Bush's responsiveness to Hornblower: Must emphasize NOT based on knowledge of Horatio's inner contortions. Based instead on sensitivity to Horatio's facial expressions and long-standing experience with him. Suggestion that Bush CANNOT, in fact, comprehend the internals of Horatio's self-loathing and drive to prove himself -- see Bush's lack of understanding/description of Horatio's interior life during the scene where he chooses Horatio to be his second at Samana. (Hah. He doesn't know the thing-in-itself, only knows the phenomena :D)
Relationship starts off as friendly as it does because Horatio is friendly. Horatio is capable of extending friendship -- the twinkle in brown eyes, etc. Something in Horatio senses that there's something in Bush at that first moment.
Horatio's effect on Bush: overcomes Bush's innate suspicion of brilliance, etc, forces, in a sense, a re-rodering of the "the world is divided into _________ and __________" sort of things. Horatio shifts the paradigm a bit. He is efficient and yet fantastc, etc. He makes Bush think about preparing the unpreparable. Maintaining his affection for Horatio makes Bush shift his worldview. It's only a shift of quarter-inches, but it's nevertheless a shift.
Horatio makes Bush feel contrary to how he would otherwise feel -- when Horatio is having his temper tantrum about the food they buy with the half-crown and he won't eat, Bush gets tired of having to put with Horatio's tantrum (how he realizes that Horatio is having a tantrum is not made explicit; we see only the details that Bush picks up with his eyes, and when the knowledge that Horatio is having a tantrum is needed, it is there. Bush does notreason it out), but he doesn't actually call Horatio on it because of how he soft he is on Horatio.
Note, too, how Bush gives Horatio the Samana in an impulse that he doesn't even recognize before he blurts it out and that is, in a way, against his original inclination to have a midshipman, etc, who would be wholly subordinate.
Horatio is a relative weak point in Bush's emotional determinedness. See: How Horatio makes Bush feel contrary to how he would otherwise feel, see impulse decisions, see how Bush worries and frets over Horatio's treatment of Lord Admiral Parry, etc, even though he long ago came to the notion that advancement in the Navy is capricious and full of Fortune. (Is Horatio refusing to seize Fortuna because of his own internal difficulties? Or just seizing it in a different way?)
SPECULATION: Horatio thinks that Bush is a splendid disciplinarian and feels that this quality is lacking in him. (see: Ship of the Line). How much of his subsequent obsession with discpline is spawned by desire to be like Bush? (Never put explicitly in those terms, but Horatio wouldn't be able to)
Emotional balance between them: making Horatio happy, seeing the relief that Bush's affection brings him makes him feel like a "bigger man." It makes Bush happy to make Horatio happy. See: when Bush asks for Horatio to be his second at Samana.
Horatio tries to give Bush dignity, space. See: when he goes and yells at people so that Bush has a chance to stop cussing and compose himself while they are trying to get the guns unstuck.
IMPORTANT IMAGERY Hornblower's smile and the degree to which it features in Bush's experienceof Hornblower: first experience is the "twinkle" in Horatio's eyes. What he takes away with him from watching Hornblower take that shower -- "the grin." What he notes about Horatio coming down to see him after he sees Buckland off -- "this time his smile was clearly not forced; it played whimsically about the corners of his mouth." When the commission comes in -- "lopsided."
It's all in the details. Partially is Forester's style, but partially is his way of portraying Bush. See: Bush's system of learning. See also: how obervant Bush is
Bush's philosophy
Tends to take the world as it is: wouldn't say that descriptive is normative -- normative suggests that "normal" has a positive meaning for Bush, but it doesn't. It just is. Example: sisters always dote on him, so he has a casual atittude about that,which also leads him to be all puzzled at the way that Horatio freaks out about Maria trying to take care of him. Product of being "raised in a hard school." Look at the notion about "boys would be beaten untilthe end of time." This is the way that life is, and it's useless to feel badly or feel at all about it.
Extended to press gangs: Was the ox unlucky when it was turned into beef? Or for that matter was the guinea unlucky when it changed hands? This was life; for a merchant seaman to find himself a sailor of the King was as natural a thing as for his hair to turn grey if he should live so long. And the only way to secure him was to surprise him in the night, rouse him out of bed, snatch him from the grog shop and the brothel, converting him in a single second from a free man earning his livelihood in his own way into a pressed man who could not take a step on shore of his own free will without risking being flogged round the fleet. Bush could no more sympathise with the pressed man than he could sympathise with the night being replaced by day. See also: Bush's mental notion of promotion in the Navy.
HOWEVER, DO NOT WRITE HIM ACTUALLY LAYING ANY OF THESE SYSTEMS OUT. Forester makes it a huge point that Bush figures this stuff out. Emphasizes, again and again, that Bush is smart and, in a way, a far better judge of people than Horatio is. However, he cannot articulate this. Bush works by intuition, by feeling. Look at how many times Forester repeats this, and look at how he structures Bush dealing with uncertain events -- the event happens, and Bush immediately feels the response.
The way he learns: at an below-conscious level. Learns from experience and by synthesizing, in the back of his head, all of this information. Again, cannot articulate how he knows what he does -- see the long-ass delineations of different sorts of people.
everything in its proper place extends up through to classifications of people. See, however, Horatio's effect on Bush.
How to lay out a Bush perspective
Deeply, profoundly inarticulate. Major character trait if we're to go by how many times Forester mentions it. See: feeling of inadequacy when trying to save Wellard, having to copy the letters of other officers to write for the Chronicle, inability to actually state his theory of different kinds of Naval officers. SPECULATION: Could this be why Bush has such difficulty with mathematics? He knows what he knows and knows it, but the internal logic of how and why he knwos what he does isn't apparent to him. The rules by which his universe operates are essentially mysterious, whereas math is all about explicit stated rules, about logical steps of reasoning.
Play on this for fic. Show Bush being moved, by Horatio and the pressure of circumstance, to try and grasp these rules. And show him ultimately failing . . . ?
checks out women an awful lot. How many times do we hear that Barbara is dumpy?
vivid, powerful flashes of past experiences, the very clear recollection-- when he thinks of Horatio storming the Renown/right before he offers Horatio his money as real to him as what he sees in his eye. Strong memory.
capable of v. brilliant language despite the inarticulacy, so you can have Bush being v. descriptive and pritty-worded -- cursing, "throwing his life on the board," explicit internal attempt to describe what it feels like to watch that Long Rooms whist game as "opium" followed by a correction, followed by another "poisonous." He can be brilliantly descriptive of emotional content when it's inside his own head. Has to refer to other letters in the Chronicle, though. Note admiration of how adept Hornblower is with other people. Speculation there?
how to handle Bush!emotion: Bush is aware aware of them. has them, but does not much look into the REASONS for why he has them. He'll control it if the emotion is facially imprudent -- original sympathy for Hornblower and how he controls it until he sees that Horatio is a smart, brave, talented, deft man and then lets himself ride on it -- but it's just there after a certain point, and Bush never thinks of going deeper. It just is. Emotion, feeling, intuition -- the irreducible components of Bush's character.