Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures Part 1

Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures.

by Douglas Jerrold.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

It has happened to the writer that two, or three, or ten, or twenty gentlewomen have asked him--and asked in various notes of wonder, pity, and reproof -

"What could have made you think of Mrs. Caudle?

"How could such a thing have entered any man's mind?"

There are subjects that seem like rain drops to fall upon a man's head, the head itself having nothing to do with the matter. The result of no train of thought, there is the picture, the statue, the book, wafted, like the smallest seed, into the brain to feed upon the soil, such as it may be, and grow there. And this was, no doubt, the accidental cause of the literary sowing and expansion--unfolding like a night-flower--of MRS. CAUDLE.

But let a jury of gentlewomen decide.

It was a thick, black wintry afternoon, when the writer stopt in the front of the playground of a suburban school. The ground swarmed with boys full of the Sat.u.r.day's holiday. The earth seemed roofed with the oldest lead, and the wind came, sharp as Shylock's knife, from the Minories. But those happy boys ran and jumped, and hopped, and shouted, and--unconscious men in miniature!--in their own world of frolic, had no thought of the full-length men they would some day become; drawn out into grave citizenship; formal, respectable, responsible. To them the sky was of any or all colours; and for that keen east wind--if it was called the east wind--cutting the shoulder- blades of old, old men of forty {1}--they in their immortality of boyhood had the redder faces, and the nimbler blood for it.

And the writer, looking dreamily into that playground, still mused on the robust jollity of those little fellows, to whom the tax-gatherer was as yet a rarer animal than baby hippopotamus. Heroic boyhood, so ignorant of the future in the knowing enjoyment of the present! And the writer still dreaming and musing, and still following no distinct line of thought, there struck upon him, like notes of sudden household music, these words--CURTAIN LECTURES.

One moment there was no living object save those racing, shouting boys; and the next, as though a white dove had alighted on the pen hand of the writer, there was--MRS. CAUDLE.

Ladies of the jury, are there not then some subjects of letters that mysteriously a.s.sert an effect without any discoverable cause?

Otherwise, wherefore should the thought of CURTAIN LECTURES grow from a school ground--wherefore, among a crowd of holiday school-boys, should appear MRS. CAUDLE?

For the LECTURES themselves, it is feared they must be given up as a farcical desecration of a solemn time-honoured privilege; it may be, exercised once in a life time,--and that once having the effect of a hundred repet.i.tions, as Job lectured his wife. And Job's wife, a certain Mohammedan writer delivers, having committed a fault in her love to her husband, he swore that on his recovery he would deal her a hundred stripes. Job got well, and his heart was touched and taught by the tenderness to keep his vow, and still to chastise his help-mate; for he smote her once with a palm-branch having a hundred leaves.

DOUGLAS JERROLD.

INTRODUCTION

Poor Job Caudle was one of the few men whom Nature, in her casual bounty to women, sends into the world as patient listeners. He was, perhaps, in more respects than one, all ears. And these ears, Mrs.

Caudle--his lawful, wedded wife as she would ever and anon impress upon him, for she was not a woman to wear chains without shaking them--took whole and sole possession of. They were her entire property; as expressly made to convey to Caudle's brain the stream of wisdom that continually flowed from the lips of his wife, as was the tin funnel through which Mrs. Caudle in vintage time bottled her elder wine. There was, however, this difference between the wisdom and the wine. The wine was always sugared: the wisdom, never. It was expressed crude from the heart of Mrs. Caudle; who, doubtless, trusted to the sweetness of her husband's disposition to make it agree with him.

Philosophers have debated whether morning or night is most conducive to the strongest and clearest moral impressions. The Grecian sage confessed that his labours smelt of the lamp. In like manner did Mrs. Caudle's wisdom smell of the rushlight. She knew that her husband was too much distracted by his business as toyman and doll- merchant to digest her lessons in the broad day. Besides, she could never make sure of him: he was always liable to be summoned to the shop. Now from eleven at night until seven in the morning there was no retreat for him. He was compelled to lie and listen. Perhaps there was little magnanimity in this on the part of Mrs. Caudle; but in marriage, as in war, it is permitted to take every advantage of the enemy. Besides, Mrs. Caudle copied very ancient and cla.s.sic authority. Minerva's bird, the very wisest thing in feathers, is silent all the day. So was Mrs. Caudle. Like the owl, she hooted only at night.

