open my lips, goodness knows!"—"Caudle Lectures (improved)." The artist was John Leech, and it was a capital cartoon. Forty years later another cartoonist, in making an illustration, apologised to the shade of Mrs. Caudle, but the apology was wholly unnecessary, for his model was not taken from that good lady's lectures at all, but from that china group which used some years ago to be familiar on cottage chimney-pieces, representing an elderly couple getting into bed from opposite sides, with the words "The last in bed to put the light out." In this instance the "couple" were Lord Salisbury and Mr. Chamberlain, and the "light" was named "Home Rule."
While yet the Lectures were appearing week by week in the pages of Punch, they were seized upon by dramatic adaptors, and the familiar couple were soon appearing both in the metropolitan and provincial theatres. Edward Stirling, most constant of. those writers who were ever ready on the shortest notice to "borrow" a popular creation for stage representation, prepared a version for the Lyceum Theatre, and this is the only one of which I have been able to obtain a copy. Its title page runs: "Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lecture! an apropos Bagatelle, in One Act, founded on and taken from the Articles in Punch, by Edward Stirling, Esq." Mr. Spielmann says that "Mrs. Keeley made a life-like Mrs. Caudle at the Lyceum—only perhaps a little too fresh and charming," but the list of dramatis personæ in the tattered little copy of the "bagatelle" which I rescued from some "penny box," says that the character of Mrs. Caudle was impersonated by Mr. Keeley. The slight piece was produced in July, 1845, and enjoyed a considerable measure of popularity.
