I made two Nicholas Nickleby memes

Using Phiz's illustrations. I think VIBE CHECK is my favourite.

The Society for Theatre Research did a Zoom production of Nicholas Nickleby and it was Good

Earlier this month, I went to the theatre - without leaving the house! The Society for Theatre Research held an online performance of Edward Stirling’s 1838 adaptation of Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby, with a versatile and enthusiastic cast. There was a brief contextualising explanation at the start, and then the performance kicked off - and what a performance it was - and you can watch it here! 

The company all had great fun performing, and all communicated their characters very effectively over Zoom, with appropriate subtleties and exuberances as required. They were very properly attired, with a splendid profusion of hats and other accoutrements, and a fine range of suitable props - sometimes it looked like a big Victorian video-chat party, which I suppose it was - and it was all excellent!

The script was that of the first ever adaption of Nickleby, and was first performed well before Dickens had even finished the novel. (The whole text of the play is available to read here!) Every month from March 1838 to September 1839, a new instalment of Nickleby would come out, containing a few chapters, two illustrations by Dickens’ mate Phiz, and a bunch of adverts and extra bits, and each instalment would cost one shilling (except the last, which was a double number and cost two). In November 1838, Stirling’s adaptation premiered at the Adelphi Theatre, on the Strand, in London.

Given my research interests, this post is mainly going to be about contextualising the first stage depiction of Wackford Squeers, comparing this with Nickleby and with some fragments of information about Yorkshire schools, and some ideas I had after watching the STR's performance.

The play opens in the Saracen’s Head, Snow Hill - a coaching inn - and we’re immediately introduced to Mr. Squeers (played by Mark Fox in the STR's version), a Yorkshire schoolmaster who quickly establishes himself as a villain, generally being disagreeable (with a façade of benevolence) in ways that Nickleby readers will recognise from his first appearance in the novel in Chapter 4. 

Upon the arrival of Ralph Nickleby (played by Steve Fitzpatrick) and his nephew Nicholas (Hugh-Guy Lorriman), Squeers begins to reel off his advert, as he does in the book, and which the 1838 audience would have recognised from schoolmasters' adverts they'd have seen in the newspapers. 

The script contains descriptions of costumes for all the characters, and here's the one for Wackford Squeers: "Black coat, waistcoat, pantaloons, Hessian boots, dark great-coat, comforter and gloves, black hat. 2nd dress. - Drab morning-gown." I've borrowed the basic elements of that and put it on my version of Squeers, who's mainly based on Phiz's version. Not gonna lie, this was mostly an excuse to draw him because I enjoy doing all the marks on his face.

The schoolmaster also explicitly mentions two towels in the first scene, while in Act 1 Scene 3, he says that the inhabitants of Dotheboys Hall get up at seven in the morning during winter, and six in the summer. However, comparing this with Nickleby, in Chapter 7, he only mentions getting up at seven - nothing about six - and isn't specific about the number of towels. Now, anybody familiar with the finer points of the 1823 ophthalmia trials (in which William Shaw was taken to court by two families for allowing their sons' sight to be damaged) will recognise the two towels - Shaw only provided two for his entire school of nearly 300 boys. We don't have the precise getting-up times at Shaw's place, but we have these times from other schoolmasters; for example, Mr. Simpson of Woden Croft, just up the road from Shaw's, specified that his scholars should get up at 5:30 in the summer and 6:30 in the winter. I reckon Stirling Knew Things.

Squeers also recites a list of items that the boys need to bring to his establishment, as he does in his initial appearance in the novel, and which echoes a list on a card of terms from William Shaw's Academy that turned up in an issue of the Dickensian. (And I am much vexed as I don't know which issue it's in and I can't cite it properly - I have lost the original PDF - iCloud has taken to betraying me of late - but I will get hold of it again.)

But I did print out the image of the card some years ago and tape it into one of my undergrad sketchbooks! There's mentions of cards of terms in other schoolmasters' adverts, so Dickens could've got his hands on any of these, for use in depicting Wackford Squeers. As far as I'm aware, the Shaw example is the only one that survives.

I’m not sure whether Yorkshire schoolmasters had appeared on the stage before Stirling's adaptation, but, if not, this is likely to have been the first time a lot of the audience had encountered a depiction of them outside their newspaper adverts, word-of-mouth tales, and Phiz's Squeers in print-shop windows.

