The Personal History of David Copperfield

The first subject on which I had to consult Traddles was this. – I had heard that many men distinguished in various pursuits had begun life by reporting the debates in Parliament. Traddles having mentioned newspapers to me, as one of his hopes, I had put the two things together, and told Traddles in my letter that I wished to know how I could qualify myself for this pursuit. Traddles now informed me, as the result of his inquiries, that the mere mechanical acquisition necessary, except in rare cases, for thorough excellence in it, that is to say, a perfect and entire command of the mystery of short-hand writing and reading, was about equal in difficulty to the mastery of six languages; and that it might perhaps be attained, by dint of perseverance, in the course of a few years. Traddles reasonably supposed that this would settle the business; but I, only feeling that here indeed were a few tall trees to be hewn down, immediately resolved to work my way on to Dora through this thicket, axe in hand.

“I am very much obliged to you, my dear Traddles!” said I. “I’ll begin to-morrow.”

Traddles looked astonished, as he well might; but he had no notion as yet of my rapturous condition.

“I’ll buy a book,” said I, “with a good scheme of this art in it; I’ll work at it at the Commons, where I haven’t half enough to do; I’ll take down the speeches in our court for practice – Traddles, my dear fellow, I’ll master it!”

“Dear me,” said Traddles, opening his eyes, “I had no idea you were such a determined character, Copperfield!”

I don’t know how he should have had, for it was new enough to me. I passed that off, and brought Mr. Dick on the carpet.

“You see,” said Mr. Dick, wistfully, “if I could exert myself, Mr. Traddles – if I could beat a drum – or blow anything!”

Poor fellow! I have little doubt he would have preferred such an employment in his heart to all others. Traddles, who would not have smiled for the world, replied composedly:

“But you are a very good penman, sir. You told me so, Copperfield?”

“Excellent!” said I. And indeed he was. He wrote with extraordinary neatness.

“Don’t you think,” said Traddles, “you could copy writings, sir, if I got them for you?”

Mr. Dick looked doubtfully at me. “Eh, Trotwood?”

I shook my head. Mr. Dick shook his, and sighed. “Tell him about the Memorial,” said Mr. Dick.

I explained to Traddles that there was a difficulty in keeping King Charles the First out of Mr. Dick’s manuscripts; Mr. Dick in the meanwhile looking very deferentially and seriously at Traddles, and sucking his thumb.

“But these writings, you know, that I speak of, are already drawn up and finished,” said Traddles after a little consideration. “Mr. Dick has nothing to do with them. Wouldn’t that make a difference, Copperfield? At all events wouldn’t it be well to try?”

This gave us new hope. Traddles and I laying our heads together apart, while Mr. Dick anxiously watched us from his chair, we concocted a scheme in virtue of which we got him to work next day, with triumphant success.

On a table by the window in Buckingham Street, we set out the work Traddles procured for him – which was to make, I forget how many copies of a legal document about some right of way – and on another table we spread the last unfinished original of the great Memorial. Our instructions to Mr. Dick were that he should copy exactly what he had before him, without the least departure from the original; and that when he felt it necessary to make the slightest allusion to King Charles the First, he should fly to the Memorial. We exhorted him to be resolute in this, and left my aunt to observe him. My aunt reported to us, afterwards, that, at first, he was like a man playing the kettle-drums, and constantly divided his attentions between the two; but that, finding this confuse and fatigue him, and having his copy there, plainly before his eyes, he soon sat at it in an orderly business-like manner, and postponed the Memorial to a more convenient time. In a word, although we took great care that he should have no more to do than was good for him, and although he did not begin with the beginning of a week, he earned by the following Saturday night ten shillings and nine pence; and never, while I live, shall I forget his going about to all the shops in the neighbourhood to change this treasure into sixpences, or his bringing them to my aunt arranged in the form of a heart upon a waiter, with tears of joy and pride in his eyes. He was like one under the propitious influence of a charm, from the moment of his being usefully employed; and if there were a happy man in the world, that Saturday night, it was the grateful creature who thought my aunt the most wonderful woman in existence, and me the most wonderful young man.

“No starving now, Trotwood,” said Mr. Dick, shaking hands with me in a corner. “I’ll provide for her, sir!” and he flourished his ten fingers in the air, as if they were ten banks.

