Atlantic Monthly | Page 9

he wrote, and he acted in life on the principles which he advocated in literature. He united, remarkably, simplicity of character with brilliancy of talk. For instance, with all his success, he never sought higher society than that which he found himself gradually and by a natural momentum borne into, as he advanced. He never suppressed a flash of indignant sarcasm for fear of startling the "genteel" classes and Mrs. Grundy. He never aped aristocracy in his household. He would go to a tavern for his oysters and a glass of punches simply as they did in Ben Jonson's days; and I have heard of his doing so from a sensation of boredom at a very great house indeed,--a house for the sake of an admission to which, half Bayswater would sell their grandmothers' bones to a surgeon. This kind of thing stamped him in our polite days as one of the old school, and was exceedingly refreshing to observe in an age when the anxious endeavour of the English middle classes is to hide their plebeian origin under a mockery of patrician elegance. He had none of the airs of success or reputation,--none of the affectations, either personal or social, which are rife everywhere. He was manly and natural,--free and off-handed to the verge of eccentricity. Independence and marked character seemed to breathe from the little, rather bowed figure, crowned with a lion-like head and falling light hair,--to glow in the keen, eager, blue eyes glancing on either side as he walked along. Nothing could be less commonplace, nothing less conventional, than his appearance in a room or in the streets.
His quick, impulsive nature made him a great talker, and conspicuously convivial,--yea, convivial, at times, up to heights of vinous glory which the Currans and Sheridans shrank not from, but which a respectable age discourages. And here I must undertake the task of saying something about his conversational wit,--so celebrated, yet so difficult (as is notoriously the case with all wits) to do justice to on paper.
The first thing that struck you was his extreme readiness in conversation. He gave the electric spark whenever you put your knuckle to him. The first time I called on him in his house at Putney, I found him sipping claret We talked of a certain dull fellow whose wealth made him prominent at that time. "Yes," said Jerrold, drawing his finger round the edge of his wineglass, "_that's_ the range of his intellect,--only it had never any thing half so good in it." I quote this merely as one of the average _bons-mots_ which made the small change of his ordinary conversation. He would pun, too, in talk, which he scarcely ever did in writing. Thus he extemporized as an epitaph for his friend Charles Knight, "GOOD NIGHT!"--When Mrs. Glover complained that her hair was turning gray,--from using essence of lavender (as she said),--he asked her "whether it wasn't essence of thyme?" On the occasion of starting a convivial club, (he was very fond of such clubs,) somebody proposed that it should consist of twelve members, and be called "The Zodiac,"--each member to be named after a sign. "And what shall I be?" inquired a somewhat solemn man, who feared that they were filled up. "Oh, we'll bring you in as the weight in Libra," was the instant remark of Douglas. A noisy fellow had long interrupted a company in which he was. At last the bore said of a certain tune, "It carries me away with it." "For God's sake," said Jerrold, "let somebody whistle it."--Such _dicteria_, as the Romans called them, bristled over his talk. And he flashed them out with an eagerness, and a quiver of his large, somewhat coarse mouth, which it was quite dramatic to see. His intense chuckle showed how hearty was his gusto for satire, and that wit was a regular habit of his mind.
I shall set down here some Jerroldiana current in London,--some heard by myself, or otherwise well authenticated. Remember how few we have of George Selwyn's, Hanbury Williams's, Hook's, or indeed any body's, and you will not wonder that my handful is not larger.
When the well-known "Letters" of Miss Martineau and Atkinson appeared, Jerrold observed that their creed was, "There is no God, and Miss Martineau is his prophet."
"I have had such a curious dinner!" said C. "Calves' tails."--"Extremes meet," Douglas said, instantly.
He admired Carlyle; but objected that he did not give definite suggestions for the improvement of the age which he rebuked. "Here," said he, "is a man who beats a big drum under my windows, and when I come running down stairs has nowhere for me to go."
A wild Republican said profanely, that Louis Blanc was "next to Jesus Christ"--"On which side?" asked the wit.
Pretty Miss ----, the actress, being