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
bedroom--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 neighboring 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 honor 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 neighbors),
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 neighborhood, 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 feelings 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 teaspoons 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.
* * * * *
The Micawbers’ affairs went from bad to worse, and Mrs. Micawber called
David into consultation.
* * * * *
“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.
* * * * *
At last Mr. Micawber’s affairs got into such a bad state that he had to
leave London. David tells of the parting.
* * * * *
I passed my evenings with Mr. and Mrs. Micawber, during the remaining
term of our residence under the same roof; and I think we became fonder
of one another as the time went on. On the last Sunday, they invited me
to dinner; and we had a loin of pork and apple sauce, and a pudding. I
had bought a spotted wooden horse overnight as a parting gift to little
Wilkins Micawber--that was the boy--and a doll for little Emma. I had
also bestowed a shilling on the Orfling, who was about to be disbanded.
We had a very pleasant day, though we were all in a tender state about
our approaching separation.
“I shall never, Master Copperfield,” said Mrs. Micawber, “revert to
the period when Mr. Micawber was in difficulties without thinking of
you. Your conduct has always been of the most delicate and obliging
description. You have never been a lodger. You have been a friend.”
“My dear,” said Mr. Micawber, “Copperfield,” for so he had been
accustomed to call me of late, “has a heart to feel for the distresses
of his fellow-creatures when they are behind a cloud, and a head to
plan, and a hand to--in short, a general ability to dispose of such
available property as could be made away with.”
I expressed my sense of this commendation, and said I was very sorry we
were going to lose one another.
“My dear young friend,” said Mr. Micawber, “I am older than you; a man
of some experience in life, and--and of some experience, in short, in
difficulties, generally speaking. At present, and until something turns
up (which I am, I may say, hourly expecting), I have nothing to bestow
but advice. Still, my advice is so far worth taking, that--in short,
that I have never taken it myself, and am the”--here Mr. Micawber, who
had been beaming and smiling, all over his head and face, up to the
present moment, checked himself and frowned--“the miserable wretch you
behold.”
“My dear Micawber!” urged his wife.
“I say,” returned Mr. Micawber, quite forgetting himself, and smiling
again, “the miserable wretch you behold. My advice is, never do
to-morrow what you can do to-day. Procrastination is the thief of time.
Collar him!”
“My poor papa’s maxim,” Mrs. Micawber observed.
“My dear,” said Mr. Micawber, “your papa was very well in his way, and
Heaven forbid that I should disparage him. Take him for all in all, we
ne’er shall--in short, make the acquaintance, probably, of anybody else
possessing, at his time of life, the same legs for gaiters, and able to
read the same description of print without spectacles. But he applied
that maxim to our marriage, my dear; and that was so far prematurely
entered into, in consequence, that I never recovered the expense.”
Mr. Micawber looked aside at Mrs. Micawber, and added: “Not that I am
sorry for it. Quite the contrary, my love.” After which he was grave
for a minute or so.
“My other piece of advice, Copperfield,” said Mr. Micawber, “you know.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen ought and
six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure
twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. The blossom is blighted,
the leaf is withered, the God of day goes down upon the dreary scene,
and--and in short you are for ever floored. As I am!”
To make his example the more impressive, Mr. Micawber drank a glass of
punch with an air of great enjoyment and satisfaction and whistled the
College Hornpipe.
I did not fail to assure him that I would store these precepts in my
mind, though indeed I had no need to do so, for, at the time, they
affected me visibly. Next morning I met the whole family at the coach
office, and saw them, with a desolate heart, take their places outside,
at the back.
“Master Copperfield,” said Mrs. Micawber, “God bless you! I never can
forget all that, you know, and I never would if I could.”
“Copperfield,” said Mr. Micawber, “farewell. Every happiness and
prosperity. If, in the progress of revolving years, I could persuade
myself that my blighted destiny had been a warning to you, I should
feel that I had not occupied another man’s place in existence
altogether in vain. In case of anything turning up (of which I am
rather confident), I shall be extremely happy if it should be in my
power to improve your prospects.”
