Frank Mildmay ... Illustrated by H. R. Millar. With an introduction by David Hannay

Introduction

BY DAVID HANNAY ILonion MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY i897 All rights resented My Muse by no means deals in fiction ; She gathers a repertory of facts, Of course with some reserve and slight restriction, But mostly treats of human things and acts. Love, war, a tempest — surely there's variety ; Also a seasoning slight of lucubration ; A bird's-eye view, too, of that wild, society ; A slight glance thrown on men of every station. Don Juan.

INTRODUCTION.

The great success of the book which first made Marryat known in 1829 is not at once intelligible, if we think of it in comparison with others of his stories. It is obviously inferior to Peter Simple, Midshipman Easy, or Masterman Ready ; and, moreover, it is marked by what is not wholly absent from others of his stories, but is nowhere so conspicuous, namely, a certain coarseness and a vein of brutality. The hero is not only a bad fellow, violent and passionate, but he is also mean. Yet the book became instantly popular, and its good fortune is not difficult to account for. It was something new, for the few existing stories of the sea were poor and little known even by naval men who had an interest in the subject. Still the Navy has always been abundantly popular with Englishmen. When, then, they at last found a writer of sea-stories who could be read, they were well disposed to give him welcome.

In spite of its tone, Frank Mildmay is eminently readable. The ad ventures are endlessly varied, and follow one another with an exhilarating speed. It contains a long gallery of thumb nail sketches from that strange naval world of which English men had heard so much, and which they understood so little. The fact that Marryat drew this world more brutal than it was would not shock his readers. Dr. Johnson's famous FRANK MILDMAY definition of a sailor's life expressed the prevailing view pretty fairly. It is perhaps strange that it should have done so, for there was an abundant sentimental liking for the sailor throughout the eighteenth century. His bravery, his generosity, his tenderness of heart were commonplaces ; yet on the few occasions when the writers of the century did look at the existence led on board ship, it filled them with horror.

The vein of Cockneyism which is to be found all through them accounts for much. Smollett and Fielding were assuredly not squeamish, yet they both appear to have shared the disgust which filled Dr. Johnson, when he stood at the break of the quarter-deck, and looked down on the overcrowding below, and was offended by the foul language and the fouler smells. From all this they recoiled. Smollett's picture of the Navy was overcharged for effect, but he would not have painted it so fiercely, all in black, as he did, if it had not revolted him. When Fielding gives us a glimpse of a ship in Amelia, it is such a vessel as Smollett had described in Roderick Random. In the Voyage to Lisbon, indeed, we see a kindlier view, but only of a small part of the life. The scene of the rescue of the cat is our evidence that, if Fielding had known the sailor better, he could have shown the kindliness, the humour, and the strange types of humanity which lay hid under the rough outside.

The Navy, too, it must be allowed, was coarse. There was enough in reality to form a basis for the satirical scenes of Smollett, and the aversion of Dr. Johnson. A boisterous tradition had become established among the sailors of all ranks. The captains of Mathews's fleet in the Mediterranean shocked Sir Horace Mann by their clumsy antics, while the Admiral himself seemed no better than a bear to the refined diplomatist. The lands man could not know that much of this was put on, because

INTRODUCTION.

it had come to be the accepted rule that a sailor was tc be noisy in his enjoyments, that not a little was the natural reaction from confinement on board, and that there was an element in it of downright practical joke, played off for the express purpose of startling him. So Dr. Johnson's view of the sailor's life came to be generally accepted. It is necessary to take this into account in judging Frank Mildmay, for Marryat unquestionably took Smollett as his model. There is no need to show that he had read the earlier writer much, or was fond of his books. The method and the tone are visibly the same. One writer may mould himself on another, without ever having read him, for an example may be made familiar by reviews or by talk, and an influence filters in. Marryat had convinced himself that the construction of a plot was a toil for which he was ill adapted.

