Atlantic Monthly | Page 4

is
just a peep of green to keep one's feelings fresh; and he is writing for
the stage. It is hard work, and sometimes the dun is at the door, and
contact is inevitable with men who don't understand the precious jewel
he weareth in his head;--but the week's hard work is got through
somehow; and on Sundays he sallies forth for rural air with a little knot
of friends, and the talk is of art, and letters, and the world. So quick and
keen a nature as his had immense buoyancy in it. Nay, for the very dun
young Douglas had an epigram,--as bright, but not as welcome, as a
sovereign. A saying of those early days has found its way into a
comedy,--but not the less belongs to his authentic biography. A
threatening attorney shakes his fist at the villakin where at the window
the wit is parleying with him. "I'll put a man in the house, Sir!"
"Couldn't you," says Douglas, (and of course the right-minded reader is
shocked,) "couldn't you make it a woman?" What a scandalous way to
treat a man of business! Between Douglas and the lawyers, for many
years, there was open war. He was a kind of Robin Hood to these
representatives of the Crown,--adopting the plucky and defiant gaiety
of the old outlaw, and shooting keen arrows at them with a bow that
never grew weak.
The theatres were his regular sources of employment for many years,
and he wrote dramas at a salary. Tradition and family connection must
have led him chiefly to this walk; for though he had some of the most
important qualities of a dramatist, very few of his dramas seem likely
to live,--and even these are not equal to his works in other departments.

The "Man made of Money" will outlast his best play. His most popular
drama,--"Black-eyed Susan,"--though clever, pretty, and tender, is not,
as a work of art, worthy of his genius; nor did he consider it so himself.
In his dramas we find, I think, rather touches of character, than
characters,--scenes, rather than plots,--disjecta membra of dramatic
genius, rather than harmonious creations of it. He could not separate
himself from his work sufficiently for the purposes of the higher stage.
As Johnson says of "Cato," "We pronounce the name of Cato, but we
think on Addison,"--so one may say of any character of Jerrold's, that it
suggests and refers us to its author. All the gold has his head on it. To
be sure, there is plenty of gold; and I wish somebody would put his
scores of plays, big and little, into a kind of wine-press and give us the
wine. There is always the wit of the man, whether the play be
"Gertrude's Cherries," or "The Smoked Mixer," or "Fifteen Tears of a
Drunkard's Life,"--or what not. That quality never failed him. He
dresses up all his characters in that brilliant livery. But dialogue is not
enough for the stage, and compared with the attraction of an intense
action is nothing. Besides, Jerrold found the modern taste for spectacle
forming thirty years ago. In his prefaces he complains bitterly of the
preference of the public for the mechanical over the higher attractions
of the art. And the satirical war he waged against actors and managers
showed that he looked back with little pleasure to the days when his
life was chiefly occupied with them and their affairs. It may be
mentioned here, that he was very shabbily treated by several people
who owed fame and fortune to his genius. I have heard a curious story
about his connection with Davidge, manager of the Surrey,--the
original, as I take it, of his Bajazet Gay. They say that he had used
Douglas very ill,--that Douglas invoked this curse upon him,--"that he
might live to keep his carriage, and yet not be able to ride in it,"--and
that it was fulfilled, curiously, to the letter. The ancient gods, we know,
took the comic poet under their protection and avenged him. Was this a
case of the kind,--or but a flying false anecdote? I would not be
certain;--but at least, when Davidge died one evening, and Douglas was
informed of the hour, he remarked, "I did not think he would have died
before the half-price came in!" Sordid fellows are not safe from genius
even in the grave. It spoils their sepulchral monuments,--as the old
heralds tore the armorial blazonry from plebeian tombs.

His first fame and success, however, were owing to the Drama; and
though his non-dramatic labors were greater and still more successful,
he never altogether left the stage. I repeat, that I value his plays, most,
because they helped to discipline him for his after-work; and I thank
the theatre chiefly for ripening in