GAPS IN THE HORNBLOWER STORY

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32542, 27 February 1971, Page 10

GAPS IN THE HORNBLOWER STORY

The Life and Times of Horatio Hornblower. By C. Northcote Parkinson. Michael Joseph. 304 pp. C. S. Forester wrote 12 books covering the career of Admiral of the Fleet the Viscount Homblower, G.C.8., beginning with “The Happy Return” (1937) and ending with “Homblower and the Crisis” (1967). These were not in any sense a chronological account of Horatio Homblower’s career. “The Happy Return” deals with Homblower as a Captain in command of a frigate; half way, that is, to flag rank. ‘"Mr Midshipman Homblower” was written only in 1950. Equally, episodes in the last book-of stories, “Homblower and the Crisis” cover in time the indomitable hero’s days as a lieutenant and as an admiral. Relating how the various books came to be written, and Homblower’s character to expand, Forester published in 1964 “The Homblower Companion.” The record would seem complete.

But no. There are, as Professor C. Northcote Parkinson, the author of this biography of Homblower reminds us, dark areas in our hero’s life. Some of these Professor Parkinson now throws light upon, aided by newly discovered family papers, and a re-

examination of the mass of material deposited with the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. Others he still cannot elucidate, but merely speculate upon; for example, the role Hornblower played in the release of the Maltese captives from Tunis in 1806. Even where he cannot comment certainly, however, Professor Parkinson arouses our. interest, and induces speculation in the reader.

Those who know Professor Parkinson only as the progenitor of the famous Parkinson’s Law, scourge of bureaucrats, might imagine that he has, in writing the biography of Forester’s fictional hero, merely acted out his own dictum. In fact, as a notable naval historian, particularly well-versed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, he is able to fill in a mass of relevant detail and background, and does much more than merely retell in brief stories that Forester has told at greater length. More, he does all this with wit and brilliance, consistently maintaining the pretence that this is no fiction, but fact, and producing a barrage of references to standard naval histories, memoirs, and archives, and illustrating his book with a cleverly chosen mixture of real and imitation

paintings of the period, including por* traits of Horatio himself, and of Lady Barbara. That of Homblower, said to be painted by Sir William Beechey, R.A., in 1811, is described as having been “cleaned and restored in 1969, some parts of it even repainted by Miss Stella L.M. Schmolle, who was scrupulously faithful to the original.” Only in such sly ways does Professor Parkinson allude to the fictional nature of, his material. He puts off the Horatiophile who wishes to visit the Chateau de Gracay, where Homblower met and fell in love with Marie, equally wittily. After including a drawing of a very French chateau of the Loire, albeit small-scale, he informs us that unfortunately the castle was demolished in 1965 as part of a road-widening scheme. All in all, this is a delightful book; one which will entertain those who know the Homblower books, and (no doubt) mystify a few who pick it up without knowing that the subject of the “biography” was bom in C. S. Forester’s imagination, rather than, as Professor Parkinson so learnedly establishes, at the village shop run by Jacob Homblower, apothecary, at Worth, Kent, in 1776.