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In the unpublished fragment of his _Life of Lord Napier_ Marryat had declared that retired sailors naturally turned to agriculture, and frequently made good farmers.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.
1842. Total receipts, £154 2 9 " Expenditure, 1637 0 6 1846. Total receipts, 898 12 6 " Expenditure, 2023 10 8
His former tenant had indeed shown but little respect for the property. Besides taking all he could out of the land without putting anything into it, he fitted up the drawing-room of the manor (which in its brightest days had been known in the village as the "Room of Thousand Columns," from an effect produced by mirrors set in the panels of folding doors, reflecting trellised pillars,) with rows of beds, which he let out to tramps at twopence a night!
Of these latter years on the farm we can gather some distinctly pleasant impressions. Marryat was evidently a good master at all times. He delighted to arrange for festivities in the servants' hall, but he was also very tolerant to poachers, and considered it his first duty to find work for his men when times were bad. His model pigsties and cottages were unpopular, but he loved his animals and understood them. The chief merit of his lazy and somewhat asinine pony Dumpling consisted in his talent for standing still. Upon this patient beast the captain would occasionally sally forth to shoot, assisting his natural short-sightedness by a curious "invention of his own;"--a plain piece of crystal surrounded by a strip of whalebone, hanging in front of his right eye from the brim of his "shocking bad hat." He was a careless dresser, but scrupulously clean; no smoker, but very fond of snuff. He had a fancy for pure white china which had to be procured from the Continent.