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Updated: June 11, 2025
Dale inquired what "light books" he was taking to Oxford: "Saussure, Humboldt, and other works on natural philosophy and geology," he answered. "Then he asked if I ever read any of the modern fashionable novels; on this point I thought he began to look positive, so I gave him a negative, with the exception of Bulwer's, and now and then a laughable one of the Theodore Hook's or Captain Marryat's."
I have been reading Captain Marryat's Naval Officer, and think it exceedingly clever and amusing. It is like himself, full of talent, originality, and humour. He is an accurate observer of life; nothing escapes him; yet there is no bitterness in his satire and no exaggeration in his comic vein.
Captain Marryat's grandfather was a good doctor, and his father, Joseph Marryat of Wimbledon House, was an M.P., chairman for the committee of Lloyd's, and colonial agent for the island of Grenada a substantial man, who refused a baronetcy, and was honoured by an elegy from Campbell. He married Charlotte Geyer, or Von Geyer, a Hessian of good descent.
Tim married, seven or eight years after his master, and settled down in a nice little house upon the estate. Although, henceforth, he did no work whatever; he insisted, to the end of his life, that he was still in Colonel Marryat's service. Hossein, to the great amusement of his master and mistress, followed Tim's example.
It would be not much more just to take Roderick as Smollett's deliberate presentment of himself than to apply the same construction to Marryat's not very dissimilar, but more unlucky, coup d'essai of Frank Mildmay.
Honourable though Marryat's life at sea was, it is as a graphic depictor of naval scenes, customs, and character that he is known to the present generation. His first story, "Frank Mildmay" , took the reading public by storm, and from that time onward he produced tale after tale with startling rapidity. "Peter Simple" is the best of Captain Marryat's novels, and "Mr.
Chamier, who was born in 1796 and did not die till 1870, was a post captain and a direct imitator of Marryat, as also was Captain Howard, Marryat's sub-editor for a time on the Metropolitan, and the part author with him of some books which have caused trouble to bibliographers.
Names are hard enough to remember, but dates are awful; I would rather do the toughest bit of construing than have a page of Greek history to get up. Well, I will certainly look you up some books on history and some travels, and will send you some of Marryat's stories. I suppose you do not care for schoolbooks; I have got a barrow-load that I shall never want again."
In 1850, Saunders and Otley published: The Floral Telegraph, or, Affections Signals by the late Captain Marryat, R.N., but Mrs Lean knows nothing of the book, and it is probably not Marryat's work. In some matters they are very detailed and personal, in others reticent. The story has been spiritedly retold, with reflections and criticisms, by Mr David Hannay in the "Great Writers" Series, 1889.
For instance, if they were going to play "Shipwrecks" "I'll be captain," she would exclaim at once. This had always been Ambrose's part, and he rather prided himself on his knowledge of nautical affairs, gathered from a wide acquaintance with Captain Marryat's stories. He gave it up politely to Ethelwyn, however, and the game began.
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