From The Athenæum. moving through hot blood and quivering nerves. Praise may be thrown back as impertinence, blame will be revenged as an insult. Yet books written under such difficul The Life and Remains of Douglas Jerrold. By his Son, Blanchard Jerrold. (Kent & Co.) A SUMMER only has bloomed and gone since ties may have a great and abiding value. the dust of Douglas Jerrold was left on the Their merits may balance the necessary desunny Norwood slope. All that had been fects. The writer assuredly knows more, even mortal of their dead friend was then borne if he be free to say less. He can tell us of to the just man's rest in the arms of some of many things unknown to the searchers of do the great writers of our generation and through uments,--for he has lived with his hero, seen such throngs of mourners as rarely gather him in undress, when no strain of conciliation round a new-made grave. Old men, worn or concealment was on the mind; and if rewith life and white with age and thought, spect and affection seal his lips on this overwere there. Young men flushed with nerve sight or that defect, they will also open his and strength, were there. Statesmen and his- lips on points of very precious and peculiar torians, poets and novelists, and poor players, interest. If such a writer cannot tell us, like grandsires with tiny children, and fresh young a judge, all that the hero was not, he can at girls and comely matrons,-lined reverentially least tell us what he was. Then, again, such the long pathway of the hill. A scene never volumes bear in every statement an emphasis to fade from the memories of those who saw it! of authority to which no work from a stranA June sun poured on the ground its own se- ger's hand, however skilful and conscientious rene and solemn joy. The first roses of the he who guides the hand may be, can ever hope year were opening to the south. A bright- to rise. The Biography of Douglas Jerrold, ness, as of new life, shimmered in the leaves by his son, written while the mirth and the and along the soft billowy wave of green. A tears are yet warm, may be taken as a good sky of intensely tender blue hung overhead. example of its class. It is a very admirable Low down miles off in the golden haze, be- portrait of a father. We hear the wit crackle hind the sad band of mourners, gloomed in the smoking-room of the club, and join in vaguely the towers and domes of the great the irresistible applause of answering laughcity. In their front, resting on the crown of ter,-we imagine the powerful journalist at another hill, sprang that shining and etherial his desk, the jar of roses at his hand, his dog structure, on which the dead genius had been Mouse scowling on the rug, a printer's devil first to fix the name of the Crystal Palace, in the passage, and a heap of papers on the and in which, as he drooped into the lap of floor,—we sit, as it were, with our feet under his mother earth, a favorite and wearied child, a the same mahogony, and in the pauses of song of redemption and eternal life pealed from merriment list to his sweet low musical chant— such a choir as, until that hour, had never been "And for this reason, heard in England. The roll of their hallelujah was unheard by the outer ears of those who stood on the contrasting hill; but the mourners heard it with their hearts, and felt it still the dull, aching pulse of pain, though to the grosser sense inaudible as if it had been chorussed in heaven. And now his Life is before us. Contemporary biography is a thing hard to achieve in all cases; most of all hard when an affectionate man has to write of one whose name he bears. Criticism is then out of court. Impartiality is scarcely to be desired, and coldness would almost be a crime. Living men, too, must be introduced into the text; and to lend the touch of history with the politeness drawing-rooms is never easy. The pen bemes a knife in the artist's hand, everywhere And for a season, Let us be merry before we go!" But we turn from these figures of the busy and companionable man of genius to the picture of his family life. Here we have Jerrold at home, and a more beautiful and winning portrait of a man of letters does not, we thinks exist. We shall not ask the reader to go with us again from cradle to grave; we prefer to pause on points of character and illustrative sayings, not yet known to the general public. Douglas Jerrold, we read, was the "son of a poor stroller:"—rather, we should say, of a poor country manager. A mystery is however, suggested about his birth, or the antecedents of his birth, on which a romance might be built :-"The poor stroller must have re "8, Chesterfield Street, 10th May, 1847. "SIR,-Your generous and very powerful advocacy of my claim to the investigation of my case has contributed to