And yet for more than a century later rubes were still paying good money to see fish sewn on to monkeys, jackalopes and even shaved bears done up as 'pig-faced ladies’, a sort of Opposite World version of the Aubrey-Maturin bear.
Not everyone in the early 19th century was as switched on, worldly or completely unignorant as this site’s readers are now with their fancy internets and History Channel. Even with that I think it would be an optimistic means of escape through enemy territory, but no more implausible to us than many other things that people believed.
Two contemporary examples - convicts escaping in New South Wales thought they could make it overland to China. They would tear out the compass roses from maps to help guide them on their way. The first specimen of the platypus was suspected of being a hoax.
There have been so many series about a hero rising through the ranks of the RN during the Napoleonic Wars, that relatively recent (anything after 1960) contributors to the genre like O’Brian must be hard-pressed to find anything original to contribute. All of these tomes include capture and inevitable escape (or parole) from the French. Honestly, the only unused plots are either boring or extremely unlikely. I imagine “disguised as a bear” was just above “dig a tunnel to Swingate” on a very short list.
On the other hand, you couldn’t pull the wool of the eyes of a scientist like, say George Shaw with some bloody beaver with a duck’s bill sewn on, masquerading as a supposed “amazing discovery” from the Antipodes…
1.) I don’t see any reference to Mark Twain and Cooper above, but Twain’s two essays about Cooper’s style are hilarious.
2.) Regarding Cooper, I note that his hero – Nathaniel “Natty” Bumppo – dresses up as a bear in * The Last of the Mohicans*. The hear costume is actually supposed to be an Indian bear costume, so its lack of realism is not a problem.
In defense of O’Brian, while the bear scene was admittedly ridiculous, it was also delightful and hilarious. Jack in the bear suit tiredly dancing a hornpipe, and Stephen working the crowd for tips “Remember the bear sir, remember the bear!” And it’s really the only incident like that in the whole series. In terms of historical accuracy, I don’t think it’s terrible and is quite unnoticeable to the casual reader. Yes, he puts his heroes into multiple famous battles, and yes, he crams about 13 books and a decade’s worth of action into 10 months of real historical time, but what else are you going to do in historical fiction?
Yes the sequence is ridiculous and very punishing to Jack. But remember the events immediately prior to this: Jack was involved in an affair with Diana and Stephen was very jealous and ready to duel with him. Emerging political and naval events shut that down pretty quickly, and then the two were thrown on shore and needed to get to Spain.
I view the whole sequence as Stephen’s sly revenge on Jack.
The bear scene is the least-plausible thing in the entire series (second only to two people floating in the middle of the Pacific being rescued by a native craft randomly happening upon them, and that’s at least possible if very unlikely). I wish there was an interview with “O’Brian” where it was brought up, just to know what he was thinking, given how careful he was to base the nautical adventures on actual events or at least plausible ones. [Unless, GreenWyvern, you can give examples of where he was inaccurate in naval matters?]
Sure, there were some ignorant rubes around then, but most of those rubes would also have seen lots of animals up close and in person. And there were just as many smart people then as now, and plenty of relatively well-traveled and worldly suspicious people, too.
[I just accept the ‘five years of action happen in one historical calendar year’ and ‘one person sees way more action than really plausible’ as necessary if we want a series longer than three or four books, so it doesn’t bother me. But the bear, I just can’t get past].
The timeline was always implausible, but didn’t become impossible until around 1812. I think it was in the forward of the third or fourth book taking place in that year that O’Brian actually acknowledges, and begs the reader to excuse, this very necessary literary conceit.
A group of women fleeing authoritative men in their tribe, who have hacked of a male symbol of vitality from their outrigger. Given POB’s use of historical incidents, I wonder if it has any basis in fact.
Yeah, I find that jumping the shark. A human in a bear costume would likely be exhibiting unmistakable *human *motions and behaviors despite trying his hardest to pass himself off as a bear.
