<p><SPAN name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"></SPAN></p>
<h2> CHAPTER 2 </h2>
<p>Of Mr Ralph Nickleby, and his Establishments, and his Undertakings, and of
a great Joint Stock Company of vast national Importance</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>'Was that half-past twelve, Noggs?' said Mr Nickleby, in a sharp and
grating voice.</p>
<p>'Not more than five-and-twenty minutes by the—' Noggs was going to
add public-house clock, but recollecting himself, substituted 'regular
time.'</p>
<p>'My watch has stopped,' said Mr Nickleby; 'I don't know from what cause.'</p>
<p>'Not wound up,' said Noggs.</p>
<p>'Yes it is,' said Mr Nickleby.</p>
<p>'Over-wound then,' rejoined Noggs.</p>
<p>'That can't very well be,' observed Mr Nickleby.</p>
<p>'Must be,' said Noggs.</p>
<p>'Well!' said Mr Nickleby, putting the repeater back in his pocket;
'perhaps it is.'</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>'I am going to the London Tavern this morning,' said Mr Nickleby.</p>
<p>'Public meeting?' inquired Noggs.</p>
<p>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.'</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>'The bell,' said Noggs, as though in explanation. 'At home?'</p>
<p>'Yes.'</p>
<p>'To anybody?'</p>
<p>'Yes.'</p>
<p>'To the tax-gatherer?'</p>
<p>'No! Let him call again.'</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>'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.'</p>
<p>'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.</p>
<p>'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.'</p>
<p>'And when they ARE at a premium,' said Mr Ralph Nickleby, smiling.</p>
<p>'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.'</p>
<p>'Yes, poor devil!' replied Ralph, drawing on his gloves. 'Though Newman
Noggs kept his horses and hounds once.'</p>
<p>'Ay, ay?' said the other carelessly.</p>
<p>'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—'</p>
<p>'Done business with him,' said Mr Bonney with a meaning look.</p>
<p>'Just so,' replied Ralph; 'I couldn't lend it, you know.'</p>
<p>'Oh, of course not.'</p>
<p>'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.'</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>'Hear!' cried a gentleman with a double chin, as Mr Bonney presented
himself. 'Chair, gentlemen, chair!'</p>
<p>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!'</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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!</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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!</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />