Dickensalong 2023- 2024 : Nicholas Nickleby

[Piggywaspushed]

Come along and join me in the next Dickens readalong.

We have chosen Nicholas Nickleby which was originally published by Dickens in 19 instalments.

I propose condensing this to a nine month read, using Dickens shorter sections as a guide. We begin in October, as follows:

October - Chapters 1 - 7
November - Chapters 8-14
December - Chapters 15-23
January - Chapters 24-29
February - Chapters 30-36
March - Chapters 37-42
April - Chapters 43-51
May - Chapters 52-58
and finishing in
June 2024 - Chapters 59 - end

Summoning old faithfuls and newcomers, one and all!

Oh, whoops!

No worries! Thought I had forgotten a whole subplot for a moment 😄

Thanks for the comments, everyone! I enjoyed this section a lot too.

I thought Smike's reaction to being caught again by Squeers was quite plausible in terms of how trauma operates: he just freezes and returns to his former terrified, abused self 😥. Bless John Browdie! I'm relieved that you call Dickens' rendition of Browdie's accent 'bonkers', Piggy. I thought maybe it was just me as an American who found it very hard going.

Browdie kind of reminds me of Hagrid in Harry Potter 😁

Interesting point, Fuzzy, about how censorious Nicholas is about the idea of his mother remarrying. She's probably not very old either! On the other hand, there's a comic parallel in this section between both Nicholas and his mum being unlucky in their romantic adventures!

It's quite chilling the way that Ralph deliberately does his best to goad Hawk into taking revenge on Nicholas.

Smike is such tragic invention. Dickens understood abuse.

Browdie, what with the vaguely Scottish name and the accent sounds Scottish in my head, so yes Hagrid (although when I first read HP I read Hagrid as West Country!). Most of the time I just approximate an understanding of what he is saying!

It's like Browdie is speaking in another language 😅but I also think of him speaking in a Scottish voice.

Thanks cassandre for verbalising that about Smike's trauma. It definitely* *felt like that to me as well.

Just thought I'd bump this to flag that the April section is longer, taking us up to the end of Chapter 51!

Thanks Piggy! I'll get cracking on it!

Forgive me for spamming the What I'm Reading board but just in case anyone has the time and inclination for a new Fallen Woman Readalong - we'll be starting Dangerous Liaisons on 1st May.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/what_were_reading/5050452-did-she-fall-or-was-she-pushed-dangerous-liaisons-readalong-2024?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=share

Merry May! Pinch punch and all that!

This was an interesting instalment. Whilst still mining the same comedy seam of Mrs Nickleby and her cucumber man turned chimney invader, the plot seems to have added a whole load of new elements and be moving towards a romantic but dramatic conclusion with the delightful Madeline entering the clutches of a horrifically old and disgusting man. As ever, Dickens seems quite sensitive , at least in his writing, to the plight of young women especially those who find themselves in economically vulnerable situations and Madeline now forms a complement to Kate. She is quite irritatingly angel by the hearth , though (whereas cucumber guy is madman literally in the hearth…)

The duel was all most dramatic. I do fear Mulberry Hawk and his machinations. So many odious men in this book. The duel got me thinking : when was NN meant to be set? Duels feel a very Georgian thing, pistols at dawn and all that? Were men still duelling in Dickensian times? I know Dickens does tend to set some of his novels in a rather vague , not quite contemporaneous, point in time.

And I fear bad things on the way for Smike. So much foreshadowing. Don’t do it to me, Dickens. I want him to marry Miss La Creevy . Or Tim Linkinwater. Either is fine.

Good morning Piggy and everyone!

I thought this was a long but absorbing installment and we can see the conclusion of the story in the near distance. Dickens brought back the theatre troupe to say goodbye for example. That was nice.

The duel was surprising for me as well.
I took it that Mulberry Hawk has gone to France never to be seen again (because he killed a man) or is that wishful thinking?

I was bemused at the introduction of new characters at so late a stage in the book. There is old Nickleby's former partner whatever he's up to and also that frightful old fellow, the hopeful fiancé of Madeleine. Poor Madeleine.

I shouted nooo after reading the words 'dread the disease' with regards to Smike. He had better not. I will be seriously p*ssed off with Dickens if Smike dies. I think Smike is pining after Kate. Please let there be a happy ending for Smike. That is all.

I looked it up! The last fatal duel in England was actually in 1852 (Frenchmen on English soil) so quite a few years after this novel was written and the last between two Englishmen was 1845. But they were definitely very rare by Dicken's time. in a case of bizarre prescience the duel in 1845 involved a man called Hawkey!

Well now @Piggywaspushed isn't that interesting and Hawkey as well 😄
Also lol at Tim Linkenwater in your post 😅Tim is lovely. He'll do!

I really enjoyed this month’s segment, not least because I got to take a break from The New Life to read it.

