could be judged from her voice, evidently all but too many for her. Her
fluttered reply showed this at the very commencement, in answer to an
inquiry as to whether she remembered one particular morning in July
last, when Mrs. Bar-dell was dusting Pickwick's apartment. “Yes, my lord
and jury, I do.” “Was that sitting-room the first-floor front?” “Yes, it
were, sir”--something in the manner of Mrs. Crupp when at her faintest.
The suspicious inquiry of the red-faced little Judge, “What were
you doing in the back-room, ma'am?” followed--on her replying
lackadaisically, “My lord and jury, I will not deceive you”--by his
blinking at her more fiercely, “You had better not, ma'am,” were only
exceeded in comicality by Justice Stare-leigh's bewilderment a moment
afterwards, upon her saying that she “see Mrs. Bardell's street-door on
the jar.”
Judge (in immense astonishment).--“On the what?”
Counsel.--“Partly open, my lord.”
Judge (with more owl-like stolidity than ever).--“She said on the jar.”
Counsel.--“It's all the same, my lord.”
Then--blinking more quickly than before, with a furtive glance at
witness, and a doubtful look of abstraction into space--the little Judge
made a note of it.
As in Mrs. Cluppins' faintness there was a recognizable touch of Mrs.
Crupp, when the spasms were engendering in the nankeen bosom of that
exemplary female, so also in the maternal confidences volunteered by the
same witness, there was an appreciable reminder of another lady who
will be remembered as having been introduced at the Coroner's Inquest
in Bleak House as “Anastasia Piper, gentlemen.” Regarding that as a
favourable opportunity for informing the court of her own domestic
affairs, through the medium of a brief dissertation, Mrs. Cluppins was
interrupted by the irascible Judge at the most interesting point in her
revelations, when, having mentioned that she was already the mother of
eight children, she added, that “she entertained confident
expectations of presenting Mr. Cluppins with a ninth about that day
six months”--whereupon the worthy lady was summarily hustled out of the
witness-box.
Nathaniel Winkle, however, consoled us immediately. Don't we remember
how, even before he could open his lips, he was completely disconcerted?
Namely, when, bowing very respectfully to the little Judge, he had that
complimentary proceeding acknowledged snappishly with, “Don't look at
me, sir; look at the jury----” Mr. Winkle, in obedience to the mandate,
meekly looking “at the place where he thought that the jury might
be.” Don't we remember also perfectly well how the worst possible
construction was cast by implication beforehand upon his probable reply
to the very first question put to him, namely, by the mere manner in
which that first question was put? “Now, sir, have the goodness to
let his lordship and the jury know what your name is, will you?” Mr.
Skimpin, in propounding this inquiry, inclining his head on one side and
listening with great sharpness for the answer, “as if to imply that he
rather thought Mr. Winkle's natural taste for perjury would induce him
to give some name which did not belong to him.” Giving in, absurdly, his
surname only; and being asked immediately afterwards, if possible still
more absurdly, by the Judge, “Have you any Christian name, sir?” the
witness, in the Reading, more naturally and yet more confusedly even
it seemed than in the book, got that eminent functionary into a great
bewilderment as to whether he (Mr. Winkle) were called Nathaniel Daniel,
or Daniel Nathaniel. Bewildered himself, in his turn, and that
too almost hopelessly, came Mr. Winkle's reply, “No, my lord; only
Nathaniel--not Daniel at all.” Irascibly, the Judge's, “What did you
tell me it was Daniel for, then, sir?” Shamefaced and yet irritably,
“I didn't, my lord.” “You did, sir!”--with great indignation, topped by
this cogent reasoning,--“How could I have got Daniel on my notes, unless
you told me so, sir?” Nothing at all was said about it in the Reading;
but, again and again, Mr. Winkle, as there impersonated, while
endeavouring to feign an easiness of manner, was made to assume, in his
then state of confusion, “rather the air of a disconcerted pickpocket.”
