I wandered about its dirty lanes, solicited, importuned by its barbarous inhabitants, male, female and epicene, and I came to the poor-house, where the old are kept until they can be buried with some show of decency. The impression of meaningless absolute unhappiness is with me yet. Medicine has brought me acquainted with misery in many forms; I am not squeamish; but for complications of filth, cruelty, and bestial ignorance, that place, with its infirmary, exceeded any thing I have ever seen or imagined. An old man, his wits quite gone, chained in the dark, squatting in his excrement, naked but for a blanket; the idiot children; the whipping. I knew it all; it is nothing new; but in this concentration it overcame me so that I could no longer feel indignation but only a hopeless nausea. It was the merest chance that I kept my appointment with the chaplain to listen to a concert – my feet, more civil than my mind, led me to the place. Curious music, well played, particularly the trumpet: a German composer, one Molter. The music, I believe, had nothing to say, but it provided a pleasant background of ‘cellos and woodwinds and allowed the trumpet to make exquisite sounds – pure colour tearing through this formal elegance. I grope to define a connection that is half clear to me – I once thought that this was music, much as I thought that physical grace and style was virtue; or replaced virtue; or was virtue on
another plane. But although the music shifted the current of my thoughts for a while, they are back again today, and I have not the spiritual energy to clarify this or any other position. At home there is a Roman stone I know (I often lay there to listen to my nightjars) with fui non sum non curo carved on it; and there I have felt such a peace, such a tranquillitas animi et indolentia corporis. Home I say, which is singular: yet indeed there is still a glow of hatred for the Spaniards under these indulgent, unmanly ashes -a living attachment to Catalan independence.’ He looked out of the cabin window at the water of the Sound, oily, with the nameless filth of Plymouth floating on it, a bloated puppy, and dipped his pen. ‘Yet on the other hand, will this glow ever blaze up again, when I think of what they will do with independence? When I let my mind dwell on the vast potentiality for happiness, and our present state? Such potentiality, and so much misery? Hatred the only moving force, a petulant unhappy striving – childhood the only happiness, and that unknowing; then the continual battle that cannot ever possibly be won; a losing fight against ill-health – poverty for nearly all. Life is a long disease with only one termination and its last years are appalling: weak, racked by the stone, rheumatismal pains, senses going, friends, family, occupation gone, a man must pray for imbecility or a heart of stone.
All under sentence of death, often ignominious, frequently agonizing: and then the unspeakable levity with which the faint chance of happiness is thrown away for some jealousy, tiff, sullenness, private vanity, mistaken sense of honour, that deadly, weak and
silly notion. I am not acute in my perceptions – my whole conduct with Diana proves it – but I would have sworn that Sophie had more bottom; was more straightforward, direct, courageous. Though to be sure, I know the depth of Jack’s feeling for her, and perhaps she does not.’ He looked up from his page again, straight into her face. It was outside the window, a few feet below him, moving from left to right as the boat pulled round the frigate’s stern; she was looking up beyond the cabin window towards the taffrail, with her mouth slightly open and her lip caught behind her upper teeth, with an expression of contained alarm in her immense upturned eyes. Admiral Haddock sat beside her, and Cecilia.
When Stephen reached the quarterdeck the admiral was uttering his thoughts on manilla cordage, and Jack and Sophie were standing some distance apart, looking extraordinary conscious. ‘His appearance,’ reflected Stephen, ‘is not so much that of concern as of consternation. His wits are overset: how very much at random he answers the admiral.’
‘And all that, my dears, has to be tarred, in the case we are rigged with common hemp,’
said the admiral.
‘Tarred, sir?’ cried Sophie. ‘Oh, indeed. With – with a tar-brush, I dare say?’ Her voice died away, and she blushed again.
‘So I entrust the girls to you, Aubrey,’ said the admiral. ‘I shift the responsibility on to your shoulders – two great girls is a very shocking responsibility – and send ’em aboard on Thursday.’
‘Upon my word, sir, you are very good – but not fit for a lady. That is to say, very fit for a lady; but cramped. Should be very happy, more than happy, to show Miss Williams any attention in my power.’
‘Oh, never mind them. They are only girls, you know
– they can rough it – don’t put yourself out. Think what you will save them in pin-money.
Stow them anywhere. Berth them with the Doctor, ha, ha! There you are, Dr Maturin. I am happy to see you. You would not mind it, eh? Eh? Ha, ha, ha. I saw you, you sly dog.
Take care of him, Aubrey; he is a sly one.’ The scattered officers on the quarterdeck frowned: the Admiral belonged to an older, coarser Navy; and he had been dining with his carnal colleague, the port admiral. ‘So that is settled, Aubrey? Capital, capital. Come, Sophie; come, Cecilia: into the chair – hang on to your petticoats; mind the wind. Oh,’
he added in what passed for a whisper, as the girls were lowered away in the ignominy of a bosun’s chair, ‘a word in your ear, Aubrey. Have you read your father’s speech? I thought not. “And now let us turn to the Navy,” said he to the House. “Here too we find that the former administration allowed, nay, encouraged the grossest laxity and unheard-of corruption. My son, a serving officer, tells me that things were very bad – the wrong officers promoted through mere influence, the ropes and sails not at all the thing; and to crown all, Mr Speaker, sir, women, women allowed on board! Scenes of unspeakable
debauchery, fitter, oh far fitter, for the French.” Now if you will take an old man’s advice, you will clap a stopper over all by express. It will do you no good in the service. Let him stick to the army. A word to the wise, eh, eh? You get my meaning?’
With a look of infinite cunning, the Admiral went over the side, attended by the honours due to his splendid rank; and having stood watching respectfully for the proper length of time, Jack turned to a messenger. ‘Pass the word for the carpenter,’ he said. ‘Mr Simmons, be so good as to select our very best hands with holystone and swab and send them aft. And tell me, who of the officers is the most remarkable for taste?’
‘For taste, sir?’ cried Simmons.
‘Yes, yes, artistic taste. You know, a sense of the sublime.’
‘Why, sir, I don’t know that any of us is much gifted in that line. I do not remember the sublime ever having been mentioned in the gun-room. But there is Mallet, sir, carpenter’s crew, who understands these things. He was a receiver of stolen property, specializing in pretty sublime pieces, as I understand it – old masters and so on. He is rather old himself, and not strong, so he helps Mr Charnock with the joinery and fine-work; but I am sure he understands things in the sublime way as well as anyone in the ship.’
‘We will have a word with him. I need some ornaments for the cabin. He can be trusted ashore, I suppose?’
‘Oh dear me, no, sir. He has run twice, and at Lisbon he tried to get ashore in a barrel, from the wrong side of the bar. And once he stole Mrs Armstrong’s gown and tried to slip past the master-at-arms, saying he was a woman.’
‘Then he shall go with Bonden and a file of Marines. Mr Charnock,’ he said to the waiting carpenter, ‘come along with me and let us see what we can do to the cabin to make it fit for a lady. Mr Simmons, while we are settling this, pray let the sailmaker start making a sailcloth carpet: black and white squares, exactly like the Victory. There is not a moment to be lost. Stephen, my hero,’ he said, in the comparative privacy of the fore-cabin, putting one arm round him in a bear-like hug’ ‘ain’t you amazed, delighted and amazed? Lord, what luck I have some money! Come and give me your ideas on improving the cabin.’