Who says proper criticism dead? What a superbly clear and cogent argument, tautly rigged. I am going to share it with a man not on Substack, my own captain who trained me in the arts of editing and managing alike, Stuart Proffitt, who was O'Brian's closing publisher for his last decade as a writer. He, a conservative, will love your argument as much as I, a socialist, did, I am sure.
Yes he is utterly brilliant. I am right now 17 books into my (latest) re-read. Regarding Maturin’s stated loyalties — to individuals only — there’s an intriguing passage in I think possibly “The Commodore” (or thereabouts) where he looks back at his diaries from the time of “Master and Commander” and seems to repudiate this, registering surprise at his former rejection of all causes, great or small, and even characterising it as something approaching spiritual death. Interesting, in that I also sensed that the Maturin of MaC was speaking for the author. I wonder whether O’Brian’s views on this also evolved over the years? Or perhaps he felt the need to account for the fact that the apparently cause-averse Maturin spends most of the series engaged in the service of one great cause after another… or perhaps the apparent contradiction isn’t one after all, and Maturin’s true dedication is to individuals over systems, and this informs his crusading opposition to the great systematiser, Bonaparte, as well as the systems of slavery and colonialism (while of course being carried about on the most advanced technological systems of his day, in the nominal service of the most successful empire of all time!)
This is the sort of dichotomy that runs throughout the books: what’s wonderful is the way in which the two sides are constantly evolving, flowing in and out of one another, taking on different valences (a near-perfect image of what I’m talking about is ready to hand in the form of the duets that the two men play, cello and violin lines improvising back and forth, sometimes intertwining, “tweedle-deedle, night after night” as Killick indignantly puts it, throughout the entire series).
That is plausibly so on The Commodore - the weakness of this post is that it's based on the 2.5 books I've read/listened to in the last few weeks - it's four years since the previous re-read, and I wasn't taking notes then (though I was thinking about some of these themes). I love the way you connect the music and the conversations.
Thank you for going after Janan Ganesh, a writer whose work prompted me to cancel my FT subscription a while back.
His fling against Patrick O’Brian is typical of his snarky arrogance, and he is welcome to the joy of it (as Aubrey would say, while knocking back a glass of sillary).
I have read the Aubrey-Maturin series several times, and every five years or so I start at the beginning again. There is always something new, something I missed before, and I have never found so many layers in any other writer. The only book I am yet to read is the last one: ‘Blue at the Mizzen’, because to read it would require me to accept the series is at an end. My wife mocks me for this sentimentality, and Maturin would as well.
Is PoB a conservative though? I’m not so sure. He wasn’t even very nautical, so his ability to present a view of the world may not reflect his place in it. The interplay between Aubrey and Maturin, the yin/yang of toryism and enlightenment, does not reach a conclusion, I think. Sometimes Aubrey has the upper hand (as in the passages about leadership that you cite), but at other times Maturin clearly has the author’s favour, despite his drug use, embrace of Diana’s moral flexibility, and surprising ability to carry out cold-hearted assassinations, the brutality of which shock even Aubrey.
I read Maturin as presenting a more subtle flavor of conservatism rather than Enlightenment values. The radical hints of Master and Commander blur out over the books in favor of a general hatred of Napoleon and idiosyncratic combination of individualism and nationalism. He is a man of science, but not of system.
I have always read him as the sort of person who was involved in a revolutionary movement or political uprising and became disenchanted with the idea of radical change as a consequence. I recall that in _Clarissa Oakes_ he articulates a kind of "leave people alone" small-l libertarian viewpoint that seems in keeping with his outlook (though it also allows the action of the novel to continue, I suppose!)
Perhaps Maturin is, in our modern parlance, ‘complicated’. It’s hard to explain his propensity to call men out for a duel. He is indifferent to wealth, but will sell his soul for a dodo carcass. He encapsulates the liberal contradictions of a sense of a better (scientific) world, yet attracted to the relics of privilege, education and connections.
