_PUNCH'S_ WRITERS: 1841.
H. P. Grattan--W. H. Wills--R. B. Postans--Bread-Tax and
Tooth-Tax--G. Hodder--G. H. B. Rodwell--Douglas Jerrold--His
Caustic Wit--The "Q Papers"--A Statesman _pour rire_--His Sympathy
with the Poor and Oppressed--Wins for _Punch_ his Political
Influence--Ill-health--"_Punch's_ Letters"--The "Jenkins" and
"Pecksniff" Papers--"Mrs. Caudle"--Jerrold's Love of Children,
common to the Staff--He Silences his Fellow-wits--And is Routed by
a Barmaid--He sends his Love to the Staff--And they prove theirs.
The remaining contributors to the first number were Joseph Allen, H. P.
Grattan, and W. H. Wills. The contribution of the first-named has
already been indicated. H. P. "Grattan"--whose real name was Plunkett,
and whose occasional pseudonym was the familiar "Fusbos"--worked well
for the first numbers and for the Almanac. He was a witty versifier and
clever dramatist, but he soon tired of the paper and directed his
energies into other channels. W. H. Wills--"Harry Wills" he was always
called--was a more important and a more faithful contributor. His first
verses were "A Quarter-day Cogitation" (p. 5), and for some time he was
the regular dramatic critic of _Punch_, in which a considerable amount
of space was accorded to the review of amusements of all kinds, and not
a little to Charles Kean and his histrionic deficiencies. Besides
"_Punch's_ Theatre," he wrote paragraphs, verses, and criticisms
innumerable, including the series of "_Punch's_ Natural History of
Courtship," illustrated by the pencils of Sir John Gilbert, Newman, and
Gavarni; "_Punch's_ Comic Mythology," "_Punch's_ Information for the
People," as well as "_Punch's_ Valentines," and lively skits like "The
Burst Boiler and the Broken Heart," and the verses in praise of
pawnbrokers, "The Uncles of England." After helping the Almanac for
1846, his _Punch_ connection was interrupted for a period through his
being called to Edinburgh to edit "Chambers's Journal;" but on his
return to London two years later he resumed his position in a modified
form. He became secretary to Charles Dickens, who was then editing the
"Daily News," as well as his assistant editor on "Household Words," and
subsequently on "All the Year Round," so that little time was left him
for humorous composition--though he certainly found leisure to issue
"The Family Joe Miller." When he was in Edinburgh he married Robert
Chambers' sister--a lady possessed of true Scottish wit, some of whose
pithy remarks are still remembered, such as "The ladies who agitate for
women's rights are generally men's lefts."
Of the other two writers who aided in the founding of _Punch_--Postans
and George Hodder--there is little to say. The first-named, indeed, has
already been sufficiently dealt with, but it may be added that his last
contribution was his verses--"A Contribution by Cobden"--on the subject
of the removal by Sir Robert Peel of the tax on artificial teeth.
Postans saw his chance, for the Repeal of the Corn Laws was already
being agitated, and the tooth-tax troubled his mouth less than the tax
on bread. His final verse ran--
"Reverse your plan," the Goddess [Commerce] said,
And smiling stood in all her beauty;
"Give me untaxed my daily bread,
And tax my teeth with double duty."
Besides his ambassadorial assistance, and in spite of his presence at
the _Punch_ Club, Hodder was not of much account on the paper, either in
its formation or its literary production. He was, however, related to
_Punch_ by marriage, being the husband of Henning's beautiful daughter,
the niece of Kenny Meadows' wife. His last appearances in its pages were
in 1843, when four contributions (including "_Punch's_ Phrenology") came
from him; and then he resumed his usual work of journalist, became
Thackeray's secretary for a time, and died through the upsetting of a
coach in Richmond Park.
Passing by Leman Rede and G. H. B. Rodwell (composer, playwright, and
ballad writer), neither of whom, so far as I have been able to
ascertain, has left any appreciable trace on _Punch_, we come to the
man to whom, more than to anyone else, the paper owed the enormous
political influence it once enjoyed, and to whom it is indebted for much
of the literary reputation it still retains--Douglas Jerrold.
