Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 117, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 May 1910 — HATBOX OF NOTED AUTHOR. [ARTICLE]

HATBOX OF NOTED AUTHOR.

Jerrolt’a Property Wae Giron to Mlcbisaa Woman by a Relative. Seared with age, its surface showing the effects of long years of hard ser-. vice, a leather hatbox, once the property of Douglas William Jerrold, famous English dramatist and humorist, Is numbered among the treasured possessions of Mrs. Caroline E. Haven of this city, a Detroit correspondent of the New York Herald says. How Mrs. Haven came into the proprietorship of this memento of the man who before he was 20 had written and proi duced numberless pieces; whose “'Black-Eyed Susan,” his first great success, ran for 300 successive nights at the Surrey theater, London, in 1829, ancb who, in addition to his work as a dramatist enriched current humor with Mrs. Caudle’s Curtain Lectures.” ."Punch’s/Letters to His Son,” and other contributions whose fame outlived their author, is in itself an interesting story. In the year 1861 my late husband was called to take charge of St. Paul’s Church, at Lewiston, Niagara County, N. Y.,” said Mrs. Haven, detailing the incident. “In that little town was living a son of Douglas Jerrold. The owner of the line of buses running from the depot to the Niagara River to meet the steamer from Toronto, Mr. Cornell, also proprietor of the hotel, was the cause of Jerrold coming to so small a town. Jerrold was a fine painter and he was kept at work on the omnibuses. He came from Canada and had a wife and two children —a son, Douglas, and a little girl, Anne. “One day a gentleman called at our home. After his departure I inquired who he was. “ "That was Douglas Jerrold,’ said my husband. ‘He wants me to come to his home to baptize his two children.’ "Jerrold had not been in Lewiston more than a year when he enlisted in the army, taking part in the Civil War. After a time the family moved to Syracuse, N. Y. When Mrs. Jerrold was leaving she gave me a hatbox that once belonged to Mr. Jerrold’s father, the famous Douglas Jerrold, who died in 1857. The box was brought from England by the son, who went there at the time of his father’s death. In addition he had with him a number of his father’s works and a good many volumes of ’The Best of All Good Company,’ of which a brother was, I believe, the author. Jerrold was very poor, and when he enlisted his wife sold as many of the books as she could. Seme twenty years after they left Lewiston I saw a brief item in one of the newspapers to the effect that a son of the great Douglas Jerrold was very sick in one of the Carolinas and in destitute circumstances.. I have often wondered whether it was the Douglas Jerrold who once painted omnibuses for a living in Lewiston.” Although the hatbox is yellow with age it is still possible to trace on it the name of Douglas Jerrold. It is also ornamented with numerous labels, one of which Ipswich, is still plainly discernible.