The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby | Page 5

should be deemed impossible. That there are, upon
record, trials at law in which damages have been sought as a poor
recompense for lasting agonies and disfigurements inflicted upon
children by the treatment of the master in these places, involving such
offensive and foul details of neglect, cruelty, and disease, as no writer
of fiction would have the boldness to imagine. And that, since he has
been engaged upon these Adventures, he has received, from private
quarters far beyond the reach of suspicion or distrust, accounts of
atrocities, in the perpetration of which upon neglected or repudiated
children, these schools have been the main instruments, very far
exceeding any that appear in these pages."
This comprises all I need say on the subject; except that if I had seen
occasion, I had resolved to reprint a few of these details of legal
proceedings, from certain old newspapers.
One other quotation from the same Preface may serve to introduce a

fact that my readers may think curious.
"To turn to a more pleasant subject, it may be right to say, that there
ARE two characters in this book which are drawn from life. It is
remarkable that what we call the world, which is so very credulous in
what professes to be true, is most incredulous in what professes to be
imaginary; and that, while, every day in real life, it will allow in one
man no blemishes, and in another no virtues, it will seldom admit a
very strongly-marked character, either good or bad, in a fictitious
narrative, to be within the limits of probability. But those who take an
interest in this tale, will be glad to learn that the BROTHERS
CHEERYBLE live; that their liberal charity, their singleness of heart,
their noble nature, and their unbounded benevolence, are no creations
of the Author's brain; but are prompting every day (and oftenest by
stealth) some munificent and generous deed in that town of which they
are the pride and honour."
If I were to attempt to sum up the thousands of letters, from all sorts of
people in all sorts of latitudes and climates, which this unlucky
paragraph brought down upon me, I should get into an arithmetical
difficulty from which I could not easily extricate myself. Suffice it to
say, that I believe the applications for loans, gifts, and offices of profit
that I have been requested to forward to the originals of the
BROTHERS CHEERYBLE (with whom I never interchanged any
communication in my life) would have exhausted the combined
patronage of all the Lord Chancellors since the accession of the House
of Brunswick, and would have broken the Rest of the Bank of England.
The Brothers are now dead.
There is only one other point, on which I would desire to offer a remark.
If Nicholas be not always found to be blameless or agreeable, he is not
always intended to appear so. He is a young man of an impetuous
temper and of little or no experience; and I saw no reason why such a
hero should be lifted out of nature.

CHAPTER 1
Introduces all the Rest
There once lived, in a sequestered part of the county of Devonshire,
one Mr Godfrey Nickleby: a worthy gentleman, who, taking it into his
head rather late in life that he must get married, and not being young
enough or rich enough to aspire to the hand of a lady of fortune, had
wedded an old flame out of mere attachment, who in her turn had taken
him for the same reason. Thus two people who cannot afford to play
cards 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 be better
likened to two principals in a sparring match, who, when fortune is low
and backers scarce, will chivalrously set to, for the mere pleasure of the
buffeting; and in one respect indeed this comparison would hold good;
for, as the adventurous pair of the Fives' Court will afterwards send
round a hat, and trust to the bounty of the lookers-on for the means of
regaling themselves, so Mr Godfrey Nickleby and HIS partner, the
honeymoon being over, looked out wistfully into the world, relying in
no inconsiderable degree upon chance for the improvement of their
means. Mr Nickleby's income, at the period of his marriage, fluctuated
between sixty and eighty pounds PER ANNUM.
There are people enough in the world, Heaven knows! and even in
London (where Mr Nickleby dwelt in those days) but few complaints
prevail, of the population being scanty. It is extraordinary how long a
man may look among the crowd without discovering the face of a
friend, but it is no less