Of Mr. Ralph Nickleby, and his Establishments, and his Undertakings, and
of a great Joint Stock Company of vast national Importance
Mr. Ralph Nickleby was not, strictly speaking, what you would call
a merchant, neither was he a banker, nor an attorney, nor a special
pleader, nor a notary. He was certainly not a tradesman, and still less
could he lay any claim to the title of a professional gentleman; for it
would have been impossible to mention any recognised profession to which
he belonged. Nevertheless, as he lived in a spacious house in Golden
Square, which, in addition to a brass plate upon the street-door, had
another brass plate two sizes and a half smaller upon the left hand
door-post, surrounding a brass model of an infant’s fist grasping a
fragment of a skewer, and displaying the word ‘Office,’ it was clear
that Mr. Ralph Nickleby did, or pretended to do, business of some kind;
and the fact, if it required any further circumstantial evidence, was
abundantly demonstrated by the diurnal attendance, between the hours of
half-past nine and five, of a sallow-faced man in rusty brown, who sat
upon an uncommonly hard stool in a species of butler’s pantry at the end
of the passage, and always had a pen behind his ear when he answered the
bell.
Although a few members of the graver professions live about Golden
Square, it is not exactly in anybody’s way to or from anywhere. It is
one of the squares that have been; a quarter of the town that has gone
down in the world, and taken to letting lodgings. Many of its first
and second floors are let, furnished, to single gentlemen; and it
takes boarders besides. It is a great resort of foreigners. The
dark-complexioned men who wear large rings, and heavy watch-guards, and
bushy whiskers, and who congregate under the Opera Colonnade, and about
the box-office in the season, between four and five in the afternoon,
when they give away the orders,--all live in Golden Square, or within a
street of it. Two or three violins and a wind instrument from the Opera
band reside within its precincts. Its boarding-houses are musical, and
the notes of pianos and harps float in the evening time round the head
of the mournful statue, the guardian genius of a little wilderness of
shrubs, in the centre of the square. On a summer’s night, windows
are thrown open, and groups of swarthy moustached men are seen by the
passer-by, lounging at the casements, and smoking fearfully. Sounds of
gruff voices practising vocal music invade the evening’s silence; and
the fumes of choice tobacco scent the air. There, snuff and cigars,
and German pipes and flutes, and violins and violoncellos, divide the
supremacy between them. It is the region of song and smoke. Street bands
are on their mettle in Golden Square; and itinerant glee-singers quaver
involuntarily as they raise their voices within its boundaries.
This would not seem a spot very well adapted to the transaction of
business; but Mr. Ralph Nickleby had lived there, notwithstanding, for
many years, and uttered no complaint on that score. He knew nobody round
about, and nobody knew him, although he enjoyed the reputation of being
immensely rich. The tradesmen held that he was a sort of lawyer, and
the other neighbours opined that he was a kind of general agent; both
of which guesses were as correct and definite as guesses about other
people’s affairs usually are, or need to be.
Mr. Ralph Nickleby sat in his private office one morning, ready dressed
to walk abroad. He wore a bottle-green spencer over a blue coat; a white
waistcoat, grey mixture pantaloons, and Wellington boots drawn over
them. The corner of a small-plaited shirt-frill struggled out, as if
insisting to show itself, from between his chin and the top button of
his spencer; and the latter garment was not made low enough to conceal
a long gold watch-chain, composed of a series of plain rings, which had
its beginning at the handle of a gold repeater in Mr. Nickleby’s pocket,
and its termination in two little keys: one belonging to the watch
itself, and the other to some patent padlock. He wore a sprinkling of
powder upon his head, as if to make himself look benevolent; but if
that were his purpose, he would perhaps have done better to powder his
countenance also, for there was something in its very wrinkles, and
in his cold restless eye, which seemed to tell of cunning that would
announce itself in spite of him. However this might be, there he was;
and as he was all alone, neither the powder, nor the wrinkles, nor the
eyes, had the smallest effect, good or bad, upon anybody just then, and
are consequently no business of ours just now.
