Eric's Reviews > H.M.S. Surprise

Not that I had tired of Maturin as a too-perfect savant, incredibly wise, subtle, and generous – physician among floggers, philosopher among the canting, counselor-critic to confused lovers - but I thought it was about time he did something human, all too human, something stupid like killing a man over a woman who’s all wrong for him. He cornered her married sugar daddy, provoked him to insult, and shot him down in a duel. (Poor Canning, I liked him, and I wonder if, as the series stretched on, O’Brian regretted killing off such an interesting character so early. I’m convinced that Maturin descends, on his Spanish mother’s side, from sage and stealthy conversos, which might have given them much to discuss.) Does this form a pattern – does Maturin shoot it out with all rivals for Diana Villiers? Her latest lover is an American planter, a type touchy in matters of honor. Could happen. Reading Post Captain, the previous novel, I wondered at the apparent contrast of Maturin and my other favorite historical-fictional character, set down in the same period - Conan Doyle’s endearingly vain and boastful Brigadier Gerard of the Hussars of Conflans, exemplar of the furia francese in a First Empire style, the thickest head and the stoutest heart in all La Grande Armée. Turns out they aren’t so different. Maturin may sound in my head like Michael Gambon reading the letters of Henry James, but he’s still “a man of blood,” as the Marine lieutenant Macdonald observed after a practice bout. Blood and folly. Anyway, this is a fun series. The prose is a tight texture of jokes, jargon, raillery, commands, and aphorisms in small sapiential gardens.