've forgotten, I'm willing to take
either side of this debate for the sake of its entertainment value, but
before I go off to a movie with the love of my life, let ask something on
topic:
On page 8 of Norton's M&C, the music is about to say something "of first
importance" when another bit of interaction with Stephen occurs.
Neglecting lyrics, where music can serve to make the most ridiculous notion
seem plausible until at least the second coffee after the show, neglecting
the words I say, what do we think about the repeated concept of music making
statements to Jack. I won't spoil a later discussion about the deep
disturbing music in another volume. Let's just stick to the basic premise
that POB obviously embraced.
Comments anyone? Especially from those who don't require my basket to carry
the tune of Hail Britannia?
Gary W. Sims, Major, USAF(ret)
I have been wondering about these important conversations music seems to
have with other people, but not me, as well. I even considered asking "The
List" what this meant, but I am glad I didn't since Gary's question is
phrased ever so much more elegantly than I could have managed. I do hope
someone who can carry a tune without resorting to a basket would explain
what is meant by POB.
Mary, hoping the frolic was successful
At 9:53 PM -0400 9/5/2001, Ladyshrike@AOL.COM wrote:
1. Is the keel dimension the *length* of the ship at the keel?
Yes. The keel of the Sophie is not to be confused with the underwater
fin-like keel of modern sailboats. The Sophie's keel was a horizontal
"backbone" that ran the length of the bottom of the vessel, terminating in
the vertical stem at the bow, and the stern post aft. Hence the phrase
"from stem to stern".
2. And the same for the gun-deck - the length?
Yes, but there is some ambiguity. Some navies would measure it on the
inside of the stem and stern posts, others on the outside of the hull.
3. How do I interpret "deep" - as width (breadth?) or height (distance from
deck to bottom of ship)?
I think that Mowett is referring to draught - how deep beneath the water
the vessel extends. Alternatively, he may mean how deep (vertically) the
interior hold is, an important measure of the cargo carrying ability.
Width would be referred to as "beam".
Don Seltzer
On page 380 mention is made of a particularly nice watch with a centre
seconds hand. Do any lissuns know would a more typical watch of that time
would look?
A few other miscellaneous comments on M&C. The middle portion, with the
_Sophie_ on her cruise, leading up to the successful actions with
_Cacafuego_ and Molly Harte, is sheer page-turning pleasure. But from
there to the end I didn't enjoy the book as much -- not just because
Jack's fortunes take a turn for the worse again, but because somehow the
masterful writing touch feels a bit diminished. Great battles take place
just over the horizon. Stephen tries to help Jack out during the court
martial but his little note doesn't really accomplish anything. Stephen
makes at least one accurate nautical observation, not really in character
for him. The gentlemanly civility between captors and prisoners is a
little hard for me to parse for tone -- is it slightly comic? Is O'Brian
showing us that in those days war was a very different sort of business, a
"career path" in modern-day parlance, where the commonalities of rank
mattered more than the differences of nationality so that officers all
knew they could count on being exchanged when captured? But in MC or HMSS
isn't there mention of some captain who has spent the entire war in a
French prison? And so on.
Still, not to be too negative, I appreciated most of M&C much more this
time through thanks to many helpful lissun groupread comments.
And I had no idea what I was starting with that Jane Austen comment, which
wasn't meant to be phlogogenic (POB content). In any case, POB certainly
uses her joke as a clear reference regardless of how she intended it.
Ditto the scene with poor Marshall and Bugge's name.
-Jerry, hoping to get his mind out of the gutter by next month's groupread
Gary Sims wrote:
what do we think about the repeated concept of
music making statements to Jack.
I wonder if this is answerable, she says, as she goes on to write a very
long non-answer. Hoping not to sound too elitist about this, hearing music
"speak" is one of those experiences that one either has the capactiy for or
doesn't. But I hasten to add that the capacity can be developed, to varying
degrees. That's what music appreciation courses are for. Yet in all such
courses I've taught I could always tell that there are students who really
truly GET IT -- who hear the music say something "of first importance" --
and those who don't. I see it as similar to having an affinity for languages
(spoken languages; music is a language in its own right; saying that music
"speaks" is not just a metaphor). One can be taught the grammar,
pronunciation, the "mechanics" of a language. Some people will absorb those
like soothing linament into the skin and "get" the language. Some will even
intuitively absorb a language without the mechanics being spelled out.
Others will shed all that information like water off an umbrella, and
they'll always struggle with understanding that language.
I would warn against anyone thinking that they're a hopeless illiterate when
it comes to understanding the language of music because they are what used
to be called "monotone," or because they consider themselves, or have been
told, they are "tone deaf." All that means, if the person is otherwise
intelligent, is that one's ear has not learned to properly differentiate
pitches; in many cases that occurs from lack of early exposure to music, but
especially to singing. Which is why I keep harping (when I get the chance)
about the importance of schools systematically teaching music from the
earliest grades onward.
As with languages, some people intuitively "get" music; I count myself most
fortunate to be among them (that ability in my case is a genetic thing on my
father's side of the family; but I've also had intense exposure from birth,
or rather, from conception). That, I think, is what being a musician is all
about. But not all listeners and music lovers are themselves musicians, of
course.
In any case, musical language also has to be learned to be best appreciated.
