EUITED BY OR ERIC S. ROBERTSON, M.A. M LIFE OF MARRYAT. LIFE OF FREDERICK MARRYAT DAVID HANNAY LONDON WALTER SCOTT, 24 WARWICK LANE NEW YORK AND TORONTO : W. J. GAGi: & CO. 1889 {All rights reserved,) 7- NOTE. THE materials for a life of Marryat are scanty, and I have acknowledged my obligation to them in the text. Mrs. Ross Church collected, in 1872, all the surviving knowledge about her father's life — all of it, that is,, which the family thought it right to publish to the world. The present little book has no pretensions to be founded on new materials. My object has only been to make the best use I could of already published matter — to tell what story there is to tell in the clearest possible manner, and to add the best estimate of Marryat's work and position in letters that I could supply. D. H. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE Frederick Marryat born loth July, 1792; his parentage; his ancestry ; home training ; schooling at Enfield ; runs away to sea ; is sent into the navy and joins the Impcrieiise under Captain Lord Cochrane, in September, 1806 . .II CHAPTER n. The naval war in 1S06 : the frigates of the Croat War ; Lord Cochrane, afterwards Lord Dundonald, Captain of the Iinpt'n'ciise ; his character ; his influence on Marryat; the cruises of the frigate as described by Marryat in his private log ; a narrow escape ; Cochrane in the House of Commons ; an affair in the boats ; the Maltese privateer, Pasquil Giliano; movements of Iiiiperieuse . . .17 CHAPTER HL hnpMeuse on coast of Spain; cutting out privateer from Almcria Bay ; alliance with Spain ; Rosas ; the Basque Roads ; naval service of Marryat after parting with Coch- rane till the end of the Great War ; saves several men from drowning ; various adventures ; summary of his services from 1806 to 1815 , . 31 8 CONTENTS. CHAPTER IV. PAGE Marryat's position in 1815 ; goes abroad ; marriage ; appointed to Beaver ; at St. Helena changes to Rosario ; in Channel ; pays off Rosario; the Channel smugglers; appointed to Larue ; Burmese War ; promotion and made a C.B. ; transferred to Tees in July, 1824 ; short command of Ariadne ; the Ariadtte his last ship ; resigns command • November, 1830 ; begins writing ; equerry to Duke of Sussex ; story of William IV, . .... 46 CHAPTER V. From 1830 to 1848 a writer ; his literary life ; expensive habits ; early success in novel writing ; editorial ventures ; The Mel ropolitan Magazine ; hard work in 1833-34; in 1833 he stands for Tower Hamlets, and fails ; at Brighton in 1834 ; quotation from letter on lawsuit ; goes abroad ; life abroad ; leaves for America 58 CHAPTER VI. Marryat's literary work up to 1837 ; his early success, and de- termination to make money ; quarrels with pulilishcr ; prices paid him; "Frank Mildmay " ; quotation from Metropolitan Magazine on " Frank Mildmay " ; other books from "King's Own" to "Pirate" and "Three Cutters " ; quality of Marryat's style ; quotation from "Peter Simple"; his plots; his fun; quotation from " Midshipman Easy " 73 CHAPTER VII. Visit to America in 1837 ; his object in going there ; in New York ; letter lo his mother descriljing where he has been ; visit to Canada; affair of the Caroline; unpopularity in United Slates ; Marryat stands his ground ; return fo England .......... 98 CONTENTS. CHAPTER VIII. Movements in London; ruin of West Indian property; life and friendships in London ; Duke Street, Wimbledon, Piccadilly, Spanish Place ; first signs of breaking health ; goes to Langham ; books of these years ; " Phantom Ship " ; children's stories; " Masterman Ready"; skirmish with Fraser's Magazine; Marryat defends publication of his stories in the Era . . . . . . . . 1 14 CHAPTER TX. Marryat goes to Eanghani for good in 1S43 ; life there ; Marrj'at and his children ; kindness to his men ; his scientific farm- ing, and its financial results; his literary work ; asked to write life of Collingwood ; declines; last stories : "The Mission," "The Settlers," "The Children of the New Forest," "The Little Savage" 132 CHAPTER X. His fatal illness ; his physique and personal appearance ; letter to Lord Auckland on supposefl slight; Hastings; loss of II. M.S. Avenger, and death of Marryat's son. Lieutenant Frederick Marryat ; returns to Langham ; last months, and death on 9th August, ietinies a very pressing one, with Marryat. Money earned, in- herited, spent — money to be recovered from debtors, and, doubtless, paid to creditors, had much of his atten- tion. It is manifest that he was what Carlylc would have called "a very expensive Herr." He liked to lead a large life, and to show a gentlemanly indifference to money. By preference he lived in good houses, in good neighbourhoods, and it is not overrash or uncharitable to guess that his income was not always adequate to his expenses. Finally, he was addicted to some of the most effectual of all methods of evacuation. If he did not promote, or have to face, a petition, at least he went through a contested election; and he had Balzac's mania for ingenious speculations, which ought to have realized wealth beyond the dreams of avarice, and did achieve a dead loss with the most unfailing regularity. Like many another sailor before and since, he was sure that he could show the trained farmer how to extract more than he had yet done from the land. He undertook to do so on his small estate at Langham, in Norfolk — with disastrous financial results. That farming specula- tion was undoubtedly the type of much in his life. His movements, if not the causes of them, can be followed easily enough. Between 1830 and his depar- ture for America in 1837, ^^ ^^^ successively at Sussex 60 LIFE OF House, Hammersmith ; at Langham, in Norfolk ; then back in London ; then in Brighton ; then in sudden haste off to Brussels ; and from thence to Lausanne. " Frank Mildmay ; or, The Naval Officer," appeared in 1829. Nine months later, when he was fixed on shore, came out the "King's Own." In 1830 lie acquired a thousand acres of land in Norfolk, which remained in his posses- sion till his death. He exchanged Sussex House for it, but how Sussex House was got we are not told. It cannot have been bought either out of prize money, or the proceeds of the two books he had published already, although his prices were remarkably good for a beginner. Four hundred pounds is the sum said to have been given by Colburn for " Frank Mildmay " — a good deal more than the most sanguine of novices would expect to receive from the most generous of publishers for a first book in these days. Certainly, in 1830, Marryat was working as a man works who has reasons for making all the money he can. He was contributing to the Metro- politan ATagazine, and receiving his sixteen pounds a sheet — which, again, is good magazine pay. It did not take him long to acquire a shrewd idea how to deal with publishers, and a distinct understanding of the due privileges of an editor. His knowledge of these im- portant matters is shown conclusively in a letter to Bcntley, setting forth the terms on which he would be prepared to edit a new nautical magazine, a proposed imitation of, or rather rival to, the United Service Journal. " My terms," he says, with the confidence of a man who knew the market, and his own value in it, "would be as follows : The sole control of the work, for when I CAPTAIN MARR YA T. 01 do my best I must be despotic or I shall not succeed ; to be paid for all my writings at the price I received in the Metropolitan, sixteen guineas per sheet. The editor- ship I would then take at ;^4oo per annum until the end of the first year, when, if the work succeeded, I should expect an addition of ^too, and if it continued profitable, another ;^ioo, so as to raise the final pay of the editor to ;!^6oo per annum. The stipulations may be talked over afterwards. To choose my sub-editor is indispensable. He must be a nautical man." Marryat had learnt plainly how necessary it is to be captain of your own ship — and withal he quite understood how to launch the new kind of craft he was about to sail. " The first number must be most carefully got up, to insure: success, and the papers ought now to be in prepara- tion. You must, therefore, take but few days to decide, as I tell you honestly I have reason to expect the offer from another quarter, who are now talking the matter over, and I must be allowed to consider myself as unpledged to you after a short time." As it is not recorded that Marryat had, like Arthur Pendennis, any George Warrington to guide his literary beginnings, he deserves all the more credit for his spon- taneous appreciation of the advantage to be obtained by playing Bacon off against Bungay. "The offer from another quarter," which was thus quoted to hasten the decision of Mr. Bentley, was the editorshi[) of the Metropolitan, which he took in 1832, and held until he left England for Brussels. He either received as part payment, or purchased a proprietary right in the magazine, which he afterwards sold to Saunders ■62 Life of and Olley for ^1,050. For the next four or five years the Metropolitan had the major part of Marryat's time and work. He had, according to his wish, a nautical sub-editor, the E. Howard, wlio wrote that strange book, "Raltlin the Reefer," which still continues to becatalogued with Marryat's own stories. There were contributors to be hunted up — kept up to the mark, more or less successfully — and occasionally soothed down — Thomas Moore for one, who wrote in agony to insist on the necessity there was that he should see his proofs, and also to make monetary arrangements. Of course there were quarrels to be fought out, ft)r in those days no periodical was able to exist without its regular battle. But in the midst of these forgetable and forgotten things — Marryat con- tributed to the Metropolitan five of the best of his books. "Newton Forster " ap[)eared in 1832, "Peter Simple" in 1833 ; and in 1834 no less than three — "Jacob Faithful," " Mr. Midshipman Easy," and "Japhet in Search of a Father." Not a little of what, to apply nau- tical language, may be called dunnage appeared with and after these — a comedy, a tragedy (of neither of which does Marryat seem to have thought highly), and a host of miscellaneous papers collected under the title of " 011a Podrida " — these last being only what Marryat frankly called his "Diary on the Continent" — namely, "very good magazine stuff." His extraordinary industry in 1831 can l)e confidently accounted for by the need of money. \\\ 1833 he had taken effectual means to lighten his purse by standing for Parliament. The constituency chosen for the venture was the Tower Hamlets, and Marryat stood as a CAP'JA/N MARK VAT. 03 Reformer. Althougli the year immediately following the passing of the Reform Rill was as good a one as he could well have found in which to try in that character, he was not successful. His reforming zeal was possibly too purely naval for the constituency, and he was wanting in the very necessary readiness to say ditto to a popular fad. Marryat seems to have considered that his dislike of the press-gang was claim enough to the character of Liberal Reformer. But in the midst of profound peace the press-gang was not a burning grievance, and on some other points he took a line not likely to prove pleasing to the sentimental among the Liberals, for whose votes he was asking. He could not be got to show a burning interest in the sorrows of the slave. He took up the logically strong, but practically ineffective, position of the man who declined to be troubled for the slave while there was so much suffering unremedied at home. This might be a very sensible decision, but unfortunately it was discredited by the fact that it had been a favourite one with the slave-holders, whose tenderness for sufferers at home was never heard of till their own property in the West Indies seemed to be in danger. On another question, which proved a trying one to candidates till very recently, Marryat took a disastrously sensible course. He was called upon to give his opinion of the practice of flogging in the navy— and committed himself to the side of discipline most fatally. " Sir," he said to a heckler, who wanted to know whether the "gallant captain " would be capable of flogging him or his sons ; " Sir, you say the answer I gave you is not direct ; I will answer you again. If ever you, or one of your sons, 64 LIFE OF should come under my command, and deserve punish- ment, if there be no other effectual mode of conferring it, I shall flog you." After that it is not surprising to hear that " Captain Marryat and the Chairman left the room together, amidst a tumult of united applause and disapprobation" — in the midst, in fact, of an uproar, in which the part of the meeting which admired his pluck was engaged in shouting against the other part which detested his good sense. There was something of Colonel Newcome in tlie politics of Captain Marryat, and he had not the good fortune to contend against a Barnes Newcome. His parliamentary ambition had to take its place with the other schemes of his life which came to nothing. A plan for the establishment of brevet rank in the navy, which he sent in about this time to Sir James Graham, was part of his activity as a political naval officer. It also came to nothing, and nobody can well regret that it was still-born. After the misspent energy of 1833, Marryat had to make up by hard pen-work. He settled in Montpelier Villas, Western Road, Brighton, and there, in 1834, wrote his three books. The effort was a severe one, and he felt the effects later on, when fatigue, and possibly questions of money, had induced him to go abroad. He had not yet altogether given up thinking of Parliament — or, at least, if he had ceased hoping to sit as member, he kept up his correspondence with ministers (jn those naval affairs which he understood. He forwarded observations on the Merchant Shipping Bill of that year — one of our portentous list of shipping measures — to Sir James Graham. His volunteer help was well received, and the CA P TA IN MA RR YA T. 65 First Lord, one of the ablest men who ever was at the head of the department, invited him to come to White- hall and talk the Bill over. This invitation may be taken as a proof, among others, that if IMarryat remained unemployed, it was mainly by his own wish. He had already, by his \Yriting on the manning of the navy, and, in less public ways, shown that in professional matters, at least, he was an excellent man of business. Sir James Graham was not the man to have refused employment to an officer of proved ability if he had wished for it, but it is tolerably plain that Marryat had other irons of a more attractive kind, for the moment, in the fire. The particular iron which he had heating in Norfolk — the estate at Langham — was not likely to relieve him fromthe necessity of making every penny he could by his pen. "No rent," was his return in 1834, and as a rule ever after — till he took it in hand himself, and then it still realized him a steady yearly deficit. This year of '* no rent " was also a year of legal unpleasantness in connection with his father's memory — which he bore in a fashion to be recommended to the imitation of all who suffer from similar misfortunes. " As for the Chancellor's judg- ment," he wrote to his mother, who had plainly been hurt, " I cannot say I thought anything about it ; on the contrary, it appears to me that he might have been much more severe if he had thought proper. It is easy to impute motives, and difficult to disprove them. I thought, considering his enmity, that he let us off cheap, as there is no punishing a Chancellor, and he might say what he pleased with impunity. I did not, therefore, roar, I only smiled. The effect will be nugatory. Not 5 66 LIFE OF one in a thousand will read it ; those who do, know it refers to a person not in this world, and of those, those who knew my father will not believe it ; those who did not will care little about it, and forget the name in a week. Had he given the decision in our favour, I should have been better pleased, but it^s no use crying ; whafs done can't be helpea." With that piece of the philosophy of the elder Faithful, Marryat ends as neat a statement of reasons for not making a fuss, and as admirable an estimate of the relative unimportance of any man's private affairs in a busy world, as will be found by much searching. Next year Marryat was off in haste to the Continent. '* Not one day was our departure postponed ; with post horses and postillions, we posted, post haste, to Brussels." As is too commonly the case, Mrs. Ross Ciuirch has nothing to say as to the cause of this flight — and we are left to conclude that it was due to that desire to economize with dignity which has driven so many Englishmen to the same voluntary exile. At Brussels or at Spa he went on working for the Metropolitan. He cannot have edited it, but he sent in his " Diary on the Continent," and he wrote, in this year, "The Pirate" and " The Three Cutters," in which, for the first time, he had the advantage of being illustrated by Clarkson Stan field. With the Metropolitan his connection was coming to an end. In 1836 he returned to P2ngland, to get rid of his proprietary interest in it to Saunders and Otley, and to part with those publishers in a friendly manner — but to part decisively, on the ground that they would hear nothing of an advance for fresh work. The CAPTAIN MARK YA T. 67 Neiu Monthly was now his resource — at the increased rate of twenty guineas a sheet. To 1S36 belong " Snarley Yow " and " The Pasha of Many Tales,"— and also the beginning of that "Life of Lord Napier" which was never to be finished. In 1837 he had begun to feel the need of a change, the desire to break fresh ground, and in April, leaving his family at Lausanne, he started for the United States. His life during these two years of foreign residence may probably be fairly well realized by the reader who will give himself the pleasure to remember some parts of Thackeray and many parts of Lever. The Marryats must have formed part of that English colony on the Continent at the head of which marched the Marquess of Steyne, while Captain Rook and the Honourable Mr. Deuceace brought up the rear. It was a society much more merry than wise, and it is to be feared more easy than honest. Its -::embers lived abroad to escape some- thing — perhaps it was only restraint, perhaps it was the heavy bills of English tradesmen not yet reclaimed from the evil ways of long credit and high prices, sometimes it was the sheriff's-ofificer. Now and then it was only the English winter. That was the most wholesome reason ; but it was the least commonly genuine, and the most frequently assumed. In all that curious expatriated world there was something of the Cave of Adullam. It was often only the more pleasant on that account. Acquaintances matured quickly ; among people who were all more or less fugitives, it^ questions were asked; even Captain Rook and Mr. Deuceace were received without too much inquiry by people who 68 LIFE OF neither imitated nor liked all their ways. Now we are less strict at liome, and by a natural reaction more ciicumspect abroad. Besides railways keep people rolling, and have greatly broken up the old English colonies. Still even now there is a continental English society, less Bohemian than the old, but still somewhat free and easy, addicted as it were to living in its shirt sleeves, very pleasant to see, and to