Introduces all the Rest.
There once lived, in a sequestered part of the county ofDevonshire, one Mr Godfrey Nickleby: a worthygentleman, who, taking it into his head rather late in lifethat he must get married, and not being young enough or richenough to aspire to the hand of a lady of fortune, had wedded anold flame out of mere attachment, who in her turn had taken himfor the same reason. Thus two people who cannot afford to playcards for money, sometimes sit down to a quiet game for love.
Some ill-conditioned persons who sneer at the life-matrimonial,may perhaps suggest, in this place, that the good couple would bebetter likened to two principals in a sparring match, who, whenfortune is low and backers scarce, will chivalrously set to, for themere pleasure of the buffeting; and in one respect indeed thiscomparison would hold good; for, as the adventurous pair of theFives’ Court will afterwards send round a hat, and trust to thebounty of the lookers-on for the means of regaling themselves, soMr Godfrey Nickleby and his partner, the honeymoon being over,looked out wistfully into the world, relying in no inconsiderabledegree upon chance for the improvement of their means. MrNickleby’s income, at the period of his marriage, fluctuatedbetween sixty and eighty pounds per annum.
There are people enough in the world, Heaven knows! and evenin London (where Mr Nickleby dwelt in those days) but fewcomplaints prevail, of the population being scanty. It is extraordinary how long a man may look among the crowd withoutdiscovering the face of a friend, but it is no less true. Mr Nicklebylooked, and looked, till his eyes became sore as his heart, but nofriend appeared; and when, growing tired of the search, he turnedhis eyes homeward, he saw very little there to relieve his wearyvision. A painter who has gazed too long upon some glaringcolour, refreshes his dazzled sight by looking upon a darker andmore sombre tint; but everything that met Mr Nickleby’s gazewore so black and gloomy a hue, that he would have been beyonddescription refreshed by the very reverse of the contrast.
At length, after five years, when Mrs Nickleby had presentedher husband with a couple of sons, and that embarrassedgentleman, impressed with the necessity of making someprovision for his family, was seriously revolving in his mind a littlecommercial speculation of insuring his life next quarter-day, andthen falling from the top of the Monument by accident, therecame, one morning, by the general post, a black-bordered letter toinform him how his uncle, Mr Ralph Nickleby, was dead, and hadleft him the bulk of his little property, amounting in all to fivethousand pounds sterling.
As the deceased had taken no further notice of his nephew inhis lifetime, than sending to his eldest boy (who had beenchristened after him, on desperate speculation) a silver spoon in amorocco case, which, as he had not too much to eat with it,seemed a kind of satire upon his having been born without thatuseful article of plate in his mouth, Mr Godfrey Nickleby could, atfirst, scarcely believe the tidings thus conveyed to him. Onexamination, however, they turned out to be strictly correct. Theamiable old gentleman, it seemed, had intended to leave the whole to the Royal Humane Society, and had indeed executed a will tothat effect; but the Institution, having been unfortunate enough, afew months before, to save the life of a poor relation to whom hepaid a weekly allowance of three shillings and sixpence, he had, ina fit of very natural exasperation, revoked the bequest in a codicil,and left it all to Mr Godfrey Nickleby; with a special mention of hisindignation, not only against the society for saving the poorrelation’s life, but against the poor relation also, for allowinghimself to be saved.
With a portion of this property Mr Godfrey Nickleby purchaseda small farm, near Dawlish in Devonshire, whither he retired withhis wife and two children, to live upon the best interest he couldget for the rest of his money, and the little produce he could raisefrom his land. The two prospered so well together that, when hedied, some fifteen years after this period, and some five after hiswife, he was enabled to leave, to his eldest son, Ralph, threethousand pounds in cash, and to his youngest son, Nicholas, onethousand and the farm, which was as small a landed estate as onewould desire to see.
These two brothers had been brought up together in a school atExeter; and, being accustomed to go home once a week, had oftenheard, from their mother’s lips, long accounts of their father’ssufferings in his days of poverty, and of their deceased uncle’simportance in his days of affluence: which recitals produced a verydifferent impression on the two: for, while the younger, who was ofa timid and retiring disposition, gleaned from thence nothing butforewarnings to shun the great world and attach himself to thequiet routine of a country life, Ralph, the elder, deduced from theoften-repeated tale the two great morals that riches are the only true source of happiness and power, and that it is lawful and justto compass their acquisition by all means short of felony. ‘And,’
reasoned Ralph with himself, ‘if no good came of my uncle’smoney when he was alive, a great deal of good came of it after hewas dead, inasmuch as my father has got it now, and is saving it upfor me, which is a highly virtuous purpose; and, going back to theold gentleman, good did come of it to him too, for he had thepleasure of thinking of it all his life long, and of being envied andcourted by all his family besides.’ And Ralph always wound upthese mental soliloquies by arriving at the conclusion, that therewas nothing like money.
