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Passage Illustrated: Insurrection and Dissolution

The news of Mr. Squeers’s downfall had reached Dotheboys; that was quite clear. To all appearance, it had very recently become known to the young gentlemen; for the rebellion had just broken out.

It was one of the brimstone-and-treacle mornings, and Mrs. Squeers had entered school according to custom with the large bowl and spoon, followed by Miss Squeers and the amiable Wackford: who, during his father’s absence, had taken upon him such minor branches of the executive as kicking the pupils with his nailed boots, pulling the hair of some of the smaller boys, pinching the others in aggravating places, and rendering himself, in various similar ways, a great comfort and happiness to his mother. Their entrance, whether by premeditation or a simultaneous impulse, was the signal of revolt. While one detachment rushed to the door and locked it, and another mounted on the desks and forms, the stoutest (and consequently the newest) boy seized the cane, and confronting Mrs. Squeers with a stern countenance, snatched off her cap and beaver bonnet, put them on his own head, armed himself with the wooden spoon, and bade her, on pain of death, go down upon her knees and take a dose directly. Before that estimable lady could recover herself, or offer the slightest retaliation, she was forced into a kneeling posture by a crowd of shouting tormentors, and compelled to swallow a spoonful of the odious mixture, rendered more than usually savoury by the immersion in the bowl of Master Wackford’s head, whose ducking was intrusted to another rebel. The success of this first achievement prompted the malicious crowd, whose faces were clustered together in every variety of lank and half-starved ugliness, to further acts of outrage. The leader was insisting upon Mrs. Squeers repeating her dose, Master Squeers was undergoing another dip in the treacle, and a violent assault had been commenced on Miss Squeers, when John Browdie, bursting open the door with a vigorous kick, rushed to the rescue. The shouts, screams, groans, hoots, and clapping of hands, suddenly ceased, and a dead silence silence ensued.

"Ye be noice chaps," said John, looking steadily round. "What’s to do here, thou yoong dogs?"

"Squeers is in prison, and we are going to run away!" cried a score of shrill voices. "We won’t stop, we won’t stop!"

"Weel then, dinnot stop," replied John; "who waants thee to stop? Roon awa’ loike men, but dinnot hurt the women."

"Hurrah!" cried the shrill voices, more shrilly still.

"Hurrah?" repeated John. "Weel, hurrah loike men too. Noo then, look out. Hip — hip, — hip — hurrah!"

"Hurrah!" cried the voices. [Chapter LXIV, "An old Acquaintance is recognised under melancholy Circumstances, and Dotheboys Hall breaks up for ever," pp. 489-490; running head: "The School Breaking Up"]

Paralel Scene from the American Household Edition (1875)

​

Above: C. S. Reinhart's vigorous treatment features the boys' meting out poetic justice to Mrs. Squeers, who literally gets a taste of her own medicine: The "Breaking-up" of Dotheboys Hall in Chapter 64.

Phiz Rebellions (1841 and 1849)

Phiz seems to have relished such boisterous crowd scenes and figures of misrule such as Bob Sawyer in Pickwick and The Vengeance in A Tale of Two Cities, but his most endearing scenes of rebellion are those involving schoolboys. To Phiz, schoolmaster Whackford Squeers is not merely a bully but a dictator whose arbitrary, sadistic, and capricious rule the exuberant rebels terminate with juvenile enthusiasm. Dotheboys Hall is but Bourbon France writ small, with a privileged aristocracy (the Squeers) lording it over reluctant employees such as Nicholas Nickleby and the victims of their sadistic impulses such as Smike in Nicholas Nickleby. Here a leader emerges who is not, like Steerforth or Madame Defarge, one of the oppressed — the honest, blunt Yorkshireman John Browdie.

In the 1849 Steel engraving Steerforth and Mr. Mell from David Copperfield Phiz has designed the scene to demonstrates is strong suit: baroque action and multivariant studies of figures caught in uproarious action. The schoolroom scene, recalling the Gordon riots of Barnaby Rudge (1841) and anticipating the revolutionary mob scenes of A Tale of Two Cities (1859), overflows with dynamic characters in a physical setting drawn with scrupulous attention to details given in the letterpress. Delighting in the challenge such a group scene presents for the graphic artist, Phiz has vigorously captured the precise moment when in the confrontation between the virtuous school master and the haughty adolescent.

Other Insurrections and Riots by Phiz

Left: Phiz's marauding proletarians, The Rioters at Work from Barnaby Rudge. Right: A later Phiz classroom insurrection, Steerforth and Mr. Mell from David Copperfield.

Left: Phiz's marauding London street mob, The Spy's Funeral from A Tale of Two Cities (July 1859). Right: A more violent Phiz mob in Paris attacks bastions of government: The Sea Rises from A Tale of Two Cities (October 1859).

Bibliography

Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. Illustrated by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne). London: Chapman and Hall, 1839.

_____. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. Ed. Andrew Lang. Illustrated by 'Phiz' (Hablot Knight Browne). The Gadshill Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1897. 2 vols.

Steig, Michael. Chapter 2, "The Beginnings of 'Phiz': Pickwick, Nickleby, and the Emergence from Caricature." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U. P., 1978. Pp. 24-50.

Vann, J. Don. "The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, twenty parts in nineteen monthly installments, April 1838-October 1839." New York: Modern Language Association, 1985. Page 63.

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Last modified 18 September 2021