Chapter I - Introduces All The
Rest
There once lived, in a
sequestered part of the county of Devonshire, one Mr Godfrey
Nickleby: a worthy gentleman, who, taking it into his head rather
late in life that he must get married, and not being young enough
or rich enough to aspire to the hand of a lady of fortune, had
wedded an old flame out of mere attachment, who in her turn had
taken him for the same reason. Thus two people who cannot afford to
play cards for money, sometimes sit down to a quiet game for
love.
Some ill-conditioned persons who
sneer at the life-matrimonial, may perhaps suggest, in this place,
that the good couple would be better likened to two principals in a
sparring match, who, when fortune is low and backers scarce, will
chivalrously set to, for the mere pleasure of the buffeting; and in
one respect indeed this comparison would hold good; for, as the
adventurous pair of the Fives' Court will afterwards send round a
hat, and trust to the bounty of the lookers-on for the means of
regaling themselves, so Mr Godfrey Nickleby and HIS partner, the
honeymoon being over, looked out wistfully into the world,
relying in no inconsiderable degree upon chance for the improvement
of their means. Mr Nickleby's income, at the period of his
marriage, fluctuated between sixty and eighty pounds PER
ANNUM.
There are people enough in the
world, Heaven knows! and even in London (where Mr Nickleby dwelt in
those days) but few complaints prevail, of the population being
scanty. It is extraordinary how long a man may look among the crowd
without discovering the face of a friend, but it is no less true.
Mr Nickleby looked, and looked, till his eyes became sore as
his heart, but no friend appeared; and when, growing tired of the
search, he turned his eyes homeward, he saw very little there to
relieve his weary vision. A painter who has gazed too long upon
some glaring colour, refreshes his dazzled sight by looking upon a
darker and more sombre tint; but everything that met Mr Nickleby's
gaze wore so black and gloomy a hue, that he would have been beyond
description refreshed by the very reverse of the contrast.
At length, after five years, when
Mrs Nickleby had presented her husband with a couple of sons, and
that embarrassed gentleman, impressed with the necessity of making
some provision for his family, was seriously revolving in his mind
a little commercial speculation of insuring his life next
quarter-day, and then falling from the top of the Monument by
accident, there came, one morning, by the general post, a
black-bordered letter to inform him how his uncle, Mr Ralph
Nickleby, was dead, and had left him the bulk of his little
property, amounting in all to five thousand pounds sterling.
As the deceased had taken no
further notice of his nephew in his lifetime, than sending to his
eldest boy (who had been christened after him, on desperate
speculation) a silver spoon in a morocco case, which, as he had
not too much to eat with it, seemed a kind of satire upon his
having been born without that useful article of plate in his mouth,
Mr Godfrey Nickleby could, at first, scarcely believe the tidings
thus conveyed to him. On examination, however, they turned out
to be strictly correct. The amiable old gentleman, it seemed, had
intended to leave the whole to the Royal Humane Society, and had
indeed executed a will to that effect; but the Institution, having
been unfortunate enough, a few months before, to save the life of a
poor relation to whom he paid a weekly allowance of three shillings
and sixpence, he had, in a fit of very natural exasperation,
revoked the bequest in a codicil, and left it all to Mr Godfrey
Nickleby; with a special mention of his indignation, not only
against the society for saving the poor relation's life, but
against the poor relation also, for allowing himself to be
saved.
With a portion of this property
Mr Godfrey Nickleby purchased a small farm, near Dawlish in
Devonshire, whither he retired with his wife and two children, to
live upon the best interest he could get for the rest of his money,
and the little produce he could raise from his land. The two
prospered so well together that, when he died, some fifteen years
after this period, and some five after his wife, he was enabled to
leave, to his eldest son, Ralph, three thousand pounds in cash, and
to his youngest son, Nicholas, one thousand and the farm, which was
as small a landed estate as one would desire to see.
These two brothers had been
brought up together in a school at Exeter; and, being
accustomed to go home once a week, had often heard, from their
mother's lips, long accounts of their father's sufferings in his
days of poverty, and of their deceased uncle's importance in his
days of affluence: which recitals produced a very different
impression on the two: for, while the younger, who was of a timid
and retiring disposition, gleaned from thence nothing but
forewarnings to shun the great world and attach himself to the
quiet routine of a country life, Ralph, the elder, deduced from the
often- repeated tale the two great morals that riches are the only
true source of happiness and power, and that it is lawful and
just to compass their acquisition by all means short of felony.
