Article description: (description ) This attribute controls the content of the description and og:description elements. | THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF NICHOLAS NICKLEBY,
containing a Faithful Account of the Fortunes, Misfortunes,
Uprisings, Downfallings and Complete Career of the Nickelby Family
by Charles Dickens
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
This story was begun, within a few months after the publication of
the completed "Pickwick Papers." There were, then, a good many cheap
Yorkshire schools in existence. There are very few now.
Of the monstrous neglect of education in England, and the disregard
of it by the State as a means of forming good or bad citizens, and
miserable or happy men, private schools long afforded a notable example.
Although any man who had proved his unfitness for any other occupation
in life, was free, without examination or qualification, to open a
school anywhere; although preparation for the functions he undertook,
was required in the surgeon who assisted to bring a boy into the world,
or might one day assist, perhaps, to send him out of it; in the chemist,
the attorney, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker; the whole
round of crafts and trades, the schoolmaster excepted; and although
schoolmasters, as a race, were the blockheads and impostors who might
naturally be expected to spring from such a state of things, and to
flourish in it; these Yorkshire schoolmasters were the lowest and most
rotten round in the whole ladder. Traders in the avarice, indifference,
or imbecility of parents, and the helplessness of children; ignorant,
sordid, brutal men, to whom few considerate persons would have entrusted
the board and lodging of a horse or a dog; they formed the worthy
cornerstone of a structure, which, for absurdity and a magnificent
high-minded LAISSEZ-ALLER neglect, has rarely been exceeded in the
world.
We hear sometimes of an action for damages against the unqualified
medical practitioner, who has deformed a broken limb in pretending to
heal it. But, what of the hundreds of thousands of minds that have been
deformed for ever by the incapable pettifoggers who have pretended to
form them!
I make mention of the race, as of the Yorkshire schoolmasters, in the
past tense. Though it has not yet finally disappeared, it is dwindling
daily. A long day's work remains to be done about us in the way of
education, Heaven knows; but great improvements and facilities towards
the attainment of a good one, have been furnished, of late years.
I cannot call to mind, now, how I came to hear about Yorkshire schools
when I was a not very robust child, sitting in bye-places near Rochester
Castle, with a head full of PARTRIDGE, STRAP, TOM PIPES, and SANCHO
PANZA; but I know that my first impressions of them were picked up
at that time, and that they were somehow or other connected with a
suppurated abscess that some boy had come home with, in consequence of
his Yorkshire guide, philosopher, and friend, having ripped it open with
an inky pen-knife. The impression made upon me, however made, never left
me. I was always curious about Yorkshire schools--fell, long afterwards
and at sundry times, into the way of hearing more about them--at last,
having an audience, resolved to write about them.
With that intent I went down into Yorkshire before I began this book, in
very severe winter time which is pretty faithfully described herein.
As I wanted to see a schoolmaster or two, and was forewarned that those
gentlemen might, in their modesty, be shy of receiving a visit from the
author of the "Pickwick Papers," I consulted with a professional friend
who had a Yorkshire connexion, and with whom I concerted a pious fraud.
He gave me some letters of introduction, in the name, I think, of my
travelling companion; they bore reference to a supposititious little boy
who had been left with a widowed mother who didn't know what to do
with him; the poor lady had thought, as a means of thawing the tardy
compassion of her relations in his behalf, of sending him to a Yorkshire
school; I was the poor lady's friend, travelling that way; and if
the recipient of the letter could inform me of a school in his
neighbourhood, the writer would be very much obliged.
I went to several places in that part of the country where I understood
the schools to be most plentifully sprinkled, and had no occasion to
deliver a letter until I came to a certain town which shall be nameless.
The person to whom it was addressed, was not at home; but he came down
at night, through the snow, to the inn where I was staying. It was after
dinner; and he needed little persuasion to sit down by the fire in a
warm corner, and take his share of the wine that was on the table.
I am afraid he is dead now. I recollect he was a jovial, ruddy,
broad-faced man; that we got acquainted directly; and that we talked
on all kinds of subjects, except the school, which he showed a great
anxiety to avoid. "Was there any large school near?" I asked him, in
reference to the letter. "Oh yes," he said; "there was a pratty big
'un." "Was it a good one?" I asked. "Ey!" he said, "it was as good as
anoother; that was a' a matther of opinion"; and fell to looking at the
fire, staring round the room, and whistling a little. On my reverting to
some other topic that we had been discussing, he recovered immediately;
but, though I tried him again and again, I never approached the question
of the school, even if he were in the middle of a laugh, without
observing that his countenance fell, and that he became uncomfortable.
At last, when we had passed a couple of hours or so, very agreeably, he
suddenly took up his hat, and leaning over the table and looking me
full in the face, said, in a low voice: "Weel, Misther, we've been vara
pleasant toogather, and ar'll spak' my moind tiv'ee. Dinnot let the
weedur send her lattle boy to yan o' our school-measthers, while there's
a harse to hoold in a' Lunnun, or a gootther to lie asleep in. Ar
wouldn't mak' ill words amang my neeburs, and ar speak tiv'ee quiet
loike. But I'm dom'd if ar can gang to bed and not tellee, for weedur's
sak', to keep the lattle boy from a' sike scoondrels while there's a
harse to hoold in a' Lunnun, or a gootther to lie asleep in!" Repeating
these words with great heartiness, and with a solemnity on his jolly
face that made it look twice as large as before, he shook hands and went
away. I never saw him afterwards, but I sometimes imagine that I descry
a faint reflection of him in John Browdie.
In reference to these gentry, I may here quote a few words from the
original preface to this book.
"It has afforded the Author great amusement and satisfaction, during the
progress of this work, to learn, from country friends and from a variety
of ludicrous statements concerning himself in provincial newspapers,
that more than one Yorkshire schoolmaster lays claim to being the
original of Mr. Squeers. One worthy, he has reason to believe, has
actually consulted authorities learned in the law, as to his having good
grounds on which to rest an action for libel; another, has meditated a
journey to London, for the express purpose of committing an assault and
battery on his traducer; a third, perfectly remembers being waited on,
last January twelve-month, by two gentlemen, one of whom held him
in conversation while the other took his likeness; and, although Mr.
Squeers has but one eye, and he has two, and the published sketch does
not resemble him (whoever he may be) in any other respect, still he
and all his friends and neighbours know at once for whom it is meant,
because--the character is SO like him.
"While the Author cannot but feel the full force of the compliment thus
conveyed to him, he ventures to suggest that these contentions may arise
from the fact, that Mr. Squeers is the representative of a class, and
not of an individual. Where imposture, ignorance, and brutal cupidity,
are the stock in trade of a small body of men, and one is described
by these characteristics, all his fellows will recognise something
belonging to themselves, and each will have a misgiving that the
portrait is his own.
