From 1830 to his death in 1848 Marryat was a working man of letters,
and a busy one. His books were many, and they do not represent all
his labours. There was a life of his old messmate, Lord Napier,
begun--and stopped--at the request of the widow, and much miscellaneous
journalism--if that is the correct description of contributions to
magazines. His pen was rapid, and he had no fear of tackling new
subjects, so that the length of the shelf which would hold his complete
works would be considerable, and the variety of the contents of the
edition not small. Sea stories and land stories, plays which never
reached the stage, diaries on the Continent and in America, letters of
Norfolk farmers, and didactic tales for children all went in.
There is a difficulty in the way of the telling of Marryat’s own life
during these busy eighteen years--the not uncommon difficulty, want
of information. The biography published by his family leaves much
unexplained, for reasons into which it would be useless, even if one
had the right, to inquire. The causes of Marryat’s sudden changes of
residence, and of his hasty journey to the Continent in 1835, are only
to be guessed at. He did not live much in the literary world of his
time. Of the eighteen years of his writing activity, several in the
middle were spent on the Continent, and several at the end in Norfolk.
In a general way one gathers that the question of money was a very
important, sometimes a very pressing one, with Marryat. Money earned,
inherited, spent--money to be recovered from debtors, and, doubtless,
paid to creditors, had much of his attention. It is manifest that he
was what Carlyle 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
speculation 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 departure for America in 1837, he was successively
at Sussex 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 he acquired a thousand acres of land in Norfolk,
which remained in his possession 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 _Metropolitan Magazine_, 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
important matters is shown conclusively in a letter to Bentley, 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 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 editorship I would then
take at £400 per annum until the end of the first year, when, if the
work succeeded, I should expect an addition of £100, and if it continued
profitable, another £100, so as to raise the _final_ pay of the editor
to £600 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 preparation. 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 spontaneous 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 editorship 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 and Otley 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, who wrote that strange book, “Rattlin the Reefer,”
which still continues to be catalogued 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, for in those days no periodical was able to
exist without its regular battle. But in the midst of these forgetable
and forgotten things--Marryat contributed to the _Metropolitan_ five
of the best of his books. “Newton Forster” appeared 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 nautical 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 “Olla Podrida”--these last being only what Marryat
frankly called his “Diary on the Continent”--namely, “very good magazine
stuff.”
His extraordinary industry in 1834 can be confidently accounted for by
the need of money. In 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 Reformer. Although the
year immediately following the passing of the Reform Bill 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, should come under my command, and
deserve punishment, 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 the 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 on 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 First Lord, one of the ablest men who ever was at the head of the
department, invited him to come to Whitehall and talk the Bill over.
This invitation may be taken as a proof, among others, that if Marryat
remained unemployed, it was mainly by his own wish. He had already, by
his writing 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 from the 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
judgment,” 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 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; what’s done can’t be helped_.”
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 Church
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 Stanfield. With the
_Metropolitan_ his connection was coming to an end. In 1836 he returned
to England, 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 New Monthly_ was now his resource--at the increased
rate of twenty guineas a sheet. To 1836 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
members lived abroad to escape something--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-officer. 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, few questions were asked; even Captain Rook
and Mr. Deuceace were received without too much inquiry by people who
neither imitated nor liked all their ways. Now we are less strict at
home, and by a natural reaction more circumspect 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
anecdotes 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 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 supplied (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 Beauvoir Priaulx about a debt
of frs. 1250, owed to Marryat by R----, a hopeless debt. “I consider
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
_strongly suspect_ that it is my intention, independent of exposure, to
_break every 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 different picture of Marryat
to that afforded by the threats against R----, and the vapid scandal
written to the gentleman with the handsome French name.
“SPA, _June 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 Blasé:’ 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 Horticultural? 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 carnation, 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 Liége, but a flower-woman from Liége, to whom I
showed them, said she had never seen them there; so I 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 Fred should not go out unless
with Mr. B---- or one of the masters. He remained 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. Write 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 manœuvres.
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 “Fred,” who had been playing truant so enviably in Paris, was
afterwards the Lieutenant Frederick Marryat who perished in the wreck of
the _Avenger_.