That doesn't mean that a listener necessarily has to learn to read music
notation (though I would suggest that in all but rare cases, acquiring that
ability, even on a rudmentary level, greatly deepens the
listening/understanding experience). Learning music's language --
understanding those statements "of first importance" -- means that one has
to learn -- or be taught -- *how* to listen; *what* to listen for. Once one
has become familiar with the "mechanics" of musical language in that way, a
door opens. (There isn't only one musical language, of course. While there
can be said to be one language in a way -- the one universal language, and
all that -- in another why each culture has its own, and indeed within
Western culture, each musical-historical period has its own. But I don't
want to get unnecessarily detailed or complicated here. This is too long
already. So for practicality's sake, I'll refer to musical language,
singular.)
Having become familiar with the "mechanics," as I was saying, the listener
can then enter the musical estate and move about from room to room and
floor to floor, so to speak. Eventually he or she will understand, have a
feeling for the entire estate, to whatever intimate or more casual degree
one chooses.
For example, I can listen to the last movement Mozart's 40th symphony on a
level which enjoys the peculiar timbres of the combined strings and
occasional woodwinds, because I like the colors of those *sounds* ("tone
colors").
Or I can pick out specific instruments and listen for what each of them is
doing (which presupposes I know the timbre of each orchestral instrument).
Or I can listen for just the bass line or just the first violins to see
where they take me; or to how they interact.
Or I can follow the upward movement of the movement's opening "rocket" theme
(the opening theme leaps upward an octave and a half, ending in fast
alternating notes, almost a trill; I can listen for general contours of
upward and downward pitch movement.
Or I can mentally follow the movement's sonata-form structure (listening for
structure is a habit which, over time, grows to be an mostly unconscious
and automatic thing).
When I listen in that last way I become aware what the themes are, how they
relate to each other tonally (in terms of key, and movement from one key to
another and back again), how the themes are repeated, how they're developed,
how they're eventually reiterated. Knowing that the movement is laid out in
sonata form, even with only basic knowledge of that form, opens the
"language" and meaning of that movement to me in a way it could never be
open were I not aware of that structure. (Knowing that, I think, is like
knowing how the form of a sonnet or a haiku effects its content).
Listening in that way I come closer and closer to the essence of the musical
language of Mozart's 40th symphony. And when I listen to other Mozart, I
begin to recognize *his* peculiar use of the musical language (just as I can
recognize a writer's peculiar style). And the cumulative effect speaks to me
in still another way.
But listening in any or all of those ways I've mentioned still requires
something else of me: a capacity to be open to the peculiar way in which
structure, orchestration, timbre, rhythm, melody, harmony and all else
combine to effect me not just intellectually but *emotionally* in a way
that, when combined, speaks important things to me. In the end, there's
something mysterious about how music does that. It's just not fully
explainable. I'm rather glad it's not.
Marian
From: "Jerry Shurman"
[...] I had no idea what I was starting with that Jane Austen comment,
which wasn't meant to be phlogogenic (POB content).
Lovely word, that -- but I'm not sure Jack ever allowed phlogistication
under his command. Did Stephen slip it in somewhere I overlooked?
Gary W. Sims, Major, USAF(ret)
It's in M&C (so I get to sneak it in under the groupread rationale) near
the end, where Stephen and the other doctor are talking and
"antiphlogistic" pops up, warming my heart.
-Jerry
I thought Jack wasn't much of a phlogging captain.
Martin @ home:
In a message dated 9/6/01 10:52:44 AM Central Daylight Time, jerry@REED.EDU
writes:
On page 380 mention is made of a particularly nice watch with a centre
seconds hand. Do any lissuns know would a more typical watch of that time
would look
Well, we own a men's pocket watch which was given to my husband's grandfather
in 1926 - appreciation from his adult Sunday School class. An Elgin
"railroad watch," I believe. These had minutes marked off and clear, large,
Arabic numerals for the hours: readable and accurate, not fancy stuff.
The second hand goes around a tiny little dial of its own with 60 gradations,
set in the lower half of the face. Perhaps a "center second hand" is being
differentiated from one like this?
Had it set in order just last year and as long as we wind 'er up regularly,
goes as sweet as kiss-me-hand, though gaining a few minutes every day.
It lives under a glass dome on top of husband's dresser.
I do not pretend to teach you to sail your sloop or poop
or whatever you call the damned machine...
Mary S
On page 380 mention is made of a particularly nice watch with a centre
seconds hand. Do any lissuns know would a more typical watch of that time
would look
http://www.breguet.com/tradition/history/
Lois
Susan wrote:
"Believable to me too [referring to Greg: "Jack and Stephen's quick friendship
was absolutely believable to me"] But surely there was some _thing_, some bit
of magic which drew you and your drinking buddy together in that first meeting
(or was it just the beer :-))."
This and Stephen's instant bonding with Jack, remind me of an insight
(warning - VERY un-pc) of Betty Macdonald's in, I think, The Egg and I, but
might be in Onions in the Stew: she reflects that men tend to make friends
for simple and uncomplicated reasons - a friend is 'old fishing buddy Tom'
or 'old army buddy Dick' and these links allow the man to overlook facts
such as that Tom cleans out his nose and ears in public and wipes the result
on the furniture or that Dick has a vocabulary of 5 words, 4 of them dirty
... whereas women are a lot more demanding and, to misquote Betty for I
don't have the passage to hand, "need to start from a feeling that there is
at least a possibility of making the friend over into a reasonable facsimile
of themselves ..." Not, of course, that this means women don't make instant
friendships - just thought I'd share this with the list, it's amused me for
years and has stood the test of experience.