I hardly know which was the better pleased, Traddles or I. “It really,” said Traddles, suddenly, taking a letter out of his pocket, and giving it to me, “put Mr. Micawber quite out of my head!”

The letter (Mr. Micawber never missed any possible opportunity of writing a letter) was addressed to me, “By the kindness of T. Traddles, Esquire, of the Inner Temple.” It ran thus: —

“My dear Copperfield,

“You may possibly not be unprepared to receive the intimation that something has turned up. I may have mentioned to you on a former occasion that I was in expectation of such an event.

“I am about to establish myself in one of the provincial towns of our favored island, (where the society may be described as a happy admixture of the agricultural and the clerical), in immediate connexion with one of the learned professions. Mrs. Micawber and our offspring will accompany me. Our ashes, at a future period, will probably be found commingled in the cemetery attached to a venerable pile, for which the spot to which I refer, has acquired a reputation, shall I say from China to Peru?

“In bidding adieu to the modern Babylon, where we have undergone many vicissitudes, I trust not ignobly, Mrs. Micawber and myself cannot disguise from our minds that we part, it may be for years and it may be for ever, with an individual linked by strong associations to the altar of our domestic life. If, on the eve of such a departure, you will accompany our mutual friend, Mr. Thomas Traddles, to our present abode, and there reciprocate the wishes natural to the occasion, you will confer a Boon

“On“One“Who“Is“Ever yours,“Wilkins Micawber.”

I was glad to find that Mr. Micawber had got rid of his dust and ashes, and that something really had turned up at last. Learning from Traddles that the invitation referred to the evening then wearing away, I expressed my readiness to do honor to it; and we went off together to the lodging which Mr. Micawber occupied as Mr. Mortimer, and which was situated near the top of the Gray’s Inn Road.

The resources of this lodging were so limited, that we found the twins, now some eight or nine years old, reposing in a turn-up bedstead in the family sitting-room, where Mr. Micawber had prepared, in a wash-hand-stand jug, what he called “a Brew” of the agreeable beverage for which he was famous. I had the pleasure, on this occasion, of renewing the acquaintance of Master Micawber, whom I found a promising boy of about twelve or thirteen, very subject to that restlessness of limb which is not an unfrequent phenomenon in youths of his age. I also became once more known to his sister, Miss Micawber, in whom, as Mr. Micawber told us, “her mother renewed her youth, like the Phoenix.”

“My dear Copperfield,” said Mr. Micawber, “yourself and Mr. Traddles find us on the brink of migration, and will excuse any little discomforts incidental to that position.”

Glancing round as I made a suitable reply, I observed that the family effects were already packed, and that the amount of luggage was by no means overwhelming. I congratulated Mrs. Micawber on the approaching change.

“My dear Mr. Copperfield,” said Mrs. Micawber, “of your friendly interest in all our affairs, I am well assured. My family may consider it banishment, if they please; but I am a wife and mother, and I never will desert Mr. Micawber.”

Traddles, appealed to, by Mrs. Micawber’s eye, feelingly acquiesced.

“That,” said Mrs. Micawber, “that, at least, is my view, my dear Mr. Copperfield and Mr. Traddles, of the obligation which I took upon myself when I repeated the irrevocable words, ‘I, Emma, take thee, Wilkins.’ I read the service over with a flat-candle on the previous night, and the conclusion I derived from it was, that I never could desert Mr. Micawber. And,” said Mrs. Micawber, “though it is possible I may be mistaken in my view of the ceremony, I never will!”

“My dear,” said Mr. Micawber, a little impatiently, “I am not conscious that you are expected to do any thing of the sort.”

“I am aware, my dear Mr. Copperfield,” pursued Mrs. Micawber, “that I am now about to cast my lot among strangers; and I am also aware that the various members of my family, to whom Mr. Micawber has written in the most gentlemanly terms, announcing that fact, have not taken the least notice of Mr. Micawber’s communication. Indeed I may be superstitious,” said Mrs. Micawber, “but it appears to me that Mr. Micawber is destined never to receive any answers whatever to the great majority of the communications he writes. I may augur, from the silence of my family, that they object to the resolution I have taken; but I should not allow myself to be swerved from the path of duty, Mr. Copperfield, even by my papa and mama, were they still living.”

I expressed my opinion that this was going in the right direction.

