Charles Dickens as a Reader Part 4

the sou-wester in him, wery salt, but on the whole, a honest sort of a chap, too, with his 'art in the right place," had just made good his betrothal to the little creature he had seen grow up there before him, "like a flower," when, at the very opening of the Reading, into the old Yarmouth boat, walked "Mas'r Davy" and his friend Steerforth. Mr.

Peggotty's explanation to his unexpected but heartily welcomed visitors as to how the engagement between Ham and Emily, had but just then been brought about, opened up before the audience in a few words the whole scheme of the tragic little dramatic tale about to be revealed to them through a series of vivid impersonations.

The idiomatic sentences of the bluff fisherman, as in their racy vernacular they were blithely given utterance to by the manly voice of the Reader, seemed to supply a fitting introduction to the drama, as though from the lips of a Yarmouth Chorus. Scarcely had the social carouse there in the old boat, on that memorable evening of Steerforth's introduction, been recounted, when the whole drift of the story was clearly foreshadowed in the brief talk which immediately took place between him and David as they walked townwards across the sands towards their hotel. "Daisy,--for though that's not the name your G.o.dfathers and G.o.dmothers gave you, you're such a fresh fellow, that it's the name I best like to call you by--and I wish, I wish, I wish you could give it to me!" That of itself had its-significance. But still more significant was David's mention of his looking in at Steerforth's bed-room on the following morning, before himself going away alone, and of his there finding the handsome scapegrace fast asleep, "lying easily, with his head upon his-arm," as he had often seen him lie in the old school dormitory. "Thus in this silent hour I left him," with mournful tenderness, exclaimed the Reader, in the words and accents of his young hero. "Never more, O G.o.d forgive you, Steerforth! to touch that pa.s.sive hand in love and friends.h.i.+p. Never, never more!" The revelation of his treachery, towards the pretty little betrothed of the young s.h.i.+pwright, followed immediately afterwards, on the occasion of David's next visit, some months later, to the old boat on the flats at Yarmouth.

The wonder still is to us, now that we are recalling to mind the salient peculiarities of this Reading, as we do so, turning over leaf by leaf the marked copy of it, from which the Novelist read; the wonder, we repeat, still is to us how, in that exquisite scene, the very words that have always moved us most in the novel were struck out in the delivery, are rigidly scored through here with blue inkmarks in the reading copy, by the hand of the Reader-Novelist. Those words we mean which occur, where Ham, having on his arrival, made a movement as if Em'ly were outside, asked Mas'r Davy to "come out a minute," only for him, on his doing so, to find that Em'ly was not there, and that Ham was deadly pale. "Ham! what's the matter?" was gasped out in the Reading.

But--_not_ what follows, immediately on that, in the original narrative: "'Mas'r Davy!' Oh, for his broken heart, how dreadfully he wept!" Nor yet the sympathetic exclamations of David, who, in the novel, describes himself as paralysed by the sight of such grief, not knowing what he thought or what he dreaded; only able to look at him,--yet crying out to him the next moment, "Ham! Poor, good fellow! For heaven's sake tell me what's the matter?" Nothing of this: only--"My love, Mas'r Davy--the pride and hope of my 'art, her that I'd have died for, and would die for now--she's gone!" "Gone?" "Em'ly's run away!" Ham, _not_ then adding in the Reading, "Oh, Mas'r Davy, think _how_ she's run away, when I pray my good and gracious G.o.d to kill her (her that is so dear above all things) sooner than let her come to ruin and disgrace!" Yet, for all that, in spite of these omissions--it can hardly by any chance have been actually by reason of them--the delivery of the whole scene was singularly powerful and affecting. Especially in the representation of Mr. Peggotty's profound grief, under what is to him so appalling a calamity. Especially also in the revelation of Mrs. Gummidge's pity for him, her grat.i.tude to him, and her womanly tender-heartedness.

