Nicholas Nickleby
‘Don’t tease your uncle with questions when he is thinking only for our
good, my love,’ said Mrs. Nickleby. ‘Nicholas, my dear, I wish you would
say something.’
‘Yes, mother, yes,’ said Nicholas, who had hitherto remained silent and
absorbed in thought. ‘If I am fortunate enough to be appointed to this
post, sir, for which I am so imperfectly qualified, what will become of
those I leave behind?’
‘Your mother and sister, sir,’ replied Ralph, ‘will be provided for, in
that case (not otherwise), by me, and placed in some sphere of life in
which they will be able to be independent. That will be my immediate
care; they will not remain as they are, one week after your departure, I
will undertake.’
‘Then,’ said Nicholas, starting gaily up, and wringing his uncle’s hand,
‘I am ready to do anything you wish me. Let us try our fortune with Mr
Squeers at once; he can but refuse.’
‘He won’t do that,’ said Ralph. ‘He will be glad to have you on my
recommendation. Make yourself of use to him, and you’ll rise to be a
partner in the establishment in no time. Bless me, only think! if he
were to die, why your fortune’s made at once.’
‘To be sure, I see it all,’ said poor Nicholas, delighted with a
thousand visionary ideas, that his good spirits and his inexperience
were conjuring up before him. ‘Or suppose some young nobleman who is
being educated at the Hall, were to take a fancy to me, and get his
father to appoint me his travelling tutor when he left, and when we
come back from the continent, procured me some handsome appointment. Eh!
uncle?’
‘Ah, to be sure!’ sneered Ralph.
‘And who knows, but when he came to see me when I was settled (as he
would of course), he might fall in love with Kate, who would be keeping
my house, and--and marry her, eh! uncle? Who knows?’
‘Who, indeed!’ snarled Ralph.
‘How happy we should be!’ cried Nicholas with enthusiasm. ‘The pain of
parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again. Kate will be a beautiful
woman, and I so proud to hear them say so, and mother so happy to
be with us once again, and all these sad times forgotten, and--’ The
picture was too bright a one to bear, and Nicholas, fairly overpowered
by it, smiled faintly, and burst into tears.
This simple family, born and bred in retirement, and wholly unacquainted
with what is called the world--a conventional phrase which, being
interpreted, often signifieth all the rascals in it--mingled their tears
together at the thought of their first separation; and, this first gush
of feeling over, were proceeding to dilate with all the buoyancy of
untried hope on the bright prospects before them, when Mr. Ralph Nickleby
suggested, that if they lost time, some more fortunate candidate
might deprive Nicholas of the stepping-stone to fortune which the
advertisement pointed out, and so undermine all their air-built castles.
This timely reminder effectually stopped the conversation. Nicholas,
having carefully copied the address of Mr. Squeers, the uncle and nephew
issued forth together in quest of that accomplished gentleman; Nicholas
firmly persuading himself that he had done his relative great injustice
in disliking him at first sight; and Mrs. Nickleby being at some pains to
inform her daughter that she was sure he was a much more kindly disposed
person than he seemed; which, Miss Nickleby dutifully remarked, he might
very easily be.
To tell the truth, the good lady’s opinion had been not a little
influenced by her brother-in-law’s appeal to her better understanding,
and his implied compliment to her high deserts; and although she had
dearly loved her husband, and still doted on her children, he had struck
so successfully on one of those little jarring chords in the human heart
(Ralph was well acquainted with its worst weaknesses, though he knew
nothing of its best), that she had already begun seriously to consider
herself the amiable and suffering victim of her late husband’s
imprudence.
CHAPTER 4
Nicholas and his Uncle (to secure the Fortune without loss of time) wait
upon Mr. Wackford Squeers, the Yorkshire Schoolmaster
Snow Hill! What kind of place can the quiet townspeople who see the
words emblazoned, in all the legibility of gilt letters and dark
shading, on the north-country coaches, take Snow Hill to be? All
people have some undefined and shadowy notion of a place whose name is
frequently before their eyes, or often in their ears. What a vast number
of random ideas there must be perpetually floating about, regarding this
same Snow Hill. The name is such a good one. Snow Hill--Snow Hill too,
coupled with a Saracen’s Head: picturing to us by a double association
of ideas, something stern and rugged! A bleak desolate tract of country,
open to piercing blasts and fierce wintry storms--a dark, cold, gloomy
heath, lonely by day, and scarcely to be thought of by honest folks
at night--a place which solitary wayfarers shun, and where desperate
robbers congregate;--this, or something like this, should be the
prevalent notion of Snow Hill, in those remote and rustic parts, through
which the Saracen’s Head, like some grim apparition, rushes each day and
night with mysterious and ghost-like punctuality; holding its swift and
headlong course in all weathers, and seeming to bid defiance to the very
elements themselves.
The reality is rather different, but by no means to be despised
notwithstanding. There, at the very core of London, in the heart of its
business and animation, in the midst of a whirl of noise and motion:
stemming as it were the giant currents of life that flow ceaselessly on
from different quarters, and meet beneath its walls: stands Newgate; and
in that crowded street on which it frowns so darkly--within a few feet
of the squalid tottering houses--upon the very spot on which the vendors
of soup and fish and damaged fruit are now plying their trades--scores
of human beings, amidst a roar of sounds to which even the tumult of a
great city is as nothing, four, six, or eight strong men at a time, have
been hurried violently and swiftly from the world, when the scene has
been rendered frightful with excess of human life; when curious eyes
have glared from casement and house-top, and wall and pillar; and
when, in the mass of white and upturned faces, the dying wretch, in his
all-comprehensive look of agony, has met not one--not one--that bore the
impress of pity or compassion.