This page from the Adelphi Theatre Calendar says that a ticket for a seat in the upper gallery cost one shilling, two for a seat in the pit, and four for a seat in a box. If you spend one shilling on an instalment of Nickleby, you get a few chapters, a couple of illustrations, etc., whereas if you spend it on a theatre ticket, you get a few hours of a variety of different entertainments, and you don't have to fork out for all the other instalments of the novel to find out what happens next in the story. There might've been people in the audience who were reading the novel and wanted to see it acted out before their very eyes, and there might've been people who went for a night out or to see some other anticipated performance and went home with a head full of Dickens, and there might've been people who were like "I've not read it, but I'll watch the adaptation".

I reckon that this play could’ve potentially contributed to public perceptions and opinions of Yorkshire schoolmasters and their establishments. There’s a few scenes at Dotheboys Hall - which would’ve been depicted wonderfully grim on stage, as the early 19th century theatre delighted in impressive sets -complete with the forbidding Mrs. Squeers (in the STR's 2020 version, played with vigour by Sunita Dugal) and a cortège of miserable boys (mainly voiced by the STR's Eileen Cottis) - which would have communicated a version of Dickens and Phiz’s interpretation of the Yorkshire schools to a broader audience.

The original 1838 Squeers was played by James P. Wilkinson, who joined the Adelphi’s company in 1819, and whose last performance was in 1845. Having quickly eyed his entry on this page, he seems to have done a lot of burlettas, comedies, and similarly amusing productions, but he wasn’t unfamiliar with more serious dramas and melodramas. 

One of J. W. Gear's illustrations of characters from Nickleby after the actors from the Adelphi's 1838 run. Here's Wackford Squeers played by James P. Wilkinson, Mrs. Nickleby played by Miss O'Neill, and Ralph Nickleby played by Mr. Cullenford. Squeers looks like he's got two eyes! He's only got one in the book. In all fairness, though, he does look like he's trying to squint with his right eye.

Here's a page from Project Gutenberg's edition of Nickleby - Gear's illustrations are in the front, accompanied by quotes from the play rather than from the book. 

Given the presentation of Squeers at the start of the play, and especially how Stirling’s production’s full title was Nicholas Nickleby - A Farce in Two Acts, the audience might’ve expected the schoolmaster to be more comedic. And yes, the character is funny, in both the original Nickleby and Stirling’s adaptation, but his malevolence soon becomes one of his distinguishing features (after the solitary eye). They certainly expected it of the original Smike, played by Mary Anne Keeley, a popular actress who specialised in comedy; the STR’s introduction explained that, as stated in Keeley’s autobiography, when she first appeared on the stage in the role, the audience expected comedy and roared with laughter - but, after she’d delivered a speech (about being trapped at Dotheboys Hall, with a lot of the “Pain and fear!” bit from Chapter 8) the audience fell dead silent, apart from a single stifled sob…

On Sunday night, the actors explained that the original script contains directions for tableaux vivants - everybody on stage freezes and holds a position, usually in silence - a good modern example is those scenes in A Field In England (directed by Ben Wheatley, 2013, would recommend). In the original performances of Stirling’s adaptation at the Adelphi, the tableaux vivants were arranged to be as close to Phiz’s illustrations as possible. So, thinking about Act 1 Scene 1 (in which we are introduced to Mr. Squeers), that tableau could have represented this scene, but he’d be dealing with breakfast rather than mending a pen:

And Mr. Snawley and his wife's offspring don't appear in the play. Those two boys aren't his - they're his wife's, from a previous marriage - and he wants rid of 'em, so they're sentenced to an eye-opening education with Mr. Squeers, at the delightful village of Dotheboys, about 250 miles away.

(As an illustrator, I think this is pretty great. From my perspective, it’s like saying that the illustrator’s work is as vital to understanding the narrative as the author’s. Eh. I’m biased towards my vocation and my fellow practitioners. And I suppose it’s convenient for actors if they’ve got a visual framework ready made for them, and some of the audience will recognise the scenes from their copies of Nickleby, or from the engravings displayed in print-shop windows.)

