Nicholas Nickleby quotes

… 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 …

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.

“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.

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.

“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.

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.

but he had walked up before it spoke, and stepping into the first floor, was received by the wearer of the yellow headdress, 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?”

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.

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?”

with other bitter recollections common to most married ladies, either during their coverture, or afterwards, or at both periods.

Mrs. Nickleby concluded by lamenting that the dear departed had never deigned to profit by her advice, save on one occasion; which was a strictly veracious statement, inasmuch as he had only acted upon it once, and had ruined himself in consequence.

Mr. Ralph Nickleby heard all this with a half-smile; and when the widow had finished, quietly took up the subject where it had been left before the above outbreak.

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 fanlight of a street door.

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.

“I am glad of that, sir,” replied the schoolmaster, drawing himself up.

“They have come to the right shop for morals, sir.”

“You are a moral man yourself,” said Mr. Snawley.

“That’s twopenn’orth, sir,” replied the waiter.

“What a rare article milk is, to be sure, in London!” said Mr. Squeers, with a sigh.

“Just fill that mug up with lukewarm water, William, will you?”

“It is a tale of life, and life is made up of such sorrows,” returned the other, courteously, but in a grave and sad tone of voice.

“There are shades in all good pictures, but there are lights too, if we choose to contemplate them,” said the gentleman with the merry face.

“The youngest sister in your tale was always lighthearted.”

… resolved that, come what come might, he would endeavour, for a time, to bear whatever wretchedness might be in store for him, and that remembering the helplessness of his mother and sister, he would give his uncle no plea for deserting them in their need.

Good resolutions seldom fail of producing some good effect in the mind from which they spring.

He grew less desponding, and—so sanguine and buoyant is youth—even hoped that affairs at Dotheboys Hall might yet prove better than they promised.

“I should think they would not, sir,” answered Nicholas.

Now, the fact was, that both Mr. and Mrs. Squeers viewed the boys in the light of their proper and natural enemies; or, in other words, they held and considered that their business and profession was to get as much from every boy as could by possibility be screwed out of him.

On this point they were both agreed, and behaved in unison accordingly. The only difference between them was, that Mrs. Squeers waged war against the enemy openly and fearlessly, and that Squeers covered his rascality, even at home, with a spice of his habitual deceit;

there were vicious-faced boys, brooding, with leaden eyes, like malefactors in a jail; and there were young creatures on whom the sins of their frail parents had descended, weeping even for the mercenary nurses they had known, and lonesome even in their loneliness.

With every kindly sympathy and affection blasted in its birth, with every young and healthy feeling flogged and starved down, with every revengeful passion that can fester in swollen hearts, eating its evil way to their core in silence, what an incipient Hell was breeding here!

And yet this scene, painful as it was, had its grotesque features, which, in a less interested observer than Nicholas, might have provoked a smile. Mrs.

“Of course there isn’t,” said Squeers.

“A horse is a quadruped, and quadruped’s Latin for beast, as everybody that’s gone through the grammar knows, or else where’s the use of having grammars at all?”

“Where, indeed!” said Nicholas abstractedly.

Squeers, with a small bundle of papers in his hand, and Mrs. S. following with a pair of canes, entered the room and proclaimed silence.

“Let any boy speak a word without leave,” said Mr. Squeers mildly, “and I’ll take the skin off his back.”

This special proclamation had the desired effect, and a deathlike silence immediately prevailed, in the midst of which Mr. Squeers went on to say:

According to half-yearly custom, the boys gave three feeble cheers at this refreshing intelligence.

Such cheers! Sighs of extra strength with the chill on.

“I have seen the parents of some boys,” continued Squeers, turning over his papers, “and they’re so glad to hear how their sons are getting on, that there’s no prospect at all of their going away, which of course is a very pleasant thing to …

“Here he is, please sir,” rejoined twenty officious voices.

Boys are very like men to be sure.

“Come here, Bolder,” said Squeers.

and Mrs. Squeers, and look upon them as his only friends; and that he will love Master Squeers; and not object to sleeping five in a bed, which no Christian should. Ah!” said Squeers, folding it up, “a delightful letter. Very affecting indeed.”

It was affecting in one sense, for Graymarsh’s maternal aunt was strongly supposed, by her more intimate friends, to be no other than his maternal parent;

Squeers, however, without alluding to this part of the story (which would have sounded immoral before boys), proceeded with the business by calling out “Mobbs,” whereupon another boy rose, and Graymarsh resumed his seat.

“Not the least trouble in the world,” replied Nicholas, closing the schoolroom door.

“I never saw such legs in the whole course of my life!” said Miss Squeers, as she walked away.

In fact, Miss Squeers was in love with Nicholas Nickleby.

“I never saw such legs in the whole course of my life!” said Miss Squeers, as she walked away.

In fact, Miss Squeers was in love with Nicholas Nickleby.

To account for the rapidity with which this young lady had conceived a passion for Nicholas, it may be necessary to state, that the friend from whom she had so recently returned, was a miller’s daughter of only eighteen, who had contracted herself unto the …

“He is very rich, I have heard,” rejoined Kate. “I don’t know that he is, but I believe so.”

“Ah, you may depend upon it he is, or he wouldn’t be so surly,” remarked Miss La Creevy, who was an odd little mixture of shrewdness and simplicity. “When a man’s a bear, he is generally pretty independent.”

“His manner is rough,” said Kate.

“His manner is rough,” said Kate.

“Rough!” cried Miss La Creevy, “a porcupine’s a featherbed to him! I never met with such a cross-grained old savage.”

“It is only his manner, I believe,” observed Kate, timidly; “he was disappointed in early life, I think I have heard, or has had his temper soured by some calamity. I should be sorry to think ill of him until I knew he deserved it.”

