Langham, to which Marryat betook himself for good in 1843, had been in his possession for some thirteen years. Its history, as far as he was concerned, 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 unprofitable 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 profit 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 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 taught 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, halfway between Wells-next-the-Sea and Holt. The Manor House, says Mrs. Ross Church, “without having any great architectural pretensions, had a certain unconventional 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 which the walls were clothed) Captain Marryat 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 twopence 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, are illustrated in his daughter’s “Life” by the following extracts, taken at random from his farm accounts.

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 £150. 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 “agricultural 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, 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 sufficiently clear that Marryat 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 discuss, 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 as the best of them; but at home he was always a thoughtful, and, at times, a very grave man; for he was not exempt from those 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 boatswain, 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 displayed 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. Moreover, 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 indulgent 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 mankind. 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 occupied. 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 obeyed. For with all his indulgence of them, Captain Marryat took care to impress one fact upon his children—that his word was law.”

The children were aware that they were dealing with a parent not incapable 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 governess [there were great negotiations over the engagement of this official], when eventually secured and transplanted 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 respect to punishment and reward. He kept a quantity of small articles for presents in his secretary, and at the termination of each week the children, and governess armed with a report of their general behaviour, were ushered with much solemnity 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 diplomacy 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 question, took hold of the rent and tore off the whole lower part of the skirt. ‘Tell her I did it,’ he said in explanation as he walked away.” This story, which had previously made its appearance in an article in the Cornhill Magazine, is supported there by the general assertion that whenever any of the young Marryats required punishment 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 recommended courage by giving them nothing to fear, inculcated 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 his 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 nauseous of all forms of twaddle. We have it on his own authority that he joined Theodore Hook in inventing 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.

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-viveur 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 with 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. These last he steadily declined. Except during a few brief visits to London on matters of business, he remained fixed at Langham 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 written 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 ‘Collingwood.’” 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. My former productions, 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 justified his unwillingness to write the life of Collingwood by other than business reasons. “I should like,” he told Forster, “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 command, 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 condition 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 truth.” 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 appears 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 followers 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, who turned up at Langham, and astonished the neighbourhood 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 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 somewhat 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 interwoven with the history of the settlement of the Cape up to 1828—written for young people of course, and, therefore 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 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 shipwrecked 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 disappointment caused is too acute. Marryat made a fatal mistake when he overlooked the possibilities of the situation. For 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 warriors, 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 imposing 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. But good as it is of its kind, the book has a feeble, aimless look, simply from want of satisfactory ending.

Of the three children’s stories which remain—“The Settlers,” “The Children of the New Forest,” and “The Little Savage”—the second is most likely to be interesting to children, and the last is, in part at least, the most original. There is something rather gruesome in the picture of the child born on a desert island, and growing up by the side of a ruffian who bullies him. The natural savagery of the human animal is developed in him unchecked, and Marryat has shown some power in the scenes in which the boy discovers the helplessness of his companion, who has been blinded by a flash of lightning, and then turns on him with cool ferocity. But the promise of the beginning is not kept. “The Little Savage” becomes didactic—full of repetitions—and ends by being more than a little tiresome. On the whole, after all, “The Children” is better. Our old friends, the Cavaliers and Roundheads, are less new than “The Little Savage,” but they last out more briskly. It is a child’s story of merit—nothing more—and the historical erudition of it, if somewhat shallow, is on a level with that of more pretentious books. “The Privateersman” has a certain interest as being the last of Marryat’s sea stories, and as a picture, or at least a rough sketch, of the strange old privateer life of which “The Voyages and Cruises of Commodore Walker” is almost our only record from the inside. It is not a pleasant book, or a strong. Moreover, Marryat puts his hero in the very most ignoble position any hero was ever in. It may be safely laid down as a rule that under no conditions ought a gentleman to desert a woman in a forest full of Red American Indians. It is one of those things which a gentleman cannot do. Now the hero of “The Privateersman” does it—and the deduction is obvious. The story has touches which remind one of “Colonel Jack,” but it is too clearly a book written simply to fill space in a magazine. Marryat’s fun had gone when he wrote it for Harrison Ainsworth and The New Monthly Magazine. “Valerie,” a species of Japhet in petticoats, is not even all Marryat’s, and was, in any case, written when he was slowly dying.