Page:Mrs Caudle's curtain lectures.djvu/15



Douglas Jerrold in creating the literary fiction of Mrs. Caudle gave us a portrait of one who in every generation has many incarnations there can, I think, be little doubt. Proof—if proof be required—is to be found in the way in which the wife of the toy-dealer of the "forties" has become a household word. She is the literary presentation of an immortal type—immortal as that other represented by the wit of the 18th century in Mrs. Malaprop. We will not go so far as to admit the truth of the hint which the author lets fall as to every woman having in her a drop of the Caudle—it might be unsafe to do so, even if it were not contrary to experience. Still I am credibly informed that there is no fear of the race dying out—from some Job Caudles of the day I have gathered as much. This being so, there can be no apology necessary for adding yet another to the many editions of the Lectures which have been used up since they appeared week by week in the pages of Punch for the entertainment of our grandparents.

Over half a century has passed since then, and it has seemed not altogether inappropriate to preface this new issue with a short history of Douglas Jerrold's most widely popular contribution to literature, and I may begin with a "prophecy" made by a friend a couple of years before "Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures" began