[Illustration: DOUGLAS JERROLD
(_From the Portrait by Sir D. Macnee, F.R.S.A., in the National Portrait
Gallery._)]
If he was not exactly the wit of his day--for his mind lacked the wider
sympathy, the greater grasp, and gentler refinement of Sydney
Smith's--he was certainly the most brilliant professional humorist of
his generation--"a wit, if not first, in the very first line." Something
of the bitterness and savagery of Gillray's rampant pleasantry afflicted
his _vis comica_; and when a happy thought, however unhappy and painful
for the hearer, came to the tip of his tongue, he could no more resist
slipping it off than he could wilfully have done him injury.
Mark Lemon used to say, "_Punch_ and I were made for each other." With
far more reason could that notion of reciprocity be applied to Jerrold.
No man ever gained so much from the paper in which he worked. He simply
frolicked in its pages, that fitted his talent as accurately as his
genius suited the times in which he lived. It is doubtful whether he
would make the same mark in it were he alive to-day; he would have to
seek another publication and another public, or else adopt an utter
change of tone. But in those lively times, when, obeying the summons
addressed to him in Boulogne, he sent his first political
paper--beginning characteristically with the introduction of Peel, in
time for the second number--he gave his powers full play. And his
sparkle was the brighter for its setting and its surroundings. His wit
was for the most part caustic and saturnine, and in no other journal
could it have so completely identified itself with the _ensemble_ of
tone. Without _Punch_, Jerrold would certainly not have been so
distinguished a man; yet he somewhere says in one of his works, with a
touch of ingratitude: "If you'd pass for somebody, you must sneer at a
play, but idolise _Punch_"--as though this were the height of
priggishness. He was a keen judge of things, and might have held that
view; but it was hardly for him, of all men, to publish it.
It is not surprising that, with the enormous reputation for wit which he
enjoyed, and up to which he lived with such triumphant ease, all the
smarter orphan-jokes of the day were fathered upon him. But there was a
ring about the true Jerroldian humour which the connoisseur could hardly
mistake. And the public soon became good enough judges of it too,
studying it regularly in _Punch_, and refusing for the most part to be
led away to look for it in the other journals which Jerrold edited, with
but indifferent success so far as their circulation went. Although his
fame was already established as a dramatist before _Punch_ was born, I
doubt, without _Punch_, he would ever have earned the reputation in pure
literature which his "Q Papers" helped to found.
It was with these "Q Papers" that he began, and he threw into them some
of his strongest and most withering writing, and oftentimes some of his
weakest sense. With his soft heart melting for the poor, and his fiery
hatred of oppression warping his better judgment, he was led into that
unreasoning attack upon property and authority to which Thackeray
deprecatingly alludes. Because the poor are unhappy, according to his
philosophy, therefore are the rich, most of them, their direct
oppressors, and ruling bodies, tyrants. Fiercely upright and
aggressively impulsive in his championship of the lowly, he was anything
but sound and thorough in his premisses; and had he the power he might
have wielded later, his defects as a political economist would
infallibly have brought about disaster. "His Radicalism," his son has
told us, "was that of a humorist"--that is to say, all his power and all
his wit as a writer (and they had few, if any, equals in the press), all
his genius for invective and ridicule, and all his commanding influence
with the public, were directed against Society and the powers that were,
simply from a playful sense of humour! Luckily, the evil, or at least
the danger, thus found a corrective for itself; for although Jerrold's
power, and with it _Punch's_, grew with amazing rapidity among all
classes, his tirades were felt to come more from the humorist's heart
than from the statesman's brain. It is thus easy to draw a comparison
between Jerrold and Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, of whom Carlyle says:
"He is a humorist from his inmost soul; he thinks as a humorist, he
feels, imagines, acts as a humorist. Sport is the element in which his
nature lives and works.... A Titan in his sport, as in his earnestness,
he oversteps all bounds, and riots without law or measure." The words
might almost have been written of Jerrold himself. But, for all that, he
was generally recognised as a leading champion of the people's rights
and reformer of their wrongs; and to this passionate earnestness, to
this keen wit and shrewd sincerity of the unconsciously special pleader,
_Punch_ owed most of the early notice he obtained, and much of his
influence in the worlds of politics and Society.
