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Captain Marryat at Langham.

Ir is now many years since Frederick Marryat died, and it may seem strange to some that whereas others, his contemporaries, of like note, and more recently gone from the stage of life, are represented upon our library-shelves biographically, there is still a gap where the life of the author of Peter Simple ought to be; but it was his own expressed desire that no memoir of him should be published after his death. But for this prohibition, his life, however inefficiently, would before now have been written; but with the remembrance of it, those who knew him best, and therefore could best perform the task, must look upon that wish of his as a command.

Yet for some time past a notice of Captain Marryat has been called for; and I think I shall not be in any degree infringing on his prohibition, by recalling my own personal recollection of him in his later years.

But first, as a contrast, I must speak of the days when he was a young man, when he published his first works. Living at Sussex House, Hammersmith, which he had purchased of the Duke of Sussex, to whom he was equerry at the time, he had kept up a round of incessant gaiety and a course of almost splendid extravagance. He had always displayed a remarkable facility in getting rid of money. Indeed, he used himself to say that he had "contrived to spend three fortunes;" for he had inherited not only his share-no small one-of his father's property, but also that of one of his brothers, who had died early, and left to him his portion, together with a pretty little number of thousands which he had acquired as heir to his uncle, Samuel Marryat, Q.C.

At Sussex House were held those amusing conjuring soirées which Captain Marryat used to have in conjunction with his great friend, Captain Chamier, when they would display the various tricks of sleight-of-hand which they together had purchased and learnt of the wizards of that day; and when Theodore Hook was wont to bewilder the company with his ventriloquisms, and make them laugh with his funny stories and imitations. There half the men to be met were such as the world had talked of, and whose bon mots were worth remembering. Marryat lived then in the atmosphere of a court as well as in the odour of literature. The former air might easily be dispensed with without any loss of happiness, but one would have thought that intellectual society had become necessary to his existence. I remember him on the Continent some years later than this, at all sorts of places,-at Brussels, at Antwerp, at Paris, at Spa, -always living en prince, and always the same wherever he went,—

throwing away his money with both hands,-the merriest, wittiest, most. good-natured fellow in the world. As soon as he was known society was ready to applaud. Once, at a German table-d'hôte, where I also was present, for I begin now to speak from personal recollection,-he, in order to amuse his next neighbour, suddenly laid down his knife and fork and looked to the other end of the table. The other knives and forks went down. He coughed, and there was a dead silence. "I'll trouble you for the salt," said he, or something equally commonplace, whereupon there was a general roar of laughter. "There's nothing like being considered a wit," he whispered.

Later, I remember Captain Marryat living in Spanish Place, London. His establishment was not so superb as it had been at Sussex House, but his manner of living was as gay. It was an incessant round of dining out and giving dinners. At his table you met all the celebrities of the day. His intimate friends were men and women who had made their names of value. In Spanish Place it was I had last seen him in association with Bulwer Lytton, Dickens, Ainsworth, and John Poole, or with the beautiful Lady Blessington and D'Orsay; and now, after an absence of years, I travelled into Norfolk, to find him in a most out-of-the-way place. I arrived one evening at the "Feathers Inn" at Holt, and discovered that I had yet four or five miles to go before I could reach Langham. So hiring one of those miserable old flies of former days, I got into it, and was jolted away, in a temper which might have borne improvement.

"What has come to him," argued I, "that he should, in the very vigour of life, retire from the world and live the life of a hermit? Well, perhaps after all, he may continue much the same sort of existence as he led of old. No doubt he has surrounded himself with every pleasure that society can give him. But he might have chosen a place a little nearer to civilization, instead of obliging me to drive four miles at eight o'clock in the evening in an old shanderydan like this."

I could not look at the country, for it was too dark; but I knew that it was nothing but a straight bare country-road along which we were going, so I had no solace but a grumble. Half-an-hour later, and grumbling was at an end. We paused a moment, the driver of the trap descended and opened a gate, and as he remounted and urged his horse to a final effort, I could see through the darkness that we were rounding a gravelled path.

Sounds are heard easily in the country: before the fly drew near the house lights were seen flashing in the hall, and we had not drawn up before the entrance when the door was flung open and several figures stood in the porch.

"Hullo!" said a voice.

Why, is it you? Why didn't you give me notice, that I might have sent for you?" It was the same voice as of old-deep-chested, cordial, and cheery.

I easily made the excuse that I had fancied Holt was close by, and immediately afterwards I was in the porch. The early moon was out, and

shining upon the house, and I stepped back upon the gravelled path to look at it. It was an Elizabethan cottage-gabled, with heavy stacks of chimneys, and an overhanging thatch-built upon the exact model of that of George the Fourth at Virginia Water. It was built by Copland, the architect, who was a personal friend of Captain Marryat's, and with whom he exchanged Sussex House for this cottage. The vagary had been that the two houses should be exchanged exactly as they stood; but the idea of all standing" having different meanings in the two different minds, he who got Sussex House as his portion came off very much the better of the two. But it had been through life the same with the present owner of Langham. If there was a quality for which there was in his mind no place, it was regard for his own interest.

As I re-entered the porch, I perceived several cocks and hens crouched down close to the threshold, and a brace of tame partridges moved away slowly to a little distance.

We went into the dining-room. It was a pretty room, walled with water-colour sketches by Stansfield; and at the further end by cases of books. There was an air of thorough comfort pervading the whole. I had not been expected; but nobody would have guessed the fact by the eatables which were almost immediately upon the table.

"Well!" said I, when the inward craving was appeased and silenced, and when consequently my good humour had returned, "this is all very nice; but what makes you live down here? I mean to carry you back to town with me. Everybody says that it is a shame that you should be out of the world like this."

