The Personal History of David Copperfield
I soon forgot him in the contemplation of Steerforth, who, in an easy amateur way, and without any book (he seemed to me to know everything by heart), took some of his classes until a new master was found. The new master came from a grammar-school; and before he entered on his duties, dined in the parlor one day to be introduced to Steerforth. Steerforth approved of him highly, and told us he was a Brick. Without exactly understanding what learned distinction was meant by this, I respected him greatly for it, and had no doubt whatever of his superior knowledge: though he never took the pains with me – not that I was anybody – that Mr. Mell had taken.
There was only one other event in this half-year, out of the daily school-life, that made an impression on me which still survives. It survives for many reasons.
One afternoon, when we were all harassed into a state of dire confusion, and Mr. Creakle was laying about him dreadfully, Tungay came in, and called out in his usual strong way: “Visitors for Copperfield!”
A few words were interchanged between him and Mr. Creakle, as, who the visitors were, and what room they were to be shown into; and then I, who had, according to custom, stood up on the announcement being made, and felt quite faint with astonishment, was told to go by the back stairs and get a clean frill on, before I repaired to the dining-room. These orders I obeyed, in such a flutter and hurry of my young spirits as I had never known before; and when I got to the parlor-door, and the thought came into my head that it might be my mother – I had only thought of Mr. or Miss Murdstone until then – I drew back my hand from the lock, and stopped to have a sob before I went in.
At first I saw nobody; but feeling a pressure against the door, I looked round it, and there, to my amazement, were Mr. Peggotty and Ham, ducking at me with their hats, and squeezing one another against the wall. I could not help laughing; but it was much more in the pleasure of seeing them, than at the appearance they made. We shook hands in a very cordial way; and I laughed and laughed, until I pulled out my pocket-handkerchief and wiped my eyes.
Mr. Peggotty (who never shut his mouth once, I remember, during the visit) showed great concern when he saw me do this, and nudged Ham to say something.
“Cheer up, Mas’r Davy bor’!” said Ham, in his simpering way. “Why, how you have growed!”
“Am I grown?” I said, drying my eyes. I was not crying at anything particular that I know of; but somehow it made me cry to see old friends.
“Growed, Mas’r Davy bor’? Ain’t he growed!” said Ham.
“Ain’t he growed!” said Mr. Peggotty.
They made me laugh again by laughing at each other, and then we all three laughed until I was in danger of crying again.
“Do you know how mama is, Mr. Peggotty?” I said. “And how my dear, dear, old Peggotty is?”
“Oncommon,” said Mr. Peggotty.
“And little Em’ly, and Mrs. Gummidge?”
“On – common,” said Mr. Peggotty.
There was a silence. Mr. Peggotty, to relieve it, took two prodigious lobsters, and an enormous crab, and a large canvas bag of shrimps, out of his pockets, and piled them up in Ham’s arms.
“You see,” said Mr. Peggotty, “knowing as you was partial to a little relish with your wittles when you was along with us, we took the liberty. The old Mawther biled ’em, she did. Mrs. Gummidge biled ’em. Yes,” said Mr. Peggotty slowly, who I thought appeared to stick to the subject on account of having no other subject ready, “Mrs. Gummidge, I do assure you, she biled ’em.”
I expressed my thanks; and Mr. Peggotty, after looking at Ham, who stood smiling sheepishly over the shell-fish, without making any attempt to help him, said:
“We come, you see, the wind and tide making in our favor, in one of our Yarmouth lugs to Gravesen’. My sister she wrote to me the name of this here place, and wrote to me as if ever I chanced to come to Gravesen’, I was to come over and enquire for Mas’r Davy and give her dooty, humbly wishing him well and reporting of the fam’ly as they was oncommon toe-be-sure. Little Em’ly, you see, she’ll write to my sister when I go back, as I see you and as you was similarly oncommon, and so we make it quite a merry-go-rounder.”
I was obliged to consider a little before I understood what Mr. Peggotty meant by this figure, expressive of a complete circle of intelligence. I then thanked him heartily; and said, with a consciousness of reddening, that I supposed Little Em’ly was altered too, since we used to pick up shells and pebbles on the beach?
“She’s getting to be a woman, that’s wot she’s getting to be,” said Mr. Peggotty. “Ask him.”
He meant Ham, who beamed with delight and assent over the bag of shrimps.
“Her pretty face!” said Mr. Peggotty, with his own shining like a light.