These papers, then, of which the first was "Punch and Peel" (July 24th,
1841), were, in fact, political leading-articles, satirical, ironical,
bitter, and more often demagogic than humorous, though of wit and humour
both there was a generous undercurrent. _Punch_ showed himself at once a
fighting man who meant to be in the thick of the fray, a politician as
impulsive as Macaulay; and though Jerrold did not begin to sign his
articles until the ninth week (which has given grounds to some writers
to assert that "Peel Regularly Called In" was the first of his
contributions), he soon succeeded in setting up "Q" as a personality
every bit as important and influential amongst his readers as _Punch_
himself. The Court, the Church, the Political and Social arena, he
included them all in his comprehensive gaze, and not an injustice, a
sham, an affectation, or a blunder--or what he happened to regard as
such--but came in for exposure and castigation. It was fortunate for him
and for _Punch_, no doubt, that he was "a humorist;" for his own
blunders and misjudgments were regarded with the more indulgence for it,
or were condoned as the excusable excesses of a chartered jester running
playfully amok. But it must not be imagined that though a humorist he
was not desperately sincere. His own early struggles, his ghastly
experience, as he ever thought it, when as a midshipman in the Navy he
saw how authority had to be enforced by flogging, and witnessed all the
revolting horrors of the cockpit during an engagement, had imparted
intense earnestness to his mind; and he focussed all his brilliancy on
the opportunity _Punch_ afforded of tilting at the windmills in the
plain. The fact seems to be that Jerrold's heart, and sometimes his
logic and his judgment as well, were a good deal of a woman's;
distinguished by every estimable and admirable quality, but with little
statesmanlike perspicuity and moderation. Such may truly be said of
those early "Q Papers," by which, nevertheless, he was able to effect
much, then and thereafter, greatly to the good of the people, yet often
wrought some of that intolerance and injustice which he was too ready to
ascribe to others.
It was he, more than anyone else, who forced on _Punch_ that admixture
of Radicalism with his Whiggery which did not wear off for the first
years of his life, and which was often enough preached with that
picturesqueness of expression which we nowadays would smile at as
"high-falutin." But the lofty ideas of the writer carried off this fault
of style. His creed was simple and clear: Cant was devilish and
Samaritanism godly; to him hypocrisy was the blackest of the vices, and
kindness the sum of all the virtues. It mattered little that that
kindness misplaced might bring a train of evils in its place; sympathy
was the one thing wanted; the quinine of stern justice (except against
the great and rich) should ever be watered down with mercy. It was, in
fact, the religion less of the practical politician and true reformer,
than of the worthy, upright, kind-hearted, unthinking Christian. His
very fearlessness made men fear him, as his motives and ability
compelled their respect; and the majority, who cared less for political
philosophy than for political fervour, applauded him blindfold, and in
due time accorded to _Punch_ a place in their esteem second only to that
enjoyed by the "Times." Of course, "bitterness" was expected in the
satirical papers of that day; and it is not pretended that Jerrold was
ever so unreasonable or so anarchical in the pages of _Punch_ as William
Brough revealed himself in the brilliant attacks on the propertied
classes in which he indulged in his Liverpool journal. He lost, of
course, no opportunity of assailing the Duke of Wellington, and Louis
Philippe, and the "Morning Post" (articles in which he attacked the
snobs of England before Thackeray did), and other of _Punch's_ permanent
butts; but his chief merit lies in his having set up the hereditary sins
of Society as targets, and shot his barbed darts into them with unerring
accuracy of aim. Of his bitterness it was said that it was
"healthy--healthy as bark," just as Thackeray--was it not?--had
previously said of his own writings in "Britannia."
