FLATTERY IN NICHOLAS NICKLEBY Part Two
Charles and Ned Cheeryble are unusual in that they go out of their way to avoid all thanks and praise, and have no desire for flattery.
Brother Charles, though, does, in a novel way, manage some outrageously over-the-top self-flattery. The brothers are identical twins so any compliment they pay their sibling is equally applicable to them: “Now, in you [Nicholas] we can repose the strictest confidence; in you we have seen—or at least I have seen, and that’s the same thing, for there’s no difference between me and my brother Ned, except that he is the finest creature that ever lived”. There’s no difference between them . . . except that Ned “is the finest creature that ever lived”!
The brothers praise generously with no other motive than to give others pleasure. They also pay Tim Linkinwater mock insults that are actually complimentary.
An excellent way to butter someone up is to make your praise creative and funny. Humour usually involves exaggeration and so you can pay over-the-top compliments that memorably make the flattering point, but—because you are joking—don’t run the risk of being suspected of insincerity. (And as an added bonus, you can make a running joke of it.)
“Tim Linkinwater looks ten years younger than he did on his last birthday.”
“Brother Ned . . . I believe that Tim Linkinwater was born a hundred-and-fifty years old, and is gradually coming down to five-and-twenty; for he’s younger every birthday than he was the year before.”
Sir Mulberry Hawk lives off Lord Frederick but, unexpectedly, manages his ‘pupil’ without flattering him at all. (Dickens deliberately steers clear of cliché.) In fact, Sir Mulberry frequently insults and mocks the young lord.
The most notable point Dickens makes, though, is that Sir Mulberry wants the ‘distinction and applause’ of his peers, but his little world is ‘peopled with profligates’, not the virtuous, so his desire for praise corrupts him and leads to even greater dissolution. ‘The reflections of Sir Mulberry Hawk turned upon Kate Nickleby, and were, in brief, that she was undoubtedly handsome; that her coyness must be easily conquerable by a man of his address and experience [self-flattery], and that the pursuit was one which could not fail to redound to his credit, and greatly to enhance his reputation . . . [a consideration which was] no mean or secondary one with Sir Mulberry.’ [People want others to sing their praises—and shape their behaviour accordingly—but whether they behave well or ill depends on who they’re trying to impress.]
By the same token, it’s the unflattering comments of his compatriots, following his clash with Nicholas, that drive Sir Mulberry wild, and why he vows such vengeance on Nicholas.
Pyke and Pluck are professional flatterers, “toads in ordinary”, who are employed by their patron Sir Mulberry to bootlick him (such as by laughing at his sneering jokes but not at other peoples’) and to flatter others on his instructions. They also act as ‘yes’ men, constantly echoing him (and themselves), reinforcing all his comments. ‘Opinion conformity’ is what psychologists call this.
Frank Cheeryble enters the novel having just ‘repeated such words as “scoundrel,” “rascal,” “insolent puppy,” and a variety of expletives no less flattering’ to the man he’s just knocked down. ‘The coffee-room customers, and the waiters, and the coachmen, and the helpers,—not to mention a bar-maid who was looking on from behind an open sash window,—seemed at that moment . . . strongly disposed to take part against’ Frank . . . [So Frank selects the key person in the room—the barmaid—and proceeds to butter her up in a way that, we later learn, leaves ‘John Browdie . . . in a state of great admiration . . . [at how] the young lady in the bar had been so skilfully won over to the right side.’]
“No, but listen to me,” said [Frank]. “If admiration of a pretty face were criminal, I should be the most hopeless person alive, for I cannot resist one. It has the most extraordinary effect upon me, checks and controls me in the most furious and obstinate mood. You see what an effect yours has had upon me already.”
“Oh, that’s very pretty," replied the young lady, tossing her head, “but—”
“Yes, I know it’s very pretty,” said the young man, looking with an air of admiration in the bar-maid’s face: “I said so, you know, just this moment. But beauty should be spoken of respectfully,—respectfully, and in proper terms, and with a becoming sense of its worth and excellence, whereas this fellow has no more notion—”
The young lady interrupted the conversation at this point, by thrusting her head out of the bar-window, and inquiring of the waiter in a shrill voice whether that young man who had been knocked down was going to stand in the passage all night, or whether the entrance was to be left clear for other people. The waiters taking the hint, and communicating it to the hostlers, were not slow to change their tone too, and the result was, that the unfortunate victim was bundled out in a twinkling.’ And so a judicious bit of flattery wins the day again . . .
