Full text of "Douglas Jerrold, dramatist and wit"

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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
AT LOS ANGELES 




DOUGLAS JERROLD 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

DOUGLAS JERROLD AND "PUNCH" 

THOMAS HOOD : HIS LIFE AND TIMES 

GEORGE MEREDITH : AN ESSAY 
TOWARDS APPRECIATION 

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

A BOOK OF FAMOUS WITS 

THE AUTOLYCUS OF THE BOOKSTALLS 

HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS IN KENT 

HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS IN 
MIDDLESEX 

THE DANUBE 



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Douglas Jerrold 

DRAMATIST AND WIT 



BY 

WALTER JERROLD 



PVITH PORTRAITS AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS 



IN TWO VOLUMES 
VOL. I. 



HODDER AND STOUGHTON 

LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO 



Printbd in Gbbat Britain bt 

Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, 

brunswick st., stamford st., 8.e. 1, 

and bungay, suffolk. 



^ 







TO 
THE DESCENDANTS OP 

DOUGLAS JERROLD 

J GRANDCHILDREN, GREAT-GRANDCHILDREN 

'^ AND GREAT-GREAT-GRANDCHILDREN 

A (UPWARDS OF FIFTY IN NITMBER) 

THIS RECORD OF THEIR ANCESTOR'S LIFE AND V/ORK 

IS DEDICATED 



186325 



PREFACE 

It is now more than twenty years since the editor 
of St. Nicholas invited the last surviving daughter of 
Douglas Jerrold to contribvite a paper on her father's 
early life to that magazine ; this my aunt was unwilling 
to do, and asked that I should be permitted to write the 
article instead. Later she expressed the hope that I 
would some day undertake the work which I have here 
completed, and gave me to that end such materials as 
remained in her possession. A biography of Douglas 
Jerrold was written shortly after his death by his eldest 
son, William Blanchard Jerrold, but in the years that 
have elapsed since then nearly all the people who knew 
the dramatist, who had listened to his Avit, have passed 
awa}'^; some of these lived to write their reminiscences 
of the old time, others have in turn become the subjects 
of biography, and the belongings of others — including 
such letters, papers and books as are the raw material 
for the biographer — have been scattered by the rise and 
fall of the auctioneer's hammer. Thus it is that fresh 
material has become available for giving more completely 
the story of the life of Douglas Jerrold. 

Such fuller story should at least prove serviceable in 
correcting the errors concerning Jerrold which are to be 
found in most works of reference, as well as certain 
others which have been quoted again and again as facts 
but which research shows to be fictions. It may be said 
that where in this work statements and dates differ 
from those given in the established works of reference, in 
the earlier biography, or biographical articles, the present 
work has the authority of immediately contemporary 
documentary or printed evidence. 

Novelist and essayist, satirist and wit, journalist and 
dramatist, Douglas Jerrold exercised his pen in so many 
directions that in the regard of those who think that the 
cobbler should stick to his last his reputation may have 
suffered from the very multiplicity of ways in which his 
talents were manifested. He is said to have been im- 
patient of the fact that that which was not the best of 
his work was that which gave him the greatest popularity. 



viii PREFACE 

The writer of close upon seventy plays, he realised 
that there were among them many better than Black- 
Eyed Susan, which was the most widely known of 
his writings for the stage; and when he described the 
Chronicles of Clovernook as containing some of his best 
work, he knew that its vogue was not a tithe of a tithe 
of that of the Caudle Lectures. Then, too, the fact that 
he was a wit militated somewhat against full recognition 
of the strong purpose which informed most that he wrote, 
and he chafed against that knowledge. In this volume 
I have sought simply to tell the story of his life, to indi- 
cate something of the character of his varied work, and 
to show what manner of man he was in the regard of 
those who knew him. 

For generous assistance I offer grateful thanks : To 
Mr. Bertram Dobell for thoughtful help over many years ; 
to him I owe the only copy I know of the Anti-Punch 
booklet, herein first drawn attention to, a copy of the 
scarce twopenny pamphlet, Life of Douglas Jerrold, pub- 
lished in 1857, several of the rarer printed plays and 
other materials. To Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton for 
the gift of his copies of Jerrold's dramas — a prized collec- 
tion including some that appear to be unique. To Sir 
James Yoxall, M.P., for a precious specimen of the 
"Caudle" bottle (depicted opposite p. 4, vol. ii. To Mr. 
Thomas Catling, who entered the service of Lloyds in 1854, 
and in due course succeeded to the editorial chair, for 
friendly help. To the late Mr. T. F. Dillon -Croker for assist- 
ance in tracing the early plays. To Mr. E. Y. Lowne for a 
copy of his Elliston letter concerning the writing of Black- 
Eyed Susan — though that letter destroys a time-honoured 
story ! To Captain Christie-Crawford for additions to 
my portraits of Douglas Jerrold. To Mr. A. S. E. 
Ackermann for the photograph of West Lodge. To Mr. 
William Roberts for a copy of the rules and list of members 
of " Our Club " and other assistance. To Miss Hutchison 
Stirling for my grandfather's letters to her distinguished 
father; and to Miss F. Rathbone, Mr. A. M, Broadley, 
Mr. H. B. Wheatley and others for the loan of letters. 

Walter Jerrold. 

Hampton-on-Thames, 
May 1914. 



CONTENTS 



PAOB 



I Childhood and Youth. 1808-1816 . . 1 

II The Printing House — First Plays — 

Marriage. 1816-1824 .... 37 

III Dramatist-of-all-Work. 1825-1828 . . 70 

IV " Black-Eyed-Susan." 1829-1830 . . 103 

V "Thomas a Becket" — "The Devil's 

Ducat." 1830-1831 135 

VI " The Rent Day " and Early Comedy. 

1831-1832 177 

VII The State of the Drama — ''Nell 
Gwynne" — The Mulberry Club. 1882- 
1884 201 

VIII In Paris. 1885-1886 246 

IX An Experiment — "Men of Character" 
— "The Handbook of Swindling." 
1836-1839 274 

X Boulogne — "The Prisoner of War" — 

"Bubbles of the Day." 1840-1843 . 316 

XI Illness — Letters from Dickens — The 

First Shilling Magazine. 1848-1844 . 349 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

To face pagt 

Douglas Jerrold .... Frontispiece 

{From Oil unaigntd oil puintiag in the possession of the Author) 

A Christmas Piece 18 

(Written by Sovglat Jerrold in ISli) 

Douglas Jerrold, 182 — 68 

(From an unsigned oil painting) 

The Coburg Theatre in 1826 .... 82 

(From an engrnring by Daniel Havrll) 

The Surrey Theatre in 1826 . . . .116 

(From an engraving by Daniel Haccll) 

Douglas Jerrold, 183 — 190 

(From a print first published in ISSO, as "from a picture in the posscttion 
of Douglaf Jerrold ") 

Douglas Jerrold in Caricature . . . 236 

Copied by Miss Daphne Jerrold after the following — 
1. John Leech. 2 and 3. A JVoril with Punch. 4. Kenny 
Meadows, o. John Tenniel. G. Richard Doyle. 7. W. M. 
Thackei'ay. 8. Kennj' Meadows. 9. John Leech. 

A Letter of Douglas Jerrold's, 1839 . . 296 

FiRWOOD House, Herne Bay .... 350 

(From a water-colour sketch by Mr. Hugh Thomson, R.I., in the possession 
of the Author) 



CHAPTER I 

CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 

1803-1816 

Much as the theatre has been written about 
in these days, there is one aspect of theatrical 
hfe which seems, except in personal memoirs 
and as episodical in theatrical histories, to have 
escaped the attention of the student — it is 
that of the provincial theatres and the theatrical 
" circuits " of the eighteenth and early nine- 
teenth centuries. Of the central establish- 
ments in London, the places in which stage 
plays were represented by companies that 
retained the title of royal servants long after 
princely salaries had been substituted for 
royal wages, much has been written, but of 
those strolling companies which periodically 
visited the various towns and villages on their 
particular " circuits," we have apparently no 
tentative chronicle — anything approaching a 
complete history would probably now be 
impossible. There are references to such com- 
panies in the lives of some of the players who 
won to wider fame, in letters and n^emoirs and 
in the periodicals of the time, but of connected 
history as yet it appears nothing. Such a 
history is too wide and too remotely connected 

VOL. I B 



2 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

with my present subject to call for treatment 
here, for I have particularly to deal with but 
one strolling player, and with him only as intro- 
ductory to the story of his son. From the 
scattered scraps in lives and reminiscences 
of actors who passed from the position of 
" strollers " to that of " stars," the story of 
those old days may, perhaps, yet be pieced 
together. We see the actors moving from 
place to place with almost bewildering rapidity, 
but it is generally as a genial, friendly company, 
accepting the rough with the smooth in a 
delightfully philosophic fashion — professional 
nomads who by day were sometimes in diffi- 
culties as to where they could find lodgings, 
and by night were playing the parts of spectac- 
ular heroes and kings. Heroes many of them 
were, it would seem, in their daily lives, though 
the heroism was not of a kind to impress the 
onlookers. Rogues and vagabonds ^ in the 
eyes of the law, they were carrying the glamour 
of wonder and poetry into all sorts of unex- 
pected places in days before the schoolmaster 
was abroad. It is small wonder that the 
appearance of the players often moved adven- 
turous youth to throw in its lot with them, and 

^ In illustration of this old status of the actor I 
have come across an amusing story of Charles Macklin. 
Having to visit a fire office in connection with the in- 
surance of some property, the actor was asked how he 
would be pleased to have his name entered. " Entered ? " 
said the veteran. " Why, I am only plain Charles Macklin, 
a vagabond by Act of Parliament; but in compliment to 
the times, you may set me down Esquire, as they are 
now synonymous terms." 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 3 

to seek fortune in their company. The way in 
which the old circuit companies moved about 
is amusingly shown by one who ran away from 
the City life to which he was indentured, and 
who subsequently justified his running away 
by the position which he took after serving a 
new apprenticeship to the fascinating life of 
the strolling player. The circuit companies 
seem to have had, as the name implies, a regu- 
lar round of towns and villages in which they 
appeared, and to have dated happenings and 
events by their successive appearances in such 
places. 

In 1789, the earliest date to which I can 
trace him, Samuel Jerrold, a member of the 
Dover company of players, and also, it is said, 
their printer — sl doubling of parts which may 
well appear strange in the twentieth century — 
was acting at Eastbourne. Thither came a 
youth of eighteen, a runaway apprentice from 
London, who was accepted as a member of 
the company under the name of " S. Merchant," 
but who was to become known to fame as 
Thomas John Dibdin. To Dibdin's Reminis- 
cenceSy published nearly forty years later, we 
owe a first glimpse of the Jerrold family. 

It was in 1789 that Dibdin, at the age of 
eighteen, set out with an introduction to Mr. 
Mate of the Margate Theatre, got there to 
learn that the company was full up and to be 
sent on with a letter — " not such a letter as 
this advising^ but one commanding my deputy 
manager, Mr. Richland, to give you an imme- 



4 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

diate engagement, and put you on a footing 
with the first actor in the company." Dibdin 
tramped from Margate to Dover, only to find 
that the company was at Eastbourne, and on 
to that town he was compelled to continue his 
tramping. 

" On entering the village, I felt no small anxiety 
lest the ' Dover Company ' should have again moved 
forwards, and my journey, consequently, be not at 
its close; but, to my great delight, I saw the last 
night's playbill affixed to a post ; and while I was loud 
in my mirth at something whimsical in its style of 
commencement, a farmer, who supposed me one of the 
corps dramatique, exclaimed as he passed, ' Addrott'n, 
there you be laughing at your own roguery ! ' 

" When we came to the inn, the first thing I saw 
was my little valise, which had arrived the day before, 
addressed to the care of the manager : I wished to 
have improved my dress a little before I waited on the 
great man, forgetting that it would be first necessary 
to receive my wardrobe from himself. The moment 
I claimed acquaintance with the parcel, and asked a 
waiter where the manager lived, a very shrewd-looking 
and rather handsome lad of about fourteen replied, 
' Mr. Richland, sir, is in the house ; and if you are the 
new gentleman he expects, will be very happy to see 
you.' This youth was nephew of the manager, his 
name Jerrold, to which he subsequently added a 
Fitz, and afterwards became manager of the Theatre 
Royal, York, in which circuit he some two years 
since died. 

" The idea of meeting the manager in my dusty 
dishabille was rather unpleasant, but before I could 
express myself to that effect, young Jerrold threw 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 5 

open a door, and I was instantaneously in the presence 
of Mr. Richland, manager; Mr. Russell (the since 
far-famed ' Jerry Sneak ' of Drury Lane Theatre, 
and now the merry manager of Brighton), deputy 
manager . . . Mr. Parsons, a serious actor who always 
laughed, sat next to a melancholy comedian, father 
of the youth Jerrold, who had so suddenly ' let me 
in,' to this long-sought society; and whose greatest 
professional importance arose from the inspiring 
circumstance of his being possessed of ' a real pair of 
the great Mr, Garrick's own shoes,' in which the happy 
Jerrold played every part assigned to him, and conse- 
quently maintained a most respectable standing in 
the theatre. I still see the delight with which his 
eyes sparkled when he exhibited these relics of the 
mighty Roscius to me for the first time, and his stare 
of admiration on learning that the ' new gentleman ' 
was really and truly no more nor less than a genuine 
godson of the immortal G." 

Dibdin gave the company a taste of his 
quality in a song which was well received, 
and " Jerrold swore by Garrick's shoes it was 
excellent." 

" When I obtained leave to retire, and got pos- 
session of my valise, it was on condition I returned in 
an hour to dine with the jolly set, and bring my 
travelling companion with me. Little Jerrold was 
printer to the corps ; and as I was leaving the room, 
he asked under what name he should have the honour 
to insert my debut in the playbill. ' Sir,' replied I, 
' my name is Norval.' ' True, sir, upon the Grampian 
Hills; but your real name.' " 

The new gentleman chose the name of 
Merchant — his own name, as the son of Charles 



6 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

Dibdin of sea-song fame, and as a runaway 
apprentice, not yet being safe for use in his 
new work. 

" Little Jerrold " presumably refers to Samuel, 
— for Robert, a boy of fourteen, was not very 
likely to be the printer to the corps. 

From Dibdin we learn that at Eastbourne 
the Dover Company was acting in a large barn, 
and that the members of the company were 
not salaried, but were playing on sharing terms, 
the arrangement being that after a certain 
amount of the money taken had been put 
aside for rent, servants and tradesmen, the 
rest was divided into a certain number of 
parts, six of which went to the manager, and 
one to each other member of the company, 
with a little extra for the one who added to his 
other duties that of prompter. Most of these 
companies of itinerant Thespians were formed 
on such lines. From an old account of one 
of them I find that, supposing the number of 
the company to be sixteen, " the profits of 
each night are divided into twenty parts or 
shares, and the extra four assigned to the 
manager for clothes, scenery, etc. The only 
advantage a good actor has in such a scheme 
is the attention paid to his benefit, because 
nightly, Macbeth and the Murderer retire with 
the same mass of wealth." 

Another glimpse of the Jerrold family is 
shown by Dibdin. When the time came for 
the " new gentleman " to claim a benefit he 
thought that he would like to play Werter, 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 7 

but the play had not been printed, and the 
company had no copy of it. 

"What then? They were acting it at Brighton 
only eighteen miles distant; and as my mother hap- 
pened to be there, I determined to visit her, obtain 
amnesty for my elopement and use her interest with 
good-natured Jem Wild (prompter at Brighton and 
Covent Garden), to borrow or copy the tragedy. As 
I played every night, and had to rehearse every day, 
I had no other mode of accomplishing my wish than 
that of leaving Eastbourne on a Saturday night after 
the farce was over, staying Sunday at Brighton, and 
returning on Monday morning. Young Jerrold, or 
Fitzgerald, offered to accompany me : we left East- 
bourne as the church clock struck midnight ; but the 
moon was up, the breeze was beautiful, the road 
romantic, and we had cheered our spirits with a good 
supper at the Lamb. We marched merrily along till 
near Seaford; when the moon having retired, our 
direct road grew rather difficult to be distinguished, 
as it lay over a waste down, bordered with tremendous 
cliffs. As the sky became more obscure, a propor- 
tionably brilliant, but terrific effect was produced 
by the sudden glare of innumerable signals of fire 
along the whole line of coast, proceeding from flash- 
boxes ; and as we passed the end of a gloomy defile, 
cut in a chalk road in the direction of the sea, we were 
suddenly met by about two hundred horses, ridden or 
led by perhaps half that number of smugglers, all 
well armed, and each horse carrying as many casks 
of ' moonlight ' as could be slung on his back. They 
challenged us with much simplicity, asked where we 
were going ; and on being informed, said we must not 
proceed further in that direction, but accompany 
them for a few miles, when they would set us down in 



8 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

a place much nearer Brighton than we then were : 
this arrangement was imparted in a good-natured 
tone, but yet one of so much decision, that we had no 
alternative but to fall in with their humour. They 
insisted on our each just tasting a glass of godsend, 
as they chose to christen some excellent brandy; 
and the next moment the godson of Garrick, the 
Incledon of Eastbourne, and the pupil of Sir William, 
was seated between two tubs on a tall black mare; 
and little Bob Jerrold, bestriding a cask of contraband, 
on the back of a Shetland pony. We rode silently 
along for a few minutes, when an athletic horseman, 
in a white round frock, came close to me with rather a 
meaning air, and asked whether I could not sing 
' Poor Jack ' ; and before I could answer, burst into a 
laugh, by which I discovered him to be the brother of 
my landlord at Eastbourne : he added, they had made 
a capital night's work, and should soon be ' at home ' 
— meaning, as I afterwards learned, their general 
depot in another part of the cliffs ; but that if we had 
continued our advance and happened to mention the 
sort of cavalcade we had encountered, there might 
be those upon the alert who would probably have 
pursued, and given them some trouble. In about an 
hour we were liberated with a caution, that it would 
be ' as well ' to say nothing about the good company 
we had been in. It was now daybreak; and by the 
directions they gave, we reached Brighton at an 
early hour, breakfasted at an inn, and as soon as I 
thought my mother would be visible, I sent young 
Jerrold to her with a letter." 

One reference in Dibdin's remarks is puzzling, 
and that is where he refers to Robert Jerrold 
as nephew to Richland. If the statement is 
correct Mrs. Richland must have been Samuel 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 9 

Jerrold's sister, but of his parentage and family 
I have been able to ascertain nothing. The 
most probable explanation is that Dibdin's 
memory was at fault, and that instead of 
" Richland " he should have written " Cope- 
land," for I have found no other mention than 
Dibdin's of a theatrical Richland. 

The Dover Company seems to have had its 
circuit about the Kent and Sussex towns, and 
in 1800 the name of Samuel Jerrold still appears 
in it when the players were at Lewes — perhaps 
by then he had his own company. The 
actor who had the Dover circuit at this time 
was Robert Copeland — of the Copelands of 
Belnagan, co. Neath — whose son, born in 1799, 
was also to become an actor in due course, and 
to marry a daughter of Samuel Jerrold.^ 
When Dibdin met Jerrold in Eastbourne, the 
latter, presumably already a widower — his 
first wife, nee Simpson, is said to have been an 
actress — was the father of two sons, the Robert 
mentioned, and a younger one named Charles. 
Between 1789 and 1800, however, Samuel 
Jerrold seems to have sought his fortunes 
further afield, and may possibly for a time 
have been a member of the Derbyshire or 
York circuits. Possibly several members of 

^ The Jerrold and Copeland families again intermarried, 
for a daughter of this miion in 1858 married a son of 
Douglas Jerrold — in consequence of which the author 
of this biography and his brothers and sisters all bear 
the mid-name of Copeland. Robert Copeland's daughter, 
Fanny Elizabeth (1801-1854), at fifteen " leading actress " 
in her father's company, is best remembered under her 
married name as Mrs. Fitzwilliam. 



10 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

the Dover Company may thus have travelled 
north, for Robert Copeland's wife is said to 
have been a member of a Yorkshire family 
named Longbottom, with traditional descent 
from the family of Bishop Fell immortalized 
in epigram. Certainly Samuel Jerrold was in 
Derbyshire, for at the small town of Wirks- 
worth, some miles to the south of Matlock, 
he married his second wife. He may have 
been thus far from his usual " circuit " pro- 
fessionally, for his second wife was presumably 
already an actress, as also possibly was her 
mother. That there was certainly a theatre 
at Wirksworth I have ascertained, for in 1801 
the Stafford Company of actors is reported to 
have had a season there. At Wirksworth 
Church " Samuel Jerrold and Mary Reid both 
of this parish " were married on April 20, 
1794. 

The second Mrs. Samuel Jerrold was much 
younger than her husband, being about two and 
twenty — indeed, her mother (nee Douglas) is 
said to have been younger than her son-in-law. 
Within nine years two daughters and two sons 
were born to this couple,^ who seem at once to 
have removed to the south, and the usual 
scenes of Samuel Jerrold's professional activi- 
ties, for, as has been said, Jerrold's name appears 
in a contemporary paragraph as among the 

^ Elizabeth Sarah, who married Wilham Robert 
Copeland; Jane Matilda, who married William John 
Hammond ; Henry, at different times a printer and 
actor; and Douglas William, the subject of this memoir. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 11 

actors in 1800 at the Lewes Theatre, though 
the " Mr. Jerrold " there noted may possibly 
have been his son Robert. It is, however, 
significant that the company also included a 
" Mrs. Read " who may have been his mother- 
in-law. Lewes was probably but the temporary 
headquarters of the circuit company. In 1802, 
Samuel Jerrold's company was acting at Wat- 
ford, for thither in that year one William 
Oxberry " fled from his former shackles on the 
wings of hope," duly obtained an engagement, 
made a start as Antonio in the Merchant of 
Venice^ and began a successful career as a 
comedian. Another actor of some import- 
ance in his day also made his start under 
Samuel Jerrold's auspices at Watford, for it 
is recorded of Thomas Cobham (1789-1842) 
that his " first public essay took place at 
Watford in Hertfordshire, fifteen miles from 
the Metropolis. The company assembled at 
this place was collected by Mr. Jerrold, father 
of the late York manager. The members for 
the most part were young in their calling, 
but we are to infer that they possessed consider- 
able talent, for most of them have risen to 
eminence in their profession. Among them was 
the late Mr. Oxberry, whose rich comic powers 
were here first called into action. From Wat- 
ford the company went to St. Albans." ^ It 
is worthy of note that Cobham was another 
instance of a printer's apprentice becoming an 
actor. 

1 Mirror of the Stage, July 26, 1824. 



12 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

In the winter of 1802-3 the Jerrolds appear 
to have been in London, whether professionally 
or in the green-room euphemism of a latter day 
" resting," it is now impossible to determine. 
During this visit Mrs. Samuel Jerrold gave 
birth on January 3, 1803— it has been said in 
Greek Street, Soho — to a son who duly received 
the names of Douglas William; the first of 
these being the maiden name of the child's 
maternal grandmother, a Scotswoman. 

In youngest infancy Douglas was carried 
down into Kent, to the village of Willsley, 
(Wilsby in the earlier biography is obviously a 
misprint) near the small town of Cranbrook, 
where his father had the theatre — he was 
described as " proprietor of many Theatres 
Rural " — and there he passed his earliest years. 
Very little is definitely known of his childhood, 
except that, owing to the fact of both his 
parents being upon the stage, his bringing up 
largely devolved upon his grandmother Reid. 
To-day it may seem remarkable that over a 
century ago a little town such as Cranbrook 
should have possessed a theatre, even of the 
humblest character. It would, of course, have 
only been occupied for brief seasons during the 
circuit of the company, but it may well have 
been that this was the manager's family head- 
quarters. Thither came some aspirants to 
stage honours, and at least two actors who 
were to achieve popularity made their debut 
here, for it is recorded in Oxberry's Dramatic 
Biography that : 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 13 

" In the year 1806 John Pritt Harley bade adieu 
to quill-driving, and quitting declarations, records, 
and pad, padded off to Cranbrook (Kent), where the 
late Mr. Jerrold was astonishing the natives, with a 
company particularly select, but by no means numer- 
ous. Harley had but little knowledge of the techni- 
calities of his new profession, or what is usually termed 
the ' business of the stage,' and, as most managers 
look on this as the criterion of merit, Mr. Jerrold cast 
him but few characters and those of no considerable 
importance. At this period Wilkinson (now of the 
Adelphi and Haymarket) was a fellow labourer in 
the same vineyard, and in possession of most of the 
parts to which our hero aspired. Here Mr. Harley 
paid his addresses to Miss Riley (daughter of Mrs. 
Inchbald, a well-known provincial actress), but, alas, 
his suit miscarried." 

Not for very long, however, were the lines 
of the child cast in places as pleasant as amid 
the pastoral peacefulness and simplicity of the 
country around Cranbrook, for in January 1807 
his parents removed their household and pro- 
fessional lares and penates to Sheerness, where 
Samuel Jerrold had recently acquired the lease 
of the theatre situated in High Street, Blue 
Town. He had been acting there in the 
autumn of the year in which his famous son 
was born, but Willsley appears to have been 
the family home. 

Despite his extreme youthfulness at this 
time of leaving the open air and quiet country 
life for the dinginess and turmoil of a busy 
seaport at a period of great naval activity, 
Douglas Jerrold carried away with him lively 



14 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

recollections of rural Kent, and an abiding love 
for country sights and sounds. That love is 
manifested in many of his writings, and notably 
in the Chronicles of Clovernook, where we seem 
to get some actual reminiscences of the pastoral 
scenery around Cranbrook. 

Sheerness, when the Jerrold family entered 
into regular possession of the theatre situated 
in the High Street of " Blue Town," was an 
important and lively naval centre. Napoleon's 
projected invasion of England was but of 
very recent occurrence, and the Corsican 
was each year more thoroughly dominating 
Europe. The Kentish seaport was always 
full of seamen and officers about to join their 
ships, or loitering ashore while those same 
" wooden walls of old England " were being 
refitted or repaired. British enthusiasm with 
regard to the Navy was perhaps during those 
stirring times at its very height; but two 
years earlier Trafalgar had been fought and 
won, Nelson's name was enshrined in every 
heart, Dibdin's songs were heard on every 
tongue. 

Of the theatre of Sheerness few facts appear 
now recoverable. It is not represented in the 
interesting series of views of provincial theatres 
given in the Theatre Tourist of 1805, and 
it received but scant attention in the brief 
notes about the doings at country theatres 
contributed to those periodicals which recog- 
nised the exploits of actors in the provinces. 
There is, however, one early notice that may 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 15 

be quoted of a performance shortly after the 
Jerrolds had entered into possession. It was 
sent by a correspondent to the Monthly Mirror, 
that repository of things theatrical. The 
theatre at Sheerness, wrote this correspondent 
on November 17, 1803 : 

" Opened about a month since, with a respectable 
company, under the management of Mr. Jerrold. 
On Monday, November 14, the theatre was honoured 
by the presence of the Port Admiral and a very 
brilliant assemblage of elegance and fashion, to see 
the comedy of John Bull. Job Thornberry was repre- 
sented by a Mr. Cobham, who entered fully into the 
spirit of the part, and exhibited, with much pathos, 
the manly energy and parental affection which the 
author intended to portray. Sir Simon, Frank 
Rochdale and Shuffleton, were respectably performed 
by Messrs. Jerrold, Holding and Moore, and the 
sentiments of Peregrine were delivered by Mr. Sealy 
with correctness and propriety. Dennis Brulgruddery 
was performed by Mr. Davis, who merits a very high 
degree of approbation, for the comic humour he 
exhibited, and Mr. Oxberry's "Dan "was certainly 
a most humorous and correct performance. Miss 
Henderson in the character of Mary Thornberry was 
extremely interesting, and Mrs. Jerrold and Mrs. 
Simcock deserve praise for their performance of Lady 
Caroline Braymore and Mrs. Brulgruddery. The farce 
(0/ Age To-morrow) was received with very consider- 
able approbation, and the company seems likely to 
be successful. The theatre is fitted up with more than 
usual elegance." 

It is probable that this was only a seasonal 
visit to Sheerness, for according to Blanchard 



16 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

Jerrold it was not until January 27, 1807, that 
Samuel Jerrold became actual lessee of the 
theatre there. 

In one of John Buncombe's small theatrical 
publications — The Roscius, of August 9, 1825 — 
there are some references to the Sheerness 
Theatre under Samuel Jerrold's management, 
which were, it seems not unlikely, contributed 
by Samuel Jerrold's son, who, as we see later, 
was among Buncombe's writers. The refer- 
ences occur in a brief biographical notice of 
James Russell, one of the stars of the English 
Opera House at the time : 

" He was destined at an early age for the study of 
medicine; but as he more frequently looked into 
Shakespeare than Galen, the drama won an adherent 
from the disciples of physic, and our hero, at the very 
mature age of eighteen (in 1807), engaged with the 
manager of the Sheerness Theatre, and commenced 
his dramatic labours as (we believe) Hogmore in 
Colman's comedy of Who wants a Guinea ? This 
effort, we are informed, gave promise of the young 
adventurer's ability, and Monsieur La Rolle, in The 
Young Hussar, confirmed every hope of his future 
success; and young Mr. Russell was considered an 
acquisition to a theatre which has had many of our 
first actors on its boards, but which never boasted 
an audience capable of distinguishing humour from 
vulgarity — passion from bombast. The Sheerness 
folks were not the most punctilious critics — a clog- 
hornpipe and a comic song were their most dainty 
delights; and we are well assured that the talented 
Edmund Kean never won such ' golden opinions ' by 
his then exquisite delineation of Jaffier and young 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 17 

Selim, as by the elasticity and sprightliness of his 
quaint Harlequin. 

" At the time Mr. Russell joined the Sheerness 
Company, Messrs. Harley and Wilkinson were enrolled 
in that splendid corps, and even then, the actors who 
now retain the highest places on the London stage 
may have mutually exchanged the loans of comedy- 
wigs and shoe-buckles. At this period, nothing 
augmented Mr. Russell's fame in the opinion of the 
town as the truly exquisite, though now somewhat 
antique, air of Mrs. Waddle was a Widow, which 
gained for the vocalist a most flattering estimation 
among the frequenters of the theatre, almost wholly 
composed of ' hearts of oak,' with the ivy {vulgo, sea- 
port nymphs) clinging around them." 

Douglas Jerrold was, we are told — and his 
later writings would have alone sufficed to 
show it — a remarkably impressionable boy, 
and amid such surroundings it is not surprising 
to find that he early evinced a desire to go to 
sea, a desire that was not, we may be sure, in 
any way lessened by his being brought into 
contact with the seamen and officers who 
crowded to the theatre, and made Sheerness an 
important centre in the Kentish circuit. About 
the same time that, or shortly after, his 
family took up their residence at Sheerness, 
Samuel Jerrold also acquired the lease of the 
Southend Theatre, at the opposite side of the 
Thames estuary. 

His earliest education Douglas received at 
the knees of his grandmother Reid, later he 
had lessons from one of the stock actors in his 

VOL. I c 



18 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

father's company, Wilkinson by name, who 
had made his first appearance on the boards 
at the Httle Cranbrook playhouse under the 
management of Samuel Jerrold, and who in 
later years was to be one of the popular actors 
of the metropolis. In 1809, then a child 
of between six and seven years of age, he 
went to school for a short while with a 
Mr. Herbert at Sheerness, and later with 
a Mr. Glass at Southend; but at the age 
of ten, all schooling in the ordinary sense 
of the word was at an end, and Douglas, a 
small, slightly built, fair-haired and fair-com- 
plexioned child, full of fire and energy, began 
the battle of life at a time when many boys are 
but just beginning the more serious stages of 
their schooling. His term under the tuition 
of Mr. Glass must have been very brief, for I 
have in my possession a " Christmas piece " 
carefully written out in a boyish hand which 
Douglas prepared at Christmas 1812, and this 
is said to have been written while he was at 
Mr. Herbert's school. This piece, with its 
crudely daubed representations of incidents in 
the life of Christ, its moral lesson and its 
signature, " Ds. Wm. Jerrold, Dec. 25, 1812," 
is a pleasant relic not only of Jerrold's boy- 
hood but of school fashions at the beginning 
of the nineteenth century. 

A letter written by one of his sisters about 
the same time is another interesting relic of 
a past style. This letter, directed to "Mrs. 
Jerrold, Theatre, Sheerness," was written on 



';A ■■ ■■ 




;®^ 













z'J / ,^' 






(URIST.MAS PiKI E 

(}YrdUii hij Douglns Jrrrold, Dec. '25, ISIT) 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 19 

December 5, 1812, from Restoration House, 
Rochester, the place which owes its name to 
the fact that there Charles II rested for the 
night on his way to London when he returned 
from exile. It runs : 

" I have deferred the pleasure I now feel in address- 
ing my dear Mamma untill I could announce the 
Vacation, which commences on the 17 inst., when I 
hope on rejoining the family circle to find you and my 
Sister have perfectly recovered your health, and I 
trust the improvement I have endeavoured to make 
in those studies your kindness permits me to pursue 
will afford you some small degree of pleasure. 

" My Governess presents her Compliments begging 
you to offer my affectionate duty to my Papa and 
Grandmamma, love to my Brothers and Sister and 
Kind remembrances to all friends, believe me, dear 
Mamma, 

" Your affectionate Daughter, 

E. S. Jerrold." 

Not thus formally do children address their 
parents nowadays. Elizabeth Jerrold, the 
writer of that letter, who was then somewhere 
about sixteen or seventeen years of age, was 
evidently the only member of the family at 
boarding school; her sister, Jane Matilda, was 
presumably at school at Sheerness, but of her 
schooling, and that of Henry, who perhaps 
preceded Douglas at Mr. Herbert's, there is 
no record. Indeed, of the family life there is 
little that is now recoverable. They probably 
had a dwelling-house at the theatre situated 
in that one of the four divisions of Sheer- 



20 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

ness then known as Blue Town, but now 
largely annexed by the docks. The theatre, 
for which Samuel Jerrold paid one Jacob 
Johnson fifty pounds a year, was long since 
demolished, and its site taken for dock ex- 
tension. 

When Blanchard Jerrold visited Sheerness 
in 1858, already the theatre had gone, and only 
here and there from old inhabitants could he 
gather scraps of data about the family to whom 
that theatre had for about eight years been 
home. The most interesting of these old 
inhabitants was one Jogrum Brown, then 
sexton, who, employed in the dockyard by 
day, had acted as doorkeeper at the theatre 
in the evening. He had some unpretentious 
recollections : 

" Mr. Samuel Jerrold played, too, sometimes. . . . 
He couldn't say how big the theatre was, but he did 
remember well that on the night when the Russian 
Admiral was at Sheerness, and gave a ' bespeak,' 
there was £42. 18. in the house. This was the largest 
sum they ever took in a night. The prices were three 
shillings to the boxes, two shillings to the pit, and one 
shilling to the gallery. . . . Ay, many strange things 
happened to him while he was doorkeeper. He 
remembered Lord Cochrane well. He used to be 
often at the theatre when he was at Sheerness in 
the Pallas, and his lordship would always insist upon 
paying double." 

The fact that Cochrane " paid double " ap- 
pears to have been the only " strange thing " 
he could recall, but he did offer a little personal 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 21 

testimony by saying that Samuel Jerrold and 
his wife were much Hked by the Sheerness 
people. 

" She was the more active manager, and was very 
kind. Once there was a landslip near Sheerness that 
carried a house and garden into the sea. Mrs. Jerrold 
was very good to the poor sufferers, and gave a benefit 
for them which realized £37." 

The theatre no doubt prospered in those 
days of activity in the busy centre, and across 
the Thames Samuel Jerrold had, besides, the 
theatre at the then village of Southend, where 
he and his wife also acted. That Southend was 
already utilised as a holiday resort we gather 
from the correspondent of a theatrical journal 
of over a century ago : 

" This theatre has been but thinly attended this 
season; we are sorry to say the spirited exertions of 
the manager have not been seconded either by the 
visitors or the inhabitants. The company consists 
of Messrs. Gladstanes, Ladbroke, Jerrold, PhilHp, 
Burton, Thomhnson, St. Clair, Pym, Smith, Wilton, 
Mesdames Jerrold, Ladbroke, Thomlinson, Pryce, 
Miss Hartley and Miss West. It would be invidious 
to speak individually of performers where the whole 
are of the first respectability." ^ 

^ Theatrical Inquisitor, October 1812. In the same 
periodical three years later it is stated that John Pritt 
Harley (1786-1858) in July 1807 "became a member 
of the companies of Mr. Gerald {sic) and Mrs. Baker the 
managress of the Southend and Canterbury Theatres," 
and that he remained as principal comedian until 
February 1813. 



22 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

The fact that Samuel Jerrold and his wife 
acted both at Sheerness and at Southend 
suggests that many must have been the trips 
of Douglas as a boy across the broad Thames' 
mouth from the one place to the other, trips 
that may have served to increase the desire 
for a sea life, and that love of the salt water 
which remained with him a lifelong passion. 

As a child Douglas Jerrold is reported to 
have mixed but little in the sports and games 
of other children. Indeed, talking in later 
years of these early Sheerness days, he was wont 
laughingly to remark that his only companion 
had been " the little buoy at the Nore," and that 
" the only athletic sport he ever mastered was 
backgammon ! " These remarks must not per- 
haps be taken too seriously, for as companion 
he had his brother Henry, who can have been 
at the most but three or four years older than 
himself, while many years afterwards one of 
" the oldest inhabitants " of Blue Town pro- 
fessed to remember the boy Douglas as a leader 
in the conflicts which took place between 
rival youthful factions of the locality. But 
even if we are to take the author's jocular 
remarks in all seriousness and to consider him 
as not altogether like other children in his 
ways, he certainly was not so in the catholicity 
of his reading, a passionate fondness for which 
was a notable characteristic. Gessner's Death 
of Abel and Smollett's Roderick Random were 
among his earliest books, and assuredly the 
child for whom such antipodal works could 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 23 

have attraction must have been an omnivorous 
reader. 

The gUtter and excitement of the Hfe of an 
actor do not seem to have attracted the boy, 
though once or twice as a very young child he 
appeared on the stage, notably when he was 
carried on by Edmund Kean in Rolla ; and when 
he appeared as the child in The Stranger. 
Very many years afterwards his own good 
memory, aided by what he had heard from his 
father, enabled him to write for his friend 
B. W. Procter (Barry Cornwall), some inter- 
esting recollections of Edmund Kean's early 
acting days under the Sheerness manager. 
These recollections are given in Procter's life 
of the great tragedian, but may well find a 
place here, as they deal with Samuel Jerrold's 
theatre during the childhood of Douglas : 

" Mr. Kean joined the Sheerness Company on 
Easter Monday, 1804. He was then still in boy's 
costume.i jje opened in George Barnwell and Harlequin 
in a pantomime. His salary was fifteen shillings per 
week. He then went under the name of Carey. He 
continued to play the whole round of tragedy, comedy, 
opera, farce, interlude and pantomime, until the close 
of the season. His comedy was very successful. In 
Watty Cockney and Risk, and in the song ' Unfortunate 
Miss Bailey,' he made a great impression upon the 
tasteful critics of Sheerness. On leaving the place, 

1 Kean was then in his seventeenth year. Later 
authorities put his first appearance at Sheerness as one 
year earher, but according to a chronicler of the 'twenties, 
" In the year 1805 we find him playing every line at 
Sheerness." 



24 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

he went to Ireland, and from Ireland to Mrs. Baker's 
company at Rochester. It was about this time (as I 
have heard my father say, who had it from Kean 
himself), that Mr. Kean, being without money to pay 
the toll of a ferry, tied his wardrobe in his pocket- 
handkerchief, and swam the river. 

" In 1807 Mr. Kean again appeared at Sheerness : 
salary, one guinea per week. He opened in Alexander 
the Great. An officer in one of the stage boxes annoyed 
him by frequently exclaiming ' Alexander the Little ! ' 
At length, making use of his (even then) impressive 
and peculiar powers, Mr. Kean folded his arms, ap- 
proached the intruder, who again sneeringly repeated : 
' Alexander the Little ! ' and with a vehemence of 
manner and a glaring look that appalled the offender, 
retorted, ' Yes — with a great soul ! ' In the farce of the 
Young Hussar which followed, one of the actresses 
fainted in consequence of the powerful acting of Mr. 
Kean. He continued at that time, and even in such a 
place, to increase in favour, and was very generally 
followed when, at the commencement of 1808, in con- 
sequence of some misunderstanding with one of the 
townspeople, he was compelled to seek the protection 
of a magistrate from a pressgang employed to take him. 
Having played four nights, the extent of time guaran- 
teed by the magistrate (Mr. Shrove of Queensborough), 
Mr. Kean made his escape with some difficulty on 
board the Chatham boat, having lain perdu in various 
places until a nocturnal hour of sailing. 

" The models of the tricks for the pantomime of 
Mother Goose, as played at Sheerness, were made by 
Mr. Kean, out of matches, pins and paper. He also 
furnished a programme of business, and notes, showing 
how many of the difficulties might be avoided for so 
small an establishment as that of Sheerness. In 
allusion to the trick of ' An odd fish,' in particular, he 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 25 

writes, ' If you do not think it worth while to go to 
the expense of a dress, if the Harlequin be clever, 
he may jump into the sea to recover the egg."" " 

Towards the close of the year 1813— his half- 
brother Charles was already in the Navy, 
having presumably run away and become a 
sailor^young Jerrold's ambition for a " life on 
the ocean wave " seemed in a fair way towards 
realization. On the 22nd of December in that 
year he was entered as a " first-class volunteer " 
on board the Namur, His Majesty's guardship 
at the Nore, a vessel which, as I gather from 
its log, was as often to be seen anchored in 
Sheerness Harbour as actually at the Nore. 
Captain (afterwards Admiral) Charles J. Austen, 
a brother of Jane Austen the novelist, the com- 
mander of the Namur, to whom indeed it is said 
that Douglas owed his commission, was a kindly 
disposed and indulgent officer, who allowed the 
boy to keep pigeons on board and, more signifi- 
cant privilege, permitted him the run of such 
books as his necessarily limited library contained. 
It was in the captain's cabin on the Namur that 
Jerrold came upon the fascinating volumes of 
Buffon's Natural History, and devoured them 
with enthusiastic avidity, and to such good 
purpose that the work always remained with 
him in memory, and when he came to be a 
writer provided him with many happy similes 
and quaint illustrations. That which must 
have made the guardship yet more homely 
to the small boy than the keeping of pets and 
the run of a library, was that the captain's 



26 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

wife and two children also lived on board 
with him, as we learn from the very interesting 
volume on Jane Austen's Sailor Brothers, 
published a few years ago.^ Captain Austen, 
whose children must have been very young, 
for he married in 1807, was a kindly, affection- 
ate man, by whom it may well be believed that 
his boy-midshipmen would be treated con- 
siderately. 

There was another lad aboard the Namur 
who was destined to win fame other than that 
which comes to the successful seaman. This 
was foremastman Clarkson Stanfield, who had 
earlier run away to sea on a merchant ship, 
but had in 1812 been made a victim of a 
pressgang. Young Jerrold, Stanfield and 
some kindred spirits were wont to relieve the 
tedium of life aboard the guardship by getting 
up private theatricals, Stanfield' s early lean- 
ing towards art making him an invaluable 
assistant in improvising and arranging scenery. 

The library in Captain Austen's cabin was of 
necessity small, and the eager, youthful reader 
soon devoured all that he could find congenial 
there; the keeping of pet pigeons could not 
provide a permanent interest, and even occa- 
sional private theatricals could but in part 
relieve the dulness of life on the guardship. 
In these circumstances it is not surprising to 
find that the boy looked longingly forward to 
something more stirring than he had as yet 

^ Jane Austen's Sailor Brothers, by J. H. Hubback and 
Edith C. Hubback. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 27 

experienced of naval life. Captain Austen had 
been succeeded by a Captain James Richards 
for a single month, and he by Captain George 
McKinley for nearly five months; when, on 
April 24, 1815, Douglas Jerrold was trans- 
ferred with a company of forty-four men to 
His Majesty's gun-brig Earnest " in lieu of the 
same number drafted to the Namury 

Napoleon had but recently escaped from 
Elba, to be declared " the general enemy of 
Europe," so that now the young naval enthu- 
siast seemed in a fair way to experience some 
of that action of which it may be supposed 
in his boyish fancy he dreamed. The Earnest 
was required at first, however, for the useful 
though not showy work of convoying trans- 
ports and military stores to Ostend, men and 
materials to be heard of again, before many 
weeks had passed, on the field of Waterloo. 
Within two months of Jerrold's transfer from 
the guardship the great battle had been fought, 
and the Earnest may have carried some of 
the men from the front when in the Downs 
she transhipped from H.M.S. Nymph an 
ensign, forty-seven invalided soldiers, five 
women and two children, and took them home 
to Sheerness. It is said that in the cockpit 
of the brig the boy-sailor, keenly sensitive and 
imaginative, saw and heard enough of the 
horrors of war to influence him for the whole of 
his life. He was brought in close contact 
with the ghastly reality, apart from the 
excitement either of the action itself or of the 



28 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

reception of the victors, and the resultant 
loathing for military " glory " was an ever- 
abiding one with him. Possibly the vessel 
brought back wounded when she returned 
from Cuxhaven on June 29, and from the Ems 
in August, but her log has no mention of such. 

While on one of these trips between Eng- 
land and the Continent— probably at Ostend — 
young Jerrold fell into sad disgrace with his 
chief ofBcer.^ He had gone ashore with the 
captain, and was left in charge of the boat. 
While the commander was absent one of the 
seamen asked permission to land, and make 
some small purchases. The good-natured and 
unsuspecting young officer at once assented, 
adding with boyish readiness, " By the way, 
you may as well buy me some apples and a 
few pears." 

" All right, sir," as readily replied the man, 
and promptly departed. 

The captain presently returned to the boat, 
and still the sailor was away on his errand. 
A search was at once instituted, but to no 
purpose, the man had effectually succeeded in 
deserting, and the captain's blame fell, of 
course, on the too-lenient midshipman. The 
episode made a very deep impression upon the 
young delinquent, and years afterwards he is 

^ This incident has hitherto been told as of two deserters, 
and as having taken place at Cuxhaven. The Muster 
Books of the brig, which I have examined in the Public 
Record Office, only tell of three seamen deserting during 
Jerrold's service on her, two at Sheemess and one, on 
June 12, 1815, at Ostend. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 29 

described as talking about it with that curious 
excitement which ht up his face when he spoke 
of anything that he had felt strongly. He 
remembered even the features of the deserter, 
as he had, long afterwards, and in a most 
unexpected manner, an opportunity of proving. 
With the overthrow of Napoleon, the war 
which had so long convulsed Europe came to 
an end ; ship after ship that had been manned 
and pressed into the service returned to 
port and was paid off, and at length came 
the turn of the Earnest. On September 30 
the commander had entered in his log " re- 
ceived orders to proceed to Deptford to be 
paid off"; and three weeks later "at 11.30 
sent the ship's company to Dockyard to be 
paid off." Thus on the 21st of October— the 
tenth anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar 
—Douglas Jerrold stepped ashore and turned 
his back upon the Navy. Henceforward he 
must seek some other field in which to 
win those laurels to which all high-spirited 
youths look forward as the assured reward 
of all their strivings. He brought ashore 
with him, as has been suggested, indelible 
impressions of the horrible reality on which 
mihtary glory is based, but though Nelson's 
profession was closed to him, he brought with 
him, too, an abiding love of the salt water, a 
lasting sympathy for those who go down to 
the sea in ships. Though he had not yet 
completed his thirteenth year, it is not fanciful 
to believe in the permanency of the impressions 



30 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

that the boy had received — nearly forty years 
of the man's work were to testify to their 
strength. 

Precisely what was the status of a " first- 
class volunteer " I cannot say, but such was 
Douglas Jerrold's position during the year 
and ten months which he passed in the Navy. 
The Muster Books give firstly the ship's 
company — including always as No. 1 that 
fictional " widow's man " whose pay and 
prize money went to Greenwich Hospital — 
the officers from admiral to midshipmen, 
the warrant officers and seamen. Then came 
the rolls of marines, supernumeraries, etc., 
including " first-class volunteers." In the case 
of the Earnest, Douglas Jerrold was the only 
one in the last category, his name and service 
particulars forming a rivulet of writing across 
the " meadow of margin " provided by two 
of the expansive sheets of the Muster Books. 

In the summer of 1813, the year in which 
Douglas entered the Navy, Samuel Jerrold had 
handed over the management of the Sheerness 
theatre to his eldest son Robert, and apparently 
contented himself with the management of 
the Southend house. It would seem as though 
the apathy of the Southend visitors and inhabi- 
tants towards the theatre, commented on by 
the writer in the Theatrical Inquisitor, continued, 
for in the autumn of 1815 Samuel Jerrold 
found it necessary to relinquish the Southend 
theatre also; indeed, to give up management 
altogether. He had, doubtless with the war- 



DOUGLAS>JERROLD 31 

ranty of a series of successful seasons during 
the naval activity at Sheerness, had the 
theatre rebuilt, but the work of rebuilding is 
said to have been entrusted to unjust men, and 
the result was that the old manager found 
himself in difficulties, the theatre had to be 
sold, the home broken up, and the family 
to seek a new one. Thus it was that at the 
end of 1815, Samuel Jerrold, his wife and their 
children, left Sheerness for London ; exchanged 
the surroundings of the theatre at Sheerness or 
Southend for lodgings in Broad Court, Drury 
Lane. 

Little is now recoverable about those small 
playhouses of a hundred years ago, and there- 
fore the following description of the Southend 
theatre as it appeared to a visitor as near to 
the time of the Jerrold's abandonment of it 
as 1817, may be worth recovering from the 
pages of an old magazine : 

" In the summer of 1817, on a month's visit to 
Southend, exploring the place, I stumbled on what I 
certainly did not expect to find, a building designated, 
in large letters, Theatre Royal, which but for this 
notice, I should have taken for a very small chapel or 
rather meeting-house. I had merely read the high- 
sounding words Theatre Royal, when the manager 
appeared at the door (there was but one, for box, pit, 
gallery and stage); I immediately recognised an old 
acquaintance, who a season before had been engaged 
at the Haymarket Theatre. He very politely gave 
me the entree of the theatre during my stay; but 
requested that I would delay my visit until the next 



32 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

night but one of performance ; as he flattered himself 
on that night there would be something worth seeing. 
It was the bespeak of the village of ' Prittlewell ' ; 
for which occasion they had prepared three new 
pieces, but more particularly Blue Beard ; on which 
he told me he had bestowed much care and expense." 

The writer proceeded to give a ludicrous 
account of the performance of Blue Beard 
to a " house " — despite the bespeak — of sixty 
or seventy persons, and his description suggests 
that owing to that lack of support with which 
the " visitors and inhabitants " had before 
been reproached, the Southend theatre had a 
company more worthy of its audience's neglect. 

After the departure of the Jerrold family 
from Sheerness and Southend, we more or less 
lose sight of Samuel Jerrold's two sons by his 
first marriage. The elder, Robert, who had 
probably left home by the time that Douglas 
was born, followed his father's profession, 
and had become a strolling player on some 
other circuit. He is said to have taken as his 
stage name Fitzgerald— presumably at first 
when acting in his father's company to avoid 
confusion — and to have become successively 
manager of the Norwich and York circuit 
companies. With the Norwich Company he 
stayed for some years. He is referred to as an 
" old friend " in a notice of Norwich theatricals 
in 1806, while in 1808— 

" Mr. Fitzgerald is, without exception, the most 
useful performer we have ; he seems to undertake and 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 33 

bustle through with uncommon ease, all the various 
parts of gentlemen, Jews, countrymen, Irishmen and 
sailors; his naturally hoarse voice, and rolling walk, 
rather unfit him for the first, but he must be thought 
the support of our house." 

A year after, and the same critic enlarged on 
Robert's versatile powers, his natural genius, 
his forcible energy, and his knowledge of stage 
effect. While six years later he was still with 
the same company, as we learn from a note 
on the Norwich Company at Lynn — 

" This town may boast of a company that would 
not disgrace the first of our metropolitan theatres- 
I never saw the comedy of the Rivals, taken as a 
whole, better. The Sir Lucius of Mr. Fitzgerald, I 
think equal, if not superior, to Mr. Johnstone : in 
Irishmen and sailors he is particularly happy— he has 
more than once been in treaty with the London mana- 
gers, but at the request of his Norwich friends, where 
he is greatly admired as an actor, and highly respected 
as a man, the treaty has been broken off." 

Shortly after this he must have left Norwich, 
for in June 1815 he was lessee of the York 
circuit. He died suddenly at Hull in the spring 
of 1818. 

Charles Jerrold, as has been said, entered 
the Navy, became a warrant officer, and died 
about 1846. 

The Admiralty papers which I have ex- 
amined in the Public Record Office show that 
he must have entered the Navy as Charles 
Gerald — which suggests either that he had run 

VOL. I J> 



S4 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

away to sea and given his name as spelt thus, 
or that finding it spelt thus on board he had 
allowed it to remain so. When or at what 
age he joined I cannot find, but in the summer 
of 1812 he was on a ship in Sir Edward Pellew's 
squadron in the Mediterranean, and was on 
June 1 duly certified as fitted to receive a 
boatswain's warrant. As boatswain he was 
appointed in the following month to the 
Minorca, and afterwards served in the same 
capacity in the Camilla, Florida, Argus and 
Rainbow. The last-named ship he joined in 
December 1823, and between then and 1827 — 
when his name no longer appeared in the ac- 
tive list of boatswains — he seems to have been 
transferred to duties in Chatham Dockyard. 

Some years ago I received a letter from an old 
man who said that as a boy in the early 'forties 
he lived at Woolwich, next door to Edward 
Jerrold, a retired warrant officer, and his wife, 
and if his memory did not err over the name, 
it is possible that Charles Jerrold was Charles 
Edward or Edward Charles. From the same 
correspondent I learned that this Jerrold 
married a Miss Barbara Punchard, daughter of 
a Captain Punchard, who was in command of 
a ship stationed at Woolwich Dockyard, and 
that he died some time in the 'forties. 

A couple of stories of this Edward Jerrold 
may be given more or less closely in the words 
of my kindly old correspondent, who " thought 
he remembered hearing it said that the Jerrolds 
were Cornish people : " 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 35 

Now Douglas himself was always devoted 
to the sea, so Edward said, and was always, 
when young, pleased to get out in a sailing 
boat. The rougher the sea the better he liked 
it. I remember Edward saying they were 
once out together when the sea was rough, 
and there was a high wind. Two or three 
times they were nearly swamped, and while 
Edward steered Douglas was kept constantly 
baling, but at last they safely reached the 
shore, and Douglas said what a jolly trip they 
had had. When he was a sailor Edward 
would, when ashore, make his way to the 
theatre where his brother's plays were being 
performed, and after one voyage he went to 
the theatre, and told some one there that he 
wanted to see Jerrold. The answer was, " Oh, 
you must mean Fitzgerald." " Fitzgerald be 
damned, my brother Douglas never had Fits," 
said the sailor, and made his way past to some 
one who happened to know the name of the 
writer of the play being performed, as well as 
that of the performers. 

The other story tells how the sailor went to 
see one of his brother's pieces performed, and 
sat in the pit. Hearing some loud laughter and 
noisy talk in the gallery, he looked up and saw 
some of his shipmates there, evidently having 
a jolly time together. This was too much for 
him, and shouting " Ship ahoy ! " he jumped 
up, and climbed by various projections past 
two tiers of boxes, sailor fashion, " with his 
bottle in his side jacket pocket, as easy as 



36 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

though mounting the rigging, and with the 
ready help of his mates from above. No 
damage was done, though the people were 
expecting every moment to see him fall, and 
the incident passed off as a sailor's freak. In 
one of the boxes which he passed sat a young 
woman with her friends who were acquainted 
with Douglas Jerrold, to whom the circumstance 
was afterwards mentioned, when they learned 
that the climbing sailor was his brother. The 
young woman was Barbara Punchard, who 
afterwards became Mrs. Edward Jerrold. 
So runs my correspondent's strange story. 



CHAPTER II 

THE PRINTING-HOUSE — FIRST PLAYS 
AND MARRIAGE 

1816—1824 

A FELLOW actor many years later said that 
Samuel Jerrold was the only really honest 
manager that he had ever known, but not- 
withstanding — cynicism might suggest because 
of — the character indicated by that testimony 
he had to give up his theatres as a failure, and 
retire on London, the goal of the hopeful and 
the hopeless alike. It was on the last day 
of 1815 that the family left their old home 
by the Chatham boat, and on the first day of 
1816, in the early morning, they landed in 
London, and settled down in a house in Broad 
Court, Drury Lane — some years since entirely 
transmogrified. Mrs. Samuel Jerrold and her 
two daughters were on the stage — and on 
coming to London it may well be that they 
sought engagements at one or another of 
the metropolitan playhouses — probably at one 
of those " minor theatres," of which the con- 
temporary press affords but the scrappiest 
details. Not for the first few years of their 
stay in London have I been able to trace their 
appearance in the playbills of the period, 

37 



38 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

though in 1822 Miss Jerrold was acting at 
Sadler's Wells, and shortly before, and for many 
years after, Mrs. Samuel Jerrold was in the 
company at the English Opera House. 

A curious feature in the history of the 
theatre during the early part of the nineteenth 
century is the association of the stage with 
the work of the printer. Samuel Jerrold, as 
we have seen, was at one time printer to the 
theatrical company to which he belonged; 
William Oxberry, a comedian of considerable 
note at the time, had been apprenticed to a 
printer, who was also something of an actor, 
and himself got his indentures cancelled that 
he might go on the stage. Samuel Phelps 
began as a printers' reader on a Plymouth 
journal, and continued the same work in 
London before finally reaching the stage. 
Samuel Jerrold's slight association with the 
craft as theatrical printer may have suggested 
the putting of the two sons of his second 
marriage to the trade, rather than to the stage, 
which had in his own case left him stranded 
in old age. Possibly, too, it may have been 
realized that most of the actors of the time had 
started as something else, and been afterwards 
impelled to the stage. Anyway, now or later, 
Henry Jerrold— whose story is of the vaguest, 
though his name crops up now and again — 
became a printer ; and shortly after the family 
reached London, Douglas, then in his four- 
teenth year, was bound apprentice to one, 
Sidney, a printer in Northumberland Street, 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 39 

Strand— a street which, entirely rebuilt, remains 
to the west of Charing Cross railway station. 
The exact date of the apprenticeship I have 
not been able to determine, but it was probably 
soon after the removal of the Jerrolds to 
London, for it was evidently necessary that 
all should combine to maintain the household, 
the head of which had apparently reached the 
end of his working days. 

To a boy in his early teens the change from 
Sheerness to Broad Court was probably little 
hardship; certainly not at first, when London 
had yet the glamour of novelty. He must 
have heard much of the London theatres— of 
the grand " patent " houses and their com- 
panies — from actor- visitors to the Sheppey 
theatre, and as his father's son he would 
probably have little difficulty in getting occa- 
sional " orders " to see the performances. 
He was early to learn that it was necessary to 
be quick-witted in his new surroundings, for a 
story runs that a few days after his arrival— 
before the naval uniform had been finally 
laid aside— he went to Scot's Theatre (later 
the Adelphi), which is said to have had a 
" remarkably amusing pantomime *' at this 
time, and as he was walking up the passage 
was stopped by an imperative " Pay here, 
please ! " Unsuspectingly he handed over his 
coin and passed on, to be met again with a 
peremptory " Pay here, please ! " as he reached 
the genuine pay-office. Only then did he 
learn that he had been victimized by a sharper. 



40 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

Having no more money, he was turning dis- 
appointedly away, when a gentleman who had 
learned of his trouble generously paid for him. 
Shortly after the Jerrolds removed to London, 
Wilkinson, the actor who after making a start 
at Cranbrook had been a member of the 
Sheerness company, and had given Douglas 
some of his first lessons, returned to London 
to become member of the company at the 
Theatre Royal English Opera— later to be 
known honourably in the annals of the stage 
as the Lyceum. 

Wilkinson— old playbills and dramatic critics 
troubled little about the Christian names of 
the actors, perhaps as " rogues and vagabonds " 
they were regarded as without the pale-— was 
a Londoner, born in 1787, who had made his 
first appearance on Samuel Jerrold's Cran- 
brook stage as Valverde in Pizarro. Later 
he was at Sheerness, thence passed on to 
Southend, and for a time was in Scotland as a 
member of Henry Siddons's Edinburgh com- 
pany. Coming south again, he was at the 
Theatre Royal at Norwich for three years, 
and on June 15, 1816— a few months after the 
arrival of his friends the Jerrolds in London — 
made his first appearance before a metropolitan 
audience at the English Opera House, where 
he continued for some years as principal 
comedian. Though described as " one of the 
best low comedians of the day," it is not easy 
to find much about him, but one colleague 
said of him, " he is another who may be held 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 41 

up as an example of what actors ought to be 
— upright, honourable and honest in all his 
dealings, a warm friend, and an excellent 
husband and father." ^ 

Wilkinson visited the new home in Broad 
Court, and more than forty years later he 
said : "I cannot forget how glad Douglas 
was to see me, and how sanguine he was of my 
success, saying (it is now as fresh in my memory 
as at the time he uttered it), ' Oh, Mr. Wilkinson, 
you are sure to succeed, and I'll write a piece 
for you.' " The old actor added, on recalling 
the incident, " I gave him credit for his warm 
and kind feeling, but doubted his capacity to 
fulfil his promise." This remark suggests that 
Wilkinson had not noticed any particular 
precocity about his child-pupil of some years 
earlier. Already it would seem the boy, 
brought up in the theatre, was thinking of the 
stage, but from a new point of view; already 
he was feeling himself moved to express 
himself by means of the pen. Therefore, it 
may well have seemed that apprenticeship to 
a printer was one of the ways which might take 
him to the desired goal. At least, in a printing- 
house he was in the atmosphere of literature; 
as compositor he would have to set the type 
for other men's books, would have opportuni- 
ties for reading, for learning how it was that 
his contemporaries were expressing themselves 
in those years when, international unrest 

^ Theatrical Biography, by Francis Courtney Wemyss. 
1848. 



42 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

having come to an end after the battle of 
Waterloo, social and political unrest were 
changing England. Old ideas were giving way 
to new ones; intolerance, fighting hard the 
while, was opposing the tolerance which a 
decade later was to admit Roman Catholics 
to the rights of citizenship; some outspoken 
writers— Cobbett, Leigh Hunt, Henry Hunt 
and others— had begun to speak for democracy, 
and though punishment fell on them at times 
for their outspokenness, their words were having 
an effect in widening the cry for reform. 
" Bliss was it in that time to be alive, but to be 
young was very heaven," said Wordsworth of 
an earlier period. Looking back on the great 
change wrought during the two short reigns 
between the death of George III and the 
accession of Victoria, the words seem again 
not inapplicable; for the two brief reigns that 
came between the long ones of George III and 
Victoria mark changes alike in the moral, 
intellectual and physical worlds. 

Already in the 'twenties the spirit of change 
was abroad, the eager youth may well have 
felt it " in the air," as we say. The awakening 
of something of a political sense in the people 
was making the cry for reform more insistent, 
was widening the recognition of the mediasval- 
ism of the spirit which debarred Roman 
Catholics from rights of citizenship; the new 
spirit in poetry, expressed through the voices 
of Byron, Wordsworth and Coleridge, became 
yet more lyrical in the voices of Keats and 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 43 

Shelley. It was a time of the questioning of 
old ideas, the formulating of new ideals. 
The focal point of such changes is of necessity 
seen in literature and the press, and it is 
small wonder that an eager-minded young 
student who found his daily work in setting 
the type by means of which the thoughts 
of others were given to the world, should 
think whether he, too, had not something 
to utter. Douglas Jerrold appears, indeed, to 
have been early inspired with the desire to 
write, though he must have felt there was 
much educational leeway to be made up 
before the desire could be achieved, and have 
sternly resolved that he would in his spare 
hours make up for lost time. Despite a 
twelve-hours day at the printing-works he 
managed by early rising and late retiring 
to find hours for the mastering of Latin, 
French and Italian, and for the reading of 
those great and varied books, a knowledge of 
which is in itself a liberal education. Shake- 
speare and Sir Walter Scott were early idols, 
the latter still veiled in the anonymity of 
" the author of Waverley'' Scott was then 
at one and the same time delighting the 
reading world and extending its boundaries, 
and in after years Jerrold would tell how he 
had borrowed the volumes one by one from a 
lending library and read them delightedly to 
his father. 

Long hours of work and time given to self- 
training did not, however, prevent the youth 



44 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

from trying his hand at Hterary expression, 
and he doubtless made early essays in the 
periodical publications of the period ; but those 
first attempts are no longer traceable, and 
perhaps not to be regretted, for, as he put it 
in one of the rare directly autobiographical 
passages in his later writings, '' self-helped 
and self-guided, I began the world at an age 
when, as a general rule, boys have not laid 
down their primers ; the cockpit of a man-of-war 
was at thirteen exchanged for the struggle of 
London; appearing in print ere perhaps the 
meaning of words was duly mastered— no one 
can be more alive than myself to the worth- 
lessness of such early mutterings." 

