Captain Blood

For one reason and another, until just now I had never read the once-popular novel Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini. It is exactly the sort of book I would have liked in my teens and twenties, kin to The Three Musketeers and its ilk. I've also never seen the movie, the one which launched the career of Errol Flynn and gave rise to other movies I've enjoyed such as 1935's The Adventures of Robin Hood. I will review it here, past a jump to avoid spoiling it for anyone who would like to read it.


I say that I had not read this novel. I had, however, read a lot of the source material on which Sabatini was drawing. I'm sorry to say that this greatly diminished my enjoyment of the book because I readily recognized where he was just stealing someone else's story and assigning it to his hero. There are a lot of great stories about the buccaneers and pirates of this era, many of them from around a generation earlier in what is called 'the Golden Age of Buccaneering' (a subset of the larger 'Golden Age of Piracy'). Sabatini references some of them in the book, and even playfully confesses to his theft of the story of the raid on Maracaibo.
I have a suspicion that Esquemeling--though how or where I can make no
surmise--must have obtained access to these records, and that he plucked
from them the brilliant feathers of several exploits to stick them into
the tail of his own hero, Captain Morgan. But that is by the way. I
mention it chiefly as a warning, for when presently I come to relate the
affair of Maracaybo, those of you who have read Esquemeling may be in
danger of supposing that Henry Morgan really performed those things
which here are veraciously attributed to Peter Blood. 
Well, I had read Esquemeling, and "Captain Charles Johnson" (probably Daniel Defoe). Sir Henry Morgan's other adventures and ultimate fate as governor of Jamaica are also pirated by the author, which is I suppose of a piece with the subject of the work. 

So I was not amazed by the stories, which was much of the intended charm of the work. The rest of the charm was meant to come from the love story. This requires a conceit that the hero and heroine are exemplars of the tradition of chivalry, which is not entirely implausible given their position as outer-members of the gentry in the late 17th century. The nobility had by that point passed by the high age of chivalry and courtly love, though in the 19th century the English at least would rediscover it as an art form (and it is of this stream that Sabatini, writing in the early 20th century, is the trailing end). The two are so well behaved in their -- well, one cannot call it a courtship -- that it avoids any confession of feeling until the very last pages of the novel, after which discussions of marriage between two people who have never so much as kissed, nor even embraced in a friendly way, immediately ensue. 

This must have seemed the high ideal of courtly love to Sabatini, drawn on the scornful damsel in the tale of Sir Gareth Beaumains and the distraught unrequited love of the Lily Maid of Astolat. Both stories were well known in his era, and the latter especially received high and tragic treatment by Tennyson (for whom she was 'the Lady of Shallot') and numerous painters and writers of the time. I admit that I did not find it charming or aspirational. Sir Gareth was well-behaved in his courtship, but not unclear about it; the damsel scorned him because she thought he was of low birth and a joke being foisted upon her, but was swayed when she realized she had misjudged him. Lancelot, the Lily Maid's intended lover, was a passionate lover indeed when he returned someone's love. He was never so well-behaved as to have insisted on strict propriety in this way, else there would never have been Galahad nor the affair with Guinevere that drives so much of the action of Malory's tale. 

Chastity is a virtue, but like all Aristotelian virtues you can go wrong by having too little or too much. The quality is only a virtue at the right point of balance. Here their unconfessed love brings them only suffering and alienation, not even hope for a better future, all the way until they stumble into confession at the end. 

Well, many people have liked this novel better than I. Some of you may, as well. 

10 comments:

raven said...

What every boy needs- good books.
The illustrations on those old adventure books were great-
especially the N.C.Wyeth ones- The one posted looks his style.

Grim said...

I also love the NC Wyeth illustrations, but I don't think that one is his. I have seen it before, but I can't recall the painter's name.

Grim said...

Ah! It's Howard Pyle.

https://www.wikiart.org/en/howard-pyle/

He also wrote a famous book, his edited for children, on the subject of the buccaneers and pirates. (And also a version of Robin Hood's adventures, which means his works may well have been influential in the movement of Errol Flynn from Captain Blood to Robin Hood.)

Assistant Village Idiot said...

I read the book as an adult, and loved it. No better way to buckle your swashes

jabrwok said...

Sabatini wrote several other books which you may enjoy more (or not). _Scaramouche_ might be the most recognizable. Also _The Sea Hawk_. I forget the other titles as it's been well over a decade since I read them.

Somewhat formulaic, but overall quite fun. Especially so for teen boys IMO, though I was much older when I discovered them.

Anonymous said...

I read _Captain Blood_ as an adult and enjoyed it a great deal. I took it for what it is, and since that period in the history of the Western Hemisphere is not something I've studied closely, had fun with the adventure. The romance? It was what it was (or wasn't), and it was a nice contrast to some things I'd read before the book.

Teen boys, if they are readers, would love it.

LittleRed1

J Melcher said...

The Errol Flynn movie of 1935 was presented as a specific (some would say "reactionary") response to rising fascism. The freed slaves, freed prisoners, freed impressed-sailors, all form their own society. They write a charter, vote upon it, and try, imperfectly, to adhere to it. Consent of the governed. We mutually pledge our lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. Yadda yadda yadda. The test of the charter was when Basil Rathbone wants to violate the rules about treatment of women. Big sword fight. (Giving rise to the stage lingo about "Flynning" for certain limited fencing / stage-choreography).

ANYhow, it's quite a contrast to the Pirates Of The Carribean movie of our age in which the pirates' code is treated as a joke, more of a set of suggested guidelines...



james said...

I don't know if "too much chastity" is exactly what's meant. "Desire" needs proper control and display, and that proper control is "chastity", right? In one context chastity demands abandon, in another silence, and in another -- perhaps ritual display is the right phrase.

Grim said...

Don't get too worked up about the names. Properly, the name of the virtue only applies to the exact right point on the scale, which runs from vice to vice. With courage, one end is cowardice, and it actually bifurcates on the other end between 'rashness' and another vice that Aristotle describes as 'the nameless vice of the Celts,' which fears nothing at all.

Somewhere along here is the virtue, 'courage,' but it's going to be different depending on the circumstances. Yet the name of the virtue is just meant to designate the right degree of the quality of handling fear.

You could say that 'chastity' is the same thing as 'courage,' the right point of inflexion along a line from lust to another pair of vices, a bifurcation between a failure to be able to express or understand yourself honestly, or a kind of insensitivity to natural desire. The point I am trying to make is that these have gone too far along the first negative bifurcation; young, healthy, unmarried, and inclined to each other strongly, they can't somehow come to express or discuss it, or to show any affection, and this leads to vicious outcomes.

Grim said...

@J Melcher:

I'll have to watch the movie. That sounds worthy.

The book definitely treats the buccaneering articles seriously. Not only in the case of Levasseur (the Basil character) but later when dealing with a Baron of France. He wants to assert the privileges of nobility in the new world; but the articles were already signed by his inferior, and the buccaneers insist upon them being honored or else. It's not quite the same point, but it is a similar point.