Douglas William Jerrold

“ Dear me! if the bed doesn't spin round and dance about! I've got all that filthy ship in my head! No: I sha'n't be well in the morning. But nothing ever ails anybody but yourself. You needn't groan in that way, Mr. Caudle, disturbing the people, perhaps, in the next room. It's a mercy I'm alive, I'm sure. If once I wouldn't have given all the world for anybody to have thrown me overboard! What are you smacking your lips at, Mr. Caudle? But I know what you mean—of course, you'd never have stirred to stop 'em; not you. ”

“ Don't you think so, Caudle? Eh, love? Now, do answer.
"How can you tell?
"Nonsense, Caudle; you must have seen it. I'm sure nothing delights the dear soul so much as when she's thinking how to please you.
"Don't you remember Thursday night, the stewed oysters when you came home? That was all dear mother's doings! 'Margaret,' says she to me, 'it's a cold night; and don't you think dear Mr. Caudle would like something nice before he goes to bed?' And that, Caudle, is how the oysters came about. Now, don't sleep, Caudle: do listen to me for five minutes; 'tisn't often I speak, goodness knows. ”

“ I'd make a law against any of 'em having wives, except upon paper; for goodness help the dear creatures tied to them! Like innocent moths lured by a candle! Talking of candles, you don't know that the lamp in the passage is split to bits! I say you don't—do you hear me, Mr. Caudle? Won't you answer? Do you know where you are? What?
"In the Garden of Eden?
"Are you? Then you've no business there at this time of night."
"And saying this," writes Caudle, "she scrambled from the bed and put out the light." ”

“ You couldn't think of taking your wife and children, like any other decent man, to a fair. Oh no, you never care to be seen with us. I'm sure, many people don't know you're married at all: how can they? Your wife's never seen with you. Oh no; anybody but those belonging to you! "Greenwich Fair, indeed! Yes,—and of course you went up and down the hill, running and racing with nobody knows who. Don't tell me; I know what you are when you're out. You don't suppose, Mr. Caudle, I've forgotten that pink bonnet, do you? No: I won't hold my tongue, and I'm not a foolish woman. ”

“ No, Caudle, no; it isn't nonsense to keep wedding-days; it isn't a deception on the world; and if it is, how many people do it! I'm sure it's only a proper compliment that a man owes to his wife. Look at the Winkles—don't they give a dinner every year? Well, I know, and if they do fight a little in the course of the twelvemonth, that's nothing to do with it. They keep their wedding-day, and their acquaintance have nothing to do with anything else.
"As I say, Caudle, it's only a proper compliment that a man owes to his wife to keep his wedding-day. ”

“ As might have been anticipated, one of the speakers touched upon the highly-popular Curtain Lectures, and in the course of his nervously brief reply Douglas Jerrold said:—"Mrs. Caudle! Your honourable member has said he does not believe there is a Mrs. Caudle in all Birmingham. I will even venture to go further than he: I do not think there is a Mrs. Caudle in the whole world. I really think the whole matter is a fiction—a wicked fiction, intended merely to throw into finer contrast the trustingness, the beauty, the confidence, and the taciturnity of the sex." ”

“ It's nothing to you that a poor woman's sitting up, and telling the minutes, and seeing all sorts of things in the fire—and sometimes thinking that something dreadful has happened to you—more fool she to care a straw about you!—This is all nothing. Oh, no! when a woman's once married she's a slave—worse than a slave—and must bear it all!
“And what you men can find to talk about, I can't think! Instead of a man sitting every night at home with his wife, and going to bed at a Christian hour,—going to a club, to meet a set of people who don't care a button for him, it 's monstrous! ”

“ But I'm a fool to trouble my head about you.
“And you're not going to let me know the secret, eh? You mean to say,—you're not? Now, Caudle, you know it's a hard matter to put me in a passion—not that I care about the secret itself: no, I wouldn't give a button to know it, for it's all nonsense, I'm sure. It isn't the secret I care about: it's the slight, Mr. Caudle; it's the studied insult that a man pays to his wife, when he thinks of going through the world keeping something to himself which he won't let her know. Man and wife one, indeed! ”