It was not till a year afterwards (1842) that he began his "_Punch's_
Letters to his Son." They were tender enough, and show little evidence
that they were written in weakness and in pain. His health, indeed, gave
him periods of agony of a rheumatic character, pain in his hands so
great that at one time he could not write, and at another his whole
racked body practically paralysed, until a "cure" at Malvern gave him
back control of it. On another occasion, but that was in later years,
when he was asked how he was, he replied, "As one that is waiting and is
waited for," and he often wrote, said his son, when the movement of the
pen was fierce pain to him. We may see in this physical torment,
perhaps, the mainspring of much of his caustic humour. Mr. Cooper, R.A.,
would ascribe to over-indulgence much of Jerrold's suffering. "His
countenance was open and bright (when sober!), and showed nothing of
that satirical bitterness for which he was so eminent.... In accordance
with the fashion of the time the man who could not drink his bottle and
remain sober, drank his bottle and got drunk." But the Academician, like
most teetotalers, would often see drunkenness where Jerrold saw merely
drink, and probably knew nothing of the latter's own feelings towards
undue indulgence. "Habitual intoxication," wrote Jerrold himself, "is
the epitome of every crime;" and elsewhere, "The bottle is the devil's
crucible." Yet it must be admitted that he was not averse to what in his
day was called "true conviviality," which, as I have heard it remarked,
never yet made a man a drunkard, though it may sometimes have made him
drunk. "If Bacchus often leads men into quagmires deep as his vats, let
us yet do him this justice--he sometimes leads them out. Ask your
opponent to take another glass of wine." And did not Thomas Hood
suggest, when he was told that by his love of wine he was shortening his
days, that anyhow he was lengthening his nights?
What may be called the "Jenkins" and the "Pecksniff" papers belong to
the same year. The former were directed against the "Morning Post,"
which, with other loyal journals, in those days adopted a tone towards
Court and Society hardly in keeping with modern ideas of manly
independence, and of course its politics were to match. Thackeray and à
Beckett joined later in the sport. But Jerrold, while believing in
Thackeray's hatred of the snob, more than suspected him of being a snob
himself; and Thackeray felt not less convinced of the hollowness of
Jerrold's "stalwartness." "Thackeray had neither love nor respect for
Jerrold's democracy," Vizetelly tells us. "I remember him mentioning to
me his having noticed at the Earl of Carlisle's a presentation copy of
one of Jerrold's books, the inscription in which ran: 'To the Right
Honourable the Earl of Carlisle, K.G., K.C.B., etc. etc.' 'Ah!' said
Thackeray, 'this is the sort of style in which your rigid,
uncompromising Radical always toadies the great.'" And yet both men were
honest toady-haters to the core. It was this very hatred of snobbism
which inspired Jerrold with his cutting retort to Samuel Warren, author
of "Ten Thousand a Year," who complained that at some aristocratic house
at which he had recently dined he could positively get no fish. "I
suppose," said Jerrold, "they had eaten it all upstairs!"[37]
The "Pecksniff" papers, as already stated, very nearly involved _Punch_
in its first libel action. The object of its criticism was, of course,
Samuel Carter Hall, who, tradition says, was the origin of Dickens's
immortal conception. This creation--the symbol of cant and
hypocrisy--was after Jerrold's own heart, and, thinking less of charity
this time than of justice, he smote the luckless editor of the "Art
Journal" hip and thigh, and revelled in his attacks. Hall's articles on
the industrial art of England were supposed to be dictated more by the
complacency and generosity of manufacturers than by the artistic
excellence of their wares. Sometimes Jerrold would use the image of
"Pecksniff" for other and more serious purposes than the baiting of Mr.
Hall and his little ways, as when, in 1844, he made this biting
onslaught on the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel:
"We have heard that Mr. Charles Dickens is about to apply to the Court
of Chancery for an injunction to prevent Sir Robert Peel continuing any
longer to personate, in his character of Premier, the character of Mr.
