Then came "The Female Robinson Crusoe," and the last (modified) success, "Twelve Fireside Saints;" but outside undertakings were almost monopolising his attention. His "Weekly Newspaper," founded on the strength of his "Q Papers," had been born and was already dead. His powerful novel "A Man Made of Money" made his next unqualified success; then in 1850 he became attached to the "Examiner," and two years later "Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper" brought him an editorship and a thousand pounds a year—and he knew at last, and for the first time, the meaning of freedom from care. He became, moreover, independent of the publishers of Punch, to whom he was pecuniarily indebted, although they had more than once raised his salary (once in order to enable him to dispense with working for the "Pictorial Times"); but his indebtedness he felt as a tie, which was none the less irksome that it was a golden fetter which bound him to his friends. Still, to the end he sent in his satires, couplets, and epigrams—stinging, brilliant, and original—jokes and sarcasms by the score, but extremely few puns.
Sometimes, reviving the memories of his early trade, he would enter the compositors' room, and, while waiting for a proof, would seize a "stick," set up some concluding lines or a fresh paragraph in type, and even make his own corrections in proof, almost driving the "reader" out of his mind, until he learned how the corrections and additions had been effected.
That Jerrold's wit ran in a higher groove than mere verbal quips and cranks is proved by the retorts and epigrams that have been preserved and ticketed in cases like a collection of brilliant butterflies. When one March or April he tumbled backwards into water where, but for the unseasonable weather, no water ought to have been, he suggested that the accident was "owing to the backward spring;" reminding us of that similar witticism of Henry Compton's, when fine hot weather followed suddenly on March snows—"We have jumped from winter to summer without a spring." His reply was characteristic to the poet Héraud's enquiry as to whether he had seen his "Descent into Hell" (then newly published)—"I wish to Heaven I had;" together with his well-known retort to Albert Smith, who, before he left the paper, protested coaxingly against Jerrold's merciless chaff, adding, "After all, you know, we row in the same boat." "True," answered Jerrold, quick as thought, "but not with the same skulls."
But he did not always come off scot-free; and, like many a wit whose tongue is feared, he could be silenced by a well-directed thrust which, for want of practice and experience in defence, he knew not how to parry. Mr. Charles Williams tells me the story, recounted to him by Thackeray, of how, when one wet night they were all at a little oyster-shop then facing the Strand Theatre, the barmaid Jane, thoroughly out of humour at Jerrold's chaff, slapped down before the little man the liquor he had ordered, with the words, "There's your grog and take care you don't drown yourself;" with the effect of damping his spirits for the rest of the night. When Alfred Bunn retaliated with "A Word with Punch,"[39] Jerrold made no reply, to the astonished delight of the rival press. No man had greater courage than he; but he probably found that he had nothing more to say, seeing that from week to week for years past he had written against Bunn all he knew or could think of. And when Shirley Brooks struck at him in "The Man in the Moon" in the course of a mock election-address beginning—"I hate the humbug of the 'wrongs of the poor man' class of writing when any sneaking rascal is found poaching and punished for it"—Jerrold held his peace, and in due time voted to have the damaging assailant invited to join Punch's Staff. Mrs. Landells, without straining their friendship, called him "the little wasp" to his face; but, as Leigh Hunt more justly said, if he had the sting of the bee, he also had the honey. When Jerrold said in his wife's presence that a man ought to be able to change a spouse like a bank-note—change one of forty for two of twenty—he indulged in kindly chaff which she well understood and could appreciate; and when, on the occasion of a party at their house, he replied to a question as to who was dancing with his wife, "Oh, a member of the Humane Society, I suppose," she had no objection to Leech making it into a picture for Punch's pages. When Jerrold said anything witty he would always laugh frankly and unreservedly at it, and, like Dickens, he would burst out laughing as he wrote, when he struck upon a comic idea for Punch.
The report that Mark Lemon said of Douglas Jerrold that "he was doubtless considered caustic because he blackened every character he touched" is probably apocryphal—though Jerrold's occasional treatment of Lemon might perhaps have justified some sort of retaliation from his genial Editor. Still, it was Jerrold's firm belief, as he declared to Mr. Sidney Cooper, R.A., that he had never in his life said or written a bitter thing of anyone who did not deserve it. But when he was on his death-bed, the day before he died, he sent a last affectionate message to his old comrades at the Table: "Tell the dear boys that if I've ever wounded any of them, I've always loved them." Horace Mayhew was with him when he passed away, and thence from the bedside brought the dead man's love to them as a token to wipe out the sting of words which, if they had not been forgotten, had been forgiven long ago.
After 1848 Jerrold wrote less and less for Punch; but until 1857, the year of his death, he faithfully attended at the Table, and exerted himself in Punch's behalf. And when he died—the greatest blow Punch had hitherto suffered by death (for Dr. Maginn was never on the Staff)—Henry Mayhew (his son-in-law), Thackeray, Horace Mayhew, Mark Lemon, and W. Bradbury were his pall-bearers, and Leech, Shirley Brooks, Tom Taylor, John Oxenford, Percival Leigh, James Hannay, Landells, Kenny Meadows, Albert Smith, and John Tenniel attended at his graveside. Dickens took a prominent part in raising a fund for the benefit of the widow, and with Thackeray and Dr. W. H. (now Sir William) Russell gave readings, while Dickens' Amateurs made a public appearance, and T. P. Cooke returned to the stage for the occasion—with a result amounting to £2,000. Tom Taylor's feeling address, which was spoken at the Adelphi Theatre by Albert Smith, between whom and Jerrold a kindlier feeling had latterly sprung up, concluded thus:—
"... If one joy
From earth can reach souls freed from earth's alloy,
'Tis sure the joy to know kind hands are here
Drying the widow's and the orphan's tear;
Helping them gently o'er lone life's rough ways,
Sending what light may be to darkling days—
A better service than to hang with verse,
As our forefathers did, the poet's hearse.
Two things our Jerrold left, by death removed—
The works he wrought: the family he loved.
The first to-night you honour; honouring these,
You lend your aid to give the others ease."