“Great Writers.”
EDITED BY
PROFESSOR ERIC S. ROBERTSON, M.A.
_LIFE OF MARRYAT._
LIFE
OF
FREDERICK MARRYAT
BY
DAVID HANNAY
LONDON
WALTER SCOTT, 24 WARWICK LANE
NEW YORK AND TORONTO: W. J. GAGE & CO.
1889
(_All rights reserved._)
🖛 FOR FULL LIST of the Volumes in this series,
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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.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
Frederick Marryat born 10th July, 1792; his parentage; his
ancestry; home training; schooling at Enfield; runs away to sea;
is sent into the navy and joins the _Impérieuse_ under Captain
Lord Cochrane, in September, 1806 11
CHAPTER II.
The naval war in 1806: the frigates of the Great War; Lord
Cochrane, afterwards Lord Dundonald, Captain of the _Impérieuse_;
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 _Impérieuse_ 17
CHAPTER III.
_Impérieuse_ on coast of Spain; cutting out privateer from
Almeria Bay; alliance with Spain; Rosas; the Basque Roads;
naval service of Marryat after parting with Cochrane till the
end of the Great War; saves several men from drowning; various
adventures; summary of his services from 1806 to 1815 31
CHAPTER IV.
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 _Larne_;
Burmese War; promotion and made a C.B.; transferred to _Tees_ in
July, 1824; short command of _Ariadne_; the _Ariadne_ 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
Metropolitan 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
determination to make money; quarrels with publisher; 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 to his mother describing where he has been; visit to
Canada; affair of the _Caroline_; unpopularity in United States;
Marryat stands his ground; return to England 98
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_ 114
CHAPTER IX.
Marryat goes to Langham for good in 1843; life there; Marryat
and his children; kindness to his men; his scientific farming,
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 supposed slight; Hastings; loss of H.M.S.
_Avenger_, and death of Marryat’s son, Lieutenant Frederick
Marryat; returns to Langham; last months, and death on 9th
August, 1848; estimate of his character and work 149
INDEX. 161
LIFE OF CAPTAIN MARRYAT.
CHAPTER I.
Frederick Marryat, one of the most brilliant, and the least fairly
recognized, of English novelists, was born in Westminster, on the 10th
July, 1792, some seven months before the outbreak of the Great War.
He was the second son of Joseph Marryat, M.P. for Sandwich, chairman
of the committee of Lloyds, and Colonial Agent for the island of
Grenada. His mother was a Bostonian, of a loyalist family. Her maiden
name was Geyer--or according to Mrs. Ross Church’s life of her father,
Von Geyer--and the family is said to have been of Hessian origin.
The Marryats themselves were a Suffolk stock. In Marshall’s “Naval
Biography,” which appeared during Marryat’s own life, the novelist is
said to have descended from one of the numerous Huguenot refugees who
settled in the Eastern Counties during the persecutions of the sixteenth
century. The family version of its history, as given by Mrs. Ross
Church, contains a longer and more splendid pedigree, going back even
to knights who came over with “Richard Conqueror.” These things, though
set forth with faith no doubt, are to be received with polite reserve
by the judicious reader. For the rest, whatever the remote origin of the
Marryats may have been, they were during the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries very distinctly middle-class people--dissenting ministers,
doctors, or business men--manifestly of good parts and industry. Some
of them wrote sermons and printed them. Thomas Marryat, the novelist’s
grandfather, was a doctor and the author of a medical book. His father
was, as the places he held show, a prosperous man; and the future
novelist entered the world under fairly favourable circumstances. There
was, it is clear, no want of money, and the family were active people
with a marked tendency to use their pens.
As no detailed life of Marryat was written until long after his death,
when no witnesses were left who could speak with knowledge, there is
an almost absolute want of evidence as to the character and probable
influence of his family life. If we are to argue from his stories, it was
hardly to be called happy. These guides may not be entirely safe, and
yet they afford evidence of a kind not to be lightly dismissed. A writer
whose pictures of home and school life are habitually disagreeable,
cannot have had many pleasant memories of his own to look back on.
