#back at it with my marryat-franklin's officers mashups i won't be stopped!!

[clove-pinks]

I keep thinking about this passage from Battersby's Fitzjames book. It's unfortunate that both the print and kindle editions repeat the typo with Frederick Marryat's first name— although forgivable considering all of the complicated leads the author was pursuing (and he probably had another Captain Francis on the brain.) I commend Battersby for even following up by looking into the plot of Percival Keene, although he flubs it. At the time I first read this I didn't know by how much.

For one thing, Percival's real father is an extremely open secret almost from the start of the book. The story begins with a mysterious, clearly scandalous association between Percival's mother and Captain Delmar, who takes an unusual interest in her newborn child. As soon as Captain Delmar reappears in the story when Percival is a young boy, there's talk: "Captain Bridgeman leant over the counter, and I heard him whisper, 'Did you ever see such a likeness as between the lad and Captain Delmar?'"

Percival is the spitting image of his biological father, and he knows it; everyone knows it. I take issue with Battersby calling Captain Delmar “lazy and boring,” but he is certainly aloof and arrogant, and a large part of the book is Percival desperately wishing to be acknowledged as his son, despite the many roadblocks of period-typical propriety and secrecy. Fitzjames sailed as a volunteer under his true second cousin Captain Robert Gambier, not his father, but he doubtless experienced some of the same awkwardness (and Battersby adds that “the association between the two men was rather like a father/son relationship” going by their surviving correspondence.)

I am dying to know the context of this reference to Medea Culpepper that Fitzjames made. If anyone has the means and motivation to look it up, the correspondence between Fitzjames and John Barrow junior is held in the Royal Geographical Society archive (and apparently does not have a finding reference code like Admiralty documents.) I can think of a few possibilities for why he’s mentioning this specific character. Medea is assertive and determined to marry an officer, and Fitzjames might be joking about an ambitious but homely woman. He might just be riffing on a woman who is immensely fat (“I believe she weighs more than the rhinoceros did which was at Post-down fair,” one of Marryat’s characters observes.)

The third reason that comes to mind is more directly relevant to Fitzjames’ double life, and probably what Battersby means by “a hint.” Percival stays with the Culpepper family before joining his ship, delivered to them by Captain Delmar himself. The resemblance between father and son is immediately noted and openly commented on by the Culpeppers, along with Captain Delmar’s patronage of Percival (“he wouldn’t pay for other people’s children.”) Percival is told to leave the room so the family can gossip about his origins, but he eavesdrops on them:

“Just so; and if that boy is not a son of Captain Delmar, I'm not a woman.” 

“I am of that opinion,” replied the father, “and therefore I offered to take charge of him, as the captain did not know what to do with him till his uniform was ready.” 

“Well,” replied Miss Culpepper, “I’ll soon find out more. I'll pump every thing that he knows out of him, before he leaves us; I know how to put that and that together.” 

“Yes,” croaked the fat mother; “Medea knows how to put that and that together, as well as any one.” 

“You must be very civil and very kind to him,” said Mr. Culpepper; “for, depend upon it, the very circumstance of the captain's being compelled to keep the boy at a distance will make him feel more fond of him.” 

“I’ve no patience with the men in that respect,” observed the young lady: “how nobility can so demean themselves, I can't think; no wonder they are ashamed of what they have done, and will not acknowledge their own offspring.”

 “No, indeed,” croaked the old lady. 

“If a woman has the misfortune to yield to her inclinations, they don't let her off so easily,” exclaimed Miss Medea.

Medea follows through on her promise to pump Percival for information, but the boy is too canny and deflects her questions with skill. Percival gives a mixture of facts and misleading information and even turns the tables on the nosy Culpepper family while tacitly acknowledging his connections to Captain Delmar. Could Fitzjames be referring to a similar situation that saw him fielding unwelcome questions about his background? He had to maintain a certain persona around his fellow officers, and maintain it consistently, and at the same time he had to be aware of gossip.

As for Battersby’s assertion that Fitzjames enjoyed the novels of Captain Marryat in general: that I can believe even without further proof from his correspondence. Marryat’s humor runs to pranks and disguises right up Fitzjames’ alley; and not only that, but he phonetically writes out accents for comic effect. (And even talks about unusual ship-board pets!) There were surely Marryat novels along with The Pickwick Papers and The Vicar of Wakefield on the Franklin expedition. Marryat has been called the most popular British author between Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, and while a wide audience enjoyed his books, I sometimes feel like they are tailored to a readership of Royal Navy sailors like himself.