In charming relief to the sequel of this tragic incident of the bereavement of the Peggottys, came David's love pa.s.sages with Dora, and his social unbendings with Mr. Micawber. Regaling the latter inimitable personage, and his equally inimitable wife, together with David's old schoolfellow, Tradelles, on a banquet of boiled leg of mutton, very red inside and very pale outside, as well as upon a delusive pigeon-pie, the crust of which was like a disappointing phrenological head, "full of lumps and b.u.mps, with nothing particular underneath," David afforded us the opportunity of realising, within a very brief interval, something at least of the abundant humour a.s.sociated with Mrs. Micawber's worldly wisdom, and Mr. Micawber's ostentatious impecuniosity. A word, that last, it always seems to us--describing poverty, as it does, with such an air of pomp--especially provided beforehand for Mr. Micawber (out of a prophetic antic.i.p.ation or foreknowledge of him) by the dictionary.

The mere opening of the evening's entertainment at David Copperfield's chambers on this occasion, enabled the Humorist to elicit preliminary roars of laughter from his audience by his very manner of saying, with a deliciously ridiculous prolongation of the liquid consonant forming the initial of the last word--"As to Mrs. Micawber, I don't know whether it was the effect of the cap, or the lavender water, or the phis, or the fire, or the wax-candles, but she came out of my room comparatively speaking l-l-lovely!"

As deliciously ridiculous was the whole scene between Dora and David, where the latter, at length, takes courage to make his proposal--"Jip barking madly all the time "--Dora crying the while and trembling.

David's eloquence increasing, the more he raved, the more Jip barked--each, in his own way, getting more mad every moment! Even when they had got married by licence, "the Archbishop of Canterbury invoking a blessing, and doing it as cheap as it could possibly be expected,"

their domestic experiences were sources of unbounded merriment.

As, for example, in connection with their servant girl's cousin in the Life Guards, "with such long legs that he looked like the afternoon shadow of somebody else." Finally, closing the whole of this ingenious epitome of the original narrative, came that grand and wonderfully realistic description of the stupendous storm upon the beach at Yarmouth, upon the extraordinary power of which as a piece of declamation we have already at some length commented. There, in the midst of the dying horrors of that storm--there, on those familiar sands, where Mas'r Davy and Little Em'ly had so often looked for sh.e.l.ls when they were children, on the very spot where some lighter fragments of the old boat, blown down the night before, had been scattered by the tempest, David Copperfield was heard describing, in the last mournful sentence of the Reading, how he saw _him_ lying with his curly head upon his arm, as he had often seen him lie when they were at school together.

THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH.

A Fairy Tale of Home was here related, that in its graceful and fantastic freaks of fancy might have been imagined by the Danish poet, Hans Christian Andersen. In its combination of simple pathos and genial drollery, however, it was a story that no other could by possibility have told than the great English Humorist. If there was something really akin to the genius of Andersen, in the notion of the Cricket with its shrill, sharp, piercing voice resounding through the house, and seeming to twinkle in the outer darkness like a star, d.i.c.kens, and no other could, by any chance, have conjured up the forms of either Caleb Plummer, or Gruff-and-Tackleton. The cuckoo on the Dutch clock, now like a spectral voice, now hiccoughing on the a.s.sembled company, as if he had got drunk for joy; the little haymaker over the dial mowing down imaginary gra.s.s, jerking right and left with his scythe in front of a Moorish palace; the hideous, hairy, red-eyed jacks-in-boxes; the flies in the Noah's arks, that "an't on that scale neither as compared with elephants;" the giant masks, having a certain furtive leer, "safe to destroy the peace of mind of any young gentlemen between the ages of six and eleven, for the whole Christmas or Midsummer vacation," were all of them like dreams of the Danish poet, coloured into a semblance of life by the grotesque humour of the English Novelist. But dear little Dot, who was rather of the dumpling's shape--"but I don't myself object to that"--and good, lumbering John Peerybingle, her husband, often so near to something or another very clever, according to his own account, and Boxer, the carrier's dog, "with that preposterous nothing of a f.a.g-end of a tail of his, describing circles of barks round the horse, making savage rushes at his mistress, and facetiously bringing himself to sudden stops,"--all bear upon them unmistakably the sign-manual of Boz.

