The Nutmeg of Consolation

The Nutmeg of Consolation

First edition
Author Patrick O'Brian
Cover artist Geoff Hunt
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Series Aubrey-Maturin series
Genre Historical novel
Publisher Harper Collins (UK)
W. W. Norton & Company (US)
Publication date
 1991
Media type Print (hardback & paperback) & Audio Book (Cassette, CD)
Pages 316 paperback edition
ISBN 0-393-03032-6 first Norton edition, hardback
OCLC 23765671
823/.914 20
LC Class PR6029.B55 N88 1991
Preceded by The Thirteen-Gun Salute
Followed by Clarissa Oakes

The Nutmeg of Consolation is the fourteenth historical novel in the Aubrey-Maturin series by British author Patrick O'Brian, first published in 1991. The story is set during the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812.

Building a schooner on an island in the South China Sea as food supplies grow scant, Aubrey and his shipmates are attacked by pirates then rescued by a Chinese ship large enough to hold them all as far as Batavia, where Raffles has a ship for them. This novel constitutes the second of a five-novel circumnavigation of the globe; other novels in this voyage include The Thirteen Gun Salute, Clarissa Oakes, The Wine-Dark Sea, and The Commodore.

Plot summary

Aubrey and his crew are shipwrecked on a remote island in the South China Sea after surviving the destruction of HMS Diane in a typhoon. A cricket match is taking place between the sailors and marines, which keeps up the crew's spirits as they build the schooner needed for reaching Batavia. Maturin is killing game for the pot, particularly wild boar and babirussas. Dyaks, Kesegaran and her male assistants, arrive on the island. Speaking in Malay with Maturin, the Dyaks promise to take a message to Batavia in exchange for a note on Shao Yen for twenty "joes" (Portuguese Johannes coins), but instead return in a proa with 300 pirates, twice as many as the 150 Dianes. After killing and beheading the ship's carpenter and some other crew members while stealing tools, they attack the encampment and burn the schooner. They are routed after a bloody conflict and all pirates lost as their proa is sunk by the last remaining ball from the "long nine" gun, well-aimed.

On the last day of rum and tobacco supplies, Maturin meets four Chinese children collecting precious birds' nests from the surrounding cliffs. Maturin binds the boy's injured leg. They inform him their father's junk is on its way from Batavia to fetch a cargo of ore from Ketapan in Borneo. Maturin persuades the children's father, Li Po, to carry the remaining crew of the Diane in the empty holds of his roomy junk back to Batavia. It is intercepted by Wan Da, whom Maturin knows well from Pulo Prabang, and gains information about the French frigate nearly ready to sail. Upon arriving in Batavia, Aubrey is provided by Governor Raffles with a 20-gun ship which Aubrey renames Nutmeg of Consolation after one of the titles of the Sultan of Pulo Prabang. Asea, Aubrey hears from a Dutch merchantman that the French frigate Cornélie is watering at an island, Nil Desperandum. Aubrey disguises the Nutmeg as a Dutch merchantman and, on being smoked, engages in battle with the Cornélie but has to turn tail. With the slower Cornélie in pursuit, Aubrey attempts to outwit her in the Salibabu Passage but is outmanoeuvred and nearly outgunned until, at the height of the chase, Nutmeg encounters the Surprise, under Commander Thomas Pullings, accompanied by the Triton, a British privateer. The Surprise gives chase; the Cornélie soon founders and the survivors, including Lieutenant Dumesnil, are taken on board the Surprise. Pullings has taken many prizes in the time they were parted, with two American privateers in convoy. The Nutmeg sails back to Batavia.

Resuming command of Surprise, Aubrey continues their interrupted journey to New South Wales. Stopping to collect fresh foods at Sweetings Island, Maturin rescues two young Melanesian girls, the sole survivors of an outbreak of smallpox. In New South Wales, Aubrey, Maturin and Martin are shocked at life in the penal colony under Governor Macquarie, no better than it was after the "Rum Rebellion". Aubrey and Maturin attend a formal dinner, hosted by Mrs Macquarie and the Governor's deputy, Colonel McPherson, at Government House. Captain Lowe insults Sir Joseph Banks and Maturin; Maturin fights and wins a duel against Captain Lowe on the spot. Maturin learns by letter that Sir Joseph Blaine could not transfer Maturin's funds to Smith's bank, so his fortune is not lost.