Mr. Caudle was blessed with an indomitable const.i.tution. One fact will prove the truth of this. He lived thirty years with Mrs.

Caudle, surviving her. Yes, it took thirty years for Mrs. Caudle to lecture and dilate upon the joys, griefs, duties, and vicissitudes comprised within that seemingly small circle--the wedding-ring. We say, seemingly small; for the thing, as viewed by the vulgar, naked eye, is a tiny hoop made for the third feminine finger. Alack! like the ring of Saturn, for good or evil, it circles a whole world. Or, to take a less gigantic figure, it compa.s.ses a vast region: it may be Arabia Felix, and it may be Arabia Petrea.

A lemon-hearted cynic might liken the wedding-ring to an ancient circus, in which wild animals clawed one another for the sport of lookers-on. Perish the hyperbole! We would rather compare it to an elfin ring, in which dancing fairies made the sweetest music for infirm humanity.

Manifold are the uses of rings. Even swine are tamed by them. You will see a vagrant, hilarious, devastating porker--a full-blooded fellow that would bleed into many, many fathoms of black pudding--you will see him, escaped from his proper home, straying in a neighbour's garden. How he tramples upon the heart's-ease: how, with quivering snout, he roots up lilies--odoriferous bulbs! Here he gives a reckless s.n.a.t.c.h at thyme and marjoram--and here he munches violets and gilly-flowers. At length the marauder is detected, seized by his owner, and driven, beaten home. To make the porker less dangerous, it is determined that he shall be RINGED. The sentence is p.r.o.nounced--execution ordered. Listen to his screams!

"Would you not think the knife was in his throat?

And yet they're only boring through his nose!"

Hence, for all future time, the porker behaves himself with a sort of forced propriety--for in either nostril he carries a ring. It is, for the greatness of humanity, a saddening thought, that sometimes men must be treated no better than pigs.

But Mr. Job Caudle was not of these men. Marriage to him was not made a necessity. No; for him call it if you will a happy chance--a golden accident. It is, however, enough for us to know that he was married; and was therefore made the recipient of a wife's wisdom.

Mrs. Caudle, like Mahomet's dove, continually pecked at the good man's ears; and it is a happiness to learn from what he left behind that he had hived all her sayings in his brain; and further, that he employed the mellow evening of his life to put such sayings down, that, in due season, they might be enshrined in imperishable type.

When Mr. Job Caudle was left in this briary world without his daily guide and nocturnal monitress, he was in the ripe fulness of fifty- seven. For three hours at least after he went to bed--such slaves are we to habit--he could not close an eye. His wife still talked at his side. True it was, she was dead and decently interred. His mind--it was a comfort to know it--could not wander on this point; this he knew. Nevertheless, his wife was with him. The Ghost of her Tongue still talked as in the life; and again and again did Job Caudle hear the monitions of bygone years. At times, so loud, so lively, so real were the sounds, that Job, with a cold chill, doubted if he were really widowed. And then, with the movement of an arm, a foot, he would a.s.sure himself that he was alone in his holland.

Nevertheless, the talk continued. It was terrible to be thus haunted by a voice: to have advice, commands, remonstrance, all sorts of saws and adages still poured upon him, and no visible wife. Now did the voice speak from the curtains; now from the tester; and now did it whisper to Job from the very pillow that he pressed. "It's a dreadful thing that her tongue should walk in this manner," said Job, and then he thought confusedly of exorcism, or at least of counsel from the parish priest.

Whether Job followed his own brain, or the wise direction of another, we know not. But he resolved every night to commit to paper one curtain lecture of his late wife. The employment would, possibly, lay the ghost that haunted him. It was her dear tongue that cried for justice, and when thus satisfied, it might possibly rest in quiet. And so it happened. Job faithfully chronicled all his late wife's lectures; the ghost of her tongue was thenceforth silent, and Job slept all his after nights in peace.

When Job died, a small packet of papers was found inscribed as follows:-

"Curtain Lectures delivered in the course of Thirty Years by Mrs.

Margaret Caudle, and suffered by Job, her Husband."