As originally recounted in the Christmas story-book, the whole narrative was comprised within a very few pages, portioned out into three little chirps. Yet the letter-press was ill.u.s.trated profusely by pencils as eminent as those of Daniel Maclise, of Clarkson Stanfield, of Richard Doyle, of John Leech, of Sir Edwin Landseer. The charming little fairy tale, moreover, was inscribed to Lord Jeffrey. It was a favourite of his, as it still is of many another critic north and south of the Tweed, light, nay trivial, though the materials out of which the homely apologue is composed. It can hardly be wondered at, however, remembering how less than four years prior to its first publication, a literary reviewer, no less formidable than Professor Wilson--while abstaining, in his then capacity as chairman of the public banquet given to Charles d.i.c.kens at Edinburgh, from attempting, as he said, anything like "a critical delineation of our ill.u.s.trious guest"--nevertheless, added emphatically, "I cannot but express in a few ineffectual words the delight which every human bosom feels in the benign spirit which pervades all his creations." Christopher North thus further expressed his admiration then of the young English Novelist--"How kind and good a man he is," the great Critic exclaimed, laying aside for a while the crutch with which he had so often, in the Ambrosian Nights, brained many an arrant pretender to the t.i.tle of genius or of philanthropist, and turning his lion-like eyes, at the moment beaming only with cordiality, on the then youthful face of d.i.c.kens,--"How kind and good a man he is I need not say, nor what strength of genius he has acquired by that profound sympathy with his fellow-creatures, whether in prosperity and happiness, or overwhelmed with unfortunate circ.u.mstances." Purely and simply, in his capacity as an imaginative writer, the Novelist had already (then in the June of 1841) impressed thus powerfully the heart and judgment of John Wilson, of Christopher North, of the inexorable Rhadamanthus of _Blackwood_ and the "Noctes." Afterwards, but a very little more than two years afterwards, came the "Carol." The following winter rang out the "Chimes." The Christmas after that was heard the chirping of the "Cricket."

Four years previously Professor Wilson, on the occasion referred to, had remarked of him most truly,--"He has not been deterred by the aspect of vice and wickedness, and misery and guilt, from seeking a spirit of good in things evil, but has endeavoured by the might of genius to trans.m.u.te what was base into what is precious as the beaten gold;" observing, indeed, yet further--"He has mingled in the common walks of life; he has made himself familiar with the lower orders of society." As if in supplementary and conclusive justification of those words, d.i.c.kens, within less than five years afterwards, had woven his graceful and pathetic fancies about the homely joys and sorrows of Bob Cratchit, of Toby Veck, and of Caleb Plummer, of a little Clerk, a little Ticket-porter, and a little Toy-maker. His pen at these times was like the wand of Cinderella's fairy G.o.dmother, changing the cuc.u.mber into a gilded chariot, and the lizards into glittering retainers.

At the commencement of this Reading but very little indeed was said about the Cricket, hardly anything at all about the kettle. Yet, as everybody knows, "the kettle began it" in the story-book. The same right of precedence was accorded to the kettle in the author's delivery of his fairy tale by word of mouth, but otherwise its comfortable purring song was in a manner hushed. One heard nothing about its first appearance on the hearth, when "it would lean forward with a drunken air, and dribble, a very idiot of a kettle," any more than of its final paean, when, after its iron body hummed and stirred upon the fire, the lid itself, the recently rebellious lid, performed a sort of jig, and clattered "like a deaf and dumb young cymbal that had never known the use of its twin brother." Here, again, in fact, as with so many other of these Readings from his own books by our Novelist, the countless good things scattered abundantly up and down the original descriptions--inimitable touches of humour that had each of them, on the appreciative palate, the effect of that verbal bon-bon, the bon-mot--were sacrificed inexorably, apparently without a qualm, and certainly by wholesale. What the Reader looked to throughout, was the human element in his imaginings when they were to be impersonated.

