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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.
M r 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.'
'My dear,' said Mr. Micawber; 'Copperfield,' for so he had been
accustomed to call me, of late, 'has a heart to feel for the distresses
of his fellow-creatures when they are behind a cloud, and a head
to plan, and a hand to - in short, a general ability to dispose
of such available property as could be made away with.'
I expressed my sense of this commendation, and said I was very
sorry we were going to lose one another.
'My dear young friend,' said Mr. Micawber, 'I am older than you;
a man of some experience in life, and - and of some experience,
in short, in difficulties, generally speaking. At present, and until
something turns up (which I am, I may say, hourly expecting), I
have nothing to bestow but advice. Still my advice is so far worth
taking, that - in short, that I have never taken it myself, and
am the' - here Mr. Micawber, who had been beaming and smiling, all
over his head and face, up to the present moment, checked himself
and frowned - 'the miserable wretch you behold.'
'My dear Micawber!' urged his wife.
'I say,' returned Mr. Micawber, quite forgetting himself, and
smiling again, 'the miserable wretch you behold. My advice is, never
do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief
of time. Collar him!'
'My poor papa's maxim,' Mrs. Micawber observed.
'My dear,' said Mr. Micawber, 'your papa was very well in his
way, and Heaven forbid that I should disparage him. Take him for
all in all, we ne'er shall - in short, make the acquaintance, probably,
of anybody else possessing, at his time of life, the same legs for
gaiters, and able to read the same description of print, without
spectacles. But he applied that maxim to our marriage, my dear;
and that was so far prematurely entered into, in consequence, that
I never recovered the expense.' Mr. Micawber looked aside at Mrs.
Micawber, and added: 'Not that I am sorry for it. Quite the contrary,
my love.' After which, he was grave for a minute or so.
'My other piece of advice, Copperfield,' said Mr. Micawber, 'you
know. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen
and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure
twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. The blossom is blighted,
the leaf is withered, the god of day goes down upon the dreary scene,
and - and in short you are for ever floored. As I am!'
To make his example the more impressive, Mr. Micawber drank a
glass of punch with an air of great enjoyment and satisfaction,
and whistled the College Hornpipe.
I did not fail to assure him that I would store these precepts
in my mind, though indeed I had no need to do so, for, at the time,
they affected me visibly. Next morning I met the whole family at
the coach office, and saw them, with a desolate heart, take their
places outside, at the back.
'Master Copperfield,' said Mrs. Micawber, 'God bless you! I never
can forget all that, you know, and I never would if I could.'
'Copperfield,' said Mr. Micawber, 'farewell! Every happiness
and prosperity! If, in the progress of revolving years, I could
persuade myself that my blighted destiny had been a warning to you,
I should feel that I had not occupied another man's place in existence
altogether in vain. In case of anything turning up (of which I am
rather confident), I shall be extremely happy if it should be in
my power to improve your prospects.'
I think, as Mrs. Micawber sat at the back of the coach, with
the children, and I stood in the road looking wistfully at them,
a mist cleared from her eyes, and she saw what a little creature
I really was. I think so, because she beckoned to me to climb up,
with quite a new and motherly expression in her face, and put her
arm round my neck, and gave me just such a kiss as she might have
given to her own boy. I had barely time to get down again before
the coach started, and I could hardly see the family for the handkerchiefs
they waved. It was gone in a minute. The Orfling and I stood looking
vacantly at each other in the middle of the road, and then shook
hands and said good-bye; she going back, I suppose, to St. Luke's
workhouse, as I went to begin my weary day at Murdstone and Grinby's.
But with no intention of passing many more weary days there.
No. I had resolved to run away. - To go, by some means or other,
down into the country, to the only relation I had in the world,
and tell my story to my aunt, Miss Betsey. I have already observed
that I don't know how this desperate idea came into my brain. But,
once there, it remained there; and hardened into a purpose than
which I have never entertained a more determined purpose in my life.
I am far from sure that I believed there was anything hopeful in
it, but my mind was thoroughly made up that it must be carried into
execution.
Again, and again, and a hundred times again, since the night
when the thought had first occurred to me and banished sleep, I
had gone over that old story of my poor mother's about my birth,
which it had been one of my great delights in the old time to hear
her tell, and which I knew by heart. My aunt walked into that story,
and walked out of it, a dread and awful personage; but there was
one little trait in her behaviour which I liked to dwell on, and
which gave me some faint shadow of encouragement. I could not forget
how my mother had thought that she felt her touch her pretty hair
with no ungentle hand; and though it might have been altogether
my mother's fancy, and might have had no foundation whatever in
fact, I made a little picture, out of it, of my terrible aunt relenting
towards the girlish beauty that I recollected so well and loved
so much, which softened the whole narrative. It is very possible
that it had been in my mind a long time, and had gradually engendered
my determination.
As I did not even know where Miss Betsey lived, I wrote a long
letter to Peggotty, and asked her, incidentally, if she remembered;
pretending that I had heard of such a lady living at a certain place
I named at random, and had a curiosity to know if it were the same.