'And,' reasoned Ralph with himself, 'if no good came of my
uncle's money when he was alive, a great deal of good came of it
after he was dead, inasmuch as my father has got it now, and is
saving it up for me, which is a highly virtuous purpose; and, going
back to the old gentleman, good DID come of it to him too, for
he had the pleasure of thinking of it all his life long, and of
being envied and courted by all his family besides.' And Ralph
always wound up these mental soliloquies by arriving at the
conclusion, that there was nothing like money.
Not confining himself to theory,
or permitting his faculties to rust, even at that early age,
in mere abstract speculations, this promising lad commenced
usurer on a limited scale at school; putting out at good
interest a small capital of slate-pencil and marbles, and gradually
extending his operations until they aspired to the copper coinage
of this realm, in which he speculated to considerable advantage.
Nor did he trouble his borrowers with abstract calculations of
figures, or references to ready-reckoners; his simple rule of
interest being all comprised in the one golden sentence, 'two-pence
for every half-penny,' which greatly simplified the accounts, and
which, as a familiar precept, more easily acquired and retained in
the memory than any known rule of arithmetic, cannot be too
strongly recommended to the notice of capitalists, both large and
small, and more especially of money-brokers and bill-discounters.
Indeed, to do these gentlemen justice, many of them are to this day
in the frequent habit of adopting it, with eminent success.
In like manner, did young Ralph
Nickleby avoid all those minute and intricate calculations of odd
days, which nobody who has worked sums in simple-interest can
fail to have found most embarrassing, by establishing the one
general rule that all sums of principal and interest should be
paid on pocket-money day, that is to say, on Saturday: and that
whether a loan were contracted on the Monday, or on the Friday, the
amount of interest should be, in both cases, the same. Indeed
he argued, and with great show of reason, that it ought to be
rather more for one day than for five, inasmuch as the borrower
might in the former case be very fairly presumed to be in great
extremity, otherwise he would not borrow at all with such odds
against him. This fact is interesting, as illustrating the secret
connection and sympathy which always exist between great minds.
Though Master Ralph Nickleby was not at that time aware of it, the
class of gentlemen before alluded to, proceed on just the same
principle in all their transactions.
From what we have said of this
young gentleman, and the natural admiration the reader will
immediately conceive of his character, it may perhaps be inferred
that he is to be the hero of the work which we shall presently
begin. To set this point at rest, for once and for ever, we hasten
to undeceive them, and stride to its commencement.
On the death of his father, Ralph
Nickleby, who had been some time before placed in a mercantile
house in London, applied himself passionately to his old pursuit of
money-getting, in which he speedily became so buried and absorbed,
that he quite forgot his brother for many years; and if, at times,
a recollection of his old playfellow broke upon him through the
haze in which he lived - for gold conjures up a mist about a man,
more destructive of all his old senses and lulling to his feelings
than the fumes of charcoal - it brought along with it a
companion thought, that if they
were intimate he would want to borrow money of him. So, Mr Ralph
Nickleby shrugged his shoulders, and said things were better as
they were.
As for Nicholas, he lived a
single man on the patrimonial estate until he grew tired of living
alone, and then he took to wife the daughter of a neighbouring
gentleman with a dower of one thousand pounds. This good lady bore
him two children, a son and a daughter, and when the son was about
nineteen, and the daughter fourteen, as near as we can guess -
impartial records of young ladies' ages being, before the
passing of the new act, nowhere preserved in the registries of this
country - Mr Nickleby looked about him for the means of repairing
his capital, now sadly reduced by this increase in his family, and
the expenses of their education.
'Speculate with it,' said Mrs
Nickleby.
'Spec - u - late, my dear?' said
Mr Nickleby, as though in doubt. 'Why not?' asked Mrs
Nickleby.
'Because, my dear, if we SHOULD
lose it,' rejoined Mr Nickleby, who was a slow and time-taking
speaker, 'if we SHOULD lose it, we shall no longer be able to
live, my dear.'
'Fiddle,' said Mrs
Nickleby.
'I am not altogether sure of
that, my dear,' said Mr Nickleby.
'There's Nicholas,' pursued the
lady, 'quite a young man - it's time he was in the way of doing
something for himself; and Kate too, poor girl, without a penny in
the world. Think of your brother! Would he be what he is, if he
hadn't speculated?'