“ Mind, Caudle, I'm not saying anything against her; not at all; but there's a flightiness in her manner—I dare say, poor thing, she means no harm, and it may be, as the saying is, only her manner after all—still, there is a flightiness about her that, after what you've been used to, would make you very wretched. Now, if I may boast of anything, Caudle, it is my propriety of manner the whole of my life. I know that wives who're very particular aren't thought as well of as those who're not—still, it's next to nothing to be virtuous, if people don't seem so. ”

“ Carry the street-door key about with you! I've heard of such things with young good-for-nothing bachelors, with nobody to care what became of 'em; but for a married man to leave his wife and children in a house with a door upon the latch—don't talk to me about Chubb, it's all the same—a great deal you must care for us. Yes, it's very well for you to say that you only want the key for peace and quietness—what's it to you, if I like to sit up? You've no business to complain; it can't distress you. ”

“ I suppose the baby must have a godfather; and so, Caudle, who shall we have? Who do you think will be able to do the most for it? No, Caudle, no; I'm not a selfish woman—nothing of the sort—but I hope I've the feelings of a mother; and what's the use of a godfather, if he gives nothing else to the child but a name? A child might almost as well not be christened at all. ”

“ Now, Caudle, none of your heathen principles—I won't hear 'em. I think what satisfies a bishop ought to content you; but the politics you learn at that club are dreadful. To hear you talk of bishops—well, I only hope nothing will happen to you, for the sake of the dear children!
"A nice little house and a garden! I know it—I was born for a garden! There's something about it makes one feel so innocent. My heart somehow always opens and shuts at roses. And then what nice currant wine we could make! And again, get 'em as fresh as you will, there's no radishes like your own radishes! ”

“ How any man can leave his own happy fireside to go and sit, and smoke, and drink, and talk with people who wouldn't one of 'em lift a finger to save him from hanging—how any man can leave his wife—and a good wife, too, though I say it—for a parcel of pot-companions—oh, it's disgraceful, Mr. Caudle: it's unfeeling. No man who had the least love for his wife could do it. ”

“ Nobody cries out more about clean linen than you do—and nobody leads a poor woman so miserable a life when she tries to make her husband comfortable. Yes, Mr. Caudle—comfortable! You needn't keep chewing the word, as if you couldn't swallow it. "Was there ever such a woman?
"No, Caudle; I hope not: I should hope no other wife was ever put upon as I am! It's all very well for you. I can't have a little wash at home like anybody else but you must go about the house swearing to yourself, and looking at your wife as if she was your bitterest enemy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I saw you when the creature was just behind my chair; you took up a glass of wine, and saying to me, 'Margaret,' and then lifting up your eyes at the bold minx, and saying 'my dear,' as if you wanted me to believe that you spoke only to me, when I could see you laugh at her behind me. And at that time little Jack wasn't on his feet. What do you say?
"YOU NODDED AND DRANK A GLASS OF WINE TO THAT CREATURE."
"Heaven forgive me?
"Ha! Mr. Caudle, it's you that ought to ask for that: I'm safe enough, I am: it's you who should ask to be forgiven. ”

“ No, you'll live and sleep at Eel-Pie Island! I shall be left alone with nothing but my thoughts, thinking when the broker will come, and you'll be with your brother directors. I may slave and I toil to save sixpences; and you'll be throwing away hundreds. And then the expensive tastes you've got! Nothing good enough for you now. I'm sure you sometimes think yourself King Solomon. But that comes of making money—if, indeed, you have made any—without earning it. No; I don't talk nonsense: people can make money without earning it. ”

“ You can go into a billiard-room—you, a respectable tradesman, or as you set yourself up for one, for if the world knew all, there's very little respectability in you—you can go and play billiards with a set of creatures in mustachios, when you might take a nice quiet hand with me at home. But no! anything but cribbage with your own wife!
"Caudle, it's all over now; you've gone to destruction. I never knew a man enter a billiard-room that he wasn't lost for ever. ”

“ Then, Caudle, you never need go to bed without something nice and hot. And you want it, Caudle.
"You don't want it?
"Nonsense, you do; for you're not strong, Caudle; you know you're not.
"I'm sure, the money she'd save us in housekeeping. Ha! what an eye she has for a joint! The butcher doesn't walk that could deceive dear mother. And then, again, for poultry! What a finger and thumb she has for a chicken! I never could market like her: it's a gift— quite a gift.
"And then you recollect her marrow-puddings? ”

