Joe Willet, just returned with one empty sleeve from his five years of
soldiering in America, had been with the soldiers in the barracks when
Barnaby had been brought there on his way to prison. He soon discovered
who the boy's rioting companions had been and took them word of his
plight, for he knew it meant death to Barnaby unless he escaped.
Maypole Hugh, Tappertit and the hangman were all itching for more
disorder, and this news gave them an excuse. They went out at once and
gathered the mob together to attack Newgate Prison and to release all
the prisoners. They themselves led the procession. The house of Varden,
Dolly's father, was on their way; they stopped there, and, in spite of
the lusty fight he made, carried the locksmith with them to compel him
to open the prison gates with his tools.
This he refused to do, and they would doubtless have killed him, but for
two men who dragged him from their clutches in the nick of time. These
two men were the one-armed Joe and Edward Chester, just returned from
the West Indies, whom the former had met by accident that day. They took
the locksmith to his home, while the raging crowd brought furniture from
neighboring houses and built a bonfire of it to burn down the great
prison gate.
From this same mob Haredale himself had a narrow escape. He was staying
at a house near by, which, belonging to a Catholic, was attacked. He
tried to escape across the roof, but was recognized from the street by
the giant Hugh. The cellar luckily had a back door opening into a lane,
and with the assistance of Joe and Edward, who had hastened to the rear
to aid him, he escaped that way.
Maypole Hugh, during this terrible time while the mob was burning houses
everywhere and the soldiers firing on the rioters in every quarter of
London, seemed to bear a charmed life. He rode a great brewer's horse
and carried an ax, and wherever the fight was thickest there he was to
be found.
Never had such a sight been seen in London as when the prison gate fell
and the crowd rushed from cell to cell, smashing the iron doors to
release the prisoners, some of whom, being under sentence of death, had
never expected to be free again. Rudge, the murderer, knowing nothing of
what the uproar meant, suffered tortures, thinking in his guilty fear
that the hordes were howling for his life. When he was finally released
and in the open street he found Barnaby beside him.
They broke off their fetters, and that night took refuge in a shed in a
field. Next day Rudge sent Barnaby to try to find the blind man, his
cunning partner, in whose wits he trusted to help them get away. Barnaby
brought the blind man, and brought also Hugh, whom he found wounded in
the street, but in so doing he was seen by Dennis, the hangman.
This villainous sneak, knowing that the daring of the rioters had
reached its limit, and that they must soon be scattered and captured,
and thinking to buy pardon for himself by a piece of treachery, without
delay brought soldiers, who surrounded the shed. The blind man,
attempting to run away, was shot dead, and the others, Rudge, Hugh and
poor, innocent Barnaby, were captured.
Then, well satisfied with his work, Dennis set out for the house where
Simon Tappertit had confined Emma Haredale and Dolly Varden. The hangman
wanted them well out of the way, so they could not testify that he had
helped to burn The Warren and to kidnap them. He had thought of a plan
to have them taken to a boat in the river and conveyed where their
friends would never find them, and to carry them off he chose Gashford,
Lord George Gordon's secretary, who was the more willing as he had
fallen in love with Emma's beauty.
But this wicked plan was never to be carried out. The very hour that
Gashford came on this pitiless errand, while he roughly bade Emma
prepare to depart, the doors flew open. Men poured in, led by Edward
Chester, who knocked Gashford down; and in another moment Emma was
clasped in her uncle's embrace, and Dolly, laughing and crying at the
same time, fell into the arms of her father. Their place of concealment
had been discovered a few hours before, and the three men had lost no
time in planning their capture.
Dennis the hangman, in spite of his previous treachery, caught in the
trap, was taken straight-way to jail, and Simon Tappertit, wounded and
raging, watched Dolly's departure from the floor, where he lay with his
wonderful legs, the pride and glory of his life, broken and crushed into
shapeless ugliness. The famous riots were over. Lord George Gordon was a
prisoner, hundreds were being arrested, and London was again growing
quiet.
Mrs. Rudge, poor mother! at last found Barnaby where he lay chained in
his cell and condemned to death. Day after day she never left him, while
Varden, the locksmith, and Haredale worked hard for his release. They
carried his case even to the King, and at the last moment, while he rode
on his way to execution, his pardon was granted.
