Monday, October 11, 2021

Mr. Midshipman Hornblower



Indigenous Peoples' Day caught me unprepared today. When I can, I like to find a good sentence related to a period of observance, read the entire book, and write my blog post to suit. If you'd like to read about a sentence from an indigenous author today, please consider my older posts on Empire of Wild, Two Roads, Trail of Lightning, or Solar Flares

Mr. Midshipman Hornblower is part of the influential Horatio Hornblower series by C. S. Forester. I'd heard "Horatio Hornblower stories" frequently as a shorthand for tales of people who start with very little and work hard to gain status and wealth. I was a little surprised to learn this book came out in 1950 – I'd gained an impression that the books had been around longer. As it turns out, C. S. Forester wrote the series out of chronological order. Mr. Midshipman Hornblower covers the beginning of Hornblower's career, but the earliest publication in the series came in 1937. This makes Forester a contemporary of Hemingway. 

The story begins in 1796, and the first sentence has some flavor of that time. Forester paid attention to the sound of the words. Notice the sets of alliteration (words that start with the same consonants): "blustering loudly, and bearing on its bosom," "duties kept them on deck." He repeated the word "loudly." In the second phrase that contains it, "big drops rattled loudly" the strong beats of the rhythm (´, ´, ´-, ´-) thump like the raindrops do. The sentence lends itself to reading aloud, with varying rhythms and repeating sounds. 

Reading it aloud also makes it easier to understand. With only two commas in thirty-nine words, the sentence could use the vocal expression of a good reader to help group the words into meaning. My first read put pauses in the sentence this way: "A January gale was roaring up the Channel,/ blustering loudly,/ and bearing on its bosom/ rain squalls/ whose big drops rattled loudly/ on the tarpaulin clothing/ of those among the officers/ and men/ whose duties kept them on deck." That's not the best division to make the sentence clear. Especially, the break after "officers" causes a hitch when parsing the sentence. A reader who already knew the sentence, and read without pause through "those among the officers and men" would make this easier to follow. Then we see that a storm brought rain that fell upon the sailors. 

A fair number of the words relate to the sea: gale, Channel, squalls, tarpaulin, deck. Some of the phrases sound old-fashioned: blustering, bearing on its bosom, tarpaulin (again), officers and men. The sounds and connotations of the words help build a mood – a little poetic, a little historic. 

This is a nostalgic sentence. It looks back to a time that some found heroic and appealing: when men (only men) stood up to the gusts of nature, and won their place by their own efforts. That's not really how we see the world any more. 

So maybe, this Indigenous Peoples' Day, this sentence can serve as a reminder of a past we no longer admire so simply. 

Graphic elements by Ken Silbert

Photo by Tyler Lastovich on Unsplash

Note: Corrected apostrophe placement in Indigenous Peoples' Day on 12 Oct. 2021.