promote that act of justice, and produced a decision of the Cabinet Council, after due deliberation, to recommend to Her Majesty my immediate restoration to the Order of the Bath, in which membered somewhat bitterly the fact, to which he often referred, namely, that he had played in a barn upon the estate that was rightfully his own." Manager Jerrold's scenes ran over a great part of the downs and hop-gardens of Kent, though his great station was Sheerness, -one of the few sea-ports that now have not even a barn devoted to the drama of " Black-recommendation Her Majesty has been graEyed Susan" and "The Wreck Ashore." An anecdote on the state of theatrical affairs in a place at that day still more primitive than Sheerness : ciously pleased to acquiesce. I would personally have waited on you, confidentially to communicate this (not yet promulgated) decree; but as there is so little chance of finding postpone that pleasure and duty.—I am, Sir, you, and I am pressingly occupied, I shall your obliged and obedient servant, 'Douglas Jerrold, Esq." 66 DUNDONALD." "More than half a century after the poor stroller, Samuel Jerrold, had displayed his precious shoes to the bumpkins about Eastbourne, his son Douglas, accompanied by his family, went to this quiet place to enjoy a summer's holiday. Here a poor stroller waited A school at Sheerness taught the youthful upon the son, and asked him to give his pat- dramatist very little; the master, if shrewd in ronage to the little theatre. Douglas Jer- business, being very ignorant in the humanirold's bespeak' was put forth in this same ties. "He taught us to turn our naughts into Eastbourne, in 1851; and the patron went to nines," said a prosperous townsman, once a the barn with his family, and was posted in the seat of honor-the honor being marked pupil in the same school with Jerrold. This by a little red cloth thrown over the front was nearly all. Little Jerrold took home bench. Rafters, dark and ghostly, overhead; only his prize ring-worm. Nor was he given, rows of greasy benches behind; and a woeful while at Sheerness, to the riotous games and stage, with dips for footlights, were not en- pastimes in which boys delight, no cudgels, couraging hints as to the nature of the enter- hockey, trap, or cricket. For all these his tainment. Presently a boy in a smock frock tender build disarmed him. "The only athsnuffed the dips, and then 'The Love Chase' was letic sport I ever mastered," he used to say, played. The manager's family took nearly with a twinkling eye, all the parts; even the poor old chief of the was backgammon." troupe, blind and worn, was led on to sing Sheerness was not then a brilliant place; and Come and take tea in the arbour.' In 1851 we could hug that dear old gentleman, still the patron of the evening must have thought, alive, who clings to the belief, defying parish Matters theatrical here are rude enough. register and baptismal records, that Douglas What must the theatre have been in which Jerrold was born in Sheerness, and was "the Dibdin, and my father and Wilkinson, per- only good thing the dirty old town ever sent formed hereabouts some sixty years ago! into the world." From this place he passed into His Majesty's service, as midshipman. Here occurs an anecdote of the young midshipman, which has not, as we think, been told before: At the barn at Sheerness good company sometimes appeared. Among persons of high distinction was Lord Cochrane (some part of whose Memoirs it is our fortune to receive as we write these lines). When his ship, the Pallas, lay in Sheerness roadstead, Lord Cochrane, now Earl of Dundonald, was always at the play; and is still remembered by the old doorkeeper, not less from his great renown as a seamen, than by his original and goodhearted whimsy of always paying for his box twice. In the little Douglas, then a flaxen Saxon boy of three or four, Lord Dundoland was to find in after life one of the staunchest of his friends and defenders. Among the very few letters preserved by Jerrold was this from the hero of the Basque Roads : 66 "He had gone ashore with Capt. Hutchinson, and was left in command of the gig. While the commander was absent two of the men in the midshipman's charge requested permission to make some trifling purchase. The good-natured officer assented, addingBy the way, you may as well buy me some apples and a few pears. All right, sir,' said the men; and they departed. The captain presently returned, and still the seamen were away on their errand. They were searched for, but they could not be found. They had deserted. Any naval reader whose eye may wander over this page will readily imagine the disgrace into which Midshipman Douglas | sailors confirmed his description of the craft; Jerrold fell with this captain. Upon the the keen