Is this squalid group, with debauchery and criminality in evidence in each figure, likely to be morally impressed by the sight of a public hanging? What are they but types of a class that always frequented such scenes? The dreadful woman has carried her child with her; the little creature’s attenuated limbs point to the neglect and ill-usage sure to be met with from such parents.
To those unacquainted with the “Caudle Lectures” by Douglas Jerrold, which appeared at this time in Punch, I recommend the perusal of those inimitable papers. One of their merits is their having given occasion for an admirable drawing by Leech. Lord Brougham was, in the eyes of Punch and many others, a firebrand in the House of Lords. He was irrepressible, contentious, and brilliant on all occasions, quarrelsome in the extreme, and a thorn in the side of whatever Government was in power unless he was a member of it. The Woolsack, more especially the object of his ambition, was made a very uneasy seat to any occupant. Behold him, then, as Mrs. Caudle—an excellent likeness—making night hideous for the unhappy Caudle, whose part is played by the Lord Chancellor—Lyndhurst—while the Caudle pillow is changed into the Woolsack.
“The Mrs. Caudle of the House of Lords.”
“What do you say? Thank heaven! you are going to enjoy the recess, and you’ll be rid of me for some months? Never mind. Depend upon it, when you come back, you shall have it again. No, I don’t raise the House and set everybody by the ears; but I’m not going to give up every little privilege, though it’s seldom I open my lips, goodness knows!”—“Caudle Lectures” (improved).
| “An Eye to Business.” |
Whether such a scene as the following ever took place may be doubted; but that it might have happened, and may happen again, there is no doubt. One meets with strange seaside objects, and to bathe at the same time as one’s tailor is within the bounds of possibility. Leech evidently thought so, hence this delightful little cut, wherein we see the creditor—evidently a tailor—improving the occasion to remind his fellow-swimmer of his little bill. See the businesslike aspect of the one and the astonishment and alarm of the other, who in the next few vigorous strokes will place himself beyond the reach of his creditor.
Full of sympathy, as Leech was, for human suffering, and frequently as he dealt with sea-sickness, he certainly never showed the least pity for the sufferers by that miserable malady. Its ludicrous aspect was irresistible to him, as numbers of illustrations sufficiently prove, and none more perfectly than the one introduced in this place, with the title of “Love on the Ocean,” representing a couple evidently married on the morning of this tempestuous day. “Why, oh why,” I can hear the unhappy bridegroom say to himself, “did we not arrange to pass our honeymoon in some pleasant place in England, and so have avoided crossing this dreadful sea?” To be ill in the dear presence of—oh, horror! And the lady is so unconscious, so serenely unconscious, of the impending catastrophe! She enjoys the sea, and, being of a poetical turn, she thus improves the occasion:
“Oh, is there not something, dear Augustus, truly sublime in the warring of the elements?”