Of the rest who died on the scaffold, Rudge, the murderer, was hanged,
cursing all men to the last; Maypole Hugh died glorying in his evil life
and with a jest on his lips, and Dennis, the hangman, was dragged to the
gallows cringing and shrieking for mercy.
A few weeks later Emma Haredale was married to Edward Chester and sailed
with him back to the West Indies, where he had established a flourishing
business.
Before this, however, his father, Sir John Chester, was well punished
for his hard heart and bad deeds by the discovery that Maypole Hugh, the
hostler, was really his own unacknowledged son, whose mother he had
deserted many years before. But even this blow, and the marriage of his
son Edward to the niece of his lifelong enemy, did not soften him. He
still hated Haredale with his old venom and loved to go to the ruins of
The Warren and gloat over its destruction.
On one of these visits he met and taunted Haredale beyond all endurance.
The two men drew their swords and fought a duel, which ended by
Haredale's running Sir John through the heart. Haredale left England at
once, entered a convent in a foreign country and spent his few remaining
years in penance and remorse.
Lord George Gordon, the poor deluded noble who had been the cause of all
this disorder, finally died, harmless and quite crazy, in Newgate
Prison. Simon Tappertit, in spite of his active part in the riots, was
luckier, for he got off with two wooden legs and lived for many years, a
corner boot-black.
Joe, of course, married Dolly Varden, and the locksmith gave her such a
generous marriage portion that he was able to set up in business,
succeeding his father as landlord of the old Maypole Inn, and there they
lived long and happily.
Barnaby Rudge, after the death of his father, gradually became more
rational and was everywhere a great favorite with old and young. He and
his mother lived always on the Maypole farm, and there were never two
more contented souls than they.
As for Grip, the raven, he soon forgot his jail experience and grew
sleek and glossy again. For a whole year he never uttered a word till
one sunny morning he suddenly broke out with, "I'm a devil, I'm a devil,
I'm a devil!" in extraordinary rapture. From that time on he talked more
and more, and as he was only one hundred and fifty years old when
Barnaby was gray headed (a mere infant for a raven) he is very probably
talking yet.
THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD
Published 1849-1850
_Scene_: London, Yarmouth, Dover and the Country
_Time_: 1812 to 1842
CHARACTERS
David Copperfield A fatherless boy
Miss Betsy Trotwood His aunt
Peggotty His nurse
Mr. Murdstone His stepfather
Miss Murdstone Mr. Murdstone's sister
Mr. Peggotty A fisherman
Peggotty's brother
Ham Their nephew
Mrs. Gummidge The widow of Mr. Peggotty's dead partner
"Little Em'ly" Peggotty's orphan niece
Barkis A cart driver
Later, Peggotty's husband
Mr. Creakle Proprietor of a boys' school
Tommy Traddles }
} Schoolmates and friends of David's
James Steerforth }
Mr. Micawber A London friend of David's
Always "waiting for something to turn up"
"Mr. Dick" A simple-minded relative of
Miss Betsy Trotwood's
Mr. Wickfield Miss Betsy's lawyer
Agnes His daughter
Uriah Heep His clerk
Later, his partner
Doctor Strong David's schoolmaster in Dover
Dora Spenlow The daughter of David's employer
and his "child-wife"
DAVID COPPERFIELD
I
DAVID'S EARLY UPS AND DOWNS
There was once a little boy by the name of David Copperfield, whose
father had died before he was born. The night he was born his
great-aunt, Miss Betsy Trotwood--a grim lady with a black cap tied under
her chin and a great gold watch chain--came to the house to ask his
mother to name the baby, which she took for granted was a girl, after
her; but as soon as she found it was a boy she flounced out in anger and
never came back again.
The first thing David remembered was living in a big country house in
England with his pretty, golden-haired mother and with Peggotty, his
nurse, a red-faced, kindly woman, with a habit of wearing her dresses so
tight that whenever she hugged him some buttons would fly off the back.
He loved his mother dearly--so dearly that when a tall, handsome man
named Murdstone began to come to see her in the evenings David was
jealous and sad. Mr. Murdstone acted as if he liked him, and even took
him riding on his horse; but there was something in his face that David
could not like.
One summer day David was sent off with Peggotty for a two weeks' visit
to her brother's house in Yarmouth. Yarmouth was a queer fishing town on
the sea-coast, and the house they went to was the queerest thing in it.
