David Copperfield
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