#john forster

[thatwritererinoriordan]

Them: You better not be rewatching The Man Who Invented Christmas and shipping Dickens x John Forster.

Me:

[marryat92]

Captain Marryat: 'Among the first in Dickens’s liking'

Marryat in 1841, the year he met Charles Dickens

Inevitably, when some lesser-known person is associated with Charles Dickens, that connection will be advertised as loudly as possible, since Dickens is one of the few 19th century writers and public figures who still enjoys widespread recognition in the English-speaking world. Such is the case with Frederick Marryat. A biographical blurb about Marryat will often bring up his friendship with Dickens before any of Marryat's own accomplishments are mentioned.

Despite their age difference —Marryat was 20 years older than Dickens— the two men were certainly friends. I have tried to puzzle out exactly how close they were with sometimes sketchy evidence (not helped by the fact that both men tried to burn or destroy large amounts of their correspondence.) I don’t know if the young Charles Dickens was keenly interested in meeting Captain Marryat; but Marryat was clearly aware of him. Dickens and Marryat didn’t meet each other in person until 1841, but Marryat recorded the wild popularity of Dickens’ first novel, The Pickwick Papers, as he traveled to America in 1837: “Dinner over; every body pulls out a number of ‘Pickwick’; every body talks and reads Pickwick; weather getting up squally; passengers not quite sure they won’t be seasick. [...] for many days afterwards, there were Pickwicks in plenty strewed all over the cabin, but passengers were very scarce.” (Diary in America)

As for who was influencing whom, that question is easy to answer. Marryat was first on the scene, writing in a Dickensian vein with picaresque heroes and colorful characters sketched from life before Dickens was a household name. Marryat published his nonfiction travelogue Diary in America years before Dickens’ equivalent American Notes (which was clearly inspired by Marryat.) According to the English professor Louis Parascandola, Marryat “was the first nineteenth century writer to publish his novels serially in his own magazine, the Metropolitan, an important precedent for later authors like Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray.”

The first meeting between Marryat and Dickens was arranged by their mutual friend, the artist Clarkson Stanfield. Stanfield wrote to Dickens at the beginning of 1841, “I have before told you that my friend Captain Marryat is very anxious to have ‘what all covet’, the pleasure of your acquaintance and, if therefore you have no objection to meet him, will you come and take a beef steak with me on Wednesday 27.” Dickens replied, “I shall be delighted to join you and know Marryat.”

Dickens and Marryat seem to have immediately hit it off, enjoying each other’s wit and theatrical personalities. As Marryat’s biographer Tom Pocock describes it:

The two men took to each other at once. They shared a recognition of the absurd and could present it entertainingly, sometimes mixed with pathos and even tragedy. But while Marryat re-created the world that he himself had experienced in his books, Dickens’s imagination erupted with cavalcades of characters and panoramas of widely varied scenery. Dickens did not see Marryat as a rival but recognised his skill in presenting the world of the sea and seamen, which he himself could only try to imagine. Thanking Marryat for sending him his latest novel, Dickens wrote, ‘I have been chuckling, and grinning, and clenching my fists and becoming warlike for three whole days past.’

It seems clear that Dickens and Marryat would be close friends, and Marryat himself might be a less obscure writer in the present day, except that his association with Dickens was so brief. By 1843 Marryat had sequestered himself at his country estate in Langham, Norfolk, far from the literati of London with the transportation methods of the day. Marryat’s biographies and Florence Marryat’s Life and Letters of Captain Frederick Marryat are full of entreaties from his friends begging Marryat to return to London to socialize with them and attend various events. He rarely agreed to travel, and by 1848 he was dead.

John Forster, Dickens’ friend and biographer, writes in The Life of Charles Dickens: “There is no one who approached [Dickens] on these occasions [dancing at parties with the Dickens children] excepting only our attached friend Captain Marryat, who had a frantic delight in dancing, especially with children, of whom and whose enjoyments he was as fond as it became so thoroughly good hearted a man to be. His name would have stood first among those I have been recalling, as he was among the first in Dickens’s liking; but in the autumn of 1848 he had unexpectedly passed away.”

For all the brevity of Dickens’ relationship with Marryat, they were close enough for Dickens to share some juicy gossip. In a letter to Forster, Dickens shines a rare light on Marryat’s rocky marriage. There is an anecdote about Marryat, “as if possessed by the devil,” teaching “every kind of forbidden topic and every species of forbidden word” to the overly sheltered sons of a baronet, and the “martyrdom” he suffered with his wife. Catherine (Kate) Marryat, as described by Dickens, is a violent, temperamental woman who beats her maid and has “no interest whatever in her children.” 

Although Victorian propriety omitted names, as Marryat’s biographer Oliver Warner notes, “The reference might be considered vague enough— except to those who knew Marryat. To them, it must have been so clear that in later editions Forster left out all references by which Kate might identify herself.” Dickens’ 20th century biographer Walter Dexter also names the troubled couple as the Marryats.

Charles Dickens is the only person whose documented, surviving correspondence mentions the fact that Marryat spoke with a lisp. Marryat’s daughter Florence mentions no such thing, and Marryat never gave a speech impediment to his leading characters, but Dickens quips about an old fresco, “I can make out a Virgin with a mildewed Glory round her head and … what Marryat would call the arthe of a cherub.” (A few online articles about Marryat make a lot of hay over this sole mention of a lisp, and they can all thank Charles Dickens for spilling the tea.) Poor Marryat, who reminisced in a laudanum haze about all of his old friends in his final months, including “Charlie Dickens”, did he anticipate this reveal? He really should have known that Dickens had a wit that could be as mocking and caustic as his own.

