I BEGIN LIFE ON MY OWN ACCOUNT, AND DON'T LIKE IT.
I know enough of the world now, to have almost lost the capacity of
being much surprised by anything; but it is matter of some surprise to
me, even now, that I can have been so easily thrown away at such an age.
A child of excellent abilities, and with strong powers of observation,
quick, eager, delicate, and soon hurt bodily or mentally, it seems
wonderful to me that nobody should have made any sign in my behalf. But
none was made; and 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 water side. It was down in
Blackfriars. Modern improvements have altered the place; but it was the
last house at the bottom of a narrow street, curving down hill to the
river, with some stairs at the end, where people took boat. It was a
crazy old house with a wharf of its own, abutting on the water when the
tide was in, and on the mud when the tide was out, and literally overrun
with rats. Its panelled rooms, discolored with the dirt and smoke of a
hundred years, I dare say; its decaying floors and staircase; the
squeaking and scuffling of the old grey rats down in the cellars; and
the dirt and rottenness of the place; are things, not of many years ago,
in my mind, but of the present instant. They are all before me, just as
they were in the evil hour when I went among them for the first time,
with my trembling hand in Mr. Quinion's.
Murdstone and Grinby's trade was among a good many kinds of people, but
an important branch of it was the supply of wines and spirits to certain
packet ships. I forget now where they chiefly went, but I think there
were some among them that made voyages both to the East and West Indies.
I know that a great many empty bottles were one of the consequences of
this traffic, and that certain men and boys were employed to examine
them against the light, and reject those that were flawed, and 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 seals to be put
upon the corks, or finished bottles to be packed in casks. All this work
was my work, and of the boys employed upon it I was one.
There were three or four of us, counting me. My working place was
established in a corner of the warehouse, where Mr. Quinion could see
me, when he chose to stand up on the bottom rail of his stool in the
counting-house, and look at me through a window above the desk. Hither,
on the first morning of my so auspiciously beginning life on my own
account, the oldest of the regular boys was summoned to show me my
business. His name was Mick Walker, and he wore a ragged apron and a
paper cap. He informed me that his father was a bargeman, and walked, in
a black velvet head-dress, in the Lord Mayor's Show. He also informed me
that our principal associate would be another boy whom he introduced by
the--to me--extraordinary name of Mealy Potatoes. I discovered, however,
that this youth had not been christened by that name, but that it had
been bestowed upon him in the warehouse, on account of his complexion,
which was pale or mealy. Mealy's father was a waterman, who had the
additional distinction of being a fireman, and was engaged as such at
one of the large theatres; where some young relation of Mealy's--I think
his little sister--did Imps in the Pantomimes.
No words can express the secret agony of my soul as I sunk into this
companionship; compared these henceforth every-day associates with those
of my happier childhood--not to say with Steerforth, Traddles, and the
rest of those boys; and felt my hopes of growing up to be a learned and
distinguished man, crushed in my bosom. The deep remembrance of the
sense I had, of being utterly without hope now; of the shame I felt in
my position; of the misery it was to my young heart to believe that day
by day what I had learned, and thought, and delighted in, and raised my
fancy and my emulation up by, would pass away from me, little by little,
never to be brought back any more; cannot be written. As often as Mick
Walker went away in the course of that forenoon, I mingled my tears with
the water in which I was washing the bottles; and sobbed as if there
were a flaw in my own breast, and it were in danger of bursting.
The counting-house clock was at half-past twelve, and there was general
preparation for going to dinner, when Mr. Quinion tapped at the
counting-house window, and beckoned to me to go in. I went in, and found
there a stoutish, middle-aged person, in a brown surtout and black
tights and shoes, with no more hair upon his head (which was a large
one, and very shining) than there is upon an egg, and with a very
extensive face, which he turned full upon me. His clothes were shabby,
but he had an imposing shirt-collar on. He carried a jaunty sort of a
stick, with a large pair of rusty tassels to it; and a quizzing-glass
hung outside his coat,--for ornament, I afterwards found, as he very
seldom looked through it, and couldn't see anything when he did.
