Another antique book for my collection: an 1838 edition of Marryat's Jacob Faithful—the book he called his personal favourite of all his works—from publisher Richard Bentley with illustrations by John Cawse, engraved by William Greatbatch. This copy has beautifully marbeled endpapers and cover. I am trying to put together the publisher's whole Marryat series: rare contemporary illustrations executed in Captain Marryat's own lifetime.
The frontispiece has a nice group of many of the major characters together in the waterman Tom Stapleton's house, with Jacob at far right. He is recognisably the same character, with his friend Tom Beazeley, in the title page illustration, which is a much darker scene.
In this chapter, Jacob and Tom have gone shooting on Wimbledon Common. No sooner do they finally bag a hare, but they run into the common-keeper, who demands both their gun and their illegal meal:
“I should rather think not,” replied I. “The gun belongs to us, and not to you;” and I caught up the gun, and presented the muzzle at him.
“What! do you mean to commit murder? Why, you young villains!”
“Do you want to commit a robbery?” retorted I, fiercely; “because if you do, I mean to commit murder. Shall I shoot him, Tom?”
“No, Jacob, no; you mustn’t shoot men,” replied Tom, who perceived that I was in a humour to keep my word with the common-keeper. “Indeed, you can’t,” continued he, whispering to me; “the gun’s not loaded.”
“Do you mean to refuse to give me up your gun?” repeated the man.
“Yes I do,” replied I, cocking the lock; “so keep off.”
“Oh! you young reprobates — you’ll come to the gallows before long, that’s certain. Do you refuse to come with me?”
“I should rather think we do,” replied I.
“You refuse, do you? Recollect I’ve caught you in the fact, poaching, with a dead hare in your possession.”
“Well, it’s no use crying about it. What’s done can’t be helped,” replied I.
“Don’t you know that all the game, and all the turf, and all the bog, and all the gravel, and all the furze on this common belong to the Right Honourable Earl Spencer?”
The young men barely escape from the common-keeper and a group of his henchmen. Captain Marryat has a lot of sympathy in his stories for both smugglers and poachers—as much as he also supported the society that created them. Jacob, the hero, retorts, "A hare on a common is as much mine as Lord Spencer's. A common belongs to every body."
Darkness, stormy weather, and snow beset the boys as they hide from the angry common-keeper, and then Jacob sees a horrifying sight: a dead body, swinging in chains overhead.
As soon as I recovered from the shock which the first view occasioned, I pointed it out to Tom, who had not yet moved. He looked up, started back, and fell over the dog — jumped up again, and burst out into as loud a laugh as his frozen jaws would permit. “It’s old Jerry Abershaw,” said he, “I know him well, and now I know where we are.” This was the case; Abershaw had, about three years before, been hung in chains on Wimbledon Common; and the unearthly sound we had heard was the creaking of the rusty iron as the body was swung to-and-fro by the gale. “All’s right, Jacob,” said Tom, looking up at the brilliant sky, and then taking up the hare, “we’ll be on the road in five minutes.”
— Frederick Marryat, Jacob Faithful. 1838 illustrations by J. Cawse and W. Greatbatch.
Dressed in his new "long togs" that give him a more gentlemanly appearance, Jacob Faithful surprises his old master Tom Beazeley, a disabled Trafalgar veteran, and Beazeley’s wife when he returns from his impressment in the Royal Navy.
“I only wish Jacob was here, that's all.”
“Then you have your wish, my good old friend,” cried I, running up to Tom, and seizing his hand; but old Tom was so taken by surprise that he started back, and lost his equilibrium, dragging me after him, and we rolled on the turf together. Nor was this the only accident, for old Mrs. Beazeley was so alarmed that she also sprang from the bench fixed in the half of the old boat stuck on end, and threw herself back against it. The boat, rotten when first put up, and with the disadvantage of exposure to the elements for many years, could no longer stand such pressure. It gave way to the sudden force applied by the old woman, and she and the boat went down together, she screaming and scuffling among the rotten planks, which now, after so many years' close intimacy, were induced to part company. I was first on my legs, and ran to the assistance of Mrs. Beazeley, who was half smothered with dust and flakes of dry pitch, and old Tom coming to my assistance, we put the old woman on her legs again.
“O deary me!” cried the old woman, “O deary me! I do believe my hip is out. Lord, Mr. Jacob, how you frightened me!”
“Yes,” said old Tom, shaking me warmly by the hand, “we were all taken aback, old boat and all. What a shindy you have made, bowling us all down like nine pins! Well! my boy, I'm glad to see you, and notwithstanding your gear, you're Jacob Faithful still.”
— Frederick Marryat, Jacob Faithful
This etching by Robert William Buss was made in 1834, according to the British Museum. Buss, who also provided illustrations for Marryat's novel Peter Simple, is one of the few Marryat illustrators who was contemporary with Marryat himself and not from a later Victorian era. I think it adds a touch of greater authenticity, as late Victorians rarely bothered with accurate depictions of clothes from the early 19th century.
Marryat’s opinions on Buss are not recorded in Life and Letters or his biographies, but he presumably would have complained if he thought that Buss couldn’t execute his vision. The details of this illustration are carefully drawn from the story, depicting the ancient Beazeley cottage on the verge of Battersea Fields, still an isolated and underdeveloped area of marshes near the river in this time period.
