RogerBW's Blog

Lord Hornblower, C. S. Forester 28 November 2024

1946 Napoleonic naval fiction, fifth written but tenth by internal chronology. Hornblower is summoned to deal with a mutinous crew on the French blockade.

I must confess I found this a bit of a slog, although it's quite short and although I read it as an audio book (the narrator's early renderings of a particular ship name come out as something like "porticowelly", but that might well be authentic to the period). Such of Hornblower's character as he's allowed to have at all is now frozen in place: when he doesn't have an occasion to be a brilliant naval commander, he indulges in gloomy introspection and contemplation of his own worthlessness. Without much in the way of battle this time, there's a lot of that here.

It's 1815 and Napoleon's rule is crumbling, so once the mutiny is dealt with the worthies of Le Havre arrange to surrender; then a punitive force must be dealt with. Once the surrender has happened, Hornblower's wife Barbara goes off to hostess the diplomatic meetings at Brussels, and he—although he's spent a great deal of time pondering how terrible it would be for anyone to think badly of him—casually and thoughtlessly resumes his affair with the vicomtesse we met in Flying Colours. (Of course it has to come to a tragic end; when she appeared on the page, I said to myself "V org fur qvrf va uvf nezf," and sure enough that was what happened. When tragedy is so predictable it becomes comedy.) Is his marriage oath of a lesser worth than his oath to the King? He doesn't give it a moment's consideration. (At least the first time he thought about it for a bit.)

Of course then the Hundred Days begin, and there's time for a last bit of heroism, but I got a strong feeling here of an author tired of his character, who's said basically everything he wanted to say, and who just wants to bring it all to a close. Indeed, it would be four more years before Forester went back to the beginning of Hornblower's career for the next book. Even without consideration that, the series won its reputation with its depictions of naval battles and life at sea, and all of that here is in the first few chapters.

Not one I'm likely to revisit soon.

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Previous in series: The Commodore | Series: Hornblower
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