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"Oh, about the way some men bind their widows"
Charles Keene
1866
Wood-engraving
9.5 cm high by 9 cm wide, vignetted
Fifty-fourth plate for Jerrold's Mrs.Caudle's Curtain Lectures, "Lecture XXXIV" (first published on 11 October 1845), p. 176.
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"What was I saying, Caudle? Oh, about the way some men bind their widows. To my mind, there is nothing so little. When a man forbids his wife to marry again without losing what he leaves —; it's what I call selfishness after death. Mean to a degree! It's like taking his wife into the grave with him. Eh? You never want to do that? No, I’m sure of that, love: you're not the man to tie a woman up in that mean manner. A man who'd do that would have his widow burnt with him, if he could —; just as those monsters, that call themselves men, do in the Indies.
"However, it's no matter to me how you've made your will; but it may be to your second wife. What? I shall never give you a chance? Ha! you don’t know my constitution after all, Caudle. I'm not at all the woman I was. I say nothing about 'em, but very often you don’t know my feelings. And as we're on the subject, dearest, I have only one favour to ask. When you marry again —; now it's no use your saying that. After the comforts you’ve known of marriage —; what are you sighing at, dear? — after the comforts, you must marry again —; now don't forswear yourself in that violent way, taking an oath that you know you must break —; you couldn't help it, I'm sure of it; and I know you better than you know yourself. Well, all I ask is, love, because it's only for your sake, and it would make no difference to me the —; how should it? —; but all I ask is, don't marry Miss Pret —;— There! there! I've done: I won't say another word about it; but all I ask is, don't. After the way you've been thought of, and after the comforts you've been used to, Caudle, she wouldn't be the wife for you. Of course I could then have no interest in the matter — you might marry the Queen of England, for what it would be to me then —; I'm only anxious about you. Mind, Caudle, I'm not saying anything against her; not at all; but there's a flightiness in her manner —; I dare say, poor thing, she means no harm, and it may be, as the saying is, only her manner after all —; still, there is a flightiness about her that, after what you've been used to, would make you very wretched. Now, if I may boast of anything, Caudle, it is my propriety of manner the whole of my life. I know that wives who're very particular aren't thought as well of as those who're not —; still, it's next to nothing to be virtuous, if people don’t seem so. And virtue, Caudle —; no, I'm not going to preach about virtue, for I never do. No; and I don't go about with my virtue, like a child with a drum, making all sorts of noises with it. But I know your principles. I shall never forget what I once heard you say to Prettyman: and it's no excuse that you'd taken so much wine you didn't know what you were saying at the time; for wine brings out man's wickedness, just as fire brings out spots of grease. [Lecture 34, "Mrs. Caudle, suspecting that Mr. Caudle has made his will, is 'only anxious as a wife' to know its provisions," pp. 176-178]
The illustration and accompanying text point towards the end of the series (in a month's time), specifically towards Margaret Caudle's death and Job's becoming a widower. The matter under consideration is two-fold: the provisions of his recently adjusted will and a possible second marriage, which for a prosperous bourgeois of late middle age such as Mr. Caudle was certainly not out of the question. In fact, Keene presents Job Caudle —; if indeed this figure is Job Caudle rather than the family lawyer —; as leaner and more handsome in this large-scale Illustration than he has appeared elsewhere in the series, implying, perhaps, that as a wealthy widower he would be a good catch.
The alternate title, "Lawyer as he is, he hadn't the face to deny it," implies that a very different passage is being referenced:
I know your will's made, for Scratcherly told me so. What? You don't believe it? Well, I'm sure! That's a pretty thing for a man to say to his wife. I know he's too much of a man of business to talk; but I suppose there's a way of telling things without speaking them. And when I put the question to him, lawyer as he is, he hadn't the face to deny it. [p. 174]
The illustration may be intended to show Mrs. Caudle's interrogating the lawyer, Mr. Scratcherly, but the facial features the soberly clad bourgeois suggest that the figure is Job Caudle. The implication, therefore, in Keene's illustration is that, Scratcherly having dropped by, the couple now discuss whatever Job has arranged with the lawyer. As the lecture shows, Mrs. Caudle is apprehensive about Miss Prettyman's replacing her, but also about the terms of the will preventing her from remarrying. Then, too, Mrs. Caudle may be deploying reverse psychology by insisting that she will pre-decease Job, who she hopes will re-assure her that under the terms of his will she and the children will be well provided for. She has begun the conversation by labelling ridiculous the "gross idea" (175) that she would re-marry, were Job to pre-decease her. Mrs. Caudle alludes to the marital customs of "the Indies" (177), but is in fact referring to those of India. To safeguard family honour and property, upper-caste Hindu society disallowed a widow's remarrying. Whether child- or adolescent brides or mature women, Hindu tradition demanded that a widow live a life of austerity and abnegation after the husband's death. The British reformed this situation somewhat in the 1856 The Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act, which legalised the remarriage of Hindu widows in all jurisdictions under East India Company administration.
Keene implies that this whole conversation is transpiring shortly before Job leaves for the office, whereas the text makes it plain that this yet another "curtain" lecture. The issue of second marriage is significant for the heroines in the plots of Middlemarch (December 1871-December 1872), Jane Eyre (1847), and Far from the Madding Crowd (January-December 1874) in particular. What becomes of the children of the first marriage when a spouse remarries is the problem foregrounded in Dickens's Dombey and Son (October 1846-April 1848). And Dickens examines the issue of second marriage for the male survivor in the childless context of David and Dora in David Copperfield (May 1849-November 1850). Hardy's illustrators were aware of the climactic nature of Bathsheba Everdene's marrying Gabriel Oak at the close of the 1874 serial novel in the Cornhill Magazine, as if Fate has preordained this union, and that her previous alliances were false steps.
Jerrold, Douglas. Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures, as Suffered by the late Job Caudle.Edited from the Original MSS. by Douglas Jerrold. With a frontispiece by Leech, and as motto on the title-page, "Then, Pistol, lay thy head in Fury's lap. —; Shakespeare." London: Punch Office; Bradbury and Evans, 1846.
Jerrold, Douglas. Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures. Illustrated by John Leach and Richard Doyle. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1856.
Jerrold, Douglas. Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures. Illustrated by Charles Keene. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1866.
Last modified 29 December 2017