A True Story, With Creative Embellishments, Inspired by My First Reading of Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander

Pixabay.

They are strangely immature for men of their age and their position: though, indeed, it is to be supposed that if they were not, they would not be here – the mature, the ponderate mind does not embark itself upon a man-of-war – is not to be found wandering about the face of the ocean in quest of violence. For all his sensibility (and he played his transcription of Deh vieni with a truly exquisite delicacy, just before we reached Ciudadela), JA is in many ways more suited to be a pirate chief in the Caribbean a hundred years ago: and for all his acumen JD is in danger of becoming an enthusiast – a latter day Loyola, if he is not knocked on the head first, or run through the body. —Master and Commander, Ch. 10

“That pilgrim from the English sloop is mad,” the surgeon’s servant told the second cook. “Mad, twisted, tormented. And ours is not much better.” —Master and Commander, Ch. 12

“You do not rate post-captains and admirals very high among intelligent beings, I believe?” —Master and Commander, Ch. 12

Twenty-odd years ago, I attended college in Annapolis, Maryland. No, not that one—the other one, St. John’s College. St. John’s is a small liberal arts school known for its “great books” program, a four-year, nonelective curriculum consisting solely of Western Civilization’s greatest hits. Despite its name, St. John’s is nonsectarian, and between that and its unusual curriculum, the school attracts a motley crew.

View of Annapolis, 1800 (pre-USNA). St. John’s McDowell Hall in the far distance, behind St. Anne’s Church in the foreground. Wikimedia Commons.

Across King George Street is the United States Naval Academy.

Naval Academy Chapel. Those darn bells are LOUD. (Wikimedia Commons.)

Johnnies and mids (we called them middies, which they hated) rarely mixed. They thought we were misfits; we thought they were dunderheads. Our heads were in the clouds; their eyes were on the horizon. Occasionally mids would meander about our campus—perhaps because alcohol was available in abundance—and try their hand at asking esoteric questions. Sometimes Johnnies would meander about the yard: to go jogging, to visit the museum, or to attend Sunday services at the chapel (for the handful of religiously minded among us). And the annual SJC-USNA croquet tournament brought us together every April, forcing us to mingle. Otherwise, we thought of each other as alien species: odd, obtuse, baffling.

We were Stephen Maturin and Jack Aubrey, the Odd Couple, but with more detachment and less goodwill.

American privateer taken by H.M.S. Sophie, 1812. (Wikipedia.)

But there are always exceptions, and my roommate was among them. She loved USNA dances. And I allowed her to drag me to a few. I was a traditional girl who wanted to get married, but I had exhausted my prospects among the least ‘mad, twisted, tormented’ of pasty-faced, priggish Johnnie pedants. Another girlfriend of mine was engaged to a mid, and he was a great guy. Maybe I would be so lucky? (Though they had met in high school, and he entered the Corps after graduation—and became a pilot, no less—so does he really count?) For all my surface disdain, I was not immune to the romance of dancing with officers in uniform. So my roommate and I would get dolled up and head toward Gate One for a night on the yard.

I quickly learned that for some—not all—midshipmen, not only were Johnnies an alien species, but women were alien too. No one has ever confirmed this, but I swear USNA must offer a class titled, “How to Talk to Women Who Are Not Your Fellow Officers and Classmates,” because every dance conversation followed the same outline:

(1) Introduce yourselves.

(2) Ask your partner where she’s from.

(3) Ask her what school she attends. (One question behind this question was, “Are you legal?” High schoolers often went to Navy dances.)

(4) Ask her about her favorite subjects.

(5) Ask her what she wants to do after graduation.

(6) Thank her for the dance.

Which isn’t a bad formula. But with Johnnies, the script always failed at Question Three:

Mr. Midshipman: “What school do you go to?”

Me, after a fortifying breath: “St. John’s.”

His eyes grew so wide that you could read his internal dialogue: “Marxist! Bluestocking! Feminazi! Weirdo! HARD-A-LEE!” Which tells you a lot about my alma mater.

Once he had recovered (“she looks normal”): “Is it true that…?”

I assured him that whatever rumor he had heard was only half-justified.

Awkward pause.

Him: “What’s your favorite class?”

Me: “Honestly, junior year readings are a real drag. Too much Age of Enlightenment flapdoodle—monads, ‘nasty, brutish, and short,’ blah, blah, blah. I can’t wait until we get to Jane Austen, but we have to survive six weeks of Kant first.”

Look of horror.

“I feel the same way. And you?”

“Ship Hydrostatics and Stability.”

My turn to be horrified.

“It’s hard but really interesting.”

Think, think, think, think. “We’re studying Newton’s Principia in our mathematics tutorial.”

Silence.

“Galileo? Descartes? Franklin? Faraday? … Aristotle? Mind you, I understand very little of it. Not a science person.”

“And you’re paying how much for this education?”

“I can’t talk about tuition or school loans while dancing. Moby Dick?”

“I took a literature class once.”

Silence again.

Him: “What do you want to do after graduation?”

Me: “Still figuring it out. Probably something impractical that pays nothing. How about you? What’s your goal?”

“Not to end up on a submarine.”

Pause. “I can respect that.”

Needless to say, I was never asked to dance twice. I did date one midshipman for a few weeks, but we ran out of things to talk about, and his backup plan met with more resistance than he anticipated. So that was that. Still, I wish him well and hope he’s somewhere not-a-submarine. I instead married an academic, had a bunch of kids, and became a novelist. Stephen won, while Jack was left to the annals of, “Mistakes I Wish I Hadn’t Made in College.”

If we had read Patrick O’Brian at St. John’s, now—we would have known to ask Messrs. Midshipmen if they were musical! USNA and St. John’s, sawing away on our violins and ‘cellos, thumos converging with dianoia. Would have been a point of commonality, growth, and friendship.