It was made of an old barge, drawn up high and dry on the beach. It had
a chimney on one side and little windows, and there were sea-shells
around the door. David's room was in the stern, and the window was the
hole which the rudder had once passed through. Everything smelled of
salt water and lobsters, and David thought it was the most wonderful
house in the world.
He soon made friends with the family--Mr. Peggotty, a big fisherman with
a laugh like a gale of wind; Ham, his nephew, a big, overgrown boy who
carried David from the coach on his back, and Mrs. Gummidge, who was the
widow of Mr. Peggotty's drowned partner.
And, last of all, there was a beautiful little girl with curly hair and
a string of blue beads around her neck whom they called Little Em'ly.
She was an orphan niece of Peggotty's. None of these people belonged to
Mr. Peggotty, but, though he was only a poor fisherman himself, he was
so kind that he gave them all a home. David played with little Em'ly,
and went out in the boat with Mr. Peggotty, and enjoyed his visit
greatly, though he grew anxious to see his mother again.
He had no idea what had happened to her till he got back home with
Peggotty. Then he found why he had been sent off on his visit. While he
was away his mother had married Mr. Murdstone.
David found things sadly altered after this. Mr. Murdstone was a hard,
cruel master. He cared nothing for the little boy and was harsh to him
in everything. He even took away David's own cozy bedroom and made him
sleep in a gloomy chamber. When he was sad Mr. Murdstone called him
obstinate and locked him up and forbade his mother to pet or comfort
him.
David's mother loved him, but she loved her new husband, too, and it was
a most unhappy state of things. To make it worse, Mr. Murdstone's sister
came to live with them. She was an unlovely old maid with big black
eyebrows, and liked David no better than her brother did.
After this there were no more pleasant hours of sitting with his mother
or walking with her to church, for Mr. Murdstone and his sister kept
them apart. The only happy moments David spent were in a little upper
room where there was a collection of books left by his dead father. He
got some comfort from reading these.
Mr. Murdstone made David's mother give him hard tasks and lessons to do,
and when David recited them he and his sister both sat and listened. To
feel their presence and disapproval confused the little fellow so much
that even when he knew his lesson he failed.
One day when he came to recite he saw Mr. Murdstone finishing the
handle of a whip he had been making. This frightened him so that he
could scarcely remember a word. Mr. Murdstone grasped him then and led
him to his room to whip him.
Poor little David was so terrified that he hardly knew what he was
doing, and in his agony and terror, while the merciless blows were
falling, he seized the hand that held him and bit it as hard as he
could. Mr. Murdstone then beat him almost to death and locked him in the
room.
He was kept there for five days with only bread and milk to eat. Every
day he was taken down for family prayers and then taken back again, and
during prayers he was made to sit in a corner where he could not even
see his mother's face. He had to sit all day long with nothing to do but
think of Mr. Peggotty's house-boat and of little Em'ly and wish he was
there. The last night Peggotty, his nurse, crept up and whispered
through the keyhole that Mr. Murdstone was going to send him away the
next day to a school near London.
The next morning he started in a carrier's cart. His mother was so much
in awe of Mr. Murdstone that she hardly dared kiss David good-by, and he
saw nothing of Peggotty. But as he was crying, Peggotty came running
from behind a hedge and jumped into the cart and hugged him so hard that
all the buttons flew off the back of her dress.
The man who drove the cart was named Barkis. He seemed to be very much
taken with Peggotty, and after she had gone back David told him all
about her. Before they parted he made David promise to write her a
message for him. It was a very short message--"Barkis is willin'." David
didn't know in the least what the driver meant, but he promised, and he
sent the message in his very first letter.
Probably Peggotty knew what he meant, though, for before David came back
again Mr. Barkis and she were courting. However, that has not much to do
with this part of the story.
The school to which Mr. Murdstone had sent him was a bare building with
gratings on all the windows like a prison, and a high brick wall around
it. It was owned by a man named Creakle, who had begun by raising hops,
and had gone into the school business because he had lost all of his own
and his wife's money and had no other way to live. He was fat and spoke
always in a whisper, and he was so cruel and bad-tempered that not only
the boys, but his wife, too, was terribly afraid of him.
He nearly twisted David's ear off the first day, and he made one of the
teachers tie a placard to David's back (this, he said, was by Mr.