To my astonishment, the STR actors did a tableau vivant! On Zoom! Everybody in separate locations! In the middle of the scene in which Smike (played by Rebecca Farrell) is captured and Nicholas batters Squeers - that’s not a spoiler, it’s probably the most well-known bit of the story - but the way that they did it was fantastic, quite ingenious and very professional. In the original production, this tableau was based on Phiz’s illustration to Chapter 13.

Imagine this - ON STAGE.

Alright, yes, this isn’t going to be exactly like what the first audiences would’ve seen back in 1838 - if you want to see exactly what they saw, then you’ll have to invent reliable time travel, but even then you wouldn’t have access to all their cultural references and mentalities and associations and what-have-you, so you won’t get exactly what they’re getting. A step down from time travel, full-scale historical experience replication would take up a lot of resources - rebuilding the Adelphi precisely as it was, finding the scripts for the rest of the evening’s performances, etc. - although it would be fun - anyway! This was a very 2020 version, conducted over Zoom (with one or two technical incidents, but that's all part of the video-chat experience, and the show went on regardless) and it was brilliant.

So, yeah. Not only was it a good night in, but the Society for Theatre Research’s performance might’ve given me a few clues and ideas with regard to public perception of Yorkshire schoolmasters. 

Watch the full STR production here!

(Yes, I am including the link twice, because it was that good.)

More information from the STR.

STR's cast list, and list of scenes.

The British Library has a playbill that mentions Stirling's adaptation from February 1839 - the play was still in its first season, and ended up running for nearly a hundred nights.

The British Library also has an original script, with a frontispiece. 

Let's draw William Shaw

Alrighty, so in this post I’ll show you how to draw the ‘protagonist’, I suppose, of my case study. The methods I use here can also be used on other historical people. 

Rather than your standard how-to-draw-a-human tutorial (start with a vague skeleton, etc.) I'm going to show you how to get an idea of what somebody might've looked like, drawing from a load of historical sources. I'll include a few sources relating to William, so you can join in, and use him to practice on. How you interpret those sources is likely to be different to how anybody else does, so if you join in, don't worry if your version looks different to mine!

This is William Shaw. He was born around 1782, probably in London (although there’s suspicions that he may have had familial connections with the Teesdale area). He ended up running Bowes Academy from 1814 to 1840. In 1810, he married Bridget Laidman, who came from a local farming family, and they had nine kids together. William and Bridget are buried in the same plot in St. Giles’ churchyard, Bowes, together with their son William. (I tend to refer to the latter as Will to avoid confusion!)

So how do you draw this here schoolmaster?

Luckily for us - not so luckily for him - a couple of chaps called Charles Dickens and Hablot Knight ‘Phiz’ Browne took a bit of an interest in his school. 

Dickens had heard horror stories about cheap boarding schools in Yorkshire and wanted to write about them, and expose these horrors to the public, so he and his illustrator friend Phiz went up on a research trip. (Research in the loosest sense of the word.) Anyway, they went under false names, asked questions, heard stuff from people, and one thing led to another, and they got a good look at William Shaw - they went to visit his school, hoping for a look around.

This image is from a presentation I gave to my local history society in March 2020, right before the first UK lockdown.

However, William had heard there was an undercover journalist from London sniffing around the area and didn’t want anybody sniffing around him (he’d been taken to court in 1823 for neglect, and it’d been widely reported in the newspapers, and he didn’t want all that dragged up again) so when they knocked on his door, he sent them on their way. But they’d seen him - a short, somewhat unorthodox-looking chap, with one functioning eye - and that was enough for them.

William’s appearance turned up in the first instalment of Nicholas Nickleby, turned up to eleven and given the name Wackford Squeers. This was catastrophic for him and Bridget and the Academy - the parents in London recognised that there’s only one one-eyed schoolmaster in Yorkshire, and believed every word of Dickens' tales of woe…

Anyway! We’re here to draw William Shaw, aren’t we? Right! Let’s get cracking!

First, we’re going to look at Phiz’s first illustration of Wackford Squeers. Some of his ex-pupils, and even Phiz himself, said that this character strongly visually resembled William, but somewhat exaggerated. 

The Yorkshire Schoolmaster at The Saracen's Head which would've been part of the first instalment of Nicholas Nickleby. There's Mr. Squeers, pretending to mend a pen.

Here’s how I worked out what I think his face looked like: I drew Phiz’s version, then ‘translated’ him into my own visual language (drawing style), and then de-exaggerated him to get the result.