Lots of intrigue going on - the plot to marry poor Madeleine to the dirty old man; whatever it is the ex-con knows about Ralph Nickleby. I feel like Dickens is very alert to the sexual threats facing vulnerable poor young women in this novel (Kate earlier on when she was being harassed by Hawk, now Madeleine with Arthur trying to get his paws on her). Felt sad that Lord Frederick got himself killed just at the moment he’d realised the truth about his ‘friend’ Hawk.

Its all been very episodic and unplanned-seeming as a novel (why are new characters coming in at this late stage?), but I’ve definitely enjoyed the journey so far.

I loved the bit with the mad next door neighbour in the chimney - another example of how funny Dickens can be. I was disappointed we didn’t get to hear Mrs N’s story of The Thirsty Woman of Tutbury! Or exactly what the Cock-Lane Ghost did improperly to the clergyman.

I was intrigued in the theatre chapter by NN’s long speech about playwrights taking partly written books and making up their own endings - definitely Dickens’ own words there!

I think the new characters are coming in so that the storylines can be satisfactorily resolved. It’s fun to see Dickens gathering the threads at this stage, starting to tighten them just slightly so that they’ll all be neatly and pleasingly aligned by the end.

On a side-note, I used to do some work that took me occasionally to an office in Cock Lane, in the City. It’s completely built of modern office-blocks now but it’s one of the oldest streets in London and just on its corner is where the Great Fire of London finally petered out (it’s also opposite Barts Hospital and body-snatching used to happen round there too). There’s a good piece about the area, and the 'ghost', here. Dickens knew it very well, and the Saracen's Head Inn, featured several times in NN, was just at the end of the road.

(edited for typos!)

Oh , yes, that really did seem to be Dickens pouring forth.

That's very interesting about the duels, Piggy, and them being mostly over by Dickens' time. The end of Chapter 50, with Verisopht's death, is classic sentimental Dickens in a way, but I found it very moving.

Fascinating link about Cock Lane, Terpsichore, thank you!

I did notice that the new characters Madeline Bray and Arthur Gride were almost caricatures of good and evil. Madeline is Angel at the Hearth / Angel at the House indeed. The story of the beautiful young girl being married off to the ugly, lecherous old man is a motif that goes back to the Middle Ages at least...

Dickens is good, however, at creating the character of the selfish man-child, who is happy to live at a woman's expense. Both Mr Mantalini and Mr Bray fit into that category. It was satisfying to see Mr Mantalini's days as cocklodger par excellence come to an end, ha! Though he'll probably just move on to his next female victim.

Chessie, I was also taken by the rant against plagiarists in the Crummles chapter. It wasn't very subtle, was it? 😂

There's a long footnote about it in my Mark Ford Penguin edition. I won't copy the whole thing, but it says that 'at least 25 stage versions of Nicholas Nickleby were produced while the novel was still appearing in instalments'. Apparently one stage version met with Dickens' approval, but 'He resented much more deeply a version by the hack dramatist W. T. Moncrieff, whom he is directly attacking here. Moncrieff's Nicholas Nickleby and Poor Smike or, The Victim of the Yorkshire School, produced at the Strand Theatre on 20 May 1839, includes a number of songs and a more than usually absurd denouement.' Apparently Montcrieff replied to Dickens' attack by accusing Dickens himself of plagiarism!

I find it fascinating that the novel was so popular that it was being plagiarised and turned into stage versions before it was even finished. Wow!

But it also shows what a theatrical quality this novel has, I think. It lends itself to the stage really well, as the 1980s RSC production I'm so fond of also shows. It's intriguing to think of the novel and stage versions of the story unfolding side by side.

And poor Smike indeed, with his unrequited love for Kate! I am actually completely drawn into the pathos of it all, but the rational part of me thinks Dickens is laying it on a bit thick. It's not enough just to be an abused orphan being chased across the country by your abuser; no, you also have to be suffering from a secret unrealisable love AND be gravely ill with consumption.

So died Lord Frederick Verisopht, by the hand which he had loaded with gifts, and clasped a thousand times; by the act of him, but for whom, and others like him, he might have lived a happy man, and died with children's faces round his bed.
The sun came proudly up in all his majesty, the noble river ran its winding course, the leaves quivered and rustled in the air, the birds poured their cheerful songs from every tree, the short-lived butterfly fluttered its little wings; all the light and life of day came on; and, amidst it all, and pressing down the grass whose every blade bore twenty tiny lives, lay the dead man, with his stark and rigid face turned upwards to the sky.

*
It's passages like that that make me realise I'm a hopeless Dickens fan. I just get a shiver down my spine.

That bit is properly poignant.

Yes, that passage was amazing

Totally agree. Dickens at his best.

Thank you for the link to that article @Terpsichore It was fascinating.

Chapters 52-58 this month everyone! Not quite so many.

Thanks Piggy! A short installment this time.

I have finished reading this instalment.
I have a tear in my eye.