That Mr. Caudle had his eye upon the future printer, is made pretty probable by the fact that in most places he had affixed the text-- such text for the most part arising out of his own daily conduct--to the lecture of the night. He had also, with an instinctive knowledge of the dignity of literature, left a bank-note of very fair amount with the ma.n.u.script. Following our duty as editor, we trust we have done justice to both doc.u.ments.

LECTURE I--MR. CAUDLE HAS LENT FIVE POUNDS TO A FRIEND

"You ought to be very rich, Mr. Caudle. I wonder who'd lend you five pounds? But so it is: a wife may work and may slave! Ha, dear! the many things that might have been done with five pounds. As if people picked up money in the street! But you always were a fool, Mr.

Caudle! I've wanted a black satin gown these three years, and that five pounds would have entirely bought it. But it's no matter how I go,--not at all. Everybody says I don't dress as becomes your wife-- and I don't; but what's that to you, Mr. Caudle? Nothing. Oh, no!

you can have fine feelings for everybody but those belonging to you.

I wish people knew you, as I do--that's all. You like to be called liberal--and your poor family pays for it.

"All the girls want bonnets, and where they're to come from I can't tell. Half five pounds would have bought 'em--but now they must go without. Of course, THEY belong to you: and anybody but your own flesh and body, Mr. Caudle!

"The man called for the water-rate to-day; but I should like to know how people are to pay taxes, who throw away five pounds to every fellow that asks them?

"Perhaps you don't know that Jack, this morning, knocked his shuttlec.o.c.k through his bedroom window. I was going to send for the glazier to mend it; but after you lent that five pounds I was sure we couldn't afford it. Oh, no! the window must go as it is; and pretty weather for a dear child to sleep with a broken window. He's got a cold already on his lungs, and I shouldn't at all wonder if that broken window settled him. If the dear boy dies, his death will be upon his father's head; for I'm sure we can't now pay to mend windows. We might though, and do a good many more things too, if people didn't throw away their five pounds.

"Next Tuesday the fire-insurance is due. I should like to know how it's to be paid? Why, it can't be paid at all! That five pounds would have more than done it--and now, insurance is out of the question. And there never were so many fires as there are now. I shall never close my eyes all night,--but what's that to you, so people can call you liberal, Mr. Caudle? Your wife and children may all be burnt alive in their beds--as all of us to a certainty shall be, for the insurance MUST drop. And after we've insured for so many years! But how, I should like to know, are people to insure who make ducks and drakes of their five pounds?

"I did think we might go to Margate this summer. There's poor little Caroline, I'm sure she wants the sea. But no, dear creature! she must stop at home--all of us must stop at home--she'll go into a consumption, there's no doubt of that; yes--sweet little angel!--I've made up my mind to lose her, NOW. The child might have been saved; but people can't save their children and throw away their five pounds too.

"I wonder where poor little Mopsy is! While you were lending that five pounds, the dog ran out of the shop. You know, I never let it go into the street, for fear it should be bit by some mad dog, and come home and bite all the children. It wouldn't now at all astonish me if the animal was to come back with the hydrophobia, and give it to all the family. However, what's your family to you, so you can play the liberal creature with five pounds?

"Do you hear that shutter, how it's banging to and fro? Yes,--I know what it wants as well as you; it wants a new fastening. I was going to send for the blacksmith to-day, but now it's out of the question: NOW it must bang of nights, since you've thrown away five pounds.

"Ha! there's the soot falling down the chimney. If I hate the smell of anything, it's the smell of soot. And you know it; but what are my feelings to you? SWEEP THE CHIMNEY! Yes, it's all very fine to say sweep the chimney--but how are chimneys to be swept--how are they to be paid for by people who don't take care of their five pounds?

"Do you hear the mice running about the room? I hear them. If they were to drag only you out of bed, it would be no matter. SET A TRAP FOR THEM! Yes, it's easy enough to say--set a trap for 'em. But how are people to afford mouse-traps, when every day they lose five pounds?

"Hark! I'm sure there's a noise downstairs. It wouldn't at all surprise me if there were thieves in the house. Well, it MAY be the cat; but thieves are pretty sure to come in some night. There's a wretched fastening to the back-door; but these are not times to afford bolts and bars, when people won't take care of their five pounds.