Let but one of these tid-bits be a.s.sociated directly with the fanciful beings introduced in the gradual unfolding of the incidents, and it might remain there untouched, Thus, for example, when the Carrier's arrival at his home came to be mentioned, and the Reader related how John Peerybingle, being much taller, as well as much older than his wife, little Dot, "had to stoop a long way down to kiss her"--the words that followed thereupon were happily _not_ omitted: "but she was worth the trouble,--six foot six with the lumbago might have done it." Several of John's choicest--all-but jokes were also retained. As, where Dot is objecting to be called by that pet diminutive, "'Why, what else are you?' returned John, looking down upon her with a smile, and giving her waist as light a squeeze as his huge hand and arm could give, 'A dot and'--here he glanced at the baby--'a dot and carry'--I won't say it, for fear I should spoil it; but I was very near a joke. I don't know as ever I was nearer." Tilly s...o...b..y and her charge, the baby, were, upon every mention of them in the Reading, provocative of abundant laughter.

The earliest allusion to Miss s...o...b..y recording these characteristic circ.u.mstances in regard to her costume, that it "was remarkable for the partial development, on all possible and impossible occasions, of some flannel vestment of a singular structure, also for affording glimpses in the region of the back of a pair of stays, in colour a dead green." On the introduction of the Mysterious Stranger--apparently all but stone deaf--from the Carrier's cart, where he had been forgotten, the comic influence of the Reading became irresistible.

Stranger (on noticing Dot) interrogatively to John.--"Your Daughter?"

Carrier, with the voice of a boatswain.--"Wife."

Stranger, with his hand to his ear, being not quite certain that he has caught it.--"Niece?"

Carrier, with a roar.--"Wife."

Satisfied at last upon that point, the stranger asks of John, as a new matter of curiosity to him, "Baby, yours?" Whereupon the Reader, _as_ John, "gave a gigantic nod, equivalent to an answer in the affirmative, delivered through a speaking-trumpet."

Stranger, still unsatisfied, inquiring,--"Girl?".--"Bo-o-oy!" was bellowed back by John Peerybingle. It was when Mrs. Peerybingle herself took up the parable, however, that the merriment excited among the audience became fairly irrepressible. Scarcely had the nearly stone-deaf stranger added, in regard to the "Bo-o-oy,"--"Also very young, eh?"

(a comment previously applied by him to Dot) when the Reader, as Mrs.

Peerybingle, instantly struck in, at the highest pitch of his voice, that is, of her voice (the comic effect of this being simply indescribable)--"Two months and three da-ays! Vaccinated six weeks ago-o! Took very fine-ly! Considered, by the doctor, a remarkably beautiful chi-ild! Equal to the general run of children at five months o-old! Takes notice in a way quite won-der-ful! May seem impossible to you, but feels his feet al-ready!" Directly afterwards, Caleb Plummer appeared upon the scene, little imagining that in the Mysterious-Stranger would be discovered, later on, under the disguise of that nearly stone-deaf old gentleman, his (Caleb's) own dear boy, Edward, supposed to have died in the golden South Americas. Little Caleb's inquiry of Mrs. Peerybingle,--"You couldn't have the goodness to let me pinch Boxer's tail, Mum, for half a moment, could you?" was one of the welcome whimsicalities of the Reading. "Why, Caleb! what a question!" naturally enough was Dot's instant exclamation. "Oh, never mind, Mum!" said the little toy-maker, apologetically, "He mightn't like it perhaps"--adding, by way of explanation--"There's a small order just come in, for barking dogs; and I should wish to go as close to Natur' as I could, for sixpence!" Caleb's employer, Tackleton, in his large green cape and bull-headed looking mahogany tops, was then described as entering pretty much in the manner of what one might suppose to be that of an ogrish toy-merchant. His character came out best perhaps--meaning, in another sense, that is, at its worst--when the fairy spirit of John's house, the Cricket, was heard chirping; and Tackleton asked, grumpily,--"Why don't you kill that cricket? I would! I always do!