"This," said Mr. Quinion, in allusion to myself, "is he."
"This," said the stranger, with a certain condescending roll in his
voice, and a certain indescribable air of doing something genteel, which
impressed me very much, "is Master Copperfield. I hope I see you well,
sir?"
I said I was very well, and hoped he was. I was sufficiently ill at
ease, Heaven knows; but it was not in my nature to complain much at that
time of my life, so I said I was very well, and hoped he was.
"I am," said the stranger, "thank Heaven, quite well. I have received
a letter from Mr. Murdstone, in which he mentions that he would desire
me to receive into an apartment in the rear of my house, which is
at present unoccupied--and is, in short, to be let as a--in short,"
said the stranger, with a smile and in a burst of confidence, "as a
bed-room--the young beginner whom I have now the pleasure to--" and the
stranger waved his hand, and settled his chin in his shirt collar.
"This is Mr. Micawber," said Mr. Quinion to me.
"Ahem!" said the stranger, "that is my name."
"Mr. Micawber," said Mr. Quinion, "is known to Mr. Murdstone. He takes
orders for us on commission, when he can get any. He has been written to
by Mr. Murdstone, on the subject of your lodgings, and he will receive
you as a lodger."
"My address," said Mr. Micawber, "is Windsor Terrace, City Road. I--in
short," said Mr. Micawber, with the same genteel air, and in another
burst of confidence--"I live there."
I made him a bow.
"Under the impression," said Mr. Micawber, "that your peregrinations in
this metropolis have not as yet been extensive, and that you might have
some difficulty in penetrating the arcana of the Modern Babylon in the
direction of the City Road--in short," said Mr. Micawber, in another
burst of confidence, "that you might lose yourself--I shall be happy to
call this evening, and install you in the knowledge of the nearest way."
I thanked him with all my heart, for it was friendly in him to offer to
take that trouble.
"At what hour," said Mr. Micawber, "shall I--"
"At about eight," said Mr. Quinion.
"At about eight," said Mr. Micawber. "I beg to wish you good day, Mr.
Quinion. I will intrude no longer."
So he put on his hat, and went out with his cane under his arm: very
upright, and humming a tune when he was clear of the counting-house.
Mr. Quinion then formally engaged me to be as useful as I could in the
warehouse of Murdstone and Grinby, at a salary, I think, of six
shillings a week. I am not clear whether it was six or seven. I am
inclined to believe, from my uncertainty on this head, that it was six
at first and seven afterwards. He paid me a week down (from his own
pocket, I believe), and I gave Mealy sixpence out of it to get my trunk
carried to Windsor Terrace at night: it being too heavy for my strength,
small as it was. I paid sixpence more for my dinner, which was a meat
pie and a turn at a neighbouring pump; and passed the hour which was
allowed for that meal, in walking about the streets.
At the appointed time in the evening, Mr. Micawber reappeared. I washed
my hands and face, to do the greater honour to his gentility, and we
walked to our house, as I suppose I must now call it, together; Mr.
Micawber impressing the names of streets, and the shapes of corner
houses upon me, as we went along, that I might find my way back, easily,
in the morning.
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,
who was sitting in the parlor (the first floor was altogether
unfurnished, and the blinds were kept down to delude the neighbours),
with a baby at her breast. This baby was one of twins; and I may remark
here that I hardly ever, in all my experience of the family, saw both
the twins detached from Mrs. Micawber at the same time. One of them was
always taking refreshment.
There were two other children; Master Micawber, aged about four, and
Miss Micawber, aged about three. These, and a dark-complexioned young
woman, with a habit of snorting, who was servant to the family, and
informed me, before half-an-hour had expired, that she was "a Orfling,"
and came from St. Luke's workhouse, in the neighbourhood, completed the
establishment. My room was at the top of the house, at the back: a close
chamber; stencilled all over with an ornament which my young imagination
represented as a blue muffin; and very scantily furnished.
