Billy Budd

Having first noticed Billy Budd on 20th August, I have now got around to reading the book.

The first attempt at the library was not very successful. Into the catalogue in the usual way, pleased to find a number of copies of the required book. Chose one and some weeks later the book found its way into the reserved cupboard at Epsom Library, where quite by chance I happened to notice it, the usual email reminder having gone awol. A bit surprised at this point to find myself holding a rather thin red paperback. Well, I think to myself, I suppose the thing is a short story. Get home to find that I have a version of the original story adapted for adults who are learning to read, not quite what I was looking for at all. I suppose, to be fair to the library, they had to list the book somewhere and under Melville was perhaps as good as anywhere else.

The second attempt went rather better and took some seconds at Amazon rather than some weeks at the library. Book now read and all things considered the opera was not a bad take on it; it was indeed a meditation on the workings of the articles of war at a rather tricky time for the Royal Navy, with mutineers behind and the French in front. Mayhem and regicide on the Continent. And then there was the innocent, handsome and popular Billy Budd, one of a type Melville thought cropped up from time to time - and one which I think I dimly recognise from one or two examples from school. I also got a sense of the sort of life that might be had by the rank and file (not quite the right simile but never mind) on an all too crowded man of war at that time, the end of the eighteenth century, something which I had never got from my extensive childhood readings of C. S. Forester. Including here the social life, the interactions between the various groups. The foretopmen, the afterguard, the tradesmen, the marines and the ship's police, all with their own places in this highly organised and highly stressed world.

The introduction suggested that Melville himself was a rather odd cove, an oddness perhaps consistent with his heavy and unusual prose - not at all suitable for an adult learner in its raw form. But I suppose I should have stuck with learner version to see how much of the original was left; presumably the core issue of what to do with someone who strikes a superior officer in the face of the enemy survives in one way or another. The answer in the book seems to be that the captain jumped the wrong way; it would have been enough to clap Budd in irons for the time being and dump the problem in slow time on the admiral - who could then quietly reprieve the chap at some suitable point in the future. No real need for instant action at all. But there was justice of a sort - omitted in the opera - as the captain died of battle wounds not long after the execution.

PS: to be tidied up when I get to crack the system on this municipal gateway computer.