Little can be recalled of Douglas Jerrold's 
apprentice days, but the following story may 
be given. When the lad brought home his 
first earnings he and his father were alone, and 
they decided to celebrate the auspicious event 
in a fitting manner. Douglas would himself 
tell with great glee in later years how he went 
forth with his own money to buy a dinner. A 
beefsteak pie was the dish decided upon, and 
the materials having been bought, the question 
arose as to how they were to be so combined 
that the result would be a veritable pie ? The 
youthful printer's apprentice was not one to be 
daunted by such a problem, and immediately 
set to work, and having completed his culinary 
task, took the pie to the bakehouse. He 
continued his journey to the circulating 
library and borrowed the latest of the novels 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 45 

of the mysterious " author of Waverley,^^ and 
returned with it to read the fascinating pages 
to his father. The recollection of this day 
ever remained vividly in Jerrold's memory, 
and when telling the story he would add 
emphatieally and with justifiable pride, " Yes, 
I earned the pie, I made the pie, I took it to 
the bakehouse, I fetched it home; and my 
father said, ' Really the boy made the crust 
remarkably well.' " 

Jerrold was only in his sixteenth year when 
the promise made to Wilkinson was fulfilled, and 
he had a piece duly written for that actor. Its 
curious fate may best be given in Wilkinson's 
own words : 

" In 1818 (his fifteenth year ^), I presume he wrote 
his first piece. It was sent in to Mr. Arnold of the 
English Opera House, and it remained in the theatre 
for two years. It was probably never read. After 
some difficulty he got it back. In the year 1821 
Mr. Egerton of Covent Garden Theatre, becoming 
manager of Sadler's Wells Theatre, and I having 
a short time to spare between the closing of the 
Adelphi and the opening of the Lyceum, he wished 
me to engage with him for a few weeks, which I did, 
but on condition of his purchasing the farce which 
had been returned from the English Opera House, 
and producing it on the first night of my engagement, 
giving me th^ character intended for me. The 
original title of the piece was The Duellists — a weak 
title I thought for Sadler's Wells; so I rechristened 
it, calling it More Frightened Than Hurt. It was 
performed for the first time on Monday, April 30, 
^ Should be sixteenth. 



46 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

1821, in its author's eighteenth ^ year. It was highly 
successful, and, however meanly the author may 
have thought of it in after days, it had merit enough 
to be translated and acted on the French stage; 
Mr. Kenney being in Paris, saw it played there, and 
not knowing its history, thought it worth his while 
to retranslate it; and he actually brought it out at 
Madame Vestris's Olympic Theatre under the name 
of Fighting by Proxy, Mr. Liston sustaining the part 
originally performed by me." 

This performance, however, was not until 
1821, and about 1819, owing to the failure of 
his employer, Douglas Jerrold had been trans- 
ferred from the printing office in Northumber- 
land Street to the one in Lombard Street from 
which was issued the Sunday Monitor. For a 
short time, too, he is said to have been printers' 
reader at Messrs. Cox & Wyman's printing 
office in Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn, 
possibly after leaving the Sunday Monitor. 

While he was a youth of about sixteen 
Douglas Jerrold left his father's home for a 
brief time, thinking perhaps by living alone 
to have a prouder feeling of independence. 
The experiment was, however, soon given up, 
and he returned to his parents' house, and 
continued that severe routine of self-improve- 
ment which he had resolutely marked out 
for himself. Early in 1820, either the day 
before or the day after the death of George III 
(on January 29), Samuel Jerrold died, and 
somewhere about this time the family re- 
^ Should be nineteenth. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 47 

moved to a new home in Little Queen Street, 
Holborn — the street in which Charles Lamb 
had lived through his tragedy a quarter of a 
century earlier. 

Very little more than a year after the death 
of the old actor-manager, his son was for the first 
time to taste of the sweets of popular applause 
on the production of his earliest dramatic 
venture. The Duellists had at length been 
recovered from the English Opera House, and 
the Jerrolds' very good friend Wilkinson was 
about to fulfil a short engagement at Sadler's 
Wells Theatre. The actor, as we have already 
seen, made it an article in his agreement that 
his boy friend's farcical comedy — renamed 
More Frightened Than Hurt — should be pro- 
duced and that he should be cast for the part 
specially written for him. The piece was duly 
presented to the public on the last day of April 
and enjoyed considerable success, including, 
as has been seen, the double compliment of 
translation into French and retranslation into 
English. 

The story of the play is distinctly comical, 
and the action and dialogue both partake 
more of the nature of " screaming farce " than 
of that pure comedy with which Jerrold after- 
wards became more notably associated. There 
are but seven characters. One, Easy by name, 
a gentleman at Cambridge, father of two girls 
of marriageable age, has invited to his place 
the son of a London butcher and a swaggering 
soldier who has never seen action, thinking 



48 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

that in them he may find fitting mates for 
Matilda and Maria. The girls, however, think 
otherwise, for they have already chosen their 
future husbands, and, of course, in the end 
they get their own way. The fun is mainly 
got out of the two unsatisfactory suitors, each 
of whom is led to believe that he is responsible 
for the murder of the other. Although the 
piece is farcical and abounds in blunt badinage, 
yet there are not wanting strokes of that wit 
which was to be manifested by the author 
during his maturer years. 

Says the swaggering Hector to the young 
butcher, who has twitted him for being a 
lieutenant on half -pay, " Half -pay ! I know 
you to be a calf -killing rascal ! " 

" Don't put yourself in my hands, then," is 
the immediate retort. 

" Who's afraid ? " says Popeseye, who has 
threatened him, at the same time doubling up 
his fists. 

" No, sir," says Hector, " I have a sword at 
my side." 

" And it seems you'll keep it there," readily 
answers the butcher, who appears to have a 
wit as sharp as his knife. 

Yet once more, when the soldier is threatened 
with a duel, he betrays his true cowardice ; his 
would-be second remonstrates with him, saying, 
" Being a soldier, I should have thought you 
would have been prepared." 

" Not at all ! We more frequently draw 
upon the banker than the foe." 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 49 

Again, when his prospective father-in-law 
says, " You have partaken of the vices of tlie 
army as well as its glories." 

Hector replies, " The vices, sir, no. I have 
them all — under my command. My friend 
Popeseye was speaking of danger; it's in that 
I have had experience. Since you force me to 
publish my valour, learn, sir, that I have had 
the honour of galloping through columns of 
fire, warding off cannon-balls with my elbows, 
then swam through a river to the enemy's 
fort, forced the pass, mounted the battery, 
spiked the guns, and waded back to my general 
with the colours in my mouth, and foreign 
princes' heads upon a string like a row of 
beads ! " This might well have inspired some 
of the " tremendous adventures " of Major 
Gahagan, which Thackeray was to record a 
good many years later. 

Of Wilkinson's performance, in the part of 

the butcher, with which the youthful author 

had " fitted " him, an admiring critic said : 

" Mr. Wilkinson, of the English Opera, than 

whom — 

" ' a merrier man 
Within the limits of becoming mirth 
We never spend an hour's talk withal,' 

has appeared in the character of Popeseye in a 
burletta entitled More Frightened Than Hurt, 
with the highest comic effect." 

The success of More Frightened Than Hurt 
must have been highly gratifying to the young 
author, for it was such that he was early 

VOL. I E 



50 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

permitted to follow it with another attempt, 
and in July there was produced The Chief- 
tain's Oath, or the Rival Clans, described by a 
contemporary critic in a way that suggests 
that it was mainly spectacular. " A splendid 
piece has been produced under the title of 
The Chieftain's Oath, or the Rival Clans, founded 
on the old melodrama of Oscar and Malvinia, 
in which the whole strength of the company 
exerted themselves to the highest degree. . . . 
Mr. Phillips as Glenall was very effective, and 
the Maclean and Campbell was a highly 
finished performance. G. Smith sung a battle 
song in excellent style, and Keeley was truly 
comic in Rundy Ramble : Miss E. Scott 
sustained the part of Matilda with much 
feeling. Elliott as Dalkeith, and Hartland as 
Donald, both played with their usual ability. 
The scenery by Greenwood is of the most 
magnificent description. The last scene, a 
spacious lake of real water and the destruction 
of Maclean's camp by fire, was grand in the 
extreme." 

About a month later, and another play of 
Douglas Jerrold's was produced at Sadler's 
Wells. This time it was the " Gipsey of Dern- 
cleugh, a melodrama in three acts adapted to 
stage representation from the novel of Guy 
Mannering." A strange feature of the drama 
of those days was that as soon as a piece 
caught on at one theatre its subject was 
promptly taken as a theme by the dramatist- 
of-all-work at another playhouse, leading to 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 51 

a duplication of titles somewhat confusing to 
the historian. The successive triumphs of 
the Wizard of the North made him a fruitful 
provider of materials for the playwrights, and 
one or more versions of Guy Mannering were 
already staged (there had been one at Covent 
Garden — a musical play by Daniel Terry — in 
1816) when it was evidently suggested that 
Jerrold should turn his hand to the same 
theme. There was certainly already The Witch 
of Derncleugh at the English Opera House — in 
which piece Mrs. Samuel Jerrold probably acted 
— when Jerrold duly followed with the Gipsey of 
Derncleugh at Sadler's Wells, to be followed in 
his turn by Dick H alter aick, the Dutch Smuggler, 
or the Gipsey of Derncleugh at the Coburg. 

It was a strange state of copyright which 
permitted such things, but a young man of 
eighteen may have been well content to take 
the law as he found it and to turn his know- 
ledge of Scott to such good account. The 
melodrama has little in it that is remarkable, 
and the inconsequent way in which the char- 
acters broke off their dialogue to sing songs, 
only slightly led up to, appears to-day somewhat 
ludicrous, but was then necessary as a means 
of evading the Act establishing the monopoly 
of the Patent Houses. Another amusing 
method of evasion had been adopted in 1813 
at the Pantheon, which was only licensed for 
music and dancing — the dialogue of the pieces 
played there being accompanied " by the 
touch of a single note on the piano " ! 



52 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

Samuel Jerrold, as has been said, had died 
a year or so before his youngest child added to 
the family's association with the theatre in 
this new fashion; and that the old strolling 
player had justified the proverb which says 
that the rolling stone gathers no moss — in 
that monetary sense in which the proverb is 
generally interpreted — may be guessed from 
the fact that his widow then, or at some later 
date, was granted an annual pension of thirty 
pounds on the General Theatrical Fund. Mrs. 
Samuel Jerrold was probably already a member 
of the stock company of the Royal English 
Opera House — though the earliest mention of 
her as such that I have found was in September 

1821 ^ — and there she continued for some years. 
According to the biographers of Samuel 

Phelps, that great tragedian left his native 
Plymouth early in 1821 and journeyed to 
London, where he became reader successively 
in the printing offices of the Globe and the 
Sun, and where he early came in touch with 
Douglas Jerrold — but one year his elder. To 
quote Phelps's biographers : '' Whilst in these 

^ The playbills that I have been able to consult show 
that at this theatre Mrs. Jerrold appeared in the following : 
the Dame in Hie Miller's Maid (melodrama), September 
1821 ; the Cook in Free and Easy (comic opera), November 

1822 and July 1827; Dame Bawbie in Gordon the Gipsy 
(melodrama), July 1823; a minor part in Der Frieschutz 
(opera), September 1824; Dorcas in Rosine (opera), 
July 1825; Margery in The Spoiled Child (farce), August 
1825; the Female Friend in Not for Me (ballad opera), 
August 1828 ; Madame Lafonde in The Quartette, September 
1830; and the Portress in Raymond and Agnes, or The 
Bleeding Nun of Lindenburg. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 53 

capacities he made the acquaintance of the late 
Douglas Jerrold and W. E. Love (polyphonist), 
who were both with him on these journals, 
and they were all three for nearly the whole of 
the five years the principal members of an 
amateur theatrical company who gave from 
one to three performances a week at a small 
private theatre in Rawstone Street, Islington." ^ 
It may well be wondered how Jerrold, engaged 
during the day in a printing office, energetically 
completing his education in his spare time and 
turning his attention to dramatic writing as 
well, could have found time also for such work 
as is suggested by an amateur dramatic com- 
pany that gave from one to three performances 
a week for five years. The extent of the per- 
formances may possibly have become exagger- 
ated by memory. There were a number of 
such amateur companies performing at private 
theatres in the 'twenties, but the performances 
received only occasional paragraphs in the 
dramatic periodicals of the day, and of this 
particular company I have found but bare 
mention. It may well be that it was in 
these early appearances Jerrold learned some- 
thing of that actor's art which he showed 
with considerable effect many years later as 
member of a more famous amateur company, 
though it was as writer that his name was to 
be associated with the stage. 

^ Should be Rawstorne Street. The brief notices of 
such performances in the theatrical ephemerae rarely 
name the performers. 



54 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

Phelps, who seems to have joined with 
Jerrold in those efforts at self-improvement 
which were to take them far from their printing- 
office stools, used to tell the following story of 
how it was they were started on French and 
Latin : 

" Turning round on his stool one day in the office 
of the newspaper where both were engaged, Douglas 
Jerrold said to Phelps rather abruptly — 

" ' What have your godfathers and godmothers 
done for you ? ' 

" ' What do you mean ? ' 

" ' Well, what have you been taught ? What do 
you know ? ' 

" This led to a comparing of notes, and it turned 
out that neither in French nor in Latin was either 
of them at that moment prepared to undergo an 
examination. Like wise men, they set about at once 
redeeming the time. An old Dutch gentleman 
became their tutor, and they very soon made good 
their deficiencies in the languages named." ^ 

It was while a member of this amateur 
company that young Samuel Phelps appeared 
as a " gentleman amateur " at the Olympic 
Theatre on the benefit of one of the actors 
who had been struck by his performance at 
the private theatre in Islington. In his age 
the great tragedian recalled with amusement 
how, having been anxious that Douglas Jerrold 
should see him, he was a little hurt on the 
following day when his friend refrained from 

^ The Life and Life-work of Samuel Phelps. By 
W. May Phelps and John Forbes -Robertson. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 55 

comment on the previous evening's perform- 
ance. At length he broke out with: 

" Well, what did you think of my acting ? 
I saw you were there." 

Jerrold turned leisurely round and said, 
"It is my very decided opinion that, if you 
persevere, you may eventually make a good 
Walking Gentleman, and get your five and 
twenty shillings a week; but you must stick 
to it, remember." That he was ready to laugh 
at his own prophecy was to be shown when 
they met as successful men nearly twenty 
years later. 

The third of the trio of printing-house 
actors, William Edward Love, the wonderful 
" polyphonist," came to be a very popular 
entertainer on both sides of the Atlantic. He 
discovered his remarkable ventriloquial gift 
when he was a boy about ten years of age at 
school. As he was born in 1806, he would 
have been only fifteen or sixteen at the time 
to which Phelps refers, and was then pre- 
sumably a printer's apprentice. As he is 
to-day but little known, the following anecdote 
from an old pamphlet on his performances may 
be given. At the age of fifteen he is said to 
have journeyed from London to visit a relative 
in Dorset and to have diversified his journey 
by making use of his " polyphony " : 

His vocal organs, which were seldom at 
rest, were put in motion at the expense of the 
guard of the mail coach, the driver thereof and 
several of the passengers. The vehicle having 



56 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

quitted Salisbury, Love, finding his fellow- 
travellers taciturn and unsociable, resigned his 
inside seat, and mounted the box by the side 
of the coachman, on pretence of viewing the 
surrounding scenery, leaving a deaf old gentle- 
man and his " better half " in possession of 
the interior of the coach. They had not pro- 
ceeded far, when a voice, apparently from 
within, exclaimed, " Stop the coach— stop the 
coach— I'm taken very unwell— for mercy's 
sake, stop the coach ! " 

The horses were pulled up— the guard was 
on the ground, and the door of the carriage 
open in less than a second. 

"What's wanted, sir?" says the guard, 
touching his hat. 

" Eh, what, what ? " says the deaf old gentle- 
man, placing his acoustic trumpet to his 
ear. 

"Are you ill, sir?" inquired his inter- 
locutor. 

" Oh ! we're at Ilchester, are we ? Then, 
d'ye hear, take my baggage to the King's 
Arms; you'll find a portmanteau, two band- 
boxes, a carpet-bag " 

" I thought," says the guard, straining his 
voice to the highest pitch— his vehemence 
imparting to his face the scarlet hue of his 
coat—" I thought you said ' Stop the coach.' " 

" On the top of the coach !— Psha ! non- 
sense !— it's in the front boot ; you put it 
there yourself before we started. I declare 
these blockheads are as stupid as " 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 57 

" You mistake altogether, sir, I " 



" Must you take it altogether ? Certainly ! 
You wouldn't leave anything behind, would 
you ? — Zounds ! fellow, if you are not able to 
carry it yourself, get a porter to help you " 

The guard, whose stock of patience had by 
this time completely evaporated, slammed the 
coach door in the traveller's face ; and, cursing 
him for an antiquated old fool, mounted his 
seat, and left the lady to explain the matter 
to her bewildered spouse in the best manner 
she could. In a few minutes the voice inside 
was repeated, exclaiming, in still more dolorous 
accents than before, " Coachman, stop — oh, 
I'm dying ! " 

" Jist hold the reins a bit, sir," said the 
coachman ; " there he goes again — blow me if 
he isn't as mad as a March hare. It's a mortal 
shame to let such kracters loose, without some- 
body to take proper care on 'em, isn't it, 
sir?" 

Love, having acquiesced in coachee's opinion 
as to the enormity of the neglect, Jehu jumped 
off the box; and, on opening the door, was 
more than a little astounded to find the old 
gentleman and his rib enjoying a comfortable 
sleep. The man of the whip, believing, how- 
ever, that his passenger was quizzing him, cut 
short his dreams by slapping him smartly on 
the shoulder — 

" Come, I say, old gem'man, this is vot I 
calls carrying the joke rayther too far; vy, 
ve shall be an hour behind time; — you knows 



58 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

you're no more asleep than I am." (Another 
electrifying slap on the shoulder.) 

The unhappy old gentleman, awaking in a 
fright, rubbing his aching limb, exclaimed, with 
a face of rueful length — 

" Eh, what's that ? — Well, coachman, what 

in the d I's name do you want ? — I declare 

these fellows are all as drunk as " 

" If anybody's drunk, it's yourself," says 
coachee, " for I'll swear you called out this 
wery moment, ' Stop the coach ! ' " The out- 
side passengers being appealed to, distinctly 
corroborated the coachman's assertion, and 
whispered their belief that the unfortunate 
gentleman was, assuredly, non compos ; while 
he, on his part, returned the compliment, by 
declaring that coachman, guard and passengers, 
were one and all in a shameful state of intoxi- 
cation ! 

The three young men — Love was still in his 
teens, and Jerrold and Phelps but little over 
twenty — were all to break away from the 
printing office on their several paths in the 
mid-'twenties, but while there were, as the 
familiar illustration puts it, " trying their 
wings." Douglas Jerrold, while still in his 
nineteenth year, had had three plays produced 
in rapid succession, and during the same year 
was to utter a protest by means of a letter 
to the press that is the earliest recognizable 
piece of his writing — other than dramatic. 
This was a letter to the editor of the Sunday 
Monitor, wherein he deplored the custom 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 59 

which then obtained of hawking the " dying 
speeches " of criminals through the streets 
on the day of their execution. On November 
21, 1821, no fewer than eight men were pubhcly 
hanged outside the Old Bailey; four of them 
for uttering forged five-pound notes, one for 
theft from a dwelling-house, one for sheep- 
stealing, and two for highway robbery. No 
sooner was the ghastly travesty of justice 
enacted than the streets were made hideous 
by the bawling of disgusting prints, purporting 
to be the last dying confessions of the executed 
malefactors. Young Jerrold wrote in this 
letter to the editor of the paper on which he 
was employed : " Amongst the many prevalent 
nuisances which call for a speedy redress, 
none, I think, are more conspicuous than the 
disgusting and I may say inhuman practice 
followed on every melancholy occasion when 
justice and the public welfare demand as an 
awful example the life of a fellow being — I 
advert to the custom of reading what are 
termed Dying Speeches ^ But few years were 
to pass before this custom was done away with, 
as also was the custom of hanging men for 
robbery, forgery and similar offences, and in a 
few more years the ghastly parade of public 
hanging was also to become a thing of the 
past. This last reform Douglas Jerrold strongly 
opposed, thinking that it would tend to defer 
the day to which he looked forward, when 
capital punishment itself should be abolished, 
and it may well be believed that such has been 



60 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

its effect. The letter is interesting not only 
as being the first of Jerrold's identifiable con- 
tributions to the press, but as an early indica- 
tion of the reforming zeal which was later to 
characterize his work as a journalist. 

How long he continued to double the parts 
of writer and compositor — when he left the 
compositor's case entirely for the desk, cannot 
now be ascertained. Before he finally gave up 
the composing-stick he is said for a time to 
have acted as dramatic critic and compositor 
on the same journal. He was gradually work- 
ing his way, but he was doing it earnestly, 
vigorously, stubbornly; slight pieces of prose 
and verse were offered to the editors of the 
current magazines and journals, and great was 
the delight when he could rush into the room 
at home, crying to his mother or sister, " It's 
in, it's in ! " He was working, he was writing, 
and he was continuing that rigorous self- 
education which he began soon after the arrival 
in London. He was beginning, too, to make a 
circle of friends among young men similarly 
circumstanced and similarly ambitious. Two 
such friends have been glanced at. Another, 
and more important one, was Samuel Laman 
Blanchard, who was engaged as a printers' 
reader, but, like Douglas Jerrold, was dream- 
ing of literary fame and working towards it. 
Blanchard, who was a year or so the younger, 
had started life as a clerk to a proctor in 
Doctors' Commons, and had had a short turn 
as member of a travelling theatrical company 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 61 

before becoming a London proof-reader. He, 
too, was a contributor to some of those dramatic 
ephemerae for which the reading pubhc of 
nearly a century ago appears to have had a 
goodly appetite, and was already known to his 
friends as a writer of graceful verse. In 1823, 
fired with admiration for Lord Byron, he and 
Jerrold discussed the project of going to 
Greece that they might enlist themselves under 
the banner of the poet and fight for Greek 
independence. They were earnestly talking of 
this dream while sheltering from a shower 
under a Holborn doorway, when suddenly the 
talk was broken off by Jerrold with, " Come, 
Sam, if we're going to Greece we mustn't be 
afraid of a shower of rain." Repeating the 
story many years afterwards Jerrold added, 
" I fear the rain washed all the Greece out of 
us." It was probably nothing more than one of 
the generous dreams of youth, for neither was in 
a position then to make of the dream a reality.^ 
Yet a further step forward was made when 
in 1823 Douglas Jerrold began to contribute 
papers to the Mirror of the Stage over the 
signature of " ce." Chief among these was a 
series of Minor-ies, which described and criti- 
cized sundry of the " stars " of the minor 
theatres ; short sketches which contained here 
and there touches indicative of their writer's 

^ When Byron died in April 1824, Jerrold wrote in his 
volume of the poet's works — 

" God, wanting fire to give a million birth 
Took Byron's soul to animate their earth." 



62 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

later style, as also did other of the pieces 
which he furnished to the same periodical over 
the same unassuming signature. 

In June 1823, The Smoked Miser, or the 
Benefit of Hanging, a one-act farce, was brought 
out on the same stage as that on which Jerrold's 
first piece had been produced rather more than 
two years earlier. The new play showed dis- 
tinct advance on its predecessor in point of 
dialogue. An old miser and his friend are 
scheming to get possession of the property of 
their ward, and wish — with that end in view- 
to wed her to an old confederate. She, how- 
ever, has placed her affections elsewhere, upon 
a young man appropriately named Daring. 
Disguised as Giles Sowthistle, one of the 
tenants of Screw, the miser. Daring visits him 
on quarter-day and pays the rent. Before he 
can get a glimpse of the deeds which prove 
his inamorata to be already entitled to her 
estate, the genuine Giles comes in to make 
excuses for his inability to pay the rent due. 
Screw tells him that his brother has already 
been there, but Giles says that he has no 
brother. " And you will deny this to be your 
relation ? " " Ees, zur, I has nobody but a 
sister, and he don't look like she." " Not your 
brother — why, he's paid your rent — what is he 
then ? " " Paid my rent ! Dang it, he is my 
brother." 

Daring and his newly-made friend are turned 
out by Spiderlimb, the miser's starveling 
servant, to whom are entrusted many of the 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 63 

brightest points in the dialogue. Daring is 
then let down a chimney in a basket to Anne, 
and they are just projecting flight when Screw 
comes to the room and they have to hide. 
The miser, confident that he has heard some 
one, goes to the fireplace, stumbles into the 
basket and is hauled half up the chimney, only 
to be released from his uncomfortable state of 
suspense for the required happy ending. 

Spiderlimb makes frequent happy references 
to his employer's parsimony and meanness. 
The miser has remonstrated with him in- 
dignantly, " Why, you scoundrel, don't I keep 
you? " "I can't persuade my stomach that 
you do." Again, he says to a visitor, " This 
way, this way, — don't be afraid, you'll not run 
against the pantry." " You are a worthy, 
intelligent lad," says the miser, wishful of 

making special use of him, " and so " 

" You give me humble merit's livery — rags," 
comes the uncompromising answer, showing 
the young author to be thus early possessed 
of some measure of that bitterness which is all 
too often referred to as his chief characteristic. 

Reviewing Croly's comedy, Pride Shall Have 
a Fall, about this time in the Mirror of the 
Stage, Jerrold said, " Were we to choose our 
own destiny, were we capable of receiving 
from Providence any of its gifts, we would not 
say — make us rich, make us talented; but 
make us fortunate; luck brings everything, 
stupefies the rest of the world, distracts and 
deceives their vision, makes them believe they 



64 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

are blinded by the rays of a peacock, when in 
fact they are nothing but the grey, dirty 
feathers of the owl." 

A month or so after The Smoked Miser had 
first made old Sadler's Wells ring with the 
merriment of delighted audiences, another 
play from the same author's pen was ready 
for the boards, and duly made its appearance 
on July 28. The piece was founded upon, 
and took its title from, Lord Byron's then just- 
published poem dealing with the mutiny of the 
" Bounty," The Island, or Christian and His 
Comrades. Seeing that in later years the play- 
wright became familiar with one of the lordly 
owners of Chatsworth, it is not uninteresting 
to find from contemporary newspaper para- 
graphs that the Duke of Devonshire was on 
this occasion among the Sadler's Wells first- 
nighters. The piece was well received, and 
shared the boards with The Smoked Miser on 
into the middle of September. According to 
the critics' skimpy notices we learn that it 
*' abounded in rapid incident and situation," 
that it was beautifully staged and that " the 
heaving of the anchor and preparing to pro- 
ceed from Otaheite, had a most real effect." 
The opening scene represented a section of the 
armed ship Bounty so correctly that " a sailor 
in the gallery (where they mustered very 
strongly) called to one of the performers to 
' go to leeward of the capstan.' " ^ 

^ The Island was revived at Sadler's Wells in the 
following year, and at the Surrey Theatre in 1825. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 65 

The Mirror of the Stage was published by 
John Buncombe, of Middle Row, Holborn, who 
was proprietor of Duncombe^s British Theatre, 
and other theatrical publications, and evidently 
a man of some moment to aspiring young 
dramatists and artists. Jerrold seems early 
to have met with recognition from Buncombe, 
and continued to write freely for some time 
in the Mirror of the Stage, often, as has been 
said, over the simple " ce," sometimes over his 
own initials, and, probably, often anonym- 
ously. In the number for February 24, 1823, 
occur a set of nine six-line stanzas from his 
pen entitled The Pleasures of One Chair ; 
verses which are neither better nor worse 
than aspiring youths are wont to put forth 
in the springtime of their lives. The following 
is a fair specimen stanza — 

" The lip — the dear invitmg guest, 
'Tis heaven sues — it must be prest 

But for religion's sake, 
Those glowing ruby gates of bliss 
Be they my beads, and I will kiss, — 

Such penance let me take." 

Laman Blanchard also contributed to Bun- 
combe's small Mirror, and it is recorded that 
one day, in the beginning of 1824, when he 
and Jerrold were talking in the publisher's 
shop, there entered a third young man who 
was introduced to the friends as Kenny 
Meadows, an artist engaged in preparing por- 
traits of actors for Buncombe's various publi- 

VOL. J ff 



66 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

cations. According to Blanchard Jerrold it 
was then that Meadows took to the pubUsher 
his portrait of the actor Young, which duly 
appeared in the Mirror of the Stage for Febru- 
ary 16 with accompanying verses by Laman 
Blanchard. This casual meeting was destined 
to bear fruit in long years of friendship and 
mutual assistance in work. 

An advertisement appeared in the Mirror 
of the Stage for January 26, 1824, announcing 
a work of Jerrold's to appear " in the course 
of next week." The title is given as The 
Seven Ages, a dramatic sketch by Douglas 
William Jerrold, and the nature of the piece 
may be gathered from the following motto 
which is appended to the announcement — 

" Neville. I don't think he could ever be 
prevailed on to produce it on the stage 

" Vapid. He ? prevailed on ! The Manager 
you mean." 

Jerrold had had no very fortunate experi- 
ence of managerial treatment with his earliest 
ventures — his total return from four plays 
amounted to twenty pounds ! — and this 
dramatic sketch was probably of a satirical 
nature. Beyond the announcement in the 
Mirror it has, however, so far proved im- 
possible to trace The Seven Ages, or even to 
find whether it was ever actually published. 

In May of this year a further play from 
Douglas Jerrold's pen was produced at Sadler's 
Wells Theatre, in the shape of Bampfylde 
Moore Carew, a dramatization of the story of 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 67 

the notorious eighteenth-century King of the 
Beggars. 

In the Belle Assemblee for 1824 there ap- 
peared three pieces of verse from Douglas 
Jerrold's pen ; all of them perhaps attributable 
to the fact that the youthful dramatist and 
compositor — he was but just over twenty-one 
— was now engaged to be married. The pieces 
are such as many youths have penned in the 
same circumstances. The following lines indi- 
cate that he was no inattentive reader of the 
work of Thomas Moore, and show him also as 
early indulging in that use of " conceits," to 
use an old word, which characterized much of 
his later writing — 

" I dreamt that young Cupid to Flora's path strayed, 

And culled every beauty that decked her domain ; 
But no flower by lightning or canker betrayed, 

Or heartsease decaying he wove in the chain. 
The garland completed around us he flew — 

The cable of joy caught our hearts in the toil. 
He shed o'er the blossoms refreshing bright dew — 

Their tendrUs entwining struck into the soil. 

Methought I saw Time — on his lips sat a smile, 

And joy lit his face as he sharpened his blade ; 
But Cupid still watchful, suspecting the wile, 

His cruel intention for ever delayed. 
The god in a rage seized the impious steel, 

And breathed o'er its surface a clothing of rust. 
Crying ne'er shall this garland your keenness reveal, 

But ever unite till ye touch them to dust." 

In 1824 Douglas Jerrold married Mary Ann 
Swann, a daughter of Thomas Swann, of 



68 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

Wetherby in Yorkshire. The marriage took 
place at the Church of St. Giles' in the Fields, 
Bloomsbury, on August 15, 1824. He is said 
to have first seen his future wife when he was 
an impetuous lad of eighteen, and to have 
exclaimed on so seeing her, " That girl shall be 
my wife ! " A similar story is told of William 
Cobbett. At the time of the marriage Douglas 
was but in his twenty-second year — his bride 
about a year younger — and so boyish in appear- 
ance that, as he would recall later, the clergy- 
man who performed the ceremony addressed 
a few kind and fatherly words to him, bidding 
him remember the serious duty he had under- 
taken of providing for a young girl's welfare 
and that he must remember that her future 
happiness must henceforth depend mainly on 
her husband. Young as he was in years and 
spirits, that husband was already old in expe- 
rience, and serious beyond those years on 
questions which do not, as a rule, much move 
the mind of youth. For a while the young 
couple continued to live, as Douglas had been 
living, with his mother and grandmother in 
Little Queen Street. 

" Luck attends the downright striker," and 
the young compositor by trade, poet, essayist, 
dramatist and critic by aspiration, boldly 
entered upon the responsibilities of head of a 
family at an age when many young men are 
still at college. The following graceful verses 
were addressed to him at this time by his poet 
friend, Laman Blanchard — 




l)(ti (;r,As .Ikkkoli) 

(From an ctiiiii iiiJ pdinti ng) 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 69 

" And thou art wed ! God knows how well 
I wish thee . . . 

Thy name shall crown the register 
Of those that bless and blindly err ; 
That follow a promiscuous gleam, 
The poet-brain's romantic dream, 
And grasp yet miss the glittering bubble. 
While hope endears the specious trouble ; 
Who brave the winds when others droop. 
And fall at once, but cannot stoop . . . 
Clipped be thy wing ! thine eye, and will. 
And progress, are an eagle's still. 
For whether with song thou tendst thy flock, 
Or sling'st smooth pebbles at the giant, 
Though deeply thou endur'st the shock. 
Nor words nor wounds shall find thee pliant . . . 
A bard for whom the thinking eye 
Fills with the heart's philosophy. 
With whom high fancies, feelings mingle, 
Says ' Nothing in the world is single,' 
And he is right ; even mine is not. 

Dear J , a solitary lot. 

But this perchance I owe to thee, 
Confirmer of my early vision." 

The young poet's was not, as he said, a 
soHtary lot, for even at the time he was en- 
gaged, if not already enrolled " in matrimony's 
list of cures," before he himself legally came of 
age, for in the Dictionary of National Biography 
Blanchard's marriage is said to have taken 
place in 1823. 



CHAPTER III 

DRAMATIST-OF-ALL-WORK 

1825—1828 

An often repeated story — with a parallel in 
the life of Benjamin Franklin — tells us that 
while Douglas Jerrold was still a compositor 
on the Sunday Monitor he made his first signifi- 
cant beginnings as a journalist. It was at the 
English Opera House — where, as has been said, 
Mrs. Samuel Jerrold was a member of the 
company — that Weber's opera of Der Freis- 
chutz was first presented to an English audience 
on July 22, 1824, and, the story runs, Douglas, 
having been present at the performance, was 
so impressed by the beauty and harmony of 
the work that he wrote a critical paper on it 
and dropped it anonymously in the editorial 
letter-box at the office where he was engaged 
as compositor. When he began work the 
next morning great was his gratification at 
finding his own manuscript among the first 
copy handed him to set up, and greater still 
on finding an editorial note appended, asking 
for further contributions from the unknown 
correspondent. This it was, we are told, which 
led to his doubling the posts of compositor and 

70 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 71 

dramatic critic, and so to his final laying aside 
of the composing-stick and becoming wholly 
dependent on the pen. 

It must be admitted that the file of the 
Sunday Monitor does not bear out the truth of 
this story. The notice of Der Freischutz which 
appeared in that journal does not seem to 
have been from Jerrold's pen, and was very 
evidently the work of the same critic who had 
written of the English Opera House in the same 
paper a week earlier. He may, of course, have 
been engaged on another paper at this time, 
but the traditional story proves un verifiable. 
In the Sunday Monitor of August 8 appeared 
a mot which might well have been Jerrold's — " a 
later critic has aptly observed in reference to 
the character of the music in Der Freischutz 
that the composer has not brought airs from 
heaven, but blasts from hell." 

It was, as has been shown, assuredly far from 
being his first appearance in print. In 1825 
both Douglas Jerrold and his friend Laman 
Blanchard were contributing to a small twelve- 
page literary miscellany — presumably issued 
weekly — entitled Arliss^s Literary Collections^^ 
in which were given short pieces of prose and 
poetry, both original and selected. Jerrold's 
signed pieces are four in number, slight, satiric 
prose scraps, but it is probable that he contri- 

^ In The Life and Remains of Douglas Jerrold it is said 
that he " first tempted the judgment of the public by bits 
of fugitive verse ; and this in Arliss's Magazine,^' but there 
is no trace of anything of his in the magazine, which was 
doubtless confused with the later Literary Collections. 



72 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

buted several of the short unsigned moraUzings 
scattered throughout the httle volume. 

Family associations and his early stage suc- 
cesses combined to make him turn to dramatic 
writing as the means of earning an income, 
and his youthful successes at Sadler's Wells 
bore early fruit, for some time in 1825 Douglas 
Jerrold accepted an engagement as playwriter 
to the Coburg Theatre at a small fixed salary. 
A few months earlier a critic had written that 
the Coburg was rapidly declining, and implied 
that it deserved so to do, for it offered its patrons 
" pieces that would disgrace a booth at Bartholo- 
mew Fair." This state of things the young 
dramatist of two-and-twenty was to reverse in 
return for the sum of four or five pounds a 
week,^ paid to him by the one-time harlequin, 
George Bolwell Davidge, become manager of 
the Coburg, on the understanding that he would 
provide pieces, drama, farces and dramatic 
squibs " as frequently as they might be called 
for by a capricious public, and an avaricious 
manager." " Long runs " were then things 
undreamed of in the philosophy of the most 
optimistic of managers and only dreamed of 
by the callowest of play writers, and the position 
was therefore far, indeed, from being a sinecure. 
New pieces were in almost constant demand, 
and the youthful author proved his remarkable 

^ In 1790 Thomas Dibdin had been similarly employed 
at one of the theatres, his duties being to write one- 
act plays as required on any local or topical subject 
— and a pantomime at Christmas — for five pounds per 
week. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD T3 

fertility of invention in the readiness with 
which he maintained the supply; and main- 
tained it, too, as he was justly proud of declar- 
ing, from native sources. Though but little 
more than a youth in years he had already 
resolved to wage war against the prevailing 
fashion of " borrowing," " adapting," or, as 
he would have preferred to stigmatize it, 
" pilfering " from the French. The most 
popular writers for the English stage of that 
day were wont to make very free use of Parisian 
productions, and young Douglas Jerrold's scorn 
of the procedure is seen in many of his early 
dramatic criticisms, as well as in his letters 
and in his more matured productions. The 
popular " adapters " of the day, too, Planche, 
Selby and others, often had the shafts of his 
wit directed at them on this account. His 
strong views were strongly expressed, and even 
in the earlier days of his severe apprenticeship 
to the craft of playwright he succeeded — 
setting aside pieces " ordered " on topical 
popular themes — in vindicating his position 
as above everything an original writer. And 
even when the themes on which his pieces were 
founded were dictated by managerial policy, 
the treatment and dialogue were always 
peculiarly his own. 

We proceed to the story of one of these 
" ordered " pieces. William Hone in his Every- 
Day Book declared that nothing would stop the 
dramatist of the time from seizing on any novelty 
for stage purposes, and reproduced a handbill 



74 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

that was being given about the streets in which 
one " Thomas Feelwell, of 104, High Holborn," 
stated that his own humane feehngs and those 
of a sensitive pubhc made it proper to expose 
the doings of the proprietors of the Coburg, 
and proceeded to set forth the following 
strange story : 

" A young man of extraordinary leanness was, for 
some days, observed shuffling about the Waterloo 
Road, reclining against the posts and walls, apparently 
from excessive weakness, and earnestly gazing through 
the windows of the eating-houses in the neighbour- 
hood for hours together. One of the managers of the 
Coburg Theatre accidentally meeting him, and being 
struck with his attenuated appearance, instantly 
seized him by the bone of his arm, and, leading him 
into the saloon of the theatre, made proposals that 
he should be produced on the stage as a source of 
attraction and delight for a British audience; at 
the same time stipulating that he should contrive 
to exist on half a meal a day — that he should be 
constantly attended by a constable, to prevent his 
purchasing any other sustenance, and be allowed no 
pocket-money, till the expiration of his engagement — 
that he should be nightly buried between a dozen 
heavy blankets, to prevent his growing lusty, and to 
reduce him to the lightness of a gossamer, in order 
that the gasping breath of the astonished audience 
might so agitate his frame, that he might be tremblingly 
alive to their admiration." 

Seriously, if this be so it ought not to be, 
said Hone, and went on to suggest that the 
condition of the poor man should be an object 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 75 

of public inquiry as well as public curiosity. 
It may well be that Mr. " Feelwell's " handbill 
was nothing but an ingenious advertisement 
for the Coburg. One Seurat, the " living skele- 
ton," was on exhibition in Pall Mall, draw- 
ing crowds of the morbidly curious, and doubt- 
less Davidge, seeking to turn that notoriety 
to theatrical gain, instructed his new journey- 
man-dramatist to make a play of which the 
attenuated one should be a central figure. 
Thus it was that The Living Skeleton was 
produced at the Coburg Theatre.^ The success 
of the little piece must have been considerable, 
for several years afterwards Jerrold's new 
productions for the Coburg stage were always 
announced as "by the author of TJie Living 
Skeleton.''' In the circumstances it is to be 
regretted that the play is not now obtainable ; 
it was commented on as follows in one of the 
newspapers of the day : 

" An amusing piece in which Sparerib, ' a student 
of medicine in love and in debt,' is asked by a creditor, 
Sharp, to raise the wind by means of exhibiting himself 
as a Hving skeleton. Sharp observes [and the satirist 
is betrayed in the dramatist of two-and-twenty], 
' that the public would rather give half a crown apiece 
to see a man without flesh than sixpence apiece to 
put one in good condition.' A real skeleton is 
substituted for Sparerib, and is seized in his name as 
a victim for the debtor's prison." 

1 August 15, 1825. There was another " living 
skeleton " in America, one Calvin Edson, who so far 
stultified his name as to die — at Randolph, Vermont, in 
October 1833. 



76 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

A fortnight after the production of The 
Living Skeleton at the Coburg, Douglas Jer- 
rold's first child, Jane Matilda, was born on 
August 29.1 

New pieces and dramatic sketches were 
brought out so frequently in the " good old 
days " that sometimes we find but the barest 
mention of them made even in periodicals 
devoted exclusively to matters theatrical. 
Especially was this the case with regard to 
pieces produced at the transpontine or other 
of the unpatented houses. The second play 

^ The following are the entries made by Douglas 
Jerrold himself in his copy of the " Baskett " Old Testa- 
ment of 1715, acquired by him in 1837, and now in the 
possession of the writer, who has added in brackets the 
places of birth from the church register — 

" Jane Matilda Jerrold, born August 29, 1825. Chris- 
tened at St. George's, Bloomsbury. 

William Blan chard Jerrold, bom December 22, 1826. 
Christened at St. George's, Bloomsbury. [Little 
Queen Street.] 

Douglas Edmund Jerrold, bom July 18, 1828. 
Christened at St. George's, Bloomsbury. [Seymour 
Street, St. Pancras.] 

Mary Anne Jerrold, bom September 21, 1831. 
Christened at St. George's, Bloomsbury. [Augustus 
Square, Regent's Park.] 

Thomas Serle Jerrold, bom July 4, 1833. Chris- 
tened at St. George's, Bloomsbury. [Seymour 
Terrace (Little Chelsea).] 

Mary Anne Jerrold, bom March 26, 1830. Died 
April 8, 1831. 

Bessy Jerrold, bom August 28, 1836. Died Nov- 
ember, 1836." 

An examination of the registers of St. George's, Blooms- 
bury, shows that Jane was not christened at that church, 
and that Thomas was actually christened Charles Serle. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 77 

to be written by Jerrold for ex-harlequin 
Davidge — or at least the second which is 
traceable as his, for the authorship of many 
productions seems never to have been declared 
— was a comic sketch entitled London Char- 
acters, a piece of dramatic caricature of which 
only the " advertisement " has proved re- 
coverable : 

"LONDON CHARACTERS 

''Puff! Puff!! Puff!!! 

" * Puff in thy teeth.' — Shakespeare. 

" Some explanation may be required from the writer 
to preface this (apparently) hardy undertaking, and 
he enters on it with all the alacrity which the con- 
sciousness of good intentions is so well calculated to 
inspire. It is a common fault that in our anxiety to 
render homage to the memory of men bygone, we 
treat somewhat too cavalierly the illustrious living, 
who still pay rent and taxes : it is as though indi- 
viduals were not to be esteemed until they had given 
employment to an undertaker. Now the present 
object of the writer is to awaken the public to a 
proper knowledge of the talents scattered through the 
town, to pull its million buttons and tweak its thou- 
sand noses, until the said lethargic public shall open 
its two thousand eyes (that is, allowing a pair for 
every person), and become fully assured of the great- 
ness it has snored over. To this end and without 
any fear or trembling the writer creates the important 
letters that form the mystic name of Francis Moore, 
physician, almanac maker, the awful wizard that 
warns the ungrateful world of the season for um- 
brellas and worsted hose : he apostrophizes those 



78 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

venerable sages Day and Martin, who, like the wise 
men of yore, write their immortality on imperishable 
leather ; Burgess, who, with Jonah, has found a 
lasting fame in the bowels of a fish ; Mr. Money, of 
Fleet Street, who, like Captain Parry, roves ' from 
pole to pole ' for mutual benefit ; Charles Wright, of 
the Opera Colonnade who makes us forget our troubles 
at the cheapest rate; Rowland, who drops the 
compassionating ' dye ' on the afflictions of red hair, 
and puts whiskers into half mourning ; Atkinson who 
trains English beauty as the Greenlanders feed their 
children, upon bears' grease; Henry Hunt, Esq., 
the reformer of vitiated tastes for Turkey coffee; 
Charles Wright, whose spirits like that of the Spanish 
goblin dwell in a bottle ; Doctor — but no, some kind 
of excellence must, like the poet's flower (and, 
indeed, like much genius of the present day), ' blush 
unseen ' ; Mrs. Johnson, whose Soothing Syrup speedily 
fills our mouths with bones that we may better tear 
flesh, shall she be forgotten ? Gratitude, forbid I 
Do they not contribute more to human comfort than 
all the feats of conquerors and kings ? The philo- 
sopher who said the sun was red-hot metal was a fool 
to Dr. Moore, who has thoroughly solved the doubts 
of mankind, showing that the moon is not green 
cheese, but, in fact, a moon. The brilliancy of Day 
and Martin, Warren and Larnder, will remain as long 
as Homer's. The Elements of Euclid are not so 
relishing to a fried sole as Burgess's Essence of 
Anchovies. The labours of Money are greater than 
those of Hercules, for the ancient did at length slay 
the hydra ; but the bear of Mr. Money has been killed 
a thousand times, and stripped of its wealth of fat, 
and yet survives. Charles Wright makes us abhor 
the creed of Mahomet; and many a Cherokee chief 
who has scalped his neighbour has been immortalized 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 79 

in pantomime, while Rowland and Atkinson, who 
have fresh-haired many a naked pate, have remained 
in obscurity. The epicure who fed off peacocks' 
brains (it is lucky he did not choose men's ; at least, 
it would be, were he now living in some countries), 
is less valuable than Henry Hunt, who makes us 
full as grateful with a little corn well singed. What 
was Semiramis who struck off heads to the present 
Mrs. Johnson who softens our infant mouths ? Are 
the ancients to be for ever apostrophized, and the 
great living to be unhonoured and unsung? No; 
the writer, fired with honourable zeal, has plucked 
a quill from the largest goose in Lincolnshire, has 
spread open a foolscap sheet, has soused into the 
ink-bottle his newly made pen, and thus registers — 
The Spirits of the Age." 

That puff-preparatory to the play was repro- 
duced in the London Magazine (Charles Lamb's 
London), with a comment that makes us regret 
the more that the text of the play has appar- 
ently not survived in any form. After quoting 
what is described as the proprietor's bill of 
fare, the critic says : " This, it must be con- 
fessed, is approaching very close to the ' very 
age and body of the time ' ; and promises a 
very interesting exhibition of the great men 
of London. Several of these originals, which 
may be said to be caricatures of mankind, are 
well caricatured by the actors. But no one 
complains ! We must fear that this is one 
other specimen of the talent of advertisers; 
and that all the worthies whose names are thus 
billed, have clubbed together to dramatize 



80 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

their popularity. The piece ought to pay a 
duty to government." 

The piece thus characteristically prefaced 
by the author was very well received. The 
reference to the men of " bold advertisement " 
as the true spirits of their age was obviously 
suggested by William Hazlitt's well-known 
volume first published in the same year. 
The years which have elapsed since its produc- 
tion have eliminated the names of some of the 
" spirits of the age " from their accustomed 
places ; many of them, however, are as familiar 
now as they were to readers of the journals 
when George the Fourth was king. 

After the production of that skit its author 
apparently remained unrepresented on the stage 
for some months, for it was on June 5, 1826, 
that his next traceable piece was produced, also 
at the Coburg Theatre, under the title — and 
nothing more of it remains — of Popular Felons. 

One of the least pleasant parts of a writer's 
connection with the " minor " theatres of 
ninety years ago must undoubtedly have been 
the having now and again to prepare a piece 
on a subject similar to that which was already 
proving attractive at one of the other houses. 
Thus when John Liston had been for some 
months drawing crowds to the Haymarket 
Theatre to laugh over his frequent intrusions 
as Paul Pry in John Poole's play of that name, 
Jerrold was called upon to write a play on the 
same theme for the Coburg, and there on 
November 27, 1826, his farcical comedy of 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 81 

Paul Pry was acted for the first time. Liston, 
an unrivalled comedian of his day, undoubtedly 
made the great success of Poole's piece, and 
the very name of the inquisitive Paul is always 
associated with those of Liston and Poole. So 
much so, indeed, that in the British Museum 
Catalogue there long appeared under the name 
of Douglas Jerrold the astounding entry — 
" Paul Pry, a comedy . . . or rather by John 
Poole ! " And the stupid error is blindly 
repeated — without the slightest attempt at 
verification — in the Dictionary of National 
Biography. The two plays are quite distinct; 
they both record mainly the pryings and 
intrudings of the unmitigated bore, Paul, 
otherwise their dramatis personce are different 
— the dialogues are certainly distinct. Jerrold 
adopted as the motto for his comedy the 
suggestive sentence from Lavater — " Avoid him 
who, from mere curiosity, asks three questions 
running, about a thing that cannot interest 
him." 

Jerrold's play contains some very pointed 
pieces of dialogue, even the ubiquitous Pry 
varying " Hope I don't intrude," with occa- 
sional smart retorts. Part of one of the scenes 
between Sir Spangle Rainbow and his French 
valet Pommade will serve to show that the 
witty conversation on which the comedies 
written in Jerrold's maturity mainly depended 
for their success was also characteristic of the 
dramatist's work at a time when he was but 
little over three-and-twenty. 

VOL. I Q 



82 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

" Sir Spangle. Yes, Pommade {using his box), this 
pinch has decided it. I'll cut his throat — he dies. 
I always follow two plans on great occasions — I first 
take a pinch of snuff to arouse my valour, and then 
a cigar to compose it. 

Pommade. Ah, ha ! So your valour begins in 
sneezing and ends in smoke. 

Sir S. What, puppy ? 

Pom. M'lud, I say you tak' de tabac — de snuff to 
clear your head — {aside) — and a ver' great deal you 
must tak' to do it. 

Sir S. Get me my foils, Pommade. I shall touch 
him with cold steel. I don't like these unmannerly 
bullets ; they might blow my brains out before I 
knew it. 

Pom. Oui, my lor' — {aside) — but dey must find 
before dey blow. 

Sir S. You know with the sword I'm inimit- 
able. . . . Don't you remember how, at the humane 
request of the Dowager Duchess of Duckspool, with 
one pass I pinned with my sword the leg of a spider 
against her Grace's bureau ; and don't you remember 
— he, he, he ! — the epigram I made on it — the — the 
point that was in it, Pommade — the point, you know ? 
He, he, he, I have point. 

Pom. Oh, you all point ! You'd mak' a ver' good 
fingerpost." 

The supposed original of Paul Pry was an 
old man named Tom Hill, a friend of Theodore 
Hook, the Brothers Smith and other convivial 
men of letters. It was a standing joke among 
his friends always to be chaffing Hill on his 
great age; they pretended to look upon him 
as a modern Methusaleh, but no one knew how 




5 ^ 

O 5 

S g 






DOUGLAS JERROLD 83 

old he actually was. James Smith said that 
Hill's age could never be really ascertained, 
for the parish register had been destroyed in 
the Great Fire of London. " Pooh, pooh ! " 
broke in Theodore Hook, "he is one of the 
little Hills that are spoke of as skipping in the 
Psalms." 

As no plays from Jerrold's pen are traceable 
for nearly two years after the production of 
Paul Pry, it seems probable that the arrange- 
ment by which he became dramatist-in-ordinary 
to the Coburg did not begin until the autumn of 
1828 and lasted but for a few months. In 
1826 and 1827 he seems largely to have been 
engaged in journalism and free-lance contribu- 
tions to the magazines. In the summer of 
the earlier year there was started the Weekly 
Times, a Sunday journal for which he un- 
doubtedly wrote, of which he is said for some 
years to have been editor, and of which he is 
believed to have been now or a little later 
part proprietor. The paper begun on June 15, 
1826, and in the second number Ned Sadget 
(a Sketch of Character) which is signed "J." 
is surely his, and no less surely the dramatic 
criticism, signed with a capital D. (for some 
weeks inverted q.), are his. In an early article 
he paid pleasant tribute to his old friend 
Wilkinson, whose " Geoffrey Muffincap is a 
statue of crystal in a niche of the Temple of 
Comedy." In the autumn of 1826 he con- 
tributed several pieces in prose and verse to 
the pages of the Monthly Magazine— then one 



84 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

of the leading monthlies edited by Thomas 
Campbell — in which were appearing many of 
those charming sketches of village life and 
character which, despite her poems, and her 
plays at Drury Lane, are the best-remem- 
bered of Mary Russell Mitford's writings. 
In the September number of the Monthly 
Jerrold appears to have begun his connection 
with this magazine — a connection which con- 
tinued for several years — with a couple of 
poems, one of them preceding and the other 
immediately following Mary Russell Mitford's 
sympathetic sketch of A Quiet Gentlewoman. 
The first is a fanciful piece, " Upon being asked 
in the course of conversation of which the 
limited knowledge and action of human nature 
formed the subject ' What I wished ? ' " The 
second is shorter, and may fittingly find a 
place here, as the aspirations to which it gives 
expression were distinctly characteristic of 
the writer. It is entitled Pen and Ink : an 
Invocation : 

" Ye fates, that give to scribbling men, 
The drops that trickle from the pen, 
To me a precious inkstand give, 
To feed my goose-quill while I live : — 
I would not have the ebon tide 
A stream where rust and acid glide ; 
For words to trace with bitter spell 
As from Medusa's head they fell ; 
And like those drops in th' olden age, 
Turn each a serpent on the page : 
Neither weak dew-gems should my quill 
Drink till a dropsy made it ill ; 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 85 

Nor would I have the honey's slime 

To toil a snake-like piece of rhyme : 

But dip my pen in some rich stream 

Where brightness, strength and beauty beam, 

And from my quill let notes be heard 

As though from some celestial bird 

Who in the skies hath left its rest 

And buUt within my pen a nest. 

Know'st not from whence this ink can start ? 
Give me, ye fates — a Poet's Heart ! 
Seek'st thou a bard ? Why, then, in sooth 
Yield to my pen— the Note of Truth ! " 

In the same magazine for the following 
month the ex-volunteer of the Earnest was 
represented by an enthusiastic and sympathetic 
sketch — the first of a series of Full-Lengths — 
of The Greenwich Pensioner.^ The famous 
Hospital must then have numbered among its 
occupants men who had borne their part in 
Nelson's victories, so that a typical pensioner 
must truly have represented a " breathing 
volume of naval history," and Jerrold's per- 
oration not have sounded extravagant : 

" Who has kept our houses from being transformed 
into barracks, and our cabbage markets into parades ? 

" Again, and again, let it be answered — the Green- 
wich pensioner. Reader, if the next time you see the 
tar, you should perchance have with you your wife 
and smiling family, think that if their tenderness has 
never been shocked by scenes of blood and terror, 
you owe such gratitude to a Greenwich pensioner. 
Indeed, I know not if a triennial progress of the 

^ Reprinted in The Handbook of Swindling and Other 
Papers, 1891. 



86 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

Greenwich establishment through the whole kingdom 
would not be attended with the most beneficial 
results — fathers would teach their little ones to lisp 
thanksgivings unto God that they were born in 
England, as reminded of their happy superiority by 
the withered form of every Greenwich pensioner ! " 

The second of the Full-Lengths, which ap- 
peared a month later, dealt with the Drill 
Sergeant,^ and is interesting as one of the 
earliest expressions of Douglas Jerrold's de- 
testation of war ; here, however, it is even more 
interesting on account of the writer's reference 
to his own shortcomings in the way of stature : 

" We shrink lest he mentally has approved of 
us as being worthy of ball-cartridge. He glances 
towards our leg, and we cannot but feel that he is 
thinking how it will look in a black gaiter. At this 
moment we take courage, and, valiantly lifting off 
our hat, pass our luxuriant curls through our four 
fingers — we are petrified; for we see by his chuckle 
that he has already doomed our tresses to the scissors 
of the barrack barber. We are at once about to take 
to our legs, when turning round, we see something 
under a middle-sized man looking over our head. On 
this we feel our safety, and triumph in the glory of 
five feet one. Something must always be allowed 
for weakness — something for vanity ; which, indeed, 
philosophers denominate the greatest weakness. 
Hence all these cogitations, foolishly attributed by the 
little individual to the Sergeant, arise from the Civil 
man's self-conceit; the Sergeant always treating 
with ineffable contempt persons of a certain size." 

^ Handbook of Sivindling and Other Papers. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 87 

The number of the New Monthly which 
contained this Hmning of the drill-sergeant had, 
it is believed from the same pen, a pretty story 
of Oriental life, The Moth with the Golden Wings, ^ 
and during the following year the writer con- 
tinued his presentation of Full-Lengths, making 
plain the characteristics of the tax-gatherer, 
the Jew slop-seller and the ship's clergyman, 
and also contributed further pieces of verse, 
from one of which. What is Fame ? a few pas- 
sages may be quoted. With the disillusion- 
ment of four-and-twenty the writer dealt with 
fame in a cynical, satiric strain : 

" And thou wouldst write ? for what ! — a name ? 
Thou'rt dead, and left behmd some books, 
Which, neatly bound, fill up the nooks 
Of some dull-headed plodder's room, 
Well ponder'd o'er by — housewife's broom ; 
Or yet, less lucky, doomed to sleep 
On bookworms' stall, with label — ' cheap ' ; 
And all the wit thy bram has wrought 
May, with good fortune, fetch a groat. 
Yet still thy fame neglect rebuts, 
If, midst the care of cracking nuts. 
Some fop avers he's read the lines. 
Plucks off the shell, — then talks of wines . . . 
Yet, in a senate-house debate 
(As beetroot beautifies a plate 
Of salad for a supper course), 
Thy lines may deck a green discourse ; 
Quoted in very timely season 
To save by rhyme, when lost to reason ; 
Then, if thou'st been a civil beast. 
Nor gored a king, nor tost a priest, 

^ Handbook of Swindling and Other Papers. 



88 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

Nor lived of courts and place a scorner, 
Thou'lt stand in stone in Poets' Corner . . . 

This, this is Fame, — to be well bound, 
Sold for the sixtieth of a pound. 
Now spoken of by petit-maitre, 
Now lost in cry of ' wine ' and ' waiter ' ; 
By peer well prized thy carved -out head, 
Which, living, perhaps, had wanted bread ; 
Cited to aid a new taxation, 
To stuff a king, and starve a nation ; 
A statue raised above thy grave. 
To tell the world thou wert no knave . . . 

This, this is Fame ! — O flattering ill ! 
Bards, cut to toothpicks every quill ! " 

On December 22, 1826, Douglas Jerrold's 
second child and eldest son was born in Little 
Queen Street, and was christened William 
Blanchard at St. George's, Bloomsbury, one 
of his godfathers being Laman Blanchard. 
During the following year the family removed 
to Seymour Street, St. Pancras, and there 
another son, Douglas Edmund, was born 
July 18, 1828. 

To the year 1827 is traceable one of those 
ready conversational witticisms on which 
Jerrold's fame was ultimately largely to rest. 
Crockford's splendid edifice of white stone had 
recently been completed, when Jerrold was 
passing one day along St. James's Street with 
a friend who, contrasting the new palatial 
building with the adjoining old houses, de- 
clared that it was " quite swanlike." " Very 
swanlike indeed," came the answer, " for you 
don't see the hlack legs working underneath." 

Davidge was not, it may be easily imagined 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 89 

from what his dramatist said of him, a par- 
ticularly considerate employer, and numerous 
as are the pieces written for his stage which 
are distinctly traceable to Douglas Jerrold's 
pen it is quite possible that there is no record 
of the hardest part of the work — ^the supplying 
of plays that did not happen to hit the popular 
taste and so called for an early superseding. 

On June 2, 1828, a one-act vaudeville of 
Jerrold's, The Statue Lover, or Music in 
Marble y was produced at Vauxhall. This was 
no more than it was described, a ludicrous 
little episode telling how a young man won a 
young woman's heart as himself, won her 
guardian-uncle by pretending to be an Italian 
singer — and reconciled the two by posing as a 
statue of Apollo. It is a slight thing, suggest- 
ing the hurried rough-and-tumble of the modern 
cinematograph rather than the comedy with 
which its author's name was to be more par- 
ticularly associated. It was, however, appar- 
ently designed for the uncritical audience of 
Vauxhall Gardens rather than for that of the 
regular theatre. 

Somewhere about this time there seems to 
have been some slight falling out of faithful 
friends between Jerrold and Laman Blanchard, 
for they were drawn together in the closest 
bonds, and are said to have shared such a 
friendship as is all too rare. The latter looked 
to his elder companion with something more 
than a brother's love and admiration. Slight 
misunderstandings might arise, but the affec- 



90 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

tion of the two was not of a kind to be impaired 
by such. The impulsive outspokenness of the 
poet, and something of the reflected character 
of his friend, may be gathered from the follow- 
ing portions of a letter inviting the young play- 
wright to take part in an outing to Richmond. 

" Dear Doug., . . . I need not say, at least I think 
not, how much of the pleasure and profit of the 
ramble will depend upon your joining it. Wednesday 
is selected as your convenient day, and I hope you 
will make some little exertion to join us, if it were 
only to afford me an opportunity of renewing, or 
rather of terminating, our conversation of Sunday 
night, and to convince you how little excuse you have 
for misinterpreting my conduct when you, of all 
persons in the world, are the very one that should 
most clearly understand it. Such as my nature is, 
it is not too much to say that it has been almost 
moulded by you ; and certainly, of late years, nothing 
has been admitted into it that has not received your 
stamp and sanction. It has been, and is, my pride 
to think and act with you on all important subjects ; 
and for lesser matters, as they are the mere dirt that 
adheres to the scales of opinion, let them not turn the 
balance against me, nor prevent me from retaining 
that fair and even place in your thoughts which it is 
one of the best consolations of my life to believe that 
you have assigned me. 

" If you can, independently of any occasional fit 
of perverse temper, conceive seriously that I do not 
give you credit for the many, or I should say, the 
numberless marks of sympathy and kindness towards 
me during our intercourse ; or if you think I can share 
my mind with others as I have done with you, let 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 91 

me refer you to a passage in Childe Harold com- 
mencing — 

" ' Oh, known the earhest and esteemed the most* 

If you should wonder why I have taken the pains to 
write all this dry detail of feelings which we mutually 
recognized and appreciated long ago, it is because 
the conversation that occasions it has made a deeper 
impression than you are aware of, perhaps than you 
intended, and more particularly as the feeling has 
displayed itself in two or three less important quarters 
at the same time. What is only teasing in indifferent 
persons, is something approaching to torture when 
conveyed by the hand which has been so long held 
out in faithful and undoubting friendship, and which 
has never allowed the worldly pressure of calamity 
to weaken its grasp. 

" I shall be glad to hear from you to-night by some 
means. Can you call ? It will be necessary to start 
at nine for half-past on Wednesday. Believe me 
ever, dear Jerrold, yours most sincerely, 

" S. L. Blanchard." 

Whatever may have been the temporary 
misunderstanding, one is almost glad it oc- 
curred, seeing the true friendly declaration 
which it occasioned. Of early letters to or 
from Douglas Jerrold this of Blanchard's 
appears to be the only one left, no other being 
obtainable until we come to the congratula- 
tions which Miss Mitford wrote on the success 
of Thomas a Becket. Wednesday being Jer- 
rold's convenient day for an outing suggests 
that he was journalistically engaged most of 
the week — possibly on the Sunday paper to 



92 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

which reference has already been made, or— for 
the letter is undated— later when he was acting 
as sub-editor of the short-lived Ballot. 

In the autumn of this year (1828) plays from 
Jerrold's pen were produced at the Coburg 
Theatre in such rapid succession as to suggest 
that it was then that he began his salaried 
appointment to write pieces as often as they 
were required. On September 1 there were 
given two melodramas in two acts by Douglas 
Jerrold. One of these, entitled Descart : the 
French Buccaneer, was a romantic story of the 
theft by an African slave of the infant daughter 
of his master, a French ofBcer, and that officer's 
subsequent revelation as no less a person than 
Descart himself. The scene is laid on a wild 
part of the African coast, and several savages 
are among the dramatis personce. The dialogue 
of this play is more pointed than that of the 
one just mentioned, a certain cowardly English 
traveller named Luckless Tramp — the part was 
taken by Davidge himself — being entrusted 
with many of the good things. He is given 
to making Radical remarks, too, which suffi- 
ciently indicate the lines on which, politically 
speaking, Jerrold's mind was then working. 

" You see, Smouch, I have wisdom," he says. 

" Oh, enough for a statesman." 

" Why, as for that, a little will serve, as 
times go." 

And again. Tramp says that in a fight, as 
in a game at whist, like a well-bred gentleman, 
he never minds standing out, adding, "But 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 93 

seriously, as for fighting, you know, a delicate 
mind shrinks from observation — I'll choose the 
rear." 

" Come, let's first go and get well victualled." 
" There, I don't mind if I proceed in the van." 
" Why, you cowardly dog, and won't you 
blush to take what you don't earn ? " 

" Lord bless you, not at all ; if that was the 
case how many high noddles would redden at 
pay day." 