"I never thought," said Mrs. Micawber, when she came up, twin and all,
to show me the apartment, and sat down to take breath, "before I was
married, when I lived with papa and mama, 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."
I said: "Yes, ma'am."
"Mr. Micawber's difficulties are almost overwhelming just at present,"
said Mrs. Micawber; "and whether it is possible to bring him through
them, I don't know. When I lived at home with papa and mama, I really
should have hardly understood what the word meant, in the sense in which
I now employ it, but experientia does it--as papa used to say."
I cannot satisfy myself whether she told me that Mr. Micawber had been
an officer in the Marines, or whether I have imagined it. I only know
that I believe to this hour that he _was_ in the Marines once upon a
time, without knowing why. He was a sort of town traveller for a number
of miscellaneous houses, now; but made little or nothing of it, I am
afraid.
"If Mr. Micawber's creditors _will not_ give him time," said Mrs.
Micawber, "they must take the consequences; and the sooner they bring it
to an issue the better. Blood cannot be obtained from a stone, neither
can anything on account be obtained at present (not to mention law
expenses) from Mr. Micawber."
I never can quite understand whether my precocious self-dependence
confused Mrs. Micawber in reference to my age, or whether she was so
full of the subject that she would have talked about it to the very
twins if there had been nobody else to communicate with, but this was
the strain in which she began, and she went on accordingly all the time
I knew her.
Poor Mrs. Micawber! She said she had tried to exert herself; and so, I
have no doubt, she had. The centre of the street-door was perfectly
covered with a great brass-plate, on which was engraved "Mrs. Micawber's
Boarding Establishment for Young Ladies:" but I never found that any
young lady had ever been to school there; or that any young lady ever
came, or proposed to come; or that the least preparation was ever made
to receive any young lady. The only visitors I ever saw or heard of,
were creditors. _They_ used to come at all hours, and some of them were
quite ferocious. One dirty-faced man, I think he was a bootmaker, used
to edge himself into the passage as early as seven o'clock in the
morning, and call up the stairs to Mr. Micawber--"Come! You ain't out
yet, you know. Pay us, will you? Don't hide, you know; that's mean. I
wouldn't be mean if I was you. Pay us, will you? You just pay us, d'ye
hear? Come!" Receiving no answer to these taunts, he would mount in his
wrath to the words "swindlers" and "robbers;" and these being
ineffectual too, would sometimes go to the extremity of crossing the
street, and roaring up at the windows of the second floor, where he knew
Mr. Micawber was. At these times, Mr. Micawber would be transported with
grief and mortification, even to the length (as I was once made aware by
a scream from his wife) of making motions at himself with a razor; but
within half an hour afterwards, he would polish up his shoes with
extraordinary pains, and go out, humming a tune with a greater air of
gentility than ever. Mrs. Micawber was quite as elastic. I have known
her to be thrown into fainting fits by the king's taxes at three
o'clock, and to eat lamb-chops, breaded, and drink warm ale (paid for
with two tea-spoons that had gone to the pawnbroker's) at four. On one
occasion, when an execution had just been put in, coming home through
some chance as early as six o'clock, I saw her lying (of course with a
twin) under the grate in a swoon, with her hair all torn about her face;
but I never knew her more cheerful than she was, that very same night,
over a veal-cutlet before the kitchen fire, telling me stories about her
papa and mama, and the company they used to keep.
In this house, and with this family, I passed my leisure time. My own
exclusive breakfast of a penny loaf and a pennyworth of milk, I provided
myself. I kept another small loaf, and a modicum of cheese, on a
particular shelf of a particular cupboard, to make my supper on when I
came back at night. This made a hole in the six or seven shillings, I
know well; and I was out at the warehouse all day, and had to support
myself on that money all the week. From Monday morning until Saturday
night, I had no advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no
assistance, no support, of any kind, from any one, that I can call to
mind, as I hope to go to heaven!