Since people have said that Wackford Squeers' appearance is an overexaggerated version of William Shaw's appearance, I de-exaggerated him to see what the original might have looked like. Perhaps. We'll never really know.

Next, we’re going to look at this quote from actor Horatio Lloyd. He attended Bowes Academy in the early 1820s, and grew up to become an actor. He said William was “a most worthy and kind-hearted, if somewhat peculiar, gentleman” and described the schoolmaster in his memoirs, published in the 1880s:

“A sharp, thin, upright little man, with a slight scale covering the pupil of one of the eyes. Yes. There he stands with his Wellington boots and short black trousers, not originally cut too short, but from a habit he had of sitting with one knee over the other, and the trousers being tight, they would get "ruck'd" half way up the boots. Then the clean white vest, swallow tailed black coat, white neck tie, silver-mounted spectacles, close cut iron-grey hair, high crowned hat worn slightly at the back of his head - and there you have the man.”

(Click here to read Lloyd’s account in full.) 

Lloyd has just given us a decent description of William’s clothing, along with one or two hints about his behaviour; he also mentions his dodgy eye, which indicates that Lloyd attended Bowes Academy following the ophthalmia fiasco. However, before we start on William's clothes, we need to think about his body - you need something to put the clothes on!

When I draw people in the wild, I automatically draw them in the costume of whatever time period I'm into - in this case, everybody gets Regencified.

As an illustrator, it’s a good idea to observe the people around you - under ordinary circumstances, I’d recommend going out onto the street and drawing people in the wild. They just go about their business and you draw them. But - we are not in normal circumstances! I’m writing this in the middle of a pandemic. You might need to get your refs elsewhere. Watch how people move on the telly, or check out Instagram for people doing cool poses and what-have-you.

Now we need to get references for his clothing. Get onto the online databases for museums! Check out re-enactors and historical costumers! Find contemporary images of people wearing similar stuff! Go window-shopping online or in books, whatevs, and try him out in different coats and such. 

Here’s three of my favourite museum sites to start you off:

Victoria & Albert Museum

Rijksmuseum (You can make an account on here that’s a bit like Pinterest in that you can make collections and save things that you find, and you know it’s all decent and properly checked because it’s the Rijksmuseum and it hasn’t been saved by randomers from across the internet.)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

(Pro tip: when you’re drawing anything from museums, etc., keep note of item numbers, which museum it’s in, date of manufacture, artist’s names, etc. - this will save a few headaches when you want to have another look at a really good coat or something later, and you can’t remember where you found it.)

Alrighty, so you’ve got some more solid stuff: you’ve got an idea of his face, you’ve given him a body, and you’ve put clothes on him. Now what? Make him do things! And the great thing about drawing is that you can make him do anything! You are in control of the pencil, or pen, or whatever. What’s he going to do?

We could ask Lloyd first.

“[William Shaw] would walk around the school room, look over us while writing, and here and there pat a boy on the head, saying "good boy - good boy; you'll be a great man some day, if you pay attention to your lessons." If a lad was ill, he would sit by his bed-side and play the flute - on which he was an adept - for an hour or two together to amuse him.”

Sometimes I think Lloyd’s a bit rose-tinted in his remembering, and I don’t entirely trust him because he’s convinced that none other than Charles Dickens attended the Academy - which is a load of wack. Anyway, let’s have a look at some other stuff. 

Some lecturers. I can't remember exactly who, and the drawings don't have any identifying clues - I'm not interested in representing specific living individuals (partly because that could be ethically dodgy) - I'm more interested in how they move.

What if we think about our own experiences at school? How did the teachers move around the room? Did they stride about, or get excited about what’s on the board, or do alarming things with dictionaries? This might influence how you draw him in the schoolroom. Or find something like this writing-blank from 1810 that shows (idealised) schoolroom scenes of the time, or this hilarious print depicting classroom chaos from circa 1825!

What about when he’s elsewhere? When he goes to London to meet parents and new boys? When he’s at home with Bridget and the kids? When he nips into town to post a letter or buy some ink?

Here’s where I’m going to leave you. Go forth and find your own things that will inform your own drawings - and have fun with it! And, if you do draw William Shaw, or anybody else using this sort of thing, please show me! Head over to Instagram or Twitter to share whatever exciting things you draw.