Mr. Peggotty and Ham knew what was in my thoughts as well as I did,and were ready with some supper and their hospitable faces to drive it away.Little Em’ly came and sat beside me on the locker for the only time in all that visit;and it was altogether a wonderful close to a wonderful day.
It was a night tide; and soon after we went to bed, Mr. Peggotty and Ham went out to fish.I felt very brave at being left alone in the solitary house, the protector of Em’ly and Mrs.Gummidge, and only wished that a lion or a serpent, or any ill-disposed monster,would make an attack upon us, that I might destroy him, and cover myself with glory.But as nothing of the sort happened to be walking about on Yarmouth flats that night,I provided the best substitute I could by dreaming of dragons until morning.
With morning came Peggotty; who called to me, as usual, under my window as if Mr.Barkis the carrier had been from first to last a dream too.After breakfast she took me to her own home, and a beautiful little home it was.Of all the moveables in it, I must have been impressed by a certain old bureau of some dark wood in the parlour (the tile-floored kitchen was the general sitting-room), with a retreating top which opened, let down, and became a desk, within which was a large quarto edition of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. This precious volume, of which I do not recollect one word, I immediately discovered and immediately applied myself to; and I never visited the house afterwards, but I kneeled on a chair, opened the casket where this gem was enshrined, spread my arms over the desk, and fell to devouring the book afresh. I was chiefly edified, I am afraid, by the pictures, which were numerous, and represented all kinds of dismal horrors; but the Martyrs and Peggotty’s house have been inseparable in my mind ever since, and are now.
I took leave of Mr. Peggotty, and Ham, and Mrs. Gummidge, and little Em’ly, that day;and passed the night at Peggotty’s, in a little room in the roof (with the Crocodile Book on a shelf by the bed’s head) which was to be always mine,Peggotty said, and should always be kept for me in exactly the same state.
‘Young or old, Davy dear, as long as I am alive and have this house over my head,’ said Peggotty,‘you shall find it as if I expected you here directly minute. I shall keep it every day,as I used to keep your old little room, my darling; and if you was to go to China,you might think of it as being kept just the same, all the time you were away.’
I felt the truth and constancy of my dear old nurse, with all my heart,and thanked her as well as I could. That was not very well, for she spoke to me thus,with her arms round my neck, in the morning, and I was going home in the morning,and I went home in the morning, with herself and Mr. Barkis in the cart. They left me at the gate,not easily or lightly; and it was a strange sight to me to see the cart go on,taking Peggotty away, and leaving me under the old elm-trees looking at the house,in which there was no face to look on mine with love or liking any more.
And now I fell into a state of neglect, which I cannot look back upon without compassion.I fell at once into a solitary condition,--apart from all friendly notice,apart from the society of all other boys of my own age,apart from all companionship but my own spiritless thoughts,--which seems to cast its gloom upon this paper as I write.
What would I have given, to have been sent to the hardest school that ever was kept!--to have been taught something, anyhow, anywhere!No such hope dawned upon me. They disliked me; and they sullenly, sternly, steadily, overlooked me.I think Mr. Murdstone’s means were straitened at about this time; but it is little to the purpose.He could not bear me; and in putting me from him he tried, as I believe,to put away the notion that I had any claim upon him--and succeeded.
I was not actively ill-used. I was not beaten, or starved;but the wrong that was done to me had no intervals of relenting, and was done in a systematic,passionless manner. Day after day, week after week, month after month, I was coldly neglected.I wonder sometimes, when I think of it,what they would have done if I had been taken with an illness;whether I should have lain down in my lonely room,and languished through it in my usual solitary way, or whether anybody would have helped me out.
When Mr. and Miss Murdstone were at home, I took my meals with them; in their absence,I ate and drank by myself. At all times I lounged about the house and neighbourhood quite disregarded,except that they were jealous of my making any friends: thinking, perhaps, that if I did,I might complain to someone. For this reason, though Mr.Chillip often asked me to go and see him (he was a widower, having, some years before that,lost a little small light-haired wife, whom I can just remember connecting in my own thoughts with a pale tortoise-shell cat),it was but seldom that I enjoyed the happiness of passing an afternoon in his closet of a surgery;reading some book that was new to me, with the smell of the whole Pharmacopoeia coming up my nose,or pounding something in a mortar under his mild directions.
For the same reason, added no doubt to the old dislike of her,I was seldom allowed to visit Peggotty. Faithful to her promise, she either came to see me,or met me somewhere near, once every week, and never empty-handed;but many and bitter were the disappointments I had,in being refused permission to pay a visit to her at her house. Some few times, however,at long intervals, I was allowed to go there; and then I found out that Mr.Barkis was something of a miser, or as Peggotty dutifully expressed it, was ‘a little near’,and kept a heap of money in a box under his bed,which he pretended was only full of coats and trousers. In this coffer,his riches hid themselves with such a tenacious modesty,that the smallest instalments could only be tempted out by artifice;so that Peggotty had to prepare a long and elaborate scheme, a very Gunpowder Plot, for every Saturday’s expenses.
All this time I was so conscious of the waste of any promise I had given,and of my being utterly neglected, that I should have been perfectly miserable, I have no doubt,but for the old books. They were my only comfort; and I was as true to them as they were to me,and read them over and over I don’t know how many times more.
I now approach a period of my life, which I can never lose the remembrance of,while I remember anything: and the recollection of which has often, without my invocation,come before me like a ghost, and haunted happier times.
I had been out, one day, loitering somewhere, in the listless,meditative manner that my way of life engendered, when,turning the corner of a lane near our house, I came upon Mr. Murdstone walking with a gentleman.I was confused, and was going by them, when the gentleman cried:
‘What!Brooks!’