I was so young and childish, and so little qualified--how could I be
otherwise?--to undertake the whole charge of my own existence, that
often, in going to Murdstone and Grinby's, of a morning, I could
not resist the stale pastry put out for sale at half-price at the
pastrycook's doors, and spent in that, the money I should have kept
for my dinner. Then, I went without my dinner, or bought a roll or a
slice of pudding. I remember two pudding-shops, between which I was
divided, according to my finances. One was in a court close to St.
Martin's Church--at the back of the church,--which is now removed
altogether. The pudding at that shop was made of currants, and was
rather a special pudding, but was dear, twopennyworth not being larger
than a pennyworth of more ordinary pudding. A good shop for the latter
was in the Strand--somewhere in that part which has been rebuilt since.
It was a stout pale pudding, heavy and flabby, and with great flat
raisins in it, stuck in whole at wide distances apart. It came up hot
at about my time every day, and many a day did I dine off it. When I
dined regularly and handsomely, I had a saveloy and a penny-loaf, or a
fourpenny plate of red beef from a cook's shop; or a plate of bread and
cheese and a glass of beer, from a miserable old public-house opposite
our place of business, called the Lion, or the Lion and something else
that I have forgotten. Once, I remember carrying my own bread (which I
had brought from home in the morning) under my arm, wrapped in a piece
of paper, like a book, and going to a famous alamode beef-house near
Drury Lane, and ordering a "small plate" of that delicacy to eat with
it. What the waiter thought of such a strange little apparition coming
in all alone, I don't know; but I can see him now, staring at me as I
ate my dinner, and bringing up the other waiter to look. I gave him a
halfpenny for himself, and I wish he hadn't taken it.
We had half-an-hour, I think, for tea. When I had money enough, I
used to get half-a-pint of ready-made coffee and a slice of bread
and butter. When I had none, I used to look at a venison-shop in
Fleet-street; or I have strolled, at such a time, as far as Covent
Garden Market, and stared at the pine-apples. I was fond of wandering
about the Adelphi, because it was a mysterious place, with those dark
arches. I see myself emerging one evening from some of these arches, on
a little public-house close to the river, with an open space before it,
where some coal-heavers were dancing; to look at whom, I sat down upon
a bench. I wonder what they thought of me!
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 had for dinner, they were afraid to give it me. I remember
one hot evening I went into the bar of a public-house, and said to the
landlord:
"What is your best--your _very best_--ale a glass?" For it was a special
occasion. I don't know what. It may have been my birth-day.
"Twopence-halfpenny," says the landlord, "is the price of the Genuine
Stunning ale."
"Then," says I, producing the money, "just draw me a glass of the
Genuine Stunning, if you please, with a good head to it."
[Illustration: My magnificent order at the public-house.]
The landlord looked at me in return over the bar, from head to foot,
with a strange smile on his face; and instead of drawing the beer,
looked round the screen and said something to his wife. She came out
from behind it, with her work in her hand, and joined him in surveying
me. Here we stand, all three, before me now. The landlord in his shirt
sleeves, leaning against the bar window-frame; his wife looking over the
little half-door; and I, in some confusion, looking up at them from
outside the partition. They asked me a good many questions; as, what my
name was, how old I was, where I lived, how I was employed, and how I
came there. To all of which, that I might commit nobody, I invented, I
am afraid, appropriate answers. They served me with the ale, though I
suspect it was not the Genuine Stunning; and the landlord's wife,
opening the little half-door of the bar, and bending down, gave me my
money back, and gave me a kiss that was half admiring and half
compassionate, but all womanly and good, I am sure.
I know I do not exaggerate, unconsciously and unintentionally, the
scantiness of my resources or the difficulties of my life. I know that
if a shilling were given me by Mr. Quinion at any time, I spent it in a
dinner or a tea. I know that I worked, from morning until night, with
common men and boys, a shabby child. I know 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.
