Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-11-09 00:00:00

THE N ORTIIERN TIMES.=-LIVERPOOL, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 0

THE LATE MR. DOUGLAS JERROLD.

(From the Atlantic Monthly, a new American Magazine.)
Douglas William Jerrold was, I take it, of South Saxon
ancestry, He was the son of a country manager, named
Samuel Jerrold, and was born in London on the 3rd of
January, 1803. His father W,14 for a long time managi rof
the Seaport theatres of Sheerness and Southend, which stand
opposite each other just where the Thames becomes the sea.
Deuelas spent more of his boyhood therefore about the sea-
coast, in the midst of a life that was doubly eramatic—
dramatic as real, and dramatic as theatrical. There were sea,
ships, sai'oss, tyisoners, the hum of was, the uproar of seaport
life on one hand ; on the other, the queer, rough, fairy world
(to hi n at once fairy world and home world) of the theatre.
It was a position to awaken peecociously, one would think,
the feelings of the quick-eyed, and quick hearted lad. No
wonder he took the sea fever to which all our blood is liable,
and tried a bout of naval life. At eleven years of ago he
became a middy, amd served a short time—not two years in all
—in a vessel stationed in the North Sea. Naval life was a
rough affair in those days. Jerrold'a most r merkable
experience seems to have been bringing over the wounded of
Waterloo from Belgium ; which stamped on his mind a sense
of the holsters of war that never left, him, but is marked on h:s
writings everywhere, in spite of a certain combative turn and
an admiration of heroes which a'sa belonged to him. To the
lae, ho had an interest in sea matters, and spoke with
enthusiasm of Lord Nelson. But the literary use he made of
his nautical experience was with Black-eyed Susan." He
was a boy when he came ashore, and threw himself on the
very different sea of Lend ; and it is the influence of
London that is mast perceptible in his mature works. Here
his work was done, his battles fought, his mind formed; and
you may observe in his writings a certain romantic and ideal
way of speaking of the country, which shows that to him it
was a place of retreat and luxury, rather than of sober, practical
living. This is net u icomenea with literary men wheats lot
has been cast in a great city, if 'hey possess, as Jerrold did,
that p s tic temperament which is alive to natural beauty. He
now became an apprentice in a printing office, and went
through the ordinary course of a printer's life. He felt
genius stirtiog in hitn, and strove for the knowledge to give it
now ish men', and the field to give it exercise. Ile read and
wro e, as well as worked and to ked, It would be a task for
antiquarian research to recover his very eariiest lucubrations
scattered among the ephemeral periodicals of that day.
Plays of his might be dug out, whose very naraes are
unknown to his most intimate friends. He scat ered
his early fruit far an 1 wide—getting little from the
world, in exeliacge. Literature was then a harder struggle
than lit our Jays. Jerrold did not know the successful men
who presided over it. He hal no patrons; an -I he Intl but
few friends. The isolat on and poverty in which ho formed
his mital and style deepened the pscu'iarity which was a char- ,
actoristic of them. They gave to his genius that intense and
eccentric character which it has; and no doubt (for Fortune
has a way of compensating) the child they breathed on the
fruits of his young nature enriched their ripeness, as a touch of
frog does with plume The grapes from which Tofu.), is made
are left hanging even when the snow is o:r th tm ;--all the
better for Tokay His youth, then, was a long and hard
struggle to get bread in exchange for wit :—; struggle
like that of the poor gir a who sell violets in the street.
Ile wan wont to talk of these easly days very feeely,—
passionately, even to tears, when he go; excited,—and always
bravely, heartily, and with the right " moral "to follow.
When Diderot had passed a whole day without bread, he
vowed that if he Ever get prosperous, he would save any fellow
creature that he c iuld from such suffering. Jeri-Wel had
learned the 82.1373 lesson. Through life, he tolls the side of the
poor arid weak. ft was the secret at ones of his philosophy and
his politics. He got endless abuse for his eternal tirades
against the great and the " respec,able,"—aga'n et big-wigs of
every size and shape. But the critics who a tacked him for
thia nega ive pole of his character overlooked the
pesitiv3 ono. He had kindness aid sympathy metre ; but he
a'ways gave them first to those who wanted them most. And
as humorist and satirist he li td a na ural tendency to attack
power—to p'ay Pasquin agniest the world's Pope. ,In fact,
his radicalism was that of a huruoii t He never adopted the
utilitarian, or, as it was called " philosophical," radicalism
which was so fashionable in his younger days ; not indeed the
continental radicalism hel f by a party in England ; bat was an
independent kind of warrior, fighting under his own bauner,
and always rather with the weapons of a man of letters than
those of a politician. For the business aspect of politics he
never showed any predilection from first to last,
Well, then—picture him to yourself, realer, a small
delicate youth, with fair prominent features—long
thin hair,—keen, eager, largo blue eyes, glancing out
from right
.to left, as he walks the streets of Babyloc,—and
seizing with a quick impulsiveness every feeling of the hour,
Still young, and very young, he was married fur love. He is
living is a cottage or villakin on the ouskirts of town, where