“Her learning!” said Ham.
“Her writing!” said Mr. Peggotty. “Why, it’s as black as jet! And so large it is, you might see it anywheres.”
It was perfectly delightful to behold with what enthusiasm Mr. Peggotty became inspired when he thought of his little favorite. He stands before me again, his bluff hairy face irradiating with a joyful love and pride, for which I can find no description. His honest eyes fire up, and sparkle, as if their depths were stirred by something bright. His broad chest heaves with pleasure. His strong loose hands clench themselves, in his earnestness; and he emphasises what he says with a right arm that shows, in my pigmy view, like a sledge hammer.
Ham was quite as earnest as he. I dare say they would have said much more about her, if they had not been abashed by the unexpected coming in of Steerforth, who, seeing me in a corner speaking with two strangers, stopped in a song he was singing, and said: “I didn’t know you were here, young Copperfield!” (for it was not the usual visiting room), and crossed by us on his way out.
I am not sure whether it was in the pride of having such a friend as Steerforth, or in the desire to explain to him how I came to have such a friend as Mr. Peggotty, that I called to him as he was going away. But I said, modestly – Good Heaven, how it all comes back to me this long time afterwards! —
“Don’t go, Steerforth, if you please. These are two Yarmouth boatmen – very kind, good people – who are relations of my nurse, and have come from Gravesend to see me.”
“Aye, aye?” said Steerforth, returning. “I am glad to see them. How are you both?”
There was an ease in his manner – a gay and light manner it was, but not swaggering – which I still believe to have borne a kind of enchantment with it. I still believe him, in virtue of this carriage, his animal spirits, his delightful voice, his handsome face and figure, and, for aught I know, of some inborn power of attraction besides (which I think a few people possess), to have carried a spell with him to which it was a natural weakness to yield, and which not many persons could withstand. I could not but see how pleased they were with him, and how they seemed to open their hearts to him in a moment.
“You must let them know at home, if you please, Mr. Peggotty,” I said, “when that letter is sent, that Mr. Steerforth is very kind to me, and that I don’t know what I should ever do here without him.”
“Nonsense!” said Steerforth, laughing. “You mustn’t tell them anything of the sort.”
“And if Mr. Steerforth ever comes into Norfolk or Suffolk, Mr. Peggotty,” I said, “while I am there, you may depend upon it I shall bring him to Yarmouth, if he will let me, to see your house. You never saw such a good house, Steerforth. It’s made out of a boat!”
“Made out of a boat, is it?” said Steerforth. “It’s the right sort of house for such a thorough-built boatman.”
“So ’tis, sir, so ’tis, sir,” said Ham, grinning. “You’re right, young gen’lm’n. Mas’r Davy bor’, gen’lm’n ’s right. A thorough-built boatman! Hor, hor! That’s what he is, too!”
Mr. Peggotty was no less pleased than his nephew, though his modesty forbade him to claim a personal compliment so vociferously.
“Well, sir,” he said, bowing and chuckling, and tucking in the ends of his neckerchief at his breast, “I thankee, sir, I thankee! I do my endeavours in my line of life, sir.”
“The best of men can do no more, Mr. Peggotty,” said Steerforth. He had got his name already.
“I’ll pound it, it’s wot you do yourself, sir,” said Mr. Peggotty, shaking his head, “and wot you do well – right well! I thankee, sir. I’m obleeged to you, sir, for your welcoming manner of me. I’m rough, sir, but I’m ready – least ways, I hope I’m ready, you understand. My house ain’t much for to see, sir, but it’s hearty at your service if ever you should come along with Mas’r Davy to see it. I’m a reg’lar Dodman, I am,” said Mr. Peggotty; by which he meant snail, and this was in allusion to his being slow to go, for he had attempted to go after every sentence, and had somehow or other come back again; “but I wish you both well, and I wish you happy!”
Ham echoed this sentiment, and we parted with them in the heartiest manner. I was almost tempted that evening to tell Steerforth about pretty little Em’ly, but I was too timid of mentioning her name, and too much afraid of his laughing at me. I remember that I thought a good deal, and in an uneasy sort of way, about Mr. Peggotty having said that she was getting on to be a woman; but I decided that was nonsense.
