Douglas Jerrold

“ Jericho.
“My love,” said Jericho: “I have acted weakly—I own it. Condescending to the prejudices of society, in a rash moment, I consented to fight a duel.”
“The rumour, Solomon, had reached me; but I would not reproach you: no; I have struggled with my feelings, and been silent. You cared not to make me a widow,” said Mrs. Jericho, “but heaven knows I forgive you.”
“I received my adversary’s ball here,”—said Jericho, spreading his hand over his heart. “A poor man must have been killed, but there is a fate that watches over property. ”

“ Because, don’t let me blame the postman,” said Basil.
“I did not answer it, young man,” cried Jericho with his best emphasis. “Where nothing is to be said, I take it, silence is the best reply. In a word, I will not advance a single farthing.”
“Not to assist your old friend Carraways?” cried Basil.
“He was never any friend of mine; a mere acquaintance,” said Jericho impatiently.
“To be sure; friendship in ill-luck turns to mere acquaintance. The wine of life—as I’ve heard it called—goes into vinegar; and folks that hugged the bottle, shirk the cruet.” ”

“ However, you’re right, lad. Be grave betimes: ’tis best, and prepares you before hand for the knocks that are certain to come. Though, to be sure, if a man may count upon a bright and easy road—a path of diamond dust with rosebud borders, like the gardens in the fairy book—you are the man.”
“Indeed, sir,” and Basil shook his head, “I think—that is, I know you mistake my path of life. ’Tis not so fine; and more, I hope not so tedious as that you see for me. In a word, I shall owe nothing to Mr. Jericho.” ”

“ My dear Jericho—ha! ha!—why, my good man, what is the matter with you? I thought you’d be delighted with my taste. Any other man would be proud of his wife, with such a choice. Eh, Mr. Candituft?”
“And so is Mr. Jericho. Only he’s a philosopher; he won’t show the rapture that swells his heart.” No winter-tortoise ever slept sounder in its shell, than did the heart of Jericho in his bosom.
“You know, my dear,”—said Mrs. Jericho, in her sweetest, most convincing voice—“you know ’twould be impossible to go to court without diamonds. ”

“ Mrs. Jericho remained the undisputed possessor of the last word. With a despairing twitch, Jericho had again seized the newspaper. “Well, then”—said the wife—“it is no use my wasting my time; I will write to the Carraways that we shan’t come.”
“You will do just as you please, I am sure, my dear. You always do,” said Jericho.
“Not I indeed; oh dear no. But, I dare say, your wife out of doors does as she likes; I have no doubt of that. I am sure, again and again have I wished I had been a Hindoo wife; then I had sacrificed myself upon the pyre and been happy—but I am rightly served.” ”

“ I like this,” cried Carraways. “Well, I do think that young folks never look so happy or so handsome as when they’re making hay. What say you, Mrs. Jericho?”
“I was ever of that sentiment,” said Mrs. Jericho, with one of her fullest smiles. “’Tis so pastoral—so innocent; so far away from the fastidious conventionalities of life.” And then Mrs. Jericho darkly frowned, and suddenly squeezing her daughter Monica by the arm, and whispering anxiously between her maternal teeth, cried—“That never can be your sister, Agatha!” ”

“ Doctor Dodo declared that he had been inveigled to the ground—the Battersea Waterloo—and therefore was under no professional pledge of silence. Again, the gun-shot wound enjoyed by Jericho—as Dodo sneeringly phrased it—was so extraordinary, so marvellous, seeing that the man was no worse for it—that, with trumpet-voice, the case must sound an alarm to the whole profession. If men were to live with holes in their hearts, there was an end of the delicate mystery of anatomy. Man became no jot more dignified than polypus. ”

“ Breeks, the tailor, began to measure, and to re-measure with an increasing wonder, that in a little time deepened into awe, and threatened to explode into terror. “It’s like measuring a penknife for a sheath,” Breeks declared to his wife. “That Mr. Jericho’s quite a puzzle, Julia; quite. There’s no knowing where the paddin’ ends and the man begins. Man, Julia! He isn’t a man at all, but a cotton-pod. Why he can’t have no more stomach than a ’bacco-pipe.” Such were the confidential communings of man with wife; and, after certain intervals, with a whole round of Mrs. Breeks’s bosom gossips. ”

