Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 422: Volume 17, New Series, January 31, 1852Various
General
Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 422: Volume 17, New Series, January 31, 1852
Various
Periodicals
A list of Jack's speculations would be instructive. He once took a
theatre without a penny to carry it on; and having announced _Hamlet_
without anybody to play, boldly studied and performed the part
himself, to the unextinguishable delight of the audience. Soon after
this, he formed a company for supplying the metropolis with Punches of
a better class, and enacting a more moral drama than the old
legitimate one--making Punch, in fact, a virtuous and domestic
character; and he drew the attention of government to the moral
benefits likely to be derived to society from this dramatic reform.
Soon after, he departed for Spain in the gallant Legion; but not
finding the speculation profitable, turned newspaper correspondent,
and was thrice in imminent danger of being shot as a spy. Flung back
somehow to England, he suddenly turned up as a lecturer on chemistry,
and then established a dancing institution and Terpsichorean Athenaeum.
Of late, Jack has found a good friend in animal magnetism, and his
_seances_ have been reasonably successful. When performing in the
country districts, Jack varied the entertainments by a lecture on the
properties of guano, which he threw in for nothing, and which was
highly appreciated by the agricultural interest. Jack's books were
principally works of travel. His _Journey to the Fountains of the
Niger_ is generally esteemed highly amusing, if not instructive: it
was knocked off at Highbury; and his _Wanderings in the Mountains of
the Moon_, written in Little Chelsea, has been favourably reviewed by
many well-informed and discriminating organs of literary intelligence,
as the work of a man evidently well acquainted with the regions he
professes to describe.
Where the Happy Jacks are at this moment no one can tell. They have
become invisible since the last clean out. A deprecatory legend has
indeed been in circulation, which professed that Jack was dead, and
that this was the manner in which, on his deathbed, he provided for
his family:--
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