"Total, all up with Squeers!" — Chap. LX, Fred Barnard's fifty-fifth illustration for "Nicholas Nickleby" (1875)

"Total, all up with Squeers!" — Chap. LX, p. 396; fifty-fifth illustration for the British Household Edition, illustrated by Fred Barnard with fifty-nine composite woodblock engravings (1875). The framed illustration is 9.3 cm high by 13.6 cm wide (3 ⅝ by 5 ⅜ inches), p. 396. Running head: "Something Hidden in the Shadow" (397). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

Passage Illustrated: Ralph Nickleby Brought to Book

"What document was it that you had?" asked Ralph, evading, for the moment, the point just raised.

"What document? Why, the document," replied Squeers. "The Madeline What’s-her-name one. It was a will; that’s what it was."

"Of what nature, whose will, when dated, how benefiting her, to what extent?" asked Ralph hurriedly.

"A will in her favour; that’s all I know," rejoined Squeers, "and that’s more than you’d have known, if you’d had them bellows on your head. It’s all owing to your precious caution that they got hold of it. If you had let me burn it, and taken my word that it was gone, it would have been a heap of ashes behind the fire, instead of being whole and sound, inside of my great-coat."

"Beaten at every point!" muttered Ralph.

"Ah!" sighed Squeers, who, between the brandy and water and his broken head, wandered strangely, "at the delightful village of Dotheboys near Greta Bridge in Yorkshire, youth are boarded, clothed, booked, washed, furnished with pocket-money, provided with all necessaries, instructed in all languages living and dead, mathematics, orthography, geometry, astronomy, trigonometry—this is a altered state of trigonomics, this is! A double 1—all, everything—a cobbler’s weapon. U-p-up, adjective, not down. S-q-u-double e-r-s-Squeers, noun substantive, a educator of youth. Total, all up with Squeers!" [Chapter LX, "The Dangers Thicken, and the Worst is Told," 394-395]

Commentary: Ralph's Comeuppance

Having been denounced by his own clerk, Newman Noggs, at the Cheerybles' offices in the City, Ralph Nickleby tries to track down Wackford Squeers, who he had hoped would locate the Bray will among the papers that Peg Sliderskew purloined from Arthur Gride. He does not find Squeers at his temporary apartments in Lambeth, overlooking the Thames. He therefore decides to visit Gride nearby.

Gride refuses to come down to the front door to talk to Ralph, feeling that putting some distance between himself and his fellow plotter may yet spare him a prison sentence. Next, Ralph visits Squeers at the local police station, where he has been incarcerated for being in possession of a stolen document: the Bray wiil. Since the Magistrate wants the police to investigate Squeers's burning Gride's stole legal papers and the nature of his relationship to the original thief, Gride's housekeeper, Squeers is to be held without bail for a week. His accommodations may be dark and dingy and ill-illuminated, but at least he has access to brandy-and-water, the effects of which he is sleeping off when Ralph interviews him. Squeers tells Ralph that he had the will which Ralph wanted until Ralph's clerk, Newman Noggs, hit him on the head with a bellows. And now Squeers is trying to decide whether to implicate Nickleby, or simply say that he was acting as Nickleby's agent and knew nothing about the papers. Ralph assures him that he will soon be at liberty, affecting a good-humoured demeanour in order to prevent Squeers from impeaching him.

Barnard casts Ralph in the interview as a figure in black to imply that ill-fortune is now closing in on both him and his agent, Squeers. Squeers, having been struck on the head and having bled profusely, has head head wrapped in a bandage, and looks much the worse for wear. The illustrator conveys little of Ralph's reaction to Squeers's remarks, but is clearly absorbing what his minion says as he tries to develop a plan to exonerate both of them. He even suggests that they may sue the authorities for false arrest, since the case against Peg Sliderskew may not implicate either of them as co-conspirators.

Related material, including front matter and sketches, by other illustrators

Scanned image, colour correction, sizing, caption, and commentary by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose, as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image, and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Bibliography

Barnard, J. "Fred" (il.). Charles Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby, with fifty-nine illustrations. The Works of Charles Dickens: The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1875. XV. Rpt. 1890.

Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. P., 1988.

Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 1998.

Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. With fifty-two illustrations by C. S. Reinhart. The Household Edition. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1872. I.

__________. Nicholas Nickleby. With 39 illustrations by Hablot K. Browne ("Phiz"). London: Chapman & Hall, 1839.

__________. Nicholas Nickleby. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. 4.

__________. "Nicholas Nickleby." Scenes and Characters from the Works of Charles Dickens, being eight hundred and sixty-six drawings by Fred Barnard et al. Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1908.

Created 23 September 20211