The second piece produced on the same 
night at the same house " adapted for repre- 
sentation " by the same author, was The Tower 
of Lochlain, or the Idiot Son, a three-act melo- 
drama, of no great merit, but sufficiently 
successful to justify its publication. A fort- 
night later, and another and a strongly con- 
trasting piece was ready for the Coburg 
audience, when there was produced Wives by 
Advertisement, a one-act dramatic satire which 
showed the young writer's readiness in making 
effective use of the slightest materials which 
happened to come to hand. It was summed 
up at the time as a very clever hit at the 
prevailing fashion of matrimonial advertise- 
ments — a fashion that if no longer prevalent 
is also not altogether unknown at the present 
day. 

But three weeks passed, and on October 6 
there was another play ready for the Coburg 
boards in the form of Ambrose Gwinett, a drama 
in three acts. The piece, which is further 
described as a seaside story, is based upon the 



94 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

hopeless love of Grayling, a prison smith, for 
Lucy Fairlove, and his hatred and jealousy of 
his successful rival Gwinett. Circumstances 
favour his conspiracy to get rid of Gwinett 
more thoroughly than he had dared to hope; 
he had planned for Gwinett to be taken by a 
pressgang ; Lucy's uncle, Collins, however, gets 
carried off instead and Gwinett is found guilty 
of murdering him and is hanged in chains, 
but his body mysteriously disappears from 
the gallows. Eighteen years elapse, and then 
Ambrose and Collins both return unexpectedly 
and all ends happily with the reuniting of the 
lovers and the discomfiture and death of the 
miserable Grayling. For those who may think 
there is little of probability in the story it 
may be said that in its essentials it is a his- 
torical one. Early in the eighteenth century 
one Ambrose Gwinett, a young man of 
Canterbury, was wrongfully accused of mur- 
dering at Deal a man who had been carried 
off by a pressgang, was tried, condemned, 
hanged, and — resuscitated ! Jerrold " height- 
ened " the interest of his drama by superadding 
the passions of love and jealousy. The piece 
brought ample receipts to the treasury of the 
Coburg, and in the following month was given 
also at Sadler's Wells. Only a week, however, 
had passed after its original production when 
a slight piece from its author's pen com- 
panioned the seaside story at the Coburg. 
This was Two Eyes Between Two, a broad 
extravaganza, as it was described, in a single 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 95 

act. The story on which it was based was 
taken from a volume presumably popular at 
the time, Posthumous Papers by a Gentleman 
About Town,^ and dealt with the humorous 
result of two one-eyed Mussulmen gambling 
for their eyes, the loser not daring to look at 
anything as the Cadi has adjudged that he has 
no right to use the eye, without paying the 
winner for the privilege of so doing ! 

Next, on November 24, came a more ambi- 
tious effort in a three-act tragic drama " with 
a purpose," to use the phrase much used later 
in the century. That purpose was made plain 
in the very title of the play. Fifteen Years of a 
Drunkard's Life. Welcoming it, a contem- 
porary critic said "the author must indeed be 
possessed of the pen of a ready writer — for he 
not only produces a new melodrama or burletta 
at this house almost every other week, and has 
also, we understand, been engaged at Sadler's 
Wells on the same terms, but he is editor of a 
Sunday paper (The Weekly Times) beside." This 
three-act " domestic melodrama " has many 
strong passages in it, and as it is directed against 
a fault not peculiar to any one time, should 
always prove popular as a play with a purpose. 
One drawback to the piece is the lengthy period 
over which the action is carried. The drunkard, 
too, is the real hero, and the nobler passages 
are put in the mouths of the villains ; Glanville, 
for example, the arch-villain and hypocrite, 

1 This work was by Cornelius Webbe, who appears to 
have been an early friend of Jerrold's. 



96 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

pointing to the besotted Vernon, broken in 
body, mind and estate, exclaims, " See, where 
the image of noble, ambitious, God-like man — 
the master of the earth, and all its being— the 
creature that binds the elements to his will — 
that tempts the billows in their wrath, and 
blunts the lightning — the gifted soul that would 
read the will of fate within the star-lettered 
front of heaven — see where he lies, gorged to 
the throat with wine ! the mockery of life, 
the antipodes of reason." 

" Still," his fellow conspirator urges, " this 
love of wine has been his only fault." 

" Only fault ! habitual intoxication is the 
epitome of every crime ; all the vices that stain 
our nature germinate within it, waiting but 
a moment to sprout forth in pestilential 
rankness. When the Roman stoic sought to 
fix a damning stigma on his sister's seducer, 
he called him neither rebel, blood-shedder or 
villain — no, he wreaked every odium within 
one word and that was — drunkard ! " 

In this play occur Jerrold's often-quoted 
words as to Shakespearean grog : "As for 
the brandy ' nothing extenuate ' — and the 
water, ' put nought in in malice ! ' " 

By the trick of a five years' lapse between 
the first and second acts and a ten-year lapse 
between the second and third the wretched 
Vernon is seen passing from happy prosperity 
through misery and crime to a tragic close, for 
the " purpose " is carried logically through 
and leads to no conventional happy ending. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 97 

This appears to have been the last of Douglas 
Jerrold's pieces written for Davidge of the 
Coburg Theatre. We have record of ten such 
spread over a period of rather more than three 
years, and as six of these had been produced 
within three months it seems likely that it was 
but for a short period that Jerrold was salaried 
playwright at the Coburg. A contemporary 
journal already quoted said that he was 
engaged at Sadler's Wells on the same terms 
as at the Coburg, but it appears likely that 
it was a working arrangement between the 
managers of the two theatres and the dramatist, 
for at this period no new plays of Jerrold's 
are traceable as having been originally pro- 
duced at Sadler's Wells. The agreement with 
Davidge seems to have come to an abrupt 
end, though not quite in the way often de- 
scribed. It has repeatedly been said that 
Jerrold quarrelled with Davidge, and with the 
manuscript of Black-Eyed Susan in his pocket 
at once went to Elliston and took up at the 
Surrey Theatre the post which he had left at 
the Coburg. The story is more dramatic than 
true. That there was a quarrel with Davidge 
there seems little doubt, and in a moment of 
bitterness the young dramatist, smarting under 
some special indignity at the hands of the 
grasping manager, exclaimed, " May he live 
to keep his carriage and be unable to ride in 
it." A wish that is said to have been painfully 
realized almost to the letter. 

Davidge was the centre of a good story 

VOL. I H 



98 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

which the late Henry Vizetelly told at length 
in his Glances Back Through Seventy Years— 

" Douglas Jerrold, who was a hack dramatist at 
the Coburg for several years during Davidge's reign, 
had a good story which I once heard him tell at Orrin 
Smith's dinner table before he used it up in his Men 
of Character,^ respecting the manager and a certain 
performing pig, a former member of the Coburg 
company. It seems that the performances of a 
cleverly trained porker, known as the learned pig, 
were all the rage at some London exhibition, and 
that Davidge was seized with the idea that the intro- 
duction of an intelligent animal of the same species 
on the Coburg boards would attract crowded houses. 
A trained pig was accordingly secured from some 
travelling showman, and Jerrold was instructed to 
write the necessary piece in which the intelligent 
Toby might display his surprising talents. The 
dramatist by no means relished the idea, and raised 
endless objections, but Davidge was obdurate, and 
in the end the piece was written. The play, with the 
pig in the principal part, proved fairly successful, 
but at length the time arrived when it became neces- 
sary to withdraw it, and the question then arose, what 
should be done with the pig. ' Eat him,' bluntly 
suggested Jerrold, ' Toby's still young and succulent.' 
' Good heavens ! how can you propose such a thing ? ' 
rejoined the indignant manager. ' To eat one's 
benefactor would be the basest ingratitude — worse, 
indeed, than cannibalism. I couldn't swallow a 
mouthful even ! ' The dramatist, abashed by the 
reproof, made no reply. A few weeks afterwards 
Jerrold happened to call on Davidge at his private 

^ This is an error. The story appeared as " The 
Manager's Pig," in Cakes and Ale (1842). 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 99 

residence when the manager and his wife were dining. 
He was about to retire, but Mrs. Davidge pressed him 
to stay, coaxingly adding, ' I'm sure you'll not refuse 
when you know what we are to have for dinner.' 
Whereupon, raising a cover, she exposed to view an 
inviting hand of pickled pork in which a tolerable 
inroad had been made, remarking as she did so, ' It's 
a piece of your old friend Toby.' Jerrold could not 
conceal his surprise, and turning to Davidge ex- 
claimed, ' Et tu, Brute ! Why, only a fortnight ago 
you pretended you couldn't swallow a mouthful of 
your benefactor.' ' No more I could, sir,* urged 
Davidge, solemnly, ' if the animal hadn't been 
salted.' " 

A glance may be taken at the brief story 
and its attendant moral as set forth by the 
dramatist himself. Davidge, disguised under 
the name of Aristides Tinfoil, is described as 
intended by nature for lawn sleeves or ermined 
robes. He " might have preached charity 
sermons, till tears should have flowed and flowed 
again : no matter; he acted the benevolent 
old man to the sobs and spasms of a crowded 
audience. He might with singular efficacy 
have passed sentence of death on coiners and 
sheep-stealers ; circumstances, however, con- 
fined his mild reproofs to scene-shifters, bill- 
stickers, Cupids at one shilling per night, and 
white muslin Graces." In his account of the 
interview between the dramatist and the 
manager Jerrold gives further indications of 
the character of his employer and also has a 
sly hit at some of the dramatic customs of the 



100 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

time. We can imagine that it is the retained 
author and the actor-manager of the Coburg 
who are taking part in the dialogue : 

" The pig was no sooner a member of the company 
than the household author was summoned by Tinfoil, 
who, introducing the man of letters to the porker, 
shortly intimated that ' he must write a part for 
him.' 

" ' For a pig, sir? ' exclaimed the author. 

" ' Measure him,' said Tinfoil, not condescending 
to notice the astonishment of the dramatist. 

" ' But, my dear sir, it is impossible that * 

" ' Sir ! impossible is a word which I cannot allow 
in my establishment. By this time, sir, you ought 
to know that my will, sir, is sufficient for all things, 
sir — that, in a word, sir, there is a great deal of 
Napoleon about me, sir.' 

" We must submit that the dramatist ought not 
to have forgotten the last interesting circumstance, 
Mr. Tinfoil himself very frequently recurring to it. 
Indeed, it was only an hour before, that he had 
censured the charwoman for having squandered a 
whole sack of saw-dust on the hall floor when half 
a sack was the allotted quantity. ' He, Mr. Tinfoil, 
had said half a sack ; and the woman knew, or ought 
to know, there was a good deal of Napoleon about 
him 1 ' To return to the pig. 

" ' Measure him, sir,' cried Mr. Tinfoil, the deepen- 
ing tones growling through his teeth, and his finger 
pointing still more emphatically downwards to the 

pig- 

" ' Why,' observed the author, ' if it could be 

measured, perhaps- 



(( I 



If it could ! Sir,' and Mr. Tinfoil, when at all 
excited trolled the monosyllable with peculiar energy — 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 101 

' Sir, I wouldn't give a straw for a dramatist who 
couldn't measure the cholera morbus.' 

" ' Much may be done for an actor by measuring,' 
remarked the dramatist, gradually falling into the 
opinion of his employer. 

" ' Everything, sir ! Good heavens ! what might 
I not have been, had I condescended to be measured ? 
Human nature, sir — the divine and glorious char- 
acteristic of our common being, sir — that is the thing, 
sir, by heavens ! sir, when I think of that great 
creature, Shakespeare, sir, and think that he never 
measured actors — no, sir ' 

" ' No, sir,' acquiesced the dramatist. 

" ' Notwithstanding, sir, we live in other times, sir ; 
and you must write a part for the pig, sir.' 

" ' Very well, sir ; if he must be measured, sir, he 
must,' said the author. 

" ' It's a melancholy thing to be obliged to succumb 
to the folly of the day,' remarked Mr. Tinfoil ; ' and 
yet, sir, I could name certain people, sir, who, by 
heavens ! sir, would not have a part to their backs, 
sir, if they had not been measured for it, sir. Let 
me see : it is now three o'clock — well, some time 
to-night, you'll let me have the piece for the pig, sir.' " 

The pig performed, as we have seen before, 
and — having been salted — was eaten by the 
manager. Jerrold was not the writer to let 
slip such an opportunity for sarcasm, and the 
last few lines of the story are distinctly char- 
acteristic. 

*' Of how many applications is this casuistry of the 
manager susceptible ? 

" ' When, sir,' cried the pensioned patriot, ' I swore 



102 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

that no power in the universal world could make me 
accept a favour at the hands of such men — I meant — * 

" Unless salted ! 

" How often is it with men's principles, as with the 
manager's pig ; things inviolable, immutable — unless 
salted ! " 

As may be gathered from the above the 
relations of Jerrold and Davidge were not of 
the most cordial, and it is by no means sur- 
prising that they quarrelled and parted. The 
pig-play, if it was ever an actuality, is un- 
traceable. 



CHAPTER IV 

" BLACK-EYED SUSAN " 

1829-1830 

It has already been said that the common 
story which tells us of the way in which 
Douglas Jerrold changed from being drama- 
tist-to-order to Davidge at the Coburg Theatre 
to being dramatist-to-order at the Surrey 
Theatre is more dramatic than true ; that the 
legend which tells us how Jerrold quarrelled 
with Davidge, and with the manuscript of 
Blacfc-Eyed Susan in his pocket went and 
interviewed Elliston, and so had the play 
produced at the Surrey, is demonstrably 
inaccurate. It was in November 1828, as 
we have seen, that the last of the Coburg 
series of pieces was produced. It was not 
until May of the following year that Black- 
Eyed Susan was written, and June before it 
made its appearance at the rival house — and 
it was preceded there by two other of Jerrold's 
plays. 

" Magnificent were thy capriccios, on this 
globe of earth, Robert William Elliston ! " 
Thus Charles Lamb apostrophized the actor- 
manager with whom for a time Douglas 
Jerrold was to be associated. Leigh Hunt 

103 



104 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

declared that EUiston was the only genius that 
had in his time approached to the greatness of 
Garrick. But by 1829 Elliston was nearing 
the end of a remarkable career, which cannot 
here be dealt with at any length. His seven 
years' management of Drury Lane which 
ended in bankruptcy in 1826— he is said to 
have sacrificed his own fortune of £30,000 
to the interests of the proprietors — had been 
marked with some incidents not usual in the 
running of a theatre. For example, on Octo- 
ber 26, 1824, he was summoned to the Sheriffs' 
Court for knocking down one of his actors, 
W. H. Williams. Elliston admitted the assault, 
apologized and expressed his willingness to 
pay the costs, and so the unseemly incident 
closed; but in May of the next year he 
committed another assault on Poole the 
dramatist, and had to pay a heavy sum in 
damages.^ In the following August he suffered 
from an epileptic or other attack which, as 
his biographer put it, left him " a helpless, 
decrepit, tottering old man " (his years were 
then but fifty-one). About this time there 
was a fierce attack on him in Oxberry's 
Dramatic Biography, while in one of the 
theatrical journals appeared the following — 
which in these days would surely be con- 
strued as libellous — " A correspondent asks 

^ In 1812, too, during his earlier occupancy of the Surrey 
Theatre, he had had a row with an actor, De Camp, which 
had led to a meeting on Dulwich Common on September 9, 
and an exchange of shots. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 105 

why Dowton, Mrs. Davison, Miss Kelly and 
Mrs. Fitzwilliam are not at Drury ? — He had 
better ask the sapient manager. N.B. — Sober 
from 12 till 2 — so says report." 

Elliston's temper, his egotism and his 
habits, were frequently and freely touched 
upon in the theatrical periodicals. In 1813 
(during his first occupancy of the Surrey) the 
following " Intelligence Extraordinary " ap- 
peared in one of these papers : " Mr. Elliston 
has been observed during the past month to 
converse for ten minutes together, without 
mentioning himself or the Surrey Theatre 1 " 

The late Joseph Knight, summing him up,^ 
said not unfairly, " few actors have occupied 
a more important place than Elliston, and 
few have exhibited more diversified talent 
or a more perplexing individuality. In the 
main he was an honest, well-meaning man. 
His weakness in the presence of temptation 
led him into terrible irregularities ; his animal 
spirits and habits of intoxication combined 
made him the hero of the most preposterous 
adventures; and his assumption of dignity, 
and his marvellous system of puffing, cast 
upon one of the first of actors a reputation 
not far from that of a ' charlatan.' " 

It was in 1826 that Elliston's rule at 
Drury Lane came to an end, and he retired 
on that transpontine house of which he had 
been lessee earlier in the century, and the 
name of which he had changed from the 
1 In the Dictionary of National Biography. 



106 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

Royal Circus to the Surrey Theatre. On 
April 16, 1827, it was announced that he 
would shortly open the Surrey. It was just 
two years later that Jerrold engaged himself 
at a weekly salary of five pounds to write 
such pieces as were required as often as they 
were needed ; and on Easter Monday (April 
20), 1829, his first play was produced at the 
Surrey. This was a three-act drama, John 
Overy, the Miser of Southwark Ferry, the only 
female character in which, the Miser's 
daughter, was acted by Mrs. Fitzwilliam,^ 
whose brother, William Robert Copeland, had 
somewhere about this time married Douglas 
Jerrold's sister Elizabeth. In this part she 
was described as appearing to great advantage, 
her acting being spirited, unaffected and 
deeply interesting. In characters of romance 
or passion she was said to be excelled by 
but one of her contemporaries, Fanny Kelly. 
The story on which John Overy is founded 
was thus summarized by George Daniel in 
the remarks-introductory which he wrote for 
an edition of the play : One John Overy, a 
miser, who lived about the eleventh century, 
rented the ferry of Southwark, before a bridge 
was built across the Thames. Flattering 
himself that his apprentices would volun- 
teer one fast, should a master so munificent 
be gathered to his fathers, he counterfeited 
death, and suffered himself to be laid out; 

^ Fanny Elizabeth Copeland had in 1822 married the 
actor Edward Fitzwilliam. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 107 

hoping by this expedient to snatch at least 
one scanty meal from the mouths of his 
cormorants. But he sadly miscalculated ; 
for his apprentices, conceiving the death of 
a ravenous old miser a matter for especial 
rejoicing, resolved to make a night of it; 
in furtherance of which they stormed the 
cupboard, which so terrified the ferryman, 
that he started up from his bier, grinning 
ghastly horrible at their merriment ; when one 
of the roysterers, taking the grim intruder 
for a ghost, struck him with the butt end of 
an oar, and made a ghost of him in reality ! 
His daughter Mary wrote to her lover the 
glad tidings ; whereupon he instantly took 
horse for London, but on his way thither was 
thrown from his steed, and killed. Mary 
sought consolation in a monastery, on which 
she bestowed the miser's gold ; and the monks, 
to reward her piety, canonized her, built a 
church and gave it her name; which church, 
says the record, is known as St. Mary Overy 
to this day. " And the bricks are alive at 
this day to testify, therefore deny it not." 

The dramatist took from the legendary 
story but a hint for his play. He followed 
the legend in making the miser's feigned 
death lead to death's actuality, but added a 
romantic love interest, and in due course a 
happy ending. The author was taken to 
task for making his miser's " passion for 
wealth overcome his regard for his daughter's 
virtue, a circumstance which, however natural 



108 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

in a wretch so sordid, is better avoided on 
the stage." The chief merit of the play was 
thought to lie in its language " written in 
praiseworthy emulation of the old comedy," 
and some of the dialogue of the minor char- 
acters is distinguished by that ready-tongued 
liveliness which marked even the less note- 
worthy of its author's pieces. 

Overy, in a speech of bitter satire, tells 
how it was that he was driven to miserliness : 
*' I have walked the world with eyes of man- 
hood nearly twoscore years, and what have 
I seen ? They call me miser, hang-dog, 
grey-haired wolf — it pleases me they should 
do so ; — the world ! there was a time when 
I looked upon it with a melting eye — a 
throbbing heart; I painted it a garden of 
flowers — I found it a heap of ashes. What 
did I see ? The weak smote down, and goaded 
by the strong — virtue shivering in the winds 
— vice swathed in ermine; — the knave's head 
plumed and glistening with diamonds — poor 
honesty shoeless and unbonneted; he, whose 
tongue gave utterance to his heart, shunned 
like a pestilence, or hunted like a beast — he, 
who would lick the hand of fools or hum a 
lie within the ear of crime, clothed with the 
richest — fed with the best. I saw this, and 
my heart grew hard, my eye sullen; I asked 
the cause of so much baseness, so much 
unmerited contempt ? — I asked, what is it, 
that gets up these mockeries of life, dividing 
man against man — placing fetters on the 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 109 

lowly and crowns upon the proud ? — A thou- 
sand voices answered ' Gold ! gold ! ' The 
sound sunk deeply in my heart — I brooded 
o'er the word; — every feeling, every sense, 
fell down and mutely worshipped the new- 
found secret : from that moment I became 
what I now am." 

John Overy is a hopeless miser, he sends 
his orphaned grandchild away rather than 
feed him, he takes money, hoping to make yet 
more, by handing over his daughter to villains, 
and he shams death rather than spend money 
(which has been given him for the purpose) 
on a feast to welcome his long-separated 
brother — and, as in the legend, that shamming 
of death leads to his murder by those who 
are attempting to steal his hoard. The 
story — as well as the dialogue — smacks of 
seventeenth-century comedy. 

The success of John Overy must have been 
alike gratifying to Jerrold and to Elliston, 
and seemed to augur well for the connection 
of the former with the Surrey Theatre. The 
manager's appreciation of the dramatist's work 
— appreciation no doubt fostered by the help 
that John Overy had been to the Surrey 
treasury — is to be seen in the following 
extract from a letter which he wrote to T. P. 
Cooke, on May 19, 1829 : 

" I am sorry to tell you that our friend Ball's 
piece proved in my mind a complete failure. Mrs. 
Cooke read it, and thought with me, that the part 



110 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

intended for you was by no means of that description 
that could have placed [you] in a prominent point of 
view. Jerrold is now about the first piece which 
is to be called Black-Eyed Susan ; or, All in the 
Downs, an admirable title, and I have strong hopes 
that the writing will be equally good, for I think 
that he is the most rising Dramatist that we 
have." 

In that letter we have the first mention of 
the play that was entirely to restore the for- 
tunes of the Surrey and of EUiston, that was 
to bring large sums to T. P. Cooke and to 
establish his lasting fame as an actor of sailor 
parts. A notable thing about the letter is 
that it shows that the title of Black-Eyed 
Susan was a happy afterthought, for Elliston 
had first written it as Sweet Poll of Plymouth ; 
or, All in the Downs, then crossed out the first 
four words and written in the now familiar 
name. 

Two days after Elliston had sent that letter 
to Cooke he produced a second play of Jerrold's 
in the form of a two-act farce, Law and Lions. 
The piece opens with a quarrel between 
Mammoth, linkman and would-be naturalist, 
and his wife — a Mrs. Malaprop of low life — 
in which the latter declares that he must get 
rid of his " rubbish " or she will stay with 
him no longer. Mammoth exclaims : " Rub- 
bish ! I must tell you, Mrs. Mammoth, that 
I'll keep what I like — spiders, cockchafers, 
black-beetles, white mice, bats, guinea-pigs, 
hedgehogs and butterflies — and I'll have all 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 111 

stuffed, and when you die I'll have you 



No, the company of a lifetime is enough for 
both parties." After further words, Mrs. 
Mammoth says indignantly, " Ignorant fellow, 
I leave you to your spiders and hedgehogs 
and museum. And now, sir, think your wife 
is dead." " A leaf from ' The Pleasures of 
Hope,' " murmurs the husband. 

This couple have a poet-lodger. Epic, who 
has settled his bill by providing Mammoth 
with a monody on the death of a piebald 
cockchafer, a welcome to a newly-caught mer- 
maid, a congratulatory ode on the birth of 
three guinea-pigs, and, as the man of animals 
adds to his wife, " the best bit yet — he has 
thrown in your epitaph as a makeweight." 
Epic, who is desirous of going to the Opera 
House masquerade, and does so by borrowing 
an officer's uniform which leads to a pretty 
tangle, says feelingly that : "A pen is very 
well for an amateur author, who has naught 
to do but spoil gilt-edge paper and make the 
nonsense-tracing engine a toothpick ; but when 
poverty transforms it into a fork, it is being 
fed with iron, indeed." 

There are many lively sallies in the dialogue, 
marriage being specially made the subject 
of satire : 

" They say a parson first invented gun- 
powder, but I never believed it till I was 
married." 

" Married happiness is a glass ball ; folks 
play with it during the honeymoon, till falling, 



112 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

it is shivered to pieces, and the rest of hfe is 
a wrangle as to who broke it." 

" Would you break the woman's heart, 
sir? " '* Sir, I am not a stonemason ! " 

" I'm determined to punish him. How 
would you have me proceed ? " " Let him 
marry her by all means." 

Thus it is seen that Douglas Jerrold probably 
left the exacting employ of Davidge before 
the close of 1828, did not begin his con- 
nection with the Surrey Theatre until the 
following Easter, and had two plays produced 
there before the writing of Black-Eyed Susan 
was finished; therefore the picturesque story 
of his quarrelling with one manager and with 
the manuscript play in his pocket going straight 
to that manager's rival is nothing more than 
a pleasant embroidering of facts. 

In the middle of May we learn from Elliston's 
letter that " the most rising dramatist " was 
only " about " Black- Eyed Susan, which the 
manager had plainly not then seen. Re- 
hearsal in those days of stock companies 
must have followed close upon completion, and 
production hard upon rehearsal. On Tuesday, 
May 19, the author was still writing it — on the 
following Monday fortnight it was produced.^ 
Elliston appears to have been satisfied that 
the writing would be good, and to have an- 
nounced the Easter Monday piece with a 

^ The Harlequin for May 30, 1829, announced : "Among 
the holiday novelties at the Surrey Theatre will be the 
dear doleful tale of Black-Eyed Susan." 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 113 

flourish of trumpets so confident that Davidge, 
obviously still smarting from Jerrold's de- 
fection, promptly staged a play at his theatre 
with the same title— a piece, however, which 
was dismissed by one of the critics as not likely 
to benefit either the manager or the public; 
another added to his notice of the Surrey 
performance : "A play-bill war has been 
carried on with great acrimony between the 
proprietors of this theatre and those of the 
Coburg, on account of the latter having taken 
advantage of the announcement of Black-Eyed 
Susan by bringing out a piece under that 
name." In another of the dramatic ephemerae 
of the hour is the following : " We perceive 
by a long paragraph printed in red in the 
Surrey bills, that a violent warfare has sprung 
up between that and the Coburg Theatre . . . 
the paragraph to which we allude is very 
cutting; but we hope no more blood will be 
spilt about the matter than has been used for 
printing this piece of stage thunder." 

On the first-night bill of the play a typo- 
graphical " fist " drew attention to the words : 
" It will perhaps be necessary to state, that 
this Piece has been for some weeks in prepara- 
tion, and that its announcement was taken 
advantage of by another establishment, which, 
in pirating the title of Black-Eyed Susan, has 
committed a contemptible and unprincipled 
infringement on private property." 

The curious fact is that the title was not 
a new one at all, having been affixed to a piece 

VOL. I I 



114 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

brought out at one of the minor theatres 
nearly sixteen years before.^ 

Endless are the stories told of Elliston, but 
one may well be repeated, as it arose out of 
this play-bill warfare over Jerrold's drama. 
It was recorded a few years later. During 
the course of the feud, Davidge had occasion 
to send a message to Elliston regarding some 
private transaction. " I come from Mr. 
Davidge of the Coburg Theatre," exclaimed 
the messenger. Elliston listened imper- 
turbably; the words were repeated. "Davidge 
— Coburg Theatre — Coburg — I don't re- 
member " " Sir," said the messenger, "Mr. 

Davidge here, of the Coburg close by." " Aye, 
aye," replied Robert William, " very likely, it 
may be all as you say; I'll take your word, 
young man ; I suppose there is such a theatre 
as the Coburg, and such a man as the Davidge, 
but this is the first time I ever heard the name 
of either." And striding off, the manager left 



^ This is shown by the following extract from the 
Theatrical Inquisitor for February 1813 : " Sans Pareil — 
The performances at this little theatre still continue to 
attract and amuse very respectable audiences. Miss 
Scott's industry has produced Black-Eyed Susan; or, 
Davy Jones'' Locker, a comic pantomime." Notice of 
another of Miss Scott's pieces produced at the Sans Pareil 
said that had the play been given at one of the patent 
houses it would have established her reputation as one 
of the leading dramatists. The present Adelphi Theatre 
was at one time known as Scott's, possibly the same 
house had been yet earlier the Sans Pareil, later to 
become known as Scott's Theatre, and later still as the 
Adelphi. It was at the Adelphi that Black-Eyed Susan 
was last staged, with William Terriss in the part of William. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 115 

the astonished message-bearer to recover his 
amazement as best he might. ^ 

It was on Whit-Monday, June 8, 1829, that 
Black-Eyed Susan made her first appearance 
at the Surrey Theatre. Influenced possibly 
by the Coburg failure, the public received the 
new piece, according to one account, in but a 
half-hearted manner. 

" The audience were hot and noisy, almost through- 
out the evening. Now and then, in a lull, the seeds 
of wit intrusted by the author to the gardener 
(Gnatbrain) were loudly appreciated; but the early 
scenes of Susan's ' heartrending woe ' could not 
appease the clamour. By and bye came the clever 
denouement when, just previously to the execution, 
the captain enters with a document proving William 
to h&ve been discharged when he committed the 
offence. The attentive few applauded so loudly as 
to silence the noisy audience. They listened and 
caught up the capitally managed incident. The 
effect was startling and electrical. The whole audi- 
ence leaped with joy and rushed into frantic enthusi- 
asm. Such was the commencement of the career 
of a drama which, in theatrical phrase, has brought 
more money to manager and actor than any piece 
of its class; but to its author a sort of sic vos non 
vobis result." 

That account was written long after the 
event, and seems to have had something of 
exaggeration, judging by the brief contempo- 
rary notices of the production of the play. 

* " Records of a Stage Veteran," New Monthly Maga- 
zine, December 1835. 



116 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

One of those notices, after summarizing the 
story, suggested that it was the parting scene 
between the condemned WilHam and his dis- 
tracted Susan which touched the audience so 
as to stamp the piece a success. T. P. Cooke, 
indeed, scored an instant triumph with WilHam, 
his performance being described from the first 
as a fine, natural piece of acting, while the 
part of Susan was adequately sustained by 
Miss Scott. The novelty was but the first 
piece of three— a " triple bill " was at that 
time the rule at many of the theatres— being 
followed by the same author's farce of The 
Smoked Miser, " to the great gratification of 
the galleries," said one of the critics, while 
*'the Pilot concluded the entertainment." 

The " bill " for the first evening was headed 
in bold letters, "First Night of Mr. T. P. 
Cooke in an entirely new nautical piece," and 
went on : " Whit-Monday, June 8, 1829, and 
during the Week, will be presented (Never 
Acted) an entirely new Nautical and Domestic 
Melodrama (by the author of Bampfylde Moore 
Carew, Ambrose Gwinett, Law and Lions, and 
John Overy), founded on the popular naval 
ballad, and entitled Black-Eyed Susan ; or, 
All in the Downs ! " Beneath this, an incident 
in the play-bill warfare with the Coburg, came 
the dig at Davidge, already quoted. 

Owing but its title to Gay's long-popular 
song, Sweet William's Farewell to Black-Eyed 
Susan, this three-act nautical drama renders 
a simply planned story in a dramatic fashion. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 117 

William returns from a voyage to find his wife 
Susan in difficulties owing to her uncle Dog- 
grass, the landlord of the cottage where she 
lives with old Dame Hatley, threatening to 
turn them out if the rent is not paid. Doggrass 
has certain dealings with the smugglers, one 
of whom has set his eyes on Susan and trumps 
up a tale of William's death. Then the fleet 
arrives off Deal, and William comes to the 
cottage at the very moment that Susan is 
being told he is dead. When the sailors are 
merrymaking they learn that they must be 
aboard again the same night. The captain 
of William's ship in an intoxicated state 
assaults Susan and is struck down by William, 
who arrives opportunely. Then comes the 
court martial on William for striking an officer 
he is found guilty, is sentenced, and about to 
be hanged when the Captain rushes on, crying, 
" If the prisoner be executed he is a murdered 
man ! " William had applied for his discharge 
and the necessary document had been kept 
back by the villainy of Doggrass, so that when 
he struck Captain Crosstree he was no longer 
in the King's service. It is a simple, tender 
story, but with naturally dramatic moments, 
to which generations of theatre-goers have 
readily responded. 

The dialogue is neat, pointed, but on the 
whole natural, much of the lighter talk coming 
from Dolly Mayflower, the only other woman 
character, and her lover Gnatbrain — " a half- 
gardener, half-waterman — a kind of alligator 



118 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

that gets his breakfast from the shore, and his 
dinner from the sea." The opening scene is 
a sparring match between Gnatbrain and 
Doggrass : 

" Doggrass. Tut ! if you're inclined to preach, 
here is a milestone — I'll leave you in its company. 

Gnatbrain. Ay, it's all very well — very well; — but 
you have broken poor Susan's heart — and as for 
William 

Dog. What of him ? 

Gnat. The sharks of him for what you care. Didn't 
you make him turn sailor and leave his young wife, 
the little, delicate, black-eyed Susan, that pretty 
piece of soft-speaking womanhood, your niece? — 
Now, say, haven't you qualms ? On a winter's 
night, now, when the snow is drifting at your door, 
what do you do ? 

Dog. Shut it. 

Gnat. What, when in your bed, you turn upon one 
side at the thunder ? 

Dog. Turn round on the other. Will you go on 
with your catechism ? 

Gnat. No, I'd rather go and talk to the echoes. 
A fair day to you. Master Doggrass ! — If your 
conscience 

Dog. Conscience ! — phoo ! my conscience sleeps 
well enough. 

Gnat. Sleeps I don't wake it — it might alarm you. 

Dog. One word with you; no more of your advice 
— I go about like a surly bull, and you a gadfly 
buzzing around me. From this moment throw off 
the part of counsellor. 

Gnat. But, don't you see 

Dog. Don't you see these trees growing about us ? 

Gnat. Very well. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 119 

Dog. If a cudgel were cut from them for every 
knave who busies himself in the business of others — 
don't you think it would mightily open the prospect ? 

Gnat. Perhaps it might. And don't you think 
that if every hard-hearted, selfish rascal that destroys 
the happiness of others, were strung up to the boughs 
before they were cut for cudgels, it would, instead of 
opening the prospect, mightily darken it ? 

Dog. I have given you warning — take heed ! take 
heed ! and with this counsel I give you a good day 
{Exit.) 

Gnat. Ay, it's the only good thing you can give; 
and that, only good, because it's not your own. The 
rascal has no more heart than a bagpipe ; one could 
sooner make Dover cliffs dance a reel to a penny 
whistle, than move him with words of pity or distress. 
No matter, let the old dog bark, his teeth will not 
last for ever — and I yet hope to see the day, when 
poor black-eyed Susan, and the jovial sailor, William, 
may defy the surly cur that has divided them." 

Doggrass is the villain of the piece, and 
when he is drowned in his eagerness to hear of 
William's execution nobody is distressed, especi- 
ally as his drowning is the means of William's 
escape at the last moment. Though William 
himself is made to patter sailor's talk — his 
every sentence is compact of sea terms — ^there 
are some strong scenes in which he plays a 
part, and it is not surprising that several 
bluff and hearty actors after the days of 
T. P. Cooke sought to win fresh laurels by 
impersonating him; his parting with Susan, 
his trial at the court martial, his distribution 
of souvenirs to his shipmates, are all strongly 



120 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

dramatic scenes. In the original cast it may 
be said that John Baldwin Buckstone took 
the part of the lively Gnatbrain. 

The fortunes of the play are worth following, 
for if its success did not greatly enrich the 
author it created in modern parlance some- 
thing of a new theatrical " record." Despite 
the first night's applause with which William's 
parting from Susan and the dramatic denoue- 
ment when the tense feeling of tragedy is 
relieved as Captain Crosstree rushes on with 
"When William struck me he was not the King's 
sailor — I was not his officer," were received, 
it is recorded that the play did not for the 
first few days inspire anything like the popu- 
larity it was shortly after to win. Indeed, 
writing to a friend in the following year, 
Elliston declared that he played Black-Eyed 
Susan for forty-seven nights to a loss — though 
he added that since then he had cleared five 
thousand pounds by it ! 

In Moncrieff's Ellistoniana it is recorded 
that the following anecdote was current about 
this play : " The first night the house was not 
half full, and its success anything but positive. 
The following morning a theatrical friend, 
calling on Robert William, inquired how 
his Black-Eyed Susan had gone off. ' All 
in the Downs, ^ hummed the light-hearted 
manager, gaily laughing at fortune. Visiting 
him some time afterwards, the same theatrical 
friend found our comedian in high glee, enjoy- 
ing himself over a bottle of black-strap. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 121 

* Well, Elliston,' said he, ' how is Black- 
Eyed Susan going on now ? " All in the 
Downs " still, I suppose, for I see you are in 
port.' ' No, sir,' said Elliston, triumphantly, 

* you are wrong. We have at last set sail ; the 
tide of popular opinion is set in in our favour, 
and with a fair wind, I have little doubt of 
making a speedy and prosperous voyage.' 
' No doubt, no doubt,' returned the friend, 
who was a bit of a wag, ' I ought to have 
known you had set sail, that the wind was 
auspicious, and the tide with you, for I see you 
are more than half seas over already.' " 

It is recorded of John Bannister, the witty 
comedian, that in his age he watched with 
interest the progress of rising performers, and 
paid the warmest tribute to their merits. In 
fact, the drama still continued to be his 
passion; the prosperity of theatres and the 
success of players always affording him the 
highest gratification. '' I remember," said 
Bannister's biographer, " when he called on me 
one morning, he said, ' I went to the Surrey 
Theatre last night ; I saw Black-Eyed Susan ; 
and egad, at my age, and with my experience 
in the dramatic way, I was ashamed to find 
myself every now and then wiping my eyes; 
but that T. P. Cooke ! — his playing, his feeling, 
his perfect sailor-like manner, his appearance, 
his dancing ! Oh, it was delightful all the 
way through ! And it really was a pretty 
black-eyed girl that acted Susan.' " 

Whether the success was immediate or for 



122 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

a while delayed, there seems some conflict of 
testimony, but the final triumph was certain. 
Started early in June it continued to draw such 
good houses that on the last day of November 
it was brought out at Covent Garden as well 
and *' most rapturously applauded." 

" All London went over the water, and Cooke 
became a personage in society, as Garrick had been 
in the days of Goodman's Fields. Covent Garden 
borrowed the play and engaged the actor for an 
after-piece. A hackney cab carried the triumphant 
William, in his blue jacket and white trousers, from 
the Obelisk to Bow Street, and Mayfair maidens wept 
over the stirring situations and laughed over the 
searching dialogue, which had moved, an hour 
before, the tears and merriment of the Borough. 
On the three hundredth night of representation, the 
walls of the theatre were illuminated, and vast 
multitudes filled the thoroughfares. When subse- 
quently reproduced at Drury Lane, it kept off ruin 
for a time even from that magnificent misfortune. 
Actors and managers throughout the country reaped 
a golden harvest." ^ 

It seems, however, to have been T. P. Cooke's 
confidence in the play rather than the confi- 
dence of the Covent Garden management which 
led to this experiment, for the actor gave his 
services gratuitously for six nights, and was 
justified in so doing, for a good " run " of the 
piece at Covent Garden — and it was again 
and again " in the bills " there until January 
1833 — accompanied that at the Surrey. It was 

^ Hepworth Dixon, the Athenceum, 1857. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 123 

only " William " who appeared at both houses ; 
at Covent Garden his " Susan " was Miss 
Ellen Tree, who later married Charles Kean. 

Covent Garden was but a step in the success 
of the piece, for already it had been taken to 
audiences far from London, so that it would 
seem that Elliston was exaggerating when he 
said that he had played it to a loss for forty- 
seven nights. On August 12, Black-Eyed 
Susan was given at Norwich during the 
Assize week, and in the same month there are 
records of its production at Cambridge, Liver- 
pool, Exeter, Newcastle, Dublin and Durham; 
it " redeemed the Plymouth Theatre from 
ruin, and put nearly a hundred pounds a week 
into the pockets of the Brighton manager." 
In December, while the play was being given 
at Covent Garden, a burlesque on it, Black- 
Eyed Sukey, was presented with great applause 
at the Olympic, and a year later, while it 
was again " on " at Covent Garden, it was 
being burlesqued just over the way in the 
pantomime of Davy Jones at Drury Lane, 
wherein Captain Crosstree, William and Black- 
Eyed Susan appeared, the part of Susan being 
acted by Wieland, celebrated by Douglas 
Jerrold in a pleasant essay as the very first 
of stage devils who made such more than a 
commonplace absurdity.^ 

1 Some Account of a Stage Devil (in the Brownrigg 
Papers). A passage in commendation of the German 
actor may be cited : " Wieland has evidently studied the 
attributes of the evil principle ; with true German pro- 
fundity, he has taken their length, and their depth, and 



124 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

In May 1830, it was announced in the 
Aihenceum that " Miss Clara Fisher has been 
performing Black-Eyed Susan to Mr. De 
Camp's William with distinguished success 
at Savannah," so that the play was not long 
in travelling very far afield. 

As one historian had summed it up, " the 
success of Black-Eyed Susan was, undoubtedly, 
very great, if not unprecedented ; and though 
it brought poor pecuniary profit to the author, 

their breadth, he has all the devil at his very finger ends, 
and richly deserves the very splendid silver-gilt horns and 
tail (manufactured by Rundell and Bridges) presented to 
him a few nights since by the company at the English Opera 
House ; presented with a speech from the stage-manager, 
which, or I have been grossly misinformed, drew tears 
from the eyes of the very sceneshifters. 

" Can anybody forget Wieland's devil in the Daughter 
of the Danube ? Never was there a more dainty bit of 
infernal nature. It lives in my mind like one of Hoffman's 
tales, a realization of the hero of the nightmare, a thing 
in almost horrible affinity with human passions. How 
he eyed the naiades, how he laughed and ogled, and 
faintingly approached, then wandered round the object of 
his demoniacal affections ! And then how he burst into 
action ! How he sprang, and leapt, and whirled, and, 
chuckling at his own invincible nature, spun like a teeto- 
tum at the sword of his baffled assailant ! And then his 
yawn and sneeze ! There was absolute poetry in them — 
the very highest poetry of the ludicrous : a fine imagina- 
tion to produce such sounds as part of the strange, wild, 
grotesque phantom — to give it a voice that, when we 
heard it, we felt to be the only voice such a thing could 
have. There is fine truth in the devils of Wieland. We 
feel that they live and have their being in the realms of 
fancy; they are not stereotype commonplaces, but most 
rare and delicate monsters, brought from the air, the 
earth, or the flood ; and wherever they are from, bearing 
in them the finest characteristics of their mysterious and 
fantastic whereabouts." 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 125 

it was of great service to him. Of Douglas 
Jerrold's popularity as a dramatist neither 
actor nor manager could rob him." The 
author's " pecuniary profit " was sixty pounds ! 
And a sixth of that was gained by selling the 
copyright of the piece. The result of such 
a dramatic success to-day would mean an 
independence for life for the lucky playwright. 
Small as was the gain to the dramatist him- 
self he was made still more bitterly to feel his 
position by the cool way in which the mag- 
nanimous Elliston on the three hundredth 
night of the piece — having illuminated the 
outside of the theatre as for a national festival 
— said to him, " My dear boy, why don't you 
get your friends to present you with a bit of 
plate ? " It never occurred to the Surrey 
autocrat that he, whose house had been saved 
from the verge of ruin by the new play, 
might have behaved more handsomely to 
the writer of it. But if Elliston himself 
did not show ordinary generosity in his treat- 
ment of his young dramatist, Elliston's bio- 
grapher did not even show common justice. 
Black-Eyed Susan is acknowledged in Ray- 
mond's Memoirs of the celebrated manager 
to have retrieved that manager's fortunes, yet 
the name of the author of the piece is studiously 
withheld ! Small wonder is it that as he grew 
up and wrested his position from the world in 
despite of such meanness and neglect that 
Douglas Jerrold frequently employed the 
armoury of his wit against those who controlled 



126 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

the theatres, as well as against those who 
kept them supplied with adaptations and 
translations from the French. Davidge, we 
have seen, was not spared by his youthful 
writer of plays, and Elliston, the bacchanalian, 
had his weaknesses no less incisively touched 
upon. It was during the rehearsal of Black- 
Eyed Susan that some important individual 
demanded instant audience of Elliston. He 
was informed that the manager could not be 
seen. 

" How is this ? " he exclaimed wrathfully. 
" I can see a duke or a prime minister any 
time in the morning, but I can never see 
Mr. Elliston." 

Jerrold, who heard the explosion, attempted 
to pacify the visitor by saying : " There's one 
comfort, if Elliston is invisible in the morning, 
he'll do the handsome thing any afternoon 
by seeing you twice, for at that time of day 
he invariably sees double." 

The full significance of the success of Black- 
Eyed Susan to the Surrey Theatre manage- 
ment may be gathered from the following 
passage from the Memoirs just referred to — 

" Elliston now played out the best and strongest 
card Fortune appeared to have dealt to him, in this 
his last mortal rubber of the Thespian game. Black- 
Eyed Susan was the honour in his hand, which sus- 
tained by the Jack (T. P. Cooke), occasioned him to 
rise, at the conclusion of the season, a considerable 
winner. This drama, however, for the first half- 
dozen nights, though much applauded, did not give 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 127 

promise of the extraordinary success which subse- 
quently attended it. On the second week of its 
representation, the piece rose Hke a rocket into the 
sky of public favour, and became, from that time, 
a blaze of popular admiration. The receipts now 
averaged five hundred pounds per week, out of which 
one hundred and fifty pounds clear fell on the profit 
side of the manager. Cooke's salary was sixty 
pounds per week, and half a clear benefit in every 
sixth week of the representation." 

For merely writing the piece Jerrold re- 
ceived the same amount of money that Cooke 
did for acting in it for one w^eek ! 

In the autumn of the following year (1830) 
when Black-Eyed Susan was revived at Covent 
Garden ^ with T. P. Cooke in his original part 
and Miss Cawse as Susan, George Daniel 
wrote in his Tatler notice the following amusing 
comment on the actor's name : " By the way, 
what are the Christian names of T. P. Cooke ? 
Is he Theophilus Philip, or Thomas Patterson, 
or what ? or is it necessary to the mystery of 
his reputation that he should always remain 
Mr. Tee Pee Cooke, as if he was Captain 
Cook's son by a Chinese wife. We have a 
grudge against these mysteries of initials. 
What is Miss EJf Aitch Kelly? and why is 
Mr. Farren Mr. Double U Farren ? We were 
in pain for the appellation of Miss H. Cawse, 

^ In June, 1831, Black-Eyed Susan was revived at the 
Surrey with Miss Scott in her original part, and was 
given simultaneously at the Queen's Theatre (with T. P. 
Cooke) and at the Coburg along with its author's Martha 
Willis. 



128 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

till we learnt her name was Harriett. Harriett 
is a good name, but Aitch was a vile precursor." 

Before leaving the subject of this play, the 
most popular of those traceable to Jerrold's 
pen, it may be as well to refer to another 
often-repeated error. It has frequently been 
stated in works of reference and elsewhere, 
that the famous nautical drama was written 
before its author was one-and-twenty. One 
authority, indeed, in one short paragraph in- 
cludes a second error with this, for we read 
in KnighVs Penny Encycloycedia that Jerrold's 
" first dramatic production, Black-Eyed Susan 
—the most popular drama of modern times or 
any time— was written before Mr. Jerrold had 
attained his twenty-first year." Thanks to 
Elliston's letter, we know that the play was 
not written until its author had completed 
his six-and-twentieth year, and it was so far 
from being his " first dramatic production " 
that it was the twenty-first of those that have 
proved traceable. This latter error may have 
been helped by the fact that Black-Eyed Susan 
was the earliest of his plays which Jerrold 
included many years later in his " Collected 
Writings." 

Following on the success of the nautical 
drama, and while it was enjoying a run then 
unprecedented in theatrical annals, Jerrold 
wrote other plays which Elliston duly produced 
at the Surrey. On July 13 of the same year 
— a month or so after the production of Black- 
Eyed Susan — was presented also a two-act 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 129 

melodrama, Vidocq, the French Police Spy, 
adapted for representation from the auto- 
biography of Vidocq, with T. P. Cooke in the 
title part. Here again the Coburg Theatre 
appears to have stolen a march upon the 
Surrey manager by producing a play with 
the same title a few days earlier. Though 
sufficiently successful to justify its publication, 
the play did not repeat the success of its 
predecessor. Vidocq, with his many disguises 
and sudden and surprising appearances, must 
have provided a capital part for T. P. Cooke, 
and the French master of deceit have afforded 
a strong contrast in characterization to the 
actor who was still appearing several times 
a week in the part of the frank and breezy 
British sailor William. 

The play is one of action rather than of 
dialogue, but an amusing scrap of the latter 
may be given where Vidocq escaped from the 
galleys, and disguised as a recruiting sergeant, 
patters to a mob to prevent suspicion falling 
on him. Indeed, he declares that he has just 
refused to enlist Vidocq, as " we have nothing 
in the army but prime picked honest fellows." 

" Vidocq. Now, silence ! Those gentlemen who 
would wish to make their fortunes let them listen to 
the offers of the Republic. You have heard of 
India ! soldiers are wanted for that best of all places 
— would you have gold, pearls, or diamonds ? The 
roads are paved with them — if you don't like to 
stoop for them, the savages will bring them to you ! 

Fanfan. Is this true ? 

VOL. I K 



130 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

Vidocq. True ! do I look like a man who would 
lie? 

All. No, no, no, it's all true — we believe the 
gentleman. 

Vidocq. Do you like women ? there they are of all 
colours, black, white, blue and yellow — you may have 
any one or all. 

Fanfan. Is this true ? 

Vidocq. True ! do I look like a man who would 
lie? 

All. No, no, no, we believe it. 

Vidocq. Do you love wine? there it is of all sorts 
— Malaga, Bordeaux, Champagne — no, I'll be honest 
with you, there is no Burgundy, it will not bear 
the voyage, but any other, at twopence, and sometimes 
nothing a bottle. Then for the fruits ! you can't 
walk without the pine-apples bumping upon your 
heads — can't sleep without the peaches dropping 
into your mouths — and for the oranges, why, you 
walk upon them. 

Fanfan. Is this true, do you think ? 

Vidocq. True ! do I look like a man who would 
tell a lie ? 

All. No, no, no. 

Vidocq. I know that if I were talking to women 
and children, I might enlarge upon the delicacies, 
but I am not, I am speaking to men who despise 
such things. People may tell you savages eat white 
men with salt — it's false, they don't. People may tell 
you stories about the yellow fever — all inventions. 
If the yellow fever were in India, would not the place 
be full of hospitals ? Now, I can tell you, there's 
not a single hospital there — isn't that convincing? 

All. Yes, yes. 

Vidocq. People will talk about mosquitoes and 
rattlesnakes. Won't you have black men to fan 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 131 

away the flies ? And as for the snakes, don't the 
rattles in their tails warn you to get out of the way ? 

Fanfan. Now is this true ? 

Vidocq. True 1 do I look like a man who would 
lie? 

All. No, no. 

Vidocq. Gentlemen, I don't want any of you to be 
led away by my discourse — go, go to India and satisfy 
yourselves. 

1st Recruit. I'll go. 

2nd R. And I. 

3rd R. And I. 

Vidocq. Come with me, then, gentlemen, come 
with me, and I'll enlist you in the service of the 
Republic. Three cheers for the Republic." 

Apart from the escapades of Vidocq, the 
only romantic story of the piece comes at the 
close, when a certain wealthy farmer's house 
is to be robbed, and the robbers include the 
seducer of the farmer's daughter, and should 
have included the farmer's errant son, only 
he becomes his sister's champion, and the play 
ends with a sensational picture in which the 
girl throws herself before her attacked lover, 
and the young man falls penitent at the feet 
of his father. As something of a topical 
piece — 2i piece the writing of which was presum- 
ably ordered by Elliston, owing to the brief 
popularity of Vidocq's supposed autobiography 
— it is a good and spirited dramatization of a 
series of episodes, but is not otherwise re- 
markable. 

In October came another play, one of those 
written to order because of the success at 



132 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

another theatre of a piece on the same theme. 
Elhston announced that on October 7 he 
would stage The Flying Dutchman — the same, 
presumably, as was then appearing at one of 
the patent houses — but when the night arrived 
he hastily substituted another play, and ap- 
peared before his audience to explain that this 
was rendered necessary owing to an injunction 
having been obtained to forbid him carrying 
out his promise ; but, he added, the patrons of 
the Surrey Theatre should not be disappointed, 
for in the following week he would produce 
another Flying Dutchman, which should be 
specially written by the author of Black-Eyed 
Susan. Eight days passed, and the play had 
been written, rehearsed, and was duly pro- 
duced on October 15. Then on November 3 
came another of his plays, The Lonely Man of 
Study, but of neither of these pieces are any 
particulars available. 

If the following strange story, which I owe 
to a cutting from an unnamed newspaper of 
over fifty years ago, be true, it was apparently 
shortly after the success of Black-Eyed Susan 
that Douglas Jerrold came to know that 
irresponsible man of many talents, William 
Maginn : 

Dr. Maginn's acquaintance with Jerrold 
commenced under singular circumstances. 
Douglas Jerrold, sitting one morning in Bald- 
win's ante-room, in New Bridge Street, London, 
Maginn came down from the editor's room 
and approached him with great frankness, and 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 133 

asked him how he did. Jerrold, who was of 
a retiring disposition, seeing a stranger accost 
him so intimately, shrank back a Uttle, and 
returned his inquiries with an air of distant 
civihty. '' Pooh, pooh ! " says Maginn; " my 
name is Maginn, and you are Jerrold, the 
author of Black-Eyed Susan ; and though not 
formally acquainted with one another we should 
be acquainted as brother writers and literary 
men; therefore, without any ceremony, will 
you sup with me at the British in Cockspur 
Street, to-night, where you will meet with 
half-a-dozen jolly dogs of the press, who, 
I think, will please you ? " Jerrold, admiring 
the frankness of the introduction, accepted 
the invitation, and met the Doctor at the 
appointed time. The party, which principally 
consisted of Sir John Hamilton, Bob Hamilton, 
Sir John Sinclair, and one or two editors, was, 
as Maginn predicted, quite agreeable to Jerrold, 
and the whisky-toddy was in the ascendant to 
a late hour in the morning. A little before 
the party separated Maginn went out of the 
room, and, in a few minutes afterwards, his 
voice was heard rather loud in the adjoining 
passage in conversation with Elemont, who 
then kept the British. Jerrold immediately 
flew to his new friend to inquire what was the 
matter, when Maginn, with great sang-froid, 
replied, " Oh, a mere trifle — this blackguard 
of a landlord has refused my note for the 
reckoning." " You forget at the same time," 
says Mr. Elemont, " to tell Mr. Jerrold that 



134 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

you owe me forty or fifty pounds already, 
which I cannot get a penny of ; and since you 
think proper to explain matters so publicly, 
I now tell you I will neither take your note 
nor your word any longer." " Well, well," 
says Jerrold, " let us have no words about it ; 
it is not the first time a gentleman wanted 
cash. Will you take my word for your bill ? " 
*' Certainly, and for as much as you like." 
" Ah, then," says Maginn, whispering to 
Elemont, " send in brandy and water all 
round and add it to the bill." The brandy 
and accompaniment were accordingly sent in. 
Jerrold pledged his word for the amount, and 
in a few days afterwards paid it. To the credit 
of Maginn he refunded the money to the 
author, although, from circumstances, a lapse 
of six years intervened between the loan and 
its repayment. 

Jerrold's words put into the mouth of a 
character in one of his plays, embodied 
advice, the usefulness of which he was to have 
brought home to him more than once : " Give 
a friend your hand as often as you like — but 
never, never, let there be a pen in it." 
When Punch started his first almanack, 
Maginn, who died in the second year of the 
paper and was never on the staff, is believed 
to have been enlisted as a helper, though one 
account says that that almanack was entirely 
the joint work of Henry May hew and H. P. 
Grattan. 



CHAPTER V 

" THOMAS 1 BECKET " AND " THE DEVIL's 
DUCAT " 

1829-1831 

The success of Black-Eyed Susan was of great 
assistance to its author in helping him forward 
in his career, by placing the stages of the 
" patent houses " within easier reach of his 
pen; and before the close of the year he had 
plays in hand for both Drury Lane and Covent 
Garden. The dramatist had removed from 
Seymour Street, St. Pancras, and was living 
at this time at No. 4 Augustus Square, near 
Regent's Park — " a small two-storied, countri- 
fied cottage at the junction of Park Village and 
Augustus Street " — and was getting through 
a considerable amount of miscellaneous writing 
and journalistic work as well as supplying 
manager Elliston with pieces as required. He 
had a young family of three children, the eldest 
of whom was but four, so that had not ambi- 
tion been sufficient to spur him forward the 
necessity of providing for the home would 
have been enough effectually to do so. Within 
four or five months after the production of 
the popular nautical drama but three pieces, 
so far as is now ascertainable, were required 

135 



136 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

from Jerrold's pen, and the writer was thus 
enabled to concentrate his powers upon a 
more ambitious task. He was meditating a 
higher flight than he had previously attempted ; 
was at work upon a piece dealing with one 
of the most dramatic periods of English 
history. 

On the thirtieth of November Thomas a 
Becket, a historical play in five acts, was 
produced at the Surrey Theatre, and was so 
very well received as to afford much gratifica- 
tion to the author— the " little Shakespeare 
in a camlet cloak " as his friend Laman 
Blanchard dubbed him. This was the most 
ambitious piece of work which its author had 
essayed, and some passages from the preface 
to the rare first edition (it is not in the British 
Museum and the preface is not given in later 
issues) may be quoted : 

" The reader will, on a perusal of this drama, 
perceive that, whilst it has been the aim of the 
dramatist rigidly to follow the great marks laid down 
by history, he has, in a few instances, been compelled 
to take some slight liberties with the less prominent 
facts connected with the story of his high-minded 
yet arrogant hero. It has been the chief purpose of 
the writer to delineate the character, in all its various 
modifications, of Thomas a Becket. ... It has been 
necessary to introduce several characters of fiction, 
for the more varied conduct of the drama. Still, 
there may be some to complain of a want of theatrical 
interest in the play. History is not to be degraded 
or sported with by an impertinent alloy of invention, 
or it would have been easy to make I^ng Henry II 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 137 

fall in love with and wed a swineherd's daughter, 
and the Archbishop of Canterbury to pronounce an 
oration at the monarch's nuptials. What is often 
thoughtlessly called for as " interest " (the commodity 
abounding in French melodramas), becomes absurd- 
ity, if wrought at the expense of truth or probability. 
The writer conceives that the dramatist who succeeds 
in justly delineating the feelings and passions of a great 
historical character, and in giving a correct view of 
his mind, working out one paramount object — is 
certain of the voices of the reflecting and may hear 
with a smile of indifference the crude objections of 
the superficial. 

" Perhaps the whole range of English history does 
not offer to the dramatist a more tempting, and withal 
a more arduous subject, than the life of Thomas k 
Becket. . . . Mr. Rumball, to whom was assigned 
the very arduous task of representing Thomas k 
Becket, acquitted himself so as to impose a great 
debt of obligation on the writer. The actor showed 
the character alternately dignified and impassioned — 
begetting in audiences, ' albeit unused ' to five act 
histories, a respect and approbation highly flattering 
to the capabilities of the performer. There are some 
auditories from whom even an attentive silence may 
be received as no mean mark of commendation." 

The closing words suggest that the Surrey 
audience was less demonstratively appreciative 
than were some of the critics of the play. The 
Prologue " written by a Friend " (probably 
Laman Blanchard) reads as though it might 
be the work of the author himself, with its 
insistence upon the English drama, its hits 
at the fashion of adapting from the French, 



138 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

and at the craze for making plays spectacular 
settings for " real live " animals. 

" To-night, a novel, but a noble guest. 
Crowned with old wreaths, and clad in classic vest, 
Comes here — a relic of our Golden Day — 
That long-sought absentee, an English Play. . . . 

Fain we'd have you find, 
The play of fancy, and the flash of mind. 
Dragons and demons. Counts bow'd down by 

crime, 
The pleasing horror of a German clime : 
French sentiment, French feeling — richly clad 
In sighs and songs, till melody runs mad — 
Clipp'd and ' adapted to our stage ' — (weak wine 
Translated into water; flavour fine !) — 
All these are banished hence, old Fiction flies. 
And English Manners — Habits — History, 

RISE : 

We offer here — no masque or gaudy dream — 
A native Drama on a native theme ! 
If in this effort, though all else should fail. 
You own, while wearied with our author's tale, 
A love of Nature and of Shakespeare reigns. 
His wreath is won ! — the rest with you remains." 

George Daniel may be quoted as showing in 
brief the scope of the tragedy thus prologued : 

" Mr Jerrold has availed himself of the reports 
of the scandalous lives of the clergy, and exhibited 
a profligate monk in the character of Philip de Brois, 
implicating the archbishop, and making him in part 
pimp to the base designs of his libidinous brother. 
He has dramatized the council at Clarendon, brought 
Henry and Becket into hot polemical discussion, and 
dissolved it by a troop of armed knights, after the 
summary fashion of the royal bully-rock. He has 
marched Becket, bearing the silver cross, into the 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 139 

presence of the King, and, under the presumed pro- 
tection of that sacred symbol, made him display a 
constancy and courage worthy of so distinguished 
a member of the Church militant. We lose sight 
of him during his six years' exile in France, and meet 
him, for a short season, when he returns to his ancient 
quarters at Canterbury. But few incidents occur 
between that period and his death ; and the curtain 
drops on his martyrdom at the altar. This play is 
written in an ambitious style ; there is a continued 
attempt at apophthegm between Moldwarp and Swart, 
and every opportunity is seized to exaggerate the pride, 
luxury and lasciviousness of the Church. It was 
produced at the Surrey Theatre with great care by 
Mr. Elliston, and received every justice in the 
acting. Mr. Jerrold, actuated by the desire to 
produce an English Play, drew entirely from his own 
resources, and gained the applause he so justly merited 
by his endeavour to render a highly interesting chapter 
of British history popular with the million." 

Though it gained applause, as Daniel says, 
the piece did not altogether succeed, it did not 
have such a run as might somewhat con- 
fidently have been looked for after the success 
of Black-Eyed Susan, but possibly the note 
struck was too serious, the level of dramatic 
dignity was too rare for an audience readier 
to respond to the simpler emotions of more 
striking incidents than to a play the motive 
of which was the quarrel between Church and 
State. Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton has sug- 
gested that it was the choice of motive which 
militated against the play's holding the public 
interest for long. Possibly it would have 



140 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

made more noteworthy a success could it have 
been originally produced at one of the patent 
houses. It was in reviewing Lord Tennyson's 
Becket that Mr. Watts-Dunton criticized Jer- 
rold's earlier play on the same theme, and 
pointed out that there is in fact " but one way 
of reading Becket's story that was in any way 
calculated to enlist the sympathies of a popular 
audience, and this reading is not the one 
chosen by Lord Tennyson " or by Jerrold. 

"A glance at Douglas Jerrold's play upon this 
subject," continued the critic, " will show what we 
mean. Jerrold's Thomas d Becket, brought out by 
Elliston with great care and intelligence in 1829, was 
as full of pregnant dialogue as any of Jerrold's works. 
The character of Becket was exceedingly well con- 
ceived, and such minor characters as Walter de Mapes, 
Swart and Moldwarp were full of life and colour. 
It is true that the play flagged in interest after the 
third act, but it was never dull, and it exhibited a 
command of true spectacular effects such as will 
not be found in Jerrold's later plays. . . . Suppose, 
however, that the motive of Jerrold's play had been, 
not a struggle between Church and State, but a struggle 
between the champion of an oppressed race and its 
oppressors : suppose that this popular dramatist 
had challenged the sympathies of his audience by 
depicting a struggle between the archbishop as the 
champion of his downtrodden Saxon fellow-country- 
men, and the King as chief of the Norman oppressors 
who held the land : would not an English audience 
have risen to the play? " ^ 

^ Aihenceum, Jan. 3, 1885. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 141 

As a literary performance Thomas a Becket 
was unquestionably an advance on the author's 
earlier dramatic work, whether regarded for 
the larger treatment of a great theme or 
whether considered for its full and pregnant 
dialogue, its characterization, or its serious 
attempt to render in worthy stage form a great 
historical episode. The story opens in a hall 
in Becket's London palace, with a couple of 
his servants meeting : 

*• Moldwarp. Good-day, fellow Swart ; what hour 
is on the dial ? 

Swart. I know not, care not. Time has broken 
his glass and thrown the sand into my eyes. I have 
no use to put him to, save to whiten my hair and 
scratch pits in my cheek. . . . And what a pair of 
knaves are we ! Rascals, that eat and sleep, and 
thicken our blood with idleness, casting away man- 
hood as part of a bygone mode, and standing two 
breathing statues, in a great man's hall ! I never pass 
a beehive that I do not redden to the ears. 

Moldwarp. Such statues as we, good Swart, are 
the true furniture of wealth. Willow backs, and eyes 
that say, ' I look but by your leave * are the real house- 
hold finery of your golden gentleman. Is't our fault 
that our best employment is the counting our fingers ? 
When Becket was Chancellor, he was full of show and 
merriment : then, thou wast his falconer ; — looked to 
his birds, and their Milan bells ; wast a gay fellow, 
that could laugh with the loudest : then was I the 
master of the dogs, and could chuckle too, and take 
my quart of mulberry without breathing twice. Now, 
Becket is archbishop : the birds have flown, the dogs 
run awav. I doubt if there be a kestrel or a 



142 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

trundle-tail left. . . . Ah ! what a fine Chancellor was 
spoilt, when our master was made an archbishop ! 

