The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 01, November, 1857. Various
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p>The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 01, November, 1857 / A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
DOUGLAS JERROLD
My personal acquaintance with Douglas Jerrold began in the spring of 1851. I had always had a keen relish for his wit and fancy; I felt a peculiar interest in a man who, like myself, had started in life in the Navy; and one of the things poor Douglas prided himself on was his readiness to know and recognize young fellows fighting in his own profession. I shall not soon forget the dinner he gave at the Whittington Club that spring. St. Clement's had rung out a late chime before we parted; and it was a drizzly, misty small hour as he got into a cab for Putney, where he was then living. I had found him all I expected; and he did not disappoint, on further acquaintance, the promise of that first interview. It will be something to remember in afterlife, that one enjoyed the friendship of so brilliant a man; and if I can convey to my readers a truer, livelier picture of his genius and person than they have been able to form for themselves hitherto, I shall be delighted to think that I have done my duty to his memory. The last summer which he lived to see is now waning; let us gather, ere it goes, the "lilies" and "purple flowers" that are due to his grave.
Jerrold's Biography is still unwritten. The work is in the hands of his eldest son,—his successor in the editorship of "Lloyd's,"—and will be done with pious carefulness. Meanwhile I cannot do more than sketch the narrative of his life; but so much, at all events, is necessary as shall enable the reader to understand the Genius and Character which I aspire to set before him.
Douglas William Jerrold was, I take it, of South-Saxon ancestry,—dashed with Scotch through his grandmother, whose maiden name was Douglas, and who is said to have been a woman of more than ordinary energy of character. As a Scot, I should like to trace him to that spreading family apostrophized by the old poet in such beautiful words,—
"O Douglas, O Douglas,
Tender and true!"
But I don't think he ever troubled himself on the subject; though he had none of that contempt for a good pedigree which is sometimes found in men of his school of politics. As regarded fortune, he owed every thing to nature and to himself; no man of our age had so thoroughly fought his own way; and no man of any age has had a much harder fight of it. To understand and appreciate him, it was, and is, necessary to bear this fact in mind. It colored him as the Syrian sun did the old crusading warrior. And hence, too, he was in a singular degree a representative man of his age; his age having set him to wrestle with it,—having tried his force in every way,—having left its mark on his entire surface. Jerrold and the century help to explain each other, and had found each other remarkably in earnest in all their dealings. This fact stamps on the man a kind of genuineness, visible in all his writings,—and giving them a peculiar force and raciness, such as those of persons with a less remarkable experience never possess. We are told, that, in selling yourself to the Devil, it is the proper traditionary practice to write the contract in your blood. Douglas, in binding himself against him, did the same thing. You see his blood in his ink,—and it gives a depth of tinge to it.
He was the son of a country manager named Samuel Jerrold, and was born in London on the 3d of January, 1803. His father was for a long time manager of the seaport theatres of Sheerness and Southend,—which stand opposite each other, just where the Thames becomes the sea. Douglas spent most of his boyhood, therefore, about the sea-coast, in the midst of a life that was doubly dramatic,—dramatic as real, and dramatic as theatrical. There were sea, ships, sailors, prisoners, the hum of war, the uproar of seaport life, on the one hand; on the other, the queer, rough, fairy world (to him at once fairy world and home world) of the theatre. It was a position to awaken precociously, one would think, the feelings of the quick-eyed, quick-hearted lad. No wonder he took the sea-fever to which all our blood is liable, and tried a bout of naval life. At eleven years of age he became a middy, and served a short time—not two years in all—in a vessel stationed in the North Sea. Naval life was a rough affair in those days. Jerrold's most remarkable experience seems to have been bringing over the wounded of Waterloo from Belgium; which stamped on his mind a sense of the horrors of war that never left him, but is marked on his writings everywhere, in spite of a certain combative turn and an admiration of heroes which also belonged to him. To the last, he had an interest in sea matters, and spoke with enthusiasm of Lord Nelson. But the literary use he made of his nautical experience ended with "Black-eyed Susan." He was a boy when he came ashore and threw himself on the very different sea of London; and it is the influence of London that is most perceptible in his mature works. Here his work was done, his battles fought, his mind formed; and you may observe in his writings a certain romantic and ideal way of speaking of the country, which shows that to him it was a place of retreat and luxury, rather than of sober, practical living. This is not uncommon with literary men whose lot has been cast in a great city, if they possess, as Jerrold did, that poetic temperament which is alive to natural beauty.
He now became an apprentice in a printing-office, and went through the ordinary course of a printer's life. He felt genius stirring in him, and he strove for the knowledge to give it nourishment, and the field to give it exercise. He read and wrote, as well as worked and talked. It would be a task for antiquarian research to recover his very earliest lucubrations scattered among the ephemeral periodicals of that day. Plays of his might be dug out, whose very names are unknown to his most intimate friends. He scattered his early fruit far and wide,—getting little from the world in exchange. Literature was then a harder struggle than in our days. Jerrold did not know the successful men who presided over it. He had no patrons; and he had few friends. The isolation and poverty in which he formed his mind and style deepened the peculiarity which was a characteristic of these. They gave to his genius that intense and eccentric character which it has; and no doubt (for Fortune has a way of compensating) the chill they breathed on the fruits of his young nature enriched their ripeness, as a touch of frost does with plums. The grapes from which Tokay is made are left hanging even when the snow is on them;—all the better for Tokay!
His youth, then, was a long and hard struggle to get bread in exchange for wit;—a struggle like that of the poor girls who sell violets in the streets. He was wont to talk of those early days very freely,—passionately, even to tears, when he got excited,—and always bravely, heartily, and with the right "moral" to follow. When Diderot had passed a whole day without bread, he vowed that if he ever got prosperous, he would save any fellow-creature that he could from such suffering. Jerrold had learned the same lesson. Through life, he took the side of the poor and weak. It was the secret, at once, of his philosophy and his politics. He got endless abuse for his eternal tirades against the great and the "respectable,"—against big-wigs of every size and shape. But the critics who attacked him for this negative pole of his intellectual character overlooked the positive one. He had kindness and sympathy enough; but he always gave them first to those who wanted them most. And as humorist and satirist he had a natural tendency to attack power,—to play Pasquin against the world's Pope. In fact, his radicalism was that of a humorist. He never adopted the utilitarian, or, as it was called, "philosophical," radicalism which was so fashionable in his younger days;—not, indeed, the Continental radicalism held by a party in England;—but was an independent kind of warrior, fighting under his own banner, and always rather with the weapons of a man of letters than those of a politician. For the business aspect of politics he never showed any predilection from first to last.
Well, then,—picture him to yourself, reader, a small, delicate youth, with fair, prominent features,—long, thin hair,—keen, eager, large, blue eyes, glancing out from right to left, as he walks the streets of Babylon,—and seizing with a quick impulsiveness every feeling of the hour. Still young,—and very young,—he has married for love. He is living in a cottage or villakin on the outskirts of town, where there is just a peep of green to keep one's feelings fresh; and he is writing for the stage. It is hard work, and sometimes the dun is at the door, and contact is inevitable with men who don't understand the precious jewel he weareth in his head;—but the week's hard work is got through somehow; and on Sundays he sallies forth for rural air with a little knot of friends, and the talk is of art, and letters, and the world. So quick and keen a nature as his had immense buoyancy in it. Nay, for the very dun young Douglas had an epigram,—as bright, but not as welcome, as a sovereign. A saying of those early days has found its way into a comedy,—but not the less belongs to his authentic biography. A threatening