go through, but not at all good to be lived in for the moral man. During the thirties this Cave of Adullam was in full swing, crowded with refugees — not for political causes — with veterans of the old war intent on making pension and half-pay go as far as possible, and with pleasure-seeking people ready for any amusement (the cheaper the better), and not too exacting as to the moral qualities or social position of those with whom they were prepared to amuse themselves. Marryat with his abundant spirits, his faculty for story- telling, and his sufficient command of money, would naturally fall on his feet in this rather gypsy world. He spoke French fluently, and his wife, as the daughter of an English consul in Russia, would be at home in continental society. Once more it must be confessed that the details are wanting. Mrs. Ross Church says, that "to this hour " (she wrote in 1872) " many anec- dotes are related of him by the older residents at Brussels." Sadly few of them seem to have been collected, for Mrs. Ross Church can only muster two — neither, it must be confessed, very brilliant nor very honourable. According to the first, Marryat was asked to dinner to meet a company of celebrities and friends CAPTAIN MARR YA T. C9 of his own, in hopes that he would talk. He held his . tongue, and when asked whether he had been silent because he was bored, answered, "Why did you imagine I was going to let out any of my jokes for those fellows to put in their next books ? No, that is not my plan. When I find myself in such company as that, I open my ears and hold my tongue, glean all I can, and give them nothing in return." The story needs a good deal of explaining before the point of it becomes obvious; and unluckily the circumstances, which could alone explain it, are wanting. The fun, if there was any, was supphed (we must suppose) by the character of the person it was said to — and who was he? The other story contains a repartee— an awful repartee — a thing to be put in a collection of witticisms with the comment that "so and so smiled, but never forgave the jest." It is about the bridge of somebody's nose, and is not greatly inferior to the recorded jokes of Douglas Jerrold. There is little to be gleaned out of such reminiscences as these, which hardly reach the dignity of ' ' dead nettles " : neither do we gather much from a surviving letter to Mr. Osmond de Beau voir Priaulx about a debt of frs. 1250, owed to Marryat by R , a hopeless debt. '* I con- sider that if I have no better chance of heaven than of R 's 1250 francs, I am in a bad way. Both he and Z are evidently a couple of rogues. The only chance of obtaining the money from R is by telling him that I am coming to Paris as soon as I can, and that I shall expose him by publishing the whole affair, his letters, &c. ; and, moreover that you stroiv^ly suspect that it is my intention, independent of exposure, to break 70 LIFE OF cilery bone in his body on my arrival. He holds himself as a gentleman, being the son of some post-captain, and will not like that message, and may perhaps pay the money rather than incur the risk." Here obviously was a very pretty quarrel ; but who was R , and had he a case, and who was Mr. Osmond de Beauvoir Priaulx, and did any assault follow ? Who knows? and indeed who cares? The rest of the letter is full of scandal about capital letters and dashes. The sight of it only make one remember how much entirely unimportant trash contrives to survive in this world. All the scraps of knowledge about Marryat which have escaped destruction are not so unpleasant, though they are nearly as obscure, as that letter to Mr. Osmond de Beauvoir Priaulx. It is recorded that he gave parties and Christmas trees, that he looked after children well, and was a neat hand at packing a portmanteau, — qualities which must have made him the most tolerable of husbands and fathers on his travels. He was at all times tender-hearted with children, as befitted an author who ended by writing almost wholly for them ; and would quiet his own by telling them stories, when the rattling of carriages and diligences had made them fractious. A letter to his mother survives from these years which is worth quoting— not because it gives much information about his own life, but because it is kindly, and gives a very difterent picture of Marryat to that afforded by the threats against R , and the vapid scandal written to the gentleman with the handsome French name. CAPTAIN MARR YA T. 71 "Spa,/«/;^ 9, 1835. " My Dearest Mother, — It is dreadfully hot, and we are all gasping for breath. Kate is very unwell. She cannot walk now, and is obliged to go out in the carriage. Children thrive. As for me, I am teaching myself German, and writing a little now and then ' The Diary of a Blase : ' one part has appeared in the Metropolitan — very good magazine stuff. I have a fractional part of the gout in my middle right finger. Is it possible to make V a member of the Horticul- tural? He is very anxious, and he deserves it; the personal knowledge is the only difficulty ; but I know him, and I am part of you, and therefore you know him. Will that syllogism do ? We are as quiet here as if we were out of the world, and I like it. I wanted quiet to recover me. Since I have been here I have discovered what I fancy will be new in England — a variety of car- nation, with short stalks — the stalks are so short that the flowers do not rise above the leaves of the plant, and you have no idea how pretty they are ; they are all in a bush (? blush). There are two varieties here, belonging to a man, but he will not part with them. He says they are very scarce, and only to be had at Vervier, a town eight miles off. They are celebrated for flowers at Liege, but a flower-woman from Liege, to whom I showed them, said she had never seen them there ; so 1 presume the man was correct. Have you heard of them? By-the-by, you should ask V to send for some Ghent roses — they are extremely beautiful. I did give most positive orders that i""red should not go out unless with Mr. B — or one of the masters. He remained 72 LIFE OF CAPTAIN MARRY AT. three days in Paris, having escaped from the gentleman who had charge of him, and cannot, or will not, account for where he was, or what he did. He did not go to his school until his money was gone. He is at a dangerous age now, and must be kept close. AVrite me or Kate a long letter, telling us all the news. I intend to come home in October, or thereabouts ; but I must arrange according to Kate's manoeuvres. If she goes her time of course I must be with her, and then she will winter here, I have no doubt, as we cannot travel in winter with babies, nor indeed do I wish to ; as travelling costs a great deal of money — and I have none to spare. "God bless you, mamma. This is a famous place for your complaint, if it comes on again. The cures are miraculous. Love to Ellen. She sha'n't come German over me when we meet. I don't think I ever should have learnt it, only G gave himself such airs about it." The letter is not a masterpiece, but it is good-natured and wholesome. The "Fr.^d," who had been playing truant so enviably in Paris, was afterwards the Lieutenant Frederick Marryat who perished in the wreck of the Avenger, CHAPTER VI IT IS departure for America is a convenient date 1. at which to stop and survey Marryat's literary work. After 1837, he did some things as good as any- thing he had done before, and some at once unhke what he had already written, and yet excellent of their kind. "Poor Jack" and "Percival Keene" have touches of the old sea life, and flashes of fun, not inferior to his earlier writing. The "Phantom Ship" has a character of its own ; the children's stories of his last years are ex- cellent. All these are later than 1837. Still, if he had ceased to write entirely in that year, his place in literature would be as high as it is. We should have " The King's Own," " Peter Simple," " Mr. Midshipman Easy," " Japhet," " Jacob Faithful," and "Snarley Yow," and with these we should possess the best of him. In those eight busy years Marryat had poured out the harvest of his experience profusely. His beginning in literature had been singularly fortunate. The time was favourable to writers of any originality certainly. A brilliant magazine article made a reputation. There was a marked readiness to recognize ability and reward it. What amount of praise and pudding would be given in 74 LIFE OF these days for another essay on Milton it would be use- less to guess, but undoubtedly it could hardly be greater than the share which fell to Macaulay for his early effort. Carlyle made a place for himself by a few articles. The wind which blew for them blew for others also. As has almost always been the case in great literary periods, the readiness of the reader to recognize and admire was as strong as the productive power of the writer. The audience met the playwright half way. Sir Walter Scott had prepared the market for the novelist. He had enormously increased the taste for novels, and whoever could write at all was the surer of a hearing, because "Waverley" had made stories a necessity to readers. There is among the more atrabilious kind of men of letters a secret belief that the sum of popularity is a fixed quantity, of which whatever is earned by one man is neces- sarily lost by another. That one nation's gain is another's loss in commerce, was an accepted axiom with economists of the days of darkness before Adam Smith. It has been given up on maturer consideration, and is assuredly no more true in literature than international trade. A great writer who gains a great popularity increases the chance of the smaller men. Sir Walter and Jane Austen helped the Mrs. Meeke in whom Macaulay delighted. Marryat had profited amply by the opening. With great adaptability he had thrown himself into the literary fight of his time. As has been already said, he soon showed himself at home in the regular business of lite- rature — in writing for the press and in editing. To take the satisfactory though vulgar test of money, he was ai)lc to make his market, and put his price up. Nor CAP TAIN MARK YA T. 75 was he at all reluctant to insist on the value of his goods. "I do not," he said in 1837, "write for sixteen guineas a sheet now. I let them off for twenty guineas, as I do not wish to run them hard ; and I now have commenced with the Neiv Monthly at that rate for one year certain, and the copyright secured to me. Times are hard, and I do not wish to break the backs of the publishers, although I ride over them roughshod. I have also made very much better terms for my books. 'Snarley Yow,' comes out on the ist of June. I have parted very amicably with Saunders and Otley, who would not stand an ad- vance. I will make hay when the sun shines ; for every dog has his day, and I presume my time will come as that of others." Twenty guineas a sheet was the exceptional price which Fraser was paying Carlyle in those very years, and was five guineas above the usual rate. Obviously here was a gentleman who knew that business was business. With this determination to make the last penny there was to make, he naturally contributed his chapter to the history of the quarrels of authors with their publishers. "Although Captain Marryat," says his daughter, "and his publishers mutually benefited by their transactions with each other, one would have imagined from the letters exchanged between them that they had been natural enemies." It is a mistake which is not uncom- mon in these transactions, and particularly likely to arise when, as in this case, a publisher frankly tells the author that he thinks him "eccentric," and an "odd creature," and adds that he is himself " somewhat warm-tempered." Who the particular publisher was who sent these pieces 76 LIFE OP of criticism and self-criticism to Marryat we are not told. The answer he received might supply a clue to the Mar- ryatist who was prepared to follow it up with the proper devotion. " There was no occasion for you to make the admis- sion that you were somewhat warm-tempered. Your letter establishes the fact. Considering your age, you are a little volcano, and if the insurance were aware of your frequent visits to the Royal Exchange, they would demand double premium for the building. Indeed, I have my surmises notv as to the last conflagration. " Your remark as to the money I have received may sound very well, mentioned as an isolated fact ; but how does it sound when it is put into juxtaposition with the sums you have received ? I, who have found everything, receiving a pittance ; while you, who have found nothing but the shop to sell in, receiving such a lion's share. I assert again, it is slavery. I am Sinbad the Sailor, and you are the Old Man of the Mountain {sic) clinging on my back, and you must not be surprised at my wishing to throw you off the first convenient opportunity. " The fact is, you have the vice of old age very strong upon you, and you are blinded by it ; but put the ques- tion to your sons, and ask them if they consider the present agreement fair. Let them arrange with me, and do you go and read your Bible. We all have our own ideas of Paradise, and if other authors think like me, the more pleasurable portion of anticipated bliss is thar CAPTAIN MARK YA T. 77 there will be no publishers there. That idea often sup- ports me after an interview with one of your fraternity." Author and publisher told one another "their fact" plainly enough in this case, and one rather wonders what lies hid under the asterisks. In the absence of informa- tion as to the proportion in which they respectively shared the profits of the stories written before 1837, one cannot undertake to say whether the unnamed publisher of fiery temper, advanced age, and small stature, received a lion's share or not. If so, it must have represented a handsome sum, for Marryat was by no means one of the worst treated of authors. Colburn gave him ;^4oo for " Frank Mildmay." For " Mr. Midshipman Easy " he received ;^i,4oo, apparently in a lump sum. "The Pirate " and " The Three Cutters," published together, brought him in jQl^o. His other books were paid on the same scale, and he certainly did not edit the Metro- politan for nothing. His code of signals, which was not literature (and perhaps on that account only the more lucrative), was an appreciable income to him throughout his life. On the whole, Marryat seems to have found the profession of author sufficiently remunerative. His indignation with his publishers may be safely taken to be mainly a proof that, in common with most writing-men of his generation, he was a firm believer in the creed that authors are an ill-used body. This is no longer quite so orthodox as it was. The wind is rather blowing the other way, and it is becoming the right thing to say that authors have themselves to thank for their ill-luck if they do not earn as much as they ought, and must bear 78 LIFE OF the burden like their fellow-men if they spend more than they earn. This good sense may corrupt into a cant as others have done, but it is good sense. Marryat— who would appear to have made three thousand pounds or so ill 1835, for taking "Mr. Midshipman Easy" and the other two stories, with his copyrights and editorship, he can hardly have made less — was in any case not an example of an ill-paid author. If he had to complain of want of money it must have been because he was a gentleman of extravagant habits, with a fatal weakness for bad investments. To be sure, if an author were to be paid according to the pleasure he has given others, and if " the shop " which makes a profit on selling his work had to render some royalty on it for ever and ever, then indeed was Marryat, together with all those whose work is of the widely-read and lasting order, ill rewarded. But insuperable difficulties bar the road to that ideal. Since paper, printing, and advertisements nmst be pro- vided, the provider of these necessary things must share ; since the novelist cannot hawk his own goods in a bar- row, he must pay somebody to do it for him ; since the world's copyright laws put a limit on the duration of pro- prietary right in books, there must come a time when they are at any man's disposal to reprint. In the long run the balance of profit must needs be in favour of the shop. To be sure, the nation of authors may console itself by reflecting that it has its revenge. There is much on which the shop makes no gain, first or last. The first of Marryat's books is one which, for reasons very neatly stated by himself, may stand apart from the others. When he had given it three successors, he CAPTAIN MARR VA T. 79 thought fit lo publish a proclamation on the subject of his work in the Metropolitan, and in that document he described " Frank Mildmay " as fairly as any honest critic could do for him. " 'The Naval Officer ' was our first attempt, and it having been our first attempt must be offered in extenuation of its many imperfections ; it was written hastily, and before it was complete we were appointed to a ship. We cared much about our ship and little about our book. Th2 first was diligently taken charge of by ourselves ; the second was left in the hands of others, to get on how it could. Like most bantlings put out to nurse, it did not get on very well. As we happen to be in the com- municative vein, it may be as well to remark that being written in the autobiographical style, it was asserted by good-natured friends, and believed in general, that it was a history of the author's own life. Now, without pre- tending to have been better than we should have been in our earlier days, we do most solemnly assure the public that, had we run the career of vice of the hero of * The Naval Officer,' at all events, we should have had suffi- cient sense of shame not to have avowed it. Except the hero and the heroine, and those parts of the work which supply the slight plot of it as a novel, the work in itself is materially true, especially in the narrative of sea adventure, most of which did (to the best of our recol- lection) occur to the author. . . . The 'confounded licking ' we received for our first attempt in the critical notices is probably well known to the reader — at all events we have not forgotten it. Now, with some, this 80 LIFE OF severe castigation of their first ofiencc would have had the effect of their never offending again; but we felt that our punishment was rather too severe ; it produced indignation instead of contrition, and we determined to write again in spite of all the critics in the universe : and in the due course of nine months we produced 'The King's Own.' In ' The Naval Officer ' we had sowed all our wild oats, we had paid off those who had ill-treated us, and we had no further personality to indulge in." From wliich, even if internal evidence were not enough to prove it, we learn that, between the paying off of the Tees and the commissioning of the Ariadne^ Marryat decided to have a general jail delivery of his old naval enemies, and that the result was " Frank Mild- may ; or, The Naval Officer." It cannot be said that the book is better than its origin. If Marryat had kept the promise he made in this proclamation of his to the readers of the Aletropolitaii — if he had re-written this so- called novel, he might, had he taken the right course, have made it one of the best of his works. He had only to make it an autobiography without disguise, to put in the good as well as the evil of his experience, to take care to explain everything to his readers, as he could well have done, and he would have given English literature a thing altogether unique — a naval memoir. We are not rich in memoirs, at least, not in good ones. The English hand is unhappy at that work. A man has only to turn to Ludlow, or Sir Philip Warwick, to see how lamentably little P'nglishmen of parts who lived through the most wonderful things could contrive to CAPTAIN MARRYAT. 