I think, as Mrs. Micawber sat at the back of the coach, with the
children, and I stood in the road looking wistfully at them, a mist
cleared from her eyes, and she saw what a little creature I really was.
I think so, because she beckoned to me to climb up, with quite a new
and motherly expression in her face, and put her arm round my neck, and
gave me just such a kiss as she might have given to her own boy. I had
barely time to get down again before the coach started, and I could
hardly see the family for the handkerchiefs they waved. It was gone in
a minute.
ON THE ROAD TO DOVER
VI
ON THE ROAD TO DOVER
AFTER his friends the Micawbers had left London David Copperfield was
very lonesome and decided to set out on a journey and find his aunt,
Miss Betsy Trotwood. He had a box which he intended to send to the
coach office in Dover, and he had a half-guinea in his pocket.
Unfortunately he met a long-legged young man who was driving a donkey
cart, who robbed him of his box and his money. David followed the young
man as long as he could and then sat down by the side of the road. He
searched his pockets and found only three halfpence. But his experience
with Mr. Micawber had taught him that he could borrow money at a
pawn-shop. He tells the story of what happened.
* * * * *
I went to the next street and took off my waistcoat, rolled it neatly
under my arm, and came to the shop door. Mr. Dolloby was the name over
the door.
Mr. Dolloby took the waistcoat, spread it on the counter, held it up
against the light, and at last said:
“What do you call a price for this here little weskit?”
“Oh, you know best, sir,” I returned modestly.
“I can’t be buyer and seller too,” said Mr. Dolloby. “Put a price on
this little weskit.”
“Would eighteen pence be--” I hinted.
Mr. Dolloby rolled it up again and gave it back to me.
“I should rob my family if I was to offer ninepence for it.”
This was a disagreeable way of putting it, for I did not want to ask
Mr. Dolloby to rob his family on my account. I would have to make the
best of my way to Dover in a shirt and a pair of trousers.
That night I lay behind a wall. Never shall I forget the feeling of
loneliness as I lay down without a roof over my head. But soon I was
asleep, and slept until the warm beams of the sun awoke me.
The next day was Sunday. In due time I heard the church bells ringing.
I passed a church or two where the congregations were inside. The peace
and rest of Sunday morning were on everything but me. I felt quite
wicked in my dust and dirt, and my tangled hair.
I got that Sunday to the bridge at Rochester footsore and tired, and
eating food that I had bought for supper. I toiled on to Chatham and
crept upon a sort of grass-grown battery, where a sentry was walking to
and fro. Here I lay near a cannon, happy in the society of the sentry’s
footsteps, though he knew nothing of my being there.
Very stiff and sore of foot I was in the morning, and quite dazed by
the beating of drums and marching of troops, which seemed to hem me in
on every side when I went down toward the long, narrow street. Feeling
that I could go but a very little way that day, if I were to reserve my
strength for getting to my journey’s end, I resolved to make the sale
of my jacket its principal business. Accordingly, I took the jacket
off, that I might learn to do without it; and carrying it under my arm,
began a tour of inspection of the various slop-shops.
It was a likely place to sell a jacket in; for the dealers in
second-hand clothes were numerous, and were, generally speaking, on the
lookout for customers at their shop doors. But, as most of them had,
hanging up among their stock, an officer’s coat or two, epaulets and
all, I was rendered timid by the costly nature of their dealings, and
walked about for a long time without offering my merchandise to any one.
This modesty of mine directed my attention to the marine-store shops,
and such shops as Mr. Dolloby’s, in preference to the regular dealers.
At last I found one that I thought looked promising, at the corner of
a dirty lane, ending in an inclosure full of stinging nettles, against
the palings of which some second-hand sailors’ clothes, that seemed to
have overflown the shop, were fluttering among some cots, and rusty
guns, and oilskin hats, and certain trays full of so many old rusty
keys of so many sizes that they seemed various enough to open all the
doors in the world.
Into this shop, which was low and small, and which was darkened rather
than lighted by a little window, overhung with clothes, and was
descended into by some steps, I went with a palpitating heart; which
was not relieved when an ugly old man, with the lower part of his face
all covered with a stubby gray beard, rushed out of a dirty den behind
it, and seized me by the hair of my head. He was a dreadful old man to
look at, in a filthy flannel waistcoat, and smelling terribly of rum.