Nothing was more natural than that he should take the Smollettian model. By making his story an autobiography, he avoided the risk of again allowing his hero to be lost in the midst of events with which he had nothing to do. The autobiographer must at least be a spectator. Then, having once provided a secure position for the hero, Marryat could go cheerfully on with the adventures. He was in no danger of being gravelled for want of matter. The incidents of his own life were there to draw on, and he used them freely. It would be hard to name a novel which is, in the proper sense of the word, more an autobiography than this. Even in little things, the identity of the author and his hero is obtruded. It can hardly have been a pure accident that their initials are the same — F. M., Frederick Marryat and Frank Mildmay.

The novelist always considered it a grievance that he had to wear out the clothes which had grown too small for his X FRANK MILDMAY elder brother. Frank Mildmay had to complain of precisely the same wrong. The hero follows the author throughout the service. The incident of the frigate sent prematurely to sea by the too impatient Admiral actually occurred to the Imperieuse, in which Marryat was then a midshipman with Lord Cochrane. It all but ended in the loss of the ship on the rocks of Ushant. Marryat never forgot the experience. Years afterwards he embalmed the feelings aroused by that Admiral, who would not listen to reason and who would be obeyed, in immortal verse. Frank Mildmay serves in the defence of Rosas, and endeavours to shelter himself behind his captain. In just such a way did Marryat attempt to make a shelter of Cochrane.

The hero is crushed by the dead body of the first lieutenant, killed in a cutting-out action. So was Marryat. Each was left for dead, and each revived on hearing an enemy give an un flattering account of him. Both were engaged in the attack on the French squadron in the Basque Roads. Frank Mildmay followed Frederick Marryat to the North American station. The hero, when serving under ' Lord William,' distinguished himself by cutting away a yard in a storm. Marryat did this piece of service when he was lieutenant with Lord James Townsend. This similarity of experience had an inconvenience which Marryat did not foresee. In taking the Smollettian model, it was not unnatural to take the Smollettian hero. This Marryat did also. Frank Mildmay is not to be fairly described as the more vicious progeny of Roderick Random, but he is clearly his descendant.

Nor can we assert that he shows any improvement on his ancestor. They are a singularly quarrelsome and arrogant pair. Roderick Random is less conscious of his own faults than Frank Mildmay. Indeed, he had that good conceit of himself which is said

INTRODUCTION.

not to be unknown among Scotchmen. Frank is for ever repenting ; but then, like the sailor whom Marryat quoted in Newton Forster, he is in the habit of rewarding himself for his repentance, and that without delay, so that the weakness of the one may be set off against the other's invincible ignorance of his real character. It is not unintelligible, but it is rather odd, that Marryat did not see the risk he was running when he put his hero so much into his own life. Some of Mr. Frank's adventures are of a kind which a gentleman, one thinks, would never attribute to one who, by any possibility, could be mistaken for himself. We may pass the plot to murder the bully Murphy ; it was bad, but not without excuse. Nor need we insist on the pose of the rather vulgar lady-killer, habitually assumed by Mr. Mildmay.

The sailor's well-established reputation for providing himself with a wife in every port may excuse, ' though nothing can justify,' his moral laxity. But the story of Eugenia is as bad as bad can be. The discovery that it is possible to be in love with two women at once is older than Frank Mildmay ; and he was not the first who distributed himself in the fashion described in this history between the ' divine Emily ' and the kind Eugenia. But Mildmay was too manifestly taking care of himself in both worlds. Eugenia ' refined ' his vice, while he was sowing his wild oats. Emily was kept in reserve to reward him when he returned to the path of virtue. There was a little too much cold-blooded calculation about it all. There is a quite gratuitous baseness, too, in drawing on Eugenia for money to gamble with.

