Jacob Faithful

Jacob Faithful, by Captain
Frederick Marryat

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Title: Jacob Faithful
Author: Captain Frederick Marryat
Release Date: May 21, 2007 [EBook #21549]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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FAITHFUL ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

Jacob Faithful
by Captain Marryat.
CHAPTER ONE.

MY BIRTH, PARENTAGE, AND FAMILY
PRETENSIONS--UNFORTUNATELY I PROVE TO BE A
DETRIMENTAL OR YOUNGER SON, WHICH IS REMEDIED BY
A TRIFLING ACCIDENT-- I HARDLY RECEIVE THE FIRST
ELEMENTS OF SCIENCE FROM MY FATHER, WHEN THE
ELEMENTS CONSPIRE AGAINST ME, AND I AM LEFT AN
ORPHAN.
Gentle reader, I was born upon the water--not upon the salt and angry
ocean, but upon the fresh and rapid-flowing river. It was in a floating
sort of box, called a lighter, and upon the river Thames, at low water,
when I first smelt the mud. This lighter was manned (an expression
amounting to bullism, if not construed kind-ly) by my father, my
mother, and your humble servant. My father had the sole charge--he
was monarch of the deck: my mother, of course, was queen, and I was
the heir-apparent.
Before I say one word about myself, allow me dutifully to describe my
parents. First, then, I will portray my queen mother. Report says, that
when she first came on board of the lighter, a lighter figure and a
lighter step never pressed a plank; but as far as I can tax my
recollection, she was always a fat, unwieldy woman. Locomotion was
not to her taste--gin was. She seldom quitted the cabin--never quitted
the lighter: a pair of shoes may have lasted her for five years for the
wear and tear she took out of them. Being of this domestic habit, as all
married women ought to be, she was always to be found when wanted;
but although always at hand, she was not always on her feet. Towards
the close of the day, she lay down upon her bed--a wise precaution
when a person can no longer stand. The fact was, that my honoured
mother, although her virtue was unimpeachable, was frequently
seduced by liquor; and although constant to my father, was debauched
and to be found in bed with that insidious assailer of female
uprightness--gin. The lighter, which might have been compared to
another garden of Eden, of which my mother was the Eve, and my
father the Adam to consort with, was entered by this serpent who
tempted her; and if she did not eat, she drank, which was even worse.
At first, indeed--and I may mention it to prove how the enemy always

gains admittance under a specious form--she drank it only to keep the
cold out of her stomach, which the humid atmosphere from the
surrounding water appeared to warrant. My father took his pipe for the
same reason; but, at the time that I was born, he smoked and she drank
from morning to night, because habit had rendered it almost necessary
to their existence. The pipe was always to his lip, the glass incessantly
to hers. I would have defied any cold ever to have penetrated into their
stomachs;--but I have said enough of my mother for the present; I will
now pass on to my father.
My father was a puffy, round-bellied, long-armed, little man, admirably
calculated for his station in, or rather out of, society. He could manage
a lighter as well as anybody; but he could do no more. He had been
brought up to it from his infancy. He went on shore for my mother, and
came on board again--the only remarkable event in his life. His whole
amusement was his pipe; and, as there is a certain indefinable link
between smoking and philosophy, my father, by dint of smoking, had
become a perfect philosopher. It is no less strange than true, that we can
puff away our cares with tobacco, when, without it, they remain a
burden to existence. There is no composing draught like the draught
through the tube of a pipe. The savage warriors of North America
enjoyed the blessing before we did; and to the pipe is to be ascribed the
wisdom of their councils and the laconic delivery of their sentiments. It
would be well introduced into our own legislative assembly. Ladies,
indeed, would no longer peep down through the ventilator; but we
should have more sense and fewer words. It is also to tobacco that is to
be ascribed the stoical