Caudle's Curtain Lectures
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
Mrs., a series of humorous sketches by Douglas Jerrold. They purport to be lectures delivered by Mrs. Margaret Caudle to her husband, Mr. Caudle, during a period of thirty years. The time chosen by Mrs. Caudle for these lectures is after they have retired and the curtains are drawn for the night. They are full of humor, and it is by them rather than any of his other work that Jerrold is known. See Jerrold A CURTAIN LECTURE OF MRS. CAUDLE. 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 taken our umbrella. Do you hear the rain, Mr. Caudle? I say, do you hear the rain? 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! I should like to know how the children are to go to school to-morrow! They sha'n't go through such weather, I am determined No; they shall stop at home and never learn anything (the blessed creatures!), sooner than go and get wet. . . . . But I know why you lent the umbrella: O! yes, I know very well! I was going out to tea at dear mother's tomorrow: you knew that, and you did it on purpose. How I am to go, I'm sure I can't tell; but if I die, I'll do it. No, sir; I won't borrow an umbrella: no; and you sha'n't buy one. Mr. Caudle, if you bring home another umbrella, I'll throw it into the street.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Aiton's wrote in 1910 that Douglas Jerrold was known "by them rather than any of his other work," that was still true of a living readership: the sketches, first run in Punch in 1845, had made "Mrs. Caudle" a household byword for the nagging wife and a stock figure of Victorian comic recitation. Today Jerrold is read almost entirely by specialists in Victorian journalism, and "a curtain lecture" — a scolding delivered in bed after the bed-curtains were drawn — has passed out of ordinary English along with the bed-curtains themselves. What has survived best is the umbrella lecture quoted here, still occasionally anthologised, and the whole text is now freely readable online rather than in the parlour edition Aiton's readers would have owned. The humour that Aiton's called "full of humor" is also read differently now, as a period joke about marriage rather than a simple one.
Written for this edition, 2026.