Our ancestors were not over - delicate about taking money from women, but even the Restoration would have thought it extreme to pillage a mistress after you had separated. This episode, which does not stand quite alone in his work, reveals the FRANK MILDMAY existence of a decidedly coarse vein in Marryat. He must have been obtuse on some points, or else he would have understood that there are actions, not so much wicked as sordidly mean, which no man commits unless he is a very low fellow. His error of judgment in making Frank Mildmay do things which no gentleman can do, while attributing so many of his own to his hero, was afterwards visited on Marryat. He found that the world was identifying him with the personage he took over from Smollett, and was sufficiently provoked by the discovery to publish a protest to the effect that he was not to be supposed to have run all his hero's career of vice.

The disclaimer can be accepted. There was, we can believe, no more of Marryat in Mildmay than their common determination not to be trodden on, and to assert themselves. This, which Marryat calls, justly enough, pride, and laments, rather unnecessarily, reappears in several of his heroes — Jacob Faithful for one — but it is no bad quality in a hero. After all, one's interest in Frank Mildmay is not that he is a descendant of Roderick Random, but that he went to sea. The land part of his adventures is by no means without vitality and interest, but the real life of the book is in the naval side. Largely because of the model taken, the picture has a character of its own in Marryat's books. He never shirked the more brutal elements in the sailor's existence as it was at the beginning of the century.

The tyrannical captain and the mess-room bully reappear; but elsewhere they are only introduced to give relief. In this book they predominate. It may well be the case that Marryat was disposed to dwell on this side of the service while he was writing Frank Mildmay. He was then just at the end of his active career, and was making up his mind to go on

INTRODUCTION.

shore. All that was difficult to bear in the service would naturally be particularly present to him. Later on, when he was no longer in actual contact with the harsher conditions of the servitude, he felt more kindly, and drew more genially. Yet in the King's Own, written at about the same time, we do not find the same predominance of cruelty and revolt. The difference may be sufficiently and safely accounted for by the fact that he so openly imitated Smollett. There is no reason to lament the imitation. If there is less of his fun and geniality in Frank Mildmay, there is in place of it a certain harsh force which is not without its attractions. His school and the midshipman's mess of his first frigate are, one feels, overcharged, but they are only the more effective on that account. The midshipman's mess of the Imperieuse was, on Marryat's own showing, a very happy place.

When he looked back on his years of cruising with Cochrane, he wrote, that ' when memory sweeps along these years of excitement, even now my pulse beats more quickly with the reminiscence.' The mess in Frank Mildmay must be taken as an artistic picture of what bullying oldsters can do to make a ship a ' hell afloat ' for the youngsters. Nobody whose memory includes reminiscences of what a schoolhouse can become under the predominance of two or three bullies, will say that the picture is grossly overcharged. Marryat, again, never served with such a tyrant as Captain G of the D brig. These capital letters and dashes were exasperating tricks of the time, assumed — if that were any excuse — in order to give a greater appearance of reality. The supposition was apparently that the reader might be expected to be deceived into the belief that there was an actual original, whose name is merely indicated.

There was, as far as we FRANK MILDMAY can learn, no Captain G among the officers under whom Marryat served, but he did not draw merely on his imagination for this shocking brute. He had his originals in such monsters as Captain Pigot of the Hermione, or Captain Corbet of the Africaine. There are minutes of courts-martial on record, to prove that among our naval officers there were some who ended by delighting in the most horrible cruelty. One captain, and a distinguished one, was dismissed for branding men with red-hot irons. How much lesser barbarity had passed unchecked before this abomination was reached we cannot know. It must have been much. At least one hopes that at no time could Englishmen sink to the level of an African savage — or an African explorer's rear-guard when the provisions have run low — without some previous training in addition to a natural disposition.