We transported the shell-fish, or the “relish” as Mr. Peggotty had modestly called it, up into our room unobserved, and made a great supper that evening. But Traddles couldn’t get happily out of it. He was too unfortunate even to come through a supper like anybody else. He was taken ill in the night – quite prostrate he was – in consequence of Crab; and after being drugged with black draughts and blue pills, to an extent which Demple (whose father was a doctor) said was enough to undermine a horse’s constitution, received a caning and six chapters of Greek Testament for refusing to confess.
The rest of the half-year is a jumble in my recollection of the daily strife and struggle of our lives; of the waning summer and the changing season; of the frosty mornings when we were rung out of bed, and the cold, cold smell of the dark nights when we were rung into bed again; of the evening schoolroom dimly lighted and indifferently warmed, and the morning schoolroom which was nothing but a great shivering-machine; of the alternation of boiled beef with roast beef, and boiled mutton with roast mutton; of clods of bread-and-butter, dog’s-eared lesson-books, cracked slates, tear-blotted copy-books, canings, rulerings, hair-cuttings, rainy Sundays, suet puddings, and a dirty atmosphere of ink surrounding all.
I well remember though, how the distant idea of the holidays, after seeming for an immense time to be a stationary speck, began to come towards us, and to grow and grow. How, from counting months, we came to weeks, and then to days; and how I then began to be afraid that I should not be sent for, and, when I learnt from Steerforth that I had been sent for and was certainly to go home, had dim forebodings that I might break my leg first. How the breaking-up day changed its place fast, at last, from the week after next to next week, this week, the day after to-morrow, to-morrow, to-day, to-night – when I was inside the Yarmouth mail, and going home.
I had many a broken sleep inside the Yarmouth mail, and many an incoherent dream of all these things. But when I awoke at intervals, the ground outside the window was not the playground of Salem House, and the sound in my ears was not the sound of Mr. Creakle giving it to Traddles, but the sound of the coachman touching up the horses.
CHAPTER VIII.
MY HOLIDAYS. ESPECIALLY ONE HAPPY AFTERNOON
When we arrived before day at the inn where the mail stopped, which was not the inn where my friend the waiter lived, I was shown up to a nice little bedroom, with Dolphin painted on the door. Very cold I was I know, notwithstanding the hot tea they had given me before a large fire down-stairs; and very glad I was to turn into the Dolphin’s bed, pull the Dolphin’s blankets round my head, and go to sleep.
Mr. Barkis the carrier was to call for me in the morning at nine o’clock. I got up at eight, a little giddy from the shortness of my night’s rest, and was ready for him before the appointed time. He received me exactly as if not five minutes had elapsed since we were last together, and I had only been into the hotel to get change for sixpence, or something of that sort.
As soon as I and my box were in the cart, and the carrier seated, the lazy horse walked away with us all at his accustomed pace.
“You look very well, Mr. Barkis,” I said, thinking he would like to know it.
Mr. Barkis rubbed his cheek with his cuff, and then looked at his cuff as if he expected to find some of the bloom upon it; but made no other acknowledgment of the compliment.
“I gave your message, Mr. Barkis,” I said; “I wrote to Peggotty.”
“Ah!” said Mr. Barkis.
Mr. Barkis seemed gruff, and answered drily.
“Wasn’t it right, Mr. Barkis?” I asked, after a little hesitation.
“Why, no,” said Mr. Barkis.
“Not the message?”
“The message was right enough, perhaps,” said Mr. Barkis; “but it come to an end there.”
Not understanding what he meant, I repeated inquisitively: “Came to an end, Mr. Barkis?”
“Nothing come of it,” he explained, looking at me sideways. “No answer.”
“There was an answer expected, was there, Mr. Barkis?” said I, opening my eyes. For this was a new light to me.
“When a man says he’s willin’,” said Mr. Barkis, turning his glance slowly on me again, “it’s as much as to say, that man’s a waitin’ for a answer.”
“Well, Mr. Barkis?”
“Well,” said Mr. Barkis, carrying his eyes back to his horse’s ears; “that man’s been a waitin’ for a answer ever since.”
“Have you told her so, Mr. Barkis?”
“N – no,” growled Mr. Barkis, reflecting about it. “I ain’t got no call to go and tell her so. I never said six words to her myself. I ain’t a goin’ to tell her so.”
“Would you like me to do it, Mr. Barkis?” said I, doubtfully.
“You might tell her, if you would,” said Mr. Barkis, with another slow look at me, “that Barkis was a waitin’ for a answer. Says you – what name is it?”
“Her name?”
“Ah!” said Mr. Barkis, with a nod of his head.
“Peggotty.”
