LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

“The two flasks were in brief time emptied” (The Wine Cellar)[Photogravure Frontispiece]
PAGE
Headpiece to Contents[v]
Tailpiece to Contents[vi]
Headpiece to List of Illustrations[vii]
Headpiece to Shakespeare at Charlecote Park[1]
Tailpiece to Shakespeare at Charlecote Park[6]
Headpiece to Shakespeare at “Bank-Side”[7]
Tailpiece to Shakespeare at “Bank-Side”[12]
Headpiece to The Epitaph of Sir Hugh Evans[13]
“One who would have added weight and dignity to the ceremony”[17]
Headpiece to Bully Bottom’s Babes[22]
Tailpiece to Bully Bottom’s Babes[27]
Headpiece to Shakespeare in China[28]
“Became wise by poring on his book”[34]
Tailpiece to Shakespeare in China[38]
Headpiece to Solomon’s Ape[39]
“Cast him down a ripe pomegranate”[43]
Tailpiece to Solomon’s Ape[45]
Headpiece to The Castle Builders of Padua[46]
Headpiece to The Tapestry Weaver of Beauvais[50]
Tailpiece to The Tapestry Weaver of Beauvais[57]
Headpiece to The Wine Cellar: A “Morality”[58]
Tailpiece to The Wine Cellar: A “Morality”[66]
Headpiece to Recollections of Guy Fawkes[67]
“Rejoicing in the captivity of a suit of clothes stuffed with hay”[70]
Tailpiece to Recollections of Guy Fawkes[74]
Headpiece to Elizabeth and Victoria[75]
“Rank ... preached its high prerogative from externals”[80]
“Hangman’s surgery”[83]
Headpiece to The Little Great and the Great Little[90]
Tailpiece to The Little Great and the Great Little[94]
Headpiece to The Manager’s Pig[95]
Tailpiece to The Manager’s Pig[102]
Headpiece to Some Account of a Stage Devil[103]
“Would solace the child by playing upon a diabolic fiddle”[113]
Tailpiece to Some Account of a Stage Devil[120]
Headpiece to Fireside Saints[121]
Tailpiece to Fireside Saints[126]
Headpiece to Cat-and-Fiddle Moralities: The Tale of a Tiger[127]
“Almost for two whole days did the tiger sleep”[135]
Tailpiece to Cat-and-Fiddle Moralities: The Tale of a Tiger[139]
Headpiece to A Gossip at Reculvers[140]
“Sugar from even the sweeter lips of lady mistress”[143]
Tailpiece to A Gossip at Reculvers[149]
Headpiece to The Two Windows[150]
Headpiece to The Order of Poverty[154]
“He has dreamed away his life upon a hillside”[164]
Tailpiece to The Order of Poverty[165]
Headpiece to The Old Man at the Gate[166]
Headpiece to The Folly of the Sword[171]
“Hodge, poor fellow, enlists”[175]
Tailpiece to The Folly of the Sword[180]
Headpiece to The Greenwich Pensioner[181]
Tailpiece to The Greenwich Pensioner[188]
Headpiece to The Drill Sergeant[189]
“He is, indeed, unbent”[195]
Headpiece to The Handbook of Swindling[199]
“Politely receives his destroyer”[233]
“Any one of these names may be ... confidently given in to the night constable”[246]
“Other worthies laboured on horseback”[256]

INTRODUCTION

Much of Douglas Jerrold’s writing took essay form although he only applied the title to five short pieces which were added as Essays to The Chronicles of Clovernook in 1846. Those five pieces are included in this volume along with others from his collected works, and from among those scattered contributions to periodicals which have been brought together at various times since his death.

Born in London on January 3rd, 1803, Douglas William Jerrold was the youngest son of a theatrical manager then of the Kent circuit. His baby years were passed at Cranbrook, his childhood at Sheerness, and then, not having quite attained the mature age of eleven, he was entered as a first-class volunteer on board the Namur, guardship at the Nore, on December 22, 1813. Here in the ship’s school his education was continued, and here the midshipman was allowed privileges dear to the boyish heart; he was permitted to keep pigeons, and not the least of his privileges was the being permitted the use of the captain’s collection of books—that captain, it is pleasant to recall, being a brother of Jane Austen. About fifteen months after joining the Namur he was transferred to the brig Ernest, engaged in convoying transports and in bringing home wounded soldiers from the Continent. Then came Waterloo and Peace. In October 1815 the Ernest was paid off and the boy-officer returned to civil life. At the end of the year the Jerrold family left Sheerness for London, and Douglas made a new start as printer’s apprentice, and perseveringly pursued a rigorous plan of self-education. Then he began writing verses and plays, and when he was eighteen his first piece was represented on the stage. Play-writing and slight journalism were combined with the compositor’s work for a few years before, throwing aside the composing stick, he relied entirely on the pen. Numerous plays—of many of which nothing beyond the names is now recoverable—were written before Douglas Jerrold made his “hit” with Black-eyed Susan in 1829. Thenceforward he was a busy playwright and a constant contributor to the magazines, annuals and newspapers. In 1841 the advent of Punch introduced him to a medium peculiarly suited to his genius, and to that periodical he contributed his most popular work, Mrs Caudle’s Curtain Lectures, and one of his best novels, The Story of a Feather. To the Illuminated Magazine (1843-4) and Douglas Jerrold’s Shilling Magazine (1845-8), both of which he edited, he contributed many characteristic essays and stories, but later he devoted himself more particularly to political writing as editor of Douglas Jerrold’s Weekly Newspaper (1846-8), and of Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper (1852-7). He died on June 8th, 1857.

We have heard much within recent years for and against fiction “with a purpose,” as though this was some new literary manifestation. Among the best remembered writers of the early Victorian era are just those who had a purpose other than that of merely amusing their readers—Thackeray and Dickens are of course the two most striking examples. The author’s purpose is often the salt not only flavouring his work for immediate contemporaries, but also preserving it for future readers. That with Douglas Jerrold this purpose counted for much we have his own words to show. Prefacing one of his serial ventures he said: “It will be our chief object to make every essay—however brief, and however light and familiar in its treatment—breathe with a purpose. Experience assures us that, especially at the present day, it is by a defined purpose alone, whether significant in twenty pages or in twenty lines, that the sympathies of the world are to be engaged, and its support insured.” That this conviction was at the back of the greater part of Douglas Jerrold’s writings no student of his work can fail to recognise. The fact is perhaps answerable for much of his work having enjoyed but a temporary popularity, for there are two ways of writing “with a purpose”—the first the topical or journalistic way, and the second the general or more philosophical. Yet if Douglas Jerrold expended himself to a considerable extent over the particular, he by no means neglected the general, of which there is abundant testimony in this volume, as well as in St Giles and St James, The Story of a Feather, Punch’s Letters, and that little book of golden philosophy, The Chronicles of Clovernook.

The essays collected into this volume are, as has been hinted, from various sources; the earliest dates from the late ’twenties, the latest from the last year of the author’s life. No attempt has been made to place them chronologically. It has seemed well to keep the five Shakespearean essays together, representing as they do a life-long interest of their author’s. In the early ’thirties Douglas Jerrold and a number of other young Shakespeare enthusiasts—William Godwin the Younger, Laman Blanchard, Kenny Meadows, etc.—formed the Mulberry Club, at the gatherings of which essays and verses were read by the members; some certainly of the following papers formed part of the club’s “Mulberry Leaves,” as also did the same writer’s song on Shakespeare’s Crab Tree, a song which may be quoted here, as it is not widely known, to complete Jerrold’s “leaves.”

To Shakespeare’s mighty line

Let’s drink with heart and soul;