Better almost than Mr. Winkle himself, however, as an impersonation,
was, in look, voice, manner, Mr. Skimpin, the junior barrister, under
whose cheerful but ruthless interrogations that unfortunate gentleman
was stretched upon the rack of examination. His (Mr. Skimpin's) cheery
echoing--upon every occasion when it was at last extorted from his
victim--of the latter's answer (followed instantly by his own taunts and
insinuations), remains as vividly as anything at all about this Reading
in our recollection. When at length Mr. Winkle, with no reluctance in
the world, but only seemingly with reluctance, answers the inquiry as to
whether he is a particular friend of Pickwick, “Yes, I am!”--“Yes, you
are!” said Mr. Skimpin (audibly to the court, but as if it were only to
himself). “And why couldn't you say that at once, sir? Perhaps you know
the plaintiff, too--eh, Mr. Winkle?” “I don't know her; I've seen her!”
“Oh, _you don't know her, but you've seen her!_ Now have the goodness to
tell the gentlemen of the jury what you mean by _that_, Mr. Winkle.” As
to how this unfortunate witness, after being driven to the confines of
desperation, on being at last released, “rushed with delirious haste”
to the hotel, “where he was discovered some hours after by the waiter,
groaning in a hollow and dismal manner, with his head buried beneath the
sofa cushions”--not a word was said in the Reading.
A flavour of the fun of Mrs. Sanders's evidence was given, but only a
passing flavour of it, in reference to Mr. Sanders having, in the course
of their correspondence, often called her duck, but never chops, nor yet
tomato-sauce--he being particularly fond of ducks--though possibly, if
he had been equally fond of chops and tomato-sauce, he might have called
her that instead, as a term of affection.
_The_ evidence of all, however, was that of Sam Weller, no less to
the enjoyment of the Author, it was plain to see, than to that of his
hearers. After old Weller's hoarse and guttural cry from the gallery,
“Put it down a wee, my lord,” in answer to the inquiry whether the
immortal surname was to be spelt with a V. or a W.; Sam's quiet “I
rayther suspect it was my father, my lord,” came with irresistible
effect from the Reader, as also did his recollection of something “wery
partickler” having happened on the memorable morning, out of which had
sprung the whole of this trial of Bardell v. Pickwick, namely, that he
himself that day had “a reg'lar new fit out o' clothes.” Beyond all the
other Wellerisms, however, was Sam's overwhelmingly conclusive answer to
counsel's inquiry in regard to his not having seen what occurred, though
he himself, at the time, was in the passage, “Have you a pair of eyes,
Mr. Weller?” “Yes, I _have_ a pair of eyes; and that's just it If they
wos a pair o' patent double-million magnifying gas microscopes of hextra
power, p'r'aps I might be able to see through two flights o' stairs
and a deal door; but _bein'_ only eyes, you see, my wision's limited.”
Better by far, in our estimation, nevertheless, than the smart Cockney
facetiousness of the inimitable Sam; better than the old coachman's
closing lamentation, “Vy worn't there a alleybi?” better than Mr.
Winkle, or Mrs. Cluppins, or Serjeant Buzfuz, or than all the rest
of those engaged in any capacity in the trial, put together, was the
irascible little Judge, with the blinking eyes and the monotonous
voice--himself, in his very _pose_, obviously, “all face and waistcoat.”
Than Mr. Justice Stareleigh there was, in the whole of this most
humorous of all the Readings, no more highly comic impersonation.
DAVID COPPERFIELD.
The sea-beach at Yarmouth formed both the opening and the closing scene
of this Reading, in six chapters, from “David Copperfield.” In its
varied portraiture of character and in the wonderful descriptive
power marking its conclusion, it was one of the most interesting and
impressive of the whole series in its delivery. Through it, we renewed
our acquaintance more vividly than ever with handsome, curry-headed,
reckless, heartless Steerforth! With poor, lone, lorn Mrs. Gummidge,
not only when everythink about her went contrairy, but when her better
nature gushed forth under the great calamity befalling her benefactor.
With pretty little Emily, and bewitching little Dora. With Mr. Micawber,
his shirt-collar, his eye-glass, the condescending roll in his voice,
and his intermittent bursts of confidence. With Mrs. Micawber, who,
as the highest praise we can bestow upon her, is quite worthy of her
husband, and who is always, it will be remembered, so impassioned in her
declaration that, come what may, she never _will_ desert Mr. Micawber!
With Traddles, and his irrepressible hair, even a love-lock from which
had to be kept down by Sophy's preservation of it in a clasped locket!
With Mr. Peggotty, in fine, who, in his tender love for his niece, is,
according to his own account, “not to-look at, but to think on,” nothing
less than a babby in the form of a great sea Porkypine! Remembering the
other originals, crowding the pages of the story in its integrity, how
one would have liked to have seen even a few more of them impersonated
by the protean Novelist! That “most wonderful woman in the world,” Aunt
Betsey, for example; or that most laconic of carriers, Mr. Barkis; or,
to name yet one other, Uriah Heep, that reddest and most writhing of
rascally attornies. As it was, however, there were abundant realizations
within the narrow compass of this Reading of the principal persons
introduced in the autobiography of David Copperfield. The most loveable,
by the way, of all the young heroes portrayed in the Dickens' Gallery
was there, to begin with, for example--the peculiar loveableness
of David being indicated as plainly as by any means through the
extraordinary variety of pet names given to him by one or another in the
course of the narrative. For, was he not the “Daisy” of Steerforth, the
“Doady” of Dora, the “Trotwood” of Aunt Betsy, and the “Mas'r Davy” of
the Yarmouth boatmen, just as surely as he was the “Mr. Copper-full”
of Mrs. Crupp, the “Master Copperfield” of Uriah Heep, and the “Dear
Copperfield” of Mr. Wilkins Micawber?
That “The Personal History and Experiences of David Copperfield
the Younger” was, among all its author's works, his own particular
favourite, he himself, in his very last preface to it, in 1867, formally
acknowledged. Several years previously, while sauntering with him to
and fro one evening on the grass-plot at Gadshill, we remember receiving
from him that same admission. “Which of all your books do you think
I regard as incomparably your best?” “Which?” “David Copperfield.” A
momentary pause ensuing, he added, readily and without the smallest
reservation, “You are quite right.” The acknowledgment then made as
to this being in fact his own opinion was thus simply but emphatically
expressed. Pen in hand, long afterwards, he made the same admission,
only with yet greater emphasis, when the Preface to the new edition of
the story in 1867 was thus closed by Charles Dickens--“Of all my books,
I like this the best. It will be easily believed that I am a fond parent
to every child of my fancy, and that no one can ever love that family as
dearly as I love them. But, like many fond parents, I have in my heart
of hearts a favourite child. And his name is 'David Copperfield.'”
Having that confession from his own lips and under his own hand, it will
be readily understood that the Novelist always took an especial delight
when, in the course of his Readings, the turn came for that of “David
Copperfield.”
One of the keenest sensations of pleasure he ever experienced as a
Reader--as he himself related to us with the liveliest gratification,
evidently, even in the mere recollection of the incident--occurred
in connection with this very Reading. Strange to say, moreover,
it occurred, not in England or in America, in the presence of an
English-speaking audience, but in Paris, and face to face with an
audience more than half of which was composed of Frenchmen. And the
hearer who caused him, there, that artistic sense, one might almost call
it thrill of satisfaction---was a Frenchman! All that was expressed
on the part of this appreciative listener, being uttered by him
instantaneously in a half-whispered, monosyllabic ejaculation. As we
have already explained upon an earlier page, the Readings which took
place in Paris, and which were in behalf of the British Charitable Fund
in that capital, were given there before a densely crowded but very
select audience at the British Embassy, Lord Cowley being then her
Majesty's ambassador. The Reading on the occasion referred to was “David
Copperfield,” and the Reader became aware in the midst of the hushed
silence, just after he had been saying, in the voice of Steerforth,
giving at the same moment a cordial grasp of the hand to the briny
fisherman he was addressing: “Mr. Peggotty, you are a thoroughly good
fellow, and deserve to be as happy as you are to-night. My hand upon
it!” when, turning round, he added, still as Steerforth, but speaking
in a very different voice and offering a very different hand-grip, as
though already he were thinking to himself what a chuckle-headed fellow
the young shipwright was--“Ham, I give you joy, my boy. My hand upon
that too!” The always keenly observant Novelist became aware of a
Frenchman, who was eagerly listening in the front row of the stalls,
suddenly exclaiming to himself, under his breath, “Ah--h!”--having
instantly caught the situation! The sound of that one inarticulate
monosyllable, as he observed, when relating the circumstance, gave the
Reader, as an artist, a far livelier sense of satisfaction than any that
could possibly have been imparted by mere acclamations, no matter how
spontaneous or enthusiastic.