Yet I held some station at Murdstone and Grinby's too. Besides that Mr.
Quinion did what a careless man so occupied, and dealing with a thing so
anomalous, could, to treat me as one upon a different footing from the
rest, I never said, to man or boy, how it was that I came to be there,
or gave the least indication of being sorry that I was there. That I
suffered in secret, and that I suffered exquisitely, no one ever knew
but I. How much I suffered, it is, as I have said already, utterly
beyond my power to tell. But I kept my own counsel, and I did my work. I
knew from the first, that, if I could not do my work as well as any of
the rest, I could not hold myself above slight and contempt. I soon
became at least as expeditious and as skilful as either of the other
boys. Though perfectly familiar with them, my conduct and manner were
different enough from theirs to place a space between us. They and the
men generally spoke of me as "the little gent," or "the young
Suffolker." A certain man named Gregory, who was foreman of the packers,
and another named Tipp, who was the carman, and wore a red jacket, used
to address me sometimes as "David:" but I think it was mostly when we
were very confidential, and when I had made some efforts to entertain
them, over our work, with some results of the old readings; which were
fast perishing out of my remembrance. Mealy Potatoes uprose once, and
rebelled against my being so distinguished; but Mick Walker settled him
in no time.
My rescue from this kind of existence I considered quite hopeless, and
abandoned, as such, altogether. I am solemnly convinced that I never for
one hour was reconciled to it, or was otherwise than miserably unhappy;
but I bore it; and even to Peggotty, partly for the love of her and
partly for shame, never in any letter (though many passed between us)
revealed the truth.
Mr. Micawber's difficulties were an addition to the distressed state of
my mind. In my forlorn state I became quite attached to the family, and
used to walk about, busy with Mrs. Micawber's calculations of ways and
means, and heavy with the weight of Mr. Micawber's debts. On a Saturday
night, which was my grand treat,--partly because it was a great thing to
walk home with six or seven shillings in my pocket, looking into the
shops and thinking what such a sum would buy, and partly because I went
home early,--Mrs. Micawber would make the most heart-rending confidences
to me; also on a Sunday morning, when I mixed the portion of tea or
coffee I had bought over-night, in a little shaving pot, and sat late at
my breakfast. It was nothing at all unusual for Mr. Micawber to sob
violently at the beginning of one of these Saturday night conversations,
and sing about Jack's delight being his lovely Nan, towards the end of
it. I have known him come home to supper with a flood of tears, and a
declaration that nothing was now left but a jail; and go to bed making a
calculation of the expense of putting bow-windows to the house, "in case
anything turned up," which was his favourite expression. And Mrs.
Micawber was just the same.
A curious equality of friendship, originating, I suppose, in our
respective circumstances, sprung up between me and these people,
notwithstanding the ludicrous disparity in our years. But I never
allowed myself to be prevailed upon to accept any invitation to eat and
drink with them out of their stock (knowing that they got on badly with
the butcher and baker, and had often not too much for themselves), until
Mrs. Micawber took me into her entire confidence. This she did one
evening as follows:
"Master Copperfield," said Mrs. Micawber, "I make no stranger of you,
and therefore do not hesitate to say that Mr. Micawber's difficulties
are coming to a crisis."
It made me very miserable to hear it, and I looked at Mrs. Micawber's
red eyes with the utmost sympathy.
"With the exception of the heel of a Dutch cheese--which is not adapted
to the wants of a young family"--said Mrs. Micawber, "there is really
not a scrap of anything in the larder. I was accustomed to speak of the
larder when I lived with papa and mama, and I use the word almost
unconsciously. What I mean to express, is, that there is nothing to eat
in the house."
"Dear me!" I said, in great concern.