With Marryat this was the case. In all his earlier stories, and until
he became decidedly didactic, and religious, in his later years, he
described the relations of parents and children, of schoolboy and
schoolmaster, as either indifferent or hostile, or as contemptuous
even when affection is not absent. Peter Simple, Mr. Midshipman Easy,
and Newton Foster are the sons of men whom they may like, but cannot
respect, of whom two are maniacs, and one is a harmless imbecile. Their
mothers are either utterly shadowy or repulsive. “Frank Mildmay,” the
first and the most autobiographical of his stories, is also the most
destitute of kindliness. Something may be allowed for rawness in the
author, and something for direct imitation of the earlier Smollettian
model. Marryat, too, publicly protested that he was not the “Naval
Officer” of this first story. But, by his own confession, he put many
of the incidents of his own life into it, and we may safely conclude
that what is wholly wanting in the story was not prominent in his own
experience. Now what is wanting is any trace that Frank Mildmay had the
smallest filial regard for his father, or was conscious of any maternal
influence, or thought of his home life with affection, or of his school
as other than a place of torment. That is not how men write when they
look back kindly on their first years. If Thackeray and Dickens drew
such different pictures of boy and school life, we know why. It is not
necessary to rack the scanty evidence about Marryat’s early years, to
find reason for believing that his father was probably a hard and dry man
of business, whose prosperity never melted the provincial dissenter quite
out of him. Of his mother there is nothing to be supposed at all.
It is to be noted that although Mr. Joseph Marryat was a prosperous man,
he did not send his sons to a public school. Frederick and his elder
brother (Joseph also, and not unknown as a collector of, and writer on,
porcelain) were sent to some sort of academy kept by a Mr. Freeman, at
Ponders End. It is an almost universal experience that the boy who has
been at a private school may remember an individual master with kindness,
but never has any degree of respect or affection for the place itself.
He is not one of an ancient body like the public-school man, and has
nothing in his memory to set off against the restraint--or in the old
hard days the floggings and hardships of school life. The Wykamite might
laugh at the wash pot of Moab, but what private-school boy would forgive
his master for turning him out to wash in a back yard? What is inflicted
by a public school is inflicted by the school itself; in a private
establishment it is inflicted by the master, and is a personal wrong.
Marryat was no exception to the rule. His memories of Ponders End were
not of a kind to make him draw cheerful pictures of school life. That he
was far from a model pupil, and had his share of the cane, has nothing
to do with it. He scamped his work, and forgot it, as many other boys
have done and will do. Not only that, but he was the cause of scamping
in others. Mr. Babbage, who was for a time his schoolfellow, is the
authority for a story which shows that Marryat was indeed a model young
scamp. Babbage wished to work (it does not appear whether they called it
“sweating” or “greasing” at Ponders End), and to get up for that purpose
with another “swot” at the absurd hour of three. With intentions which
were only too obvious, Marryat, who was his room fellow, proposed to join
the party. Babbage objected, and thought to escape the intrusion by the
easy method of not waking Marryat. This answered until the creator of
Mr. Midshipman Easy first bethought himself of drawing his bed across
the door, and then when even the moving of his bed did not rouse him,
of tying his hand to the handle. For some nights Babbage got over the
difficulty by cutting the fastening, until Marryat found a chain which
could not be cut. Babbage had his revenge. He invented an ingenious
machine for jerking the chain, and went on waking his chum repeatedly for
no purpose. At last a compromise was made. Marryat joined the good boys
for early study, and of course it was not long before others joined too,
and then the letting off of fireworks and various noises betrayed the
secret. How many of the party were flogged does not appear. Before long
Marryat had to be up at six bells in the middle watch on duty too often
to leave him much inclination to turn out voluntarily, even for mischief,
when he could by any chance get a night in.
It is also recorded of Marryat that he ran away to sea three times, that
is, he ran away with the intention of getting to sea, but the end of the
adventure was always capture, return to school, and more cane. His great
grievance is reported to have been the obligation to wear the clothes
which his elder brother had outgrown. The detail seems to indicate a
certain narrowness, not to say sordidness, in so prosperous a household
as the Marryats’, and the aggravation was certainly gross enough to
justify the protest. On one of these occasions Mr. J. Marryat showed a
remarkable weakness. He gave the truant money and sent him in a carriage
back to school. This error of judgment had a very natural consequence.
Marryat slipped out of the carriage, found his way quietly home, and took
his younger brothers to the theatre. At last his father came to the
very sensible conclusion that the sea was the best place for such a boy.
Being a man of some influence and position, he was able to start his son
well, on board a crack frigate, and under a distinguished captain. In
September, 1806, Marryat entered the _Impérieuse_, captain Lord Cochrane,
and sailed for the Mediterranean.