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David Copperfield By Charles Dickens
PAGE: 1

DAVID COPPERFIELD


by CHARLES DICKENS



AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED TO
THE HON.  Mr. AND Mrs. RICHARD WATSON,
OF ROCKINGHAM, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.



CONTENTS


I.      I Am Born
II.     I Observe
III.    I Have a Change
IV.     I Fall into Disgrace
V.      I Am Sent Away
VI.     I Enlarge My Circle of Acquaintance
VII.    My 'First Half' at Salem House
VIII.   My Holidays.  Especially One Happy Afternoon
IX.     I Have a Memorable Birthday
X.      I Become Neglected, and Am Provided For
XI.     I Begin Life on My Own Account, and Don't Like It
XII.    Liking Life on My Own Account No Better, I Form a Great Resolution
XIII.   The Sequel of My Resolution
XIV.    My Aunt Makes up Her Mind About Me
XV.     I Make Another Beginning
XVI.    I Am a New Boy in More Senses Than One
XVII.   Somebody Turns Up
XVIII.  A Retrospect
XIX.    I Look About Me and Make a Discovery
XX.     Steerforth's Home
XXI.    Little Em'ly
XXII.   Some Old Scenes, and Some New People
XXIII.  I Corroborate Mr. Dick, and Choose a Profession
XXIV.   My First Dissipation
XXV.    Good and Bad Angels
XXVI.   I Fall into Captivity
XXVII.  Tommy Traddles
XXVIII. Mr. Micawber's Gauntlet
XXIX.   I Visit Steerforth at His Home, Again
XXX.    A Loss
XXXI.   A Greater Loss
XXXII.  The Beginning of a Long Journey
XXXIII. Blissful
XXXIV.  My Aunt Astonishes Me
XXXV.   Depression
XXXVI.  Enthusiasm
XXXVII.  A Little Cold Water
XXXVIII. A Dissolution of Partnership
XXXIX.   Wickfield and Heep
XL.      The Wanderer
XLI.     Dora's Aunts
XLII.    Mischief
XLIII.   Another Retrospect
XLIV.    Our Housekeeping
XLV.     Mr. Dick Fulfils My Aunt's Predictions
XLVI.    Intelligence
XLVII.   Martha
XLVIII.  Domestic
XLIX.    I Am Involved in Mystery
L.       Mr. Peggotty's Dream Comes True
LI.      The Beginning of a Longer Journey
LII.     I Assist at an Explosion
LIII.    Another Retrospect
LIV.     Mr. Micawber's Transactions
LV.      Tempest
LVI.     The New Wound, and the Old
LVII.    The Emigrants
LVIII.   Absence
LIX.     Return
LX.      Agnes
LXI.     I Am Shown Two Interesting Penitents
LXII.    A Light Shines on My Way
LXIII.   A Visitor
LXIV.    A Last Retrospect




PREFACE TO 1850 EDITION


I do not find it easy to get sufficiently far away from this Book,
in the first sensations of having finished it, to refer to it with
the composure which this formal heading would seem to require.  My
interest in it, is so recent and strong; and my mind is so divided
between pleasure and regret - pleasure in the achievement of a long
design, regret in the separation from many companions - that I am
in danger of wearying the reader whom I love, with personal
confidences, and private emotions.

Besides which, all that I could say of the Story, to any purpose,
I have endeavoured to say in it.

It would concern the reader little, perhaps, to know, how
sorrowfully the pen is laid down at the close of a two-years'
imaginative task; or how an Author feels as if he were dismissing
some portion of himself into the shadowy world, when a crowd of the
creatures of his brain are going from him for ever.  Yet, I have
nothing else to tell; unless, indeed, I were to confess (which
might be of less moment still) that no one can ever believe this
Narrative, in the reading, more than I have believed it in the
writing.

Instead of looking back, therefore, I will look forward.  I cannot
close this Volume more agreeably to myself, than with a hopeful
glance towards the time when I shall again put forth my two green
leaves once a month, and with a faithful remembrance of the genial
sun and showers that have fallen on these leaves of David
Copperfield, and made me happy.
     London, October, 1850.


PREFACE TO
THE CHARLES DICKENS EDITION


I REMARKED in the original Preface to this Book, that I did not
find it easy to get sufficiently far away from it, in the first
sensations of having finished it, to refer to it with the composure
which this formal heading would seem to require.  My interest in it
was so recent and strong, and my mind was so divided between
pleasure and regret - pleasure in the achievement of a long design,
regret in the separation from many companions - that I was in
danger of wearying the reader with personal confidences and private
emotions.

Besides which, all that I could have said of the Story to any
purpose, I had endeavoured to say in it.

It would concern the reader little, perhaps, to know how
sorrowfully the pen is laid down at the close of a two-years'
imaginative task; or how an Author feels as if he were dismissing
some portion of himself into the shadowy world, when a crowd of the
creatures of his brain are going from him for ever.  Yet, I had
nothing else to tell; unless, indeed, I were to confess (which
might be of less moment still), that no one can ever believe this
Narrative, in the reading, more than I believed it in the writing.