I had two or three shillings of my week's money in my pocket--from which
I presume that it must have been on a Wednesday night when we held this
conversation--and I hastily produced them, and with heartfelt emotion
begged Mrs. Micawber to accept of them as a loan. But that lady, kissing
me, and making me put them back in my pocket, replied that she couldn't
think of it.
"No, my dear Master Copperfield," said she, "far be it from my thoughts!
But you have a discretion beyond your years, and can render me another
kind of service, if you will; and a service I will thankfully accept
of."
I begged Mrs. Micawber to name it.
"I have parted with the plate myself," said Mrs. Micawber. "Six tea, two
salt, and a pair of sugars, I have at different times borrowed money on,
in secret, with my own hands. But the twins are a great tie; and to me,
with my recollections of papa and mama, these transactions are very
painful. There are still a few trifles that we could part with. Mr.
Micawber's feelings would never allow _him_ to dispose of them; and
Clickett"--this was the girl from the workhouse--"being of a vulgar
mind, would take painful liberties if so much confidence was reposed in
her. Master Copperfield, if I might ask you"--
I understood Mrs. Micawber now, and begged her to make use of me to any
extent. I began to dispose of the more portable articles of property
that very evening; and went out on a similar expedition almost every
morning, before I went to Murdstone and Grinby's.
Mr. Micawber had a few books on a little chiffonier, which he called the
library; and those went first. I carried them, one after another, to a
bookstall in the City Road--one part of which, near our house, was
almost all bookstalls and bird-shops then--and sold them for whatever
they would bring, The keeper of this bookstall, who lived in a little
house behind it, used to get tipsy every night, and to be violently
scolded by his wife every morning. More than once, when I went there
early, I had audience of him in a turn-up bedstead, with a cut in his
forehead or a black eye, bearing witness to his excesses over night (I
am afraid he was quarrelsome in his drink), and he, with a shaking hand,
endeavouring to find the needful shillings in one or other of the
pockets of his clothes, which lay upon the floor, while his wife, with a
baby in her arms and her shoes down at heel, never left off rating him.
Sometimes he had lost his money, and then he would ask me to call again;
but his wife had always got some--had taken his, I dare say, while he
was drunk--and secretly completed the bargain on the stairs, as we went
down together.
At the pawnbroker's shop, too, I began to be very well known. The
principal gentleman who officiated behind the counter, took a good deal
of notice of me; and often got me, I recollect, to decline a Latin noun
or adjective, or to conjugate a Latin verb, in his ear, while he
transacted my business. After all these occasions Mrs. Micawber made a
little treat, which was generally a supper; and there was a peculiar
relish in these meals which I well remember.
At last Mr. Micawber's difficulties came to a crisis, and he was
arrested early one morning, and carried over to the King's Bench Prison
in the Borough. He told me, as he went out of the house, that the God of
day had now gone down upon him--and I really thought his heart was
broken and mine too. But I heard, afterwards, that he was seen to play a
lively game at skittles, before noon.
On the first Sunday after he was taken there, I was to go and see him,
and have dinner with him. I was to ask my way to such a place, and just
short of that place I should see such another place, and just short of
that I should see a yard, which I was to cross, and keep straight on
until I saw a turnkey. All this I did; and when at last I did see a
turnkey (poor little fellow that I was!), and thought how, when Roderick
Random was in a debtor's prison, there was a man there with nothing on
him but an old rug, the turnkey swam before my dimmed eyes and my
beating heart.
Mr. Micawber was waiting for me within the gate, and we went up to his
room (top story but one), and cried very much. He solemnly conjured me,
I remember, to take warning by his fate; and to observe that if a man
had twenty pounds a-year for his income, and spent nineteen pounds
nineteen shillings and sixpence, he would be happy, but that if he spent
twenty pounds one he would be miserable. After which he borrowed a
shilling of me for porter, gave me a written order on Mrs. Micawber for
the amount, and put away his pocket-handkerchief, and cheered up.