And yet, she had loved him dearly for many years, and had no greater share of selfishness than is the usual lot of mortals.

Such is the irritability of sudden poverty. A decent annuity would have restored her thoughts to their old train, at once.

“Repining is of no use, ma’am,” said Ralph. “Of all fruitless errands, sending a tear to look after a day that is gone is the most fruitless.”

“Repining is of no use, ma’am,” said Ralph.

“Of all fruitless errands, sending a tear to look after a day that is gone is the most fruitless.”

“So it is,” sobbed Mrs. Nickleby. “So it is.”

“I will try to please, uncle,” replied Kate: “indeed I—”

“Don’t begin to cry,” growled Ralph; “I hate crying.”

“It’s very foolish, I know, uncle,” began poor Kate.

His name was originally Muntle; but it had been converted, by an easy transition, into Mantalini: the lady rightly considering that an English appellation would be of serious injury to the business.

He had married on his whiskers; upon which property he had previously subsisted, in a genteel manner, for some years;

and which he had recently improved, after patient cultivation by the addition of a moustache, which promised to secure him an easy independence:

“Oh! Nothing, ma’am, nothing,” replied Ralph. “I know his amiable nature, and yours—mere little remarks that give a zest to your daily intercourse—lovers’ quarrels that add sweetness to those domestic joys which promise to last so long—that’s all; that’s all.”

If an iron door could be supposed to quarrel with its hinges, and to make a firm resolution to open with slow obstinacy, and grind them to powder in the process, it would emit a pleasanter sound in so doing, than did these words in the rough and bitter voice in which they were uttered by Ralph.

Even Mr. Mantalini felt their influence, and turning affrighted round, exclaimed: “What a demd horrid croaking!”

“Perhaps she drank,” suggested Miss La Creevy.

“I don’t know how that may have been,” returned Mrs. Nickleby: “but I know she had a very red face, so your argument goes for nothing.”

In this manner, and with like powerful reasoning, did the worthy matron meet every little objection that presented itself to the new scheme of the morning. Happy Mrs. Nickleby!

In this manner, and with like powerful reasoning, did the worthy matron meet every little objection that presented itself to the new scheme of the morning.

Happy Mrs. Nickleby! A project had but to be new, and it came home to her mind, brightly varnished and gilded as a glittering toy.

This question disposed of, Kate communicated her uncle’s desire about the empty house, to which Mrs.

“No; I thought of it as I came along; but didn’t get one, thinking you mightn’t be ready.

I think of a great many things. Nobody can prevent that.

”

With this effusion of feeling, Miss Squeers went to bed.

Spite is a little word; but it represents as strange a jumble of feelings, and compound of discords, as any polysyllable in the language.

Miss Squeers knew as well in her heart of hearts that what the miserable serving-girl had said was sheer, coarse, lying flattery, as did the girl herself;

and, as morning took the place of night, the smiles gradually faded away, with the friendly darkness which had given them birth.

Dreams are the bright creatures of poem and legend, who sport on earth in the night season, and melt away in the first beam of the sun, which lights grim care and stern reality on their daily pilgrimage through the world.

Nicholas looked upon the sleepers; at first, with the air of one who gazes upon a scene which, though familiar to him, has lost none of its sorrowful effect in consequence;

In that quarter of London in which Golden Square is situated, there is a bygone, faded, tumbledown street, with two irregular rows of tall meagre houses, which seem to have stared each other out of countenance years ago.

The very chimneys appear to have grown dismal and melancholy, from having had nothing better to look at than the chimneys over the way.

Their tops are battered, and broken, and blackened with smoke;

Dingy, ill-plumed, drowsy flutterers, sent, like many of the neighbouring children, to get a livelihood in the streets, they hop, from stone to stone, in forlorn search of some hidden eatable in the mud, and can scarcely raise a crow among them.

The only one with anything approaching to a voice, is an aged bantam at the baker’s; and even he is hoarse, in consequence of bad living in his last place.

To judge from the size of the houses, they have been, at one time, tenanted by persons of better condition than their present occupants;

“Anywheres, my dear,” said the collector, “I am not particular.”

Not particular! What a meek collector! If he had been an author, who knew his place, he couldn’t have been more humble.

“Mr. Lillyvick,” said Kenwigs, addressing the collector, “some friends here, sir, are very anxious for the honour of—thank you—Mr. and Mrs. Cutler, Mr. Lillyvick.”

The worthy gentleman then became once more the life and soul of the society; being again reinstated in his old post of lion, from which high station the temporary distraction of their thoughts had for a moment dispossessed him.

Quadruped lions are said to be savage, only when they are hungry; biped lions are rarely sulky longer than when their appetite for distinction remains unappeased.

Mr. Lillyvick stood higher than ever; for he had shown his power; hinted at his property and testamentary intentions; gained great credit for disinterestedness and virtue;

For a gentleman who was rejoiced to see a body of visitors, Mr. Gregsbury looked as uncomfortable as might be; but perhaps this was occasioned by senatorial gravity, and a statesmanlike habit of keeping his feelings under control.

He was a tough, burly, thickheaded gentleman, with a loud voice, a pompous manner, a tolerable command of sentences with no meaning in them, and, in short, every requisite for a very good member indeed.

“Now, gentlemen,” said Mr. Gregsbury, tossing a great bundle of papers into a wicker basket at his feet, and throwing himself back in his chair with his arms over the elbows, “you are dissatisfied with my conduct, I see by the newspapers.”

“So dusty and hot,” observed the same speaker, adjusting her dress for her.

Kate might have said, that mourning is sometimes the coldest wear which mortals can assume; that it not only chills the breasts of those it clothes, but extending its influence to summer friends, freezes up their sources of goodwill and kindness, and withering all the buds of promise they once so liberally put forth, leaves nothing but bared and rotten hearts exposed.

