Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1619 page)

The delay not only saved their lives, it gave them back their liberty as well. The infection of the popular sympathy had penetrated through the prison doors. All three brothers were handsome, well-grown young men. The gentlest of the three in disposition — Thomas Siadoux — aroused the interest and won the affection of the head-gaoler’s daughter. Her father was prevailed on at her intercession to relax a little in his customary vigilance; and the rest was accomplished by the girl herself. One morning, the population of Toulouse heard, with every testimony of the most extravagant rejoicing, that the three brothers had escaped, accompanied by the gaoler’s daughter. As a necessary legal formality, they were pursued, but no extraordinary efforts were used to overtake them: and they succeeded, accordingly, in crossing the nearest frontier.

Twenty days later, orders were received from the capital, to execute their sentence in effigy. They were then permitted to return to France, on condition that they never again appeared in their native place, or in any other part of the province of Languedoc. With this reservation they were left free to live where they pleased, and to repent the fatal act which had avenged them on the murderer of their father at the cost of the priest’s life.

Beyond this point the official documents do not enable us to follow their career. All that is now known has been now told of the village-tragedy at Croix-Daurade.

DOUGLAS JERROLD.

* The biographical facts mentioned in this little sketch are derived from Mr. Blanchard Jerrold’s interesting narrative of his father’s Life and Labours. For the rest — that is to say, for the opinions here expressed on Jerrold’s works, and for the estimate attempted of his personal character — I am responsible. This is the only instance of a reprinted article in the present collection, any part of which is founded on a modern and an accessible book. The reader will perhaps excuse and understand my making an exception here to my own rules, when I add that Douglas Jerrold was one of the first and the dearest friends of my literary life.

SOME seventy years ago, there lived a poor country player, named Samuel Jerrold. His principal claim to a prominent position among the strolling company to which he was attached consisted in the possession of a pair of shoes once belonging to the great Garrick himself. Samuel Jerrold always appeared on the stage in these invaluable “properties” — a man, surely, who deserves the regard of posterity, as the only actor of modern times who has shown himself capable of standing in Garrick’s shoes.

Samuel Jerrold was twice married — the second time to a wife so much his junior that he was older than his own mother-in-law. Partly, perhaps, in virtue of this last great advantage on the part of the husband, the marriage was a very happy one. The second Mrs. Samuel was a clever, good-tempered, notable woman; and helped her husband materially in his theatrical affairs, when he rose in time (and in Garrick’s shoes) to be a manager of country theaters. Young Mrs. Samuel brought her husband a family — two girls to begin with; and, on the third of January, eighteen hundred and three, while she was staying in London, a boy, who was christened Douglas William, and who was destined, in after-life, to make the name of the obscure country manager a household word on the lips of English readers.

In the year eighteen hundred and seven, Samuel Jerrold became the lessee of the Sheerness Theater; and little Douglas was there turned to professional account, as a stage-child. He appeared in “The Stranger” as one of the little cherubs of the frail and interesting Mrs. Haller; and he was “carried on” by Edmund Kean, as the child in “Rolla.” These early theatrical experiences (whatever influence they might have had, at a later time, in forming his instincts as a dramatist) do not appear to have at all inclined him toward his father’s profession when he grew older. The world of ships and sailors amid which he lived at Sheerness seems to have formed his first tastes and influenced his first longings. As soon as he could speak for himself on the matter of his future prospects, he chose the life of a sailor; and at ten years old he entered on board the guardship
Namur
as a first-class volunteer. Up to this time the father had given the son as good an education as it lay within his means to command. Douglas had been noted as a studious boy at school; and he brought with him a taste for reading and for quiet pursuits when he entered on board the
Namur
. Beginning his apprenticeship to the sea as a Midshipman, in December, eighteen hundred and thirteen, he was not transferred from the guardship to active service until April, eighteen hundred and fifteen, when he was drafted off, with forty-six men, to his Majesty’s gunbrig
Ernest.

