Two Gone-by Story Tellers.
Must it be said that the jolly story-teller of the sea and of the sea-ports, who wrote for our uncles and aunts, and elder brothers, the brisk, rollicking tales about Midshipman Easy, and Japhet in Search of a Father, is indeed gone by?
His name was Frederick Marryat,[89] the son of a well-to-do London gentleman, who had served the little Borough of Sandwich as member of Parliament (and was also author of some verses and political tractates), but who did not wean his boy from an inborn love of the sea. To gratify this love the boy had sundry adventurous escapades; but when arrived at the mature age of fourteen, he entered as midshipman in the Royal Navy—his first service, and a very active one, being with that brave and belligerent Lord Cochrane, who later won renown on the west coast of South America. Adventures of most hazardous and romantic qualities were not wanting under such an officer, all of which were stored in the retentive memory of the enthusiastic and observant midshipman, and thereafter, for years succeeding, were strewn with a free hand over his tales of the sea. These break a good many of the rules of rhetoric—and so do sailors; they have to do with the breakage of nearly all the commandments—and so do sailors. But they are breezy; they are always pushing forward; spars and sails are all ship-shape; and so are the sailors’ oaths, and the rattle of the chain-cables, and the slatting of the gaskets, and the smell of the stews from the cook’s galley.
There is also a liberal and quasi democratic coloring of the links and interludes of his novels. The trials of Peter Simple grow largely out of the cruel action of the British laws of primogeniture; nor does the jolly midshipman—grandson, or nephew—forego his satiric raps at my lord “Privilege.” Yet Marryat shows no special admiration for such evolutions of the democratic problem as he encounters in America.[90]
Upon the whole, one finds no large or fine literary quality in his books; but the fun in them is positive, and catching—as our aunts and uncles used to find it; but it is the fun of the tap-room, and of the for’castle, rather than of the salon, or the library. For all this, scores and scores of excellent old people were shaking their sides—in the early part of this century—over the pages of Captain Marryat—in the days when other readers with sighs were bemoaning the loss of the “Great Magician’s” power in the dreary story of Count Robert of Paris, or kindling into a new worship as they followed Ainsworth’s[91] vivid narrative of Dick Turpin’s daring gallop from London to York.
A nearer name to us, and one perhaps more familiar, is that of G. P. R. James,[92] an excellent, industrious man, who drove his trade of novel-making—as our engineers drive wells—with steam, and pistons, and borings, and everlasting clatter.
Yet,—is this sharp, irreverent mention, wholly fair to the old gentleman, upon whose confections, and pastries, so many of us have feasted in times past? What a delight it was—not only for youngsters, but for white-haired judges, and country lawyers—to listen for the jingle of the spurs, when one of Mr. James’s swarthy knights—“with a grace induced by habits of martial exercise”—came dashing into old country quietudes, with his visor up; or, perhaps in “a Genoa bonnet of black velvet, round which his rich chestnut hair coiled in profusion”—making the welkin ring with his—“How now, Sir Villain!”
I caught sight of this great necromancer of “miniver furs,” and mantua-making chivalry—in youngish days, in the city of New York—where he was making a little over-ocean escape from the multitudinous work that flowed from him at home; a well-preserved man, of scarce fifty years, stout, erect, gray-haired, and with countenance blooming with mild uses of mild English ale—kindly, unctuous—showing no signs of deep thoughtfulness or of harassing toil. I looked him over, in boyish way, for traces of the court splendors I had gazed upon, under his ministrations, but saw none; nor anything of the “manly beauty of features, rendered scarcely less by a deep scar upon the forehead,”—nor “of the gray cloth doublets slashed with purple;” a stanch, honest, amiable, well-dressed Englishman—that was all.
And yet, what delights he had conjured for us! Shall we be ashamed to name them, or to confess it all? Shall the modern show of new flowerets of fiction, and of lilies—forced to the front in January—make us forget utterly the old cinnamon roses, and the homely but fragrant pinks, which once regaled and delighted us, in the April and May of our age?
What incomparable siestas those were, when, from between half-closed eyelids, we watched for the advent of the two horsemen—one in corselet of shining silver, inlaid with gold, and the other with hauberk of bright steel rings—slowly riding down the distant declivity, under the rays of a warm, red sunset! Then, there were abundance of gray castle-walls—ever so high, the ivy hanging deliciously about them; and there were clanging chains of draw-bridges, that rattled when a good knight galloped over; and there were stalwart gypsies lying under hedges, with charmingest of little ones with flaxen hair (who are not gypsies at all, but only stolen); and there is clash of arms; and there are bad men, who get punched with spear heads—which is good for them; and there are jolly old burghers who drink beer, and “troll songs”; and assassins who lurk in the shadows of long corridors—where the moonbeams shine upon their daggers; and there are dark-haired young women, who look out of casements and kiss their hands and wave white kerchiefs,—and somebody sees it in the convenient edge of the wood, and salutes in return, and steals away; and the assassin escapes, and the gypsies are captured in the bush, and some bad king is killed, and an old parchment is found, and the stars come out, and the rivulet murmurs, and the good knight comes back; and the dark tresses are at the casement, and she smiles, and the marriage bells ring, and they are happy. And the school bell (for supper) rings, and we are happy!
As I close this book with these last shadowy glimpses of story-tellers, who have told their pleasant tales, and have lived out their time, and gone to rest, I see lifting over that fair British horizon, where Victoria shows her queenly presence—the modest Mr. Pickwick, with his gaiters and bland expanse of figure; Thackeray, too, with his stalwart form and spectacled eyes is peering out searchingly upon all he encounters; the refined face of Ruskin is also in evidence, and his easy magniloquence is covering one phase of British art with new robes. A woman’s Dantesque profile shows the striking qualities which are fairly mated by the striking passages in Adam Bede and Daniel Deronda; one catches sight, too, of the shaggy, keen visage of the quarrel-loving Carlyle, and of those great twin-brethren of poesy—Browning and Tennyson—the Angelo and the Raphael of latter images in verse. Surely these make up a wonderful grouping of names—not unworthy of comparison with those others whom we found many generations ago, grouped around another great queen of England, who blazed in her royal court, and flaunted her silken robes, and—is gone.