Pecksniff, as delineated in _Martin Chuzzlewit_, that character being
copyright. We hope this rumour is unfounded, as the injunction would
certainly be refused. Sir Robert Peel is in a condition to prove that
the part in question has been enacted by him for a long series of years,
and was so long before any of Mr. Dickens's works appeared; in short,
that he, Sir Robert Peel, is the original Pecksniff."
The year 1843 was a notable one in _Punch's_ calendar, for in it Jerrold
struck that note of sympathy and tenderness that was almost immediately
to culminate in Hood's tragic poem. "The Story of a Feather" was begun,
and was the greatest success the paper had scored up to that time, with
the exception of the first Almanac. Dickens, who watched for it and read
it as it came out, wrote privately to him that it was "a beautiful
book," and his verdict was endorsed by the ever-increasing circle of
_Punch's_ readers. "Our Honeymoon" was Jerrold's last series of the
year--a year which drew from him plenty of outside work. He edited Mr.
Herbert Ingram's admirable but short-lived "Illuminated Magazine," and
wrote for it the "Chronicles of Clovernook" and the "Chronicles of a
Goosequill." It is astonishing, in looking back at Jerrold's remarkable
work at this period, to think that the public reads his books no more,
and prefers to ruin its literary taste on fifth-rate romances rather
than on the virile novels of a recent past.
For a little while nothing of special note, though still a great mass of
work, came from Jerrold's pen, until 1845, when, as prophesied by Hal
Baylis (_see_ p. 97), "Mrs. Caudle" burst upon the town. In common with
a few other things achieved by _Punch_, it created a national _furore_,
and set the whole country laughing and talking. Other nations soon took
up the conversation and the laughter, and "Mrs. Caudle" passed into the
popular mind and took a permanent place in the language in an incredibly
short space of time.
"Some years after I had ceased my connection with _Punch_," says Landells
in one of his autobiographical papers now in my hands, "I met Douglas
Jerrold at the corner of Essex Street in the Strand. It was the time
when the first number of the 'Caudle Curtain Lectures' appeared. In the
course of conversation I remarked that I did not read _Punch_ regularly,
but I had by chance perused the opening chapter of his new subject, and
I thought, if he followed up the series in the spirit he had begun, they
would be the most popular that have ever appeared in its pages. He
laughed heartily and replied--'It just shows what stuff the people will
swallow. I could write such rubbish as that by the yard;' and he added,
'I have before said, the public will always pay to be amused, but they
will never pay to be instructed.' The Caudle Lectures did more than any
series of papers for the universal popularity of _Punch_, and there is
no doubt but they added greatly to Jerrold's reputation, although he
always affected not to think so."
The origin of Mrs. Caudle--one of those women interminably loquacious
and militantly gloomy under fancied marital oppression, who (as Jerrold
said of another) "wouldn't allow that there was a bright side to the
moon"--was the result of no mental effort. Henry Mayhew's son has said
that the character was evolved from the relations of Mr. and Mrs.
Landells; but to anyone conversant with them the suggestion is palpably
absurd. Moreover, Jerrold, himself a good authority, one would have
thought, declared that she was "the result of no thought;" she was
merely "wafted into his brain." The reason of the immediate success of
these "Curtain Lectures" was said to be that every woman in the land
recognised in the lecturer a gratifying resemblance to someone in her
own circle. It was primarily, no doubt, the _intime_ character of the
papers, rather than their inherent humour, that tickled the public
taste--though at the same time it gave some offence. A reminiscence of a
literary _protégée_ of Jerrold's--Mrs. Newton Crosland--seems to bear
this out. In company with her mother, she was dining at Jerrold's house,
when, "towards the close of the meal, a packet arrived--proofs, I fancy;
at any rate, Douglas Jerrold opened a letter which visibly disturbed
him. 'Hark at this,' he said, after a little while; and he then
proceeded to read a really pathetic though not very well expressed
letter from an aggrieved matron, who appealed to him to discontinue or
modify the Caudle Lectures. She declared they were bringing discord into
families and making a multitude of women miserable."