"The Author's object in calling public attention to the system would be
very imperfectly fulfilled, if he did not state now, in his own person,
emphatically and earnestly, that Mr. Squeers and his school are faint
and feeble pictures of an existing reality, purposely subdued and kept
down lest they should be deemed impossible. That there are, upon record,
trials at law in which damages have been sought as a poor recompense
for lasting agonies and disfigurements inflicted upon children by the
treatment of the master in these places, involving such offensive and
foul details of neglect, cruelty, and disease, as no writer of fiction
would have the boldness to imagine. And that, since he has been engaged
upon these Adventures, he has received, from private quarters far beyond
the reach of suspicion or distrust, accounts of atrocities, in the
perpetration of which upon neglected or repudiated children, these
schools have been the main instruments, very far exceeding any that
appear in these pages."
This comprises all I need say on the subject; except that if I had seen
occasion, I had resolved to reprint a few of these details of legal
proceedings, from certain old newspapers.
One other quotation from the same Preface may serve to introduce a fact
that my readers may think curious.
"To turn to a more pleasant subject, it may be right to say, that
there ARE two characters in this book which are drawn from life. It is
remarkable that what we call the world, which is so very credulous in
what professes to be true, is most incredulous in what professes to be
imaginary; and that, while, every day in real life, it will allow in one
man no blemishes, and in another no virtues, it will seldom admit a
very strongly-marked character, either good or bad, in a fictitious
narrative, to be within the limits of probability. But those who take an
interest in this tale, will be glad to learn that the BROTHERS CHEERYBLE
live; that their liberal charity, their singleness of heart, their
noble nature, and their unbounded benevolence, are no creations of the
Author's brain; but are prompting every day (and oftenest by stealth)
some munificent and generous deed in that town of which they are the
pride and honour."
If I were to attempt to sum up the thousands of letters, from all sorts
of people in all sorts of latitudes and climates, which this unlucky
paragraph brought down upon me, I should get into an arithmetical
difficulty from which I could not easily extricate myself. Suffice it
to say, that I believe the applications for loans, gifts, and offices
of profit that I have been requested to forward to the originals of the
BROTHERS CHEERYBLE (with whom I never interchanged any communication
in my life) would have exhausted the combined patronage of all the Lord
Chancellors since the accession of the House of Brunswick, and would
have broken the Rest of the Bank of England.
The Brothers are now dead.
There is only one other point, on which I would desire to offer a
remark. If Nicholas be not always found to be blameless or agreeable, he
is not always intended to appear so. He is a young man of an impetuous
temper and of little or no experience; and I saw no reason why such a
hero should be lifted out of nature.
CHAPTER 1
Introduces all the Rest
There once lived, in a sequestered part of the county of Devonshire, one
Mr Godfrey Nickleby: a worthy gentleman, who, taking it into his head
rather late in life that he must get married, and not being young enough
or rich enough to aspire to the hand of a lady of fortune, had wedded an
old flame out of mere attachment, who in her turn had taken him for the
same reason. Thus two people who cannot afford to play cards for money,
sometimes sit down to a quiet game for love.
Some ill-conditioned persons who sneer at the life-matrimonial, may
perhaps suggest, in this place, that the good couple would be better
likened to two principals in a sparring match, who, when fortune is low
and backers scarce, will chivalrously set to, for the mere pleasure
of the buffeting; and in one respect indeed this comparison would hold
good; for, as the adventurous pair of the Fives' Court will afterwards
send round a hat, and trust to the bounty of the lookers-on for the
means of regaling themselves, so Mr Godfrey Nickleby and HIS partner,
the honeymoon being over, looked out wistfully into the world, relying
in no inconsiderable degree upon chance for the improvement of their
means. Mr Nickleby's income, at the period of his marriage, fluctuated
between sixty and eighty pounds PER ANNUM.
There are people enough in the world, Heaven knows! and even in London
(where Mr Nickleby dwelt in those days) but few complaints prevail, of
the population being scanty. It is extraordinary how long a man may look
among the crowd without discovering the face of a friend, but it is no
less true. Mr Nickleby looked, and looked, till his eyes became sore
as his heart, but no friend appeared; and when, growing tired of the
search, he turned his eyes homeward, he saw very little there to relieve
his weary vision. A painter who has gazed too long upon some glaring
colour, refreshes his dazzled sight by looking upon a darker and more
sombre tint; but everything that met Mr Nickleby's gaze wore so black
and gloomy a hue, that he would have been beyond description refreshed
by the very reverse of the contrast.
At length, after five years, when Mrs Nickleby had presented her husband
with a couple of sons, and that embarrassed gentleman, impressed with
the necessity of making some provision for his family, was seriously
revolving in his mind a little commercial speculation of insuring his
life next quarter-day, and then falling from the top of the Monument by
accident, there came, one morning, by the general post, a black-bordered
letter to inform him how his uncle, Mr Ralph Nickleby, was dead, and
had left him the bulk of his little property, amounting in all to five
thousand pounds sterling.
As the deceased had taken no further notice of his nephew in his
lifetime, than sending to his eldest boy (who had been christened after
him, on desperate speculation) a silver spoon in a morocco case, which,
as he had not too much to eat with it, seemed a kind of satire upon his
having been born without that useful article of plate in his mouth,
Mr Godfrey Nickleby could, at first, scarcely believe the tidings thus
conveyed to him. On examination, however, they turned out to be strictly
correct. The amiable old gentleman, it seemed, had intended to leave
the whole to the Royal Humane Society, and had indeed executed a will to
that effect; but the Institution, having been unfortunate enough, a few
months before, to save the life of a poor relation to whom he paid a
weekly allowance of three shillings and sixpence, he had, in a fit of
very natural exasperation, revoked the bequest in a codicil, and left it
all to Mr Godfrey Nickleby; with a special mention of his indignation,
not only against the society for saving the poor relation's life, but
against the poor relation also, for allowing himself to be saved.
With a portion of this property Mr Godfrey Nickleby purchased a small
farm, near Dawlish in Devonshire, whither he retired with his wife and
two children, to live upon the best interest he could get for the rest
of his money, and the little produce he could raise from his land. The
two prospered so well together that, when he died, some fifteen years
after this period, and some five after his wife, he was enabled to
leave, to his eldest son, Ralph, three thousand pounds in cash, and
to his youngest son, Nicholas, one thousand and the farm, which was as
small a landed estate as one would desire to see.
These two brothers had been brought up together in a school at Exeter;
and, being accustomed to go home once a week, had often heard, from
their mother's lips, long accounts of their father's sufferings in his
days of poverty, and of their deceased uncle's importance in his days
of affluence: which recitals produced a very different impression on
the two: for, while the younger, who was of a timid and retiring
disposition, gleaned from thence nothing but forewarnings to shun the
great world and attach himself to the quiet routine of a country life,
Ralph, the elder, deduced from the often-repeated tale the two great
morals that riches are the only true source of happiness and power, and
that it is lawful and just to compass their acquisition by all means
short of felony. 'And,' reasoned Ralph with himself, 'if no good came
of my uncle's money when he was alive, a great deal of good came of it
after he was dead, inasmuch as my father has got it now, and is saving
it up for me, which is a highly virtuous purpose; and, going back to the
old gentleman, good DID come of it to him too, for he had the pleasure
of thinking of it all his life long, and of being envied and courted
by all his family besides.' And Ralph always wound up these mental
soliloquies by arriving at the conclusion, that there was nothing like
money.
