Meanwhile he had won his way to the pages of numerous periodicals—before 1830 of the second-rate magazines only, but after that to those of more importance. He was a contributor to the Monthly Magazine, Blackwood’s, the New Monthly, and the Athenaeum. To Punch, the publication which of all others is associated with his name, he contributed from its second number in 1841 till within a few days of his death. He founded and edited for some time, though with indifferent success, the Illuminated Magazine, Jerrold’s Shilling Magazine, and Douglas Jerrold’s Weekly Newspaper; and under his editorship Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper rose from almost nonentity to a circulation of 182,000. The history of his later years is little more than a catalogue of his literary productions, interrupted now and again by brief visits to the Continent or to the country. Douglas Jerrold died at his house, Kilburn Priory, in London, on the 8th of June 1857.
Jerrold’s figure was small and spare, and in later years bowed almost to deformity. His features were strongly marked and expressive from the thin humorous lips to the keen blue eyes gleaming from beneath the shaggy eyebrows. He was brisk and active, with the careless bluffness of a sailor. Open and sincere, he concealed neither his anger nor his pleasure; to his simple frankness all polite duplicity was distasteful. The cynical side of his nature he kept for his writings; in private life his hand was always open. In politics Jerrold was a Liberal, and he gave eager sympathy to Kossuth, Mazzini and Louis Blanc. In social politics especially he took an eager part; he never tired of declaiming against the horrors of war, the luxury of bishops, and the iniquity of capital punishment.
Douglas Jerrold is now perhaps better known from his reputation as a brilliant wit in conversation than from his writings. As a dramatist he was very popular, though his plays have not kept the stage. He dealt with rather humbler forms of social life than had commonly been represented on the boards. He was one of the first and certainly one of the most successful of those who in defence of the native English drama endeavoured to stem the tide of translation from the French, which threatened early in the 19th century altogether to drown original native talent. His skill in construction and his mastery of epigram and brilliant dialogue are well exemplified in his comedy, Time Works Wonders (Haymarket, April 26, 1845). The tales and sketches which form the bulk of Jerrold’s collected works vary much in skill and interest; but, although there are evident traces of their having been composed from week to week, they are always marked by keen satirical observation and pungent wit.
Among the best known of his numerous works are: Men of Character (1838), including “Job Pippin: The man who couldn’t help it,” and other sketches of the same kind; Cakes and Ale (2 vols., 1842), a collection of short papers and whimsical stories; some more serious novels—The Story of a Feather (1844), The Chronicles of Clovernook (1846), A Man made of Money (1849); and St Giles and St James (1851); and various series of papers reprinted from Punch—Punch’s Letters to his Son (1843), Punch’s Complete Letter-writer (1845), and the famous Mrs Caudle’s Curtain Lectures (1846).
See W. B. Jerrold, Life and Remains of Douglas Jerrold (1859). A collected edition of his writings appeared in 1851-1854, and The Works of Douglas Jerrold, with a memoir by his son, W. B. Jerrold, in 1863-1864; but neither is complete. Among the numerous selections from his tales and witticisms are two edited by his grandson, Walter Jerrold, Bons Mots of Charles Dickens and Douglas Jerrold (new ed. 1904), and The Essays of Douglas Jerrold (1903), illustrated by H. M. Brock. See also The Wit and Opinions of Douglas Jerrold (1858), edited by W. B. Jerrold.
His eldest son, William Blanchard Jerrold (1826-1884), English journalist and author, was born in London on the 23rd of December 1826, and abandoning the artistic career for which he was educated, began newspaper work at an early age there. He was appointed Crystal Palace commissioner to Sweden in 1853, and wrote A Brage-Beaker with the Swedes (1854) on his return. In 1855 he was sent to the Paris exhibition as correspondent for several London papers, and from that time he lived much in Paris. In 1857 he succeeded his father as editor of Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, a post which he held for twenty-six years. During the Civil War in America he strongly supported the North, and several of his leading articles were reprinted and placarded in New York by the federal government. He was the founder and president of the English branch of the international literary association for the assimilation of copyright laws. Four of his plays were successfully produced on the London stage, the popular farce Cool as a Cucumber (Lyceum 1851) being the best known. His French experiences resulted in a number of books, most important of which is his Life of Napoleon III. (1874). He was occupied in writing the biography of Gustave Doré, who had illustrated several of his books, when he died on the 10th of March 1884.
Among his books are A Story of Social Distinction (1848), Life and Remains of Douglas Jerrold (1859), Up and Down in the World (1863), The Children of Lutetia (1864), Cent per Cent (1871), At Home in Paris (1871), The Best of all Good Company (1871-1873), and The Life of George Cruikshank (1882).
JERRY, a short form of the name Jeremiah, applied to various common objects, and more particularly to a machine for finishing cloth. The expression “jerry-built” is applied to houses built badly and of inferior materials, and run up by a speculative builder. There seems to be no foundation for the assertion that this expression was occasioned by the work of a firm of Liverpool builders named Jerry.