Those were stirring times. The fierce struggle of Waterloo was at hand; and Douglas’s first cruise was across the Channel to Ostend, at the head of a fleet of transports carrying troops and stores to the battlefield. Singularly enough, his last cruise connected him with the results of the great fight, as his first had connected him with the preparations for it. In the July of the Waterloo year, the
Ernest
brought her share of the wounded back to Sheerness. On the deck of that brig Jerrold first stood face to face with the horror of war. In after-life, when other pens were writing glibly enough of the glory of war, his pen traced the dark reverse of the picture, and set the terrible consequences of all victories, righteous as well as wicked, in their true light.

The great peace was proclaimed, and the nations rested at last. In October, eighteen hundred and fifteen, the
Ernest
was “paid off.” Jerrold stepped on shore, and never returned to the service. He was without interest; and the peace virtually closed his professional prospects. To the last day of his life he had a genuinely English love for the sea and sailors; and, short as his naval experience had been, neither he nor his countrymen were altogether losers by it. If the Midshipman of the Ernest had risen to be an Admiral, what would have become then of the author of “Black-eyed Susan”?

Douglas’s prospects were far from cheering when he returned to his home on shore. The affairs of Samuel Jerrold (through no fault of his own) had fallen into sad confusion. In his old age his vocation of manager sank from under him; his theater was sold; and, at the end of the Waterloo year, he and his family found themselves compelled to leave Sheerness. On the first day of eighteen hundred and sixteen they sailed away in the Chatham boat, to try their fortune in London.

The first refuge of the Jerrolds was at Broad Court, Bow Street. Poor old Samuel was now past his work; and the chief dependence of the ruined family rested on Douglas and his mother. Mrs. Samuel contrived to get some theatrical employment in London; and Douglas, after beginning life as an officer in the navy, was apprenticed to a printer, in Northumberland Street, Strand.

He accepted his new position with admirable cheerfulness and resolution; honestly earning his money, and affectionately devoting it to the necessities of his parents. A delightful anecdote of him, at this time of his life, is told by his son. On one of the occasions when his mother and sister were absent in the country, the little domestic responsibility of comforting the poor worn-out old father with a good dinner rested on Douglas’s shoulders. With the small proceeds of his work he bought all the necessary materials for a good beefsteak pie — made the pie himself, succeeded brilliantly with the crust — himself took it to the bake-house — and himself brought it back, with one of Sir Walter Scott’s novels, which the dinner left him just money enough to hire from a library, for the purpose of reading a story to his father in the evening, by way of dessert. For our own parts, we shall henceforth always rank that beefsteak pie as one among the many other works of Douglas Jerrold which have established his claim to remembrance and to regard. The clew to the bright, affectionate nature of the man — sometimes lost by those who knew him imperfectly, in after-life — could hardly be found in any pleasanter or better place, now that he is gone from among us, than on the poor dinner-table in Broad Court.

Although he was occupied for twelve hours out of the twenty-four at the printing-office, he contrived to steal time enough from the few idle intervals allowed for rest and meals to store his mind with all the reading that lay within his reach. As early as at the age of fourteen, the literary faculty that was in him seems to have struggled to develop itself in short papers and scraps of verse. Only a year later, he made his first effort at dramatic composition, producing a little farce, with a part in it for an old friend of the family, the late Mr. Wilkinson, the comedian. Although Samuel Jerrold was well remembered among many London actors as an honest country manager; and although Douglas could easily secure from his father’s friends his admission to the theater whenever he was able to go to it, he does not appear to have possessed interest enough to gain a reading for his piece when it was first sent in to the English Opera-house. After three years had elapsed, however, Mr. Wilkinson contrived to get the lad’s farce produced at Sadler’s Wells, under the title of “More Frightened than Hurt.” It was not only successful on its first representation, but it also won the rare honour of being translated for the French stage. More than this, it was afterward translated back again, by a dramatist who was ignorant of its original history, for the stage of the Olympic Theater; where it figured in the bills under the new title of “Fighting by Proxy,” with Liston in the part of the hero. Such is the history of Douglas Jerrold’s first contribution to the English drama. When it was produced on the boards of Sadler’s Wells, its author’s age was eighteen years.