I hate their noise!" John exclaiming, in amazement,--"You kill your crickets, eh?" "Scrunch 'em, sir!" quoth Tackleton. One of the most wistfully curious thoughts uttered in the whole of the Reading was the allusion to the original founder of the toy-shop of Gruff and Tackleton, where it was remarked (such a quaint epitome of human life!) that under that same crazy roof, beneath which Caleb Plummer and Bertha, his blind daughter, found shelter as their humble home,--"the Gruff before last had, in a small way, _made toys for a generation of old boys and girls, who had played with them, and found them out, and broken them, and gone to sleep_." Another wonderfully comic minor character was introduced later on in the eminently ridiculous person of old Mrs. Fielding--in regard to in-door gloves, a foreshadowing of Mrs. Wilfer--in the matter of her imaginary losses through the indigo trade, a spectral precursor, or dim prototype, as one might say, of Mrs. Pipchin and the Peruvian mines. Throughout the chief part of the dreamy, dramatic little story, the various characters, it will be remembered, are involved in a mazy entanglement of cross purposes. Mystery sometimes, pathos often, terror for one brief interval, rose from the Reading of the "Home Fairy-Tale."

There was a subdued tenderness which there was no resisting in the revelation to the blind girl, Bertha, of the illusions in which she had been lapped for years by her sorcerer of a lather, poor little Caleb, the toy-maker. There was at once a tearful and a laughing earnestness that took the Reader's audience captive, not by any means unwillingly, when little Dot was, at the last, represented as "clearing it all up at home" (indirectly, to the great honour of the Cricket's reputation, by the way) to her burly husband--good, stupid, worthy, "clumsy man in general,"--John Peerybingle, the Carrier. The one inconsistent person in the whole story, it must be admitted, was Tackleton, who turned out at the very end to be rather a good fellow than otherwise. Fittingly enough, in the Reading as in the book, when the "Fairy Tale of Home"

was related to its close, when Dot and all the rest were spoken of as vanished, a broken child's-toy, we were told, yet lay upon the ground, and still upon the hearth was heard the song of the Cricket.

NICHOLAS NICKLEBY.

A variety of attractive Readings might readily have been culled from Nicholas Nickleby's Life and Adventures. His comical experiences as a strolling-player in the Company of the immortal Crummleses--his desperate encounter with Sir Mulberry Hawk on the footboard of the cabriolet--his exciting rescue of Madeline from an unholy alliance with Gride, the miser, on the very morning fixed for the revolting marriage--his grotesque a.s.sociation for a while with the Kenwigses and their uncle Lilliyick--his cordial relations with the Brothers Cheeryble and old Tim Linkinwater--any one of these incidents in the career of the most high spirited of all the young heroes of our Novelist, would have far more than simply justified its selection as the theme of one of these ill.u.s.trative entertainments. Instead of choosing any one of those later episodes in the fict.i.tious history of Nicholas Nickleby, however, the author of that enthralling romance of everyday life, picked out, by preference, the earliest of all his young hero's experiences--those in which, at nineteen years of age, he was brought into temporary entanglement with the domestic economy of Dotheboys Hall, and at the last into personal conflict with its one-eyed princ.i.p.al, the rascally Yorks.h.i.+re school-master.

The Gads.h.i.+ll collection of thin octavos, comprising the whole series of Readings, includes within it two copies of "Mrs. Gamp" and two copies of "Nicholas Nickleby." Whereas, on comparing the duplicates of Mrs. Gamp, the two versions appear to be so slightly different that they are all but identical, a marked contrast is observable at a glance between the two Nicklebys. Each Reading is descriptive, it is true, of his sayings and doings at the Yorks.h.i.+re school. But, even externally, one of the two copies is marked "Short Time,"--the love-pa.s.sages with Miss Squeers bemg entirely struck out, and no mention whatever being made of John Browdie, the corn-factor. The wretched school, the sordid rascal who keeps it, Mrs. Squeers, poor, forlorn Smike, and a few of his scarecrow companions--these, in the short-time version, and these alone, const.i.tute the young usher's surroundings. In here recalling to recollection the "Nicholas Nickleby" Reading at all, however, we select, as a matter of course, the completer version, the one for which the generality of hearers had an evident preference: the abbreviated version being always regarded as capital, so far as it went; but even at the best, with all the go and dash of its rapid delivery, insufficient.

