第 12 页

then.

I felt it rather hard, I must own, to be made, without deserving it, the

subject of jokes between the coachman and guard as to the coach drawing

heavy behind, on account of my sitting there, and as to the greater

expediency of my travelling by waggon. The story of my supposed appetite

getting wind among the outside passengers, they were merry upon it

likewise; and asked me whether I was going to be paid for, at school,

as two brothers or three, and whether I was contracted for, or went upon

the regular terms; with other pleasant questions. But the worst of

it was, that I knew I should be ashamed to eat anything, when an

opportunity offered, and that, after a rather light dinner, I should

remain hungry all night--for I had left my cakes behind, at the hotel,

in my hurry. My apprehensions were realized. When we stopped for supper

I couldn’t muster courage to take any, though I should have liked it

very much, but sat by the fire and said I didn’t want anything. This did

not save me from more jokes, either; for a husky-voiced gentleman with

a rough face, who had been eating out of a sandwich-box nearly all the

way, except when he had been drinking out of a bottle, said I was like

a boa-constrictor who took enough at one meal to last him a long time;

after which, he actually brought a rash out upon himself with boiled

beef.

We had started from Yarmouth at three o’clock in the afternoon, and we

were due in London about eight next morning. It was Mid-summer weather,

and the evening was very pleasant. When we passed through a village, I

pictured to myself what the insides of the houses were like, and what

the inhabitants were about; and when boys came running after us, and

got up behind and swung there for a little way, I wondered whether their

fathers were alive, and whether they were happy at home. I had plenty to

think of, therefore, besides my mind running continually on the kind

of place I was going to--which was an awful speculation. Sometimes, I

remember, I resigned myself to thoughts of home and Peggotty; and to

endeavouring, in a confused blind way, to recall how I had felt, and

what sort of boy I used to be, before I bit Mr. Murdstone: which I

couldn’t satisfy myself about by any means, I seemed to have bitten him

in such a remote antiquity.

The night was not so pleasant as the evening, for it got chilly; and

being put between two gentlemen (the rough-faced one and another) to

prevent my tumbling off the coach, I was nearly smothered by their

falling asleep, and completely blocking me up. They squeezed me so hard

sometimes, that I could not help crying out, ‘Oh! If you please!’--which

they didn’t like at all, because it woke them. Opposite me was an

elderly lady in a great fur cloak, who looked in the dark more like a

haystack than a lady, she was wrapped up to such a degree. This lady had

a basket with her, and she hadn’t known what to do with it, for a long

time, until she found that on account of my legs being short, it could

go underneath me. It cramped and hurt me so, that it made me perfectly

miserable; but if I moved in the least, and made a glass that was in the

basket rattle against something else (as it was sure to do), she gave

me the cruellest poke with her foot, and said, ‘Come, don’t YOU fidget.

YOUR bones are young enough, I’m sure!’

At last the sun rose, and then my companions seemed to sleep easier.

The difficulties under which they had laboured all night, and which had

found utterance in the most terrific gasps and snorts, are not to be

conceived. As the sun got higher, their sleep became lighter, and so

they gradually one by one awoke. I recollect being very much surprised

by the feint everybody made, then, of not having been to sleep at all,

and by the uncommon indignation with which everyone repelled the

charge. I labour under the same kind of astonishment to this day, having

invariably observed that of all human weaknesses, the one to which our

common nature is the least disposed to confess (I cannot imagine why) is

the weakness of having gone to sleep in a coach.

What an amazing place London was to me when I saw it in the distance,

and how I believed all the adventures of all my favourite heroes to be

constantly enacting and re-enacting there, and how I vaguely made it

out in my own mind to be fuller of wonders and wickedness than all the

cities of the earth, I need not stop here to relate. We approached it by

degrees, and got, in due time, to the inn in the Whitechapel district,

for which we were bound. I forget whether it was the Blue Bull, or the

Blue Boar; but I know it was the Blue Something, and that its likeness

was painted up on the back of the coach.

