Kissing - The aim of flattery is to seduce others into doing your will, and a kiss from an attractive member of the opposite sex is very flattering indeed. ‘It was very little that Nicholas knew of the world, but he guessed enough about its ways to think that if he gave Miss La Creevy one little kiss, perhaps she might not be the less kindly disposed towards those he was leaving behind. So, he gave her three or four.’
And Mrs Kenwigs: “Morleena, my dear, run down and let your [rich] uncle in, and kiss him directly you get the door open”. Later, to soothe the collector’s irritation, she lines her daughters up and they kiss him one by one.
Brutus: “I kiss thy hand, but not in flattery, Caesar”. - Julius Caesar.
Advertisements - An advert works by flattering a product or service and so Nicholas Nickleby is full of such puffery. And to emphasise flattery’s dissembling nature, it’s almost all grossly dishonest misadvertising.
‘With one or two exceptions, there seemed to be the very same placards [job adverts] in the window that he had seen before. There were the same unimpeachable masters and mistresses in want of virtuous servants, and the same virtuous servants in want of unimpeachable masters and mistresses, and the same magnificent estates for the investment of capital, and the same enormous quantities of capital to be invested in estates . . .’
‘And all the speeches . . . established in the hearers’ minds that there was no speculation so . . . praiseworthy, as the [totally fraudulent] United Metropolitan Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet Baking and Punctual Delivery Company.’
Being EXTRA LARGE (in every sense) is extremely flattering and appealing: ‘half-a-dozen men . . . bearing gigantic announcements that a Public Meeting would be holden at one o'clock precisely, to take into consideration the propriety of petitioning Parliament in favour of the United Metropolitan Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet Baking and Punctual Delivery Company [“We must have a whole mouthful of name . . . or our dear old Public . . . won’t stump up.”], capital five millions [equivalent to over three hundred million today!], in five hundred thousand shares of ten pounds each; which sums were duly set forth in fat black figures of considerable size.’
‘They passed a great many bills . . . wherein the names of Mr Vincent Crummles, Mrs Vincent Crummles, Master Crummles, Master P. Crummles, and Miss Crummles, were printed in very large letters, and everything else in very small ones.’
‘The public were informed, in all the colours of the rainbow, and in letters afflicted with every possible variation of spinal deformity, how that Mr Johnson would have the honour of making his last appearance that evening.’ [The first of three intended ‘last appearances’. “Three is not enough, and it's very bungling and irregular not to have more, but if we can't help it we can’t, so there’s no use in talking”.]
Nicholas ‘went through his part in the two last pieces as briskly as he could, and having been received with unbounded favour and unprecedented applause, - so said the bills for next day, which had been printed an hour or two before . . .”
Squeers advertises his appalling school in the newspapers:
“EDUCATION. - At Mr Wackford Squeers’s Academy, Dotheboys Hall, at the delightful village of Dotheboys . . . Youth are boarded, clothed, booked, furnished with pocket-money, provided with all necessaries, instructed in all languages living and dead, mathematics, orthography, geometry, astronomy, trigonometry, the use of the globes, algebra . . . and every other branch of classical literature. . . . Diet unparalleled.”
Squeers loses ‘no opportunity of advertising gratuitously’ and fattens his son so he can be a living advert: ‘“My son, sir, little Wackford. What do you think of him, sir, for a specimen of the Dotheboys Hall feeding? Ain’t he fit to bust out of his clothes, and start the seams, and make the very buttons fly off with his fatness?”
Squeers also uses Snawley as a reference/advert in a quid pro quo arrangement: “This gentleman, sir, is a parent who is kind enough to compliment me upon the course of education adopted at Dotheboys Hall”.
Flattering associations - Dickens mocks the way that people are foolishly flattered by being connected with Lords and other gentry—automatically thinking well of them (and forgiving their sins) simply because of their high status. He deliberately makes all the novel’s aristocrats either rogues or idiots. Mr Wititterly is a prime offender: he was ‘busy in the body of the house, informing such of his friends and acquaintance as happened to be there, that those two gentlemen upstairs, whom they had seen in conversation with Mrs W., were the distinguished Lord Frederick Verisopht and his most intimate friend, the gay Sir Hawk’. And he’s ‘in a tremor of delight’ when they actually visit his house. Mrs Wititterly is equally ecstatic but hides it because it’s not flattering to herself to show how much she’s flattered.
Nowadays, in our less class-ridden society, people get a kick out of being acquainted with the famous, and, like Mr Wittiterly, name-drop shamelessly.
Everyone gets flattered to their face, but “it’s fated that listeners [eavesdroppers] are never to hear any good of themselves”.
Social flattery - Compliments on public occasions are almost mandatory and only pay lip service, as is well understood: ‘To all of which flattering expressions, Mr and Mrs Kenwigs replied, by thanking every lady and gentleman . . . and hoping they might have enjoyed themselves only half as well as they said they had’.
Dickens mocks the absurdity and meaninglessness of such cajolery as in this exchange about Mrs Kenwigs eight years earlier:
“I was younger then,” tittered Mrs Kenwigs.
“No,” said the collector.
“Certainly not,” added everybody.’
Ironic flattery - An ironic compliment can be more cutting than an insult, reminding the hearer of how they ought to behave. Miss La Creevy to Miss Knag: “Good-morning to you, ma’am; and many obligations for your extreme politeness and good breeding”.
