Atlantic Monthly, - [best ebook reader under 100 txt] 📗

in France. Still, he had not yet caught the nation,—there being many degrees of celebrity below that stage of it; and now, in middle life, his best and crowning success was to begin.

I believe that Jerrold had long desiderated a “Punch”; but it is certain that the present famous periodical of that name was started by his son-in-law, Mr. Henry Mayhew. For a while it had no great success, and the copyright was sold for a small sum to Messrs. Bradbury and Evans. Success came, and such a success that “Punch” must always last as part of the comic literature of England. That literature is rich in political as well as other forms of satire; and from various causes, about the time of “Punch,” political satire was at a low ebb. The newspapers no longer published squibs as they once had done. The days of the Hooks and Moores had gone by; there was nobody to do with the pen what H. B. did with the pencil. So “Punch” was at once a novelty and a necessity,—from its width of scope, its joint pictorial and literary character, and its exclusive devotion to the comic features of the age. “Figaro” (a satirical predecessor, by Mr. à Beckett) had been very clever, but wanted many of “Punch’s” features, and was, above all, not so calculated to hit “society” and get into families.

Jerrold’s first papers of mark in “Punch” were those signed “Q.” His style was now formed, as his mind was, and these papers bear the stamp of his peculiar way of thinking and writing. Assuredly, his is a peculiar style in the strict sense; and as marked as that of Carlyle or Dickens. You see the self-made man in it,—a something sui generis,—not formed on the “classical models,” but which has grown up with a kind of twist in it, like a tree that has had to force its way up surrounded by awkward environments. Fundamentally, the man is a thinking humorist; but his mode of expression is strange. The perpetual inversions, the habitual irony, the mingled tenderness and mockery, give a kind of gnarled surface to the style, which is pleasant when you get familiar with it, but which repels the stranger, and to some people even remains permanently disagreeable. I think it was his continual irony which at last brought him to writing as if under a mask; whereas it would have been better to write out flowingly, musically, and lucidly. His mixture of satire and kindliness always reminds me of those lanes near Beyrout in which you ride with the prickly-pear bristling alongside of you, and yet can pluck the grapes which force themselves among it from the fields. Inveterately satirical as Jerrold is, he is even “spoonily” tender at the same time; and it lay deep in his character; for this wit and bon-vivant, the merriest and wittiest man of the company, would cry like a child, as the night drew on, and the talk grew serious. No theory could be more false than that he was a cold-blooded satirist,—sharp as steel is sharp, from being hard. The basis of his nature was sensitiveness and impulsiveness. His wit is not of the head only, but of the heart,—often sentimental, and constantly fanciful, that is, dependent on a quality which imperatively requires a sympathetic nature to give it full play. Take those “Punch” papers which soon helped to make “Punch” famous, and Jerrold himself better known. Take the “Story of a Feather,” as a good expression of his more earnest and tender mood. How delicately all the part about the poor actress is worked up! How moral, how stoical, the feeling that pervades it! The bitterness is healthy,—healthy as bark. We cannot always be

“Seeing only what is fair, Sipping only what is sweet,”

in the presence of such phenomena as are to be seen in London alongside of our civilization. If any feeling of Jerrold’s was intense, it was his feeling of sympathy with the poor. I shall not soon forget the energy and tenderness with which he would quote these lines of his favorite Hood:—

“Poor Peggy sells flowers from street to street, And—think of that, ye who find life sweet!— She hates the smell of roses.”

He was, therefore, to be pardoned when he looked with extreme suspicion and severity on the failings of the rich. They at least, he knew, were free from those terrible temptations which beset the unfortunate. They could protect themselves. They needed to be reminded of their duties. Such was his view, though I don’t think he ever carried it so far as he was accused of doing. Nay, I think he sometimes had to prick up his zeal before assuming the flagellum. For a successful, brilliant man like himself,—full of humor and wit,—eminently convivial, and sensitive to pleasure,—the temptation rather was to adopt the easy philosophy that every thing was all right,—that the rich were wise to enjoy themselves with as little trouble as possible,—and that the poor (good fellows, no doubt) must help themselves on according as they got a chance. It was to Douglas’s credit that he always felt the want of a deeper and holier theory, and that, with all his gaiety, he felt it incumbent on him to use his pen as an implement of what he thought reform. Indeed, it was a well-known characteristic of his, that he disliked being talked of as “a wit.” He thought (with justice) that he had something better in him than most wits, and he sacredly cherished high aspirations. To him buffoonery was pollution. He attached to salt something of the sacredness which it bears in the East. He was fuller of repartee than any man in England, and yet was about the last man that would have condescended to be what is called a “diner-out”. It is a fact which illustrates his mind, his character, and biography.