Murdstone's order) which read:
____________________
| |
| TAKE CARE OF HIM |
| HE BITES |
|____________________|
To have to wear this before everybody made David sorrowful and ashamed,
but luckily a good-natured boy named Tommy Traddles, who liked David's
looks, said it was a shame to make him wear it, and as Tommy Traddles
was very popular, all the other boys said it was a shame, too. So,
beyond calling him "Towser" for a few days, and saying "Lie down, sir!"
as if he were a dog, they did not make much fun of him while he wore it.
Besides Tommy Traddles, David liked best the head boy, James
Steerforth--the oldest boy in the school, and the only one Creakle did
not dare beat or mistreat. Steerforth took David under his wing and
helped him with his lessons, while in return David used to tell him
stories from the books he had read.
What with the beatings and tasks, David was glad enough when vacation
time came. But his home-coming was anything but pleasant. He found his
mother with a little baby, and she looked careworn and ill.
Mr. Murdstone, he saw at once, hated him as much as ever, and Miss
Murdstone would not let him even so much as touch his baby brother. He
was forbidden to sit in the kitchen with Peggotty, and when he crept
away to the upper room with the books Mr. Murdstone called him sullen
and obstinate. David was so miserable every day that he was almost glad
to bid his mother good-by, and as he rode away, to look back at her as
she stood there at the gate holding up her baby for David to see.
That was the last picture David carried in his heart of his pretty
mother. One day not long after, he was called from the school-room to
the parlor, and there Mr. Creakle told him that his mother was dead and
that the baby had died, too.
David reached home the next day. Peggotty took him into her arms at the
door and called his mother her "dear, poor pretty," and comforted him,
but he was very sad. It seemed to him that life could never be bright
again.
After the funeral Miss Murdstone discharged Peggotty and, probably not
knowing what else to do with him, let David go with the faithful old
servant down to the old house-boat at Yarmouth, where he had been
visiting when his mother was married to Mr. Murdstone.
The wonderful house on the beach was just the same. Mr. Peggotty and Ham
and Mrs. Gummidge were still there, with everything smelling just as
usual of salt water and lobsters; and little Em'ly was there, too, grown
to be quite a big girl. It seemed, somehow, like coming back to a dear
old quiet home, where nothing changed and where all was restful and
good.
But this happiness was not to last. David had to go home again, and
there it was worse than ever. He was utterly neglected. He was sent to
no school, taught nothing, allowed to make no friends. And at last Mr.
Murdstone, as if he could think of nothing worse, apprenticed him as a
chore boy in a warehouse in London.
The building where David now was compelled to work was on a wharf on the
river bank, and was dirty and dark and overrun with rats. Here he had to
labor hard for bare living wages, among rough boys and rougher men, with
no counselor, hearing their coarse oaths about him, and fearing that one
day he would grow up to be no better than they. He was given a bedroom
in the house of a Mr. Micawber, and this man was, in his way, a friend.
There was never a better-hearted man than Mr. Micawber, but he seemed to
be always unlucky. He had a head as bald as an egg, wore a tall, pointed
collar, and carried for ornament an eye-glass which he never used. He
never had any money, was owing everybody who would lend him any, and was
always, as he said, "waiting for something to turn up." With this
exception David had not a friend in London, and finally Mr. Micawber
himself was put in prison for debt, and his relatives, who paid his
debts to release him, did so on condition that he leave London. So at
length David had not even this one friend.
David bore this friendless and wretched life as long as he could, but at
length he felt that he could stay at the warehouse no longer and made up
his mind to run away.
The only one in the world he could think of who might help him
was--whom do you think? His great-aunt, Miss Betsy Trotwood, who had
left his mother's house the night he was born because he did not happen
to be a girl. She was the only real relative he had in the world.
She lived, Peggotty had told him, in Dover, and that was seventy miles
away; but the distance did not daunt him. So one day he put all his
things into a box and hired a boy with a cart to take it to the coach
office. But the boy robbed him of all the money he had (a gold piece
Peggotty had sent him) and drove off with his box besides, and poor
David, crying, set out afoot, without a penny, in the direction he
thought Dover lay.
That evening he sold his waistcoat to a clothes-dealer for a few
pennies, and when night came he slept on the ground, under the walls of
Mr. Creakle's old school where he had known Steerforth and Tommy
Traddles. The next day he offered his jacket for sale to a half-crazy
old store-keeper, who took the coat but would not pay him at first, and
David had to sit all day on the door-step before the other would give
him the money.
