new play:—"In this comedy I do contemplate such a heroine as a set-off to the many sins imputed to me as committed against woman, whom I have always considered to be an admirable idea imperfectly worked out." Then, too, either inspired by the great success of Mrs. Caudle, or else in deference to protesting correspondents, Douglas Jerrold appended the following postscript to "Lecture the Last":—"There are other Caudle Papers extant. Some of these may, possibly, be presented to the universe in our next volume. From these documents the world will then learn, in the words of his wronged wife, 'what an aggravating man Caudle really was!' Yes; the world will, at last, know him as well as she did."[1]
The promise was very soon fulfilled, for in the Punch's Almanack for 1846, "Mr. Caudle's Breakfast Talk" was given in a dozen brief chapters—one for each month. The talk is but an echo of the lectures—the manner, the very phrasing is the same; the relations of the dramatis personæ are merely reversed. Mr. Caudle having made Miss Prettyman Mrs. Caudle number two shows himself to have been an apt imitator of the "sainted" wife whose lectures he had suffered. The "talk" is not particularly happy, and the author was doubtless well advised in putting it in the Almanack instead of making a fresh serial of it. The twelfth chapter may be quoted as showing how the author accounted for Mr. Caudle's rapid change of demeanour from that of silent sufferer to nagging bully:—"Mr. Caudle, ere he left this world, had much more 'Breakfast Talk' with his unfortunate wife, but it is believed that we have given the principal heads of his discourses: for his topics were like the
- ↑ Punch, vol. ix., p. 199.