Dr Redfern takes Maturin to see Padeen Colman, recovering in the hospital from his severe flogging for absconding from the penal colony. Maturin and Martin journey inland of Sydney to examine the local flora and fauna and collect specimens. On a second trip, they stay with Paulton in the Hunter Region, and find Padeen in better shape, assigned to work out there as Maturin had arranged. The Irishman was convicted for stealing laudanum from an Edinburgh apothecary, meriting the punishment of transportation to this penal colony. Maturin tells Padeen to meet him at Bird Island on the day Surprise is to sail. This plan is checked by Aubrey, who promised to take no escaped prisoners, leaving Maturin in a quandary. Maturin hears from Hastings of the recently arrived Waverley that his wife Diana had a daughter in April, and he is overjoyed, but tells no one else his good news. Maturin and Martin, keen to have one more look for the duck-billed platypus, locally named the 'water-mole', are taken on a final expedition in the cutter by Barret Bonden. Maturin and Martin search the local pools and spot two platypuses. Maturin manages to secure one - a male - in his net but his arm is pierced by its two poison-spurs. When the Surprise arrives to pick them up, Padeen is also taken aboard. To everyone's relief Maturin slowly regains consciousness after he is aboard.

Characters

See also Recurring characters in the Aubrey–Maturin series

Batavia and the Nutmeg of Consolation

Chasing Cornélie and meeting Surprise

New South Wales:

Ships

Series chronology

This novel references actual events with accurate historical detail, like all in this series. In respect to the internal chronology of the series, it is the eighth of eleven novels (beginning with The Surgeon's Mate) that might take five or six years to happen but are all pegged to an extended 1812, or as Patrick O'Brian says it, 1812a and 1812b (introduction to The Far Side of the World, the tenth novel in this series). The events of The Yellow Admiral again match up with the historical years of the Napoleonic wars in sequence, as the first six novels did.

Reviews

Reviews written soon after publication were generally impressed with the main characters, drawn well, though opposite in style. The author's ability to put the reader in an era about 200 years ago was judged to be impressive and engrossing. Some feared that too much nautical detail will put off some readers, while another found that of small importance compared to the characters and how they are facing the world. Publication in the US of novels in the series prior to this one was happening as The Nutmeg of Consolation was first printed in both the US and the UK; the series had found a new audience. At least one reviewer gave his view of the fourteen novels as a whole, as they are a newly discovered treasure.

Kirkus Reviews found this novel to be witty, literate and engaging:

Another in O'Brian's stylish epic series devoted to the exploits of Captain Jack Aubrey, his close friend and traveling companion Dr. Steven Maturin, and the men who share their ships--and their adventures--on the high seas of a world nearly two centuries gone. We pick up Aubrey and the crew right where we left them in The Thirteen Gun Salute (p. 496), shipwrecked in the South China Sea after having seen the British envoy they had been carrying sent to a watery grave as a result of his impetuous actions. After a bloody battle with Aborigine invaders and an unexpected rescue, Aubrey is given command of the small Dutch ship whose name serves as the title of this volume. He then overtakes and tricks a French frigate into following him to his rendezvous with his beloved man-of-war, Surprise, leading to the capture of the enemy ship forthwith. Then it's off to the Solomon Islands, where the seagoers rescue two young girls from an island stricken with smallpox, and ultimately to Sydney, where Maturin is provoked into a duel, complicating relationships with officials ashore (as do the two rescued children). The doctor, who is somewhat bemused throughout by his apparently fallen fortunes (thanks to a banking decision made in the previous novel), is, as always, the tale's most interesting character and constantly preoccupied with flora, fauna, and good conversation, not to mention the sumptuous food and drink that he and Aubrey seem to enjoy even in the midst of battle. Witty, literate, and engaging--as Aubrey himself might say, "capital work indeed."[1]

Publishers Weekly judged that the subtly drawn characters of Maturin and Aubrey will please readers:

Readers will welcome the reappearance here of elegant Stephen Maturin, one hero of O'Brian's excellent 19th-century seafarer series. Maturin is a ship's doctor, naturalist, spy, musician, ex-opium eater and, we're reminded here, terrific swordsman. His "brother" is Capt. Jack Aubrey, RN, MP, popular hero for his success against Napoleon, less introspective but as subtly drawn as Maturin and as avid a musician. Last seen in The Thirteen-Gun Salute the two were shipwrecked on a barren isle in the South China Sea. After a bitter fight with Dyaks and Malays they reach Batavia, where Governor Raffles gives Aubrey the eponymic Dutch sloop (a tight, sweet, newly-coppered, broad-buttocked litle ship, a solace to any man's heart) to continue his circumnavigation of the globe. As usual the chief joys are in the details of the food, drink and clothes of the era, with those of the rain forests, kangaroos and platypuses added here. On the other hand, early Sydney's squalor is matched by its brutality.[2]

Library Journal found the main characters very well drawn, and noted the quality of the writing in the description of flora and fauna seen in the series of adventures in this novel:

