FLORENCE MARRYAT.
Battling with a fierce snowstorm, and a keen east wind, which drives the flakes straight into your face like repeated stings of a small sharp whip, a welcome shelter is presently found in Florence Marryat's pretty, picturesque little house in St. Andrew's Road, West Kensington. Two bright red pots filled with evergreens mark the house, which is built in the Elizabethan style of architecture, with a covered verandah running along the upper part. By a strange coincidence, the famous author has settled down within a stone's throw of the place where her distinguished father—the late Captain Marryat, R.N.—once lived. Until three months ago, there stood in the Fulham Palace Road, a large, handsome building enclosed in ten acres of ground, which was first called "Brandenburg Villa," and was inhabited by the celebrated singer Madame Sontag. It next fell into the hands of the Duke of Sussex, who changed its name to Sussex House, and finally sold it to his equerry Captain Marryat, who exchanged it with Mrs. Alexander Copeland for the Manor of Langham, in Norfolk, where he died. For some years past Sussex House has been in Chancery, but now it is pulled down; the land is sold out in building plots, and the pleasure grounds will be turned into the usual streets and rows of houses for the needs of the ever-increasing population. The study—or as Florence Marryat calls it, her "literary workshop"—is very small, but so well arranged that it seems a sort of multum in parvo, everything a writer can want being at hand. It has a look of thorough snugness and comfort. The large and well-worn writing table is loaded with books of reference and a vast heap of tidily-arranged manuscript, betokening the fact that yet another new novel is under weigh. A massive brass inkstand, bright as gold, is flanked on each side by a fierce-looking dragon. Two of the walls are lined with bookshelves from floor to ceiling, filled with books which must number many hundreds of volumes. Over the fireplace hangs an old-fashioned round mirror set in a dull yellow frame, mounted on plush, around whose broad margin is displayed a variety of china plates, picked up in the many foreign countries which Miss Marryat has visited, and the effect is particularly good. The room is lighted at the further corner by glass doors opening into an aviary and conservatory, which is bright with many red-berried winter plants; this little glass-house opens on to the big kennels where Miss Marryat's canine pets are made so comfortable.
But the door opens. Enters your hostess with two ringdoves perched familiarly on her shoulder. She is tall in stature, erect in carriage, fair in complexion: she has large blue eyes—set well apart—straight, well-formed eyebrows, and an abundance of soft, fair fluffy hair. She is dressed very simply in a long black tea-gown with Watteau pleat, very plainly made, but perfect in cut and fit, and looking quite unstudied in its becoming graceful simplicity.
Florence Marryat is the youngest of the eleven children of the late well-known author, Captain Marryat, R.N., C.B., F.R.S. Her mother, who died at the good old age of ninety—in full possession of all her faculties—was a daughter of Sir Stephen Shairp, of Houston, Linlithgow, who was for many years H.B.M. Consul-General and Chargé d'Affaires at the Court of Russia. One side of the little study is dedicated to the relics of her father, and in the centre hangs his portrait, surrounded by trophies and memories. The picture is painted by the sculptor Behnes, in water-colours, and represents a tall, fair, slight, though muscular-looking man leaning against the mast of his ship, Ariadne, dressed in the full uniform of those days, a long-tailed coat, white duck trousers, and cocked hat held under his arm. Two smaller pictures of him are pen-and-ink drawings by Count D'Orsay and Sir Edward Belcher respectively.