Near to the jail, and by consequence near to Smithfield also, and
the Compter, and the bustle and noise of the city; and just on that
particular part of Snow Hill where omnibus horses going eastward
seriously think of falling down on purpose, and where horses in hackney
cabriolets going westward not unfrequently fall by accident, is
the coach-yard of the Saracen’s Head Inn; its portal guarded by two
Saracens’ heads and shoulders, which it was once the pride and glory of
the choice spirits of this metropolis to pull down at night, but which
have for some time remained in undisturbed tranquillity; possibly
because this species of humour is now confined to St James’s parish,
where door knockers are preferred as being more portable, and bell-wires
esteemed as convenient toothpicks. Whether this be the reason or not,
there they are, frowning upon you from each side of the gateway. The inn
itself garnished with another Saracen’s Head, frowns upon you from the
top of the yard; while from the door of the hind boot of all the red
coaches that are standing therein, there glares a small Saracen’s Head,
with a twin expression to the large Saracens’ Heads below, so that the
general appearance of the pile is decidedly of the Saracenic order.
When you walk up this yard, you will see the booking-office on your
left, and the tower of St Sepulchre’s church, darting abruptly up into
the sky, on your right, and a gallery of bedrooms on both sides. Just
before you, you will observe a long window with the words ‘coffee-room’
legibly painted above it; and looking out of that window, you would have
seen in addition, if you had gone at the right time, Mr. Wackford Squeers
with his hands in his pockets.
Mr. Squeers’s appearance was not prepossessing. He had but one eye,
and the popular prejudice runs in favour of two. The eye he had, was
unquestionably useful, but decidedly not ornamental: being of a greenish
grey, and in shape resembling the fan-light of a street door. The blank
side of his face was much wrinkled and puckered up, which gave him a
very sinister appearance, especially when he smiled, at which times his
expression bordered closely on the villainous. His hair was very flat
and shiny, save at the ends, where it was brushed stiffly up from a low
protruding forehead, which assorted well with his harsh voice and coarse
manner. He was about two or three and fifty, and a trifle below the
middle size; he wore a white neckerchief with long ends, and a suit of
scholastic black; but his coat sleeves being a great deal too long,
and his trousers a great deal too short, he appeared ill at ease in
his clothes, and as if he were in a perpetual state of astonishment at
finding himself so respectable.
Mr. Squeers was standing in a box by one of the coffee-room fire-places,
fitted with one such table as is usually seen in coffee-rooms, and two
of extraordinary shapes and dimensions made to suit the angles of the
partition. In a corner of the seat, was a very small deal trunk, tied
round with a scanty piece of cord; and on the trunk was perched--his
lace-up half-boots and corduroy trousers dangling in the air--a
diminutive boy, with his shoulders drawn up to his ears, and his hands
planted on his knees, who glanced timidly at the schoolmaster, from time
to time, with evident dread and apprehension.
‘Half-past three,’ muttered Mr. Squeers, turning from the window, and
looking sulkily at the coffee-room clock. ‘There will be nobody here
today.’
Much vexed by this reflection, Mr. Squeers looked at the little boy to
see whether he was doing anything he could beat him for. As he happened
not to be doing anything at all, he merely boxed his ears, and told him
not to do it again.
‘At Midsummer,’ muttered Mr. Squeers, resuming his complaint, ‘I took
down ten boys; ten twenties is two hundred pound. I go back at eight
o’clock tomorrow morning, and have got only three--three oughts is an
ought--three twos is six--sixty pound. What’s come of all the boys?
what’s parents got in their heads? what does it all mean?’
Here the little boy on the top of the trunk gave a violent sneeze.
‘Halloa, sir!’ growled the schoolmaster, turning round. ‘What’s that,
sir?’
‘Nothing, please sir,’ replied the little boy.
‘Nothing, sir!’ exclaimed Mr. Squeers.
‘Please sir, I sneezed,’ rejoined the boy, trembling till the little
trunk shook under him.
‘Oh! sneezed, did you?’ retorted Mr. Squeers. ‘Then what did you say
“nothing” for, sir?’
In default of a better answer to this question, the little boy screwed a
couple of knuckles into each of his eyes and began to cry, wherefore Mr
Squeers knocked him off the trunk with a blow on one side of the face,
and knocked him on again with a blow on the other.
‘Wait till I get you down into Yorkshire, my young gentleman,’ said Mr
Squeers, ‘and then I’ll give you the rest. Will you hold that noise,
sir?’
‘Ye--ye--yes,’ sobbed the little boy, rubbing his face very hard with
the Beggar’s Petition in printed calico.
‘Then do so at once, sir,’ said Squeers. ‘Do you hear?’
As this admonition was accompanied with a threatening gesture, and
uttered with a savage aspect, the little boy rubbed his face harder, as
if to keep the tears back; and, beyond alternately sniffing and choking,
gave no further vent to his emotions.
‘Mr. Squeers,’ said the waiter, looking in at this juncture; ‘here’s a