Patrick O’Brian and the Aubrey-Matarin series

 Richard Patrick Russ was born in England in 1908, the grandson of an immigrant German furrier who had amassed a significant fortune not added to by any of his numerous offspring.  By the time young Patrick came along, his father, a physician who lived in a strange world of impractical inventions, had helped to dissipate the family fortune and would spend his life supporting a range of ill advised and doomed ideas.  The children of his marriages were dispersed to a variety of relatives, never developing a strong sense of family.  Young Patrick, whose family could not afford much in the way of serious education, escaped into writing animal stories and reading widely.  He published his first story at age fifteen and escaped into an ill advised marriage while in his very early twenties.

 World War II provided Patrick Russ with a variety of experiences, still deeply shrouded, in some elements of British intelligence.  He met his second wife, Mary, while doing this work, abandoned his wife and two children, one of whom was crippled with spina bifeda, and changed his name to Patrick O’Brien, effectively cutting off relations with his pre-war experience and his entire family.  Shortly after the war, O’Brian and Mary moved to the south of France, near the Spanish border, where the cost of living would make it easier to support his work as a writer.  They lived there the rest of their lives, quietly writing and keeping their gardens and grapes enough to produce some of the justly famed local wines.  O’Brian produced several collections of short stories as well as a couple of novels and a non-fiction sea faring tale, all of which were pretty well received, but none of which sold in any great numbers.

O’Brian’s sea faring book, The Golden Ocean, received enough attention to attract a publisher looking for a novelist to produce stories in the wake of the recently deceased C.S. Forester, author of the Horatio Hornblower series.  In response to this request, O’Brian wrote Master and Commander in which he created his sea captain, James Aubrey, as well as Aubrey’s special friend, the physician and spy, Dr. Stephen Matarin.  It is out of such inauspicious beginnings that one of the great literary and publishing events of the twentieth century would come.  Over the next thirty years, O’Brian would produce twenty seafaring novels chronicling the adventures of two of the most distinctive characters in literature.  Millions of copies of these books in a number of languages would enrich the experiences of readers.

 Dean King’s informative and interesting biography Patrick O’Brian: a Life Revealed clearly represents deep digging into the carefully disguised life of this most secretive of writers.  O’Brian was not the person he portrayed himself to be.  King, who has written much about O’Brian’s work, including a glossary of naval and medical terms and a useful synopsis of all the Aubrey-Matarin novels, presents the novelist in his greatness and with all his flaws.  But this work is clearly for those whose devotion to the novels has led them to an interest in their source.  The real treasure, however, lies in the adventures and relationship of Captain James Aubrey and Dr. Stephen Matarin.

Beginning with Master and Commander, first published in 1970, and extending for twenty volumes culminating in Blue at the Mizzen, published in 1999, the Aubrey – Matarin novels can be read as twenty different works, but they gain in interest and value if they are taken as a single twenty volume epic novel covering a period of roughly fifteen years during the Napoleonic wars at the beginning of the nineteenth century and read in sequence..  There is no need to go into particular detail concerning the individual stories, as a number of web sites do an more than adequate job of presenting each of the novels in summary and in detail. 

In brief, two major characters dominate these sea-faring adventures.  Captain James Aubrey rises from his first command of a small frigate to wealth, respect and an admiralty through his bravery and initiative at sea.  He brings humanity, bravery, and innovation to his command of a variety of sailing ships.  As superior as he is at sea, he is conversely, at sea when ashore.  On land, Aubrey has difficulty sustaining relationships with his family, easily falls in among swindlers and thieves intent on cheating him of his money and destroying his career, and has no feel for the political realities of his time.  While he can do no wrong at sea, he is constantly in trouble on land.  His adventures provide swashbuckling thrills, suspense, and no little laughter.

 Steven Matarin becomes Aubrey’s special friend as ship’s surgeon in the first volume.  Matarin is a brilliant surgeon, a devoted naturalist, and a marvelous spy for British naval intelligence.  On ship board he is nearly helpless, while ashore he is an unparalleled success in understanding the political demands of the times.  His ability to establish and maintain relationships with women is nearly hopeless.  His ability to outwit evil enemies is without peer.  On ship, however, he is always on the verge of falling overboard and drowning or being decapitated by a spar.  He cannot manage to remember even the hours represented by the ship’s bell system.  Again, tragedy, adventure, and humor provide a delightful mix.

 The developing relationship between these two men and their adventures form the core of these twenty novels.  One context is the British navy in the Napoleonic wars.   Another context is life and mores in early nineteenth century England.  Brought together these elements provide an incomparable set of books, even for people who have not previously read in the genre.  In fact, these novels transcend the genre format and stand with any literature of the twentieth century. 

Links to Aubrey - Matarin Web Sites:

http://www.wwnorton.com/pob/pobhome.htm;

http://orik.com/books/patrickobrien.htm

http://www.io.com/gibbonsb/pob/