Everything Dr Stephen Maturin Dissects In Patrick O'Brian's "Master and Commander" and "Post Captain"

also some of my Women's Hotel book tour stops

First things first: The Chatner is having a subscription special! Anyone who buys a paid subscription during the month of September will get 20% off for the next year. This also applies to gift subscriptions, so if you’re feeling generous but also thrifty, I’ve got you covered.

Second things second: I’ll be going out on a book tour for Women’s Hotel next month, and I’d like to see you. This is not yet an exhaustive list, but here are some stops I’ve booked so far:

October 15th, 6:30pm, at Oblong Books in Rhinebeck, NY (with Alexis Coe)

October 16th, 7pm, at Books Are Magic in Brooklyn, NY (with Helen Rosner)

October 19, 1:30pm, at the Wisconsin Book Festival in Madison (at time of writing the WBF website seems to be down, but hopefully this link will work eventually!)

October 23rd, 6:30pm, at Schuler Books in Okemos, Michigan (with Austin Channing).

Incidentally, if you’d like to me add your university/bookstore/library to the tour, I’d love to do so, time permitting! Feel free to send me an email if you happen to have a library or university lying around and you’d like me to pop in.

Third things &c.: The baby used to like to sleep all night without waking up very often, but now that he’s five months old he likes to wake up more. He’s not usually hungry or in need of a change; it just seems like he jolts awake and has trouble going back to sleep on his own. Did you ever have a baby who did this? Do you have any suggestions? I like hearing about how other people have tackled similar problems, so please don’t worry about giving unsolicited advice. I welcome it! We’re taking it one day at a time and taking things in shifts, so it’s not so bad, but we’ve never had a five-month old baby before, so it can’t hurt to get more information.

Fourth things fourth: Having recently concluded my Jane Austen series, I’ve just started reading the Patrick O’Brian Aubrey-Maturin series, and I’m having the most wonderful time. I just let all the nautical jargon wash over me. When I come to a line like “Towards four bells in the middle watch Jack came on deck: the Polychrest was lying to under foretopsail and mizzen” or “Fo’c’sle, there; cast loose two and four. Mr Rolfe, fire on the second boat as I run inshore. Fire the moment they bear – full elevation. Mr Parker, tops’ls and courses” I simply say to myself, “Well, the ship is doing what it ought to do,” and keep going until I reach something I can comprehend.

Captain Jack Aubrey and Dr Stephen Maturin are a classic Kirk/Spock pairing. Captain Jack is nicknamed “Goldilocks” and we are told that “in times of stress [he] had two main reactions: he either became aggressive or he became amorous; he longed either for the violent catharsis of action or for that of making love. He loved a battle: he loved a wench,” while Dr Maturin hates changing his clothes and has only one friend: Captain Jack Aubrey.

Maturin becomes an English spy in the second book (there are 21 books in the “Aubreyad” so I’m set up for the next year or two), but so far his primary hobby, outside of doctoring the crew, is dissecting things. The man cannot stop vivisecting! Roughly every fifty pages Captain Aubrey bursts below decks having just found a new violin, or befriended an enemy French captain who has been honourably captured, or climbing a mainsail, to find Stephen elbows-deep in creaturely gore, which is the best kind of friendship I can think of. They have nothing in common, and they are in love.

Here is an exhaustive but incomplete list of everything Maturin dissects in Master and Commander and Post Captain; I will do my best to update this once I’ve finished the series.

A splendid toad

“Presently, he took notice of the ants that were taking away his crumbs. Tapinoma erraticum. They were walking in a steady two-way stream across the hollow, or of his inverted wig, as it lay there looking very like an abandoned bird's nest, though once it had been as neat a physical bob as had ever been seen in Stephen's Green. They hurried along with their abdomens high, jostling, running into one another: his gaze followed the wearisome little creatures, and while he was watching them a toad was watching him: their eyes met, and he smiled.

A splendid toad: a two-pound toad with brilliant tawny eyes. How did he manage to make a living in the sparse thin grass of that stony, sun-beaten landscape, so severe and parched, with no more cover than a few tumbles of pale stone, a few low creeping hook-thorned caper-bushes and a cistus whose name Stephen did not know? Most remarkably severe and parched, for the winter of 1799-1800 had been uncommonly dry, the March rains had failed and now the heat had come very early in the year. Very gently he stretched out his finger and stroked the toad's throat: the toad swelled a little and moved its crossed hands; then sat easy, gazing back.”

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A dolphin and a woman

“Ever since coming back from the hospital they had been dissecting a well-preserved dolphin, which lay on high bench by the window, next to something covered by a sheet.

'There is no edge on this one,' said Stephen. 'Try the catling.' He turned to the dolphin. 'No,' he said, peering under a flipper. 'Where can we have left it? Ah'— lifting the sheet— 'here is another…You began your incision at the Hippocratic point, I see,’ he said, raising the sheet a little more, and gazing at the young lady beneath it.”

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Striped Hyena

“‘Stephen,’ he cried, bursting open the door, his shining face far larger and higher than usual. ‘Victory! Come out at once and drink to a victory! Give you joy of a famous victory, old cock,’ he cried, shaking him terribly by the hand. ‘Such a magnificent fight.’

‘Why, what happened?’ asked Stephen, slowly wiping his scalpel and covering up his Moorish hyena.”

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Leg (Human?)

“‘Do you think so?’ said Stephen, who had come aboard with a leg wrapped in sailcloth, quite a fresh leg, a present from Mr Florey.”

