hand to cool his-sef, and tossing back his iron-grey mop of a head of hair with the other, as if it was so much shavings—there, Mrs. Harris, I see him getting encouragement from the pretty delooded creeturs, which never know'd that sweet saint, Mrs. C, as I did, and being treated with as much confidence as if he'd never wiolated none of the domestic ties, and never showed up nothing! Oh the aggrawation of that Dougladge! Mrs. Harris, if I hadn't apologiged to Mr. Wilson, and put a little bottle to my lips which was in my pocket for the journey, and which it is very rare indeed I have about me, I could not have abared the sight of him— there, Mrs. Harris! I could not!—I must have tore him, or have give way and fainted."[1]
In the passage which I have quoted from James Hannay's memorial tribute to my grandfather, it is pointed out that Jerrold rather resented the being known mainly as the author of "Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures" and "Black-Eyed Susan"—conscious as he was of having done far better work in fiction than he gave in the former, and of having written at least a dozen plays superior, from a literary point of view, to the latter. But popularity is gained by different means, and in these two instances the domestic humour of the one and the sentiment of the other proved—and still prove—irresistible when put before the people of this country—a nation which combines domesticity and sentimentality in a way that none other does. Something of his resentment to the idea that Mrs. Caudle was a slander on the sex, and that he was a literary evil-doer, I find in a characteristic letter which he wrote, apparently about this time, to Miss Sabilla Novello. He mentioned being engaged on a
- ↑ "Life of Charles Dickens." by John Forster, bk. vi., ch. i,