“ Jericho to her emphatic first-born.
“Oh, mustn’t I, though?” cried Basil. “It’s as little as I can do. Ha! you don’t know the lot of people that’s asking me. Bless you! they ask a hundred times to my once. Well, will old Jericho tip the loyalty? Did you give him my sentiment, mother, eh? Money—money’s like the air you breathe; if you have it not you die. Have you brought me the beggarly allowance?—If I don’t blush a hole in my cheek to take it! It’s disgusting. A hundred a year! Not enough to keep a blind man in dogs.”
“My dear Basil, where do you imbibe such extraordinary parallels?” ”

“ He had met Douglas Jerrold, the famous wit, and had been entertained by the poet William Howitt, who made a farewell speech in his honor. Everywhere he had denounced slavery, everywhere hospitable doors had opened wide to receive him, everywhere he had made friends for himself and his cause. A slave and an outcast at home, he had been made to feel himself a gentleman, had been the companion of great men and good women. Urged to remain in this land of freedom, and offered aid to establish himself in life there, his heart bled for his less fortunate brethren in captivity ”

“ His huge town mansion, burning with gold—the very domain of upholstery, massive, rich and gorgeous, for the Man of Money was for the most substantial, the most potent development of his creed, whereby to awe and oppress his worshippers—his house, in its wide hospitality, embraced, as Jericho devoutly believed, the world. Let all mankind outside his walls suddenly sink and die, and he would be convinced that still under his roof-tree were gathered together all the men and women who composed the heart, the kernel of human life. ”

“ Jericho’s mines, whence he derives his wealth, is the very mine that some day”—
Basil’s mother grew pale. She tried to speak; and then to smile, as though in scorn and utter incredulity.
“I only repeat the rumour; of course, mother, I give no faith to bonds of brimstone. Still, I should like to be assured of the source of his means. Why, mother, you have eyes. You cannot, if you would, be blind to the daily, hourly waste of the man. Like a waxen figure made by a witch, he dwindles—dwindles. People say, too, such waste is the tribute exacted by the devil.” ”

“ A season with me, my dear madam, that lasts all the year round, I can assure you,” and again Basil kissed the hand of his anxious parent.
“The truth is, Basil, I do believe that Mr. Jericho is very much pressed—very much. And you know he is indulgent to you; and so, you must not be hard upon him: indeed, my love, you must not. I am very much afraid,”—and Mrs. Jericho looked at the youth with new affection—“very much afraid that you’re an extravagant child.”
“’Pon my life, my dear madam, when I see what other young fellows do, I feel myself a mean man; sometimes despise myself. ”

“ Jericho. “They’re wearing him to a shadow. He’ll never be himself so long as he’s in that horrid Commons. He must retire into the Upper House. He’s losing all his substance in Acts of Parliament. And what—what indeed does anybody care? Except ourselves,” said Mrs. Jericho, with self-correction—“except ourselves. And, dear Sir Arthur, I know your friendship—I know your sympathy: that Mr. Jericho, in all his trials, in all his anxieties for the country, that he may always depend upon.” ”

“ Jewels, pictures, horses had Jericho—with more than imperial bounty—bestowed upon all sides. A week only after the duel, and Jericho had more than trebled the number of his friends and champions. The Hole in the Heart, in the eye of Jericho’s world had gradually closed; and the heart was nobler, better, truer, kindlier than ever.
Mrs. Jericho was soon sweetly comforted by the enthusiasm of crowds of dear friends for her magnificent husband. She ought, indeed, to be a happy woman, possessing such a man. ”

“ The devil Jericho threw gifts about him; and all society turned itself into a knot of vipers, and stung my reputation—killed my practice—poisoned my bread. And so, sir”—and Dodo gasped for breath, and strove for serenity,—“and so, I have resolved to leave the land. We all go,”—and Dodo smiled—“all, mother and myself, the nine here, and the one at the breast. I’ve brought ’em—dear hearts!—to show ’em their berths. I’m afraid, I’ve tired you; good morning, sir. Come along, Charlotte; come along, my loves. We go where there are no snakes—no snakes.” ”

“ Instantly she was herself; more than ever herself: full to overflowing with the wrongs of a mother. In that bit of white satin, did Mrs. Jericho read—as she firmly believed—the fatal marriage warrant of her son, her eldest born.
Mrs. Carraways had, of course, to change her cap. Such was her first intention; the serious purpose that had sent her flying to her room. However, let no woman say she will at a pinch change her cap and nothing more. For Mrs. Carraways had no sooner entered her room, and caught a bit of herself in her glass, than she was convinced she must also change her gown. ”

