Favorite quotes 1: Jack and literature (and Lady Keith's new picture)

"Had you not thought of going to Woolhampton -- of going to your father's house?"

"Yes ... yes. I mean to give him a visit, of course. But there's my new mother-in-law, you know. And to tell you the truth, I don't think it would exactly answer." He paused, trying to remember the name of the person, the classical person, who had had such a trying time with his father's second wife; for General Aubrey had recently married his dairy-maid, a fine black-eyed young woman with a moist palm whom Jack knew very well. Actaeon, Ajax, Aristides? He felt that their cases were much alike and that by naming him he would give a subtle hint of the position: but the name would not come, and after a while he reverted to the advertisements.

Post Captain, p. 16.

A convoy of hay-wains came down the Hampstead Road, led by countrymen with long whips. The whips, the drivers' smocks, the horses' tails and manes were trimmed with ribbons, and the men's broad faces shone red, effulgent through the gloom. From Jack's remote and ineffectual schooldays sprang a tag: O fortunatos nimium, sua si bona norint, agricolas. "Come, that is pretty good. How I wish Stephen had been by, to hear it. However, I shall flash it out at him presently." There would be plenty of opportunity, since they were to travel down the same road that evening to Queenie's rout, and with any luck they would see some agricolas among that pitiable throng.

Post Captain, p. 153-154.

"We will go and look at Lady Keith's new picture. Here it is. What do you think of her?"

It was clear that the Magdalene had not yet repented: she was standing on a quay with blue ruins in the background -- a blue that swept with varying intensities through her robe to the sea -- with gold plates, ewers and basins heaped up on a crimson cloth, and an expression of mild complacency on her face. Her blue dress had blown off -- a fresh double-reef topsail breeze -- and so had a filmy white garment, exposing handsome limbs and a firm, though opulent bosom. Jack had been a long time at sea, and this drew his attention; however, he shifted his gaze after a moment, surveyed the rest of the picture and sought for something appropriate, perhaps even witty, to say. He longed to produce a subtle and ingenious remark, but he longed in vain -- perhaps the day had been too full -- and he was obliged to fall back on "Very fine -- such a blue." Then a small vessel in the lower left-hand corner caught his eye, something in the nature of a pink; she was beating up for the harbour, but it was obvious from the direction of the lady's clothes that the pink would be taken aback the moment she rounded the headland. "As soon as she catches the land-breeze she will be in trouble," he said. "She will never stay, not with those unhandy lateens, and there is no room to wear; so there she is on a lee-shore. Poor fellows. I am afraid there is no hope for them."

"That is exactly what Maturin told me you would say," cried Diana, squeezing his arm. "How well he knows you, Aubrey."

Post Captain, p. 172-173.

"I never was a great reader," said Jack. His friends looked down at their wine and smiled. "I mean I never could get along with your novels and tales. Admiral Burney -- Captain Burney then -- lent me one wrote by his sister when we were coming back with a slow convoy from the West Indies; but I could not get through with it -- sad stuff, I thought. Though I dare say the fault was in me, just as some people cannot relish music; for Burney thought the world of it, and he was as fine a seaman as any in the service. He sailed with Cook, and you cannot say fairer than that."

"That is the best qualification for a literary critic I ever heard of," said Yorke. "What was the name of the book?"

"There you have me," said Jack. "But it was a small book, in three volumes, I think; and it was all about love. Every novel I have ever looked into is all about love; and I have looked into a good many, because Sophie loves them, and I read aloud to her while she knits, in the evening. All about love."

The Fortune of War, p. 52-53.

"Were you ever in Elsinore, Mr Jagiello?" asked Jack.

"Oh, many a time, sir," said Jagiello. "I know it well. I believe I could show you Hamlet's grave from here."

"I was really wondering whether they were ten or thirteen inch mortars on the upper terrace," said Jack, "but I should be very happy to see Hamlet's grave as well."

"Both ten and thirteen, sir. And if you go a little to the right from the farthest turret, there are some trees: and among those trees there is the grave. You can just make out the rocks."

"So there he lies," said Jack, his telescope levelled. "Well, well: we must all come to it. But it was a capital piece, capital. I never laughed so much in my life."

"A capital piece indeed," said Stephen, "and I doubt I could have done much better myself. But, do you know, I have never in my own mind classed it among the comedies. Pray did you read it recently?"

"I never read it at all," said Jack. "That is to say, not right through. No: I did something better than that -- I acted in it. There, the upper terrace fires. I was a midshipman at the time."

"What part did you play?"

Jack did not answer at once: he was watching for the fall, counting the seconds. At the twenty-eighth it came, well pitched up but wide to starboard. "Port your helm, there," he called, and then went on, "I was one of the sexton's mates. There were seventeen of us, and we had real earth to dig, brought from shore; it played Old Harry with the deck, but by God it was worth it. Lord, how we laughed! The carpenter was the sexton, and instead of going on in that tedious way about whose grave it was he made remarks about the ship's company. I was Ophelia, too: that is to say, one of the Ophelias."
[...]
At the breakfast-table, with a fine view of the narrows and the now silent Elsinore, Stephen said, "So you were Ophelia in your youth, Captain Aubrey."

"A part of Ophelia. But in this case the part was greater than the whole: I was called back three times, and the other fellows were not called back at all, even the one that drowned in a green dress with sprigs. Three times, upon my honour!"

