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Mr. and Mrs. Caudle at the Sea-side
John Leech
1845
Wood-engraving
duodecimo page
Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures, "Lecture XXIII, “Mrs. Caudle Wishes to Know If They’re Going to the Seaside, or Not, This Summer — That’s All,” 122.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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Still, if you take ’em for two months, they’re cheaper than for one. No, Mr. Caudle, I shall not be quite tired of it in one month. No: and it isn't true that I no sooner get out than I want to get home again. To be sure, I was tired of Margate three years ago, when you used to leave me to walk about the beach by myself, to be stared at through all sorts of telescopes. But you don’t do that again, Mr.Caudle, I can tell you.
‘What will I do at Margate? Why, isn’t there bathing, and picking up shells; and aren’t there the packets, with the donkeys; and the last new novel, whatever it is, to read? — for the only place where I really relish a book is at the sea-side. No; it isn’t that I like salt with my reading, Mr. Caudle! I suppose you call that a joke? You might keep your jokes for the daytime, I think. But as I was saying — only you always will interrupt me — the ocean always seems to me to open the mind. I see nothing to laugh at; but you always laugh when I say anything. Sometimes at the sea-side — especially when the tide’s down — I feel so happy: quite as if I could cry.
‘When shall I get the things ready? For next Sunday? ‘What will it cost? ‘Oh, there — don’t talk of it. No: we won’t go. I shall send for the painters to-morrow. What? ‘I can go and take the children, and you’ll stay?
‘No, sir: you go with me, or I don’t stir. I’m not going to be turned loose like a hen with her chickens, and nobody to protect me. So we’ll go on Monday? Eh? [Lecture XXIII, “Mrs. Caudle Asks about the Sea-Side,” p. 123-124]
In her mind's eye, despite her parsimonious husband's superficial objections, Mrs Caudle and the children are already down at the south coast, perhaps even at Dover rather than the seaside resort of Margate, if Leech's white chalk cliffs in the background are to be credited. The sketch shows the reader precisely what Mrs. Caudle has in mind: apparently there will be sufficient sun for her to need a parasol, and her three girls and the boy (entirely Leech's invention) will play amicably together on the sands with shovels. And, more to the point, her husband will be right beside her, holding what appears to be a telescope, and smiling. The vacation has the added value of getting the family out of the London, and she will therefore be able to have the rooms painted, even if, as Mr. Caudle says, anticipating her husband's next objection, that seaside "lodgings — and at Margate, too — are a little dearer than living at your own house" (122 in the 1907 edition, 118).
"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 21 May 2024