Swart. Aye ; we must now duck to Saint Becket. 
He hath discarded glitter, and fallen in love with 
sack-cloth. 

Moldwarp. They say, he mortifies himself past 
belief; that under his robes he wears a hair shirt, 
next his skin. 

Swart. Ha ! ha ! a piety of bristles ! 

Moldwarp. Nay, be not irreverent; all saints 
have done as much. 

Swart. Aye. Yet if sanctitude sprout from a 
hair shirt, I marvel we do not canonize the bears. 
Farewell." 

Wlien Swart goes off Moldwarp sums him 
up saying, " That fellow can cover more brain 
with his little finger, than many with their 
whole palm. There is no handling him; touch 
him where you will, and like a porcupine, he 
pierces you. He keep falcons ! he is worthy 
to bear Jupiter's eagle. I had rather hear 
him growl than others sing." 

The first act of the tragedy shows us the 
Chancellor become Churchman, hints at the 
growing rivalry of King and Archbishop, and 
indicates the subsidiary romance of Lucia 
Vincent, who has been forced to flee from 
home owing to the unwelcome advances of 
her late priest, Philip de Brois, and, thanks 
to the assistance of Swart, is safely married 
to her true lover, Walter Breakspear. Philip 
— the villain of the piece — denounces her (un- 
truly, of course) as one who has broken her 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 143 

vows, so that along with, and made part of, 
the struggle between the powers temporal and 
the powers spiritual is this of the young 
maligned wife. With the second act, Becket, 
a severe, serious and heroic Becket, appears on 
the scene, and Philip emphasizes his charges, 
to be met with a slight reprimand that gives 
occasion to Becket for the telling of the 
romantic story of his parents : 

" Woman hath no constancy ! Wrong not her 
who bore me by such censure. Hear a short tale, 
then own the charge untrue. My father was a 
soldier of the cross and fought in Palestine. He was 
taken — enslaved — a hero of the faith, he wore his 
bonds as garlands. His master had one lovely girl ; 
my father taught the young heretic by stealth our 
creed : she would weep over the Christian prisoner, 
gemming his clanking fetters with her tears. My 
father gained his freedom, reached his home; the 
girl remained amidst the terrors of the war, — a tender 
floweret in a soldier's helm. At length, urged by 
uneasy thoughts, — guided as by a wand of flame, by 
her new faith, — she left her golden clime, nor did 
the terrors of the wilderness, or the billows of the sea 
restrain her, till, with her heart brimfull of hope — her 
Saracenic tongue enriched with but one poor word 
of English, Gilbert — my father's name — (he had 
taught her to breathe the syllables, blithe music in 
his late captivity) — she found herself in London. 
Yet, how to find my father? With untired feet, 
from morn till darkness, she would thread each street 
and suburb; and, at every step, as the dove broods 
in one note o'er its hopes, — so with her one word 
of English — ' Gilbert ' — would she tell her story. 



144 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

' Gilbert ! ' ' Gilbert ! ' fell from her lip, as down a 
coral shelf drop follows drop. A cherub heard the 
word and bore it to my father. Angels sang when 
they did marry. Say not again woman hath no 
constancy ! " 

In the third act we have the King in council 
at Clarendon, when the quarrel between him 
and Becket becomes sharply defined, and the 
Archbishop, refusing to allow Philip de Brois 
to be tried by the secular court, and refusing 
to return moneys of which he had been ab- 
solved, pronounces the Church's ban on Lucia 
for cleaving to her husband. In the fourth 
act King and Archbishop are both in France, 
and from his late servants and others at home 
it is shown that the Churchman is in lowest 
disgrace, his supporters banished. 

Then Idonea, a nun — the only woman besides 
Lucia in the play — comes on as bearer of 
letters of excommunication from Becket to the 
Bishop of London and his fellows, and dialogue 
between her and Swart (who proves to be her 
brother) contrasts the " softest wax, moulded 
by the hand of craft and superstition " and 
the critical spirit which has arisen against 
the dominance of the Churchman. Then 
comes announcement of the unexpectedly 
dramatic return of Becket. The fifth act 
opens with the foolish Snipe and a fellow 
hurrying " like fowls to barley to welcome " 
Becket. We see Becket deeply hurt but 
dignified at his repudiation by the prince 
whom he had brought up, and Philip de Brois 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 145 

pressing his malevolent designs against Lucia, 
whom he has seized. A brief scene shows the 
knights who have hastened over from France 
that they may act on King Henry's hasty 
words, " Am I so beset with cowards, that 
none will revenge me of this turbulent priest ? " 
An interview between Lucia and Becket — "at 
the hour of vespers, on the sacred altar pledge 
me the oath and you are free ! " — hastens 
the play to its tragic close in Canterbury 
Cathedral. 

There is a largeness of purpose, skilful, 
pregnant dialogue — Becket's own speeches 
suggest that the author designed to use blank 
verse — and a sufficiency of action to make this 
a really impressive example of the historical 
drama. 

The Epilogue, which was spoken by Miss 
Scott — the Lucia of the play and the creator 
of the part of Black-Eyed Susan — was written 
by Cornelius Webbe, who in the course of 
it re-emphasized the fact that it was a native 
drama — not as the dramatist said of the work 
of one of his contemporary adapters the pro- 
duct of a steal pen — 

" Come, Sirs, your verdict ! Remember the offender 
Is by no means an old one — so be tender ! 
' Guilty ' he pleads to this most grave offence — 
Of writing a new play — in every sense 
Of English birth and growth ; which, in our time, 
When not to steal is held a losing crime — 
When more than half our plays, like half our fleet, 
Are taken ' from the French ' — when not discreet, 
VOL. I L 



146 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

But, in our author, you will sure forgive 
His British bravery, and let him live." 

Cordial, however, as was the reception of the 
work, it ran but for six nights, when it was 
withdrawn in favour of more popular, if less 
Hterary, fare. The play, according to one 
dramatic critic of the day, was " well got up, 
but indifferently acted," though George Daniel 
— ^the familiar " D — G " of theatrical criticism 
— recorded an opposite opinion. If the play 
did not gain the continued support of the many 
who award the fruits of immediate success it 
won the suffrage of the still more important 
few. Winning the popular ear had not proved 
especially profitable to Douglas Jerrold, much 
as it had done for his employer, but that 
sweet acknowledgment of his powers which is 
always dear to the heart of the earnest worker 
was now accorded to the young writer by a 
number of men of letters who had already 
won their position. A friend congratulating 
him on Thomas a Becket said, " You'll be the 
Surrey Shakespeare." " The sorry Shake- 
speare, you mean," replied Jerrold, as ready to 
utter a jest against himself as against another. 
Men of letters must be taken in its wider 
sense as including women, for among the 
earliest letters to Douglas Jerrold which I have 
is the following from Mary Russell Mitford, 
the bright, vivacious author of Our Village and 
of a number of plays. The " interlined and 
blotted note, so very untidy and unladylike," 
runs : 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 147 

" Three Mile Cross, near Beading, 

" Saturday evening, December 14ith, 1829. 

" My dear Sir, — I have just received from Mr. 
Willey your very kind and gratifying note. The 
plays which you have been so good as to send me are 
not yet arrived; but fearing from Mr. Willey 's letter 
that it may be some days before I receive them, I 
do not delay writing to acknowledge your polite 
attention. I have as yet read neither of them, but 
I know that I shall be greatly delighted by the merits 
which I shall find in both — in the first, by that truth 
of the touch which has commanded a popularity 
quite unrivalled in our day; in the second by the 
higher and prouder qualities of the tragic poet. The 
subject of Thomas a Becket interests me particularly, 
as I had at one time a design to write a tragedy called 
Henry the Second, in which his saintship would have 
played a considerable part. My scheme was full of 
license and anachronism, embracing the apocryphal 
story of Rosamond and Eleanor, the rebellious sons — 
not the hackneyed John and Richard, but the best 
and worst of the four — Henry and Geoffrey, linking 
the scenes together as best I might, and ending with 
the really dramatic catastrophe of Prince Henry. I 
do not at all know how the public would have tolerated 
a play so full of faults, and it is well replaced by your 
more classical and regular drama. I was greatly 
interested by the account of the enthusiastic reception 
given by the old admirers of Black-Eyed Susan to a 
successor rather above their sphere. It was hearty, 
genial, English — much like the cheering which an 
election mob might have bestowed on some speech 
of Pitt, or Burke, or Sheridan, which they were sure 
was fine, although they hardly understood it. 

" If I had a single copy of Rienzi at hand this should 
not go unaccompanied. I have written to Mr. Willey 



148 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

to procure me some and hope soon to have the 
pleasure of requesting your acceptance of one. In 
the meantime I pray you to pardon this interlined 
and blotted note, so very untidy and unladylike, but 
which I never can help, and to excuse the wafer, and 
the absence of the Christian name. I am sending a 
frankful of letters to town and am afraid of over- 
weight. My father begs his best compliments and I 
am, with every good wish, 

" Very sincerely yours, 

" M. R. MiTFORD." 

The plays which the young dramatist had 
sent to Miss Mitford in her Berkshire retire- 
ment were evidently Black-Eyed Susan and 
Thomas a Becket, though I have not come 
across so early an edition of the former. 
That such kindly recognition of his work as 
is shown in this friendly letter was well appre- 
ciated is evidenced by the care with which 
the recipient kept it. Indeed to-day, but for 
a slight staining of the paper, the treasured 
letter is as fresh as when it left its writer's 
hand more than eighty years ago. The follow- 
ing reply, from 4 Augustus Square, Regent's 
Park, is undated, but was evidently written 
at the beginning of 1830, for the condolence 
which the writer offers was occasioned by the 
death of Miss Mitford's mother on the first day 
of that year. 

*' My dear Madam, — May I be allowed to offer my 
sincere expressions of condolence for the loss you 
have so recently sustained, and to venture a hope of 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 149 

your timely recovery from the effects of so afflicting 
a visitation. 

" That the dramas, which I have taken the liberty 
of intruding upon your notice, receive your commenda- 
tion is to me a subject of pride and pleasure : for 
wanting the suffrage of the few, popular success is as 
empty as it is frequently immediate. 

" Long before I could hope that any effort of mine 
would receive the attention of Mr. Talfourd, I had 
admired the active, liberal and dispassionate tone 
of that gentleman's criticisms ; consequently I felt 
additional gratification from his praise in this month's 
New Monthly. At the present ebb of dramatic 
criticism, when ipse dixit, not analysis, decides on the 
faults or merits of writers, it is most encouraging, 
especially to the young beginner, to know there is 
at least one publication where he may meet with 
fair and gentlemanly treatment. There is, too, 
another satisfaction to the dramatist, who, at the 
outset, encounters the prejudice and ignorance of 
what is termed ' daily and weekly criticism.' He has 
but to make two or three fortunate hits — no matter 
whether borrowed from Messrs. Scribe or Mr. Colburn 
— ^to change unthinking abuse into equally ignorant 
encomium. With such critics how short the pause 
from a hiss to a huzza ! 

" My Witchjinder at Drury Lane was a decided 
failure. The subject was ill chosen; for few who 
condemned it were aware that they were judging an 
attempted representation of historical character, but 
condemned it as a monstrous fiction. Neither had 
the piece one intrinsic advantage. Mr. Farren first 
injured it by his extravagant praise, and then made 
the mischief complete by his utter misconception of 
the part. Then came the learning, the intelligence, 
and the liberality of the newspapers. Li the present 



150 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

day a moderately gifted dramatist has a pretty time 
of it : if he succeed his piece has the immortaUty of 
a month — if he fail, his name is gibbeted in every 
journal as a dullard or a coxcomb. French melo- 
dramas have ruined us. 

" I have, Madam, to apologize for inflicting so long 
a letter on your patience, and again repeating my 
wishes for your convalescence, and my acknow- 
ledgements of the honour which you have done me 
in the notice taken of my dramas (which, unless they 
be followed by much worthier things, I had rather 
had never been), I remain, my dear Madam, 
" Ever truly and obliged, 

" Douglas Jerrold." 

" French melodramas have ruined us " — 
this expressed a lasting grievance with Douglas 
Jerrold. Against adaptation and translation 
he sternly set his face. When it was proposed 
to him that he should adapt a piece for Drury 
Lane he replied, emphatically, " I will come 
into this theatre as an original dramatist or 
not at all." But it was not only the rivalry 
of the easy-going adapters from which play- 
wrights suffered. Having written their work 
they found it, owing to the monopoly of the 
patent houses and the state of the law with 
regard to what Thomas Hood termed " copy- 
right and copy wrong," impossible to claim any 
protection for it as property. In a note to the 
preface to Thomas a Becket the author wrote : 
" It must, unfortunately, be allowed that the 
present period is not the most auspicious to 
the production of original dramas : when 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 151 

every other species of literature, save that of 
the theatre, is protected by legislative enact- 
ments from unprincipled piracy, it is not to 
be expected that many writers will be found to 
expose their plays, as Alfred hung up his 
golden bracelets, in sheer contempt of robbers. 
In England, the bantlings of the dramatist 
are a proscribed race ; they come under a kind 
of outlawry ; — ' whoso findeth them, may slay 
them.' Whilst such is the case, it will be in 
vain to hope for a rapid improvement in the 
modern drama." 

Before the close of the year in which the 
minor-theatre popularity that had been won 
by earlier plays had widened by the great 
success of Black-Eyed Susan, Douglas Jerrold 
was given the opportunity of writing for both 
Drury Lane and Co vent Garden. It was on 
December 19 that he made his appearance — 
with an English play on an English theme, as 
he had said — at Drury Lane, and it proved a 
disastrous attempt to win the ear of the 
" patent " theatre audience. The play was 
The Witchfinder, and as the author said in his 
letter to Mary Russell Mitford, it was " a 
decided failure," the performance not being 
repeated. Jerrold's own explanation of the 
causes of the failure are borne out by some 
of the contemporary criticism, for the piece 
is described as not having been dealt with 
fairly by the management, and as having been 
inadequately acted, and as a consequence, said 
one critic, it " met with a most uncourteou§ 



152 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

reception ; for great part of the second act was 
merely dumb show." 

This was a melodrama founded on a novel 
of the same name (published in 1824), dealing 
with the life of the notorious Matthew Hopkins, 
by the author of The Lollards. I have found 
the following summary of the story among the 
notices which the piece received : Judith, a 
young maiden residing under the guardianship 
of John Sterne, is wooed by Justice Beril, 
who, finding that his suit does not proceed 
so prosperously as he could wish, employs 
Matthew Hopkins, the Witch Finder, to plead 
his cause. Matthew, however, has had an 
eye to the maiden himself, and takes this 
opportunity of disclosing his passion. Judith 
rejects his love with indignation and horror 
(for her heart is already bestowed on Evelyn). 
Hopkins, in revenge, denounces her for a 
witch; and when she is on the point of being 
torn to pieces by the ignorant mob, her lover 
rushes in and rescues her. 

Very naturally the author felt somewhat 
chagrined over this failure of his first attempt 
to make good a position as something other 
than a writer of minor drama. The " minor " 
dramatist of those days was not in a fortunate 
position, the mere fact that he was writing for 
the unpatented houses was sufficient to ensure 
his works being almost wholly ignored by the 
critics or, if they were mentioned, sufficient to 
ensure his name being withheld from the 
criticism. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 153 

About three weeks after The Witchfinder 
made its ill-starred appearance at Drury Lane 
a new piece from Jerrold's pen was produced 
at the Surrey Theatre. This was Sally in 
Our Alley, which had been written for Covent 
Garden, but in consequence of the fate of The 
Witchfinder the author wisely decided to " trans- 
plant his offspring to a nursery more suitable 
to its unassuming merits." 

This is a two-act drama owing nothing more 
than its title to Henry Carey's popular ballad, 
but, by the very use of that title, as a contem- 
porary critic put it, charming away all critical 
bile. The scene is laid at Putney, and the 
story of the piece has been thus racily sum- 
marized — 

" A gibbet is the surest sign of a country's civiliza- 
tion, for to a certainty there are laws, and so sure as 
we see neighbours set together by the ears, there is 
a lawyer not far afield ! One Isaac Perch — a piscator 
and pedagogue, whenever he would hook a trout, 
gives his urchins a holiday, and the grateful young 
rogues supply him with artificial flies manufactured 
from the wing feathers of Farmer Hurdle's fowls and 
the resplendent tail of Sir John Flambeau's pet 
peacock. This, in the hands of Mr. Attorney Claws, 
is capital larceny — and, with a trespass committed 
by one old woman's ducks on the grounds of another 
old woman — an indictment for a nuisance by a ham- 
mering brazier against an everlasting opera singer — 
and a humble petition from Tom Crowbar, the ' in- 
corrigible housebreaker ' — promise to bring grist to 
his mill. But ' it never rains but it pours ' ; Perch 
has hooked a solitary chub in the private fishpond 



154 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

of Sir John Flambeau; and having been dogged to 
the cottage of old Frank, the father of Sally, is pounced 
upon by the hungry attorney, and carried off in 
custody. Now Sir John, though a retired tallow- 
chandler, and well-to-do in the world, has none of 
the vulgar aristocracy of wealth. He desires not to 
be the Dragon of Putney; and reproves Mr. Claws 
for his officiousness. But Claws has a friend at 
court in the person of my lady, a low-Hved piece of 
city pride ; who, because Sir John has spoken in civil 
terms to poor Sally, becomes furiously jealous; and, 
with the assistance of one. Captain Harpoon, whom 
she deceives by false representations, enters into a 
plot to ship her off to Russia. The Captain, an honest 
blunt sailor, offers her his hand and heart ; and finding 
them pre-engaged, he enters into an explanation with 
old Frank, which completely discloses her ladyship's 
perfidy. Many years since, Frank had lost an only 
son at sea ; the son, who was drowned in sight of port, 
had placed two hundred pounds of prize money in 
the hands of the (then) navy agent. Claws, with orders 
to pay it over to his poor parents. To this his friend 
and fellow-seaman Harpoon was witness : and hap- 
pening unexpectedly to encounter the attorney, the 
question naturally is, has he paid it according to 
order ? The man of law has embezzled it ; and being 
called upon to refund principal and interest, Harry 
Bloom has her father's consent (for old Frank had 
vowed never to wed his daughter to squalid poverty) 
to take to wife Sally in our Alley. Mr. Jerrold has 
introduced some shrewd remarks on the oppression 
of the rich against the poor ; on the power which wealth 
gives to do good and evil ; and how much the latter 
preponderates. The characters of Claws, the mis- 
chief-making pettifogger, and Lady Flambeau, the 
high-dumptiness of dripping personified, are not 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 155 

exaggerated. Perch, the rattHng piscator, is pleasantly 
drawn — his resolution to join Captain Harpoon in 
a whale-fishing expedition is ultra- Waltonian. The 
design of this piece is to beat down pride, inhumanity, 
and presumption ; to show that ' a man's a man for 
a' that ' however low his estate." ^ 

Isaac Perch's defence of the " brave science " 
of angling is worthy of so ardent a disciple of 
old Walton. " Idle ! talk not of the idleness 
which is full of health and quiet thoughts. 
Is it idle to be up with the day — ^to feel the 
balmy coolness of a rich May dew — to catch 
the coming splendour of the sun — to see the 
young lambs leap — to hear singing a mile 
above us the strong-throated lark, the spirit 
of the scene ! Is this idle ? Yes, by some 'tis 
called so. The sluggard who wakes half the 
night to lay lime-twigs for poor honesty the 
next day — the varlet who acknowledges no 
villainy on the safe side of an act of parliament 
— he calls me a loiterer and a time killer. Be 
it so, it does not spoil my fishing. Idle ! why 
angling is in itself a system of morality ! " 

*' The morality of jagging a hook through a 
fly ! " breaks in the schoolmaster's companion. 

*' No," he retorts, " but of seeing how great 
and golden a fish may be ensnared by glittering 
deceit. What is the world's ceremony but 
a gaudy fly, made of silks and feathers — what 
mankind but the poor silly fish biting and 
nibbling at it ? Angling ! its very implements 
teach us lessons of morality; the rod is the 
1 George P9.niel, 



156 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

type of rectitude; the angler's constant com- 
panion and sermon — a box of worms." 

When Isaac Perch is told that all his pupils 
have been taken away and put to a new 
master because he himself is too lively he says, 
" I suppose my successor is one of those fellows 
who dive into the well for truth, and croak 
only with the frogs at the bottom." 

Sally in Our Alley at the Surrey enjoyed 
considerable success and was followed just a 
fortnight later by another piece — presumably 
but a brief " curtain raiser " — entitled Gervase 
Skinner, founded upon Theodore Hook's story 
Penny Wise and Pound Foolish. Particulars 
of this play and of its reception do not seem 
now recoverable, but the time of its appearance 
seems to have synchronized more or less closely 
with a quarrel between Jerrold and Elliston. 
Of the nature of the quarrel there is nothing 
known, but it may well be that the author of 
Black-Eyed Susan had come to regard his work 
as of the value of something more than five 
pounds a week, and that he chafed at the 
dictatorial ways of the great Lessee. 

All that we know of the quarrel is as much 
as is given in the following letters written to 
Mrs. T. P. Cooke. The address from which 
the letters were dated was 2 Great Union 
Street, Borough. Somewhere about this period 
Douglas Jerrold was in money difficulties owing, 
it is believed, to his connection with a Sunday 
paper, presumably the Weekly Times, in which 
he had been interested. The first of the letters. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 157 

which is undated, but evidently belongs to this 
period, runs as follows — 



" My dear Madam, — On Monday last I received, 
in the King's Bench, a most arrogant letter from 
Mr. Elliston — he, however, knew to what place he 
was directing, and thought he could impose what 
terms he pleased. I very summarily undeceived him. 
He demanded that I should write the Whitsuntide 
piece, as coming in my present engagement — this, as 
I before stated, I did not conceive myself entitled to 
do, — and consequently refused to address myself to 
that drama, until Mr. Elliston stated what proposal 
he might have to make to me subsequently to Whit- 
suntide. I have no doubt that it was his wish to 
get the piece of me, and then bow me out of his 
Treasury — I receiving no recompense after its pro- 
duction. I added, in my letter to Mr. Elliston, that 
it was to me a matter of perfect indifference, whether 
I ever wrote another line for the Surrey Theatre — 
this answer he scarcely expected from the King's 
Bench. I met him on Friday, and he was then all 
smiles and affability — his professions of friendship if 
possible more contemptible than his previous attempt 
at injustice. He is to call upon me, in the course 
of this week, and to settle with me for another twelve 
month, when, the agreement completed, I shall look 
practically to Mr. Cooke's drama for Whitsuntide. 
I never had the most glowing opinion of the principle 
— to put feeling and liberality quite out of the ques- 
tion — of Mr. Elliston — but within these few days he 
has, with me, proved himself worthy of whatever 
rumour may have attached to him. Indeed, I fear 
a few days in a prison yield us a right estimation of 
the motives and characters of most people. Begging 



158 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

you to give my compliments to Mr. C. and trusting 
that you are fast recovering from the effects of your 
late bereavement, 

" Believe me, ever truly, 

" D. Jerrold." 

The second letter is as follows — 

" My dear Madam, — I have heard of the paragraph 
in The Despatch, but had so frequently had cause to 
feel a contempt for the ignorant and petty spirit of 
that journal — that, as it appears, I was justified in 
treating the account of the failure of the piece in 
Dublin as one of the numerous falsehoods which have 
of late been directly or indirectly levelled at me. 
I am most happy to hear of Mr. C.'s success, and 
trust he encounters his fatigues with good health. 
I suppose you have heard that Elliston and I are 
' wide as the poles asunder.' Subsequently to my 
last letter, I had an interview with him when he 
demanded of me a piece for Easter, and a piece for 
Mr. C. — refusing to come to any specific engagement 
after Whitsuntide. I at once expressed my deter- 
mination to write neither piece on such an uncertain 
tenure, when Mr. E. (just and Hteral soul !) declared 
the engagement at an end, and from that period 
(about a month since) stopped my salary. Nay, more, 
he had the unblushing effrontery to tell me that I had 
for some time received money without making any 
adequate return — that he had made scarcely anything 
by Black-Eyed Susan — that other pieces of mine, 
Law and Lions, John Overy, etc., had kept money 
out of the house, and that he had gratified my vanity 
at the cost of £300 by the production of Thomas a 
Becket. The silence of contempt was the only fitting 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 159 

answer to such assertions ; and we parted. Since 
that period, he wrote to me, inquiring my terms for 
two pieces (the Whitsuntide and the benefit piece) 
for Mr. Cooke — I returned him my price, stipulating 
that the money should be paid on delivery of the 
manuscripts — this he refused to do, and here the 
correspondence ended — of course I do not do the 
piece. After the treatment I have received from 
Elliston I am justified in any suspicion of his probity 
— and I have no doubt, were I to send him a nautical 
piece — (and the sailor I contemplated writing, was a 
peculiar, and yet untouched character) — he might 
hand over my suggestion to another writer, and 
return me my MS. It is painful to have such an 
opinion of any man — yet, when it is considered what 
benefits have resulted to Elhston — indirectly and in 
some measure from myself — the condition he was in 
when Black-Eyed Susan came out — and of the return 
he has made me, at a period when he was aware I 
was struggling under difficulties, and those not the 
effect of extravagance or bad principles — when all 
these circumstances are taken into consideration I 
must appear wholly justified in treating him as a 
man incapable of the commonest principles of justice 
— to put liberality out of the question. I have 
been thus diffuse on the subject, as probably Mr. 
Elliston may have given another version of the 
causes of our rupture — however, what I have written 
is the truth — a ' plain, unvarnished ' narrative of the 
case. In a few days I trust to have surmounted my 
present difficulties — when, having the offer of the 
conduct of a Sunday paper, I shall resume my former 
avocations, and in all probability, take a lengthened 
leave of the drama — I have received few available 
inducements to cultivate it. Begging to be remem- 
bered, and with my best wishes to Mr. Cooke — and 



160 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

trusting that yourself and little girl are quite well, 
I remain, 

" Yours truly, 

" Douglas Jerrold." 



The " paragraph in The Despatch " was 
evidently the following (Weekly Dispatch^ 
March 7) : " Jerrold's nautical drama of Black- 
Eyed Susan^ notwithstanding the powerful 
assistance afforded by the acting of T. P. 
Cooke as William, has utterly failed in Dublin, 
having been performed only five nights to 
indifferent houses. T. P. Cooke has in conse- 
quence returned to London." The writer of 
theatrical gossip in The Dispatch appears to 
have let slip no opportunity for a dig at the 
dramatist about this period. During the earlier 
part of the same year there had been : *' Mr. 
Jerrold's new musical drama of Sally in Our 
Alley has been declined by the management 
of Covent Garden Theatre and returned to 
that gentleman, who, it appears, has prevailed 
on Mr. Elliston to produce it forthwith at the 
Surrey." Then came a chilling notice of the 
piece and, a week later, " Mr. Jerrold has 
contradicted the statement published in our 
last that the opera of Sally in Our Alley had 
been declined by the managers of Covent 
Garden Theatre. We admit we were in that 
respect wrong. Will he in the same spirit of 
candour acknowledge the real cause which led 
to the withdrawal of the piece from the house 
in question ? " And in the following month : 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 161 

" Two celebrated dramatic authors are at the 
moment incarcerated from an inabihty to meet 
certain pecuniary considerations. The muse of 
one has latterly been extremely prolific." A 
few months later, however, the same journal 
gave an enthusiastic notice of the Mutiny at 
the Nore, declaring that no playgoer " no 
matter where he may be located in this over- 
built town should fail to go and see the piece 
at the Pavilion." When another dramatist, 
availing himself of the vogue of nautical 
drama which Jerrold's most popular play had 
established (and even borrowing from one of 
Jerrold's titles), brought out Fifteen Years 
of a Sailor's Life, the same paper declared 
that it would rival Black- Eyed Susan — " being 
better." 

Another letter to Mrs. T. P. Cooke is undated, 
but apparently belongs to this period of struggle 
and success. It was written from 4 Augustus 
Square, Regent's Park : 

" My dear Madam, — Circumstances of rather a 
peculiar and pressing nature (in some measure 
resulting from my late difficulties) induce me (in 
the absence of Mr. T. P. Cooke) to solicit of you the 
favour of the loan of £15 until the 17th instant, when 
I feel certain of the pleasure of returning the same. 
I am at present employed on a piece, but as much 
of the success in literary matters depends upon a 
freedom from external annoyance, I have taken the 
liberty of trespassing on your kindness. 

" I remain, yours truly, 

" Douglas Jerrold." 
VOL, I a« 



162 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

The play in question may have been that 
which he was writing for production for T. P. 
Cooke's benefit — The Press Gang — in which case 
the quarrel must either have been temporarily 
healed, or, as I think more likely, he wrote the 
play for Cooke and not for EUiston. 

For something less than twelve months had 
Jerrold continued as dramatic writer to Ellis- 
ton's establishment. The exacting, autocratic 
manager was not very likely to get along well 
with the ardent, impulsive young author. No 
further particulars of the quarrel are now 
obtainable than are contained in the above 
letters, but the misunderstanding was evidently 
a serious one, for the author of Black-Eyed Susan 
was no longer represented on the boards of the 
Surrey Theatre except on two occasions, once 
later in the same year, and once in 1831 after 
Elliston's death. Despite the " few available 
inducements " to cultivate the drama the 
writer did not take a lengthened leave of the 
stage; so far from it, indeed, that within the 
next five years he was to write close upon a 
score of plays, some of which have taken their 
place as among the best appreciated of his 
work and as distinct contributions to the 
dramatic literature of the century. 

The success which Black-Eyed Susan had 
achieved was very naturally an inducement to 
the author to make further essays with the 
nautical drama. Just a year after Susan and 
William had first gladdened the hearts of 
thousands of theatre-goers The Mutiny at the 
Nore was produced (June 7, 1830) at the 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 163 

Pavilion Theatre, and was " well acted and 
popular." It dealt with a historical incident 
well within the memory of middle-aged mem- 
bers of the audience, and enjoyed considerable 
popularity, such popularity indeed that during 
the second half of 1830 it was given at three 
different London houses, the Pavilion, where 
it began — and also at the Coburg and Tottenham 
Street Theatres. 

It was but thirty-three years earlier, in 1797, 
that there had been a serious outbreak of 
mutiny in the Royal Navy at the Nore and 
also at Portsmouth, and therefore it must have 
been " like stirring living embers " to make of 
the theme a theatrical display. The dramatist 
introduces a romantic story which shows 
Richard Parker, the ringleader of the muti- 
neers, as having married a woman to whom 
his captain was a rival suitor. That captain 
has submitted Parker to indignities which so 
rankle that, when the mutiny comes to an end, 
rather than surrender to him Parker shoots his 
officer and then submits to being taken. The 
play closes with his execution on board H.M.S. 
Sandwich — history had made such a happy 
ending as that of Black-Eyed Susan impossible. 
It is a spirited play in which the grievances 
which gave rise to the mutiny are set out with 
sympathy, and with knowledge which the 
dramatist had doubtless gathered during his 
boyish experiences in the Navy from men who 
may well have been concerned in the troubles 
of 1797. 

A month after this piece had started on its 



164 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

popular course the author had another nautical 
drama ready for the boards, and under the 
title of The Press Gang ; or, Archibald of the 
Wreck, it was produced at the Surrey Theatre 
on July 5, with T. P. Cooke, the famous 
William, in the role of the hero. There remains 
nothing beyond the scanty press notices of the 
period to indicate its character; one such thus 
presents the plot : 

" The story may be thus described : Arthur 
Granby, when at a very early age, was pressed on 
board a man-of-war, from which he deserted and 
joined a merchant's crew. On his return from a 
long voyage, he is married to the long-wished-for 
object of his affection, with which incident the 
drama commences. As the happy pair are leaving 
the church, a press gang enter and capture the 
despairing husband, and carry him to their ship, 
which proves to be the identical one that he had 
deserted from many years before. Arthur is con- 
demned to undergo the usual punishment of a deserter ; 
when, just as it is going to be inflicted, it is discovered 
that Granby, who had been kidnapped from his 
parents when a child, is a peer of the realm, and 
therefore not liable to be pressed. This drama is 
written by a very superior minor dramatist, Mr. 
Jerrold, and the incidents are truly dramatic, and 
wrought up so artfully, as to produce the deepest 
sympathy and attention. The plot is rather irregular, 
and we cannot speak very highly of the denouement, 
which is far too abrupt and improbable." 

This was presumably the benefit piece of 
which the author had written to the actor's 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 165 

wife, and a truce appears to have been made 
with Elhston. 

These earHer years of Douglas Jerrold's 
career as writer, when he was beginning to 
win an acknowledged position for himself 
among the dramatists and journalists of the 
day, are chiefly marked, so far as anything 
is now ascertainable, by the production of 
new plays. Letters of any interest and other 
materials are very scanty during this period. 
Jerrold was working hard both as journalist 
and playwright on his way to an accredited 
position. 

On December 16, 1830, a new piece by 
Douglas Jerrold — " a gentleman who has dis- 
tinguished himself by writing for the minor 
theatres in a style far superior to any they have 
of late years been honoured with " ^ — was pro- 
duced at the Adelphi Theatre, in the form of 
a romantic drama in two acts entitled The 
DeviVs Ducat ; or, the Gift of Mammon. This 
was new in more ways than one ; it is written 
in blank verse and is more ambitious in scope 
and treatment than the general run of the 
dramas written for the audiences of the Coburg 
and Surrey Theatres; is, indeed, on quite 
different lines, and in its differing way no less 
ambitious a dramatic venture than the Thomas 
a Becket of twelve months earlier. 

Yet, in those days of many new plays and 
constant changing of the theatrical bills a 
fresh piece was quite likely to be overlooked 
1 The Dramatic Gazette, December 1830. 



166 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

whatever its merits, for in a periodical of the 
time {The Tatler) George Daniel apologized for 
not having noticed its production, having 
concluded it to be " one of the flaring Bartholo- 
mew Fair things that are so common at the 
minor theatres." However, after visiting the 
Adelphi he made ample amends in the warmth 
of his encomium and incidentally referred to 
the legend on which the dramatist based his 
story. The author thus replied to the refer- 
ence : 

" Mr. Tatler, — ' Pases,' in whose birth, parentage 
and education, you have shown so kind an interest, 
is really, as you surmise, to be found in the Latinity 
of Erasmus. Le Clerk gives his authority (omitted 
in the bill) as follows — Erasmus in Adagiis Suidas. 

" I fear I cannot honestly receive the praise for 
much invention in the incident of Grillo's robbing 
Nibbio in the confession scene — that circumstance 
having been suggested to me by Robertson, who in 
his History of Charles V, speaks of Petzel, a Dominican, 
sent forth to all ' indulgences ' vending an absolution 
of theft to a couple of marauders, who afterwards 
(doubtless to try the virtues of the document) emptied 
the pockets of their spiritual physician. 

" I have thought it but candid to say thus much, 
leaving it to your judgment whether it be of sufficient 
importance to interest the readers of The Tatler. 
" I am, yours, 

" Respectfully, 

" Douglas Jerrold." 

After giving this letter the critic commented : 
" Mr. Jerrold ought not to suffer for his 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 167 

modesty, in speaking as he does of the scene 
in question. The idea is borrowed; but the 
pleasant details are his own ; and the humorous 
impudence of the theft, openly and at the same 
instant committed upon the absolver, beats 
the after- thought of the two marauders. It 
puts a new zest upon the old joke of Autolycus." 
The idea of this romantic drama is taken 
from a story of Pases, an ancient magician who 
made for himself a coin that whenever it was 
spent returned to him, and in the play it is 
shown how such a boomerang-like disk returns 
but to damage its unfortunate possessor. When 
the play was printed, three or four months 
after its production, in Cumberland's edition 
of acting plays, it was " embellished " with a 
portrait of Mr. O. Smith in the character of 
Mam.mon in kingly costume, and was prefaced 
by George Daniel who, ever ready to acknow- 
ledge the originality of the dramatist, has a 
pretty severe hit at the dramatic depredators 
who in the varying capacities of translator, 
adapter and poacher, were flourishing at the 
time. " Mr. Jerrold," said the critic, " does 
not borrow from the French — neither does he 
poach in the unfrequented fields of the drama 
and realize the fable of the ass in the lion's 
skin. A hint from an old ballad or book is 
sufficient — he is content with an apple, without 
stripping the whole tree." Another critic said : 
** He is not one of those * recreant bards ' 
who glean the vile refuse of a Gallic stage. 
All his dramas are true English, from top to 



168 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

toe: so that his very failures are entitled to 
respect." 

The DeviVs Ducat is an ambitious effort 
and it is so both in its conception and in 
its style. It aims at bringing home to those 
who witness its performance some shrewd 
lessons as to the value of the possession 
of ill-gotten wealth. There is something 
fascinating about the possession of a coin 
which, use it as often as we may for the 
purpose of purchasing that which we desire, 
is yet never actually spent. This drama is 
notable as being the only acted one by Douglas 
Jerrold written in blank verse. He was a 
great reader of the Elizabethan dramatists, 
whose rich stores during his early manhood 
were being drawn attention to by the loving 
ministrations of Charles Lamb. 

The scene opens in the country near Naples, 
and two brothers, Astolfo and Leandro, are 
discovered. They have been robbed of all their 
wealth by a rascally old lawyer, one Nibbio, 
who, not content with ruining them, is also 
anxious to gain as his wife the beautiful young 
Sabina, who is plighted to Astolfo. Of the 
two brothers Astolfo is passionate, rebellious, 
while Leandro, with something of Christian 
fortitude, having been robbed of his patrimony, 
consoles himself philosophically by saying : 

" Truly, contentment is the poor man's bank. 
Old Nibbio hath robbed us of our land — 
What then ? will sour looks bring it back again ? 

Astolfo. Brother, 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 169 

In this world pleasures are not showered on us ; 
They must be bought. 

Leandro. Nay, but listen — 

Astolfo. Silence, or thou'lt drive me mad — I tell 
thee. 
Robbed of our estate, we are made outcasts — 
Thrown on the world to swell the train of those, 
Who for ready smiles and subtle adulation. 
Give raiment, food, and lodging. 

Leandro. Astolfo, thou think'st too much of our 
loss — 
Gold doth not work such miracles. 

Astolfo. Not ! look abroad — 
Doth it not give honour to the worthless, 
Strength to the weak, beauty to withered age. 
And wisdom to the fool ? — As the world runs, 
A devil with a purse wins more regard 
Than angels empty handed." 

To the brothers enters Grillo, a whilom thief, 
and now servant to Sabina's father. He 
delivers a note to Astolfo, in which the ruined 
youth is told that he is to think no longer of 
the girl as his affianced bride. Astolfo with 
righteous indignation breaks out : 

" Sabina ! — I remember nothing earlier 
Than her sweet face — she, to whom next heaven, 
I looked for hope, is barred me. — Why is this ? 
What have I done ? — Is my name degraded ? 
Is my blood tainted, my mind changed ? — Am I not 
In heart and conscience the same Astolfo 
As of yesterday ? — What, then, my fault ? 'tis this — 
Far worse than sacrilege, or sudden leprosy — 
I am a beggar ! 
Proclaim the wealthy knave, cut-throat and cheat, 



170 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

Still crowds, as deaf as adders, crawl and bow 

To him. Denounce him poor — as though the plague 

Were at his bones, he stands alone." 

The spirit of Mammon appears to the des- 
perate man who has declared that he is one 
who " dares be villain but dares not be poor." 
Mammon comes as an old and haggard man, 
with a face expressive of the most sullen apathy. 
Astolf o recoils in horror from the dire apparition 
with the exclamation, " What art thou ? " 

" Mammon. Thine idol, come, bow to me. 

Astolfo. Thou art a fiend, set on to snare my soul ! 
I do repent me. 

Mammon. Fool ! 
Religion's in the heart, not in the knee I 
Already thou hast worshipped me. 

Astolfo. Thy name I 

Mammon. Mammon — 
Thou dost smile. 'Tis a name that makes men laugh. 
Though death be aiming at them. Thou'dst be mine ? 

Astolfo. No : thy looks are terrible, thy words — 

Mammon. So, then, we can change both. 

{He casts away his mask and ragged clothing 
and appears a mass of gold, with a golden 
crown and sceptre.) 
Start not, signor : I am earth's harlequin ; 
I build up palaces, put slaves on thrones, 
Erase the spots from treason's stained coat, 
Manacle warm youth to shivering age, 
Re-christen fools most wise and learned men, 
And trumpet villains, honest." 

Mammon presents Astolfo with the mar- 
vellous unspendable ducat, and the young man 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 171 

goes off and bargains with Nibbio and Botta 
to win back his bride ; it costs him six thousand 
ducats, but what of that — with Mammon at 
his back it matters not how much he spends. 
He is about to wed the wilhng Sabina when 
Nibbio rushes in with his empty box, the 
ducats having all disappeared. Mammon has 
of course kept the word of promise to the ear 
to break it to the hope and, his juggling with 
the fiend made manifest, the wretched Astolfo 
finds himself in a condition far worse than 
that of poverty. The ducat is seized and 
crossed by the monks, but returns at once to 
its miserable owner. He is to be burnt for 
his dealings with the unholy one ; but Mammon 
is nothing if not a refined torturer, and he 
rescues his dupe from prison. Astolfo, with 
the faithful Sabina, would fly, but none will 
take his money. He encounters Botta with a 
bag of gold, and is struggling to possess himself 
of it when Mammon comes on and kills the old 
man, making Astolfo appear the murderer. 
Astolfo has discovered the depth of the villainy 
by which he and his brother have been cheated 
of their all by Botta and Nibbio; and in the 
closing scene strangles the latter before being 
carried off by Mammon. 

The play has marked lessons in it, lessons 
which they who run can scarcely fail to read. 
Here, as in other of his writings, the dramatist 
is not sparing of scathing remarks on those who 
live by litigation, and some of the best points 
in the dialogue are directed against the grasping 



172 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

lawyer, the hypocritical churchman. The old 
man Nibbio, disappointed of a young bride, 
becomes a Franciscan monk. Says Grillo : " I 
always thought his knavery so great, nothing, 
save a cowl, could cover it." Grillo, the old- 
time pickpocket, meets Nibbio in his new 
monkish garb, and salutes him : 

" Grillo. Save you, father — will you give a poor 
reprobate your blessing? 

Nibbio. Bless thee, my son. 

Grillo. Father, I — I — bless me again, good father. 

Nibbio. What, Grillo ? Humph ! art thou sincere^ 
my son ? 

Grillo. Sincere ! Could I jest with the wonder of 
Naples ? Why thou hast been planted in a convent 
only a few days, and thou art already a full-blown 
saint. Bless me again ! 

Nibbio. There ! go thy ways — mend thy life : thou 
hast been a knave — but the viler the rogue, the 
lovelier the convert. 

Grillo. In truth, father, I would ease my conscience. 
I would tell thee all my sins. 

Nibbio. All ! 

Grillo. Nay, there's time 'tween this and midnight. 
Oh, I've been a horrid knave ! Had every one of 
my sins a neck, Italy would want rope to hang 'em. 
But I'll tell thee a few of my lighter faults. In 
Venice, I killed a merchant — 

Nibbio. Well. 

Grillo. In Padua, I set fire to a house — 

Nibbio. Well. 

Grillo. In Venice, I broke the hearts of three widows, 
and robbed sixteen orphans — 

Nibbio. Well, well, if thou'rt contrite, there's hope. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 173 

Grillo. In Verona, I ruined a lawyer — no, that 
comes by-and-by, among my good acts. In Genoa, 
I turned Jew ; in Bologna, I eat pork again ! In 
Palermo, I broke a bank; and at Leghorn I sank a 
ship, with her crew and passengers. Is there hope 
yet? 

Nibbio. Go on, go on. Thou mayst not yet despair. 

Grillo. Here, in Naples, I stole three peaches from 
a convent garden. 

Nibbio. Horrible, horrible. 

Grillo. {Sidling close to Nibbio) I have done worse 
than that. 

Nibbio. Impossible ! it cannot be. 

Grillo. Yes ; it's my last crime. 

Nibbio. I tremble to listen — what was thy last 
crime ? 

Grillo. {Stealing a bag of money from Nibbio's 
girdle) My last crime ? 

Nibbio. Ay ; thy last crime. 

Grillo. I stole some money from a monk. 

Nibbio. Thou'rt a lost wretch — no hope — a lost 
wretch ! 

Grillo. I would even now return some part of the 
gold to the church. 

Nibbio. 'Tis the only way to whiten thyself. How 
many pieces didst thou steal ? 

Grillo. At a rough guess— for gentlemen of my trade 
rarely count — {glancing at the bag) some fifty pieces. 

Nibbio. I would not lose a soul : bring me twenty, 
and thou shalt have my prayers. 

Grillo. Twenty I 

Nibbio. To mend thy conscience. 

Grillo, Mend it ! Some of thy brethren would sell 
me a new one for half the money. 

Nibbio. Well, well ; if thou dost really repent, ten 
may serve. 



174 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

Grillo. Say five, and it's a bargain. Come, or I'll 
take my custom to another workman. Tinker my 
conscience well, and I'll give five. 

Nibbio. I do almost commit a sin, letting thee off 
so cheaply. Say six — well, well, five ! 

Grillo. {Taking money from the bag unseen by 
Nibbio, and presenting it to him) There's thy money. 

Nibbio. And there's my blessing ! 

Grillo. Now, thou dost pardon me the theft ? 

Nibbio. I do, I do. 

Grillo. As for the man I robbed — 

Nibbio. The loss will exercise his patience. Thou 
hast told me all thy crimes ? 

Grillo. All I can remember. Now for my virtues — 
nay, I'll soon despatch them : marriage is a virtue — 

Nibbio. It may be. 

Grillo. Then I am virtuous : I've married six wives, 
and am promised to five more." 

How excellently in this scene the confessed 
rogue works upon the cupidity of the notary 
monk, and how ready we are to forgive him 
his sins for the golden humour with which he 
tells of them, and for the delicious way in which 
he plays upon the would-be clever Nibbio. 
The DeviVs Ducat " passed current in London, 
stamped with general applause " — O. Smith as 
Mammon, and Buckstone as Grillo meeting 
with special approval. 

An undated letter addressed to a friend 
named H. Whittle — an actor or manager — 
appears to belong to this year. It may have 
been written in the early part of it, when the 
quarrel with Elliston was in progress, though 
the reference to the DeviVs Ducat suggests 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 175 

that it might have been written later. If, as 
is indicated, the arrangement with Elhston was 
still in force when the letter was written, then 
the DeviVs Ducat must have been completed 
many months before it was staged. The letter 
runs as follows : 

" My dear Whittle, — I yesterday saw Mr. 
E[lliston]'s factotum, and, as I wished if possible to 
do the business relative to the MS. smoothly, sounded 
him as to Mr. E.'s disposition should it be done else- 
where. His opinion was that he would instantly 
litigate, and as this might embroil you and myself in 
disagreeable proceedings it will probably be as well 
to defer the piece until your next Ben., by which time 
I may be enabled to obtain amicably what might 
now only lead to annoyance. Besides, his daughter 
died but two days ago, and — although I owe him 
nothing in point of courtesy — I shouldn't like to 
create him new uneasiness at such a period. With 
the DeviVs Ducat do what you please. I shall see 
you to-morrow. 

" Believe me, dear Whittle, 
" Your ever truly, 

" D. J." 

It is possible that the dramatist's corre- 
spondent was connected with the Adelphi 
Theatre, as it was there that The DeviVs Ducat 
made its appearance. That Whittle was 
evidently a familiar friend the terms of this 
note sufficiently indicate, but I have found 
no further mention of him. Another friend 
made at this time was John Abraham Heraud, 
a journalist and minor poet of the period. It 



176 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

was in this year that Heraud pubhshed a 
volume of poems the title of which gave 
Jerrold the opportunity for a jest. The poet 
meeting the dramatist asked, " Have you seen 
my Descent into Hell?'''' "No," retorted the 
latter, " but I should like to." It was Heraud, 
too, who was delightfully satirized a dozen 
years later in what is accepted as Thackeray's 
first contribution to Punch, " The Legend of 
Jawbrahim Heraudee." 



CHAPTER VI 

" THE RENT DAY " AND EARLY COMEDY 

1831—1832 

The quarrel that set Jerrold and Elliston 
wide as the poles asunder, left the dramatist 
free to place his work elsewhere than at the 
Surrey, and also probably left him freer for 
journalism. That the varied work which he 
had done for the stage had made his name 
known beyond the circle of friends and ac- 
quaintances, is to be seen from such occasional 
mention in the periodicals of the time as 
troubled to note the fact that plays had authors. 
Among men of kindred tastes and work he 
was taking his place as a keen-witted and 
ready-tongued companion, who was always 
welcome. His brilliant conversational wit was 
readily recognized, and his bonhomie won him 
many friends among those who knew him as 
a man of real earnestness of spirit, of great 
kindliness and of keen sensibility, one whose 
incisive remarks were frequently made for the 
wit of the thing rather than with any cruel 
intent. The man to whom the stroke was 
delivered would know whether it was a rapier 
thrust or a mere brilliant touch — a hit, a 
palpable hit— with a fencing foil. There were 

VOL. I 177 N 



178 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

some who looked askance at him, who feared 
the point of a weapon of which they lacked 
the mastery, but they were probably those who 
had given good cause for some specially biting 
bit of sarcasm, some rankling point of wit. 

It was somewhat about this time that a 
number of young men, of whom Jerrold was 
one, banded themselves into the Mulberry 
Club. One of the prime movers in the scheme 
appears to have been William Godwin's very 
promising son, who about two years later was 
untimely cut off by cholera.^ The club met 
at first once a week at " a house of entertain- 
ment " in Vinegar Yard, Drury Lane, and 
had a special dinner on that significant 
anniversary, the twenty-third of April. Mem- 
bers read original papers or poems relating 
only to Shakespeare, and, as many artists 
belonged to the club, they exhibited sketches 
of some event connected with the poet's life. 
A number of the youthful aspirants who fore- 
gathered at this lowly place of meeting were 
destined in after years to win for themselves 
notable niches in the temple of fame. The 

^ William Godwin the Elder in a preface to his son's 
novel Transfusion said of the Mulberries : " It was part of 
the plan of this club that each member should in rotation 
produce and read before his fellows, on certain select 
occasions, an original essay on any subject he might think 
proper, provided it bore some reference to the object of 
the club. Accordingly two of the essays produced by 
him [William Godwin the Younger] were, the first entitled 
On Shakespeare^ s Knowledge of His Ozvn Greatness, and 
the second A Dissertation on the Dramatic Unities, which 
were after his death published in the Court Magazine." 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 179 

three friends, Douglas Jerrold, Laman Blan- 
chard and Kenny Meadows, all of them 
ardent worshippers at the shrine of the great 
poet, were, of course, of the coterie; Charles 
Dickens, Serjeant Talfourd, Thackeray, 
Charles Knight, Charles and Thomas Landseer, 
Frank Stone, George Cattermole, Daniel Mac- 
lise, " Bob " Keeley, and many other familiar 
names, figured in the roll of membership either 
in those early years or later, when the name 
had been changed from the Mulberry to the 
Shakespeare Club, and a more important 
meeting place was fixed upon.^ 

All the papers and poems which were read, 
and the sketches which were shown, at the 
*' Mulberry " meetings, were kept together in 
a book called Mulberry Leaves. This volume 
on the expiry of the club remained in the hands 
of William Elton, an actor member who was 
drowned in 1843 while journeying from Edin- 
burgh to London. The book, which presumably 
remained with his family, has not been trace- 
able. Only a portion of the volume's contents 
was ever published, and it may be hoped that 
the entire work is still in existence, and will 
some day be made public, for it would be an 
extremely interesting souvenir of the earlier 
years and writings of a remarkable circle of 
talented young men. Many of Douglas Jer- 

^ It was evidently a member of the club who edited 
BelVs Weekly Magazine in 1834, for in the third number 
is given a conversation between the editor and his friends 
(signed <j>) in which the editor says " shall we smoke a 
cigar more majorum, at the Mulberry Club." 



180 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

rold's " leaves " were published in various 
periodicals, and three of them are probably to 
be recognized in his collected writings.^ Of 
his verse contributions to the club, but one 
example remains in the form of a song on 
Shakespeare's Crab Tree.^ Many years after- 
wards, speaking of the old circle, Douglas 
Jerrold said that it was impossible to look back 
to that " society of kindred thoughts and 
sympathizing hopes without a sweetened 
memory — without the touches of an old affec- 
tion." In so looking back he was often moved 
to sing again in a soft sweet voice, the Crab- 
tree song which he had written in old " Mul- 
berry " days. 

It was probably in the Mulberry circle that 
some one hit upon a novel method of testing 
the members' knowledge of the works of 
Shakespeare. A word was to be given to each 
person by his table neighbour, and this he 
was to define at once with an apposite quota- 
tion from the poet. On its becoming Jerrold's 
turn to respond, his neighbour probably plumed 
himself upon having set a poser, for he sug- 
gested the seemingly hopeless word " tread- 
mill." Instantly came the wit's definition 
of it in Lear's words, " Down — thou climbing 
sorrow." This readiness of wit seems to have 
been an early characteristic, for it is one of 
the first things insisted upon by those of the 

^ Shakespeare at Bankside, Shakespeare in China and 
The Epitaph of Sir Hugh Evans in Cakes and Ale. 
2 The Essays of Douglas Jerrold, Introduction. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 181 

dramatist's friends who have left any account 
of their intercourse with him. It may reason- 
ably be doubted whether Sydney Smith is 
altogether in the right when he says that wit 
may be mastered by patient study, that in 
effect we may all become in our own way 
Talleyrands, Sheridans, Sydney Smiths or 
Jerrolds, yet we cannot doubt that, given the 
mental alertness on which true wit depends, 
the incessant exercise of it makes it seem yet 
more remarkably ready. Douglas Jerrold as 
a sociable and convivial companion and as a 
dramatist was in a double manner keeping 
his talent always polished and always in play. 
The DeviVs Ducat had been produced at the 
Adelphi a fortnight before Christmas, 1830; 
on the following Easter Monday, April 4, 1831, 
leaving the romantic drama in verse, Jerrold 
was represented on the boards of the Pavilion 
Theatre by an original domestic drama in 
three acts called Martha Willis, the Servant 
Maid. The story is laid nearly a century 
before the time of its production, and its 
characters are grouped more or less closely 
around one, Nunky Gruel, a miserly and hypo- 
critical pawnbroker. This man is a notorious 
receiver of stolen goods, and encourages the 
young men who come within his influence to 
" make money " by fair means or foul. The 
hero, Walter Speed, is a highwayman who is 
*' wanted " for stopping a coach and a former 
lover of Martha Willis, a country girl who has 
entered service in London with the hope that 



182 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

she may encounter him. Martha and several 
others are placed in Newgate for robbery and 
are sentenced to death; she refusing to say 
that which by freeing her would make Speed's 
guilt known. Speed, who has given the girl 
the stolen ring which brings about her con- 
demnation, determines to work what repara- 
tion he may; he kills the usurer and receiver 
of stolen goods who has been his undoing, and 
disguised gains admission to Newgate, where 
making himself known, he clears the girl, 
takes poison, and dies. The play, which is 
perhaps more notable for the pointed dialogue 
than for any strong interest in the highly 
sensational story, enjoyed such success as to 
warrant its revival more than once during 
the next few years. 

Slug, who professes to be a reformed char- 
acter, has a passage at arms with Scarlet, the 
guard of the Derby Highflyer : 

" Scarlet. Reformed, eh ? and what's become of 
your friend, Nat Fell ? 

Slug. My friend? Why, didn't he and two others 
stop your coach on the Derby road ? 

Scarlet. Yes 1 and if my blunderbuss hadn't 
missed fire, he'd have had lead enough in his head 
for an alderman. So you've dissolved partnership 
have you ? 

Slug. I tell you, Master Scarlet, he was never a 
friend of mine ; you see, he was new from the country, 
and a fine dashing fellow with money in his pocket, 
when I first knew him — then he went to gaming 
houses, and then 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 183 

Scarlet. I know — it is but a handsbreadth from 
a dice box to a pistol. Gambler and pickpocket ! 
Why, they back one another like the head and tail 
of a penny piece ! toss, and 'tis a chance which comes 
uppermost. And so Nat Fell 

Slug. Ay, that's his name here, though when he's 
at home at Chesterfield, he's called Walter Speed. 
Well, he, I tell you, has gone bad enough — but as for 
me, I'm a respectable professional man — I'm a lawyer, 
and an honest man. 

Scarlet. Ay, that is, you only rob according to act 
of Parliament. Well, good-day. 

Slug. Good-day. Master Scarlet, you'll take 
nothing ? 

Scarlet. No, and I'll see you don't. 

Slug. Ha ! you will have your jest. But good-day 
to you ! You're a fine, open, worthy, {aside) sneaking, 
pettifogging rascal. [Exit. 

Scarlet. Turned honest ! Then black's turned 
white." 

The usurer, gloating over " the last of his 
lordship's plate," as he puts it with his hoard, 
murmurs to himself, " Humph ! a lord without 
gold and silver is marvellously like a peacock 
without his feathers." Says a convicted thief 
to the mother who had taught him thievery : 
" When parents give life, they give a curse 
if they do not teach that which makes life 
happy." 

Jerrold was at about this period devoting 
much of his time to journalism. When Thomas 
Wakley — celebrated as founder of the Lancet, 
and for many years as coroner for Middlesex — 
started a journal called the Ballot during the 



184 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

great Reform agitation, he chose Douglas 
Jerrold to assist him in the triple capacity 
of sub-editor, reviewer and dramatic critic. 
Later, when the Ballot was merged in the 
Examiner, Jerrold continued for a while as 
sub-editor under Albany Fonblanque. It was 
about this time, too, that Jerrold became a 
contributor of original essays to the Athenceum 
and also is reported to have written a very 
violent political pamphlet which was sup- 
pressed. The actual subject of this pamphlet 
it now seems impossible to trace, although 
from the fact of its having been written when 
the question of Reform was agitating men's 
minds to an unusual degree it may be imagined 
that it, too, dealt with the topical matter. 
It is something characteristic of the man's 
ardent, outspoken nature that what was 
apparently his first essay in political writing 
should so shock the sensibilities of the powers 
that were that they should require its with- 
drawal from circulation. When his pen was 
further trained in the mastery of sarcasm and 
invective it was destined to become a very real 
power in the sphere of political journalism. 

In the summer of 1831, T. P. Cooke, the 
actor who, as William in Black-Eyed Susan, 
had made so decided a hit, contemplated — it 
may be presumed in the rdle of sailor — giving 
a series of " Entertainments " in the manner 
which Charles Mathews and Frederick Henry 
Yates had made popular. With this aim in 
view he communicated with the author of 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 185 

the piece which had been the means of so 
considerably adding to his reputation, inquiring 
if he would undertake the literary part of such 
an " Entertainment." The terms which he 
offered did not apparently err on the side of 
munificence, as may be gathered from Jer- 
rold's reply, dated from 4, Augustus Square, 
Regent's Park, on June 23 : 

" My dear Cooke, — I feel assured that I should 
not be able to do anything worthy of you, or credit- 
able to myself, on the terms you propose. The 
work would employ me — to do it as I should wish, 
and to make it something like a standard thing — 
some weeks. I could not do it — forming as it must a 
whole night's entertainment, under £100. Moncrieff 
and Peake have each had £300 off Mathews for his 
At Homes. It is not, I hope, too much vanity in 
ncie to rate myself at about one-third the value of 
either of those gentlemen. I am aware that the 
At Homes are established things, and that yours 
would, from its very novelty, be something of a 
speculation, yet to give that speculation any chance 
of success it is necessary that great attention should 
be directed to it, which attention I could not pay 
under the terms I have above specified." 

Cooke's scheme, apparently, did not come 
to anything, or if it did, he must have found 
a more amenable writer to prepare his " book," 
for Jerrold turned his attention to the writing 
of a comic drama, by which he should once 
more seek to gain the suffrages of a Drury 
Lane audience. 

On December 8, 1831, The Bride of Ludgate 



186 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

was duly produced at that theatre, and proved 
a better example of finished comedy than the 
author's previous essays; it may indeed be 
looked upon as the first of that series of 
brilliant dialogue plays which ends with A 
Heart of Gold more than twenty years later. 
Two years had passed since the failure of 
The WitchfindeVy and in the interval the author 
had strengthened his position and acquired 
a greater sureness of touch; the new piece 
w^as distinctly successful, despite the fact that 
in a fit of pique Farren, who was cast for one 
of the leading characters, " declined the part 
the day before the performance." As " D. G." 
put it, assuredly the fate of the dramatist 
is hard, seeing that the attitude of one of the 
" puppets " may destroy the chances of a 
piece which represents six months of work. 
The critic in his preface to Cumberland's 
edition of this play waxed wroth, in capitals 
and italics, over this defection of one of the 
actors — " To destroy the hopes of an author is 
a matter of small moment to the mimic ! to 
whom all feelings are alike. What is his 
success to HIM, even though the decent com- 
forts of a family depend on it ? The puffed and 
pampered player lacks even the small charity 
of the Fine Gentleman in Garrick's Prologue — 

" Let the poor devil eat, — allow him that ! " 
The poor devil may be damned in a double 
sense, ere he abate one inch of his dignity — 
unless to cry quits with some stipendiary hack, 
some penny-a-line man, or brother buffoon.^ ^ 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 187 

Among the other " wrongs " of dramatists 
which galled Jerrold at various times was the 
censorship exercised by the Examiner of Plays. 
George Colman — the worthy who then wielded 
this autocratic power — refused to license the 
Bride of Ludgate for performance because the 
plot required King Charles to wear the disguise 
of a clergyman, and the habit of a lawyer had 
lamely to be substituted. But of this trouble 
with the Examiner we shall see something 
more in the account of the next of the plays. 

The story of The Bride of Ludgate is laid in 
the Restoration days, when the Merry Monarch 
and his licentious courtiers were ready to 
engage in all manner of amorous escapades. 
The King and his boon companion Sedley 
have gone to a certain vintner's in disguise, 
on the pretence of dealing in wines, but in 
reality to make the acquaintance of the 
merchant's pretty young wife. There they 
find themselves let in for a series of amusing 
adventures. Andrew Shekel, a rich old money- 
lender of Ludgate, is about to marry a young 
girl, Melissa, whose affections have previously 
been engaged by young Mapleton, the son of 
a Cromwellian. After a series of amusing 
scenes in which Mapleton is half married to 
Melissa's maid, and the King is arrested as a 
traitor by one of his own boon companions, 
Charles in royal fashion puts all right by 
restoring Mapleton the family estates which 
had been confiscated, by insisting upon his 
marrying Melissa forthwith, while he further 



188 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

rewards the disappointed old Shekel with a 
promise of knighthood. The play sets forth 
a pretty story and has much of sparkling 
dialogue in it. " Our loyalty," says one of 
the swaggerers to the disguised King, " is 
clear as crystal." " Is it so ! " exclaims Charles 
in an aside, "" I'll try my diamonds on it." 
After his bribery has seemed successful, when 
the expose takes place, he turns and says, 
" La ! dost not blush to take a bribe ? " to 
receive the disarming retort, " La, sire, 'twould 
have looked ill to blush to take, when your 
Majesty didn't blush to offer." 

Here is a scrap of dialogue between the 
disguised King and Sedley in the house of the 
vintner : 

" Charles. Why, Sedley, surely some one hath 
threatened you with matrimony, you seem so dull 
of late. 

Sedley. In truth, I begin to reflect that 

Charles. Then you are a lost man; for reflection 
to a rake is fatal as singing to a swan. Why, you 
are so irrevocably lost that even your virtues, could 
you filch any, would undo the world. 

Sedley. The world is in no danger ; yet, how ? 

Charles. How ! Why, your sobriety would shut up 
the taverns, your frugality would ruin the money- 
lenders, and your chastity make a desert of West- 
minster Hall. 

Sedley. But then the virtue that would rejoice at 
my conversion 

Charles. She'd have little reason; for virtue her- 
self, with you for an admirer, would lose her reputa- 
tion. Ha ! here returns our watchdog, the valorous 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 189 

Captain Mouth. That fellow looks as warlike, yet, 
withal's as harmless as an unloaded field-piece. 

Sedley. Nay, the captain has seen service. 

Charles. So have the chamberlains at the Blue Boar. 
He has the constitutional courage of a post — he'll not 
run away. When science thought of gunpowder, she 
thought of such fellows as he to expend it on." 

Captain Mouth is a delightful swaggerer, and 
his gasconading about the court, repeated in his 
presence by the vintner to the disguised King, 
is part of a diverting scene. In story, situation 
and dialogue taken together, the playwright 
had up to this time done nothing better than 
this piece, which is written in the very spirit 
of the drama of the period in which its scenes 
are set. 

The beginning of 1832 was notable in Jer- 
rold's life for two reasons, for it was in January 
that he started on its brief career a comico- 
satirical paper called Punch in London, proto- 
type of the Punch which ten years later was 
to come and stay, and it was signalized by the 
production of the second most popular of his 
plays. Punch in London, which appeared on 
January 14, was not a pretentious journal, 
but it was clear and outspoken in its attacks 
on the triple giants, snobbery, toadyism and 
humbug. The new paper was undoubtedly 
suggested by the production, a month earlier, 
of Figaro in London, under the editorship of 
Gilbert Abbot a Beckett; it was not in any 
sense a close imitator of its more successful 
rival, although somewhat obviously an " after- 



190 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

thought." Because of this a Beckett's paper 
has been referred to as the prototype of the 
Punch with which we are all now familiar; 
the connection is, however, more apparent 
than real. Punch in London came out not so 
much as a periodical as an individual, and 
addressed his audience in very much the same 
way as his successor was to do twenty years 
later. He came out frankly as a critic who 
would " spare nobody," and had some lively 
comment on men and affairs. Jerrold was 
connected with it but for the first few of the 
not many weeks of its existence, and as I have 
dealt with his work on it already in an earlier 
volume ^ it is unnecessary to enlarge upon it 
here. It may be said that in his contributions, 
in the very opening address, the editor insisted 
upon " the purpose " which inspired his pen. 

