Tough Customer
A little anecdote about a schoolmaster who wasn’t as much of a Wackford Squeers as he appeared to be.
A little anecdote about a schoolmaster who wasn’t as much of a Wackford Squeers as he appeared to be.
Charles Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby (1839) firmly fixed in the public’s mind the image of the Victorian schoolmaster as a Wackford Squeers, pitilessly exploiting his pupils for labour and feeding them little more than kitchen scraps in return. The poulterer in this little anecdote seems to have fallen easily into this trap, and paid the price.
There is a good story told of a school-master who hit upon a clever expedient for securing the best of a good bargain. Addressing a poulterer who had six fowls exposed for sale in his shop he said, “I always like to give my boys plenty to do at meal-times; just pick me out the three toughest of these fowls will you?”
The poulterer, delighted at the prospect of disposing of the least valuable portion of his stock, did as he was asked, whereupon, the schoolmaster quietly remarked, “Ah, thankyou! I will take the other three, please!”
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.