As a Reading, it always seemed to us, that “David Copperfield” was cut
down rather distressingly. That, nevertheless, was unavoidable. Turning
in off Yarmouth sands, we went straight at once through the “delightful
door” cut in its side, into the old black barge or boat, high and dry
there on the sea-beach, and which was known to us nearly as familiarly
as to David himself, as the odd dwelling-house inhabited by Mr.
Peggotty. All the still-life of that beautifully clean and tidy interior
we had revealed to us again, as of old: lockers, boxes, table, Dutch
clock, chest of drawers--even tea-tray, only that we failed to hear
anything said about the painting on the tea-tray, representing “a lady
with a parasol, taking a walk with a military-looking child, who was
trundling a hoop.” The necessities of condensation in the same way
restricted the definition of Mr. Peggotty's occupation in the Reading,
to the simple mention of the fact that he dealt in lobsters, crabs, and
craw-fish, without any explanation at all as to those creatures being
heaped together in a little wooden out-house “in a state of wonderful
conglomeration with one another, and never leaving off pinching whatever
they laid hold of.” Little Emily appeared as a beautiful young woman,
and no longer as the prattling lassie who, years before had confided
to her playfellow, David, how, if ever she were a lady, she would give
uncle Dan, meaning Mr. Peggotty, “a sky-blue coat, with diamond buttons,
nankeen trousers, a red velvet waistcoat, a cocked hat, a large gold
watch, a silver pipe, and a box of money.” Mrs. Gummidge, as became a
faithful widow, was still fretting after the Old 'Un. Ham, something of
Mr. Peggotty's own build, as the latter described him, “a good deal o'
the sou-wester in him, wery salt, but on the whole, a honest sort of
a chap, too, with his 'art in the right place,” had just made good his
betrothal to the little creature he had seen grow up there before him,
“like a flower,” when, at the very opening of the Reading, into the
old Yarmouth boat, walked “Mas'r Davy” and his friend Steerforth. Mr.
Peggotty's explanation to his unexpected but heartily welcomed visitors
as to how the engagement between Ham and Emily, had but just then been
brought about, opened up before the audience in a few words the whole
scheme of the tragic little dramatic tale about to be revealed to them
through a series of vivid impersonations.
The idiomatic sentences of the bluff fisherman, as in their racy
vernacular they were blithely given utterance to by the manly voice of
the Reader, seemed to supply a fitting introduction to the drama, as
though from the lips of a Yarmouth Chorus. Scarcely had the social
carouse there in the old boat, on that memorable evening of Steerforth's
introduction, been recounted, when the whole drift of the story was
clearly foreshadowed in the brief talk which immediately took place
between him and David as they walked townwards across the sands towards
their hotel. “Daisy,--for though that's not the name your godfathers
and godmothers gave you, you're such a fresh fellow, that it's the name
I best like to call you by--and I wish, I wish, I wish you could give it
to me!” That of itself had its-significance. But still more significant
was David's mention of his looking in at Steerforth's bed-room on the
following morning, before himself going away alone, and of his there
finding the handsome scapegrace fast asleep, “lying easily, with his
head upon his-arm,” as he had often seen him lie in the old school
dormitory. “Thus in this silent hour I left him,” with mournful
tenderness, exclaimed the Reader, in the words and accents of his young
hero. “Never more, O God forgive you, Steerforth! to touch that passive
hand in love and friendship. Never, never more!” The revelation of his
treachery, towards the pretty little betrothed of the young shipwright,
followed immediately afterwards, on the occasion of David's next visit,
some months later, to the old boat on the flats at Yarmouth.
