Chapter 2

Nicholas Nickleby

by Charles Dickens

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 thier 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.