He became a cultivated and bold traveller, beloved by his friends, and not unknown to fame. He only survived his father a few years, and died at the age of twenty-eight.
Marryat now began his charming series of stories for children, a work to which he turned for a practical reason that sounds strangely from his impulsive lips:--
"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." Save for a little tendency to preachment, these volumes, particularly _Masterman Ready_, and _The Children of the New Forest_, are admirably suited to their purpose from the genuine childlikeness of their conception and treatment.
Meanwhile Marryat's health was rapidly giving way, and almost his last appearance before the public was in 1847, when he addressed a pathetic, but fairly dignified letter to the First Lord of the Admiralty, as a protest against some affront, which he suspected, to his professional career. The exact circumstances of the case cannot be now discovered, but it may be readily conjectured that the formalism of official courtesy did not match with the Captain's taste, and that the necessity for self-control on his own part had irritated his resentment. The First Lord expressed his regret at having wounded a distinguished officer, and bestowed on him a good service pension.
It may be said that the pension came too late, if indeed it would at any time have been particularly serviceable. Marryat was now engaged in that melancholy chase for health which generally augurs the beginning of the end. He had ruptured two blood vessels, and was in great danger from the constitutional weakness which had first attacked him as a young lieutenant in the West Indies. He moved to his mother's house in order to consult the London doctors. A mild climate was recommended, and he went down to Hastings, where the news of his son's death destroyed his own chances of recovery. After about a month's trial of Brighton, he came back to the London doctors who told him that "in six months he would be numbered with his forefathers."