'WACKFORD SQUEERS.'

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 4, Issue 110, 19 November 1915, Page 4 (Supplement)

'WACKFORD SQUEERS.'

IDENTITY DISCOVERED

NEW DICKENS LETTER. For many years it has been a subject of controversy whether Squeers, the despicable Yorkshire schoolmaster drawn by Dickens in "Nicholas Nickelby," had a living prototype or was merely a creation of. /the novelist's brain. The latter view he* so far prevailed. The position of those who advanced it seemed unassailable. They had only to refer to the preface of the first cheap edition of tne novel, which opens with an assurance of the great amusement and satisfaction the author had derived from learning that more than one Yorkshire schoolmaster laid claim to being the original Mr. Squeers. The preface proceeds: —

While the author cannot but feel the full force of the compliment thus conveyed to him, he ventures to suggest that these contentions may arise from the fact that Mr. Squeers is the representative of a class and not an inu vidual. Where imposture, ignorance, and brutal cupidity are the stock-in-trade of a small body of men, and one is described by these characteristics, all his fellows will recognise something belonging to themselves, and each will have a misgiving that the portrait is his own.

But now there has come to light a letter of Dickens' which establishes once and for all the fact that the prototype of Squeers was a certain Yorkshire schoolmaster, William Shaw, this letter, in view of the passage quoted from the preface, may indicate either inconsistency, a lapse of memory, or a desire to conciliate such of the Yorkshire schoolmasters "who meditated a journey to London for the express purpose of committing an assault and battery upon the traducer." It has come, in the ordinary course of business, into the hands of Messrs. Maggs Brothers, the antiquarian booksellers, of 109 Strand, London, who guarantee its authenticity and it is addressed to Mrs. S. C. Hall, who was then a wellknown writer on Irish life. NOVELIST'S DISCLOSURE.

It is written from Doughty Street, London, dated December 25,1838, and, except for the deletion of a line mentioning a mutual friend, is as follows. I am exceedingly obliged to you for your kind note and the interesting anecdote which you tell so well. I have laid it by in the M.S. of the first number of Nickelby, and shall keep it there in confirmation of the truth of my little picture. Depend upon it that the rascalities of those Yorkshire schoolmasters cannot easily be exaggerated, and that 1 have kept down the strong truth and thrown as much comicality over it as 1 could, rather than disgust and weary the reader with its fouler aspects. The identical scoundrel you speak of, 1 saw—curiously enough, His name is Shaw; the action was tried (1 believe) eight or ten years since, and if 1 am not much mistaken, another action was brought against him by the parents of a miserable child a cancer in

whose head he opened with an inky penkniij, and so caused hw deatii. The country for miles around was covered, when 1 was tnere, with deep snow. There in an old church near the school, and the iirst gravestone 1 stumbled on that dreary winter afternoon was placed above the grave of a boy, 18 long years old, who had died—suddenly, tne inscription said; I suppose his heart broke —the camel falls down " suddenly" when they heap tne last load upon his backdied at that wretched place. 1 think his ghost put Smike into my head, upon the spot.

A KIND-HEARTED ATTORNEY. 1 went down in an assumed name, taking a plausible letter to an old Yorkshire attorney from another attorney in town, telling him bow a friend had been left a widow and wanted to place her boys at a Yorkshire school, in the hopes of thawing the frozen compassion of her relations. The man of business gave me an introduction to one or two schools but at night be came down to the inn where 1 was stopping, and, after much hesitation and confusion be was a large-headed, flat-nosed, redfaced, old fellow—said, with a degree of feeling one would not have given him credit for, that the matter had been on his mind all day—that they vure sad places for mothers to sendi their orphan boys to—that he hoped I would not give him up as my adviser—but that she had better do anything with them —let them hold horses, run errands —fling them in any way upon the mercy ot the world —rather than trust them there. This was an attorney, a well-fed man of business, and a rough Yorkshireman. Mrs. Dickens and myself will be delighted to see the friend you speak of . . . and I throw myself single-handed upon your good nature, and beseech you to forgive me this long story —which you ought to do, as you have been the means of drawing it from me.

The letter, which was readily shown to a representative of the "Daily Telegraph," is in the clear, firm Land of Dickens, and from beginning to end of the four closely-written pages there is neither deletion nor correction, and only one interlineation—the word ■'rough," which had been introduced before the "Yorkshireman" near the end of the letter.

Jn the September number of the " Dickonsian, "the magazine for Dickene lovere," the letter is reproduced in facsimile, and the editor, Mr. B. W. Matz, adds:--' It will be gathered from this letter that Shaw was the schoolmaster who raised Dickens's ire and indignation more perhaps than any other, and that doubtless the "identical scoundrel" played no 6mall part in the moulding of the character of Squeers. There are other points in tho letter of extreme interest.

The "old church near tho school" was Bones Church, and it was in the churchyard that Dickene stumbled on the gravestone of the boy whose " ghost put Smite into his fccad, upon the spot." The boy's najic was, according to th'j inscription, "George Aehton Taylor, son of John Try lor, of Irowbridge, Wiltshire, who died suddenly at, Mi. William Shaw's Academy, of this place, April 13, 1822, aged 10 years,"

SHAW'S PROSPECTUS. Already tho publication of Dickens's letter to Mrs. S. C, Hall has led to developments. There has juet been bent to Mr. Matz, for notice in tho next issue of tho "Dickensi»n," a printed card, which is what nowadays would be called the "prospectus" of the Shaw Seminary. The printed matter on one H» of the card details th* education

which Mr. Shaw undertook to impart, at £2O per annum, tu the pupils entrusted to him, and on the other i* a list of the outnt while each pupil was bound to provide. On the margin ot the letterpress tnere is written in the handwriting of Mr. Shaw himself, in clear, cal.graphy:—

Mr. Shaw leaves the Saracen's Head, Snow um, at half past six o'clock on Thursday morning, July

There is also the memorandum in Shaw's handwriting: "Two coach fares £3." In Shaw's printed prospectus his London headquarters are stated to be the George and Blue Boar, High Hplborn. Yet it js at the Saracen's Head, in !?now Hill, that Squeers, as detailed in chapter IV. of "Nicholas Nickelby" waited for pupils, and whence the stage coach journey to Yorkshire was started.