The next four nights he slept under haystacks, greatly in fear of
tramps, and at length, on the sixth day, ragged, sunburned, dusty and
almost dead from weariness, he got to Dover.
He had to ask many people before he could find out where Miss Betsy
Trotwood lived. It was outside the town, in a cottage with a little
garden. Here she lived all alone, except for a simple-minded old man,
whom she called Mr. Dick, who was a relative of hers, and who did
nothing all day but fly big kites and write petitions to the king, which
he began every morning and never finished. All the neighbors thought
Miss Betsy Trotwood a most queer old woman, but those who knew her best
knew that she had a very kind heart under her grim appearance.
When David reached the house Miss Betsy was digging at some flowers in
the garden. All she saw was a ragged, dirty little boy, and she called
out, without even turning her head: "Go away; no boys here!"
But David was so wretched that he went right in at the gate and went up
behind her and said: "If you please, aunt, I'm your nephew."
His aunt was so startled at his looks and at what he said, that she sat
down plump on the ground; and David, his misery getting all at once the
better of him, sobbed out all the pitiful tale of his wrongs and sorrows
since his mother had died.
Miss Betsy Trotwood's heart was touched. She seized David by the collar,
led him into the house, made him drink something and then made him lie
down on the sofa while she fed him hot broth. Then she had a warm bath
prepared, and at last, very tired and comfortable, and wrapped up in a
big shawl, David fell asleep on the sofa.
That night he was put to bed in a clean room, and before he slept he
prayed that he might never be homeless and friendless again.
II
LITTLE EM'LY
Good fortune was with David now. His aunt wrote to Mr. Murdstone, and he
and his sister came, fully expecting to take the boy back with them,
but, instead, Miss Betsy told Mr. Murdstone plainly that he was a
stony-hearted hypocrite, who had broken his wife's heart and tortured
her son, and she ordered him and his sister from the house. David was so
delighted at this that he threw his arms around her neck and kissed her,
and from that moment Miss Betsy Trotwood began to love him as if he had
been her own son.
David loved her in return. He drove out with her and helped Mr. Dick fly
his kites and was very grateful. And at length his aunt placed him in a
school in Dover and found him pleasant lodgings there in the house of
her lawyer, Mr. Wickfield.
It was a different sort of school from what his first had been. His
teacher was a Doctor Strong, and the school-boys were not the
frightened, ill-treated lot he had known at Mr. Creakle's house. He was
happy there, but his happiest hours of all were those spent, after
school was out, at Mr. Wickfield's. The lawyer had an only daughter,
Agnes, just David's age, a sweet, gentle girl, who seemed to live for
her father, and whom David came to consider before long almost as a
sister.
One person connected with the lawyer's household whom he did not like so
well was Uriah Heep. Heep was a high-shouldered, red-headed, bony young
man, with no eyebrows or eyelashes, and with long skeleton fingers. He
dressed all in black, and his hands were clammy and cold, like a fish,
so that it chilled one to touch them. He never smiled--the nearest he
could come to it was to make two creases down his cheeks. He was always
cringing and pretending to be humble, but really he was a sneak and a
scoundrel at heart. David detested him without knowing why, the more so
when he came to see that Heep was gaining an influence over Agnes's
father. All the while, too, Heep pretended to like David, though David
knew very well he did not.
So time went on. David studied hard and was a favorite with both pupils
and teachers. At length he was head boy himself, and at seventeen his
school life was finished.
He parted regretfully from Doctor Strong and from Agnes, and after
paying his aunt, Miss Betsy Trotwood, a visit, he started off to
Yarmouth to see his old nurse, now the wife of Barkis, the driver, and
just as fond of David as ever. On his way through London, as it
happened, David met the old school-fellow whom he had so liked, James
Steerforth, and, loath to part with him so quickly, he proposed that the
latter accompany him to Yarmouth.
Steerforth agreed and they went together. They took dinner at Peggotty's
and spent the first evening in the old house-boat, where Mr. Peggotty
still lived with Ham and Mrs. Gummidge and little Em'ly, the latter now
grown to be a lovely girl and engaged to marry Ham. They spent some
weeks there, each amusing himself in his own way, and soon Steerforth
was as popular as David had always been, for he sang beautifully and
talked entertainingly, and all, from Mr. Peggotty to little Em'ly,
thought they had never seen so brilliant and handsome a lad.