THE SURGEON’S MATE — CHAPTER TWO

This chapter begins with Stephen’s ruminations about the diversity among sea officers – the peers and the ones that came in through the hawsehole (like Pullings, for instance) – the purely ignorant and the classical scholars – the fabulously wealthy and those subsisting on half-pay — as well as a recognition of the common trait that bound them all together: they were all physically marked by their service, either with scars or the marks of strain found among those who had spent much of their youth vacillating between endless hours in the vastness of the ocean, or fraught minutes under fire. 

Stephen also thinks about their wives — how very far outside their class they found themselves once they’d married into the service. I was reminded of poor Hornblower’s first wife, Maria, who had met him while he was living on half-pay and playing whist for supper-money. Her mother rented out rooms, and Maria herself taught the local kids basic math and reading for a penny a lesson. Stephen ends his thoughts with something once expressed less elegantly by a member of the Jackson Gang, Tector Crites, in the movie ‘The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean’: There is nothing worse than a harlot turned respectable. And there are plenty of that ilk there now wearing pink muslin and wedding rings.

We’re at the Admiral’s ball, of course — packed full of sea officers and their wives. And Diana, who graces the ball with her elegant presence, gowned in blue lute-string and sporting her extremely respectable riviere of diamonds. Stephen’s complement ”…the black band about your thorax is a stroke of genius” is hilarious, and even more so because Diana accepts it as a genuine compliment. 

From his position among the potted plants 

Stephen observes the men, the women, and the jewels — I really love the diversity here, from a cheap garnet pendant to ‘thumping great’ emeralds and a set of rubies capable of building and provisioning a 32 gun frigate. 

The ball goes badly for Jack at first — he finds out that Sophie has been going to balls back home and dancing, too, and Diana notices him standing by a pillar “looking like the Last Judgement”. The ball swirls around him, until he overhears himself being referred to as ‘handsome’ by probably the least appropriate woman there, Miss Amanda Smith. Apparently, Diana knows of this young woman (though she’s thirty, at least) and disapproves of her. I view her as something of what my mother-in-law always referred to as a ‘heifer’ — brash, barely socially acceptable, sexually froward, and gauche. Diana doesn’t think much of her — “…seducing poor Aubrey is like taking pennies from a blind man’s hat…” – knew her back in India when “she came out with the fishing-fleet…”, meaning young women on the catch for a husband or a nabob. Apparently Amanda didn’t take, because the Army is pretty cautious when it comes down to actually marrying ones flirt. And now she’s focused on the Navy — and Jack in particular. And she gets him, too. She’s perfectly fine with hearing Jack rehash the adventures of the last two books, and we get a bit of a hint as to her unstability via an encounter with an unassuming toad. Jack should have known better, but he wakes up the next morning in her ‘predictable bed’, and the ensuing retreat is somewhere between comical and farce. Miss Smith references the romance between Nelson and Lady Hamilton more than once over the course of this chapter. Its was a famous scandal in its day: https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/emma-hamilton-lord-nelson 

Miss Smith is described as wearing red, and probably too much makeup. I immediately thought of this portrait

The next morning, the farce continues with Jack trying to sneak back into the room he shares with Stephen and making such a ruckus that Stephen could not realistically allow him to go undetected. But things are looking up — Jack has a message from the post office, and rushes (after a quick wash to remove Miss Smith’s rouge from his face) to get his expected letter from Sophie. He hasn’t heard from her in over a year. Sophie is full of news — George has been breeched, and the ‘turnip-headed’ twin girls are now learning deportment and French. And there is a note of warning — Kimber the ‘mining engineer’ who has contracts to convert Jack’s led dross into silver via a patented secret method, is demanding more and more money. And in between the news of Sophie at home and Kimber probably cheating Jack out of everything he owns, Stephen is admitting that “….often men do not see what they do not wish to see…” He speaks of evidence of a physical condition (very likely Diana’s pregnancy) that he has noticed, but not acknowledged until it had become too obvious to ignore. ”Gnosce teipsum (know thyself) is very well, but how to come to it? We are fallible creatures, Jack, and adept at self deception.”

We are left with these worries – Jack’s fortune being drained away by a fraudster, and his reputation clawed to pieces by a young woman without a discreet bone in her body. He’s already regretting his indiscretion at the ball. And finds himself wishing that Nelson had never met Lady Hamilton.

But events are moving along — The packet Diligence comes in from England and anchors next to HMS Nova Scotia, and both Jack and Stephen are eager to be aboard either one of them. They’re waiting for Captain Broke’s dispatch about the battle between the Chesapeake and the Shannon, which has hung fire between Broke’s injuries and the too-nice deference of his senior officer. However, Diana comes to visit and brings the double news that 1. Broke’s dispatches have been written up by Capten Capel and the Commissioner, and so the packet and HMS Nova Scotia will be bound for England within the next few days. and 2. Amanda Smith had overturned her dogcart and was sitting in a ditch with a torn petticoat and hysterics. 

Jack is overjoyed at the first news, and not too worried about the second. In fact, he makes immediate plans to secure berths on the packet. Stephen and Diana are left alone, and immediately Stephen broaches the idea of walking over to the presbytery and having Father Costello marry them. What follows is painful — Diana confesses that she believes herself to be pregnant, and will not marry any man while pregnant with another man’s child. Stephen declares his undying affection, but she gives him such a “…sad, disillusioned smile…” that he can’t bear it. He walks away, puts on the concealing blue spectacles, and lights a cigar. He hits her with the argument that it is simply awful to be an acknowledged bastard. Stephen should know — he’s one himself, and knows how cruel the world can be. She begs him for a chemical abortifacient. He reminds her that his oaths and personal convictions will not allow him to prescribe such a thing. He tells her that she must marry him. And she shakes her head ‘no’. And there they sit in misery, until a cheerful young officer brings them the news that the Diligence sails on the next tide but one, and they are directed him to proceed to the man-of-war’s hard with the utmost dispatch. 

HMS Diligence