At last, to my great
relief, it flashed across me that I was Sydney Smith.'
In the summer of the year 1848 Napier and I stayed a couple
of nights with Captain Marryat at Langham, near Blakeney. He
used constantly to come over to Holkham to watch our cricket
matches. His house was a glorified cottage, very comfortable
and prettily decorated. The dining and sitting-rooms were
hung with the original water-colour drawings - mostly by
Stanfield, I think - which illustrated his minor works.
Trophies from all parts of the world garnished the walls.
The only inmates beside us two were his son, a strange, but
clever young man with considerable artistic abilities, and
his talented daughter, Miss Florence, since so well known to
novel readers.
Often as I had spoken to Marryat, I never could quite make
him out. Now that I was his guest his habitual reserve
disappeared, and despite his failing health he was geniality
itself. Even this I did not fully understand at first. At
the dinner-table his amusement seemed, I won't say to make a
'butt' of me - his banter was too good-natured for that - but
he treated me as Dr. Primrose treated his son after the
bushel-of-green-spectacles bargain. He invented the most
wonderful stories, and told them with imperturbable
sedateness. Finding a credulous listener in me, he drew all
the more freely upon his invention. When, however, he
gravely asserted that Jonas was not the only man who had
spent three days and three nights in a whale's belly, but
that he himself had caught a whale with a man inside it who
had lived there for more than a year on blubber, which, he
declared, was better than turtle soup, it was impossible to
resist the fooling, and not forget that one was the Moses of
the extravaganza.
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