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Updated: June 25, 2025
"O mamma darling," came the fervent answer, "do let it be in a knot." At last she yielded, and it was decided that Miss Marryat, on returning home, should take me with her. Miss Marryat the favorite sister of Captain Marryat, the famous novelist was a maiden lady of large means.
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.
Marryat, to ask you if you are ready to undertake a delicate, and somewhat dangerous, mission. Captain Clive tells me that he is convinced that you will be able to discharge the duties satisfactorily. He has been giving me the highest report of your conduct and courage, and he tells me that you speak the language with some facility."
Receive, now, the emotions of Captain Marryat, R.N. author of the sea tales, writing in 1837, three years after Mr. Murray 'Never, perhaps, in the records of nations, was there an instance of a century of such unvarying and unmitigated crime as is to be collected from the history of the turbulent and blood-stained Mississippi.
I remember she was surprised on one of my home-comings, when Miss Marryat noted "cheerfulness" as a want in my character, for at home I was ever the blithest of children, despite my love of solitude; but away, there was always an aching for home, and the stern religion cast somewhat of a shadow over me, though, strangely enough, hell never came into my dreamings except in the interesting shape it took in "Paradise Lost."
This condition of things corresponds in some degree to that described by Captain Marryat in that fine old story "Jacob Faithful," in the early chapters of which we get diverting glimpses of life on board a Thames lighterman. But the river population of China is still more absolutely aquatic in manner of life than the Thames barge-folk.
Often as I had spoken to Marryat, I never could quite make him out. Now that I was his guest his habitual reserve disappeared, and despite his failing health he was geniality itself. Even this I did not fully understand at first. At the dinner-table his amusement seemed, I won't say to make a 'butt' of me his banter was too good-natured for that but he treated me as Dr.
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.
If a chance of distinguishing himself happened, promotion would follow; but if not, he might be for years on shore, starving on half pay and waiting in vain for an appointment, while officers with more luck and better interest went over his head. Other professions had been discussed, but nothing determined upon, when Lieutenant Marryat suddenly died.
Such was the marling-spike seaman of the days of Cooper and Marryat, and such was still the able seaman, the "A.B.," of 1855. It was not indeed necessary, nor expected, that most naval officers should do such things with their own hands; but it was justly required that they should know when a job of marling-spike seamanship was well or ill done, and be able to supervise, when necessary.
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