Fanny Squeers by J. Clayton Clarke (“Kyd”) for the watercolour series (1910): reproduced on John Player cigarette card no. 45: 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.]
FANNY SQUEERS. (Nicholas Nickleby.)
Daughter of Mr. Whackford Squeers, the school-master; a young lady in her twenty-third year, possessing a waspish nature and somewhat doubtful charms, and, at first, in love with Nicholas. Finding her passion however to be but coldly received, this love speedily evaporates, and she “hates and detests Nicholas with all the narrowness of mind and littleness of purpose worthy a a descendant of the house of Squeers.” [Verso of Card No. 45]
Passage upon which Kyd has based his characterisation: Fanny Instantly Falls in Love
Fred Barnard's comic realisation of the pen-sharpening scene: "Oh! as soft as possible, if you please." — British Household Edition, p. 53
Miss Fanny Squeers carefully treasured up this, and much more conversation on the same subject, until she retired for the night, when she questioned the hungry servant, minutely, regarding the outward appearance and demeanour of Nicholas; to which queries the girl returned such enthusiastic replies, coupled with so many laudatory remarks touching his beautiful dark eyes, and his sweet smile, and his straight legs — upon which last-named articles she laid particular stress; the general run of legs at Dotheboys Hall being crooked—that Miss Squeers was not long in arriving at the conclusion that the new usher must be a very remarkable person, or, as she herself significantly phrased it, ‘something quite out of the common.’ And so Miss Squeers made up her mind that she would take a personal observation of Nicholas the very next day.
In pursuance of this design, the young lady watched the opportunity of her mother being engaged, and her father absent, and went accidentally into the schoolroom to get a pen mended: where, seeing nobody but Nicholas presiding over the boys, she blushed very deeply, and exhibited great confusion.
‘I beg your pardon,’ faltered Miss Squeers; ‘I thought my father was — or might be — dear me, how very awkward!’
‘Mr. Squeers is out,’ said Nicholas, by no means overcome by the apparition, unexpected though it was.
‘Do you know will he be long, sir?’ asked Miss Squeers, with bashful hesitation.
‘He said about an hour,’ replied Nicholas — politely of course, but without any indication of being stricken to the heart by Miss Squeers’s charms.
‘I never knew anything happen so cross,’ exclaimed the young lady. ‘Thank you! I am very sorry I intruded, I am sure. If I hadn’t thought my father was here, I wouldn’t upon any account have — it is very provoking — must look so very strange,’ murmured Miss Squeers, blushing once more, and glancing, from the pen in her hand, to Nicholas at his desk, and back again.
‘If that is all you want,’ said Nicholas, pointing to the pen, and smiling, in spite of himself, at the affected embarrassment of the schoolmaster’s daughter, ‘perhaps I can supply his place.’
Miss Squeers glanced at the door, as if dubious of the propriety of advancing any nearer to an utter stranger; then round the schoolroom, as though in some measure reassured by the presence of forty boys; and finally sidled up to Nicholas and delivered the pen into his hand, with a most winning mixture of reserve and condescension.
‘Shall it be a hard or a soft nib?’ inquired Nicholas, smiling to prevent himself from laughing outright.
‘He has a beautiful smile,’ thought Miss Squeers.
‘Which did you say?’ asked Nicholas.
‘Dear me, I was thinking of something else for the moment, I declare,’ replied Miss Squeers. ‘Oh! as soft as possible, if you please.’ With which words, Miss Squeers sighed. It might be, to give Nicholas to understand that her heart was soft, and that the pen was wanted to match.
Upon these instructions Nicholas made the pen; when he gave it to Miss Squeers, Miss Squeers dropped it; and when he stooped to pick it up, Miss Squeers stooped also, and they knocked their heads together; whereat five-and-twenty little boys laughed aloud: being positively for the first and only time that half-year.
‘Very awkward of me,’ said Nicholas, opening the door for the young lady’s retreat.
‘Not at all, sir,’ replied Miss Squeers; ‘it was my fault. It was all my foolish — a — a— good-morning!’ [Household Edition, Nicholas Nickleby," Chapter IX, "Of Miss Squeers, Mrs. Squeers, Master Squeers, and Mr. Squeers; and of various Matters and Persons connected no less with the Squeerses than Nicholas Nickleby," pp. 52-53]
Commentary: A Character Rarely Depicted in Illustrations for the Novel
In Kyd's sequence of fifty cards, there only three character cards from the cast of Nicholas Nickleby (April 1838 through October 1839), amounting just 6% of the total: the brutal, semi-literate school-master Wackford Squeers, no. 44; his vain, ugly, 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' volume by C. S. Reinhart. Although Kyd's representations are largely based on the original illustrations by Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), the modelling of the figures is suggestive of those of celebrated Dickensian illustrator Fred Barnard for the Household Edition volume 10 (1875). However, none of these earlier illustrators provided Kyd with usable models for Fanny Squeers. The text itself, however, furnishes clues as to how Kyd might compose the comedic portrait of the vain and egocentric twenty-three-year-old with her mother's harsh voice and her father's half-shut right eye.
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 them 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.
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 17 January 2015
Last modified 23 July 2025