"'I should have spoiled his features yesterday afternoon if I could have afforded it,' said Newman." — Chapter 31. C. S. Reinhart's thirty-second illustration for Dickens's "Nicholas Nickleby" (1875)

"I should have spoiled his features yesterday afternoon if I could have afforded it,' said Newman." [Page 173] by Charles Stanley Reinhart (1875), in Charles Dickens's The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, Harper & Bros. New York Household Edition, for Chapter XXXi. 9.3 x 13.5 cm (3 ⅝ by 5 ⅜ inches), framed. Running head: "Mr. Noggs becomes Excited" (173). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

Passage Illustrated: Newman Noggs and Miss La Creevy predict trouble for Nicholas

"Have you seen the old lady?" asked Newman.

"You mean Mrs. Nickleby?’ said Miss La Creevy. "Then I tell you what, Mr. Noggs, if you want to keep in the good books in that quarter, you had better not call her the old lady any more, for I suspect she wouldn’t be best pleased to hear you. Yes, I went there the night before last, but she was quite on the high ropes about something, and was so grand and mysterious, that I couldn’t make anything of her: so, to tell you the truth, I took it into my head to be grand too, and came away in state. I thought she would have come round again before this, but she hasn’t been here."

"About Miss Nickleby —" said Newman.

"Why, she was here twice while I was away," returned Miss La Creevy. "I was afraid she mightn’t like to have me calling on her among those great folks in what’s-its-name Place, so I thought I’d wait a day or two, and if I didn’t see her, write."

"Ah!" exclaimed Newman, cracking his fingers.

"However, I want to hear all the news about them from you," said Miss La Creevy. "How is the old rough and tough monster of Golden Square? Well, of course; such people always are. I don’t mean how is he in health, but how is he going on: how is he behaving himself?"

"Damn him!" cried Newman, dashing his cherished hat on the floor; "like a false hound."

"Gracious, Mr. Noggs, you quite terrify me!" exclaimed Miss La Creevy, turning pale.

"I should have spoilt his features yesterday afternoon if I could have afforded it," said Newman, moving restlessly about, and shaking his fist at a portrait of Mr. Canning over the mantelpiece. "I was very near it. I was obliged to put my hands in my pockets, and keep ‘em there very tight. I shall do it some day in that little back-parlour, I know I shall. I should have done it before now, if I hadn’t been afraid of making bad worse. I shall double-lock myself in with him and have it out before I die, I’m quite certain of it."

"I shall scream if you don’t compose yourself, Mr. Noggs," said Miss La Creevy; "I’m sure I shan’t be able to help it."

"Never mind," rejoined Newman, darting violently to and fro. "He’s coming up tonight: I wrote to tell him. He little thinks I know; he little thinks I care. Cunning scoundrel! he don’t think that. Not he, not he. Never mind, I’ll thwart him — I, Newman Noggs. Ho, ho, the rascal!" [Chapter XXXi, ""Of Ralph Nickleby and Newman Noggs, and some wise Precautions, the success or failure of which will appear in the Sequel," 172]

The Situation Described on the Eve of Nicholas's Return to London

Phiz's serial illustration depicts Nicholas's learning of the danger to which Ralph Nickleby has exposed his niece: Nicholas Attracted by the Mention of His Sister's Name in the Coffee-Room (January 1839).

Having learned from a recently received letter that Nicholas is returning to London that very evening, Newman Noggs becomes concerned that the youth will attempt to chastise and even assault Ralph Nickleby for his introducing Kate to his dissipated aristocratic associates Sir Mulberry Hawk and Lord Frederick Verisopht. Miss La Creevy, having been away in the country at her brother's estate, has not seen either Mrs. Nickleby or Kate in some time. She now agrees to intercept Kate and take her for an evening at the theatre so that Nicholas will not be able to find her and learn the extent of Ralph's failure to protect his niece. Whereas the original serial illustration showed Nicholas's discovery through a coffee-house conversation, Reinhart like Barnard in the British Household Edition has chosen to illustrate the meeting of two of the novel's most engaging secondary characters, the quirky clerk and the charming miniaturist, in her studio.

Both Household Edition illustrators have chosen to focus not on Nicholas's apprehension of his sister's situation through an overheard coffee-house conversation (the scene which Phiz described in January 1839), but on Newman Noggs' and miss la Creevy's shared concern that Nicholas, upon returning to LOndon, will assault a wealthy, influential relative who will not scruple to turn the law on his nephew.

The British Household Edition's Version of Noggs's Ranting to Miss La Creevy

Above: Fred Barnard's 1875 British Household Editioncomposite woodblock engraving of Noggs's visit to Miss La Creevy's studio: Lashing himself up to an extravagant pitch of fury, Newman Noggs jerked himself about the room with the most eccentric motion ever beheld in a human being.

Related material by other illustrators (1838 through 1910)

Scanned image, colour correction, sizing, caption, and commentary by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose, as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image, and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Bibliography

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

Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. With fifty-two illustrations by C. S. Reinhart. The Household Edition. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1875.

__________. "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.

Created 15 August 2021