attention he gave to any stories of young delinquent the event made a lasting wrecks or storms told by the crew-all these impression, and years afterwards he talked signs of enjoyment recalled the midshipman. about it with that curious excitement which lit up his face when he spoke of any thing he had felt. He remembered even the features of the two deserters; as he had, most unexpectedly, an opportunity of proving. The midshipman had long put his dirk aside, and washed the salt from his brave face. He had become a fighter with a keener weapon than his dirk had ever proved, when, one day strolling eastward, possibly from the office of his own newspaper to the printing premises of Messrs. Bradbury & Evans, in Whitefriars, he was suddenly struck with the form and face of a baker, who, with his load of bread at his back, was examining some object in the window of the surgical instrument maker, who puzzles s many inquisitive passers-by, near the entrance to King's College. There was no mistake. Even the flour dredge could not hide the fact. The ex-midshipman walked nimbly to the baker's side, and rapping him sharply upon son to sea, nor would he hear with any the back, said, 'I say, my friend, don't you Nor had he forgotten how to manage a boat. On a certain occasion he was sailing in a frail cutter, from Sark to Guernsey, when the wind freshened, and the sea became lively, and the boat was in dangerous currents. The men were not sufficient for the occasion. The boat shipped water; my mother and Mrs. Henry Mayhew, who were of the party, clung to their male companions in terror. The midshipman of the Ernest saw that the boat was being mismanaged, and that at any moment she might be swamped. He calmly seized the helm, bawled out his orders, stood up in the stern-sheets firm as any old helmsman, his Ettle figure looking wondrously feeble and fragile amid the boiling waters, and in a few minutes the craft bounded over the waves, behaving herself with all the propriety of the best-regulated ship." Yet Jerrold would not have sent his own think you've been rather a long time about hearty pleasure of the son of a friend going that fruit?' The deserter's jaw fell. Thirty into that service. A gentleman called on years had not calmed the unquiet suggestions him one day, with a fine youth sick for the of his conscience. He remembered the fruit brine and bent on a gazette all to himself. and the little middy, for he said- Lor! is" And what are you at now, my dear boy?" that you, sir?' The midshipman went on his asked Jerrold. "Silk, Sir," says the hopeful way laughing." How Jerrold first met Clarkson Stanfield on board His Majesty's ship Namur,-how they got up private plays on board,—and how the remembrance of these early days gave rise to the famous private theatricals in which all London assisted,-has been told. With the peace Jerrold left the sea, though it may be truly said the sea never left him : Nelson. "If you go to sea you'll find it worsted." A natural weakness of bodythat ebbed almost daily into real debility, as it flowed back daily into a sudden and surprising semblance of strength-disposed him to shun for himself, and fear for those he liked, the chances of violent fatigue and dangerous adventures, though no man could admire with warmer zest the tale of brave "He never ceased to be, at heart, a sailor. actions bravely told. All his faculties swayed, He loved the sea, was proud of British oak. as it were, between poles which seemed to Its dashing, careless, hearty phases were have no visible connection. A man to outsuited to his nature. He often said that had ward seeming full of whimsical oppositions! the war lasted, and had his strength held out, He delighted in exercise, yet he could scarcely he would have been somebody in His Majesty's ride or walk. Bold as a lion, he was also service. And you could not please him more thoroughly at the seaside than by proposing a nervous as a bird. In a boat he was a rock, day in a cutter. His eye would light up, and on the edge of a cliff a leaf. Standing in the he would hasten to the shore to talk the mat- stern-sheets in a storm he looked the image ter over with the sailors himself. They drove of a hero,-standing on the July Column he a good bargain with him, for he could never turned pale and sick. Though twisted with haggle over shillings, and they liked his frank, pain, he was ever the livehest rattle in the familiar manner. It was delightful to see his little figure planted in the stern-sheets, his company. Heart-disease, sciatica, rheumatface radiant, his hair flowing in the wind; ism in the eyes, never left him safe an instant. mouth and nostrils drawing in, with huge For many years his life was spent on a gravecontent, the saline breeze. The energy with stone, looking into the