as Phoebe in As You Like It. After acting elsewhere in Ireland she appeared in 1782 at Leeds, and subsequently at other Yorkshire towns, in a variety of parts, including Lady Teazle. It was at this time that she began calling herself Mrs Jordan. In 1785 she made her first London appearance at Drury Lane as Peggy in A Country Girl. Before the end of her first season she had become an established public favourite, her acting in comedy being declared second only to that of Kitty Clive. Her engagement at Drury Lane lasted till 1809, and she played a large variety of parts. But gradually it came to be recognized that her special talent lay in comedy, her Lady Teazle, Rosalind and Imogen being specially liked, and such “breeches” parts as William in Rosina. During the rebuilding of Drury Lane she played at the Haymarket; she transferred her services in 1811 to Covent Garden. Here, in 1814, she made her last appearance on the London stage, and the following year, at Margate, retired altogether. Mrs Jordan’s private life was one of the scandals of the period. She had a daughter by her first manager, in Ireland, and four children by Sir Richard Ford, whose name she bore for some years. In 1790 she became the mistress of the duke of Clarence (afterwards William IV.), and bore him ten children, who were ennobled under the name of Fitz Clarence, the eldest being created earl of Munster. In 1811 they separated by mutual consent, Mrs Jordan being granted a liberal allowance. In 1815 she went abroad. According to one story she was in danger of imprisonment for debt. If so, the debt must have been incurred on behalf of others—probably her relations, who appear to have been continually borrowing from her—for her own personal debts were very much more than covered by her savings. She is generally understood to have died at St Cloud, near Paris, on the 3rd of July 1816, but the story that under an assumed name she lived for seven years after that date in England finds some credence.
See James Boaden, Life of Mrs Jordan (1831); The Great Illegitimates (1830); John Genest, Account of the Stage; Tate Wilkinson, The Wandering Patentee; Memoirs and Amorous Adventures by Sea and Land of King William IV. (1830); The Georgian Era (1838).
JORDAN, THOMAS (1612?–1685), English poet and pamphleteer, was born in London and started life as an actor at the Red Bull theatre in Clerkenwell. He published in 1637 his first volume of poems, entitled Poeticall Varieties, and in the same year appeared A Pill to Purge Melancholy. In 1639 he recited one of his poems before King Charles I., and from this time forward Jordan’s output in verse and prose was continuous and prolific. He freely borrowed from other authors, and frequently re-issued his own writings under new names. During the troubles between the king and the parliament he wrote a number of Royalist pamphlets, the first of which, A Medicine for the Times, or an Antidote against Faction, appeared in 1641. Dedications, occasional verses, prologues and epilogues to plays poured from his pen. Many volumes of his poems bear no date, and they were probably written during the Commonwealth. At the Restoration he eulogized Monk, produced a masque at the entertainment of the general in the city of London and wrote pamphlets in his support. He then for some years devoted his chief attention to writing plays, in at least one of which, Money is an Ass, he himself played a part when it was produced in 1668. In 1671 he was appointed laureate to the city of London; from this date till his death in 1685 he annually composed a panegyric on the lord mayor, and arranged the pageantry of the lord mayor’s shows, which he celebrated in verse under such titles as London Triumphant, or the City in Jollity and Splendour (1672), or London in Luster, Projecting many Bright Beams of Triumph (1679). Many volumes of these curious productions are preserved in the British Museum.
In addition to his numerous printed works, of which perhaps A Royal Arbour of Loyall Poesie (1664) and A Nursery of Novelties in Variety of Poetry are most deserving of mention, several volumes of his poems exist in manuscript. W. C. Hazlitt and other 19th-century critics found more merit in Jordan’s writings than was allowed by his contemporaries, who for the most part scornfully referred to his voluminous productions as commonplace and dull.
See Gerard Langbaine, Account of the English Dramatic Poets (1691); David Erskine Baker, Biographia Dramatica (4 vols., 1812); W. C. Hazlitt, Handbook to the Popular, Poetical and Dramatic Literature of Great Britain (1867); F. W. Fairholt, Lord Mayors Pageants (Percy Society, 1843), containing a memoir of Thomas Jordan; John Gough Nichols, London Pageants (1831).