There are few who have lost a friend or relative constituting in life their sole dependence, who have not keenly felt this chilling influence of their sable garb. She had felt it acutely, and feeling it at the moment, could not quite restrain her tears.

Philosophy would have taught her that the degradation was on the side of those who had sunk so low as to display such passions habitually, and without cause: but she was too young for such consolation, and her honest feeling was hurt.

May not the complaint, that common people are above their station, often take its rise in the fact of un common people being below theirs?

In such scenes and occupations the time wore on until nine o’clock, when Kate, jaded and dispirited with the occurrences of the day, hastened from the confinement of the workroom, to join her mother at the street corner, and walk home:—the more sadly, from having …

… hence it is that diseased sympathy and compassion are every day expended on out-of-the-way objects, when only too many demands upon the legitimate exercise of the same virtues in a healthy state, are constantly within the sight and hearing of the most unobservant person alive.

In short, charity must have its romance, as the novelist or playwright must have his.

A thief in fustian is a vulgar character, scarcely to be thought of by persons of refinement;

“Oh, indeed!” said Mr. Mortimer Knag. “Ah!”

Having given utterance to these ejaculations with a very profound and thoughtful air, Mr. Knag slowly snuffed two kitchen candles on the counter, and two more in the window, and then snuffed himself from a box in his waistcoat pocket.

There was something very impressive in the ghostly air with which all this was done; and as Mr.

“Past ten,” said Mr. Knag, consulting his watch. “Thomas, close the warehouse.”

Thomas was a boy nearly half as tall as a shutter, and the warehouse was a shop about the size of three hackney coaches.

“Ah!” said Mr. Knag once more, heaving a deep sigh as he restored to its parent shelf the book he had been reading. “Well—yes—I believe supper is ready, sister.”

“No, no, no,” replied the old lord, “no, no, I’m going to be married, and lead a new life. Ha, ha, ha! a new life, a new life! ha, ha, ha!”

It was a satisfactory thing to hear that the old gentleman was going to lead a new life, for it was pretty evident that his old one would not last him much longer.

The mere exertion of protracted chuckling reduced him to a fearful ebb of coughing and gasping; it was some minutes before he could find breath to remark that the girl was too pretty for a milliner.

“I hate her,” cried Miss Knag; “I detest and hate her. Never let her speak to me again; never let anybody who is a friend of mine speak to her; a slut, a hussy, an impudent artful hussy!”

Having denounced the object of her wrath, in these terms, Miss Knag screamed once, hiccuped thrice, gurgled in her throat several times, slumbered, shivered, woke, came to, composed her headdress, and declared herself quite well again.

Poor Kate had regarded these proceedings, at first, in perfect bewilderment. She had then turned red and pale by turns, and once or twice essayed to speak;

“Ah!” said Mrs. Nickleby, with great fervour, “if my advice had been taken at the beginning—Well, I have always done my duty, and that’s some comfort.”

When she had arrived at this reflection, Mrs. Nickleby sighed, rubbed her hands, cast up her eyes, and finally assumed a look of meek composure; thus importing that she was a persecuted saint, but that she wouldn’t trouble her hearers by mentioning a circumstance which must be so obvious to everybody.

“Now,” said Ralph, with a smile, which, in common with all other tokens of emotion, seemed to skulk under his face, rather than play boldly over it—“to return to the point from which we have strayed.

“Oh no,” said Ralph; “come when you like, in a hackney coach—I’ll pay for it. Good night—a—a—God bless you.”

The blessing seemed to stick in Mr. Ralph Nickleby’s throat, as if it were not used to the thoroughfare, and didn’t know the way out.

But it got out somehow, though awkwardly enough; and having disposed of it, he shook hands with his two relatives, and abruptly left them.

“No,” said Mrs. Nickleby, musing. “

There certainly is none. But it’s a very honest face.

”

… Kate, listening first in apathy, and afterwards in amusement, felt, as they walked home, something of her mother’s sanguine complexion gradually awakening in her own bosom, and began to think that her prospects might be brightening, and that better days might be dawning upon them.

Such is hope, Heaven’s own gift to struggling mortals; pervading, like some subtle essence from the skies, all things, both good and bad; as universal as death, and more infectious than disease!

The feeble winter’s sun—and winter’s suns in the city are very feeble indeed—might have brightened up, as he shone through the dim windows of the large old house, on witnessing the unusual sight which one half-furnished room displayed.

“Who brought him to you first?” pursued Sir Mulberry; “and how, without me, could you ever have wound him in your net as you have?”

“The net is a large one, and rather full,” said Ralph. “Take care that it chokes nobody in the meshes.”

“You would sell your flesh and blood for money; yourself, if you have not already made a bargain with the devil,” retorted the other.

The little bustling, active, cheerful creature existed entirely within herself, talked to herself, made a confidante of herself, was as sarcastic as she could be, on people who offended her, by herself; pleased herself, and did no harm.

If she indulged in scandal, nobody’s reputation suffered; and if she enjoyed a little bit of revenge, no living soul was one atom the worse.

One of the many to whom, from straitened circumstances, a consequent inability to form the associations they would wish, and a disinclination to mix with the society they could obtain, London is as complete a solitude as the plains of Syria, the humble artist had …

and, until the peculiar misfortunes of the Nickleby family attracted her attention, had made no friends, though brimful of the friendliest feelings to all mankind.

There are many warm hearts in the same solitary guise as poor little Miss La Creevy’s.

However, that’s neither here nor there, just now.

The thought of you has upheld me through all I have endured today, and shall, through fifty times such trouble. Give me your hand. My heart is linked to yours. We will journey from this place together, before the week is out.