Not confining himself to theory, or permitting his faculties to rust,
even at that early age, in mere abstract speculations, this promising
lad commenced usurer on a limited scale at school; putting out at good
interest a small capital of slate-pencil and marbles, and gradually
extending his operations until they aspired to the copper coinage of
this realm, in which he speculated to considerable advantage. Nor did
he trouble his borrowers with abstract calculations of figures, or
references to ready-reckoners; his simple rule of interest being all
comprised in the one golden sentence, 'two-pence for every half-penny,'
which greatly simplified the accounts, and which, as a familiar precept,
more easily acquired and retained in the memory than any known rule
of arithmetic, cannot be too strongly recommended to the notice of
capitalists, both large and small, and more especially of money-brokers
and bill-discounters. Indeed, to do these gentlemen justice, many of
them are to this day in the frequent habit of adopting it, with eminent
success.
In like manner, did young Ralph Nickleby avoid all those minute and
intricate calculations of odd days, which nobody who has worked sums
in simple-interest can fail to have found most embarrassing, by
establishing the one general rule that all sums of principal and
interest should be paid on pocket-money day, that is to say, on
Saturday: and that whether a loan were contracted on the Monday, or on
the Friday, the amount of interest should be, in both cases, the same.
Indeed he argued, and with great show of reason, that it ought to be
rather more for one day than for five, inasmuch as the borrower might
in the former case be very fairly presumed to be in great extremity,
otherwise he would not borrow at all with such odds against him. This
fact is interesting, as illustrating the secret connection and sympathy
which always exist between great minds. Though Master Ralph Nickleby was
not at that time aware of it, the class of gentlemen before alluded to,
proceed on just the same principle in all their transactions.
From what we have said of this young gentleman, and the natural
admiration the reader will immediately conceive of his character, it may
perhaps be inferred that he is to be the hero of the work which we shall
presently begin. To set this point at rest, for once and for ever, we
hasten to undeceive them, and stride to its commencement.
On the death of his father, Ralph Nickleby, who had been some time
before placed in a mercantile house in London, applied himself
passionately to his old pursuit of money-getting, in which he speedily
became so buried and absorbed, that he quite forgot his brother for many
years; and if, at times, a recollection of his old playfellow broke
upon him through the haze in which he lived--for gold conjures up a mist
about a man, more destructive of all his old senses and lulling to
his feelings than the fumes of charcoal--it brought along with it a
companion thought, that if they were intimate he would want to borrow
money of him. So, Mr Ralph Nickleby shrugged his shoulders, and said
things were better as they were.
As for Nicholas, he lived a single man on the patrimonial estate until
he grew tired of living alone, and then he took to wife the daughter of
a neighbouring gentleman with a dower of one thousand pounds. This good
lady bore him two children, a son and a daughter, and when the son
was about nineteen, and the daughter fourteen, as near as we can
guess--impartial records of young ladies' ages being, before the passing
of the new act, nowhere preserved in the registries of this country--Mr
Nickleby looked about him for the means of repairing his capital, now
sadly reduced by this increase in his family, and the expenses of their
education.
'Speculate with it,' said Mrs Nickleby.
'Spec--u--late, my dear?' said Mr Nickleby, as though in doubt.
'Why not?' asked Mrs Nickleby.
'Because, my dear, if we SHOULD lose it,' rejoined Mr Nickleby, who
was a slow and time-taking speaker, 'if we SHOULD lose it, we shall no
longer be able to live, my dear.'
'Fiddle,' said Mrs Nickleby.
'I am not altogether sure of that, my dear,' said Mr Nickleby.
'There's Nicholas,' pursued the lady, 'quite a young man--it's time he
was in the way of doing something for himself; and Kate too, poor girl,
without a penny in the world. Think of your brother! Would he be what he
is, if he hadn't speculated?'
'That's true,' replied Mr Nickleby. 'Very good, my dear. Yes. I WILL
speculate, my dear.'
Speculation is a round game; the players see little or nothing of their
cards at first starting; gains MAY be great--and so may losses. The run
of luck went against Mr Nickleby. A mania prevailed, a bubble burst,
four stock-brokers took villa residences at Florence, four hundred
nobodies were ruined, and among them Mr Nickleby.
'The very house I live in,' sighed the poor gentleman, 'may be taken
from me tomorrow. Not an article of my old furniture, but will be sold
to strangers!'
The last reflection hurt him so much, that he took at once to his bed;
apparently resolved to keep that, at all events.
'Cheer up, sir!' said the apothecary.
'You mustn't let yourself be cast down, sir,' said the nurse.
'Such things happen every day,' remarked the lawyer.
'And it is very sinful to rebel against them,' whispered the clergyman.
'And what no man with a family ought to do,' added the neighbours.
Mr Nickleby shook his head, and motioning them all out of the room,
embraced his wife and children, and having pressed them by turns to
his languidly beating heart, sunk exhausted on his pillow. They were
concerned to find that his reason went astray after this; for he
babbled, for a long time, about the generosity and goodness of his
brother, and the merry old times when they were at school together.
This fit of wandering past, he solemnly commended them to One who never
deserted the widow or her fatherless children, and, smiling gently on
them, turned upon his face, and observed, that he thought he could fall
asleep.
CHAPTER 2
Of Mr Ralph Nickleby, and his Establishments, and his Undertakings, and
of a great Joint Stock Company of vast national Importance
Mr Ralph Nickleby was not, strictly speaking, what you would call
a merchant, neither was he a banker, nor an attorney, nor a special
pleader, nor a notary. He was certainly not a tradesman, and still less
could he lay any claim to the title of a professional gentleman; for it
would have been impossible to mention any recognised profession to which
he belonged. Nevertheless, as he lived in a spacious house in Golden
Square, which, in addition to a brass plate upon the street-door, had
another brass plate two sizes and a half smaller upon the left hand
door-post, surrounding a brass model of an infant's fist grasping a
fragment of a skewer, and displaying the word 'Office,' it was clear
that Mr Ralph Nickleby did, or pretended to do, business of some kind;
and the fact, if it required any further circumstantial evidence, was
abundantly demonstrated by the diurnal attendance, between the hours of
half-past nine and five, of a sallow-faced man in rusty brown, who sat
upon an uncommonly hard stool in a species of butler's pantry at the end
of the passage, and always had a pen behind his ear when he answered the
bell.
Although a few members of the graver professions live about Golden
Square, it is not exactly in anybody's way to or from anywhere. It is
one of the squares that have been; a quarter of the town that has gone
down in the world, and taken to letting lodgings. Many of its first
and second floors are let, furnished, to single gentlemen; and it
takes boarders besides. It is a great resort of foreigners. The
dark-complexioned men who wear large rings, and heavy watch-guards, and
bushy whiskers, and who congregate under the Opera Colonnade, and about
the box-office in the season, between four and five in the afternoon,
when they give away the orders,--all live in Golden Square, or within a
street of it. Two or three violins and a wind instrument from the Opera
band reside within its precincts. Its boarding-houses are musical, and
the notes of pianos and harps float in the evening time round the head
of the mournful statue, the guardian genius of a little wilderness of
shrubs, in the centre of the square. On a summer's night, windows
are thrown open, and groups of swarthy moustached men are seen by the
passer-by, lounging at the casements, and smoking fearfully. Sounds of
gruff voices practising vocal music invade the evening's silence; and
the fumes of choice tobacco scent the air. There, snuff and cigars,
and German pipes and flutes, and violins and violoncellos, divide the
supremacy between them. It is the region of song and smoke. Street bands
are on their mettle in Golden Square; and itinerant glee-singers quaver
involuntarily as they raise their voices within its boundaries.
