"The Crying Cherub (tailpiece)" by John Leech for Douglas Jerrold's "Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures" (1846, 1866)

[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> John Leech]

The Crying Cherub (tailpiece)

John Leech

1846

Wood-engraving

3.5 cm high by 3.4 cm wide (1 ⅜ by 1 ¼ inches), framed.

Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures, "The Last Lecture, Mrs. Caudle has taken cold; the tragedy of thin shoes" (188).

[Click on image to enlarge it and mouse over text for links.]

Passage Illustrated: A Fitting Tailpiece for The Epilogue — Snuffing the Candle

This significant sketch is a correct copy of a drawing from the hand of Caudle at the end of this Lecture. It can hardly, we think, be imagined that Mrs. Caudle, during her fatal illness, never mixed admonishment with soothing as before ; but such fragmentary Lectures were, doubtless, considered by her disconsolate widower as having too touching, too solemn an import to be vulgarised by type. They were, however, printed on the heart of Caudle ; for he never ceased to speak of the late partner of his bed as either ‘his sainted creature,’ or ‘that angel now in heaven.’ [Pp. 190-191 in “Lecture the Last, Mrs Caudle Has Taken Cold: The Tragedy of Thin Shoes” in the 1907 edition; page 188 in the 1866 edition]

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Bibliography

"Curtain Lecture." World-Wide Words: Investigating the English language across the globe. http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-cur1.htm

Jerrold, Douglas William. Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures. London: R. Brimley Johnson, 1866.

Jerrold, Douglas William. Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1856.

Jerrold, Douglas. Mrs. Caudle’s Curtain Lectures and Other Stories and Essays. Intro. Walter Jerrold. London, Toronto, and New York: Henry Frowde Oxford U. P., 1854, rpt. 1907.

Kelly, Richard. "Mrs. Caudle: A Victorian Curtain Lecturer." University of Toronto Quarterly, Vol. 38, Number 3 (April 1969): 295-309. Project Muse http://muse.jhu.edu/article/559417/pdf.

Spielmann, Marion Harry. History of 'Punch'. London and New York: Cassell, 1895.

Sutherland, John. The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford, Cal: Stanford U. P., 1989.

Created 4 September 2017

Last modified 26 May 2024