Entering the service at a very early age, and in troublous times, Captain Marryat gained rapid promotion, and had been in no less than fifty-nine naval engagements before he was twenty-one, and with the single exception of Lord Nelson he was the youngest Post Captain ever known, having indeed attained that rank at the age of twenty-four. After the first Burmese war, in which he took so distinguished a part, he was offered a baronetcy as a reward for his services, but refused it, choosing instead a crest and arms to commemorate the circumstance, with the stipulation that the arms should be such as his daughters might carry. This was accordingly done, and at the present moment there are only eleven women in England who possess the same right, of which number Miss Marryat and her sisters make five. The crest, with arms (a fleur-de-lis and a Burmese boat with sixteen rowers on an azure ground, with three bars argent and three bars sable) is framed, and hangs close to what she calls her "Marryat Museum." Just below the portrait is an oval ebony frame containing an etching of a beaver done on a piece of ship's copper by her father, a morocco case close by holds all his medals, which were bequeathed to her, including the Legion of Honour bestowed on him by the Emperor Napoleon, and the picture of the dead Emperor, sketched by the gallant sailor, and published by Colnaghi, which is considered the best portrait of him ever taken. His daughter remarks:—"It was always said of my father that he ever displayed to perfection that courage, energy, and presence of mind which were natural to his lion-hearted character. Unlike the veteran who 'shouldered his crutch to show how fields were won,' he never voluntarily referred to exploits of which any man might have been proud. He was content to do, and know that he had done, and left to others the pride which he might justly have felt for himself."
Independent of his nautical career, Captain Marryat had other great talents. His writings will never be forgotten, from "Peter Simple" and "Midshipman Easy" down to "Masterman Ready," the much-beloved books of children. His "Code of Signals" is so celebrated that reference must just be made to it. Shortly before he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, he invented and brought to perfection the code which was at once adopted in the Merchant Service, and is now generally used by the British and French navies, in India, at the Cape of Good Hope, and other English settlements, and by the Mercantile Marine of North America. It is also published in the Dutch and Italian languages, and, by an order of the French Government, no merchant vessel can be insured without these signals being on board. Rising, Miss Marryat puts the original work into your hands, and you observe, with something like awe, that it is all written in the deceased sailor's own hand; the penmanship is like copper-plate, the flags and signals are painted, and each page is neatly indexed. Needless to say, it is regarded as a priceless treasure by his daughter.
Born of such a gifted father, it is small wonder that the child should have inherited brilliant talents. She was never sent to school, but was taught under a succession of governesses. "On looking back," she says with compunction, "I regret to remember that I treated them all very badly, for I was a downright troublesome child. I was an omnivorous reader, and as no restriction was placed on my choice of books, I read everything I could find, lying for hours full length on the rug, face downwards, arms propping up my head, with fingers in ears to shut out every disturbing sound, the while perpetually summoned to come to my lessons. I may be said to have educated myself, and probably I got more real learning out of this mode of procedure than if I had gone through the regular routine of the schoolroom, with the cut-and-dried conventional system of the education of that day."
Florence Marryat has been twice married: first at the age of sixteen to Captain Ross Church, of the Madras Staff Corps, and secondly to Colonel Francis Lean of the Royal Marines. By the first marriage she had eight children, of whom six survive.
The first three-volume novel she published was called "Love's Conflict." It was written under sad circumstances. Her children were ill of scarlet fever; most of the servants, terror-stricken, had deserted her, and it was in the intervals of nursing these little ones that, to divert her sad thoughts, she took to her pen. From that time she wrote steadily and rapidly, and up to the present date she has actually turned out fifty-seven novels besides an enormous quantity of journalistic work, about one hundred short stories, and numerous essays, poems, and recitations. She says of herself, that from earliest youth she had always determined on being a novelist, and at the age of ten she wrote a story for the amusement of her playfellows, and illustrated it with her own pen-and-ink sketches (for be it known, the accomplished author has likewise inherited this talent from her father, and to this day she will decorate many a letter to her favourite friends with funny and clever little illustrations and caricatures). But she wisely formed the determination that she would never publish anything until her judgment was more matured, so as to ensure success, that she "would study people, nature, nature's ways, and character, and then she would let the world know what she thought"; and in this piece of self-denial she has shown extreme wisdom, and reaped her reward in the long record of successes that she has scored and the large fortune she has made, but which, alas! she no longer possesses. "Others have spent it for me," she says plaintively; but she adds generously, "and I do not grudge it to them." Part of it enabled her, at any rate, to give each and all of her children a thoroughly good education, and she is proud to think that they owe it all to her own hard work. Miss Marryat is always especially flattered to hear that her novels are favourites with women, and she had a gratifying proof of this when visiting Canada in 1885. She was waited on by a deputation of ladies, armed with bouquets and presents, to thank her for having written that charming story called "My Own Child."