Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1 | Page 8

That which was venial in a miserable starveling of Grub
Street is perfectly disgusting in the extravagantly paid novelists of these
days--the caressed, of generous booksellers. Mr Ainsworth and Captain
Marryat ought to disdain such pitiful peddling. Let them eschew it
without delay."
Marryat's reply was, spirited and manly. After ridiculing Fraser's
attempt "to set up a standard of precedency and rank in literature," and
humorously proving that an author's works were not to be esteemed in
proportion to the length of time elapsing between their production, he
turned to the more serious and entirely honest defence that, like
Dickens, he was supplying the lower classes with wholesome
recreation:--
"I would rather write for the instruction, or even the amusement of the
poor than for the amusement of the rich; and I would sooner raise a
smile or create an interest in the honest mechanic or agricultural
labourer who requires relaxation, than I would contribute to dispel the
ennui of those who loll on their couches and wonder in their idleness
what they shall do next. Is the rich man only to be amused? are mirth
and laughter to be made a luxury, confined to the upper classes, and
denied to the honest and hard-working artisan?...
In a moral point of view, I hold that I am right. We are educating the

lower classes; generations have sprung up who can read and write; and
may I enquire what it is that they have to read, in the way of
amusement?--for I speak not of the Bible, which is for private
examination. They have scarcely anything but the weekly newspapers,
and, as they cannot command amusement, they prefer those which
create the most excitement; and this I believe to be the cause of the
great circulation of the Weekly Dispatch, which has but too well
succeeded in demoralising the public, in creating disaffection and
ill-will towards the government, and assisting the nefarious views of
demagogues and chartists. It is certain that men would rather laugh than
cry--would rather be amused than rendered gloomy and
discontented--would sooner dwell upon the joys or sorrows of others in
a tale of fiction than brood over their own supposed wrongs. If I put
good and wholesome food (and, as I trust, sound moral) before the
lower classes, they will eventually eschew that which is coarse and
disgusting, which is only resorted to because no better is supplied. Our
weekly newspapers are at present little better than records of
immorality and crime, and the effect which arises from having no other
matter to read and comment upon, is of serious injury to the morality of
the country ... I consider, therefore, that in writing for the amusement
and instruction of the poor man, I am doing that which has but been too
much neglected--that I am serving my country, and you surely will
agree with me that to do so in not infra. dig. in the proudest
Englishman; and, as a Conservative, you should commend rather than
stigmatise my endeavours in the manner which you have so hastily
done."
It has been said that Marryat's wandering ceased in 1843, and it was in
that year that he settled down at Langham to look after his own estate.
Langham is in the northern division of Norfolk, half way between
Wells-next-the-Sea and Holt. The Manor House, says Mrs Lean,
"without having any great architectural pretensions, had a certain
unconventional prettiness of its own. It was a cottage in the Elizabethan
style, built after the model of one at Virginia Water belonging to his
late majesty, George IV., with latticed windows opening on to flights of
stone steps ornamented with vases of flowers, and leading down from
the long narrow dining-room, where (surrounded by Clarkson

Stanfield's illustrations of Poor Jack, with which the walls were clothed)
Marryat composed his later works, to the lawn behind. The house was
thatched and gabled, and its pinkish white walls and round porch were
covered with roses and ivy, which in some parts climbed as high as the
roof itself."
In the unpublished fragment of his Life of Lord Napier Marryat had
declared that retired sailors naturally turned to agriculture, and
frequently made good farmers. A sailor on land, he rather quaintly
remarks, is "but a sort of Adam--a new creature, starting into existence
as it were in his prime;" and "the greatest pleasures of man consist in
imitating the Deity in his creative power." The anticipated pleasure in
farming he did to a great extent realise, but the profits were still to seek.
It can only be said that his losses were rather smaller that they had been
in his absence.
Thus:--
1842. Total receipts, £154 2 9 " Expenditure, 1637 0 6 1846. Total
receipts, 898 12 6 " Expenditure, 2023 10 8