"Look at them tears, sir!" — Chapter 34. C. S. Reinhart's thirty-fifth illustration for Dickens's "Nicholas Nickleby" (1875)

"Look at them tears, sir!" * * * "There's oiliness!"r [Page 185] by Charles Stanley Reinhart (1875), in Charles Dickens's The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, Harper & Bros. New York Household Edition, for Chapter XXXV. 10.4 x 13.5 cm (4 ⅛ by 5 ⅜ inches), framed. Running head: "News of My Nephew" (185). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

Passage Illustrated: Ralph entertains Wackford Squeers

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 Reinhart's Chapter 13 illustration, Nicholas varies the monotony of Dotheboys Hall by a most vigorous and remarkable proceeding. Squeers seems to be angking 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 Reinhart illustration, Ralph seems to be studying both young Wackford and his father as curious specimens rather than as interlocutors. Squeers has arrived back in London on a promotional campaign for Dotheboys Hall — and with a court case for negligence hanging over him. His appearance is consistent with Reinhart's previous presentation of him in the Yorkshire schoolroom over which he presides, in "This is the first class in English Spelling and Philosophy, Nickleby." (Ch. 7). He is note the ebullient brute depicted by Fred Barnard in the parallel illustration of the British Household Edition, "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!" Reinhart, in contrast, has muted the character comedy by presenting both Ralph and his vistor without distortion.

Clayton J. Clarke's Player's Cigarette Card illustration of the brutal schoolmaster in the 1910 coloured lithographic series of Dickens's most memorable characters: Wackford Squeers (Card 44).

However, as in the Barnard woodcut, Ralph's serious expression and attentive posture do not reflect the whole-hearted support and enjoyment that Squeers in the letterpress 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 scene, here as in the British Household Edition, is to focus the reader's attention on their conversation, which subsequently sheds light on Smike's origins: forteen years previous, 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.

Sol Eytinge, Junior's version of Wackford Squeers and family in the Diamond Edition (1867).

The one-eyed schoolmaster is, ironically, largely illiterate, but possesses a fine business sense that combines duplicity, fraud, and self-promotion: his target audience is not really potential students but relatives with illegitimate children to conceal. His spartan school in the wilds of Yorkshire, near the coaching town of Greta Bridge, has as its greatest selling point its remoteness from the capital. The scene in Ralph's office certainly implies that he and Squeers are somehow in league, and that their relationship has some bearing on Smike's origins. The scene thus prepares readers for the revelation that the handicapped youth is in fact Ralph Nickleby's son by a secret, mercenary marriage, and therefore Nicholas's cousin.

The British Household Edition's Version of Squeers's Visit to Ralph Nickleby's office

Above: Fred Barnard's 1875 British Household Editioncomposite woodblock engraving of much the same narrative moment, as Squeers introduces his son to the money-lender: "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, p. 220.

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 20 August 2021