Recent experience of exhaustion roused memory of serious
food-poisoning over four decades ago, and the hallucination it caused. Which memory said to me: The Gates of Doom. On a less trying day I looked up one of my
favourite Rafael Sabatini novels.
As usual, Rafael credited a memoir as his source, that of Dr.
Emanuel Blizzard. As usual, that’s
baloney! So where did Rafael get all
that he put into his account, from Harry Gaynor’s hanging to his resuscitation? Did he ever experience hallucinations during
illness? Or hear all about one from an
acquaintance? Or read something
similar? The same questions arise about
Dr. Blizzard’s treatment of Harry.
I suspect that my fondness for the novel arises chiefly from the
endearing Dr. Blizzard. When reading and
re-reading for the writing of Romantic
Prince, I returned often to the novel for some detail or other, and then
found myself stopping at the part where the good doctor finds Harry awakened
from a long, healing sleep, continuing to read until Harry bids him farewell. Rafael comments:
They parted the best of friends in the
world, and, after the Captain had gone, that lonely anatomist realised for the
first time in all his absorbed and studious years that his house in the Gray's
Inn Road was dingy, dull and dismal.
For some reason, that sentence moves me.
Rafael wrote strikingly about another kind and
memorable doctor – in Fortune’s Fool. Dr. Beamish is one of the reasons for my
liking the novel.
We are most unlikely to learn why Rafael put
these words into the good doctor’s mouth, and not even the necessity of
persuading Sylvia Farquharson to work in the shelter for plague sufferers
explains all that he says. So I
think. They are inspiring words at any
time, to anyone willing to think about them.
“It is
in helping others that we best help ourselves," he explained. "Who
labours but for himself achieves a barren life, is like the unfaithful steward
with his talents. Happiness lies in labouring for your neighbour. It is a
twofold happiness. For it brings its own reward in the satisfaction of
achievement, in the joy of accomplishment; and it brings another in that,
bending our thoughts to the needs and afflictions of our fellows, it removes
them from the contemplation of the afflictions that are our own."
*
“You
might do it because you conceive it to be a debt you owe to God and your
fellow-creatures for your own preservation. Or you might do it so that, in
seeking to heal the afflictions of others, you may succeed in healing your own.
But, however you did it, it would be a noble act, and would surely not go
unrewarded."
*
"I
do not wish to force you into any course against your will. If the task is
repugnant to you—and I can well understand that it might be—do not imagine that
I shall on that account forsake you. I will not leave you helpless and alone.
Be sure of that."
Another striking remark in the novel is Rafael’s description of
plague-stricken London as Randal Holles sees it:
Last of
all, but perhaps most awe-inspiring, as being the most eloquent witness to the
general desolation, he saw that blades of grass were sprouting between the
kidney stones with which the street was paved, so that, but for those lines of
houses standing so grim and silent on either side, he could never have supposed
himself to be standing in a city thoroughfare.
These are some of the touches that – for me – distinguish Rafael
Sabatini’s novels from those of writers who received a better press then and
now. Why is it incumbent on most of
those expressing an opinion of this writer’s novels, whether they are
themselves writers, or critics published in journals, broadsheets, and
periodicals, dictionaries or whatever of fiction and so on, or the generality writing
on their own websites, to make negative comments, draw unfavourable
comparisons, dismiss with the lazy term ‘swashbuckler’? When I had the time and justification for
re-reading Rafael’s novels, I would come across things I had not noticed
before, and be delighted, while surprised at having missed them earlier.
Ruth Heredia is the originator and holds the copyright to all material on this blog unless credited to some source. Please do not use it or pass it off as your own work. That is theft. If you wish to link it, quote it, or reprint in whole or in part, please be courteous enough to seek my permission.
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