This would not seem a spot very well adapted to the transaction of
business; but Mr Ralph Nickleby had lived there, notwithstanding, for
many years, and uttered no complaint on that score. He knew nobody round
about, and nobody knew him, although he enjoyed the reputation of being
immensely rich. The tradesmen held that he was a sort of lawyer, and
the other neighbours opined that he was a kind of general agent; both
of which guesses were as correct and definite as guesses about other
people's affairs usually are, or need to be.
Mr Ralph Nickleby sat in his private office one morning, ready dressed
to walk abroad. He wore a bottle-green spencer over a blue coat; a white
waistcoat, grey mixture pantaloons, and Wellington boots drawn over
them. The corner of a small-plaited shirt-frill struggled out, as if
insisting to show itself, from between his chin and the top button of
his spencer; and the latter garment was not made low enough to conceal
a long gold watch-chain, composed of a series of plain rings, which had
its beginning at the handle of a gold repeater in Mr Nickleby's pocket,
and its termination in two little keys: one belonging to the watch
itself, and the other to some patent padlock. He wore a sprinkling of
powder upon his head, as if to make himself look benevolent; but if
that were his purpose, he would perhaps have done better to powder his
countenance also, for there was something in its very wrinkles, and
in his cold restless eye, which seemed to tell of cunning that would
announce itself in spite of him. However this might be, there he was;
and as he was all alone, neither the powder, nor the wrinkles, nor the
eyes, had the smallest effect, good or bad, upon anybody just then, and
are consequently no business of ours just now.
Mr Nickleby closed an account-book which lay on his desk, and, throwing
himself back in his chair, gazed with an air of abstraction through the
dirty window. Some London houses have a melancholy little plot of ground
behind them, usually fenced in by four high whitewashed walls, and
frowned upon by stacks of chimneys: in which there withers on, from
year to year, a crippled tree, that makes a show of putting forth a few
leaves late in autumn when other trees shed theirs, and, drooping in
the effort, lingers on, all crackled and smoke-dried, till the following
season, when it repeats the same process, and perhaps, if the weather
be particularly genial, even tempts some rheumatic sparrow to chirrup
in its branches. People sometimes call these dark yards 'gardens'; it
is not supposed that they were ever planted, but rather that they are
pieces of unreclaimed land, with the withered vegetation of the original
brick-field. No man thinks of walking in this desolate place, or of
turning it to any account. A few hampers, half-a-dozen broken bottles,
and such-like rubbish, may be thrown there, when the tenant first moves
in, but nothing more; and there they remain until he goes away again:
the damp straw taking just as long to moulder as it thinks proper:
and mingling with the scanty box, and stunted everbrowns, and broken
flower-pots, that are scattered mournfully about--a prey to 'blacks' and
dirt.
It was into a place of this kind that Mr Ralph Nickleby gazed, as he sat
with his hands in his pockets looking out of the window. He had fixed
his eyes upon a distorted fir tree, planted by some former tenant in a
tub that had once been green, and left there, years before, to rot
away piecemeal. There was nothing very inviting in the object, but Mr
Nickleby was wrapt in a brown study, and sat contemplating it with far
greater attention than, in a more conscious mood, he would have deigned
to bestow upon the rarest exotic. At length, his eyes wandered to a
little dirty window on the left, through which the face of the clerk
was dimly visible; that worthy chancing to look up, he beckoned him to
attend.
In obedience to this summons the clerk got off the high stool (to which
he had communicated a high polish by countless gettings off and on),
and presented himself in Mr Nickleby's room. He was a tall man of middle
age, with two goggle eyes whereof one was a fixture, a rubicund nose,
a cadaverous face, and a suit of clothes (if the term be allowable
when they suited him not at all) much the worse for wear, very much too
small, and placed upon such a short allowance of buttons that it was
marvellous how he contrived to keep them on.
'Was that half-past twelve, Noggs?' said Mr Nickleby, in a sharp and
grating voice.
'Not more than five-and-twenty minutes by the--' Noggs was going to
add public-house clock, but recollecting himself, substituted 'regular
time.'
'My watch has stopped,' said Mr Nickleby; 'I don't know from what
cause.'
'Not wound up,' said Noggs.
'Yes it is,' said Mr Nickleby.
'Over-wound then,' rejoined Noggs.
'That can't very well be,' observed Mr Nickleby.
'Must be,' said Noggs.
'Well!' said Mr Nickleby, putting the repeater back in his pocket;
'perhaps it is.'
Noggs gave a peculiar grunt, as was his custom at the end of all
disputes with his master, to imply that he (Noggs) triumphed; and (as he
rarely spoke to anybody unless somebody spoke to him) fell into a grim
silence, and rubbed his hands slowly over each other: cracking the
joints of his fingers, and squeezing them into all possible distortions.
The incessant performance of this routine on every occasion, and the
communication of a fixed and rigid look to his unaffected eye, so as to
make it uniform with the other, and to render it impossible for anybody
to determine where or at what he was looking, were two among the
numerous peculiarities of Mr Noggs, which struck an inexperienced
observer at first sight.
'I am going to the London Tavern this morning,' said Mr Nickleby.
'Public meeting?' inquired Noggs.
Mr Nickleby nodded. 'I expect a letter from the solicitor respecting
that mortgage of Ruddle's. If it comes at all, it will be here by the
two o'clock delivery. I shall leave the city about that time and walk
to Charing Cross on the left-hand side of the way; if there are any
letters, come and meet me, and bring them with you.'
Noggs nodded; and as he nodded, there came a ring at the office bell.
The master looked up from his papers, and the clerk calmly remained in a
stationary position.
'The bell,' said Noggs, as though in explanation. 'At home?'
'Yes.'
'To anybody?'
'Yes.'
'To the tax-gatherer?'
'No! Let him call again.'
Noggs gave vent to his usual grunt, as much as to say 'I thought so!'
and, the ring being repeated, went to the door, whence he presently
returned, ushering in, by the name of Mr Bonney, a pale gentleman in a
violent hurry, who, with his hair standing up in great disorder all over
his head, and a very narrow white cravat tied loosely round his throat,
looked as if he had been knocked up in the night and had not dressed
himself since.
'My dear Nickleby,' said the gentleman, taking off a white hat which was
so full of papers that it would scarcely stick upon his head, 'there's
not a moment to lose; I have a cab at the door. Sir Matthew Pupker takes
the chair, and three members of Parliament are positively coming. I have
seen two of them safely out of bed. The third, who was at Crockford's
all night, has just gone home to put a clean shirt on, and take a bottle
or two of soda water, and will certainly be with us, in time to address
the meeting. He is a little excited by last night, but never mind that;
he always speaks the stronger for it.'