He had appeared in public, however, as an author before this time, having composed some verses which were printed in a forgotten periodical called
Arliss’s Magazine.
The loss of his first situation, through the bankruptcy of his master, obliged him to seek employment anew in the printing-office of one Mr. Bigg, who was also the editor of a newspaper called the
Sunday Monitor.
In this journal appeared his first article — a critical paper on “Der Freischütz.” He had gone to the theater with an order to see the opera; and had been so struck by the supernatural drama and the wonderful music to which it was set, that he noted down his impressions of the performance, and afterward dropped what he had written, anonymously, into the editor’s box. The next morning his own article was handed to him to set up in type for the forthcoming number of the
Sunday Monitor.

After this first encouragement, he began to use his pen frequently in the minor periodicals of the time; still sticking to the printer’s work, however, and still living at home with his family. The success of his little farce at Sadler’s Wells led to his writing three more pieces for that theater. They all succeeded; and the managers of some of the other minor theaters began to look after the new man. Just at this time, when his career as dramatist and journalist was beginning to open before him, his father died. After that loss, the next important event in his life was his marriage. In the year eighteen hundred and twenty-four, when he was twenty-one years of age, be married his “first love,” Miss Mary Swann, the daughter of a gentleman who held an appointment in the Post-office. He and his bride settled, with his mother and sister and a kind old friend of his boyish days, in Holborn; and here — devoting his days to the newspapers, and his evenings to the drama — the newly-married man started as author by profession, and met the world and its cares bravely at the point of the pen.

The struggle at starting was a hard one. His principal permanent source of income was a small weekly salary paid to him as dramatist to the establishment, by one Davidge, manager of the Coburg (now the Victoria) Theater. This man appears to have treated Jerrold, whose dramas brought both money and reputation to his theater, with an utter want of common consideration and common gratitude. He worked his poor author pitilessly; and it is, on that account, highly satisfactory to know that he overreached himself in the end, by quarreling with his dramatist, at the very time when Jerrold had a theatrical fortune (so far as managers’ interests were concerned) lying in his desk, in the shape of “Black-Eyed Susan.” With that renowned play (the most popular of all nautical dramas) in his hand, Douglas left the Coburg to seek employment at the Surrey Theater — then under the management of Mr. Elliston. This last tradesman in plays — who subsequently showed himself to be a worthy contemporary of the other tradesman at the Coburg — bid rather higher for Jerrold’s services, and estimated the sole monopoly of the fancy, invention, and humour of a man who had already proved to be a popular, money-bringing dramatist at the magnificent rate of five pounds a week. The bargain was struck; and Jerrold’s first play produced at the Surrey Theater was “Black-Eyed Susan.”

He had achieved many enviable dramatic successes before this time. He had written domestic dramas — such as “Fifteen Years of a Drunkard’s Life,” and “Ambrose Gwinett” — the popularity of which is still well remembered by playgoers of the old generation; but the reception of “Black-Eyed Susan” eclipsed all previous successes of his or of any other dramatist’s in that line. Mr. T. P. Cooke, who, as the French say, “created” the part of William, not only found half London flocking into the Borough to see him; but was actually called upon, after acting in the play, as a first piece, at the Surrey Theater, to drive off in his sailor’s dress, and act in it again on the same night, as the last piece, at Covent Garden Theater. Its first “run” mounted to three hundred nights; it afterward drew money into the empty treasury of Drury Lane: it remains, to this day, a “stock-piece” on which managers and actors know that they can depend; and, strangest phenomenon of all, it is impossible to see the play now without feeling that its great and well deserved dramatic success has been obtained with the least possible amount of assistance from the subtleties and refinements of dramatic art. The piece is indebted for its hold on the public sympathy solely to the simple force, the irresistible directness, of its appeal to some of the strongest affections in our nature. It has succeeded, and it will succeed, not because the dialogue is well, or, as to some passages of it, even naturally written; not because the story is neatly told, for it is (especially in the first act) full of faults in construction; but solely because the situations in which the characters are placed appeal to the hearts of every husband and every wife in the theater. In this aspect of it, and in this only, the play is a study to any young writer; for it shows on what amazingly simple foundations rest the main conditions of the longest, the surest, and the widest dramatic success.