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《DAVID COPPERFIELD 大卫·科波菲尔（英文版）》作者：查尔斯狄更斯【完结】

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.

My father had once been a favourite of hers, I believe; but she was

mortally affronted by his marriage, on the ground that my mother was ‘a

wax doll’. She had never seen my mother, but she knew her to be not

yet twenty. My father and Miss Betsey never met again. He was double

my mother’s age when he married, and of but a delicate constitution. He

died a year afterwards, and, as I have said, six months before I came

into the world.

This was the state of matters, on the afternoon of, what I may be

excused for calling, that eventful and important Friday. I can make no

claim therefore to have known, at that time, how matters stood; or to

have any remembrance, founded on the evidence of my own senses, of what

follows.

My mother was sitting by the fire, but poorly in health, and very low in

spirits, looking at it through her tears, and desponding heavily about

herself and the fatherless little stranger, who was already welcomed by

some grosses of prophetic pins, in a drawer upstairs, to a world not at

all excited on the subject of his arrival; my mother, I say, was sitting

by the fire, that bright, windy March afternoon, very timid and sad, and

very doubtful of ever coming alive out of the trial that was before her,

when, lifting her eyes as she dried them, to the window opposite, she

saw a strange lady coming up the garden.

My mother had a sure foreboding at the second glance, that it was

Miss Betsey. The setting sun was glowing on the strange lady, over the

garden-fence, and she came walking up to the door with a fell rigidity

of figure and composure of countenance that could have belonged to

nobody else.

When she reached the house, she gave another proof of her identity.

My father had often hinted that she seldom conducted herself like any

ordinary Christian; and now, instead of ringing the bell, she came and

looked in at that identical window, pressing the end of her nose against

the glass to that extent, that my poor dear mother used to say it became

perfectly flat and white in a moment.

She gave my mother such a turn, that I have always been convinced I am

indebted to Miss Betsey for having been born on a Friday.

My mother had left her chair in her agitation, and gone behind it in

the corner. Miss Betsey, looking round the room, slowly and inquiringly,

began on the other side, and carried her eyes on, like a Saracen’s Head

in a Dutch clock, until they reached my mother. Then she made a frown

and a gesture to my mother, like one who was accustomed to be obeyed, to

come and open the door. My mother went.

‘Mrs. David Copperfield, I think,’ said Miss Betsey; the emphasis

referring, perhaps, to my mother’s mourning weeds, and her condition.

‘Yes,’ said my mother, faintly.

‘Miss Trotwood,’ said the visitor. ‘You have heard of her, I dare say?’

My mother answered she had had that pleasure. And she had a disagreeable