What, if I am steeped in poverty? You lighten it, and we will be poor together.

”

“Compose yourself, my own angel,” said Madame. “It was nobody’s fault; it was mine as much as yours, we shall do very well yet. Come, Alfred, come.”

Mr. Mantalini did not think proper to come to, all at once; but, after calling several times for poison, and requesting some lady or gentleman to blow his brains out, gentler feelings came upon him, and he wept pathetically.

In this softened frame of mind he did not oppose the capture of the knife—which, to tell the truth, he was rather glad to be rid of, as an inconvenient and dangerous article for a skirt pocket—and finally he suffered himself to be led away …

Cadogan Place is the one slight bond that joins two great extremes; it is the connecting link between the aristocratic pavements of Belgrave Square, and the barbarism of Chelsea.

It is in Sloane Street, but not of it. The people in Cadogan Place look down upon Sloane Street, and think Brompton low.

They affect fashion too, and wonder where the New Road is.

… the same footing as the high folks of Belgrave Square and Grosvenor Place, but that they stand, with reference to them, rather in the light of those illegitimate children of the great who are content to boast of their connections, although their connections disavow them.

Wearing as much as they can of the airs and semblances of loftiest rank, the people of Cadogan Place have the realities of middle station.

It is the conductor which communicates to the inhabitants of regions beyond its limit, the shock of pride of birth and rank, which it has not within itself, but derives from a fountainhead beyond;

Wititterly’s complexion, and a little dog to snap at strangers’ legs for Mrs. Wititterly’s amusement, and the aforementioned page, to hand chocolate for Mrs. Wititterly’s refreshment.

The lady had an air of sweet insipidity, and a face of engaging paleness; there was a faded look about her, and about the furniture, and about the house.

She was reclining on a sofa in such a very unstudied attitude, that she might have been taken for an actress all ready for the first scene in a ballet, and only waiting for the drop curtain to go up.

She was reclining on a sofa in such a very unstudied attitude, that she might have been taken for an actress all ready for the first scene in a ballet, and only waiting for the drop curtain to go up.

The page left it; but if ever an Alphonse carried plain Bill in his face and figure, that page was the boy.

“I have ventured to call, ma’am,” said Kate, after a few seconds of awkward silence, “from having seen your advertisement.”

… capital which Nicholas found himself entitled to, either in possession, reversion, remainder, or expectancy, after paying his rent and settling with the broker from whom he had hired his poor furniture, did not exceed, by more than a few halfpence, the sum of twenty shillings.

And yet he hailed the morning on which he had resolved to quit London, with a light heart, and sprang from his bed with an elasticity of spirit which is happily the lot of young persons, or the world would never be stocked with old ones.

It was a cold, dry, foggy morning in early spring.

“Now listen to me, Smike,” said Nicholas, as they trudged with stout hearts onwards. “We are bound for Portsmouth.”

Smike nodded his head and smiled, but expressed no other emotion; for whether they had been bound for Portsmouth or Port Royal would have been alike to him, so they had been bound together.

“I don’t know much of these matters,” resumed Nicholas; “but Portsmouth is a seaport town, and if no other employment is to be obtained, I should think we might get on board some ship.

“Let me do something for you, at least,” said Smike. “You will never let me serve you as I ought.

You will never know how I think, day and night, of ways to please you.

”

In the morning they were astir: though not quite so early as the sun: and again afoot; if not with all the freshness of yesterday, still, with enough of hope and spirit to bear them cheerily on.

It was a harder day’s journey than yesterday’s, for there were long and weary hills to climb; and in journeys, as in life, it is a great deal easier to go down hill than up.

However, they kept on, with unabated perseverance, and the hill has not yet lifted its face to heaven that perseverance will not gain the summit of at last.

“Very bad,” said the landlord.

As of course, being a landlord, he would say.

“I want to get on,” observed Nicholas, hesitating. “I scarcely know what to do.”

A glance at the toil-worn face of Smike determined Nicholas, so without any further consideration he made up his mind to stay where he was.

The landlord led them into the kitchen, and as there was a good fire he remarked that it was very cold. If there had happened to be a bad one he would have observed that it was very warm.

“What can you give us for supper?” was Nicholas’s natural question.

“And well I may,” rejoined the manager. “I never saw a young fellow so regularly cut out for that line, since I’ve been in the profession.

And I played the heavy children when I was eighteen months old.

”

“The theatrical profession,” said Mr. Vincent Crummles. “I am in the theatrical profession myself, my wife is in the theatrical profession, my children are in the theatrical profession.

I had a dog that lived and died in it from a puppy; and my chaise-pony goes on, in Timour the Tartar.

I’ll bring you out, and your friend too. Say the word. I want a novelty.”

“Many and many is the circuit this pony has gone,” said Mr. Crummles, flicking him skilfully on the eyelid for old acquaintance’ sake. “

He is quite one of us. His mother was on the stage.

”

It was; for the infant phenomenon, though of short stature, had a comparatively aged countenance, and had moreover been precisely the same age—not perhaps to the full extent of the memory of the oldest inhabitant, but certainly for five good years.

But she had been kept up late every night, and put upon an unlimited allowance of gin-and-water from infancy, to prevent her growing tall, and perhaps this system of training had produced in the infant phenomenon these additional phenomena.

While this short dialogue was going on, the gentleman who had enacted the savage, came up, with his walking shoes on his feet, and his slippers in his hand, to within a few paces, as if desirous to join in the conversation.

“

Invention! what the devil’s that got to do with it!

” cried the manager hastily.

The plot was most interesting.

It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.