London Lois
Business writer: The guns' bulk reduced the area between the foremast
and the stem to approximately 10 square feet (my measurement, sorry if it
is ridiculous), into which the men were tightly jammed, watching the
proceedings.
Attempting-to-be-clever-but-actually-clumsy writer: 'Plenty of room,'
said Jack, staring around at the area between the foremast and the stem,
choked with men like sardines in a can.
POB: 'Plenty of room all round - great oceans of room, upon my word,' he
said, backing a step. In his haste to avoid being trodden down, the
gunner's mate behind him collided with his neighbour, who ran into his,
setting off a chain-reaction in that crowded, roughly triangular space
between the foremast and the stem that resulted in the maiming of one
ship's boy and very nearly in the watery death of another. (M&C p 63)
Ain't it beautiful?
Nathan
One curious detail that POB mentions regarding the Sophie is that she was
formerly the Spanish Vincejo. HMS Vincejo (or Vencejo) was indeed a
brig-sloop captured from the Spanish and was operating out of Port Mahon in
1800. It appears that POB modeled the Sophie as a composite of the Vincejo
and of Cochrane's Speedy. The armament of fourteen 4-lbers is Speedy, but
the unusual quarterdeck and rigging is more like the Vincejo.
As described by Showell Styles in "Vincey Joe at Quiberon",
"His Majestys' brig-sloop Vencejo was an old Spanish packet, a prize taken
in some forgotten encounter of the previous century. Doubtless she had
been the pride of her designer, who must have been influenced by a
nostalgia for the old Armada days when he gave her a detached quarterdeck -
almost a high poop - with barricades and portholes, and a decked forecastle
to match; doubtless also she was efficient enough for short voyages between
the little ports of the Catalonian coast. But the Admiralty court that had
adjudged her suitable for conversion to a fighting unit of the British Navy
must have believed in the making of silk purses out of sows' ears.
Her rating of 'sloop' had been given because of her small force and size -
she was a mere 277 tons - and bore no relation to her rig, which was indeed
unique. Her two masts, precisely similar in height, were
squaresail-rigged, with courses, topsails, top-gallants and royals like any
proud frigate; but since she could carry only short masts these
proliferating sails were very small. Perhaps with some idea of
compensation, she had been given an enormous gaff-and-boom mainsail
reminiscent of a Thames barge, aft of the mainmast and a perpetual source
of anxiety to anyone on the quarter-deck. When this sail was lowered its
boom projected a clear thirty-five feet beyond the after-rail; an
inelegance which had been counterbalanced by the fitting of an inordinately
long bowsprit. The braggadocio of her rig was echoed by her hull, where
twenty gun-ports, ten on each broadside, menaced along the band of yellow
newly painted on her black timbers. In fact, the ports wre so close
together that it was impossible to mount any long-range cannon. She had
been given 18-pounder carronades, useless except in the unlikely event of
Vencejo coming board-and board with an enemy vessel, and she had only
eighteen of those because there was no room for the other two. In a word,
Vencejo was a floating trompe d'oeil, as ineffective as her name."
I've wondered whether there was some connection between POB and Showell
Styles, as authors of similar novels. POB would later insert Michael
Fitton into several of his later books. Fitton, a real naval officer of
the time, was the hero of numerous Styles's novels.
Don Seltzer
In a message dated 9/7/01 7:52:54 AM Central Daylight Time,
dseltzer@DRAPER.COM writes:
One curious detail that POB mentions regarding the Sophie is that she was
formerly the Spanish Vincejo
Perhaps you can clarify the elm tree pump issue for me, as long as we're
talking about the Sophie.
I understand what it is, but it is described as being "far above her station"
Now, I took this to mean that it is something that a large ship might have,
fo the ease of bringing aboard sea water from a great height, whereas on the
Sophie one could simply toss over a bucket.
Or is there some other reason?
Sarah
Perhaps you can clarify the elm tree pump issue for me, as long as we're
talking about the Sophie.
I understand what it is, but it is described as being "far above her
station"
It is a British class reference. It means that one thinks one is more
upper-class than one really is. It was used by Terence Rattigan with great
effect in 'French Without Tears' when some one refers to someone else as
'having idees au-dessus de sa gare.'
Patrick ( T )
Yes, I understand the class reference, Patrick, I just don't understand why
it was made. Why is an elm tree pump "upper class". I'm sorry, my question
wasn't phrased clearly.
Sarah
At 9:17 AM -0400 9/7/2001, ThistleFrm@AOL.COM wrote:
Perhaps you can clarify the elm tree pump issue for me, as long as we're
talking about the Sophie.
Don't know where POB got this one from. Elm tree pumps are not mentioned
by either Cochrane writing about Speedy, or by Styles in describing Vincejo.
I'm not clear on whether the Sophie's elm tree pump was shipped along the
side when needed, or actually penetrated the hull.
Don Seltzer
In a message dated 9/7/01 6:04:05 AM Central Daylight Time,
NVarnum@ARKAYINDUSTRIES.COM writes:
Attempting-to-be-clever-but-actually-clumsy writer: 'Plenty of room,'
said Jack, staring around at the area between the foremast and the stem,
choked with men like sardines in a can.
What would pain me most wd be the anachronism!
