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 birthday.
‘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.’
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 debtors’ 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 threshold 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 parlours 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 timberyard;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 favourite 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 develop, 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 honour 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 honourable 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!
CHAPTER 12. LIKING LIFE ON MY OWN ACCOUNT NO BETTER, I FORM A GREAT RESOLUTION
In due time, Mr. Micawber’s petition was ripe for hearing;and that gentleman was ordered to be discharged under the Act, to my great joy.His creditors were not implacable; and Mrs.Micawber informed me that even the revengeful boot-maker had declared in open court that he bore him no malice,but that when money was owing to him he liked to be paid. He said he thought it was human nature.
Mr. Micawber returned to the King’s Bench when his case was over, as some fees were to be settled,and some formalities observed, before he could be actually released.The club received him with transport, and held an harmonic meeting that evening in his honour;while Mrs. Micawber and I had a lamb’s fry in private, surrounded by the sleeping family.
‘On such an occasion I will give you, Master Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber,‘in a little more flip,’ for we had been having some already, ‘the memory of my papa and mama.’
‘Are they dead, ma’am?’ I inquired, after drinking the toast in a wine-glass.
‘My mama departed this life,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘before Mr. Micawber’s difficulties commenced,or at least before they became pressing. My papa lived to bail Mr. Micawber several times,and then expired, regretted by a numerous circle.’
Mrs. Micawber shook her head, and dropped a pious tear upon the twin who happened to be in hand.
As I could hardly hope for a more favourable opportunity of putting a question in which I had a near interest, I said to Mrs. Micawber:
‘May I ask, ma’am, what you and Mr. Micawber intend to do, now that Mr.Micawber is out of his difficulties, and at liberty?Have you settled yet?’
‘My family,’ said Mrs. Micawber, who always said those two words with an air,though I never could discover who came under the denomination, ‘my family are of opinion that Mr.Micawber should quit London, and exert his talents in the country. Mr.Micawber is a man of great talent, Master Copperfield.’
I said I was sure of that.
‘Of great talent,’ repeated Mrs. Micawber. ‘My family are of opinion, that, with a little interest,something might be done for a man of his ability in the Custom House.The influence of my family being local, it is their wish that Mr.Micawber should go down to Plymouth. They think it indispensable that he should be upon the spot.’
‘That he may be ready?’ I suggested.
‘Exactly,’ returned Mrs. Micawber. ‘That he may be ready--in case of anything turning up.’
‘And do you go too, ma’am?’
The events of the day, in combination with the twins, if not with the flip, had made Mrs.Micawber hysterical, and she shed tears as she replied:
‘I never will desert Mr. Micawber. Mr. Micawber may have concealed his difficulties from me in the first instance,but his sanguine temper may have led him to expect that he would overcome them.The pearl necklace and bracelets which I inherited from mama,have been disposed of for less than half their value; and the set of coral,which was the wedding gift of my papa, has been actually thrown away for nothing.But I never will desert Mr. Micawber. No!’ cried Mrs. Micawber, more affected than before, ‘I never will do it!It’s of no use asking me!’
I felt quite uncomfortable--as if Mrs. Micawber supposed I had asked her to do anything of the sort!--and sat looking at her in alarm.
‘Mr. Micawber has his faults. I do not deny that he is improvident.I do not deny that he has kept me in the dark as to his resources and his liabilities both,’ she went on, looking at the wall; ‘but I never will desert Mr. Micawber!’
Mrs. Micawber having now raised her voice into a perfect scream,I was so frightened that I ran off to the club-room, and disturbed Mr.Micawber in the act of presiding at a long table, and leading the chorus of
Gee up, Dobbin, Gee ho, Dobbin, Gee up, Dobbin, Gee up, and gee ho--o--o!
--with the tidings that Mrs. Micawber was in an alarming state,upon which he immediately burst into tears,and came away with me with his waistcoat full of the heads and tails of shrimps, of which he had been partaking.
‘Emma, my angel!’ cried Mr. Micawber, running into the room; ‘what is the matter?’
‘I never will desert you, Micawber!’ she exclaimed.
‘My life!’ said Mr. Micawber, taking her in his arms. ‘I am perfectly aware of it.’
‘He is the parent of my children!He is the father of my twins!He is the husband of my affections,’ cried Mrs. Micawber, struggling;‘and I ne--ver--will--desert Mr. Micawber!’
Mr. Micawber was so deeply affected by this proof of her devotion (as to me,I was dissolved in tears), that he hung over her in a passionate manner, imploring her to look up,and to be calm. But the more he asked Mrs. Micawber to look up,the more she fixed her eyes on nothing; and the more he asked her to compose herself,the more she wouldn’t. Consequently Mr. Micawber was soon so overcome,that he mingled his tears with hers and mine;until he begged me to do him the favour of taking a chair on the staircase,while he got her into bed. I would have taken my leave for the night,but he would not hear of my doing that until the strangers’ bell should ring.So I sat at the staircase window, until he came out with another chair and joined me.
‘How is Mrs. Micawber now, sir?’ I said.
‘Very low,’ said Mr. Micawber, shaking his head; ‘reaction. Ah, this has been a dreadful day!We stand alone now--everything is gone from us!’
Mr. Micawber pressed my hand, and groaned, and afterwards shed tears. I was greatly touched,and disappointed too, for I had expected that we should be quite gay on this happy and long-looked-for occasion.But Mr. and Mrs. Micawber were so used to their old difficulties, I think,that they felt quite shipwrecked when they came to consider that they were released from them.All their elasticity was departed, and I never saw them half so wretched as on this night;insomuch that when the bell rang, and Mr. Micawber walked with me to the lodge,and parted from me there with a blessing, I felt quite afraid to leave him by himself, he was so profoundly miserable.
But through all the confusion and lowness of spirits in which we had been, so unexpectedly to me,involved, I plainly discerned that Mr. and Mrs.Micawber and their family were going away from London,and that a parting between us was near at hand. It was in my walk home that night,and in the sleepless hours which followed when I lay in bed,that the thought first occurred to me--though I don’t know how it came into my head--which afterwards shaped itself into a settled resolution.
I had grown to be so accustomed to the Micawbers,and had been so intimate with them in their distresses, and was so utterly friendless without them,that the prospect of being thrown upon some new shift for a lodging,and going once more among unknown people,was like being that moment turned adrift into my present life,with such a knowledge of it ready made as experience had given me.All the sensitive feelings it wounded so cruelly,all the shame and misery it kept alive within my breast, became more poignant as I thought of this;and I determined that the life was unendurable.
That there was no hope of escape from it, unless the escape was my own act, I knew quite well.I rarely heard from Miss Murdstone, and never from Mr. Murdstone:but two or three parcels of made or mended clothes had come up for me, consigned to Mr. Quinion,and in each there was a scrap of paper to the effect that J. M. trusted D. C.was applying himself to business, and devoting himself wholly to his duties--not the least hint of my ever being anything else than the common drudge into which I was fast settling down.
The very next day showed me, while my mind was in the first agitation of what it had conceived,that Mrs. Micawber had not spoken of their going away without warrant.They took a lodging in the house where I lived, for a week;at the expiration of which time they were to start for Plymouth. Mr.Micawber himself came down to the counting-house, in the afternoon, to tell Mr.Quinion that he must relinquish me on the day of his departure, and to give me a high character,which I am sure I deserved. And Mr. Quinion, calling in Tipp the carman, who was a married man,and had a room to let, quartered me prospectively on him--by our mutual consent,as he had every reason to think; for I said nothing, though my resolution was now taken.
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 over-night 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.’