'That's true,' replied Mr
Nickleby. 'Very good, my dear. Yes. I WILL speculate, my
dear.'
Speculation is a round game; the
players see little or nothing of their cards at first starting;
gains MAY be great - and so may losses. The run of luck went
against Mr Nickleby. A mania prevailed, a bubble burst, four
stock-brokers took villa residences at Florence, four hundred
nobodies were ruined, and among them Mr Nickleby.
'The very house I live in,'
sighed the poor gentleman, 'may be taken from me tomorrow. Not an
article of my old furniture, but will be sold to strangers!'
The last reflection hurt him so
much, that he took at once to his bed; apparently resolved to keep
that, at all events.
'Cheer up, sir!' said the
apothecary.
'You mustn't let yourself be cast
down, sir,' said the nurse. 'Such things happen every day,'
remarked the lawyer.
'And it is very sinful to rebel
against them,' whispered the clergyman.
'And what no man with a family
ought to do,' added the neighbours.
Mr Nickleby shook his head, and
motioning them all out of the room, embraced his wife and
children, and having pressed them by turns to his languidly
beating heart, sunk exhausted on his pillow. They were concerned to
find that his reason went astray after this; for he babbled,
for a long time, about the generosity and goodness of his brother,
and the merry old times when they were at school together. This fit
of wandering past, he solemnly commended them to One who never
deserted the widow or her fatherless children, and, smiling
gently on them, turned upon his face, and observed, that he thought
he could fall asleep.
Chapter II - Of Mr Ralph
Nickleby, And His Establishments, And His Undertakings, And Of A
Great Joint Stock Company Of Vast National Importance
Mr Ralph Nickleby was not,
strictly speaking, what you would call a merchant, neither was he a
banker, nor an attorney, nor a special pleader, nor a notary. He
was certainly not a tradesman, and still less could he lay any
claim to the title of a professional gentleman; for it would have
been impossible to mention any recognised profession to which he
belonged. Nevertheless, as he lived in a spacious house in Golden
Square, which, in addition to a brass plate upon the street- door,
had another brass plate two sizes and a half smaller upon the left
hand door-post, surrounding a brass model of an infant's fist
grasping a fragment of a skewer, and displaying the word 'Office,'
it was clear that Mr Ralph Nickleby did, or pretended to do,
business of some kind; and the fact, if it required any further
circumstantial evidence, was abundantly demonstrated by the diurnal
attendance, between the hours of half-past nine and five, of a
sallow-faced man in rusty brown, who sat upon an uncommonly hard
stool in a species of butler's pantry at the end of the passage,
and always had a pen behind his ear when he answered the
bell.
Although a few members of the
graver professions live about Golden Square, it is not exactly in
anybody's way to or from anywhere. It is one of the squares that
have been; a quarter of the town that has gone down in the world,
and taken to letting lodgings. Many of its first and second floors
are let, furnished, to single gentlemen; and it takes boarders
besides. It is a great resort of foreigners. The dark- complexioned
men who wear large rings, and heavy watch-guards, and bushy
whiskers, and who congregate under the Opera Colonnade, and about
the box-office in the season, between four and five in the
afternoon, when they give away the orders, - all live in Golden
Square, or within a street of it. Two or three violins and a wind
instrument from the Opera band reside within its precincts. Its
boarding-houses are musical, and the notes of pianos and harps
float in the evening time round the head of the mournful statue,
the guardian genius of a little wilderness of shrubs, in the centre
of the square. On a summer's night, windows are thrown open, and
groups of swarthy moustached men are seen by the passer-by,
lounging at the casements, and smoking fearfully. Sounds of gruff
voices practising vocal music invade the evening's silence; and
the fumes of choice tobacco scent the air. There, snuff and
cigars, and German pipes and flutes, and violins and
violoncellos, divide the supremacy between them. It is the region
of song and smoke. Street bands are on their mettle in Golden
Square; and itinerant glee-singers quaver involuntarily as they
raise their voices within its boundaries.
This would not seem a spot very
well adapted to the transaction of business; but Mr Ralph Nickleby
had lived there, notwithstanding, for many years, and uttered no
complaint on that score. He knew nobody round about, and nobody
knew him, although he enjoyed the reputation of being immensely
rich. The tradesmen held that he was a sort of lawyer, and the
other neighbours opined that he was a kind of general agent; both
of which guesses were as correct and definite as guesses about
other people's affairs usually are, or need to be.