Mr. Nickleby closed an account-book which lay on his desk, and, throwing
himself back in his chair, gazed with an air of abstraction through the
dirty window. Some London houses have a melancholy little plot of ground
behind them, usually fenced in by four high whitewashed walls, and
frowned upon by stacks of chimneys: in which there withers on, from
year to year, a crippled tree, that makes a show of putting forth a few
leaves late in autumn when other trees shed theirs, and, drooping in
the effort, lingers on, all crackled and smoke-dried, till the following
season, when it repeats the same process, and perhaps, if the weather
be particularly genial, even tempts some rheumatic sparrow to chirrup
in its branches. People sometimes call these dark yards ‘gardens’; it
is not supposed that they were ever planted, but rather that they are
pieces of unreclaimed land, with the withered vegetation of the original
brick-field. No man thinks of walking in this desolate place, or of
turning it to any account. A few hampers, half-a-dozen broken bottles,
and such-like rubbish, may be thrown there, when the tenant first moves
in, but nothing more; and there they remain until he goes away again:
the damp straw taking just as long to moulder as it thinks proper:
and mingling with the scanty box, and stunted everbrowns, and broken
flower-pots, that are scattered mournfully about--a prey to ‘blacks’ and
dirt.
It was into a place of this kind that Mr. Ralph Nickleby gazed, as he sat
with his hands in his pockets looking out of the window. He had fixed
his eyes upon a distorted fir tree, planted by some former tenant in a
tub that had once been green, and left there, years before, to rot
away piecemeal. There was nothing very inviting in the object, but Mr
Nickleby was wrapt in a brown study, and sat contemplating it with far
greater attention than, in a more conscious mood, he would have deigned
to bestow upon the rarest exotic. At length, his eyes wandered to a
little dirty window on the left, through which the face of the clerk
was dimly visible; that worthy chancing to look up, he beckoned him to
attend.
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.
‘I am going to the London Tavern this morning,’ said Mr. Nickleby.
‘Public meeting?’ inquired Noggs.
Mr. Nickleby nodded. ‘I expect a letter from the solicitor respecting
that mortgage of Ruddle’s. If it comes at all, it will be here by the
two o’clock delivery. I shall leave the city about that time and walk
to Charing Cross on the left-hand side of the way; if there are any
letters, come and meet me, and bring them with you.’
Noggs nodded; and as he nodded, there came a ring at the office bell.
The master looked up from his papers, and the clerk calmly remained in a
stationary position.
‘The bell,’ said Noggs, as though in explanation. ‘At home?’
‘Yes.’
‘To anybody?’
‘Yes.’
‘To the tax-gatherer?’
‘No! Let him call again.’
Noggs gave vent to his usual grunt, as much as to say ‘I thought so!’
and, the ring being repeated, went to the door, whence he presently
returned, ushering in, by the name of Mr. Bonney, a pale gentleman in a
violent hurry, who, with his hair standing up in great disorder all over
his head, and a very narrow white cravat tied loosely round his throat,
looked as if he had been knocked up in the night and had not dressed
himself since.
‘My dear Nickleby,’ said the gentleman, taking off a white hat which was
so full of papers that it would scarcely stick upon his head, ‘there’s
not a moment to lose; I have a cab at the door. Sir Matthew Pupker takes
the chair, and three members of Parliament are positively coming. I have
seen two of them safely out of bed. The third, who was at Crockford’s
all night, has just gone home to put a clean shirt on, and take a bottle
or two of soda water, and will certainly be with us, in time to address
the meeting. He is a little excited by last night, but never mind that;
he always speaks the stronger for it.’
‘It seems to promise pretty well,’ said Mr. Ralph Nickleby, whose
deliberate manner was strongly opposed to the vivacity of the other man
of business.
‘Pretty well!’ echoed Mr. Bonney. ‘It’s the finest idea that was ever
started. “United Metropolitan Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet Baking
and Punctual Delivery Company. Capital, five millions, in five hundred
thousand shares of ten pounds each.” Why the very name will get the
shares up to a premium in ten days.’
‘And when they ARE at a premium,’ said Mr. Ralph Nickleby, smiling.
‘When they are, you know what to do with them as well as any man alive,
and how to back quietly out at the right time,’ said Mr. Bonney, slapping
the capitalist familiarly on the shoulder. ‘By-the-bye, what a VERY
remarkable man that clerk of yours is.’
‘Yes, poor devil!’ replied Ralph, drawing on his gloves. ‘Though Newman
Noggs kept his horses and hounds once.’
‘Ay, ay?’ said the other carelessly.
