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Mrs. Caudle 'won't have a Cab'
Charles Keene
1866
Wood-engraving
9.4 x 8.8 cm, vignetted
Fourteenth illustration for Douglas Jerrold's Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures (first published in 1845): "The Sixth Lecture," p. 27.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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"Bah! That's the third umbrella gone since Christmas. What were you to do? Why, let him go home in the rain, to be sure. I'm very certain there was nothing about him that could spoil. Take cold, indeed! He doesn't look like one of the sort to take cold. Besides, he’d have better taken cold than take our only umbrella. Do you hear the rain, Mr. Caudle? I say, do you hear the rain? And as I'm alive, if it isn't St. Swithin’s day! Do you hear it against the windows? Nonsense; you don’t impose upon me. You can’t be asleep with such a shower as that! Do you hear it, I say? Oh, you do hear it! Well, that's a pretty flood, I think, to last for six weeks; and no stirring all the time out of the house. Pooh! don’t think me a fool, Mr. Caudle. Don't insult me. He return the umbrella! Anybody would think you were born yesterday. As if anybody ever did return an umbrella! There —; do you hear it! Worse and worse! Cats and dogs, and for six weeks, always six weeks. And no umbrella! ["Sixth Lecture. —; "Mr. Caudle has lent an Acquaintance the Family Umbrella," p. 26]
We encounter the illustration after the text in which Mrs. Caudle complains about her husband's having lent the family umbrella several pages after the loan has been effected and the friend has left the Caudle house. As she sits in bed, reflecting on the dire consequences of her husband's thoughtless act of generosity, she seems sure that he is trying to prevent her from seeing her mother. And yet, owing to the cost, she rejects his proposal that she take a cab in order to have tea at her mother's house:
"No: and I won't have a cab. Where do you think the money's to come from? You've got nice high notions at that club of yours. A cab, indeed! Cost me sixteenpence at least —; sixteenpence! two-and-eightpence, for there's back again. Cabs, indeed! I should like to know who’s to pay for 'em; I can't pay for 'em, and I'm sure you can't, if you go on as you do; throwing away your property, and beggaring your children —; buying umbrellas!. [p. 25]
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 12 November 2017