Lovely piece. Too bad for Ganesh missing the virtue of the middlebrow. You could, for example, make the case that Le Carre's central thesis is about how public organizations work: they suck the motivation out of their members, making massive errors, shift blame, and promote the politically astute over the more capable actors. In a way that is different from Greene, he focuses on the creaky bureaucracy and not just the spies that occupy it.
On Master and Commander, one other element is Aubrey's conservatism is his emphasis on tradition. Especially in the early novels, he spends a good deal of time evoking the hallowed traditions of the service as a justification for his actions.
Yesterday, was continuing to listen to H.M.S. Surprise while out walking the dog (and sorry that there is now no possibility of running into you!) and there is a nice short disquisition from Stephen starting, "You are hag-ridden by custom in the Navy."
On the main point, Le Carre is indeed very good on just that point, and on the hero as capable bureaucrat amidst the mess rather than man of action. Also, Tinker, Tailor as a detective story of bureaucracy; the crucial importance of files, and of budget forensics ...
I remember one of the true laugh-out-loud moments somewhere in the early phase of the series, where Aubrey is disagreeing violently with an admiral (Admiral Mitchell perhaps?) and repeatedly deploying this phrase, eventually getting so far under the admiral’s skin that he bursts out with, ‘“Fuck the immemorial custom of the service!”’ Both men are shocked to silence by this. Pretty sure Aubrey ends up getting his way.
Thanks. This was a great defense of O’Brian, who I finally started reading last year. I wish someone will do a similar defense of le Carré, who is similarly slandered in the quoted passage. Different politics from O’Brian of course, who focuses on a completely different British era and institution, but it is frankly madness to also dismiss le Carré as un-literary or just some kind of Dad read. The two writers are similar in that they have a particular literary project that they pursue and iterate on over their careers. And they were also both commercially successful, which might be the real problem.
I couldn’t agree more. I don’t have any affinity for LC’s politics or interpretations of the modern world; I have all the affinity I can for his gifts as a psychological observer, prose stylist, etc. The opening of “Single & Single,” to take one tiny example among hundreds, is unforgettable; so too the end of “The Honorable Schoolboy,” at least for me. I could go on, but lordy: what a crazy take, that there’s nothing enriching about LC!
The subtlety with which he conveys Maturin's many shades of irony is extraordinary. And the Irish accent is a perfectly creditable representation, despite occasional tiny solecisms (no-one born outside the 26 counties could be expected to know how to pronounce Naas e.g.).
I thoroughly enjoyed this piece, the first of yours I’ve read. Re your mention of Maturin’s description of adulterated lime juice as “sophisticated,” in Philip K. Dick’s “The Man in the High Castle” (1962) a businessman tells an intermediary, “You are a sophisticate,” when that person suggests they not report to the government a transaction that would result in the reduction of the government pension of the intermediary’s client. This usage piquantly captures the rationalization (for those who need one!) often underlying such ploys. I haven’t encountered it elsewhere, and wonder how O’Brian came to use it when the Aubrey-Maturin series began in 1969.
Thank you for this superb exegesis of the books -- well played indeed! If I can add one piece that perhaps demonstrates this even more directly than the examples you use, it is from the discussion of the Enclosure Movement in The Yellow Admiral. It encapsulates everything you describe -- the recognition of authority, and the difficulties of circumscribing it with humanity, the Burkean defense of tradition against the rationalists, the (British) conservative belief that the reformers will end by aiding the powerful, and a robust defense of the commons and critique of enclosure, though more in the style of Thomas More, than Polanyi.
"They talked about preserving game, poaching, keepers, and deer for half a mile, and then, when another lane branched off, winding through deep furze on either side, they followed it and so reached a white line of post and rail. Jack said, 'This is the limit of the common. Beyond the fence our south pasture begins, demesne land. You have only seen a small corner of Simmon's Lea - another day I hope to show you the mere and beyond - but it gives you an idea...'