Mr Ralph Nickleby sat in his
private office one morning, ready dressed to walk abroad. He wore a
bottle-green spencer over a blue coat; a white waistcoat, grey
mixture pantaloons, and Wellington boots drawn over them. The
corner of a small-plaited shirt-frill struggled out, as if
insisting to show itself, from between his chin and the top button
of his spencer; and the latter garment was not made low enough to
conceal a long gold watch-chain, composed of a series of plain
rings, which had its beginning at the handle of a gold repeater in
Mr Nickleby's pocket, and its termination in two little keys: one
belonging to the watch itself, and the other to some patent
padlock. He wore a sprinkling of powder upon his head, as if to
make himself look benevolent; but if that were his purpose, he
would perhaps have done better to powder his countenance also, for
there was something in its very wrinkles, and in his cold restless
eye, which seemed to tell of cunning that would announce itself in
spite of him. However this might be, there he was; and as he
was all alone, neither the powder, nor the wrinkles, nor the
eyes, had the smallest effect, good or bad, upon anybody just then,
and are consequently no business of ours just now.
Mr Nickleby closed an
account-book which lay on his desk, and, throwing himself back in
his chair, gazed with an air of abstraction through the dirty
window. Some London houses have a melancholy little plot of
ground behind them, usually fenced in by four high whitewashed
walls, and frowned upon by stacks of chimneys: in which there
withers on, from year to year, a crippled tree, that makes a show
of putting forth a few leaves late in autumn when other trees shed
theirs, and, drooping in the effort, lingers on, all crackled and
smoke-dried, till the following season, when it repeats the same
process, and perhaps, if the weather be particularly genial,
even tempts some rheumatic sparrow to chirrup in its branches.
People sometimes call these dark yards 'gardens'; it is not
supposed that they were ever planted, but rather that they are
pieces of unreclaimed land, with the withered vegetation of the
original brick-field. No man thinks of walking in this desolate
place, or of turning it to any account. A few hampers, half-a-dozen
broken bottles, and such-like rubbish, may be thrown there, when
the tenant first moves in, but nothing more; and there they remain
until he goes away again: the damp straw taking just as long
to moulder as it thinks proper: and mingling with the
scanty box, and stunted
everbrowns, and broken flower-pots, that are scattered mournfully
about - a prey to 'blacks' and dirt.
It was into a place of this kind
that Mr Ralph Nickleby gazed, as he sat with his hands in his
pockets looking out of the window. He had fixed his eyes upon a
distorted fir tree, planted by some former tenant in a tub that had
once been green, and left there, years before, to rot away
piecemeal. There was nothing very inviting in the object, but Mr
Nickleby was wrapt in a brown study, and sat contemplating it with
far greater attention than, in a more conscious mood, he would have
deigned to bestow upon the rarest exotic. At length, his eyes
wandered to a little dirty window on the left, through which the
face of the clerk was dimly visible; that worthy chancing to look
up, he beckoned him to attend.
In obedience to this summons the
clerk got off the high stool (to which he had communicated a high
polish by countless gettings off and on), and presented himself in
Mr Nickleby's room. He was a tall man of middle age, with two
goggle eyes whereof one was a fixture, a rubicund nose, a
cadaverous face, and a suit of clothes (if the term be allowable
when they suited him not at all) much the worse for wear, very much
too small, and placed upon such a short allowance of buttons
that it was marvellous how he contrived to keep them on.
'Was that half-past twelve,
Noggs?' said Mr Nickleby, in a sharp and grating voice.
'Not more than five-and-twenty
minutes by the - ' Noggs was going to add public-house clock, but
recollecting himself, substituted 'regular time.'
'My watch has stopped,' said Mr
Nickleby; 'I don't know from what cause.'
'Not wound up,' said Noggs. 'Yes
it is,' said Mr Nickleby.
'Over-wound then,' rejoined
Noggs.
'That can't very well be,'
observed Mr Nickleby. 'Must be,' said Noggs.
'Well!' said Mr Nickleby, putting
the repeater back in his pocket; 'perhaps it is.'
Noggs gave a peculiar grunt, as
was his custom at the end of all disputes with his master, to
imply that he (Noggs) triumphed; and (as he rarely spoke to anybody
unless somebody spoke to him) fell into a grim silence, and rubbed
his hands slowly over each other: cracking the joints of his
fingers, and squeezing them into all possible distortions. The
incessant performance of this routine on every occasion, and the
communication of a fixed and rigid look to his unaffected eye, so
as to make it uniform with the other, and to render it impossible
for anybody to determine where or at what he was looking, were
two among the numerous peculiarities of Mr Noggs, which struck an
inexperienced observer at first sight.
