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Nicholas Nickleby
Dickens, Charles
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Nicholas Nickleby
Dickens, Charles
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pubOne.info thank you for your continued support and wish to present you this new edition. This story was begun, within a few months after the publication of the completed Pickwick Papers. There were, then, a good many cheap Yorkshire schools in existence. There are very few now.
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ClásicosCHAPTER 1 - Introduces all the Rest
There once lived, in a sequestered part of the
county of Devonshire, one Mr Godfrey Nickleby: a worthy gentleman,
who, taking it into his head rather late in life that he must get
married, and not being young enough or rich enough to aspire to the
hand of a lady of fortune, had wedded an old flame out of mere
attachment, who in her turn had taken him for the same reason. Thus
two people who cannot afford to play cards for money, sometimes sit
down to a quiet game for love.
Some ill-conditioned persons who sneer at the
life-matrimonial, may perhaps suggest, in this place, that the good
couple would be better likened to two principals in a sparring
match, who, when fortune is low and backers scarce, will
chivalrously set to, for the mere pleasure of the buffeting; and in
one respect indeed this comparison would hold good; for, as the
adventurous pair of the Fives' Court will afterwards send round a
hat, and trust to the bounty of the lookers-on for the means of
regaling themselves, so Mr Godfrey Nickleby and HIS partner, the
honeymoon being over, looked out wistfully into the world, relying
in no inconsiderable degree upon chance for the improvement of
their means. Mr Nickleby's income, at the period of his marriage,
fluctuated between sixty and eighty pounds PER ANNUM.
There are people enough in the world, Heaven knows!
and even in London (where Mr Nickleby dwelt in those days) but few
complaints prevail, of the population being scanty. It is
extraordinary how long a man may look among the crowd without
discovering the face of a friend, but it is no less true. Mr
Nickleby looked, and looked, till his eyes became sore as his
heart, but no friend appeared; and when, growing tired of the
search, he turned his eyes homeward, he saw very little there to
relieve his weary vision. A painter who has gazed too long upon
some glaring colour, refreshes his dazzled sight by looking upon a
darker and more sombre tint; but everything that met Mr Nickleby's
gaze wore so black and gloomy a hue, that he would have been beyond
description refreshed by the very reverse of the contrast.
At length, after five years, when Mrs Nickleby had
presented her husband with a couple of sons, and that embarassed
gentleman, impressed with the necessity of making some provision
for his family, was seriously revolving in his mind a little
commercial speculation of insuring his life next quarter-day, and
then falling from the top of the Monument by accident, there came,
one morning, by the general post, a black-bordered letter to inform
him how his uncle, Mr Ralph Nickleby, was dead, and had left him
the bulk of his little property, amounting in all to five thousand
pounds sterling.
As the deceased had taken no further notice of his
nephew in his lifetime, than sending to his eldest boy (who had
been christened after him, on desperate speculation) a silver spoon
in a morocco case, which, as he had not too much to eat with it,
seemed a kind of satire upon his having been born without that
useful article of plate in his mouth, Mr Godfrey Nickleby could, at
first, scarcely believe the tidings thus conveyed to him. On
examination, however, they turned out to be strictly correct. The
amiable old gentleman, it seemed, had intended to leave the whole
to the Royal Humane Society, and had indeed executed a will to that
effect; but the Institution, having been unfortunate enough, a few
months before, to save the life of a poor relation to whom he paid
a weekly allowance of three shillings and sixpence, he had, in a
fit of very natural exasperation, revoked the bequest in a codicil,
and left it all to Mr Godfrey Nickleby; with a special mention of
his indignation, not only against the society for saving the poor
relation's life, but against the poor relation also, for allowing
himself to be saved.
With a portion of this property Mr Godfrey Nickleby
purchased a small farm, near Dawlish in Devonshire, whither he
retired with his wife and two children, to live upon the best
interest he could get for the rest of his money, and the little
produce he could raise from his land. The two prospered so well
together that, when he died, some fifteen years after this period,
and some five after his wife, he was enabled to leave, to his
eldest son, Ralph, three thousand pounds in cash, and to his
youngest son, Nicholas, one thousand and the farm, which was as
small a landed estate as one would desire to see.
These two brothers had been brought up together in a
school at Exeter; and, being accustomed to go home once a week, had
often heard, from their mother's lips, long accounts of their
father's sufferings in his days of poverty, and of their deceased
uncle's importance in his days of affluence: which recitals
produced a very different impression on the two: for, while the
younger, who was of a timid and retiring disposition, gleaned from
thence nothing but forewarnings to shun the great world and attach
himself to the quiet routine of a country life, Ralph, the elder,
deduced from the often- repeated tale the two great morals that
riches are the only true source of happiness and power, and that it
is lawful and just to compass their acquisition by all means short
of felony. 'And,' reasoned Ralph with himself, 'if no good came of
my uncle's money when he was alive, a great deal of good came of it
after he was dead, inasmuch as my father has got it now, and is
saving it up for me, which is a highly virtuous purpose; and, going
back to the old gentleman, good DID come of it to him too, for he
had the pleasure of thinking of it all his life long, and of being
envied and courted by all his family besides.' And Ralph always
wound up these mental soliloquies by arriving at the conclusion,
that there was nothing like money.