POB: 'Plenty of room all round - great oceans of room, upon my word,' he
said, backing a step. In his haste to avoid being trodden down, the
gunner's mate behind him collided with his neighbour, who ran into his,
setting off a chain-reaction in that crowded, roughly triangular space
between the foremast and the stem that resulted in the maiming of one
ship's boy and very nearly in the watery death of another. (M&C p 63)
Ain't it beautiful?
Yes, but I'm worried about that "maiming." What do you suppose it meant? I
hope, only that his toes got tromped upon and perhaps he got a broken toe or
a black-bruised toenail or two.
Then again, I suppose that "chain-reaction" is an anachronism too; but the
writing here is more authorial POV, the "can of sardines" seems in the
proposed bad passage to be from the POV of Jack Aubrey, who as far as I know
never saw canned food (wasn't it developed later in the 19th cent)?
Thanks, Nathan, that was interesting!
Like ... a galvanized manatee, or dugong, [RoM, p. 224]
Mary S
the "can of sardines" seems in the
proposed bad passage to be from the POV of Jack Aubrey, who as far as I know
never saw canned food (wasn't it developed later in the 19th cent)?
Wasn't it that Napoleon chap who developed (or caused to be developed) canned
food?
Astrid Bear
I seem to remember something about that from "The Ascent of Man" series with
Jacob Bronowsky. I have the companion book to hand but can't readily find it.
And something to do with lead poisoning because the early cans were made from
lead?
And weren't tinned beef and other tinned victuals in the ship's stores? Or
am I thinking of my as-yet-unopened tin of Spotted Dick?
Alice
See attachment for a view of the place where Jack and Steven began their
friendship and embarked upon their wonderful journey through the canon.
a fair wind and following seas to all---Tom
http://ironbarr.com/usnships/images/PtMahon2.gif
No doubt this picture was taken from where Stephen spent the night in his
cave...
It appears there's an inner harbor, with a sort of narrow channel leading to
the open ocean. So - a question for those of you accumulating Naval Minutiae
- is it that inner harbor where all the xebecs, pollacas, herringbusses,
snows, pinks, etc., etc., and the Sophie were? Or would the RN ships have
been standing outside? That narrow channel could be difficult to transverse,
I bet, if the winds weren't just so. Or has the harbor changed significantly
in the last 200 years?
Alice
PS Thanks, Tom.
Ach, it's too early in the morning! Obviously, I meant "traverse," not
"transverse."
Alice
You can't believe everything that you find on the Web. I can't make this
picture match up with maps of Port Mahon. Mahon Harbor is a long narrow
body of water stretching west about 5 miles from the sea. Port Mahon and
its anchorage are near the bottom of this bay. No dogleg, and much further
than the photo suggests. Also no sign of the quarantine island and
hospital in the middle of the bay.
It is possible that the photo shows a small cove on the north side of Mahon
Harbor, near the headland of Cape Mola, and several miles east of Port
Mahon.
Don Seltzer
On Page 298 of "Master and Commander," Jack hums "The Black Joke." I found
versions of what he was humming at http://www.google.com
by typing in "The Black Joke" but when I copied the link and tried to post it,
the page wouldn't come up again. If you'd like to see the song Jack hummed,
go to google and look it up - it IS there.
- Susan
I am still laughing over the encounter after the Sophies have blown up the
fort at Almoraira, between Sir Harry aboard the "San Fiorenzo" (Norton
paperback p. 235) and Jack, who has appeared with his hideously burned face,
neck, and scalp, greased with ointment by Stephen. Sir Harry is known as a
stickler for 'promptness, cleanliness, perfection of dress and hierarchy.'
"Here you are at last," said Sir Harry, looking at him with marked
distaste........"Your appearance don't change much, Aubrey."
We wrote about when or if Jack and Stephen addressed each other by first
names, and the only instance I noticed was when Heneage Dundas sailed back
to report on the victory between French and English ships in the Gut, when
Jack runs through Gilbraltar with the news: "Stephen," he cried, bursting
open the door, his shining face far larger and higher than usual. "Victory!
Come out at once and drink to a victory! Give you joy of a famous victory,
old cock," he cried, shaking him terribly by the hand. "Such a magnificent
fight." (Norton ppback, p. 404) I haven't noticed Stephen calling Jack by
his first name to his face, but I think he writes it in his journal. Or just
"JA."
Linnea Angermuller (finished M&C so now cast ashore)
Someone mentioned Cobles?
I well remember these lovely little fishing boats from long ago
in the Northeast of England, which did bear a great resemblance
to the Viking longboat. At that time there were over a score of
them in the little village of Newbiggin, on my recent visit only
a handful were left. The fishermen's Church was the local
landmark, it was almost on the cliff edge from erosion. Time
changes everything.
As for M&C, the opening paragraphs brought a great longing for
the delights missed by Jack, a Bakewell Tart or an Eccles cake,
so much so I went and made a Bakewell - and thoroughly enjoyed
it - though an Eccles cake is a little beyond me.
Nostalgia?
Tony Davison in KwaZulu-Natal
Reading through M&C, I found something that I don't recall elsewhere in the
canon.
On two occasions he narrates two incidents which don't occur in Stephen or
Jack's space. They are only small, but I can't think of his using this
technique elsewhere. I'm thinking of the introduction of the Cacafuego and
when the French squadron sees the fire of the burning ship full of olive
oil. In each case they are effective, but it seems that it wasn't
something he chose to repeat.
and also, in my re-reading, I spotted Jack's delicacy in introducing
Captain Bugge to Mr Marshall. It's a small gem.
Kerry
Kerry, can you give page numbers for these episodes?
Rowen
The Cacafuego reference is at p 204 (with a tip of the hat to an "all
seeing eye")
The French squadron is introduced at p 366
And I have recalled that POB did something similar in Treason's harbour,
very effectively.
The introduction of Capt Bugge is at p 166
All from the Norton edition.
Kerry
Kerry Webb
don't think that the friendship between Stephen and
Jack was instantaneous. Their first contact was not
harmonious (please note the musical reference!!!).
When we are introduced to them, the two have nothing
in common except for their interest in music. Their
relationship grows through mutual need: Jack is newly
isolated by his promotion to "captain" and Stephen is
broke and without immediate prospects. It is the
character of these two men that permits them to
recognize the goodness and qualities of one another.
POB uses Stephen as a foil to explain all the nautical
minutia, and as the canon progresses, to tie Jack's
activities to the historical context. I've often
wondered if POB knew at the beginning what a central
character Stephen would become. Forester never made
that much of Mr Bush.
The lissuns have discussed the naval battles and the
historic canon in great detail, so I've reread M&C to
try to look at it from a different point of view.
However; the relationship between these two men has
always been the most interesting thing about the
canon. Is this a feminine thing?
Ms Ray McP
By the way, in M&C someone (I can't find the page)
refers to someone having the "con". I think that is a
modern term relating to "conning tower" where someone
guides the ship. Does anyone know?
Moi
Shipmates,
Returning to M&C (it's a group read after all) after the terrible happenings
of the las week was like talking to a good old friend. When you have
something that bothers you, and you talk to a true friend, you don't have to
actually talk about your problems, just being together and talking about
anything - good old days, shared interests, anything, is soothing and
helpful. That's how I feel returning to PO'B and M&C.
And I have encountered a reference which I don't understand, I'm sure the
very learned company of the Gunroom will rush with explanations. On p. 98
(Norton paperback), when Stephen climbs Sophie's maintop for the very first
time, while he half-listens to young Mowett's explanations (and what a
wonderfuly interwoven piece of narration this scene is!) he makes a mental
remark like this:
"'Castlereagh hanging at the one masthead and Fitzgibbon at the other,'
thought Stephen, but with only the weariest gleam of spirit."
Whom does he refer to? The names sound Irish, so I guess it's something
related to the uprising, but I'd appreciate someone explaining this remark in
more detail.
Pawel
For Lord Castlereagh, who was assiduous in his pursuit of the United
Irishmen see:
http://www.rte.ie/millennia/people/stewartrobert.html
and
http://www.unet.univie.ac.at/~a8700035/biograph.html
For John Fitzgibbon, Lord Chancellor and a right royal bigot, see
www.newadvent.org/cathen/13123a.htm
It will be clear that nothing would have pleased Stephen more than to see
the pair of them swing. But the "weariest gleam of spirit" nicely points up
the change in attitude that, already in M&C, had begun to form in Stephen
regarding the futility of rebellion in the circumstances then prevailing.
Paul, who thinks history has done the job that the gallows missed
In a message dated 9/17/01 3:14:11 PM, paul335@GOFREE.INDIGO.IE writes:
For Lord Castlereagh, who was assiduous in his pursuit of the United
Irishmen ...
He was roundly hated by many people. I remember...
I met a monster on the way.
though I forget the poet. (Burns, perhaps?) And it was the amazing Lord Byron
who wrote, in the familiar form of the "abi viator" epitaph...
Posterity will ne'er survey
Charlezzzz
Byron called Castlereach "the intellectual eunuch"
Shelley:"I met Murder on the way: he had a mask like Castlereagh."
The romantics were not fond of him.
He slit his own throat.
Marion
Go to Second Page of Master and Commander Discussion
From: Mary Arndt
Sent: Sunday, September 02, 2001 7:39 AM
Subject: Re: GROUPREAD:M&C:wha' happened in English?
From: Susan Wenger
Sent: Sunday, September 02, 2001 8:14 AM
Subject: Re: GROUPREAD:M&C:P.S. to wha' happened in English?
"Using no sea-terms? I should be puzzled to do that, sir;
but I will try, if you wish it."
"No; for it is by those names alone that they are known,
in nearly every case, I imagine."
From: David Dunn
Sent: Sunday, September 02, 2001 8:40 AM
Subject: Re: Group Read: M&C re:the Speedy
From: Adam Quinan
Sent: Sunday, September 02, 2001 8:55 AM
Subject: Re: Group Read: M&C re:the Speedy
From: Jerry Shurman
Sent: Sunday, September 02, 2001 9:17 AM
Subject: Re: Group Read: M&C: bad joke
From: Jerry Shurman
Sent: Sunday, September 02, 2001 9:36 AM
Subject: Re: GROUPREAD:M&C:wha' happened in English?
From: Jerry Shurman
Sent: Sunday, September 02, 2001 9:54 AM
Subject: Group Read: M&C: Republic versus Democracy
Jerry
From: Mary Arndt
Sent: Sunday, September 02, 2001 11:30 AM
Subject: Re: GRP:M&C An Historical Backdrop
From: Mary Arndt
Sent: Sunday, September 02, 2001 11:32 AM
Subject: Re: Group Read: M&C re:the Speedy
From: Dick Tartow
Sent: Sunday, September 02, 2001 12:01 PM
Subject: Re: Group Read: M&C re:the Speedy
From: Jim McPherson
Sent: Sunday, September 02, 2001 12:08 PM
Subject: Re: Group Read: M&C re:the Speedy
James McPherson
33* 47' 30" N
116* 32' 10" W
675' above sea level
From: Linnea
Sent: Sunday, September 02, 2001 12:52 PM
Subject: Re: GROUPREAD:M&C:P.S. to wha' happened in English?