When, then, Marryat describes the expression in Captain G 's eyes, the 'malignant cruelty, and delight in torturing his own species,' he was drawing, if not on his own reminiscences, at least on those of his brother - officers. If the picture of the Navy in Frank Mildmay is false, it is not because he drew such a captain as this, but because he did not draw what was better and kindlier in its due proportions. Later on, when he had worked out his own method, and had his materials better in hand, he gave both sides in Peter Simple, but Frank Mildmay is the work of a 'prentice hand who was still an imitator. PAGE 4 6 io 20 30 34 36 44 61 65 6*7 69 XV LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Trafalgar ..... Frontispiece My morning's collection was exacted from me to the very last nut, and the greedy eyes of my mistress seemed to inquire for more ... ...

I contrived to gain admittance, and very speedily transferred all the eggs to my own chest .... The usher, like a low-bred cur, when he could no longer bully, began to fawn ...... Up went her heels in the air, and down fell her head into the bottom of the boat ..... Subtle and silent, I then cut his lanyard Without any ceremony or preface, seized me by each arm, and very deliberately lashed me fast in the rigging I seized a brass candlestick, the bottom of which was loaded with lead, and threw it at him with all my might I was secretly pleased when I saw them removed beyond the reach of human interrogation . . . . The animal was not dead, and closing his jaws, divided my finger to the bone ..... The lieutenant sprang up, leaped from the bulwark in upon her deck, and, before I could lift my cutlass in his defence, fell back upon me ..... ' Here is a young cock that has done crowing '.

We took good aim at the helmsman, and hit him FRANK MILDMAY PAGE Having wetted his forefinger with his tongue, the old mate tried to remove the stain of the caustic, but the ' d d spot ' still remained ...... 75 No persuasion of ours could induce them to spare the life of one of these unhappy people .... 86 He could only say ' Quid— Quid ! ' and point with his finger into the water ......

I 12 Having succeeded in restoring the fair patient to consciousness, I prescribed a warm bed .... 121 I was in the act of singing 'Pray Goody,' when my eyes suddenly met those of my papa, who was staring like the head of Gorgon ..... 134 I contrived, with great difficulty, to reach the deck '45 Neptune coming on board iSS When I arose, I could perceive one of the man's hands i63 Judy laid a kiss on his right cheek ; Maria matched it on his left ; the captain was the happiest of mortals 177 I took the slings of the main-yard iS3 We found our game in church steeples iS7 ' Only that your President, Mr. Madison, has thought fit to declare war against England, and your vessel is a prize to His Britannic Majesty's ship ' . 192 The three examining captains 199 Mr. Pipes handled his cat like an adept 220 He tumbled off his chair, and lay motionless on the carpet 234 The captain heard the noise of the hammer, and finding it was the doctor, desired him to desist 236 She listed the cup to her withered lip, and was just going to fulfil her destiny and to drink, when I dashed it out of her hand 248 We saw the back or dorsal fin of a monstrous shark above the surface of the water, and his whole length visible beneath it 254 The wretched man, throwing himself on his knees, again screamed out, ' Oh, mercy, mercy, mercy ! ' LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE 'Throw these here two aftermost guns overboard,' said the captain ....... 287 She contrived to pour a part of the boiling water into the shoes of Sir Hurricane ..... 328 ' You are a cock-and-hen admiral, a dog-in-the-manger barrownight ' ....... 333 ' I say, what's this ?' he roared out. ' Oh, you d d rascals!' 341 The fellow could not hold on, so tumbled off and lay in the middle of the road . . . . -353 She sat at the table with a book before her, but her thoughts, it was evident, were not there .... 369 The manly and athletic form, which one minute before excited my most malignant hatred, became an object of frantic affection ...... 377 To get a sight of the English murderer 3-Si

Chapter I

These are the errors, and these are the fruits of misspending our prime youth at the schools and universities, as we do, either in learning mere words or such things chiefly as were better unlearned. — Milton. My father was a gentleman and a man of considerable property. In my infancy and childhood I was weak and sickly, but trie favourite of my parents beyond all my brothers and sisters, because they saw that my mind was far superior to my sickly frame, and feared they should never raise me to manhood ; contrary, however, to their expectations, I surmounted all these untoward appearances, and attracted much notice from my liveliness, quickness of repartee, and impudence — qualities which have been of much use to me through life. I can remember that I was both a coward and a boaster ; but I have frequently remarked that the quality which we call cowardice in a child is no more than implying a greater sense of danger, and consequently a superior intellect.