‘Yes,’ continued Ralph, ‘and not many years ago either; but he
squandered his money, invested it anyhow, borrowed at interest, and in
short made first a thorough fool of himself, and then a beggar. He took
to drinking, and had a touch of paralysis, and then came here to borrow
a pound, as in his better days I had--’
‘Done business with him,’ said Mr. Bonney with a meaning look.
‘Just so,’ replied Ralph; ‘I couldn’t lend it, you know.’
‘Oh, of course not.’
‘But as I wanted a clerk just then, to open the door and so forth, I
took him out of charity, and he has remained with me ever since. He is
a little mad, I think,’ said Mr. Nickleby, calling up a charitable look,
‘but he is useful enough, poor creature--useful enough.’
The kind-hearted gentleman omitted to add that Newman Noggs, being
utterly destitute, served him for rather less than the usual wages of a
boy of thirteen; and likewise failed to mention in his hasty chronicle,
that his eccentric taciturnity rendered him an especially valuable
person in a place where much business was done, of which it was
desirable no mention should be made out of doors. The other gentleman
was plainly impatient to be gone, however, and as they hurried into the
hackney cabriolet immediately afterwards, perhaps Mr. Nickleby forgot to
mention circumstances so unimportant.
There was a great bustle in Bishopsgate Street Within, as they drew up,
and (it being a windy day) half-a-dozen men were tacking across the road
under a press of paper, bearing gigantic announcements that a Public
Meeting would be holden at one o’clock precisely, to take into
consideration the propriety of petitioning Parliament in favour of the
United Metropolitan Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet Baking and Punctual
Delivery Company, capital five millions, in five hundred thousand shares
of ten pounds each; which sums were duly set forth in fat black figures
of considerable size. Mr. Bonney elbowed his way briskly upstairs,
receiving in his progress many low bows from the waiters who stood on
the landings to show the way; and, followed by Mr. Nickleby, dived into a
suite of apartments behind the great public room: in the second of which
was a business-looking table, and several business-looking people.
‘Hear!’ cried a gentleman with a double chin, as Mr. Bonney presented
himself. ‘Chair, gentlemen, chair!’
The new-comers were received with universal approbation, and Mr. Bonney
bustled up to the top of the table, took off his hat, ran his fingers
through his hair, and knocked a hackney-coachman’s knock on the table
with a little hammer: whereat several gentlemen cried ‘Hear!’ and nodded
slightly to each other, as much as to say what spirited conduct that
was. Just at this moment, a waiter, feverish with agitation, tore into
the room, and throwing the door open with a crash, shouted ‘Sir Matthew
Pupker!’
The committee stood up and clapped their hands for joy, and while they
were clapping them, in came Sir Matthew Pupker, attended by two live
members of Parliament, one Irish and one Scotch, all smiling and bowing,
and looking so pleasant that it seemed a perfect marvel how any
man could have the heart to vote against them. Sir Matthew Pupker
especially, who had a little round head with a flaxen wig on the top
of it, fell into such a paroxysm of bows, that the wig threatened to
be jerked off, every instant. When these symptoms had in some degree
subsided, the gentlemen who were on speaking terms with Sir Matthew
Pupker, or the two other members, crowded round them in three little
groups, near one or other of which the gentlemen who were NOT on
speaking terms with Sir Matthew Pupker or the two other members, stood
lingering, and smiling, and rubbing their hands, in the desperate hope
of something turning up which might bring them into notice. All this
time, Sir Matthew Pupker and the two other members were relating to
their separate circles what the intentions of government were, about
taking up the bill; with a full account of what the government had said
in a whisper the last time they dined with it, and how the government
had been observed to wink when it said so; from which premises they were
at no loss to draw the conclusion, that if the government had one
object more at heart than another, that one object was the welfare and
advantage of the United Metropolitan Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet
Baking and Punctual Delivery Company.