'I am going to the London Tavern
this morning,' said Mr Nickleby. 'Public meeting?' inquired
Noggs.
Mr Nickleby nodded. 'I expect a
letter from the solicitor respecting that mortgage of Ruddle's. If
it comes at all, it will be here by the two o'clock delivery. I
shall leave the city about that time and walk to Charing Cross on
the left-hand side of the way; if there are any letters, come and
meet me, and bring them with you.'
Noggs nodded; and as he nodded,
there came a ring at the office bell. The master looked up from
his papers, and the clerk calmly remained in a stationary
position.
'The bell,' said Noggs, as though
in explanation. 'At home?' 'Yes.'
'To anybody?' 'Yes.'
'To the tax-gatherer?' 'No! Let
him call again.'
Noggs gave vent to his usual
grunt, as much as to say 'I thought so!' and, the ring being
repeated, went to the door, whence he presently returned, ushering
in, by the name of Mr Bonney, a pale gentleman in a violent hurry,
who, with his hair standing up in great disorder all over his head,
and a very narrow white cravat tied loosely round his throat,
looked as if he had been knocked up in the night and had not
dressed himself since.
'My dear Nickleby,' said the
gentleman, taking off a white hat which was so full of papers that
it would scarcely stick upon his head,
'there's not a moment to lose; I
have a cab at the door. Sir Matthew Pupker takes the chair, and
three members of Parliament are positively coming. I have seen two
of them safely out of bed. The third, who was at Crockford's all
night, has just gone home to put a clean shirt on, and take a
bottle or two of soda water, and will certainly be with us, in time
to address the meeting. He is a little excited by last night, but
never mind that; he always speaks the stronger for it.'
'It seems to promise pretty
well,' said Mr Ralph Nickleby, whose deliberate manner was strongly
opposed to the vivacity of the other man of business.
'Pretty well!' echoed Mr Bonney.
'It's the finest idea that was ever started. ‘United Metropolitan
Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet Baking and Punctual Delivery
Company. Capital, five millions, in five hundred thousand shares of
ten pounds each.’ Why the very name will get the shares up to
a premium in ten days.'
'And when they ARE at a premium,'
said Mr Ralph Nickleby, smiling.
'When they are, you know what to
do with them as well as any man alive, and how to back quietly out
at the right time,' said Mr Bonney, slapping the capitalist
familiarly on the shoulder. 'By-the-bye, what a VERY remarkable man
that clerk of yours is.'
'Yes, poor devil!' replied Ralph,
drawing on his gloves. 'Though Newman Noggs kept his horses and
hounds once.'
'Ay, ay?' said the other
carelessly.
'Yes,' continued Ralph, 'and not
many years ago either; but he squandered his money, invested it
anyhow, borrowed at interest, and in short made first a thorough
fool of himself, and then a beggar. He took to drinking, and had
a touch of paralysis, and then came here to borrow a pound, as in
his better days I had - '
'Done business with him,' said Mr
Bonney with a meaning look. 'Just so,' replied Ralph; 'I couldn't
lend it, you know.'
'Oh, of course not.'
'But as I wanted a clerk just
then, to open the door and so forth, I took him out of
charity, and he has remained with me ever since. He is a little
mad, I think,' said Mr Nickleby, calling up a charitable look,
'but he is useful enough, poor creature - useful enough.'
The kind-hearted gentleman
omitted to add that Newman Noggs, being utterly destitute,
served him for rather less than the usual wages of a boy of
thirteen; and likewise failed to mention in his hasty chronicle,
that his eccentric taciturnity rendered him an especially valuable
person in a place where much business was done, of which it was
desirable no mention should be made out of doors. The other
gentleman was plainly impatient to be gone, however, and as they
hurried into the hackney cabriolet immediately afterwards,
perhaps Mr Nickleby forgot to mention circumstances so
unimportant.
