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In the unpublished fragment of his _Life of Lord Napier_ Marryat had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.