Principal References (not including Marryat’s own books):

Life and Letters of Captain Frederick Marryat, Florence Marryat (1872)

Life of Charles Dickens, John Forster (1872-1874)

Captain Marryat: A Rediscovery, Oliver Warner (1953)

Puzzled Which to Choose: Conflicting Socio-Political Views in the Works of Captain Frederick Marryat, Louis J. Parascandola (1997)

Captain Marryat: Seaman, Writer, and Adventurer, Tom Pocock (2000)

[parkersrevenge]

I have quite made up my mind that Forster really believes he does know you personally, and has all his life. He talks to me about you with such gravity that I am afraid to grin, and feel it necessary to look quite serious. Sometimes he tells me things about you, doesn't ask me, you know, so that I am occasionally perplexed beyond all telling, and begin to think it was he, and not I, who went to America. It's the queerest thing in the world.

Charles Dickens to Cornelius Felton, December 31, 1842, in yet another update on the weird and completely incomprehensible crush that John Forster seemed to have had on him.

As this has been a pet project of mine for a few years now (though one I haven’t devoted too much in-depth research to), here are some other fun references to this gossip:

Charles Dickens to Cornelius Felton, May 21, 1842:

“Forster is my great friend, and writes at the bottom of all his letters- “My love to Felton”.”

John Forster to Henry Longfellow, January 3, 1843:

“How I envy you the intercourse with Felton! What a creature to love he is. How justly, and with what heart, he writes!”

My forever favorite:

Samuel Gridley Howe to Charles Sumner, August 2, 1843:

“Forster’s affection for Felton is becoming a sort of mania; he will certainly do something dreadful if he cannot gratify his longing to embrace him. I suspect he is remaining single in the hope of Felton’s becoming a widower that he may marry him.”

And when Felton becomes a widower, Henry offers Forster some... advice:

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to John Forster, May 8, 1845:

“Did anyone write to you… to tell you of Felton’s great affliction- the death of his wife- or am I, today, the first bearer of evil tidings? She died about a fortnight since…. Felton is quite overcome by it, but bears his sorrow heroically. We are urging him strenuously to sail at once for Europe: but I am afraid he will not do it, as he finds difficulties in the way; though I for one can see none that are insurmountable. If you have time to write him by the next steamer you will console him and cheer him.”

[parkersrevenge]

The ongoing saga of the Boston Gang shipping John Forster and Cornelius Felton has reached downright ludicrous levels, and I still have no idea what to make of it.

We have Charles Dickens to Felton himself, in 1842: “Forster is my great friend, and writes at the bottom of all his letters- “My love to Felton”.”

We have John Forster to Henry Longfellow in 1843: “How I envy you the intercourse with Felton! What a creature to love he is. How justly, and with what heart, he writes!”

Aaaaand Sam Howe to Charles Sumner in 1843: “Forster’s affection for Felton is becoming a sort of mania; he will certainly do something dreadful if he cannot gratify his longing to embrace him. I suspect he is remaining single in the hope of Felton’s becoming a widower that he may marry him.”

Now in 1845 we have Henry Longfellow writing to Forster: Did anyone write to you... to tell you of Felton’s great affliction- the death of his wife- or am I, today, the first bearer of evil tidings? She died about a fortnight since.... Felton is quite overcome by it, but bears his sorrow heroically. We are urging him strenuously to sail at once for Europe: but I am afraid he will not do it, as he finds difficulties in the way; though I for one can see none that are insurmountable. If you have time to write him by the next steamer you will console him and cheer him.”

I know when Felton remarries not long after this, Longfellow and Sumner exchange some bitter words with each other about it, so updates will continue as research progresses.

I honestly can’t tell if Sumner, Howe, Dickens, and Longfellow are just taking the piss out of the both of them, but the fact remains that this whole thing reads like something out of a god damn fanfic.

[parkersrevenge]

Charles Dickens, to John Forster, on his.... issues... handling the marriage of Queen Victoria to Prince Albert.

London, 12th February 1840

I am utterly lost in misery, and can do nothing. I have been reading Oliver, Pickwick, and Nickleby to get my thoughts together for the new effort, but all in vain:

“My heart is at Windsor, My heart isn’t here; My heart is at Windsor, A following my dear.”

I saw the Responsibilities this morning, and burst into tears. The presence of my wife aggravates me. I loathe my parents. I detest my house. I begin to have thoughts of the Serpentine, of the Regent’s-canal, of the razors upstairs, of the chemist’s down the street, of poisoning myself at Mrs.-’s table, of hanging myself upon the pear tree in the garden, of abstaining from food and starving myself to death, of being bled for my cold and tearing off the bandage, of falling under the feet of cab-horses in the New-road, of murdering Chapman and Hall and becoming great in story (SHE must hear something of me then- perhaps sign the warrant: or is that a fable?), of turning Chartist, of heading some bloody assault upon the palace and saving Her by my single hand- of being anything but what I have been, and doing anything but what I have done.

Your distracted friend.

Charles Dickens.

[sleepyleftistdemon]

(via (283) Entering Marion - YouTube)

Today’s song going through my head.

[oldestmakkapakkafan]

He is literally everything I ever wanted in a maaaan except that he's white and a cop and he's an alcoholic and has short hair and is named John and is from the 60s almost 70s!!!! <33

[keldermans]

Why don't you go sing "Entering Marion" and maybe you'll calm down