There was a great bustle in
Bishopsgate Street Within, as they drew up, and (it being a windy
day) half-a-dozen men were tacking across the road under a press of
paper, bearing gigantic announcements that a Public Meeting would
be holden at one o'clock precisely, to take into consideration the
propriety of petitioning Parliament in favour of the United
Metropolitan Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet Baking and Punctual
Delivery Company, capital five millions, in five hundred thousand
shares of ten pounds each; which sums were duly set forth in fat
black figures of considerable size. Mr Bonney elbowed his way
briskly upstairs, receiving in his progress many low bows from the
waiters who stood on the landings to show the way; and, followed by
Mr Nickleby, dived into a suite of apartments behind the great
public room: in the second of which was a business-looking
table, and several business-looking people.
'Hear!' cried a gentleman with a
double chin, as Mr Bonney presented himself. 'Chair, gentlemen,
chair!'
The new-comers were received with
universal approbation, and Mr Bonney bustled up to the top of the
table, took off his hat, ran his fingers through his hair, and
knocked a hackney-coachman's knock on the table with a little
hammer: whereat several gentlemen cried 'Hear!' and nodded slightly
to each other, as much as to say what spirited conduct that was.
Just at this moment, a waiter, feverish with agitation, tore into
the room, and throwing the door open with a crash, shouted 'Sir
Matthew Pupker!'
The committee stood up and
clapped their hands for joy, and while they were clapping them,
in came Sir Matthew Pupker, attended by two live members of
Parliament, one Irish and one Scotch, all smiling and bowing, and
looking so pleasant that it seemed a perfect marvel how any man
could have the heart to vote against them. Sir Matthew Pupker
especially, who had a little round head with a flaxen wig on the
top of it, fell into such a paroxysm of bows, that the wig
threatened to be jerked off, every instant. When these symptoms had
in some degree subsided, the gentlemen who were on speaking terms
with Sir Matthew Pupker, or the two other members, crowded round
them in three little groups, near one or other of which the
gentlemen
who were NOT on speaking terms
with Sir Matthew Pupker or the two other members, stood lingering,
and smiling, and rubbing their hands, in the desperate hope of
something turning up which might bring them into notice. All
this time, Sir Matthew Pupker and the two other members were
relating to their separate circles what the intentions of
government were, about taking up the bill; with a full account of
what the government had said in a whisper the last time they dined
with it, and how the government had been observed to wink when it
said so; from which premises they were at no loss to draw the
conclusion, that if the government had one object more at heart
than another, that one object was the welfare and advantage of the
United Metropolitan Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet Baking and
Punctual Delivery Company.
Meanwhile, and pending the
arrangement of the proceedings, and a fair division of the
speechifying, the public in the large room were eyeing, by turns,
the empty platform, and the ladies in the Music Gallery. In these
amusements the greater portion of them had been occupied for a
couple of hours before, and as the most agreeable diversions pall
upon the taste on a too protracted enjoyment of them, the sterner
spirits now began to hammer the floor with their boot- heels, and
to express their dissatisfaction by various hoots and cries. These
vocal exertions, emanating from the people who had been there
longest, naturally proceeded from those who were nearest to the
platform and furthest from the policemen in attendance, who having
no great mind to fight their way through the crowd, but
entertaining nevertheless a praiseworthy desire to do something to
quell the disturbance, immediately began to drag forth, by the coat
tails and collars, all the quiet people near the door; at the same
time dealing out various smart and tingling blows with their
truncheons, after the manner of that ingenious actor, Mr Punch:
whose brilliant example, both in the fashion of his weapons and
their use, this branch of the executive occasionally follows.
Several very exciting skirmishes
were in progress, when a loud shout attracted the attention even of
the belligerents, and then there poured on to the platform, from a
door at the side, a long line of gentlemen with their hats off,
all looking behind them, and uttering vociferous cheers; the cause
whereof was sufficiently explained when Sir Matthew Pupker and the
two other real members of Parliament came to the front, amidst
deafening shouts, and testified to each other in dumb motions that
they had never seen such a glorious sight as that, in the whole
course of their public career.
At length, and at last, the
assembly left off shouting, but Sir Matthew Pupker being voted into
the chair, they underwent a relapse which lasted five minutes. This
over, Sir Matthew Pupker went on to say what must be his
feelings on that great occasion, and what must be
that occasion in the eyes of the
world, and what must be the intelligence of his fellow-countrymen
before him, and what must be the wealth and respectability of
his honourable friends behind him, and lastly, what must be the
importance to the wealth, the happiness, the comfort, the liberty,
the very existence of a free and great people, of such an
Institution as the United Metropolitan Improved Hot Muffin and
Crumpet Baking and Punctual Delivery Company!
