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Commentary: Copping's Visual Exposé of "Dotheboys Hall"

Although Copping could have easily chosen to focus on Dickens's social criticism in Nicholas Nickleby, he focuses instead on the memorable characters themselves, in comedic situations. On Nicholas's first full day as a fledgling teacher or "usher" at Wackford Squeers's "Dotheboys Hall," the protagonist encounters his employer's daughter, the awkward and ugly Fanny, who has popped into his classroom, ostensibly to have her father mend a pen, but in fact to see for herself the handsome youth about whom her parents and brother had been talking when she arrived home the previous night. Having ascertained from a perpetually hungry maid-servant that Nicolas has a fine form and handsome face, Fanny has determined to find out for herself at the first opportunity:

The young lady watched the opportunity of her mother being engaged, and her father absent, and went accidentally into the school-room to get a pen mended: where, seeing nobody but Nicholas presiding over the boys, she blushed very deeply, and exhibited great confusion.

". . . I am very sorry I intruded, I am sure. If I hadn't thought my father was here, I wouldn't upon any account have — it is very provoking — must look so very strange," murmured Miss Squeers, blushing once more, and glancing, from the pen in her hand, to Nicholas at his desk, and back again.

Copping has transformed the "desk" mentioned in Dickens into a podium to focus on the principals, thereby shortening the distance between the speakers. Nicholas's snow-white "stirrup pants," very much in vogue in the late 1830s, suggest his innocence and display his youthful figure to advantage. Fanny's buck-teeth, on the other hand, seem to be Copping's invention, for Dickens just a few pages earlier in chapter 9, "Of Miss Squeers, Mrs. Squeers, Master Squeers, and Mr. Squeers; and of various Matters and Persons connected no less with the Squeerses than with Nicholas Nickleby" (installment 3, June 1838), describes her merely as short like her father, with her mother's harsh voice and her father's "remarkable expression of the right eye, something akin to having none at all." Phiz does not in fact portray her, so that Copping has been free to improvise, providing her with a fashionable gown and apron, and ringlets in the late Regency mode. Copping connects the figures by repeating the colour of the apron in the boy's jacket and vest (left of centre) and in Nicholas's swallow-tail coat. The gold of Fanny's hair is repeated in Nicholas's waist-coat. Although these items of dress are consistent with Phiz's original illustrations (for example, "Nicholas Hints at the Probability of His Leaving the Company," chapter 29), Copping has individualized Nicholas's profile.

Bibliography

Dickens, Charles. The Adventures of Oliver Twist. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. London: Bradbury and Evans; Chapman and Hall, 1846.

Matz, B. W., and Kate Perugini; illustrated by Harold Copping. Character Sketches from Dickens. London: Raphael Tuck, 1924. Copy in the Paterson Library, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada.

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Created 2 April 2009

Last updated 21 September 2023