“It may be a sacrifice,” said Mrs. Micawber, “to immure one’s-self in a Cathedral town; but surely, Mr. Copperfield, if it is a sacrifice in me, it is much more a sacrifice in a man of Mr. Micawber’s abilities.”

“Oh! You are going to a Cathedral town?” said I.

Mr. Micawber, who had been helping us all, out of the wash-hand-stand jug, replied:

“To Canterbury. In fact, my dear Copperfield, I have entered into arrangements, by virtue of which I stand pledged and contracted to our friend Heep, to assist and serve him in the capacity of – and to be – his confidential clerk.”

I stared at Mr. Micawber, who greatly enjoyed my surprise.

“I am bound to state to you,” he said, with an official air, “that the business habits, and the prudent suggestions, of Mrs. Micawber, have in a great measure conduced to this result. The gauntlet, to which Mrs. Micawber referred upon a former occasion, being thrown down in the form of an advertisement, was taken up by my friend Heep, and led to a mutual recognition. Of my friend Heep,” said Mr. Micawber, “who is a man of remarkable shrewdness, I desire to speak with all possible respect. My friend Heep has not fixed the positive remuneration at too high a figure, but he has made a great deal, in the way of extrication from the pressure of pecuniary difficulties, contingent on the value of my services; and on the value of those services I pin my faith. Such address and intelligence as I chance to possess,” said Mr. Micawber, boastfully disparaging himself, with the old genteel air, “will be devoted to my friend Heep’s service. I have already some acquaintance with the law – as a defendant on civil process – and I shall immediately apply myself to the Commentaries of one of the most eminent and remarkable of our English Jurists. I believe it is unnecessary to add that I allude to Mr. Justice Blackstone.”

These observations, and indeed the greater part of the observations made that evening, were interrupted by Mrs. Micawber’s discovering that Master Micawber was sitting on his boots, or holding his head on with both arms as if he felt it loose, or accidentally kicking Traddles under the table, or shuffling his feet over one another, or producing them at distances from himself apparently outrageous to nature, or lying sideways with his hair among the wine-glasses, or developing his restlessness of limb in some other form incompatible with the general interests of society; and by Master Micawber’s receiving those discoveries in a resentful spirit. I sat all the while, amazed by Mr. Micawber’s disclosure, and wondering what it meant; until Mrs. Micawber resumed the thread of the discourse, and claimed my attention.

“What I particularly request Mr. Micawber to be careful of, is,” said Mrs. Micawber, “that he does not, my dear Mr. Copperfield, in applying himself to this subordinate branch of the law, place it out of his power to rise, ultimately, to the top of the tree. I am convinced that Mr. Micawber, giving his mind to a profession so adapted to his fertile resources, and his flow of language, must distinguish himself. Now, for example, Mr. Traddles,” said Mrs. Micawber, assuming a profound air, “a Judge, or even say a Chancellor. Does an individual place himself beyond the pale of those preferments by entering on such an office as Mr. Micawber has accepted?”

“My dear,” observed Mr. Micawber – but glancing inquisitively at Traddles, too; “we have time enough before us, for the consideration of those questions.”

“Micawber,” she returned, “no! Your mistake in life is, that you do not look forward far enough. You are bound, in justice to your family, if not to yourself, to take in at a comprehensive glance the extremest point in the horizon to which your abilities may lead you.”

Mr. Micawber coughed, and drank his punch with an air of exceeding satisfaction – still glancing at Traddles, as if he desired to have his opinion.

“Why, the plain state of the case, Mrs. Micawber,” said Traddles, mildly breaking the truth to her, “I mean the real prosaic fact, you know – ”

“Just so,” said Mrs. Micawber, “my dear Mr. Traddles, I wish to be as prosaic and literal as possible on a subject of so much importance.”

“ – Is,” said Traddles, “that this branch of the law, even if Mr. Micawber were a regular solicitor – ”

“Exactly so,” returned Mrs. Micawber. (“Wilkins, you are squinting, and will not be able to get your eyes back.”)

“ – Has nothing,” pursued Traddles, “to do with that. Only a barrister is eligible for such preferments; and Mr. Micawber could not be a barrister, without being entered at an inn of court as a student, for five years.”

“Do I follow you?” said Mrs. Micawber, with her most affable air of business. “Do I understand, my dear Mr. Traddles, that, at the expiration of that period, Mr. Micawber would be eligible as a Judge or Chancellor?”