Not confining himself to theory, or permitting his faculties torust, even at that early age, in mere abstract speculations, thispromising lad commenced usurer on a limited scale at school;putting out at good interest a small capital of slate-pencil andmarbles, and gradually extending his operations until they aspiredto the copper coinage of this realm, in which he speculated toconsiderable advantage. Nor did he trouble his borrowers withabstract calculations of figures, or references to ready-reckoners;his simple rule of interest being all comprised in the one goldensentence, ‘two-pence for every half-penny,’ which greatlysimplified the accounts, and which, as a familiar precept, moreeasily acquired and retained in the memory than any known ruleof arithmetic, cannot be too strongly recommended to the notice ofcapitalists, both large and small, and more especially of money-brokers and bill-discounters. Indeed, to do these gentlemenjustice, many of them are to this day in the frequent habit ofadopting it, with eminent success.
In like manner, did young Ralph Nickleby avoid all those minute and intricate calculations of odd days, which nobody whohas worked sums in simple-interest can fail to have found mostembarrassing, by establishing the one general rule that all sums ofprincipal and interest should be paid on pocket-money day, that isto say, on Saturday: and that whether a loan were contracted onthe Monday, or on the Friday, the amount of interest should be, inboth cases, the same. Indeed he argued, and with great show ofreason, that it ought to be rather more for one day than for five,inasmuch as the borrower might in the former case be very fairlypresumed to be in great extremity, otherwise he would not borrowat all with such odds against him. This fact is interesting, asillustrating the secret connection and sympathy which alwaysexist between great minds. Though Master Ralph Nickleby wasnot at that time aware of it, the class of gentlemen before alludedto, proceed on just the same principle in all their transactions.
From what we have said of this young gentleman, and thenatural admiration the reader will immediately conceive of hischaracter, it may perhaps be inferred that he is to be the hero ofthe work which we shall presently begin. To set this point at rest,for once and for ever, we hasten to undeceive them, and stride toits commencement.
On the death of his father, Ralph Nickleby, who had been sometime before placed in a mercantile house in London, appliedhimself passionately to his old pursuit of money-getting, in whichhe speedily became so buried and absorbed, that he quite forgothis brother for many years; and if, at times, a recollection of his oldplayfellow broke upon him through the haze in which he lived—for gold conjures up a mist about a man, more destructive of all hisold senses and lulling to his feelings than the fumes of charcoal—it brought along with it a companion thought, that if they wereintimate he would want to borrow money of him. So, Mr RalphNickleby shrugged his shoulders, and said things were better asthey were.
As for Nicholas, he lived a single man on the patrimonial estateuntil he grew tired of living alone, and then he took to wife thedaughter of a neighbouring gentleman with a dower of onethousand pounds. This good lady bore him two children, a son anda daughter, and when the son was about nineteen, and thedaughter fourteen, as near as we can guess—impartial records ofyoung ladies’ ages being, before the passing of the new act,nowhere preserved in the registries of this country—Mr Nicklebylooked about him for the means of repairing his capital, now sadlyreduced by this increase in his family, and the expenses of theireducation.
‘Speculate with it,’ said Mrs Nickleby.
‘Spec-u-late, my dear?’ said Mr Nickleby, as though in doubt.
‘Why not?’ asked Mrs Nickleby.
‘Because, my dear, if we should lose it,’ rejoined Mr Nickleby,who was a slow and time-taking speaker, ‘if we should lose it, weshall no longer be able to live, my dear.’
‘Fiddle,’ said Mrs Nickleby.
‘I am not altogether sure of that, my dear,’ said Mr Nickleby.
‘There’s Nicholas,’ pursued the lady, ‘quite a young man—it’stime he was in the way of doing something for himself; and Katetoo, poor girl, without a penny in the world. Think of your brother!
Would he be what he is, if he hadn’t speculated?’
‘That’s true,’ replied Mr Nickleby. ‘Very good, my dear. Yes. Iwill speculate, my dear.’
Speculation is a round game; the players see little or nothing oftheir cards at first starting; gains may be great—and so may losses.
The run of luck went against Mr Nickleby. A mania prevailed, abubble burst, four stock-brokers took villa residences at Florence,four hundred nobodies were ruined, and among them MrNickleby.
‘The very house I live in,’ sighed the poor gentleman, ‘may betaken from me tomorrow. Not an article of my old furniture, butwill be sold to strangers!’
The last reflection hurt him so much, that he took at once to hisbed; apparently resolved to keep that, at all events.
‘Cheer up, sir!’ said the apothecary.
‘You mustn’t let yourself be cast down, sir,’ said the nurse.
‘Such things happen every day,’ remarked the lawyer.
‘And it is very sinful to rebel against them,’ whispered theclergyman.
‘And what no man with a family ought to do,’ added theneighbours.
Mr Nickleby shook his head, and motioning them all out of theroom, embraced his wife and children, and having pressed themby turns to his languidly beating heart, sunk exhausted on hispillow. They were concerned to find that his reason went astrayafter this; for he babbled, for a long time, about the generosity andgoodness of his brother, and the merry old times when they wereat school together. This fit of wandering past, he solemnlycommended them to One who never deserted the widow or herfatherless children, and, smiling gently on them, turned upon hisface, and observed, that he thought he could fall asleep.