But they made a greater multitude of men merry, and _Punch_ proceeded
with them--indeed, he continued so long that his rivals protested
loudly, as well they might in their own interests. They published
engravings of handsome sarcophagi, and gave similar unmistakable hints
that they considered the interment of Mrs. Caudle's corpse a long time
overdue; while "Joe Miller the Younger" represented him as "The Modern
Paganini playing on One String: 'Caudle--without variations.'" But
Jerrold, who had lately moved from Regent's Park to his house, West
Lodge, at Putney Lower Common, continued there to write Caudle Lectures
"by the yard"--alternating the locale, according to Mark Lemon, with a
tavern in Bouverie Street. And he laughed to see how his papers were
translated into nearly every Continental language, and were transferred
to the stage both in London and the provinces. Mrs. Keeley made a
life-like Mrs. Caudle at the Lyceum--only perhaps a little too fresh and
charming; the character in the provinces being often undertaken by male
impersonators, such, for example, as Mr. Warren. John Leech executed
upon stone a couple of admirable portraits of the conjugal pair, which
were sold, coloured, for a shilling; but they were soon pirated and
hawked about the streets, and the unprincipled conductors of "The Penny
Satirist," and similar abominations, traded largely not only on the
identity of the Caudles, but on the words of Mrs. Caudle herself--so
freely that legal steps had to be taken to stop the nuisance. The latest
edition of this _jeu d'esprit_ is that which has been illustrated by
Charles Keene, and it can hardly be doubted that in his drawings he
often touches the high-water mark of his artistic execution.
In due time Douglas Jerrold, as in duty bound, made the _amende
honorable_ to the sex he had maligned. He was invited to take the chair
at a great public meeting held at Birmingham in his honour, when the
whole audience rose at him. He was asked to speak without fear, "as
there was no Mrs. Caudle in Birmingham." He responded that he "did not
believe that there was a Mrs. Caudle in the whole world," and the
gracefulness of his reference set him at peace with womankind once more.
In point of fact, he was no more pleased, artistically, with the success
of Mrs. Caudle among his books than he was pleased with the position of
"Black-eyed Susan" among his plays, as he was well aware that he had
done much better work in both branches. But for _Punch's_ sake he was
delighted. So after the death of Mrs. Caudle, which in decency could no
longer be delayed, Jerrold attempted to carry on the idea by marrying
the widower to the lady of whom his wife had been so jealous; so that
Mr. Caudle--his head turned by his new-born liberty--might, in the
"Breakfast Talk" levelled at his second spouse, avenge the oppression
he had suffered from his first. But the experiment, which took place in
the Almanac of the following year, fell flat, and Mr. and Mrs. Caudle,
too, dropped out of Mr. Punch's doll-box for good and all.
Then followed, in 1846, "_Punch's_ Complete Letter-writer," which in
consequence of the odium incurred a short time before by Sir James
Graham, the Home Secretary,[38] by the opening of certain letters while
they were passing through the post, Jerrold sarcastically dedicated to
the heckled baronet. He did this on the ground that Sir James, having
the whole run of the Post Office and the fingering of all the letters,
must therefore possess "a most refined, most exquisite taste for the
graces of epistolary composition," and could thoroughly appreciate them.
This was another version of Hood's lines--
"A daw's not reckon'd a religious bird
Because he keeps a-cawing from a steeple,"
and is the pattern on which Mr. Whistler's effort was founded--that the
mere company of pictures can impart no feeling or knowledge of art, else
the policeman in the National Gallery must be the best of critics. But
at this time better work of Jerrold's, "St. Giles's and St. James's,"
was appearing in his "Shilling Magazine" (newly started by Bradbury and
Evans), as well as in the "Daily News," under the title of the "Hedgehog
Papers;" while "Time Works Wonders" raised his reputation higher than
ever upon the stage.
