"Look at them tears, sir," said Squeers with a triumphant air, as Master Wackford whiped his eyes with the cuff of his jacket; "there's oiliness!" Chap. XXXIV — Fred Barnard's thirty-first illustration for "Nicholas Nickleby" (1875)

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"Look at them tears, sir," said Squeers with a triumphant air, as Master Wackford wiped his eyes with the cuff of his jacket; "there's oiliness!" — Chap. XXXIv, p. 220, from the British Household Edition of Charles Dickens's The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, illustrated by Fred Barnard with fifty-nine composite woodblock engravings (1875). 10.7 cm high by 13.9 cm wide (4 ¼ by 5 ½ inches), vignetted. Running head: "A Few More Details" (221). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

Passage Illustrated: A "Streaky Bacon" Comic Scene after the Melodramatic Exchanges

"You’re quite sure you’re not at home, are you?" said Newman.

"What does the idiot mean?" cried Ralph, testily.

"He has been waiting nearly ever since they first came in, and may have heard your voice — that’s all," said Newman, rubbing his hands.

"Who has?" demanded Ralph, wrought by the intelligence he had just heard, and his clerk’s provoking coolness, to an intense pitch of irritation.

The necessity of a reply was superseded by the unlooked-for entrance of a third party — the individual in question — who, bringing his one eye (for he had but one) to bear on Ralph Nickleby, made a great many shambling bows, and sat himself down in an armchair, with his hands on his knees, and his short black trousers drawn up so high in the legs by the exertion of seating himself, that they scarcely reached below the tops of his Wellington boots.

"Why, this is a surprise!" said Ralph, bending his gaze upon the visitor, and half smiling as he scrutinised him attentively; "I should know your face, Mr. Squeers."

"Ah!" replied that worthy, "and you’d have know’d it better, sir, if it hadn’t been for all that I’ve been a-going through. Just lift that little boy off the tall stool in the back-office, and tell him to come in here, will you, my man?" said Squeers, addressing himself to Newman. "Oh, he’s lifted his-self off. My son, sir, little Wackford. What do you think of him, sir, for a specimen of the Dotheboys Hall feeding? Ain’t he fit to bust out of his clothes, and start the seams, and make the very buttons fly off with his fatness? Here’s flesh!" cried Squeers, turning the boy about, and indenting the plumpest parts of his figure with divers pokes and punches, to the great discomposure of his son and heir. "Here’s firmness, here’s solidness! Why you can hardly get up enough of him between your finger and thumb to pinch him anywheres." [Chapter XXXIV, "Wherein Mr. Ralph Nickleby is visited by Persons with whom the Reader has been already made acquainted," 219]

Commentary: Ralph entertains the North-of-England School-master and his son

Phiz's serial illustration focuses on an earlier scene in Ralph's office in Ch. 34: Mr. and Mrs. Mantalini in Ralph Nickleby's Office (February 1839).

The Mantalinis have just left Ralph's office when a visitor of a different complexion entirely arrives: Nicholas's north-of-England nemesis, the crude, vulgar, brutal Master of Dotheboys Hall, Wackford Squeers. The reader naturally wonders what has brought Squeers to town since the journey from Yorkshire is both long and costly. The illustration provides yet another instance of "streaky bacon" plot construction since it complements a far more serious scene, Nicholas's assaulting Sir Mulberry Hawk in his carriage outside a Park Lane hotel in Chapter 32. Dickens introduces the latest arrival by mentioning "his one eye" (219), the salient feature of the Yorkshire schoolmaster who was for a brief time Nicholas Nickleby's employer. The satire of Sqeers's brand of education continues in much the same vein as Dickens left in when Nicholas decamped with Smike from Greta Bridge.

Although Squeers in the illustration looks perfectly sound, he asserts that he was one continuous bruise from head to toe, thanks to Nicholas's thrashing of him as anticipated in Barnard's Chapter 13 illustration, "Wretch, " rejoined Nicholas fiercely, "touch him at your peril! I will not stand by, and see it done. My blood is up, and I have the strength of ten such men as you.". Squeers seems to be angling to have Ralph pay the cost of his having to be examined by a "medical attendant" after the incident. However, as we are reassured by Squeers's anecdote about giving the sons of five tradesmen at the school Scarlet Fever, and paying the physician through additional charges (fraudulently) added to their bills, Squeers is not dunning Nickleby. Why then has he come down to London? Apparently he is recruiting again, and staying at The Saracen's Head, where the reader first encountered him.

In the Barnard illustration, Ralph seems to be studying young Wackford as a promotional specimen in his father's publicity campaign for Dotheboys Hall. His expression and posture certainly do not reflect the whole-hearted support and enjoyment that Squeers seems to be expecting from his metropolitan friend. Getting young Wackford out of the way on a pie-buying errand, Ralph questions Squeers closely about the twenty-year-old "boy" with whom Nicholas absconded. The purpose of the scvene, then, is to shed light on Smike's origins: forteen years previously, one autumn a stranger dropped Smike off at the school, and continued to pay Smike's tuition and board for six to eight years — and then the payments from London suddenly stopped. The scene, then, is important as it marks Ralph's interest in Smike, and suggests that Ralph and Squeers are going to employ Smike in a plot against Nicholas.

The American Household Edition's Version of the Meeting of Villains

Above: C. S. Reinhart's realisation of the scene between Ralph and Squeers makes the money-lender look far more dignified, but the fat boy as much of a sissy: "Look at them tears, sir!" * * * "There's oiliness!"

Related material, including front matter and sketches, by other illustrators

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Bibliography

Barnard, J. "Fred" (il.). Charles Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby, with fifty-eight illustrations. The Works of Charles Dickens: The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1875. Volume 15. Rpt. 1890.

Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. P., 1988.

Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 1998.

Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. With fifty-two illustrations by C. S. Reinhart. The Household Edition. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1872. I.

__________. Nicholas Nickleby. With 39 illustrations by Hablot K. Browne ("Phiz"). London: Chapman & Hall, 1839.

__________. Nicholas Nickleby. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. 4.

__________. "Nicholas Nickleby." Scenes and Characters from the Works of Charles Dickens, being eight hundred and sixty-six drawings by Fred Barnard et al.. Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1908.

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Created 20 August 2021