An outlaw had been very successful in doing something somewhere, and came home, in triumph, to the sound of shouts and fiddles, to greet his wife—a lady of masculine mind, who talked a good deal about her father’s bones, which it seemed were unburied, though …

“I assure you,” said Miss Snevellicci, taking his arm, “that I think myself very lucky they did not owe all the money instead of being sixpence short.

Now, if you were to succeed, they would give people to understand that they had always patronised you; and if you were to fail, they would have been quite certain of that from the very beginning.

”

Some wanted tragedies, and others comedies; some objected to dancing; some wanted scarcely anything else. Some thought the comic singer decidedly low, and others hoped he would have more to do than he usually had.

Some people wouldn’t promise to go, because other people wouldn’t promise to go; and other people wouldn’t go at all, because other people went.

At length, and by little and little, omitting something in this place, and adding something in that, Miss Snevellicci pledged herself to a bill of fare which was comprehensive enough, if it had no other merit (it included among other trifles, four pieces, divers songs, …

“A boy phenomenon, perhaps?” suggested Nicholas.

“There is only one phenomenon, sir,” replied Mr. Crummles impressively, “and that’s a girl.”

“Very true,” said Nicholas. “I beg your pardon. Then I don’t know what it is, I am sure.”

“Not so much with her, as with her audiences,” replied Mr. Crummles. “

Nobody could stand it. It was too tremendous.

You don’t quite know what Mrs. Crummles is yet.”

After the morning’s rehearsal they went to work again, nor did they stop, except for a hasty dinner, until it was time to repair to the theatre at night.

Never had master a more anxious, humble, docile pupil. Never had pupil a more patient, unwearying, considerate, kindhearted master.

As soon as they were dressed, and at every interval when he was not upon the stage, Nicholas renewed his instructions. They prospered well.

“Hear him,” said Sir Mulberry, turning to his two friends. “Hear this discontented grumbler. Isn’t it enough to make a man swear never to help him in his plots and schemes again? Isn’t it an infernal shame?”

Pyke asked Pluck whether it was not an infernal shame, and Pluck asked Pyke; but neither answered.

“Isn’t it the truth?” demanded Verisopht. “Wasn’t it so?”

his professional reputation being at stake,” said Mr. Folair, quite seriously. “But his heart failed him, and he cast about for some other way of annoying you, and making himself popular at the same time—for that’s the point.

Notoriety, notoriety, is the thing.

Bless you, if he had pinked you,” said Mr. Folair, stopping to make a calculation in his mind, “it would have been worth—ah, it would have been worth eight or ten shillings a week to him.

“So these are some of the stories they invent about us, and bandy from mouth to mouth!” thought Nicholas. “

If a man would commit an inexpiable offence against any society, large or small, let him be successful. They will forgive him any crime but that.

”

“I am not a man to be moved by a pretty face,” muttered Ralph sternly. “

There is a grinning skull beneath it, and men like me who look and work below the surface see that, and not its delicate covering.

And yet I almost like the girl, or should if she had been less proudly and squeamishly brought up. If the boy were drowned or hanged, and the mother dead, this house should be her home. I wish they were, with all my soul.”

he came back again to the cold fireside and the silent dreary splendour; and in that one glimpse of a better nature, born as it was in selfish thoughts, the rich man felt himself friendless, childless, and alone.

Gold, for the instant, lost its lustre in his eyes, for there were countless treasures of the heart which it could never purchase.

A very slight circumstance was sufficient to banish such reflections from the mind of such a man.

There was not the smallest speculation, however, in the countenance of Newman Noggs.

If it be possible to imagine a man, with two eyes in his head, and both wide open, looking in no direction whatever, and seeing nothing, Newman appeared to be that man while Ralph Nickleby regarded him.

“Oh!” said Newman, throwing some intelligence into his eyes all at once, and dropping them on his master, “I thought you rang.” With which laconic remark Newman turned round and hobbled away.

half-naked shivering figures stopped to gaze at Chinese shawls and golden stuffs of India. There was a christening party at the largest coffin-maker’s and a funeral hatchment had stopped some great improvements in the bravest mansion.

Life and death went hand in hand; wealth and poverty stood side by side; repletion and starvation laid them down together.

But it was London;

… to the inn where they were to pass the night, and where (after writing a few lines to Ralph, the delivery of which was to be entrusted to Newman next day), he endeavoured to obtain the repose of which he stood so much in need.

Drunken men, they say, may roll down precipices, and be quite unconscious of any serious personal inconvenience when their reason returns.

The remark may possibly apply to injuries received in other kinds of violent excitement:

“With regard to the trifle of salary that is due,” said Mr. Wititterly, “I will”—here he was interrupted by a violent fit of coughing—“I will—owe it to Miss Nickleby.”

Mr. Wititterly, it should be observed, was accustomed to owe small accounts, and to leave them owing.

All men have some little pleasant way of their own; and this was Mr. Wititterly’s.

“Recollections like these,” pursued Ralph, with a bitter smile, “flock upon me—when I resign myself to them—in crowds, and from countless quarters.

As a portion of the world affect to despise the power of money, I must try and show them what it is.

”

“Because I should change; not those about me. And if they forgot me, I should never know it,” replied Smike.

“In the churchyard we are all alike, but here there are none like me. I am a poor creature, but I know that.”

“You are a foolish, silly creature,” said Nicholas cheerfully. “If that is what you mean, I grant you that. Why, here’s a dismal face for ladies’ company!—my pretty sister too, whom you have so often asked me about. Is this your Yorkshire gallantry? For shame!

There was something so earnest and guileless in the way in which all this was said, and such a complete disregard of all conventional restraints and coldnesses, that Nicholas could not resist it.

Among men who have any sound and sterling qualities, there is nothing so contagious as pure openness of heart.

