第 26 页

street, and roaring up at the windows of the second floor, where he knew

Mr. Micawber was. At these times, Mr. Micawber would be transported with

grief and mortification, even to the length (as I was once made aware by

a scream from his wife) of making motions at himself with a razor;

but within half-an-hour afterwards, he would polish up his shoes with

extraordinary pains, and go out, humming a tune with a greater air of

gentility than ever. Mrs. Micawber was quite as elastic. I have known

her to be thrown into fainting fits by the king’s taxes at three

o’clock, and to eat lamb chops, breaded, and drink warm ale (paid for

with two tea-spoons that had gone to the pawnbroker’s) at four. On one

occasion, when an execution had just been put in, coming home through

some chance as early as six o’clock, I saw her lying (of course with a

twin) under the grate in a swoon, with her hair all torn about her face;

but I never knew her more cheerful than she was, that very same night,

over a veal cutlet before the kitchen fire, telling me stories about her

papa and mama, and the company they used to keep.

In this house, and with this family, I passed my leisure time. My own

exclusive breakfast of a penny loaf and a pennyworth of milk, I provided

myself. I kept another small loaf, and a modicum of cheese, on a

particular shelf of a particular cupboard, to make my supper on when I

came back at night. This made a hole in the six or seven shillings, I

know well; and I was out at the warehouse all day, and had to support

myself on that money all the week. From Monday morning until Saturday

night, I had no advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation,

no assistance, no support, of any kind, from anyone, that I can call to

mind, as I hope to go to heaven!

I was so young and childish, and so little qualified--how could I be

otherwise?--to undertake the whole charge of my own existence, that

often, in going to Murdstone and Grinby’s, of a morning, I could

not resist the stale pastry put out for sale at half-price at the

pastrycooks’ doors, and spent in that the money I should have kept for

my dinner. Then, I went without my dinner, or bought a roll or a slice

of pudding. I remember two pudding shops, between which I was divided,

according to my finances. One was in a court close to St. Martin’s

Church--at the back of the church,--which is now removed altogether.

The pudding at that shop was made of currants, and was rather a special

pudding, but was dear, twopennyworth not being larger than a pennyworth

of more ordinary pudding. A good shop for the latter was in the

Strand--somewhere in that part which has been rebuilt since. It was a

stout pale pudding, heavy and flabby, and with great flat raisins in it,

stuck in whole at wide distances apart. It came up hot at about my time

every day, and many a day did I dine off it. When I dined regularly and

handsomely, I had a saveloy and a penny loaf, or a fourpenny plate of

red beef from a cook’s shop; or a plate of bread and cheese and a

glass of beer, from a miserable old public-house opposite our place of

business, called the Lion, or the Lion and something else that I have

forgotten. Once, I remember carrying my own bread (which I had brought

from home in the morning) under my arm, wrapped in a piece of paper,

like a book, and going to a famous alamode beef-house near Drury Lane,

and ordering a ‘small plate’ of that delicacy to eat with it. What the

waiter thought of such a strange little apparition coming in all alone,

I don’t know; but I can see him now, staring at me as I ate my dinner,

and bringing up the other waiter to look. I gave him a halfpenny for

himself, and I wish he hadn’t taken it.

We had half-an-hour, I think, for tea. When I had money enough, I used

to get half-a-pint of ready-made coffee and a slice of bread and butter.

When I had none, I used to look at a venison shop in Fleet Street; or

I have strolled, at such a time, as far as Covent Garden Market, and

stared at the pineapples. I was fond of wandering about the Adelphi,

because it was a mysterious place, with those dark arches. I see myself

emerging one evening from some of these arches, on a little public-house

close to the river, with an open space before it, where some

coal-heavers were dancing; to look at whom I sat down upon a bench. I

wonder what they thought of me!

I was such a child, and so little, that frequently when I went into the

bar of a strange public-house for a glass of ale or porter, to moisten

what I had had for dinner, they were afraid to give it me. I remember

one hot evening I went into the bar of a public-house, and said to the

landlord: ‘What is your best--your very best--ale a glass?’ For it was a

special occasion. I don’t know what. It may have been my birthday.

