NICHOLAS NICKLEBY MURAL - GRETA ARMS HOTEL
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Description
This wonderful mural forms a dihedral in the public lounge in the Greta Arms Hotel and depicts the hapless pupils of Whackford Squeers at Dotheboys Hall. In his third novel, Dickens assigns the following misleading description of Mr. Squeers's establishment: "At Mr Wackford Squeers's Academy, Dotheboys Hall, at the delightful village of Dotheboys, near Greta Bridge in Yorkshire, Youth are boarded, clothed, booked, furnished with pocket-money, provided with all necessaries, instructed in all languages living and dead, mathematics, orthography, geometry, astronomy, trigonometry, the use of the globes, algebra, single stick (if required), writing, arithmetic, fortification, and every other branch of classical literature. Terms, twenty guineas per annum. No extras, no vacations, and diet unparalleled. Mr Squeers is in town, and attends daily, from one till four, at the Saracen's Head, Snow Hill. N.B. An able assistant wanted. Annual salary 5 pounds. A Master of Arts would be preferred." Researching his story Dickens inspected several schools in (the then North Riding of Yorkshire) traveling under an assumed name, he must have seen sights similar to those depicted in this excellent mural and in his novel describes the pupils thus: - "Pale and haggard faces, lank and bony figures, children with the countenances of old men, deformities with irons upon their limbs, boys of stunted growth, and others whose long meagre legs would hardly bear their stooping bodies, all crowded on the view together; there were the bleared eye, the hare-lip, the crooked foot, and every ugliness or distortion that told of unnatural aversion conceived by parents for their offspring, or of young lives which, from the earliest dawn of infancy, had been one horrible endurance of cruelty and neglect". Charles Dickens 1812 - 1870. -
Owner
summonedbyfells -
Source
Flickr (Flickr) -
License
What does this mean? Attribution License
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Further information
Link: https://www.flickr.com/photos/8521690@N02/8677786255/
Resource type: Image
Added by: Simon Cotterill
Last modified: 7 years, 3 months ago
Viewed: 1189 times
Picture Taken: 2013-04-24T12:54:15 -
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