Nicholas took the infection instantly, and ran over the main points of his little history without reserve: merely suppressing names, and touching as lightly as possible upon his uncle’s treatment of Kate.

… a perfect wonder to look upon—and Nicholas, who helped and encouraged them every one—all the peace and cheerfulness of home restored, with such new zest imparted to every frugal pleasure, and such delight to every hour of meeting, as misfortune and separation alone could give!

In short, the poor Nicklebys were social and happy; while the rich Nickleby was alone and miserable.

“It’s the finest boy I ever saw in all my life,” said the doctor. “I never saw such a baby.”

It is a pleasant thing to reflect upon, and furnishes a complete answer to those who contend for the gradual degeneration of the human species, that every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last.

“I ne—ver saw such a baby,” said Mr. Lumbey, the doctor.

Tim Linkinwater shook his head with an air of mild reproof. Mr. Nickleby was not sufficiently impressed with the deep and awful nature of his undertaking. Suppose there should be any mistake—any scratching out!

Young men are adventurous. It is extraordinary what they will rush upon, sometimes.

Without even taking the precaution of sitting himself down upon his stool, but standing leisurely at the desk, and with a smile upon his face—actually a smile—there was no mistake about it; Mr.

but that was not to be. My dear brother—The Memory of our Mother.”

“Good Lord!” thought Nicholas, “and there are scores of people of their own station, knowing all this, and twenty thousand times more, who wouldn’t ask these men to dinner because they eat with their knives and never went to school!”

But there was no time to moralise, for the joviality again became very brisk, and the decanter of port being nearly out, brother Ned pulled the bell, which was instantly answered by the apoplectic butler.

“Your poor pa!” said Mrs. Nickleby, pondering. “He never knew, till it was too late, what I would have had him do!”

This was undoubtedly the case, inasmuch as the deceased Mr. Nickleby had not arrived at the knowledge when he died. Neither had Mrs. Nickleby herself; which is, in some sort, an explanation of the circumstance.

“However,” said Mrs. Nickleby, drying her tears, “this has nothing to do—certainly nothing whatever to do—with the gentleman in the next house.”

“But this man, who is not a shoemaker—what has he done, mother, what has he said?” inquired Nicholas, fretted almost beyond endurance, but looking nearly as resigned and patient as Mrs. Nickleby herself. “

You know, there is no language of vegetables, which converts a cucumber into a formal declaration of attachment.

”

… opinion of sceptical persons have undergone much alteration when he followed up the remark by poking Smike in the chest with the ferrule of his umbrella, and dealing a smart shower of blows, with the ribs of the same instrument, upon his head and shoulders.

“I never threshed a boy in a hackney coach before,” said Mr. Squeers, when he stopped to rest. “There’s inconveniency in it, but the novelty gives it a sort of relish, too!”

Poor Smike! He warded off the blows, as well as he could, and now shrunk into a corner of the coach, with his head resting on his hands, and his elbows on his knees;

“It’s clear that there has been a Providence in it, sir,” said Mr. Snawley, casting down his eyes with an air of humility, and elevating his fork, with a bit of lobster on the top of it, towards the ceiling.

“Providence is against him, no doubt,” replied Mr. Squeers, scratching his nose. “Of course; that was to be expected. Anybody might have known that.”

“Hard-heartedness and evildoing will never prosper, sir,” said Mr. Snawley.

Nothing transpired, however, to confirm this suspicion, and Tim could not be entrapped into any confession or admission tending to support it in the smallest degree.

Mystery and disappointment are not absolutely indispensable to the growth of love, but they are, very often, its powerful auxiliaries.

“Out of sight, out of mind,” is well enough as a proverb applicable to cases of friendship, though absence is not always necessary to hollowness of heart, even between friends, and truth and honesty, like precious stones, are perhaps most easily imitated at a distance, …

… well enough as a proverb applicable to cases of friendship, though absence is not always necessary to hollowness of heart, even between friends, and truth and honesty, like precious stones, are perhaps most easily imitated at a distance, when the counterfeits often pass for real.

Love, however, is very materially assisted by a warm and active imagination: which has a long memory, and will thrive, for a considerable time, on very slight and sparing food.

Thus it is, that it often attains its most luxuriant growth in separation and under circumstances of the utmost difficulty;

“Not a bit, and don’t deserve to be,” replied the keeper. “

He’s a deal pleasanter without his senses than with ’em.

He was the cruellest, wickedest, out-and-outerest old flint that ever drawed breath.”

… he does, respectfully, and in quite poetical language, and making offers with so much thought, and care, and prudence—not as if he ran into the streets, and went down upon his knees to the first chit of a girl he met, as a madman would!

No, no, Kate, there’s a great deal too much method in his madness; depend upon that, my dear.

”

I was not insensible, indeed. I might have felt happier if I had been. Dear mama,” said Kate, in great agitation, “

I know no difference between this home and that in which we were all so happy for so many years, except that the kindest and gentlest heart that ever ached on earth has passed in peace to heaven.

”

A gush of tears came to her relief, and Kate laid her head upon her mother’s breast, and wept like a little child.

It is an exquisite and beautiful thing in our nature, that when the heart is touched and softened by some tranquil happiness or affectionate feeling, the memory of the dead comes over it most powerfully and irresistibly.

It would almost seem as though our better thoughts and sympathies were charms, in virtue of which the soul is enabled to hold some vague and mysterious intercourse with the spirits of those whom we dearly loved in life. Alas!

It would almost seem as though our better thoughts and sympathies were charms, in virtue of which the soul is enabled to hold some vague and mysterious intercourse with the spirits of those whom we dearly loved in life.

Alas! how often and how long may those patient angels hover above us, watching for the spell which is so seldom uttered, and so soon forgotten!