JORDAN, WILHELM (1819–1904), German poet and novelist, was born at Insterburg in East Prussia on the 8th of February 1819. He studied, first theology and then philosophy and natural science, at the universities of Königsberg and Berlin. He settled in Leipzig as a journalist; but the democratic views expressed in some essays and the volumes of poems Glocke und Kanone (1481) and Irdische Phantasien (1842) led to his expulsion from Saxony in 1846. He next engaged in literary and tutorial work in Bremen, and on the outbreak of the revolution, in February 1848, was sent to Paris, as correspondent of the Bremer Zeitung. He almost immediately, however, returned to Germany and, throwing himself into the political fray in Berlin, was elected member for Freienwalde, in the first German parliament at Frankfort-on-Main. For a short while he sided with the Left, but soon joined the party of von Gagern. On a vote having been passed for the establishment of a German navy, he was appointed secretary of the committee to deal with the whole question, and was subsequently made ministerial councillor (Ministerialrat) in the naval department of the government. The naval project was abandoned, Jordan was pensioned and afterwards resided at Frankfort-on-Main until his death on the 25th of June 1904, devoting himself to literary work, acting as his own publisher, and producing numerous poems, novels, dramas and translations.
Among his best known works are: Demiurgos (3 vols., 1852–1854), a “Mysterium,” in which he attempted to deal with the problems of human existence, but the work found little favour; Nibelunge, an epic poem in alliterative verse, in two parts, (1) Sigfriedsage (1867–1868; 13th ed. 1889) and (2) Hildebrants Heimkehr (1874; 10th ed. 1892)—in the first part he is regarded as having been remarkably successful; a tragedy, Die Wittwe des Agis (1858); the comedies, Die Liebesleugner (1855) and Durchs Ohr (1870; 6th ed. 1885); and the novels Die Sebalds (1885) and Zwei Wiegen (1887). Jordan also published numerous translations, notably Homers Odyssee (1876; 2nd ed. 1889) and Homers Ilias (1881; 2nd ed. 1894); Die Edda (1889). He was also distinguished as a reciter, and on a visit to the United States in 1871 read extracts from his works before large audiences.
JORDAN (the down-comer; Arab. esh-Sheri’a, the watering-place), the only river of Palestine and one of the most remarkable in the world. It flows from north to south in a deep trough-like valley, the Aulon of the Greeks and Ghōr of the Arabs, which is usually believed to follow the line of a fault or fracture of the earth’s crust. Most geologists hold that the valley is part of an old sea-bed, traces of which remain in numerous shingle-banks and beach-levels. This, they say, once extended to the Red Sea and even over N.E. Africa. Shrinkage caused the pelagic limestone bottom to be upheaved in two ridges, between which occurred a long fracture, which can now be traced from Coelesyria down the Wadi Araba to the Gulf of Akaba. The Jordan valley in its lower part keeps about the old level of the sea-bottom and is therefore a remnant of the Miocene world. This theory, however, is not universally accepted, some authorities preferring to assume a succession of more strictly local elevations and depressions, connected with the recent volcanic activity of the Jaulan and Lija districts on the east bank, which brought the contours finally to their actual form. In any case the number of distinct sea-beaches seems to imply a succession of convulsive changes, more recent than the great Miocene upheaval, which are responsible for the shrinkage of the water into the three isolated pans now found. For more than two-thirds of its course the Jordan lies below the level of the sea. It has never been navigable, no important town has ever been built on its banks, and it runs into an inland sea which has no port and is destitute of aquatic life. Throughout history it has exerted a separatist influence, roughly dividing the settled from the nomadic populations; and the crossing of Jordan, one way or the other, was always an event in the history of Israel. In Hebrew times its valley was regarded as a “wilderness” and, except in the Roman era, seems always to have been as sparsely inhabited as now. From its sources to the Dead Sea it rushes