Not confining himself to theory, or permitting his
faculties to rust, even at that early age, in mere abstract
speculations, this promising lad commenced usurer on a limited
scale at school; putting out at good interest a small capital of
slate-pencil and marbles, and gradually extending his operations
until they aspired to the copper coinage of this realm, in which he
speculated to considerable advantage. Nor did he trouble his
borrowers with abstract calculations of figures, or references to
ready-reckoners; his simple rule of interest being all comprised in
the one golden sentence, 'two-pence for every half-penny,' which
greatly simplified the accounts, and which, as a familiar precept,
more easily acquired and retained in the memory than any known rule
of arithmetic, cannot be too strongly recommended to the notice of
capitalists, both large and small, and more especially of
money-brokers and bill- discounters. Indeed, to do these gentlemen
justice, many of them are to this day in the frequent habit of
adopting it, with eminent success.
In like manner, did young Ralph Nickleby avoid all
those minute and intricate calculations of odd days, which nobody
who has worked sums in simple-interest can fail to have found most
embarrassing, by establishing the one general rule that all sums of
principal and interest should be paid on pocket-money day, that is
to say, on Saturday: and that whether a loan were contracted on the
Monday, or on the Friday, the amount of interest should be, in both
cases, the same. Indeed he argued, and with great show of reason,
that it ought to be rather more for one day than for five, inasmuch
as the borrower might in the former case be very fairly presumed to
be in great extremity, otherwise he would not borrow at all with
such odds against him. This fact is interesting, as illustrating
the secret connection and sympathy which always exist between great
minds. Though Master Ralph Nickleby was not at that time aware of
it, the class of gentlemen before alluded to, proceed on just the
same principle in all their transactions.
From what we have said of this young gentleman, and
the natural admiration the reader will immediately conceive of his
character, it may perhaps be inferred that he is to be the hero of
the work which we shall presently begin. To set this point at rest,
for once and for ever, we hasten to undeceive them, and stride to
its commencement.
On the death of his father, Ralph Nickleby, who had
been some time before placed in a mercantile house in London,
applied himself passionately to his old pursuit of money-getting,
in which he speedily became so buried and absorbed, that he quite
forgot his brother for many years; and if, at times, a recollection
of his old playfellow broke upon him through the haze in which he
lived – for gold conjures up a mist about a man, more destructive
of all his old senses and lulling to his feelings than the fumes of
charcoal – it brought along with it a companion thought, that if
they were intimate he would want to borrow money of him. So, Mr
Ralph Nickleby shrugged his shoulders, and said things were better
as they were.
As for Nicholas, he lived a single man on the
patrimonial estate until he grew tired of living alone, and then he
took to wife the daughter of a neighbouring gentleman with a dower
of one thousand pounds. This good lady bore him two children, a son
and a daughter, and when the son was about nineteen, and the
daughter fourteen, as near as we can guess – impartial records of
young ladies' ages being, before the passing of the new act,
nowhere preserved in the registries of this country – Mr Nickleby
looked about him for the means of repairing his capital, now sadly
reduced by this increase in his family, and the expenses of their
education.
'Speculate with it,' said Mrs Nickleby.
'Spec – u – late, my dear?' said Mr Nickleby, as
though in doubt.
'Why not?' asked Mrs Nickleby.
'Because, my dear, if we SHOULD lose it,' rejoined
Mr Nickleby, who was a slow and time-taking speaker, 'if we SHOULD
lose it, we shall no longer be able to live, my dear.'
'Fiddle,' said Mrs Nickleby.
'I am not altogether sure of that, my dear,' said Mr
Nickleby.
'There's Nicholas,' pursued the lady, 'quite a young
man – it's time he was in the way of doing something for himself;
and Kate too, poor girl, without a penny in the world. Think of
your brother! Would he be what he is, if he hadn't speculated?'
'That's true,' replied Mr Nickleby. 'Very good, my
dear. Yes. I WILL speculate, my dear.'
Speculation is a round game; the players see little
or nothing of their cards at first starting; gains MAY be great –
and so may losses. The run of luck went against Mr Nickleby. A
mania prevailed, a bubble burst, four stock-brokers took villa
residences at Florence, four hundred nobodies were ruined, and
among them Mr Nickleby.
'The very house I live in,' sighed the poor
gentleman, 'may be taken from me tomorrow. Not an article of my old
furniture, but will be sold to strangers!'
The last reflection hurt him so much, that he took
at once to his bed; apparently resolved to keep that, at all
events.
'Cheer up, sir!' said the apothecary.
'You mustn't let yourself be cast down, sir,' said
the nurse.
'Such things happen every day,' remarked the
lawyer.
'And it is very sinful to rebel against them,'
whispered the clergyman.
'And what no man with a family ought to do,' added
the neighbours.
Mr Nickleby shook his head, and motioning them all
out of the room, embraced his wife and children, and having pressed
them by turns to his languidly beating heart, sunk exhausted on his
pillow. They were concerned to find that his reason went astray
after this; for he babbled, for a long time, about the generosity
and goodness of his brother, and the merry old times when they were
at school together. This fit of wandering past, he solemnly
commended them to One who never deserted the widow or her
fatherless children, and, smiling gently on them, turned upon his
face, and observed, that he thought he could fall asleep.
CHAPTER 2 - 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...