The wonder still is to us, now that we are recalling to mind the salient
peculiarities of this Reading, as we do so, turning over leaf by leaf
the marked copy of it, from which the Novelist read; the wonder, we
repeat, still is to us how, in that exquisite scene, the very words that
have always moved us most in the novel were struck out in the delivery,
are rigidly scored through here with blue inkmarks in the reading copy,
by the hand of the Reader-Novelist. Those words we mean which occur,
where Ham, having on his arrival, made a movement as if Em'ly were
outside, asked Mas'r Davy to “come out a minute,” only for him, on his
doing so, to find that Em'ly was not there, and that Ham was deadly
pale. “Ham! what's the matter?” was gasped out in the Reading.
But--_not_ what follows, immediately on that, in the original
narrative: “'Mas'r Davy!' Oh, for his broken heart, how dreadfully he
wept!” Nor yet the sympathetic exclamations of David, who, in the novel,
describes himself as paralysed by the sight of such grief, not knowing
what he thought or what he dreaded; only able to look at him,--yet
crying out to him the next moment, “Ham! Poor, good fellow! For heaven's
sake tell me what's the matter?” Nothing of this: only--“My love, Mas'r
Davy--the pride and hope of my 'art, her that I'd have died for, and
would die for now--she's gone!” “Gone?” “Em'ly's run away!” Ham, _not_
then adding in the Reading, “Oh, Mas'r Davy, think _how_ she's run away,
when I pray my good and gracious God to kill her (her that is so dear
above all things) sooner than let her come to ruin and disgrace!” Yet,
for all that, in spite of these omissions--it can hardly by any chance
have been actually by reason of them--the delivery of the whole scene
was singularly powerful and affecting. Especially in the representation
of Mr. Peggotty's profound grief, under what is to him so appalling a
calamity. Especially also in the revelation of Mrs. Gummidge's pity for
him, her gratitude to him, and her womanly tender-heartedness.
In charming relief to the sequel of this tragic incident of the
bereavement of the Peggottys, came David's love passages with Dora, and
his social unbendings with Mr. Micawber. Regaling the latter inimitable
personage, and his equally inimitable wife, together with David's old
schoolfellow, Tradelles, on a banquet of boiled leg of mutton, very red
inside and very pale outside, as well as upon a delusive pigeon-pie,
the crust of which was like a disappointing phrenological head, “full of
lumps and bumps, with nothing particular underneath,” David afforded us
the opportunity of realising, within a very brief interval, something
at least of the abundant humour associated with Mrs. Micawber's worldly
wisdom, and Mr. Micawber's ostentatious impecuniosity. A word, that
last, it always seems to us--describing poverty, as it does, with such
an air of pomp--especially provided beforehand for Mr. Micawber (out of
a prophetic anticipation or foreknowledge of him) by the dictionary.
The mere opening of the evening's entertainment at David Copperfield's
chambers on this occasion, enabled the Humorist to elicit preliminary
roars of laughter from his audience by his very manner of saying, with a
deliciously ridiculous prolongation of the liquid consonant forming the
initial of the last word--“As to Mrs. Micawber, I don't know whether it
was the effect of the cap, or the lavender water, or the phis, or the
fire, or the wax-candles, but she came out of my room comparatively
speaking l-l-lovely!”
As deliciously ridiculous was the whole scene between Dora and David,
where the latter, at length, takes courage to make his proposal--“Jip
barking madly all the time “--Dora crying the while and trembling.
David's eloquence increasing, the more he raved, the more Jip
barked--each, in his own way, getting more mad every moment! Even when
they had got married by licence, “the Archbishop of Canterbury invoking
a blessing, and doing it as cheap as it could possibly be expected,”
their domestic experiences were sources of unbounded merriment.
As, for example, in connection with their servant girl's cousin in the
Life Guards, “with such long legs that he looked like the afternoon
shadow of somebody else.” Finally, closing the whole of this ingenious
epitome of the original narrative, came that grand and wonderfully
realistic description of the stupendous storm upon the beach at
Yarmouth, upon the extraordinary power of which as a piece of
declamation we have already at some length commented. There, in the
midst of the dying horrors of that storm--there, on those familiar
sands, where Mas'r Davy and Little Em'ly had so often looked for shells
when they were children, on the very spot where some lighter fragments
of the old boat, blown down the night before, had been scattered by the
tempest, David Copperfield was heard describing, in the last mournful
sentence of the Reading, how he saw _him_ lying with his curly head upon
his arm, as he had often seen him lie when they were at school together.
THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH.