"A damn good read," my friend Gene said, closing the cover on Vol. 20 but continuing to hold the book in his hand. Sitting on the other side of the kitchen table, I raised my hand to wave farewell to our fictional friends as they set sail for the South Africa squadron, where Jack Aubrey would hoist his blue pennant. We knew, of course, from the title of the last book, "Blue at the Mizzen," that "Lucky" Jack would make admiral.
For the last year and a half, at home or traveling, we have devoted what evenings we could to this 20-volume series on the British Royal Navy during the time of Napoleon. When the friendship between Gene and me was new, I discovered that he had a voice perfectly suited for reading aloud and that he liked doing it. With his skill for languages, foreign words and phrases didn't throw him. He doesn't overuse his flair for the dramatic but can summon it when it's useful to the story. As a child, I loved being read to, and I love it still.
For the year and a half it took to read the series, our interest never waned. We would finish dinner, pile the dishes into the dishwasher, wash and dry the pots and pans, and settle down with coffee and dessert for an hour or two with the characters that leaped from the page the minute the book was opened.
In our mutual affection for them, we even forgot our own quarrels. When we sat down, we could be nursing some grievance, one with the other, but as the excitement mounted and we cheered or fretted or condemned the cast, we were partners again. The credit for this goes to Patrick O'Brian, who invented a world and invited us in. Every chapter was a new adventure, sometimes every page, sometimes every paragraph.
From Page 1, we liked our heroes. We were there when they met. At a concert, the irascible Stephen Maturin, down on his luck, leans forward to reprimand the officer in front of him (Jack), for using his fist to beat time to Locatelli's C major quartet, and worse, so Stephen claims, for tapping on the wrong beat. What nearly results in a duel ends in a friendship so tight that in 20 volumes, each running an average of 300 pages, the men quarrel only one other time.
They are brothers, and "Brother" is what they call each other. Given an opportunity -- and O'Brian gives them plenty -- one would, without question, lay down his life for the other.
Meanwhile, Jack plays his violin with more soul than Stephen (who also composes) plays his cello. Music is their solace on long voyages.
The Catalan-born Stephen is the gifted physician-naturalist-linguist, who, because he hates Napoleon, does pro bono intelligence work for the British. Despite being homely and careless about his dress and hygiene, he attracts beautiful, spunky women. He is not above self-medicating. He likes opium, which he takes rather oftener than is wise. After a particularly bizarre episode, he switches to coca leaves. Like Jack, Stephen has both courage and daring. We once watched in horror while he slit the throats of two men plotting treason against the British. In another book, he lopped off his toes with a chisel when they froze.
Jack is lovable, and though married and devoted to his wife and children, his good looks and good nature make him attractive to women. He has an illegitimate black son with whom he is reunited and of whom he is proud. A magnificent navigator and strategist, he runs a tight ship with a devoted crew who admire his fairness, his fighting spirit and the fact that at sea he takes many prizes and makes them all rich. On land he tends to be gullible. This often gets him into trouble, from which the devoted Stephen has to help extricate him.
And now the two of them and all our friends together have sailed off into the sunset. Indexing "Blue at the Mizzen" in a biography of Patrick O'Brian I own but will never read because I want to keep his fiction more real than any facts, I learned that before his death on Jan. 2, 2000, in the Fitzwilliam Hotel, Dublin (I hope he wasn't alone), O'Brian wrote three chapters of the new book.
Having studied his style through 20 volumes, I can tell you what happens in the new book. With Stephen as his attending physician, Jack Aubrey recovers from his wounds. In a battle for Chilean independence, a bullet had struck him in the left shoulder and a sword passed clean through his thigh.
Christine Wood, a wealthy, widowed anatomist (isn't it interesting that we should know her first husband was impotent), agrees to marry Stephen Maturin. How could she refuse him when the letters he writes her are so full of adventure they read like novels and the emerald he sends is perfection? (Diana Villiers, Stephens' first wife, who raised Arabian horses, is killed in a riding accident. What little discreet sex there is in the books happens between these two.)
At the wedding I am imagining, all the characters in the series gather. In 20 volumes, the reader becomes attached to a surprising number of individuals, each one a celebration of author O'Brian's astonishing imagination. In depth and breadth, the author's powers can only be compared to those of Charles Dickens.
The recipe I'd like to run is for weevil-infested biscuits, always with us on long voyages.
Instead, my favorite shortcake.
Shortcake
2 cups flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
3 teaspoons sugar, divided
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter
2/3 cup heavy cream
Sift together flour, baking powder, 2 teaspoons sugar and salt. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse oatmeal. Stir in cream until dry ingredients are moistened and cling together. Roll or pat out into a circle about 1 inch thick.
Cut into 6 or 7 2 1/2- to 3-inch circles, shaping scraps to make the necessary number. Sprinkle surface of shortcake biscuits with remaining teaspoon sugar.
Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet in a 400-degree oven for 15 to 18 minutes or until golden brown. Makes 6 or 7. Good with sugared strawberries.
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