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Entry tags:
Music Hall Turns
May 2011
Nicholas Nickleby - Charles Dickens - Penguin Classics, 1999
* * * *
Many voracious readers will have played the game of author bingo, in which you tick off their major works and call "house!" when you have read them all. It is a bittersweet moment. On the one hand there is pride in the achievement of what may have been a very long-term project, particularly if the author's body of work is substantial. On the other, there is the melancholy realisation that you will never again experience the thrill of encountering a full flower of their imagination for the first time. There are some pleasures to be had from re-reading or delving into minor works, but they are not the same.
I have now reached that point with Charles Dickens. This was the only one of his twelve major novels that I hadn't read, and while it isn't the best (that was Great Expectations), it is particularly interesting for the way in which it prefigures the themes and tropes of later and greater works. So not a bad one to end on.
Dickens is an unusual author in that he improved steadily with age. The early novels - The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, Barnaby Rudge, The Old Curiosity Shop and Martin Chuzzlewit - tend to rely on (dated) humour and undeveloped caricatures. Movement is a constant theme, with no situation lasting longer than 100 pages and no characters followed for more than a few chapters. A case in point here is the famous depiction of Wackford Squeers (surely one of the most inspired names in the whole of literature) and Dotheboys Hall, which is done and dusted in the first quarter of the book. Squeers does of course make subsequent reappearances but has no real agency of his own.
Another of the flaws in the early novels is the clean-cut distinction between the good guys and the bad. Here the main plot is a rather tiresome wicked uncle story, with Uncle Ralph - a clear try-out for Ebenezer Scrooge - making the lives of Nicholas, his sister Kate and their silly mother a misery. Though even he is not the most unpleasant character in the book; Sir Mulberry Hawk, a parasite who lives off rich lords, takes that honour.
As usual, the least believable characters are those drawn from real life. Squeers himself comes across as a caricature of a tight-fisted Yorkshireman but is apparently an amalgam of the schoolmasters whom Dickens met while researching the novel. The worst example, however, is the Cheeryble brothers, who are as nauseatingly benevolent as their name would suggest and who in real life would surely have ruined their business in very short order, but whom Dickens firmly proclaims are genuine.
Of the main characters, I have a soft spot for Nicholas himself, who while still a Victorian idealisation is unusually active for a Dickens hero and has an interesting habit of resorting to physical violence when faced with what he perceives as villainy. Though his duffing up of a puffed-up rival in Mr Crummles' theatrical troupe leaves a sour taste in the mouth. Interestingly this seems to have been deliberate - Dickens states that he was not meant to seem always "blameless or agreeable". So Nicholas is an early and primitive example of the flawed hero, a type that Dickens goes on to do rather better in Great Expectations. Kate is a typical Dickens heroine - one area where he never did improve was in his portrayal of women - but does at least show some spirit and independence of thought. Smike, a simple minded youth whom Nicholas rescues from Dotheboys Hall, is clearly an early try-out for some of the innocent child characters that would appear in later novels.
Life among the caricatures is rather better. I particularly liked the the Kenwigses, a lower class family whose lionising of a rich elderly neighbour has absolutely nothing to do with the hope that he will leave large amounts of money to their children in his will. The portrayal of their poverty-stricken pride and social snobbery would seem cruel and demeaning were it not done with such obvious affection. Dickens was clearly aware of his duty to bring the trials of the poor to the attention of his largely middle-class audience.
The Crummles, the proprietors of a theatrical troupe that Nicholas joins after leaving Dotheboys Hall, are another affectionately cruel depiction, but illustrate the joy and also the most glaring flaws in this and the other early novels, which are the lack of thematic connection and the jarring changes of tone. It feels very like one of the Crummles' own shows - a series of music hall turns with something new every five minutes, tragedy one moment, comedy the next, with only the barest of plots to link them all together. What is interesting about Nicholas Nickleby, however, is the number of character types, themes and scenes that would be later be developed into fully fledged novels of their own. The book itself may be incoherent, but as a marker of Dickens' literary development it is fascinating.
