The state of being “rather in want of money” was to be chronic with Marryat, if we are to judge by the amount of writing he did during the remaining nine years of his life. Before very long, indeed, he began to have very serious reason indeed for complaining of straitened means. His father’s fortune, which must have been considerable, had been invested in the West Indies in those golden days at the end of the Great War, when the languor of Spain, and the ruin of San Domingo by the negro revolt, had given the English sugar islands a monopoly of the market for colonial produce. In the forties, however, these happy times had disappeared for ever. Competition and free trade brought down prices, the abolition of slavery stopped production, and the value of West Indian property went down with a run. The Marryat family suffered with the rest of the world. The novelist had resources which were wanting to his brothers; but then this advantage was compensated, as has been said before, by extravagant and speculative habits. In 1839 the pinch was not as yet felt so severely as it was later on. Marryat, immediately upon his return, went over to Paris for his family, which had moved thither from Lausanne during his stay in the States; and, bringing them to England, settled at 8, Duke Street, St. James’s. For some four years he led, as he had hitherto done, a somewhat wandering life. After a brief year in Duke Street, he moved to Wimbledon House; which had belonged to his father, and was still occupied by his mother. A short stay there was succeeded by a brief residence in chambers at 120, Piccadilly, and then by another year or so of occupation of a house in Spanish Place, Manchester Square. In 1843 be broke away from London for good, and established himself at his own house at Langham, in Norfolk.
All this restlessness speaks for itself. Men who possess the faculty of managing their affairs with judgment, or who wish to apply themselves to steady work, do not run in this way from pillar to post. Once again I have to remark that much in Marryat’s life is left to be guessed at. It is as well that it should be so. The indications we possess tell the world all that it is entitled to learn. There is--though the contrary proposition is frequently maintained in these days--no inherent right in the public to be made acquainted with the private affairs of a gentleman simply because he has done it the inestimable service of supplying it with readable books. That Marryat, who has just been found expressing a wish to retire from the “fraternity of authors,” was writing himself blind in these years, is a fact which tells its own tale. Add to this a few indications which Mrs. Ross Church has thought it right to supply--a brief reference to some family misfortune of which the details are not given; a complaint in one of Marryat’s letters that somebody, apparently a relation, had suspected him of a wish to borrow money; and an increasing tone of grief and trouble in all his letters--and we have enough to form a general estimate of his position with. More we probably could not learn, and would have no right to hunt up if we could. That Marryat had a difficulty in making both ends meet; that his expedients did not always succeed; that some of them were, too probably, undignified; that the need for them was, at least partly, due to his own mismanagement, are acknowledged facts. We may, and must, be satisfied with them.