Just when Douglas Jerrold was severing 
his connection with Punch in London the 
curtain went up at Drury Lane, on January 25, 
on a new play in which that " purpose " was 
put in another and perhaps more widely 
telling fashion. The success of the comedy 
of the preceding month had made the manage- 
ment alive to the fact that in their new writer 
they had an original dramatist of some power. 
He was, indeed, justifying his explosive state- 
ment of a few years earlier, " I will come into 
this theatre as an original dramatist, or not 
at all." But if the Bride of Ludgate with its 
air of old-world comedy proved popular, how 

^ Douglas Jerrold and Punch (Macmillan & Co.), 1910. 



~^fea. 




^Ov.U W^^^^ 



Douglas Jerroi.i) 

From a print Jirst pulilishcd in 1S36 (is "from a pictirre in the possession 
of VoKyhis Jerrold " 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 191 

much more likely to enlist the sympathetic 
admiration of a Drury Lane audience was a 
piece, a *' domestic " drama, based on the 
homely subject of The Rent Bay. Sir David 
Wilkie's celebrated picture of the same name 
gave the dramatist all the hint that he wanted, 
and the result was a play which, while it was 
marked with all his peculiar brilliance of 
dialogue, had a closer grip on life, was more 
sustainedly of human interest, than many 
other of his plays. That The Rent Day — 
described as a " fine specimen of the slandered 
dramatic genius of the age " — was not, how- 
ever, written for Drury Lane is to be seen 
from the following paragraph which affords 
a curious sidelight on the ways of " star " 
actors, and is an interesting item in the history 
of Jerrold's connection with the stage. It 
appeared in the first munber of The English 
Figaro, another of the numerous imitators of 
Figaro in London. 

" Jerrold's domestic drama in two acts, entitled 
The Rent Day, is to be produced at Drury Lane next 
week. This is the same piece which was lately 
withdrawn from the Adelphi Theatre after it had 
been put in rehearsal. The Bashaw Yates wanted 
the drama to be denuded of half its fair proportions 
and likewise permission from the author to allow 
the comic part to be played ad libitum, because the 
tom fool of Yates's company forsooth ' had a bad 
study.' To this proposal, Mr. Jerrold very properly 
demurred, not wishing to father all the obscenities 
which the said tom fool might perpetrate in the course 



192 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

of an evening, and straightway took the piece to 
Drury Lane, where it was instantly accepted, and 
underlined in the bills the next day.^ 

" But here another obstacle presented itself to 
mar the fair prospects of the author in the person 
of William — a gentleman drawing forty pounds a 
week from the treasury, thirty for himself and ten 
for Mrs. Faucit Farren — who objected to play the 
part assigned to him, because (impertinent coxcomb !) 
he did not consider it to be ' the best part in the 
piece ! ' The affair was not arranged when we went 
to press. Really it is high time such fellows as these 
should be taught that they are dependent upon the 
public and not the public upon them.'' 

The drama duly appeared on January 25, 

and William Farren was not in the cast ! 

The piece achieved an instant and marked 

success which must have been galling indeed 

to the actor who had withdrawn in a fit of 

temper. " Bashaw Yates " too must have 

felt particularly sore over the matter, for after 

compelling the author to take his play from 

the Adelphi boards, he had later on to flatter 

it by mounting an imitation ! Whether the 

^ Another of the journals of the day, The Theatrical 
Observer, recorded that The Rent Day was partly accepted 
at the Adelphi, but withdrawn by the author on account 
of some caprice of the manager, or his wife, and proved to 
Drury Lane "a great card "; while another said, "The 
managers of the Adelphi, with an acumen which argues 
well for their sagacity, could see but little merit in this 
piece, and actually allowed the author to withdraw it 
from their house, because, with the spirit which becomes 
a man of genius, he would not consent for the sake of a 
few paltry pounds to have his piece hacked about to suit 
the whims and fancies of one of the major mountebanks 
of this most magisterial minor." 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 193 

writer of the paragraph had confused Farren's 
defection at the last moment from the cast 
of The Bride of Ludgate, or whether the actor 
really struck for a second time, cannot be 
decided. Certainly he did not appear in either 
of Jerrold's plays. 

When The Rent Day was sent to George 
Colman as Examiner of Plays, the following 
communication was returned — two days before 
the first performance : 

" January 23, 1832. 
" Please to omit the following underlined words in 
the representation of the drama called The Rent Day. 

Act I 

Scene I. ' The blessed little babes, God bless 'em ! ' 

Scene III. ' Heaven be kind to us, for I've almost 
lost all other hope,' 

Ditto. ' Damn him .' 

Scene IV. ' Damn business.' ' No, don't damn 
business ; I'm very drunk, but I can't damn business — 
it's profane. ' 

Ditto. ' Isn't that an angel ? ' ' I can't tell ; I've 
not been used to such company. ' 

Scene V. ' Oh, Martin, husband, for the love of 
heaven ! ' 

Ditto. ' Heaven help us, heaven help us ! ' 

Act II 
Scene III. ' Heaven forgive you, can you speak of 
it ? ' ' I leave you, and may heaven pardon and 
protect you ! ' 

TOL. I o 



194 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

Scene last. ' Farmer, neighbours, heaven bless you 
— let the landlord take all the rest.' 

Ditto. 'They have now the money, and heaven 
prosper it with them.' 

" G. COLMAN. 

" To the Manager, Theatre Royal, Drury Lane." 

And George Colman — before his official 
appointment — had a reputation as a humorist ! 
Apropos of this it may be mentioned that the 
Examiner had struck out all the " Damme's " 
that occurred in a play called Married and 
Single before endorsing it for performance, 
" because such language was immoral." 
EUiston, acknowledging the licence, wrote : 

" Dear Colman, — ' Damn me, if it isn't the brazier.' 
' Damn the traveller do I see coming to the Red Cow.' 
' Damn this fellow.' ' Sooner be damned than dig.' 

" Yours, 

" R. W. Elliston." 

The point of this was, I believe, that all these 
expletive sentences were taken from Colman's 
own dramatic writings ! ^ 

When The Rent Day— in which John Pritt 
Harley, who had made his debut in Samuel 
Jerrold's little Cranbrook theatre in 1806, 
had a notable part — was in active rehearsal at 
Drury Lane, the author one day had a pleasant 
surprise on going behind the scenes at the 

^ I have the licence granted to William Robert Copeland 
in 1855 to perform a three-act drama Our Victories in the 
Crimea, but it is carefully endorsed by the then Examiner, 
William Bodham Donne, " Omit all oaths in representation 
and the words ' Lord,' ' God,' etc. " ! 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 195 

theatre, for there he met once more Clarkson 
Stanfield, the painter, whom he had not seen 
since they parted, nearly twenty years earHer, 
on board the Namw\ the one a boy officer, 
the other a " foremast man." The meeting 
again was the renewing of a close friendship 
which lasted throughout life. Stanfield was 
at the time engaged in preparing scenery for 
his whilom shipmate's new " domestic drama." 
The play met with rapturous applause, the 
clever setting of the opening scene as an exact 
reproduction of Wilkie's popular picture being 
greeted with considerable enthusiasm. In con- 
nection with this it may not be inappropriate 
to quote the late W. P. Frith, the popular 
painter of " The Derby," who wrote : 

" Wilkie's ' Rent Day ' was said to have inspired 
the play of that name by Douglas Jerrold ; however 
that may have been, it is certain that the famous 
picture was represented by living actors on the stage 
at a special moment [the raising of the curtain on 
the first act] during the performance of the piece. 
Mulready, always Wilkie's intimate friend, told me 
of the glee with which the artist informed him of the 
compliment to be paid to his picture. 

" ' We'll just go together the first night, ye know; 
I've been at the playhouse putting the people in the 
positions, and it's just wonderfully like ma picture.' 

" The two painters secured central places in the 
dress circle; the curtain was drawn up, and an 
exact representation of the picture disclosed. ^ 

^ The fifth scene of the first act similarly disclosed 
a representation of Wilkie's companion picture, " Dis- 
training for Rent." 



196 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

" ' Not only,' said Mulready to me, ' did they get 
the groups right, but they had managed to select 
people really like those in the picture. I was de- 
lighted,' said he, ' and turning to Wilkie to express 
my pleasure, I saw the tears running down his face. 
" What's the matter ? Why, it's admirable ! Surely 
you are satisfied? " 

" ' Well, ye see,' said Wilkie, ' I feel it's such an 
honour, it's just quite overcome me to think that a 
picture of mine should be treated like that ; and did 
ye hear how the people clapped, man ? It's varra 
gratifying.' " ^ 

The announcement that Jerrold's play was 
suggested by Wilkie's picture did not by any 
means enlist the sympathies of the critics on 
its behalf. The dramatist was told, by those 
kind friends on the press who are ever ready 
to offer advice, that he might easily have found 
a better subject on which to employ his talents. 
" When hackneyed engravings are taken for the 
groundwork of pieces at our national theatres 
it is high time for some kind of reform in the 
drama." Gilbert Abbot a Beckett, who thus 
found fault with the play before its production, 
was among its most hearty supporters when he 
had witnessed the performance. So consider- 
able was the success that Morris, the manager 
of the Haymarket, coolly appropriated it, his 
theatre being then in a bad way, and the loose 
system of dramatic copyright, or no-copyright, 
permitting such piracy. Imitation, a popular 
proverb tells us, is the sincerest form of 

^ Further Reminiscences, by W. P. Frith. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 197 

flattery, and Jerrold's drama was duly flattered 
by dramatists with a plentiful lack of origin- 
ality. The opening scene of the play was 
received with such rapturous applause that 
Buckstone, more successful as a play actor 
than as a playwright, modelled a piece which 
he called The Forgery on two other of Wilkie's 
paintings, " Reading the Will " and " The 
Village Politicians." Beyond the great success 
of The Rent Day these early " living pictures " 
did not meet with any sustained popular 
approbation. At the time that it was pro- 
duced it may be added the same author's 
dramas of Martha Willis and Ambrose Gwinett 
were drawing " good houses " in Paris. 

Described as a domestic drama in two 
acts, this play may well have been suggested 
by the popular painting by David Wilkie of 
the same name — the painting which was 
utilized as the setting for the opening scene. 
Though described as a domestic drama it is 
also something of a social satire on the times 
when landlords revelled in London gaming- 
houses on wealth wrung by harsh or unjust 
stewards from a suffering tenantry. The 
steward of one, Grantley, is an ex-convict who, 
having feathered his nest, is preparing to 
decamp. The ill-used tenant is Martin Hey- 
wood, whose father and grandfather had for 
sixty years been regular with rent, tax and 
tithe, but Martin lias fallen on evil days, and 
cannot face " Rent Day " with the imper- 
turbability of full pockets. Grantley, having 



198 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

written to his steward for more money, visits 
his estate incognito to see how it will be raised, 
and is thus able to unmask the villainy of 
Crumbs and to ensure the happy ending 
demanded. ' 

Says one of the characters : " Fault ! 
poverty's no crime; " to be countered with 
" Isn't it ? well, it's so hke I don't know the 
difference." When the bailiff says he'll have 
the law of Toby for slander he is told, " The 
character that needs law to mend it is hardly 
worth the tinkering," and on being threatened 
with violence if he doesn't go he says, " I give 
you warning ! Remember I'm a sworn ap- 
praiser," to receive the retort, " You're the 
better judge for what you ought to be knocked 
down." With its ready dialogue, and its 
touches of social satire, The Rent Day has also 
a tender story of love and misunderstanding, 
with highly dramatic situations, where the 
distracted farmer finds — thanks to the villainy 
of a couple of scoundrels — his wife in a 
seemingly compromising position and where, 
struggling with the broker for possession of 
his grandfather's chair, Martin discovers in 
that piece of furniture a hoard that suffices 
to make him stand clear again with the world, 
while Grantley appears on the scene in his 
proper person to straighten the other matter, 
to dismiss the scoundrel steward — who has 
but been seeking vengeance for an earlier 
wrong — and to present Martin with the free- 
hold of the farm. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 199 

One great theatrical " hit " now means far 
more profit to a playwriter than did fifty 
such successes in the first half of the nineteenth 
century. In illustration of the small returns 
which were made then it is worth mentioning 
that I possess the document, dated March 8, 
1832, in which for the magnificent sum of ten 
pounds Douglas Jerrold disposed of " the 
perpetual copyright of The Rent Day, a domestic 
drama " to one, Mr. C. Chappie.^ Of course, 
the dramatist had reaped the profit of the 
play's successful first run, which, as runs went 
then, was a long one. If, however, the author 
did not make any large amount of pecuniary 
gain out of his successful piece it certainly 
added to his fame as an original writer. The 
nature of the success may be gauged from the 
wording of the Drury Lane programme for 
February 2. It is headed " Fifth Night of 
the New Drama," and after the cast of The 

1 Chappie duly published it at three shillings, and a 
second edition was immediately called for at the same 
price. Later the author appears to have re-acquired his 
interest in the published play, for I have seen a letter 
addressed to Mitchell of Drury Lane, dated, presumably 
from the publisher's. 

" October 18, 
" Henrietta Street, Covent Garden. 

" Dear Sir, — If you play The Rent Day again, it will 
much oblige me if you will let the subjoined paragraph 
appear in the bill. 

" Yours truly, 

"D. Jerrold. 

" A new Edition of the drama of The Rent Day (price 
one shilling) is published and may be had of J. Miller, 
Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, and at the Theatre." 



200 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

Rent Day, and the following farce, and before 
particulars of the Pantomime, is an inter- 
polated passage printed in red with a typo- 
graphical digit pointing to the words : 

" A Complete Overflow ! The Rent Day ! Having 
been stamped, by the judgment of the public, as one 
of the best productions on the list of the acting 
Drama, and the intense interest its different scenes 
develop, being nightly received with the greatest 
applause, by crowded and fashionable audiences, 
will be performed this Evening, on Saturday, Tuesday 
and Wednesday next; and four times a week until 
further notice." 



CHAPTER VII 

STATE OF THE DRAMA — " NELL GWYNNE " — THE 
MULBERRY CLUB 

1832—1834 

For nearly a dozen years — during which he 
had produced about three dozen plays — Douglas 
Jerrold had now been a dramatist, and the 
rewards of the profession were by no means 
encouraging. He found it necessary to double 
the parts of journalist and writer for the 
magazines with that of playwright, and that 
doubling of parts gave him opportunities for 
saying what he thought, for delivering himself 
of what he felt to be truth on many questions, 
and incidentally for standing forth boldly 
and claiming the " rights " which belonged to 
him and his colleagues as dramatists. In the 
following May his indignation at the wrongs of 
the writer for the English stage found vent in 
a bitter essay, in which he pointed out what 
those wrongs were, and how they might be 
ameliorated. Jerrold had unquestionably suf- 
fered in more ways than one over the miserable 
condition of things which then obtained. He 
had been underpaid by Davidge and Elliston, 
he had had his pieces "" pirated " or " borrowed " 
in the most open manner, and had no redress. 

201 



202 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

All that he could do was to express with bitter 
sarcasm some of the wrath that he felt, and 
thus it was that he wrote : 

" Were we asked what profession promised, with 
the greatest show of success, to form a practical 
philosopher, we should on the instant make reply, 
' The calling of an English dramatist.' There is in 
his case such a fine adaptation of the means to the 
end that we cannot conceive how, especially if he be 
very successful, the dramatist can avoid becoming a 
first form scholar in the academy of the stoics. The 
daily lessons set for him to con are decked with that 
' consummate flavour ' of wisdom, patience ; they 
preach to him meekness under indigence ; continual 
labour with scanty and uncertain reward ; quiescence 
under open spoliation ; satisfaction to see others 
garner the harvest he has sown; with at least the 
glorious certainty of that noble indigence lauded by 
philosophers and practised by the saints — poverty, 
stark-naked poverty, with grey hairs; an old age 
exulting in its forlornness ! If, after these goodly 
lessons, whipped into him with daily birch, he 
become no philosopher, then is all stoicism the fraud 
of knaves, and even patience but a word of two 
syllables. But we are convinced of the efficacy of 
the system. English dramatists are stoics, and not 
in a speculative sense, but in the hard practical 
meaning of the term. Time has hallowed their 
claim to the proud distinction, it is consecrated to 
them by the base coats of their prime, and the tatters 
of their old age ; not only endured without complaint, 
but enjoyed as ' their charter.' " ^ 

* New Monthly Magazine, May 1832, the article being 
in part a review of a pamphlet On Theatrical Emancipation 
and tJie Rights of Dramatists, by Thomas James Thackeray. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 203 

During this year a Select Committee of the 
House of Commons inquired into the subject 
of dramatic literature, and Douglas Jerrold 
was examined as a witness before it on June 
29, a position which we may be sure he took 
with considerable pleasure. In a footnote to 
the preface of the first edition of Thomas a 
Becket he had written : 

" It must, unfortunately, be allowed that the 
present period is not the most auspicious to the 
production of original dramas : when every other 
species of literature, save that of the theatre, is 
protected by legislative enactments from unprin- 
cipled piracy, it is not to be expected that many 
writers will be found to expose their plays, as Alfred 
hung up his golden bracelets, in sheer contempt of 
robbers. In England the bantlings of the dramatist 
are a proscribed race; they come under a kind of 
outlawry — ' whosoever findeth them may slay them.' 
Whilst such is the case, it will be in vain to hope for 
an improvement in the modern drama." 

The Select Committee consisted of twenty- 
four members of Parliament — including Lord 
John Russell, Lytton Bulwer and Alderman 
Waithman — sat from June 13 to July 12, and 
duly presented its report during the latter 
month. 

Davidge in his evidence said : " Authors 
who have been successful at the patent 
theatres are the authors at the minor theatres. 
The author of The Rent Day, which has been 
instanced as the most profitable production 
at Drury Lane, was the author of a number 



204 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

of pieces at the Coburg." He also said that 
the largest sum he had ever given to an 
author for a new piece was fifty pounds — his 
average price was twenty ! 

Jerrold in his replies to the questions ad- 
dressed to him said that his Black-Eyed Susan 
had been acted over 400 nights during its first 
year — 150 nights at the Surrey, 100 at Sadlers' 
Wells, 100 at the Pavilion, 30 nights at Covent 
Garden and at other houses such as the West 
London and the Olympic; and that all that 
he had received was £50 from the Surrey 
manager and £lO by selling the copyright of 
the play — together precisely the amount which 
T. P. Cooke had received for six nights' acting 
at Covent Garden. He further explained that 
the selling of the copyright for what it would 
fetch was rendered necessary as there was a 
dealer in new plays who provided provincial 
managers with copies of London successes at 
two pounds a play, by means of which, as he 
said, the authors were represented by mere 
skeletons of their dramas, and were, in fact, not 
only robbed, but murdered. His payment for 
The Rent Day, he said, was £150 paid on the 
twenty-fifth night of performance. When 
asked as to what remedy he would propose, he 
suggested that plays should be placed under 
the ordinary copyright law (which then pro- 
tected an author's work for but twenty- 
eight years), and that no manager should be 
free to represent any piece without its author's 
consent. As he said, had he received but 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 205 

"the humble terms of five shilHngs a night " 
for every performance of Black-Eyed Susan 
throughout the country, it would have amounted 
to a great sum to him. 

Jerrold had indeed had several quarrels 
with actors and managers, his quick impulsive 
spirit could but ill brook the condescending 
attention of men who were greatly profiting 
by his work. With Davidge and Elliston he 
had quarrelled, and with good cause; personal 
pique on the part of a principal performer was 
mainly instrumental in wrecking the promise 
of his first appearance in the national theatre; 
when a drama of his was successful at one 
house it was coolly appropriated at another 
(and by a manager who refused his original 
work !). Yet again had he cause of com- 
plaint, as we find in the following very emphatic 
letter written somewhere about this period to 
T. P. Cooke. It was addressed from 6, 
Seymour Terrace, Little Chelsea, whither the 
Jerrold family had removed some time after 
September 21, 1831, for when on that date 
Mary Ann Jerrold was born the home was still 
Augustus Square. 

" Dear Sir, — I saw Mr. Davidge last night. His 
statement ran as follows : He had no idea of playing 
Jack Dolphin until suggested by you, who handed 
him over a list of pieces (which he showed me) with 
that drama among them. That you informed him 
the piece was Mr. FarrelVs, and took upon yourself 
to ask Mr. F.'s permission to act it. Moreover, 
Mr. Davidge informed me that he had seen bills of 



206 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

the Southampton and Portsmouth theatres, in which 
the piece (acted in by you) was advertised. If all 
this be true, I quite acquit Mr. Davidge. In my 
letter to Mr. Hammond, ^ in answer to a wish expressed 
by you to have the piece to play in your provincial 
circuit, I stated as definitely and as impressively as 
my imperfect powers of language enabled me, that if 
the drama were acted by you (for there was then no 
other MS. save that in the possession of Mr. Hammond) 
I expected a due remuneration. I expect so still. I 
have written quite enough for the high profits and 
popularity of others, with but the most paltry 
pecuniary advantages to myself. (I got sixty pounds 
by Black-Eyed Susan !) 

" Mr. Hammond informed me, in answer to my 
letter, that you refused my offer of the MS. of Jack 
Dolphin for ten pounds. Well and good. How did 
the piece get to Portsmouth and Southampton? 
And now the piece is introduced to the Coburg at 
your express recommendation, backed by a state- 
ment that it is Mr. FarrelVs property, when, but a 
week or two previous to my leaving town, I had 
stated that Mr. F. had, certainly, a right to play the 
piece at his own theatre, but none whatever to 
transfer that right to another. Mr. Farrell's testi- 
mony, however, seems of a higher value than mine : 
he purchased the right to play the piece, I only wrote 
the drama. 

" Even now, if a man may be indulged with even 
the shadow of a direction over his own property, I 
protest against the representation of Jack Dolphin 
at the Coburg Theatre : and if it has been performed 
on your introduction, and by you, at any provincial 
theatre, save the Liver, I expect the sum of ten 

1 His brother-in-law, W. J. Hammond. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 207 

pounds. I endeavour to write, as I feel on this 
subject, strongly and unequivocally, putting aside 
all false delicacy, in the assertion of my right to 
the profits of my own labour, which, God knows', 
have hitherto held a fearful disproportion to the 
profits of those avaihng themselves of it. This (the 
contemplated representation at the Coburg) is a 
new infringement on the rights, or rather it is a new 
addition to the wrongs of dramatists; on which I 
shall not hesitate to descant more pubHcly and in 
more set terms. I wish — though it matters little to 
the question — that the drama was a little more 
worthy of this discussion; for with all its lately 
discovered capabilities, I cannot but think that that 
which was so very contemptible in comparison to 
the Blue Anchor some year or so ago, should now be 
thought worthy of Portsmouth, Southampton, etc. 
In conclusion, if you have performed this drama 
{Jack Dolphin) at any other provincial theatre, or 
contemplate so doing (I had much rather it was not 
acted at all) I beg to press my claim of ten pounds. 

" I am, etc., etc., 

" D. Jerrold." 

Of the earlier and later fortunes of Jack 
Dolphin I have not been able to ascertain 
anything. 

On the last day of June 1832, The Golden 
Calf was produced at the New Strand Theatre, 
and met with considerable success — " declined, 
owing to strong family prejudices " by Morris 
of the Hay market, it " drew an abundance of 
worshippers to the Strand." Its chief motive 
was an insistence upon much of the hollowness 
of the hfe of the day, of the awful sacrifices 



208 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

that were then (as now) made " to keep up 
appearances." 

This was a comedy " ridicuHng with pleasant 
humour and caustic satire the bhnd homage 
that wealth and high station receive from their 
votaries," exposing that dangerous weakness 
by which for every pound of his income a man 
would lead the world to believe that he has 
five. A young man, Mountney, has inherited 
from his father, a retired tradesman, a com- 
fortable fortune, but he falls in with the 
thriftless Lord Tares and other expensive 
companions, is led to card-playing and 
runs rapidly through his patrimony. His 
wife, taught by his example, has also taken 
to play, and a dramatic scene shows us the 
husband asking his wife to return to him the 
diamonds he had given her on her wedding 
day, for he had staked and lost even them. 
The wife, in as desperate a strait as her husband, 
has pledged the jewels to raise money where- 
with to meet a " debt of honour " incurred at 
the card table. But for this added complica- 
tion the play may remind the reader somewhat 
of some of the scenes in Sheridan's School 
for Scandal, Mountney being another, but a 
desponding instead of a buoyantly cheerful, 
Charles Surface. The nearest likeness in the 
two plays, a likeness that cannot fail to have 
struck playgoers familiar with Sheridan's 
masterpiece, is that like another uncle from 
Calcutta an old friend of Mountney's turns 
up and saves him from ruin after making plain 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 209 

to him the villainy of Tares and the hollow 
friendship of those who had gathered about 
him as long as he could be made to serve their 
selfish ends. The story of the comedy is 
interesting, and some of the characters are 
well defined, especially the grasping money- 
lender Pinchbeck and his intolerable wife with 
her perennial desire to get asked into " society." 
The dialogue is sparkling throughout, as may 
be gathered from the following passages; 
Mountney, to raise money so that he may 
keep up his London state a little longer, has 
sold his father's country house, and the pur- 
chaser, through Pinchbeck, is Chrystal, the 
" little nabob " of The Golden Calf. 

" Pinch. I have sold Multiplication Lodge this 
morning. 

Echo. Bravo ! what ass has bought it ? 

Chrys. [Advancing and bowing). The ass before 
you. 

Echo. Ten million pardons ! I — I — My dear sir, if 
'twill be any satisfaction, you may call me an ass in 
return. 

Chrys. Sir, it is quite unnecessary. Though, were 
I to retaliate, I should rather call you a zebra ! 

Echo. Why a zebra ? 

Chrys. [Coolly surveying him.) A mere ass in a fine 
coat. 

Echo. Ha ! ha ! Why, as his lordship says, this is 
the age of coats. We have had the age of gold, the 
age of silver, and other substantial ages : they are 
obsolete : people care not for the reality, so they can 
secure the show. The present age is the age of — of 
— in fact, it wants a comprehensive title. 

VOL. I p 



210 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

Chrys. 'Tis easily found. For when men, making 
a sign of wealth the highest standard of opinion, gull 
each other with a show of substance : — when, to keep 
up the general trick, folly and vice strike hands, and 
misery too often seals the compact; — when men sell 
their hearts for tinsel ; — when they honour not so 
much the mind's nobility as jingling syllables ; — 
when 'tis not asked, ' what can a man do ? ' — but 
' what seems he to possess ? ' — not ' what does he 
know ? ' but ' where does he live ? ' — and when this 
passion for appearance stays not with some hundred 
gilded nondescripts, but like one general social blight 
is at this moment found in every rank, in every walk, 
— for a verity we may not call the present age the 
age of gold or of silver; but, of all ages else, the 

AGE OF OUTSIDES ! 

Echo. That's satire; confess — isn't it satire? 
Chrys. It may be; for fools and rascals give that 
name to truth." 

Other passages may be noted — " An im- 
postor ! w^hy how can there be a rich impostor ? 
The wolf who killed in sheep's clothing would 
never have been hanged had he masqueraded 
in a golden fleece." 

" A humble jackdaw out of debt is much 
better than a peacock that owes for its 
feathers." 

" I'm sure, talk of taxes — the greatest tax 
of all is the tax of appearance." 

" Oh, sir, I know what a writ is," says 
Pinchbeck's poor servant Rags to the bene- 
factor Chrystal, and then he immediately goes 
on to define it as follows in words, as it has 
been said, about as complimentary as Johnson's 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 211 

famous definition of an exciseman : " What is 
it not, sir ? It's a rope to bind a man's hands, 
and then a tongue that tells him to work when 
bound; it's a curious and learned invention to 
squeeze blood from a stone; horrible words, 
writ on the devil's skin to conjure with; an 
undertaker that buries alive; a cannibal that 
swallows whole ; a thing to take away the use 
of legs; a stake, driven through the body of a 
live man to hold him to one place ; a great cage 
with invisible bars ; a monster that eats wives 
and babes ; a — a honey sop for rascals, a deadly 
drug for honest folks ! " 

The Golden Calf was successful, if not so 
generally popular as some of the author's 
earlier and less-finished pieces, and Douglas 
Jerrold, while continuing his work as journalist 
and contributor to periodicals, turned his 
attention to yet another play for the stage of 
Old Drury. The Rent Day had proved so 
popular a few months earlier that it was 
resolved that the new piece should also be of 
that class of " domestic drama " which Jerrold 
called " a poor thing, but mine own." On 
October 6, the play was duly produced under 
the title of The Factory Girl. From the 
accounts given in the contemporary press it 
appears to have been most unjustly and 
inexplicably condemned, but so efiectually 
that the management did not venture beyond 
a second representation. 

Said Figaro in London, a paper by no means 
uniformly laudatory of Jerrold's work : 



212 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

" A new domestic drama by Mr. Jerrold, the 
talented author of The Rent Day, was produced under 
the title of The Factory Girl, on Saturday last at 
Drury Lane Theatre. Writers like Mr, Jerrold deserve 
our gratitude as well as our admiration, for their 
aim is not merely to amuse, but to plead, through the 
medium of the stage, the cause of the poor and 
oppressed classes of society. Such is the author's 
object in The Factory Girl, in which he has drawn 
with lamentable truth the picture of a weaver's lot, 
which is to be the slave of the inhuman system of 
overworking in English factories and too often a 
victim of the petty tyranny of those who are placed in 
authority over him. We are not fond of detailing 
plots, and we therefore give none in the present 
instance : the story has interest and incident which 
would with the general good writing through the 
piece and the quaint satirical humour of Harley's 
part, have carried off The Factory Girl triumphantly 
had it not been in some degree marred by the de- 
nouement, in which letters were pulled out of bosoms, 
a labourer finds a brother in a rich merchant, and 
an extensive relationship is discovered among the 
principal characters. This comfortable arrangement 
for a happy ending naturally excited a smile which 
gave to the ill-natured a plea for sending forth 
their venomous breath in loud blackguard shouts 
of ' off ' — when Harley announced the piece for 
repetition ; this uncalled-for opposition is always 
caught up eagerly by the gang of disappointed 
would-be writers for the stage who rush in by shoals 
at half-price for a damn into the two or one shilling 
gallery. The poor half-starved dirty devils mus- 
tered rather strong on Saturday night, and the hoot 
of the hungry and splenetic writers was for a few 
moments audible. Some lovers of justice among the 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 213 

gods, seeing the object of the envious opponents 
of the piece, thought right partially to clear the 
gallery for a division, and the gang of would-be 
Shakespeares or Sheridans were speedily deposited 
extra the theatre." 

No more of the piece is known than is given 
in newspaper passages such as this, the lack 
of invention apparently shown in the denoue- 
ment, added to the factious opposition, was 
sufficient effectually to damn the piece, and 
after a couple of successes, the sensitive 
dramatist suffered his second repulse within 
the walls of Drury. He could, however, point 
to the triumph achieved by The Rent Day, with 
the full confidence that he could and would 
yet do better still. 

Another contemporary critic may, however, 
fittingly be heard in defence of this play written 
with a high purpose. The critic, like the 
dramatist, was considerably in advance of his 
particular generation, and recognized that the 
stage might well be a true civilizing and 
moral agent : 

" 'We are gratified,' says the anonymous author, 
' at perceiving that the choice of this powerful 
dramatist's subjects invariably involves some prin- 
ciple or system. In his Rent Day the mischievous 
effects of absenteeism were strikingly developed ; and 
disfigure our manufacturing system are portrayed 
with all the force and skill of a masterly hand. If 
all authors had the same object in view, the stage 
would, in comparison to the pulpit, as a director of 



214 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

morals, be what practice is to theory. With the 
highest veneration and regard to that venerable 
body, we should then be enabled to dispense with 
the whole bench of Bishops Avithout feeling it as a 
national calamity.'" 

Before taking leave of The Factory Girl, we 
may glance at the following note appended by 
Douglas Jerrold to a sketch of The Factory 
Child, written a few years later : 

" It is now six years since the writer of this paper 
essayed a drama, the purpose of which was an appeal 
to public sympathy in the cause of the Factory 
Children : the drama was very summarily condemned ; 
cruelly maimed the first night, and mortally killed 
on its second representation. The subject of the 
piece ' was low, distressing.' The truth is, it was 
not then la mode to affect an interest for the ' coarse 
and vulgar ' details of human life ; and the author 
suffered because he was two or three years before the 
fashion. This circumstance, however, is only now 
alluded to, that the writer of the present paper may 
not be supposed to have unseemingly entered upon 
ground taken within these few days by a lady writer, 
but as only claiming the right to return to a subject 
he had before, in adverse times, adventured on." 

In his next dramatic essay — Nell Gwynne — 
" perhaps the most delightful play he ever 
penned " — Douglas Jerrold wrote the first of 
those brilliant comedies of dialogue which are 
preserved in his collected works. The Golden 
Calf was an attempt in the same line of writing, 
but despite the many good points in it it was 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 215 

not so uniformly successful as the historical 
comedy in two acts which, after being declined 
by Madame Vestris for the Haymarket, was 
produced at Covent Garden Theatre on Jan- 
uary 9, 1853, under the title of Nell Gwynne ; 
or. The Prologue. A chance perusal of the 
valuable Roscius Anglicanus by " old Downes 
the prompter," the author acknowledges, first 
suggested the comedy. A few months after 
the production of the piece, when issuing it in 
printed form, he wrote an introduction, in 
which he sketched the life of Nell Gwynne and 
printed that curious document, her will. From 
this introduction the following passages will 
show the motive of the dramatist, and justify 
the view which he took of the character of the 
notorious Nell : 

" Whilst we may safely reject as unfounded gossip 
many of the stories associated with the name of 
Nell Gwynne, we cannot refuse belief to the various 
proofs of kindheartedness, liberality and — taking 
into consideration her subsequent power to do harm 
— absolute goodness of a woman mingling — (if we may 
believe a passage in Pepys) — from her earliest years 
in the most depraved scenes of a most dissolute age. 
The life of Nell Gwynne, from the time of her con- 
nection with Charles the Second, to that of her death, 
proved that error had been forced upon her by 
circumstances, rather than indulged from choice. 
It was under this impression that the present little 
comedy was undertaken : under this conviction an 
attempt has been made to show some glimpses of 
the ' silver lining ' of a character, to whose influence 
over an unprincipled voluptuary, we owe a national 



216 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

asylum for veteran soldiers, and whose brightness 
shines with the most amiable lustre in many 
actions of her life, and in the last disposal of her 
worldly effects. . . . All the characters in the comedy, 
with but two exceptions, and allowing the story that 
the first lover of Nell was really an old lawyer, figured 
in the time of Charles the Second. For the intro- 
duction of Orange Moll (so inimitably acted by Mr. 
Keeley) the author pleads the authority of Pepys. . . . 
The incident of the king supping at a tavern with Nell, 
and finding himself without money to defray the 
bill, is variously related in the Chroniques Scandaleuses 
of his ' merry ' and selfish days." 

The story is that Nell, persecuted by an old 
lawyer, runs away and tries to get on to the 
stage. She has an interview with Betterton 
of the Duke's Theatre, but is not approved, 
and in despair determines to sell oranges about 
Drury Lane Theatre. There her pretty face 
and ready wit soon attract custom away from 
" Orange Moll," and other rival sellers. There, 
too, Nell encounters again the King (incognito) 
and his boon companion Berkeley, and is also 
seen by the managers, who invite her to go 
on the stage that evening and speak the 
prologue in a great hat — larger than that 
attracting attention at the opposition house. 

In one of the various encounters between 
Nell and King Charles (who is masquerading 
as a City mercer), she tells him of a dream 
in which a forecast is given of her future life, 
and in the course of the dialogue sings one 
of those graceful little lyrics which are intro- 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 217 

duced here and there in Jerrold's dramatic 
writings : 

" Nell. Now or never ; listen. — I dreamt that I 
was riding in a fine golden coach with the king. 
Charles. With the king ! 

Nell. You know, we do dream such strange things 
— with the king. Well, the coach stopped : when 
there came up a poor soldier without any legs and 

arms, and of a sudden he held out his hand 

Charles. What ! without any arms ? 
Nell. You know it was only in a dream. 
Charles. Yes, Nelly; but you ought to dream 
according to anatomy. 

Nell. I say, he held out his hand; and, telling us 
that he had no place to lay his old gray head upon, 
not a morsel of bread to put into his mouth, he begged 
for charity, while the tears came peeping into the 
corners of his eyes. 
Charles. Well? 

Nell. I turned round to the king — for, bless you, I 
was altogether at my ease, no more afraid of him 

than I am of you — and I said, ' Charles ! ' 

Charles. Charles ! 

Nell. ' Is it not a shame to let your old soldiers 
carry about their scars as witnesses of their king's 
forgetf ulness ? — is it not cruel that those who for 

your sake ' 

{Unconsciously laying her hand upon the 
arm of Charles.) 
Charles. For my sake ? 

Nell. You know, I am supposing you the king. 
Charles. Oh, aye, aye ! 

Nell. ' Who for your sake have left some of their 
limbs in a strange country, should have no resting- 
place for the limbs they have in their own ? ' 



218 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

Charles. I see the end : the king reheved the soldier, 
and then you awoke ? 

Nell. No, I didn't; for I thought the coach went 
on towards Chelsea, and there 

Charles, Well, what happened at Chelsea ? 

Nell. There, I thought I saw a beautiful building 
suddenly grow up from the earth; and going in 
and coming out of it, just like so many bees, heaps 
of old soldiers, with their long red coats, and 
three-corner hats, and some with their dear wooden 
legs, and all with their rough faces looking so happy 
and contented — that, when I looked and thought it 
was all my work, I felt as if I could have kissed every 
one of 'em round ! 

Charles. When it came to that of course you 
awoke ? 

Nell. No, I didn't — not until I saw a place with my 
picture hanging out for a sign. My head for a sign ! 
what do you think of that? 

Charles. Think? — I can't think of the sign with 
the living lips before me. {She avoids him.) Nay, 
thou'rt a wild and beautiful bird. 

Nell. Aye, he must be a cunning fowler who cages 
me. 

Charles. I can make the bars of gold. 

Nell. If you'd hold the surer, better bend one of 
the gold bars into a ring. No other cage, no other 
net; a little fable hath taught me wisdom. You 
shall hear it. 

" ' Little bird, little bird, have a care ; ' 
Thus whisper'd a lark to her child ; 

' See the fowler is spreading his snare, 
What makes ye thus noisy and wild ? ' 

' Good mother,' the silly one cried, 
Conceitedly trimming its wing, — 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 219 

I've beauty and youth on my side, — 
Hang fowlers ! I'll gambol and sing, 
Good mother. 
Hang fowlers ! I'll gambol and sing.' 

' Little bird, little bird, not so near ; ' 

In vain ! ' Now too late you'll regret ; 
For the poor little bird dead with fear, 

A captive is ta'en in the net. 
The mother then sighed forth this truth, 

Her little one fast in the string, — 
' In prisons, what's beauty and youth ? 

Fear fowlers, nor gambol and sing,' 
' Oh, mother ! ' 

' Fear fowlers, nor gambol and sing ! ' " 

An amusing contretemps follows on Charles's 
offer of " heaps of wealth " when the waiter 
comes in with the bill and neither Charles nor 
Berkeley has the wherewithal to meet it. The 
play closes with a scene in the King's Theatre, 
when Nell appears on the stage to speak 
Dryden's prologue to the Conquest of Grenada. 
She has not repeated a dozen lines of that 
which she has to say when she recognizes in 
the chief occupant of the Royal box the 
whilom mercer, who has been philandering 
with her. With this her recollection of the 
prologue fails her, and she says : 

" What he — the King ! — the words are flown. 
For Dryden's syllables, pray take my own. 

{Lets hat fall.) 
First let me ask that nieeness may not halt 
With eager eyes, to scan out every fault ; 
And miss, with venal look, those streaks of light ; 
Which fortune only would not have more bright. 



220 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

Of good and ill all character is made ; 

The good accept — the rest cast into shade. 

Of some we'd show (if so our hopes might draw) 

The moral amber, with nor grub nor straw ; 

Would take away th' unseemly gnats and flies, 

And keep the prettiness that glads all eyes. 

This our design : if granted, may I ask 

Your hands and wishes for th' attempted task? " 

Douglas Jerrold succeeded in making a very 
attractive heroine out of King Charles's notor- 
ious mistress without any reference to her 
further career other than the prophecy in the 
passage quoted. 

The play was highly successful. In the 
Theatrical Observer for January 21, 1833, it 
was announced : " We hear that M. Laporte 
is so much elated with the attraction of Nell 
Gwynne that he has commissioned Mr. Jerrold 
to write a sequel in which Nell will be intro- 
duced as la maitresse titree of the King, and 
as forming one of the most attractive objects 
of the voluptuous Court of Charles. . . . Nell 
Gwynne was offered to Vestris for £100, which 
she thought more than the lady was worth, 
but Laporte, being a better judge of female 
attractions, gave a higher price, and has gained 
a great profit by his bargain; the receipts of 
the last six nights have amounted to £2250." 
The sequel play, it may be added, was never 
written.^ 

^ In the Casket, a periodical of the time, the plays of 
the period were turned into stories and given week by 
week. Jerrold 's Rent Day, DeviVs Ducat and Nell 
Gwynne, were all flattered in this (to the author) unprofit- 
able fashion. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 221 

Nell Gwynne was most cordially welcomed 
by some of the leading literary critics of the 
day. John Forster and Thomas Noon Talfourd 
were at any rate among those who warmly 
recognized the power and wit of the rising 
dramatist. For it was with these comedies, 
written in the first half of the 'thirties, that 
Jerrold earned his right to the foremost 
position among the writers for the English 
stage for the next twenty years. Talfourd, 
Mary Russell Mitford and Sheridan Knowles 
were, it is true, then among the dramatists 
of the day, but all of them together did not 
produce so many successful pieces as did the 
author of Nell Gwynne. Each of these writers 
might be better in some one respect than their 
younger colleague, but none was his equal 
for sustained brilliancy of dialogue; Sheridan 
Knowles was the only one who with Jerrold 
might bear comparison with the writers for 
the Restoration stage. 

With all his work Douglas Jerrold was not 
too busy to be at the service of others, and 
his kindly offices were requisitioned by the 
fineold veteran William Godwin, as the following 
note from the famous author of Political Justice 
and Caleb Williams sufficiently testifies. 

" No. 13, New Palace Yard, 

"Saturday, June 1 [1833]. 

" My dear Sir, — I was in great hope, after having 
broken the ice in Gower Place, that we should be 
favoured with a visit from you without ceremony. 
You have, doubtless, heard of the revolution (whether 



222 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

to call it for good or ill I scarcely know) which has 
taken place in my fortune, and has brought me to 
this spot.i At any rate we are considerably nearer 
to each other. I am sure you have not forgotten 
what passed between us respecting my poor son's 
drama of The Sleeping Philosopher.^ You con- 
ceived you had provided a reception for it at the 
Olympic next season, and were so good as to offer 
to make a certain alteration in it. I and his mother 
are both anxious about its fate, and to see some- 
thing done respecting it. Could you spare an idle 
hour to consult on the subject? And for that 
purpose would you have the goodness early to take 
a chop with us here? Say Tuesday next, if con- 
venient to you, at four o'clock. 

" Meanwhile, beheve me, dear Sir, 
" Very sincerely yours, 

" William Godwin." 

The drama by William Godwin the Younger 
does not seem to have been produced, despite 
his friend's interest. 

Jerrold's eldest son, William Blanchard, has 
recorded how he vividly remembered — he was 
but ten years of age when Godwin died— 
accompanying his father to the dark rooms in 
the New Palace Yard, which were occupied 
by Godwin and his wife, whom he described 
as "an old vivacious lady and an old gentle- 
man " : 

^ Godwin had been appointed by Lord Grey to the 
sinecure post of yeoman usher of the Exchequer, a post 
which was shortly after abolished, though Godwin was 
permitted to retain it to the end of his life (April 7, 1836). 

2 Godwin the Younger was one of Jerrold's friends of 
the Mulberry Club (see p. 178). 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 223 

" My father was most anxious that I should re- 
member them; and I do remember well that he 
appeared to bear a strong regard for them, and to 
talk of them more warmly than he spoke of ordinary 
men and women. One anecdote connected with them 
he used to relate again and again v,'ith great unction. 
I should first observe that my father was a very 
skilled whistler — a skill which he would practise 
frequently. He had always some ballad fresh in 
his memory; and you might know when he was 
stirring on summer mornings, by hearing his dressing- 
room window dra\Mi sharply up (he did everything 
sharply) and a tender, small voice now pour forth, 
evidently in the fulness of enjoyment — 

" Sweet is the ship that under sail 
Spreads her white bosom to the gale ; 

and now break into a note clear as a lark's ; luxuriate 
in rapid tmsts and turns of melody; then suddenly 
stop, as the door was cast open, to cry aloud, ' Now, 
boys, boys ! not up yet ? ' Well, one morning he 
called on the Godwins, and was kept for some 
minutes waiting in their drawing-room. It was 
irresistible — he could never think of these things. 
Whistle in a lady's drawing-room ! The languid eyes 
of Belgravia turn upwards. Still he did whistle — not 
only pianissimo hut fortissimo, with variations enough 
to satisfy the most ambitious of thrushes. Suddenly 
good little Mrs. Godwin gently opened the door, paused 
still — not seen by the performer — to catch the dying 
notes of the air, and then, coming up to her visitor, 
startled him with the request made in all seriousness, 
' You couldn't whistle that again, could you ? ' " 

Dramas or comedies from the dramatist's 
pen were being produced about this period at 



224 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

the rate of two a year. In January, as we 
have seen, Nell Gwynne made her bow at 
Covent Garden. On July 17, a successor was 
brought out at the Haymarket in the form 
of a two-act comedy entitled the Housekeeper. 
The author had by this time found his chief 
strength as a dramatist to lie in comedy- 
dialogue, and the new piece was a further 
proof of his mastery of this form of dramatic 
art. In plot and character, it is complained 
by some critics, Douglas Jerrold was deficient 
as a dramatist, and although the criticism 
may be sound when applied to some of the 
plays it is quite false as applied to the whole 
body of his work for the stage. The House- 
keeper is distinctly a proof of the contrary, 
for the interest in the development of the 
story is well sustained throughout, and the 
characterization is particularly good. The 
scene is set in the year 1722, at a time when 
certain supporters of the Pretender hoped to 
make an attempt in his cause that might be 
favourable, while people were still suffering 
from the shock of the bursting of the South 
Sea Bubble. The conspiracy was, however, 
crushed in embryo, but it led to the exiling 
of Bishop Atterbury and to one Christopher 
Layer, a barrister, being executed. Layer, as 
the author pointed out, is the only real person 
introduced into the comedy, " the other char- 
acters, with the incidents in which they are 
concerned, being the invention of the writer, 
who has ' taken out ' the allowed dramatic 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 225 

licence, to fix on an historical circumstance 
as the means of developing imaginary events." 
It is a pretty, romantic story that is revealed, 
showing the way in which a studious recluse 
in a quiet house near St. James's Park is to 
be exploited for their own purposes by the 
conspirators. This recluse, Sidney Maynard, 
has a servant, a respectable middle-aged 
woman, coming from the country. The sudden 
prospect of matrimony makes that woman 
stay in Derbyshire and send young Sophy 
Hawes instead, while Sophy is persuaded by 
Felicia (Maynard's cousin) to allow her to 
take the place at first. Sophy's lover, Simon 
Box, is in London, and resents her going as 
housekeeper to young Maynard, and thus falls 
in with Felicia's scheme ; while Maynard's one- 
time boon companions seek to win him from 
that purpose of solitude and study which it is 
the design of one Father Oliver and his fellow 
conspirators to strengthen for their own ends. 

The arrival of Felicia as housekeeper in 
place of the widow excites the curiosity — and 
later the warmer feelings — of Maynard, and the 
suspicions of Father Oliver, a number of whose 
confederates are to meet unknown to the 
master in Maynard's house. The same evening 
his whilom boon companions decide to have 
a housewarming there and send in a case of 
wine for the purpose. Thus are brought about 
some striking situations, leading up to the 
culminating one when — thanks to the quick- 
wittedness of Felicia, the conspirators are 

VOk. I. Q 



226 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

unmasked, soldiers arrive, and Maynard finds 
who liis mysterious housekeeper is, and con- 
chjdes " if she looks yes, why, then, all will 
be welcome to my housewarming, for here, 
behold my wife — the best Housekeeper ! '* 

In his time of disillusionment Maynard has 
declared that in study and wisdom are the 
only lasting good : " Glory ! 'tis but a bubble 
blown from blood. Law ! a spider's wisdom ! 
and politics ! the statesman ponders and plans, 
winning nothing certain but ingratitude and 
indigestion. Whilst for woman, we hunt a 
wildfire and vow it is a star." The inebriated 
Bin says to the girls who have told him that 
there is " not such a thing in the house " as 
a corkscrew, that they are not to shun good 
advice — " I feel I speak as a father ; for if I'd 
twenty marrying daughters these should be 
my solemn words to each : ' Never be without 
a corkscrew ! ' " 

The piece was well received both by the 
public and the critics, and enjoyed a good 
run. Nell Gwynne, produced six months earlier, 
was being acted in London at the same time 
as its successor, and the author determined 
upon publishing these two plays. They are 
referred to in the following letters to Forster : 

" 6, Seymour Terrace, Little Chelsea, 

" July 20, 1833. 

" My dear Forster, — You must allow me the 
pleasure of a cordial acknowledgement of your kind- 
ness. Though I feel you have, on the present as 
on a former occasion, thrown what are the best 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 227 

points into the strongest relief, by softening down 
the worst, it would be a poor affectation in me to 
question such partiality, as, indeed, its very existence 
is a matter of, I hope, something better on my part 
then mere self-complacency. We can none, or at 
least very few, escape the influence of personal 
acquaintance. It is, then, a subject of honest 
pleasure to the obliged when such knowledge, on 
some minds, is the liberal interpreter of good inten- 
tions, and the charitable apologist of all deficiencies. 
" Yours, my dear Forster, 
" Very truly, 

" Douglas Jerrold. 

" P.S. — Nell and the Housekeeper will be in print 
on Monday — when I will forward them to you. 
About a fortnight's careful work will finish Beau 
Nash : which is then to be produced immediately." 

" Friday, Seymour Terrace, Little Chelsea, 
"Aug. 1833. 

" My dear Forster, — Will you favour me with a 
few lines on my two pieces in the True Sun? I ask 
for nothing more than a mere signification of their 
being in print — and being the first of a series to be 
published by our society. Hearing that you are 
again attached to the paper induces me to solicit 
this added favour at your hands. 

" Yours ever truly, 

" Douglas Jerrold. 

" I publish these dramas on my own account ; 
and of course all publicity — ^the more especially as 
they are now being played helps the sale. I have 
been expecting— what I now ask of you — this past 
fortnight." 



228 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

*' Our Society " referred to in these letters 
was the Dramatic Authors' Society, the in- 
ception of which is mentioned in the following 
note to Joseph Lunn, of Craven Street, Strand, 
a dramatic writer who enjoyed some popularity 
in the first half of the nineteenth century : 

" Thursday, 6, Seymour Terrace, Little Chelsea, 

" July 13, 1833. 

" Dear Lunn, — I am requested to write to ask 
your attendance at the Garrick Tavern, Bow Street, 
at the hour of one (precisely) on Monday, to consider 
certain resolutions to be entered upon to secure us 
the fruits of the Dramatic Authors' Art — and a law. 
Kjiowles, Serle, Buckstone, Dance, Oliver (?)^ and 
self, were present yesterday, but it was resolved to 
postpone any final settlement until everybody — who 
would wish to secure himself — for it is only by 
acting in a society, that the managers are to be 
fought — should meet. Hinc — this letter. At one 
precisely. 

" Yours truly, 
" D. Jerrold." 

The next letter refers to a much-discussed 
project as to establishing a third patent play- 
house. 

^ James Sheridan Ediowles (1784-1862) as author of 
The Hunchback and The Love Chase, was a dramatist of 
lasting fame ; Thomas James Serle, an actor and play- 
wright of some repute in his day, secretary to Macready 
at Drury Lane, was godfather of Douglas Jerrold's youngest 
son, Thomas Serle Jerrold, who was an infant nine days 
old when this letter was written; John Baldwin Buck- 
stone (1802-1879) was another play writing actor who 
enjoyed considerable popularity up to the end of a long 
life; Charles Dance (1794-1863) was a prolific writer for 
the theatres; Oliver eludes identification. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 229 

" 6, Seymour Terrace, Little Chelsea, 
" Aug. 1833. 

" My dear Forster, — I waited for you yesterday 
(with Serle, etc.) at Miller's ^ till half -past three. We 
meet there on Saturday next at two. Will you 
come ? It is about this 3d. theatre. I did not see 
your luminary ^ of Wednesday week, not being able 
to get to town. But have no doubt you then added 
to the debt which it gives me great pleasure to owe 
you. 

" Yours ever, very truly, 

" Douglas Jerrold. 

" Miss Tidswell — my near and dear neighbour — 
has requested me to ask you about the safety (I 
presume tender associations make her anxious) of 
a portrait of Kean. Will you appease ' this tumult 
in a vestal's veins ? ' I find I must put by Beau 
Nash till next year, as it must be three acts. My 
little affair of Swamp Hall comes out next week." 

The " little affair of Swamp Hall " was a 
farcical comedy produced at the Haymarket 
Theatre in September 1833, which for some 
reason failed to tickle the popular fancy, 
despite the praise accorded to it by the 
critics. One writer said : " Swamp Hall^ an 
admirable piece by Jerrold, has been most 
brainlessly condemned by a Haymarket 
audience. It was a trifle of extreme merit, 
but the public sometimes applauds trash to 
the echo and condemns really admirable 

^ John Miller of Henrietta Street, who published some 
of Jerrold 's plays. 
» The True Sun. 



230 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

productions. If such conduct suits them, it is 
not for us to interfere, since their bad taste 
brings with it its own penalty ! " It also 
brings a pretty severe penalty upon the author, 
whose work of some weeks or months is thus 
" brainlessly condemned " in a single evening. 
" The public sometimes applauds trash to 
the echo," suggests a mot of Jerrold's on the 
subject. A friend who was with him at one 
of the patent houses when a dull and stupid 
play had met with a favourable reception, said 
it was astonishing that any people could be 
found foolish enough to applaud such stuff. 
"Why," said Jerrold at once, " all those who clap 
their hands probably had orders to do so." 
That Swamp Hall had been offered to Drury 
Lane before going to the Haymarket, we learn 
from a number of reports on plays read by 
Thomas Morton given in Alfred Bunn's The 
Stage, Both Before and Behind the Curtain ; 
for though Bunn waxed wroth over Kemble's 
appointment as official Examiner of Plays 
in succession to Colman, he submitted the 
pieces sent in to Drury Lane to the judgment 
of a playwright ! Of Swamp Hall Morton 
said : " This piece I have either read or seen, 
as all the circumstances are familiar to me. 
Won't do at all." He had presumably read 
Jerrold's magazine story of the same name.'^ 
From that story we may gather that the play 
was an amusing expose of the weakness of people 

^ Reprinted in Tales of Douglas Jerrold Now First 
Collected, 1891. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 231 

who put up with the tyranny of a person from 
whom they have " expectations." 

On the second day of the new year, 1834, 
another play of Jerrold's, The Wedding Gown, 
was produced at Drury Lane. It was very well 
received, the author being hailed as "in his 
way the Lillo of his day " — though it was, per- 
haps, no very high compliment to be bracketed 
with the author of George Barnwell — and during 
February the piece was represented before 
King William IV, " by special desire." A 
scrap of contemporary criticism called forth 
by this play runs : 

" While such pieces as this are written, produced 
and fill the theatre, surely there can be no just 
foundation for the remark that has been made that 
the drama has declined. If the stage has not been 
prosperous this little comedy alone suffices to prove 
that the dramatic author is not the party chargeable 
with the faults that must have been committed 
or the injuries that have been sustained. On the 
contrary, we apprehend the dramatic author is the 
individual who has suffered the greatest wrong under 
the state of things to which we have adverted. But 
Mr. Jerrold and The Wedding Gown inspires us with 
hopes of a better condition for the Muse whom 
Shakespeare wedded to immortality. The comedy 
reads as well as it acts — perhaps better, for we have 
marked several passages of great natural truth and 
animated feeling, to which full justice has not yet 
been done at Drury Lane. That felicitous tact and 
neat development of his subject, that pleasant in- 
genuity and sparkling polish of dialogue by which 
the author has so remarkably distinguished himself. 



232 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

are calculated to tell as effectively in the closet as 
on the stage. We sympathize with Lubeski and his 
interesting daughter ; smile at Beeswing ; tease, trifle, 
yet may mean well with Margaret ; and rejoice with 
all parties when at last by that skilful dinouement 
their happiness is assured." 

Another critic said — 

" At Drury Lane the principal feature has been 
Jerrold's interesting drama of the Wedding Gown.^ 
On reviewing the merits of this gentleman we scarcely 
know which to admire most — his terse and polished 
writing, his fine, manly sentiments, or that consum- 
mate skill which, without violating probability, 
excites and keeps alive the interest of his audience." 

It was presumably during the spring of 
1834 that Jerrold removed from Seymour 
Terrace to 11, Thistle Grove, still in Little 
Chelsea. Since his time that narrow way 
has been renumbered, so that it cannot be 
said whether his house was at the old end 
that remains or in the rebuilt portion. 

Jerrold had another comedy in hand, Beau 
Nash, as we saw in his letter to Forster of a 
few months earlier. It was to be finished by 
the summer, and on June 25 the dramatist 
wrote again to his friend from his new address : 

" My dear Forster, — Will you come and eat 
something with me on Sunday? Sam ^ is really 

1 It enjoyed a run of twenty-nine nights during its 
first season. 

2 Laman Blanchard. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 233 

coming ! ! ! ! (so you can't refuse). Dine at 4, 

military time. 

" Yours ever truly, 

" Douglas Jerrold. 

" Drop me a line — or if passing leave [it] at Miller's 
or Divan. I am very ill, being just delivered.^* 

The postscript evidently refers to the new 
three-act comedy of manners. Beau Nash, the 
King of Bath, which was produced about three 
weeks later (July 16) at the Haymarket 
Theatre, and on which the author declared he 
had spent far more than twice as much labour 
of thought and research as on any other of his 
dramatic pieces. The thought and research 
were well spent, and the piece was received 
with considerable applause, yet for some reason 
the author did not include it in his collected 
writings. In the preface to the printed edition 
of this comedy — dated from Little Chelsea 
three days after the production of the piece — 
he wrote : 

" In a Life of Richard Nash, Esq., attributed to the 
pen of Goldsmith, may be found full authority for 
the eccentricities of the stage hero. In the same 
biography the writer incidentally dwells upon the 
knavish subtleties and compunctious visitings of a 
Jack Baxter; who, though never honoured with the 
personal intimacy of the beau monarch, yet desired 
to acknowledge in fine bold type his wayward and 
royal benevolence. The only ' historical ' persons 
in the present drama are the lauded potentate and 
the laudatory pickpocket. 



234 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

" The author pleads guilty to one charge made 
against his drama — that it possesses ' no startling 
situations ' ; and confesses that, doubtless, a comedy 
of manners would be a much better comedy were it a 
melodrama. 

" ' Startling situations ' have been so frequent 
that the public are now taught — by some, too, whose 
ostensible duty it is to teach the public better — ^to 
consider mere men and women mere commonplaces; 
and mere pictures of life mere everyday dulness. 
According to such instructors, audiences are to be 
treated not as a body of persons in sound moral 
health but as a convocation of opium-eaters. A 
dramatist is now to be ' a dreamer of dreams,' and 
not an illustrator of truths." 

There are several hits in the opening scenes 
of the comedy at the neglect of the legitimate 
drama for the performance of puppets, and 
though the scene is set in the Bath of the 
eighteenth century, it is probable that the 
author was glancing at something of the taste 
of his period in stage matters : 

" Derby. Who and what are you ? 

Claptrap. By name, Thespis Claptrap, formerly 
actor at the playhouse here in Bath ; but now, chief 
assistant to the illustrious Mr. Powell. 

Derby. Not the Powell who has set Bath mad after 
his puppets ? 

Claptrap. Sir, the professor of motions ; and with 
myself, as Mr. Bickerstaff's Tatler will certify, worker 
of Punch. 

Wilton. Well, though I have heard much of the 
puppets, I never heard of you. 

Claptrap. To be sure not, sir; the wood and paint 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 235 

carry it ; who thinks of the poor devils who find the 
words and pull the wires ? 

Wilton. Yet why leave the wisdom of the theatre 
for the jargon of the puppet show ? 

Claptrap. Sir, I did but follow the example of my 
betters. They vowed the playhouse was the vulgar 
produce of barbarous times ; and so patronized Punch 
to display their refinement." 

Later on, too, Claptrap, when he hears a 
lady say that she dearly loves all plays, urges, 
" Never confess it : 'tis enough to ruin you 
with people of wit " ; adding : "if you'd pass 
for somebody, you must sneer at a play, but 
idolize Punch. I know the most refined folks, 
who'd not budge a foot to hear Garrick, would 
give a guinea each, nay, mob for a whole 
morning, to see a Greenlander eat seal's flesh 
and swallow whale oil." 

The time of the play is that when the 
Beau's portrait was about to be hung in the 
Pump Room between the busts of Pope and 
Newton— that conjunction which inspired Lord 
Chesterfield's famous quatrain : 

" This Picture placed the busts between 
Gives satire all its strength — 
Wisdom and Wit are little seen 
And Folly at full length ! " 

The dramatist also has his hit at the com- 
pletion of the trio : 

" Wilton. A statue of Nash ! 

Derby. Aye, erected in the Pump Room by the 
mayor and aldermen ; who, with corporation taste, 



236 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

place the figure between the busts of Newton and 
Pope. 

Wilton. Impossible ! The corporation cannot so 
offend philosophy and wit. 

Derby. Why, in this case, the corporation reverse 
the common rule, and use no ceremony with 
strangers." 

The comedy of manners has many satiric 
touches, but also much of a tenderer humour, 
and to it as a whole may be applied the words 
used by Nash of his piece for the puppets, 
" The play is like the leaf that Dr. Cheney 
talks of — one side a blister, the other a salve." 

The critics waxed eloquent in praise of Beau 
Nash. Forster wrote a lengthy and appreci- 
ative notice in the New Monthly Magazine, in 
the course of which he said : 

" For this we are obliged to Mr. Jerrold. . . . He 
strives to fix, in permanent colours, some of the 
fleeting bygone follies of mankind. Long ago, from 
the groves and glories of Bath, its assembly, its pump- 
room, and its wells, a ' parting genius was with sighing 
sent,' which now the dramatist restores to us in his 
habit as he lived, with his tawdry dress and his white 
hat, putting him on the real scene, with the real 
associates of his life around him, fearing not to make 
them occupy what is now rare and dangerous ground 
(for the stage, nowadays, must reduce everything 
either to strict morality or to ' open manslaughter 
and bold bawdry ') — ^that neutral ground of character 
which stands between vice and virtue, which is in 
fact indifferent to neither. ' A happy breathing place 
from the burden of a perpetual moral questioning ' 









DuiGLAs Jerroij) in C'ark atlre 

Copied by Miss Dapliuo Jerrold after the following — 

(1, standing) John Leech, Punch ; (2 and :3, wasp and snake) A Won! n-ith Punch : (4, pen) 
Kenny Meadows, Heads of thn People; (o) John Tenniel, Punch; (6) Richard Doyle, 
Punch; (7) W. M. Thackeray, Punch; (S, "the printer's devil") Kenny Meadows, 
H'U'lx of the People; (0, with drum) John T.eech, Punch. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 237 

and scorning to mar the truth of his picture by 
any merely trading convulsions or startling situa- 
tions. . . . We must make a charge here, too, against 
our accomplished author, which we have elsewhere 
made more than once. He is too fond of repartee. 
He can bear to be told this, for he shares the fault in 
very illustrious company. Congreve always made 
wit too much the business, instead of the ornament 
of his comedies. In Mr. Jerrold's dialogue passages 
are every now and then peeping out which seem to 
have been prepared, ' cut and dry,' for the scene. 
The speaker has evidently brought them with him; 
he has not caught them on the scene by the help of 
some light of dialogue or suggestion of present 
circumstances. We beg of Mr. Jerrold to consider 
this more curiously in his next production, and we 
beg of him to lose no time in favouring us again." 

The author was evidently not disposed to 
lose much time, for the following note was 
probably written before Forster's criticism 
made its appearance in the August number of 
the magazine. 

" My dear Forster, — I enclose the order. It is 
the only one I have had since the first night ; deter- 
mining — sink or swim — that the manager should not 
have to accuse me of paper support. I leave the 
Beau to the charity of the gentle public; and that 
the Lord may touch their hearts and awaken their 
understandings, is the disinterested prayer of, 

" Yours ever truly, 

*' Douglas Jerrold. 

" I commenced yesterday a new comedy of pure 
fiction. ' At 'em again ! ' " 



238 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

This note was probably followed closely by 
the next (they are both undated). The proof 
referred to may have been one of Forster's 
article on the Beau for the New Monthly. 