there is just a peep of green to keep one's feelings fresh ; and
he is writing for the stage. It is hard work, and sometim's
the dun is at the door, and contact is inevia;ble with men rah°
don's understand the otecious jewel he_weareth in Isla head._
sundays he sallies forth far iu al air with a little knot oft
friends, and the tails is of art, and letters, and the world. So I
quick and keen ea nature as his had immense buoyancy in
Nay, for the very dun young Douglas had an epigram,—asli
bright, but not as welcome, as a sovereign. A saving of those
early days has found its wry into a comedy,—but not the less
belongs to his authentic biography. A threatening attorney
shakes his fist at the villakin where at the window the wit is
parleying with him, '• I'll put a man in the house, Sir !"
" Couldn't y ,u," says Douglas, (end of course the right-minded
reader is shocked,) " couldn't you make it a woman !"
What a scandalous way to treat a man of business Between
Douglas and the lawyers, for many yearn, there Was open war.
He was a kind of Robin Hood to these reptesentatives of tho
Crown,—adopting the plucky and defiant gaiety of the old
outlaw, and shooting keen arrows at them with a bow that
never grew weak. A wit wi h a mission,—this was the position
of Douglas in the last y :ars of his life. Accordingly he was
a little ashamed of the immense success of the "Caudle
Lectures,"—the fame of which I remember being bruited
about the Mediterranean in 1843,—and which, as social dr ell-
cries, met nations lauehieg. Douglas took their celebrity rather
sulkily He did not like to be talked of as a funny man.
However, they just hit the reading English,l—always domestic
in their literary as in their other tastes,—and so helped to
establi,h Punch and to diffuse Jerrold's name. He began
now to be a power in popu'ar literature; and coming to be
associate! wi h the liberal side of Punch, especially, the
Radicals throughout Britain hailed him as a chief. Hence, in
due course, his newspaper and Isis rnaenzine,--both of which
might have been permanently successful establishments, had
his genius for business borne airy proportion to his genius for
literature. This, however, was by no manner of means the
case. His nature was altogether that of a literary man and
artist. lle could not speak in public. He could not manage
money matters. He could only write and talk,—and these
rather as a kind of inzprovvissatore than as a steady, reading
bookish man, like a Macintosh or a M icaulay. His politics
partook of this charac er, and I always used to think that it
*as a queer destiny which male him a Radical teacher. The
Radical literature of I nglaud is, with few exceptions, of a
prosaic character. The most funotis school of Radicalism is '
utilitarian and systematic. Douglas was, emphatically, neither
Ile was impulsive, eppigramme•ic, sentimental. He desired
gaily against an institution, like a pleader at a bull. He never '
sat down like the regular workers of hie party, to calculate the
expenses of monarchy or the extravagance of the civil list.
He had no notion of any sort of economy." The first thing
that struck you was his extreme readiness in conversaioe.
Be gave the electric spark whenever you put your knuakie to
Th first time I called on him ie his house at Pwnev,
fotted himsipping claret, We talked of a cer-
tain dull fell iw those wealth male him prominent at that
time, '' Yes," said Jerre! ', drawing his finger round the edge
of his wineglass, tin's the range of his intellect,—only it
had never anything half so go el in it." I quote this merely
as one of the average bons nso!s which ne isle the small change
of his ordinary conver a ion. He would pun, too, in talk,
which he scarcely ever did in writing. Tints ho extemporised
as an epitaph fur his iend Charles Knight, Good Night !"
When Mrs. Glover complained that her hair was turning grey
--from using essence ef lavinder (as she said)—he a ked her
" whether it wasn't essence of yme ?" On the ecca ion of
starting a c rnvivial dab (he was very fond of such clubs),
tornebody proposed that it should consist of twelve members,
arid be called " The Z ethic," member to be named after a
sign. '• And what shall I be?" inquired a somewhat solemn
man, who feared that they were filled up. "Oh, we'll bring
you in as the weight in Libra," was the instant remark of
Vouglas. A noisy fellow had beg interrupted a company in
which he was. At last the bore said of a certain tune, "It
carries me away with i'." " For God's sake," said J. rrold,
let somebody whistle ii."

" I have had such a curious dinner said C. " Calves tails."
"Extremes meet," Douglas said instantly.
Lie admired Carlyle ; but objected that he did not give
definite suggestions for the improvement of the age which he
rebuked. " Here," said he, "is a man who beats a big drum
uader my windows, and whea I come running down-stairs has
nowhere for me to go."
A wild Republican said profanely, that Louis Blanc was
" next to Jesus Christ." "On which side ?" asked the wit.
Pretty Miss —, the actrt es, being mentioned, he praised
her early beauty. "She was a lovely little thing," he said,
" when she was a bud, and "—(a pluse)—" before she was a
Rouen'." This was in a mei ty vein, and the serious r,ader
must forgive me.

lie called a small, thin London litterateur of his acquain-
tance,'" a pin without the head or the point."
When a plain, not to say ugly, gentlemen intimated his
intention of being godfather to somebody's child,Jerrold begged
him not to give the youngster his "mug."
A dedication to him being spoken of, "Ah!" said be with
mock gravity, '‘ that's an awful power that
----- in his
hands."

Carlyle and a much inferior man being coupled by Immo