After the misspent energy of 1833, Marryat had to make up by hard pen-work. He settled in Montpelier Villas, Western Road, Brighton, and there, in 1834, wrote his three books. The effort was a severe one, and he felt the effects later on, when fatigue, and possibly questions of money, had induced him to go abroad. He had not yet altogether given up thinking of Parliament--or, at least, if he had ceased hoping to sit as member, he kept up his correspondence with ministers on those naval affairs which he understood. He forwarded observations on the Merchant Shipping Bill of that year--one of our portentous list of shipping measures--to Sir James Graham. His volunteer help was well received, and the First Lord, one of the ablest men who ever was at the head of the department, invited him to come to Whitehall and talk the Bill over. This invitation may be taken as a proof, among others, that if Marryat remained unemployed, it was mainly by his own wish. He had already, by his writing on the manning of the navy, and, in less public ways, shown that in professional matters, at least, he was an excellent man of business. Sir James Graham was not the man to have refused employment to an officer of proved ability if he had wished for it, but it is tolerably plain that Marryat had other irons of a more attractive kind, for the moment, in the fire.
The particular iron which he had heating in Norfolk--the estate at Langham--was not likely to relieve him from the necessity of making every penny he could by his pen. “No rent,” was his return in 1834, and as a rule ever after--till he took it in hand himself, and then it still realized him a steady yearly deficit. This year of “no rent” was also a year of legal unpleasantness in connection with his father’s memory--which he bore in a fashion to be recommended to the imitation of all who suffer from similar misfortunes. “As for the Chancellor’s judgment,” he wrote to his mother, who had plainly been hurt, “I cannot say I thought anything about it; on the contrary, it appears to me that he might have been much more severe if he had thought proper. It is easy to impute motives, and difficult to disprove them. I thought, considering his enmity, that he let us off cheap, as there is no _punishing a Chancellor_, and he might say what he pleased with impunity. I did not, therefore, _roar_, I only _smiled_. The effect will be nugatory. Not one in a thousand will read it; those who do, know it refers to a person not in this world, and of those, those who knew my father will not believe it; those who did not will care little about it, and forget the name in a week. Had he given the decision in our favour, I should have been better pleased, but _it’s no use crying; what’s done can’t be helped_.” With that piece of the philosophy of the elder Faithful, Marryat ends as neat a statement of reasons for not making a fuss, and as admirable an estimate of the relative unimportance of any man’s private affairs in a busy world, as will be found by much searching.