Poor Mrs. Nickleby, accustomed to give ready utterance to whatever came uppermost in her mind, had never conceived the possibility of her daughter’s dwelling upon these thoughts in secret, the more especially as no hard trial or querulous reproach had ever drawn them from her.

… Charles, laying his hand upon his shoulder, bade him walk with him, or Nicholas, looking smilingly round, beckoned him to come and talk with the old friend who understood him best, and who could win a smile into his careworn face when none else could.

Pride is one of the seven deadly sins; but it cannot be the pride of a mother in her children, for that is a compound of two cardinal virtues⁠—faith and hope.

This was the pride which swelled Mrs. Nickleby’s heart that night, and this it was which left upon her face, glistening in the light when they returned home, traces of the most grateful tears she had ever shed.

Frank Cheeryble offered his hand to Kate twice over, quite forgetting that he had bade her adieu already. This was held by the elder Mr. Cheeryble to be a convincing proof that he was thinking of his German flame, and the jest occasioned immense laughter.

So easy is it to move light hearts.

In short, it was a day of serene and tranquil happiness;

Affecting to consider himself but a type of all humanity, he was at little pains to conceal his true character from the world in general, and in his own heart he exulted over and cherished every bad design as it had birth.

The only scriptural admonition that Ralph Nickleby heeded, in the letter, was “know thyself.”

He knew himself well, and choosing to imagine that all mankind were cast in the same mould, hated them;

… he is told is his father, and whose first act is to signify his intention of putting an end to his short term of happiness, of consigning him to his old fate, and taking him from the only friend he has ever had—which is yourself.

If Nature, in such a case, put into that lad’s breast but one secret prompting which urged him towards his father and away from you, she would be a liar and an idiot.

”

… His, they must be reared and fostered, or it is as natural that they should be wholly obscured, and that new feelings should usurp their place, as it is that the sweetest productions of the earth, left untended, should be choked with weeds and briers.

I wish we could be brought to consider this, and remembering natural obligations a little more at the right time, talk about them a little less at the wrong one.

”

and persuading himself that he was a most conscientious and glorious martyr, nobly resolved to do what, if he had examined his own heart a little more carefully, he would have found he could not resist.

Such is the sleight of hand by which we juggle with ourselves, and change our very weaknesses into stanch and most magnanimous virtues!

Mr. Cheeryble, being of course wholly unsuspicious that such reflections were presenting themselves to his young friend, proceeded to give him the needful credentials and directions for his first visit, which was to be made next morning;

… reside by the wise provisions of the same enlightened laws which leave the debtor who can raise no money to starve in jail, without the food, clothing, lodging, or warmth, which are provided for felons convicted of the most atrocious crimes that can disgrace humanity.

There are many pleasant fictions of the law in constant operation, but there is not one so pleasant or practically humorous as that which supposes every man to be of equal value in its impartial eye, and the benefits of all laws to be equally attainable by all men, without the smallest reference to the furniture of their pockets.

To the row of houses indicated to him by Mr. Charles Cheeryble, Nicholas directed his steps, without much troubling his head with such matters as these;

And yet Nicholas was in the Rules of the King’s Bench Prison! If he had been in Italy indeed, and the time had been sunset, and the scene a stately terrace!

But, there is one broad sky over all the world, and whether it be blue or cloudy, the same heaven beyond it; so, perhaps, he had no need of compunction for thinking as he did.

It is not to be supposed that he took in everything at one glance, for he had as yet been unconscious of the presence of a sick man propped up with pillows in an easy-chair, who, moving restlessly and impatiently in his seat, attracted his …

“He was one of us who made that saying, I should think,” said Ralph. “

Time is money, and very good money too, to those who reckon interest by it. Time is money! Yes, and time costs money; it’s rather an expensive article to some people we could name, or I forget my trade.

”

Well, that adds to my pain, but not to theirs. The thing is no worse because I know it, and it tortures me as well as them.

Gride and Nickleby! Good pair for a curricle.

Oh roguery! roguery! roguery!”

“I am sure it’s done,” said Ralph. “He is trying to deceive himself, even before our eyes, already. He is making believe that he thinks of her good and not his own.

He is acting a virtuous part, and so considerate and affectionate, sir, that the daughter scarcely knew him.

I saw a tear of surprise in her eye. There’ll be a few more tears of surprise there before long, though of a different kind. Oh! we may wait with confidence for this day week.”

Mr. Timberry, in reply, shook his head with a gloomy air, tapped his chest several times with great significancy, and drawing his cloak more closely about him, said, “But no matter, no matter. Come!”

It is observable that when people upon the stage are in any strait involving the very last extremity of weakness and exhaustion, they invariably perform feats of strength requiring great ingenuity and muscular power.

Thus, a wounded prince or bandit chief, who is bleeding to death and too faint to move, except to the softest music (and then only upon his hands and knees), shall be seen to approach a cottage door for aid in such a series of …

“I have heard several,” replied Nicholas, with a smile. “What is yours?”

“When I dramatise a book, sir,” said the literary gentleman, “that’s fame. For its author.”

“That’s fame, sir,” said the literary gentleman.

“We were a very happy little company, Johnson,” said poor Crummles. “You and I never had a word.

I shall be very glad tomorrow morning to think that I saw you again, but now I almost wish you hadn’t come.

”

“Going?” returned Mrs. Grudden. “

Lord ha’ mercy, what do you think they’d do without me?

”

… from day to day, at least among the waving trees, and not in the midst of dreadful engines which make young children old before they know what childhood is, and give them the exhaustion and infirmity of age, without, like age, the privilege to die.

God send that old nursery tales were true, and that gypsies stole such children by the score!