So true are these avowals at the present day, that I can now only
take the reader into one confidence more.  Of all my books, I like
this the best.  It will be easily believed that I am a fond parent
to every child of my fancy, and that no one can ever love that
family as dearly as I love them.  But, like many fond parents, I
have in my heart of hearts a favourite child.  And his name is
DAVID COPPERFIELD.
     1869




THE PERSONAL HISTORY AND
EXPERIENCE OF
DAVID COPPERFIELD THE YOUNGER



CHAPTER 1
I AM BORN



Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether
that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.
To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was
born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve
o'clock at night.  It was remarked that the clock began to strike,
and I began to cry, simultaneously.

In consideration of the day and hour of my birth, it was declared
by the nurse, and by some sage women in the neighbourhood who had
taken a lively interest in me several months before there was any
possibility of our becoming personally acquainted, first, that I
was destined to be unlucky in life; and secondly, that I was
privileged to see ghosts and spirits; both these gifts inevitably
attaching, as they believed, to all unlucky infants of either
gender, born towards the small hours on a Friday night.

I need say nothing here, on the first head, because nothing can
show better than my history whether that prediction was verified or
falsified by the result.  On the second branch of the question, I
will only remark, that unless I ran through that part of my
inheritance while I was still a baby, I have not come into it yet.
But I do not at all complain of having been kept out of this
property; and if anybody else should be in the present enjoyment of
it, he is heartily welcome to keep it.

I was born with a caul, which was advertised for sale, in the
newspapers, at the low price of fifteen guineas.  Whether sea-going
people were short of money about that time, or were short of faith
and preferred cork jackets, I don't know; all I know is, that there
was but one solitary bidding, and that was from an attorney
connected with the bill-broking business, who offered two pounds in
cash, and the balance in sherry, but declined to be guaranteed from
drowning on any higher bargain.  Consequently the advertisement was
withdrawn at a dead loss - for as to sherry, my poor dear mother's
own sherry was in the market then - and ten years afterwards, the
caul was put up in a raffle down in our part of the country, to
fifty members at half-a-crown a head, the winner to spend five
shillings.  I was present myself, and I remember to have felt quite
uncomfortable and confused, at a part of myself being disposed of
in that way.  The caul was won, I recollect, by an old lady with a
hand-basket, who, very reluctantly, produced from it the stipulated
five shillings, all in halfpence, and twopence halfpenny short - as
it took an immense time and a great waste of arithmetic, to
endeavour without any effect to prove to her.  It is a fact which
will be long remembered as remarkable down there, that she was
never drowned, but died triumphantly in bed, at ninety-two.  I have
understood that it was, to the last, her proudest boast, that she
never had been on the water in her life, except upon a bridge; and
that over her tea (to which she was extremely partial) she, to the
last, expressed her indignation at the impiety of mariners and
others, who had the presumption to go 'meandering' about the world.
It was in vain to represent to her that some conveniences, tea
perhaps included, resulted from this objectionable practice.  She
always returned, with greater emphasis and with an instinctive
knowledge of the strength of her objection, 'Let us have no
meandering.'

Not to meander myself, at present, I will go back to my birth.

I was born at Blunderstone, in Suffolk, or 'there by', as they say
in Scotland.  I was a posthumous child.  My father's eyes had
closed upon the light of this world six months, when mine opened on
it.  There is something strange to me, even now, in the reflection
that he never saw me; and something stranger yet in the shadowy
remembrance that I have of my first childish associations with his
white grave-stone in the churchyard, and of the indefinable
compassion I used to feel for it lying out alone there in the dark
night, when our little parlour was warm and bright with fire and
candle, and the doors of our house were - almost cruelly, it seemed
to me sometimes - bolted and locked against it.

An aunt of my father's, and consequently a great-aunt of mine, of
whom I shall have more to relate by and by, was the principal
magnate of our family.  Miss Trotwood, or Miss Betsey, as my poor
mother always called her, when she sufficiently overcame her dread
of this formidable personage to mention her at all (which was
seldom), had been married to a husband younger than herself, who
was very handsome, except in the sense of the homely adage,
'handsome is, that handsome does' - for he was strongly suspected
of having beaten Miss Betsey, and even of having once, on a
disputed question of supplies, made some hasty but determined
arrangements to throw her out of a two pair of stairs' window.
These evidences of an incompatibility of temper induced Miss Betsey
to pay him off, and effect a separation by mutual consent.  He went
to India with his capital, and there, according to a wild legend in
our family, he was once seen riding on an elephant, in company with
a Baboon; but I think it must have been a Baboo - or a Begum.
Anyhow, from India tidings of his death reached home, within ten
years.  How they affected my aunt, nobody knew; for immediately
upon the separation, she took her maiden name again, bought a
cottage in a hamlet on the sea-coast a long way off, established
herself there as a single woman with one servant, and was
understood to live secluded, ever afterwards, in an inflexible
retirement.

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