" My dear Forster, — I leave town to-morrow for 
Doncaster. I have troubled you with this to prevent 
the misinterpretation of my silence touching the proof 
you thought to send me ; which kindness will now 
be unnecessary; at least, useless. I shall be absent 
at most about 3 weeks. I hope to bring back with 
me such a comedy ! Yours, my dear Forster, ever, 

" Douglas Jerrold." 

Of the visit to Doncaster — where his brother- 
in-law Hammond had the theatre — no record 
remains ; if it took place it was evidently but a 
short one, for on August 8 Jerrold wrote once 
more from his home in Chelsea : 

" My dear Forster, — I am deeply indebted to 
you for the long, elaborate and analytical essay in the 
N.M.M.^ At this time it may be of peculiar service 
to me : for I have every reason to believe that it is 
the intention of Mr. Morris to play me false. Last 
night (August 7) the comedy was acted for the tenth 
time ; and placed between two such cold slices of 
bread and butter as The Padlock and The Green-Eyed 
Monster : nevertheless, the house was full — (the 
boxes crowded) — and, if there be truth in actors, 
the piece went off better than ever. Yet, in despite 
of its increasing effect, I find by the bills of to-day 
that it is not to be repeated until Wednesday. Un- 
fortunately, I have no written agreement with Morris, 
who was to pay me on the success of the piece : which 

* The New Monthly Magazine. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 239 

success he now broadly insinuates is not evident ; 
and, at the same time, does all that in him lies to 
prevent. These are your Christian managers ! How- 
ever, I wrote to thank you, and not to inflict upon 
you a volume of grief of, 

" Yours most truly, 

" Douglas Jerrold. 

" I have so frequently written to you, appointing a 
day for you to come and see me, that I now leave the 
day to your own choice. Name a day next week ; give 
me 48 hours' notice; and bring with you any such 
five feet two of natural dissipation and acquired 
infamy as Sam,^ the Joshua of the True Sun^ 

Douglas Jerrold often had occasion to com- 
plain of " your Christian managers," and one 
of his retorts to Morris may well find a place 
here, more especially as it was probably made 
during the preparations for Beau Nash. The 
dramatist was finding fault with the strength, 
or lack of strength, of the Haymarket com- 
pany, when the manager expostulated, saying, 
*' Why, there's Vining, he was bred on these 
boards ! " 

" He looks as though he'd been cut out of 
them,^^ retaliated Jerrold. 

It is, of course, impossible now to decide 
upon the relative merits of the combatants in 
the dispute between Jerrold and Morris, but 
when the matter had to be taken to the courts 
of justice the jury was with the dramatist. 
The manager certainly appears to have justi- 
fied Jerrold's indignation by his treatment of 
^ Laman Blanchard, then editing the True Sun. 



240 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

the brilliant and should-have-been-successful 
comedy. On August 12 the author again 
mentioned the subject in a note to Forster : 

" I have, in vain, tried the actors for orders — (I 
am, at this moment, 2 p.m., reeking in a wet shirt) ; 
orders they have not, i, e. — ^they say so. Morris 
I cannot encounter until the Beau has rim his course. 
You may take this consolation in your disappoint- 
ment; you are not alone: for Mrs. Shelley, who 
wrote to me on Saturday, for the same favour, is 
also on your side. Now, I don't care much about 
you, but I am very much annoyed that I cannot 
oblige a lady on her first request. So it is, but let 
us hope there is another and a better theatre ' where 
the Forsters cease from troubling and the Jerrolds 
are at rest.' I hope you got home safe ; and, believe 
me, I am very well ; and, moreover, believe that I 
am, 

" Yours ever truly, 

" Douglas Jerrold. 

" I leave town (I hope) on Saturday, for ' the open 
sea,* for (I hope) a month." 

The hope that he would be leaving town at 
the end of the same week for " the open sea " 
which he loved so much proved illusory, and 
the close of the same month found him still at 
home in Little Chelsea. On the 28th he wrote 
again to Forster : 

" My dear Forster, — I enclose you a notice of 
the lecture — which I earnestly wish you could have 
heard. I have, perhaps, been partial in the length 
of my remarks, but not, I assure you, in their spirit. 
The discourse was excellent ; no less so for not 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 241 

mincing the matter. I am now at law with Morris 
[having] proceeded as far as possible until November. 
He refuses to pay me another shilling in addition to 
the £50. We must fight for it, and so ' God defend 
the right.' If you see Procter ^ will you tell him 
that ' a most eligible opportunity now presents 
itself ' in the way of a house ; my next-door neigh- 
bour is compelled to move; the house is the same 
extent, same rent, with better garden than mine. 
So you can, with your glowing powers of description, 
give him a notion of the bargain. I answered his 
note, but have not heard from him. It will much 
oblige me, and serve a true fellow (one of the right 
kind ^) if the enclosed be inserted. I have written 
it in a feigned hand, as I contemplate sending some 
articles to the N.M.M. from myself. Morris coldly 
informed me that he should never play the Beau 
again. I was wrong not to give the play a spice 
of the bawdy ; I understand that it is just now very 
successful at the Haymarket, 

" Yours ever truly, 

" Douglas Jerrold." 

It was during the stay in Thistle Grove that 
one of those " home incidents " occurred which 
Jerrold readily turned to literary purposes. 
A pair of pea-fowls had been presented to 
him and proved anything but agreeable pets. 
Their story was tragic. The screaming of the 
peacock and his wandering ways caused com- 
plaints from the neighbours, and each time 

^ B. W. Procter, still perhaps better known by his pen- 
name as " Barry Cornwall." 

* Probably accompanying a manuscript signed with 
the writer's nom de plume of Henry Brownrigg. 

VOL. 1. R 



242 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

he was brought back his captor expected to 
be rewarded. The experience was no doubt 
heightened by fancy in The Peacock ; a House- 
hold Incident,^ which Jerrold wrote two or 
three years later. When it was decided that 
the troublesome birds should be got rid of a 
friend who had greatly admired them begged 
that he might have them as ornaments to his 
grounds, and they were duly transferred to 
him. A few weeks later a member of Douglas 
Jerrold's household was calling at a poulterer's 
shop near the friend's home, and mention was 
made of the birds, when it was learned that 
peacock and peahen had had but short shrift 
in their new place, being handed over to the 
poulterer in exchange for table poultry ! 

" Give a friend your hand as often as you 
like," says Jerrold in one of his plays, "but 
never, never let there be a pen in it." It would 
have been well if he had acted up to his own 
counsel, but possibly that counsel had been 
born of experience, for towards the close of 
1834 he had to pay the penalty for " backing 
a bill " for a friend. However, he had done 
the friendly act, the friend failed to meet his 
engagement, and Jerrold was looked to for a 
sum of money which it was quite out of his 
power to pay. A retreat across the Channel 
was made necessary, and to Paris the dramatist, 
his wife and younger three -year-old daughter 
and presumably the baby Thomas departed, 

^ Reprinted in Tales by Douglas Jerrold now first 
collected, 1891. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 243 

and there they spent the terribly severe winter 
of 1834-5. If he had made himself responsible 
for liabilities more than he could meet, the 
brave man was by no means downcast, and 
the months passed in the French capital were 
fruitful of work of the most varied character. 
It is not possible to say when Jerrold's 
connection with the Examiner ceased, but the 
following letters, addressed by him to John 
Forster, appear to refer to work on that journal 
— the only paper with which they were both 
connected, so far as is known, before the 
Daily News of a dozen years later. This 
seems to have been the first occasion on which 
Douglas Jerrold suffered from that rheumatism 
of the eyes, by which he was more than once 
severely tortured. As the letters are not 
dated, it can only be assumed that they were 
written about this time, for they are addressed 
to Forster in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and he did 
not go to reside there until 1834. 

"Friday noon. 

" My dear Forster, — If, without great risk, I 
can get to the office to-morrow, I will ; if not I have 
desired [ ] to send you the papers for the post- 
script, and must trouble you for the same ; for I cannot 
at all confront the light, and pen this with difficulty. 
If I am not at the office by 10 — which if possible I 
will be — you will have the papers from the office, 

" Yours truly, 

" D. Jerrold. 

" I write this in a room all but entirely darkened. 
I open letter to say that the doctor has just been with 



244 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

me and pronounced another sentence of leeches 
with supplementary blister and poultice. Order not 
to quit room. Hence, I must trouble you to-morrow.'* 

" Monday. 

" My dear Forster, — It was only last night that 
I was assured of the safety of my eye ; I trust I shall 
now escape partial blindness, though at present I am 
now in that condition. In every other respect I 
am mending; and having now been twelve days on 
tea and calomel, with incidental bleedings and 
blisterings, am promoted to mutton broth. Before 
I sent you the papers on Tuesday last, I literally 
fainted away in my attempt to mark them for cutting 
out. I was forbidden to make the slightest effort 
with my eyesight, and — as I did not hear from you 
last week — thought there would not have been much 
difficulty in getting them done for the present. How- 
ever, I have hit upon a way to meet the dilemma, and 
if you will let me have to-day's papers by the boy 
(they were served upon you this morning) I will get 
somebody to read them to me and to make a selection. 
The papers of to-morrow shall (I will take care) be 
delivered upon me. 

" Yours ever truly, 

" D. Jerrold. 

" I believe my dear and early friend Blanchard is 
not employed after 3 o'clock every afternoon — but 
' thafs not much.' " 

The third letter deals with Jerrold's final 
break with the Examiner, apparently in conse- 
quence of his position on the journal not being 
properly defined. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 245 

" My dear Forster, — I prepared copy this week, 
not having heard from Mr. Fonblanque, to whom I 
had promised a continuance until he should have 
made another election; I, however, avail myself of 
your offer, and on the close of the present week, lay 
down my office. 

" In Mr. Fonblanque's last letter to me he expresses 
a hope of being able to make some arrangement with 
me for contributions. Whether, however, this hope 
still exists, I know not. At all events, I quit the 
Ex. ; but my present office is susceptible of a mis- 
representation in no way conducive to my interests 
or agreeable to my feelings. This misrepresentation 
— I hope not consciously — has been made, and by 
Blanchard. It is, however, scarcely worth a thought. 

" Ever yours, 

" D. Jerrold. 

" At the Club, in full conclave, on Saturday week, 
my position on the Ex. was, I understand, defined, 
that is misrepresented in no very flattering way to 
me ; and that on the authority of a new contributor. 
I have written to Mr. F." 

It is possible that the misrepresentations, 
whatever they may have been, were responsible 
for the temporary coolness between Jerrold 
and Laman Blanchard referred to in the letter 
from the latter given in an earlier chapter. 
Dateless correspondence is one of the greatest 
difficulties, and one of the commonest, in the 
path of the biographer. 



CHAPTER VIII 

SOJOURN IN PARIS : FREEMASONRY 

1835—1836 

Towards the close of 1834, as we have seen, 
the delinquency of a friend in not meeting a 
bill — which we may be sure he was quite 
certain of meeting when he persuaded Jerrold 
to back it — had made it advisable for the 
dramatist to cross the Channel, and the early 
part of 1835 found him, a young man of thirty- 
two of acknowledged reputation as a dramatist, 
working hard in Paris, that city whence so 
many of his fellow playwrights sought all the 
necessary " inspiration " for their pieces. The 
few months' stay in the gay city must have 
been spent in hard work, for the author soon 
had several plays ready for the stage, and that 
he had been writing short essays in fiction the 
magazines of the period show. 

In Paris in this early part of the year 1835 
several young Englishmen were living who 
were destined to play an important part in 
the public eye. John Barnett, the popular 
composer of The Mountain Sylph,^ was in the 
Rue d'Amboise, and in the same house with 

^ Which had been successfully produced at the Lyceum 
during the preceding autumn. 

246 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 247 

him dwelt young Henry Mayhew, to be honour- 
ably known in later years as the pioneer into 
a new world of investigation in his splendid 
work on London Labour and the London Poor, 
and in connection with the early history of 
Punch. Another and yet more notable English 
resident in Paris was William Makepeace 
Thackeray, then a young man of three-and- 
twenty, more or less busy over his art studies. 
Visiting Barnett's rooms after dinner one 
evening Jerrold first met Mayhew, his name 
suggesting the firm of solicitors whose pressing 
claims had something to do with the retire- 
ment on Paris. Together the two left Barnett's 
place, the younger man having volunteered to 
accompany Jerrold back to his quarters in the 
old Place Carrousel. 

" Immediately we set foot in the street " (to repeat 
Henry Mayhew's version of the incident) " Jerrold 
said eagerly, ' You are connected with Mayhew, the 
solicitor of Carey Street, are you not ? ' 

" ' I am,' I replied, more mystified than ever, 
' his son.' 

" ' I thought so ! ' exclaimed the author of Black- 
Eyed Susan, with a heavy sigh, ' and you are come 
over about those bills,' he quickly added. 

" ' Those bills ! What bills ? I know nothing 
about any bills,' was my rejoinder. ' You needn't 
fancy that I have anything to do with the law.' 

" ' Haven't you, by Jove ! ' cried the little man, 
and he stopped suddenly, as if to shake a heavy 
load of care from his back. ' Then give me your 
hand, sir. I am glad to meet a gentleman,' said he, 
with a significant emphasis on the word, ' who 



248 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

doesn't require an Act of Parliament to make him 
one,' for Jerrold could never resist the chance of 
having a fling at the legal profession." ^ 

Night after night, said Henry Mayhew, in 
an article in a forgotten magazine, did dis- 
cussions go on in the composer's rooms in 
Paris with Jerrold, Mayhew and Barnett as 
chief spokesmen, and Thackeray more as an 
amused listener than as an active disputant. 
To cite Henry Mayhew's recollections as further 
given by his son : 

" The evenings passed in John Barnett's rooms 
at Paris among such splendid company as the future 
authors of Vanity Fair and Mrs. Caudle's Lectures, 
as well as the composer of the Mountain Sylph, were 
things to be perpetually treasured in the brain — ^to 
be treasured as tenaciously as the sea-shell stores up 
the whisperings of the mighty ocean, and keeps on 
for ever recalling the syren voices long after they 
have ceased to murmur their music in the ear. . . . 
Night after night did this celebrated triumviri 
assemble in the Rue d'Amboise to talk, over their 
coffee and ' caporal,' the wildest nonsense and the 
finest sense it was ever my happy lot to listen to. 
And night after night, let the discourse take at first 
whatever turn it might, it was sure at last to get into 
the same old metaphysical tangle — 'Which was the 
greatest art : music, painting or the drama ? ' being 
the nice little knot which the three young pundits 
would invariably endeavour to unpick. 

" Barnett, of course, was music'' s champion. 

1 A Jorum of"" Punch " with Those Who Helped to Brew 
it. Being the Early History of " The London Charivari,'" 
by Athol Mayhew, 1895. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 249 

Thackeray, on the other hand (for he was then 
studying figure -drawing at Passy, in the vain belief, 
strange to say, that he was more of an artist than 
author), entered the lists in favour of painting ; while 
Jerrold took up the cudgels for the drama, and be- 
laboured away at the others in right good earnest — 
his final knockdown blow generally being a reference 
to Hamlet's celebrated soliliquy, ' To be or not to 
be.' 

" ' There, Master Thackeray ! ' the little man 
would cry triumphantly, ' could you or your Michael 
Angelo, or your Rubens, or Rembrandt, ever put 
that upon canvas ? And you. Master Barnett ! 
could you, or any Beethoven or Mozart that ever 
lived, set that to music ? ' 

" And with this slight poser the conversation 
would lapse once more into that agreeable kind of 
' chaff ' with which, the proverb tells us, young birds 
rather than old ones are apt to be most taken." 

These Paris gatherings were to be the pre- 
cursors of many similar London ones — three 
of the quartet were to be associated at the 
Punch table a few years later — but though they 
formed a pleasant opportunity for recreation 
in his holiday exile, Jerrold was busy pre- 
paring new plays, for 1835 was to prove one 
of his busiest years in connection with the 
theatre, and he was also engaged in writing 
the first of a series of pregnant, suggestive 
stories which were to appear in Blackwood's 
Magazine,^ and later in volume form with 

^ In her biographical work on William Blackwood and 
His Sons Mrs. Oliphant, referring to Douglas Jerrold's 
contributions to Maga, says that he can scarcely have 



250 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

illustrations by Thackeray. The great novelist 
was still looking to his pencil rather than 
to his pen to bring him fame, and it may 
well be that it was when they met in Paris 
that his illustrating Jerrold's stories was 
first suggested. Silas Fleshpots, a Respectable 
Man, which was written in Paris and de- 
spatched thence to Blackwood's, was subse- 
quently to be portrayed by Thackeray, and 
it is not fanciful to believe that the proposal 
that he should do so started in the Rue 
d'Amboise. 

The little matter of the bill was duly settled, 
and the stay in the French capital was evidently 
but a short one, for Jerrold was doubtless back 
in London early in February, in the middle of 
which month no fewer than four of his pieces 
were produced, two at the Olympic, and one 
each at Drury Lane and the Queen's Theatre. 
The two former were unsuccessful, but the 
others were both " hits," more especially the 

felt himself at home in its pages, adding : " He contri- 
buted a few of his farcical stories and was vigorously 
denounced by [Samuel] Warren, who took the trouble to 
write to the Black woods, solemnly asserting that his 
sole motive was of the highest kind, to implore them to 
put an end to contributions which were impairing the 
tone of the magazine and disgusting its readers. I do 
not suppose that this adjuration had any effect, but 
Jerrold's contributions did not continue very long." 
Possibly this was Warren's retort-underhand to Jerrold's 
witticism at his expense ; for it is said to have been Warren 
who, enlarging upon the fact that he had dined at a noble- 
man's house, said that he could not understand why 
there had been no fish on the table—" Perhaps they ate 
it all upstairs," suggested Jerrold. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 251 

one which, played at the Httle Queen's Theatre 
in Tottenham Court Road, had been rejected 
by the " reader " for Covent Garden and 
Drury Lane, as we see in the author's dedi- 
catory epistle. 

The first piece. Hearts and Diamonds, was 
placed before the public at the Olympic on 
February 13, and of it nothing now remains 
but the briefest newspaper notices. Three 
days later The Hazard of the Die, a tragic 
drama in two acts, was brought out at Drury 
Lane, and achieved a distinct success; on the 
same evening The Schoolfellows, a two-act 
comedy, made a brilliant debut at the " minor " 
Queen's Theatre, and on the following night 
The Man's an Ass was produced and instantly 
condemned on account, it is reported, of some 
" ticklish turn." The manuscript of this play 
is in the Forster Collection at South Kensing- 
ton Museum, briefly and pointedly endorsed, 
" Played once and d d." 

The Hazard of the Die, presented by a strong 
cast including Messrs. Wallack and Benjamin 
Webster and Mrs. Faucit, achieved a distinct 
triumph, while the comedy at the Queen's 
Theatre was by far the most notable of these 
fruits of the winter's stay in Paris. It was, 
indeed, probably only finished there, for, as 
we saw, the author was at work on a new 
comedy — " At 'em again" — the previous summer 
shortly after the production of Beau Nash. 
That new comedy was The Schoolfellows, one 
of the most charming of all his dramatic 



252 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

works, and the only one of these four plays 
produced during February 1835 to find a place 
in his collected writings. 

It is a tender two-act comedy, telling the 
story of a group of one-time schoolfellows, who 
meet at Hampstead at the house of their 
whilom master, Cedar, the kindly pedagogue 
whose prejudice it had ever been " to prefer 
one slip of olive to a whole grove of birch." 
The schoolfellows comprise Horace, the son of 
Sir Luke Meredith, who has made a runaway 
match and brings his ten-day's bride to Cedar ; 
Jasper, the nameless boy who had been left 
at the school by one Rushworth who had car- 
ried off the schoolmaster's daughter ; Nicholas 
Shilling, a purse-proud " man of property " ; 
Jack Marigold, an apothecary in love with 
Shilling's sister, and Tom Drops, whose weak- 
ness for liquor has reduced him to the position 
of factotum at the local inn. With Cedar is his 
granddaughter Esther. Jasper, who had run 
away from the school as a child, returns as a 
man having made his fortune, and when he in- 
sists on learning the secret of his parentage from 
the old schoolmaster he is told that he is Esther's 
half-brother, for it is only later when Rushworth 
returns to make his peace that Cedar finds his 
belief in the boy's origin wrong — that he is in 
truth another son of Sir Luke Meredith. 

Here is a pretty bit of talk in which the 
runaway bridegroom tells of the elopement : 

" Cedar. Silly boy and girl ! how could you marry ? 
Horace, Why, sir, the match was made by the old 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 258 

confederates — love and opportunity. Our hearts fell 
victims to the cherry season. 

Cedar. The cherry season ? 

Horace. Sir, the proof. Many an evening had we 
mingled oaths and sighs — Marion from her chamber 
window — I from the garden. And thus, sir, guile- 
less and loving, we should have gone on, ay, until the 
day of wrinkles. 'Twas enough for us to see — to 
hear each other. 

Marion. Indeed, I had no other thought. 

Horace. But, sir, in a disastrous hour, the gardener 
left his ladder at a certain cherry tree. Well, sir, to 
tell you how it happened passes my wit. Suffice 
it — I found the ladder at Marion's window, and 
Marion's hand, like a ripe peach, fast in mine. She 
never looked so destroyingly lovely — her eyes were 
never so bright 

Marion. Horace ! 

Horace. Her lips never so red 



Cedar. But then, 'twas the cherry season. 

Horace. Still, to run away was not to be thought 
of. I vow, sir, as I ascended the ladder, Plato went 
with me every round. 

Cedar. And having taken you to the top, it seems 
he wouldn't spoil company, so left you there. Plato 
was ever a good master of the ceremonies ; just 
introducing people, and then politely making his 
bow. Well, the lady came down. 

Horace. My heart beating count — and each thump 
louder than the last — at every step. Talk of Venus 
rising from the sea ! Were I to paint a Venus she 
should be escaping from a cottage window, with a 
face now white, now red, as the roses nodding about 
it; an eye, like her own star; lips, sweetening the 
jasmine, as it clings to hold them; a face and form 
in which harmonious thoughts seem as vital breath ! 



254 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

Nothing but should speak : her little hand should 
tell a love-tale; nay, her very foot, planted on the 
ladder, should utter eloquence, enough to stop a 
hermit at his beads, and make him watchman whilst 
the lady fled. 

Cedar. Horace Meredith, if you propose to publish 
a new mythology, I must say — schoolmaster as I am 
— your Venus is a pretty sample of the work." 

There is much neat wit in the play of dia- 
logue. When the man of property says, 
"Haven't I studied mankind?" "Aye," 
agrees the schoolmaster, " but I fear only 
as thieves study a house — to take advantage 
of the weakest parts of it." When Shilling 
says to Marigold, " Do you question the effect 
of my courage? " he gets the reply, " On the 
contrary — I think no man makes so little go 
so far." Shilling is like Falstaff, in that he is 
often the cause that wit is in other men ; when he 
snubs his old schoolmate Drops with, " You 
have forgotten yourself in your drink," he is 
countered with, " If the drink will do as much 
for you, take to the bottle to-morrow." 

In the end the tangle is cleared up, the irate 
Sir Luke is placated, and a pleasant comedy 
reaches its fitting close in the forgiveness of the 
runaways, in the man of property bowing to 
the inevitable in the love of his sister (though 
he prudently declares that she shall not touch 
her inheritance until twenty-one), and in the 
promised union of Jasper and Esther. 

In March the Schoolfellows was published 
with the following interesting dedicatory epistle 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 255 

to Thomas James Serle, which is worth quoting 
here, as it only occurs in the early edition of 
the play, and as it expresses pointedly some 
of the author's views on the difficulties en- 
countered by the conscientious playwrights 
at a time when the drama was supposed to be 
in a low state : 

" My dear Serle, — Would the accompanying 
little comedy were more worthy of your acceptance ! 
It was my wish to make it so ; but the evil crisis 
upon which we have fallen, rendering the exercise 
of our art, as an art, almost hopeless — the system 
which has flung the Dramatic Muse under horse's 
hoofs, turning every well-considered and elaborate 
attempt at stage literature, to the confusion of its 
projector, compelled me in the present instance to 
forgo my first plan of five acts, and to adopt that of 
two. In shortening my labour I, no doubt, lessened 
my disappointment. This may, in some measure, 
account for, if it do not wholly excuse, a want of 
minute development of character, a hurry of incidents, 
and a suddenness of catastrophe. The subject to be 
duly illustrated required no less than five acts ; but 
five acts in these days ! 

" In inscribing to you The Schoolfellows, you will 
not, I am convinced, give the drama a less cordial 
welcome because refused by the professionally 
retained reader ^ — the one reader — appointed to the 
two theatres, Drury Lane and Co vent Garden .^ That 

1 Frederick Reynolds, 1764-1841. 

2 The following from a contemporary magazine is 
interesting in this connection : " We would conclude our 
theatrical remarks by offering a tribute of gratitude to 
Mr. Jerrold, for endeavouring to arrest the decadence of 
the drama, but find that, to act fairly by him, would be 



256 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

gentleman was, doubtless, correct in his opinions, 
that for the two patent stages the piece was alto- 
gether ineffective. But tell me, in passing such 
sentence, did not the one janitor to the twin temples 
of fame somehow question their right to a privilege, 
which the legislature makes almost wholly their 
own ? However, such was the answer ; and though, 
in our boyhood, we may have enjoyed a scene in 
which Grimaldi fulfilled at the same moment the 
office of porter to two mansions, yet, with the present 
exclusive market, a negative from the one porter of 
Drury Lane and Covent Garden, though the said 
porter has himself been half-a-century a comic writer, 
is, certainly, not one of his best jokes. Nay, there 
are better, even in Laugh When You Can} 

" The Schoolfellows was not, we have it on authority, 
calculated to attract sufficient money to either of the 
two larger houses. I now conscientiously believe it. 
Subsequent events have confirmed me in the melan- 
choly conviction that a writer who — unassisted by a 
troop of horse, an earthquake, a conflagration, or a 

to devote an article exclusively to the subject, which just 
now is impossible. Mr. Jerrold will believe us when we 
state that The Hazard of the Die, if it has not proved a 
lucky throw for Drury Lane, is owing to the caprice of the 
manager who interrupted its success for reasons best 
known to himself. 

" It was given for eleven nights. 

" The plot was excellent — the soul-stirring interest was 
most intense — and the performers generally, but Mr. 
Wallack in particular, did the author that justice which 
marked their full conception of his spirit. The School- 
fellows at the Queen's and Hearts and Diamonds at the 
Olympic (both by Mr. Jerrold) are mentioned, not merely 
as being successfully performed, but because each in its 
way deserves unmixed commendation. We do not 
hesitate to affirm that The Schoolfellows at either of the 
larger houses would have assisted the treasury." 

^ One of Frederick Reynolds's own plays. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 257 

cataract — trusts merely to the conduct of his fable, 
his words and his characters, must fail, at least in the 
treasury sense, at either Drury Lane or Covent 
Garden; this is one of the sternest truths that men 
admit ; for it is a truth of the pocket. When the 
prices at the patent houses are nearly double those 
of what are called the minor theatres, who — unless 
it be to see some extraordinary raree-show wide away 
from the real purpose of the drama — ^will pay the 
heavier charge ? 

" At the time I write, The Schoolfellows has been 
acted twenty-seven times, and is still announced for 
further repetition. ' Yes,' it may be answered, ' but 
acted at a minor theatre, where the audience is less 
cultivated, and consequently less critical ; where, 
with an undistinguishing appetite, they may thank- 
fully devour the refuse of Covent Garden.' Though 
little disposed to make the Court Guide the only test 
of judgment, I might have crowded into the page a 
long list of lords and ladies of every degree of nobility, 
who — for their names have gemmed the paragraphs 
of newspapers — have assisted, to use a French phrase, 
at the unlawful representation of The Schoolfellows at 
an unlicensed theatre. This is no extravagance ; the 
tyro in heraldry might gain most discursive know- 
ledge from the coach panels that are nightly wedged 
in Tottenham Street. 

" This point brings me to the question on which 
you, my dear Serle, have long laboured ; distinguish- 
ing yourself, no less by a singleness of purpose in the 
advocacy of commonsense, and of the rights of every 
man whose hard destiny it is to live by the sweat of 
his pen, than by fervid eloquence and the soundest 
judgment. Surely, excluded by a system (for I 
make no charge against individuals ; I believe they 
are fully aware of the hopelessness of the present 

VOL. I. s 



258 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

state of things) from what the legislature, in its 
former wisdom, intended to be the highest reward 
of the dramatist — when told that the only prizes to 
be won at the two theatres are, as in some of the 
olden games, to be carried away upon horseback — 
when the only Pegasus of the patent theatres is to 
be found in the mews of Mr. Ducrow — it is not too 
much to ask from the Government an assured retreat, 
where the writer and the actor may pursue their 
calling, safe from ' the armed heels ' of bays and pie- 
balds. It is no answer for our opponents to tell us 
there are, for the exercise of the art of the dramatist 
and the player, the minor theatres. Those establish- 
ments, with only two exceptions, are at the mercy 
of the common informer every night; though the 
patricians of the land, by their patronage, counten- 
ance the illegality, their licences are forfeited. Thus 
they are insecure in their tenure; and, even when 
licensed by the Lord Chamberlain, are trammelled 
by absurd fallacies ; though, in sorrow I say it, there 
is no public functionary whose orders are so con- 
stantly evaded as are the mandates of the royal key- 
bearer. His Lordship says there shall be six songs 
in each act of every burletta : and the due number 
are constantly sent to the Deputy Licenser — ^(nay, 
I know a recent instance in which the verses were 
selected from the works of the Deputy himself) — 
who pockets the fee, with a full conviction that in 
five out of six instances not one of the songs will 
be retained, but were merely sent to cheat the 
unsuspecting Chamberlain ! 

" In the appeal which must again be made to the 
legislature, we have surely a claim to the advocacy 
of those noblemen who visit minor theatres. Surely 
they will not refuse their voices when they have 
before given their names ; they can hardly take boxes 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 259 

at a playhouse, and then, by their vote, declare it, 
if not mischievous, unnecessary. 

" In the hope that the question of the existence of 
a national drama will meet with that speedy con- 
sideration which it now so strongly demands, and 
in the conviction that with its purity and elevation 
your efforts must meet with a proportionate reward, 
believe me, dear Serle, 

" Your sincere friend, 

" Douglas Jerrold. 

" Little Chelsea, 

" March 20, 1835." 

It was an old cry, that against the animal 
shows at the theatres, for the Brothers Smith 
had given forceful utterance to it more than 
twenty years earlier in the Rejected Addresses. 
It was indeed an old cry and is a new one, for 
Punch has but recently had his gibe at the real 
sheep and camel introduced in Joseph and His 
Brethren at His Majesty's Theatre. Alfred 
Bunn, who for a time controlled the destinies 
of both the patent houses at this period, 
lamented the taste of the public, but declared 
that it was necessary to give that public what 
it wanted or to shut up the theatres. The 
reference to the extent to which the " minor " 
theatres were at the mercy of the common 
informer is interesting in that in the very 
month in which the letter was written, the 
company performing at the Strand Theatre 
were summoned at the instigation of such a 
common informer, the principals were fined, 
and the house closed ! 

The third of the four new pieces of Jerrold 's 



260 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

produced within a single week, The Hazard 
of the Die at Drury Lane, enjoyed a goodly 
measure of success, thanks largely to the 
acting of Wallack, which in a note to the 
printed play the author briefly avowed " in 
the hope that in dramatic as in commercial 
matters, a few words may be understood to 
convey a due acknowledgment of the heaviest 
debt." Why the run of the play was stopped 
by the " caprice of the manager " cannot be 
said. The author's words in the preface to 
The Schoolfellows indicate that when the 
dramatist did get beyond the " patent " 
portals he was still in uneasy case. 

The story is one of the French Revolu- 
tion on the eve of Robespierre's downfall. 
David Duvigne has gambled to raise money 
that by means of bribery he may get his 
mother, his brother Charles, Violette and her 
father St. Ange safely away from Paris. 
His plans are overheard by Citizen President 
Kalmer, and the threatened crisis is hastened 
— Charles Duvigne and St. Ange being arrested. 
In disguise David goes to the prison and is 
himself forced to add their names to the list 
of those entered for execution the next day. 
He bribes the gipsy jailor to save St. Ange, 
but needs a further two hundred crowns if 
Charles also is to be saved; borrows the sum 
and is then tempted to gamble that he may get 
more money for the flight — gambles and loses 
that which he had borrowed ! Past the gaming- 
place the tumbrils go bearing the victims to 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 261 

the guillotine, and David sees the brother 
whose chance of safety he has sacrificed. He 
would fling himself from the window but is 
prevented, raves and announces that he is a 
suspect with a price on his head. As he collapses 
there are cries from the street that Robespierre 
has fallen, that the last batch of victims has 
been released at the very foot of the guillotine, 
and Charles and Violette come in as the 
wretched man dies. It is a vivid drama based 
on an anecdote for which the author was 
indebted to a friend, though he modified the 
horror of the story, saying : 

" I have endeavoured to display a social evil with 
less distress to my audience and readers (if, in these 
disastrous times, it may not be thought quixotic in a 
play^vriter to hope for readers) than was warranted 
by the horror of the original event. In the tragedy 
of real life, the brother, the victim of the gamester, 
was guillotined, and the prototype of David lingered 
and died a maniac. Names might be given; but 
are, for obvious reasons, withheld. The friend who 
acquainted me with the story had it from the lips 
of a late distinguished member of the French bar, 
who, in the reign of terror, was fellow-prisoner with 
the brother sacrificed to ' the hazard of the die.' " 

The fourth of these plays, The Man's an 
Ass, is a very diverting farce presenting a story 
not without hints taken from Apuleius in that 
it shows a man supposed to be translated into 
an ass. The pretence is made by a hungry 
fellow who, having removed a miller's ass, puts 



262 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

himself in its place in the hope that he may 
partake of a feast which the miller is pre- 
paring. But it so happens that it is the 
miller's wedding-day, that on the journey 
home Angelino, the ass, has been refractory 
and thrown the bride and so is to die— the 
butcher has indeed already been sent for ! 
Thus come some amusing scenes developed in 
quick and easy dialogue, as the ruthless miller 
determines that the deed shall be done and 
the man who claims to have been the ass is 
brought to the conclusion that : " He who 
quits even parched peas and safety to eat a 
savoury dish in noise and danger — though he 
may have the wisdom of the seven sages, the 
learning of all the schools, still is such a man 
only a— a— in a word The Man's an Ass." It 
is sheer farce, farce the instant condemnation 
of which it is not now easy to understand, un- 
less one of the actors was responsible for the 
" tickhsh turn." 

In this year Douglas Jerrold was active as a 
Freemason ; ^ he had begun contributing to 
The Freemason's Quarterly in 1834, and in 
1835 was represented in each number of that 
miscellany. On May 29 a performance was 

^ His Masonic " record " was as follows : On November 
10, 1831, Bro. Jerrold was initiated in the Bank of England 
Lodge, No. 329, which met at the Horn Tavern, Doctors' 
Commons, and continued a member until June 1836. He 
joined the Lodge of Concord, No. 49, in March 1838, and 
appears to have left it in December 1844. This last- 
named Lodge has made no return since 1849, and the 
charter cannot be traced. — Freemason's Monthly Magazine, 
July 1857. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 263 

given at the English Opera House in aid of 
the Asylum for Aged Freemasons, and one 
of the brethren recited an address "written 
for the occasion by Brother Douglas Jerrold." 
The address is only one of several which he 
wrote at different times for the same bene- 
ficent purpose, and may be given here as a 
specimen of them all, as an illustration of 
the writer's happy fancy in dealing with a 
seemingly matter-of-fact subject : 

" In types we speak ; by tokens, secret ways, 
We teach the wisdom of primeval days. 
To-night, 'tis true, no myst'ry we rehearse, 
Yet — hear a parable in homely verse. 

A noble ship lay found 'ring in the main, 

The hapless victim of the hurricane ; 

Her crew — her passengers — with savage strife. 

Crowd in the boat that bears them on to life ; 

They see the shore — again they press the strand — 

A happy spot — a sunny, fertile land ! 

But say — have all escaped the 'whelming wave ? 
Is no one left within a briny grave ? 

Some few old men, too weak to creep on deck, 

Lie in the ocean coflfin'd in the wreck. 

They had no child to pluck them from the tide, 

And so vmaided, unremembered, died. 

But orphan babes are rescued from the sea 

B}^ the strong arm of human sympathy; 

For in their looks — their heart-compelling tears — 

There speaks an eloquence denied to years. 

The shipwrecked men, inhabiting an isle, 

Lovely and bright with bounteous Nature's smile. 

And richly teeming with her fairest things. 

Ripe, luscious fruits, and medicinal springs, 



264 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

Must yet provide against the changing day, 

The night's dank dew, the mountain's scorching ray ; 

For Nature giving, still of men demands 

The cheerful industry of willing hands. 

But some there are among our shipwrecked crowd 

Spent of their strength — by age, by sickness, bowed ; 

Forlorn old men in childhood's second birth. 

Poor broken images of Adam's earth ! 

Of what avails the riches 'bout them thrown, 

If wanting means to make one gift their own ? 

To him what yields the juicy fruit sublime. 

Who sees the tree but needs the strength to climb ? 

To him what health can healing waters bring 

Who palsied lies, and cannot reach the spring ? 

Must they then starve with plenty in their eye ? 

Near health's own fountain must they groan and die ? 

Whilst in that isle each beast shall find a den, 

Shall no roof house our desolate old men ? 

There shall ! 

{To Audience) 

I see the builders throng around, 
With line and rule prepared to mark the ground ; 
Nor lack these gentlest wishes — hands most fair, 
To join the master in his fervent prayer ; 
But with instinctive goodness crowd to-night, 
Smiling approval of our solemn rite. 
The noblest daughters of this favoured isle ! — 
And virtue labours, cheered by beauty's smile, 
The stone is laid — the temple is begun — 
Help ! and its walls will glitter in the sun. 
There, 'neath its roof, will charity assuage 
The clinging ills of poor dependent age ; 
There, 'neath acacia boughs, will old men walk 
And, calmly waiting death, with angels talk." 

The address which he wrote for the following 
year's Festival, The Grey Head, was set to 
music by Reeve and published as a song. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 265 

It was somewhere about the year 1835 that 
Douglas Jerrold first met Charles Dickens, 
then descriptive reporter on the Morning 
Chronicle, and two or three years later to wake 
one fine morning to find himself famous as the 
author of the Pickwick Papers. How the first 
meeting was brought about cannot now be 
said. Jerrold already knew John Forster well, 
but Dickens did not meet him until the close 
of 1836. It was probably some other friend 
who sent " Boz " out to Little Chelsea to make 
the acquaintance of a writer eight years his 
senior, one who had already gained a prominent 
position among the dramatists of the time, 
and whose name must have been familiar to 
his visitor as that of a frequent contributor 
to the leading magazines. Dickens himself 
recorded his impression of this first meeting : 
" I remember very well that when I first saw 
him in about the year 1835 — when I went into 
his sick room in Thistle Grove, Brompton, 
and found him propped up in a great chair, 
bright-eyed and quick and eager in spirit, 
but very lame in body, he gave me an im- 
pression of tenderness. It never became dis- 
sociated from him." The meeting that then 
took place was a significant one, for the 
young men became close friends, and remained 
such — with one brief break — to the end of 
life. 

It was, perhaps, during this illness that 
Douglas Jerrold illustrated what has been 
later termed, " the will to live," in a way which 



266 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

came to be recorded in a medical work of a 
few years later : 

" That mysterious and incomprehensible thing, the 
will, has, we know, an important influence on the 
whole animal economy, and many instances have 
come before us where it has staved off insanity; 
others where it has aided in restoring health. I will 
cite a case which is well known to me, and which 
exemplifies this action, although unconnected with 
insanity. A celebrated man of literature, dependent 
for his income on the labours of his pen — ^feeding his 
family, as he jocularly calls it, out of an inkstand — 
was in the advanced stage of a severe illness. After 
many hesitations, he ventured to ask his medical 
attendant if there remained any hope. The doctor 
evaded the embarrassing question as long as possible, 
but at last was compelled sorrowfully to acknowledge 
that there was none. 

" ' What ! ' said the patient, ' die, and leave my 

wife and five helpless children ! By , I won't 

die!' 

" If there be oaths which the recording angel is 
ashamed to write down, this was one of them. The 
patient got better from that hour." ^ 

The following letter, written from Thistle 
Grove on August 6, 1835, was addressed to 
W. H. Harrison, evidently the editor of the 
Freemason's Quarterly, in which the article 
referred to made its appearance. The Trial 
of Shakespeare, was, there can be no doubt, 
Walter Savage Landor's Citation and Examina- 
tion of William Shakespeare and Others for 

1 A. L. Wigan, M.D. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 267 

Deer Stealing, which had been pubhshed (by 
Saunders, not Bentley) during the previous 
year : 

" My dear Sir, — The Trial of Shakespeare was, I 
think, published by Bentley. I have only read 
extracts from it in reviews : and though I therein 
recognized nothing similar to my little sketch, never- 
theless the pubhcation of the book does, on consider- 
ation, seem to preoccupy the subject. I concluded 
that you had seen something of the volume, or should 
before have pointed it out to you. If you please — 
for I confess myself somewhat thin-skinned under 
any charge of plagiary, the more especially when 
unmerited — you may omit the first legend. 

" For the second ; it has never yet seen the light ; 
nor am I aware of the existence of any essay to which 
even the uncharitableness of criticism might imagine 
a resemblance. 

" It struck me in sending it, that were it more 
broken up into paragraphs — as new subjects are 
introduced — it would be more effective. As it is, the 
images, crowding so closely upon each other — (whilst 
the spirit of the essay depends upon the distinctness 
with which they represent the several plays) — may 
give surprise and thus fail to satisfy the reader. If 
you think with me, and will again favour me with the 
proof, I will make the alterations with as little trouble 
as possible to the printer. There being now only one 
legend, I should call the paper Shakespeare at Bankside. 
" I am, my dear Sir, 
" Yours truly, 

" Douglas Jerrold." 

This note is interesting, not only as showing 
that the two " legends," Shakespeare at Chart- 



268 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

cote Park ^ and Shakespeare at Bankside ^ were 
originally to be published together, but also 
on account of the seal with which it was 
fastened— a profile of Shakespeare. The seal 
from which this impression was taken, a finely 
cut cameo in a bone handle, is in my possession, 
a precious relic testifying to Douglas Jerrold's 
love of the national poet, and possibly repre- 
senting the common seal of the Mulberry Club. 
Harrison did not, apparently, think that the 
Charlcote Park fancy was sufficiently like 
Landor's work — as apart from similarity of 
theme it certainly is not— to forbid its use, and 
it duly appeared in the December number of 
his magazine, though it is worthy of note 
that the author's thin-skinnedness " under any 
charge of plagiary " prevented him from in- 
cluding it along with its companion piece in the 
volumes he published a few years later. 

Some time during the autumn of 1835 
Douglas Jerrold again went to Paris, for the 
next letter is dated thence to John Forster, 
and its tenor suggests that the writer con- 
templated making a long stay in the French 
capital, presumably as a kind of Paris corre- 
spondent of the New Monthly Magazine. 



" Paris, December 12 [1835]. 
" Hotel de la Bibliotheque, Rue St- Nicoise. 

" My dear Forster, — I send this through the 
office of the Ambassador — by which means I am 

^ The Handbuok of Sivindling and other Papers, 1891. 
2 Cakes and Ale, 1842. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 269 

promised the advantage of all future communications 
with England from here. Wigan will transmit me 
anything from you by Barnett's brother who leaves 
London in a few days. I have seen Thackeray : he 
called upon me (on hearing of my arrival) and gave 
me a most cordial greeting ; with offers of introduction, 
etc. 

" I think I can send you a few tolerable pages of 
gossip for the N.M. for the present month. As I 
become more familiar with Parisian matters, and get 
more into society — which I find opening in many 
unexpected ways upon me — I have no doubt I can 
render a monthly commentary more acceptable. Has 
Hall vouchsafed his opinion of my offer ? 

" I have some hopes of being able to produce a 
drama at the Thehtre Frangais ; of course, in con- 
junction with a French author, who will translate 
my piece, and share profits. I think I have a very 
catholic subject wherewith to try the experiment. 
It may appear a fiction, but dramatists here eat, drink, 
dress and dwell like gentlemen. All I have read of 
theatrical affairs in London since my departure con- 
firms me in the opinion of the prudence of that step. 
Osbaldiston is incorrigible, and for Drury Lane, who 
can write against steel armour ? 

" Since I have been here, I have written a couple 
of papers for Blackwood and am now at work upon 
my novel. (Should goosequills rise in Paris, you 
will know to whom to attribute the advance.) By- 
the-way, will you in your literary news in the N.M. 
give a line on that fact (I mean the novel) — a circum- 
stance so important to the world of letters ? I have, 
however, a reason for wishing certain people to 
know that I am about to publish : that I am not 
idle. 

" This is a dull, stupid, barren letter ; but the 



270 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

subject (myself) affords nothing better. My next, 
however, shall sparkle with diamond dust. 

" Yours, my dear Forster, ever truly, 
" Douglas Jerrold. 

" I am sure you will be glad to know that the notice 
in the Examiner on that little Shakespearean paper of 
mine has produced for me — ^here, in the good city 
of Paris — more than one new and congratulatory 
acquaintance. 

" I presume, if you have my paper for the N.M. 
by the 23rd 'twill be time enough ? Depend upon it 
— 'twill make some six or seven pages." 

That letter is interesting for a variety of 
reasons — incidentally it suggests that Forster 
had some official connection with the New 
Monthly Magazine,^ possibly he may have 
acted for a time as sub-editor. Hall, who had 
vouchsafed no reply to the proposal, was 
Samuel Carter Hall, and he apparently did not 
agree to the offer of gossip from Paris — 
certainly none appeared in the number for 
which Jerrold said his copy could be depended 
upon, nor indeed did any of his work appear 
in the New Monthly until after the change of 
editorship. 

^ The New Monthly Magazine was edited by Thomas 
Campbell 1820-30, by Samuel Carter Hall (with a few 
months of Lytton Bulwer's editing) 1830-36, by Theodore 
Hook 1836-41, and by Thomas Hood 1841-43. This 
letter suggests that John Forster was exercising some 
control over the magazine; he was certainly a great 
friend of its owner-publisher, Henry Colburn, whose 
widow he married, but his biographers do not allude to 
any connection with the New Monthly Magazine. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 271 

On December 21, 1835, Doves in a Cage, 
a new comedy of Douglas Jerrold's, was pro- 
duced at the Adelphi, and enjoyed consider- 
able popularity, which, as a friendly critic said, 
it richly deserved. That news of its success 
was a pleasant Christmas gift to the author 
away in Paris may be gathered from the 
note, dated from the French capital December 
27, attached to the printed play, which was 
evidently immediately prepared for publi- 
cation : 

" The cordiality with which this little play has 
been received by an audience (and an Adelphi 
audience !) may afford a promise of better days to 
the despairing British dramatist, at present all but 
excluded from his native stage by foreign music and 
translated spectacle. It is manifest that even an 
attempt, however feebly executed, to trust to the 
simplicity of comedy — depending neither upon the 
glories of the scene painter nor the cunning of 
the machinist — will be encouragingly accepted by the 
theatrical public, continually libelled as caring for 
nothing save processions and panoramas — steeds of 
neighing flesh and steeds of ' bronze ' ; to be delighted 
only when the mask of comedy is exchanged for a 
masquerade, and the bowl of tragedy enlarged into a 
brazen cauldron." 

The scenes of this play are all laid in, or 
in the neighbourhood of, the Fleet Prison, at 
the time of the Restoration. One Prosper, a 
spendthrift gallant who has been secretly 
wooing Mabillah, the niece and heiress of the 
wealthy merchant Bezant, is laid by the heels 



272 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

by his creditors in the Fleet, getting (with an 
officer in attendance) an occasional few hours 
out to pursue his wooing. Sables, an old 
merchant, seeks to wed Mabillah, and to 
further his suit she is arrested and put in the 
Fleet that he may win as benefactor what he 
could not gain as wooer. When the inevitable 
meeting between the lovers takes place in the 
prison, Cherub— a Fleet hanger-on— makes each 
believe that the other is there on a philan- 
thropic errand, and it is only later when, the 
two being permitted out under observation, 
they meet again in the house of the Fleet 
parson, where Sables hopes to make sure of 
his young bride, that Prosper learns that the 
girl is penniless. Though he has started as a 
fortune-hunter he proves a true lover, and 
taken back to the Fleet refuses to accept 
payment of all his debts and freedom on the 
condition that he gives up Mabillah and goes 
abroad. Then he hears that the girl's uncle 
is ruined, sees her brought into the Fleet— 
and, to save her, signs the bond which would 
compel her to accept her old wooer, which she 
has pledged herself to do if her lover, in whom 
she has the strongest faith, agrees. Prosper has 
accepted the terms to save her from the prison 
from which he had refused to save himself. 
Then the uncle comes forward, returns the 
bond, and explains that it has merely been a 
trial of their affections— he is not ruined : "It 
was my wish to teach you the true knowledge 
of each other — 'twas for that you here 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 273 

encountered ; for well I knew that they who in 
hours of gaiety and freedom seem mere birds 
of idle song, touched by adversity become — 
doves in a cage." 

There are many ready hits in the give-and- 
take of the dialogue. Cherub says of Car- 
buncle, the Fleet parson, " He'll talk of marriage 
till you almost think there's little harm in 
it. . . . It's hard to pass him and walk on a 
bachelor; " and from his experience of the 
Fleet finds the philosophy, "Depend on't, 
there's nothing like a prison pavement to 
ring our old friends upon." (Here the author 
was doubtless recalling his own recent ex- 
periences.) Says Prosper of Mabillah, " like 
the girl in the story, she speaks [pearls and 
diamonds;" "I wish you joy, sir," comes 
the reply, " that's a wife you'll never blame 
for talking." Stephen, a countryman who 
has just been married by the Fleet parson, 
asks him, " Please you, sir, and truly now — 
my wedding knot, is it fast tied ? " " Fast ! " 
says Carbuncle, " so fast, the king in his robes, 
with the crown on his head, and his sword of 
justice in his hand, could not cut it." " Not 
with the sword of justice ? " echoes the lout. 
" Not even with the sword of mercy," says 
Carbuncle, having securely pocketed his fee. 



VOL. I. 



CHAPTER IX 

AN EXPERIMENT — " MEN OF CHARACTER "— 
" THE HANDBOOK OF SWINDLING " 

1836—1839 

The hope, possibly but shortly indulged, of 
establishing himself in Paris as correspondent 
was not fulfilled, and within a few weeks of 
writing his letter to Forster Douglas Jerrold 
was home again at Thistle Grove, and about 
to engage in a new enterprise. Thence he 
replied on February 5, 1836, to a letter from 
the secretary of the Cambridge Garrick Club, 
which informed him that it had been proposed 
to make him an honorary member of that 
body. With evident pleasure at the honour 
done him the dramatist wrote : 

" Sir, — I must plead absence from home in excuse 
of this delayed acknowledgement of your favour of 
the 28th ult. 

" I shall feel much gratification at being found 
worthy of admission into a Society, the enlightened 
objects of which are the encouragement of a dramatic 
literature in opposition to a state of things at present 
warring with its very existence. When translation, 
spectacle and foreign opera have all but excluded 
the intellect of the country from the theatre — it is 
cheering to find a body, such as the Cambridge 

274 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 275 

Garrick Club, actively strong in the good cause — 
strenuously supporting ' the simple way — ^the good 
old plan.' Wishing the Club great and speedy success 
in its high purpose, 

" I remain. Sir, 

" Your obedient servant, 

" Douglas Jerrold." 

The dramatist was duly elected on Feb- 
ruary 22 a " free and Honorary Member of the 
Club." 1 

In The Album of the Cambridge Garrick Club 
for 1836, Jerrold's verses on Shakespeare's Crab 
Tree are printed with a note stating that they 
" have the authority of a legend current at 
Stratford-on-Avon, though probably not gen- 
erally known." In the same volume will be 
found the following short notice of " Mr. Douglas 
Jerrold and Mr. Clarkson Stanfield, R.A. (with 
an etching from an original portrait of Mr. 
Jerrold in his own possession)." A note is 
appended to the portrait of Jerrold to the 
effect that it is believed to be the first ever 
published. 

" Some eighteen years ago," runs this brief record, 
" two heedless boys, yclept ' Middies ' on board the 
Namur, one of the old First of June timbers, practised, 
as may readily be believed, all the freaks and follies 
for which the cockpit was once so renowned. Jerrold, 
albeit not even yet of herculean frame, had even then 
less than the appearance of a stripling, but the blood 
of Douglas would protect itself in the contentions of 

^ The Cambridge Garrick Club gave performances 
of Jerrold's Law and Lions in the following May and June. 



276 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

boyhood ; and it would seem that the son of an actor 
could usurp, as a patronymic, what as author he has 
since become entitled to claim in dramatic right. In 
the cockpit the Middy Jerrold would ' strut his hour 
on the stage,' and aspired to the important character 
of the Robber in the Iron Chest. Stanfield was scene 
painter to the company, principal decorator and 
master of the ceremonies to the gentlemen and ladies 
who might be selected from such as, at the period 
we describe, were in the habit of visiting a man-of- 
war. Stanfield now ranks the very first in that 
branch of the profession which he may be truly said 
to have created ; while Jerrold takes the lead as a 
dramatist, and naturally enough, in nautical drama, 
makes the sea talk. Pause reader, and think." 

That brief note, it may be mentioned, was 
lifted bodily from the Freemason's Quarterly. 

The new enterprise into which Douglas 
Jerrold entered was the dual one of acting and 
theatrical management. William John Ham- 
mond, who had some years earlier married 
Jerrold's sister Jane, had been lessee of the 
little Liver Theatre at Liverpool for three or 
four years, and while retaining his interest in 
that and the Doncaster Theatre, moved to 
London, where he and Jerrold together took the 
Strand Theatre. It was an interesting ex- 
periment in actor-management, for Hammond 
was an actor, his wife was an actress, and 
Douglas Jerrold came to the partnership in 
the triple capacity of part-lessee, playwright 
and actor. Only the year before the Strand 
Theatre had been compelled to close its doors 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 277 

in consequence of the action of a common 
informer. The particular evasion of the law 
here was selling tickets at the theatre for 
another playhouse — ^tickets which also admitted 
the bearer to the Strand Theatre ! By this 
time the danger of such a contretemps was 
done away with and it was duly announced 
that " the little theatre in the Strand has at 
last obtained a legal right to a money-taker 
and a company of comedians. We hope the 
office of the first will be no sinecure, for we 
cannot doubt that the exertions of the second 
will be well directed by the new lessees; to 
wit Mr. J. W. Hammond,^ a lively and agree- 
able comedian from Liverpool, and Mr. Douglas 
Jerrold, a dramatist who is henceforth to be 
knov/n as a tragedian also." That Hammond 
had a ready humour is suggested by the follow- 
ing anecdote taken from a newspaper of 1838 : 
Hammond of the Strand Theatre observing 
Salter the comedian to be a little behind time 
at rehearsal, gave him one of those managerial 
glances which the latter well knew to be 
significant. " I was nabbed by a shower of 
rain in the city," said Salter, " and therefore 
stood up till it was over." " My boy," re- 
torted Hammond, " you had better have 
attended to your business here. You may 
walk through the city all your days and 
nobody will mistake you for a dry Salter." 
With this auspicious combination the doors 

^ Should be W. J. Hammond, but I have not infre- 
quently come across his initials thus transposed. 



278 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

of the theatre were opened on April 25, and 
the curtain went up on two new pieces from 
Jerrold's pen — a tragic play, The Painter of 
Ghent, and a rollicking farcical comedy, The 
Man for the Ladies. In the first of these the 
author himself sustained the principal char- 
acter in a way which thoroughly justified the 
attempt — his acting being " marked with strong 
intellect and quick sensibility "—while in the 
second play Hammond took the chief part. 
Jerrold was scarcely the man for an actor's 
life — especially seeing that he was busy with 
the pen at the same time, and the nightly 
task was sure to pall. It was, indeed, only 
for a couple of weeks that he impersonated 
his creation, and in after years was known to 
refer to this experiment as his " folly," as a 
kind of escapade out of which he had come as 
well as he deserved. In a Theatrical Alphabet y 
published shortly afterwards, the episode was 
celebrated in the following clumsy couplet — 

" I is an Ivanhoff — I like his voice, 
J, Jerrold who played a few evenings from choice." 

While Hammond and Jerrold continued their 
joint tenancy of the Strand Theatre, the two 
families lived in a house at the lower end of 
Essex Street, Strand, at the top of the steps 
leading to the riverside. During the time of the 
partnership besides the plays named the follow- 
ing pieces of Jerrold's were produced : The 
Bill- Sticker ; The Peril of Pippins, " a travestic 
drama in four acts," and The Gallantee Showman^ 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 279 

or, Mr, Peppercorn at Home, both founded upon 
his own magazine sketches. On December 16 
" Brothers Hammond and Jerrold " lent their 
theatre to the Bank of England Lodge for 
an amateur performance for the benefit of a 
Masonic charity. 

When the season came to an end an address 
to the public, evidently written by the drama- 
tist, was delivered by the actor-manager : 

" We began vnth. a tragic drama, The Painter of 
Ghent ; but as the aspect of the boxes and pit was 
much more tragic than we could wish, we in sailor's 
phrase ' let go the painter.' We tried something 
like a ballet, which, after a few nights (but purely 
out of mercy to the reputation of Taglioni and 
Perrot), we withdrew. We found that our legs were 
not very good, and so we resolved to produce a 
comedy of words and character, in other phrase, 
mistrusting our legs, we resolved henceforth to stand 
only upon our — head. . . . We dedicate this theatre 
to comedy and farce. We shall endeavour to ' catch 
the living manners as they rise ' ; though, with respect 
for pre-occupied ground we shall select no cases from 
the Old Bailey. And should there happen so unto- 
ward an event as a war with France, be under no 
apprehension for your supplies, as we depend upon 
no emissary in Paris." 

At about this time, according to the late 
Henry Vizetelly, with Jerrold's friends it was 
an open secret that he was also the contri- 
butor of some biting comments to the 
columns of the " grandmotherly " Morning 



280 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

Herald. Vizetelly goes on to say that it was 
about the mid- 'thirties, when he and young 
John Leech Uved as fellow apprentices in the 
house of Orrin Smith, the engraver, that he 
first met Douglas Jerrold, who, with his close 
friend, Laman Blanchard, was a rather frequent 
guest at Orrin Smith's dinner-table. Another 
friend in the same circle was a promising 
young artist, Edward Chatfield by name, who 
was also a member of the Mulberry Club. It 
may have been Chatfield who painted the 
portrait of Jerrold which is reproduced as 
frontispiece to this volume. Personal glimpses 
of Jerrold during these earlier years of his 
career as a successful writer for the magazines 
and the stage are all too few, and therefore it 
will not be out of place to quote the reminis- 
cences of the veteran engraver-publisher. He 
speaks of Douglas Jerrold as : 

" a youngish man of three or four-and-thirty. [He 
was thirty-four on January 3, 1837.] There was a 
peculiarity about his personal appearance certain to 
strike even the most casual observer. His small, and 
even then slightly stooping figure, his head with its 
long light falling hair, which in moments of excite- 
ment he tossed about as a lion does its mane, and 
his prominent searching blue eyes that seemed to 
penetrate everywhere, invariably attracted the at- 
tention of strangers. He was a great gain to any 
company, for he always enlivened the dullest of 
conversation with his irrepressible wit. The many 
good things he said were evidently unpremeditated. 
They escaped from his lips on the spur of the moment, 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 281 

instead of being ingeniously led up to after the manner 
of professional wits. Even his puns were singularly 
felicitous and far beyond most feats of verbal 
cleverness." 

This scrap from Vizetelly's Glances Back 
Through Seventy Years is interesting not only 
on account of the glimpse which it gives us 
of the personality of Douglas Jerrold at this 
time of his life, but also as the earliest recogni- 
tion of him as a conversational wit. That he 
had already given evidence of ready repartee 
we have seen once or twice in the preceding 
pages, but it was especially during the time 
that he was a successful and prominent 
author, journalist and dramatist that he came 
to be recognized as a " wit." A dangerous 
recognition for him, if we are to believe his 
own gloss on the proverb " Give a dog a bad 
name and hang him," " now certainly the 
shortest and worst name you can give him is — 
wit." Nearly all the people who met him 
either casually or frequently during the last 
twenty years of his life have recorded the 
remarkable impression made by his ready wit. 

For three or four years Jerrold made no 
fresh appearance as dramatist, and indeed, 
with the exception of The Painter of Ghent, 
the pieces which he wrote during 1836 and 
1837 were not altogether worthy of the reputa- 
tion or of the powers of which he had many 
times shown himself to be undoubtedly pos- 
sessed. The " lengthened leave of the drama " 
to which he had looked forward some years 



282 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

earlier was in the long run useful to him, and, 
as we shall see, resulted in the production of 
a fresh brilliant series of comedies. But if 
not devoting his own attention to the stage, 
he was evidently ready to render assistance 
to a friend, for in November of 1837 a nautical 
drama entitled Wapping Old Stairs was pro- 
duced at the Haymarket Theatre and was 
introduced by the author, Henry Holl, in the 
following words : "I am happy in acknowledg- 
ing the obligation I am under to my friend 
Mr, Jerrold for the suggestion of the idea of 
this piece. I have not only to thank him for 
the suggestion of the subject, but for the 
pleasure of being, as I trust I always shall be, 
his sincere friend." 

It was of this Henry Holl — uncle of Frank 
Holl the painter — who quitted the stage and 
re-started life as a wine-merchant, that Jerrold 
said in discussing the change with a friend : 
" Ay, and I hear that his wine off the stage is 
better than his whine on it." 

At the beginning of 1838 Douglas Jerrold 
published his first work in volume form — unless 
we count his plays, many of which had been 
issued from time to time. He was then 
thirty-five years of age, so that he had, to use 
his own conceit, been in no hurry to take the 
shutters down before there was something in 
the window. The three volumes (it was during 
the very heyday of the three-volume system) 
with which he first sought the suffrages of the 
book-buying public were entitled Men of Char^ 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 283 

acter, and they comprised nine fiction-sketches 
which had appeared in the pages of Blackwood's 
and other magazines. The nine " men of 
character " whose stories are told in these 
volumes need not detain us, for they are all 
to be found in Jerrold's collected works except 
Titus Trumps, the Man of Many Hopes, and 
his place is taken by Christopher Snub who was 
" born to be hanged.^' The quaint preface is 
not given with the Men in their re-issued form, 
and therefore no apology is necessary for 
quoting it in its brief entirety : 

" John British, in the bigness of his heart, sat 
with his doors open to all comers, though we will 
not deny that the welcome bestowed upon his guests 
depended not always so much upon their deserving 
merits, as upon their readiness to flatter their host 
in any of the thousand whims to which, since truth 
should be said, John was given. Hence a bold, 
empty-headed talker would sometimes be placed on 
the right hand of John — would be helped to the 
choicest morsels, and would drink from out the 
golden goblet of the host — whilst the meek wise 
man might be suffered to stare hungrily from a 
corner, or at best pick bits and scraps off a wooden 
trencher. With all this, John was a generous fellow ; 
for no sooner was he convinced of the true value of 
his guest than he would hasten to make profuse 
amends for past neglect, setting the worthy in the 
seat of honour, and doing him all graceful reverence. 
In his time John had assuredly made grievous 
blunders : now twitting him as a zany or a lunatic, 
who, in after years, was John's best councillor — his 
blithe companion : now stopping his ears at what. 



284 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

in his rash ignorance, he called a silly goose, that 
in later days, became to John the sweetest nightingale. 

" John has blundered it is true. It is as true that 
he has rewarded those he has wronged; and if — for 
it has happened — ^the injured have been far removed 
from the want of cakes and ale, has not John put his 
hand into his pocket, and with a conciliatory, penitent 
air promised a tombstone ? To our matter — 

" Once upon a time two or three fellows — ' Men of 
Character,' as they afterwards dubbed themselves — 
ventured into the presence of John British. Of the 
merits of these worthies it is not for us to speak, 
being, unhappily, related to them. That their 
reception was very far beyond their deserts, or that 
their effrontery is of the choicest order, may be 
gathered from this circumstance; they now bring 
newcomers — other ' men,' never before presented to 
the house of John, and pray of him to listen to the 
histories of the strangers and at his own * sweet will ' 
to bid them pack, or to entertain them." * 

The three volumes, which contain some 
happy examples of the author's power of 
writing short stories, rich at once in satire 
and quaint philosophy, have come to have a 
special value from the collector's point of 
view on account of the dozen plates from 
the pencil of W. M. Thackeray with which 
they were illustrated — plates the originals of 
which (with one unused) are in the Forster 
Collection at South Kensington. Those water- 
colour originals are delightful examples of 

1 Men of Character, it may be said, was published in a 
Russian translation during the first year of the Crimean 
War. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 285 

Thackeray's pictorial humour, but the repro- 
ductions in the volumes are so woodeny that 
a reader might well have thought that the 
stories in which they were set would have been 
better unadorned than so adorned. Happily 
the illustrator found out in time that he had 
mistaken his vocation, and the result was 
that the greatest novelist of his generation 
eventually took his proper place, and utilized 
his humorous pencil for the play of fancy more 
than for the work of illustration. 

