WITH hope dead in his breast, the former warehouseman exhibited his certificate. William twitched it from his fingers. ‘You wrote a pamphlet against us once’ he observed, scrawling across the paper in a bold hand. The man took it back dully. What could he expect to read? ‘Rogue’ perhaps. ‘Scoundrel, libeller.’ But what he read through misty eyes was the company signature. ‘We never refuse an honest tradesman,’ beamed William. ‘I said you would live to repent writing that pamphlet. Some day, I said, you would know us better.
‘Well, my dear fellow, you know us now. What are you going to do?’ The warehouseman expressed fresh optimism. ‘But how are you off in the meantime?’ insisted William. Eventually he wormed it out of him that he was struggling to put food on the family table. ‘My dear fellow,’ William cried ‘this will not do!’ and pressed a ten-pound note into his hands.* Too choked to speak, his visitor pulled out a handkerchief, put it to his face, and ran from the room.
* According to the website Measuring Worth’, £10 in 1839 (the year that Nicholas Nickleby came out) would as a measure of income or wealth be roughly equivalent to £886 in 2019. Like the Cheerybles, William liked to indulge in theatrical bluster before any act of charity. On another occasion, he was asked to donate money to a poor widow. He harrumphed that her late husband had cost the firm some £200, but when it was put to him that the widow was not any the less needy William serenely handed over £5, and said there was another £5 waiting for her if she ever needed it.