We sat before a little fire, with two bricks put within the rusted
grate, one on each side, to prevent its burning too many coals; until
another debtor, who shared the room with Mr. Micawber, came in from the
bakehouse with the loin of mutton which was our joint-stock repast. Then
I was sent up to "Captain Hopkins" in the room overhead, with Mr.
Micawber's compliments, and I was his young friend, and would Captain
Hopkins lend me a knife and fork.
Captain Hopkins lent me the knife and fork, with his compliments to Mr.
Micawber. There was a very dirty lady in his little room, and two wan
girls, his daughters, with shock heads of hair. I thought it was better
to borrow Captain Hopkins's knife and fork, than Captain Hopkins's comb.
The Captain himself was in the last extremity of shabbiness, with large
whiskers, and an old, old brown great-coat with no other coat below it.
I saw his bed rolled up in a corner; and what plates and dishes and pots
he had, on a shelf; and I divined (God knows how) that though the two
girls with the shock heads of hair were Captain Hopkins's children, the
dirty lady was not married to Captain Hopkins. My timid station on his
threshhold was not occupied more than a couple of minutes at most; but I
came down again with all this in my knowledge, as surely as the knife
and fork were in my hand.
There was something gipsy-like and agreeable in the dinner, after all. I
took back Captain Hopkins's knife and fork early in the afternoon, and
went home to comfort Mrs. Micawber with an account of my visit. She
fainted when she saw me return, and made a little jug of egg-hot
afterwards to console us while we talked it over.
I don't know how the household furniture came to be sold for the family
benefit, or who sold it, except that _I_ did not. Sold it was, however,
and carried away in a van; except the bed, a few chairs, and the
kitchen-table. With these possessions we encamped, as it were, in the
two parlors of the emptied house in Windsor Terrace; Mrs. Micawber, the
children, the Orfling, and myself; and lived in those rooms night and
day. I have no idea for how long, though it seems to me for a long time.
At last Mrs. Micawber resolved to move into the prison, where Mr.
Micawber had now secured a room to himself. So I took the key of the
house to the landlord, who was very glad to get it; and the beds were
sent over to the King's Bench, except mine, for which a little room was
hired outside the walls in the neighbourhood of that Institution, very
much to my satisfaction, since the Micawbers and I had become too used
to one another, in our troubles, to part. The Orfling was likewise
accommodated with an inexpensive lodging in the same neighbourhood. Mine
was a quiet back-garret with a sloping roof, commanding a pleasant
prospect of a timber-yard; and when I took possession of it, with the
reflection that Mr. Micawber's troubles had come to a crisis at last, I
thought it quite a paradise.
All this time I was working at Murdstone and Grinby's in the same common
way, and with the same common companions, and with the same sense of
unmerited degradation as at first. But I never, happily for me no doubt,
made a single acquaintance, or spoke to any of the many boys whom I saw
daily in going to the warehouse, in coming from it, and in prowling
about the streets at meal-times. I led the same secretly unhappy life;
but I led it in the same lonely, self-reliant manner. The only changes I
am conscious of are, firstly, that I had grown more shabby, and
secondly, that I was now relieved of much of the weight of Mr. and Mrs.
Micawber's cares; for some relatives or friends had engaged to help them
at their present pass, and they lived more comfortably in the prison
than they had lived for a long while out of it. I used to breakfast with
them now, in virtue of some arrangement, of which I have forgotten the
details. I forget, too, at what hour the gates were opened in the
morning, admitting of my going in; but I know that I was often up at six
o'clock, and that my favorite lounging-place in the interval was old
London Bridge, where I was wont to sit in one of the stone recesses,
watching the people going by, or to look over the balustrades at the sun
shining in the water, and lighting up the golden flame on the top of the
Monument. The Orfling met me here sometimes, to be told some astonishing
fictions respecting the wharves and the Tower; of which I can say no
more than that I hope I believed them myself. In the evening I used to
go back to the prison, and walk up and down the parade with Mr.
