Blistering Barnacles

Richard Russ (1914-2000) and Georges Remi (1907-2000) changed their names; Richard Russ by Deed Poll, Georges Remi as a nom de plume.

When they became famous, when they were rather elderly, they went to the United States but until then they lived and travelled only in Europe. Richard Russ was a diligent researcher enabling him to write convincingly about continents he had never visited. Georges Remi, likewise, wrote about the Belgian Congo, Tibet, the Soviet Union, the United States, the Middle East and more including the moon. He is better known as Hergé, creator of Tintin.

Richard Russ is, as you guessed or knew, Patrick O’Brian. I am reading The Mauritius Command. It depicts the Anglo-French naval war in Mauritius and Réunion that took place 1809 – 1811. In it Stephen Maturin opines on Irish peers – I guess expressing P O’B’s opinion –  but he is talking before The Acts of Union of 1800. Authors often have to play tricks like this with their time-lines. Shakespeare does it in Othello. Acts II to V take place within a single day yet for plot purposes ships travel between Venice and Cyprus. Anyway, what does Stephen Maturin think of Irish peers?

“Bless your innocence, Jack: an Irish peer is not necessarily a man of any consequence at all. I do not wish to make any uncivil reflection on your country – many of my best friends are Englishmen – but you must know that this last hundred years and more it has been the practice of the English ministry to reward their less presentable followers with Irish titles; and your second-rate jobbing backstairs politician, given a coronet of sorts and transplanted into a country where he is a stranger, is a pitiful spectacle, so he is; a flash Brummagem imitation of the real thing. I should be sorry if the Irish peers, for the most part of them, were Irishmen. Apart from certain naval lords, that the ministry dare not have in the English House, they are a shabby crew, upon the whole, out of place in Ireland and ill at ease in England. I do not speak of your Fitzgeralds or Butlers, you understand, still less of the few native families that have survived, but of what is commonly called an Irish peer. Clonfert’s grandfather, now, was a mere – “
(The Mauritius Command, Patrick O’Brian)

One comment

  1. The poor French Navy…only one victory recorded on the Arc de Triomphe de l’Etoile and that is Grand Port part of Mauritius Command narrative of Mr Russ. Happy to report, and this may be old news to readers of Richard Patrick Russ,that British commander who set things right post frogreich’s great victory was Admiral Sir Albemarle Bertie,1st Baronet. And,yes,he was a sea dog and rather controversial commander.

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