Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures

by Douglas William Jerrold

Hence, for all future time, the porker behaves himself with a sort of forced propriety - for in either nostril he carries a ring. It is, for the greatness of humanity, a saddening thought, that sometimes men must be treated no better than pigs.

But Mr. Job Caudle was not of these men. Marriage to him was not made a necessity. No; for him call it if you will a happy chance - a golden accident. It is, however, enough for us to know that he was married; and was therefore made the recipient of a wife’s wisdom. Mrs. Caudle, like Mahomet’s dove, continually pecked at the good man’s ears; and it is a happiness to learn from what he left behind that he had hived all her sayings in his brain; and further, that he employed the mellow evening of his life to put such sayings down, that, in due season, they might be enshrined in imperishable type.

When Mr. Job Caudle was left in this briary world without his daily guide and nocturnal monitress, he was in the ripe fulness of fifty-seven. For three hours at least after he went to bed - such slaves are we to habit - he could not close an eye. His wife still talked at his side. True it was, she was dead and decently interred. His mind - it was a comfort to know it - could not wander on this point; this he knew. Nevertheless, his wife was with him. The Ghost of her Tongue still talked as in the life; and again and again did Job Caudle hear the monitions of bygone years. At times, so loud, so lively, so real were the sounds, that Job, with a cold chill, doubted if he were really widowed. And then, with the movement of an arm, a foot, he would assure himself that he was alone in his holland. Nevertheless, the talk continued. It was terrible to be thus haunted by a voice: to have advice, commands, remonstrance, all sorts of saws and adages still poured upon him, and no visible wife. Now did the voice speak from the curtains; now from the tester; and now did it whisper to Job from the very pillow that he pressed. “It’s a dreadful thing that her tongue should walk in this manner,” said Job, and then he thought confusedly of exorcism, or at least of counsel from the parish priest.

Whether Job followed his own brain, or the wise direction of another, we know not. But he resolved every night to commit to paper one curtain lecture of his late wife. The employment would, possibly, lay the ghost that haunted him. It was her dear tongue that cried for justice, and when thus satisfied, it might possibly rest in quiet. And so it happened. Job faithfully chronicled all his late wife’s lectures; the ghost of her tongue was thenceforth silent, and Job slept all his after nights in peace.

When Job died, a small packet of papers was found inscribed as follows:-

“Curtain Lectures delivered in the course of Thirty Years by Mrs. Margaret Caudle, and suffered by Job, her Husband.”

That Mr. Caudle had his eye upon the future printer, is made pretty probable by the fact that in most places he had affixed the text - such text for the most part arising out of his own daily conduct - to the lecture of the night. He had also, with an instinctive knowledge of the dignity of literature, left a bank-note of very fair amount with the manuscript. Following our duty as editor, we trust we have done justice to both documents.

LECTURE I - MR. CAUDLE HAS LENT FIVE POUNDS TO A FRIEND

“You ought to be very rich, Mr. Caudle. I wonder who’d lend you five pounds? But so it is: a wife may work and may slave! Ha, dear! the many things that might have been done with five pounds. As if people picked up money in the street! But you always were a fool, Mr. Caudle! I’ve wanted a black satin gown these three years, and that five pounds would have entirely bought it. But it’s no matter how I go, - not at all. Everybody says I don’t dress as becomes your wife - and I don’t; but what’s that to you, Mr. Caudle? Nothing. Oh, no! you can have fine feelings for everybody but those belonging to you. I wish people knew you, as I do - that’s all. You like to be called liberal - and your poor family pays for it.

“All the girls want bonnets, and where they’re to come from I can’t tell. Half five pounds would have bought ’em - but now they must go without. Of course, they belong to you: and anybody but your own flesh and body, Mr. Caudle!