Everything, even, we should imagine, to one un-acquainted with the novel, was ingeniously explained by the Reader in a sentence or two at starting. Nicholas Nickleby was described as arriving early one November morning, at the Saracen's Head, to join, in his new capacity (stripling though he was) as scholastic a.s.sistant, Mr. Squeers, "the cheap--the terribly cheap" Yorks.h.i.+re schoolmaster. The words just given in inverted commas are those written in blue ink in the Novelist's handwriting on the margin of his longer Reading copy. As also are the following words, epitomising in a breath the position of the young hero when the story commences--"Inexperienced, sanguine, and thrown upon the world with no adviser, and his bread to win," the ma.n.u.script interpolation thus intimates: the letterpress then relating in its integrity that Nicholas had engaged himself as tutor at Mr. Wackford Squeers's academy, on the strength of the memorable advertis.e.m.e.nt in the London newspapers.

The advertis.e.m.e.nt, that is, comprising within it the long series of accomplishments imparted to the students at Dotheboys Hall, including "single-stick" (if required), together with "fortification, and every other branch of cla.s.sical literature." The Reader laying particular stress, among other items in the announcement, upon "No extras, no vacations, and diet unparalleled;" and upon the finis.h.i.+ng touch (having especial reference to the subject in hand), "An able a.s.sistant wanted: annual salary, 5! A master of arts would be preferred!" Immediately after this, in the Reading, came the description of Mr. Squeers, several of the particulars in regard to whose villainous appearance always told wonderfully: as, where it was said "he had but one eye, and the popular prejudice runs in favour of two;" or, again, where in reference to his attire--it having been mentioned that his coat-sleeves were a great deal too-long and his trousers a great deal too short--it was added that "he appeared ill at ease in his clothes, and as if he were in a perpetual state of astonishment at finding himself so respectable." Listening to the Reader, we were there, in the coffee-room of the Saracen's Head--the rascal Squeers in the full enjoyment of his repast of hot toast and cold round of beef, the while five little boys sat opposite hungrily and thirstily expectant of their share in a miserable meal of two-penn'orth of milk and thick bread and b.u.t.ter for three. "Just fill that mug up with lukewarm water, William, will you?" "To the wery top, sir? Why the milk will be drownded!" "_Serve it right for being so dear!_" Squeers adding with a chuckle, as he pounded away at his own coffee and viands,--"Conquer your pa.s.sions, boys, and don't be eager after wittles." To see the Reader as Squeers, stirring the mug of lukewarm milk and water, and then smacking his lips with an affected relish after tasting a spoonful of it, before reverting to his own fare of b.u.t.tered toast and beef, was to be there with Nicholas, a spectator on that wintry morning in the Snow Hill Tavern, watching the guttling pedagogue and the five little famished expectants. Only when Squeers, immediately before the signal for the coach starting, wiped his mouth, with a self-satisfied "Thank G.o.d for a good breakfast," was the mug rapidly pa.s.sed from mouth to mouth at once ravenously and tantalizingly. The long and bitter journey on the north road, through the snow, was barely referred to in the Reading; due mention, however, being made, and always tellingly, of Mr. S queers's habit of getting down at nearly every stage--"to stretch his legs, he said,--and as he always came back with a very red nose, and composed himself to sleep directly, the stretching seemed to answer." Immediately on the wayfarers' arrival at Dotheboys, Mrs. Squeers, arrayed in a dimity night-jacket, herself a head taller than Mr. Squeers, was always introduced with great effect, as seizing her Squeery by the throat and giving him two loud kisses in rapid succession, like a postman's knock. The audience then scarcely had time to laugh over the interchange of questions and answers between the happy couple, as to the condition of the cows and pigs, and, last of all, the boys, ending with Madame's intimation that "young Pitcher's had a fever," followed up by Squeers's characteristic exclamation, "No! d.a.m.n that chap, he's always at something of that sort"--when there came the first glimpse of poor Smike, in a skeleton suit, and large boots originally made for tops, too patched and ragged now for a beggar; around his throat "a tattered child's frill only half concealed by a coa.r.s.e man's neckerchief." Anxiously observing Squeers, as he emptied his overcoat of letters and papers, the boy did this, we were told, with an air so dispirited and hopeless, that Nicholas could hardly bear to watch him. "Have you--did anybody--has nothing been heard--about me?"

were then (in the faintest, frightened voice!) the first stammered utterances of the wretched drudge. Bullied into silence by the brutal schoolmaster, Smike limped away with a vacant smile, when we heard the female scoundrel in the dimity night-jacket saying,--"I'll tell you what, Squeers, I think that young chap's turning silly."