His bedstead, covered with a tumbled and ragged piece of patchwork,
was in the den he had come from, where another little window showed a
prospect of more stinging nettles, and a lame donkey.
“Oh, what do you want?” grinned this old man in a fierce, monotonous
whine. “Oh, my eyes and limbs, what do you want? Oh, my lungs and
liver, what do you want? Oh, goroo, goroo!”
I was so much dismayed by these words, and particularly by the
repetition of the last unknown one, which was a kind of rattle in his
throat, that I could make no answer; whereupon the old man, still
holding me by the hair, repeated:
“Oh, what do you want? Oh, my lungs and liver, what do you want?”
“I want to know,” I said trembling, “if you would buy a jacket?”
“Oh, let’s see the jacket. Bring the jacket out.”
With that he took his trembling hands, which were like the claws of a
bird, out of my hair.
“How much for the jacket?” cried the old man. “Oh, goroo, how much for
the jacket?”
“Half a crown,” I answered.
“Oh, my lungs and liver, no. Oh, my eyes, no. Eighteen pence. Goroo.”
Every time he said goroo his eyes seemed in danger of popping out of
his head.
“Well,” said I, “I’ll take eighteen pence.”
“Oh, my liver,” cried the old man, throwing the jacket on the shelf.
“Get out of the shop. Don’t ask for money, make it an exchange.”
He made many attempts to make me consent to an exchange, at one time
coming out with a fishing-rod, at another with a fiddle, at another
with a cocked hat, at another with a flute. But I wanted the money to
buy food. At last he began to pay me in halfpence at a time, and was
full two hours getting by easy stages to a shilling.
My bed that night was under a haystack, where I rested comfortably,
after having washed my blistered feet in a stream. When I took the road
again next morning it was through hop fields and orchards. The orchards
were ruddy with bright apples, and in a few places the hop-pickers were
already at work. I thought it all extremely beautiful, and I would have
enjoyed it if it had not been for the people I met on the road.
The trampers were worse than ever that day, and inspired me with a
dread that is yet quite fresh in my mind. Some of them were most
ferocious looking ruffians, who stared at me as I went by; and stopped,
perhaps, and called after me to come back and speak to them; and when
I took to my heels, stoned me. I recollect one young fellow--a tinker,
I suppose, from his wallet and brazier--who had a woman with him, and
who faced about and stared at me thus; and then roared at me in such a
tremendous voice to come back, that I halted and looked round.
“Come here, when you’re called,” said the tinker, “or I’ll rip your
young body open.”
I thought it best to go back. As I drew nearer to them, trying to
propitiate the tinker by my looks, I observed that the woman had a
black eye.
“Where are you going?” said the tinker, gripping the bosom of my shirt
with his blackened hand.
“I’m going to Dover,” I said.
“Where do you come from?” asked the tinker, giving his hand another
turn in my shirt to hold me more securely.
“I come from London,” I said.
“What lay are you upon?” asked the tinker. “Are you a prig?”
“N--no,” I said.
“Ain’t you! If you make a brag of your honesty to me,” said the tinker,
“I’ll knock your brains out.”
With his disengaged hand he made a menace of striking me, and then
looked at me from head to foot.
“Have you got the price of a pint of beer about you?” said the tinker.
“If you have, out with it, afore I take it away.”
I should certainly have produced it, but that I met the woman’s look,
and saw her very slightly shake her head, and form “No” with her lips.
“I am very poor,” I said, attempting to smile, “and have got no money.”
“Why, what do you mean?” said the tinker, looking so sternly at me,
that I almost feared he saw the money in my pocket.
“Sir!” I stammered.
“What do you mean,” said the tinker, “by wearing my brother’s silk
handkerchief? Give it over here!” And he had mine off my neck in a
moment, and tossed it to the woman.
The woman burst into a fit of laughter, as if she thought this a joke,
and tossing it back to me, nodded once, as slightly as before, and made
the word “Go!” with her lips.