CHAPTER 2

Of Mr Ralph Nickleby, and his Establishments, and his Undertakings, and
of a great Joint Stock Company of vast national Importance


Mr Ralph Nickleby was not, strictly speaking, what you would call
a merchant, neither was he a banker, nor an attorney, nor a special
pleader, nor a notary. He was certainly not a tradesman, and still less
could he lay any claim to the title of a professional gentleman; for it
would have been impossible to mention any recognised profession to which
he belonged. Nevertheless, as he lived in a spacious house in Golden
Square, which, in addition to a brass plate upon the street-door, had
another brass plate two sizes and a half smaller upon the left hand
door-post, surrounding a brass model of an infant's fist grasping a
fragment of a skewer, and displaying the word 'Office,' it was clear
that Mr Ralph Nickleby did, or pretended to do, business of some kind;
and the fact, if it required any further circumstantial evidence, was
abundantly demonstrated by the diurnal attendance, between the hours of
half-past nine and five, of a sallow-faced man in rusty brown, who sat
upon an uncommonly hard stool in a species of butler's pantry at the end
of the passage, and always had a pen behind his ear when he answered the
bell.

Although a few members of the graver professions live about Golden
Square, it is not exactly in anybody's way to or from anywhere. It is
one of the squares that have been; a quarter of the town that has gone
down in the world, and taken to letting lodgings. Many of its first
and second floors are let, furnished, to single gentlemen; and it
takes boarders besides. It is a great resort of foreigners. The