Book Review : A Fine Political Sea Tale in Australia

A Wilful Woman by Michael Talbot (Knopf: $18.95; 354 pages)

“A Wilful Woman” is second in a closely researched series of serious, sophisticated and intelligent historical novels recording the settlement of Australia. But--since the characters here are still calling this land “New Holland” and referring to aboriginals as “Indians”--this story has much less to do with the matter of Australia as such than with English politics and seafaring in the 18th Century. Those readers who remember (or still read) the C. S. Forester novels, particularly the wonderful early Capt. Horatio Hornblower ones like “Beat to Quarters” and “Ship of the Line” will be crazy about “A Wilful Woman.”

For those who grew up on Forester (remember, that’s C. S. Forester, not E. M. Forster), there’s nothing more fun than a leaky ship that’s gone around a couple of capes, stays “hoveto” for pages at a time and makes a perfect landfall with the aid of nothing more than dead reckoning and a couple of aspirin. It’s the mark of a more perfect and simple world, where you’ve got the easy-going (but cool and hip) Blue Jackets, Navy Men, set against the klutzy, rule-bound Red Coat Marines, who hate to be on board a ship, don’t know how to get in or out of a dinghy, live to slaughter innocent passers-by and have bad personalities besides.

A Complimentary Commander

This is the kind of novel where the commander of the fleet--in this case, Arthur Phillip, is always “sending his compliments” to some unlucky officer, then having a tantrum about why this hasn’t been done or that hasn’t been done. Also the kind of novel that’s rife with scoundrels--in this case they range from (1) the churlish, humorless, Robert Ross, commander of the marines, who spends all his time building Ft. Ross and figuring out how Cmdr. Arthur Phillip might catch some kind of pox and keel over and die, so that he, Robert Ross, might become commander of this very biggest--yet least known--colony of the British Empire, New Holland, to (2) Buck Nash, a former Buckingham Palace wastrel, an idle, mean-spirited courtier, who got convicted for wife-stealing and was subsequently “transported,” who also wants Cmdr. Phillip out of the way, for reasons of his own.

The backdrop here is the very beginning of the founding of the Sydney Harbor Colony. The plot moves along on three levels: (1) Who’s going to win ascendancy, Arthur Phillip or Robert Ross? (2) What about all those convicts, especially, what about the women? With a ratio of one-to-six in favor of the stronger sex, won’t all these women, even the one respectable married lady, end up raped, murdered and pillaged? And (3) who, of the sundry male convicts, will be successful in the colonies and end up becoming a pillar of the state?

Kitty’s Coalitions

“A Wilful Woman” (the woman in question here is an ex-actress named Kitty Brandon, who spends most of her time setting up coalitions between unlikely characters), presents an interesting literary or “writerly” challenge. As in Michael Wilding’s “The Paraguayan Experiment,” the prose here moves between actual documents of the day, weird, hard-to-read, bureaucratic officialese, and plenty of the spoken word in dialogue. But how did officials, prostitutes, criminals and marines actually speak in the 18th Century? I’m willing to take C. S. Forester’s word about how British naval officers talked: After Capt. Horatio Hornblower, how could I not? But I had trouble with some of the convicts here and with Kitty Brandon herself. That doesn’t matter much. This is a wonderful book to read, an acerbic antidote to the holidays, a book full of low crime, undug latrines and ruffled dignity.

The reviewer presents her compliments to the intelligent readership of the Los Angeles Times and respectfully suggests that it take under consideration for purchase, Michael Talbot’s “A Wilful Woman.”