In the same year appeared the commencement of the series "Mrs. Bibs'
Baby"--but it was not a success, and was entirely thrown into the shade,
as it appeared, by Thackeray's first triumph, the "Snob Papers." The
chief charm about "Mrs. Bibs' Baby" is that it was the outcome of
Jerrold's passionate love of children. This delightful trait in
Jerrold's character--as in Steele's, Fielding's, Goldsmith's, and
Dickens's--has been common to many of the _Punch_ Staff, as we know in
their lives and have seen in their works. We all know how Thackeray
never saw a boy without wanting to tip him--a practical form of sympathy
which found great approval. Leech loved all children, even the terrible
ones, and makes us feel it in his drawings. Mr. du Maurier adores the
nice and the pretty ones, and even has a fatherly sort of pity for the
stupid and the ugly. Mr. Harry Furniss's "Romps" reflects his keen
delight in young people, the wilder the better. Shirley Brooks loved to
read the "Jabberwock" to them, and Sir John Tenniel, like his old chief,
Mark Lemon, loved them for their childhood's sake--or he would never
have been able to give us "Alice in Wonderland." Of course, there may be
others on the Staff who have no particularly pronounced feeling in this
direction; but Jerrold would often go out of his way to introduce babies
into his serious articles. He speaks somewhere of something "sweeter
than the sweetest baby"--and once said that "children are earthly idols
that hold us from the stars." So he began "Mrs. Bibs' Baby," and felt
humiliated and disappointed when the public showed no glimmer of
interest in it, and he was soon induced by his own good sense and the
editorial hint to desert his latest offspring.
Then came "The Female Robinson Crusoe," and the last (modified) success,
"Twelve Fireside Saints;" but outside undertakings were almost
monopolising his attention. His "Weekly Newspaper," founded on the
strength of his "Q Papers," had been born and was already dead. His
powerful novel "A Man Made of Money" made his next unqualified success;
then in 1850 he became attached to the "Examiner," and two years later
"Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper" brought him an editorship and a thousand
pounds a year--and he knew at last, and for the first time, the meaning
of freedom from care. He became, moreover, independent of the publishers
of _Punch_, to whom he was pecuniarily indebted, although they had more
than once raised his salary (once in order to enable him to dispense
with working for the "Pictorial Times"); but his indebtedness he felt as
a tie, which was none the less irksome that it was a golden fetter which
bound him to his friends. Still, to the end he sent in his satires,
couplets, and epigrams--stinging, brilliant, and original--jokes and
sarcasms by the score, but extremely few puns.
Sometimes, reviving the memories of his early trade, he would enter the
compositors' room, and, while waiting for a proof, would seize a
"stick," set up some concluding lines or a fresh paragraph in type, and
even make his own corrections in proof, almost driving the "reader" out
of his mind, until he learned how the corrections and additions had been
effected.
That Jerrold's wit ran in a higher groove than mere verbal quips and
cranks is proved by the retorts and epigrams that have been preserved
and ticketed in cases like a collection of brilliant butterflies. When
one March or April he tumbled backwards into water where, but for the
unseasonable weather, no water ought to have been, he suggested that the
accident was "owing to the backward spring;" reminding us of that
similar witticism of Henry Compton's, when fine hot weather followed
suddenly on March snows--"We have jumped from winter to summer without a
spring." His reply was characteristic to the poet Héraud's enquiry as to
whether he had seen his "Descent into Hell" (then newly published)--"I
wish to Heaven I had;" together with his well-known retort to Albert
Smith, who, before he left the paper, protested coaxingly against
Jerrold's merciless chaff, adding, "After all, you know, we row in the
same boat." "True," answered Jerrold, quick as thought, "but not with
the same skulls."