The “Q.” papers, I say, were the first essays which attracted attention in “Punch.” In due time followed his “Punch’s Letters to his Son,” and “Complete Letter-Writer,” with the “Story of a Feather”, mentioned above. A basis of philosophical observation, tinged with tenderness, and a dry, ironical humor,—all, like the Scottish lion in heraldry, “within a double tressure-fleury and counter-fleury” of wit and fancy,—such is a Jerroldian paper of the best class in “Punch.” It stands out by itself from all the others,—the sharp, critical knowingness, sparkling with puns, of à Beckett,—the inimitable, wise, easy, playful, worldly, social sketch of Thackeray. In imagery he had no rivals there; for his mind had a very marked tendency to the ornamental and illustrative,—even to the grotesque. In satire, again, he had fewer competitors than in humor;—sarcasms lurk under his similes, like wasps in fruit or flowers. I will just quote one specimen from a casual article of his, because it happens to occur to my memory, and because it illustrates his manner. The “Chronicle” had been attacking some artists in whom he took an interest. In replying, he set out by telling how in some vine countries they repress the too luxuriant growths by sending in asses to crop the shoots. Then he remarked gravely, that young artists required pruning, and added, “How thankful we ought all to be that the ‘Chronicle’ keeps a donkey!” This is an average specimen of his playful way of ridiculing. In sterner moods he was grander. Of a Jew money-lender he said, that “he might die like Judas, but that he had no bowels to gush out”;—also, that “he would have sold our Saviour for more money.” An imaginative color distinguished his best satire, and it had the deadly and wild glitter of war-rockets. This was the most original quality, too, of his satire, and just the quality which is least common in our present satirical literature. He had read the old writers,—Browne, Donne, Fuller, and Cowley,—and was tinged with that richer and quainter vein which so emphatically distinguishes them from the prosaic wits of our day. His weapons reminded you of Damascus rather than Birmingham,

A wit with a mission,—this was the position of Douglas in the last years of his life. Accordingly he was a little ashamed of the immense success of the “Caudle Lectures,”—the fame of which I remember being bruited about the Mediterranean in 1845,—and which, as social drolleries, set nations laughing. Douglas took their celebrity rather sulkily. He did not like to be talked of as a funny man. However, they just hit the reading English,—always domestic in their literary as in their other tastes,—and so helped to establish “Punch” and to diffuse Jerrold’s name. He began now to be a Power in popular literature; and coming to be associated with the liberal side of “Punch,” especially, the Radicals throughout Britain hailed him as a chief. Hence, in due course, his newspaper and his magazine,—both of which might have been permanently successful establishments, had Ids genius for business borne any proportion to his genius for literature.

This, however, was by no manner of means the case. His nature was altogether that of a literary man and artist. He could not speak in public. He could not manage money matters. He could only write and talk,—and these rather as a kind of improvvisatore, than as a steady, reading, bookish man, like a Mackintosh or a Macaulay. His politics partook of this character, and I always used to think that it was a queer destiny which made him a Radical teacher. The Radical literature of England is, with few exceptions, of a prosaic character. The most famous school of radicalism is utilitarian and systematic. Douglas was, emphatically, neither. He was impulsive, epigrammatic, sentimental. He dashed gaily against an institution, like a picador at a bull. Ha never sat down, like the regular workers of Ms party, to calculate the expenses of monarchy or the extravagance of the civil list. He had no notion of any sort of “economy.” I don’t know that he had ever taken up political science seriously, or that he had any preference for one kind of form of government over another. I repeat,—his radicalism was that of a humorist. He despised big-wigs, and pomp of all sorts, and, above all, humbug and formalism. But his radicalism was important as a sign that our institutions are ceasing to be picturesque; of which, if you consider his nature, you will see that his radicalism was a sign. And he did service to his cause. Not an abuse, whether from the corruption of something old, or the injustice of something new, but Douglas was out against it with his sling. He threw his thought into some epigram which stuck. Praising journalism once, he said, “When Luther wanted to crush the Devil, didn’t he throw ink at him?” Recommending Australia, he wrote, “Earth is so kindly there, that, tickle her with a hoe, and she laughs with a harvest.” The last of these sayings is in his best manner, and would be hard to match anywhere for grace and neatness. Here was a man to serve big cause, for he embodied its truths in forms of beauty. His use to his party could not be measured like that of commoner men, because of the rarity and attractive nature of the gifts which he brought to its service. They had a kind of incalculable value, like that of a fine day, or of starlight.

He was now immersed in literary activity. He had all kinds of work on hand. He brought out occasionally a five-act comedy, full as usual of wit. He wrote in “Punch,”—started a newspaper,—started a magazine,—published a romance,—all within a few years of each other. The romance was “A Man made of Money,” which bids fair, I think, to be read longer than any of his works. It is one of those fictions in which,