'A wonderfully pleasant idea, a delightful landscape indeed; and in the autumn, the late autumn, you will have all the northern duck down here, to say nothing of waders, and with any luck some geese.'
'Certainly, and perhaps some whooper swans. But I really meant an idea of what these unhappy commoners are signing away. You may say they do not value the beauty...'
'I say nothing of the kind: would scorn it.'
'But they do value the grazing, the fuel, the litter for their beasts, the thatch and the hundred little things the common can provide: to say nothing of the fish, particularly eels, the rabbits, the odd hare and a few of Griffiths' pheasants. Harding does not see them, so long as it is villagers, and on a decent scale.'
For some time they had been hearing an odd continuous sound that Stephen could not identify until they came to the gate itself; while Jack was opening it Stephen looked back along a straight piece of the lane, and there he saw a woman leading an ass harnessed to a sledge piled high with furze; she was wearing a man's old, very old coat and gloves and it was evident that she had cut it herself. Jack held the gate for her, calling out, 'Mrs Harris, how do you do?'
'And yourself, Captain Jack?' she replied in an equally powerful voice, though hoarser. 'And your good lady? I will not stop, sir - I fairly dreaded that old gate - for the ass is so eternal sullen I should never get him to move again, if I let up to open it.' Indeed the ass's momentum slackened in the gateway; but with a singularly vile oath she urged him on and through.
'We are going to look at Binning's meadow,' called Jack after her, as they turned away to the left.
'You will see the mare right comely,' she replied.
'Jack,' said Stephen, 'I have been contemplating on your words about the nature of the majority, your strangely violent, radical, and even - forgive me - democratic words, which, with their treasonable implication of "one man, one vote", might be interpreted as an attack on the sacred rights of property; and I should like to know how you reconcile them with your support of a Tory ministry in the House.'
'Oh, as for that,' said Jack, 'I have no difficulty at all. It is entirely a matter of scale and circumstance. Everyone knows that on a large scale democracy is pernicious nonsense; a country or even a county cannot be run by a self-seeking parcel of tub-thumping politicians working on popular emotion, rousing the mob. Even at Brooks's, which is a hotbed of democracy, the place is in fact run by the managers and those that don't like it may either do the other thing or join Boodle's; while as for a man-of-war, it is either an autocracy or it is nothing, nothing at all - mere nonsense. You saw what happened to the poor French navy at the beginning of the Revolutionary War...'
'Dear Jack, I do not suppose literal democracy in a ship of the line nor even in a little small row-boat. I know too much of the sea,' added Stephen, not without complacency.
'...while at the other end of the scale, although "one man, one vote" certainly smells of brimstone and the gallows, everyone has always accepted it in a jury trying a man for his life. An inclosure belongs to this scale: it too decides men's lives. I had not realized how thoroughly it does so until I came back from sea and found that Griffiths and some of his friends had persuaded my father to join with them in inclosing Woolcombe Common: he was desperate
for money at the time. Woolcombe was never so glorious a place as Simmon's Lea, but I like it very well - surprising numbers of partridge and woodcock in the season - and when I saw it all cleared, flattened, drained, fenced and exploited to the last half-bushel of wheat, with many of the small encroachments ploughed up and the cottages destroyed, and the remaining commoners, with half of their living and all their joy quite gone, reduced to anxious cap-inhand casual labourers, it hurt my heart, Stephen, I do assure you. I was brought up rough when I was a little chap, after my mother's death, sometimes at the village school, sometimes running wild; and I knew these men intimately as boys, and now to see them at the mercy of landlords, farmers, and God help us parish officers for poor relief, hurts me so that I can scarcely bring myself to go there again. And I am determined the same thing shall not happen to Simmon's Lea, if ever I can prevent it. The old ways had disadvantages, of course, but here - and I speak only of what I know - it was a human life, and the people knew its ways and customs through and through.'
'I am of your way of thinking entirely, my dear,' said Stephen. He had rarely seen Jack so deeply moved and he said nothing for a furlong..
