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Newman Noggs Leaves the Ladies in the Empty House
Phiz (Hablot K. Browne)
Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby
June 1838
Steel engraving
Source: J. A. Hammerton, The Dickens Picture-Book, p. 153.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Old, and gloomy, and black, in truth it was, and sullen and dark were the rooms, once so bustling with life and enterprise. There was a wharf behind, opening on the Thames. An empty dog-kennel, some bones of animals, fragments of iron hoops, and staves of old casks, lay strewn about, but no life was stirring there. It was a picture of cold, silent decay.
"This house depresses and chills one,’ said Kate, ‘and seems as if some blight had fallen on it. If I were superstitious, I should be almost inclined to believe that some dreadful crime had been perpetrated within these old walls, and that the place had never prospered since. How frowning and how dark it looks!"
"Lord, my dear," replied Mrs. Nickleby, "don’t talk in that way, or you’ll frighten me to death."
"It is only my foolish fancy, mama," said Kate, forcing a smile.
"Well, then, my love, I wish you would keep your foolish fancy to yourself, and not wake up my foolish fancy to keep it company,’ retorted Mrs. Nickleby. "Why didn’t you think of all this before — you are so careless — we might have asked Miss La Creevy to keep us company or borrowed a dog, or a thousand things — but it always was the way, and was just the same with your poor dear father. Unless I thought of everything —" This was Mrs. Nickleby’s usual commencement of a general lamentation, running through a dozen or so of complicated sentences addressed to nobody in particular, and into which she now launched until her breath was exhausted.
Newman appeared not to hear these remarks, but preceded them to a couple of rooms on the first floor, which some kind of attempt had been made to render habitable. In one, were a few chairs, a table, an old hearth-rug, and some faded baize; and a fire was ready laid in the grate. In the other stood an old tent bedstead, and a few scanty articles of chamber furniture.
"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Nickleby, trying to be pleased, "now isn’t this thoughtful and considerate of your uncle? Why, we should not have had anything but the bed we bought yesterday, to lie down upon, if it hadn’t been for his thoughtfulness!"
"Very kind, indeed," replied Kate, looking round.
Newman Noggs did not say that he had hunted up the old furniture they saw, from attic and cellar; or that he had taken in the halfpennyworth of milk for tea that stood upon a shelf, or filled the rusty kettle on the hob, or collected the woodchips from the wharf, or begged the coals. But the notion of Ralph Nickleby having directed it to be done, tickled his fancy so much, that he could not refrain from cracking all his ten fingers in succession: at which performance Mrs. Nickleby was rather startled at first, but supposing it to be in some remote manner connected with the gout, did not remark upon. [Chapter XI, "Newman Noggs inducts Mrs. and Miss Nickleby into their New Dwelling in the City," ]
Left: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s character study of the quirky clerk in the Diamond Edition: Newman Noggs (1867). Right: Fred Barnard's title-page vignette for the British Household Edition (1875).
Newman Noggs, Ralph Nickleby's cynical, long-suffering clerk is yet another iteration of the Comic Man of domestic melodrama. Prior to becoming the curmudgeonly Raph's clerk, Noggs had his own business. However, when he went bankrupt, he became a malcontented alcoholic, whose irrational mental ticks and ironic comments mask his sympathetic nature and genuine insights into human nature.He becomes one of the picaresque hero's chief friends, the Sancho Panza to Nicholas's Don Quixote. Kyd's version of Noggs in the Player's Cigarette Card series captures well the middle-aged alcoholic's rubicund nose, which adds humour to his benign expression. According to Dickens's description of him Chapter 2, Noggs immediately strikes the reader as decidedly odd:
In obedience to this summons the clerk got off the high stool (to which he had communicated a high polish by countless gettings off and on), and presented himself in Mr. Nickleby’s room. He was a tall man of middle age, with two goggle eyes whereof one was a fixture, a rubicund nose, a cadaverous face, and a suit of clothes (if the term be allowable when they suited him not at all) much the worse for wear, very much too small, and placed upon such a short allowance of buttons that it was marvellous how he contrived to keep them on.
"Was that half-past twelve, Noggs?" said Mr. Nickleby, in a sharp and grating voice.
"Not more than five-and-twenty minutes by the —" Noggs was going to add public-house clock, but recollecting himself, substituted ‘regular time.’
"My watch has stopped," said Mr. Nickleby; "I don’t know from what cause."
"Not wound up," said Noggs.
"Yes it is," said Mr. Nickleby.
"Over-wound then," rejoined Noggs.
"That can’t very well be," observed Mr. Nickleby.
"Must be," said Noggs.
"Well!" said Mr. Nickleby, putting the repeater back in his pocket; "perhaps it is."
Noggs gave a peculiar grunt, as was his custom at the end of all disputes with his master, to imply that he (Noggs) triumphed; and (as he rarely spoke to anybody unless somebody spoke to him) fell into a grim silence, and rubbed his hands slowly over each other: cracking the joints of his fingers, and squeezing them into all possible distortions. The incessant performance of this routine on every occasion, and the communication of a fixed and rigid look to his unaffected eye, so as to make it uniform with the other, and to render it impossible for anybody to determine where or at what he was looking, were two among the numerous peculiarities of Mr. Noggs, which struck an inexperienced observer at first sight. [Chapter II, "Of Mr. Ralph Nickleby, and his Establishments, and his Undertakings, and of a great Joint Stock Company of vast national Importance," 12]
Left: Clayton J. Clarke's Player's Cigarette Card No. 46: Newman Noggs (1910). Centre: C. S. Reinhart's American Household Edition realisation of the same scene: Newman Noggs Opened the Door of the Deserted Mansion (1875). Centre: Harry Furniss's study of the quirky clerk: Newman Noggs (1910). Right: .
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. 24-50.
Thomas, Deborah A. "Chapter 2: Imaginative Overindulgence." Dickens and the Short Story. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982. 7-31.
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. 63.
Created 9 April 2002 Last modified 20 April 2021