Smike and Nicholas Nickelby
Smike had never known fair treatment much less kind treatment and in the Dotheboys Hall School run by Mr. and Mrs. Squeers, enslaved and abused, his torment had only grown more intense. The new teacher Nicholas Nickelby was a different sort of person and in meeting him Smike met someone who treated him like a human to be cared for and nurtured rather than a whipping boy when someone with an ill temper wanted to ease his/her spleen. In the face of the boundless cruelty of the Squeers—shown to the entire body of children under their care—Nickelby resigned from the school in defiance of the Squeers' wishes.
Smike saw the young teacher as his hope for life and unknown to Nicholas he followed him away from the school, not showing himself in case Nickelby were to send him back. The teacher spent a night in a barn and in the morning he suddenly wakened and found Smike there; Nickelby had wakened without warning and Smike had no time to hide. Now discovered he begged to be allowed: "To go with you—anywhere—everywhere—to the world's end—to the churchyard grave."
The teacher's life's situation was not at all an easy one and while he feels a deep compassion for the boy he tells him he has little to offer by way of help but Smike is not put off and desperate for the warmth of friendship, or, even if friendship is too much to ask, he wants to know, "May I—may I go with you? I will be your faithful, hard-working servant, I will indeed. I want no clothes…I only want to be near you."
"And so you shall," said the teacher. "And the world shall deal by you as it does by me, till one or both of us shall quit it for a better."
Both were as good as their words.
In a world of quick-change passions, of outrageous pre-nuptial agreements, broken contracts, worthless promises, "sweet" marriage vows that vanish like morning mist, friendships that were "treasured" as long as one person ceaselessly pleased the other—in a world awash with so much uncertainty it's a breath of life to be certain of someone!
To read the commitment Ruth made and stuck with it (Ruth 1:16-18) makes your soul rise to its feet and cheer. Yesssssssss! To read of the mutual commitment of Smike and Nickelby generates the same feeling because it's the same thing.
Dickens' writing has remained one of the grandeurs of English life and literature. It isn't all sweetness and light for his own life wasn't like that. There's a lot of pain and loss in his writing and that reminds us that he stayed in touch with life as a whole. He didn't become the noted author he is by writing perfumed bubble and froth or simplistic moral platitudes (which is what much of the popular Christian literature is). Nor did he write dark hopeless muck or leave us wringing our hands in abject despair or make heroes of villains. He continued to remind us of the possibilities and potential of life; he speaks of happy endings without apology and makes us believe that honest commitments not only can be made but that they can be kept through thick and thin. What's more, he shows us the glory of such people and makes us want to be like that.
He touches the depths of life and enables us to see that there's more than evil in the world. And while there is evil in the world that is hard to explain if God is good, Dickens and people like him remind us that there is good in the world and that is hard to explain if there is no God that is good.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.