I think it demonstrates your point resoundingly! Thanks for a great posting. Best, James Boyle
Excellent stuff, thank you! Might I suggest that the mode of conservatism you describe owes much to the principle of subsidiarity, under which rule is to be exercised by those authorities closest to the community being ruled? Fathers of families, dukes of their estates, captains of their ships, priests of their parishes, etc. This should (should) keep authority from becoming distant, Whiggish and merely efficient by incarnating it in the specific circumstances and relationships of the human beings involved.
interesting you bring up chris arnade. i found his journey from finance bro to "underclass whisperer" interesting at very first (back when i used to real naked capitalism and that sector of strange conspiracy-adjacent very online financially literate people) and since trumpism find him increasingly untethered and unpalatable. at base is his bad faith openness to the worst actors in society as a reactionary stance to the ostensible hegemony of liberalism and his generosity and faith to an underclass of *one* type that he thinks is downtrodden, and not the rest. i find him quite insufferable and perhaps that is why bringing him up as a kind of conservative cipher is interesting....
A life long lefty lawyer, I've always viewed O'brian as a personal hero. Thanks for explaining why. Almost as much fun are the Sharpe novels by Bernard Cornwell. Same time period but set in the Napoleonic land wars. The hero Sharpe, child of the gutter, finds the same values that shape Aubrey. So maybe not a complete lefty.
I think this is an excellent analysis of the appeal of O'Brien. I had never put it together like this for myself, but every bit seemed right as you unfolded it. So thanks!
Who says proper criticism dead? What a superbly clear and cogent argument, tautly rigged. I am going to share it with a man not on Substack, my own captain who trained me in the arts of editing and managing alike, Stuart Proffitt, who was O'Brian's closing publisher for his last decade as a writer. He, a conservative, will love your argument as much as I, a socialist, did, I am sure.
Thank you, and I would of course be delighted if you shared it.
I had a similar urge to send it to William Waldegrave
Yes he is utterly brilliant. I am right now 17 books into my (latest) re-read. Regarding Maturin’s stated loyalties — to individuals only — there’s an intriguing passage in I think possibly “The Commodore” (or thereabouts) where he looks back at his diaries from the time of “Master and Commander” and seems to repudiate this, registering surprise at his former rejection of all causes, great or small, and even characterising it as something approaching spiritual death. Interesting, in that I also sensed that the Maturin of MaC was speaking for the author. I wonder whether O’Brian’s views on this also evolved over the years? Or perhaps he felt the need to account for the fact that the apparently cause-averse Maturin spends most of the series engaged in the service of one great cause after another… or perhaps the apparent contradiction isn’t one after all, and Maturin’s true dedication is to individuals over systems, and this informs his crusading opposition to the great systematiser, Bonaparte, as well as the systems of slavery and colonialism (while of course being carried about on the most advanced technological systems of his day, in the nominal service of the most successful empire of all time!)
This is the sort of dichotomy that runs throughout the books: what’s wonderful is the way in which the two sides are constantly evolving, flowing in and out of one another, taking on different valences (a near-perfect image of what I’m talking about is ready to hand in the form of the duets that the two men play, cello and violin lines improvising back and forth, sometimes intertwining, “tweedle-deedle, night after night” as Killick indignantly puts it, throughout the entire series).
That is plausibly so on The Commodore - the weakness of this post is that it's based on the 2.5 books I've read/listened to in the last few weeks - it's four years since the previous re-read, and I wasn't taking notes then (though I was thinking about some of these themes). I love the way you connect the music and the conversations.
Thank you for going after Janan Ganesh, a writer whose work prompted me to cancel my FT subscription a while back.
His fling against Patrick O’Brian is typical of his snarky arrogance, and he is welcome to the joy of it (as Aubrey would say, while knocking back a glass of sillary).