Mr Bonney then presented himself
to move the first resolution; and having run his right hand through
his hair, and planted his left, in an easy manner, in his ribs, he
consigned his hat to the care of the gentleman with the double chin
(who acted as a species of bottle- holder to the orators
generally), and said he would read to them the first resolution -
'That this meeting views with alarm and apprehension, the existing
state of the Muffin Trade in this Metropolis and its neighbourhood;
that it considers the Muffin Boys, as at present constituted,
wholly underserving the confidence of the public; and that it deems
the whole Muffin system alike prejudicial to the health and
morals of the people, and subversive of the best interests of a
great commercial and mercantile community.' The honourable
gentleman made a speech which drew tears from the eyes of the
ladies, and awakened the liveliest emotions in every individual
present. He had visited the houses of the poor in the various
districts of London, and had found them destitute of the slightest
vestige of a muffin, which there appeared too much reason to
believe some of these indigent persons did not taste from year's
end to year's end. He had found that among muffin-sellers there
existed drunkenness, debauchery, and profligacy, which he
attributed to the debasing nature of their employment as at present
exercised; he had found the same vices among the poorer class of
people who ought to be muffin consumers; and this he attributed to
the despair engendered by their being placed beyond the reach of
that nutritious article, which drove them to seek a false stimulant
in intoxicating liquors. He would undertake to prove before a
committee of the House of Commons, that there existed a combination
to keep up the price of muffins, and to give the bellmen a
monopoly; he would prove it by bellmen at the bar of that House;
and he would also prove, that these men corresponded with each
other by secret words and signs as 'Snooks,' 'Walker,' 'Ferguson,'
'Is Murphy right?' and many others. It was this melancholy state of
things that the Company proposed to correct; firstly, by
prohibiting, under heavy penalties, all private muffin trading of
every description; secondly, by themselves supplying the public
generally, and the poor at their own homes, with muffins of first
quality at reduced prices. It was with this object that a bill had
been introduced into Parliament by their patriotic chairman Sir
Matthew Pupker; it was this bill that they had met to support; it
was the supporters of this bill who would confer undying brightness
and splendour upon England, under the name of the United
Metropolitan Improved Hot
Muffin and Crumpet Baking and
Punctual Delivery Company; he would add, with a capital of Five
Millions, in five hundred thousand shares of ten pounds each.
Mr Ralph Nickleby seconded the
resolution, and another gentleman having moved that it be amended
by the insertion of the words 'and crumpet' after the word
'muffin,' whenever it occurred, it was carried triumphantly. Only
one man in the crowd cried 'No!' and he was promptly taken into
custody, and straightway borne off.
The second resolution, which
recognised the expediency of immediately abolishing 'all muffin (or
crumpet) sellers, all traders in muffins (or crumpets) of
whatsoever description, whether male or female, boys or men,
ringing hand-bells or otherwise,' was moved by a grievous gentleman
of semi-clerical appearance, who went at once into such deep
pathetics, that he knocked the first speaker clean out of the
course in no time. You might have heard a pin fall - a pin! a
feather - as he described the cruelties inflicted on muffin boys by
their masters, which he very wisely urged were in themselves a
sufficient reason for the establishment of that inestimable
company. It seemed that the unhappy youths were nightly turned out
into the wet streets at the most inclement periods of the year,
to wander about, in darkness and rain - or it might be hail or snow
- for hours together, without shelter, food, or warmth; and let the
public never forget upon the latter point, that while the muffins
were provided with warm clothing and blankets, the boys were wholly
unprovided for, and left to their own miserable resources. (Shame!)
The honourable gentleman related one case of a muffin boy, who
having been exposed to this inhuman and barbarous system for no
less than five years, at length fell a victim to a cold in the
head, beneath which he gradually sunk until he fell into a
perspiration and recovered; this he could vouch for, on his own
authority, but he had heard (and he had no reason to doubt the
fact) of a still more heart-rending and appalling circumstance.
He had heard of the case of an orphan muffin boy, who, having been
run over by a hackney carriage, had been removed to the hospital,
had undergone the amputation of his leg below the knee, and was now
actually pursuing his occupation on crutches. Fountain of
justice, were these things to last!
This was the department of the
subject that took the meeting, and this was the style of speaking
to enlist their sympathies. The men shouted; the ladies wept into
their pocket-handkerchiefs till they were moist, and waved them
till they were dry; the excitement was tremendous; and Mr
Nickleby whispered his friend that the shares were thenceforth at a
premium of five-and-twenty per cent.