The guard’s eye lighted on me as he was getting down, and he said at the

booking-office door:

‘Is there anybody here for a yoongster booked in the name of Murdstone,

from Bloonderstone, Sooffolk, to be left till called for?’

Nobody answered.

‘Try Copperfield, if you please, sir,’ said I, looking helplessly down.

‘Is there anybody here for a yoongster, booked in the name of Murdstone,

from Bloonderstone, Sooffolk, but owning to the name of Copperfield, to

be left till called for?’ said the guard. ‘Come! IS there anybody?’

No. There was nobody. I looked anxiously around; but the inquiry made no

impression on any of the bystanders, if I except a man in gaiters, with

one eye, who suggested that they had better put a brass collar round my

neck, and tie me up in the stable.

A ladder was brought, and I got down after the lady, who was like a

haystack: not daring to stir, until her basket was removed. The coach

was clear of passengers by that time, the luggage was very soon cleared

out, the horses had been taken out before the luggage, and now the coach

itself was wheeled and backed off by some hostlers, out of the way.

Still, nobody appeared, to claim the dusty youngster from Blunderstone,

Suffolk.

More solitary than Robinson Crusoe, who had nobody to look at him

and see that he was solitary, I went into the booking-office, and, by

invitation of the clerk on duty, passed behind the counter, and sat down

on the scale at which they weighed the luggage. Here, as I sat looking

at the parcels, packages, and books, and inhaling the smell of stables

(ever since associated with that morning), a procession of most

tremendous considerations began to march through my mind. Supposing

nobody should ever fetch me, how long would they consent to keep me

there? Would they keep me long enough to spend seven shillings? Should I

sleep at night in one of those wooden bins, with the other luggage,

and wash myself at the pump in the yard in the morning; or should I

be turned out every night, and expected to come again to be left till

called for, when the office opened next day? Supposing there was no

mistake in the case, and Mr. Murdstone had devised this plan to get rid

of me, what should I do? If they allowed me to remain there until my

seven shillings were spent, I couldn’t hope to remain there when I began

to starve. That would obviously be inconvenient and unpleasant to the

customers, besides entailing on the Blue Whatever-it-was, the risk of

funeral expenses. If I started off at once, and tried to walk back home,

how could I ever find my way, how could I ever hope to walk so far, how

could I make sure of anyone but Peggotty, even if I got back? If I

found out the nearest proper authorities, and offered myself to go for a

soldier, or a sailor, I was such a little fellow that it was most likely

they wouldn’t take me in. These thoughts, and a hundred other such

thoughts, turned me burning hot, and made me giddy with apprehension and

dismay. I was in the height of my fever when a man entered and whispered

to the clerk, who presently slanted me off the scale, and pushed me over

to him, as if I were weighed, bought, delivered, and paid for.

As I went out of the office, hand in hand with this new acquaintance,

I stole a look at him. He was a gaunt, sallow young man, with hollow

cheeks, and a chin almost as black as Mr. Murdstone’s; but there the

likeness ended, for his whiskers were shaved off, and his hair, instead

of being glossy, was rusty and dry. He was dressed in a suit of black

clothes which were rather rusty and dry too, and rather short in the

sleeves and legs; and he had a white neck-kerchief on, that was not

over-clean. I did not, and do not, suppose that this neck-kerchief was

all the linen he wore, but it was all he showed or gave any hint of.

‘You’re the new boy?’ he said. ‘Yes, sir,’ I said.

I supposed I was. I didn’t know.

‘I’m one of the masters at Salem House,’ he said.

I made him a bow and felt very much overawed. I was so ashamed to allude

to a commonplace thing like my box, to a scholar and a master at Salem

House, that we had gone some little distance from the yard before I had

the hardihood to mention it. We turned back, on my humbly insinuating

that it might be useful to me hereafter; and he told the clerk that the

carrier had instructions to call for it at noon.

‘If you please, sir,’ I said, when we had accomplished about the same

distance as before, ‘is it far?’

‘It’s down by Blackheath,’ he said.

‘Is that far, sir?’ I diffidently asked.

‘It’s a good step,’ he said. ‘We shall go by the stage-coach. It’s about

six miles.’