“He would be eligible,” returned Traddles, with a strong emphasis on that word.

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Micawber. “That is quite sufficient. If such is the case, and Mr. Micawber forfeits no privilege by entering on these duties, my anxiety is set at rest. I speak,” said Mrs. Micawber, “as a female, necessarily; but I have always been of opinion that Mr. Micawber possesses what I have heard my papa call, when I lived at home, the judicial mind; and I hope Mr. Micawber is now entering on a field where that mind will develope itself, and take a commanding station.”

I quite believe that Mr. Micawber saw himself, in his judicial mind’s eye, on the woolsack. He passed his hand complacently over his bald head, and said with ostentatious resignation:

“My dear, we will not anticipate the decrees of fortune. If I am reserved to wear a wig, I am at least prepared, externally,” in allusion to his baldness, “for that distinction. I do not,” said Mr. Micawber, “regret my hair, and I may have been deprived of it for a specific purpose. I cannot say. It is my intention, my dear Copperfield, to educate my son for the Church; I will not deny that I should be happy, on his account, to attain to eminence.”

“For the Church?” said I, still pondering, betweenwhiles, on Uriah Heep.

“Yes,” said Mr. Micawber. “He has a remarkable head-voice, and will commence as a chorister. Our residence at Canterbury, and our local connexion, will, no doubt, enable him to take advantage of any vacancy that may arise in the Cathedral corps.”

On looking at Master Micawber again, I saw that he had a certain expression of face, as if his voice were behind his eyebrows; where it presently appeared to be, on his singing us (as an alternative between that and bed) “The Wood-Pecker tapping.” After many compliments on this performance, we fell into some general conversation; and as I was too full of my desperate intentions to keep my altered circumstances to myself, I made them known to Mr. and Mrs. Micawber. I cannot express how extremely delighted they both were, by the idea of my aunt’s being in difficulties; and how comfortable and friendly it made them.

When we were nearly come to the last round of the punch, I addressed myself to Traddles, and reminded him that we must not separate, without wishing our friends health, happiness, and success in their new career. I begged Mr. Micawber to fill us bumpers, and proposed the toast in due form: shaking hands with him across the table, and kissing Mrs. Micawber, to commemorate that eventful occasion. Traddles imitated me in the first particular, but did not consider himself a sufficiently old friend to venture on the second.

“My dear Copperfield,” said Mr. Micawber, rising with one of his thumbs in each of his waistcoat pockets, “the companion of my youth: if I may be allowed the expression – and my esteemed friend Traddles: if I may be permitted to call him so – will allow me, on the part of Mrs. Micawber, myself, and our offspring, to thank them in the warmest and most uncompromising terms for their good wishes. It may be expected that on the eve of a migration which will consign us to a perfectly new existence,” Mr. Micawber spoke as if they were going five hundred thousand miles, “I should offer a few valedictory remarks to two such friends as I see before me. But all that I have to say in this way, I have said. Whatever station in society I may attain, through the medium of the learned profession of which I am about to become an unworthy member, I shall endeavour not to disgrace, and Mrs. Micawber will be safe to adorn. Under the temporary pressure of pecuniary liabilities, contracted with a view to their immediate liquidation, but remaining unliquidated through a combination of circumstances, I have been under the necessity of assuming a garb from which my natural instincts recoil – I allude to spectacles – and possessing myself of a cognomen, to which I can establish no legitimate pretensions. All I have to say on that score is, that the cloud has passed from the dreary scene, and the God of Day is once more high upon the mountain tops. On Monday next, on the arrival of the four o’clock afternoon coach at Canterbury, my foot will be on my native heath – my name, Micawber!”

Mr. Micawber resumed his seat on the close of these remarks, and drank two glasses of punch in grave succession. He then said with much solemnity:

“One thing more I have to do, before this separation is complete, and that is to perform an act of justice. My friend Mr. Thomas Traddles has, on two several occasions, ‘put his name,’ if I may use a common expression, to bills of exchange for my accommodation. On the first occasion Mr. Thomas Traddles was left – let me say, in short, in the lurch. The fulfilment of the second has not yet arrived. The amount of the first obligation,” here Mr. Micawber carefully referred to papers, “was, I believe, twenty-three, four, nine and a half; of the second, according to my entry of that transaction, eighteen, six, two. These sums, united, make a total, if my calculation is correct, amounting to forty-one, ten, eleven and a half. My friend Copperfield will perhaps do me the favor to check that total?”

