Initial letter "A": thirty-fifth illustration forDouglas Jerrold's"Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures," 3rd edition(1866)

Illuminated Initial "I"

Charles Keene

1866

Wood-engraving

6.2 cm high by 5.1 cm wide, framed

Thirty-fifth illustration for Douglas Jerrold's Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures (first published 28 June 1845): "The Twenty-first Lecture," p. 104.

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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

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Passage Illustrated

"And you suppose I didn't see how it was managed that you and that Miss Prettyman were always partners at whist? How was it managed? Why, plain enough. Of course you packed the cards, and could cut what you liked. You'd settled that between you. Yes; and when she took a trick, instead of leading off a trump —; she play whist, indeed!— what did you say to her, when she found it was wrong? Oh — it was impossible that her heart should mistake! And this, Mr. Caudle, before people— with your own wife in the room!

And Miss Prettyman— I won't hold my tongue. I will talk of Miss Prettyman: who's she, indeed, that I shouldn't talk of her? I suppose she thinks she sings? What do you say? She sings like a mermaid? [Lecture XXI. "Mr. Caudle Has Not Acted 'Like a Husband' at the Wedding Dinner," p. 108 ]

Commentary

Keene introduces the much-reviled, attractive Miss Prettyman playing whist with Job Caudle after the fourteenth anniversary dinner that Margaret Caudle has insisted they throw for a few friends. Presumably Mrs, Caudle's other bête noir, Richard Prettyman (the girl's father and Job's drinking companion), has accompanied his daughter to the celebratory dinner and subsequent card-playing. This mixed-gender card-game seems to have had the stamp of middle-class respectability, if one may judge by this Keene illustration and Marcus Stone's A Rubber at Miss Havisham's in the Illustrated Library Edition of Great Expectations (1864).

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 9 December 2017