“ He's plenty of money, Caudle; and I think he might be got. Babies, I know it—babies are his weak side. Wouldn't it be a blessed thing to find our dear child in his will? Why don't you speak? I declare, Caudle, you seem to care no more for the child than if it was a stranger's. People who can't love children more than you do, ought never to have 'em.
"You don't like Wagstaff?
"No more do I much; but what's that to do with it? People who've their families to provide for, mustn't think of their feelings. I don't like him; but then I'm a mother, and love my baby. ”

“ I only want to give 'em proper notions of themselves: and what, indeed, can the poor things think when they see the Briggs's, and the Browns, and the Smiths—and their fathers don't make the money you do, Caudle—when they see them as fine as tulips? Why, they must think themselves nobody; and to think yourself nobody—depend upon it, Caudle,—isn't the way to make the world think anything of you. ”

“ I should like to know how that can be when a man's a mason—when he keeps a secret that sets him and his wife apart? Ha, you men make the laws, and so you take good care to have all the best of 'em to yourselves; otherwise a woman ought to be allowed a divorce when a man becomes a mason. When he's got a sort of corner-cupboard in his heart—a secret place in his mind—that his poor wife isn't allowed to rummage!
“Caudle, you shan't close your eyes for a week—no, you shan't—unless you tell me some, of it. Come, there's a good creature; there's a love. ”

“ Going and spending your money, and—nonsense! don't tell me—no, if you were to ten times swear it, I wouldn't believe that you only spent eighteen-pence on a Saturday. You can't be all those hours, and only spend eighteen-pence. I know better. I'm not quite a fool, Mr. Caudle. A great deal you could have for eighteen-pence! And all the Club married men and fathers of families. The more shame for 'em! Skylarks, indeed! They should call themselves Vultures; for they can only do as they do by robbing their innocent wives and children. Eighteen-pence a week! ”

“ No, sir, I'm not going out a dowdy to please you or anybody else. Gracious knows! it isn't often that I step over the threshold; indeed, I might as well be a slave at once,—better, I should say. But when I do go out,—Mr. Caudle, I choose to go like a lady. ”

“ That was my death, Caudle, though don't let that make you uneasy, love; for I don't think you meant to do it.
"Ha! it's all very well for you to call it nonsense; and to lay your ill conduct upon my shoes. That's like a man, exactly! There never was a man yet that killed his wife, who couldn't give a good reason for it. ”

“ If I can tell what's coming to the world, I'm a sinner! Everybody's for turning their farthings into double sovereigns and cheating their neighbours of the balance. And you, too—you're beside yourself, Caudle—I'm sure of it. ”

“ I'm not made happy by the blacks, and they don't prolong my enjoyment; and, more than that, you're an unfeeling man to say so. You're enough to make a woman wish herself in her grave—you are, Caudle.
"And a pretty example you set to your sons! Because we'd a little wash to-day, and there wasn't a hot dinner—and who thinks of getting anything hot for washer-women?—because you hadn't everything as you always have it, you must swear at the cold mutton—and you don't know what that mutton costs a pound, I dare say—you must swear at a sweet, wholesome joint like a lord. ”

“ Not that I should so much mind—that is, if you have made money—if you'd stop at the Eel-Pie line. But I know what these things are: they're like treacle to flies: when men are well in 'em, they can't get out of 'em: or, if they do, it's often without a feather to fly with. No: if you've really made money by the Eel-Pie line, and will give it to me to take care of for the dear children, why, perhaps, love, I'll say no more of the matter. ”

“ I only hope to goodness you'll not come to want, talking of shillings in the way you do. Now, don't begin about your comfort: don't go on aggravating me, and asking me if your comfort's not worth a shilling a week? That's nothing at all to do with it—nothing: but that's your way—when I talk of one thing, you talk of another; that's so like you men, and you know it. Allow me to tell you, Mr. Caudle, that a shilling a week is two pound twelve a year; and take two pound twelve a year for, let us say, thirty years, and—well, you needn't groan, Mr. Caudle—I don't suppose it will be so long ”