Nicholas Nickleby: Chapter 34 Summary & Analysis

Mr. Mantalini visits Ralph in his office, trying to get Ralph to loan him more money. Ralph ultimately agrees but then Madame Mantalini comes into the office. She says that Mr. Mantalini will be the ruin of her, and she can’t believe he’s asking Ralph for more money. She says that she now has to pay Miss Knag a significant amount of money as a partner. Madame Mantalini decides she’s going to put Mr. Mantalini on an allowance. In response, Mr. Mantalini repeatedly threatens to kill himself until Mrs. Mantalini relents and says she won’t put him on an allowance.

As the Mantalinis turn to leave, Mr. Mantalini says he almost forgot to mention Mulberry. He asks Ralph if he heard what happened. Ralph says he heard that Mulberry fell from his carriage and was injured. Mr. Mantalini tells Ralph that Nicholas was to blame and explains that the two had been fighting about Kate. He says that Mulberry’s injuries are serious. Ralph is shocked. He says that his nephew is again trying to thwart him. He laments that Kate will be taught to hate him, and he wishes he could find a quiet way to get revenge on Nicholas.  

Mr. Squeers then arrives to see Ralph. He has his son in tow. In the course of their conversation, Squeers tells Ralph that he has just finished recovering from injuries sustained from the fight with Nicholas. He assures Ralph that his family didn’t pay out of pocket for any medical expenses. Instead, they intentionally got one student sick with scarlet fever and then made sure he passed on the illness to four other boys. The Squeerses then added their own medical expenses to the bills they sent to the boys’ parents.

Ralph asks Squeers if he wants revenge against Nicholas, and Squeers says that he very much does. He then asks Mr. Squeers about Smike. Squeers says he knows next to nothing about Smike. He is 25 or 26 years old and was brought to Dotheboys Hall as a young child by a man Smike didn’t know. The man paid for six or eight years before the payments stopped. Mr. Squeers made inquiries but couldn’t track down any relatives of Smike. He kept Smike at the school out of charity, he tells Ralph. When Squeers leaves, Ralph tears up the letter from Nicholas. He knows that some people despise power that comes from money, but he aims to show those people what that kind of power can do.