Meanwhile, and pending the arrangement of the proceedings, and a fair
division of the speechifying, the public in the large room were eyeing,
by turns, the empty platform, and the ladies in the Music Gallery. In
these amusements the greater portion of them had been occupied for a
couple of hours before, and as the most agreeable diversions pall upon
the taste on a too protracted enjoyment of them, the sterner spirits now
began to hammer the floor with their boot-heels, and to express their
dissatisfaction by various hoots and cries. These vocal exertions,
emanating from the people who had been there longest, naturally
proceeded from those who were nearest to the platform and furthest from
the policemen in attendance, who having no great mind to fight their way
through the crowd, but entertaining nevertheless a praiseworthy desire
to do something to quell the disturbance, immediately began to drag
forth, by the coat tails and collars, all the quiet people near the
door; at the same time dealing out various smart and tingling blows with
their truncheons, after the manner of that ingenious actor, Mr. Punch:
whose brilliant example, both in the fashion of his weapons and their
use, this branch of the executive occasionally follows.
Several very exciting skirmishes were in progress, when a loud shout
attracted the attention even of the belligerents, and then there poured
on to the platform, from a door at the side, a long line of gentlemen
with their hats off, all looking behind them, and uttering vociferous
cheers; the cause whereof was sufficiently explained when Sir Matthew
Pupker and the two other real members of Parliament came to the front,
amidst deafening shouts, and testified to each other in dumb motions
that they had never seen such a glorious sight as that, in the whole
course of their public career.
At length, and at last, the assembly left off shouting, but Sir Matthew
Pupker being voted into the chair, they underwent a relapse which lasted
five minutes. This over, Sir Matthew Pupker went on to say what must be
his feelings on that great occasion, and what must be that occasion
in the eyes of the world, and what must be the intelligence of
his fellow-countrymen before him, and what must be the wealth and
respectability of his honourable friends behind him, and lastly, what
must be the importance to the wealth, the happiness, the comfort, the
liberty, the very existence of a free and great people, of such an
Institution as the United Metropolitan Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet
Baking and Punctual Delivery Company!
Mr. Bonney then presented himself to move the first resolution; and
having run his right hand through his hair, and planted his left, in
an easy manner, in his ribs, he consigned his hat to the care of the
gentleman with the double chin (who acted as a species of bottle-holder
to the orators generally), and said he would read to them the first
resolution--‘That this meeting views with alarm and apprehension,
the existing state of the Muffin Trade in this Metropolis and its
neighbourhood; that it considers the Muffin Boys, as at present
constituted, wholly underserving the confidence of the public; and that
it deems the whole Muffin system alike prejudicial to the health and
morals of the people, and subversive of the best interests of a great
commercial and mercantile community.’ The honourable gentleman made a
speech which drew tears from the eyes of the ladies, and awakened the
liveliest emotions in every individual present. He had visited the
houses of the poor in the various districts of London, and had found
them destitute of the slightest vestige of a muffin, which there
appeared too much reason to believe some of these indigent persons
did not taste from year’s end to year’s end. He had found that among
muffin-sellers there existed drunkenness, debauchery, and profligacy,
which he attributed to the debasing nature of their employment as at
present exercised; he had found the same vices among the poorer class of
people who ought to be muffin consumers; and this he attributed to
the despair engendered by their being placed beyond the reach of that
nutritious article, which drove them to seek a false stimulant in
intoxicating liquors. He would undertake to prove before a committee of
the House of Commons, that there existed a combination to keep up the
price of muffins, and to give the bellmen a monopoly; he would prove it
by bellmen at the bar of that House; and he would also prove, that these
men corresponded with each other by secret words and signs as ‘Snooks,’
‘Walker,’ ‘Ferguson,’ ‘Is Murphy right?’ and many others. It was
this melancholy state of things that the Company proposed to correct;
firstly, by prohibiting, under heavy penalties, all private muffin
trading of every description; secondly, by themselves supplying the
public generally, and the poor at their own homes, with muffins of first
quality at reduced prices. It was with this object that a bill had
been introduced into Parliament by their patriotic chairman Sir Matthew
Pupker; it was this bill that they had met to support; it was the
supporters of this bill who would confer undying brightness and
splendour upon England, under the name of the United Metropolitan
Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet Baking and Punctual Delivery Company;
he would add, with a capital of Five Millions, in five hundred thousand
shares of ten pounds each.
Mr. Ralph Nickleby seconded the resolution, and another gentleman having
moved that it be amended by the insertion of the words ‘and crumpet’
after the word ‘muffin,’ whenever it occurred, it was carried
triumphantly. Only one man in the crowd cried ‘No!’ and he was promptly
taken into custody, and straightway borne off.