Nicholas Nickleby - Charles Dickens - Penguin Classics, 1999
* * * *
Many voracious readers will have played the game of author bingo, in which you tick off their major works and call "house!" when you have read them all. It is a bittersweet moment. On the one hand there is pride in the achievement of what may have been a very long-term project, particularly if the author's body of work is substantial. On the other, there is the melancholy realisation that you will never again experience the thrill of encountering a full flower of their imagination for the first time. There are some pleasures to be had from re-reading or delving into minor works, but they are not the same.
I have now reached that point with Charles Dickens. This was the only one of his twelve major novels that I hadn't read, and while it isn't the best (that was Great Expectations), it is particularly interesting for the way in which it prefigures the themes and tropes of later and greater works. So not a bad one to end on.
Dickens is an unusual author in that he improved steadily with age. The early novels - The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, Barnaby Rudge, The Old Curiosity Shop and Martin Chuzzlewit - tend to rely on (dated) humour and undeveloped caricatures. Movement is a constant theme, with no situation lasting longer than 100 pages and no characters followed for more than a few chapters. A case in point here is the famous depiction of Wackford Squeers (surely one of the most inspired names in the whole of literature) and Dotheboys Hall, which is done and dusted in the first quarter of the book. Squeers does of course make subsequent reappearances but has no real agency of his own.
Another of the flaws in the early novels is the clean-cut distinction between the good guys and the bad. Here the main plot is a rather tiresome wicked uncle story, with Uncle Ralph - a clear try-out for Ebenezer Scrooge - making the lives of Nicholas, his sister Kate and their silly mother a misery. Though even he is not the most unpleasant character in the book; Sir Mulberry Hawk, a parasite who lives off rich lords, takes that honour.
As usual, the least believable characters are those drawn from real life. Squeers himself comes across as a caricature of a tight-fisted Yorkshireman but is apparently an amalgam of the schoolmasters whom Dickens met while researching the novel. The worst example, however, is the Cheeryble brothers, who are as nauseatingly benevolent as their name would suggest and who in real life would surely have ruined their business in very short order, but whom Dickens firmly proclaims are genuine.
Of the main characters, I have a soft spot for Nicholas himself, who while still a Victorian idealisation is unusually active for a Dickens hero and has an interesting habit of resorting to physical violence when faced with what he perceives as villainy. Though his duffing up of a puffed-up rival in Mr Crummles' theatrical troupe leaves a sour taste in the mouth. Interestingly this seems to have been deliberate - Dickens states that he was not meant to seem always "blameless or agreeable". So Nicholas is an early and primitive example of the flawed hero, a type that Dickens goes on to do rather better in Great Expectations. Kate is a typical Dickens heroine - one area where he never did improve was in his portrayal of women - but does at least show some spirit and independence of thought. Smike, a simple minded youth whom Nicholas rescues from Dotheboys Hall, is clearly an early try-out for some of the innocent child characters that would appear in later novels.
Life among the caricatures is rather better. I particularly liked the the Kenwigses, a lower class family whose lionising of a rich elderly neighbour has absolutely nothing to do with the hope that he will leave large amounts of money to their children in his will. The portrayal of their poverty-stricken pride and social snobbery would seem cruel and demeaning were it not done with such obvious affection. Dickens was clearly aware of his duty to bring the trials of the poor to the attention of his largely middle-class audience.
The Crummles, the proprietors of a theatrical troupe that Nicholas joins after leaving Dotheboys Hall, are another affectionately cruel depiction, but illustrate the joy and also the most glaring flaws in this and the other early novels, which are the lack of thematic connection and the jarring changes of tone. It feels very like one of the Crummles' own shows - a series of music hall turns with something new every five minutes, tragedy one moment, comedy the next, with only the barest of plots to link them all together. What is interesting about Nicholas Nickleby, however, is the number of character types, themes and scenes that would be later be developed into fully fledged novels of their own. The book itself may be incoherent, but as a marker of Dickens' literary development it is fascinating.