'It seems to promise pretty well,' said Mr Ralph Nickleby, whose
deliberate manner was strongly opposed to the vivacity of the other man
of business.
'Pretty well!' echoed Mr Bonney. 'It's the finest idea that was ever
started. "United Metropolitan Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet Baking
and Punctual Delivery Company. Capital, five millions, in five hundred
thousand shares of ten pounds each." Why the very name will get the
shares up to a premium in ten days.'
'And when they ARE at a premium,' said Mr Ralph Nickleby, smiling.
'When they are, you know what to do with them as well as any man alive,
and how to back quietly out at the right time,' said Mr Bonney, slapping
the capitalist familiarly on the shoulder. 'By-the-bye, what a VERY
remarkable man that clerk of yours is.'
'Yes, poor devil!' replied Ralph, drawing on his gloves. 'Though Newman
Noggs kept his horses and hounds once.'
'Ay, ay?' said the other carelessly.
'Yes,' continued Ralph, 'and not many years ago either; but he
squandered his money, invested it anyhow, borrowed at interest, and in
short made first a thorough fool of himself, and then a beggar. He took
to drinking, and had a touch of paralysis, and then came here to borrow
a pound, as in his better days I had--'
'Done business with him,' said Mr Bonney with a meaning look.
'Just so,' replied Ralph; 'I couldn't lend it, you know.'
'Oh, of course not.'
'But as I wanted a clerk just then, to open the door and so forth, I
took him out of charity, and he has remained with me ever since. He is
a little mad, I think,' said Mr Nickleby, calling up a charitable look,
'but he is useful enough, poor creature--useful enough.'
The kind-hearted gentleman omitted to add that Newman Noggs, being
utterly destitute, served him for rather less than the usual wages of a
boy of thirteen; and likewise failed to mention in his hasty chronicle,
that his eccentric taciturnity rendered him an especially valuable
person in a place where much business was done, of which it was
desirable no mention should be made out of doors. The other gentleman
was plainly impatient to be gone, however, and as they hurried into the
hackney cabriolet immediately afterwards, perhaps Mr Nickleby forgot to
mention circumstances so unimportant.
There was a great bustle in Bishopsgate Street Within, as they drew up,
and (it being a windy day) half-a-dozen men were tacking across the road
under a press of paper, bearing gigantic announcements that a Public
Meeting would be holden at one o'clock precisely, to take into
consideration the propriety of petitioning Parliament in favour of the
United Metropolitan Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet Baking and Punctual
Delivery Company, capital five millions, in five hundred thousand shares
of ten pounds each; which sums were duly set forth in fat black figures
of considerable size. Mr Bonney elbowed his way briskly upstairs,
receiving in his progress many low bows from the waiters who stood on
the landings to show the way; and, followed by Mr Nickleby, dived into a
suite of apartments behind the great public room: in the second of which
was a business-looking table, and several business-looking people.
'Hear!' cried a gentleman with a double chin, as Mr Bonney presented
himself. 'Chair, gentlemen, chair!'
The new-comers were received with universal approbation, and Mr Bonney
bustled up to the top of the table, took off his hat, ran his fingers
through his hair, and knocked a hackney-coachman's knock on the table
with a little hammer: whereat several gentlemen cried 'Hear!' and nodded
slightly to each other, as much as to say what spirited conduct that
was. Just at this moment, a waiter, feverish with agitation, tore into
the room, and throwing the door open with a crash, shouted 'Sir Matthew
Pupker!'
The committee stood up and clapped their hands for joy, and while they
were clapping them, in came Sir Matthew Pupker, attended by two live
members of Parliament, one Irish and one Scotch, all smiling and bowing,
and looking so pleasant that it seemed a perfect marvel how any
man could have the heart to vote against them. Sir Matthew Pupker
especially, who had a little round head with a flaxen wig on the top
of it, fell into such a paroxysm of bows, that the wig threatened to
be jerked off, every instant. When these symptoms had in some degree
subsided, the gentlemen who were on speaking terms with Sir Matthew
Pupker, or the two other members, crowded round them in three little
groups, near one or other of which the gentlemen who were NOT on
speaking terms with Sir Matthew Pupker or the two other members, stood
lingering, and smiling, and rubbing their hands, in the desperate hope
of something turning up which might bring them into notice. All this
time, Sir Matthew Pupker and the two other members were relating to
their separate circles what the intentions of government were, about
taking up the bill; with a full account of what the government had said
in a whisper the last time they dined with it, and how the government
had been observed to wink when it said so; from which premises they were
at no loss to draw the conclusion, that if the government had one
object more at heart than another, that one object was the welfare and
advantage of the United Metropolitan Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet
Baking and Punctual Delivery Company.
Meanwhile, and pending the arrangement of the proceedings, and a fair
division of the speechifying, the public in the large room were eyeing,
by turns, the empty platform, and the ladies in the Music Gallery. In
these amusements the greater portion of them had been occupied for a
couple of hours before, and as the most agreeable diversions pall upon
the taste on a too protracted enjoyment of them, the sterner spirits now
began to hammer the floor with their boot-heels, and to express their
dissatisfaction by various hoots and cries. These vocal exertions,
emanating from the people who had been there longest, naturally
proceeded from those who were nearest to the platform and furthest from
the policemen in attendance, who having no great mind to fight their way
through the crowd, but entertaining nevertheless a praiseworthy desire
to do something to quell the disturbance, immediately began to drag
forth, by the coat tails and collars, all the quiet people near the
door; at the same time dealing out various smart and tingling blows with
their truncheons, after the manner of that ingenious actor, Mr Punch:
whose brilliant example, both in the fashion of his weapons and their
use, this branch of the executive occasionally follows.
Several very exciting skirmishes were in progress, when a loud shout
attracted the attention even of the belligerents, and then there poured
on to the platform, from a door at the side, a long line of gentlemen
with their hats off, all looking behind them, and uttering vociferous
cheers; the cause whereof was sufficiently explained when Sir Matthew
Pupker and the two other real members of Parliament came to the front,
amidst deafening shouts, and testified to each other in dumb motions
that they had never seen such a glorious sight as that, in the whole
course of their public career.
At length, and at last, the assembly left off shouting, but Sir Matthew
Pupker being voted into the chair, they underwent a relapse which lasted
five minutes. This over, Sir Matthew Pupker went on to say what must be
his feelings on that great occasion, and what must be that occasion
in the eyes of the world, and what must be the intelligence of
his fellow-countrymen before him, and what must be the wealth and
respectability of his honourable friends behind him, and lastly, what
must be the importance to the wealth, the happiness, the comfort, the
liberty, the very existence of a free and great people, of such an
Institution as the United Metropolitan Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet
Baking and Punctual Delivery Company!