81 bring away with them— how Httle at least of the Hfe, the colour, the dramatic swing of it all. Of the few we can show, which are not unfit to stand with the Frenchmen, Clarendon, Pepys, Colley Gibber, Evelyn (and four or five others), none were of the sea. " Cochrane's Autobio- graphy" may be quoted against me, but even this, good as it is in places, is drowned in angry denunciations of human wickedness, and demonstrations that this or the other thing ought to have been done by official backsliders, so that what Cochrane did himself is almost crowded out. Besides, it is only a fragment, and then reste a savoir s'il n'est pas viort It has not lived. One may, and must, use it for the history of the man and the time, but who reads it for its intrinsic literary merit? The French seamen have the better of us there. The memoirs of Forbin, of Duguay-Trouin, and even the recently pub- lished journal of a much less famous man, Jean Doublet, are capital reading. Marryat might, if he had so pleased, have done a book which would have been to the memoirs of Forbin what the memoirs of Clarendon are to the memoirs of Sully, to adopt the formula dear to Lord Macaulay. He might have done what Sir Walter Scott praised Basil Hall for attempting — have given in autobiographical form a picture of sea life, which would have been interesting, not only to those who already love the subject, but to all who love good reading. He did not so choose. He carried out his mission in another form, and " Frank Mildmay " remained as it first appeared. That the book was so much of an autobiography was a misfortune for Marryat. He might protest as much as he pleased that he was not Frank Mildmay, and had not 6 82 LIFE OF run a career of vice, but the impression left by the book was and is disagreeable. Why should a man attribute his own adventures to a tiger? Now, Frank Mildmay is a tiger — a very insolent, callous, young cub. It shows Marryat to have been very inexperienced indeed that he should have made such a mistake. He must have known that the adventures would be recognized. The naval world is a small one, and an exclusive. Naval officers live together by choice on shore as they do by lecessity at sea. Everything written about the pro- fession is talked over, and interpreted, when interpretation is needed. Every incident in "Frank Mildmay" was no doubt recognized at once ; and when it was found that the things that had happened to the hero of the story were the adventures of the author, it is not to be wondered at that the two were thought to be also identical in character. Marryat, in fact, committed with himself the very error of judgment into which Dickens was led with Leigh Hunt, when he made Harold Skimpole a rascal, in order to prove tliat he was not a caricature of his friend. But there is something more than inexperience and error of judgment about "The Naval Officer." Marryat can hardly have seen what a bad fellow he had drawn. Frank Mildmay has not only those "sins of the devil," which may be worse, but are more dignified, than the sins of men — he errs not only by " pride and rebellion," but he is a mean scamp; and I am afraid that Marryat did not see it. He was as blind to the faults of his bantling as Smollett was to the ruffianism of Roderick Random, or Fielding to the very vulgar inferiority of Tom Jones. Criticism seems to have opened his eyes, CAPTAIN MARK YA T. 83 and little as he liked the lesson, he took the warning; but it was only for a time. Unfortunately he fell back on it. Pcrcival Keenc is just such another — a very low fellow, with a kind of wild boar courage. It would appear that Marryat did not see some things as plainly as one could wish he had done. It is unnecessary to insist on the faults of construction in a book which belonged to an altogether bastard genre. AVhat merits it had — and they were sufficient to give promise of a brilliant novelist — were to be repeated in other books much more pleasant, and much more capable of rei)aying examination. The other nine books which Marryat published in these seven years were " wholly fictitious in characters, in plot, and in events," to quote his own words. In fact, they were stories, and what truth there is in them was not crudely taken from memory, but adapted and fitted into its place. The essential accuracy of the picture they give of sea life has never been questioned, at least it has never been challenged on serious grounds. It is undoubtedly the case that critics of a certain well- known stamp have been known to complain that no such series of adventures as these stories contain were ever known to occur, and that the daily life of a midshipman is not so amusing as Mr. Easy's, nor so varied as Peter Simple's. A criticism which only amounts to this — that the stories are stories, and not log-books, need hardly be seriously answered. Sailors read them, and always have read them. They are as popular in the American Naval School as they have been among English boys. To the skill with which the stories were built, less justice Hi LIFE OF has been done. It has always, as it were, been taken for granted that Marryat owed everything to his expe- rience as a seaman, and that, except in so far as he had seen things which other men had not seen, he was not of the race of novehsts whose work lives. Now this is heresy. In truth, the sea life owes more to Marryat than he to the sea. No one meets Mr. Easy, or Terence O'Brien, or Mr, Chucks, or Mr. Vanslyperken in this commonplace world. He meets something out of which they may be made. Uncjuestionably his experience was of inestimable value to Marryat — as all exceptional expe- rience is to all novelists. At the very beginning of his career he was complimented by Washington Irving on his good luck. " You have a glorious field before you, and one in which you cannot have many competitors, as so very few unite the author to the sailor." No doubt it was Marryat's happiness that he had so good a Sparta to cultivate — but, after all, the result was primarily due to the skill of the cultivator. Speaking as one who has a full share of the good English taste for reading about the things of the sea, I am inclined to maintain that few kinds of books are more tedious than sea stories which ask to be read and enjoyed simply because they are sea stories. Battle, and storm, and shipwreck may be poured out on you, and yet leave you cold. These things by themselves in fiction are ca[)ab]e of being as tiresome as the once l)revalent detective, or now popular religious disputations. To compare the stock sea story with the great books of travel — with Dampier, or with Anson's Voyage, or with Basil Ringrose— would be unfair. We do not need to compare the best of one kind with the worst of another. CAPTAIN MARK YA T. 85 • But they will not stand reading even with Captain Hacke's dingy little compilation, or with the long-winded journal of Woodes Rogers. The reality of the latter is some compensation for their undoubted dulness. At least in reading them one knows that one is looking at a strange old life told by the men who lived it. When taken by a workman and badly used, the adventures these actual adventurers passed through and recorded become merely, badly used material. A painter was once shown the scrawlings of a youtliful prodigy who had been covering paper with pictures of ships and sailors. He was asked whether these works did not show a genius for art. " No," said the judicious artist, " the boy has been reading sea stories, and his head is full of them. He draws because he likes the things, not because he loves drawing." The verdict stated a great critical truth— and, however unpleasant it may be to prodigies to learn that taste and faculty are not identical, and that they must rely on their power of interpreting their subject, and not on the subject itself, it is the case, nevertheless. Now with Marryat the faculty was always equal to the fusing and managing of the materials. In "Japhet," where he does not touch the sea at all, he has yet con- trived to impart life and interest to his puppets and their doings. It may stand by " Con Cregan " in the long list of stories which began with "Guzman de Alfarache," and includes " Moll Flanders " and "Peregrine Pickle." In this case Marryat's best knowledge was not available, and he had to rely on his power of re-using well-worn mate- rials. Where his experience and his ability combined, he attained to a very considerable degree of narrative skill. 86 LIFE OF Whether he had trained himself by early reading or not (and indeed there is nothing to show that he was a reader), he had early command of a very admirable narrative style. It might be plausibly maintained that this was a heritage among seamen. There is nothing in English literature at once more simple, more manly, more perfectly adequate to its purpose than the language of Dampier. In Marryat's own time this power had not been lost by English seamen. The navy may have been a rough school, but there was nothing in its training which made men unable to use the pen, and use it well. As an example of flowing, and also perfectly unaffected, description, the account of the battle of the Nile, given by Captain Miller, of the Theseus^ is without fault. It deserves a place of honour in every collection of Eng- lish letters. The beauty of CoUingwood's letters is acknowledged even by those who have thought fit to carp at his character. Marryat brought this style to his literary work, and kept it unchanged to the end. It is a style in which there is no straining. Marryat never had recourse, as his contemporary, Michael Scott, was wont, to capital letters, italics, and broken lines when he wished to impress his readers. He never appears even to have been particularly anxious to impress. When a wreck or a battle comes in his way, it is told as Captain Miller might have told it. Therefore it has its effect, and convinces you, as the narrative of the battle of the Nile does, that the thing described had been seen, had been lived through. The most famous of his passages — the club-hauling of the Dioinede^ the fight with the Russinn frigate in " Mr. Midshipman Easy " — the CA P TA IN MA RRYAT. 87 destruction of the French liner at the end of " The King's Own" — are too long for quotation; but in "Peter Simple" there is one which is of not unmanageable length, and which shows the qualities of his writing at their best. It is the account of the hurricane which threw Peter on the coast of St. Pierre : — " In half an hour 1 shoved off with the boats. It was now quite dark, and I pulled towards the harbour of St. Pierre. The heat was excessive and unaccountable ; not the slightest breath of wind moved in the heavens, or below ; no clouds to be seen, and the stars were obscured by a sort of mist : there appeared a total stagnation in the elements. The men in the boats pulled off their jackets, for after a few moments' pulling, they could bear them no longer. As we pulled in, the atmosphere be- came more opaque, and the darkness more intense. We supposed ourselves to be at the mouth of the harbour, but could see nothing, not three yards a-head of the boat. Swinburne, who always went with me, was steering the boat, and I observed to him the unusual appearance of the night. " ' I've been watching it, sir,' replied Swinburne, ' and I tell you, Mr. Simple, that if we only knew how to find the brig, I would advise you to get on board of her immediately. She'll want all her hands this night, or I'm much mistaken.' " ' Why do you say so ? ' replied I. " ' Because I think, nay, I may say that I'm sartain, we'll have a hurricane afore morning. It's not the first time I've cruised in these latitudes. I recollect in '94 ' 88 LIFE OF " But I interrupted him. 'Swinburne,! believe that you are right. At all events I'll turn back ; perhaps we may reach the brig before it comes on. She carries a light, and we can find her out.' I then turned the boat round, and steered, as near as I could guess, for where the brig was lying. But we had not pulled out more than two minutes, before a low moaning was heard in the atmosphere — now here, now there — and we appeared to be pulling through solid darkness, if I may use the expression. Swinburne looked around him, and pointed out on the starboard bow. " ' It's a coming, Mr. Simple, sure enough ; many's the living being that will not rise on its legs to-morrow. See, sir.' " I looked, and dark as it was, it appeared as if a sort of black wall was sweeping along the water right towards us. The moaning gradually increased to a stunning roar, and then at once it broke upon us with a noise to which no thunder can bear a comparison. The sea was per- fectly level, but boiling, and covered witli a white foam, so that we appeared in the night to be floating on milk. The oars were caught by the wind with such force, that 'he men were dashed forward under the thwarts, many of them severely hurt. Fortunately, we pulled with tholes and pins ; or the gunwales and planks of the boat would have been wrenched off, and we should have foundered. The wind soon caught the boat on her broadside, and, had there been the least sea, would have inevitably thrown her over ; but Swinburne put the helm down, and she fell off before the hurricane, darting through the boiling water at the rate of ten miles an CA P TAIN MARK YA T. 89 hour. All hands were aghast ; they had recovered their seats, but were obliged to relinquish them, and sit down at the bottom, holding on by the thwarts. The terrific roaring of the hurricane prevented any communication except by gesture. The other boats had disappeared ; lighter than ours, they had flown away faster before the sweeping element ; but we had not been a minute before the wind, before the sea rose in a most unaccountable manner — it appeared to be by magic. " Of all the horrors that ever I witnessed, nothing could be compared to the scene of this night. We could see nothing, and heard only the wind, before which we were darting like an arrow, to where we knew not, unless it were to certain death. Swinburne steered the boat, every now and then looking back as the waves increased. In a few minutes we were in a heavy swell, that at one minute bore us all aloft, and at the next almost sheltered us from the hurricane; and now the atmosphere was charged with showers of spray, the wind cutting off the summits of the waves, as if with a knife, and carrying it along with it, as it were, in its arms. "The boat was filling with water, and appeared to settle down fast. The men baled with their hats in silence, when a large wave culminated over the stern, filling us up to our thwarts. The next moment we all received a shock so violent, that we were jerked from our seats. Swinburne was thrown over my head. Every timber of the boat separated at once, and she appeared to crumble from under us, leaving us floating on the raging waters. We all struck out for our lives, but with little hope of preserving them ; but the next wave washer! 00 LIFE OF us on tlie rocks, against whicli the boat had already been hurled. That wave gave life to some, and death to others. Me, in Heaven's mercy, it preserved : I was thrown so high up, that I merely scraped against the top of the rock, breaking two of my ribs. Swinburne, and eight more, escaped with me, but not unhurt ; two had their legs broken, three had broken arms, and the others were more or less contused. Swinburne miraculously received no injury. We had been eighteen in the boat, of which ten escaped : the others were hurled up at our feet; and the next morning we found them dreadfully mangled. One or two had their heads literally shattered to pieces against the rocks. I felt that I was saved, and was grateful ; but still the hurricane howled — still the waves were washing over us. I crawled further up upon the beach, and found Swinburne sitting down with his eyes directed seaward. He knew me, took my hand, squeezed it, and then held it in his. For some moments we remained in this position, when the waves, which every moment increased in volume, washed up to us, and obliged us to crawl further up. I then looked around me : the hurricane continued in its fury, but the atmosphere was not so dark. I could trace for some distance the line of the harbour, from the ridge of foam upon the shore : and for the first time I thought of O'Brien and the brig. I put my mouth close to Swin- burne's ear, and cried out, 'O'lJricn!' Swinburne shook his head, and looked up again at the offing. I thought whether there was any chance of the brig's escape. She was certainly six, if not seven miles off, and the hurricane was not direct on the shore. She C/1 P TA IN ^ J A RR YA T. 91 might have a drift of ten miles, perhaps ; but what was that against such tremendous power ? " Now this might have come straight from another Dampier. There is no attempt to convince you of the force of the hurricane by laborious descriptions of what it looked like. It is shown to be awful by the effect it produces. The sentences go rapidly on. Their very simplicity helps to convey the impression of the sudden- ness and overwhelming fury of the storm. The effect would have been lost if the writer had stopped to talk. The style seems to me to be the perfection of prose, for a tale of adventure — the straightforward, almost collocpu'al report of one who has gone through it all, carried to its very, best — made into literature without being obtrusively literary. As the style is, so are the stories. A natural tact seems to have told Marryat when he had gone far enough in search of the strange. His heroes lead lives that are possible. He might, if he had chosen, have rivalled Michael Scott's wondrous pirates. Once, indeed, in " Percival Keene," he actually did it, but, as a rule, his pirate is a conceivable good-for-nothing rather cowardly blackguard, such as came in the natural course of things to swing at Kingston or at Execution Dock. Even Cain himself, "The Pirate," is within the bounds of probability as compared with the wondrous Spanish Americans, or astounding Scotch gentlemen of superhuman wickedness, who flourish in " Tom Cringle's Log," and the " Cruise of the Midge.'' Neither do incidents of the wilder and more horrific kind appear in Marryat's books. There 92 LIFE OF is nothing in him, for instance, like that scene of the " Midge in the Hornets' nest," which may, by the way, be commended to the attention of critics who think that blood and horror have been recently imported into romance by a generation which is supposed to have been corrupted by the French taste of the decadence. The adventures of Marryat's heroes might possibly and even probably have befallen an officer of his time. Of construction, except such as was imposed by an instinctive desire to make the incidents follow one another in some sort of natural sequence, there is little or no sign. \Mien, as in " Peter Simple," he tries to fit one on to his story, it is no addition to the merits of the book. Who cares a straw for Peter's wicked uncle, for the changing of the children, or for the unravelling of the very transparent mystery ? It is too obvious that Marryat took these things at random from the common fund of the Minerva Pre.