"David Copperfield"--published in 1849-50--will always be
acclaimed by many as the best of all Dickens's books. It was
its author's favourite, and its universal and lasting
popularity is entirely deserved. "David Copperfield" is
especially remarkable for the autobiographical element, not
only in the wretched days of childhood at the wine merchant's,
but in the shorthand-reporting in the House of Commons.
Dickens never forgot his early degradation, as it seemed to
him, in the blacking warehouse at Hungerford Stairs, or quite
forgave those who sent him to an occupation he so loathed.
Much of "David Copperfield" is familiar in our mouths as
household words, and Swinburne has maintained that Micawber
ranks with Dick Swiveller as one of the greatest characters in
all Dickens's novels. "Copperfield" comes midway in the great
list of works by Charles Dickens.
_I.--My Early Childhood_
I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve
o'clock at night, at Blunderstone, in Suffolk. I was a posthumous child.
My father's eyes had been closed upon the light of this world six months
when mine opened upon it. Miss Betsey Trotwood, an aunt of my father's,
and consequently a great-aunt of mine, arrived on the afternoon of the
day I was born, and explained to my mother (who was very much afraid of
her) that she meant to provide for her child, which was to be a girl.
My aunt said never a word when she learnt that it was a boy, and not a
girl, but took her bonnet by the strings in the manner of a sling, aimed
a blow at the doctor's head with it, put it on bent, walked out, and
never came back. She vanished like a discontented fairy.
The first objects that assume a distinct presence before me, as I look
far back into the blank of my infancy, are my mother, with her pretty
air and youthful shape, and Peggotty, my old nurse, with no shape at
all, and with cheeks and arms so red and hard that I wondered the birds
didn't peck her in preference to apples.
I remember a few years later, a gentleman with beautiful black hair and
whiskers walking home from church on Sunday with us; and, somehow, I
didn't like him or his deep voice, and I was jealous that his hand
should touch my mother's in touching me--which it did.
It must have been about this time that, waking up from an uncomfortable
doze one night, I found Peggotty and my mother both in tears, and both
talking.
"Not such a one as this Mr. Copperfield wouldn't have liked," said
Peggotty. "That I say, and that I swear!"
"Good heavens!" cried my mother. "You'll drive me mad! How can you have
the heart to say such bitter things to me, when you are well aware that
out of this place I haven't a single friend to turn to?" But the
following Sunday I saw the gentleman with the black whiskers again, and
he walked home from church with us, and gradually I became used to
seeing him and knowing him as Mr. Murdstone. I liked him no better than
at first, and had the same uneasy jealousy of him.
It was on my return from a visit to Yarmouth, where I went with Peggotty
to spend a fortnight at her brother's, that I found my mother married to
Mr. Murdstone. They were sitting by the fire in the best parlour when I
came in.
I gave him my hand. After a moment of suspense, I went and kissed my
mother. I could not look at her, I could not look at him; I knew quite
well he was looking at us both. As soon as I could creep away, I crept
upstairs, and cried myself to sleep.
A word of encouragement, of pity for my childish ignorance, of welcome
home, of reassurance to me that it _was_ home, might have made me
dutiful to him in my heart henceforth, instead of in my hypocritical
outside, and might have made me respect instead of hating him.
Miss Murdstone arrived next day; she was dark, like her brother, and
greatly resembled him in face and voice. Firmness was the grand quality
on which both of them took their stand.
I soon fell into disgrace over my lessons. I never could do them with my
mother satisfactorily with the Murdstones sitting by; their influence
upon me was like the fascination of two snakes on a wretched young bird.
One dreadful morning, when the lessons had turned out even more badly
than usual, Mr. Murdstone seized hold of me and twisted my head under
his arm preparatory to beating me with a cane. At the first stroke I
caught the hand with which he held me, in my mouth, between my teeth,
and bit it through. He beat me then as if he would have beaten me to
death. And when he had gone, I was kept a close prisoner in my room, and
was not allowed to see my mother, and was only permitted to walk in the
garden for half an hour every day. Miss Murdstone acted as gaoler, and
after five days of this confinement, she told me I was to be sent away
to school--to Salem House School, Blackheath.
I saw my mother before I left. They had persuaded her I was a wicked
fellow, and she was more sorry for that than for my going.
_II.--I Begin Life on My own Account_
I was doing my second term at school when I was told that my mother was
dead, and that I was to go home to the funeral.
