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Mrs. Caudle Discharges "Kitty" —; Initial Letter "T"
Charles Keene
1866
Wood-engraving
6.2 cm high by 5 cm wide, framed
Fifty-first illustration for Douglas Jerrold's Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures (first published on 6 September 1845): "The Thirty-second Lecture," p.163.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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"And now you insist upon keeping Kitty, when there's no having a bit of crockery for her? That girl would break the Bank of England —; I know she would — if she was to put her hand upon it. But what's a whole set of blue china to her beautiful blue eyes? I know that's what you mean, though you don't say it.
"Oh, you needn't lie groaning there, for you don't think I shall ever forget Rebecca. Yes, —; it's very well for you to swear at Rebecca now, —; but you didn't swear at her then, Mr. Caudle, I know. 'Margaret, my dear!' Well, how you can have the face to look at me —; You don't look at me? The more shame for you.
"I can only say, that either Kitty leaves the house, or I do. Which is it to be, Mr. Caudle? Eh? You don't care? Both? But you're not going to get rid of me in that manner, I can tell you. But for that trollop —; now, you may swear and rave as you like —; You don't intend to say a word more? Very well; it's no matter what you say —; her quarter's up on Tuesday, and go she shall. A soup-plate and a basin went yesterday.
"A soup-plate and a basin, and when I've the headache as I have, Mr. Caudle, tearing me to pieces! But I shall never be well in this world —; never. A soup-plate and a basin!"
"She slept," writes Caudle, "and poor Kitty left on Tuesday." [Lecture Thirty-one, "Mrs. Caudle discourses of Maids of All-work and Maids in general. Mr. Caudle's 'infamous behaviour' ten years so," pp. 167-168]
Not all servants proved efficient and discrete. Moreover, as Jerrold points out, sometimes the jealousy of the female employer would create as much friction as the male employer Mr. B.'s romantic pursuit of the virtuous maid Pamela in Samuel Richardson's 1740 epistolary novel. Cruikshank satirized some of the problems with domestic servants in The Cat Did It and "It's my cousin, ma'am" in the Mayhew Brothers' The Greatest Plague of Life: or, The Adventures of a Lady in Search of a Good Servant (1847). Undoubtedly, some female employers resented having to be not only mother to a nursery full of children, but also an an educator within the home of young domestic servants. Petty thievery, disclosure of confidences, and "men friends" complicated the employer's relationship with domestic help.
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 25 December 2017