Inducted into the loathsome school-room on the following morning by Squeers himself, Nicholas, first of all, we were informed, witnessed the manner in which that arrant rogue presided over "the first cla.s.s in English spelling and philosophy," practically ill.u.s.trating his mode of tuition by setting the scholars to clean the w-i-n win, d-e-r-s ders, winders--to weed the garden--to rub down the horse, or get rubbed down themselves if they didn't do it well. Nicholas a.s.sisted in the afternoon, moreover, at the report given by Mr. Squeers on his return homewards after his half-yearly visit to the metropolis. Beginning, though this last-mentioned part of the Reading did, with Squeers's ferocious slash on the desk with his cane, and his announcement, in the midst of a death-like silence--

"Let any boy speak a word without leave, and I'll take the skin off that boy's back!" many of the particulars given immediately afterwards by the Reader were, in spite of the surrounding misery, irresistibly provocative of laughter. Ample justification for this, in truth, is very readily adduceable. Mr. Squeers having, through his one eye, made a mental abstract of Cobbey's letter, for example, Cobbey and the whole school were thus feelingly informed of its contents--"Oh! Cobbey's grandmother is dead, and his uncle John has took to drinking. Which is all the news his sister sends, except eighteen-pence--which will just pay for that broken square of gla.s.s! Mrs. Squeers, my dear, will you take the money?" Another while, Graymarsh's maternal aunt, who "thinks Mrs. Squeers must be a angel," and that Mr. Squeers is too good for this world, "would have sent the two pairs of stockings, as desired, but is short of money, so forwards a tract instead," and so on; "Ah-! a delightful letter--very affecting, indeed!" quoth Squeers. "It was affecting in one sense!" observed the Reader; "for Graymarsh's maternal aunt was strongly supposed by her more intimate friends to be his maternal parent!" Perhaps the epistle from Mobbs's mother-in-law was the best of all, however--the old lady who "took to her bed on hearing that he wouldn't eat fat;" and who "wishes to know by an early post where he expects to go to, if he quarrels with his vittles?" adding, "This was told her in the London newspapers--not by Mr. Squeers, for he is too kind and too good to set anybody against anybody!"

As an interlude, overflowing with fun, came Miss Squeers's tea-drinking--the result of her suddenly falling in love with the new usher, and that chiefly by reason of the straightness of his legs, "the general run of legs at Dotheboys Hall being crooked." How John Browdie (with his hair damp from was.h.i.+ng) appeared upon the occasion in a clean s.h.i.+rt--"whereof thecollars might have belonged to some giant ancestor,"--and greeted the a.s.sembled company, including his intended, Tilda Price, "with a grin that even the collars could not conceal," the creator of the worthy Yorks.h.i.+reman went on to describe, with a gusto akin to the relish with which every utterance of John Browdie's was caught up by the listeners. Whether he spoke in good humour or in ill humour, the burly cornfactor was equally delightful. One while saying, laughingly, to Nicholas, across the bread-and-b.u.t.ter plate which they had just been emptying between them, "Ye wean't get bread-and-b.u.t.ther ev'ry neight, I expect, mun. Ecod, they dean't put too much intif 'em.

Ye'll be nowt but skeen and boans if you stop here long eneaf. Ho! ho!

ho!"--all this to Nicholas's unspeakable indignation. Or, another while, after chafing in jealousy for a long time over the coquetries going on between Tilda Price and Nicholas--the Yorks.h.i.+reman flattening his own nose with his clenched fist again and again, "as if to keep his hand in till he had an opportunity of exercising it on the nose of some other gentleman,"--until asked merrily by his betrothed to keep his glum silence no longer, but to say something: "Say summat?" roared John Browdie, with a mighty blow on the table; "Weal, then! what I say 's this--Dang my boans and boddy, if I stan' this ony longer! Do ye gang whoam wi' me; and do yon loight and toight young whipster look sharp out for a brokken head next time he c.u.ms under my hond. c.u.m whoam, tell'e, c.u.m whoam!" After Smike's running away, and his being brought back again, had been rapidly recounted, what nearly every individual member of every audience in attendance at this Reading was eagerly on the watch for all along, at last, in the fullness of time, arrived,--the execrable Squeers receiving, instead of administering, a frightful beating, in the presence of the whole school; having carefully provided himself beforehand, as all were rejoiced to remember, with "a fearful instrument of flagellation, strong, supple, wax-ended, and new!"