"How did the poor young lady come to be divided up?"

"Why, there was only one midshipman in the flagship pretty enough for a girl, but his voice was broke and he could not keep in tune neither; so for the part where she has to sing, I put on the dress and piped up with my back to the audience. But neither of us was going to be drowned and buried in real earth, Admiral or no Admiral, so that part fell to a youngster who could not defend himself; and that made three of us, do you see." Jack smiled, his mind going back to the West Indies, where the performance had taken place; and after a while he sang:
"Young men will do't
An they come to't
By Cock they are to blame.
Yes, alas; and it all ended unhappy, as I recall."

"So it did, too," said Stephen, "the pity of the world."

The Surgeon's Mate, p. 207-209.

The letter had begun the day before, when the Surprise, steering for Santa Maura, where two ships of her convoy were to be left, had been forced away by stress of weather, forced away almost to Ithaca. "To Ithaca itself, upon my word of honour. But would any amount of pleading on my part or on the part of all the literate members of the ship's company induce that animal to bear away for the sacred spot? It would not. Certainly he had heard of Homer, and had indeed looked into Mr Pope's version of his tale; but for aught he could make out, the fellow was no seaman. Admittedly Ulysses had no chronometer, and probably no sextant neither; but with no more than log, lead and lookout an officer-like commander would have found his way home from Troy a d----d sight quicker than that. Hanging about in port and philandering, that was what it amounted to, the vice of navies from the time of Noah to that of Nelson. And as for that tale of all his foremast hands being turned into swine, so that he could not win his anchor or make sail, why, he might tell that to the Marines. Besides, he behaved like a very mere scrub to Queen Dido -- though on second thought perhaps that was the other cove, the pious Anchises. But it was all one: they were six of one and half a dozen of the other, neither seamen nor gentlemen, and both of 'em God d----d bores into the bargain."

Treason's Harbour, p. 261-262.

"I tell you what it is," he said to Stephen at one of their rare meetings in the town, when they were both buying strings, rosin and sheet-music, "I shall have to ship a schoolmaster. With Calamy and Williamson, that makes six of the little beasts, and although I can teach them navigation when things are quiet and beat them whenever they need it, it seems a poor shabby thing to send them out into the world without a notion of history or French or hic haec hoc. Seamanship is a very fine thing, but it is not the only quality, particularly by land, and I have often felt my own want of education -- I have often envied those fellows who can dash off an official letter that reads handsome and rattle away in French and throw out quotations in Latin or even God help us in Greek -- fellows who know who Demosthenes was, and John o'Groats. You can cut me down directly with a Latin tag. And it is no good telling an ordinary healthy boy to sit down with his Gregory's Polite Education or Robinson's Abridgment of Ancient History: without he is a phoenix like St Vincent or Collingwood he needs a schoolmaster to keep him to it."

"I wonder whether you sea-officers may not rate literature too high," said Stephen.

The Far Side of the World, p. 70.

"I beg pardon, sir," said Mowett in the doorway, "but the privateer has taken a leaf out of our book and she has sent hawsers aloft."

"Has she?" cried Jack. "Oh, the wicked dog. Come, have a cup of coffee to keep your spirits up, Mowett; then we shall go on deck, where virtue spooms before the goddam gale, and our heaving wishes will help fill the sail, ha, ha, ha! That is Dryden, you know."

The Reverse of the Medal, p. 105.

On hearing that in the course of a drawing-room the Regent's mistress Lady Hertford had been rude to Diana Maturin, his cousin by marriage and his best friend's wife, he said angrily and in rather too public a place, "Birds of a feather, birds of a feather; fowl in their own nest, all tarred with the same brush. Dryden put it very well, speaking of another great man's mistresses: he said -- he said -- I have it. He said false, foolish, old, ill-natured and ill-bred. Aye: there's no beating Dryden. False, foolish, old, ill-natured and ill-bred -- nothing more ill-bred than being uncivil at a levee or a drawing-room."

It was his former shipmate Mowett who had told him the quotation and it was his present shipmate Maturin who told him that the words had reached the royal ear.

The Thirteen Gun Salute, p. 12-13.

Of course the boat had been seen putting off, and of course Captain Pullings was there to receive him, and of course there were side-boys, scrubbed pink, offering man-ropes as he came nimbly up, which was just as well, since he was immediately followed by Dr Maturin, as impervious to sea-lore as Mr Aubrey was to elegant literature -- more so, indeed, since Jack had read Macbeth aloud, enchanting his daughters, not long since, while Stephen had not thought of ships or the sea since he set foot on shore, and had contrived to forget almost all of what little he had ever acquired: furthermore, he had only been aroused from his dreamlike state a moment before, when the barge came alongside and the even motion stopped.

The Commodore, p. 82.

"There you are, Stephen," cried Jack, looking up from his desk, a more natural smile doing away with the severity of his expression. "Have you come back? God's my life, you are soaked quite through. Should you not change your shoes and stockings? It is always said that the feet are the weakest part. Take Achilles' heel -- but you know all about Achilles' heel."

"Presently. But for the moment, Jack..."

"Well, in any case take a dram to keep the wet out. Sea-water does no harm, but rain is deadly stuff once it gets right in." He swung round, took a case-bottle from the locker and poured them each a tot of rum, a glorious rum he had drawn from the wood in Trafalgar year.

The Commodore, p. 113.