That’s Victor Meldrew’s catchphrase in One Foot in the Grave; a sitcom broadcast on the BBC in the last decade of the 20th century – those halcyon days. Well, I don’t believe it; I don’t believe I’ve never written about Rafael Sabatini.
While ladies turn to Georgette Heyer and Barbara Cartland for comfort reading chaps lap up Rafael Sabatini, Baroness Orczy, Sapper, Leslie Charteris and Dornford Yates. Just the thing to transport us from restricted reality to join swashbuckling heroes, some of whom are embarrassingly politically incorrect.
Sabatini’s life is as colourful as his novels. His parents, English mother, Italian father, were opera singers and he grew up in Italy, England, Portugal and Switzerland. English was his sixth language. He was six years older than PG Wodehouse and, like him, he briefly worked for a business before becoming a full-time author. His first novel was published in 1902 but his first real success came in 1921 with Scaramouche. Two tragedies scarred his life. His only son was killed in a car crash in 1927. He then lived with his second wife in Herefordshire. His step-son trained as a pilot in the RAF. He celebrated winning his wings by flying over their house at which point the ‘plane spun out of control and crashed as his mother and step-father watched.
Sabatini died in Switzerland in 1950. His headstone has this inscription:”he was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad”. It’s the first line of Scaramouche.
I’m going to read The Fortunes of Captain Blood. There is this modest description on the flyleaf.
“It is no exaggeration to say that Captain Blood is one of, if not the, most popular characters of historical fiction. The novels in which his grand exploits are chronicled have sold in their hundreds of thousands and he has appeared in two films. He is, in fact, so well and widely known that the mere announcement of a new volume containing more of his swashbuckling adventures, is sufficient to send many thousands of readers in search of a copy.”
You have omitted John Buchan as a source of comfort reading. I have just re-read “Greenmantle”.Here’s the end. Sandy Arbuthnot (later the 16th Baron Clanroyden) leads the charge ” In the very front… there was one man. He was like the point of the steel spear soon to be driven home…..He was turbaned and rode like one possessed,.. Then I knew that the prophecy had been true, and that their prophet had not failed them. The long standing looked for revelation had come. Greenmantle had appeared at last to an awaiting people”. Good stuff.
How wonderful to hear tell of Dornford Yates of whose books (gr?) I think I have a complete set. The young have certainly never heard of him. We, as a whole schoo,l were read them by the Headmaster of the first prep school I attended and, whenever that great phrase, ‘Be that as it may…’, was intoned, we were all primed to give a collective theatrical groan. Needless to say the whole school paid not a jot of attention to the story just waiting for the halcyon moment. I had to read them all as a 13 year old to realise what the whole caboodle was about.
I have 33 hardbacks. If you are missing any I can supply. DY was not a nice man.