I did so and found it correct.

“To leave this metropolis,” said Mr. Micawber, “and my friend Mr. Thomas Traddles, without acquitting myself of the pecuniary part of this obligation, would weigh upon my mind to an insupportable extent. I have, therefore, prepared for my friend Mr. Thomas Traddles, and I now hold in my hand, a document, which accomplishes the desired object. I beg to hand to my friend Mr. Thomas Traddles my I. O. U. for forty-one, ten, eleven and a half; and I am happy to recover my moral dignity, and to know that I can once more walk erect before my fellow man!”

With this introduction (which greatly affected him), Mr. Micawber placed his I. O. U. in the hands of Traddles, and said he wished him well in every relation of life. I am persuaded, not only that this was quite the same to Mr. Micawber as paying the money, but that Traddles himself hardly knew the difference until he had had time to think about it.

Mr. Micawber walked so erect before his fellow man, on the strength of this virtuous action, that his chest looked half as broad again when he lighted us down stairs. We parted with great heartiness on both sides; and when I had seen Traddles to his own door, and was going home alone, I thought, among the other odd and contradictory things I mused upon, that, slippery as Mr. Micawber was, I was probably indebted to some compassionate recollection he retained of me as his boy-lodger, for never having been asked by him for money. I certainly should not have had the moral courage to refuse it; and I have no doubt he knew that (to his credit be it written), quite as well as I did.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

A LITTLE COLD WATER

My new life had lasted for more than a week, and I was stronger than ever in those tremendous practical resolutions that I felt the crisis required. I continued to walk extremely fast, and to have a general idea that I was getting on. I made it a rule to take as much out of myself as I possibly could, in my way of doing everything to which I applied my energies. I made a perfect victim of myself. I even entertained some idea of putting myself on a vegetable diet, vaguely conceiving that, in becoming a graminivorous animal, I should sacrifice to Dora.

As yet, little Dora was quite unconscious of my desperate firmness, otherwise than as my letters darkly shadowed it forth. But, another Saturday came, and on that Saturday evening she was to be at Miss Mills’s; and when Mr. Mills had gone to his whist-club (telegraphed to me in the street, by a bird-cage in the drawing-room middle window), I was to go there to tea.

By this time, we were quite settled down in Buckingham Street, where Mr. Dick continued his copying in a state of absolute felicity. My aunt had obtained a signal victory over Mrs. Crupp, by paying her off, throwing the first pitcher she planted on the stairs out of window, and protecting in person, up and down the staircase, a supernumerary whom she engaged from the outer world. These vigorous measures struck such terror to the breast of Mrs. Crupp, that she subsided into her own kitchen, under the impression that my aunt was mad. My aunt being supremely indifferent to Mrs. Crupp’s opinion and everybody else’s, and rather favoring than discouraging the idea, Mrs. Crupp, of late the bold, became within a few days so faint-hearted, that rather than encounter my aunt upon the staircase, she would endeavour to hide her portly form behind doors – leaving visible, however, a wide margin of flannel petticoat – or would shrink into dark corners. This gave my aunt such unspeakable satisfaction, that I believe she took a delight in prowling up and down, with her bonnet insanely perched on the top of her head, at times when Mrs. Crupp was likely to be in the way.

My aunt, being uncommonly neat and ingenious, made so many little improvements in our domestic arrangements, that I seemed to be richer instead of poorer. Among the rest, she converted the pantry into a dressing-room for me; and purchased and embellished a bedstead for my occupation, which looked as like a bookcase in the daytime, as a bedstead could. I was the object of her constant solicitude; and my poor mother herself could not have loved me better, or studied more how to make me happy.

Peggotty had considered herself highly privileged in being allowed to participate in these labors; and, although she still retained something of her old sentiment of awe in reference to my aunt, had received so many marks of encouragement and confidence, that they were the best friends possible. But the time had now come (I am speaking of the Saturday when I was to take tea at Miss Mills’s) when it was necessary for her to return home, and enter on the discharge of the duties she had undertaken in behalf of Ham. “So good bye, Barkis,” said my aunt, “and take care of yourself! I am sure I never thought I could be sorry to lose you!”