Musings on The Wounded Name

[luzula]

Some of you may enjoy the comment where I search for how many times the speech verb "ejaculate" is used in various 18th century novels and draw conclusions, and mildred_of_midgard's preceding comment on the usage of "ejaculate" over time.

During my recording of The Wounded Name, I am really noticing how different Laurent is from various other Broster characters, in that he doesn't care about his military duty. It would have been fairly easy for him to escape from the place where he and Aymar are prisoners, but does he? No, he stays to nurse Aymar. And later when he's free, does he return to the army? Nope, he stays with Aymar with some transparent excuse for why he's not leaving. To be clear, I too would rather stay and take care of my friend than go off and fight for Louis XVIII against the Bonapartists! But I wonder why Broster does not use Laurent's duty as a way of heightening the dilemma in the book? Perhaps because if Laurent's duty were properly invoked, he would have no real excuse to stay for so long. But Aymar, who does care about military duty, doesn't seem to mind that Laurent is basically deserting (though I'm not sure if it is technically deserting when he was a volunteer to begin with).

Also, it makes for an interesting contrast with Keith Windham, for example—who is, of course, a professional. Perhaps the general to whom Laurent was aide-de-camp rolled his eyes and did not actually miss this aristocratic dilettante. I am reminded of Duffy's characterization of the stereotypical aide-de-camp as "young, pretty, well-born, and mounted on a fast horse".

Comments

[luzula]

By the way, how can the Articles of War for the army have no prohibition on aiding the enemy?? Neither the 1722 or the 1749 ones do (which I am sure you have also got via tgarnsl). I mean, these ones for the Navy definitely do. The prohibition on mutiny and sedition, or disobeying orders, doesn't really cover the same ground, or does it?

[sanguinity]

That does seem odd. I wonder -- given how many regulations are "written in the blood" as the saying goes (i.e., authorities often don't think/bother to prohibit a thing until after the thing became a problem), I wonder if sometime after 1749 there was a celebrated case of someone aiding the enemy, and when command tried to throw the book at them, they found they had no book to throw? Thus leading to the amending of the book/Articles?

Obviously that's raw speculation, but something to keep an eye out for, I would think.