“Douglas Jerrold.”
“W. H. Harrison, Esq.”
Beyond the fact that they both deal with the tradition of Shakespeare’s deer-stealing escapade and departure from Stratford-on-Avon, there is but little similarity between Douglas Jerrold’s brief essay and Landor’s much longer work. With reference to Shakespeare in China it may be of interest to point out—the author in satirising his fellow countryman later used the fiction of describing English characters from the Chinese point of view in Punch of May 25th, 1844.
If the first few essays testify to the author’s loving homage to Shakespeare, others in no uncertain voice proclaim his political radicalism, his detestation of war, and his sense of the truth that man’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn. In Recollections of Guy Fawkes the references to the Isle of Sheppy “some five and twenty years ago” are reminiscences of Jerrold’s boyhood at Sheerness. The pleasant little homily on human consistency, The Manager’s Pig, is said to have been founded in fact; the manager in question being Davidge of the Coburg Theatre, to whom Jerrold was for a time “household author” at a weekly salary. The series of Cat-and-Fiddle Moralities so auspiciously begun with The Tale of a Tiger was not pursued any further. The Drill Sergeant and The Greenwich Pensioner formed part of a series of Full Lengths, contributed to the Monthly Magazine in 1826-7; there were at least six of them, but as I have not been able to consult a complete set of the magazine, I have only been able to trace three—the two given and one on The Ship Clergyman.
In the closing item of this collection we have a satiric essay of a sort, which seems to have been in the air at the time; it was published originally in 1839 with illustrations by Phiz, at the same time that Thackeray by contributing his Catherine to Fraser’s was also seeking to discredit “the Newgate school” of fiction. Later, in Punch, Douglas Jerrold reverted to the “Newgate novel-mongers,” mentioning them as still a power, and showing that satire had not stopped the demand for their productions; and in one of the most popular of his comedies a character is made to say, “When I was young, girls used to read Pilgrim’s Progress, Jeremy Taylor, and such books of innocence; now, young ladies know the ways of Newgate as well as the turnkeys. Then, books gave girls hearty, healthy food; now, silly things, like larks in cages, they live upon hemp-seed.”
W. J.
SHAKESPEARE AT CHARLECOTE PARK
It was a fine May morning when the bailiff of Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlecote, attended by some half-dozen serving men, rode quickly through the streets of Stratford, and halted at the abode of his worship the Mayor. The children in the street stood mute, and stared; gossips ran to door and casement; Thrums, the tailor, mechanically twitched off his cap, and for a moment forgot the new bridal jerkin of Martin Lapworth, the turner, of Henley Street; John-a-Combe, the thrifty money-scrivener, startled from a sum of arithmetic, watched the horsemen with peering eyes and open mouth; and every face expressed astonishment and surmise as the horses’ hoofs tore up the road, and the arms of the riders rang and clattered; and their visages, burly and glowing, showed as of men bearing mighty tidings. Had a thunderbolt fallen in the market-place, it could not more suddenly have broken the tranquillity of Stratford than had the sudden visit of Sir Thomas Lucy’s retainers. Every one pressed to the Mayor’s house to learn the tidings, and in a brief time one, taking up the fears of his neighbour for the truth, told an inquiring third that the swarthy Spaniard, with a thousand ships, had entered the Thames; that her gracious highness the Queen was a close prisoner in the Tower, and that the damnable papists had carried the host through the city, and had performed High Mass in the Abbey of Westminster. This rumour was opposed by another, averring that the Queen had drunk poison in a quart of sherris (a beverage much loved by her highness)—whilst a fourth story told of her private marriage with the Master of the Horse. Great wonderment followed on each tale. Some vowed they would never be brought to speak Spanish, others religiously called for fire upon all Catholics—whilst more than one good housewife hoped that in all reasonable time her Majesty would bring forth a prince. Stratford was the very court-place for rumour; old, yellow Avon paused in his course, astonished at the hum and buzz that came with every wind.