So real are the characters described by Charles d.i.c.kens in his life-like fictions, and so exactly do the incidents he relates as having befallen them resemble actual occurrences, that we recall to recollection at this moment the delight with which the late accomplished Lady Napier once related an exact case in point, appealing, as she did so, to her husband, the author of the "Peninsular War," to corroborate the-accuracy of her retrospect! Telling how she perfectly well remembered, when the fourth green number of "Nicholas Nickleby" was just out, one of her home group, who had a moment before caught sight of the picture of the flogging in a shop-window, rushed in with the startling announcement--as though he were bringing with him the news of some great victory--"What do you think? _Nicholas has thrashed Squeers!_" As the Novelist read this chapter, or rather the condensation of this chapter, it was for all the world like a.s.sisting in person at that sacred and refres.h.i.+ng rite!

"Is every boy here?"

Yes, every boy was there, and so was every observant listener, in eager and--knowing what was coming--in delighted expectation. As Squeers was represented as "glaring along the lines," to a.s.sure himself that every boy really _was_ there, what time "every eye drooped and every head cowered down," the Reader, instead of uttering one word of what the ruffianly schoolmaster ought then to have added: "Each boy keep to his place. Nickleby! you go to your desk, sir!"--instead of saying one syllable of this, contented himself with obeying his own ma.n.u.script marginal direction, in one word--Pointing! The effect of this simple gesture was startling--particularly when, after the momentary hush with which it was always accompanied, he observed quietly,--"There was a curious expression in the usher's face, but he took his seat without opening his lips in reply." Then, when the schoolmaster had dragged in the wretched Smike by the collar, "or rather by that fragment of his jacket which was nearest the place where his collar ought to have been,"

there was a horrible relish in his saying, over his shoulder for a moment, "Stand a little out of the way, Mrs. Squeers, my dear; _I've hardly got room enough!_" The instant one cruel blow had fallen--"Stop!"

was cried in a voice that made the rafters ring--even the lofty rafters of St. James's Hall.

Squeers, with the glare and snarl of a wild beast.--"Who cried stop?"

Nicholas.--"I did! This must not go on!"

Squeers, again, with a frightful look.--"Must not go on?"

Nicholas.--"Must not! Shall not! I will prevent it!"

Then came Nicholas Nickleby's manly denunciation of the scoundrel, interrupted one while for an instant by Squeers screaming out, "Sit down, you--beggar!" and followed at its close by the last and crowning outrage, consequent on a violent outbreak of wrath on the part of Squeers, who spat at him and struck him a blow across the face with his instrument of torture: when Nicholas, springing upon him, wrested the weapon from his hand, and pinning him by the throat--don't we all exult in the remembrance of it?--"beat the ruffian till he roared for mercy."

After that climax has been attained, two other particulars are alone worthy of being recalled to recollection in regard to this Reading.

First, the indescribable heartiness of John Browdie's cordial shake-of-the-hand with Nicholas Nickleby on their encountering each other by accident upon the high road. "Shake honds? Ah! that I weel!"

coupled with his ecstatic shout (so ecstatic that his horse shyed at it), "Beatten schoolmeasther! Ho! ho! ho! Beatten schoolmeasther!

Who ever heard o' the loike o' that, noo? Give us thee hond agean, yoongster! Beatten schoolmeasther! Dang it, I loove thee for 't!"

Finally, and as the perfecting touch of tenderness between the two cousins, then unknown to each other as such, in the early morning light at Boroughbridge, we caught a glimpse of Nicholas and Smike pa.s.sing, hand in hand, out of the old barn together.

MR. BOB SAWYER'S PARTY.