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 warrn 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 embarassed 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.