I never returned to Salem House. Mr. Murdstone and his sister left me to
myself, and I could see that Mr. Murdstone liked me less than ever. At
odd times I speculated on the possibility of not being taught any more
or cared for any more, and growing up to be a shabby, moody man,
lounging an idle life away about the village.
Peggotty was under notice to quit, and thought of going to live with her
brother at Yarmouth; but as it turned out, she didn't do this, but
married the old carrier Barkis instead.
"Young or old, Davy dear, as long as I am alive, and have this house
over my head," said Peggotty to me on the day she was married, "you
shall find it as if I expected you here directly. I shall keep it every
day, as I used to keep your old little room, my darling."
The solitary condition I now fell into for some weeks was ended one day
by Mr. Murdstone telling me that I was to be put into the business of
Murdstone and Grinby.
"You will earn enough to provide for your eating and drinking, and
pocket money," said Mr. Murdstone. "Your lodging, which I have arranged
for, will be paid by me. So will your washing, and your clothes will be
looked after for you, too. You are now going to London, David, to begin
the world on your own account."
"In short, you are provided for," observed his sister, "and will please
to do your duty."
So I became, at ten years old, a little labouring hind in the service of
Murdstone and Grinby.
Murdstone and Grinby's warehouse was at the waterside, down in
Blackfriars, and an important branch of their trade was the supply of
wines and spirits to certain packet ships. A great many empty bottles
were one of the consequences of this traffic, and a certain number of
men and boys, of whom I was one, were employed to rinse and wash them.
When the empty bottles ran short, there were labels to be pasted on full
ones, or corks to be fitted to them, or finished bottles to be packed in
casks.
There were three or four boys, counting me. Mick Walker was the name of
the oldest; he wore a ragged apron, and a paper cap. The next boy was
introduced to me under the extraordinary name of Mealy Potatoes, which
had been bestowed upon him on account of his complexion, which was pale,
or mealy.
No words can express the secret agony of my soul as I sunk into this
companionship, and compared these associates with those of my happier
childhood, with the boys at Salem House. Often in the early morning,
when I was alone, I mingled my tears with the water in which I was
washing the bottles, and sobbed as if there were a flaw in my breast,
and it were in danger of bursting.
My salary was six or seven shillings a week--I think it was six at
first, and seven afterwards--and I had to support myself on that money
all the week. My breakfast was a penny loaf and a pennyworth of milk,
and I kept another small loaf and a modicum of cheese to make my supper
on at night.
I was so young and childish, and so little qualified to undertake the
whole charge of my existence, that often of a morning I could not resist
the stale pastry put out for sale at half price at the pastry-cooks'
doors, and spent on that the money I should have kept for my dinner. On
those days I either went without my dinner, or bought a roll or a slice
of pudding.
I was such a child, and so little, that frequently when I went into the
bar of a strange public-house for a glass of ale or porter to moisten
what I had for dinner, they were afraid to give it me.
I know I do not exaggerate the scantiness of my resources or the
difficulties of my life. I know that if a shilling were given me at any
time, I spent it in a dinner or a tea. I know that I worked from morning
until night, a shabby child, and that I lounged about the streets,
insufficiently and unsatisfactorily fed. I know that, but for the mercy
of God, I might easily have been, for any care that was taken of me, a
little robber or a little vagabond.
Arrangements had been made by Mr. Murdstone for my lodging with Mr.
Micawber--who took orders on commission for Murdstone and Grinby--and
Mr. Micawber himself escorted me to his house in Windsor Terrace, City
Road.
Mr. Micawber was a stoutish, middle-aged person, in a brown surtout,
with no more hair upon his head than there is upon an egg, and with a
very extensive face. His clothes were shabby, but he wore an imposing
shirt-collar. He carried a jaunty sort of a stick, with a large pair of
rusty tassels to it; and an eyeglass hung outside his coat--for
ornament, I afterwards found, as he very seldom looked through it, and
couldn't see anything when he did.
Arrived at his house in Windsor Terrace--which, I noticed, was shabby,
like himself, but also, like himself, made all the show it could--he
presented me to Mrs. Micawber, a thin and faded lady, not at all young.
"I never thought," said Mrs. Micawber, as she showed me my room at the
top of the house at the back, "before I was married that I should ever
find it necessary to take a lodger. But Mr. Micawber being in
difficulties, all considerations of private feeling must give way."