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Remora

“‘A remora!’ cried Stephen with all the amazement and delight the Greek and Jack had counted upon, and more. ‘A bucket, there! Be gentle with the remora, good Sponge, honest Sponge. Oh, what happiness to see the true remora!’

…The remora was so strong it had certainly torn the sheathing off, they explained to him; but that was nothing—it was so strong it could hold the sloop motionless, or almost motionless, in a brisk gale! But now they had him—there was an end to his capers now, the dog—and now the Sophie would run along like a swan. For a moment Stephen felt inclined to argue, to appeal to their common sense, to point to the nine-inch fish, to the exiguity of its fins; but he was too wise, and too happy, to yield to this temptation, and he jealously carried the bucket down to his cabin, to commune with the remora in peace.

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An alcoholic gibbon

“‘Do you hear, Stephen?’ said Jack. ‘There is a gibbon aboard, that is not well.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Stephen, returning to the present. ‘I had the pleasure of meeting her this morning, walking hand in hand with the very young gentleman: it was impossible to tell which was supporting which. A fetching, attractive creature, in spite of its deplorable state. I look forward eagerly to dissecting it. Monsieur de Buffon hints that the naked callosities on the buttocks of the hylobates may conceal scent glands, but he does not go so far as to assert it.’

A chill fell on the conversation, and after a slight pause Jack said, ‘I think, my dear fellow, that the ship’s company would be infinitely more obliged to you, was you to cure it, than for putting Monsieur de Buffon right – for putting Cassandra in order, rather than a Frenchman, eh, eh?’

‘Yet it is the ship’s company that is killing her. That ape is a confirmed alcoholic; and from what little I know of your foremast jack, no earthly consideration will prevent him from giving rum to anything he loves. Our monk-seal in the Mediterranean, for example: it drowned in a state of besotted inebriation, with a fixed smile upon its face; and when fished up and dissected, its kidneys and liver were found to be ruined, very much like those of Mr Blanckley of the Carcass bomb-ketch, an unpromoted master’s mate of sixty-three whom I had the pleasure of opening at Port Mahon, a gentleman who had not been sober for five and thirty years.’”

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Horse

“‘Mr Lever called at Melbury,’ said Cecilia. ‘Captain Aubrey had gone to London – he is always going to London, it appears – but he saw Dr Maturin, and says that he is quite strange, quite like a foreign gentleman. He was cutting up a horse in the winter drawing-room.’

‘How very undesirable,’ said Mrs Williams.”

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Tumor and Dormouse

“‘They are very well,’ said Stephen, unwilling to open his holsters (a teratoma in one, a bottled Arabian dormouse in the other).

‘Come, let me have your pistols. I thought as much: what is this?’

‘A teratoma,’ said Stephen sulkily.

‘What is a teratoma?’ asked Jack, holding the object in his hand. ‘A kind of grenado?’

‘It is an inward wen, a tumour: we find them, occasionally, in the abdominal cavity. Sometimes they contain long black hair, sometimes a set of teeth: this has both hair and teeth. It belonged to a Mr Elkins of the City, an eminent cheese-monger. I prize it much.’

‘By God,’ cried Jack, thrusting it back into the holster and wiping his hand vehemently upon the horse, ‘I do wish you would leave people’s bellies alone. So you have no pistols at all, I collect?’

‘If you wish to be so absolute, no, I have not.’”

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Bees

“‘Stephen,’ he said, ‘how are your bees?’

‘They are very well, I thank you; they show great activity, even enthusiasm. But,’ he added, with a slight hesitation, ‘I seem to detect a certain reluctance to return to their hive.’

‘Do you mean to say you let them out?’ cried Jack. ‘Do you mean that there are sixty thousand bees howling for blood in the cabin?’

‘No, no. Oh no. Not above half that number; perhaps even less. And if you do not provoke them, I am persuaded you may go to and fro without the least concern; they are not froward bees.

‘What’s amiss?’ asked Jack, whose mind had moved so deep into naval life that he had forgotten the bees, as he might have forgotten even a vivid nightmare.

‘They are remarkably adaptable – perhaps the most adaptable of all social insects,’ said Stephen, from another part of the cabin. ‘We find them from Norway to the burning wastes of the Sahara; but they have not grown quite used to their surroundings yet.’

‘Oh God,’ said Jack, scrabbling for the handle. ‘Are they all out?’

‘Not all,’ said Stephen. ‘And learning from Killick that you expected guests, I conceived you might prefer them away. There is so much ignorant prejudice against bees in a dining-room.’ Something was crawling on Jack’s neck; the door had completely vanished; he began to sweat heavily.”

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A butterfly

“Stephen recollected himself, felt in his bosom, and replied, ‘Great news, sir. Bless me, I was so hurried I had almost forgot. The ingenious priest of Sant Martí found her, or him, or them, this summer. A little crushed, a little spoilt by the rain, but still recognizable.’ Between the pages of his opened pocket-book lay a depressed Clouded Yellow, a genetic freak with both its starboard wings bright green, the others gold.

‘A true gynandromorph!’ cried Sir Joseph, bending over the creature. ‘I have never see one in my life before. Perfectly male the one side, perfectly female the other. I am amazed, sir, amazed.’”

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Presumably a badger at some point, though the text isn’t exactly clear

Jack, seeing Stephen coming aft from his elm-tree pump, said, ‘My God, it is prime to be at sea again. Don't you feel like a badger in a barrel, on shore?’

‘A badger in a barrel?’ said Stephen, thinking of badgers he had known. ‘I do not.’”

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Please start reading the series at once so we can talk about it. What do you think a mizzenmast is?

[Image via]