^s. AVhat he took from nobody was his fun. After all, it is this fun which is the living element in Marryat's work. Wit, or humour of the highest class, he cannot be said to have possessed, though he was by no means destitute of the sympathy which is insepa- rable from all true humour. The sketch of the mate, Martin, in "Midshipman Easy," is a sufficient defence against the charge of want of feeling, if, indeed, it had ever been made. Many who have had a more visible anxiety to be pathetic than Marryat have failed to draw so touching a figure as this slight outline of the melan- choly officer, in whom the disappointments of years have crushed all hope, without hardening or souring him. CAPTAIN MARRYAT. 93 " No, no," said the mate, when his acting order as lieutenant was brought him as he lay wounded in his hammock, " I knew very well that I never should be made. If it is not confirmed, I may live ; but if it is, I am sure to die." And die he does, because hope deferred has dried up the spring of hfe within him. In the character of Mr. Chucks kindness and fun are mingled. He is respectable in spite of his absurdities, and lovable because of them. In the Dominie in " Jacob Faithful " there is an effort to produce a second Mr. Chucks, but it is not successful. He is too plainly a reminiscence of another Dominie— a fairly well-done copy, but only a copy. For the most part the fun of Marryat belongs to the grotesque order. This, unques- tionably, is not the highest. But what is not the highest may yet be genuine, and thai Marryat's fun, as the world has now recognized for half a century, undoubtedly is. His gallery of "figures of fun" is a long one. Peter Simple in the days before Terence O'Brien made a man of him ; Jack Easy before he had been converted from a belief in the equality of all men ; in a rougher way his father; Mr. Muddle; and, above all, Mr. Chucks, have an intrinsic comic vis. The fun which they make, or which goes on about them, is never mere horse-play. They are not mannikins of the stamp of Smollett's Pallet, created only to be knocked about, and to make grimaces, but possible, and even probable, human beings — a little distorted, a little exaggerated, put frequently into such positions as are more fit for farce than comedy, but not on that account ceasing to be real. 94 LIFE OF " Mr. Sniallsolc's violence made Mr. Biggs violent, which made the boatswain's mate violent — and the captain of the forecastle violent also ; all which is prac- tically exemplified by philosophy in the laws of motion, communicated from one body to another ; and as Mr. Smallsole swore, so did the boatswain swear. Also the boatswain's mate, the captain of the forecastle, and all the men — showing the force of exani[)le. " Mr. Smallsole came forward. "'Damnation, INlr. Biggs, what the devil are you about ? Can't you move here ? ' " ' As much as we can, sir,' replied the boatswain, 'lumljered as tlie forecastle is with idlers.' And here Mr. Biggs looked at our hero and Mesty, who were standing against the bulwark. " ' What are you doing here, sir ? ' cried Mr. Small- sole to our hero. " 'Nothing at all, sir,' replied Jack. "'Then I'll give you something to do, sir. Go up to the mast-head, and wait there till I call you down. Come, sir, I'll show you the way,' continued the master, walking aft. Jack followed till they were on the quarter- deck. "'Now, sir, up to the maintop gallant masthead; perch yourself upon the cross-trees — up with you.' " ' What am I to go up there for, sir ? ' inquired Jack. " ' For punishment, sir,' replied the master. " ' What have I done, sir ? ' "'No reply, sir — up with you.' " ' If you please, sir,' replied Jack, ' I should wish to argue this point a little.' CAPTAIN MARK YA T. 95 " ' Argue the point ! ' roared Mr. Smallsole — 'by Jove, I'll teach you to argue the pouit — away with you, sir.' "'If you please, sir,' continued Jack, 'the captain told me that the articles of war were the rules and regulations by which every one in the service was to be guided. Now, sir,' said Jack, ' I have read them over till I know them by heart, and there is not one word of mast-heading in the whole of them.' Here Jack took the articles out of his pocket and unfolded them. " ' Will you go to the mast-head, sir, or will you not ? ' said Mr. Smallsole. " ' Will you show me the mast-head in the articles of war, sir? ' replied Jack ; ' here they are.' " * I tell you, sir, to go to the mast-head : if not, I'll be d d if I don't hoist you up in a bread-bag.' " ' There's nothing about bread-bags in the articles of war, sir,' replied Jack ; ' but I'll tell you what there is, sir ; ' and Jack commenced reading, — " ' All flag-ofificers, and all persons in or belonging to his majesty's ships or vessels of war, being guilty of pro- fane oaths, execrations, drunkenness, uncleanness, or other scandalous actions, in derogation of God's honour, and corruption of good manners, shall incur such punish- ment as ' " ' Damnation ! ' sried the master, who was mad with rage, hearing that the whole ship's company were laughing. " ' No, sir, not damnation,' replied Jack ; * that's when he's tried above ; but according to the nature and degree of the oftence.' " ' Will you go to the mast-head, sir, or will you not ? 96 LIFE OF " ' If you please,' replied Jack, ' I'd rather not.* " ' Then, sir, consider yourself under an arrest. I'll try you by a court-martial, by God. Go down below, sir. "'With the greatest pleasure, sir,' replied Jack; 'that's all right and according to the articles of war, which are to guide us all.' Jack folded up his articles of war, put them into his pocket, and went down into the berth." Here is farce, but farce which almost borders on comedy. Given Jack Easy with his natural pluck and his absurd training, suddenly put into a man-of-war, and set to reconcile the practice of the service with the ideal picture of it presented by the articles of war, and this is precisely what might be expected to happen. The ab- surdity always arises from the clash of the characters; and though it be farce, it is farce of the highest order. Rarely does the grotesque lean to the horrible. The death of Mr. Vanslyperken is a case in which it does ; but Marryat was, for the most part, content to amuse, and to amuse only. How well he succeeded we all know. Which of us has not laughed with him ever since we were boys ? Mr. Chucks stands between Commodore Trunnion and Mr. Micawber. The scene I have quoted above, and a dozen others, live by the side of Pipe's journey to the garrison with the nymph of the road. The adventures in battle and wreck are very good, but they are not the best. Romance of the brilliant order Marryat did not often try, and when he did, he was at best but mode- rately successful. He was more of the race of Defoe CAPTAIN MARK YA T. 97 than of Dumas. But from Dcfoc, over whom no man ever lauglied, he was divided by his love of laughter, and power of drawing it forth. His fun may be often mere animal spirits, but at least it was spon- taneous, and was by natural instinct literary. He did not toil and labour to be funny. Even in his most hasty work he would hit off a scene with neat pen-strokes, marking just enough and no more. Take, for instance, the revenue officers in "The Three Cutters." Lieutenant Appleboy and his companions are introduced simply because he had seen them, and as much for his own amusement as his readers. Marryat had seen the types when he was doing preventive work himself in the Rosario, and drew tliem out of his memory when he needed them. Some of his figures were doubtless por- traits — all of them had possibly some touch of por- traiture. But on his paper they have an interest alto- gether independent of their originals. There are, as Mr. Sainlsbury, speaking of the personalities of Daudet, has said, two ways of drawing portraits in literature. The first is to adapt your sitter into somebody else whom we love for his own sake. The second is to give us an image for which we should care but little if it was not meant for A or B. Of these two methods Marryat took the first. If there was an original to Terence O'Brien we should like to have known him ; but, whether or not, we like Terence for his own sake. Was there a boatswain in His Majesty's Service who stood for ]\Ir. Chucks ? Possibly ; but what then? In Marryat's stories are types as well as individuals. They and their doings have an independent universal truth. 7 CHAPTER VII. WHEN Marryat was about to start for the United States he gave a reason of some gravity for his proposed trip. The last words of the " Diary on the Con- tinent " propound a serious question : " Do the faults of this people (to wit, the Swiss) arise from the peculiarity of their constitutions, or from the nature of their govern- ment? To ascertain this, one must compare them with those who live under similar institutions. I must go to America — that's decided." A biographer of any virtue will desire to be inspired with the Boswellian spirit — to write as loyally as Macaulay did of Addison — but I can- not quite believe that Marryat's visit to America was caused by a sudden passion for the study of comparative pohtics, and the influence of institutions on national character. A more plausil)lc explanation could be found. It was excellently given by the elder Mr. Weller in the course of some remarks made for the benefit of Mr. Pickwick. To write a book about America was a favourite enterprise with literary persons in those years. Miss Martineau and Mrs. TroUope had just done it, and there was no reason why Marryat should not do it also. A taste for seeing the world may have helped to turn LIFE OF CAPTAIN MARRY AT. 99 his activity in that direction, and, besides he was, as will be seen, on the lookout for promising speculations, and may have had some thoughts on copyright. Possibly none of these motives were very clear to himself, and he may really have thought he was going to study American institutions. Moved by sufificient motives, whether the alleged or the unconsciously felt, he did go to America by the packet Quebec in 1837, did stay there for two years, and write a book about the States in six volumes, and two series. Of this book it may be said, in a favourite phrase of the writer whom Marryat described as " Mr, Carlisle, the author of ' Sartor Resartus ' " (a slip which was dreadfully avenged), that " it is forgetable." Marryat's diary and remarks show that he would have made an excellent newspaper correspondent. He had a faculty for getting up information, a quick eye, and a ready pen. With these qualities a man can easily make "copy " out of a visit to a new country. Indeed, Marryat was no novice at the work, for which his " Diary on the Continent " had pre- pared him. When his six volumes on America are judged as what they were, they are on the whole credit- able. He made the Americans very angry, but that it was never difficult to do. He had provocation to write more bitterly than he did. But whatever may be the merits of, or the excuses for, the thing, it is hardly worth while to return to "newspaper correspondence" at the end of half a century. Unless the correspondent has seen history in the making, and has noted it well so as to become an original authority, he can hardly hope to be read two generations or so later on. The worst of it, 100 LIFE OF too, is that Marryat saw something which was well worth recording, and did not record it properly. A large part of his book is taken up with contradicting Miss Martineau ; and who can rejoice in the refutation of an almost for- gotten book by a still more forgotten book ? The incidents of the visit form an interesting passage in Marryat's life. He reached New York in the midst of the great financial smash of 1837, and saw the "Empire City" in all the excitement of panic. He stayed in America till after the suppression of the Canadian rising, and himself took part in the fighting. Of course he had a newspaper controversy — and it was of a kind suffi- ciently honourable to himself. When he first landed Marryat seems to have been well received, though with a certain reserve. By reserve is not to be understood any- thing so absurd as that he was left alone. On the con- trary, he was abundantly overwhelmed with inquiry and comment. But the Americans were then in the midst of one of the sorest of their sore fits with foreign comment, and were (not quite unjustifiably) on their guard against travellers who came to spy out the land, and make a book about it. They were not averse to comment, but they were anxious that it should not only be favourable, but of exactly that kind of favourableness of which they approved. Therefore they were intent to know whether Marryat meant to write about them, and, if so, what he meant to say. He extricated himself from the difficulty dexterously enough, and, on the whole, succeeded in keep- ing on friendly terms with his hosts. As a matter of course, American copyright institutions, and their effect on the national character of the publisher, had their share CAPTAIN MARRYAT. 101 of his attentions. In this respect, also, his experiences were pleasing enough in America. He was working in the intervals of observation. For American consumption he wrote a play, " The Ocean Waif ; or, The Channel Outlaw," which appeared at a New York theatre ; and he was moreover engaged on "The Phantom Ship." In 1838 he made an arrangement with Messrs. Carey and Hart to sell them " proof sheets of his ' Diary in America' and 'Phantom Ship,' a month prior to their pubhcation in London, for the sum of two thousand two hundred and fifty dollars ; and provided no one else published the works in America within thirty days from the date they issued from their press, a further sum of two hundred and fifty dollars." Whether pirate enter- prise deprived him of the extra sum needed to make up the round two thousand five hundred, does not appear, but at least Marryat, with his usual turn for business, contrived to get something out of America for the amusement he had given it. A letter to his mother, pleasant and manly as all his letters to her were, gives a sufficient picture of the first part of his stay in America. " October, 1837. " My dearest Mother, — I have been so occupied and I have been moving about so fast that I really have had time to write to hardly anybody, and I [mt off a letter to you till I had a more quiet moment ; but as it appears that moment was never to come, I now write to you on board of a steamer on Lake Erie. You have, of course, heard from the Tuckers [these were his 102 LIFE OF cousins on his mothei's side] that I went up to Boston for a few days to see some of them ; indeed all except Mrs. C and Mr. Tucker himself, who was mending his bridge, and could not leave his work ; they were all very kind, but I like poor Mrs. G better than any of tliem, " I have since been a tour of the lakes, and have travelled some thousand miles. I went up the Hudson, crossed to Saratoga, Trenton Falls, Falls of the Mohawk, Oswego River to Lake Ontario; then to Niagara, Buffalo, and to Lake P>ie — to Detroit ; from Detroit to Lake St. C!air, and Lake Huron to Mackinan, from Mackinan took a bark canoe, and crossed the Huron, went up the River St. Ciair to the Sault S'® Marie, and from thence to Lake Superior. The latter part of the journey," five days in a bark canoe, was very fatiguing, and I was devoured by the mosquitoes ; but it has been very interesting, and I have been much gratified. I am now on my return and am bound for Canada, passing by Buffalo and Niagara to Toronto. Since I have been here I have been looking out for a good piece of land, for it more than doubles its value in five or six years, and I have been fortunate in purchasing some very fine land from the Government opposite to Detroit on the Canada side — about 600 acres. I have written to B B , offering to settle him on it, as it is not out of the world, but in very gocxl society. I think it will be worth his while, as in a few years he will be independent. He will however require ;>^30o or so to fit himself out, but that he only need borrow as he will soon be able tc pay off. I trust that if he accepts my offer his brother will assist him, and if so, he will do well. CAPTAIN MA RR VA T. 103 " I am going to Toronto to pay the first instalment, and from there to Montreal, and then I return by Lake Champlain so as to call upon Mrs. C at Burlington; and from thence proceed to Bellows Falls to see my Uncle Tucker, who is rather angry with me for not going there before, which I could not. From Bellows Falls I shall return to New York^I do not think by the way of Boston, for they want to give me a public dinner there, and I want to avoid it. At Philadelphia I must be in September for the same purpose, as I accepted the invitation ; but I wish they had not paid me the compliment. From Philadelphia I go to Washington to canvass for the international copyright, and then I shall probably go south for the winter. "The more I see of America the more I feel the necessity of either saying nothing about it, or seeing the whole of it properly. Indeed I am in that situation that I cannot well do otherwise now. It is expected by the Americans, and will also be by the English ; and if I do not, they will think I shrink from the task because it is too difficult, which it really is. All I have yet read about America, written by English travellers, is absurd, especially Miss M — • — 's work : that old woman was blind as well as deaf. I only mean to publish in the form of a diary (but that is the best way) ; but I will not publish till I have seen all, and can be sure I have not been led into error like others. It is a wonderful country, and not understood by the English now, and only the major part of the Americans. (?) They are very much afraid of me here, although they are very civil ; but I do nut wonder at it — they have been treated wiib 104 LIFE OF great ingratitude. I at least shall do them justice, without praising them more than they deserve. No traveller has yet examined them with the eye of a philosopher, but with all the prejudices of little minds. "Except a letter from you, I have not received a line from England, which is rather strange. From Kate I have had many letters. I have so many correspondents now — not only at home, but I have a large American correspondence which is too valuable to break off — that I really find I cannot write letter for letter. I have so much to read, so much to write, and so much to think about, that I must be excused. My time is not idly employed, I assure you, although I do not grow thin upon it ; but, on the contrary, I think I am fuller than when I left England. I have been so far away these last six weeks that I have heard little English news, except the death of the King and the accession of Princess Victoria. I met Captain V 's brother the other day who told me that tlie Etna was going home to England in consequence of Captain V 's health. If so, I may hear something about Frederick, which I have not for a long while. I hope my dear Ellen [a sister] is (juile well and happy. My kindest love to her. I will write to her as soon as I can ; but it appears to me that I have more to do every day, and 1 really shall be glad to arrive at Bellows Falls and stay there for a week, if it is only to take hrcath. My journal is already swelled out nearly a volume, and the notes I have taken to work up afterwards will almost double it, and yet I have seen but a small portion of the country. I have picked up two or three good specimens for Joe's mineral collection on CAPTAIN MARRYAT. 