Mr Bonney then presented himself to move the first resolution; and
having run his right hand through his hair, and planted his left, in
an easy manner, in his ribs, he consigned his hat to the care of the
gentleman with the double chin (who acted as a species of bottle-holder
to the orators generally), and said he would read to them the first
resolution--'That this meeting views with alarm and apprehension,
the existing state of the Muffin Trade in this Metropolis and its
neighbourhood; that it considers the Muffin Boys, as at present
constituted, wholly underserving the confidence of the public; and that
it deems the whole Muffin system alike prejudicial to the health and
morals of the people, and subversive of the best interests of a great
commercial and mercantile community.' The honourable gentleman made a
speech which drew tears from the eyes of the ladies, and awakened the
liveliest emotions in every individual present. He had visited the
houses of the poor in the various districts of London, and had found
them destitute of the slightest vestige of a muffin, which there
appeared too much reason to believe some of these indigent persons
did not taste from year's end to year's end. He had found that among
muffin-sellers there existed drunkenness, debauchery, and profligacy,
which he attributed to the debasing nature of their employment as at
present exercised; he had found the same vices among the poorer class of
people who ought to be muffin consumers; and this he attributed to
the despair engendered by their being placed beyond the reach of that
nutritious article, which drove them to seek a false stimulant in
intoxicating liquors. He would undertake to prove before a committee of
the House of Commons, that there existed a combination to keep up the
price of muffins, and to give the bellmen a monopoly; he would prove it
by bellmen at the bar of that House; and he would also prove, that these
men corresponded with each other by secret words and signs as 'Snooks,'
'Walker,' 'Ferguson,' 'Is Murphy right?' and many others. It was
this melancholy state of things that the Company proposed to correct;
firstly, by prohibiting, under heavy penalties, all private muffin
trading of every description; secondly, by themselves supplying the
public generally, and the poor at their own homes, with muffins of first
quality at reduced prices. It was with this object that a bill had
been introduced into Parliament by their patriotic chairman Sir Matthew
Pupker; it was this bill that they had met to support; it was the
supporters of this bill who would confer undying brightness and
splendour upon England, under the name of the United Metropolitan
Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet Baking and Punctual Delivery Company;
he would add, with a capital of Five Millions, in five hundred thousand
shares of ten pounds each.
Mr Ralph Nickleby seconded the resolution, and another gentleman having
moved that it be amended by the insertion of the words 'and crumpet'
after the word 'muffin,' whenever it occurred, it was carried
triumphantly. Only one man in the crowd cried 'No!' and he was promptly
taken into custody, and straightway borne off.
The second resolution, which recognised the expediency of immediately
abolishing 'all muffin (or crumpet) sellers, all traders in muffins (or
crumpets) of whatsoever description, whether male or female, boys or
men, ringing hand-bells or otherwise,' was moved by a grievous gentleman
of semi-clerical appearance, who went at once into such deep pathetics,
that he knocked the first speaker clean out of the course in no time.
You might have heard a pin fall--a pin! a feather--as he described
the cruelties inflicted on muffin boys by their masters, which he
very wisely urged were in themselves a sufficient reason for the
establishment of that inestimable company. It seemed that the unhappy
youths were nightly turned out into the wet streets at the most
inclement periods of the year, to wander about, in darkness and rain--or
it might be hail or snow--for hours together, without shelter, food,
or warmth; and let the public never forget upon the latter point, that
while the muffins were provided with warm clothing and blankets,
the boys were wholly unprovided for, and left to their own miserable
resources. (Shame!) The honourable gentleman related one case of a
muffin boy, who having been exposed to this inhuman and barbarous system
for no less than five years, at length fell a victim to a cold in the
head, beneath which he gradually sunk until he fell into a perspiration
and recovered; this he could vouch for, on his own authority, but he
had heard (and he had no reason to doubt the fact) of a still more
heart-rending and appalling circumstance. He had heard of the case of an
orphan muffin boy, who, having been run over by a hackney carriage, had
been removed to the hospital, had undergone the amputation of his
leg below the knee, and was now actually pursuing his occupation on
crutches. Fountain of justice, were these things to last!
This was the department of the subject that took the meeting, and this
was the style of speaking to enlist their sympathies. The men shouted;
the ladies wept into their pocket-handkerchiefs till they were moist,
and waved them till they were dry; the excitement was tremendous; and
Mr Nickleby whispered his friend that the shares were thenceforth at a
premium of five-and-twenty per cent.
The resolution was, of course, carried with loud acclamations, every
man holding up both hands in favour of it, as he would in his enthusiasm
have held up both legs also, if he could have conveniently accomplished
it. This done, the draft of the proposed petition was read at length:
and the petition said, as all petitions DO say, that the petitioners
were very humble, and the petitioned very honourable, and the object
very virtuous; therefore (said the petition) the bill ought to be passed
into a law at once, to the everlasting honour and glory of that most
honourable and glorious Commons of England in Parliament assembled.
Then, the gentleman who had been at Crockford's all night, and who
looked something the worse about the eyes in consequence, came forward
to tell his fellow-countrymen what a speech he meant to make in favour
of that petition whenever it should be presented, and how desperately he
meant to taunt the parliament if they rejected the bill; and to inform
them also, that he regretted his honourable friends had not inserted a
clause rendering the purchase of muffins and crumpets compulsory upon
all classes of the community, which he--opposing all half-measures,
and preferring to go the extreme animal--pledged himself to propose
and divide upon, in committee. After announcing this determination, the
honourable gentleman grew jocular; and as patent boots, lemon-coloured
kid gloves, and a fur coat collar, assist jokes materially, there
was immense laughter and much cheering, and moreover such a brilliant
display of ladies' pocket-handkerchiefs, as threw the grievous gentleman
quite into the shade.
And when the petition had been read and was about to be adopted, there
came forward the Irish member (who was a young gentleman of ardent
temperament,) with such a speech as only an Irish member can make,
breathing the true soul and spirit of poetry, and poured forth with such
fervour, that it made one warm to look at him; in the course whereof,
he told them how he would demand the extension of that great boon to his
native country; how he would claim for her equal rights in the muffin
laws as in all other laws; and how he yet hoped to see the day when
crumpets should be toasted in her lowly cabins, and muffin bells should
ring in her rich green valleys. And, after him, came the Scotch member,
with various pleasant allusions to the probable amount of profits, which
increased the good humour that the poetry had awakened; and all the
speeches put together did exactly what they were intended to do, and
established in the hearers' minds that there was no speculation
so promising, or at the same time so praiseworthy, as the United
Metropolitan Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet Baking and Punctual
Delivery Company.
So, the petition in favour of the bill was agreed upon, and the meeting
adjourned with acclamations, and Mr Nickleby and the other directors
went to the office to lunch, as they did every day at half-past one
o'clock; and to remunerate themselves for which trouble, (as the company
was yet in its infancy,) they only charged three guineas each man for
every such attendance.
CHAPTER 3
Mr Ralph Nickleby receives Sad Tidings of his Brother, but bears up
nobly against the Intelligence communicated to him. The Reader is
informed how he liked Nicholas, who is herein introduced, and how kindly
he proposed to make his Fortune at once
Having rendered his zealous assistance towards dispatching the lunch,
with all that promptitude and energy which are among the most important
qualities that men of business can possess, Mr Ralph Nickleby took a
cordial farewell of his fellow-speculators, and bent his steps westward
in unwonted good humour. As he passed St Paul's he stepped aside into
a doorway to set his watch, and with his hand on the key and his eye
on the cathedral dial, was intent upon so doing, when a man suddenly
stopped before him. It was Newman Noggs.