Newman Noggs proudly makes a point of never seeking to cajole Ralph for his own advantage. In fact, on every occasion, he deliberately goes out of his way to contradict and irritate his employer. “When did I ever cringe and fawn to you,—eh? Tell me that!”
“Have you seen the old lady?” asked Newman.
“You mean Mrs Nickleby?” said Miss La Creevy. “Then I tell you what, Mr Noggs, if you want to keep in the good books in that quarter, you had better not call her the old lady any more, for I suspect she wouldn’t be best pleased to hear you.” Keeping in someone’s good books is what flattery is all about.
Ralph Nickleby revels in being flattered and toadied to, but it’s not the complimentary words themselves he savours, it’s the fact of his ‘betters’ being forced to be obsequious and humble. Note the terms in which Ralph rues the loss of his money: “Ten thousand pounds! How many proud painted dames would have fawned and smiled, and how many spendthrift blockheads done me lip-service to my face and cursed me in their hearts, while I turned that ten thousand pounds into twenty! . . . what smooth-tongued speeches, and courteous looks, and civil letters, they would have given me! The cant of the lying world is, that men like me compass our riches by dissimulation and . . . fawning, cringing, and stooping. Why . . . what mean and abject evasions, what humbled behaviour from upstarts who, but for my money, would spurn me aside as they do their betters every day, would that ten thousand pounds have brought me in!” Thus Ralph loves to be fawned on by the ‘great’ and ‘mighty’; it’s testimony to his wealth and power.
Ralph pays sneering, ironic compliments that are actually an insult. “You know what a witty, humorous, elegant, accomplished man Lord Frederick is.”
When genuinely complimenting to achieve an end, Ralph sometimes uses a subtle method: “Now, what business has a poor widow in such a house as this, ma'am?” “Very true,” replied Miss La Creevy, not at all displeased with this implied compliment to the apartments’. And: ‘the good lady’s opinion had been not a little influenced by her brother-in-law’s appeal to her better understanding, and his implied compliment to her high deserts’. [If you want to flatter a person who’s likely to suspect your motive, try this sneakily effective technique.] Ralph only uses flattery as an occasional tool but is highly adept at it.
A flatterer makes a person feel good by boosting their self-esteem; Ralph, in Sir Mulberry’s sickroom, makes unflattering remarks to make him feel bad—but, as with flattery, conceals his ulterior motive and, ostensively, behaves like a friend. “Some say [Nicholas] frightened you, but that’s a lie, I know. I have said that boldly—Oh, a score of times! I am a peaceable man, but I can’t hear folks tell that of you,—no, no.”
Ralph owes his very name to brown-nosing as he ‘had been christened after [his rich great-uncle] . . . on desperate speculation’.
Ralph is unusual in that he never self-flatters: ‘The only scriptural admonition that Ralph Nickleby heeded, in the letter, was “know thyself”’.
He’s well aware of the ingratiating power of imitation and implies that Tim Linkinwater is a toady: “Talking in riddles would seem to be the peculiar forte of you two, and I suppose your clerk, like a prudent man, has studied the art also with a view to your good graces.”
Tom is a hopeless flatterer and his uncouth attempts backfire and generate ill-feeling:
‘And as [Tom] said it, he winked towards Nicholas, with a degree of familiarity which he . . . intended for a rather flattering compliment, but with which Nicholas was most ungratefully disgusted.’
‘Nicholas looked at the ugly clerk, as if he had a mind to reward his admiration of the young lady by beating the ledger about his ears . . . setting at defiance . . . those ancient laws of chivalry, which . . . rendered it incumbent upon [all good knights] to roam about the world, and knock at head all such matter-of-fact and unpoetical characters, as declined to exalt, above all the earth [i.e. flatter to the skies], damsels whom they had never chanced to look upon or hear of, - as if that were any excuse!’
Frank Cheeryble assaults Tom, who rages: “A pretty state of things, if a man isn’t to admire a handsome girl without being beat to pieces for it”.
