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Nandy, John Edward (LD) Mr Nandy was the father of Mrs Plornish. He was ‘a poor reedy piping old gentleman, like a worn-out bird; who had been in what he called the music-binding business, and met with great misfortunes . . . [He] had retired of his own accord to the Workhouse.’ Mrs Plornish, however, loves and admires him for his talents and manners. ‘The poor litle old man knew some pale and vapid songs, long out of date, about Chloe, and Phyllis, and Strephon being wounded by the son of Venus; and for Mrs Plornish there was no such music at the Opera, as the small internal flutterings and chirpings wherein he would discharge himself of these ditties, like a weak, little, broken barrel-organ, ground by a baby.’ On visiting his son-in-law in the Marshalsea, where he was briefly imprisoned for debt, Nandy made the acquaintance of Mr Dorrit, who loftily patronised him. Nandy left the workhouse to live with the Plornishes when Mr Dorrit bought their little business for them. (I: 31; II: 4, 13, 26, 27)

Nathan, Mr (SB) The dresser at a private theatre. He was a ‘red-headed and red-whiskered Jew’. (‘Scenes: Private Theatres’)

Native, the (DS) Major Bagstock’s Indian manservant. The Major sometimes pelts him with various objects, for he ‘plumed himself on having the Native in a perfect state of drill, and visited the least departure from strict discipline with this kind of fatigue duty’. (7, 10, 20, 24, 26, 29, 58, 59)

Neckett (BH) The bailiff’s man who comes to arrest Mr Skimpole for debt. When Esther Summerson sees him, he is sitting on a sofa ‘in a white great-coat, with smooth hair upon his head and not much of it, which he was wiping smoother, and making less of, with a pocket-handkerchief’. Because he threatens to take Mr Skimpole to a

sponging-house, Coavinses, Skimpole invariably refers to him by that name. When Neckett dies, he leaves three orphans, Charlotte (known as Charley), Emma and Tom, who are provided for by Mr Jarndyce. (6, 15, 23, 67)

Neckett, Charlotte (BH) See Charley.