‘All the world’s a stage’, Shakespeare wrote, but for a repertory company, the stage is all the world. They’re wrapped up in it entirely. Victory at Waterloo? Death of the monarch? Of less account than who’s got the juiciest part in the latest play. Dickens captures this perfectly in Nicholas Nickleby, where the actors not only live and breathe the theatre, but Crummles’s theatrical troupe are almost hermetically sealed off from the rest of the book.
Vincent Crummles doesn’t boast about his own ability; instead, he trumpets the ‘talent’ of family members and basks in reflected glory. In particular, he launches into hyperbolic praise of his wife and the Infant Phenomenon. “My daughter,—my daughter,” replied Mr Vincent Crummles; the idol of every place we go into, sir. We have had complimentary letters about this girl, sir, from the nobility and gentry of almost every town in England. . . . The talent of this child is not to be imagined.” By proclaiming his progeny as prodigies, he self-flatters by association.
He also regularly fishes for compliments from Nicholas about everyone’s performance: “What did you think of that, sir?”
Vincent Crummles judges, and compliments, everything from a purely theatrical viewpoint. Of poor, malnourished Smike’s appearance: “What a capital countenance your friend has got! . . . he'd make such an actor for the starved business as was never seen in this country”.
Mr Folair (who’s almost certainly gay, incidentally) perfectly illustrates the duplicitous nature of flattery: he eulogizes people to their face and then derides them behind their back. ‘Uttering in a loud voice such of the latter allusions as were complimentary to the unconscious phenomenon, and giving the rest [“Ugh, you little imposition”] in a confidential “aside” to Nicholas.’ This kind of hypocrisy is endemic in the theatre. Actors are notorious for being both vain and insecure, and flummery (about everyone’s performance) is practically a requirement.
Miss Petowker informs Nicholas that she told Mr Crummles she’d ‘encountered [Nicholas] in the very first and most fashionable circles’ and says, for this obliging (and wholly untrue) puff, she’ll soon request a return favour. [Puffing someone to someone else (e.g. their boss), and then letting them know you did it, is an effective way to win their favour.]
She’s also skilled at ordinary flattery: ‘It was not until Miss Petowker had practised several blandishments to soften [Mr Lillyvick] that he deigned to break silence’.
Self-flattery reigns amongst the actors when ‘everybody happened to know that the London manager had come down specially to witness his or her own performance’. Self-flattery is as prevalent in Nicholas Nickleby as it is in real life i.e. it’s virtually universal.
Mr Lenville is so distraught at being deprived by Nicholas of that lifeblood of every actor, an audience’s flattering applause (“instead of having a reception every night . . . they have let him come on as if he was nobody”), that, understandably, he’s almost driven to bloodshed: “So he has gone on night after night, never getting a hand, and you getting a couple of rounds at least, and sometimes three, till at length he got quite desperate, and had half a mind last night to play Tybalt with a real sword, and pink you—not dangerously, but just enough to lay you up for a month or two”. Few things are more flatteringly uplifting than an audience’s ovation. Applause and mass adoration are what every actor thirsts for.
Miss Snevellicci ‘accidentally’ leaves out a scrapbook for Nicholas to read. (“I wouldn’t have had you see it for the world!”) It’s full of glowing tributes to herself e.g.
Sing, God of Love, and tell me in what dearth
Thrice-gifted Snevellicci came on earth,
To thrill us with her smile, her tear, her eye,
Sing, God of Love, and tell me quickly why.
Miss Snevellicci and Nicholas play a flirting game of flattery:
“I am sure I never saw you before; I couldn't have forgotten it.” [said Nicholas]
“O, I'm sure, it’s very flattering of you to say so,” retorted Miss Snevellicci with a graceful bend. “Now I look at you again, I see that the gentleman at Canterbury hadn’t the same eyes as you - you’ll think me very foolish for taking notice of such things, won’t you?”
“Not at all,” said Nicholas. “How can I feel otherwise than flattered by your notice in any way?”
“O, you men are such vain creatures!” cried Miss Snevellicci.’
“But really,” said Miss Snevellicci, “my darling Led . . . was taken so very ill in the night that I thought she would have expired in my arms.”
“Such a fate is almost to be envied,” returned Nicholas . . .
“What a creature you are to flatter!” said Miss Snevellicci, buttoning her glove in much confusion.
“If it be flattery to admire your charms and accomplishments,” rejoined Nicholas, laying his hand upon the scrapbook, “you have better specimens of it here.”
Mr and Mrs Curdle are theatre ‘patrons’ who “if you were to succeed, they would give people to understand that they had always patronised you; and if you were to fail, they would have been quite certain of that from the very beginning” i.e. they’d give themselves dishonest praise and deceive themselves into believing their own self-flattery.
Mr Curdle is particularly fond of self-compliments:
‘“What man is there, now living, who can present before us all those changing and prismatic colours with which the character of Hamlet is invested?” exclaimed Mrs Curdle.
“What man indeed - upon the stage,” said Mr Curdle, with a small reservation in favour of himself.’
Mr Curdle spouts eulogiums about the Infant Phenomenon’s acting, which, since it’s genuine praise (he can’t have an ulterior motive), reveals his total lack of discernment.
