Mr Caudle was the long-suffering husband at the centre of "Mrs Caudle's Curtain Lectures," Douglas Jerrold's satirical series serialised in Punch magazine through 1845 and 1846, featuring thirty-seven bedtime monologues delivered by his wife Margaret, who scolded him at length while he typically stayed silent or offered only feeble replies. The series proved so popular that the Caudles turned up on all sorts of Victorian commercial goods, including stoneware gin bottles. A hand-painted porcelain candle snuffer is a nice addition to that same tradition, a piece of merchandise built around a character everyone reading Punch would have instantly recognised.
Royal Worcester rendered him with real character in the face and posture, sculptural work that manages to hint at the resigned, put-upon quality that made Caudle such a durable comic figure in the first place. Candle snuffers like this were functional desk or bedside objects, used to extinguish a candle without the smoke and mess of blowing it out directly, though pieces this detailed were clearly made to be looked at as much as used.
