Post Captain - Mapes Court

A tale of two captains

When you finish a novel, O Reader, do you close the book, let your fingertips rest on the back cover (or perhaps rub small circles on it) and remember passages or scenes that delight you? We lovers of Patrick O’Brian always have ACTION to remember. If we only remember the first three novels in the series, we have the tiny Sophie’s upset victory over the Cacafuego, the Lively’s relentless victory over the Spanish squadron off the southern coast of Portugal, and the deceptively wounded Surprise’s fight with Linois’ squadron in the Indian Ocean. There’s a reason most of the 21 novels in the Audrey-Maturin series reached The New York Times’ Best Seller list. Brilliantly dramatized battle scenes tighten their grip on readers.

“Barton Cottage” from Emma Thompson’s Sense and Sensibility

Turn with us, though, to only five pages (21–26) in Chapter One of Post Captain, when we visit Mapes Court (“an entirely feminine household”) and the domestic guns are run out for a series of broadsides. The Court has existed since Dutch William’s time but is not Edward Gibbon’s “perfect aristocracy of reason and virtue.”¹ Instead there is “genteel money-worship, position-worship, and suffused indignation.” O’Brian introduces each of the daughters first: Sophia, Cecila, and Frances, and then he turns to the captains of the warring ships—Mrs. Williams and Diana Villiers. These two portraits, even before a word is said, resonate throughout the rest of this novel.

Whether Mrs. Williams liked her daughters at all was doubtful: she loved them, of course, and had ‘sacrificed everything for them’, but there was not much in her composition for liking—it was too much taken up with being right (Hast thou considered my servant Mrs. Williams, that there is none like her in the earth, a perfect and upright woman?), with being tired, and with being ill-used.²

Ponder all that happens in this one introductory sentence. O’Brian begins with the quintessential dichotomy in families and in courtship—“like” versus “love.” In my case I might say, “I don’t like Uncle Frank at all, but he is family, and I will love him.” Or someone being courted might say, “He is a perfectly likeable guy, but I don’t love him.” Apparently Mrs. Williams, she who must be obeyed, in all her self-righteousness, doesn’t really like her daughters, but they are hers and she loves them (note the “of course”).

Tell me, how many times in that entirely feminine household have her daughters heard her say, “I have sacrificed everything for you”? After reading Hilary Mantel’s magnificent The Mirror and the Light and watching the PBS series with Mark Rylance and Damian Lewis, I am reminded of Henry VIII, who “never was known to sacrifice an inclination to the interest or happiness of another.”³ Mrs. Williams will sacrifice only her daughters’ happiness for a good marriage settlement. But let us not imagine a straightforward deal is enough. Drip the sentence with the sanctimonious prayer—Hast thou considered my servant …a perfect and upright woman?

In Evan’s recent post he explains that “what drives the marriage plot of Post Captain are questions of money, rank, and status.” If you as a reader don’t lose the momentum of O’Brian’s long sentence, Mrs. Williams explains what sacrificial suffering a mother must endure to obtain the money, rank, and status: “It was too much taken up with being right … with being tired, and with being ill-used.” Later in the novel Jack faces a mutiny on the Polychrest. Mrs. Williams behaves as if her gunners load the two aftermost guns with grape and her Marines fall in with muskets and the fo’c’sle and she turns all her captain’s firepower on her own daughters.

After this magnificent characterization of one domestic captain, O’Brian spends four paragraphs characterizing the other captain, Diana Villiers, who because of both her husband and father’s deaths in India and her loss of wealth must arrive at Mapes Court without money and only the protectorate of the Williams family. Of course “Mrs. Williams’ idea of a protectorate was much more like a total annexation.” Diana will soon best Mrs. Williams in importance to the story, but in these introductory pages, O’Brian plants the character traits we readers will know too well following Diana as she strives toward money, rank, and status, both to our frustration and our joy, but always to our reading pleasure.

Diana’s [movement] had a quick, flashing rhythm—on those rare occasions when there was a ball within twenty miles of Mapes she danced superbly.

[…]

It had been a foolish marriage on the emotional plane—both too passionate, strong, self-willed, and opposed in every way to do anything but tear one another to pieces.

[…]

But her theory and practice were sometimes at odds.

I chose only three partial sentences to illustrate. Without question Diana’s physical movement, whether atop a horse hunting a fox, or dancing in a ballroom, is a characteristic O’Brian seldom doesn’t mention, and her beauty (which she knows is fading) is her only remaining path to money, rank, and status—she admits this directly to Stephen. But if Mrs. Williams gets in her own and her daughters’ way with her self-righteousness, Diana can be “too passionate, self-willed, and opposed” in nearly everything, but especially in the men she sees. In future novels in the series, it will cost her, it will tear her to pieces, and in this novel it threatens her relationship with Stephen, for few other men could put up with her dalliances with Jack.

Jane Austen suggests in Mansfield Park that a woman can oppose a man she might love because she is partial to her own scheme to get ahead. Austen could just as well be writing of Diana Villers and Stephen Maturin. To Stephen’s great frustration, Diana’s “theory and practice were sometimes at odds.” This discord drives much of the subsequent drama we love.

1. Edward Gibbon, History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire (1846), vol. 4, chapter 45.

2. Post Captain, 23–24.

3. The OED says this is from Thomas Keightley, History of England, vol. 1, 416.