Atlantic Monthly | Page 2

de la Roumania, by Jas. O. Noyes, M.D. Ruskin's Elements of Drawing
Sahara, une Eté dans le Scenes of Clerical Life Smith, Alexander, City
Poems by Spanish Conquest in America, the Spurgeon, Rev. C.H.,
Sermons of
Thüringer Naturen, von Otto Ludwig Twin Roses
Waagen, Dr., Galleries and Cabinets of Art in Great Britain by
Waverley Novels White Lies, by Charles Reade

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY
VOL. I.--NOVEMBER, 1857.--NO. I.

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