We are all naturally cowards : education and observation teach us to discriminate between real and apparent danger, pride teaches the concealment of fear, and habit renders us indifferent to that from which we have often escaped with impunity. It is related of the Great Frederick that he misbehaved the first time he went into action ; and it is certain that a novice in such a situation can no more command all his resources than a boy when first bound apprentice to a shoemaker can make a pair of shoes. We must learn our trade, whether it be to stand steady before the enemy or to stitch a boot : practice alone can make a Hoby or a Wellington. I pass on to my school-days, when the most lasting im pressions are made. The foundation of my moral and religious B I # instruction had been laid with care by my excellent parents ; but, alas ! from the time I quitted the paternal roof not one stone was added to the building, and even the traces of what existed were nearly obliterated by the deluge of vice which threatened soon to overwhelm me.

Sometimes, indeed, I feebly but ineffectually endeavoured to stem the torrent ; at others I suffered myself to be borne along with all its fatal rapidity. I was frank, generous, quick, and mischievous ; and I must admit that a large portion of what sailors call ' devil ' was openly displayed, and a much larger portion latently deposited in my brain and bosom. My ruling passion, even in this early stage of life, was pride. Lucifer himself, if he ever was seven years old, had not more. If I have gained a fair name in the service, if I have led instead of followed, it must be ascribed to this my ruling passion. The world has often given me credit for better feelings, as the source of action, but I am not writing to conceal, and the truth must be told. I was sent to school to learn Latin and Greek, which there are various ways of teaching.

Some tutors attempt the suaviter in modo, my schoolmaster preferred the fortiter in re j and, as the boatswain said, by the ' instigation ' of a large knotted stick, he drove knowledge into our skulls as a caulker drives oakum into the seams of a ship. Under such tuition we made astonishing progress ; and whatever my less desirable acquirements may have been, my father had no cause to complain of my deficiency in classic lore. Superior in capacity to most of my schoolfellows, I seldom took the pains to learn my lesson previous to going up with my class ; ' the master's blessing,' as we called it, did occasionally descend on my devoted head, but that was a bagatelle ; I was too proud not to keep pace with my equals, and too idle to do more. Had my schoolmaster been a single man, my stay under his care might have been prolonged to my advantage ; but unfortunately, both for him and for me, he had a helpmate, and her peculiarly unfortunate disposition was the means of corrupting those morals over which it was her duty to have watched with the most assiduous care.

Her ruling passions were suspicion and avarice, written in legible characters in her piercing eyes and sharp-pointed nose. She never supposed us capable of telling the truth, so we very naturally never gave ourselves the trouble to cultivate a useless virtue, and seldom resorted to it unless it answered our purpose better than a lie. This propensity of Mrs. Higginbottom converted our candour and honesty into deceit and fraud. Never believed, we cared little about the accuracy of our assertions ; half-starved, through her meanness and parsimony, we were little scrupulous as to the ways and means, provided we could satisfy our hunger ; and thus we soon became as great adepts in the elegant accomplishments of lying and thieving, under her tuition, as we did in Greek and Latin under that of her husband.

A large orchard, fields, garden, and poultry-yard, attached to the establishment, were under the care and superintendence of the mistress, who usually selected one of the boys as her prime minister and confidential adviser. This boy, for whose education his parents were paying some sixty or eighty pounds per annum, was permitted to pass his time in gathering up the windfalls ; in watching the hens, and bringing in their eggs, when their cackling throats had announced their safe accouche ment ; looking after the broods of young ducks and chickens, et hoc genus omne j in short, doing the duty of what is usually termed the odd man in the farm-yard. How far the parents would have been satisfied with this arrangement, I leave my readers to guess ; but to us who preferred the manual to mental exertion, exercise to restraint, and any description of cultivation to that of cultivating the mind, it suited extremely well ; and accordingly no place in the gift of government was ever the object of such solicitude and intrigue as was to us school-boys the situation of collector and trustee of the eggs and apples.

