400 Nobodies Ruined

One day in and I'm already swooning over how wonderful Nicholas Nickleby is. The book, not the actual character. Dickens captures the impact of economics on daily life in a way that make his stories painfully relevant. Debt, credit, loans, income, property - drive his characters and plots.

I think I sometimes imagine that things like foreclosure or the agony of mounting debt are modern inventions. Reading Dickens is a nice reminder that we humans are all the same and have been for a long time. In the first chapter Dickens sums up the financial trouble of Mr. Nickleby Sr. and it struck me as all too familiar:

Speculation is a round game; the players see little or nothing of their cards at first starting; gains may be great - and so may losses. The run of luck went against Mr. Nickleby; a mania prevailed, a bubble burst, four stock brokers took villa residences at Florence, four hundered nobodies were ruined and among them Nr. Nickleby.

"The Very house I live in," sighed the poor gentleman, "may be taken from me to-morrow. Not an article of my old furniture, but will be sold to strangers!'

The last reflection hurt him so much, the he took at once to his bed, apparently resolve to keep that, at all events.

Poor old Nickleby. Modern America feels your pain. I must now go back to packing. Sigh...