Charles Keene's Initial letter "Y," forDouglas Jerrold's"Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures" (1866)

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Mr. Caudle"takes to billiards" —; Initial Letter "Y"

Charles Keene

1866

Wood-engraving

6.3 cm high by 5.1 cm wide, framed

Fifty-fifth illustration for Douglas Jerrold's Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures (first published on 18 October 1845): "The Thirty-fifth Lecture: "Mrs. Caudle "has been told" that Caudle has "taken to play" at Billiards," p. 180.

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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

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Passage Illustrated: Mr. Caudle takes to billiards in a public hall

"That's it: just to prove what a hypocrite you are: just to show you that you can't deceive me.

"So, Mr. Caudle —; you've turned billiard-player, sir. Only once? That's quite enough: you might as well play a thousand times; for you're a lost man, Caudle. Only once, indeed! I wonder, if I was to say 'Only once,' what would you say to me? But, of course, a man can do no wrong in anything.

"And you're a lord of the creation, Mr. Caudle; and you can stay away from the comforts of your blessed fireside, and the society of your own wife and children — though, to be sure, you never thought anything of them —; to push ivory balls about with a long stick upon a green table-cloth. What pleasure any man can take in such stuff must astonish any sensible woman. I pity you, Caudle!

"And you can go and do nothing but make 'cannons' —; for that's the gibberish they talk at billiards —; when there's the manly and athletic game of cribbage, as my poor grandmother used to call it, at your own hearth. You can go into a billiard-room —; you, a respectable tradesman, or as you set yourself up for one, for if the world knew all, there's very little respectability in you —; you can go and play billiards with a set of creatures in mustachios, when you might take a nice quiet hand with me at home. But no! anything but cribbage with your own wife! [The Thirty-fifth Lecture, "Mrs. Caudle 'has been told' that Caudle has 'taken to play' at Billiards," pp. 181-182]

Related Material: Billiard Halls

Bibliography

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 27 December 2017