The latest of O'Brian's many novels of the sea, this is an intriguing story about an early 19th-century British ship as it voyages through the South China Sea. On their way back from concluding a treaty with a local potentate, Captain Jack Aubrey and his crew go through a series of adventures, including shipwreck and a battle with a French frigate. They end up amidst the cruelty of Botany Bay, the penal colony in New South Wales. The crew are, on the whole, a dignified bunch, and some of the characters are very well drawn, including Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, the ship's Irish doctor and naturalist. Some of the best parts of the book are the descriptions of the flora and fauna of the area, and O'Brian certainly knows his stuff about 19th-century seamanship (although landlubber readers may find themselves confused by some of the technical terminology). Recommended for public libraries.[3]

Mark Horowitz in the Los Angeles Times described the novels so far written as a long story of two characters, living at the dawn of the 19th century but in novels that are truly modern"

How good can they really be? In England, after all, 19th-Century naval fiction--from the classic Horatio Hornblower stories by C. S. Forester to the waterlogged tales of Dudley Pope--is a tried and true, not to say tired, genre with limited appeal. But O'Brian's books are as atypical of conventional sea stories as Conrad's. Like John le Carre, he has erased the boundary separating a debased genre from "serious" fiction. O'Brian is a novelist, pure and simple, one of the best we have. . . . These are contemporary novels, written, paradoxically, in an 18th-Century voice. The Age of Reason is just making way for the Romantic era; Maturin and Aubrey, the philosophe and the man of action, are on the cusp. Without a hint of anachronism, O'Brian still manages to suggest a modern sensibility struggling to be born. (Once, Maturin even comes perilously close to discovering the subconscious a century in advance of Freud; another time, contemplating a peculiar animal specimen, he speculates on the origins of species and their evolution, but can't quite work out the details.)
As to where it will all end, O'Brian's not saying. At least one more in the series is on the way. "Are endings really so very important?" asks a friend of Maturin's during a discussion of literature in, of all places, far-off Botany Bay. "Sterne did quite well without one. . . . I remember Bourville's definition of a novel as a work in which life flows in abundance, swirling without pause: or as you might say without an end, an organized end. And there is at least one Mozart quartet that stops without the slightest ceremony: most satisfying when you get used to it."[4]

In the episode "Harvest Festival" of Season 3 of the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation, the character Ron Swanson is seen reading the book in a lawn chair.

Allusions to history and other sources

In his Author's Note, O'Brian makes reference to Robert Hughes' The Fatal Shore, a book that provided him with invaluable research information about the history of Australia and, in particular, the penal colony of New South Wales.

Allusions to flora and fauna

Maturin and Martin are keen to see a living duck-billed platypus (Ornithorhynchus paradoxus), and finally do, at the end of the novel, learning what is common knowledge there, that the male of the species has a poisonous sting.

Continuity

This story begins where The Thirteen Gun Salute ended, on the island with the HMS Diane broken by the typhoon, building a new ship from what they can salvage. It makes reference to the last time that Aubrey and Maturin approached Botany Bay in The Fortune of War, after the situation with Captain William Bligh and the Rum Rebellion has been addressed. Their stop was short, as their mission was not needed and the place unbearable as to the human inhabitants.

Publication history

The process of reissuing the novels prior to this novel and The Letter of Marque was in full swing in 1991, as the whole series gained a new and wider audience, as Mark Howowitz describes.

Two of my favorite friends are fictitious characters; they live in more than a dozen volumes always near at hand. Their names are Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, and their creator is a 77-year-old novelist named Patrick O'Brian, whose 14 books about them have been continuously in print in England since the first, "Master and Commander," was published in 1970. O'Brian's British fans include T. J. Binyon, Iris Murdoch, A. S. Byatt, Timothy Mo and the late Mary Renault, but, until recently, this splendid saga of two serving officers in the British Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars was unavailable in this country, apart from the first few installments which went immediately out of print. Last year, however, W. W. Norton decided to reissue the series in its entirety, and so far nine of the 14 have appeared here, including the most recent chapter, The Nutmeg of Consolation.[4]

References

  1. ↑ "The Nutmeg of Consolation" (1 July 1991 ed.). Kirkus Reviews. 20 May 2010. Retrieved 11 December 2014.
  2. ↑ "The Nutmeg of Consolation". Publishers Weekly. September 1991. Retrieved 11 December 2014.
  3. ↑ Bryan Aubrey (1991). "The Nutmeg of Consolation". Fairfield, Iowa: Library Journal. Retrieved 11 December 2014.
  4. 1 2 Mark Horowitz (8 September 1991). "Down to the Sea in Ships". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 11 December 2014.
  5. ↑ Vic (18 September 2007). "Simon Vance – Audio Book Narrator". Now in Audio. Retrieved 10 April 2015. In the past Simon has also narrated as Richard Matthews, Robert Whitfield and John Richmond. . . Simon now narrates only under his real name
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