The second resolution, which recognised the expediency of immediately
abolishing ‘all muffin (or crumpet) sellers, all traders in muffins (or
crumpets) of whatsoever description, whether male or female, boys or
men, ringing hand-bells or otherwise,’ was moved by a grievous gentleman
of semi-clerical appearance, who went at once into such deep pathetics,
that he knocked the first speaker clean out of the course in no time.
You might have heard a pin fall--a pin! a feather--as he described
the cruelties inflicted on muffin boys by their masters, which he
very wisely urged were in themselves a sufficient reason for the
establishment of that inestimable company. It seemed that the unhappy
youths were nightly turned out into the wet streets at the most
inclement periods of the year, to wander about, in darkness and rain--or
it might be hail or snow--for hours together, without shelter, food,
or warmth; and let the public never forget upon the latter point, that
while the muffins were provided with warm clothing and blankets,
the boys were wholly unprovided for, and left to their own miserable
resources. (Shame!) The honourable gentleman related one case of a
muffin boy, who having been exposed to this inhuman and barbarous system
for no less than five years, at length fell a victim to a cold in the
head, beneath which he gradually sunk until he fell into a perspiration
and recovered; this he could vouch for, on his own authority, but he
had heard (and he had no reason to doubt the fact) of a still more
heart-rending and appalling circumstance. He had heard of the case of an
orphan muffin boy, who, having been run over by a hackney carriage, had
been removed to the hospital, had undergone the amputation of his
leg below the knee, and was now actually pursuing his occupation on
crutches. Fountain of justice, were these things to last!
This was the department of the subject that took the meeting, and this
was the style of speaking to enlist their sympathies. The men shouted;
the ladies wept into their pocket-handkerchiefs till they were moist,
and waved them till they were dry; the excitement was tremendous; and
Mr. Nickleby whispered his friend that the shares were thenceforth at a
premium of five-and-twenty per cent.
The resolution was, of course, carried with loud acclamations, every
man holding up both hands in favour of it, as he would in his enthusiasm
have held up both legs also, if he could have conveniently accomplished
it. This done, the draft of the proposed petition was read at length:
and the petition said, as all petitions DO say, that the petitioners
were very humble, and the petitioned very honourable, and the object
very virtuous; therefore (said the petition) the bill ought to be passed
into a law at once, to the everlasting honour and glory of that most
honourable and glorious Commons of England in Parliament assembled.
Then, the gentleman who had been at Crockford’s all night, and who
looked something the worse about the eyes in consequence, came forward
to tell his fellow-countrymen what a speech he meant to make in favour
of that petition whenever it should be presented, and how desperately he
meant to taunt the parliament if they rejected the bill; and to inform
them also, that he regretted his honourable friends had not inserted a
clause rendering the purchase of muffins and crumpets compulsory upon
all classes of the community, which he--opposing all half-measures,
and preferring to go the extreme animal--pledged himself to propose
and divide upon, in committee. After announcing this determination, the
honourable gentleman grew jocular; and as patent boots, lemon-coloured
kid gloves, and a fur coat collar, assist jokes materially, there
was immense laughter and much cheering, and moreover such a brilliant
display of ladies’ pocket-handkerchiefs, as threw the grievous gentleman
quite into the shade.
And when the petition had been read and was about to be adopted, there
came forward the Irish member (who was a young gentleman of ardent
temperament,) with such a speech as only an Irish member can make,
breathing the true soul and spirit of poetry, and poured forth with such
fervour, that it made one warm to look at him; in the course whereof,
he told them how he would demand the extension of that great boon to his
native country; how he would claim for her equal rights in the muffin
laws as in all other laws; and how he yet hoped to see the day when
crumpets should be toasted in her lowly cabins, and muffin bells should
ring in her rich green valleys. And, after him, came the Scotch member,
with various pleasant allusions to the probable amount of profits, which
increased the good humour that the poetry had awakened; and all the
speeches put together did exactly what they were intended to do, and
established in the hearers’ minds that there was no speculation
so promising, or at the same time so praiseworthy, as the United
Metropolitan Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet Baking and Punctual
Delivery Company.
So, the petition in favour of the bill was agreed upon, and the meeting
adjourned with acclamations, and Mr. Nickleby and the other directors
went to the office to lunch, as they did every day at half-past one
o’clock; and to remunerate themselves for which trouble, (as the company
was yet in its infancy,) they only charged three guineas each man for
every such attendance.