Cocktail Talk: Nicholas Nickleby, Part III
For our third Nicholas Nickleby Cocktail Talk (don’t miss Part I and Part II), we’re going to have a quote that starts at least with some words from one of the most fun, most jolly, but also most hard-to-read secondary characters perhaps in all of Dickens, John Browdie, the big Yorkshoreman with the serious accent to match. He likes his eating and drinking and joshing with his wife as much as anyone, as well as liking our main hero, and working to ensure he’s kept with a full glass.
With these words, John Browdie opened the door himself, and opening his eyes too to their utmost width, cried, as he clapped his hands together, and burst into a hearty roar:
‘Ecod, it be the godfeyther, it be the godfeyther! Tilly, here be Misther Nickleby. Gi’ us thee hond, mun. Coom awa’, coom awa’. In wi ‘un, doon beside the fire; tak’ a soop o’ thot. Dinnot say a word till thou’st droonk it a’! Oop wi’ it, mun. Ding! but I’m reeght glod to see thee.’
Adapting his action to his text, John dragged Nicholas into the kitchen, forced him down upon a huge settle beside a blazing fire, poured out from an enormous bottle about a quarter of a pint of spirits, thrust it into his hand, opened his mouth and threw back his head as a sign to him to drink it instantly, and stood with a broad grin of welcome overspreading his great red face like a jolly giant.
— Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby
