Although well written and fast-moving, Samarcand may perhaps be regarded as a retrograde step in Patrick’s writing at this time. To do him justice, I think it likely that the novel represented a distillation of half-remembered early reading, rather than overt plagiarism. In any case, much of it, as has been seen, was written at an early stage of his literary evolution. Although it was published at the time in Germany and Sweden, a publisher could not be found in the United States until 2007.
Nevertheless, 1955 was to prove a pivotal year in Patrick’s life. It was purely fortuitous that his son Richard’s final departure coincided with my first arrival in Collioure. As has also been seen, it was in this year that my mother and Patrick established themselves permanently at Collioure, buying the vineyard at Correch d’en Baus, and beginning work on building the casot and upper room of the home they would inhabit for the rest of their lives. Finally, January 1955 saw what may be regarded as the inception of Patrick’s enduring contribution to world literature.
Here I would emphasize that nothing in the unhappy contretemps arising during my first visit (described in the previous chapter) stinted one of Patrick’s most amiable characteristics: his unfailing generosity. I had returned to England laden with presents, ranging from an open razor and leather strop, which I used for years, to a precious copy of The Trial of James Stewart in Aucharn in Duror of Appin, for the Murder of Colin Campbell, Esq (Edinburgh, 1753). This is the now rare book which inspired Stevenson’s Kidnapped. When Patrick bought it in early 1945, he noted in his diary:
Before reading Catriona [the sequel to Stevenson’s Kidnapped] I went through James Stewart’s trial, which was very good, if somewhat repetitious reading. Unfortunately I chanced to see the result before reading it, which rather spoilt the suspense for the last speeches, but before that it was positively exciting. It is impossible to see it objectively, having read Kidnapped but I am sure I could never have made such a tale of it.
Despite this rueful acknowledgement, while being fortuitously in a position to compare it with its prime source, Patrick’s diffident self-criticism provides a premonition of his eventual mastery of one of the most difficult (yet oddly underrated) of literary achievements, the historical novel. In 1945, a month after reading Catriona, he had skimmed through:
Dr Goldsmith’s History of Rome [1782], abridged by himself, as a preparation for Gibbon. A poor piece of work, I think, though I liked ‘through desarts filled with serpents of various malignity’. All somewhat Little Arthur-ish.[2] One gets the impression that the Romans were an appallingly bloody-minded lot – true maybe – but what is far worse, and quite false is the impression that they were modern men (insofar as they were men, and not names) acting in an incomprehensible way in a vacuum. It is not history – hardly chronicle. It seems to me that works like the Hammonds’ English labourer are worth more than a dozen such works, as far as inculcating an historical sense goes.
This trenchant criticism might be levelled at all too many historical novelists. Indeed, the indications are that it was about this time that Patrick himself came to shed his earlier jejune concept of historical fiction. In January 1940 he had written a melodramatic short story about a crusading knight, John of Bellesme, which owes more to the romantic novels of high adventure written by the Sussex novelist Jeffery Farnol than to anything actually occurring during the Middle Ages. Although Patrick preserved the manuscript, he must surely have been relieved in later years that it was never published.[3]
His only other transitory attempt at historical fiction appears to have been written about the same time. Published in The Last Pool, ‘The Trap’ is much inferior to its fellow tales set in Patrick’s own day. Although as ever well written, its tale of a daring youth who fares forth to poach in the grounds of a tyrannical squire is too reminiscent of the stock characters and standard predicaments of juvenile fiction to carry much conviction.[4]
Following a flurry of creativity over the momentous winter of 1939–40, it seems that Patrick’s wartime employment, first as an ambulance driver in the Blitz, then as an operative with Political Warfare Executive, effectively diverted him from writing. Finding himself, for the first time in his life, unexpectedly in possession of a settled income, he bought many books, chiefly in the second-hand shops of Cecil Court. These he read and clearly absorbed, but it was only as the War drew inexorably towards its close over the winter of 1944–45 that his authorial ambition became reawakened.
The fact that there is frustratingly little documentation for this period of his literary life is in itself suggestive. He began keeping a pocket diary on 1 January 1945, and the care with which he preserved his diaries thereafter makes it unlikely that earlier copies have perished. In it, as well as in memorandum books compiled about the same time, Patrick began entering comments on his reading, together with suggestions for books he contemplated writing. The indications are that, although the war years provided him with a period of respite from creative work, they were also a time of protracted parturition. His perceptive condemnation, on the one hand, of Goldsmith’s trite Roman history, and on the other his unqualified praise for Stevenson’s masterpiece Kidnapped, indicate his dawning understanding of the realities of historiography, together with its glamorous offspring, the historical novel.
Mention of Stevenson’s two great books leads me incidentally to wonder whether Patrick may not also have been unconsciously influenced by the Scottish author’s creation of paired contrasted characters (David Balfour and Allan Breck), their attitudes reflecting disparate political and social aspects of the age: an antithesis which at the same time enriches a memorable friendship.
Again, I wonder whether his new-found propensity for imbuing his narrative with humour – grotesque and farcical, light-hearted and ironical, at times cheerfully vulgar – had lain submerged beneath a long-held conviction that adult literature represented an essentially serious business. His natural sense of humour, ironical and exuberant, took long to emerge in his work.[fn3] At times I put this belated development down to the influence of Somerset Maugham, whom Patrick like many of his contemporaries rated high in the literary scale. But there can surely be little doubt that the enduring precarious state of his finances played its part in producing an entrenched state of gloom.
After Hussein, only his sparkling short stories ‘The Green Creature’ and ‘The Virtuous Peleg’ fully revealed Patrick’s propensity for laughter in court. However, an observant follower of his literary career would have noted how his anthology A Book of Voyages (1947) reproduced specimens of choice rococo passages which afforded him perceptible delight.
As was mentioned in the last chapter, the theme Patrick selected for his fresh venture was Commodore Anson’s celebrated voyage around the globe in 1740–44. One reason for this choice was almost certainly the fact that his library was well equipped for the purpose. He had first grown familiar with the story from the concise account included in Beatson’s six-volume Naval and Military Memoirs of Great Britain, which he bought before the War.[5] Subsequently he acquired the Reverend Richard Walter’s account of Anson’s voyage, published in 1762, together with its accompanying (now rare) handsome quarto volume of maps and plates.[6]
For the social, literary and political history of the time he profited greatly from a present fortuitously given by my mother. In February 1945, ‘M[ary]. very civilly gave me the Gentleman’s Magazine 1743–4–5. Masses of information, both solid