The great race of the day had just been run; and the close lines of people, on either side of the course, suddenly breaking up and pouring into it, imparted a new liveliness to the scene, which was again all busy movement.

In an old house, dismal dark and dusty, which seemed to have withered, like himself, and to have grown yellow and shrivelled in hoarding him from the light of day, as he had in hoarding his money, lived Arthur Gride.

Meagre old chairs and tables, of spare and bony make, and hard and cold as misers’ hearts, were ranged, in grim array, against the gloomy walls;

attenuated presses, grown lank and lantern-jawed in guarding the treasures they enclosed, and tottering, as though from constant fear and dread of thieves, shrunk up in dark corners, whence they cast no shadows on the ground, and seemed to hide and cower from observation.

“She’s half a witch, I think,” said Arthur Gride, when he found himself again alone. “But she’s very frugal, and she’s very deaf. Her living costs me next to nothing; and it’s no use her listening at keyholes; for she can’t hear.

She’s a charming woman⁠—for the purpose; a most discreet old housekeeper, and worth her weight in⁠—copper.

”

“It’s necessary to draw the line somewheres, my fine feller,” replied the principal. “We draw the line there. We can’t go beyond bakers.

If we was to get any lower than bakers, our customers would desert us, and we might shut up shop.

You must try some other establishment, sir. We couldn’t do it here.”

Newman Noggs uttered his name, and Mr. Lillyvick groaned: then coughed to hide it.

But the groan was a full-sized groan, and the cough was but a wheeze.

“Is anything the matter?” said Newman Noggs.

“Matter, sir!” cried Mr. Lillyvick. “

The plug of life is dry, sir, and but the mud is left.

”

“It’s the fowl,” replied Peg, holding up a plate containing a little, a very little one.

Quite a phenomenon of a fowl. So very small and skinny.

“A beautiful bird!” said Arthur, after inquiring the price, and finding it proportionate to the size.

“

Oh dear! she can never hear the most important word, and hears all the others!

” whined Gride. “At his expense—you catamaran!”

“Top bolt,” muttered Arthur, fastening as he spoke, “bottom bolt, chain, bar, double lock, and key out to put under my pillow!

So, if any more rejected admirers come, they may come through the keyhole.

And now I’ll go to sleep till half-past five, when I must get up to be married, Peg!”

The crisis of the project and its result.

There are not many men who lie abed too late, or oversleep themselves, on their wedding morning.

A legend there is of somebody remarkable for absence of mind, who opened his eyes upon the day which was to give him a young wife, and forgetting all about the matter, rated his servants for providing him with such fine clothes as had been …

“Much!” said Ralph, with a sneer. “

Why, everybody knows what easy things to understand and to control, women are.

But come, it’s very nearly time for you to be made happy. You’ll pay the bond now, I suppose, to save us trouble afterwards.”

… commission of some injustice, it is not uncommon for them to express pity for the object either of that or some parallel proceeding, and to feel themselves, at the time, quite virtuous and moral, and immensely superior to those who express no pity at all.

This is a kind of upholding of faith above works, and is very comfortable.

To do Ralph Nickleby justice, he seldom practised this sort of dissimulation;

“I come here,” said Nicholas in a low deep voice, “to save your victim if I can. Liar and scoundrel you are, in every action of your life; theft is your trade; and double dastard you must be, or you were not here today.

Hard words will not move me, nor would hard blows. Here I stand, and will, till I have done my errand.

”

“You will do him no hurt that he will not repay. You may use force with me; I think you will, for I am a girl, and that would well become you.

But if I have a girl’s weakness, I have a woman’s heart, and it is not you who in a cause like this can turn that from its purpose.

”

“Not one,” replied Nicholas, “I will not hear of one—save this. Look to yourself, and heed this warning that I give you!

Your day is past, and night is coming on.

”

“

Whence will curses come at your command? Or what avails a curse or blessing from a man like you?

I tell you, that misfortune and discovery are thickening about your head; that the structures you have raised, through all your ill-spent life, are crumbling into dust; that your path is beset with spies;

“Ah!” returned his mother, “what style of nose? What order of architecture, if one may say so.

I am not very learned in noses. Do you call it a Roman or a Grecian?

”

While I ground, and pinched, and used these needy borrowers for my pleasure and profit, what smooth-tongued speeches, and courteous looks, and civil letters, they would have given me!

The cant of the lying world is, that men like me compass our riches by dissimulation and treachery: by fawning, cringing, and stooping.

Why, how many lies, what mean and abject evasions, what humbled behaviour from upstarts who, but for my money, would spurn me aside as they do their betters every day, would that ten thousand pounds have brought me in!

But it’s a ill wind as blows no good to nobody; that’s what I always say when them lads has a wisitation.

A wisitation, sir, is the lot of mortality. Mortality itself, sir, is a wisitation.

The world is chock full of wisitations; and if a boy repines at a wisitation and makes you uncomfortable with his noise, he must have his head punched. That’s going according to the Scripter, that is.”

“What’s the reason,” said Mr. Squeers, deriving fresh facetiousness from the bottle; “what’s the reason of rheumatics? What do they mean? What do people have’em for—eh?”

Mrs. Sliderskew didn’t know, but suggested that it was possibly because they couldn’t help it.

“Measles, rheumatics, whooping cough, fevers, agers, and lumbagers,” said Mr. Squeers, “is all philosophy together; that’s what it is. The heavenly bodies is philosophy, and the earthly bodies is philosophy. If there’s a screw loose in a heavenly body, that’s philosophy;

Squeers,’ he says, ‘I an’t.’ ‘Then, sir,’ says I, ‘I am sorry for you, for I shan’t be able to explain it.’

Naturally, the parent goes away and wishes he was a philosopher, and, equally naturally, thinks I’m one.

”