105 Lake Superior, and some day or another he may get hold of them. Write and tell me all the news. I have not had a line from Mr. Howard or anybody else, which is very strange. The steamboat jogs so that I can hardly write, and I suspect you will hardly be able to read ; but if so, it will take you time to decipher, and therefore will last the longer. " God bless you, dear mother. A hundred kisses to Ellen, and kind regards to all who care for me. " Yours ever truly and affectionately, " F. Marryat." From this letter it may be gathered that in October, 1837, Marryat was in good humour with America, and was seriously thinking of a study of it which should be a possession for ever. America was, on the whole, well pleased with him. He had been civilly received, with a certain reserve as might have been expected, seeing that he was a writing man, who had come with the hardly disguised intention of writing, and after many who had written by no means acceptably ; but still, in spite of this natural wariness, with kindness. He was a good talker and showed it. He had kinsmen in the States who helped him on. Altogether things had gone smoothly with him. The Americans had even been glad to acknowledge his connection with Boston, and some of them had given him a helping hand in that great copy- right figlit in which the sympathy of the more right- minded has never been denied to the English author, but has also never been of any effect. Unfortunately this very trip to Canada led to a storm which put Marryat for lUG LIFE OF a time into the position of bcst-abuscd man on the con- tinent. At Toronto he was naturally asked to a public dinner, and also naturally requested to speak. In the course of liis speech he, again very naturally, took occasion to mention, in a laudatory manner, the cutting out of the Caroline^ by Lieutenant Drew. This feat had then made some noise in the world. Canada was in a disturbed condition, and the confusion had been fomented by filibustering from the United States territory. The Caroline had been fitted out to help the rebels, and had been "cut out" in gallant style from under the guns of Fort Schlosser on the American side of the river, after sharp fighting by a Lieutenant Drew and a body of Canadian volunteers. After capturing the vessel and removing her crew, the Canadians had sent her down over the falls of Niagara. The incident was one of which the loyalists were with good reason proud. As an Englishman, as a naval officer, and as a speaker at a public dinner, Marryat was triply justified in praising " Captain Drew (as he styled him), and his brave comrades who cut out the Caroline.'^ Nothing ought to have been a more complete matter of course than that he should propose their health. Eut Americans were then in a particularly thin-skinned state, even for them. They chose to be very angry with him for doing what any American officer would have done under similar circum- stances, at least as loudly. ^Vhat may be called the spirit of Hannibal ChoUop awoke within them, and a chorus of denunciation was begun at once, in the most loud-mouthed and abusive style of American journalism. CAPTA IN MA RR YA T. 107 Paragraphs headed "More Insolence," and so forth, appeared in abundance. Marryat's books and his effigy were publicly burnt. When he returned from Canada to the States, deputations waited on him, much in the frame of mind of the enlightened citizens who were so indignant when Martin Chuzzlewit offended a free people by coming back from Eden. As a matter of course, any stick was good enough to serve the turn of American journalism. He was accused, among other things, of having " insulted and contradicted, and refused to drink wine " with Henry Clay. The story was, it is needless to say, only a piece of Yankee smartness, but Marryat tlwught it necessary to appeal to that distinguished poli- tician for a certificate of character, and obtained from him an assurance that their meeting had afforded mutual satisfaction. In short, the whole business was one of those displays of noisy gregarious folly of which our American cousins are occasionally guilty. It was rather more absurd than a recent incident of the same sort, be- cause Marryat was merely a traveller, and was speaking on British territory when he gave the toast which Yankee journalism chose to think offensive. But the old colonial hatred of England (not yet perhaps so entirely dead as after-dinner orators are accustomed to assert) was then full of vigorous life. Americans were wavering between reluctance to plunge into war, and desire to do the old country a damage by helping the rebellious French Canadians. In this divided state of mind they relieved their feelings by howling at Marryat, because he had not " cracked them up accordingly." Marryat extricated himself from this pass with com- 1U8 LIFE OF mendable nerve and dexterity. He faced and soft- sawdered the deputations. He took the burning of his books very coolly, went about as before, and finally had it out with his hosts at a dinner given him at Cincinnati. The speech, which is far too long to quote, is full of the manly good sense which the American, when not acting in the characters of raving journalist or anxious candi- date, will commonly listen to. Marryat reminded his hearers that he had spoken in British territory to his countrymen, and that their own patriotic orators were not averse to waving the banner habitually, or restrained from doing so by the knowledge that an Englishman was present. His hosts being simply American gentlemen, sitting in their right senses, agreed with him. A some- what dramatic finish was given to this stage of the inci- dent by Captain J. Pierce, who had been captain of the American privateer Ida when she Avas taken by the Newcastle^ of which Marryat was then second lieutenant. Captain Pierce got on his legs to thank Marryat for the courtesy and good nature he had shown to himself and other prisoners. "The Wizard of the Sea," as the American newspapers loved to call him when they were not in a flaming rage, might consider that, as far as his hosts at Cincinnati could answer for it, he was cleared of the charge of insulting the great American people. Their opinion, like that of the " respectable American," in so many other matters, did not avail to stop all annoyance. Marryat continued to be pestered by abuse, frequently conveyed in unpaid letters. At last, and somewhat weakly, in October of 1838, he published a general protest in the form of a letter to the editors of CA P TA IN MA RR YA T. 1 09 the Louisville Journal, wherein he denied with much detail that he intended to spy out the barrenness of the land. He was, of course, answered as offensively as might be. Marryat had perhaps begun by this time to discover that it was not so easy to write of America in a philo- sophic spirit as he had once thought. To be sure he had laid himself open to annoyance by going to the States at all, and still more by going there with the in- tention of writing a book. The Canadian troubles were destined to break into his tour again. In the autumn of 1838 the French population rose in open rebellion, and, as is commonly the fate of insurgents, gained some preliminary successes, which made their final punishment all the more severe. Marryat remembering that he was an English naval officer still on the active list, gave up philosophic inquiry, hurried back to Canada, and volunteered for service under Sir John Colborne. This officer, a veteran of the Great War, and one who had had a distinguished share in winning the battle of Waterloo, made short work of the rising. Marryat saw some fighting once more in his life, and described it briefly in another of his capital letters to his mother. "Montreal, Dec. 18, 1838. "My Dearest Mother, — Except one letter from B B , it is now nearly four months since I have heard either from England or the Continent ; the latter I can in some way account for, at least in my own opinion —.still I wish to hear how my little girls are. 110 LIFE OF " I was going South when I heard of the defeat of St. Denis, and the dangerous position of the provinces of Upjier and Lower Canada ; and I considered it my duty as an officer to come up and offer my services as a volunteer. I have been with Sir John Colborne, the Commander-in-Chief, ever since, and have just now returned from an expedition of five days against St. Eustache and Grand Brule, which has ended in the total discomfiture of the rebels, and, I may add, the putting down of the insurrection in both provinces. I little thought when I wrote last that I should have had the bullets whizzing about my ears again so soon. It has been a sad scene of sacrilege, murder, burning, and destroying. All the fights have been in the churches, and they are now burnt to the ground, and strewed with the wasted bodies of the insurgents. War is bad enough, but civil war is dreadful. Thank God, it is all over. " The winter has just set in ; we have been fighting in the deep snow, and crossing rivers with ice thick enough to bear the artillery ; we have been always in extremes — at one time our ears and noses frost-bitten by the extreme cold, at others roasting amidst the flames of hundreds of houses. I came out of Grand Brule after it was all over. I had the greatest difficulty in getting through the fire. I had a sleigh with two grey horses driven taudein (as it was too cold to ride the horse the general had offered me), and before I escaped, one side of each of the horses was burnt brown and yello^v before we could force them through ; however, the poor animals were more frightened than hurt. " As I can be of no further use now, I shall return to CA P TAIN MA RR YA T. Ill America in a few days. I really wish I could receive a letter from England. I feel very much about having no intelligence. It will be too late to go South now, and I think I shall winter quietly at New York, and proceed to Washington early in the year. " I really have nothing more to say. It is hard to fill a sheet when correspondence is all on one side. Su give my love to Ellen, and God bless you both. " Ever your affectionate son, " F. Mark VAT." A postscript gives directions to B B , who appears to have decided to come out and settle on the desirable piece of land which Marryat had purchased in Canada. The American tour was near its end. Marryat never made that examination of the South which he had very justly thought necessary, if he was to obtain a thorough knowledge of the States. When he returned to New York in January, 1839, the country was in no condition to attract English travellers. The already existing hostility to England had been excited to a storm, and there was copious talk of the tallest kind about war going on from end to end of the Union. Everybody was wait- ing for the President's message and professing to expect the outbreak of hostilities. Marryat waited to see what would come of it all. The prospect of serious war had for a moment swept all thought of books out of his mind. He waited for a summons to join Sir F. Head if his ser- vices were further needed in Canada ; but while there was a i)rospect that he might again have " a man-ol-war on 112 LIFE OF the ocean," he was in no hurry to run the risk of being shut up in Canada, where the best he could hope for would be a lake command. In a letter from New York to his mother he expresses very explicitly his wishes to serve again, and his hopes of further employment on blue water, and even ends up with one of those growls at the business of book-writing not uncommon among writing men when tlTcy happen to be languid, or to have heard bad news. "Mr. Howard" (his former sub-editor no doubt, and the author of "Rattlin the Reefer") "writes me in very bid spirits. He says that I am injured by remaining away from England, and my popularity is on the wane. I laugh at that ; it is very possible people will be ill- natured while I am not able to defend myself; but what I have done they cannot take from me, and if I wrote no more, I have written quite enough. If I were not rather in want of money I certainly would not write any more, for I am rather tired of it. I should like to disengage myself from the fraternity of authors, and be known in future only in my profession as a good ofificer and sea- man." There is about this a ring of manly good sense. Marryat could well afford to laugh at Mr. Howard's croaking, knowing as he did, with his robust self-con- fidence, that his popularity was in no danger ; that he had it in him to make another popularity if the old was indeed waning. It may well be that his wish to be back in active service was wise. His life might have been longer, and happier, if he had again walked his own quarter- deck. The wish was certainly no vague one, floating idly in his mind. He made plans in Canada, drew maps. CAPTAIN MARK VA T. 113 and sent home information to the Admiralty in the mani- fest hope that his exertions would serve him at head- quarters. If war had broken out with the United States it is certain that Marryat, recommended as he was not only by his past serviced, but by his knowledge of the American coast, would have stood well for employment. But the storm blew over ; the British Empire settled down into peace again, and Marryat remained on shore, driving away with his pen under the pressure of that tyranny which he describes as the state of being "rather in want of money." He left the States early in 1839, and by June of that year was settled in quarters of his own in 8, Duke Street, St. James's. CHAPTER VIII. THE state of being " rather in want of money " was to be chronic with Marryat, if we are to judge by the amount of writing he did during the remaining nine years of his hfe. Before very long, indeed, he began to have very serious reason indeed for complaining of straitened means. His father's fortune, which must have been considerable, had been invested in the West Indies in those golden days at the end of the Great War, when the languor of Spain, and the ruin of San Domingo by the negro revolt, had given the English sugar islands a monopoly of the market for colonial pro- duce. In the forties, however, these happy times had dis- appeared for ever. Competition and free trade brought down prices, the abolition of slavery stopped production, and the value of West Indian property went down with a run. The Marryat family suffered with the rest of the world. The novelist had resources which were want- ing to his brothers ; but then this advantage was com- pensated, as has been said before, by extravagant and speculative habits. In 1839 the pinch was not as yet felt so severely as it was later on. Marryat, immediately upon his return, went over to Paris for his family, which LIFE OF CAPTAIN MARRY AT. 115 had moved thither from Lausanne duruig his stay in the States; and, bringing them to England, settled at 8, Duke Street, St. James's. For some four years he led, as he had hitherto done, a somewhat wandering life. After a brief year in Duke Street, he moved to AV^imhle- don House, which had belonged to his father, and was still occupied by his mother. A short stay there was succeeded by a brief residence in chambers at 120, Piccadilly, and then by another year or so of occupation of a house in Spanish Place, Manchester Square. In 1843 he broke away from London for good, and estab- lished himself at his own house at Langham, in Norfolk. All this restlessness speaks for itself. Men who possess the faculty of managing their affairs with judg- ment, or who wish to apply themselves to steady work, do not run in this way from pillar to post. Once again I have to remark that much in ALnrryat's life is left to be guessed at. It is as well that it should be so. The indications we possess tell the world all that it is entitled to learn. Tliere is — though the contrary proposition is frequently maintained in these days — no inherent right in the public to be made acquainted with the private affairs of a gentleman simply because he has done it the inestimable service of supplying it with readable books. That Marryat, who has just been found express- ing a wish to retire from the " fraternity of authors," was writing himself blind in these years, is a fact which tells its own tale. Add to this a few indications which Mrs. Ross Church has thought it right to supply — a brief refer- ence to some family misfortune of which the details are not given ; a complaint in one of Marryat's letters tliat 116 LIFE OF somebody, apparently a relation, had suspected him of a wish to borrow money ; and an increasing tone of grief and trouble in all his letters — and we have enough to form a general estimate of his position with. More we probably could not learn, and would have no right to hunt up if we could. That Marryat had a difficulty in making both ends meet; that his expedients did not always succeed ; that some of them were, too probably, undignified; that the need for them was, at least partly, due to his own mismanagement, are acknowledged facts. We may, and must, be satisfied with them. It is also easily to be believed that Marryat would enjoy the hard living, and even hard drinking— artistic, literary, and semi-literary — life of his time. Clarkson Stanficld was an intimate friend. Rogers, who was acfjuainted with everybody, was an acquaintance. With Dickens and Forster his friendship was of long standing, and seems to have remained unbroken. One of the few, and too generally insignificant, letters to her father printed by Mrs. Ross Church, is an invitation to dinner from Dickens, ending with a pleasing promise to give him some hock which would do him good. He was a guest at those merry children's parties which Mr. Forster has described. In his quarters in his various London lodgings we are given to understand that there was much and gay hospitality. Friends were profusely entertained in rooms adorned with furs, trophies, Burmese idols, and weapons — all the miscellaneous curios collected by a sailor and traveller during many wandering hours. In I'urmah, Marryat had even made a collection of jewels rut from out of the bodies of slain enemies. The CAPTAIN MARR \ 'A T. 117 Ijiirniaii who has a gem makes an incision in his leg and hides it there, as our sailors discovered more or less to tlieir profit. Unfortunately the curios and the talk are all scattered-and irrecoverable. " It has all vanished like 'air, thin air'" — as Marryat wrote himself of certain common reminiscences to "a lady for whom, to the time of his death, he retained the highest sentiments of friend- ship and esteem." Marryat's friendships were not all of this enduring kind. " Like most warm-hearted people," as his daughter puts it, " he was quick to take offence, and no one could have decided, after an absence of six months, with whom he was friends and with whom he was not." Eager restlessness is the quality wliich seems to have been most noticed in him by all his friends. It kept him on the move, not only from house to house, but on excursions to Langham or other parts of England. The toil which circumstances forced upon Marryat must have gready aided