Micawber; or play casino with Mrs. Micawber, and hear reminiscences of
her papa and mama. Whether Mr. Murdstone knew where I was, I am unable
to say. I never told them at Murdstone and Grinby's.
Mr. Micawber's affairs, although past their crisis, were very much
involved by reason of a certain "Deed," of which I used to hear a great
deal, and which I suppose, now, to have been some former composition
with his creditors, though I was so far from being clear about it then,
that I am conscious of having confounded it with those demoniacal
parchments which are held to have, once upon a time, obtained to a great
extent in Germany. At last this document appeared to be got out of the
way, somehow; at all events it ceased to be the rock-ahead it had been;
and Mrs. Micawber informed me that "her family" had decided that Mr.
Micawber should apply for his release under the Insolvent Debtors Act,
which would set him free, she expected, in about six weeks.
"And then," said Mr. Micawber, who was present, "I have no doubt I
shall, please Heaven, begin to be beforehand with the world, and to live
in a perfectly new manner, if--in short, if anything turns up."
By way of going in for anything that might be on the cards, I call to
mind that Mr. Micawber, about this time, composed a petition to the
House of Commons, praying for an alteration in the law of imprisonment
for debt. I set down this remembrance here, because it is an instance to
myself of the manner in which I fitted my old books to my altered life,
and made stories for myself, out of the streets, and out of men and
women; and how some main points in the character I shall unconsciously
develope, I suppose, in writing my life, were gradually forming all this
while.
There was a club in the prison, in which Mr. Micawber, as a gentleman,
was a great authority. Mr. Micawber had stated his idea of this petition
to the club, and the club had strongly approved of the same. Wherefore
Mr. Micawber (who was a thoroughly good-natured man, and as active a
creature about everything but his own affairs as ever existed, and never
so happy as when he was busy about something that could never be of any
profit to him) set to work at the petition, invented it, engrossed it on
an immense sheet of paper, spread it out on a table, and appointed a
time for all the club, and all within the walls if they chose, to come
up to his room and sign it.
When I heard of this approaching ceremony, I was so anxious to see them
all come in, one after another, though I knew the greater part of them
already, and they me, that I got an hour's leave of absence from
Murdstone and Grinby's, and established myself in a corner for that
purpose. As many of the principal members of the club as could be got
into the small room without filling it, supported Mr. Micawber in front
of the petition, while my old friend Captain Hopkins (who had washed
himself, to do honor to so solemn an occasion) stationed himself close
to it, to read it to all who were unacquainted with its contents. The
door was then thrown open, and the general population began to come in,
in a long file: several waiting outside, while one entered, affixed his
signature, and went out. To everybody in succession, Captain Hopkins
said: "Have you read it?"--"No."--"Would you like to hear it read?" If
he weakly showed the least disposition to hear it, Captain Hopkins, in a
loud sonorous voice, gave him every word of it. The Captain would have
read it twenty thousand times, if twenty thousand people would have
heard him, one by one. I remember a certain luscious roll he gave to
such phrases as "The people's representatives in Parliament assembled,"
"Your petitioners therefore humbly approach your honorable house," "His
gracious Majesty's unfortunate subjects," as if the words were something
real in his mouth, and delicious to taste; Mr. Micawber, meanwhile,
listening with a little of an author's vanity, and contemplating (not
severely) the spikes on the opposite wall.
As I walked to and fro daily between Southwark and Blackfriars, and
lounged about at meal-times in obscure streets, the stones of which may,
for anything I know, be worn at this moment by my childish feet, I
wonder how many of these people were wanting in the crowd that used to
come filing before me in review again, to the echo of Captain Hopkins's
voice! When my thoughts go back, now, to that slow agony of my youth, I
wonder how much of the histories I invented for such people hangs like a
mist of fancy over well-remembered facts! When I tread the old ground, I
do not wonder that I seem to see and pity, going on before me, an
innocent romantic boy, making his imaginative world out of such strange
experiences and sordid things!