I have read the Aubrey-Maturin series several times, and every five years or so I start at the beginning again. There is always something new, something I missed before, and I have never found so many layers in any other writer. The only book I am yet to read is the last one: ‘Blue at the Mizzen’, because to read it would require me to accept the series is at an end. My wife mocks me for this sentimentality, and Maturin would as well.
Is PoB a conservative though? I’m not so sure. He wasn’t even very nautical, so his ability to present a view of the world may not reflect his place in it. The interplay between Aubrey and Maturin, the yin/yang of toryism and enlightenment, does not reach a conclusion, I think. Sometimes Aubrey has the upper hand (as in the passages about leadership that you cite), but at other times Maturin clearly has the author’s favour, despite his drug use, embrace of Diana’s moral flexibility, and surprising ability to carry out cold-hearted assassinations, the brutality of which shock even Aubrey.
I read Maturin as presenting a more subtle flavor of conservatism rather than Enlightenment values. The radical hints of Master and Commander blur out over the books in favor of a general hatred of Napoleon and idiosyncratic combination of individualism and nationalism. He is a man of science, but not of system.
I have always read him as the sort of person who was involved in a revolutionary movement or political uprising and became disenchanted with the idea of radical change as a consequence. I recall that in _Clarissa Oakes_ he articulates a kind of "leave people alone" small-l libertarian viewpoint that seems in keeping with his outlook (though it also allows the action of the novel to continue, I suppose!)
Perhaps Maturin is, in our modern parlance, ‘complicated’. It’s hard to explain his propensity to call men out for a duel. He is indifferent to wealth, but will sell his soul for a dodo carcass. He encapsulates the liberal contradictions of a sense of a better (scientific) world, yet attracted to the relics of privilege, education and connections.
Lovely piece. Too bad for Ganesh missing the virtue of the middlebrow. You could, for example, make the case that Le Carre's central thesis is about how public organizations work: they suck the motivation out of their members, making massive errors, shift blame, and promote the politically astute over the more capable actors. In a way that is different from Greene, he focuses on the creaky bureaucracy and not just the spies that occupy it.
On Master and Commander, one other element is Aubrey's conservatism is his emphasis on tradition. Especially in the early novels, he spends a good deal of time evoking the hallowed traditions of the service as a justification for his actions.
Yesterday, was continuing to listen to H.M.S. Surprise while out walking the dog (and sorry that there is now no possibility of running into you!) and there is a nice short disquisition from Stephen starting, "You are hag-ridden by custom in the Navy."
On the main point, Le Carre is indeed very good on just that point, and on the hero as capable bureaucrat amidst the mess rather than man of action. Also, Tinker, Tailor as a detective story of bureaucracy; the crucial importance of files, and of budget forensics ...
‘“The immemorial custom of the service!”’
I remember one of the true laugh-out-loud moments somewhere in the early phase of the series, where Aubrey is disagreeing violently with an admiral (Admiral Mitchell perhaps?) and repeatedly deploying this phrase, eventually getting so far under the admiral’s skin that he bursts out with, ‘“Fuck the immemorial custom of the service!”’ Both men are shocked to silence by this. Pretty sure Aubrey ends up getting his way.
Thank you for this. I’m rereading O’Brian now, with love as always, and you’ve added another layer to my pleasure. I take it most kindly indeed.
Thanks. This was a great defense of O’Brian, who I finally started reading last year. I wish someone will do a similar defense of le Carré, who is similarly slandered in the quoted passage. Different politics from O’Brian of course, who focuses on a completely different British era and institution, but it is frankly madness to also dismiss le Carré as un-literary or just some kind of Dad read. The two writers are similar in that they have a particular literary project that they pursue and iterate on over their careers. And they were also both commercially successful, which might be the real problem.
I couldn’t agree more. I don’t have any affinity for LC’s politics or interpretations of the modern world; I have all the affinity I can for his gifts as a psychological observer, prose stylist, etc. The opening of “Single & Single,” to take one tiny example among hundreds, is unforgettable; so too the end of “The Honorable Schoolboy,” at least for me. I could go on, but lordy: what a crazy take, that there’s nothing enriching about LC!
