Mr. Squeers by J. Clayton Clarke (“Kyd”) for the watercolour series (1910): reproduced on John Player cigarette card no. 42: Ninety-two Characters from Dickens: Nicholas Nickleby. 2 ½ inches high by 1 ¼ inches wide (6.3 cm high by 3.3 cm wide). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
MR. SQUEERS. (Nicholas Nickleby.)
A brutal, illiterate pedagogue, keeper of a “Yorkshire” school. He possesses but one eye, while “popular prejudice runs in favour of two”; and when he smiles his expression borders “closely on the villainous.” His utilitarian method of imparting instruction is simplicity itself: “C-l-e-a-n, clean, verb active, to make bright, to scour. W-i-n, wind. d-e-r, winder, a casement. When the boy knows this out of a book, he goes and does it.” [Verso of Card No. 42]
Passage Realised; Nicholas observes "that learned gentleman" at breakfast
Mr. Squeers’s appearance was not prepossessing. He had but one eye, and the popular prejudice runs in favour of two. The eye he had, was unquestionably useful, but decidedly not ornamental: being of a greenish grey, and in shape resembling the fan-light of a street door. The blank side of his face was much wrinkled and puckered up, which gave him a very sinister appearance, especially when he smiled, at which times his expression bordered closely on the villainous. His hair was very flat and shiny, save at the ends, where it was brushed stiffly up from a low protruding forehead, which assorted well with his harsh voice and coarse manner. He was about two or three and fifty, and a trifle below the middle size; he wore a white neckerchief with long ends, and a suit of scholastic black; but his coat sleeves being a great deal too long, and his trousers a great deal too short, he appeared ill at ease in his clothes, and as if he were in a perpetual state of astonishment at finding himself so respectable. [Household Edition, Nicholas Nickleby, Ch. IV, "Nicholas and his Uncle (to secure the Fortune without loss of time) wait upon Mr. Wackford Squeers, the Yorkshire Schoolmaster,"]
Commentary: Kyd's Short Program of Illustration for Nicholas Nickleby
In Kyd's sequence of fifty cards, fully 13 or over 25% concern a single novel, The Pickwick Papers. The series includes only three character cards from the cast of Nicholas Nickleby (April 1838 through October 1839), or just 6% of the total: the brutal, semi-literate school-master Wackford Squeers, no. 44; his vain, ungly, spiteful daughter, Fanny, no. 45; and the affable but injudicious drunkard Newmann Noggs, Ralph Nickleby's clerk, no. 46 — characterisations based on the original serial illustrations of Dickens's regular visual interpreter in the 1840s, Phiz, who produced forty steel-engravings and the wrapper design for the Bradbury and Evans nineteen-month serial, as well as two vignettes for the two-volume Library Edition (1858-59): The Nickleby Family and The Mad Gentleman and Mrs. Nickleby. It was subsequently illustrated in the British Household Edition by Fred Barnard and in the New York Harper and Brothers' text by C. S. Reinhart.
Right: Nicholas's observations of the Squeers on the way north: The Yorkshire Schoolmaster at The Saracen's Head, as realised by Phiz in Chapter IV in the initial instalment of the serial (April 1838).
The Dickens reader at the fin de siecle must have been surprised to find missing from Kyd's character sketches such significant figures in Nicholas Nickleby as the hero's sister, Kate, his devious uncle, Ralph, and the handicapped orphan (who turns out to be Nicholas's cousin) Smike. Kyd's chief source for his three characterisations was the original serial illustrations of Phiz, specifically for the repulsive Squeers The Yorkshire Schoolmaster at The Saracen's Head (Ch. IV, April 1838) and Nicholas Astonishes Mr. Squeers and Family (Ch. XIII, July 1838). Certainly, Harrold Copping's 1924 Wackford Squeers and the New Pupil (Character Sketches from Dickens) is much closer to the 1838 serial illustrations than Kyd's study of a middle-aged man in a long great-coat, but of course Kyd would not have been influenced by it.
Left: "Very glad to make your acquaintance, miss," said Squeers, raising his hat an inch or two (1875), Fred Barnard's British Household Edition study of the surly Yorkshire schoolmaster. Centre: C. S. Reinhart's version of Nicholas's introduction to Squeers's system of education: The is the first class in English Spelling and Philosophy, Nickleby", with a detail of Squeers at his desk. (1872). Right pf centre: Harry Furniss's portrait of the vicious, animalistic school-master, Mr. Squeers in Chapter IV of the Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910). Right: Fred Barnard's The schoolmaster and his companion looked steadily at each other for a few second, and then exchanged a very meaning smile (Ch. IV).
Related material, including front matter and sketches, by other illustrators
- Nicholas Nickleby (homepage)
- Phiz's 38 monthly illustrations for the novel, April 1838-October 1839.
- Cover for monthly parts
- Charles Dickens by Daniel Maclise, engraved by Finden
- "Hush!" said Nicholas, laying his hand upon his shoulder. (Vol. 1, 1861)
- The Rehearsal (Vol. 2, 1861)
- "My son, sir, little Wackford. What do you think of him, sir?" (Vol. 3, 1861)
- Newman had caught up by the nozzle an old pair of bellows . . . (Vol. 4, 1861).
- Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s 18 Illustrations for the Diamond Edition (1867)
- C. S. Reinhart's 52 Illustrations for the American Household Edition (1875)
- Harry Furniss's 29 illustrations for Nicholas Nickleby in the Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910)
- Kyd's four Player's Cigarette Cards (1910).
Scanned images and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the images and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. P., 1988.
Brigden, C. A. T. "No. 11. Mr. Squeers." The Characters from Charles Dickens as depicted by Kyd. Rochester, Kent: John Hallewell, 1978.
The Characters of Charles Dickens Pourtrayed in a Series of Original Water Colour Sketches by “Kyd.” London, Paris, and New York: Raphael Tuck & Sons, 1898[?].
Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Checkmark and Facts On File, 1999.
Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. Illustrated by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne). London: Chapman and Hall, 1839.
_________. Nicholas Nickleby, with fifty-nine illustrations by Fred Barnard. The Works of Charles Dickens: The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1875. Volume XV. Rpt. 1890.
_________. Nicholas Nickleby. Illustrated by F. O. C. Darley and John Gilbert. The Works of Charles Dickens. The Household Edition. 55 vols. New York: Sheldon and Company, 1862. Vols. 1-4.
_______. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. With fifty-two illustrations by C. S. Reinhart. The Household Edition. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1875. Volume I.
_________. Nicholas Nickleby. With 59 illustrations by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman & Hall, 1875. Volume XV.
_________. Nicholas Nickleby. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Volume IV.
_________ , and Fred Barnard. The Dickens Souvenir Book. London: Chapman & Hall, 1912.
Hammerton, J. A. "Chapter 12: Nicholas Nickleby." The Dickens Picture-Book. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. 18 vols. London: Educational Book Co., 1910. XVII. 147-170.
Steig, Michael. Chapter 2. "The Beginnings of 'Phiz': Pickwick, Nickleby, and the Emergence from Caricature." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U. P., 1978. 14-50.
Vann, J. Don. "Nicholas Nickleby." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: The Modern Language Association, 1985. 63.
Created 15 January 2015
Last modified 23 July 2025