‘No, sir, David Copperfield,’ I said.
‘Don’t tell me. You are Brooks,’ said the gentleman. ‘You are Brooks of Sheffield. That’s your name. ’
At these words, I observed the gentleman more attentively. His laugh coming to my remembrance too,I knew him to be Mr. Quinion, whom I had gone over to Lowestoft with Mr. Murdstone to see,before--it is no matter--I need not recall when.
‘And how do you get on, and where are you being educated, Brooks?’ said Mr. Quinion.
He had put his hand upon my shoulder, and turned me about, to walk with them.I did not know what to reply, and glanced dubiously at Mr. Murdstone.
‘He is at home at present,’ said the latter. ‘He is not being educated anywhere.I don’t know what to do with him. He is a difficult subject.’
That old, double look was on me for a moment; and then his eyes darkened with a frown, as it turned, in its aversion, elsewhere.
‘Humph!’ said Mr. Quinion, looking at us both, I thought. ‘Fine weather!’
Silence ensued, and I was considering how I could best disengage my shoulder from his hand, and go away, when he said:
‘I suppose you are a pretty sharp fellow still?Eh, Brooks?’
‘Aye!He is sharp enough,’ said Mr. Murdstone, impatiently. ‘You had better let him go.He will not thank you for troubling him.’
On this hint, Mr. Quinion released me, and I made the best of my way home.Looking back as I turned into the front garden, I saw Mr.Murdstone leaning against the wicket of the churchyard, and Mr. Quinion talking to him.They were both looking after me, and I felt that they were speaking of me.
Mr. Quinion lay at our house that night. After breakfast, the next morning, I had put my chair away,and was going out of the room, when Mr. Murdstone called me back.He then gravely repaired to another table, where his sister sat herself at her desk. Mr. Quinion,with his hands in his pockets, stood looking out of window; and I stood looking at them all.
‘David,’ said Mr. Murdstone, ‘to the young this is a world for action;not for moping and droning in.’ --‘As you do,’ added his sister.
‘Jane Murdstone, leave it to me, if you please. I say, David,to the young this is a world for action, and not for moping and droning in.It is especially so for a young boy of your disposition, which requires a great deal of correcting;and to which no greater service can be done than to force it to conform to the ways of the working world, and to bend it and break it.’
‘For stubbornness won’t do here,’ said his sister ‘What it wants is, to be crushed. And crushed it must be. Shall be, too!’
He gave her a look, half in remonstrance, half in approval, and went on:
‘I suppose you know, David, that I am not rich. At any rate, you know it now.You have received some considerable education already. Education is costly;and even if it were not, and I could afford it,I am of opinion that it would not be at all advantageous to you to be kept at school.What is before you, is a fight with the world; and the sooner you begin it, the better.’
I think it occurred to me that I had already begun it, in my poor way: but it occurs to me now, whether or no.
‘You have heard the “counting-house” mentioned sometimes,’ said Mr. Murdstone.
‘The counting-house, sir?’ I repeated. ‘Of Murdstone and Grinby, in the wine trade,’ he replied.
I suppose I looked uncertain, for he went on hastily:
‘You have heard the “counting-house” mentioned, or the business, or the cellars, or the wharf, or something about it.’
‘I think I have heard the business mentioned, sir,’ I said,remembering what I vaguely knew of his and his sister’s resources. ‘But I don’t know when.’
‘It does not matter when,’ he returned. ‘Mr. Quinion manages that business.’
I glanced at the latter deferentially as he stood looking out of window.
‘Mr. Quinion suggests that it gives employment to some other boys,and that he sees no reason why it shouldn’t, on the same terms, give employment to you.’
‘He having,’ Mr. Quinion observed in a low voice, and half turning round, ‘no other prospect, Murdstone.’
Mr. Murdstone, with an impatient, even an angry gesture, resumed, without noticing what he had said:
‘Those terms are, that you will earn enough for yourself to provide for your eating and drinking,and pocket-money. Your lodging (which I have arranged for) will be paid by me. So will your washing--’
‘--Which will be kept down to my estimate,’ said his sister.
‘Your clothes will be looked after for you, too,’ said Mr. Murdstone; ‘as you will not be able,yet awhile, to get them for yourself. So you are now going to London, David, with Mr. Quinion,to begin the world on your own account.’
‘In short, you are provided for,’ observed his sister; ‘and will please to do your duty.’
Though I quite understood that the purpose of this announcement was to get rid of me,I have no distinct remembrance whether it pleased or frightened me. My impression is,that I was in a state of confusion about it, and, oscillating between the two points,touched neither. Nor had I much time for the clearing of my thoughts, as Mr. Quinion was to go upon the morrow.
Behold me, on the morrow, in a much-worn little white hat,with a black crape round it for my mother, a black jacket, and a pair of hard,stiff corduroy trousers--which Miss Murdstone considered the best armour for the legs in that fight with the world which was now to come off.Behold me so attired, and with my little worldly all before me in a small trunk, sitting,a lone lorn child (as Mrs. Gummidge might have said), in the post-chaise that was carrying Mr.Quinion to the London coach at Yarmouth!See, how our house and church are lessening in the distance;how the grave beneath the tree is blotted out by intervening objects;how the spire points upwards from my old playground no more, and the sky is empty!
CHAPTER 11. 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 waterside. 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,discoloured 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 everyday 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 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 that 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 name 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 this 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 parlour (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 boot-maker,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 anyone, 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 pastrycooks’ 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 pineapples.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!