He was standing upon the hearthrug, with his back to the firelooking down at me as I sat at the table. He was not a tall man-five feet ten-but I think intended by nature to be six feet, only having gone to sea when still almost a child, at a time when the between-decks were very low-pitched, he had, he himself declared, had his growth unnaturally stopped. His immensely powerful build, and massive chest, which measured considerably over forty inches round, would incline one to this belief. He had never been handsome, as far as features went, but the irregularity of his features might easily be forgotten by those who looked at the intellect shown in his magnificent forehead. His forehead and his hands were his two strong points. The latter were models of symmetry. Indeed, while resident at Rome, at an earlier period of his life, he had been requested by a sculptor to allow his hand to be modelled.

At the time I now speak of him he was fifty-two years of age; but looking considerably younger. His face was clean shaved; and his hair so long that it reached almost to his shoulders, curling in light loose locks like those of a woman. It was slightly grey. He was dressed in anything but evening costume on the present occasion, having on a short velveteen shooting-jacket and coloured trousers. I could not help smiling as I glanced at his dress-recalling to my mind what a dandy he had been as a young man.

"What can make you live down here?" repeated I.

"I have had enough of the world," he answered. "I like this sort of life besides, look at all my girls and boys. I want to retrench." "But do you believe you save money by farming your own land ?" I asked.

In perfect good faith he assured me that he did. It was the delusion of his present life that scientific farming was an economical plan of living; although to the ordinary run of mortals it appeared uncommonly like throwing money away. Marryat, I think, rather prided himself upon his common sense. He said once, "People say that geniuses very seldom have common sense: now I have been called a genius; but I am sure I have plenty of common sense." He had not a bit of it.

But I have left him standing on the hearthrug all this while, with his back to the fire, and we get on but slowly with our conversation.

"What time do you get up in the morning?" asked I.

"About five at this time of the year."

"About-about what?

at that hour?"

Are you mad? Do you expect me to get up

"By no means: get up at any hour you like; but I am my own bailiff."

"Do you mean to say that your servants are up and about at five o'clock in the morning?"

"They are by the time I return home and want them. I do not trouble them before. I open my bed-room window and jump out when I am dressed, which saves all the trouble of unbarring doors. We breakfast at eight."

Although eight was an improvement upon five, yet it required some moments to recover from the shock. When I did so, I said humbly that I would go to bed.

I suppose there is something in country air conducive to early rising; for, contrary to my usual custom, I woke betimes the following morning. I went to my bedroom window and looked out. The room was at the back of the house, and overlooked a large lawn, divided from a field by an invisible fence. The practically useful had evidently here swamped the ornamental. The field was green with young barley, which for the time looked almost as pretty as if the whole had been grass. Wherever I looked, my eye invariably fell upon some animal or other. There were a dozen or more young calves feeding about the lawn; two or three ponies and a donkey under a clump of larches in one direction, a long-legged colt and its mamma standing jealously apart from them in another. Coops with young fowls of various kinds stood upon the gravel walk in front of the dining-room doorstep.

As I was looking, I heard the premonitory signal of some one's approach, a laugh; and along the garden walk I saw Captain Marryat coming with several of his family. Two or three dogs capered around and about; a jackdaw sat on the shoulder of one of the girls; and as they

neared the lawn, they were joined by a flock of pigeons, which wheeled round and round their heads, settling for a moment, sometimes on the shoulder of one, sometimes on the hat of another, or coming six in a row upon any arm that was held out to them. Then the little calves found out what was the matter, and whisking their tails over their backs, ran headlong at their master, catching at his coat-tails, sucking his fingers when they could get hold of them, and so besetting his path that it was with difficulty he could move on.

It was a lovely morning, and instead of entering the house-having ascertained by a glance through the open glass doors of the dining-room that his lazy guest was not yet down-Captain Marryat seated himself on the edge of the lawn, closely cropped by his little friends the calves. Hereupon the ponies advanced and sniffed at his hands and face, and one of them knocked his hat over his eyes. He was evidently a spoilt little brute, for shortly afterwards, upon having his long tail pulled, he ran away a few paces, and looking carefully back so as to measure his distance, threw up his heels within a few inches of his tormentor's face, a practical joke which both parties seemed equally to appreciate.

I turned from the window, feeling that at this rate I should never be dressed.

After breakfast there was plenty to do in the way of feeding innumerable animals. I never saw so many animals together out of a menagerie. There was an aviary six or eight feet square, full of birds of every description. There were rabbits, pheasants, partridges, cats, dogs, and donkeys. In the walled garden we were followed by a tame seagull and a tame heron. The horses, in and out of the stables, were more like dogs than horses, and the dogs were more like children than dogs.

Naturally we commenced talking of animals and their instincts and traits of sagacity; and to my surprise, Marryat did not appear to go so far as have some in his estimate of them. I repeated some anecdote of a dog which I admitted I had only on hearsay, and asked if he thought it probable.

"It may be true," he answered. "I had once a very clever Newfoundland dog myself. But it is the fashion of the present day to exalt animals into reasoning beings; which serves to lower rather than to exalt their instinct."

Here one of the little girls asked what this particular dog he alluded to was in the habit of doing.

"Why, my dear, he did what any other intelligent dog would have done. On one occasion when I was called suddenly to join my ship, and had left a quantity of dirty duds at home, the dog Captain picked out every individual article that belonged to me from the general mass, and piling them in a heap, he sat upon them and would not allow them to be touched by any one. Now this is a regular dog's trick, instigated by attachment. Captain knew by his scent which clothes were mine; he did not carefully examine the marks to find my initials. When I read of a