Almost as interesting as the remarkable story of Patrick O'Brian, self-styled Irishman, a writer of genius and in large part a total fraud, is the tale of how Dean King managed to penetrate the hokum with which the subject of this biography surrounded his life, his origins and his name. For how does anyone get to the bottom of an enigma like O'Brian without a single lead to follow?
I wish I knew; certainly the author of this admirable investigation into the person and the fiction and fact of Patrick O'Brian's life tells us nothing of his methods; and that is a shame, because they could be constructed into a text-book on how to investigate those who do not want to be investigated.
When Patrick O'Brian first heard of this intrusive and indefatigable American's interest in his life, he contacted friends and admirers, including this reviewer, urging them in his patrician and lordly way not to help Dean King in any way. For the most part we acceded to this request, both out of affection for Patrick O'Brian, and also out of fear. Patrick O'Brian had a fierce and terrifying temper - something which this biographer, for all his assiduity, seems not to have grasped. Patrick was also incredibly charming, yet could be a ferocious bully as well.
Despite this lack of co-operation from both the subject and most people who knew him, and spreading his information (and indeed some of the writing) very thin, the biographer has done a remarkably fine and honest recreation of his subject's life.
However, I have one serious misgiving about this book, which probably stems from the lack of co-operation from people such as myself, perhaps to be rectified in later editions. We do not get from its pages a feel for Patrick O'Brian himself.
Moreover, there are large questions unanswered, for doubtless the same reason: yet since the subject died in January, they might well remain that way. Most prominent of these is this: how could Richard Russ - Patrick's real name - who prided himself on being a gentleman of honour and duty, in 1942 bring himself to walk out on his first wife, and his two children, one of whom was suffering from the spina bifida which was soon to claim her life? What work did he actually do for British Intelligence during the war? Why did he change his name to Patrick O'Brian at war's end? Why did he pretend to be Irish, when not a molecule of his being justified the claim? And are the answers to these truths combined in a single explanation which required Richard Russ to assume the identity of a citizen of a neutral country at war's end?
Patrick told me he worked for Special Operations Executive, the undercover guerilla/terrorist organisation set up by the British to subvert Nazi rule in Europe. Certainly, the heads of both MI5, MI6, and Royal Naval Intelligence were present at the banquet, cherished still by all of us present, and given in Patrick's honour nearly four years ago. Were they there merely to honour the author of the greatest series of novels to adorn the literature of the English language in the 20th century? Did they pay honour to a former colleague of great distinction? Or both, maybe?
Patrick O'Brian's literary eminence began by chance: a happy commission from an American publisher, to fill the void left by C.S. Forester and his Hornblower series. O'Brian was 53, a successful translator and a moderately esteemed writer of works of largely unrealised promise. When he sat down to write Master and Commander 33 years ago, that promise came to an instant and glorious flowering, which was then miraculously sustained for some 30 years. There is simply nothing like it in the entire annals of English literature.
As unique as his talent was, the neglect which he endured at the hands of the literary establishment, which, intoxicated by the meretricious, the showy, the experimental - characterised most spectacularly by the Booker Prize, for which O'Brian was never even once nominated - treated his works with shameful disdain. He was, of course, deeply unfashionable. He loathed Bonaparte, who, against all the evidence, was still deemed a libertarian icon within the leftliberal establishment which dominated literary circles. Well before the term was known, Patrick O'Brian was politically incorrect. Indeed, far from being sympathetic to feminism, he lauded the traditional male virtues of patriotism, physical bravery and comradeship. He opened doors for ladies, and in their company walked on the traffic side of the pavement; and oh, how the intelligentsia sneered.
Thus did he toil unacclaimed for a quarter of a century, sustained morally by the support of great and noble individuals in the publishing world such as Christopher McIlhose, Stuart Profitt and Richard Ollard, and financially from the modest fractions his booksales earned him. Though the literary establishment ultimately failed to stop him achieving the eminence he deserved, it managed to prevent him from enjoying the financial fruits of his labours until old age and the death of his wife Mary had robbed them of their meaning.
The public revelation that he was not Irish came during the last year of his life, and nearly broke him. He felt he was being mocked by those who had given him sanctuary in Trinity College on the basis of his Irishness. They did not mock him at all, for they had grown enormously fond of this elderly and courteous gentleman. I see him still, a lonely, withered old widower, lying on his bed in Trinity, his eyes shut, listening to his beloved Boccherini on his Walkman, or chirpily heating Marks and Spencers convenience foods in his microwave ("Have you tried this sauce? It really is very fine, indeed, quite prodigious," his eyes twinkling with the little pre-cooked pleasures of life).
When Trinity closed for Christmas and the New Year last, he removed to a hotel, where at the start of the new century he died alone, winter, asthma and age arranging a victory none singularly could have achieved. But by then, he had written all that he was going to write, and he departed, leaving us a Golconda of literary treasures which will be cherished into the next century and beyond.
This book is available from Internet bookstores. The British edition of this book is due out next month
Kevin Myers is an Irish Times journalist