'Ah! Newman,' said Mr Nickleby, looking up as he pursued his occupation.
'The letter about the mortgage has come, has it? I thought it would.'
'Wrong,' replied Newman.
'What! and nobody called respecting it?' inquired Mr Nickleby, pausing.
Noggs shook his head.
'What HAS come, then?' inquired Mr Nickleby.
'I have,' said Newman.
'What else?' demanded the master, sternly.
'This,' said Newman, drawing a sealed letter slowly from his pocket.
'Post-mark, Strand, black wax, black border, woman's hand, C. N. in the
corner.'
'Black wax?' said Mr Nickleby, glancing at the letter. 'I know something
of that hand, too. Newman, I shouldn't be surprised if my brother were
dead.'
'I don't think you would,' said Newman, quietly.
'Why not, sir?' demanded Mr Nickleby.
'You never are surprised,' replied Newman, 'that's all.'
Mr Nickleby snatched the letter from his assistant, and fixing a cold
look upon him, opened, read it, put it in his pocket, and having now hit
the time to a second, began winding up his watch.
'It is as I expected, Newman,' said Mr Nickleby, while he was thus
engaged. 'He IS dead. Dear me! Well, that's sudden thing. I shouldn't
have thought it, really.' With these touching expressions of sorrow, Mr
Nickleby replaced his watch in his fob, and, fitting on his gloves to a
nicety, turned upon his way, and walked slowly westward with his hands
behind him.
'Children alive?' inquired Noggs, stepping up to him.
'Why, that's the very thing,' replied Mr Nickleby, as though his
thoughts were about them at that moment. 'They are both alive.'
'Both!' repeated Newman Noggs, in a low voice.
'And the widow, too,' added Mr Nickleby, 'and all three in London,
confound them; all three here, Newman.'
Newman fell a little behind his master, and his face was curiously
twisted as by a spasm; but whether of paralysis, or grief, or inward
laughter, nobody but himself could possibly explain. The expression of
a man's face is commonly a help to his thoughts, or glossary on his
speech; but the countenance of Newman Noggs, in his ordinary moods, was
a problem which no stretch of ingenuity could solve.
'Go home!' said Mr Nickleby, after they had walked a few paces: looking
round at the clerk as if he were his dog. The words were scarcely
uttered when Newman darted across the road, slunk among the crowd, and
disappeared in an instant.
'Reasonable, certainly!' muttered Mr Nickleby to himself, as he walked
on, 'very reasonable! My brother never did anything for me, and I never
expected it; the breath is no sooner out of his body than I am to be
looked to, as the support of a great hearty woman, and a grown boy and
girl. What are they to me! I never saw them.'
Full of these, and many other reflections of a similar kind, Mr Nickleby
made the best of his way to the Strand, and, referring to his letter as
if to ascertain the number of the house he wanted, stopped at a private
door about half-way down that crowded thoroughfare.
A miniature painter lived there, for there was a large gilt frame
screwed upon the street-door, in which were displayed, upon a black
velvet ground, two portraits of naval dress coats with faces looking
out of them, and telescopes attached; one of a young gentleman in a very
vermilion uniform, flourishing a sabre; and one of a literary character
with a high forehead, a pen and ink, six books, and a curtain. There
was, moreover, a touching representation of a young lady reading a
manuscript in an unfathomable forest, and a charming whole length of a
large-headed little boy, sitting on a stool with his legs fore-shortened
to the size of salt-spoons. Besides these works of art, there were a
great many heads of old ladies and gentlemen smirking at each other out
of blue and brown skies, and an elegantly written card of terms with an
embossed border.
Mr Nickleby glanced at these frivolities with great contempt, and gave
a double knock, which, having been thrice repeated, was answered by a
servant girl with an uncommonly dirty face.
'Is Mrs Nickleby at home, girl?' demanded Ralph sharply.
'Her name ain't Nickleby,' said the girl, 'La Creevy, you mean.'
Mr Nickleby looked very indignant at the handmaid on being thus
corrected, and demanded with much asperity what she meant; which she
was about to state, when a female voice proceeding from a perpendicular
staircase at the end of the passage, inquired who was wanted.
'Mrs Nickleby,' said Ralph.
'It's the second floor, Hannah,' said the same voice; 'what a stupid
thing you are! Is the second floor at home?'
'Somebody went out just now, but I think it was the attic which had been
a cleaning of himself,' replied the girl.
'You had better see,' said the invisible female. 'Show the gentleman
where the bell is, and tell him he mustn't knock double knocks for the
second floor; I can't allow a knock except when the bell's broke, and
then it must be two single ones.'
'Here,' said Ralph, walking in without more parley, 'I beg your pardon;
is that Mrs La what's-her-name?'
'Creevy--La Creevy,' replied the voice, as a yellow headdress bobbed
over the banisters.
'I'll speak to you a moment, ma'am, with your leave,' said Ralph.
The voice replied that the gentleman was to walk up; but he had walked
up before it spoke, and stepping into the first floor, was received by
the wearer of the yellow head-dress, who had a gown to correspond, and
was of much the same colour herself. Miss La Creevy was a mincing
young lady of fifty, and Miss La Creevy's apartment was the gilt frame
downstairs on a larger scale and something dirtier.
'Hem!' said Miss La Creevy, coughing delicately behind her black silk
mitten. 'A miniature, I presume. A very strongly-marked countenance for
the purpose, sir. Have you ever sat before?'
'You mistake my purpose, I see, ma'am,' replied Mr Nickleby, in his
usual blunt fashion. 'I have no money to throw away on miniatures,
ma'am, and nobody to give one to (thank God) if I had. Seeing you on the
stairs, I wanted to ask a question of you, about some lodgers here.'
Miss La Creevy coughed once more--this cough was to conceal her
disappointment--and said, 'Oh, indeed!'
'I infer from what you said to your servant, that the floor above
belongs to you, ma'am,' said Mr Nickleby.
Yes it did, Miss La Creevy replied. The upper part of the house belonged
to her, and as she had no necessity for the second-floor rooms just
then, she was in the habit of letting them. Indeed, there was a lady
from the country and her two children in them, at that present speaking.
'A widow, ma'am?' said Ralph.
'Yes, she is a widow,' replied the lady.
'A POOR widow, ma'am,' said Ralph, with a powerful emphasis on that
little adjective which conveys so much.
'Well, I'm afraid she IS poor,' rejoined Miss La Creevy.
'I happen to know that she is, ma'am,' said Ralph. 'Now, what business
has a poor widow in such a house as this, ma'am?'
'Very true,' replied Miss La Creevy, not at all displeased with this
implied compliment to the apartments. 'Exceedingly true.'
'I know her circumstances intimately, ma'am,' said Ralph; 'in fact, I
am a relation of the family; and I should recommend you not to keep them
here, ma'am.'
'I should hope, if there was any incompatibility to meet the pecuniary
obligations,' said Miss La Creevy with another cough, 'that the lady's
family would--'
'No they wouldn't, ma'am,' interrupted Ralph, hastily. 'Don't think it.'
