Patrick O’Brian - The Uncertain Land and Other Poems

In 1949 he and my mother migrated to Collioure in the south of France. During the more rewarding decades which ensued, Patrick regularly jotted down poems in little notebooks and on odd sheets of paper. Among the earliest verse surviving from that period are allusions to the wild and rugged landscape they had left behind them, which was not dissimilar to that of the Pyrenees towering above the little town.

Many of Patrick’s salient characteristics are revealed in this collection: his recurring fear of death, love of local scenery, and careful perception of the patient labours of the local inhabitants. Although he was broadly apolitical, in his poem Espagnols exilés he manifests poignant sympathy for Spanish Republicans who had fled across the frontier in 1939, a residue of whom lingered on in Collioure after my parents’ arrival.

However, it should not be thought that his themes are all melancholy. He cherished a copy of Edward Lear’s poems, given to me by a fond great-aunt for my fourth birthday, which my mother abstracted shortly afterwards when she departed our family home to live with Patrick. ‘A dog bit his master’, composed not long after their arrival at Collioure, provides a fine specimen of Patrick’s love of the absurd.

In the following year he composed his poem ‘In Upper Leeson Street’, which nostalgically evokes his memorable stay in Dublin in 1937, where he completed his precocious novel Hussein . Although even in private he talked little about his former life (save, I assume, to my mother), it is clear that in his mind he dwelt much on their early days of adventurous privation, as well as images of people and places lovingly stored in his memory. The earliest allusions are to be found in the reverie ‘If I could go back into my dream’, which if I am not mistaken draws upon childish fancies of wild beasts frequenting the streets, areas, and corners of the London with which he was familiar when living there as a small boy of five.

Although Patrick devoted much care to poetic composition, much of it does not appear even to have been submitted for publication. Unlike his prose, which he generally looked upon with justified approval, he quite frequently expressed hesitant reservations about the value of his poetry. As he noted in his diary in October 1978, ‘More work on poems, but doubt keeps creeping in & as I wrote on one of them, simplicity can come v close to silliness’. But he was rigorously self-critical, and I for one find his poetry delightful.

He was strongly drawn to the genre, and possessed a particular penchant for the writings of Chaucer, which he possessed in Tyrwhitt’s handsome two-volume edition (1798). Time and again, when relaxing with a drink after the day’s labours were done, he would return to the ebullient Father of English Poetry with zestful pleasure. When I stayed with my parents in the days of my youth, we would follow supper by taking it in turns to read aloud our favourite poems accompanied by the shrilling of cicadas in the darkened vineyard. For some reason, this congenial practice was later abandoned, but it was doubtless continued when Patrick was alone with my mother. fn2

In September 1978 Patrick noted in his diary:

My poems discourage me: too personal, often too trifling. There are some I like that would do for general consumption but probably not enough to make a book.

However, he had earlier noted:

These last 2 days I’ve been looking through my poems, with the idea of picking out enough of those that do not make me blush for a volume: many I had quite forgotten & some surprised me agreeably.

Although he sent a batch shortly afterwards to his sympathetic literary agent Richard Scott Simon, only a handful saw the light of publication during Patrick’s lifetime. Now, however, this handsome collection has been brought together, containing both polished versions and drafts that for one reason or another were left in an unfinished state, which I do not doubt will give Patrick’s legion of admirers around the world the pleasure they afford me.

NIKOLAI TOLSTOY, 2018

Lines of unpredictable merit written on the back of Miss Patz, a rough-haired Dachshundin in the year of Grace a thousand nine hundred and forty-one, on Wednesday, the eighth day of January, at about half after one in the afternoon, it being a cold day, dismal with half molten snow.

The people of this [Chelsea ambulance] station are disconsolate and rude,

All English to the tonsils, and filled with British phlegm.

They blow their noses horribly, and between the blast is spewed

A flux of ghastly small-talk. Why, O God, did you make them?

¿Was other clay not handy?

Was there nothing else to please?

O Lord that gave us brandy

And lamb and fresh green peas

¿Why did You turn your hand to these?

The last line is (I think) an Alexandrine,

which is very clever indeed, probably.

That is affected, I must admit. ¿But am

I inferior to a Spaniard? ¡No!

In dispraise of the Personnel of 22 St[ation].

L.A.A.S. fn1

The people of this station are disconsolate and rude

they are English to the tonsils, and with British phlegm embued

In proof of this opinion to their handkerchiefs I point

And not only to their kerchiefs, but oyster eyes and rheumy joint.

But also to their tempers, habitually vile

The fruit of grave distempers and coagulated bile.

All wart-hogs in comparison are quite high-souled and mild

Which leads to the conclusion that the better beasts are wild.

This may be sung (though the notion is grim)

To the tune of a well-known American hymn.

viz., or vide licet, if you should prefer the word

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord …

[Miss Patz]

Patz went out in the dead of the night,

in the dead of the night went she.

But first she carefully put out the light,

And closed the door with a key.

[Miss Patz’s invitation to the pub]

Sie sagte sich «Im ein Augenblick»

Ich werde haben ein grosse Trink.

Und so in kleiner

Moment werdet in meiner

Turn, zwei-drei steiner

Sein, oder bier als wein.

Gut. Geh’ich nach Klub.

Nein; erst hab ich lust für ein Pub.

She went quite straight to the Lion called Black fn2

Tossed down a quick pint, and never looked back

For a wicked old Owl, who took his dram raw

Determined to try the truth of the saw …

mark the Saw.

In wommin vinident [‘full of wine’] is no defence,

ðus knoweth lechours by experience.

Dan C[haucer].

So he plied her with whiskey, with gin and with rum

And said that he wished she would instantly come

To a very fine party to be held at a club

So complaisant and willing she then left the pub.

At the club she encountered a motley crew

Hard-drinking and raffish and lecherous too

They drank bottles of whiskey and magnums of gin

Till Patz felt uncertain what state she was in.

The Owl broke off in the midst of a tale

(It was singularly dirty – exclusively male)

And said ‘Liebe Fraülein, what makes you so pale?

Come, drink up a glass of red pepper and ale.’

She said ‘it’s my head, the air, heat and the smoke,’

And giggled like one who has just made a joke.