From: Linnea
Sent: Sunday, September 02, 2001 1:14 PM
Subject: Re: GROUPREAD: M&C: Begin at the beginning...
From: Batrinque@AOL.COM
Sent: Sunday, September 02, 2001 2:14 PM
Subject: Group Read: M&C: On His Majesty's Secret Service
41*37'53"N 72*22'51"W
From: Greg White
Sent: Sunday, September 02, 2001 4:54 PM
Subject: Re: GROUPREAD: M&C: Begin at the beginning...
71º20'13.2" W
From: Susan Wenger
Sent: Sunday, September 02, 2001 5:28 PM
Subject: Re: GROUPREAD:M&C:P.S. to wha' happened in English?
From: Jessey Seiler
Sent: Sunday, September 02, 2001 6:18 PM
Subject: GROUPREAD: M&C: First Names
From: Mary S
Sent: Sunday, September 02, 2001 8:22 PM
Subject: Re: Group Read: M&C: bad joke
35° 58' 11" N
86° 48' 57" W
From: Lois du Toit
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 3:32 AM
Subject: Re: GROUPREAD:M&C: the beginning of friendship
(Lois Anne du Toit): lois@glomas.com
"Man is the only animal that both laughs and weeps, for man alone is struck
by the difference between what things are and what they ought to be."
(William Hazlitt)
From: Lois du Toit
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 3:47 AM
Subject: Re: GROUP READ: MAC: Morning Scenes, James Dillon
(Lois Anne du Toit): lois@glomas.com
"Man is the only animal that both laughs and weeps, for man alone is struck
by the difference between what things are and what they ought to be."
(William Hazlitt)
From: Barney Simon
Sent: Saturday, September 01, 2001 6:33 AM
Subject: Group Read: MAC: Jumping the gun
East of NYC
From: Barney Simon
Sent: Saturday, September 01, 2001 11:36 AM
Subject: groupread M&C: At a loss for words?
East of NYC
From: Barney Simon
Sent: Saturday, September 01, 2001 11:39 AM
Subject: Groupread M&C: a weighty thought
East of NYC
From: Barney Simon
Sent: Saturday, September 01, 2001 11:44 AM
Subject: Groupread M&C: Blood letting
East on NYC
From: Barney Simon
Sent: Saturday, September 01, 2001 7:40 PM
Subject: groupread M&C: Communications logistics
East of NYC
From: Barney Simon
Sent: Saturday, September 01, 2001 2:20 PM
Subject: groupread m&c: a rose by any other name...
East of NYC
From: Martin Watts
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 5:30 AM
Subject: Re: Groupread M&C: a weighty thought
50° 45' N 1° 55' W.
The Borough and County of the Town of Poole
From: Ladyshrike@AOL.COM
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 6:24 AM
Subject: GrpRead:M&C: Good Morning, HMS Sophie!
From: Ladyshrike@AOL.COM
Sent: Monday, September
03, 2001 6:31 AM
Subject: Re: Groupread M&C: Blood letting
From: Batrinque@AOL.COM
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 6:44 AM
Subject: Re: Groupread M&C: Blood letting
41*37'53"N 72*22'51"W
From: Batrinque@AOL.COM
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 6:43 AM
Subject: Re: GrpRead:M&C: Good Morning, HMS Sophie!
41*37'53"N 72*22'51"W
From: Martin Watts
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 6:51 AM
Subject: Re: GrpRead:M&C: Good Morning, HMS Sophie!
50° 45' N 1° 55' W.
The Borough and County of the Town of Poole
From: Jim Biggerstaff
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 7:01 AM
Subject: Re: Groupread M&C: Blood letting
===========
From: Mary Arndt
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 7:13 AM
Subject: Re: Groupread M&C: a weighty thought
From: Mary Arndt
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 7:33 AM
Subject: Re: Groupread M&C: Blood letting
From: Mary Arndt
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 7:42 AM
Subject: Re: GrpRead:M&C: Good Morning, HMS Sophie!
From: Greg White
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 8:15 AM
Subject: Re: GrpRead:M&C: Good Morning, HMS Sophie!
71º20'13.2" W
From: Mary Arndt
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 8:19 AM
Subject: Re: GrpRead:M&C: Good Morning, HMS Sophie!
From: Susan Wenger
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 8:58 AM
Subject: Re: GrpRead:M&C: Good Morning, HMS Sophie!
From: Robert Fleisher
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 9:34 AM
Subject: Re: GrpRead:M&C: Good Morning, HMS Sophie!
Houston, TX
From: Jessey Seiler
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 9:57 AM
Subject: Re: Groupread M&C: a weighty thought
From: Greg White
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 10:16 AM
Subject: Groupread M&C: Laura Place
71º20'13.2" W
From: Mary S
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 11:31 AM
Subject: Re: groupread M&C: At a loss for words?
