fl n yi^ » KTheirBooK UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES DOUGLAS JERROLD Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2008 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/douglasjerrolddr02jerr DoiTiLAS Jerroli), 1845 {Prom an etching bi/ Kainy Mea-loi's) Douglas Jerrold DRAMATIST AND WIT BY WALTER JERROLD WITH PORTRAITS AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS IN TWO VOLUMES VOL n. HODDER AND STOUGHTON LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO Printed in Great Britain bt Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, brunswick st., stamford st., s.e. 1, and bungay, suffolk. PR v.a. CONTENTS XII An " Annus Mirabilis " of Work — " Mrs. Caudle"—"Time Works Wonders"— Platform and Stage. 1845 . 381 XIII The Daily News—Douglas Jerrolds Weekly Newspaper — Letters — The Whitting- TON Club. 1846-1847 . .428 XIV Splendid Strolling — Mrs. Gamp and "that Dougladge"—Paris in Revo- lution. 1847-1848 468 XV " The Wittiest Man in London " — A Rolling Stone — Trip to Ireland— Difference with Dickens — Public Hanging — The Museum Club. 1849 . 497 XVI A Gold Pen—The " Catspaw "—Trip to the Lakes—Harriet Martineau—Leigh Hunt's Sneer—Eastbourne. 1850 . 528 XVII "Collected Works" — Sheridan Knowles: "Child of Nature"—"Re- tired FROM Business " — A Royal Per- —Lloyd's. formance 1851-1852 . 559 XVIII "St. Cupid" at Windsor—Gift to Kos- suth—A Swiss Holiday — "A Heart of Gold." 1853-1854 . .589 18ba?;i:6 vi CONTENTS CHAP. PAQI XIX Nathaniel Hawthorne and Douglas Jerrold—Boulogne—A Narrow Escape —Death OF A Beckett. 1855-1856 . 622 XX The Reform Club — Illness—The End. 1857 645 List of Douglas Jerrold's Plays . 660 Index 665 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS To face page Douglas Jerrold, 1845 . Frontispiece (From an engraving by H. Robinson of drawing by Kenny Meadoios) " " A Caudle Bottle in Doulton-ware . 384 (From a specimen i?i the jiossession of the Author) " Splendid Strollers " 408 John Forster as Kitcly ; John Leech as Master Matthew ; Douglas Jerrold as Master Steiilien ; and Charles Dickens as Captain Bohadil : in Ben Jonson's Every Man in His Hitmour. (From drawings by Kenny Meadows) Douglas Jerrold, 1847 470 (Fi\jin an engraving by Prior of a photograph by Beard, published May 1, 18U7) West Lodge, Putney Lower Common . 513 (From a photograph by Mr. A. S. F. Ackerrnann, B.Sc, taken in 1910, shortly before the demolition) Douglas Jerrold, 1852 578 (From an oil piainting by Sir Daniel Macnee, P. U.S.A., in the National Portrait Gallery) Douglas Jerrold, 1853 590 (From a marble bust by E. H. Baily, R.A., in the National Portrait Gallery) Douglas Jerrold, 1857 648 (From a photograph by Dr. Hugh Diamond, May, 1857) — CHAPTER XII AN " ANNUS MIRABILIS " OF WORK — " MRS. CAUDLE " — " TIME WORKS WONDERS " — PLATFORM AND STAGE 1845 With the year 1845 we reach what may be regarded, from the point of view of work accomphshed, the annus mirabilis of Douglas Jerrold's career. It began with the pubhca- tion in volume form of PuncKs Complete Letter Writer ; it saw the inception, course and completion of the most popular series which the author contributed to Punch—the work which has made his name familiar to thousands unacquainted with any other of his writings—it saw the production of what is by many regarded as the most brilliant of his comedies. Then, too, he was writing week by week an incessant succession of articles, jeucc d'esprit and comments on current affairs in Punch—sometimes as many as a dozen in a single weekly number, and he had also under- taken a new and ambitious magazine, himself contributing month by month an instalment of a long novel St. Giles and St. James ^— and monthly comments in the shape of the ^ Collected Writings, vol. i. VOL. II. B 382 DOUGLAS JERROLD Hedgehog Letters '^ on matters of the moment in that epistolary form of which he had such ready and varied command. Douglas Jerrold^s Shilling Magazine marked a very definite stage in the history of periodical literature, for its price, boldly made part of its title, indicated the breaking away from the orthodox half-crown then charged for such monthly miscellanies—and fifteen years before Thackeray started the Cornhill at the new price, though many writers have carelessly written of that as " the first of the shillings." The new venture met with a reception so cordial—both from press and public—as to augur well for the future of the undertaking. From Cambridge came the words : "In the name of commonsense we thank Mr. Jerrold for this attempt—a successful one as we hope and trust—to rescue the public from the mass of half-crown rubbish, miscalled periodical literature; and in its stead to give us a good article, or rather good articles, at a popular " price." From Yorkshire : We have long admired the writings of Douglas Jerrold. He is a hearty