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Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857

Author: Various

Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8498] [This file was first posted on July 16, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOL. I, NO. 1, NOV. 1857 ***

 

E-text prepared by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

 

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS

 

CONTENTS.

Abbé de l’Epée, the Agassiz’s Natural History Akin by Marriage American Antiquity Aquarium, my Architecture, Domestic Art Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, the

Battle of Lepanto, the Beecher, Henry Ward Beethoven Béranger Birds and their Ways Books British Gallery in New York, the British India Buchanan’s Administration Burr, Aaron Button-Rose, the

Carlyle, Thomas Catacombs of Rome, the Child-Life by the Ganges Cretins and Idiots

Diamond Lens, the

Eben Jackson

Financial Flurry, the Florentine Mosaics

Ghost Redivivus, the Great Failure, the Grindwell Governing Machine, the

Hundred Days, the

Illusions India, British Indian Revolt, the Intellectual Character

Jerrold, Douglas Journal to my Cousin Mary

Kansas Usurpation, Review of the

Lepanto, the Battle of L’Epée, the Abbé de Librarian’s Story, the Loo Loo

Mamoul Manchester Exhibition, the Maya, the Princess Mourning Veil, the Music My Aquarium My Journal to my Cousin Mary

New England Ministers Notes on Domestic Architecture

Our Birds and their Ways

Pendlam, a Modern Reformer Persian Poetry Pictures, Something about President’s Message, the Prima Donna, Who paid for the Pure Pearl of Diver’s Bay, the

Queen of the Red Chessmen, the

Robin Hood Roger Pierce Round Table, the

Saints, and their Bodies Sally Parsons’s Duty Solitude and Society Something about Pictures Spartacus

Tea Tiflin of Paragraphs Turkey Tracks

Welsh Musical Festival Where will it End? Who is the Thief? Who paid for the Prima Donna? Wichern, Dr., and his Pupils Winds and the Weather, the

 

POETRY.

Amours de Voyage

Beauty Brahma Burying-Ground, the Old Busts of Goethe and Schiller, the By the Dead

Camille Catawba Wine Charley’s Death Chartist’s Complaint, the Cornucopia

Daybreak Daylight and Moonlight Days Didactic Poetry, the Origin of

Epigram on J.M.

Gift of Tritemius, the Goethe and Schiller, the Busts of Golden Milestone, the

Happiness

Karin, the Story of

Lucknow, the Relief of

Mercedes Milestone, the Golden My Portrait Gallery

Nest, the

Old Burying-Ground, the Origin of Didactic Poetry, the

Psyche, thy

Relief of Lucknow, the Rommany Girl, the

Sandalphoa Santa Filomena Sculptor’s Funeral, the Skipper Ireson’s Ride Sonnets Story of Karin, the

Tacking Ship off Shore Telling the Bees Thy Psyche Two Rivers

Wedding Veil, the Wind and Stream, the Word to the Wise

 

LITERARY NOTICES

American Cyclopædia, the New Anglais, les, et l’Inde

Bayne, Peter, Essays in Biography and Criticism Beatrice Cenci, by Guerrazzi Brazil and the Brazilians

City Poems, by Alexander Smith Clerical Life, Scenes of Comic and Humorous German Poetry Cyclopædia, the New American

Dante’s Hell, by J.C. Peabody De Vere, Aubrey, May Carols by Dichtung, die deutsche komische und humoristische, seit Beginn des 16. Jahrhunderts bis auf unsere Zeit Dunglison’s Dictionary of Medical Science

Elements of Drawing, by Ruskin Eté dans le Sahara, une

France au XVI. Siècle, Histoire de

Galleries and Cabinets of Art in Great Britain, by Dr. Waagen German Poetry, Comic and Humorous Greyson Letters, the, by Henry Rogers

Hamilton, Alexander, History of U.S. as traced in the Writings of Handbook of Railroad Construction Handel, Schoelcher’s Life of Harford’s Life of Michel Angelo Helps’s History of the Spanish Conquest Homoeopathic Domestic Physician Hunt, Leigh, Poetical Works of

Kane, Dr. E.K., Elder’s Life of Kraft und Stoff, von C. Büchner

Liberté, la, par Emile de Girardin Library of Old Authors, Smith’s

Materie und Geist, von Büchner May Carols, by Aubrey de Vere Michel Angelo Buonarotti, Harford’s Life of Michelet, Histoire de France par

Norwège, la, par Louis Enault

Parthenia, by Mrs. Lee Prudhomme, M. Joseph, Memoires de

Reichspostreiter, der, in Ludwigsburg Revolution Francaise, Histoire de la Roumania, by Jas. O. Noyes, M.D. Ruskin’s Elements of Drawing

Sahara, une Eté dans le Scenes of Clerical Life Smith, Alexander, City Poems by Spanish Conquest in America, the Spurgeon, Rev. C.H., Sermons of

Thüringer Naturen, von Otto Ludwig Twin Roses

Waagen, Dr., Galleries and Cabinets of Art in Great Britain by Waverley Novels White Lies, by Charles Reade

 

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY

 

VOL. I.—NOVEMBER, 1857.—NO. I.