“Chrisen name? Or nat’ral name?” said Mr. Barkis.
“Oh, it’s not her Christian name. Her Christian name is Clara.”
“Is it though!” said Mr. Barkis.
He seemed to find an immense fund of reflection in this circumstance, and sat pondering and inwardly whistling for some time.
“Well!” he resumed at length. “Says you, ‘Peggotty! Barkis is a waitin’ for a answer.’ Says she, perhaps, ‘Answer to what?’ Says you, ‘To what I told you.’ ‘What is that?’ says she. ‘Barkis is willin’,’ says you.”
This extremely artful suggestion, Mr. Barkis accompanied with a nudge of his elbow that gave me quite a stitch in my side. After that, he slouched over his horse in his usual manner; and made no other reference to the subject except, half an hour afterwards, taking a piece of chalk from his pocket, and writing up, inside the tilt of the cart, “Clara Peggotty” – apparently as a private memorandum.
Ah, what a strange feeling it was to be going home when it was not home, and to find that every object I looked at, reminded me of the happy old home, which was like a dream I could never dream again! The days when my mother and I and Peggotty were all in all to one another, and there was no one to come between us, rose up before me so sorrowfully on the road, that I am not sure I was glad to be there – not sure but that I would rather have remained away, and forgotten it in Steerforth’s company. But there I was; and soon I was at our house, where the bare old elm trees wrung their many hands in the bleak wintry air, and shreds of the old rooks’ nests drifted away upon the wind.
The carrier put my box down at the garden gate, and left me. I walked along the path towards the house, glancing at the windows, and fearing at every step to see Mr. Murdstone or Miss Murdstone lowering out of one of them. No face appeared, however; and being come to the house, and knowing how to open the door, before dark, without knocking, I went in with a quiet, timid step.
God knows how infantine the memory may have been, that was awakened within me by the sound of my mother’s voice in the old parlor, when I set foot in the hall. She was singing in a low tone. I think I must have lain in her arms, and heard her singing so to me when I was but a baby. The strain was new to me, and yet it was so old that it filled my heart brim-full; like a friend come back from a long absence.
I believed, from the solitary and thoughtful way in which my mother murmured her song, that she was alone. And I went softly into the room. She was sitting by the fire, suckling an infant, whose tiny hand she held against her neck. Her eyes were looking down upon its face, and she sat singing to it. I was so far right, that she had no other companion.
I spoke to her, and she started, and cried out. But seeing me, she called me her dear Davy, her own boy! and coming half across the room to meet me, kneeled down upon the ground and kissed me, and laid my head down on her bosom near the little creature that was nestling there, and put its hand up to my lips.
I wish I had died. I wish I had died then, with that feeling in my heart! I should have been more fit for Heaven than I ever have been since.
“He is your brother,” said my mother, fondling me. “Davy, my pretty boy! My poor child!” Then she kissed me more and more, and clasped me round the neck. This she was doing when Peggotty came running in, and bounced down on the ground beside us, and went mad about us both for a quarter of an hour.
It seemed that I had not been expected so soon, the carrier being much before his usual time. It seemed, too, that Mr. and Miss Murdstone had gone out upon a visit in the neighbourhood, and would not return before night. I had never hoped for this. I had never thought it possible that we three could be together undisturbed, once more; and I felt, for the time, as if the old days were come back.
We dined together by the fireside. Peggotty was in attendance to wait upon us, but my mother wouldn’t let her do it, and made her dine with us. I had my own old plate, with a brown view of a man-of-war in full sail upon it, which Peggotty had hoarded somewhere all the time I had been away, and would not have had broken, she said, for a hundred pounds. I had my own old mug with David on it, and my own old little knife and fork that wouldn’t cut.
While we were at table, I thought it a favorable occasion to tell Peggotty about Mr. Barkis, who, before I had finished what I had to tell her, began to laugh, and threw her apron over her face.
“Peggotty!” said my mother. “What’s the matter?”
Peggotty only laughed the more, and held her apron tight over her face when my mother tried to pull it away, and sat as if her head were in a bag.
“What are you doing, you stupid creature?” said my mother, laughing.
“Oh, drat the man!” cried Peggotty. “He wants to marry me.”
“It would be a very good match for you; wouldn’t it?” said my mother.
“Oh! I don’t know,” said Peggotty. “Don’t ask me. I wouldn’t have him if he was made of gold. Nor I wouldn’t have anybody.”