deep hole, yet no which his glass was raised when a sail ap- one's spirits flowed with more abounding peared; the delight he expressed when the plentifulness than his. With a singular quickness for music, he could never dance a have observed this many and many a time. step. Without voice, his singing was a de- When they and I came home from Italy, in light which no ear that ever heard it will for- 1845, your father went to Brussels to meet us, get. His great accomplishment was, howin company with our friends, Mr. Forster and Mr. Maclise. We all travelled together ever, whistling. A love of country life-its about Belgium for a little while, and all came sights and sounds and scents, to all of which home together. He was the delight of the he was sensitive to the very verge of pain-children all the time, and they were his degave him, first a familiarity, then a command, light. He was in his most brilliant spirits, over all the notes of birds; and he would and I doubt if he were ever more humorous bring about him in his suburban garden troops of thrushes, robins, blackbirds, sparrows, which seemed to know him by a natural instinct as a true friend and leal protector. Born under Bow bells, he used to mock at cockney's born and reared in the country for their ignorance of the voices and ways of birds. If you heard in the lanes about Putney Common, or later in the meadows near West End, a whistle of peculiar strength and sweetness, you felt sure that Jerrold would turn up at the next stile or the first bend of the road. Sometimes, when kept waiting, his pipe tuned up in a drawing-room, to the astonishment, no doubt, of Jeames, but the great amusement of Jeames' mistress. "Couldn't you whistle that again?" pleaded Mary Wolstonecraft coaxingly to her youthful visitor, after stealing on a prelude of the kind. on an" in his life. But the most enduring impression we have all often spoken of it since-was, that he left upon us, who are grown up-and that Jerrold, in his amiable capacity of being easily pleased, in his freshness, in his good nature, in his cordiality, and in the unrestrained openness of his heart, had quite captivated us. Of his generosity I had a proof within these two or three years, which it saddens me to think of now. There had been personal subject, and not involving an angry an estrangement between us-not word-and a good many months had passed without my even seeing him in the street, when it fell out that we dined each with his own separate party, in the STRANGER'S ROOM of a club. Our chairs were almost back to back, and I took mine after he was seated and at dinner. I said not a word (I am sorry to remember), and did not look that way. Before we had sat so long, he openly wheeled his chair round, stretched out both his hands in a most engaging manner, and said aloud, Coaxing was, in fact, the relation that ev-with a bright and loving face that I can see as ery one instinctively took towards the fragile write to you," For God's sake, let us be and gentle being,-for, however bright and friends again! A life's not long enough for leonine, you always thought of him as of something feeble and young. This gentleness was, in truth, the one thing by which all his closest friends knew him. We will cite Mr. Charles Dickens as an incidental wit ness: "Few of his friends,' Mr. Dickens writes, I think, can have more favorable opportunities of knowing him in his gentlest and most affectionate aspect than I have had. He was one of the gentlest and most affectionate of men. I remember very well that when I first saw him, in about the year 1835, when I went into his sick-room in Thistle Grove, Brompton, and found him propped up in a great chair, bright-eyed, and quick, and eager in spirit, but very lame in body, he gave me an impression of tenderness. It never became dissociated from him. There was nothing cynical or sour in his heart, as I knew it. In the of children and young peocompany ple he was particularly happy, and showed to extraordinary advantage. He never was so gay, so sweet-tempered, so pleasing, and so pleased as then. Among my own children I I this." Yet this man was called bitter, acrid, sour, and we know not what. From another letter written by the Author of "Pickwick" to the Chronicler of "Clovernook," of an earlier date than the one just given, we quote a warm and manly paragraph :— 6 "This day week I finished my little Christmas book (writing towards the close the exact words of a passage in your affectionate letter, received this morning; to wit, After all, life has something serious in it '), and ran over here for a week's rest. I cannot tell you how much true gratification I have had in your most hearty letter. F. told me that the same spirit breathed through a notice of Dombey'in your paper; and I have been