'If I am to understand that,' said Miss La Creevy, 'the case wears a
very different appearance.'
'You may understand it then, ma'am,' said Ralph, 'and make your
arrangements accordingly. I am the family, ma'am--at least, I believe
I am the only relation they have, and I think it right that you should
know I can't support them in their extravagances. How long have they
taken these lodgings for?'
'Only from week to week,' replied Miss La Creevy. 'Mrs Nickleby paid the
first week in advance.'
'Then you had better get them out at the end of it,' said Ralph.
'They can't do better than go back to the country, ma'am; they are in
everybody's way here.'
'Certainly,' said Miss La Creevy, rubbing her hands, 'if Mrs Nickleby
took the apartments without the means of paying for them, it was very
unbecoming a lady.'
'Of course it was, ma'am,' said Ralph.
'And naturally,' continued Miss La Creevy, 'I who am, AT
PRESENT--hem--an unprotected female, cannot afford to lose by the
apartments.'
'Of course you can't, ma'am,' replied Ralph.
'Though at the same time,' added Miss La Creevy, who was plainly
wavering between her good-nature and her interest, 'I have nothing
whatever to say against the lady, who is extremely pleasant and affable,
though, poor thing, she seems terribly low in her spirits; nor against
the young people either, for nicer, or better-behaved young people
cannot be.'
'Very well, ma'am,' said Ralph, turning to the door, for these encomiums
on poverty irritated him; 'I have done my duty, and perhaps more than I
ought: of course nobody will thank me for saying what I have.'
'I am sure I am very much obliged to you at least, sir,' said Miss La
Creevy in a gracious manner. 'Would you do me the favour to look at a
few specimens of my portrait painting?'
'You're very good, ma'am,' said Mr Nickleby, making off with great
speed; 'but as I have a visit to pay upstairs, and my time is precious,
I really can't.'
'At any other time when you are passing, I shall be most happy,' said
Miss La Creevy. 'Perhaps you will have the kindness to take a card of
terms with you? Thank you--good-morning!'
'Good-morning, ma'am,' said Ralph, shutting the door abruptly after him
to prevent any further conversation. 'Now for my sister-in-law. Bah!'
Climbing up another perpendicular flight, composed with great mechanical
ingenuity of nothing but corner stairs, Mr Ralph Nickleby stopped to
take breath on the landing, when he was overtaken by the handmaid, whom
the politeness of Miss La Creevy had dispatched to announce him, and
who had apparently been making a variety of unsuccessful attempts, since
their last interview, to wipe her dirty face clean, upon an apron much
dirtier.
'What name?' said the girl.
'Nickleby,' replied Ralph.
'Oh! Mrs Nickleby,' said the girl, throwing open the door, 'here's Mr
Nickleby.'
A lady in deep mourning rose as Mr Ralph Nickleby entered, but appeared
incapable of advancing to meet him, and leant upon the arm of a slight
but very beautiful girl of about seventeen, who had been sitting by her.
A youth, who appeared a year or two older, stepped forward and saluted
Ralph as his uncle.
'Oh,' growled Ralph, with an ill-favoured frown, 'you are Nicholas, I
suppose?'
'That is my name, sir,' replied the youth.
'Put my hat down,' said Ralph, imperiously. 'Well, ma'am, how do you do?
You must bear up against sorrow, ma'am; I always do.'
'Mine was no common loss!' said Mrs Nickleby, applying her handkerchief
to her eyes.
'It was no UNcommon loss, ma'am,' returned Ralph, as he coolly
unbuttoned his spencer. 'Husbands die every day, ma'am, and wives too.'
'And brothers also, sir,' said Nicholas, with a glance of indignation.
'Yes, sir, and puppies, and pug-dogs likewise,' replied his uncle,
taking a chair. 'You didn't mention in your letter what my brother's
complaint was, ma'am.'
'The doctors could attribute it to no particular disease,' said Mrs
Nickleby; shedding tears. 'We have too much reason to fear that he died
of a broken heart.'
'Pooh!' said Ralph, 'there's no such thing. I can understand a man's
dying of a broken neck, or suffering from a broken arm, or a broken
head, or a broken leg, or a broken nose; but a broken heart!--nonsense,
it's the cant of the day. If a man can't pay his debts, he dies of a
broken heart, and his widow's a martyr.'
'Some people, I believe, have no hearts to break,' observed Nicholas,
quietly.
'How old is this boy, for God's sake?' inquired Ralph, wheeling back his
chair, and surveying his nephew from head to foot with intense scorn.
'Nicholas is very nearly nineteen,' replied the widow.
'Nineteen, eh!' said Ralph; 'and what do you mean to do for your bread,
sir?'
'Not to live upon my mother,' replied Nicholas, his heart swelling as he
spoke.
'You'd have little enough to live upon, if you did,' retorted the uncle,
eyeing him contemptuously.
'Whatever it be,' said Nicholas, flushed with anger, 'I shall not look
to you to make it more.'
'Nicholas, my dear, recollect yourself,' remonstrated Mrs Nickleby.
'Dear Nicholas, pray,' urged the young lady.
'Hold your tongue, sir,' said Ralph. 'Upon my word! Fine beginnings, Mrs
Nickleby--fine beginnings!'
Mrs Nickleby made no other reply than entreating Nicholas by a gesture
to keep silent; and the uncle and nephew looked at each other for
some seconds without speaking. The face of the old man was stern,
hard-featured, and forbidding; that of the young one, open, handsome,
and ingenuous. The old man's eye was keen with the twinklings of avarice
and cunning; the young man's bright with the light of intelligence and
spirit. His figure was somewhat slight, but manly and well formed; and,
apart from all the grace of youth and comeliness, there was an emanation
from the warm young heart in his look and bearing which kept the old man
down.
However striking such a contrast as this may be to lookers-on, none ever
feel it with half the keenness or acuteness of perfection with which it
strikes to the very soul of him whose inferiority it marks. It galled
Ralph to the heart's core, and he hated Nicholas from that hour.
The mutual inspection was at length brought to a close by Ralph
withdrawing his eyes, with a great show of disdain, and calling Nicholas
'a boy.' This word is much used as a term of reproach by elderly
gentlemen towards their juniors: probably with the view of deluding
society into the belief that if they could be young again, they wouldn't
on any account.
'Well, ma'am,' said Ralph, impatiently, 'the creditors have
administered, you tell me, and there's nothing left for you?'
'Nothing,' replied Mrs Nickleby.
'And you spent what little money you had, in coming all the way to
London, to see what I could do for you?' pursued Ralph.
'I hoped,' faltered Mrs Nickleby, 'that you might have an opportunity of
doing something for your brother's children. It was his dying wish that
I should appeal to you in their behalf.'
'I don't know how it is,' muttered Ralph, walking up and down the room,
'but whenever a man dies without any property of his own, he always
seems to think he has a right to dispose of other people's. What is your
daughter fit for, ma'am?'
'Kate has been well educated,' sobbed Mrs Nickleby. 'Tell your uncle, my
dear, how fa |