Patrick O'Brian: Post captain

Mrs Villiers was a widow: she had been born, in the same year as Sophia, but what a different life she had led; at fifteen, after her mother’s death, she had gone out to India to keep house for her expensive, raffish father, and she had lived there in splendid style even after her marriage to a penniless young man, her father’s aide-​dc-​camp, for he had moved into their rambling great palace, where the addition of a husband and an extra score of servants passed unnoticed. 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 from the worldly point of view there was a great deal to be said for it. It did bring her a handsome husband, and it might have brought her

a deer-​park and ten thousand a year as well, for not only was Charles Villiers well-​connected (one sickly life between him and a great estate) but he was intelligent, cultivated, unscrupulous and active - particularly gifted on the political side: the very man to make a brilliant career in India. A second Clive, maybe, and wealthy by the age of thirty-​odd. But they were both killed in the same engagement against Tippoo Sahib, her father owing three lakhs of rupees and her husband nearly half that sum.

The Company allowed Diana her passage home and fifty pounds a year until she should remarry. She came back to England with a wardrobe of tropical clothes, a certain knowledge of the world, and almost nothing else. She came back, in effect, to the schoolroom, or something very like it. For she at once realized that her aunt meant to clamp down on her, to allow her no chance of queering her daughters’ pitch; and as she had no money and nowhere else to go she determined to fit into this small slow world of the English countryside, with its fixed notions and its strange morality.

She was willing, she was obliged, to accept a protectorate, and from the beginning she resolved to be meek, cautious and retiring; she knew that other women would regard her as a menace, and she meant to give them no provocation. But her theory and her practice were sometimes at odds, and in any case Mrs Williams’s idea of a protectorate was much more like a total annexation. She was afraid of Diana, and dared not push her too far, but she never gave up trying to gain a moral superiority, and it was striking to see how this essentially stupid woman, unhampered by any principle or by any sense of honour, managed to plant her needle where it hurt most.

This had been going on for years, and Diana’s clandestine or at least unavowed excursions with Mr Savile’s hounds had a purpose beyond satisfying her delight in riding. Returning now she met her cousin Cecilia in the hail, hurrying to look at her new bonnet in the pier-​glass between the breakfast-​room windows.

‘Thou looks’t like Antichrist in that lewd hat,’ she said in a sombre voice, for the hounds had lost their fox and the only tolerable-​looking man had vanished.

‘Oh! Oh!’ cried Cecilia, ‘what a shocking thing to say! It’s blasphemy, I’m sure. I declare I’ve never had such a shocking thing said to me since Jemmy Blagrove called me that rude word. I shall tell Mama.’

‘Don’t be a fool, Cissy. It’s a quotation - literature - the Bible.’

‘Oh. Well, I think it’s very shocking. You are covered with mud, Di. Oh, you took my tricorne. Oh, what an ill-​natured thing you are - I am sure you spoilt the feather. I shall tell Mama.’ She snatched the hat, but finding it unhurt she softened and went on, ‘Well: and so you had a dirty ride. You went along Gallipot Lane, I suppose. Did you see anything of the hunt? They were over there on Polcary all the morning with their horrid howling and yowling.’

‘I saw them in the distance,’ said Diana.

‘You frightened me so with that dreadful thing you said about Jesus,’ said Cecilia, blowing on the ostrich-​feather, ‘that I almost forgot the news. The Admiral is back!’

‘Back already?’

‘Yes. And he will be over this very afternoon. He sent Ned with his compliments and might he come with Mama’s Berlin wool after dinner. Such fun! He will tell us all about these beautiful young men! Men, Diana!’

The family had scarcely gathered about their tea before Admiral Haddock walked in. He was only a yellow admiral, retired without hoisting his flag, and he had not been afloat since 1794, but he was their one authority on naval matters and he had been sadly missed ever since the unexpected arrival of a Captain Aubrey of the Navy -a captain who had taken Melbury Lodge and who was therefore within their sphere of influence, but about whom they knew nothing and upon whom (he being a bachelor) they, as ladies, could not call.

‘Pray, Admiral,’ said Mrs Williams, as soon as the Berlin wool had been faintly praised, peered at with narrowed eyes and pursed lips, and privately condemned as useless

- nothing like a match, in quality, colour or price. ‘Pray, Admiral, tell us about this Captain Aubrey, who they say has taken Melbury Lodge.’

‘Aubrey? Oh, yes,’ said the Admiral, running his dry tongue over his dry lips, like a parrot, ‘I know all about him. I have not met him, but I talked about him to people at the club and in the Admiralty, and when I came home I looked him up in the Navy List. He is a young fellow, only a master and commander, you know -’

‘Do you mean he is pretending to be a captain?’ cried Mrs Williams, perfectly willing to believe it.

‘No, no,’ said Admiral Haddock impatiently. ‘We always call commanders Captain So-​and-​So in the Navy. Real captains, full captains, we call post-​captains - we say a man is made post when he is appointed to a sixth-​rate or better, an eight-​and-​twenty, say, or a thirty-​two-​gun frigate. A post-​ship, my dear Madam.’

‘Oh, indeed,’ said Mrs Williams, nodding her head and looking wise.

‘Only a commander: but he did most uncommon well in the Mediterranean. Lord Keith gave him cruise after cruise in that little old quarter-​decked brig we took from the Spaniards in ninety-​five, and he played Old Harry with the shipping up and down the coast. There were times when he well-​nigh filled the Lazaretto Reach in Mahon with his prizes - Lucky Jack Aubrey, they called him. He must have cleared a pretty penny - a most elegant penny indeed. And he it was who took the Cacafuego! The very man,’ said the Admiral with some triumph, gazing round the circle of blank faces. After a moment’s pause of unbroken stupidity on their part he shook his head, saying, ‘You never even heard of the engagement, I collect?’

No, they had not. They were sorry to say that they had not heard of the Cacafuego - was it the same as the Battle of St Vincent? Perhaps it had happened when they were so busy with the strawberries. They had put up two hundred pots.

‘Well, the Cacafuego was a Spanish xebec-​frigate of two and thirty guns, and he went for her in this little fourteen-​gun sloop, fought her to a standstill, and carried her into Minorca. Such an action! The service rang with it. And if it had not been for some legal quirk about her papers, she being lent to the Barcelona merchants and not commanded by her regular captain, which meant that technically she was not for the moment a king’s ship but a privateer, he would have been made post and given command of her. Perhaps knighted too. But as it was - there being wheels within wheels, as I will explain at another time, for it is not really suitable for young ladies - she was not bought into the service; and so far he has not been given his step. What is more, I do not think he ever will be. He is a vile ranting dog of a Tory, to be sure - or at least his father is but even so, it was shameful. He may not be quite the thing, but I intend to take particular notice of him - shall call tomorrow - to mark my sense of the action: and of the injustice.’