I was so faint and tired, that the idea of holding out for six miles

more, was too much for me. I took heart to tell him that I had had

nothing all night, and that if he would allow me to buy something to

eat, I should be very much obliged to him. He appeared surprised at

this--I see him stop and look at me now--and after considering for a few

moments, said he wanted to call on an old person who lived not far off,

and that the best way would be for me to buy some bread, or whatever I

liked best that was wholesome, and make my breakfast at her house, where

we could get some milk.

Accordingly we looked in at a baker’s window, and after I had made a

series of proposals to buy everything that was bilious in the shop, and

he had rejected them one by one, we decided in favour of a nice little

loaf of brown bread, which cost me threepence. Then, at a grocer’s shop,

we bought an egg and a slice of streaky bacon; which still left what

I thought a good deal of change, out of the second of the bright

shillings, and made me consider London a very cheap place. These

provisions laid in, we went on through a great noise and uproar that

confused my weary head beyond description, and over a bridge which, no

doubt, was London Bridge (indeed I think he told me so, but I was half

asleep), until we came to the poor person’s house, which was a part of

some alms-houses, as I knew by their look, and by an inscription on a

stone over the gate which said they were established for twenty-five

poor women.

The Master at Salem House lifted the latch of one of a number of little

black doors that were all alike, and had each a little diamond-paned

window on one side, and another little diamond--paned window above; and

we went into the little house of one of these poor old women, who was

blowing a fire to make a little saucepan boil. On seeing the master

enter, the old woman stopped with the bellows on her knee, and said

something that I thought sounded like ‘My Charley!’ but on seeing me

come in too, she got up, and rubbing her hands made a confused sort of

half curtsey.

‘Can you cook this young gentleman’s breakfast for him, if you please?’

said the Master at Salem House.

‘Can I?’ said the old woman. ‘Yes can I, sure!’

‘How’s Mrs. Fibbitson today?’ said the Master, looking at another old

woman in a large chair by the fire, who was such a bundle of clothes

that I feel grateful to this hour for not having sat upon her by

mistake.

‘Ah, she’s poorly,’ said the first old woman. ‘It’s one of her bad days.

If the fire was to go out, through any accident, I verily believe she’d

go out too, and never come to life again.’

As they looked at her, I looked at her also. Although it was a warm day,

she seemed to think of nothing but the fire. I fancied she was jealous

even of the saucepan on it; and I have reason to know that she took its

impressment into the service of boiling my egg and broiling my bacon, in

dudgeon; for I saw her, with my own discomfited eyes, shake her fist at

me once, when those culinary operations were going on, and no one else

was looking. The sun streamed in at the little window, but she sat with

her own back and the back of the large chair towards it, screening the

fire as if she were sedulously keeping IT warm, instead of it keeping

her warm, and watching it in a most distrustful manner. The completion

of the preparations for my breakfast, by relieving the fire, gave her

such extreme joy that she laughed aloud--and a very unmelodious laugh

she had, I must say.

I sat down to my brown loaf, my egg, and my rasher of bacon, with a

basin of milk besides, and made a most delicious meal. While I was yet

in the full enjoyment of it, the old woman of the house said to the

Master:

‘Have you got your flute with you?’

‘Yes,’ he returned.

‘Have a blow at it,’ said the old woman, coaxingly. ‘Do!’

The Master, upon this, put his hand underneath the skirts of his coat,

and brought out his flute in three pieces, which he screwed together,

and began immediately to play. My impression is, after many years of

consideration, that there never can have been anybody in the world who

played worse. He made the most dismal sounds I have ever heard produced

by any means, natural or artificial. I don’t know what the tunes

were--if there were such things in the performance at all, which I

doubt--but the influence of the strain upon me was, first, to make me

think of all my sorrows until I could hardly keep my tears back; then to

take away my appetite; and lastly, to make me so sleepy that I couldn’t

keep my eyes open. They begin to close again, and I begin to nod, as the

recollection rises fresh upon me. Once more the little room, with its

open corner cupboard, and its square-backed chairs, and its angular

little staircase leading to the room above, and its three peacock’s