saying since to K. and G., that there is no such good way of testing the worth of a literary friendship as by comparing its influence on one's mind with any that literary animosity can produce. Mr. W. will throw me into a violent fit of anger for the moment, it is true; but his acts and deeds pass into the death of all bad things next day, and rot out of my mem 424 ory; whereas a generous sympathy, like yours, and gardens; indeed, we can't tell if he loves me "Aix in Savoy. And on we Then, to continue the chapter of apparently fanciful contradictions in this strangely-gifted sail, and how tired we are! Godpapa done "DARLING WILLIE,-What a ride and a being, he who could hardly walk a mile, and up and gone to bed, although we have tumhad always shrunk from mounting a horse, laid down quite shaken. When we left Fonblers with a band under the window! Mamma was in imagination a great traveller. man ever laid down so many plans that came and the train was stifling, the wasps irritating, No tainebleau the heat was like furnace heat, to naught. At the winter fire, or under the and the people dismal about cholera; but mulberry-tree, as he listened to friends who what glorious sweeps of vineyards, and what wander to and fro on the face of this earth, gorgeous oleanders, pomegranates, and dahlon the glow, the change, the intoxication of ias! Godpapa had never seen a vineyard brain produced by new sceneries and manners, he would start into fiery ardor. Rome, beauty, and wanted to stop at all the pretty before, nor a pomegranate blossoming in the open air; and he raved all day over this new Constantinople, Seville, Lisbon-yes, he would places-such as Tonnerre, Nuits, St. Julien. go! But when the time came round to start,There,' he cried is Tonnerre! My God, his feeble health prostrated a brave desire. what a landscape! Let us stay here for a Paris and the Rhine were, until 1854, the day or two. Give me the "Murray"-let only journeys he ever made. In that year slope-Marguerite of Burgundy-desolated he meant to run down on Venice and spend by cholera in '32-that will do.' see, Tonnerre-ha!-dull town-steep some weeks on the Italian lakes. But the slid, past Dijon, Chalons, Macon, tasting the Austrian Kaiser forbade. "We have orders wines, and munching grapes, and sometimes not to admit you into any part of the Aus- tarts with live wasps in them; and so in the trian Empire," said a polite official, when he late hours to Lyon, tired to death, to face the applied for a passport. "That shows your weakness, not my strength," said the appli- don't like their gear to be thumbed and poked long delay at the station, the hauling over of cant. He went, with his wife and with Mr. luggage, and the impatience of the ladies, who and Mrs. Dixon, through Burgundy to Lyons, up the Rhone into Savoy and Switzerland, and through the German Rhineland back to Brussels and London. This trip had a considerable influence on his mind and health. Unhappily, the great writer was a bad correspondent, and the letters sent home were brief and unimportant. From letters written to a little boy, who was son to two of the travelers and godson to the other two-extracts from which are here given-the course of the dramatist and his companions may be traced. We give two or three bits about "Godpapa," having in them that grain of character which to Aix in Savoy-there catch Chambery dili comes of intimate communication : "Fontainebleau. "MY DEAR WILLIE,-After four hot days in Paris we were cooling in the prettiest sort of country-house on the edge of the great forest of Fontainebleau, into which we drive and ramble, losing ourselves in its magnificent avenues of chestnuts and poplars. ... Godpapa has a great love for trees and woods asks a pompous gentleman, all button and toand administered. bacco. Yes,' says Godpapa, who will have Any thing to declare ?' his bit of fun; a live elephant-take care!' Riding into Lyon on a sultry night is like wriggling into a mouldy melon, stuffed with strong other's turned-up noses, and thought of the fresh lakes and breezy Alps. onions and cheese; and we looked at each send and take places for us in to-morrow's diligence for Geneva?' says Godpapa to Mr. Could you Glover, landlord of the Hôtel de l'Univers, where we tumbled in at midnight. All the places taken for three days,' tartly answered the river. Only! What river?-Rhône Glover. Any other conveyance? Only gence to Geneva.' So we dropped into bed (after paying such a bill)-mamma very tired, half-dressed-dozed an hour-and off again and chill in the dull morning air, and at four o'clock flung off the Rhône bank, and, with our faces to the Alps and the rising sun, dodged, swung, and leaped against the rapid current, between heights crowned, like the Rhine, with ruined convents and castles, and |