But he did not always come off scot-free; and, like many a wit whose
tongue is feared, he could be silenced by a well-directed thrust which,
for want of practice and experience in defence, he knew not how to
parry. Mr. Charles Williams tells me the story, recounted to him by
Thackeray, of how, when one wet night they were all at a little
oyster-shop then facing the Strand Theatre, the barmaid Jane, thoroughly
out of humour at Jerrold's chaff, slapped down before the little man the
liquor he had ordered, with the words, "There's your grog and take care
you don't drown yourself;" with the effect of damping his spirits for
the rest of the night. When Alfred Bunn retaliated with "A Word with
Punch,"[39] Jerrold made no reply, to the astonished delight of the
rival press. No man had greater courage than he; but he probably found
that he had nothing more to say, seeing that from week to week for years
past he had written against Bunn all he knew or could think of. And when
Shirley Brooks struck at him in "The Man in the Moon" in the course of a
mock election-address beginning--"I hate the humbug of the 'wrongs of
the poor man' class of writing when any sneaking rascal is found
poaching and punished for it"--Jerrold held his peace, and in due time
voted to have the damaging assailant invited to join _Punch's_ Staff.
Mrs. Landells, without straining their friendship, called him "the
little wasp" to his face; but, as Leigh Hunt more justly said, if he had
the sting of the bee, he also had the honey. When Jerrold said in his
wife's presence that a man ought to be able to change a spouse like a
bank-note--change one of forty for two of twenty--he indulged in kindly
chaff which she well understood and could appreciate; and when, on the
occasion of a party at their house, he replied to a question as to who
was dancing with his wife, "Oh, a member of the Humane Society, I
suppose," she had no objection to Leech making it into a picture for
_Punch's_ pages. When Jerrold said anything witty he would always laugh
frankly and unreservedly at it, and, like Dickens, he would burst out
laughing as he wrote, when he struck upon a comic idea for _Punch_.
The report that Mark Lemon said of Douglas Jerrold that "he was
doubtless considered caustic because he blackened every character he
touched" is probably apocryphal--though Jerrold's occasional treatment
of Lemon might perhaps have justified some sort of retaliation from his
genial Editor. Still, it was Jerrold's firm belief, as he declared to
Mr. Sidney Cooper, R.A., that he had never in his life said or written a
bitter thing of anyone who did not deserve it. But when he was on his
death-bed, the day before he died, he sent a last affectionate message
to his old comrades at the Table: "Tell the dear boys that if I've ever
wounded any of them, I've always loved them." Horace Mayhew was with him
when he passed away, and thence from the bedside brought the dead man's
love to them as a token to wipe out the sting of words which, if they
had not been forgotten, had been forgiven long ago.
After 1848 Jerrold wrote less and less for _Punch_; but until 1857, the
year of his death, he faithfully attended at the Table, and exerted
himself in _Punch's_ behalf. And when he died--the greatest blow _Punch_
had hitherto suffered by death (for Dr. Maginn was never on the
Staff)--Henry Mayhew (his son-in-law), Thackeray, Horace Mayhew, Mark
Lemon, and W. Bradbury were his pall-bearers, and Leech, Shirley
Brooks, Tom Taylor, John Oxenford, Percival Leigh, James Hannay,
Landells, Kenny Meadows, Albert Smith, and John Tenniel attended at his
graveside. Dickens took a prominent part in raising a fund for the
benefit of the widow, and with Thackeray and Dr. W. H. (now Sir William)
Russell gave readings, while Dickens' Amateurs made a public appearance,
and T. P. Cooke returned to the stage for the occasion--with a result
amounting to £2,000. Tom Taylor's feeling address, which was spoken at
the Adelphi Theatre by Albert Smith, between whom and Jerrold a kindlier
feeling had latterly sprung up, concluded thus:--
"... If one joy
From earth can reach souls freed from earth's alloy,
'Tis sure the joy to know kind hands are here
Drying the widow's and the orphan's tear;
Helping them gently o'er lone life's rough ways,
Sending what light may be to darkling days--
A better service than to hang with verse,
As our forefathers did, the poet's hearse.
Two things our Jerrold left, by death removed--
The works he wrought: the family he loved.
The first to-night you honour; honouring these,
You lend your aid to give the others ease."
FOOTNOTES:
[37] Dr. Strauss's attribution of this repartee to Robert Brough in
reproof of James Hannay appears to be quite without foundation.
[38] See p. 113 _et seq._
[39] See p. 227 _et seq._