Vizetelly has recorded how Thackeray would tear the postal-wrapper nervously from the newly-delivered Punch in order to "see what Master Douglas has to say this week"—(there is a world of dislike and scorn in that courtesy-title of "Master")—and how, when he gave a lunch in honour of the French humorous draughtsman "Cham," he invited "Big" Higgins, Tom Taylor, Richard Doyle, and Leech, all Punch men, to meet him, but neither Mark Lemon nor Jerrold, for "Young Douglas, if asked, would most likely not come; but if he did, he'd take especial care that his own effulgence should obscure all lesser lights." It was not Arcedeckne, I am assured by Mr. Cuthbert Bradley ("Cuthbert Bede's" son), but Jerrold, who, in Mark Lemon's hearing, crushingly criticised Thackeray's first public reading to the lecturer's face, with the laconic remark, "Wants a piano!" Thackeray, as we all know, was free enough himself in his criticisms of his own features, and his many sketches of his dear old broken nose are familiar enough to every lover of the man. Yet he was not best pleased when he entered the Punch dining-room a little late, apologising for his unpunctuality through having been detained at a christening, at which he had stood sponsor to his friend's boy, to be met with Jerrold's pungent exclamation—"Good Lord, Thackeray! I hope you didn't present the child with your own mug!" And still less was he flattered when he heard that, on its being reported in the Punch office that he was "turning Roman," simply because he defended Doyle's secession, Jerrold tartly remarked that "he'd best begin with his nose." (Jerrold, by the way, uses the same conceit in a letter to Sir Charles Dilke when repeating a rumour of the attempted conversion of the novelist by "Lady ——.") These and many more sardonic thrusts would amply account for Thackeray's dislike; yet that the men's relations were not half so disagreeable as has generally been believed is shown by the fact of Thackeray coming up specially to town from his lecturing tour in order to support Jerrold on the night of his election at the Reform Club, and delightedly exclaiming, when the result was known—"We've got the little man in!" Nor would he, perhaps, have shown himself and Jerrold, in the accompanying cut, listening in fraternal shame-facedness and disgust to a fellow-passenger declaiming against the wickedness and profanity of Punch.
PORTRAITS OF THACKERAY AND JERROLD.
(Drawn by W. M. Thackeray.)
AUTHOR'S MISERIES, NO. VI.
Old gentleman. Miss Wiggets. Two authors.
Old gentleman: "I am sorry to see you occupied, my dear Miss Wiggets, with that trivial paper Punch. A railway is not a place, in my opinion, for jokes. I never joke—never."
Miss W.: "So I should think, sir."
Old gentleman: "And, besides, are you aware who are the conductors of that paper, and that they are Chartists, Deists, Atheists, Anarchists, and Socialists, to a man? I have it from the best authority that they meet together once a week in a tavern in St. Giles's, where they concoct their infamous print. The chief part of their income is derived from threatening letters which they send to the nobility and gentry. The principal writer is a returned convict. Two have been tried at the Old Bailey; and their artist—as for their artist...."
Guard: "Swin-dun! Sta-tion!" (Punch, p. 198, Vol. XV., 1848.)