his natural restlessness in wear- ing out his life. Steady work and hard work are not necessarily synonymous, and Marryat worked very hard by fits and starts. While in America, and amid all the racket of his tour, he had written "The Phantom Ship,' which appeared in 1839. The six volumes of his " Diary in America '' followed in the same year. That was not off his hands before he was at work on "Poor Jack." " Masterman Ready," " The Poacher," and " Percivai Keene," followed before the end of 1842. Here was an amount of work (six books within five years) which might not be found excessive by the orderly businesslike novelist of to-day, but which must have put a severe strain on a man who wrote at irregular times, but when 118 LIFE OF actually at it, wrote furiously. It was a distinct aggrava- tion of the burden that his handwriting was very minute. A man who, having to write a great deal, writes very small, must cither be very sure of his eyesight and his nerves, or prepared through ignorance or recklessness to ruin them both. It is, therefore, not to be wondered at that Marryat's letters between 1839 and 1840 contain references to the state of his health of a constantly more melancholy nature. "I shall," he wrote to the same lady friend in the first of these years, "be at leisure, I really believe, about the first week in December ; but the second portion of ' America ' has been a very tough job. I am now correcting press {sic) of the third volume, and half of it is done. I hope to be quite finished by the end of the month, and also to have the other work ready for publication on the 1st of January; but what with printers, engravers, stationers, and publishers, I have been much overworked. I have written and read till my eyes have been no bigger than a mole's, and my sight about as per- fect. I have remained sedentary till I have had tin acces de bile, and have been under the hands of the doctor, and for some days obliged to keep my bed ; all owing to want of air and exercise. Now I am quite well again." Some two years later the news is much worse, and there is no mention of complete recovery. " That you may not think me unkind," he writes again to the same correspondent, "in refusing your invitation, I must tell you that I am much worse than I have made myself out in my former letters. I fell down as if I had been shot a few days ago, and have been ever since obliged to be very quiet, and am nul permitted to drink anything but water, or undergo the CAPTAIN MARR VA T. 119 least excitement, and you would offer me every description in the shape of beauty, mirth, revelry, and feasting, put- ting yourself out of the question ! No ; for my sins — sins in the shape of three volumes chiefly — and heavy sins, too, I must now submit to mortification and pen- ance. I am positively forbidden to write a line, but you may tell William and Dunny that the little book is finished, and will be out at Easter, when they will be able to read it." Obviously work, and forms of relaxa- tion as wearing as any work, had begun already to ruin a constitution not really robust. Marryat's tendency to break blood vessels had already crippled him when a lieutenant in the navy, and should have warned him that though he might be muscularly powerful, he had no great reserve of constitutional strength to draw on. The visit to America makes a break in the character as well as in the continuity of Marryat's work. He had said all he had to say about the sea life of his own time, and had to turn elsewhere. The " Diary in America " is perhaps a sign that he thought for a moment of rivalling Captain Basil Hall. If he was indeed tempted to do so, the temptation ceased to be difiicult to resist after his return to Europe. Tiie toil of travel, and then of writing out his impressions of travel, had been greater than he had expected, and had produced no equivalent result — either in money or reputation. Mrs. Ross Church states that he received for the " Diary," "on first publishing the manuscript," ;!^i, 600. But, according to the same authority, he had received nearly as much for several of his other books in a lump sum, and they con- tinued to bring him in a yearly harvest, whereas the 120 LIFE OF " Diary " sank at once into the position of a mere book about America. In truth, this kind of writing had been overdone. There was no longer a market for books of the Trollope or even tlie Martineau order. Everything had been said about the United States which the pubhc wanted to hear for the time. The pubhshers of the "Diary" must have discovered that, in taking the "Diary," they had made the mistake not uncommonly committed by the trade, and by theatrical managers, the mistake of overestimating the length of time during which the public will continue to care for the same thing. They, doubtless, told Marryat that the taste for stories was more enduring than the liking for descriptions, abusive, laudatory, or philosophical, of our American cousins. With or without advice of this kind, he returned to stories, and remained steadily faithful to them. "The Phantom Ship," written during the American tour, differs materially from all the tales which had jire- ceded it, except " Snarley Yow." It is a romance with a strong element of diablerie. Possibly because it was not written in a hurry for the press, it shows more signs of care in construction than most of the earlier books. Also, it is an historical romance, and proves that Marryat had worked at the history of the sea-life — not, douijtless, very hard, but still to some purpose. The result makes one regret that lie did not fmd, or seek for, tiie leisure to dig further, and to avail himself of his discoveries. No great amount of research can have been ref^uircd to collect the materials for " 'J'hc Phantom Sliip." Admiral Burney's " Discoveries in the South Seas " would alone CAPTAIN MA RR YA T. 1'21 have given Marryat all he wanted fur this [)i( lure of the old Dutch seamanship. Still he brought with him so much knowledge acquired by actual experience that a little was enough. Had he so pleased he miglit, with the help of Hakluyt, of Monson, and of Sir Richard Hawkins' "Voyage," have given us a picture of the Elizabethan seamen. He might have drawn the " chivalry of the sea," as Washington Irving asked him to do. A " Westward Ho " he would not have written. We should not have had from him (nor have expected) anything equivalent to the dream of Amyas Leigh, or the exquisite speech at the grave of Salvation Yeo. But what he could have done was what Kingsley could not do, and, with the tact of an artist, did not try to do too much. He might have realized the actual sea life of the time — the ships, the seamen, and the seamanship of the past. It was a work in which only a sailor could have suc- ceeded. The ])ictorial imagination of Kingsley and the conscientious workmanship of Charles Reade alike fail to give reality to their sea scenes. The first was a great artist, and the second an exceedingly clever man with no contemptible share of the imagination of the his- torian and biographer^the power of seeing the value of materials, of deducing from the report of a thing done the manner of the doing and the nature of the doer. They both worked hard to realize the sea, and yet, if we compare the cruises of the Rose and the Vengeance, or the fight with the pirates in " Hard Cash," with the " club- hauling " of the Diomede, there is a perceptible difference. I am not unaware that one may be unconsciously in- fluenced by the knowledge that Marr)at was a seaman, 122 LIFE OF to expect, and see more truth in his pictures than in theirs. Remembering that, however, I still think that his sea scenes differ from Kingsley's, or Reade's, as the thing seen differs from the thing " got up " — with imagination, with insight, with conscientious industry, no doubt, — but still " got up." In this, and in other ways, Marryat did not do all he might have done. "'I'he Phantom Ship," with " Snarley Yow" which preceded, and the " Privateersman " which followed it, must be taken for what they are worth in place of the possible better. Even so, however, the value of the first of them is considerable. Marryat made a good use of what Leigh Hunt has somewhat hastily decided is the only sea legend. There is no great originality in the incidents. Vanderdecken was made to his hand, and he had German enough — or failing that had translations enough — to supply him with the diablerie. iJutthe materials are well used. 'I'he story swings along. Philip Vanderdecken, the Pilot Schriften, the greedy Portuguese governor, and the priests have a distinct vitality. Amine is by far his nearest approach to an acceptable heroine ; for indeed it must be confessed that this sailor had an altogether maritime ignorance of women, except bumboat women and the ladies of the Hard. The scenes in which his heroines are on the stage are skip. Amine's appearances, however, are not skip. She is a very acceptable heroine of melodrama, good of her kind, with a decided character of her own. The Inquisition scenes in which she is the central figure are liie highest point Marryat reached in romance. Very good too are the successive appearances of tlie Phantum CA P TA IN MA RR YA T. 123 Ship, done as was commonly the case with Marryat, simply, without straining, without obvious desire to make you shiver. If the last scene of all trenches on the namby pamby, as I am afraid it does, it is preceded by a very good one indeed. Marryat has indicated the lone- liness, the weary waiting, the heart-broken striving of Vanderdecken's doomed crew, very sufficiently by the futile effort of the poor mate, who would fain persuade the Portuguese to carry the Flying DutcJiman^s fatal letters home. That Marryat was content to indicate is not the least of his claims to be considered an artist. He knew by instinct, or deduction, the advantage of coming sud- denly on his reader. Too many other story-tellers prepare, and accumulate, and i)our forth, the materials of the -shower (too commonly of adjectives) which is to cause us \\iQ frisson. We see them doing it, and know what is meant, and, human nature being perverse, hold ourselves steady and refuse to shiver. The princess whose husband could not shiver gave him the emotion by turning the cold water and tittlebats down his back when he was expecting no such shock. If he had seen her filling the tub, putting in the little fishes, and coming t ) tilt it all over him, there would have been no surprise, and, too probably, he would never have known that delightful sensation. " Poor Jack," the immediate successor of "The Phan- tom Ship," is somewhat closer to " Mr. Midshipman Easy," but it, too, is something of an historical study, whether it was deliberately designed to be so or not. Greenwich Plospital has become something very dif- ferent from the retreat for wounded seamen which l-ll LIFE OF Marryat knew, and his picture of it, somewhat sketchy as it is, will always have the value of a document. The story one need not stop to analyse at any length. Inci- dents and characters are of the kind familiar with Marryat — not inferior to the average of the others, but not distinguished from them by any very marked charac- teristics. One piece of fun it does contain not inferior to his best, the immortal apology of the midshipman who liad told the master that he was not fit to carry guts to a bear. The palpable absurdity of the incident is on a par wiih Mr. Easy's amazing use of the Articles of War. "The Poacher" and " Percival Keene," which also belong to these years, both have a flavour of work done only because the author was " rather in want of money." The first is another venture in the same line as " Japhet." The second is the least pleasant, take it for all in all, of the books which bear Marryat's name. It is the only one which had better not be reread in niaturcr years by him who has read it as a boy. The fun is forced — of the horse-play practical joking kind — and the serious parts are somewhat spoilt by fuslian. The negro pirate captain and his crew are good enough for boyish tragedy, but that is not what we expect from Marryat. Finally, too, there is a disagreeable flavour in tlie book. The hero is a low fellow — not in a healthy human way even, but in a very mean intriguing fashion, and he plays his part in the meanest possible manner. The one s:cry of these days which could least be spared from Marryat's work is " Masterman Ready." This, the first of his children's books, is also one of the best, perhaps the very best, thing of its kind in English. CA P TA IN M/l RR \ 'A T. 125 It is a child's story in which there is not one word above the intelligence of the readers it was designed for, one situation or one character they could not grasp, and yet it is distinctly literature. It is didactic, and yet there is no preachment. It is i)athctic, and yet it is not mawkish. It ends with a death-bed scene which is nut an offence. In point of mere cleverness of workmanshii) it ranks, in my opinion, first among Marryat's works, and yet it is per- fectly simple and unstrained. Marryat was indeed well qualified to write for children. He had loved their com- pany at all times, and had served a long apprenticeship in telling stories to his own. The practice had taught him to avoid the fatal mistake of condescension. An intelligent child, as even so weighty a writer as Guizot has remarked, can understand a great deal more than the duller kind of adult is disposed to allow. It does not like to be effusively addressed as " my little friend," and made to see that the kind gentleman or lady who speaks is intent on improving its mind. "I can't be always good," said Tommy ; " I'm very hungry ; I want my dinner." The unsophisticated youthful mind is apt to be equally direct about its literature. It can't be always imbibing preachment ; it becomes languid, and wants to be amused : but it also likes precision of detail, and is eager to learn the why and how of everything. With these two rules to guide him — not to be too obtrusively instructive, and yet to explain every incident as it came, Marryat wrote a model child's story. Forster was cer- tainly in the right in declaring it to be the most read, and the most willingly reread, of its class. For its mere cleverness the book can be enjoyed by the oldest of 12G LIFE OF readers who is not too dreadfully in earnest. It was no small feat to have taken so well worn a situation as the shipwreck and the desert island, and to have made out of it a book which may stand next to Defoe's. The desertion of the Pacific and her passengers by the crew, her wreck, the life on the island, the fight with the savages, and the rescue, are as probable, they follow one another as natu- rally, as the events in the life of Robinson Crusoe. Marryat had too much tact and knowledge to fall into the extravagances of the " Swiss Family Robinson." The beasts and plants of the island are not an impossible collection of the flora and fauna of three continents. Then, too, the book contains two of Marryat's very best characters. Masterman Ready is an ideal old sailor, brave, modest, kind, helpful, able to turn his hand to anything, and to do it well, yet, wilhal, no mere bundle of abstract virtues, but a most credible human being — such a man as might have been formed by such a life. Very different, but equally good, is Master Tommy Seagrave, the ideal of greedy, naughty boys. Tonmiy's ever vigorous appetite and irrepressible passion for making a noise, for meddling with everything, for trying every- thing, for spoiling everything, are as perfect in their way as the meek heroism of Masterman Ready. At the end, the collision of the two produces very genuine tragedy. Master Tommy was just the boy who would have emptied the water-butt, under pretext of bringing water from the well, and would have accepted the very undeserved praise bestowed on his zeal without the faintest scruple. The consequences of his bad behaviour are absolutely natural and inevitable. That Masterman Ready should have met CA P TA IN MA RR YA T. 127 his death through Master Tommy was an artistic stroke of the highest merit. And Marryat tells it all with a calm detachment which might reduce the average Russian novelist to despair. He is not wroth with Tommy. He accepts him as inevitable, and only describes him with a calm artistic precision, simply as the type of "The Boy." Then, too, consider the final no-repentance and escape of Tommy. He how^led for water and got it, and Masterman Ready died that he might have it. The little wretch never knew what mischief he had done. He sailed away to Sydney with an excellent appetite, and as long as he had enough to eat, and things to break, was no doubt perfectly happy. There is a something colossal in the truth, and the artistic calmness of the whole story. While Marryat was at work on " The Poncher," he had a slight literary skirmish — not unworthy of notice as a proof that certain things are unchanging in the literary world. The story appeared in The Era in weekly numbers. One of those remarkable persons, who, in every succes- sive generation, find it necessary to make a protest in favour of the dignity of literature, and whose idea of dignity commonly is that literature can only be good when it appears in a certain way and at a certain price, fell foul of Marryat for choosing this low method of publication. This egregious person wrote in Eraser, and very gratuitously attacked Marryat, in the course of some remarks on Harrison Ainsworth, in the following " slash- ing " style : " If writing monthly fragments threatened to deteriorate Mr. Ainsworth's productions, what must be the result of this /lebdomadal habit ? Captain Marryat, 128 LIFE OF we are sorry to see, has taken to the same Hne. Both these popular authors may rely on our warning, that they will live to see their laurels fade unless they more care- fully cultivate a spirit of self-respect. That which was venial in a miserable starveling of Grub Street \'^ perfectly disgusting in the extravagantly paid novelists of these days — the caressed of generous booksellers. Mr. Ains- worth and Captain Marryat ought to disdain such pitiful /•eddling. Let them eschew it without delay." These were very bitter words, but the only influence they had on Marryat was to provoke him to show that he could do the single-stick style as well as the Fraser men themselves. With less wit, but more good humour than Thackeray, he, too, wrote his Essay on Thunder and Small Beer. He pointed out that there is no neces- sary connection between the manner of publication and the method of composition of a book, and even made (juite respectable fun of Fraser' s pedantry. " In the paragraph,'' he says, " which I have quoted there is an im- plication on your part which I cannot pass over without comment. You appear to set up a standard oi precedency and rajik in literature, founded upon the rarity or frequency of an author's appearing before the public, the scale de- scending from the ' caressed of generous publishers ' to the ' starveling of Grub Street ' — the former, by your im- plication, constituting the aristocracy and the latter the profanum vulgus of the quill. Now although it is a fact that the larger and nobler animals of creation produce but slowly, while the lesser, such as rabbits, rats, and mice, are remarkable for their fecundity ; I do not think that the comparison will hold good as to the breeding of CA P TA IN MA RR VA T. 120 brains; and to prove it, let us examine-if this argument by implication of yours is good — at what grades upon the scale it would place the writers of the present day." IJy applying "this argument by implication " in a rigid fashion, Marryat has no difhculty in showing that " my Lady anybody," who produces one novel a year, is necessarily twice as great a writer as Hook or James who produces two, and twelve times as great as \.