The resolution was, of course,
carried with loud acclamations, every man holding up both hands in
favour of it, as he would in his
enthusiasm have held up both legs
also, if he could have conveniently accomplished it. This done, the
draft of the proposed petition was read at length: and the petition
said, as all petitions DO say, that the petitioners were very
humble, and the petitioned very honourable, and the object very
virtuous; therefore (said the petition) the bill ought to be
passed into a law at once, to the everlasting honour and glory of
that most honourable and glorious Commons of England in Parliament
assembled.
Then, the gentleman who had been
at Crockford's all night, and who looked something the worse about
the eyes in consequence, came forward to tell his fellow-countrymen
what a speech he meant to make in favour of that petition whenever
it should be presented, and how desperately he meant to taunt the
parliament if they rejected the bill; and to inform them also, that
he regretted his honourable friends had not inserted a clause
rendering the purchase of muffins and crumpets compulsory upon all
classes of the community, which he - opposing all half-measures,
and preferring to go the extreme animal - pledged himself to
propose and divide upon, in committee. After announcing this
determination, the honourable gentleman grew jocular; and as patent
boots, lemon-coloured kid gloves, and a fur coat collar, assist
jokes materially, there was immense laughter and much cheering, and
moreover such a brilliant display of ladies' pocket-handkerchiefs,
as threw the grievous gentleman quite into the shade.
And when the petition had been
read and was about to be adopted, there came forward the Irish
member (who was a young gentleman of ardent temperament,) with such
a speech as only an Irish member can make, breathing the true
soul and spirit of poetry, and poured forth with such fervour,
that it made one warm to look at him; in the course whereof, he
told them how he would demand the extension of that great boon to
his native country; how he would claim for her equal rights in
the muffin laws as in all other laws; and how he yet hoped to see
the day when crumpets should be toasted in her lowly cabins, and
muffin bells should ring in her rich green valleys. And, after
him, came the Scotch member, with various pleasant allusions
to the probable amount of profits, which increased the good humour
that the poetry had awakened; and all the speeches put together did
exactly what they were intended to do, and established in the
hearers' minds that there was no speculation so promising, or
at the same time so praiseworthy, as the United Metropolitan
Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet Baking and Punctual Delivery
Company.
So, the petition in favour of the
bill was agreed upon, and the meeting adjourned with acclamations,
and Mr Nickleby and the other directors went to the office to
lunch, as they did every day at half-past one o'clock; and to
remunerate themselves for which trouble, (as the
company was yet in its infancy,)
they only charged three guineas each man for every such
attendance.
Chapter III - Mr Ralph Nickleby
Receives Sad Tidings Of His Brother, But Bears Up Nobly Against
The Intelligence Communicated To Him. The Reader Is Informed How He
Liked Nicholas, Who Is Herein Introduced, And How Kindly He
Proposed To Make His Fortune At Once
Having rendered his zealous
assistance towards dispatching the lunch, with all that promptitude
and energy which are among the most important qualities that
men of business can possess, Mr Ralph Nickleby took a cordial
farewell of his fellow-speculators, and bent his steps westward in
unwonted good humour. As he passed St Paul's he stepped aside into
a doorway to set his watch, and with his hand on the key and his
eye on the cathedral dial, was intent upon so doing, when a man
suddenly stopped before him. It was Newman Noggs.
'Ah! Newman,' said Mr Nickleby,
looking up as he pursued his occupation. 'The letter about the
mortgage has come, has it? I thought it would.'
'Wrong,' replied Newman.
'What! and nobody called
respecting it?' inquired Mr Nickleby, pausing. Noggs shook his
head.
'What HAS come, then?' inquired
Mr Nickleby. 'I have,' said Newman.
'What else?' demanded the master,
sternly.
'This,' said Newman, drawing a
sealed letter slowly from his pocket. 'Post-mark, Strand, black
wax, black border, woman's hand, C. N. in the corner.'
'Black wax?' said Mr Nickleby,
glancing at the letter. 'I know something of that hand, too.
Newman, I shouldn't be surprised if my brother were dead.'
'I don't think you would,' said
Newman, quietly. 'Why not, sir?' demanded Mr Nickleby.
'You never are surprised,'
replied Newman, 'that's all.'
Mr Nickleby snatched the letter
from his assistant, and fixing a cold look upon him, opened, read
it, put it in his pocket, and having now hit the time to a second,
began winding up his watch.