The author had by now quitted Chelsea 
and was residing on Haverstock Hill— Sinton's 
Nursery — whence the preface to Men of 
Character is dated in January. Here he was 
visited either in the preceding or following 
summer by Henry Mayhew, whom he had 
met in Barnett's rooms in Paris, and who has 
left this pleasant glimpse of what Haverstock 
Hill was like over seventy years ago : 

" On my return to town I soon made out the little 
man again, and found him located in a market- 
gardener's house, up at Haverstock Hill, revelling 
day by day in the perfume of the acres of roses in 
which his new homestead was literally embedded. 
For the sense of smell in Jerrold was exquisitely 
acute ; so that it did one's heart good to walk round 
the nursery grounds with him, and watch his nostrils 
work as he kept sniffing up now the rich aroma of 
the ' attar ' vapour diffused through the air — ^then, 
drinking in the odour of the clematis, as though he 
really tasted the essence of it — and then feasting his 
nose with the cherry-pie-like scent of the heliotrope." 



286 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

In February 1838 the correspondence with 
Forster was renewed with the following brief 
note. There is, it will be observed, a gap of 
years in the existing letters between these two. 
Jerrold had during that time been abroad, and 
had removed his residence, but when in town 
it is quite likely that they saw one another 
frequently at their clubs, at the Wrekin 
Tavern in Broad Court, Drury Lane — a place 
much frequented at the time by the literary 
men of the day— and at other resorts. The 
particular Club referred to in the note may 
have been the Mulberries, or one of the various 
social coteries which Jerrold himself was largely 
influential in forming. It is written from 
Haverstock Hill : 

" My dear Forster, — I have ventured to promise 
my juveniles Covent Garden on Monday next; they 
are the most enviable of mortals, never having seen 
a pantomime, yet big with the thoughts of it ! Will 
you get me the box from Macready, and drop me a 
line here, or (should you be at the Piazza on Saturday) 
resolve me at the Club ? For the party — ^we are 
seven. I have not yet been able to get an evening 
in town in your service, but name any night (save 
Monday) and place next week. Colburn has, of course, 
sent you my nothing by this time. 

" Yours truly, 

" Douglas Jerrold." 

The next note, also to Forster, is dated 
March 19 : 

" My dear Forster, — Can you — without feeling 
that you are asking too much — obtain me the box, 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 287 

for Thursday, for Lady of Lyons? And if so will 
you drop me the document per post, time enough 
for me to transmit it to the party by the same 
medium ? I have been an invalid ever since I saw 
you, or should have been at the Club on Saturday. 

" Yours truly, 

" D. Jerrold." 

" I have been an invalid " — this is a recurring 
note, for from early manhood Jerrold seems 
to have been a victim of rheumatism in various 
forms. But despite ill-health he was busy 
with the pen, and during the spring completed 
a new play. This play seems to be glanced at 
in an undated letter to Benjamin Webster 
asking " when can you hear my comedy ? " 
and whether there is a nook in the theatre for 
that night for his human belongings — " any 
way I shall send them on the chance, and in 
the course of the evening, descend like a moun- 
tain torrent upon your dressing-room, sweeping 
your flocks and herds." In a postscript Jerrold 
added : "I have written a new verse for ' God 
Save the Queen,' in which I have (I think) very 
neatly introduced Her Majesty's new box, 
retiring room and gold sandwich-case — would 
you let me sing it to an oboe accompaniment ? " 
The play was read and duly produced — but 
judging by the following letter to Webster, not 
duly honoured — at the Haymarket : 

" May 23 [1838], Haverstock Hall. 
" My dear Webster, — After half-an- hour's earnest 
application at the bill, I did yesterday discover 



288 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

my unhappy Mother cruelly jammed in the posters 
between the White Horse and Mr. Willis Jones. 
Can't you allow the lady a little more elbow-room ? 
I have as great a contempt as anybody can have for 
the vanity of large type, and all the seductive arts 
of the printer, but as it has been and is the system, 
and as things are, by the judicious public, 'prejudged 
by the size of the letter they are announced in, I 
think I may put in my claim for equal courtesy with 
the author of Rory O^More, both as to dramatic 
success and dramatic standing. 

" I write this in perfect good humour, notwith- 
standing a sense of my filial obligations compels me 
to ask for better treatment of my Mother. 

" Yours truly, 

" D. Jerrold." 

Beyond that letter to the actor- manager- 
playwright, Benjamin Webster, and a few 
press notices, but little is recoverable about 
the simply named drama which was produced 
at the Haymarket on May 31, 1838. The 
following paragraph from an obscure little 
periodical entitled Actors by Daylight is only 
tantalizing : " The long-promised drama by 
Jerrold was produced : the plot is very slender, 
and were not the incidents clothed in the most 
charming and eloquent language that ever 
emanated from the pen of Jerrold, we should 
have some doubt of its success." One of the 
press notices — from the Theatrical Observer — 
gives something of the story : 

" A new drama, in two acts, called The Mother, 
from the pen of Douglas Jerrold, author of The Rent 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 289 

Day, etc., was produced at the Haymarket Theatre 
last night, and went off with unanimous applause. 
It is said to be founded on a fact; the following is 
the story : a Captain Davenant (E. Glover) and his 
lady Eulalie (Celeste), at the opening of the drama 
are childless, their only one, having, as they suppose, 
died when an infant. This is a source of great grief 
to them, especially to Eulalie, who, being very much 
struck with the beauty of a gipsy child, is made to 
believe that it is the result of an illicit intercourse 
between her husband and a gipsy girl (Miss Cooper). 
This almost drives Eulalie distracted, but it is 
eventually proved to her great delight that she her- 
self is the mother of the child, it having been stolen 
by one of the tribe, out of revenge for a supposed 
injury inflicted on her son by the father of Captain 
D avenant. 

" This serious business was relieved by the drollery 
of Larceny, a part rendered highly amusing by the 
acting of Mr. Buckstone. Celeste, as the Mother, 
played with great feeling, and was warmly applauded ; 
when she came forward at the call of the audience, at 
the end of the piece, not contenting herself with 
silently curtseying her thanks, she said, ' Ladies and 
gentlemen, I thank you from the bottom of your 
heart (my heart), for your kind indulgence.' We 
must not omit to mention that Webster gave great 
importance to a trifling part, that of a very old man, 
by his admirable acting. Strickland also deserves 
praise for his clever impersonation of a sailor. 
As a drama we do not think it equal to either 
the Rent Day or the Housekeeper, but it contains 
some good writing, and will doubtless prove 
attractive for a time. . . . Despite the storm that 
fell just as the doors opened, there was a good 
house." 

VOL. I. U 



290 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

Despite its good reception — on the second 
performance it was received " with great 
applause " — The Mother was only acted eight 
times when it was withdrawn owing to Madame 
Celeste's departure to fulfil a provincial 
engagement, and was not revived. 

During this summer of 1838 Charles Dickens 
occupied a cottage at Twickenham — a house 
still standing, near to St. Margaret's railway 
station — and there Jerrold, Thackeray, Tal- 
fourd, Forster, Maclise, and other kindred 
spirits were wont to visit the already popular 
author of Pickwick, and to take part in those 
boyish games and fun in which several of 
them, endowed with youthful spirits to the 
last, were always ready to indulge. There, 
too, in " the feast of reason and the flow of 
soul," this group of talented men sharpened 
each other's wits, like knives, to use Mrs. 
Procter's happy expression. 

In the autumn, probably after a holiday 
spent in Paris, Douglas Jerrold removed from 
his rose-embowered house at Haverstock Hill 
to 8, Lower Craven Place, Kentish Town, 
whence he wrote as follows on August 28 : 

" My dear Forster, — Accompanying this are 
your two books, for which many thanks. I continue 
hard at work — the last week almost finished Act I — • 
have been taken from it for a few days, but have no 
doubt of finishing Act III by [the] middle of Sep- 
tember. I will, however, give you [a look] in and report 
progress. I think I have more than kept up to Act I. 

"Yours faithfully, 

" D. Jerrold." 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 291 

Douglas Jerrold was far from being so careful 
a correspondent as his friend Dickens, who 
gave the date of each letter he wrote written 
out in full, instead of trusting to figures. 
Jerrold, as often as not, put no date at all, and 
frequently only the day of the week or month. 
On the note just quoted, for example, he put 
no year, but Forster has added 1838. Possibly 
the date should be a year later, and the play 
the unacted Spendthrift ; no further piece of 
his was put on the stage until 1841. 

In Blackwood's Magazine for October there 
appeared a poem by Douglas Jerrold entitled 
The Rocking Horse, dated as written in " Paris, 
1838," and as the date agrees with the reference 
to the writer's younger daughter's age it may 
safely be assumed that some time during the 
year the family was staying in the French 
capital. The Rocking Horse was suggested 
by a remark made by Jerrold 's four-year-old 
daughter Mary, with whom he was walking 
in the Tuileries Gardens. A verse or two 
may well be selected from the score or so of 
stanzas as illustration of the author's manner 
of blending the playful and serious : 

" One morning, Indolence my guide, 
This garden ground I trod. 
With maiden tripping at my side 
Some four years old and odd. 

She spoke, and sombre thoughts grew bright 

She laugh'd — 'twas sorrow's knell ; 
As wicked imps, 'tis said, take flight, 

At sound of holy bell." 



292 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

The child, as children will, asked all manner 
of questions about " each marble faun, so 
lifelike in its air," disposed about the famous 
gardens, and at length paused astonished before 
*' statues twain of Herculean size " : 

" That, trump in hand, rein each a steed 
Impatient of the check — 
A winged beast of fiery breed, 
And ' thunder-clothed ' neck. 

The little maiden stood and gazed, 

Then cried with all her force, 
(And towards the steed her finger raised) 

' Pa, that's a rocking horse ! ' " 

Other exclamations from the little prattler 
bring up recollections of the various monarchs 
who have dwelt in the palace of the Tuileries, 
and after a rapid account of these Jerrold 
finishes with : 

" If thus, I thought, the lords of earth 
Are but the toys of fate, 
A passing ray their royal worth, 
And shadows all their state ; 

Let whosoever bridle Fame, 

Turk, Frenchman, Grecian, Norse — 

East, west, north, south — the steed's the same — 
'Tis but a — rocking-horse ! " 

During the autumn of 1838 a new magazine 
was started, and Forster was apparently con- 
cerned in its control. The article suggested 
in the following note does not appear to 
have been ever written, and it may well be 
that Douglas Jerrold scarcely possessed the 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 293 

patience for investigating the matter as fully 
as it would have required, although he would 
doubtless have served up such information as 
was readily accessible in a fresh and enter- 
taining fashion, with suggestive individual 
comment. The Monthly Chronicle continued 
in existence until 1841, but I cannot find that 
Jerrold ever became a contributor to its pages. 
The note is dated October 13, and is written 
from Lower Craven Place : 

" My dear Forster, — Since our last talk — of 
which, if you remember, the Monthly Chronicle made 
a part — it has struck me that I might be able to 
furnish an article or so to that work, should not the 
ground be wholly possessed by better men. I have 
for some time contemplated an essay on The Songs 
of the People — I mean the songs sung in streets, 
parlours of hostelries, tap-rooms, yea, tea-gardens — 
the paper to embrace a view of the present state of 
public amusements with their influence on the mass. 
I know no work which I would so willingly make 
the repository of such an article as the M.C. I am 
not aware that anything has been written on the 
matter, and there are in truth some capital specimens 
of humour and rough satire in some of these lyrics 
of the people. What think you of the idea ? I shall 
be your way in the course of a few days. 
" Yours truly ever, 

" Douglas Jerrold." 

In the summer of 1839 Jerrold made a trip 
to Boulogne — a place which long attracted 
him — to bring home for the holiday the two 
of his boys who were at school there. With 



294 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

him were his friends Kenny Meadows the 
artist and Orrin Smith the engraver, the 
hohday perhaps being in the form of a cele- 
brating of the success of a httle venture in 
which they were all concerned— the periodical 
publication of certain Heads of the People. 
Jerrold's eldest son, then a boy of thirteen, 
wrote long after : 

" I remember his arrival well — how he took us 
from our school and sallied forth into the country 
with us, on a donkey expedition — he not the oldest 
boy present. Everything was delightful. He chatted 
gail}^ with the paysanne of a roadside auberge on the 
Calais road, and joked upon her sour cider. He 
listened laughingly to our stories of school fights, 
and to our disdain for the juvenile specimens of our 
lively neighbours. My brother [Edmund] described 
a hurt one of the boys had received. My father 
asked anxiously about it; whereupon my brother, 
to turn off the paternal sympathy, and prove in a 
word that the matter was not worth a moment's 
thought, added sharply : ' Oh, it's only a French 
boy, papa ! ' Then a burst of laughter. We crossed 
back from Boulogne to Rye by steamer, and so to 
Hastings and London by coach." 

That holiday glimpse shows Jerrold in a 
characteristic mood when enjoying the aban- 
don of change from work, and when in the 
society of children; for, as his new friend 
Charles Dickens recognized, *' in the company 
of children and young people he was particu- 
larly happy and showed to extraordinary 
advantage. He never was so gay, so sweet- 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 295 

tempered, so pleasing and so pleased as 
then." 

The close of the 'thirties marks a rest in 
Douglas Jerrold's work as dramatist. He was 
busy with his contributions to periodicals, and 
was engaged in preparing, in conjunction with 
a number of other writers, a series of papers 
under the title of Heads of the People. But 
before that work was ready the author had 
completed a brochure. The Handbook of Swind- 
ling., which was duly published with a plate 
by Phiz in 1839.^ This booklet affords most 
entertaining reading, full of satire and sarcasm 
at the expense of all kinds of pretension. In 
detailing how the Swindler may best work 
his way in the world, the author inculcates 
morp.lity as effectually as many a more direct 
preacher. The small volume is well worthy 
of its author's talents, although he appears 
to have thought but meanly of it, for not 
only was it issued pseudonymously as written 
by " Barabbas Whitefeather," and edited by 
" John Jackdaw," but its true authorship 
appears never to have been avowed during 
the life of Douglas Jerrold. 

Jerrold had already identified himself with 
the cause of Liberalism in politics, although 
his influence as a writer on that side did not 

1 This small volume has become a prized rarity for 
collectors. It was not reprinted until 1891, when it 
formed — with other pieces by Douglas Jerrold — one of 
the volumes of the " Camelot Series " (after re-named 
" The Scott Library "). Later it has been includcl in a 
volume of the " World's Classics." 



296 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

become notable until the latter part of his life. 
It was probably his known sympathy with all 
reform movements that gave rise to an un- 
founded rumour about this time that he and 
William Howitt were the moving spirits of 
the Co-operative League. " They were never 
seen or heard of in connection with that body," 
said the veteran reformer, George Jacob Holy- 
oake, many years later. 

At the Freemasons' Dinner of this year 
" Brother Jerrold, whose zeal and talents 
have been equally serviceable to the cause '* 
again offered some happily conceived verses 
appropriate to the occasion. In November 
he visited Lord Lytton at his celebrated 
residence at Knebworth in Hertfordshire, and 
was there several times later, but never seems 
to have been on intimate terms with " the 
padded man that wears the stays." 

That the little Handbook of Swindling was 
a success we may gather from a letter from the 
author to the publishers (Chapman & Hall), 
written from Lower Craven Place, on Decem- 
ber 23, 1839 : 

" My dear Sirs, — I should have given you a call, 
but have been kept prisoner this past week by my 
old enemy — rheumatism. I am glad for many 
reasons that the Handbook subscribed so well. 
Whether it has been abused or fer contra, I know 
not. 

" An idea has struck me, which I think may be 
at the present time felicitously worked out in a little 
book, to be illustrated with little wood-designs, by 






T »tujUl U-i, (^ -VI, a ciC ^Ur lovH '''^ M^ 

"^ kv^O^ ^ ««MiJil ..Willi »w "w 'vwN.A (Mr 'W'^ 



A Lkttkh (II- Ddl (;l,.\s .Ii:in!n[,i)'s^ l<'>.'>'.) 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 297 

the Comic Latin Grammar man; who is quite ready. 
For title of book turn over. 

" This work is not to be considered as a catch- 
penny, but as a playful and satiric notice of the 
present state of all parties in the event of the coming 
marriage — the philosophy of royal marriages, etc.; 
as seen through the unsophisticated vision of, say, 
some New Zealander for a time residing here; and 
' done into English ' by some John Jackdaw. 

" I thought I would write you thus much that you 
might think of the matter, when — as I hope to be 
out in a day or two — it can be decided upon. 

" Yours truly, 

" Douglas Jerrold. 

" Blueacre (?) can stand over awhile. 

THE 
QUEEN'S WEDDING-RING 

A 

National Story 

BY 

A Distinguished Stranger 

RESIDING 

IN England 

' With this ring I thee wed — with my body I thee 
worship — and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.' 

With Illustrations." 

It was exactly a month before that letter 
was written that Queen Victoria had announced 
to her Privy Council that she intended to marry 
Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, but I 
cannot find that during the few weeks that 



298 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

preceded the great ceremony any little book 
such as Jerrold here proposed was ever issued ; 
possibly the publishers did not think the 
project sufficiently promising. The " Comic 
Latin Grammar man " was John Leech, then 
a young man of two-and-twenty, who had 
presumably just completed the illustrating of 
that book of Percival Leigh's, and so doing 
had at once stepped into an acknowledged 
place among humorous draughtsmen. " Blue- 
acre " is the nearest reading that I can make 
of that which could " stand over," but what 
the reference means cannot be determined. 

Kenny Meadows having drawn a number of 
characteristic " portraits " of the English, 
Orrin Smith the engraver, Tyas the publisher, 
and one of the Vizetellys, undertook at their 
joint risk to publish these illustrations, with 
accompanying essays, first in periodical num- 
bers, and later in volume form. The editorial 
control was placed in Jerrold's hands, and 
towards the close of 1839 (it is dated 1840) the 
first series was completed and in the hands of 
the public, as Heads of the People, 

No fewer than forty-three " portraits of the 
English " are contained in this first series, of 
which fifteen were from the pen of the editor, 
the rest being contributed by such other 
*' distinguished writers " (to quote the title- 
page) as Charles Whitehead (two), Leman 
Rede, Percival Leigh (two), Cornelius Webbe 
(two), R. H. Home (two), E. Chatfield, Leigh 
Hunt (two), " Alice," Laman Blanchard (two), 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 299 

Miss Winter, E. Howard, John Ogden (two), 
William Howitt (two), a " Knight of the Road " 
Hal. Willis, Samuel Lover, William Thackery 
(sic), Richard Brinsley Peake, Thornton Leigh 
Hunt, and " Godfrey Grafton, gent." There 
was some negotiation with a view to Thomas 
Hood's contributing also, but possibly the fact 
that he was living at Ostend at the time may 
have interfered with his so doing. 

Under each of the portraits was given a 
happily found quotation, probably supplied 
by the editor; that under " The Spoilt Child " 
— " a child more easily conceived than des- 
cribed " — embodying one of his own conversa- 
tional sallies. At the close of the volume 
Kenny Meadows drew a strongly marked 
" he?d " of one of the " people " concerned 
in the production of the work. This was of 
the editor himself engaged in fastening with 
his pen a small inky devil upon paper, and 
occurs appropriately enough at the end of Jer- 
rold's presentation of " The Printer's Devil." ^ 

A second series and volume of Heads of the 
People by many of the same writers and some 
others duly made its appearance, and the 
whole work enjoyed a goodly measure of 
popularity. In the original or a reprinted 
form it is not infrequently to be met with in 
second-hand book lists. Kenny Meadows's very 
characteristic drawings have now quite an 
antiquated appearance, but most of the pen 

^ It may be seen among the caricatures opposite p, 236 
of this volume. 



300 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

sketches have as much truth to-day as they 
had seventy and odd years ago, and are no 
less true to Hfe now than is much of Jerrold's 
preface, which may be quoted here as it finds 
no place with those fourteen *' Sketches of the 
English " which he included in his collected 
works from the nineteen " Heads " that he 
had contributed to the original publication. 
The preface is satirical, sarcastical, but it is a 
characteristic piece of its author's writing : 

" English faces, and records of English character, 
make up the present volume. Leaving the artist 
and the writers to exhibit and indicate their own 
individual purpose, we would fain dwell awhile in 
the consideration of the general value and utility of 
a work the aim of which is to preserve the impress 
of the present age ; to record its virtues, its follies, 
its moral contradictions and its crying wrongs. From 
such a work, it is obvious that the student of human 
nature may derive the best of lore ; the mere idling 
reader become at once amused and instructed ; whilst 
even to the social antiquarian, who regards the 
feelings and habits of men more as a thing of time, 
a barren matter of anno domini, than as the throb - 
bings of the human heart and the index of the 
national mind, the volume abounds with facts of the 
greatest and most enduring interest. 

" It was no little satisfaction to the projectors 
of Heads of the People to find the public somewhat 
startled by the first appearance of the work; some- 
what astonished at the gravity of its tone, the moral 
seriousness of its purpose. Many took up the first 
number only to laugh; and we are proud to say, 
read on to think. A host of readers were disappointed ; 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 301 

I hey purchased, as they thought, a piece of pleasantry, 
io be idly glanced at and then flung aside : they 
found it otherwise. They believed that they were 
only called to see and hear the grinning face and 
vacant nonsense of a glib storyteller, and they 
discovered in their new acquaintance a depth and 
delicacy of sympathy, a knowledge of human life, 
and a wise gladness, a philosophic merriment, and 
honest sarcasm, that made them take him to their 
home as a fast friend. Nor was it in England only 
that the purpose of the work was thus happily ac- 
knowledged. It has not only been translated into 
French, but has formed the model of a national work 
for the essayists and wits of Paris. ^ The Heads of 
the People of the numerous family of John Bull are 
to be seen gazing from the windows of French shop- 
keepers, at our ' natural enemies ' — a circumstance 
not likely to aggravate the antipathy which, according 
to the profitable creed of bygone statemongers. 
Nature had, for some mysterious purpose, implanted 
in the breasts of the Briton and the Gaul ! 

" The work will be pursued in the same straight- 
forward, uncompromising, and it is hoped, human- 
izing spirit that characterizes the present volume. 
John Bull has too long rested in the comfortable 
self-complacency that he, above all other persons 
of the earth, enshrines in his own mind all the wisdom 
and the magnanimity vouchsafed to mortal man ; 
that in his customs he is the most knowing, the least 
artificial, the most cordial, and the most exemplary 
of persons ; and that in all the decencies of life, he, 
and he alone, knows and does that which is 

•' ' Wisest, discreetest, virtuousest, best ; ' 
* Les Francais Peints par Eux-MSmes. 



302 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

that he has no prejudices — none ; or, if indeed he 
have any, that they exist and have been nurtured 
so very near his virtues that if he cannot detect the 
sHghtest difference between them, it is not hkely 
that any vagabond foreigner can make so tremendous 
a discovery. And then John boasts, and in no 
monosyllabic phrase, of his great integrity, of his 
unbending spirit to the merely external advantages 
of worldly follies : he looks to the man, and not the 
man's pocket ! He — he pays court to no man ; no, 
he cries out in the market-place that honesty is the 
best policy, grasps his cudgel, looks loftily about him, 
swelling with the magnificence of the apothegm, and 
strides away to his beef and ale, with an almost 
overwhelming sense of all his many virtues. 

" Now, let the truth be told. John Bull Hkes a 
bit of petty larceny as well as anybody in the world : 
he likes it, however, with this difference, the iniquity 
must be made legal. Only solemnize a wrong by an 
act of parliament, and John Bull will stickle lustily 
for the abuse; will trade upon it, turn the market 
penny with it, cocker it, fondle it, love it, say pretty 
words to it; yea, hug it to his bosom, and cry out 
' rape and robbery ' if sought to be deprived of it. 

" Next, John has no slavish regard for wealth : to 
be sure not ; and yet, though his back is as broad 
as a table, it is as lithe as a cane ; and he will pucker 
his big cheeks into a reverential grin, and stoop and 
kiss the very hoofs of the golden calf, wherever it 
shall be set up before him. John will do this and 
blush not ; and having done it, he will straighten 
himself, wipe his lips with his cuff of broadcloth, 
look magnanimous, and ' damn the fellow that 
regards money.' 

" And then for titles. Does John value titles ? 
Hear the contemptuous roar with which, in the 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 303 

parlour of ' The King's Head ' he talks of them. 
' What's a title ? ' he will ask ; ' it's the man, eh ? ' 
And next week Lord Bubblebrain puts up for the 
county; and, condescending to ask John Bull for 
his vote, John stands almost awestruck at his porch, 
smoothes his hair, smiles, smirks, bows, and feels 
that there is a sort of white magic in the looks and 
words of a lord. He stammers out a promise of a 
plumper, bows his lordship to the gate, and then 
declares to his neighbours that, ' It warn't for the 
title he gave his vote — he should hope not; no, he 
wouldn't sell his country in that way. But Lord 
Bubblebrain is a gentleman, and knows what's right 
for the people.' And then John's wife remarks, how 
affable his lordship was to the children, and especially 
to the sick baby ; which John receives as a matter of 
course ; shortly observing, that ' no gentleman could 
do less ; not that he gave his vote for any such 
doings.' 

" And has John no virtues ? A thousand ! So 
many, that he can afford to be told of his weakness, 
his folly — yea, of the wrongs he does, the wrongs 
he suffers. 

" The ridiculous part of John's character is his 
love of an absurdity, an injustice — it may be, an 
acute inconvenience — from its very antiquity. ' Why, 
what's the matter ? ' we asked last week of an old 
acquaintance, limping and pushing himself along, 
not unlike a kangaroo with the rheumatism, ' AVhat's 
the matter?' 'Matter! corns — corns.' 'And why 
don't you have 'em cut ? ' ' Cut ! ' cried our friend, 
with a look of surj3rise and inquiry, ' Cut ! why it is 
now fifteen years that I have had those corns.' 
There spoke John Bull, though he shall be almost 
at a standstill, lame with corns, yet what a roaring 
does he make if you attempt to cut them — and 



304 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

why ? He has had them so many years, A wen 
upon his neck, if a wen of fifty years' growth, though 
it bent him double, would ' be to him as a daughter.' " 

The John Bull of the early twentieth century 
is much as was the John Bull of the early 
nineteenth — if we may judge by the clamour 
at every fresh essay in political chiropody. 

In the autumn of 1839 Jerrold's brother-in- 
law, Hammond, became lessee of Drury Lane 
Theatre for three years, and duly opened on 
October 26. The previous lessee, Alfred Bunn, 
the " Poet Bunn "of a score of Punch's 
gibes, wrote in his egotistic but entertaining 
reminiscences : 

" The theatre has been let to my successor for 
£5,000 per annum, and, long before the usual season 
shall expire, it will be to let for less, or I am a false 
prophet. The day on which I make this memor- 
andum I met the present lessee of Drury Lane, 
Mr. Hammond, early in the morning, on my way 
into the city; and, after the interchange of a few 
remarks, I said : ' If you don't look much sharper 
after matters than you do, you'll go where I am 
going.' ' Where may that be ? ' said he. 'To the 
Court of Bankruptcy,' said I. And we parted — ^he 
in doubt, and I in certainty. His place is in a sloop, 
not on the quarter-deck of a seventy-four." 

If Bunn was a poor poet he proved a true 
prophet, for Hammond's season came to an 
abrupt termination on the last day of the 
following February, having lasted for ninety- 
nine nights. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 305 

One of the early clubs of which Jerrold was 
a member was The Rationals — a society, chiefly 
theatrical, that met every Saturday at the 
Garrick's Head in Bow Street. An occasion 
there when his fellow members goaded Jerrold 
into a fury has been described in lively fashion 
by the dramatist's son-in-law : 

" On one of these Saturday nights, I remember 
Douglas making his appearance at the Wrekin 
somewhat earlier, and rather more excited, than 
usually. There was no necessity to ask the reason : 
some one had evidently been having a good stir at 
the little genius's fire, and his steam was up — to a 
hundred horse-power at least. So he was too full of 
what had occurred not to be communicative. 

" Now one of the first principles of these same 
' Rationals,' as they called themselves, was that 
fines were to be levied for every offence against 
the club rules, which had been framed certainly 
upon the most irrational basis. Thus, there were 
fines for treating the chairman with anything like 
respect — fines for making a pun — fines for repeating 
a joke which was a known ' Old Joe ' — ^and fines for 
telling an anecdote of an earlier date than B.C., or of 
more than five minutes' duration. Then there were 
fines for having the ' hiccups ' before supper — fines 
for murdering the Queen's English, and particularly 
for diT-asperating the h's — fines for calling your 
brother Rational an ass — and fines for swearing, or 
indulging in an oath even of the mildest description. 
Further, fines were imposed on any member stating, 
when he rose to make a speech, that he was un- 
accustomed to public speaking — fines for starting a 
discussion on the immortality of the soul before two 

VOL. I. X 



306 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

o'clock in the morning — and fines for vowing that 
you loved your sainted mother, or prided yourself 
on being a good husband and a father, at any hour 
of the evening. 

" These fines served to form a fund for the repeated 
replenishment of the punch-bowl in the course of the 
entertainment. Consequently every member kept a 
sharp watch upon the others, and each persisted 
during dinner in either exciting his brother opposite 
or next to him to some infraction of the rules, or else 
in making out that the said brother had transgressed 
them even if he had not ; so that, in the heat of the 
discussion which might ensue, some one might call 
upon the ' holy poker ' or take his ' sacred davy ' as 
to the truth of something or other; or appeal to the 
worthy chairman for an impartial decision; or else 
affirm, with withering sarcasm, that it was no wonder 
the ' creature ' on his right didn't mind about the 
pence, and only took care of the pounds, since it 
behoved all stray animals of his class to keep a 
sharp lookout for the pounds certainly — each of 
which matters being a finable offence, it generally 
followed that money enough came to be collected 
in the pool for just a bowl or two as a commence- 
ment to the festivities, by the time the cloth was 
removed. 

" Well, it so happened that, on the night above 
referred to, the chairman, who, if I recollect rightly, 
was no less a person that Fitzball (the celebrated slow- 
music and blue -fire dramatist of the minor theatres), 
begged of some one near him, who would keep on 
shouting ' Waiter ! ' at the top of his voice, to have 
pity on his ears, saying : ' Please bear in mind, old 
boy, Fve got a head on my shoulders," whereupon 
Jerrold cried out across the table — 

" ' For my part, Fitz, I think you've only got a 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 307 

blind boil on your shoulders, which will never come 
to a head.'' 

Fine him,' chuckled the rollicking Paul Bedford, 
who was the ' vice ' of the evening ; ' fine Jerrold for 
saying '^d.' 

I'll take my oath I didn't ! ' exclaimed the 
sensitive little man, stung to the quick at the bare 
idea that any one could think it possible for him to 
be guilty of so vulgar an error in his pronunciation. 
Fine him again ! ' roared Tom Grieve, from the 
bottom of the table, ' for having recourse to an oath.' 
Dear me ! what long ears some creatures have,' 
sneered Douglas, getting rapidly out of temper. 

Fine him, too, for the base insinuation,' once 
more interposed the roguish Paul. 

" ' Fine him ! Fine him ! Fine him ! ' was echoed 
from every part of the table, for all were only too 
glad to catch the redoubtable little satirist on the hop. 
I'll trouble you for eighteenpence, Mr. Jerrold ! ' 
said the secretary, blandly walking up to the dramatist 
with the plate. 

" ' I'll see you d — d before I pay a halfpenny,' 
fumed the author of Black-Eyed Susan, now boiling 
over with passion. 

" ' That makes half-a-crown, sir,' added the imper- 
turbable club official, without moving a muscle. ' We 

charge a shilling a d , sir ; though, I believe you 

know, we make a liberal allowance on your taking 
a quantity.' 

" This was too much for little Douglas. Fairly 
beside himself with rage, he knocked the plate from 
the secretary's hand, and sent all the money which 
had been previously placed in it by offending members 
flying into the air. 

" Such an incident, of course, threw the convivial 
meeting into the wildest disorder. Paul Bedford was 



308 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

up in an instant : he flew with Tom Grieve to the 
side of the hot-blooded author, and each held him 
by an arm to prevent him doing any further damage. 

" Now both of these worthies were alike sons of 
Anak, in their build and stature : men of comparatively 
herculean frames, and each standing some six feet 
at least in his shoes. 

" Jerrold, on the other hand, was a mere mite of 
a man — hardly taller, stouter or stronger than a 
girl of sixteen ; and yet he was quickened with a 
spirit which gave him, when roused, the pluck and 
fury of a stag at bay. 

" So little David struggled and struggled with the 
Goliath on either side of him; and having at length 
burst away from their hold, he threw himself into an 
attitude of resolute defence, while he growled out 
between his clenched teeth — 

" ' By God, sirs ! if you lay a hand upon me again, 
I'll throw the pair of you out of the window.' 

" ' Ay ! and I believe I should have done it too,' 
added the little fellow on recounting the adventure 
to me, utterly unconscious as he was of the gross 
absurdit)' of his fancying that it was possible for a 
dwarf like him to fling two giants like them through 
the casement." ^ 

Another story to which no date is attached 
may be given here. There was at one time a 
clever, drunken, dissipated individual con- 
nected with the press, who from his habits, 
and being at any time ready to prostitute his 
talent for gain, had obtained the unenviable 
name of " Dirty Cummings." An article re- 

* From a magazine article on Jerrold's London, by 
Henry May hew. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 309 

markable for the brilliancy of its wit and the 
keenness of its satire had appeared anonymously 
in one of the popular journals and caused 
something of a sensation. Jerrold and several 
literary men were in the parlour of a theatrical 
tavern one evening, when the conversation 
turned upon this article and the question of 
its authorship. Cummings at length solemnly 
rose and said : " Gentlemen, I feel over- 
whelmed by your flattering eulogy of the 
article in discussion. A feeling of modesty 
has hitherto sealed my lips, but I can no longer 
conceal the truth — / am the author.^'' The 
company were astounded, and incredulous, till 
Jerrold, who had remained calm and silent, 
quietly addressed Cummings, saying : " I regret 
to be compelled to deprive you, Mr. Cummings, 
of that portion of fame you have a laudable 
desire to obtain, and of which you certainly 
stand in need; however, it happens most 
unfortunately for your well-known love of 
truth that I have the draft of the article in 
question in my pocket " — producing the proof 
slips — " it is here, with the corrections, singu- 
larly enough, marked in my handwriting — / 
am the author ^ Poor Cummings, it is added, 
made an ignominious retreat, amid the scornful 
laughter of the company. 

In the autumn of 1838 it was announced 
in one of the journals that " Jerrold has a new 
five-act comedy nearly ready for Macready " ; 
some weeks later : " several new farces and 
dramas have been accepted at Covent Garden, 



310 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

from the several pens of Sheridan Knowles, 
Bulwer, Jerrold, Poole, and Egerton Wilks " ; 
and again : 

" The Advertiser, a journal now and then par- 
ticularly heavy on the theatres and theatrical matters 
generally, weekly chronicling the debut in the country 
of some favourite Snooks or Jenkins, who may have 
walked on for the third or fourth robber in a fifth-rate 
Surrey melodrama, has undertaken this week to 
relate the progress of a five-act drama now being 
prepared by Jerrold. After stating that the first 
four acts have already seen the light, it states that 
the delivery of the fifth may be daily looked for. 
Here's news — rare news ! only think when the act 
is brought to completion, of Jerrold being brought 
to bed. Poor Jerrold ! here are materials for a new 
domestic drama. We trust that this bantling will 
be soon able to run alone and speak for itself. We 
should be sorry to learn that when, as the author was 
expecting the critical caudle, he should instead receive 
from the audience the customary groaning. At 
present we are happy to announce in obstetric phrase- 
ology, that he is ' as well as can be expected.' " 

Yet again in the same periodical we read, 
early in 1839, " the fifth act of Jerrold's new 
play was found frozen in a garret last week in 
the vicinity of Hampstead." It was no friendly 
spirit that dictated some of these comments, 
yet the fact that they were made was in itself 
a tribute to the position of the dramatist. 
The strange thing is that the piece thus 
heralded to an unusual extent by newspaper 
announcement is the only play of Jerrold's 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 311 

that was to remain unacted, and why it so 
remained is a mystery. From some of the 
comments pencilled on the copy of the manu- 
script which I have examined it may be 
imagined that Macready and the author could 
not agree as to certain changes in the plot 
which the actor thought would improve it. 
The story opens on the very day on which 
" George Malpas of Malpas Hall in the county 
of Nottingham " should have wedded the fair 
Alice, daughter of the blind Everingham who 
had " lost all his substance in the war " which 
cost Charles the First his throne and life. The 
wedding is prevented, for there are unredeemed 
bonds which put the lawyers in possession of 
Malpas Hall and send the owner off a wanderer 
with a promise to return to Alice in three years. 
A pretty romance is developed in which the 
man of parchment, Lapwing, and Sir Edwy 
Somercoate — doubly the rival of Malpas — play 
their parts before that happy ending is attained 
to which in the days of optimistic drama an 
audience confidently looked. 

In The Spendthrift, Douglas Jerrold once 
again essayed the use of blank verse in the 
more serious parts of the dialogue though the 
play opened with a prose scene in which a 
complacent innkeeper lauded his house as one 
of his fellows was later to do in the opening of 
Time Works Wonders. 

" Collop. Aye, sir, aye ; I think that is beef ! But 
my heart, Sir ! you should see the thing some people 
call beef in this town; veal. Sir, veal, crossed in its 



312 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

growth. But you say well, Sir; that is, indeed, an 
ox to be proud of. Ha ! Sir, that ale's as soft as 
moonlight. 'Tis true, the town has a name for ale, 
but there's only one Blue Dog for all that. Ha ! 
ha ! Sir, as you say, 'tis like honey in your throat. 
Last summer, the thunder spoilt the liquor here- 
about — the thunder never came near the Blue Dog ! 
I pray you, Sir, don't look to find another fowl like 
that in these parts; not another, save in the roost 
at the Blue Dog. A bed of roses hasn't the sweetness 
of that ham. Sir. Pork cured into a nosegay : but 
then I smoked it, myself. Sir — not that I ever brag 
of anything in my poor homestead — but for smoke, 

Sir 

Church hells are heard to ring. 

Lapwing. Eh? bells? 

Collop. Aye, Sir; a beautiful silvery peal — but 
you can hear them nowhere so well as where you sit. 

Lapwing. A wedding, eh ? Many people marry at 
Nottingham ? 

Collop. Why, Sir, we have, I hope, our share of 
simplicity with the rest of the kingdom. 

Lapwing. Ha ! a great bridal this ? 

Collop. Very great; that is, great on one side. 
He's a good one as ever carried purse. 

Lapwing. And the bride — the girl — the wench? 

Collop. She's good, too, of a sort : but, master 
laAvyer, when the weight's all in one scale, eh ? 

Lapwing. Bad — bad ! Justice is neither carved 
nor painted in that way. Her scales are equal. 

Collop. Why, I take it — for the Blue Dog has been 
to Sessions — I take it, that's sometimes according to 
the money you put in 'em." 

Beginning thus lightly, the story is shown 
to be a shadowed one by the arrival of the 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 313 

dismissed musicians. The shadow is such as 
to compel the young man to leave the girl 
on the very day on which she should have 
been his wife, and a tender story of constancy 
is developed as those who are responsible for 
the exile of Malpas seek also to victimise the 
patient Alice. The play though shot through 
with comedy is more dramatic than most of 
its author's comedies of manners, but suffers 
perhaps a little from the blank verse in which 
its more serious scenes are presented, for 
Jerrold, gifted with a keen poetic sense, did not 
move easily in " the gewgaw fetters of rhyme." 
It is to be regretted that Macready did not 
produce the play, for it might well have scored 
a success. 

Among the meeting-places of men of letters, 
actors and others of the 'thirties and 'forties 
were the cigar shops and " divans," some of 
which seem to have been in effect clubs. Of 
these one of the best known seems to have 
been Kilpack's Divan in King Street, Covent 
Garden — premises that later became more 
famous as Evans' Supper Rooms. In a miscel- 
lany journal of 1839, The Town, a perfect 
storehouse of facts reputable and disreputable 
concerning the social life of the period, I find 
the following account of this place — then known 
as " Gliddon's Divan " : 

" This elegant place of amusement, and intellectual 
as well as physical refreshment, was established in 
1825, by Mr. Arthur Gliddon, whose lady, when he 
kept a tobacconist's shop in Tavistock Street, was 



314 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

celebrated in Leigh Hunt's Indicator as ' La Bella 
Tobacoia.' It is a handsomely furnished apartment, 
about sixty feet long, twenty high and twenty broad. 
Its present proprietor is Mr. Thomas Kilpack, a dark 
little man, below rather than above the middle 
height, with his heart in the right place, becoming 
civility of manner, an intelligent head, a large family 
and a chatty amiable disposition. It is well known 
that his Divan is thriving. Father as it is to all 
similar places of resort, and anxiously as our little 
Tommy endeavours to merit the patronage of an 
enlightened and discriminating public, we should 
be surprised were it not so. The society one meets 
with there is difficult of definition. Its variety is, in 
fact, a great attraction. Artists, authors, actors, 
attorneys, soldiers, sailors, surgeons, members of 
Parliament, with a sprinkling of our nobility are 
daily and nightly to be viewed on the premises. . . . 

D s J d, the man who did Black-Eyed Susan, 

is also a subscriber. He said a devilish good thing 
by the way, to Orator Clarke, the intellectual weaver 
of Bedford Street, who made so great a sensation at 
the Radical meeting in Maiden Lane a week or two 
back. Clarke, having made some remarks worthy 
the excellent Tory principles he advocates, looked at 

J d for a reply to what he had said. ' Oh, my 

dear boy,' said the good-natured little scribbler, 
' you're a good lantern — but you've got no light 
inside you.' C — bb,i the Tory frame-maker, who was 
by, roared as he always does, like a bullock." 

Jerrold must long have been a hahitue of 
Kilpack's. As we saw in one of his letters he 
earlier made it a place for meeting friends, and 

^ i. e. William Crabb, who seconded the nomination of 
Sir Francis Burdett as candidate for Westminster. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 315 

George Augustus Sala must have been writing 
of the late 'forties when he said : *' Often have 
I sidled into Kilpack's shop to get a twopenny 
cheroot and catch a furtive glimpse of the 
author of Men of Character and Mrs. Caudle's 
Curtain Lectures, as he sat on a cask of snuff, 
swinging his legs and dangling his eyeglass, 
and ever and anon removing his hat to pass 
the fingers of one hand through his grey mane 
of hair." 



CHAPTER X 

BOULOGNE—" THE PRISONER OF WAR "— 
" BUBBLES OF THE DAY " 

1840—1843 

Boulogne, it has been said, was a favourite 
resort of Jerrold's, where he could enjoy the 
change of hfe and rehef from the distractions 
of London, which it may well be imagined 
interfered over much with the work of one so 
strongly social and clubbable. To a school at 
Boulogne each of his three boys was sent as 
soon as he was of sufficient age, and thither 
Thomas soon followed his brothers William and 
Edmund, the parents with the two girls, Jane 
and Polly, occupying a house in the neighbour- 
hood for months at a time. 

Although for some while a resident of the 
now popular French watering-place, Douglas 
Jerrold was by no means an infrequent visitor 
to London, occupying when there the house at 
the extreme southern end of Essex Street, 
Strand (No. 25), while the Hammonds were in 
Liverpool, where Hammond was lessee of another 
theatre, and where his other brother-in-law, 
William Robert Copeland, was long connected 
with theatrical management as proprietor of the 
Theatre Royal and Amphitheatre. The stay in 

316 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 317 

Boulogne had been fruitful of another comedy, 
and during January, theatre-goers learned from 
the daily press that " the White Milliner, 
Jerrold's forthcoming comedy at Covent 
Garden, is said to be founded on an historical 
anecdote related by Walpole and quoted by 
Pennant. In the New Exchange, or England's 
Bourse, erected in 1608, north of the present 
Adelphi Terrace, and pulled down in 1735, a 
female, according to Walpole, suspected to be 
the widow of the Duke Tyrconnel, supported 
herself by the trade of this place. She sat 
in a white mask and a white dress, and was 
known by the name of the White Milliner. 
Vestris, of course, acts the Milliner." 

That this truly explains the origin of the 
piece may be gathered from the fact that the 
item of information was sent by the playwright 
himself to Moran of " the great Globe " — 
requesting a corner for its insertion. 

On February 9, 1841, the play made its 
appearance, and was well received. The cast 
included a number of actors and actresses of 
considerable note in their day, some of whose 
names have indeed become classical in the 
Green Room — Charles Mathews, W. Farren, 
Keeley, Madame Vestris and Mrs. Humby, 
at least, are names still familiar to all with 
but the slightest acquaintance with the stage 
history of the nineteenth century. Charming, 
indeed, is the dainty comedy, with its striking 
scenes, its admirable play of witty language, 
and the scope it allows for pretty and varied 



318 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

stage effects. The scene is laid in the days 
of good Queen Anne, and the whole of the 
interest turns, of course, upon the identity of 
the mysterious masked milliner.^ 

Shortly after the production of The White 
Milliner the play was published in Buncombe's 
" acting edition," and a copy of this which 
has come into my hands bears an interesting- 
announcement to the effect that on the follow- 
ing first of March there would be published 
Volume I of " Jerrold's Plays," contain- 
ing eight of his comedies and dramas. The 
issue consisted, it may be imagined, of 
Buncombe's " acting editions," with special 
title-pages, bound together in volume form. 
I have been so far unsuccessful in my effort 
to light upon a volume of this series of 
Bouglas Jerrold's plays; the earlier series 
published by Miller has also proved unobtain- 
able, though I have a few odd plays from 
each. 

Once more, in 1841, the early summer saw 
the Jerrold family deserting the dingy house 
overlooking the unembanked Thames for the 
bright and pleasant surroundings of a cottage 
near Boulogne. This was the house which 
the famous actress, Borothy Jordan, had 
occupied after her unhappy flight from England, 
before she passed on to Paris and a lonely 
death. Here Jerrold stayed, devoting his 
mornings to the desk and his afternoons to 

^ This play was acted twice in the spring of 1885 by 
an amateur company at the Criterion Theatre. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 319 

rambles and excursions with his young family 
and the friends who came over to visit him, 
then he removed to a house in the Rue d'Alger, 
Capecure — on the south side of Boulogne, and 
there he was visited by George Hodder, who 
describes a happy fortnight spent in August 
as his guest. 

" A dip in the sea — his native element as he some- 
times called it — was a relaxation to which he was 
especially addicted, but he did not care to indulge 
it where the multitude was wont to assemble for the 
same object. On one occasion I was walking with 
him at sunset along the beach, in the outskirts of the 
town, when the tide was unusually low, and the 
sands were as smooth and unruffled as a drawing- 
room carpet. The charm of the weather seemed to 
absorb Jerrold's attention, for the evening was as 
calm and placid as the countenance of a sleeping 
infant, and he made frequent allusions to the atmo- 
sphere, which, he said, was such as he had never 
experienced ' out of France.' At length, fixing his 
eye upon the almost motionless sea, and inhaling 
the fresh air as if he were sipping nectar, he suddenly 
exclaimed, ' How lovely the water looks ! Egad, 
I'll have a dip ! ' and in scarcely more time than is 
occupied by the pantomime clown in making his 
inevitable ' change ' he stuck his stick in the sand, 
placed his hat upon the top and his clothes around 
it, and ran into the water with a nimbleness which 
he could hardly have surpassed in the midshipman 
days of his youth." 

The same visitor, too, gives a pleasant 
picture of what he terms " the domiciliary 



320 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

habits of Jerrold," of his dehght in juvenile 
parties when his children and their school 
companions found him one of the readiest to 
join in any fun, and when he always included 
in the evening's amusement acting charades, 
in which the principal performers were himself, 
Alfred Wigan and his wife, and M. Bonnefoy, 
the master under whom the Jerrold boys were 
being educated. 

By early rising and devoting his mornings 
to the desk, Douglas Jerrold got through a 
goodly amount of work while giving his 
visitors the impression that he was always at 
their service, so one of those visitors said. 
During this summer he was writing two 
comedies, one for Drury Lane and one for 
Covent Garden — both of them to be hailed 
as literary successes and one of them as a 
considerable stage success. 

This year is a notable one in Jerrold 's 
career, for while he was in Boulogne a group 
of his friends in London were bringing to 
fruition an idea which seems to have been 
" in the air " for a little time. I am not 
going to re-open the vexed question of the 
origin of Punch ; and I need not enter at all 
fully into the story of Jerrold's association 
with the paper, for I have already dealt with 
that story at some length in a previous volume.^ 
Suffice it that the projectors of Punch found 
their scheme take definite shape in the summer 
of 1841, that Jerrold was evidently early ac- 

^ Douglas Jerrold and " Punch,'^ Macmillan, 1910. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 321 

quainted with the fact, and invited to send in 
contributions, and that his first contribution 
only arrived in time for insertion in the second 
number. One of the early political articles 
which he signed " Q "—the subject a Bishop's 
consecrating of regimental colours — " made so 
great a sensation that the Society of Friends 
had it reprinted and placarded it on the walls 
of Nottingham." Henceforward Punch and 
the Punch circle were to form an important 
part of his life, but to his special association 
with them it will only be necessary here to 
make occasional reference. 

It was at about this time that Jerrold 
was instrumental with other devoted Shake- 
speareans in starting the Shakespeare Society 
— Frederick Guest Tomlins is credited with 
being the actual founder — becoming a mem- 
ber of the first Council, with Payne Collier, 
J. O. Halliwell (afterwards Halliwell-Phillips), 
Charles Knight, Sir Frederick Madden and 
Talfourd among his colleagues. The Society 
may perhaps be regarded as a development of 
the more social if less scholarly Mulberry Club. 
The movement for forming the Society seems 
to have begun in 1839, and to have been suc- 
cessfully carried to a conclusion in the follow- 
ing year or 1841, after which its publications 
formed for some years important contributions 
to Shakespearean literature. 

During this winter the two plays which had 
occupied the author during his sojourn at 
Boulogne were in active preparation at the 

VOL. I. Y 



322 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

two patent houses, and were to be recognized 
as notable additions to the best work which 
he had done for the stage. 

Some time before The Prisoner of War was 
produced it was read by the author to two 
friends in the Essex Street house one Sunday- 
afternoon. Those friends were Henry May hew 
and Frederick Guest Tomhns, and the former 
has left a pleasant account of the experience 
in which he says that " Jerrold read the play 
as he could read, if he liked; giving the finest 
point to all his wit, the most glowing fire to 
all his passion and the most exquisite tender- 
ness to all the gentle and more touching 
portions of the piece. That evening I have 
long kept mapped out in my mind as one 
of ' the greenest spots in memory's waste.' 
Tomlins and I sat by the open windows 
puffing our clouds and sipping our ' toddy ' 
while little Douglas tested the effect of his 
latest mental experiment upon our two brains 
— as Moliere was wont to try his comedies on 
his cook." This reading, if Mayhew's memory 
was correct, must have taken place during the 
summer of 1841, as he speaks of the scent of 
roses from the Temple Gardens coming in at 
the window. It was on February 8, 1842, that 
The Prisoner of War, a comedy in three acts, 
was produced at Drury Lane, and achieved a 
distinct success, as the author had confidently 
anticipated. As it was said, the parts of the 
self-satisfied Englishman, Pallmall, and of his 
lively sister Polly, would have sufficed to estab- 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 323 

lish a less interesting play — and those parts 
were enacted by Robert Keeley and his wife 
in a way which suggested that they might 
have been, as they doubtless were, " fitted 
with them." 

When the peace of Amiens was broken 
within a year of its being made, and the British 
minister left Paris, Napoleon retaliated by 
detaining all the British subjects who were 
in France at the time, and it is with a body of 
such detenus kept at Verdun that the play is 
concerned. It is a delightful comedy both in 
the pleasant sentimental story it unfolds and 
in its picture of the good people of Verdun 
seeking, like thrifty folks, to make all they 
can out of the " enemy " compulsorily de- 
tained in their midst. In the opening scene 
some of the French are discovered discussing 
the prisoners, when Pallmall enters just as 
Nicole has said : "A plague on these English 
dogs, say I ! They've spoilt Verdun." 

" Pallmall. Politeness, Monsieur Nicole, politeness 
to the captive. If we are dogs, can't you skin us, 
and be civil ? 

Babette. Oh, Monsieur Pallmall, never mind Nicole. 
Doesn't all Verdun love the dear prisoners^ the 
charming English ? 

Boaz. Aren't all our houses open to you ? 

Pallmall. All. In Ireland the pig pays the rent; 
in Verdun the pig's an Englishman. Oh, only to see 
how your housekeepers squabble for a lodger ! Such 
hospitality ! I was never so fought for by the women 
in my life. 



324 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

Boaz. And isn't our pockets open to you, isn't my 
pocket open ? 

Pallmall. Open as a rat-trap ; but I shan't nibble, 
Boaz. No, you don't toast cheese for me. As for 
the innocent sailors — the poor saltwater babes that 
you swallow like oysters by the dozen 

Boaz. Vot vould dey do without me ? Ven deir 
allowance is gone, vy den 

Pallmall. Gone ! It never comes ; you pounce 
upon it by the way; like an old hawk on a carrier 
pigeon. 

Boaz. Dey vill drink — dey vill gamble — ^poor tings 
— only to lose de time. 

Pallmall. And you'll be gambled with for tempting 
'em, brave, unsuspecting fellows ! You'll be one of 
the devil's dice, depend on't. 

Boaz. Mr. Pallmall ! Devil's dice ! 

Pallmall. Listen. He'll find two rascally money- 
lenders — if he can — with as many spots upon them 
as yourself ; and, on a night of chickenhazard, he'll 
rattle you all three together in a red-hot dice-box. 
That's your fate. 

Boaz. Ha ! Mister Mallpall ! vot I do ish kindness. 
I have no profits — de taxes eat up all. 

Babette. Yes, indeed — since the war the taxes are 
dreadful. 

Pallmall. All comes of living in France — should 
live in England. 

Babette. What, have you never a tax in England ! 

Pallmall. We haven't the word in our language. 
There are two or three little duties, to be sure ; but 
then, with us, duties are pleasures. As for taxes, 
you'd make an Englishman stare only to mention 
such things. 

Boaz. Indeed ? Ha, ha, charming place. Den 
vidout taxes how do you keep up de government ? 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 325 

Pallmall. Keep it up ? Like an hourglass : when 
one side's quite run out, we turn up the other and 
go on." 

When two of the French housekeepers are 
squabbling over a new prisoner, the successful 
one claims him, declaring that Lieutenant 
Firebrace had promised her, and " though 
I struggled, would kiss me, as he said to bind 
the bargain." Firebrace admits it : "I kissed 
and promised. Such beautiful lips ! Man's 
usual fate, I was lost upon the coral reefs." 
Pallmall is reproached by his sister for having 
been so boastful as to be sent from Paris, and 
he says it was nothing but patriotism. 

" Pnlly. Patriotism ? Would you think it, sir, he 
quarrelled with some French dragoons, because he 
would insist that the best cocoanuts grew on Primrose 
Hill, and that birds of paradise flew about St. James's. 

Pallmall. And wasn't that patriotism ? They 
abused the British climate, and I championed my 
nation, sir. As a sailor isn't it your duty to die for 
your country ? 

Firebrace. Most certainly. 

Pallmall. As a civilian, sir, 'tis mine to lie for her. 
Courage isn't confined to fighting. No, no, whenever 
a Frenchman throws me down a lie — for the honour 
of England I always trump it. 

Polly. Yes, brother; but, recollect, how very 
often you play the first card. 

Pallmall. And if I do colour up England a little 
for these Frenchmen, after all, 'tis but a little ; just 
a touch here and a touch there. 

Firebrace. Take a sailor's advice, sir; don't colour 



326 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

at all. Where nature has done so well, there's little 
need of paint or patches. 

Polly. What a sentiment ! Why couldn't I think 
of it when Ma'amselle La Nymphe wanted me to 
wear rouge ? " 

Well written and well acted, The Prisoner 
of War was immediately successful. It is 
recorded in the life of Samuel Phelps that on 
the first production of the play " the author 
went behind the scenes to congratulate Samuel 
Phelps on his success with the part of the chess- 
playing Captain Channel, and in the course 
of the talk said slyly : ' I suppose, old fellow, 
you have not forgotten my prophecy of the 
five-and-twenty shillings, eh ! — you're getting 
almost as many pounds, I expect ! ' The 
actor answered with a long-drawn ' No — not 
quite that.' As a matter of fact he was 
getting twenty." Jerrold did not mind having 
to admit that his prophecy of about twenty 
years earlier had been falsified. A curious 
instance of the contradiction of authorities is 
to be found in this small matter, for Phelps's 
biographers doubtless got that story from the 
veteran actor himself. Yet George Hodder 
said of The Prisoner of War, " It is not a little 
singular that, proud as Jerrold was and had 
reason to be of this admirable work, he never 
saw it played — at least during its first season." 

Before The Prisoner of War had been three 
weeks acted, the second of the pieces the 
writing of which had occupied Jerrold in 
Boulogne during the previous year was ready, 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 327 

and on February 25 the curtain went up at 
Covent Garden Theatre on a five-act comedy 
entitled Bubbles of the Day-—' one of the wittiest 
and best-constructed comedies in the English 
language " ; " the most electric and witty play 
in the English language, a play without story, 
scenery or character, but which by mere 
power of dialogue, by flash, swirl and corusca- 
tion of fancy, charmed one of the most in- 
tellectual audiences ever gathered." A play, 
as another critic (and an actor), put it, which 
has wit enough for three comedies. Bubbles 
of the Day was a distinct literary success, 
but not a stage one; it did not enter upon 
such a " run " as The Prisoner of War was 
enjoying at the other theatre over the way. 
It was, indeed, five acts of witty talk with but 
the thinnest thread of story, and it is said that 
those who most admired the dialogue were 
readiest to recognize the lack of plot and of 
sustained interest in the action. Thus it was 
that though the author found the play one 
which added to his fame as a man of letters 
he had the disappointment of finding that it 
did not establish itself as a " draw." 

There appears to have been about this time 
again some of that falling out of faithful 
friends which is said to be the renewing of 
love between Jerrold and his chum of many 
years, Blanchard, for a portion of a letter of 
April 5, 1842, from the latter to the former 
evidently marks a meeting following on a 
period of estrangement. Blanchard wrote : 



328 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

" My dearest Friend, — . . . My soul acquits me 
of having done any wrong to the sacred feeling that 
holds us together; but I must convince you of this 
guiltlessness by something more impressive than a 
few words, and I will. There has never been any 
real reason for the cessation of intercourse between 
us, any more than for the cessation of the imperish- 
able soul of friendship that makes us one; and 
intercourse only lessened and dropped on my side 
because there were jarrings when we met in company, 
and a constraint when we were alone. And I could 
easier bear our non -meeting than appear to trifle with 
what was most solemn or affect an indifference which 
(whatever may be the case with any such passion 
as envy, hatred or jealousy) is, and ever must be, 
impossible. I could not go on meeting you as I might 
any one else, with an uneasy conscience under the 
easy manner, and the anticipation of reproaches, to 
which all reply must come in the form of recrimination. 

But I am now doing what I said was unnecessary. 
Trust me, I rejoice most deeply, unfeignedly and 
with my whole heart, in our meeting on Saturday, 
and I shall date as from a new day. More you cannot 
be to me than you have been for twenty years ; but 
as the miser who puts his gold out to use is richer 
than he who locks the same up in his strong-box, 
so I, having the same friend as of old, shall be richer 
by turning that invaluable, that inexpressible blessing 
to its true account. God bless you and yours always, 
prays 

" Your most affectionate friend, 

" Laman Blanch ard." 

The following fragment of a letter from 
Blanchard appears to belong to the same 
period : 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 329 

" God send you more successful days, for, apart 
from other considerations, there is something in 
success that is necessary to the softening and sweeten- 
ing of the best-disposed natures ; and nothing but 
that, I do beheve, will so quickly convince you of 
the needless asperity of many of your opinions, 
and of the pain done to the world when you tell it 
you despise it." 

This suggests that Jerrold had been ex- 
pressing himself with emphatic bitterness on 
something at the time, and also illustrates 
the diverse temperaments of the two men, 
the one a tender, dreamy poet, the other a 
lively, eager critic of life, wrathful over all 
wrong and injustice, keen on expressing him- 
self, and impatient that things were not to be 
more rapidly bettered. 

In April 1842, Douglas Jerrold returned 
once more to Boulogne, taking with him to 
join his daughters at school there, one of his 
Hammond nieces. He settled himself at 4, 
Rue d'Alger, for he wrote thence, on May 9, 
to one Henry Phillips : 

" My dear Sir, — I have only to-day received your 
letter. I am here, I think, for the season. It is, 
however, not improbable that I may visit London for 
a few days in June. However, can the matter you 
write of be discussed in a letter; if so, direct as 
above, and I will lose no time in replying to you. 
" Yours truly, 

" Douglas Jerrold." 

From Boulogne Jerrold continued the polit- 
ical articles signed " Q " which he was 



330 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

writing for Punch, and set once more to work 
on the writing of a comedy for Covent Garden, 
undeterred by the quahfied success which had 
attended the brilUant Bubbles. Though his 
children were all at school, by his living at 
Boulogne they were sufficiently near for him 
to have them frequently with him, and for him 
to pass many pleasant hours with them and 
friends from England, in excursions into the 
neighbouring country. The three boys were 
still with M. Bonnefoy, and the two girls — 
as I learn from a sampler worked by the 
younger one, then ten years of age, in this 
year of 1842 — were " eleves des Dames Fevril- 
lier " who had a school in the Rue Tant-Perd- 
Tant-Paie at Boulogne. It was during this 
stay that a simple incident happened to which, 
it was said, he would often refer in later years. 
His youngest child, Thomas, had a pet rabbit, 
and one morning the boy entered his father's 
bedroom, holding the animal up by its legs, 
and shouting, " Here he is, papa, as dead as 
mutton ! " The animal dropped heavily on 
the ground, and Tom, his feigned indifference 
overcome by the sound, burst into tears, 
saying, " I knew it had the snuffles when I 
bought it ! " As the eldest son simply re- 
corded, " This bit of nature was never forgotten 
by ' stern ' Douglas Jerrold." 

Friends crossed over on brief visits, and some 
were tempted who for one reason or another 
could not accept, as we gather from a letter of 
May 26, 1842, received from Laman Blanchard : 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 331 

" My dear Jerrold, — My wife was witness to 
a vow, now three weeks old, that I couldn't and 
wouldn't reply to your note until she had made up 
her mind, yea or nay, upon the proposal it contained ; 
but as, with a consistency marvellous in women, she 
continues to the close of the month in the same way 
of speech, saying, ' Ah, it's all very nice talking ! ' 
and ' It's easy for you,' and ' Nothing I should like 

so much, but ' and ' Suppose Edmund were to get 

down to the ditch,' and ' What do you think ? that 
Miss Mary had the porkbutcher down in the kitchen 
last night ' — and five thousand other objections rung 
upon such changes as the house on fire, the necessary 
new bonnetings, the inevitable sea-sickness, and the 
perils of the ocean — to say nothing of a reserved force 
brought up when all other objections are routed in 
the shape of a presentiment that something will 
happen — God knows what, but something — directly 
her back is turned upon old England (what can she 
mean ?) — all this, I say, induces me to break my 
vow, and communicate the indecision and perplexity 
that beset us daily. I had forgotten, however, the 
most solid of the difficulties that stand between us 
and you — the others are, indeed, but spongy, and 
might easily be squeezed dry; but here is a bit of 
rock ahead in the " warning " of a servant in whom 
we have trust. She is going away — away to be 
married, as most of our maids do. This is about the 
sixth in four years. Better, you will say, than going 
away not married, but really in the present case a bore, 
especially if the other (as is probable) follows her. 
We should be left with two strangers, and my wife's 
natural dread, almost a superstitious one, of leaving 
home — of losing sight of her children — of crossing 
the water more especially — ^would be increased to 
an unsoothable height. At present, however, it is 



332 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

only certain that one goes, and so we must wait the 
issue of another fortnight, and then abandon finally 
all the exquisite pleasure of procrastination — and 
decide. Never surely did God sanctify the earth 
with lovelier weather than now. Even Lambeth is 
a heaven below in such a blessed time as this. But 
still there is a whisper going on in the paradise all 
about me to ' be off,' telling me that no opportunity 
can be fairer, and that no welcome can be half so 
strong. But to Boulogne without her would never 
do, the hope having been so fondly raised ; so if you 
see one you see both. At the worst, as she says, it 
is something to have been so warmly wished for; 
and to have such a letter backing the verbal wish. 
For myself I am urgently moved toward Gloucester, 
where I have an acquaintance {' which is very well 
hoff ') relying on an old promise ; but it must be 
older yet ere it be fulfilled. And Hastings also 
calls upon me, from the sea, saying, ' You said you'd 
come in May ' ; but Hastings is as impotent as 
Gloucester. Belfast, moreover, pleads winningly, 
and still in vain. This to let you know I am cared 
for in other quarters, and that I prize your summons 
before all others, however pleasant and friendly. . . . 
I send you a little song written since I saw you, and 
rather relished I find. I have about half a volume of 
such matters scattered here and there. 

TRUTH AND RUMOUR 

As Truth once paused on her pilgrim way 

To rest by a hedge-side thorny and sere, 
Few travellers there she charmed to stay, 

Though hers were the tidings that all should hear 
She whispering sung, and her deep rich voice 

Yet richer, deeper, each moment grew; 
And still though it bade the crowd rejoice, 

Her strain but a scanty audience drew. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 333 

But Rumour close by, as she pluck'd a reed 

From a babbling brook detain 'd the throng; 
With a hundred tongues that never agreed, 

She gave to the winds a mocking song. 
The crowd with dehght its echoes caught. 