“Then, why don’t you tell him so, you ridiculous thing?” said my mother.
“Tell him so,” retorted Peggotty, looking out of her apron. “He has never said a word to me about it. He knows better. If he was to make so bold as say a word to me, I should slap his face.”
Her own was as red as ever I saw it, or any other face, I think; but she only covered it again, for a few moments at a time, when she was taken with a violent fit of laughter; and after two or three of those attacks, went on with her dinner.
I remarked that my mother, though she smiled when Peggotty looked at her, became more serious and thoughtful. I had seen at first that she was changed. Her face was very pretty still, but it looked careworn, and too delicate; and her hand was so thin and white that it seemed to me to be almost transparent. But the change to which I now refer was superadded to this: it was in her manner, which became anxious and fluttered. At last she said, putting out her hand, and laying it affectionately on the hand of her old servant,
“Peggotty, dear, you are not going to be married?”
“Me, ma’am?” returned Peggotty, staring. “Lord bless you, no!”
“Not just yet?” said my mother, tenderly.
“Never!” cried Peggotty.
My mother took her hand, and said:
“Don’t leave me, Peggotty. Stay with me. It will not be for long, perhaps. What should I ever do without you!”
“Me leave you, my precious!” cried Peggotty. “Not for all the world and his wife. Why, what’s put that in your silly little head?” – For Peggotty had been used of old to talk to my mother sometimes like a child.
But my mother made no answer, except to thank her, and Peggotty went running on in her own fashion.
“Me leave you? I think I see myself. Peggotty go away from you? I should like to catch her at it! No, no, no,” said Peggotty, shaking her head, and folding her arms; “not she, my dear. It isn’t that there ain’t some Cats that would be well enough pleased if she did, but they shan’t be pleased. They shall be aggravated. I’ll stay with you till I am a cross cranky old woman. And when I’m too deaf, and too lame, and too blind, and too mumbly for want of teeth, to be of any use at all, even to be found fault with, then I shall go to my Davy, and ask him to take me in.”
“And, Peggotty,” says I, “I shall be glad to see you, and I’ll make you as welcome as a queen.”
“Bless your dear heart!” cried Peggotty. “I know you will!” And she kissed me beforehand, in grateful acknowledgment of my hospitality. After that, she covered her head up with her apron again, and had another laugh about Mr. Barkis. After that, she took the baby out of its little cradle, and nursed it. After that, she cleared the dinner-table; after that, came in with another cap on, and her work-box, and the yard-measure, and the bit of wax candle, all just the same as ever.
We sat round the fire, and talked delightfully. I told them what a hard master Mr. Creakle was, and they pitied me very much. I told them what a fine fellow Steerforth was, and what a patron of mine, and Peggotty said she would walk a score of miles to see him. I took the little baby in my arms when it was awake, and nursed it lovingly. When it was asleep again, I crept close to my mother’s side according to my old custom, broken now a long time, and sat with my arms embracing her waist, and my little red cheek on her shoulder, and once more felt her beautiful hair drooping over me – like an angel’s wing as I used to think, I recollect – and was very happy indeed.
While I sat thus, looking at the fire, and seeing pictures in the red-hot coals, I almost believed that I had never been away; that Mr. and Miss Murdstone were such pictures, and would vanish when the fire got low; and that there was nothing real in all that I remembered, save my mother, Peggotty, and I.
Peggotty darned away at a stocking as long as she could see, and then sat with it drawn on her left hand like a glove, and her needle in her right, ready to take another stitch whenever there was a blaze. I cannot conceive whose stockings they can have been that Peggotty was always darning, or where such an unfailing supply of stockings in want of darning can have come from. From my earliest infancy she seems to have been always employed in that class of needlework, and never by any chance in any other.
“I wonder,” said Peggotty, who was sometimes seized with a fit of wondering on some most unexpected topic, “what’s become of Davy’s great-aunt?”
“Lor, Peggotty!” observed my mother, rousing herself from a reverie, “what nonsense you talk!”
“Well, but I really do wonder, ma’am,” said Peggotty.
“What can have put such a person in your head?” inquired my mother. “Is there nobody else in the world to come there?”
“I don’t know how it is,” said Peggotty, “unless it’s on account of being stupid, but my head never can pick and choose its people. They come and they go, and they don’t come and they don’t go, just as they like. I wonder what’s become of her?”
“How absurd you are, Peggotty,” returned my mother. “One would suppose you wanted a second visit from her.”