\\q Fraser \n3.n himself, whose production is monthly. The reasoning is burlesquely fallacious, but it was meant to be so. Marryat spoke with more gravity, and more point too, when he urged that he was doing a good work by spreading his story "among the lower classes, who, until lately (and the chief credit of the alteration is due to Mr. Dickens), had hardly an idea of such recreation." "In a moral point of view I hold that I am right. We are educating the lower classes; generations have sprung up who can read and write ; and may I inquire what it is they have to read, in the way of amusement ? — for I speak not of the Bible, which is for private exami- nation. They have scarcely anything but the weekly newspapers, and as they cannot command amusement, they prefer those which create the most excitement ; and this I believe to be the cause of the great circulation of The Weekly Despatch, which has but too well succeeded in demoralizing the public, in creating disaffection and ill-will towards the Government, and assisting the ne- farious views of demagogues, and chartists. It is certain that men would rather laugh than cry — would rather be amused than rendered gloomy and discontented — would sooner dwell upon the joys and sorrows of others, in a 9 loO Life of t;ilc of fiction, than brood over their supposed wrongs. 1 f I put good and wholesome food (and, as I trust, sound moral) before the lower classes, they will eventually eschew that which is coarse and disgusting, which is only resorted to because no better is supplied. Our weekly newspapers are at present little better than records of immorality and crime, and the effect which arises from having no other matter to read and comment on, is of serious injury to the morality of the country. . . . I ' consider, therefore, that in writing for the amusement and instruction of the poor man, I am doing that which has been but too much neglected— that I am serving my country, and you surely will agree with me that to do so is not infra dig. in the proudest Englishman : and, as a Conservative, you should commmend, rather than stigma- tise my endeavours in the manner which you have so hastily done." The intention and the argument here are better than the style. Marryat was better at narrative than exposi- tion, and could at times be as free with the relative jjronouns as that distinguished officer. Captain Rawdon Crawley. The confidence Marryat, in common with most of his contemporaries, reposed in the influence of wholesome amusement was doubtless excessive. It has not been found that when the "poor man" [or other reader for that matter], has a choice of Hercules given liini between good literature and bad, he will cleave to the first and reject the last. Also, there is a candid confession of the faith "that there is nothing like leather " in Marryat's confidence that good weekly stories would soothe the discontent which was seething in Eng- CAPTAIN MA RR YA T. 1:3 1 land before 1848. But in sjiite of slips of grammar, optimism, and over-confidence, Marryat's answer to the priggery in Fraser is a creditable manifesto. To desire to kill the trash of The Weekly Despatch was at least a respectable ambition, and a man has a good right to believe in his causes, and his weapons. CHAPTER IX. LANG HAM, to which Marryat betook himself for good in 1S43, had been in his possession for some thirteen years. Its history, as far as he was con- cerned, may be taken to have been characteristic of the man. He acquired it, according to Mrs. Ross Church, by exchange— having "swapped" it, after dinner and copious champagne, against Sussex House, Hammersmith. From that period it had been an interesting but un- profitable possession to him. Before he left for America he had already had occasion to complain of the difficulty of getting rent. A tenant had been expelled, and replaced by another of the fairest character. But appearances had proved delusive. Langham had been all along more of a burden than a [)rofit to its owner. In 1843 he seems to have decided to see what he could do with it himself. A passage in his fragmentary life of Lord Napier, quoted by his daughter, shows that he shared to the full the common delusion of men, and the especial delusion of sailors, that it is easy to manage a small property. In this pleasing but fatal belief he set out to see what he could do with the 700 acres of the estate himself. Again I have to acknowledge my inability to LIFE OF CAPTAIN MARRYAT. 133 give any account of the motives for this sudden (for it appears to have been sudden) decision. Considerations of economy were doubtless of weight with him. The fall in the value of West Indian property had, as has been said, hit him hard. The demands on his purse were as heavy as ever — indeed, to judge from a somewhat plaintive reference in one of his letters — even heavier. He speaks in this place of actions brought by tradesmen to recover money for goods supplied to his sons Frederick and Frank — from which we may conclude that the young men had inherited their share of the paternal faculty for spending money. Their father was driven to express the wish that the value of this necessary was tauglit in schools. Neither at school nor at home do the young Marryats appear to have gained this knowledge, and in those years the navy, which they had both entered, was no school of thrift. Doubtless they were among the causes which first induced Captain Marryat to betake himself to the country, and then kept him hard at work when he was there. Langham is in the northern division of Norfolk, half- way between Wells-next-the-Sea and Holt. The Manor House, says Mrs. Ross Church, " without having any great architectural pretensions, had a certain unconven- tional prettiness of its own. It was a cottage in the Elizabethan style, built after the model of one at Virginia Water belonging to his late Majesty, George IV., with latticed windows opening on to flights of stone steps ornamented with vases of flowers, and leading down from the long narrow dining-room, where (surrounded by Clarkson Stanfield's illustrations of * Poor Jack,' with 134 LIFE OF wliich tlie walls were clothed) Cajitnin Marrynt composed his later works, to the lawn behind. The house was thatched and gabled, and its pinkish white walls and round porch were covered with roses and ivy, which in some parts climbed as high as the roof itself." When Marryat came down to examine his property with an intention of living on it, he found it suffering from all the evils which commonly fall upon the property of absentee landlords. The tenant of the larger of the two farms into which the estate was divided had not only mismanaged his land. Having the house itself at his mercy, he had turned the drawing-room into a common lodging-house, in which tramps and other necessitous persons could have a bed for the modest sum of two- pence a night. The windows were smashed or unclosed, and the birds of the air had built their nests in the rooms. This state of neglect was soon changed for the better, and Langham Manor became habitable. In it Marryat sat down during the last five years of his life, to show in practice the soundness of his theory touching the fitness of sailors for the management of small properties. It will surprise few to learn that the result only proved once more that small properties are not so easily forced to yield a profit. Even before actually coming to live on the estate, Marryat had tried various speculations with his land. The results of his efforts, personal and vicarious, arc illustrated in his daughter's "Life" by the following extracts, taken at random from his farm accounts. CAPTAIN MARK YA T. 135 £ s. d. 1S42. Total receipts 154 2 9 Expenditure 1637 o 6 1846. Total receipts 89S 12 6 Expenditure 2023 10 8 It will be seen that the balance was less heavily against Marryat in '46 when he was present, than in '42 when he could only look on from afar. Even in these cases the master's eye is of value. It is better to lose on your own ventures than to be robbed all round, and in so far Marryat no doubt gained by living on his land, In 1845 he even secured some compensation for the damage done to his house and property by the dishonest tenant — at least the courts decided that compensation should be paid him. After a lawsuit, an unsuccessful effort at compromise, and (Marryat declares) much hard swearing by his opponent, he was awarded ;/^i5o. Whether he ever got it is a question, for the tenant seems to have been meditating bankruptcy immediately afterwards. The end of the business is wrapt up in mystery. On the whole, one can quite believe that the Captain's " agricul- tural vagaries appeared almost like insanity to those steady plodding minds that could not understand that a man may have genius, and no common sense." Quite credible, too, is it that Marryat was very particularly proud of his common sense, and " would have been very much hurt " if any man had doubted his claim to possess it in an eminent degree. If there is anything of which the more flighty kind of speculator is firmly persuaded, 136 LIFE OF it is of his practical faculty and sober good sense. It is very characteristic that in all Marryat's stories for children, and in touches scattered over his earlier works, there are proofs of a taste for thinking about matters of business, and for constructing plausible narratives of profitable investments of money and labour. It would seem that, among writing men (and not among them only) this taste is an infallible sign of a natural incapacity to acquire three pennyworth of anything for less than eighteen pence. Balzac had it, and he never could keep his fingers off a losing speculation. Marryat is so exact about sums of money, and has such a turn for showing how profits are to be made, that we are quite prepared to hear of him bursting into his brother's room at 3 o'clock a.m., with splendid schemes for draining the marshes of Clay-by-the-Sea, and thereby realizing wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. It follows as a matter of course that his only surviving son, Frank, found Langham a worthless inheritance. It is at this period of his life that we can obtain the best, and, indeed, almost the only personal view of Marryat. Of the last years of his life at Langham, Mrs. Ross Church speaks from memory, and her evidence has independent support. The picture we obtain is in the main pleasant, though it is sufiiciently clear that Marr}'at was not exactly an angel. " Many people," says his daughter, " have asked whether Captain Marryat, when at home, was not 'very funny.' No, decidedly not. In society, with new topics to discus.s, and other wits about him on which to sharpen his own— or, like flint and steel, to emit sparks by friction— he was as gay and humorous CA P TAIN MA RR VA T. 137 as the best of them ; but at home he was abvays a thouglilfiil, and, at times, a very grave man ; for lie was not exempt from tliose ills that all flesh is heir to, and had his sorrows and his difficulties and moments of depression like the rest of us. At such times it was dangerous to thwart or disturb him, for he was a man of strong passions and indomitable determination ; but, whoever felt the effects of his moods of perplexity or disappointment, his children never did." Mrs. Ross Church must forgive it if this description reminds me more than a little of a certificate to character I once heard given to a British skipper, a mahogany-faced man of immense strength and violence, in the office of one of Her Majesty's consuls, in a Mediterranean port. This gallant seaman had been summoned by one of his men for assault and battery. He confessed the beating, but denied that it had been so aggravated as the plaintiff alleged. Moreover he pleaded provocation, and called up his boatswain as a witness to character. The boat- swain, an honest-looking rather chuckle-headed fellow, was obviously torn by conflicting desires. He did not wish to displease his captain, and yet he did not wish to tell lies which would go against his comrade. Nothing definite could be got out of him while in the presence of the parties. When asked in confidence (and in an outer office) what the truth of the matter was, he answered, "Why, you see, sir, it's just this — the captain he's a very good sort of man as long as he has everything his own way — but when he's crossed he clears the place." It may be taken as proved, then, that Marryat had in abundance that kind of good nature which is displaye4 138 LIFE OF when the owner is pleased and happy — of which this may at least be said, that it is vastly superior to no good nature at all. ATorcover, we have to consider what things it was that made him displeased and unhappy. Mrs. Ross Church's qualification to the character just quoted shows that he did not entirely hang his fiddle up when he came home. To his children " he was a most in- dulgent father and friend, caring little what escapades they indulged in so long as they were not afraid to tell the truth. ' Tell truth and shame the devil ' was a quotation constantly on his lips ; and he always upheld falsehood and cowardice as the two worst vices of man- kind. He never permitted anything to be locked or hidden away from his children, who were allowed to indulge their appetites at their own discretion ; nor were they ever banished from the apartments which he occu- pied. Even whilst he was writing, they would pass freely in and out of the room, putting any questions to him that occurred to them, and the worst rebuke they ever encountered was the short determined order, 'Cease your prattle, child, and leave the room,' an order that was immediately o!)eyed. For witli all his indulgence of them, Captain Marryat took care to im[)ress one fact upon his children — that his word was law." The children were aware that they were dealing with a parent not inca[)al)lc of getting in a rage, and therefore stopped in time — which is one of the many advantages of not possessing a too equable temper. These collisions of theirs with the sovereign authority at Langham cannot, however, have been frequent, as this further quotation from Mrs. Ross Church will show : "The long-expected CA P TAIN MARK VA T. 139 governess [there were great negotiations over the en- gagement of this official], when eventually secured and transi)lanted to Langham, was not received by the children, who had been accustomed to have their own way in everything, with much enthusiasm ; and their father was the friend to whom they invariably appealed for protection against her authority. Captain Marryat had rather an original plan with resi)ect to punishment and reward. He kept a quantity of small articles for presen'.s in liis secretary, and at the termination of each week the children, and governess armed with a report of their general behaviour, were ushered with much solem- nity into the library to render up an account. Those who had behaved well during the preceding seven days received a prize, because they had been so good ; and those who had behaved ill also received one, in hopes that they would never be naughty again. The governess was also presented with a gift, that her criticism on the justice of the transaction might be disarmed. Thus all parties left the room perfectly satisfied ; an end which, Captain Marryat used to observe, it required some dip- lomacy to attain. The governess was in the habit of restraining the children's thoughtlessness by imposition of fines or lessons when they tore their clothes ; but, as tearing their clothes was an event of daily occurrence, the punishment became rather heavy ; and one of the younger ones, having made a large rent in a new frock, ran in dismay to her father in order to consult him how best to escape the impending doom. Captain Marryat, without any regard to the future of the garment in ques- tion, took hold of the rent and tore off the whole lower 140 LIFE OF part of the skirt. 'Tell her / did it/ he said in explana- tion as he walked away." This story, which had pre- viously made its appearance in an article in the Corn- hill Magazine, is supported there by the general assertion that whenever any of the young Marryats required punish- ment they were doubly petted for the rest of the day. " It seemed as if no amount of indulgence was thought too much for compensation ; like the jam to take the taste of the physic out of the mouth." Persons who make a serious study of the art of training children may not all agree that a system which recom- mended courage by giving them nothing to fear, incul- cated the love of truth by making it safe and pleasant to tell it, and developed the moral virtues by unlimited indulgence, was one to be held up as a model to fathers. No doubt, however, it was abundantly pleasant for the children, and it may readily be believed that Captain Marryat was loved by his own house. With his children he lived on terms of affectionate freedom, making them his companions, and even training them to play piquet, for which scientific game he had a great affection, in order that they might share with him in all things. For animals, too, he had a genuine but not a maudlin affection. His dogs and liis pony Dumpling figure much in the accounts given of his last years. His favourite bull, Ben Brace, was kept tethered opposite the window of the room in which he wrote. It is a good sign of his genuine kindness for animals that he seems to have been made rather impatient by the gushing talk about them, and the wondrous tales of their intelligence, which are (in the opinion of some) nearly the most CAPTAIN lUARR YA T. 141 nauseous of all forms of twaddle. We have it on his own authority that he joined Theodore Hook in invent- ing outrageous stories about the intelligence of animals, and palming them off on the too credulous popular naturalist. To his men Marryat seems to have been a kind master. He at least gave them copious feasts on proper occasions. " All the men who were on the farm," he tells his god-daughter, " were invited to a Christmas dinner in the kitchen, and they sat down two-and-twenty at the table in the servants' hall, and were waited upon by our own servants. They had two large pieces of roast beef, and a boiled leg of pork; four dishes of Norfolk dumplings ; two large meat pies ; two geese> eight ducks, and eight widgeon : and after that they had four large plum puddings." This, with "plenty of strong beer," which was also duly supplied, made, as Marryat seems to have felt with pardonable satisfaction, a feed likely to be remembered by the two-and-twenty farm hands. He was not so original as he perhaps thought himself, or as some have supposed him to have been, in employing an ex-poacher, one Barnes, as gamekeeper. That particular kind of thief had often been set to catch the other thieves before Captain Marryat went to live at Langham. The poacher who is not merely the paid hand of a London poulterer is commonly enough not such a bad fellow, and when he is allowed to combine his sporting tastes with a regular salary, and a position of some authority, is capable of doing fairly well. In this case whatever risk Marryat ran was justified by the result. Barnes proved not only a good servant to him, but is said to have been a loyal follower to his son Frank when he emigrated to California. 