35° 58' 11" N
86° 48' 57" W
From: Jim McPherson
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 11:47 AM
Subject: Re: GROUP READ: MAC: Morning Scenes, James Dillon
James McPherson
33* 47' 30" N
116* 32' 10" W
675' above sea level
From: Ladyshrike@AOL.COM
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 12:00 PM
Subject: Re: Groupread M&C: Blood letting
From: Tom Lewis
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 1:25 PM
Subject: Re: Group Read: M&C: Republic versus Democracy
From: Adam Quinan
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 1:21 PM
Subject: Re: Groupread M&C: Blood letting
From: Gary W. Sims
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 3:38 PM
Subject: Re: Group Read: M&C: bad joke
--------------------------------------------
Agog at the notion of vegetarian dogs
At or about 34°42' N 118°08' W
From: Marian Van Til
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 4:43 PM
Subject: Re: Group Read: MAC: Jumping the gun
East of NYC
From: Marian Van Til
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 4:47 PM
Subject: Re: Group Read: M&C: bad joke
From: Bob Kegel
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 11:08 AM
Subject: Subject: Re: Groupread M&C: a weighty thought
46°59'18.661"N 123°49'29.827"W
19 stone
From: Ray Rischpater
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 7:55 PM
Subject: Group Read: M&C: Of Diaries and Logs...
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 7:56 PM
Subject: Group Read: M&C: Aaahhh... the foreshadowing in Chapter 10.
From: Ray Rischpater
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 8:27 PM
Subject: Group Read: M&C: On His Majesty's Secret Service
From: Ray McPherson
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 9:38 PM
Subject: Re: Group Read: M&C: bad joke
From: Ray McPherson
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 9:40 PM
Subject: Re: Group Read: MAC: Jumping the gun
From: Ray McPherson
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 10:12 PM
Subject: Re: Subject: Re: Groupread M&C: a weighty thought
From: Ladyshrike@AOL.COM
Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2001 1:48 AM
Subject: Re: Subject: Re: Groupread M&C: a weighty thought
From: Tony Davison
Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2001 2:25 AM
Subject: Characterisation
at KwaZulu-Natal
From: Greg White
Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2001 6:19 AM
Subject: Re: Group Read: M&C: bad joke
71º20'13.2" W
From: William Nyden
Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2001 10:06 AM
Subject: Re: Group Read: MAC: Jumping the gun
Bill Nyden
a Rose by another name
37° 25' 15" N 122° 04' 57" W
======================================================
William Nyden | CAD Systems Engineer
Space Systems/Loral | nyden@ssd.loral.com
3825 Fabian Way, Z-02 | ph (650) 852-4333
Palo Alto, CA 94303 USA | fax (650) 852-5207
Fiction after all, has to make sense."
- Mark Twain
http://www.maturin.org/
http://www.Calif-Sport-Divers.org/
http://www.HMSSurprise.org/
From: William Nyden
Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2001 1:05 PM
Subject: Re: groupread M&C: At a loss for words?
Bill Nyden
a Rose by another name
37° 25' 15" N 122° 04' 57" W
From: Susan Wenger
Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2001 4:05 PM
Subject: Re: Group Read: M&C: Of Diaries and Logs...
From: Ladyshrike@AOL.COM
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2001 2:46 AM
Subject: Re: GROUP READ: MAC: Morning Scenes, James Dillon
Ditto Stephen.
Dillon says, "Christe."
From: Nathan Varnum
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2001 3:40 AM
Subject: Re: GROUPREAD:M&C: the beginning of friendship
From: Barney Simon
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2001 3:55 AM
Subject: Re: Group Read: MAC: Jumping the gun
NYC
From: Barney Simon
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2001 3:55 AM
Subject: Re: Subject: Re: Groupread M&C: a weighty thought
From: Greg White
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2001 4:47 AM
Subject: Re: GROUPREAD:M&C: the beginning of friendship
71º20'13.2" W
From: Ladyshrike@AOL.COM
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2001 4:50 AM
Subject: Jack's violin, and Stephen playing it
From: Martin Watts
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2001 4:56 AM
Subject: Re: Subject: Re: Groupread M&C: a weighty thought
50° 45' N 1° 55' W.
The Borough and County of the Town of Poole
From: Mary Arndt
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2001 5:25 AM
Subject: Re: Jack's violin, and Stephen playing it
From: Susan Wenger
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2001 5:40 AM
Subject: Re: GROUPREAD:M&C: the beginning of friendship
From: Isabelle Hayes
Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2001 7:09 PM
Subject: Re: groupread M&C: At a loss for words?
From: Gerry Strey
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2001 7:16 AM
Subject: Re: groupread M&C: At a loss for words?
Madison, Wisconsin
From: Nathan Varnum
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2001 9:20 AM
Subject: Re: GROUPREAD:M&C: the beginning of friendship
From: Dick Tartow
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2001 11:28 AM
Subject: Re: GrpRead:M&C: Good Morning, HMS Sophie!
From: Charlezzzz@AOL.COM
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2001 2:44 PM
Subject: Re: Group Read: M&C: bad joke
From: Susan Wenger
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2001 3:02 PM
Subject: GROUPREAD:M&C: a part of a sentence I like
From: Susan L. Collicott
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2001 3:32 PM
Subject: Re: GROUPREAD:M&C: a part of a sentence I like
From: William Nyden
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2001 4:37 PM
Subject: Re: groupread M&C: At a loss for words?
Bill Nyden
a Rose by another name
37° 25' 15" N 122° 04' 57" W
From: Ladyshrike@AOL.COM
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2001 5:53 PM
Subject: M&C: Questions about the Sophie...