“ Mizzlemist delivered himself with such energy, that at the same time he struck the fork between the bones of Jericho’s right hand, pinning it where it lay. The planted weapon trembled in the mahogany. Mr. Jericho’s head was at the moment turned aside. A shout from the company proclaimed some calamity. Mr. Jericho slowly turning, saw the fork still quivering in his flesh. He calmly withdrew the weapon from the wood, laid it down, passed his palm over his bloodless hand, and with a smile said—“It’s nothing.” ”

“ No, my little tortoise-shell, I shall always study humility, it’s safest—shall always think myself not good enough for any woman in the world. When I die, this is the epitaph I shall have grown over me:—‘He was so humble of spirit, he never lifted his thoughts to marriage. Reader, go and do likewise.’”
“My dear, strange Basil!” said Mrs. Jericho, with an incredulous laugh.
“Shall endeavour to leave five pounds a-year, to have that epitaph grown over me in mustard and cress. Five pounds a-year, ma’am, to the sexton, to keep my memory green.” ”

“ Jericho. “Seizin!”
“Quite right, my dear madam. Seizin’s the word. You’ve no notion of the amount of law I know. In another fortnight I’m called, and then—upon my life when I think of some people, they fire me with ambition. They do. I’ll get upon the bench, if it’s only to hang ’em.”
“Not you, my dear sir,” said Candituft—“you don’t know your own heart. We do.”
“I haven’t your charity; I wish I had: only a little—you’ve too much. You waste it. ’Pon my life, you are so good, you’d pour rose-water over a toad,” and Basil leered at the Man-Tamer. ”

“ Thus spoke Breeks, the tailor, holding his strip of parchment to the eye of the attenuated Jericho. “I never did know such a shrink.”
“I’m glad of it,” said Jericho with dignity. “I was fast losing my figure, Breeks.”
“Oh dear, no!” said Breeks. “A little stout, to be sure; but noways out of character. Some people’s only made to be stout, and nothing else. And now in six weeks six inches! Why, in a twelvemonth, do you know what that’ll come to? Eh?”
“You will measure me without observation, Mr. Breeks,” said Jericho, “or not measure me at all.”
The Man made of Money shows his want of feeling. ”

“ Jericho. “And you can leave home, can quit fortune, family, every grace and happiness of life for the whim of a desert?”
“Grace and happiness a man may, if he will, always carry with him. The most valuable of luggage, they pack very easily. Desert! Look here, my dear mother—see,” and Basil took from his pocket a map, which unfolding, he spread upon the table. “Quite a land of plenty! Earth is here so kind, that just tickle her with a hoe and she laughs with a harvest.”
Mrs. Jericho said nothing; but shook her head and sighed. And here Mrs. Carraways quietly withdrew. ”

“ My dear sir, you will find it will be impossible for us to make too much of you. And now to the question that has brought me here. The borough of Toadsham is at your service. You needn’t even show yourself; all you have to say is—yes; and take your seat. You can’t imagine how your dear, your noble wife has jumped at the notion.”
“Well, ‘yes’ is soon said,” observed Jericho.
“And you’ll say it? I knew you would,” and Candituft shook Jericho by the hand. “Ha, sir! what a career is open to you. With your boundless wealth”—
“Pooh! pooh! no such thing, Mr. Candituft. ”

“ Jericho drew himself up. “Pardon me, my dear friend—I”—Candituft struggled with his feelings; at length, he fell upon Jericho’s neck, and in an agony of friendship exclaimed—“Worthiest of beings! Best of creatures! You must fight!”
Jericho was a little subdued by such devotion.—“You really think I must fight?”
“Do you think,” said Candituft, “that the Duke of St. George would suffer a man who refused a challenge to sully the door-step of Red Dragon House? Noblest of men as he is, and kindest of the human race, he would feel it to be his duty to spit upon you. ”

“ Jericho in a tone of tender remonstrance, “do not be so extravagant. And you hurt your sisters; you do, indeed. A man”—and Mrs. Jericho took breath for a great utterance—“a man never so beautifully shows his own strength, as when he respects our softness.”
“No, indeed;” said the young ladies, speaking and shaking their heads in sympathy. “No!”
“I’ve a whole bank of respect in me, ma’am”—and Basil spread his fingers over his breast—“but I don’t pay a penn’orth of it to forged drafts. Now, softness is one thing; and—my dear parent I am quite prepared to prove what I say—and gammon is another.” ”