and sincere writer. Earnestness is his leading characteristic. He exposes class selfishness with a pen of fire ; and loves to strip off the mask of hypocrisy and fraud. And when he has laid hold of some hollow windbag of cant, with what infinite gusto he rips it up. Meanwhile, he sympathizes most keenly with the poor, the suffering and the strugghng 1 The Barber's Chair and the Hed^ehoo Letters, 1874. DOUGLAS JERROLD 383 classes; and it is mainly with the view of keeping awake the public attention to their condition that the present magazine has been " started." From Gloucester : The magazine opens with the commencement of a tale The History of St. Giles and St. James, the first portion of which is written with a vigour and intensity of description which we have seldom seen equalled, much less surpassed." From Scotland—with a double insistence upon value for money which must have tickled the editor : *' Anybody who wants a shillingsworth of amusement will naturally go seek it here. Douglas Jerrold will not disappoint them. Nobody writes purer English. Every one must admire his manner, his pathos, and his philanthropy. Such another handful of original matter cannot be had at the price." From all sides came a chorus of welcoming praise that cannot have failed to delight the writer, who was finding a new field for the expression of his strong opinions on social and political matters—and it may be said that the political chiefly interested him for its reaction on the social. The magazine claimed his earnest attention —he rejects a friend's article, while admitting its excellence, because it is " not shillingish," so strictly does he seek to maintain the purpose —and apart from the editorial supervision had each month to prepare an instalment of his novel in that hand-to-mouth system of the time. In the first number of Punch for the year —! 384 DOUGLAS JERROLD 1845, too, he commenced anonymously those Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures which began at once to be talked about, and soon to create a furore, and on their authorship becoming known to extend their writer's reputation as widely as that of Dickens himself. The popularity of the Lectures sent the circulation of Punch up it is said by leaps and bounds, and Margaret Caudle and the lectured Job became familiar in all mouths. I have been told that " injunctions were taken out to prevent copies of Punch being sold at street corners to the sound of trumpets." The Lectures were adapted for the stage by more than one writer on the look-out for a theme sure of being a " draw," the Caudles re- appeared in all sorts of forms—even in relief from John Leech's picture of the couple in bed —on stone-ware gin-bottles, and so forth.^ It has been recorded that week by week the newsagents would ascertain whether there was " another Caudle " in before deciding upon how many of the journals they would require—they were not often disappointed, for from the first week in January until the second " week in November, when the last " lecture appeared, there were but eight weeks in which Punch came out without Mrs. Caudle. If it be true that imitation is the sincerest ^ Within recent years I have seen Mrs. Caudle utiHzed for the purpose of advertising soap and hver pills While some years ago a penny edition of the Lectures was published to advertise another article of domestic usefulness. — DOUGLAS JERROLD 385 form of flattery, then were the Lectures flattered in most fulsome fashion, for—presumably while they were still appearing in Punch—they were lifted, slightly altered and vulgarized, and published in eight- page pamphlet form with the crudest of wood blocks and accompanying coarse verses as weak in rhythm as they were wild in rhyme. The title given to this " catch- penny " piratical perversion was Mrs. Cuddle's Bedroom Lectures.^ While the Lectures were still appearing in Punch they were at least twice dramatized, for during the summer one version made by C. Z. Barnett was produced at the Princess's Theatre, and I possess a copy of another by Edward Stirling which was given at the Lyceum; while Sterling Coyne is said to have made yet a third. At the Lyceum Robert Keeley most effectively personated Mrs. Caudle. Stirling's version appears to have been the only one printed, and it consists largely of an ingenious running together in dialogue form of sentences from the lectures with, of course, a goodly monopoly of the talk given to Mrs. Caudle herself. " The Caudle Duet " was versified from Punch and sung at Rosherville Gardens, and " Mrs. Caudle's Quadrilles " were " composed and dedicated to Douglas Jerrold, Esq., by J. H. Tully." ^ A copy of the part containing Lectures, or Lessons, 10 to 15 has recently been added to the British Museum Library, where it is tentatively dated "1850!" I think that it is most probable that Mrs.