In the course of that letter, I told Peggotty that I had a particular
occasion for half a guinea; and that if she could lend me that sum
until I could repay it, I should be very much obliged to her, and
would tell her afterwards what I had wanted it for.
Peggotty's answer soon arrived, and was, as usual, full of affectionate
devotion. She enclosed the half guinea (I was afraid she must have
had a world of trouble to get it out of Mr. Barkis's box), and told
me that Miss Betsey lived near Dover, but whether at Dover itself,
at Hythe, Sandgate, or Folkestone, she could not say. One of our
men, however, informing me on my asking him about these places,
that they were all close together, I deemed this enough for my object,
and resolved to set out at the end of that week.
Being a very honest little creature, and unwilling to disgrace
the memory I was going to leave behind me at Murdstone and Grinby's,
I considered myself bound to remain until Saturday night; and, as
I had been paid a week's wages in advance when I first came there,
not to present myself in the counting-house at the usual hour, to
receive my stipend. For this express reason, I had borrowed the
half-guinea, that I might not be without a fund for my travelling-expenses.
Accordingly, when the Saturday night came, and we were all waiting
in the warehouse to be paid, and Tipp the carman, who always took
precedence, went in first to draw his money, I shook Mick Walker
by the hand; asked him, when it came to his turn to be paid, to
say to Mr. Quinion that I had gone to move my box to Tipp's; and,
bidding a last good night to Mealy Potatoes, ran away.
My box was at my old lodging, over the water, and I had written
a direction for it on the back of one of our address cards that
we nailed on the casks: 'Master David, to be left till called for,
at the Coach Office, Dover.' This I had in my pocket ready to put
on the box, after I should have got it out of the house; and as
I went towards my lodging, I looked about me for someone who would
help me to carry it to the booking-office.
There was a long-legged young man with a very little empty donkey-cart,
standing near the Obelisk, in the Blackfriars Road, whose eye I
caught as I was going by, and who, addressing me as 'Sixpenn'orth
of bad ha'pence,' hoped 'I should know him agin to swear to' - in
allusion, I have no doubt, to my staring at him. I stopped to assure
him that I had not done so in bad manners, but uncertain whether
he might or might not like a job.
'Wot job?' said the long-legged young man.
'To move a box,' I answered.
'Wot box?' said the long-legged young man.
I told him mine, which was down that street there, and which
I wanted him to take to the Dover coach office for sixpence.
'Done with you for a tanner!' said the long-legged young man,
and directly got upon his cart, which was nothing but a large wooden
tray on wheels, and rattled away at such a rate, that it was as
much as I could do to keep pace with the donkey.
There was a defiant manner about this young man, and particularly
about the way in which he chewed straw as he spoke to me, that I
did not much like; as the bargain was made, however, I took him
upstairs to the room I was leaving, and we brought the box down,
and put it on his cart. Now, I was unwilling to put the direction-card
on there, lest any of my landlord's family should fathom what I
was doing, and detain me; so I said to the young man that I would
be glad if he would stop for a minute, when he came to the dead-wall
of the King's Bench prison. The words were no sooner out of my mouth,
than he rattled away as if he, my box, the cart, and the donkey,
were all equally mad; and I was quite out of breath with running
and calling after him, when I caught him at the place appointed.
Being much flushed and excited, I tumbled my half-guinea out
of my pocket in pulling the card out. I put it in my mouth for safety,
and though my hands trembled a good deal, had just tied the card
on very much to my satisfaction, when I felt myself violently chucked
under the chin by the long-legged young man, and saw my half-guinea
fly out of my mouth into his hand.
'Wot!' said the young man, seizing me by my jacket collar, with
a frightful grin. 'This is a pollis case, is it? You're a-going
to bolt, are you? Come to the pollis, you young warmin, come to
the pollis!'
'You give me my money back, if you please,' said I, very much
frightened; 'and leave me alone.'
'Come to the pollis!' said the young man. 'You shall prove it
yourn to the pollis.'
'Give me my box and money, will you,' I cried, bursting into
tears.
The young man still replied: 'Come to the pollis!' and was dragging
me against the donkey in a violent manner, as if there were any
affinity between that animal and a magistrate, when he changed his
mind, jumped into the cart, sat upon my box, and, exclaiming that
he would drive to the pollis straight, rattled away harder than
ever.
I ran after him as fast as I could, but I had no breath to call
out with, and should not have dared to call out, now, if I had.
I narrowly escaped being run over, twenty times at least, in half
a mile. Now I lost him, now I saw him, now I lost him, now I was
cut at with a whip, now shouted at, now down in the mud, now up
again, now running into somebody's arms, now running headlong at
a post. At length, confused by fright and heat, and doubting whether
half London might not by this time be turning out for my apprehension,
I left the young man to go where he would with my box and money;
and, panting and crying, but never stopping, faced about for Greenwich,
which I had understood was on the Dover Road: taking very little
more out of the world, towards the retreat of my aunt, Miss Betsey,
than I had brought into it, on the night when my arrival gave her
so much umbrage.
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