Nikolai Tolstoy - Patrick O’Brian - A Very Private Life

While Peter Palafox, engaging Irish hero of The Golden Ocean , reappears in the tale, Patrick introduced two fresh protagonists. These are the dashing historical Jack Byron himself, and his fictional comrade Tobias Barrow. Tobias is the adopted son of a wealthy squire, Mr Elwes, a neighbour of the Chaworth family, with whom Jack and his sister live. While Jack and Tobias become fast friends, as a malevolent Whig Mr Elwes was regarded with disfavour by the well-born Tory Chaworths.

Mr Elwes had acquired his riches from successful practice as a surgeon and dubious investment in South Sea stock. He adopted Tobias, with the dual intent of bringing him up as his apprentice, and indulging a hobbyhorse project of educating him to become a marvel of omniscience. As the system involved almost unceasing daily toil and ‘the most severe whippings’, it did not prove a happy home for the boy. Moreover, while he achieved a considerable hoard of knowledge, principally in Latin, Greek and the physical sciences, in addition to an encyclopaedic understanding of natural history, in other respects he failed his oppressive patron’s expectations dismally. Nor was his situation likely to be improved by the imminent arrival of a stepmother, ‘an odious woman with a dark red face’, who ‘hated Tobias at first sight’. Faced with this distasteful prospect, he attaches himself to Jack, accompanying him to serve with Anson’s squadron in the great expedition to harry the Spaniards.

Tobias is an eccentric solitary, a boy-man with an obsession for collecting and studying exotic creatures: ‘he had spent all his days in that strange, dark, unsocial house, with odd, unsatisfactory servants perpetually coming and going.’ Hopelessly absent-minded and inattentive to appearances, he all but falls overboard on boarding ship.

It is not hard to detect the original of Tobias. As a boy, Patrick led a lonely and unloved existence in various grim and silent homes. There he was subjected to the harsh whims, including it seems severe beatings, of his cold and selfish father – likewise an eccentric medical man – who engaged in desultory attempts to instruct his young son. Again, the extent to which Mr Elwes’s Whig principles antagonize his better-bred Tory neighbours recalls Dr Russ’s attachment to the Liberal Party, which Patrick came to believe accounted for their isolation and supposed ostracism at Lewes by the local Tory nobility and gentry. [fn7] Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

Dreamy and impractical, Tobias sought refuge in varied fields of esoteric learning – just as had Patrick, during long periods of abandonment to his own devices. While Patrick was fortunate to avoid having an unpleasant stepmother, he was regularly tyrannized by a succession of largely ill-qualified governesses. Again, at sea Tobias resents the rough pranks of his youthful messmates in the cockpit of the Wager . His ordeal most likely echoed the stiff and awkward Patrick’s own unhappy experience during his brief service as a cadet in the RAF, later (as I have suggested) recalled in his short story ‘The Happy Despatch’. [10] Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.