Patrick Tull forever, and accept no substitutes. Nobody else comes within a nautical mile of doing Maturin justice.
The subtlety with which he conveys Maturin's many shades of irony is extraordinary. And the Irish accent is a perfectly creditable representation, despite occasional tiny solecisms (no-one born outside the 26 counties could be expected to know how to pronounce Naas e.g.).
I thoroughly enjoyed this piece, the first of yours I’ve read. Re your mention of Maturin’s description of adulterated lime juice as “sophisticated,” in Philip K. Dick’s “The Man in the High Castle” (1962) a businessman tells an intermediary, “You are a sophisticate,” when that person suggests they not report to the government a transaction that would result in the reduction of the government pension of the intermediary’s client. This usage piquantly captures the rationalization (for those who need one!) often underlying such ploys. I haven’t encountered it elsewhere, and wonder how O’Brian came to use it when the Aubrey-Maturin series began in 1969.
It's standard 18th century English apparently. On PKD - https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/the-pkd-dystopia
Thank you for this superb exegesis of the books -- well played indeed! If I can add one piece that perhaps demonstrates this even more directly than the examples you use, it is from the discussion of the Enclosure Movement in The Yellow Admiral. It encapsulates everything you describe -- the recognition of authority, and the difficulties of circumscribing it with humanity, the Burkean defense of tradition against the rationalists, the (British) conservative belief that the reformers will end by aiding the powerful, and a robust defense of the commons and critique of enclosure, though more in the style of Thomas More, than Polanyi.
"They talked about preserving game, poaching, keepers, and deer for half a mile, and then, when another lane branched off, winding through deep furze on either side, they followed it and so reached a white line of post and rail. Jack said, 'This is the limit of the common. Beyond the fence our south pasture begins, demesne land. You have only seen a small corner of Simmon's Lea - another day I hope to show you the mere and beyond - but it gives you an idea...'
'A wonderfully pleasant idea, a delightful landscape indeed; and in the autumn, the late autumn, you will have all the northern duck down here, to say nothing of waders, and with any luck some geese.'
'Certainly, and perhaps some whooper swans. But I really meant an idea of what these unhappy commoners are signing away. You may say they do not value the beauty...'
'I say nothing of the kind: would scorn it.'
'But they do value the grazing, the fuel, the litter for their beasts, the thatch and the hundred little things the common can provide: to say nothing of the fish, particularly eels, the rabbits, the odd hare and a few of Griffiths' pheasants. Harding does not see them, so long as it is villagers, and on a decent scale.'
For some time they had been hearing an odd continuous sound that Stephen could not identify until they came to the gate itself; while Jack was opening it Stephen looked back along a straight piece of the lane, and there he saw a woman leading an ass harnessed to a sledge piled high with furze; she was wearing a man's old, very old coat and gloves and it was evident that she had cut it herself. Jack held the gate for her, calling out, 'Mrs Harris, how do you do?'
'And yourself, Captain Jack?' she replied in an equally powerful voice, though hoarser. 'And your good lady? I will not stop, sir - I fairly dreaded that old gate - for the ass is so eternal sullen I should never get him to move again, if I let up to open it.' Indeed the ass's momentum slackened in the gateway; but with a singularly vile oath she urged him on and through.
'We are going to look at Binning's meadow,' called Jack after her, as they turned away to the left.
'You will see the mare right comely,' she replied.
'Jack,' said Stephen, 'I have been contemplating on your words about the nature of the majority, your strangely violent, radical, and even - forgive me - democratic words, which, with their treasonable implication of "one man, one vote", might be interpreted as an attack on the sacred rights of property; and I should like to know how you reconcile them with your support of a Tory ministry in the House.'
