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
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
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
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
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
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
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.