#jack easy

[clove-pinks]

They should stop having sad soggy pathetic boat men tournaments and start having Smug Obnoxious Jerk Boat Man tournaments. I nominate all of Captain Marryat's protagonist characters and also Marryat himself.

[marryat92]

Jack ascended, taking it very easy: he stopped at the main-top for breath; at the main-topmast head, to look about him; and, at last, gained the spot agreed upon, where he seated himself, and, taking out the articles of war, commenced them again, to ascertain whether he could not have strengthened his arguments. He had not, however, read through the seventh article before the hands were turned up — “up anchor!” and Mr. Sawbridge called, “All hands down from aloft!” Jack took the hint, folded up his documents, and came down as leisurely as he went up.

— Frederick Marryat, Mr. Midshipman Easy

Jack Easy, mastheaded and reading the Articles of War on a Player's Cigarettes card (New York Public Library collection).

[marryat92]

“Man is a free agent,” replied Easy.

“I’ll be shot if a midshipman is,” replied Gascoigne, laughing, “and that you’ll soon find.”

“And yet it was the expectation of finding that equality that I was induced to come to sea.”

“On the first of April, I presume,” replied Gascoigne. “But are you really serious?”

— Frederick Marryat, Mr. Midshipman Easy. Illustration by Leonard Huskinson.

[marryat92]

“He must be mad—quite mad,” exclaimed Sawbridge, whose astonishment even mastered his indignation. “Mad as a March hare—by God.”

“No, sir,” replied Jack, “I am not mad, but I am a philosopher.”

“A what?” exclaimed Sawbridge, “damme, what next?—well, my joker, all the better for you; I shall put your philosophy to the proof.”

“It is for that very reason, sir,” replied Jack, “that I have decided upon going to sea: and if you do remain on board, I hope to argue the point with you, and make you a convert to the truth of equality and the rights of man.”

“By the Lord that made us both, I’ll soon make you a convert to the thirty-six articles of war—that is, if you remain on board; but I shall now go to the captain, and report your conduct, sir, and leave you to your dinner with what appetite you may.”

— Frederick Marryat, Mr. Midshipman Easy

Captain Marryat's Mr. Midshipman Easy, 1930 edition with illustrations by Sybil Tawse

[marryat92]

As there was no time to lose, our hero very soon bade adieu to his paternal roof, as the phrase is, and found his way down to Portsmouth. As Jack had plenty of money, and was very much pleased at finding himself his own master, he was in no hurry to join his ship, and five or six companions not very creditable, whom either Jack had picked up, or had picked up Jack, and who lived upon him, strongly advised him to put it off until the very last moment.

— Frederick Marryat, Mr. Midshipman Easy

Portsmouth, drawing by Nicholas Pocock, c. 1800.

[marryat92]

He then dressed himself, went on deck, found that the sloop was just clear of the Needles, that he felt very queer, then very sick, and was conducted by a marine down below, put into his hammock, where he remained during a gale of wind of three days, bewildered, confused, puzzled, and every minute knocking his head against the beams with the pitching and tossing of the sloop.

— Frederick Marryat, Mr. Midshipman Easy. Illustration by Leonard Huskinson.

[marryat92]

Mr. Sawbridge, who imagined that the name of the first-lieutenant would strike terror to a culprit midshipman, threw himself back in the chair, and assumed an air of importance.

“Really, sir,” replied Jack, “what may be your exact situation on board, my ignorance of the service will not allow me to guess, but if I may judge from your behaviour, you have no small opinion of yourself.”

“Look ye, young man, you may not know what a first-lieutenant is, and I take it for granted that you do not, by your behaviour; but depend upon it, I’ll let you know very soon.”

— Frederick Marryat, Mr. Midshipman Easy

Portrait of Royal Navy Lieutenant David O'Brien Casey (ca.1775-1853), British school.

[marryat92]

Really one of the most sly and clever parts of Mr. Midshipman Easy is the fact that Jack Easy is an insufferable hypocrite. He goes on and on about the equality of man, but because he thinks he's an Enlightened Intellectual and not because he truly believes in it. There are countless examples of Jack pulling rank on people he thinks are beneath him—and this is when he's still a young idealist; by the end of the book he embraces his privilege and literally becomes a Tory politician.

I was just laughing over teenage Jack, busted trespassing on a neighbour's property and helping himself to the well-stocked fishing pond. Jack's verbose argument that private property shouldn't exist doesn't impress the proprietor, who instructs his groundskeepers to get rid of him.

“Sir, I beg your pardon, you have not yet heard all my arguments,” replied Jack, who did not approve of the conclusions drawn.

“I have no time to hear more, Mr. Easy: I wish you a good morning.” And the proprietor departed, leaving Jack in company with the keepers.

“I’ll trouble you for that rod, master,” said William. James was very busy stringing the fish through the gills upon a piece of osier.

“At all events you will hear reason,” said Jack. “I have arguments—”

“I never heard no good arguments in favour of poaching,” interrupted the keeper.

“You’re an insolent fellow,” replied Jack. “It is by paying such vagabonds as you that people are able to be guilty of injustice.”

“It’s by paying us that the land an’t poached — and if there be some excuse for a poor devil who is out of work, there be none for you, who call yourself a gentleman.”

“According to his ‘count, as we be all equal, he be no more a gentleman than we be.”

“Silence, you blackguard, I shall not condescend to argue with such as you: if I did I could prove that you are a set of base slaves, who have just as much right to this property as your master or I have.”

“As you have, I dare say, master.”

“As I have, you scoundrel; this pond is as much my property, and so are the fish in it, as they are of your master, who has usurped the right.”

“I say, James, what do you say, shall we put the young gentleman in possession of his property?” said William, winking to the other.

William took the hint; they seized Jack by the arms and legs, and soused him into the pond.