'Oh, as for that,' said Jack, 'I have no difficulty at all. It is entirely a matter of scale and circumstance. Everyone knows that on a large scale democracy is pernicious nonsense; a country or even a county cannot be run by a self-seeking parcel of tub-thumping politicians working on popular emotion, rousing the mob. Even at Brooks's, which is a hotbed of democracy, the place is in fact run by the managers and those that don't like it may either do the other thing or join Boodle's; while as for a man-of-war, it is either an autocracy or it is nothing, nothing at all - mere nonsense. You saw what happened to the poor French navy at the beginning of the Revolutionary War...'
'Dear Jack, I do not suppose literal democracy in a ship of the line nor even in a little small row-boat. I know too much of the sea,' added Stephen, not without complacency.
'...while at the other end of the scale, although "one man, one vote" certainly smells of brimstone and the gallows, everyone has always accepted it in a jury trying a man for his life. An inclosure belongs to this scale: it too decides men's lives. I had not realized how thoroughly it does so until I came back from sea and found that Griffiths and some of his friends had persuaded my father to join with them in inclosing Woolcombe Common: he was desperate
for money at the time. Woolcombe was never so glorious a place as Simmon's Lea, but I like it very well - surprising numbers of partridge and woodcock in the season - and when I saw it all cleared, flattened, drained, fenced and exploited to the last half-bushel of wheat, with many of the small encroachments ploughed up and the cottages destroyed, and the remaining commoners, with half of their living and all their joy quite gone, reduced to anxious cap-inhand casual labourers, it hurt my heart, Stephen, I do assure you. I was brought up rough when I was a little chap, after my mother's death, sometimes at the village school, sometimes running wild; and I knew these men intimately as boys, and now to see them at the mercy of landlords, farmers, and God help us parish officers for poor relief, hurts me so that I can scarcely bring myself to go there again. And I am determined the same thing shall not happen to Simmon's Lea, if ever I can prevent it. The old ways had disadvantages, of course, but here - and I speak only of what I know - it was a human life, and the people knew its ways and customs through and through.'
'I am of your way of thinking entirely, my dear,' said Stephen. He had rarely seen Jack so deeply moved and he said nothing for a furlong..
I think it demonstrates your point resoundingly! Thanks for a great posting. Best, James Boyle
Patrick Tull is a masterful reader of O'Brian! I read them all and then bought a sailboat. And then came Tull's audio, and I wanted a bigger boat!
To be fair, the desire for a bigger boat cannot be laid at the feet of O'Brian or even the inestimable Tull.
It is, (dare I say it?) the immemorial custom of the service.
Excellent stuff, thank you! Might I suggest that the mode of conservatism you describe owes much to the principle of subsidiarity, under which rule is to be exercised by those authorities closest to the community being ruled? Fathers of families, dukes of their estates, captains of their ships, priests of their parishes, etc. This should (should) keep authority from becoming distant, Whiggish and merely efficient by incarnating it in the specific circumstances and relationships of the human beings involved.
interesting you bring up chris arnade. i found his journey from finance bro to "underclass whisperer" interesting at very first (back when i used to real naked capitalism and that sector of strange conspiracy-adjacent very online financially literate people) and since trumpism find him increasingly untethered and unpalatable. at base is his bad faith openness to the worst actors in society as a reactionary stance to the ostensible hegemony of liberalism and his generosity and faith to an underclass of *one* type that he thinks is downtrodden, and not the rest. i find him quite insufferable and perhaps that is why bringing him up as a kind of conservative cipher is interesting....
A life long lefty lawyer, I've always viewed O'brian as a personal hero. Thanks for explaining why. Almost as much fun are the Sharpe novels by Bernard Cornwell. Same time period but set in the Napoleonic land wars. The hero Sharpe, child of the gutter, finds the same values that shape Aubrey. So maybe not a complete lefty.
I think this is an excellent analysis of the appeal of O'Brien. I had never put it together like this for myself, but every bit seemed right as you unfolded it. So thanks!
thank you!
Looks like you left your writing notes at the bottom of the page.