Tag Archives: Jack Aubrey

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‘The gold and the pearls help,’ said Stephen. ‘The one echoes her hair and the other her teeth. I will tell you a thing about women. They are superior to men in this, that they have an unfeigned, objective, candid admiration for good looks in other women — a real pleasure in their beauty. Yours, too, is a most elegant dress: other women admire it. I have remarked this. Not only from their glances, but most positively, by standing behind them and listening to their conversation.’

Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian

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The lane ran straight up hill, rising higher and higher, with God knows what breakneck descent the other side. The horse slowed to a walk — the bean-fed horse, as it proved by a thunderous, long, long fart.

‘I beg your pardon,’ said the midshipman in the silence.

‘Oh, that’s all right,’ said Diana coldly. ‘I thought it was the horse.’ A sideways glance showed that this had settled Babbington’s has for the moment.

Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian

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‘Good morning, Maturin,’ said Diana, coming down the steps. ‘I hope I have not kept you waiting. What a neat cob you have there, upon my word! You never found him in this part of the world.’

‘Good morning, Villiers. You are late. You are very late.’

‘It is the one advantage there is in being a woman. You do know I am a woman, Maturin?’

‘I am obliged to suppose it, since you affect to have no notion of time — cannot tell what o’clock it is. Though why the trifling accident of sex should induce a sentient being, let alone such an intelligent being as you, to waste half this beautiful clear morning, I cannot conceive. Come, let me help you to mount. Sex — sex . . . ‘

‘Hush, Maturin. You must not use words like that here. It was bad enough yesterday.’

‘Yesterday? Oh, yes. But I am not the first man to say that wit is the unexpected copulation of ideas. Far from it. It is commonplace.’

‘As far as my aunt is concerned you are certainly the first man who ever used such an expression in public.

Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian

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Sometimes Mrs Williams wondered whether he really were quite the thing — whether those strange tales about sea-officers might possibly be true in his case. Was it not very odd that he should live with Dr Maturin?

Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian

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A deep and powerful voice the other side of the door was singing

You ladies of lubricity
That dwell in the bordello
Ha-ha ha-ha, ha-ha ha-her
For I am that kind of fellow,

but the ladies walked into the hall quite unmoved, since not one of them except Diana understood the words, and she was not easily upset. 

– Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian

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‘No future in the service for that kind of officer, above all with St Vincent at the Admiralty. And then I fear he may not attend to the fifth commandment quite as he should.’ The girls’ faces took on an inward look as they privately ran over the Decalogue: in order of intelligence a little frown appeared on each as its owner reached the part about Sunday travelling, and then cleared as they carried on to the commandment the Admiral had certainly intended.

Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian

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She spoke little, in company or out, but she was capable of a sudden dart of sharpness, of a remark that showed much more intelligence and reflection than would have been expected from her rudimentary education and her very quiet provincial life. These remarks had a much greater force, coming from an amiable, pliant, and as it were sleepy reserve, and before now they had startled men who did not know her well — men who had been praying away happily with the conscious superiority of their sex. They dimly grasped an underlying strength, and they connected it with her occasional expression of secret amusement, the relish of something that she did not choose to share. 

Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian

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‘Get over, you bastard,’ said the girl, in her pure clear young voice. Jack had never heard a girl say bastard before, and he turned to look at her with particular interest. She was busy coping with the mare’s excitement, but after a moment she caught his eye and frowned. He looked away, smiling, for she was the prettiest thing — indeed beautiful with her heightened colour and her fine straight back, sitting her horse with the unconscious grace of a midshipman at the tiller in a lively sea. She had black hair and blue eyes; a certain ram-you-damn-you air that was slightly comic and more than a little touching in so slim a creature. She was wearing a shabby blue habit with white cuffs and lapels, like a naval lieutenant’s coat, and on top of it all a dashing tricorne with a tight curl of ostrich-feather. In some ingenious way, probably by the use of combs, she had drawn up her hair under this hat so as to leave one ear exposed; and this perfect ear, as Jack observed when the mare came crabwise towards him, was as pink as . . .

Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian

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Now and then Jack’s big hunter brought his ears to bear; this was a recent purchase, a strongly-built bay, quite up to Jack’s sixteen stone. But it did not much care for hunting, and then like so many geldings it spent much of its time mourning for its lost stones: a discontented horse. If the moods that succeeded one another in its head had taken the form of words they would have run, ‘Too heavy — sits too far forward when we go over a fence — have carried him far enough for one day — shall have him off presently, see if I don’t. I smell a mare! A mare! Oh!’ Its flaring nostrils quivered, and it stamped. 

Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian

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‘Looking for a fox, are they?’ said Stephen Maturin, as though hippogriffs were the more usual quarry in England, and he relapsed into a brown study, munching slowly upon his bread. 

Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian