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Mr. and Mrs. Badgerly —; Initial Letter "Y"
Charles Keene
1866
Wood-engraving
6.3 cm high by 5.2 cm wide, framed
Fiftieth illustration for Douglas Jerrold's Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures (first published on 30 August 1845): "The Thirty-first Lecture," p.158.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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And now answer me this question. What did you say—before the whole world—of Mr. Badgerly's whiskers? There's nothing to laugh at, Caudle; if you'd have seen that poor woman to-day, you'd have a heart of stone to laugh. What did you say of his whiskers? Didn't you tell everybody he dyed 'em? Didn't you hold the candle up to 'em, as you said, to show the purple?To be sure you did?Ha! people who break jokes never care about breaking hearts. Badgerly went home like a demon; called his wife a false woman: vowed he'd never enter a bed again with her, and to show he was in earnest, slept all night upon the sofa. He said it was the dearest secret of his life; said she had told me; and that I had told you; and that's how it has come out. What do you say?Badgerly was right. I did tell you?I know I did: but when dear Mrs. Badgerly mentioned the matter to me and a few friends, as we were all laughing at tea together, quite in a confidential way—when she just spoke of her husband's whiskers, and how long he was over 'em every morning—of course, poor soul! she never thought it was to be talked of in the world again. Eh? Then I had no right to tell you of it? And that's the way I'm thanked for my confidence. Because I don't keep a secret from you, but show you, I may say, my naked soul, Caudle, that's how I'm rewarded. Poor Mrs. Badgerly—for all her hard words—after she went away, I'm sure my heart quite bled for her. What do you say, Mr. Caudle?Serves her right — she should hold her tongue? [Lecture Thirty-one, "Mrs. Caudle complains very bitterly that Mr. Caudle has 'broken her confidence'," pp. 159-160]
As late as 1858, Charles Dickens and his wife of twenty-two years, Catherine, elected to separate, with Mrs. Dickens receiving a considerable annual payment (a separate maintenance). Although under the terms of The Matrimonial Causes Act (1857), which established the divorce courts, wives had access to divorce on the basis of adultery, even after 1858, divorce was not a socially acceptable practice among the respectable classes. Separation was tolerated. The Badgerlies, separating in the 1840s rather than the 1860s, would not have had access to a judicial separation, which Parliament instituted under the new divorce laws. Rather, like the Dickenses in 1858, they would have had to sign a quasi-ecclesiastical legal agreement for a separate maintenance:
Arranging the terms of their separation by means of a deed —; in effect, a financial contract —; the Dickenses signed a document that was not recognized under common law and violated the principle of coverture. But since the 1600s the Court of Chancery had recognized and enforced separation deeds, which allowed a husband to provide a wife with a separate settlement of property, vested in male trustees, and released him from liability for her debts. Accordingly, the phrase "notwithsranding her coverture" recurs throughout the Dickenses' separation deed.
Whatever the pressures placed on her to do so, Catherine "voluntarily" separated from her husband by means of a contract: her signature marked her consent. Mutually, agreeing to their new arrangements, the pair avoided the publicity and legal difficulties that would have attended any attempt on Catherine's part to obtain a judicial separation, a decree that could be granted by the newly established Divorce Court, that defined husbands and wives as antagonists, and that would have required proof of spousal wrongdloing that Catherine did not possess.
Before 1858, the right to divorce or separate was granted only by the ecclesiastical courts. Until the year of the Dickenses' marital breakdown, the type of divorce that allowed for remarriage (divorce a vinculo matrimonii) was almost exclusively the prerogative of wealthy husbands and required not only an ecclesiastical decree but also an action for "criminal conversation" against a spouse's lover as well as an act of Parliament. Although the ecclesiastical courts had allowed married women to separate on the grounds of adultery, cruelty, or desertion (divorce a mensa et thoro), they could not remarry and did not regain their property rights under common law. [Nayder, p. 251]
Consequently, if Mrs. Badgerly is demanding a separation, the cause is far greater than her snide remarks about her husband's vanity in maintaining his purplish side-whiskers or mutton-chop sideburns. Either he has been wantonly cruel, or there is another woman. In Keene's illustration, Mr. Badgerly has a magnificent set of sideburns, worthy of the poet and critic Matthew Arnold. Unfortunately for Badgerly (if he is vain of his appearance), in the Keene illustration the husband has only a vestige of the hair on his head remaining, despite his vanity, whereas Mrs. Badgerly has profuse locks. If the Dickenses' property settlement is any parallel to the Badgerlys', the husband will pay a premium of six hundred pounds annually for a matter of whiskers. As was the case with most middle-class separations, Mrs. Badgerly will bring up the girls, while Mr. Badgerly will raise the boys.
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.
Nayder, Lillian. "Chapter 7: 'As If She were Sole and Unmarried'." The Other Dickens: A Life of Catherine Dickens. Ithaca and London: Cornell U. P., 2011. Pp. 250-310.
Last modified 24 December 2017