I had the good fortune to be early selected for this im portant post, and the misfortune to lose it soon after, owing to the cunning and envy of my schoolfellows and the suspicion of my employers. On my first coming into office, I had formed the most sincere resolutions of honesty and vigilance ; but what are good resolutions, when discouraged on the one hand by the revilings of suspicion and assailed on the other by the cravings of appetite ? My morning's collection was exacted from me to the very last nut, and the greedy eyes of my mistress seemed to inquire for more. Suspected when innojl/j» morning's collection was exacted from me to the very last nut, and the greedy eyes of my mistress seemed to inquire for more. cent, I became guilty out of revenge ; was detected and dismissed. A successor was appointed, to whom I surrendered all my offices of trust, and having perfect leisure, I made it my sole business to supplant him.

It was an axiom in mathematics with me at that time, though not found in Euclid, that wherever I could enter my head, my whole body might follow. As a practical illustration of this proposition, I applied my head to the arched hole of the hen-house door, and by scraping away a little dirt, con trived to gain admittance, and very speedily transferred all the eggs to my own chest. When the new purveyor arrived, he found nothing but ' a beggarly account of empty boxes ' ; and his perambulations in the orchard and garden, for the same reason, were equally fruitless. The pilferings of the orchard and garden I confiscated as droits ; but when I had collected a sufficient number of eggs to furnish a nest, I gave information of my pretended discovery to my mistress, who, thinking she had not changed for the better, dismissed my successor and received me into favour again.

I was, like many greater men, immediately reinstated in office when it was discovered that they could not do without me. I once more became chancellor of the hen-roost and ranger of the orchard, with greater power than I had possessed before my disgrace. Had my mistress looked half as much in my face as she did into my hatful of eggs, she would have read my guilt ; for at that unsophisticated age I could blush, a habit long since dis carded in the course of my professional duties. In order to preserve my credit and my situation, I no longer contented myself with windfalls, but assisted Nature in her labours, and greatly lightened the burthen of many a loaded fruit-tree ; by these means, I not only gratified the avarice of my mistress at her own expense, but also laid by a store for my own use.

On my restoration to office, I had an ample fund in my exchequer to answer all present demands ; and by a provident and industrious anticipation, was enabled to lull the suspicions of my employers and to bid defiance to the opposition. It will readily be supposed that a lad of my acute ness did not omit any technical management for the purposes of disguise ; the fruits which I presented were generally soiled with dirt at the ends of the stalks, in such a manner as to give them all the appearance of 'felo de se,' Le. fell of itself. Thus, to my own chest. I contrived to gain admittance, and very speedily transferred all the eggs in the course of a few months, did I become an adept in vice, from the mismanagement of those into whose hands I was entrusted to be strengthened in religion and virtue.

Fortunately for me, as far as my education was concerned, I did not long continue to hold this honourable and lucrative employment. One of those unhappy beings called an usher peeped into my chest, and by way of acquiring popularity with the mistress and scholars forthwith denounced me to the higher powers. The proofs of my peculation were too glaring, and the amount too serious to 'be passed over ; I was tried, con victed, condemned, sentenced, flogged, and dismissed in the course of half an hour ; and such was the degree of turpitude attached to me on this occasion, that I was rendered for ever incapable of serving in that or any other employment connected with the garden or farm ; I was placed at the bottom of the list, and declared to be the worst boy in the school. This in many points of view was too true ; but there was one boy who bade fair to rival me on the score of delinquency ; this was Tom Crauford, who from that day became my most intimate friend.