Patrick O'Brian Discussion Forum

Banks and Blaine

Both Banks and Blaine were, like many other gentlemen of Our Period, naturalists [‘an expert in or student of natural history; a person who has a special interest in or makes a special study of plants or animals’ OED] but their other preoccupations [their ‘day jobs’] were quite different: Banks was a ‘patron of science’ [DNB] and Blaine was a spy master, an intelligence chief.

So to say that Banks was the model for Blaine is wrong. There were, at that time, many naturalists but few patrons of science. Blaine was well off but not that well off.

Fri Nov 6

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