142 LIDE OF Here, on his own land, surrounded by his family, Marryat spent what were, doubtless, not the least happy years of his life. An occasional friend from London found the ex-viveiir and dandy in velveteen shooting jacket and coloured trousers, turning out at five in the morning, trotting about his farm on Dumpling, attentive to scientific farming, and invincible in hope of profit from that deceptive venture. For company, he had his romps wiih his children, his game of piquet, and an occasional, or even frequent, visit from Lieutenant Thomas, of the coastguard station at Morston. The two old seamen met, and talked of the rapid progress of the service to the d , as old seamen have done from the beginning, and will do to the end of time. From the outer world came requests for work from editors, suggestions that he should take up this subject or the other, and at times invitations to come up and take part in farewell dinners to Macready or to Dickens. 'J'hese last he steadily declined. Except during a few brief visits to London on matters of busi- ness, he remained fixed at Langliam till the disease which proved fatal drove him up to town in search of better medical help than he could obtain in Norfolk, He has himself described the work of these last years in a letter to Forster, who had wrillen in 1845 to Marryat, suggesting that he should give " a month or two to a short biography, of about a volume ; something of the size and manner of Southey's ' Nelson,' and the subject ' Colling- wood.'" Marryat thought it over, but declined, giving, among other reasons, this : " That I have lately taken to a different style of writing, that is, for young people. CAPTA IN MA RR YA T. 143 My former [)ruductiuns, like all novels, have had their day, and for the present, at least, will sell no more ; but it is not so with the juveniles ; they have an annual demand, and become a little income to me ; which I infinitely prefer to receiving any sum in a mass, which very soon disappears somehow or other." Marryat justi- fied his unwillingness to write the life of Collingwood by other than business reasons. *' I should like," he told Forstcr, " to write about Collingwood, but if I were to write it in anything like a stipulated time I should not do it well. Biography is most difficult writing, and requires more time and thought than any original composition, and if I take it up I must be free as air." In addition to this (justly high) estimate of the difficulty and dignity of biography, Marryat, with sound critical judgment, decided that Collingwood was not a proper subject. There is not enough known or to be known about him. So much of his work was done as a subordinate under St. Vincent or Nelson. With them he was always in the second place at best, and when he reached great independent com- mand, the heroic days of the naval war were over, and there was little for him to do beyond duties of a mainly routine character, performed in the midst of chronic illness. It is a pity perhaps that Marryat did not devote some part of his work to naval biography, but he would hardly have made a real success with Collingwood. For Forster himself, Marryat wrote a series of letters to the Examiner on the " Condition of England Question," or that part of England which he saw about him in Norfolk, " I have," he wrote to Forster, " been amusing myself with putting together my thoughts and knowledge of the con- 144 LIFE OF dition of the agricultural class — I mean the common labourer principally — and I believe I know more of the subject than anything I have seen in print. What I can say is from personal knowledge. I was thinking of writing some letters to Peel as a Norfolk farmer, ' The Poor Man versus Sir Robert Peel.' It would not do to put my name to them as they would be anything but Conservative, but they would be the iniih." It was not Marryat's destiny to be a politician, and his opinion of Sir Robert Peel is perhaps not very valuable. His own political activity was not particularly consistent, for he ai)pears to have swayed from Reformer to Conservative, and back again, but it may be noted that he ended by sharing that dislike of the leader who always led his fol- lowers to surrender which was so widely, felt in Peel's last days. His main work was always his stories for children. Five of these belong to the Langham period — "The Narrative of the Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet," "The Settlers in Canada," "The Mission," " The Children of the New Forest," and " The Little Savage." There may be some doubt whether the first ought to come under this heading. Marryat did not consider it a child's story himself; but if it is not that one has some difficulty in deciding what it was. The materials were, Mrs. Ross Church says, supplied by a young Frenchman, named Lasalles, wlio turned up at i-angham, and astonished the neiglibourhood by lassoing cattle and doing other barbarous feats. The matter supplied by this amusing adventurer was " licked into shape " by Marryat. This account of the origin of the CA P TA IN MA RRYAT. 145 book is certainly borne out by its contents. It is a somewhat rambling story of adventure among the Red Men, starting from an improbability, and ending some- what abruptly. No small part of it consists of an account of the early Mormons, and has sadly the air of padding. On the whole, it has much more the look of a collection of notes for a tale of adventure than anything else, and has always been one of the least read, if not entirely the least read, of the books which bear Marryat's name. Of " The Mission " its author gave an exact account in a letter to his friend Mrs. S : "It is composed of scenes and descriptions of Africa in a journey to the Northward from the Cape of Good Hope — full of lions, rhinoceroses, and all manner of adventures, interspersed with a little common sense here and there, and inter- woven with the history of the settlement of the Cape up to 1828 — written for young people of course, and, there- fore trifling, but amusing." "The Mission," although this promising sketch of it is strictly correct, has not been much more popular than " Monsieur Violet," and the reason is obvious enough. It is not so much a story as a series of unconnected, or very loosely connected, incidents ; and moreover, it contains what any right-minded boy could only regard as a cruel "sell." The hero starts forth to clear up the fate of a relative — a lady who has been wrecked on the Caffre coast many years before. It is not known for certain whether she was drowned or died on shore, and a fear has always existed that she survived as a prisoner among the natives, and had grown up to be the wife of some Caffre chief, and bear him young barbarians in his kraal — a fate JQ 14G LIFE OF which it is believed did actually befall the daughters of an English officer, who were wrecked on that coast on their way back from India. He goes on, hears of a renowned chief, whose mother was an Englishwoman, finds him, and then discovers that it was another shi|)- wrecked lady, who had the happiness to produce a half- bred hero in that distant region. His own relative has certainly perished. Now this is cruel. It was not worth while to go so far to learn so little, and the feeling of dis- a})pointment caused is too acute. Marryat made a fatal mistake when he overlooked the possibilities of the situ- ation. I'or the rest, it is a pity he did, because the background of the story is particularly good. Marryat seems to have obtained a very clear idea of the Cape, which he must have visited during his service in the South Atlantic. His hunting adventures, his Zulu war- riors, his Dutch Boers, and Hottentot boys are distinctly good. There is even a touch of something grandiose in the references to the invaders from the North, who were then pressing down on Caffraria. They weigh in an im- posing fashion on the fortunes of the adventurers in "The Mission." It is somewhat unfair to look at it all now, when these materials have again been made popular. r, 12mo. Part of the "Juvenile Library." Another edition. 2 vols. London, 1850, Svo. — Another edition. 1853, Svo. London, Masterman Ready ; or, the Wreck of the Pacific. 3 vols. Lon- don, 1641, Svo. BIBLIOGRAPHY. Ill Mastermau Ready. Now edition. (Bvhn's lUudmted Library.) London, ISDl, Svo. Another edition, 2 vols. London, 1853, 12nio. Another edition. London, 1856, r2mo. — Another edition. (BclVs Heading Books.) London, 1875, 8vo. — Another edition. London, 1878, 16mo. — Another edition. London, 1885, 8vo. — Anotlier edition. With illus- trations. London [1886], 8vo. The Metropolitan : a monthly journal of literature, science, and the fine arts. [Continued as] The Metropolitan Magazine. Suc- cessively edited by T. Camp- bell, F. Marrj'at, etc. 57 vols. London, 1831-50, 8vo. The Mission, or Scenes in Africa. London, 1845, 8vo. Another edition. London, 1853, 12mo. -New edition. (BoJm's Illus- t rated Library. ) London, 1854, 870. Another edition. London, ;856, l-2mo. Another edition. London, 1887, 8vo. Mr. Midshipman Easy. 3 vols. London, 1836, 12mo. Another edition. London. 1838, 8vo. No. Ixvi. of the "Standard Novels." • Another edition. London, 1856, 8vo. ■ Another edition. With illus- trations. London, 1873, 8vo. Mr. Midshipman Easy. Another edition. London [1S79], 8vo. One of a series entitled " Notable Novels." [" Handy- Volume Marryat " edition.] London [1880], 16mo. -Another edition. London, [1881], 8vo. One of "Ward and Lock's Stand- ard Novels." — Anotlier edition. • London [1883], 8vo. Narrative of the Travels and Ad- ventures of Monsieur Violet in California, Sonora, and Western Texas. 3 vols. London, 1843, 12mo. -Another edition. Loudon, 1819, 8vo. — The Travels and Adventures of Mon.«ieur Violet among the Snake Indians and Wild Tribes of the Great Western Prairies. London, 1849, 12mo. Vol. 33 of the " Parlour Library." -The Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet in California, Sonora, and Western Texas. With illustrations. London, 1874, 8vo. Another edition. London [1875], 8vo. -Another edition. London [1880], 16mo. One of the " Handy- Volume IMarryat " series. The Naval Officer ; or. Scenes and Adventures in the life of Frank Mildmay. 3 vols. Loudon, 1829, 12mo. Revised edition. (Colbiirn's Modern Standard Novelists, vol. X.) London, 1839, 8vo. Frank Mildmay ; or, the Naval Officer, with a Memoir by Florence Marryat. Loudon [1873], Svo. IV BiryLTOGRAPHY. The Naval OfTicer. Another edi- tion. London [1874], 8vo. One of a series, entitled " Notable Novels." Author's edition. London [1874], Svo. — Another edition London " Handy- Volume [1880], 16mo. One of the Marryat" series. Newton Forster; or, the Merchant Service. 3 vols. London, 1832, 12nio. Another edition. London, 1838, Svo. No. Ixvii. of the " Standard Novels." -Another edition. London, 1856, Svo. One of a series entitled the "Railway Library." Another edition. With illus- trations. London, 1873, Svo. Another edition. London [1874], Svo. One of a series entitled " Notable Novels." Author's edition. London [1874], Svo. Another edition [1880], 16nio. One of the Marryat" series. 011a Podrida. 3 1840, 12mo. Another edition. London " Handy- Volume vols. London, London, London, 1849, Svo. — Another edition. lS.o6, 12mo. Another edition. With ill us trations. London, 1874, Svo. -Author's copyright edition London [1S75], Svo Another edition. [18S0], 16mo. One of the Marrjat " series. The Pacha of Many Tales London, 1835, 12mo. London " Handy-Volume 3 vols. The Pacha of Many Tales. Another edition. Paris, 1?35, Svo. Another edition. London, 1838, Svo. No. Ixviii. of the "Standard Novels." New edition. London, 1856, Svo. — Author's edition. London [1874], Svo. Another edition. With illus- trations. London, 1873", Svo. Another edition. London [ISSO], Svo. One of the "Handy-Volume Marryat" series. Percival Keene. 3 vols. London, 1842, 12mo. Another edition. London, of the "Standard 1S4S, Svo. No. cxiii. Novels." -New edition, with a Memoir of the Author. London, 1857, Svo. One of the .series entitled " Railway Library." Another edition. With illustrations. London [1873], Svo. New edition. London [1875], Svo. Another edition. With a Memoir of the Author. Lon- don [1880], 16mo. One of the " Handy- Volume Marryat " series. Peter Simple. 3 vols. London, 1834, 12mo. Another edition. London, 1838, Svo. No. Ixii. of the Novels." — Another edition. 1856, Svo. -Another edition. ''Standard London, With illus- trations. London, 1870, Svo. — Another edition. With illus- trations. London, 1873, Svo. BIBLIOGRAPHY. Peter Simple. Author's edition, complete. London [1874], 8vo. Another edition. London, Guildford [printed 1876], 8vo. Another edition. London, Halifax [printed 1878], 8vo. Another edition. London [1880], 16mo. One of the " Handy-Volume Marryat " series. Another edition. London [1881], 8vo. One of " Ward and Lock's Standard Novels." The Phantom Ship. 3 vols. London, 1839, 12mo. Another edition, 1847, 8vo. — Another 1849, Svo. — 'Another edition, edition. London, London, London, 1856, Svo. — Another edition. With illus- trations. London, 1874, Svo. — Another edition. London [1880], 16mo. One of the "Handy-Volume Marryat " series. The Pirate and the Three Cutters. Illustrated with engravings from drawings by C. Stanfield. Lon- don, 1836, 4to. Another edition. With en- gravings by Stanfield. Lon- don, 1848, 8vo. New edition. (Bohn's Illus- trated Library.) London, 1849, Svo. Another edition. With a Memoir of the Author, etc. London, Beccles [printed 1877], Svo. Another edition. London [1880], Svo. Another edition. London [1880], 16mo. One of the "Handy-Volume Marryat" series. The Pirate and the Three Cutters. Another edition. With illus- trations. London [1886], Svo. Poor Jack. With illustrations by C. Stanfield. London, 1840, Svo. -Another edition. London, 1880, Svo. — Another edition. London [1883], Svo. One of the series of "Notable Novels." -Another edition. With illus- trations by C. Stanfield. Lon- don, 1883, Svo. The Privateer's Man, one hundred years ago, 2 vols. London, 1846, Svo. Another edition. London, 18.53, Svo. Another edition. 2 vols. London, 1854, Svo. Another edition. London, 1S56, Svo. The Privateersman. Ad- ventures by sea and land, in civil and savage life, one hundred years ago. {Bohn's Illustrated Library.) London, 1S60, Svo. Rattlin the Reefer. London, 1838, Svo. No. LsLx. of the "Standard Novels." Another edition. London, 1856, 16mo. Another edition. With illus- trations. London, 1873, Svo. — Another edition. London [1875], Svo. Another edition. Edited [or rather written] by Captain Marryat. [" Handy - Volume Marryat" edition.] London [1880], 16mo. The Settlers in Canada. 2 vols. London, 1844, Svo. VI BIBLIOGRAPHY. Tlie Settlers in Canaila. Another edition. London, 1854, 12mo. Another edition. London, 1855, 12mo. New edition. With illustra- tions by Gilbert and Dalziel. London, 18(30, 8vo. Part of " Bohn's Illustrated Library." Another edition, London [18S6], 8vo. — Another edition. London [18>7], 8vo. Snarleyyow ; or, the Dog Fiend. 3 vols. London, 1837, 12iiio. Another edition. Paris, 1837, Svo. Another edition. London, 1847, 8vo. No. cvli. Novels." — Another of the edition. " Standard London, 1856, 12mo. Tlie Dog Fiend ; or, Snarley- yow. London, 1857, Svo. One of the series entitled "Rail- way LiVjrary." Another edition. With illus- trations. London, New York, 1873, 8vo. Another edition. [Handy- volume Marry at] London [l>i80], Svo. Suggestions for the Abolition of tlie jiresent System of Ini]ircss- inent in the Naval Service. London, 1S22, Svo. Valerie, an Autobiography. 2 vols. London, 1849, 12mo. Another edition. With illus- trations. London [1873], Svo. Another edition. London, 1852, 16mo. — Author's Copyright edition. London [1875], Svo. Valeric, an Autobiography. An- other edition. London [1880], 16 mo. One of the " Handy-voUimo Marryat " Series. IL APPENDIX. BIOGllArHY, CraXICISM, ETC. Gary, T. G, — Letter to a lady in France on the supposed failure of a National Bank . . . with answers to enquiries concerning the books of Captain Marryat and Mr. Dickens. Boston [U.S.], 1843, Svo. Second edition. Boston [U.S.], 1844, Svo. Marryat, Florence. — Life and Letters of Captain Marryat. 2 vols. London, 1872, Svo. ilarryat, Frederick.— A Reply to Captain Marryat's statements relative to the coloured West Indians, in his work entitled, " A Diary in America." [Con- sisting of letters which appeared in the " St. George's Chronicle."] London, 1840, Svo. Marshall, John. — Royal Naval Biography. 4 vols. London, 1823-35, Svo. Frederick Marryat, vol. iii., pp. 201-270. Poe, Edgar A. — The Literati, etc. New York, 1850, Svo. Frederick Marryat, pp. 450-460. MAGAZINE AIITICLES. J\Iarryat, Frederick. — New JMouthlv Magazine, vol. 48, 1836, pp. 228-232.— Bentley's Sliscellany (with portrait), by C. Whitehead, vol. 24, 1848, BIBLIOGRAPHY. VII Marryat, Captain. pp. 524-530 ; same article, Eclectic Mat^azine, vol. 16, 1849, pp. 135-139, and Lit- tell's Living Afje, vol. 19, pp. 540-543. — Temple liar, vol. 37, 1873, pp. 100-106.— London Society, by T. H. S. Escott, vol. 23, 1873, pp. 3t-44. and his Diary. Southern Literary Messenger, vol. 7, 1841, pp. 253-276. at Lanrjham. Cornhill Magazine, vol. 16, 1867, pp. 149-161. — Life and Letters of. Chambers's Journal, 1872, pp. 691-695. -Midshipman Easy. Monthly Keview, vol. 3 N.S., 1836, pp, 211-223. — Newton Forster. "Westminster Review, vol. 16, 1832, pp. 390- 394. Marryat, Captain. Novels. Eraser's Magazine, vol. 17, 1838, pp. 571-577. Percival Keene. Tait's Edin- burgh Magazine, vol. 9 N.S., 1842, pp. 670-680.— Monthly Review, vol. 3 N.S., 1842, pp, 213-223. — Sea Novels. Dublin Uni- versity Magazine, vol. 47, 1856, pp. 294-308 ; same article. Eclectic Magazine, vol. 38, pp. 46-61). — Cornhill Magazine, by J. Hannay, vol. 27, 1873, pp. 170-190 ; same article, Littell's Living Age, vol. 116, pp. 676- 689, and Eclectic Mai^^azine, vol. 17 N.S., pp. 464-478. — Settlers in Canada. Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 11, 1844, pp. 807, 808. — Snarlcyyow. Dublin Uiii- ver.sitv I\Iagazine, vol. 10, 1837, pp. 325-338. III. CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS. Suggestions for the aboli- Rattlin the Reefer . 1838 tion of the jireseut system Phantom Ship . 1839 of Impressment in the Diary in America 1839 Naval Service 1822 OUa Podrida . 1840 Adventures of a Naval Poor Jack .... 1840 Oflicer ; or, Frank Mild- Masterman Ready 1841 may .... 1829 Joseph Rushbrook ; or, Tlie The King's Own 1830 Poacher 1841 Newton Forster 1832 Percival Keene . 1842 Peter Simple 1834 Narrative of the Travels Jacob Faithful . 1834 and Adventures of Mon- Pacha of Many Tales . 1835 sieur Violet . 1843 Mr. Midshipman Easy 1836 Settlers in Canada 1844 Japhet in Search of a The Mission ; or, Scenes in Father .... 1836 Africa .... 1845 Pirate and the Three Privateer's Man 1846 Cutters .... 1836 Children of the New Forest 1847 Code of Signals . 1837 Snarleyyow ; or, the Dog The Little Savage . 1848-49 Fiend .... 1837 Valerie .... 1849 Printed hy Waltliu ."iCOTT, Felling, A'ewcastle-on-Tyne. Edited by William Sharp. WITH INTRODUCTORY NOTICES BY VARIOUS CONTRIBUTORS. 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