And closer around her yet they drew ; 
So wondrous and wild the lore she taught. 

They listen 'd, entranced, the long day through. 

The sun went down : when he rose again. 

And sleep had becalm'd each listener's mind, 
The voice of Rumour had rung in vain, 

No echo had left a charm behind. 
But Truth's pure note, ever whispering clear, 

Wand'ring in air, fresh sweetness caught ; 
Then all unnoticed it touch'd the ear. 

And fill'd with music the cells of thought. 

" Ever yours affectionately, 

" Laman Blanchard." 

Early this year Douglas Jerrold brought 
together a number of the short stories and 
philosophical and allusive papers that he had 
contributed to periodicals during the previous 
half-dozen years and published them as Cakes 
and Ale, and the two volumes M^ith frontispieces 
and pictorial title-pages by George Cruikshank 
were issued by Messrs. How and Parsons, who 
also published the Bubbles of the Day in a 
handsome form. The volumes were dedicated : 
" To Thomas Hood, Esq., whose various genius 
touches alike the spring of laughter and the 
source of tears, these volumes are in the fullest 
sincerity dedicated." In acknowledgment 
Hood, then nearing the close of his brave life, 
wrote : 



334 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

" Dear Jerrold, — Many thanks for your Cakes 
and Ale, and for the last especially, as I am for- 
bidden to take it in a potable shape. Even Bass's, 
which might be a Bass relief, is denied to me. The 
more kind of you to be my friend and pitcher. 

" The inscription was an unexpected and really 
a great pleasure ; for I attach a peculiar value to the 
regard and good opinion of literary men. The truth 
is, I love authorship, as Lord Byron loved England — 
'with all its faults,' and in spite of its calamities. 
I am proud of my profession, and very much inclined 
to ' stand by my order.' It was this feeling, and no 
undue estimate of the value of my own fugitive 
works, that induced me to engage in the copyright 
question. Moreover, I have always denied that 
authors were an irritable genus, except that their 
tempers have peculiar trials, and the exhibitions are 
public instead of private. Neither do I allow the 
especial hatred, envy, malice, and all uncharitable- 
ness so generally ascribed to us ; and here comes your 
inscription in proof of my opinion. For my own 
part, I only regret that fortune has not favoured me 
as I could have wished, to enable me to see more 
of my literary brethren around my table. Never- 
theless, as you are not altogether Home's Douglas, 
I hope you will some day find your way here. Allow 
me to thank you also for the Bubbles, and to con- 
gratulate you on your double success on the stage, 
being, I trust, pay and play — ^not the turf alternative. 
I am, dear Jerrold, 

" Yours very truly, 

" Thos. Hood." 

From Boulogne on June 13 Jerrold M^rote — 
evidently to Benjamin Webster — a lively letter 
on his dramatic v^^ork : 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 335 

" 4, Bue d' Alger, Boulogne, s/m. 
*' My dear Sir, — It is with great pleasure I 
acknowledge your letter. I forget his name, but 
I believe there is in the Kalendar a saint who was 
once an actor (and, I hope, also a manager). I will 
endeavour to discover him ; and as this is a Catholic 
country, I will offer up to him a whole sixpenny 
bottle of ink, in expiation of my unjust suspicion 
of Farren. If the saint is not to be found, I suppose 
I must fast upon salmon for the next fortnight. 
Perhaps, however, the best way will be to dedicate 
a few pounds of candles — midnight tapers, by the 
light of which shall be written for him a magnificent 
part. 

" I am, however, engaged upon a drama for you — 
if Mr. Osbaldistone will spare me the phrase — ' of 
a peculiar and startling character.' I think the very 
thing for the Haymarket; one of those things that 
either flash in the pan or hit like a bomb-shell. 
I also have two other subjects for your next season ; 
for I think my manufacture — such as it is — will 
show best at Haymarket distance. I have always 
thought so, and shall be glad when I have induced 
your opinion to back mine. Had Bubbles first been 
shown by your footlights, I think they would have 
glittered for a season (to be sure, I never chanced 
the refusal). 

" This brings me to a point in your letter. I do 
not like to be thought unduly impressed with the 
value of my own wares, rating them above the 
merchandise of others : but look at the difference 
of London Assurance and my play ; I mean the differ- 
ent circumstances that attended them. The Assur- 
ance author gets — there was no Miss Kemble — a 
long, uninterrupted run, and consequently all the 
money he dipped his pen for. Bubbles are only 



336 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

suffered to glisten between the shakes of a prima 
donna (and very great shakes they were, I must own), 
is brought out as a forlorn hope at the fag-end of 
a season ; and the author, with his tobacco-pipe 
and soap-dish, is on the eighteenth night — only the 
eighteenth, my masters — of his blowing, compelled 
to make way for what ? why — the German Flute ! 
How stands the present account ? 

Assurance . . . £400 
Bubbles ... 270 



Due on Bubbles . £130 

Only let me make up the balance, and then — ^the 
frog shall come out of the marble — the world shall 
see what liberality dwells in the heart of a playwriter. 
" Yours ever truly, 

" Douglas Jerrold. 

" I will write to you more about the play in a few 
days, giving you the plot and purpose of same. 
Does Mme. Celeste act at Hay market again this 
season ? " 

There was to be no Haymarket play for 
nearly three years, but the piece for Covent 
Garden was completed this summer, and was 
duly produced by Madame Vestris at that 
theatre on September 10. The play was 
Gertrude^ s Cherries, or Waterloo in 1835, a 
two-act comedy, and for its production Jerrold 
visited London — the proposed trip in June 
did not apparently take place. A pleasant, 
romantic story is unfolded in the play; for 
Gertrude, the vendor of cherries near the 
historic battlefield, is daughter of an English- 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 337 

man believed to have died at Waterloo, and 
who, having quarrelled with his family, has 
allowed them to continue in that belief. 
That man's father has come to visit the field 
of tragic memories, bringing with him his 
grandson Vincent and the youthful widow 
whom he wishes that grandson to marry. 
The youthful widow falls in with an early 
flame, Vincent promptly falls in love with the 
damsel of the cherries — only later to find that 
she is his cousin, and Gertrude's father and 
grandfather are of course reconciled. It is 
a pretty play with some entertaining dialogue, 
in which a honeymooning undertaker from 
Hoimdsditch, who is greatly befooled by sellers 
of " relics " of the great battle, plays the chief 
comic part. 

" Jerrold, after witnessing the success of 
Gertrude's Cherries, has, we believe, returned 
to France " — so ran a newspaper comment of 
the day, but it was not to prove a happy 
return, for shortly afterwards — after a chilly 
evening spent on the pier at Boulogne — he 
had a severe attack of rheumatism which 
settled in the eyes and made him suffer 
tortures. As his son put it, "a French doctor 
came to him, and treated him as a horse might 
be treated. He was blistered, and again 
blistered. He shrieked if the light of the small- 
est candle reached him; yet he could, if the 
chord were touched, say a sharp thing. This 
French doctor had just been operating upon 
the patient. The patient had winced a little, 

VOL. I. z 



338 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

and the operator had said, ' Tut ! tut ! it's 
nothing at all ! ' Presently some hot water 
was brought in. The doctor put his fingers 
in it, and sharply withdrew them with an 
oath. The patient, who was now lying, faint, 
upon the sofa, said ' Tut ! tut ! It's nothing- 
nothing at all ! ' " 

After five weeks of illness he was well enough 
to pay a visit to London for the purpose of 
consulting a specialist, and on November 7 
wrote from Dover : 

" My dear Forster, — You will, I know, be happy 
to see this scrawl. I have just crossed from Boulogne 
and shall be in London to-morrow evening. I, in 
truth, rejoice in a resurrection. I, however, come 
to have advice from Alexander that will, I trust, in 
a few days quite restore me. I will see you (thank 
God ! I now can see you) in the forenoon of 
Wednesday. 

" Yours truly ever, 

" Douglas Jerrold." 

The letter is written in a large and " scrawl- 
ing " manner quite in contrast with the author's 
usual small, neat penmanship, and thus bears its 
evidence to the affliction from which the writer 
had suffered. It was evidently but a brief visit 
to London, for just three weeks later Jerrold 
wrote again to the same correspondent from 
Boulogne, announcing his determination to 
settle in London : 

" My dear Forster, — In dread of a relapse, I 
have resolved to avail myself of the first fair day — for 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 339 

here the weather continues very bad — ^and start for 
England. I have tried for several mornings to work, 
but cannot. After half-an-hour's application, or less, 
reading or writing, thick spots obscure my sight, and 
then come all sorts of horrid apprehensions. Yet 
I strive to think it is nothing but weakness, which 
rest — and rest only — will remedj\ On this, how- 
ever, I come (and have resolved to settle in England) 
for advice. I now despair being able to complete 
Rabelais, for, though I might still eke out sight 
enough for it, without any permanent evil — yet the 
nervous irritability which besets me weakens every 
mental faculty. You will, I hope, believe me truly 
distressed at the inconvenience I shall draw upon you. 
which, at no small risk, I would if possible prevent. 
If, however, I am to work again, Rabelais shall be 
the first thing I complete. I shall see you in a few 
days. 

" Yours ever most truly (and sadly), 

" D. Jerrold." 

John Forster was at the time editor of the 
Foreign Quarterly Review, and Jerrold had 
promised a contribution on the subject of 
Rabelais — a contribution which he was destined 
never to write, though he is said to have been 
a diligent and enthusiastic student of Rabelais' 
work. Writing to Douglas Jerrold's son many 
years later, Forster said, " I never in my experi- 
ence found an understanding of, and liking 
for, Rabelais other than the sure test of a well- 
read man. Your father had read and studied 
a great deal more than those who most inti- 
mately knew him would always have been 
prepared to give him credit for." The tone 



340 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

of the preceding letter was coloured not only 
by his own severe illness but by the fact that 
a niece, the one whom he had himself taken 
out in April — daughter of his sister, Mrs. 
Hammond — to be at school with his own girls 
in Boulogne, had just died there. 

During 1842— week by week from the begin- 
ning of July until the end of the year, Jerrold 
had been contributing to the columns of 
Punch a satirically pointed series of Punch's 
Letters to His Son, which were duly published 
early in the following year as a neat little 
volume with a number of illustrations by the 
author's old friend, Kenny Meadows. Jerrold 
was already feeling, perhaps somewhat bitterly, 
the reputation which had been passed on him 
for bitterness, and he wrote as Punch in the 
introduction to these letters : " I am prepared 
to be much abused for these epistles. They are 
written in lemon- juice. Nay, the little sacs 
in the jaws of the rattlesnake, wherein the 
reptile elaborates its poison to strike with 
sudden death the beautiful and harmless 
guinea-pigs and coneys of the earth — these 
venomous bags have supplied the quill that 
traced the mortal sentences. Or if it be not 
really so, it is no matter ; the worthy, amiable 
souls, who would have even a Sawney Bean 
painted upon a rose-leaf, will say as much; 
so let me for once be beforehand, and say it 
for them." The writer was again and again 
to be accused of dipping his pen in lemon-juice 
merely because he refused to subscribe to the 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 341 

smugly comfortable but pernicious doctrine 
that " all's right with the world." 

Reaching London with his family towards 
the close of 1842, Douglas Jerrold settled for 
a short time in the Vale of Health, Hamp- 
stead, while looking about for a new home, 
and thence on January 1, 1843, he wrote to 
Forster : 

" My dear Forster, — A happy new year to you ! 
I have at last a tranquil moment, which I employ 
in jotting a few words to you. I should have called 
upon you when I came to see Alexander but was 
summoned back to Boulogne, where I found my dear 
niece — a loveable, affectionate creature, little less to 
me than a daughter — in her coffin at my house. 
She had died of typhus at school — died in her four- 
teenth year. I found my wife almost frantic with 
what she felt to be a terrible responsibility; for we 
had brought the child only last April from her heart- 
broken mother to Boulogne. I assure you, that I 
have been so harassed by bodily and mental annoy- 
ance, I might say torture — that I have scarcely any 
notion of how the time has passed since I last saw 
you. We are, however, now settling down into some- 
thing like tranquillity. I am myself much better — 
with the healthful use of my sight. I have taken 
a house near Regent's Park (Park Village) and hope 
to be in it in a few days, with all my family. I 
will call upon you in a day or two. The contents of 
the Foreign have a promising appearance — I deeply 
regret that one article is wanting. 

" Ever, my dear Forster, yours truly, 

" Douglas Jerrold. 

*' Possibly we may meet at Talfourd's on Thursday," 



342 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

The article " wanting " in the Foreign 
Quarterly was, of course, his own promised 
paper on Rabelais. 

The house that was fixed upon was a very 
pretty place, 3, Gothic Cottages, Park Village 
East, Regent's Park, and there at the beginning 
of 1843 the home was newly set up, and in 
" a study bowered by trees " the author could 
set to work again so far as his still but con- 
valescent eyes would permit. He had already 
begun the tender Story of a Feather, which 
commenced its serial appearance in the pages 
of Punch in the first number for the new year, 
and in the tree-bowered study it was to be 
continued and completed. That the eyes were 
still causing some anxiety is to be gathered 
from the next letter to Forster : 

" 3, Gothic Cottages, Eegenfs Park, 

'' February 15 [1843]. 

" My dear Forster, — I am kept at home for one 
or two days, with a hint (no more) of inflammation 
in one of my eyes : this will pass by keeping out of 
the cold air. I have been at work and shall be quite 
ready for you. I will see you, I hope, on Friday. 
I am, indeed, sorry to hear of your ill -health — and 
most heartily wish you speedy deliverance from the 
fiend rheumatism. Have you tried ' Feaver's Em- 
brocation ' ? It is, I know, a quack medicine ; but 
as the regulars are puzzled by the malady past all 
knowledge, one is, therefore, justified in trying the 
amateurs. / have found instant relief from it — 
'tis an outward ' appliance ' — and have successfully 
recommended it in several cases — notwithstanding 
my belief that every man has his own rheumatism. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 343 

I heard on Saturday morning that you had been ill, 
and also at night from Blanchard that you were quite 
recovered, or should have called on Monday. 

" Yours ever truly, 

" D. Jerrold. 

" I'm glad you like the Feather.'' 

He was evidently still contemplating the 
Rabelais, but as evidently had not got beyond 
the contemplation of it when he wrote again 
some three weeks later : 

" My dear Forster, — I have been from home, 
and so received yours only last night. I have found 
it impossible to do any work by candlelight, which 
hindrance has considerably impeded me : and I have 
moreover lost time in finally settling certain matters 
which have been long harassing me — however, now 
they are settled I should have communicated with 
you ere this, but day by day thought the annoyance 
would be over, and so leave my mind at liberty. 
I cannot accomplish the paper in time — and yet 
have scarcely the courage to tell you so. I have, 
however, been the victim of circumstances which 
may in your opinion make me seem reckless and 
negligent in this affair — but it is not so. You have 
doubtless seen my name in conjunction with a new 
periodical. Do not believe that that project has 
employed my thoughts to the neglect of you — for 
nothing more has been done than the writing of the 

advertisement. 

" Yours truly, 

" D. Jerrold." 

On April 4, Douglas Jerrold made one of 
his infrequent appearances in public, when as 



344 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

steward he supported Charles Dickens, who 
was presiding at the London Tavern over the 
annual dinner of the Printers' Pension Society. 
One of the toasts ran, " Thomas Hood, Esq., 
Douglas Jerrold, Esq., and the other authors 
present," and to this Hood responded. 

At length, after the various delays, Jerrold 
gave up any idea of doing the Rabelais article 
and wrote on April 19 : 

" My dear Forster, — If ever I propose to myself 
the evil habit of not attending to letters, you I can 
assure you will be about the last I shall pass the 
unseemly practice upon. I have delayed answering 
until now, because I wished to answer definitively. 
I feel that in two instances my non -performance 
must have been so grievously inconvenient and per- 
plexing, that I would not risk a third for any con- 
sideration. It is, therefore, that I have taken time 
to answer. I think I could do the paper ; but I will 
not content myself with supposition. This magazine, 
placing as it does a new responsibility upon me, 
will not allow me to answer definitively yes ; and, 
therefore, rather than run the least hazard, rather 
than chance the remotest doubt — with great, very 
great, unwillingness, I reply — no. It is, however, 
but the poorest justice to you that I should say as 
much; as I perfectly appreciate the motive which 
has — out of consideration to me — kept so good a 
subject for the work hitherto untouched. Though, 
however, I may not be able to give the time and labour 
necessary to so elaborate a [matter] as Rabelais, 
I should nevertheless much like any other subject 
that might present itself in an easier vein, I will, 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 345 

if you like, keep my attention awake to some such 
subject, and post to you thereupon. 
" Yours truly, 

" Douglas Jerrold." 

Some days later the volume which was 
evidently to have been the " peg " on which 
the article was to be hung was returned to 
the disappointed editor : 

" My dear Forster, — I send Rabelais. You will 
perceive a change in the book, inasmuch as the scarlet 
edges are a faint reflection of the blushes of 
" Yours truly, 

" Douglas Jerrold." 

In May came the first number of the 
Illuminated Magazine — apparently Douglas 
Jerrold 's first essay in editing since the Punch 
in London of a dozen years before. The 
" advertisement " of the Illuminated declared 
that " figures and objects of every kind there 
will be, illustrative of the text, in its every 
variety of essay — narrative — history — of social 
right and wrong — of the tragedy of real life, 
as of its folly, its whim, its mere burlesque. 
Our prime object will be variety of matter, 
so that the readers of the Illuminated Magazine, 
like the lovers of pine-apples, may choose some 
for one flavour, some for another, and some — 
and we trust the greater number — for all." 
In the preface to the first volume completed 
in the following October, it was said ; 



346 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

" It has been the wish of the proprietors of this 
work to speak to the masses of the people ; and 
whilst sympathizing with their deeper and sterner 
wants, to offer to them those graces of art and litera- 
ture which have too long been held the exclusive 
right of those of happier fortunes." 

The magazine set off with an essay by the 
editor entitled " Elizabeth and Victoria," ^ 
in which the author compared the legendary 
" good old times " with the degenerate present 
of the grumbling laudator temporis acti. It is 
this essay that is referred to in the following 
letter from Charles Dickens. The " books " 
may be taken to indicate a belated presentation 
copy of Cakes and Ale: 

" Devonshire Terrace, 

" Third May, 1843. 

" My dear Jerrold, — Let me thank you most 
cordially for your books (and I have read them with 
perfect delight), but also for this hearty and most 
welcome mark of your recollection of the friendship 
we have established ; in which light I know I may 
regard and prize them. 

" I am greatly pleased with your opening paper in 
the Illuminated. It is very wise and capital ; written 
with the finest end of that iron pen of yours ; witty, 
much needed, and full of truth. I vow to God 
that I think the parrots of society are more intolerable 
and mischievous than its birds of prey. If ever I 
destroy myself, it will be in the bitterness of hearing 
those infernal and damnably good old times extolled. 
Once, in a fit of madness, after having been to a public 

^ Reprinted with The Chronicles of Clovernook, 1846. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 347 

dinner which took place just as this Ministry came 
in, I wrote the parody I send you enclosed, for 
Fonblanque. There is nothing in it but wrath; 
but that's wholesome, so I send it you. 

" I am writing a little history of England for my 
boy, which I will send you when it is printed for him, 
though your boys are too old to profit by it. It is 
curious that I have tried to impress upon him (writing, 
I dare say, at the same moment with you) the exact 
spirit of your paper, for I don't know what I should 
do if he were to get hold of any Conservative or 
High Church notions ; and the best way of guarding 
against any such horrible result is, I take it, to wring 
the parrots' necks in his very cradle. 

" O Heaven, if you could have been with me at 
a hospital dinner last Monday ! There were men 
there who made such speeches and expressed such 
sentiments as any moderately intelligent dustman 
would have blushed through his cindery bloom to 
have thought of. Sleek, slobbering, bow-paunched, 
over-fed, apoplectic, snorting cattle, and the auditory 
leaping up in their delight ! I never saw such an 
illustration of the power of the purse, or felt so 
degraded and debased by its contemplation, since 
1 have had eyes and ears . The absurdity of the thing 
was too horrible to laugh at. It was perfectly over- 
whelming. But if I could have partaken it with 
anybody who would have felt it as you would have 
done, it would have had quite another aspect; or 

would at least, like a ' classic mask ' (oh, d that 

word !) have had one funny side to relieve its dismal 
features. 

" Supposing fifty families were to emigrate into 
the wilds of North America — yours, mine and forty- 
eight others — picked for their concurrence of opinion 
on all important subjects and for their resolution 



348 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

to found a colony of commonsense, how soon would 
that devil, Cant, present itself among them in one 
shape or other ? The day they landed, do you say, 
or the day after ? 

" That is a great mistake (almost the only one I 
know) in the Arabian Nights, when the Princess 
restores people to their original beauty by sprinkling 
them with the golden water. It is quite clear that 
she must have made monsters of them, by such a 
christening as that. 

" My dear Jerrold, faithfully your Friend, 

" Charles Dickens." 



CHAPTER XI 

ILLNESS — LETTERS FROM CHARLES DICKENS— 
THE FIRST SHILLING MAGAZINE 

1843—1844 

That there was something disappointing 
to the editor about the appearance of the 
Illuminated we learn from one or two refer- 
ences in his letters of the time. And indeed 
the colour implied in the title was limited to 
the title-page, and was very crudely produced. 
That despite such mechanical drawbacks the 
magazine met with a cordial reception we learn 
from the following note addressed to Cyrus 
Redding : 

" 3, Gothic Cottages, 

" May 12 [1843]. 

" My dear Redding, — I have been out of town 
for two or three days, or should have answered 
before. Name your own day, giving me a forty- 
eight hours' notice and you shall command the 
' tediousness ' of, 

" Yours truly, 

" Douglas Jerrold. 

" The mag. was infamously printed. It has, how- 
ever, done more than well. In June 'twill, I think, be 
brighter." 

349 



350 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

With the magazine safely started, and meet- 
ing with such a reception as promised for it a 
goodly future, the editor was able to take his 
work with him away to some such country 
retreat as always delighted him. The experi- 
ence of the previous autumn had probably 
made Boulogne a place of memories too sadly 
fresh in the mind, and Jerrold went for the 
first time to a place which attracted him again 
and again in successive years — though a place, 
it may be said, which he did not mind chaffing 
in the pages of Punch. This was Heme Bay — 
or rather the village of Heme, lying something 
less than a couple of miles from the actual 
Bay, where for several years at holiday time he 
sought rustic quiet. Firwood House, the only 
place in the neighbourhood with which I can 
definitely associate his visits to the breezy and 
bracing Kentish coast, is at Heme Common, 
a delightful tree-embowered hilltop house, from 
the pines at the back of which is to be seen 
the Bay. From Heme, about the end of May 
1843, he wrote thus to Charles Dickens — what 
the enclosure for Daniel Maclise was does not 
appear : 

" My dear Dickens, — I write from a little cabin, 
built up of ivy and woodbine, and almost within 
sound of the sea. Here I have brought my wife 
and daughter, and have already the assurance that 
country air and sounds and sights will soon recover 
them. 

" I have little more than a nodding acquaintance 
with Maclise, and therefore send the enclosed to him 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 351 

through you. I cut it out of The Times last summer 
in France, with the intention of forwarding it. Since 
then it has been mislaid, and has only turned up 
to-day with other papers. It appears to me to 
contain an admirable subject for a picture ; and for 
whom so specially as Maclise ? What an annoyance, 
too, it is to know that good subjects, like the hidden 
hoards of the buried, are lying about, if we only 
knew where to light upon them. This, to be sure, 
is only annoying to those who want subjects or 
money; and then, again, of these Maclise is not. 
Nevertheless upon the fine worldly principle of 
leaving £lO legacies to Croesus, I send the enclosed 
to Mr. M. I am about to take advantage of the 
leisure of country life, and the inspiration of a glorious 
garden, to finish a comedy begun last summer, and 
to which rheumatism wrote ' to be continued,' when 
rheumatism, like a despotic editor, should think fit. 
By the way, did they forward to you this month's 
Illuminated Magazine? I desired them to do so. 
As for ' illuminations,' you have, of course, seen the 
dying lamps on a royal birthday-night, with the R 
burned down to a P, and the Ws very dingy W's 
indeed, even for the time of the morning. The 
' illuminations ' in my magazine were very like 
these. No enthusiastic lamplighter was ever more 
deceived by cotton wicks and train oil, than I by 
the printer. However, I hope in another month 
we shall be able to burn gas." 

The " illumination " in so far as that was 
shown in the red, blue and gold title-page of 
the magazine was certainly not satisfactory, 
but in the second meaning of its title the mis- 
cellany may be said to have justified that title 
thoroughly. The stay in Heme Bay provided 



352 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

the editor with material for some Ught yet 
pregnant philosophical essays — now it is a 
sight of the local workhouse, with its two tiny 
windows looking out in the country — all its 
other windows turned inward upon the small 
enclosed space and looking but upon other 
buildings. " No crevice, no loophole per- 
mitted captive poverty a look, a glimpse of 
the fresh face of nature ; his soul, like his body, 
was bricked up according to the statute." A 
consideration of this leads to the conclusion : 
" If God punish man for crime, as man 
punishes man for poverty, woe to the sons of 
Adam." In another case it is a walk to the 
twin towers of Reculver that starts a vein of 
musing. Then, it may be added, this striking 
coast-mark had not been safeguarded from the 
devouring sea. No longer is it possible to see 
the bones of the long-dead exposed in the wave- 
washed earth of the burial ground around the 
remains of the ancient church; no longer can 
one have the experience which Douglas Jerrold 
recorded at the close of his Gossip at Reculver : 

" One day, wandering near this open space, we 
met a boy, carrying away, with exulting looks, a 
skull in very perfect preservation. He was a London 
boy, and looked rich indeed with his treasure. 

" ' What have you there ? ' we asked. 

" ' A man's head — a skull,' was the answer. 

" ' And what can you possibly do with a skull ? ' 

" ' Take it to London.' 

" ' And when you have it in London, what then 
will you do with it ? ' 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 353 

" ' I know.' 

" ' No doubt. But what will you do with it ? ' 

" And to this thrice-repeated question, the boy- 
three times answered, ' I know.' 

" ' Come, here's sixpence. Now, what will you do 
with it ? ' 

" The boy took the coin — grinned — hugged him- 
self, hugging the skull the closer, and said very 
briskly, ' Make a money-box of it ! ' 

" A strange thought for a child. And yet, mused 
we as we strolled along, how many of us, with nature 
beneficent and smiling on all sides — how many of us 
think of nothing so much as hoarding sixpences — yea, 
hoarding them even in the very jaws of Death ! " 

While Jerrold was at Heme Bay came news 
that Benjamin Webster had, for the encourag- 
ing of English dramatic talent, offered the sum 
of five hundred pounds for the best comedy 
submitted to him by the close of the following 
September. The author of over sixty plays 
was highly diverted by the manager's pro- 
posal ; he had won a place as the first of living 
dramatists by nearly a quarter of a century's 
writing for the stage — and for his most 
successful piece, a piece that had established 
an unchallenged " record," to use a modern 
phrase, he had received from the theatre but 
a tenth of that amount. He wrote to Charles 
Dickens : 

" Of course you have flung Chuzzlewit to the winds, 
and are hard at work upon a comedy. Somebody — 
I forget his name — told me you were seen at the Hay- 
market door, with a wet newspaper in your hand, 

VOL. I. A A 



354 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

knocking frantically for Webster. Five hundred 
pounds for the best English comedy ! As I think of 
the sum, I look loftily around this apartment of full 
twelve by thirteen — glance with poetic frenzy on a 
lark's turf that does duty for a lawn — take a vigorous 
inspiration of the double ' Bromptons ' that are 
nodding defyingly at me through the diamond panes 
— and think the cottage, land, pigsty, all are mine, 
evoked from an ink-bottle, and labelled ' freehold,' 
by the call of Webster ! The only thing I am puzzled 
for is a name for the property — a name that shall 
embalm the cause of its purchase. On due reflection 
I don't think Humbug Hall a bad one. 

" If a man wanted further temptation to write 
the ' best ' comedy, it would be found in the com- 
position of the court that shall decide upon its merits. 
Among the judges shall be authors and actors, male 
and female, with dramatic critics. I am already 
favoured with the names of some of these, which, 
as you will persist, you may be interested in the 
knowledge of . . . . Mind, you must send in your play 
by Michaelmas — it is thought Michaelmas Day itself 
will be selected by many of the competitors ; for, as 
there will be about five hundred (at least) comedies, 
and as the committee cannot read above two at a 
sitting, how — unless, indeed, they raffle for choice — 
can they select the true thing — the phoenix from the 
geese — by January 1, 1844 ? You must make haste, 
so don't go out o' nights. ..." 

To this Charles Dickens replied in " merry 
pin " as follows : 

" Devonshire Terrace, 

" Thirteenth June, 1843. 

" My dear Jerrold, — Yes, you have anticipated 
my occupation. Chuzzlewit be d — d. High comedy 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 855 

and five hundred pounds are the only matters I can 
think of. I call it The One Thing Needful : or A 
Part is Better than the Whole. Here are the char- 
acters — 

Old Febrile Mr. Farren 

Young Febrile {his Son) . . Mr. Howe 

Jack Hessians {his Friend) . Mr. W. Lacy 

Chalks {a Landlord) . . Mr. Gough 

Hon. Harry Staggers 
Sir Thomas Tip 



Swig 

The Duke of Leeds 

Sir Smivin Growler 



Mr. Mellon 
Mr. Buckstone 
Mr. Webster 
Mr. Coutts 
Ml*. Macready 



Servants, Gamblers, Visitors, etc. 

Mrs. Febrile .... Mrs. Gallot 

Lady Tip Mrs. Humby 

Mrs. Sour Mrs. W. Clifford 

Fanny Miss A. Smith 

" One scene, where Old Febrile tickles Lady Tip 
in the ribs, and afterwards dances out with his hat 
behind him, his stick before and his eye on the pit, 
I expect will bring the house down. There is also 
another point, where Old Febrile, at the conclusion 
of his disclosure to Swig, rises and says : ' And now. 
Swig, tell me, have you ever acted ill ? ' which will 
carry off the piece. 

" Heme Bay. Hum. I suppose it is no worse 
than any other place in this weather, but it is watery 
rather, isn't it ? In my mind's eye, I have the sea 
in a perpetual state of smallpox; and the chalk 
running downhill like town milk. But I know the 
comfort of getting to work in a fresh place, and pro- 
posing pious projects to one's self, and having the 



356 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

more substantial advantage of going to bed early 
and getting up ditto, and walking about alone. I 
should like to deprive you of the last-named happi- 
ness, and to take a good long stroll, terminating in 
a public -house, and whatever they chanced to have 
in it. But fine days are over, I think. The horrible 
misery of London in this weather, with not even a 
fire to make it cheerful, is hideous. 

" But I have my comedy to fly to. My only 
comfort ! I walk up and down the street at the 
back of the theatre every night, and peep in at the 
green room window, thinking of the time when 
' Dick — ins ' will be called for by excited hundreds, 
and won't come until Mr. Webster (half Swig and 
half himself) shall enter from his dressing-room, and 
quelling the tempest with a smile, beseech the wizard, 
if he be in the house (here he looks up at my box), 
to accept the congratulations of the audience, and 
indulge them with a sight of the man who has got 
five hundred pounds in money, and it's impossible 
to say how much in laurel. Then I shall come 
forward, and bow once — twice — thrice — roars of 
approbation — Bray vo — brarvo — hooray — hoorar — 
hooroar — one cheer more ; and asking Webster home 
to supper, shall declare eternal friendship for that 
public-spirited individual, 

" I am always, my dear Jerrold, 

" Faithfully your Friend, 
" The Congreve of the Nineteenth Century 
" (which I mean to be called in the 
Sunday papers) 

" P.S. — I shall dedicate it to Webster, beginning : 
' My dear Sir, — When you first proposed to stimulate 
the slumbering dramatic talent of England, I assure 
you I had not the least idea — etc., etc., etc' 



5 55 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 357 

Webster's offer of a prize for the best 
English comedy led to some member or mem- 
bers of the Punch staff indulging in a pleasant 
piece of parody in the manner of the Rejected 
Addresses, and during the following winter 
was published a shilling brochure from the 
Punch office, entitled " Scenes from the Rejected 
Comedies, by some of the competitors for the 
Prize of £500 offered by Mr. B. Webster, Lessee 
of the Haymarket Theatre for the Best 
Original Comedy, Illustrative of English 
Manners." The second " Scene," purported 

to be from " Humbugs of the Hour, by D s 

J d," and is a neat scrap of parody, stressing 

some of the characteristics of Jerrold's dra- 
matic writing, and especially the smartness of 
repaitee used by all his people — " but perhaps 
it is a piece of ungrateful hypercriticism to 
complain of a dramatist for putting wit into 
the mouths of all his characters." 

To Jerrold this summer came sad news of 
the death of an old friend of the Mulberry 
Club days. William Elton, an actor of some 
note in his day, was among the fifty-two 
persons drowned in the wrecking of the Pegasus 
off the Fame Islands on July 19, 1843, and 
Jerrold, Dickens and many other friends joined 
in raising a fund for his family. In an early 
number of the Uluminated Magazine Douglas 
Jerrold inserted two of Elton's "Mulberry 
Leaves," prefacing them with the following 
tribute to his friend and reminiscence of the 
Club: 



358 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

" These poems were written, sung and said by the 
late Edward William Elton, whose awful death has 
quickened public sympathy towards the children of 
the departed — the orphans of a fond, shipwrecked 
father. The lines were among the contributions of 
a society — the Mulberry Club — formed many years 
since, drawn into a circle by the name of Shakespeare. 
Of that society William Elton was an honoured and 
honouring member. Noble men had already dropped 
from that circle. The frank, cordial -hearted William 
Godwin, with an unfolding genius worthy of his 
name, was smitten by the cholera. Edward Chat- 
field, on the threshold of a painter's fame, withered 
slowly into death. And now William Elton, with 
his children left to the mercies of the world — and 
well has the world vindicated its sympathies for his 
hapless best beloved — has been called to his old 
companions. 

" The society in which the subjoined poems were 
produced is now dissolved. In its early strength it 
numbered some who, whatever may have been or 
yet may be, their success in life, cannot but look back 
to that society of kindred thoughts and sympathizing 
hopes, without a sweetened memory — without the 
touches of an old affection. My early boy-friend, 
Laman Blanchard, and Kenny Meadows, a dear 
friend, too, whose names have become musical in 
the world's ear, were of that society; of the knot of 
wise and jocund men, then unknown, but gaily 
struggling. 

" I have given a place in these pages to the following 
poems not, it will be believed, in a huckstering spirit 
to call morbid curiosity to the verses of a drowned 
actor, but as illustrative of the graceful intelligence 
of the mind of one, for whose fate the world has 
shown so just a sympathy. Poor Elton ! He was 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 359 

one of the men whose walk through Hfe is nearly 
always in the shade. Few and flickering were the 
beams upon his path ! The accident that led to the 
closing of his life was only of the same sad colour 
as his life itself. He was to have embarked in a 
vessel bound direct for London. She had sailed 
only half-an-hour before, and he stepped aboard that 
death ship, the Pegasus ! If, however, the worldly 
successes of Elton were not equal to his deserts, he 
had a refined taste, and a true love of literature — 
qualities that ' make a sunshine in a shady place,' 
diminishing the gloom of fortune. As an actor, 
Elton had not sufficient physical power to give force 
and dignity to his just conceptions. In his private 
character — and I write from a long knowledge of 
the dead — he was a man of warm affections and 
high principle ; taking the buffets of life with a 
resignation, a philosophy, that to the outdoor world 
showed nothing of the fireside wounds bleeding 
within." 

Elton was but forty-nine when he died, 
journeying homewards to his young family of 
seven children, after fulfilling a month's en- 
gagement at the Edinburgh Theatre. He 
was tragically unfortunate in his home life, 
in that having been separated from his first 
wife, his second wife went out of her mind 
after bearing five children. Poor Elton ! 
indeed. 

It was at Heme Bay that Douglas Jerrold 
set to work on that dainty imaginative piece 
of philosophical fiction — containing according 
to some critics some of the finest prose-writing 
of his time — the Chronicles of Clovernook, 



360 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

Much of this beautiful story — which began in 
the magazine for August of this year, was 
written at a time when the author was again 
racked by his old enemy rheumatism; again 
that enemy attacked his eyes, and his slight 
frame was so tortured by the disease that — a. 
man in the early prime of his life, but just 
over forty, he is said to have had to be carried 
on an arm-chair on board the boat which was 
to take him back to London. This was 
presumably in October, for to the short in- 
stalment of the story in the November number 
was appended the following note : 

" Here a sudden and sharp illness compelled the 
■writer to lay down his pen ; nor was he able to 
resume it until too late in the month to continue 
the narrative. When Louis XIV visited the death- 
bed of one of his favourites, the moribund courtier 
begged pardon for the ' ugly faces ' which the acute- 
ness of his suffering wrought in him. In the like 
spirit of contrition, a periodical writer feels that he 
ought to beg pardon of the sovereign public for being 
ill, when he is expected to be in the enjoyment of 
working health, still ' to be continued ' with the 
monthly task he has entered upon." 

The old conditions of "to be continued " 
when authors wrote from month to month as 
their copy was required did not allow of a 
man's falling ill — if he were so unfortunate as 
to do so there was an awkward break in the 
serial publication of his work. And Douglas 
Jerrold was at this time writing two serials, 
turning from the weekly instalments of the 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 361 

Story of a Feather for Punch to the Clovernook 
for the Illuminated. He had a bad bout of it 
this winter. From the middle of October until 
December the former story, nearing its close, 
had to be suspended, and then the last three 
instalments were written, while after November 
the readers of the magazine had to wait until 
March for the continuation of the Hermit of 
Belly ftille^ s account of his stay in the land 
of Turveytop. The editor's illness is touched 
upon in the following note to Henry F. Chorley, 
sending a proof of a poem in memory of Victor 
Hugo's daughter, Leopoldine, who, with her 
husband — they had been married but a few 
months — had been drowned in the Seine : 

"3, Gothic Cottages, Park Village {East), 

" Regent's Park, November 15 [1843]. 

" Dear Sir, — I herewith forward you the proof of 
your touching and beautiful verse ; which, believe 
me, I receive in the full spirit of cordiality with which 
it is offered. I have been ill — very ill — for some 
time, or should have acknowledged your kindness 
before. 

" Yours faithfully, 

" Douglas Jerrold." 

Again and again this winter was the author 
driven from his desk by illness which made 
him in appearance a far older man than he 
was in years, but even from his sickbed and 
from a darkened room he dictated some of 
his short, sharp bits for the pages of Punch, 
and, convalescent again, turned to his un- 



362 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

finished tasks with fresh zeal. In the number 
for July 1844, the Chronicles were somewhat 
abruptly terminated, and with the October 
number — the completion of the third volume — 
Douglas Jerrold ceased to edit the magazine, 
having, as we shall see, a new and more am- 
bitious project of a similar kind in view. The 
Illuminated Magazine was a capital miscellany, 
but the editor was perhaps a little too kindly 
in the acceptance of contributions somewhat 
over heavy in manner — it is a recurring story 
in the record of his editorial experiences. 
Thackeray nearly twenty years later was to 
expatiate upon the " thorns " in the cushion 
on which the editor of a popular maga- 
zine sat, and Jerrold felt them too. Neither 
was sufficiently pachydermatous for the 
position. 

A note written by Richard Hengist Home 
to Edgar Allan Poe in April 1844 indicates 
that the Illuminated was not then flourishing 
as it should. Poe's tale, it may be mentioned, 
did not appear in the magazine. 

"... I could most probably obtain the insertion 
of the Article ^ you have sent in Jerrold's Illuminated 
Magazine. Jerrold has always spoken and written 
very handsomely about me, and there would be no 
difficulty. But — I fear this magazine is not doing at 
all well. I tell you this in confidence. They have a 
large but inadequate circulation. The remuneration 
would be scarce worth having — ten guineas a sheet 
is poor pay for such a page ! And now, perhaps they 

1 A tale entitled " The Spectacles," 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 363 

do not even give that. I will see. My impression, 
however, is that for the reasons stated previously, 
I shall not at present be able to assist you in the way 
I could best wish." 

Richard Hengist Home had in the previous 
year published his remarkable epic, Orion, 
and published it at the price of one farthing ! 
As Jerrold said in a three-page review of it 
in the magazine, the author had " certainly 
taken the most efficient means for enabling 
everybody to obtain it." Though published 
at that absurd price — probably in no small 
measure because of that fact — Orion received 
some share of that attention which it indubit- 
ably deserved, and during the same year 
reached its sixth edition at the greatly en- 
hanced price of half-a-crown. At this time 
Home was engaged in preparing a series of 
studies of contemporary writers somewhat on 
the lines of Hazlitt's Spirit of the Age. Douglas 
Jerrold, who had found in Hazlitt's work 
inspiration for a dramatic squib, was himself 
to be considered as one of the authors through 
whom was expressed the New Spirit of the 
Age. 

It has been stated that Douglas Jerrold at 
times regretted that it had not when young 
been his lot to be called to the bar, but it 
must be recognized that he was scarcely fitted 
for the life of a barrister, and his constant 
gibes at the law and lawyers do not suggest 
that he would have found the work congenial. 
It was, however, possibly when called upon to 



364 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

make speeches in public that he regretted not 
having had such work as should have made 
him get over the painful nervousness that 
always attended him on the occasions when 
he had felt compelled to do so. Such a call 
came to him from Dickens, who had promised 
to take the chair at a dinner at the London 
Tavern on June 5, 1844, for the benefit of 
" the Sanatorium, or the sick house for students, 
governesses, clerks, young artists and so forth." 
*' Is your modesty a confirmed habit, or could 
you prevail upon yourself, if you are moder- 
ately well, to let me call you up for a word or 
two at the Sanatorium Dinner? There are 
some men (excellent men) connected with that 
institution who would take the very strongest 
interest in your doing so; and do advise me, 
one of these odd days, that if I can do it well 
and unaffectedly, I may." 

Early in 1844 The Story of a Feather, having 
completed its course in the pages of Punch, 
was published in volume form — the first of 
Douglas Jerrold's novels and one of an un- 
conventional character. In following the 
fortunes of an ostrich feather as told by itself 
from its arrival in this country, the author 
was enabled to tell a tender story, to delineate 
some strongly marked characters, and to 
indulge in that humorous and satiric com- 
ment on society in which lay much of his 
strength as a writer of fiction. He could rarely 
divorce his pen from a purpose over and above 
that of mere entertainment, and this perhaps 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 365 

is one reason why stories acclaimed on their 
original appearance have ceased to draw with 
readers who have becon^^e impatient with 
" purpose " rendered in imaginative work. 
It is a tender, dainty, at times serious and 
satiric story revealed in the autobiography of 
an ostrich feather, that is now worn by Kitty 
Clive, now lying in a sordid Bloomsbury 
attic. It is not necessary here to recapitulate 
that story, but the author's long connection 
with the theatre lends an interest to his 
summing up of the actor in one of the theatrical 
chapters : 

" An actor is a creature of conceit. Such is the 
reproof flung upon poor buskin. How, indeed, is it 
possible that he should escape the sweet malady? 
You take a man of average clay; you breathe in 
him a divine afflatus ; you fill him with the words of 
a poet, a wit, a humorist; he is, even when he 
knows it not, raised, sublimated by the foreign 
nature within him. Garrick enters as Macbeth. 
What a storm of shouts — what odoriferous breath in 
' bravos ' seething and melting the actor's heart ! 
Is it possible that this man, so fondled, so shouted 
to, so dandled by the world, can at bed-time take off 
the whole of Macbeth with his stockings ? He is 
always something more than David Garrick, house- 
holder in the Adelphi. He continually carries about 
him pieces of greatness not his own ; his moral self 
is encased in a harlequin's jacket — the patches of 
Parnassus. The being of the actor is multiplied, it 
is cast for a time in a hundred different moulds ; 
hence, what a puzzle and a difficulty for David to 
pick David, and nothing more than David, from the 



366 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

many runnings ! And then, an actor by his position 
takes his draughts of glory so hot and so spiced — (see, 
there are hundreds of hands holding to him smoking 
goblets !) — ^that he must, much of his time, live in a 
sweet intoxication which, forsooth, hard-thinking 
people call conceit." 

In the introduction the satire of the story is 
quaintly stressed in a defence of the ostrich 
against the legends concerning it : 

" For thousands of years my ancestors have borne 
the weight of lies upon their backs. And first, for 
the shameless scandal that the family of ostrichs 
wanted the love which even with the wasp makes 
big its parental heart towards its little ones. 

" ' The ostrich, having laid her eggs, leaves them 
to be hatched by the heat of the sun.' 

" Such is the wickedness that for tens of centuries 
has passed among men for truth, reducing the ostrich 
to a level with those hollow-hearted children of 
Adam who leave their little ones to the mercies of 
the world, to the dandling of chance, to the hard 
rearing of the poorhouse. There is Lord de Bowelless ; 
he has a rent-roll of thousands ; he is a plumed and 
jewelled peer. Look at him in his robes ; behold 
' law-maker ' written on the broad tablet of his 
comprehensive brow. He is in the House of Peers : 
the born protector of his fellowmen. How the con- 
sciousness of high function sublimates his nature ! 
He looks, and speaks, and lays his hand upon his 
breast, the invincible champion of all human suffering 
— all human truth. Turn a moment from the peer, 
and look at yonder biped. There is an old age of 
cunning cut and lined in the face of a mere youth. 
He has counted some nineteen summers, yet is his 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 367 

soul wrinkled with deceit. And wherefore ? Poor 
wretch ! His very birth brought upon her who bore 
him abuse and infamy : his first wail was to his 
mother's ear the world's audible reproach. He was 
shuffled off into the world, a thing anyway to be 
forgotten, lost, got rid of. In his very babyhood, he 
was no more to men than the young lizard that 
crawls upon a bank, and owes its nurture to the 
bounty of the elements. And so this hapless piece 
of human offal — this human ostrich deserted in its 
very shell — was hatched by wrong and accident into 
a thief, and there he stands, charged with the infamy 
of picking pockets. The world taught him nothing 
wise or virtuous, and now, most properly, will the 
world scourge him for his ignorance. 

" And thus, because man, and man alone, can with 
icy heart neglect his little ones — can leave them in 
the world's sandy desert to crawl into life as best they 
may — because a de Bowelless can suffer his natural 
baby to be swaddled in a workhouse, to eat the pap 
of pauper laws — to learn as it grows nothing but the 
readiest means of satisfying its physical instincts — 
because his Lordship can let his own boy sneak, and 
wind, and filch through life, ending life the father 
did him the deep wrong to bestow upon him, in 
deepest ignominy, because, forsooth, the human sire 
is capable of all this, he must, in the consciousness 
of his own depraved nature, libel the parental feelings 
of the affectionate ostrich ! Oh, that the slander 
could perish and for ever ! Oh, that I could pierce 
the lie to the heart ; with a feather pierce it, though 
cased in the armour of forty centuries ! 

" Again, the ostrich is libelled for his gluttony. 
Believe what is said of him, and you would not trust 
him even in the royal stables, lest he should devour 
the very shoes from the feet of the horses . Why, the 



368 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

ostrich ought to be taken as the one emblem of 
temperance. He Hves and flourishes in the desert ; 
his choicest food a bitter, spiky shrub, with a few 
stones — for how rarely can he find iron, how few the 
white days in which the poor ostrich can, in Arabia 
Petrsea, have the luxury of a tenpenny nail ? — to 
season, as with salt, his vegetable diet. And yet 
common councilman Prawns, with face purple as the 
purple grape, will call the ostrich — glutton ! " 

It was during 1843 that the system which 
gave Drury Lane and Covent Garden a strange 
monopoly in matters theatrical was at last 
repealed, a reform of which, as will have been 
gathered, Douglas Jerrold was an emphatic 
advocate. 

Mention has been made of Richard Hengist 
Home's studies of contemporary writers en- 
titled The New Spirit of the Age. It is known 
that Home received in the preparation of this 
work much helpful criticism from Elizabeth 
Barrett — three years later to marry Robert 
Browning — and therefore in this place there is 
an interest in the following passage of a letter 
which she wrote to the author while the work 
was passing through the press. Home was a 
warm admirer of Jerrold and his writings, 
while Miss Barrett's admiration, it would seem, 
was considerably qualified. When Wordsworth 
died it may be said that Jerrold expressed 
the view that if the Poet Laureateship was 
not to lapse, it would be fitting that the 
position should be given by the Queen to a 
woman, seeing that her reign was distinguished 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 369 

by so notable a poet as Elizabeth Barrett 
Browning. 

" With many thanks I return the proof. It is 
excellent indeed ; and there is a passage about 
Douglas Jerrold which is full of beauty. You will 
see marked at the beginning, where I differ from you 
on the subject of the employment of wit in satire, 
which department of poetry you certainly seem to 
overlook. All the great satirists have been ' on 
virtue's side,' or on what they took for virtues ; and 
if they sometimes struck the lash out recklessly, it 
is no argument against their having generally an 
intention. . . , Yes, the essay in this proof is excel- 
lent. Still it does strike me that you raise Douglas 
Jerrold a little above his natural level, and depreciate 
Fonblanque and Sydney Smith a little below theirs, 
by classing the three together — him, with them, I 
mean." 

In no spirit of undue partiality it may be 
said that to-day it would be but a small 
minority of readers who would, without looking 
up some work of reference, know anything at 
all of Albany de Fonblanque, who, brilliant 
as he was as a journalist, was doomed to the 
fugacity of fame that is the lot of those who 
deal, however brilliantly, with criticism of 
matters of the moment. 

During the early part of 1844 Jerrold was 
very busy with miscellaneous contributions to 
Punch, and with completing the Chronicles of 
Clovernook in the magazine he was editing, on 
the completion of which, in the July number, 
he at once set about a new series for Punch, 

VOL. 1. B B 



370 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

Encouraged by the success which had attended 
the earlier letters in which the jester had 
given his advice to his son, the author 
now started and continued to the end of 
the year a series presenting Punches Complete 
Letter Writer. 

A letter to Benjamin Webster, of the 
Haymarket Theatre, this year, refers to the 
dramatist's Time Works Wonders. 

" Boulogne-sur-Mer, 
" September 19 [1844], Rue de Maquetra. 

" My dear Sir, — I have only to-day received your 
letter with one from Lemon. From this I am induced 
to believe that what I urged in my last respecting 
the additional remuneration has come as an unex- 
pected demand upon you, and I therefore, under the 
present circumstances, waive it : the more especially, 
as from certain matters I have now in hand, I should 
not be able to complete the two -act piece for your 
present season. I am moreover of opinion that the 
piece I sent you will be susceptible of fuller effect (as, 
indeed, must all pieces of sentiment and character) 
on your stage than [that] of any larger arena. Will 
you favour me with an early line, addressed as 
above. 

" Yours truly, 

" D. Jerrold. 

" If May wood cannot be made to dovetail with 
your arrangements, I am willing that the part should 
go to Mr. Strickland." 

Some time during the autumn of this year 
Douglas Jerrold paid a visit to Scotland, and 
was present at a Burns Festival at which the 
poet's sons were entertained, but unfortunately 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 371 

no particulars of the trip are available beyond 
the two pages on the theme which he con- 
tributed to Punch. 

In the October number of the Illuminated 
Magazine Jerrold bade farewell to his readers 
in a brief note dated from " West Lodge, 
Putney Common," and resigning his office to 
his successor — who (perhaps after an interval) 
was William John Linton, the poet and en- 
graver whose wife, Mrs. Lynn Linton, was to 
be one of the most popular writers of the next 
generation. The following letter — the first 
available that was written from the home 
most memorably connected with its writer — 
addressed to Camilla Toulmin (afterwards Mrs. 
Newton Crosland) suggests that the editorship 
had not been an entirely comfortable position 
and hints at a new venture that was evidently 
then taking shape : 

" West Lodge, Putney, 

" October 10, 1844. 

" My dear Madam, — I am happy to learn that 
you have returned recruited for your work, which I 
have no doubt will bear evidence of the fresh air of 
Devon. My engagement with the magazine ended 
somewhat abruptly, but I am on perfectly good terms 
with the proprietor who, for a mere money-grubber, 
is by no means the worst of that stolid class. I feel, 
however, sensibly relieved by withdrawing from the 
work ; it kept me from higher and better labour, and 
I was constantly trammelled by indecision and ignor- 
ance. Mr. Ingram's partner thinks himself literary, 
and will I believe edit. If I can judge correctly of 
his taste, it will not long survive his intelligence. He 
has a notion that contributions are to be got for 



372 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

nothing, and so they are, and when got are worth 
exactly what is paid for them. 

I have the satisfaction of knowing that from what 
has been done much good has resulted to Thorn, but 
almost all assistance has been from the south. Scot- 
land has kept her purse -strings with a double knot in 
'em, even though it seemed that half -farthings have 
been expressly issued to tempt her liberality. I will 
send you Thom's book when I can pick it out of the 
little mountain of volumes amongst which it is at 
present buried. 

" I shall certainly bestow my tediousness upon you 
the first time I come your way, and my paternal 
duties ^ will, I presume, make the day not distant. 
We trust, also, that yourself and mamma will see us 
here in the great desert of Putney, in which I never 
breathed more freely than for months past. Now I 
have here the blessing of a large garden, out of which 
I hope to dig a book or two. 

" In two or three months I hope for the pleasure 
of again meeting you on a work under a far different 
proprietorship than that I have just quitted. With 
our remembrances to Mrs. Toulmin, believe me, 

" Yours truly, 

" Douglas Jerrold. 

*' P.S. — I trust I need not say that at any time it 
will afford me much pleasure — in so far as ' what so 
poor a man as Hamlet can do ' — to forward your 
wishes ; and therefore hope you will never hesitate 
to tell me when you think I can be in the slightest way 
useful." 

To a short-lived periodical of this autumn, 
The Stage, Jerrold contributed some brief 

1 Presumably to visit his elder daughter, Jane, who 
during this year (1844) married Henry May hew. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 373 

articles, one on The Poor Player, evidently 
informed with recollections of his father's life 
as a " stroller," and the other — inspired by 
the writer's own experiences — on Refusing a 
Part. At about this time it was announced, 
too, that " a new drama by Douglas Jerrold 
will be speedily produced at the Strand 
Theatre," but the announcement was not 
true. It may have been a misreading of the 
revival of Nell Gwynne at that theatre. Not 
yet was the dramatist to make a return to 
the stage. He was, indeed, engaged in negoti- 
ating for the production of a more ambitious 
magazine venture than the Illuminated, and 
that early in November the arrangements were 
completed may be gathered from the following 
note of November 11 to George Hodder, who 
was a reporter on the Morning Herald, and 
then engaged on his Sketches of Life and 
Character Taken at Bow Street: 

" Dear Hodder, — I arrived back last night. My 
object in now writing is that you should speak to 
Mr. H. (I forget his name), the surgeon of Sanatorium, 
telling him that I have a magazine coming out on 
January 1 (the thing is decided), and that I shall 
be very glad if he will furnish an article of the 
same nature as his last. The matter must be of the 
present day, and social in its application, 

" Yours truly, 

"D. J.'? 

Charles Dickens was away in Italy com- 
pleting a new Christmas story. The Chimes, 
and thence he wrote inviting Jerrold to the 



374 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

reading of that story and asking him to return 
afterwards to Italy : 

" Cremona, 
" Saturday Xight, Sixteenth November, 1844. 

" My dear Jerrold, — As half a loaf is better 
than no bread, so I hope that half a sheet of paper 
may be better than none at all, coming from one 
■who is anxious to live in yom: memory and friend- 
ship. I should have redeemed the pledge I gave 
you in this regard long since, but occupation at one 
time, and absence from pen and ink at another, have 
prevented me. 

" Forster has told you, or will tell you, that I very 
much -wish you to hear my little Christmas book; 
and I hope you will meet me, at his bidding, in 
Lincoln's Inn Fields. I have tried to strike a blow 
upon that part of the brass countenance of wicked 
Cant, where such a compliment is sorely needed at 
this time, and I trust that the result of my training 
is at least the exhibition of a strong desire to make 
it a staggerer. If you should think at the end of 
the four rounds (there are no more) that the said 
Cant, in the language of BelVs Life, ' comes up piping,' 
I shall be very much the better for it. 

" I am now on my way to 3Iilan ; and from thence 
(after a day or two's rest) I mean to come to England 
by the grandest Alpine pass that the snow may leave 
open. You know this place as famous of yore for 
fiddles. I don't see any here now. But there is a 
whole street of coppersmiths not far from this inn, 
and they throb so d — ably and fitfully, that I thought 
I had a palpitation of the heart after dinner just 
now, and seldom was more relieved than when I 
found the noise to be none of mine. 

" I was rather shocked yesterday (I am not strong 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 375 

in geographical details) to find that Romeo was only 
banished twenty-five miles. That is the distance bet 
tween Mantua and Verona. The latter is a quain- 
old place, with great houses m it that are now solitary 
and shut up — exactly the place it ought to be. The 
former has a great many apothecaries in it at this 
moment, who could play that part to the life. For 
of all the stagnant ponds I ever beheld, it is the 
greenest and the weediest. I went to see the old 
palace of the Capulets, which is still distinguished by 
their cognizance (a hat carved in stone on the court- 
yard wall). It is a miserable inn. The court was 
full of crazy coaches, carts, geese and pigs, and was 
ankle-deep in mud and dung. The garden is walled 
off and built out. There was nothing to connect it 
with its old inhabitants and a very unsentimental 
lady at the kitchen door. The Montagues used 
to live some two or three miles off in the country. 
It does not appear quite clear whether they ever 
inhabited Verona itself. But there is a village 
bearing their name to this day, and traditions of the 
quarrels between the two families are still as nearly 
alive as anything can be in such a drowsy neighbour- 
hood. 

" It was very hearty and good of you, Jerrold, to 
make that affectionate mention of the Carol in Punch, 
and I assure you it was not lost on the distant 
object of your manly regard, but touched him as you 
wished and meant it should. I wish we had not 
lost so much time in improving our personal know- 
ledge of each other. But I have so steadily read 
you, and so selfishly gratified myself in always ex- 
pressing the admiration with which your gallant 
truths inspired me, that I must not call it time lost, 
either. 

" You rather entertained a notion, once, of coming 



376 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

to see me at Genoa. I shall return straight, on the 
ninth of December, limiting my stay in town to the 
week. Now couldn't you come back with me ? The 
journey, that way, is very cheap, costing little more 
than twelve pounds ; and I am sure the gratification 
to you would be high. I am lodged in quite a wonder- 
ful place, and would put you in a painted room, as 
big as a church and much more comfortable. There 
are pens and ink upon the premises; orange trees, 
gardens, battledores and shuttlecocks, rousing wood- 
fires for evenings, and a welcome worth having. 

" Come ! Letter from a gentleman in Italy to 
Bradbury & Evans in London. Letter from a gentle- 
man in a country gone to sleep to a gentleman in a 
country that would go to sleep too, and never wake 
again, if some people had their way. You can work 
in Genoa. The house is used to it. It is exactly a 
week's post. Have that portmanteau looked to, and 
when we meet, say, ' I am coming.' 

" I have never in my life been so struck by any place 
as by Venice. It is the wonder of the world. Dreamy, 
beautiful, inconsistent, impossible, wicked, shadowy, 
d — ^able old place. I entered it by night, and the 
sensation of that night and the bright morning that 
followed is a part of me for the rest of my existence. 
And, oh, God ! the cells below the water, underneath 
the Bridge of Sighs ; the nook where the monk came 
at midnight to confess the political offender; the 
bench where he was strangled ; the deadly little vault 
in which they tied him in a sack, and the stealthy 
crouching little door through which they hurried him 
into a boat, and bore him away to sink him where 
no fisherman dare cast his net — ^all shown by torches 
that blink and wink, as if they were ashamed to look 
upon the gloomy theatre of sad horrors ; past and 
gone as they are, these things stir a man's blood like 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 377 

a great wrong or passion of the instant. And with 
these in their minds, and with a museum there, having 
a chamber full of such frightful instruments of torture 
as the devil in a brain fever could scarcely invent, 
there are hundreds of parrots, who will declaim to 
you in speech and print, by the hour together, on the 
degeneracy of the times in which a railroad is building 
across the water at Venice ; instead of going down on 
their knees, the drivellers, and thanking Heaven that 
they live in a time when iron makes roads, instead 
of prison bars and engines for driving screws into the 
skulls of innocent men. Before God, I could almost 
turn bloody-minded, and shoot the parrots of our 
island with as little compunction as Robinson Crusoe 
shot the parrots in his. 

" I have not been in bed these ten days, after five 
in the morning, and have been travelling many hours 
every day. If this be the cause of my inflicting a 
very stupid and sleepy letter on you, my dear Jerrold, 
I hope it will be a kind of signal at the same time, of 
my wish to hail you lovingly even from this sleepy 
and unpromising state. And believe me as I am, 
" Always your Friend and Admirer." 

To Forster Dickens had already written with 
reference to the party which he wished brought 
together for the reading. " I know you have 
consented to the party. Let me see. Don't 
have any one, this particular night to dinner, 
but let it be a summons for the special purpose 
at half-past six. Carlyle, indispensable, and I 
should like his wife of all things : her judgment 
would be invaluable. You will ask Mac[lise] 
and why not his sister? Stanny and Jerrold 
I should particularly wish. Edwin Landseer; 



378 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

Blanchard ; perhaps Harness ; and what say 
you to Fonblanque and Fox? I leave it to 
you. You know the effect I want to try." 
Dickens returned, and the reading duly took 
place on December 2 at Forster's room in 
58, Lincoln's Inn Fields. Not all those whom 
the novelist named were present, but from 
Maclise's remarkable sketch it is to be seen 
that those who attended were — besides the 
novelist, the host, and the artist, Thomas 
Carlyle, Laman Blanchard, Douglas Jerrold, 
Frederick Dickens, Clarkson Stanfield, Alex- 
ander Dyce, the Rev. William Harness, and 
W. J. Fox. The meeting is described fully in 
Forster's life of Dickens. 

Before the close of the year Jerrold's new 
magazine was announced to commence at the 
beginning of 1845 — announced in a prospectus 
which is so characteristic of the writer's con- 
stant purpose that no apology is necessary for 
giving it in its entirety. The title fixed upon 
for the periodical is of itself sufficient indica- 
tion of the popularity which the author had 
won. Already Thomas Hood — nearing the 
close of his brave life — had started Hood's 
Magazine, using the editor's name as trade- 
mark instead of the publisher's as in the old 
style, and Douglas Jerrold's Shilling Magazine 
was a further recognition of the fact that writers 
as well as publishers not only had something 
to do with such miscellanies, but might have 
names that had a label- value in the eyes of the 
reading public. The prospectus ran : 



DOUGLAS JERROLD 379 

"It is intended that this Work shall be mainly 
devoted to a consideration of the social wants and 
rightful claims of the People; that it shall appeal 
to the hearts of the Masses of England. 

" With no expectation or wish to conflict with or 
supplant any present publication, it is believed that 
a Work popularly addressed to the sympathies and 
common sense of the kingdom, must make for itself 
a large and hitherto unoccupied sphere of instruction, 
amusement, and utility. 

" It is our belief that the present epoch is pregnant 
with more human interest than any previous era ; as 
it is also our faith that the present social contest, if 
carried out on all sides with ' conscience and tender 
heart,' must end in a more equitable allotment of the 
good provided for all men. To aid, however humbly, 
in this righteous and bloodless struggle is a truer, a 
more grateful glory, than any glory blatant in gazettes. 
And an aroused Spirit begins to feel this. Awakening 
from a long, vain dream, that showed the many 
created only to minister to the few, the said Spirit 
believes — or says it believes — in the universality of 
the human heart. Hence, it vindicates a common 
right of happiness : hence, in its new tenderness, it 
even ' babbles o' green fields ' for the health and 
healthful thoughts of the people. So much the 
better. 

" With Politics — as Party Politics — ^we meddle not. 
The day is happily gone by when Parties — like foul- 
mouthed vixens — assailed each other with unseemly 
epithets, that mutual abuse might hide mutual cor- 
ruption and infirmity. We shall deal with Politics 
only in their social relation, as operating for the good 
or evil of the community. Whig and Tory — Con- 
servative and Radical — will be no more to us than 
the names of extinct genera. 



380 DOUGLAS JERROLD 

" It will be our chief object to make every essay — 
however brief, and however light and familiar its 
treatment — breathe with a Purpose. Experience of 
wider success, and more comprehensive application 
than have heretofore been enjoyed by any Weekly 
Periodical, assures us that, especially at the present 
day, it is by a defined purpose alone, whether significant 
in twenty pages or twenty lines, that the sympathies 
of the world are to be engaged, and its support 
ensured. 

" It will also be our aim to make every page 
exclusively British in its subject, possessing either a 
present vital interest or tending to the future. 

" Whilst dealing with the highest social claims of 
our countrymen, we shall not exclude from our 
pages either Sketch of Character — Tale — History — or 
Romance. Far otherwise. It will be our earnest 
desire to avail ourselves of all and every variety of 
literature, ij illustrating and working out some whole- 
some principle. Mere stories, made like Twelfth- 
night heroes, of mere sugar, we shall certainly eschew. 

" Neither would we have the ' light reader ' take 
alarm at our graver subjects. They, too, it is hoped, 
may be discussed with no very violent call upon his 
wakefulness. It is not necessary that such themes — 
like bullets — should be cast in lead to do the surest 
service. 

" In this address we have aimed at brevity. Could 
we have delivered our intentions in one twentieth part 
of the space, most willingly would we have done so. 
As it is, we have left much unsaid, which our First 
Number must endeavour to say for us." 

END OF VOL. I. 



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