 

DOUGLAS JERROLD.

 

My personal acquaintance with Douglas Jerrold began in the spring of 1851. I had always had a keen relish for his wit and fancy; I felt a peculiar interest in a man who, like myself, had started in life in the Navy; and one of the things poor Douglas prided himself on was his readiness to know and recognize young fellows fighting in his own profession. I shall not soon forget the dinner he gave at the Whittington Club that spring. St. Clement’s had rung out a late chime before we parted; and it was a drizzly, misty small hour as he got into a cab for Putney, where he was then living. I had found him all I expected; and he did not disappoint, on further acquaintance, the promise of that first interview. It will be something to remember in afterlife, that one enjoyed the friendship of so brilliant a man; and if I can convey to my readers a truer, livelier picture of his genius and person than they have been able to form for themselves hitherto, I shall be delighted to think that I have done my duty to his memory. The last summer which he lived to see is now waning; let us gather, ere it goes, the “lilies” and “purple flowers” that are due to his grave.

Jerrold’s Biography is still unwritten. The work is in the hands of his eldest son,—his successor in the editorship of “Lloyd’s,”—and will be done with pious carefulness. Meanwhile I cannot do more than sketch the narrative of his life; but so much, at all events, is necessary as shall enable the reader to understand the Genius and Character which I aspire to set before him.

Douglas William Jerrold was, I take it, of South-Saxon ancestry,—dashed with Scotch through his grandmother, whose maiden name was Douglas, and who is said to have been a woman of more than ordinary energy of character. As a Scot, I should like to trace him to that spreading family apostrophized by the old poet in such beautiful words,—

“O Douglas, O Douglas, Tender and true!”

But I don’t think he ever troubled himself on the subject; though he had none of that contempt for a good pedigree which is sometimes found in men of his school of politics. As regarded fortune, he owed every thing to nature and to himself; no man of our age had so thoroughly fought his own way; and no man of any age has had a much harder fight of it. To understand and appreciate him, it was, and is, necessary to bear this fact in mind. It colored him as the Syrian sun did the old crusading warrior. And hence, too, he was in a singular degree a representative man of his age; his age having set him to wrestle with it,—having tried his force in every way,—having left its mark on his entire surface. Jerrold and the century help to explain each other, and had found each other remarkably in earnest in all their dealings. This fact stamps on the man a kind of genuineness, visible in all his writings,—and giving them a peculiar force and raciness, such as those of persons with a less remarkable experience never possess. We are told, that, in selling yourself to the Devil, it is the proper traditionary practice to write the contract in your blood. Douglas, in binding himself against him, did the same thing. You see his blood in his ink,—and it gives a depth of tinge to it.

He was the son of a country manager named Samuel Jerrold, and was born in London on the 3d of January, 1803. His father was for a long time manager of the seaport theatres of Sheerness and Southend,—which stand opposite each other, just where the Thames becomes the sea. Douglas spent most of his boyhood, therefore, about the sea-coast, in the midst of a life that was doubly dramatic,—dramatic as real, and dramatic as theatrical. There were sea, ships, sailors, prisoners, the hum of war, the uproar of seaport life, on the one hand; on the other, the queer, rough, fairy world (to him at once fairy world and home world) of the theatre. It was a position to awaken precociously, one would think, the feelings of the quick-eyed, quick-hearted lad. No wonder he took the sea-fever to which all our blood is liable, and tried a bout of naval life. At eleven years of age he became a middy, and served a short time—not two years in all—in a vessel stationed in the North Sea. Naval life was a rough affair in those days. Jerrold’s most remarkable experience seems to have been bringing over the wounded of Waterloo from Belgium; which stamped on his mind a sense of the horrors of war that never left him, but is marked on his writings everywhere, in spite of a certain combative turn and an admiration of heroes which also belonged to him. To the last, he had an interest in sea matters, and spoke with enthusiasm of Lord Nelson. But the literary use he made of his nautical experience ended with “Black-eyed Susan.” He was a boy when he came ashore and threw himself on the very different sea of London; and it is the influence of London that is most perceptible in his mature works. Here his work was done, his battles fought, his mind formed; and you may observe in his writings a certain romantic and ideal way of speaking of the country, which shows that to him it was a place of retreat and luxury, rather than of sober, practical living. This is not uncommon with literary men whose lot has been cast in a great city, if they possess, as Jerrold did, that poetic temperament which is alive to natural beauty.

He now became an apprentice in a printing-office, and went through the ordinary course of a printer’s life. He felt genius stirring in him, and he strove for the knowledge to give it nourishment, and the field to give it exercise. He read and wrote, as well as worked and talked. It would be a task for antiquarian research