From: Gary W. Sims
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2001 7:19 PM
Subject: Re: Group Read: M&C: Statements of Note
--------------------------------------------
Off to frolic, or the closest approach thereto still feasible
At or about 34°42' N 118°08' W
From: Mary Arndt
Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2001 4:39 AM
Subject: Re: Group Read: M&C: Statements of Note
From: Don Seltzer
Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2001 5:54 AM
Subject: Re: M&C: Questions about the Sophie...
From: Jerry Shurman
Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2001 7:50 AM
Subject: GROUP READ: M&C: second hands
From: Marian Van Til
Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2001 9:41 AM
Subject: Music "talking" (was: RE: [POB] Group Read: M&C: Statements of Note) LONG!!
From: Gary W. Sims
Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2001 9:58 AM
Subject: Re: GROUP READ: M&C: second hands
--------------------------------------------
Warming to the notion
At or about 34°42' N 118°08' W
From: Jerry Shurman
Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2001 10:34 AM
Subject: Re: GROUP READ: M&C: second hands
From: Martin Watts
Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2001 11:14 AM
Subject: Re: GROUP READ: M&C: second hands
50° 44' 57" N
1° 58' 34" W
From: Mary S
Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2001 1:21 PM
Subject: Re: GROUP READ: M&C: second hands
35° 58' 11" N
86° 48' 57" W
From: losmp
Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2001 2:31 PM
Subject: Re: GROUP READ: M&C: second hands
From: Lois du Toit
Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2001 11:52 PM
Subject: Re: GROUPREAD:M&C: the beginning of friendship
(Lois Anne du Toit): lois@glomas.com
"Man is the only animal that both laughs and weeps, for man alone is struck
by the difference between what things are and what they ought to be."
(William Hazlitt)
From: Nathan Varnum
Sent: Friday, September 07, 2001 2:54 AM
Subject: GROUP READ: M&C: Good writing
From: Don Seltzer
Sent: Friday, September 07, 2001 4:52 AM
Subject: GRP:M&C More about the Sophie
From: Thistle Farm
Sent: Friday, September 07, 2001 5:17 AM
Subject: Re: GRP:M&C More about the Sophie
From: Patrick Tull
Sent: Friday, September 07, 2001 5:28 AM
Subject: Re: GRP:M&C More about the Sophie
From: Thistle Farm
Sent: Friday, September 07, 2001 5:42 AM
Subject: Re: GRP:M&C More about the Sophie
From: Don Seltzer
Sent: Friday, September 07, 2001 6:19 AM
Subject: Re: GRP:M&C More about the Sophie
From: Mary S
Sent: Friday, September 07, 2001 9:19 AM
Subject: Re: GROUP READ: M&C: Good writing
35° 58' 11" N
86° 48' 57" W
From: Astrid Bear
Sent: Friday, September 07, 2001 6:39 PM
Subject: Re: GROUP READ: M&C: Good writing
From: Ladyshrike@AOL.COM
Sent: Friday, September 07, 2001 7:03 PM
Subject: Re: GROUP READ: M&C: Good writing
From: Thomas Hayes
Sent: Saturday, September 08, 2001 6:04 PM
Subject: Port Mahon, Minorca
From: Ladyshrike@AOL.COM
Sent: Sunday, September 09, 2001 2:59 AM
Subject: Re: Port Mahon, Minorca
From: Ladyshrike@AOL.COM
Sent: Sunday, September 09, 2001 3:18 AM
Subject: Ooops Re: Port Mahon, Minorca
From: Don Seltzer
Sent: Sunday, September 09, 2001 3:49 PM
Subject: Re: Port Mahon, Minorca
From: Susan Wenger
Sent: Sunday, September 09, 2001 3:46 AM
Subject: GroupRead:M&C:The Black Joke
From: Linnea
Sent: Sunday, September 09, 2001 7:02 AM
Subject: Group Read: M&C The Humor
From: Tony Davison
Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2001 2:34 AM
Subject: M&C
who's never had a Strasbourg Pie but likes a Cheese 'n Onion one
From: Kerry Webb
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2001 10:21 PM
Subject: GroupRead:M&C:Different streams of narrative .. and other stuff
Kerry Webb
Canberra, Australia http://www.alia.org.au/~kwebb
From: Rowen84@AOL.COM
Sent: Sunday, September 16, 2001 6:20 PM
Subject: Re: GroupRead:M&C:Different streams of narrative .. and other stuff
From: Kerry Webb
Sent: Monday, September 17, 2001 12:06 AM
Subject: Re: GroupRead:M&C:Different streams of narrative .. and other stuff
Canberra, Australia http://www.alia.org.au/~kwebb/
From: Ray McPherson
Sent: Sunday, September 16, 2001 7:43 PM
Subject: Friendship
From: Pawel Golik
Sent: Sunday, September 16, 2001 8:14 PM
Subject: M&C question, for all love - an Irish reference?
From: Paul B.
Sent: Monday, September 17, 2001 11:11 AM
Subject: Re: M&C question, for all love - an Irish reference?
From: Charlezzzz@AOL.COM
Sent: Monday, September 17, 2001 11:25 AM
Subject: Re: M&C question, for all love - an Irish reference?
He had a face like Castlereagh.
A nobler grave than this:
Here lie the bones of Castlereagh:
Stop, traveller, and piss.
From: MMarch5235@AOL.COM
Sent: Monday, September 17, 2001 6:20 PM
Subject: Re: M&C question, for all love - an Irish reference?
Note: For space purposes, the Master and Commander discusion has
been broken into two parts.
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