‘Twopence-halfpenny,’ says the landlord, ‘is the price of the Genuine

Stunning ale.’

‘Then,’ says I, producing the money, ‘just draw me a glass of the

Genuine Stunning, if you please, with a good head to it.’

The landlord looked at me in return over the bar, from head to foot,

with a strange smile on his face; and instead of drawing the beer,

looked round the screen and said something to his wife. She came out

from behind it, with her work in her hand, and joined him in surveying

me. Here we stand, all three, before me now. The landlord in his

shirt-sleeves, leaning against the bar window-frame; his wife looking

over the little half-door; and I, in some confusion, looking up at them

from outside the partition. They asked me a good many questions; as,

what my name was, how old I was, where I lived, how I was employed,

and how I came there. To all of which, that I might commit nobody, I

invented, I am afraid, appropriate answers. They served me with the ale,

though I suspect it was not the Genuine Stunning; and the landlord’s

wife, opening the little half-door of the bar, and bending down, gave

me my money back, and gave me a kiss that was half admiring and half

compassionate, but all womanly and good, I am sure.

I know I do not exaggerate, unconsciously and unintentionally, the

scantiness of my resources or the difficulties of my life. I know that

if a shilling were given me by Mr. Quinion at any time, I spent it in

a dinner or a tea. I know that I worked, from morning until night, with

common men and boys, a shabby child. I know that I lounged about the

streets, insufficiently and unsatisfactorily fed. I know that, but for

the mercy of God, I might easily have been, for any care that was taken

of me, a little robber or a little vagabond.

Yet I held some station at Murdstone and Grinby’s too. Besides that Mr.

Quinion did what a careless man so occupied, and dealing with a thing so

anomalous, could, to treat me as one upon a different footing from the

rest, I never said, to man or boy, how it was that I came to be there,

or gave the least indication of being sorry that I was there. That I

suffered in secret, and that I suffered exquisitely, no one ever knew

but I. How much I suffered, it is, as I have said already, utterly

beyond my power to tell. But I kept my own counsel, and I did my work.

I knew from the first, that, if I could not do my work as well as any

of the rest, I could not hold myself above slight and contempt. I soon

became at least as expeditious and as skilful as either of the other

boys. Though perfectly familiar with them, my conduct and manner were

different enough from theirs to place a space between us. They and

the men generally spoke of me as ‘the little gent’, or ‘the young

Suffolker.’ A certain man named Gregory, who was foreman of the packers,

and another named Tipp, who was the carman, and wore a red jacket, used

to address me sometimes as ‘David’: but I think it was mostly when we

were very confidential, and when I had made some efforts to entertain

them, over our work, with some results of the old readings; which were

fast perishing out of my remembrance. Mealy Potatoes uprose once, and

rebelled against my being so distinguished; but Mick Walker settled him

in no time.

My rescue from this kind of existence I considered quite hopeless, and

abandoned, as such, altogether. I am solemnly convinced that I never for

one hour was reconciled to it, or was otherwise than miserably unhappy;

but I bore it; and even to Peggotty, partly for the love of her and

partly for shame, never in any letter (though many passed between us)

revealed the truth.

Mr. Micawber’s difficulties were an addition to the distressed state of

my mind. In my forlorn state I became quite attached to the family, and

used to walk about, busy with Mrs. Micawber’s calculations of ways and

means, and heavy with the weight of Mr. Micawber’s debts. On a Saturday

night, which was my grand treat,--partly because it was a great thing

to walk home with six or seven shillings in my pocket, looking into the

shops and thinking what such a sum would buy, and partly because I went

home early,--Mrs. Micawber would make the most heart-rending confidences

to me; also on a Sunday morning, when I mixed the portion of tea or

coffee I had bought over-night, in a little shaving-pot, and sat late

at my breakfast. It was nothing at all unusual for Mr. Micawber to sob

violently at the beginning of one of these Saturday night conversations,

and sing about Jack’s delight being his lovely Nan, towards the end of

it. I have known him come home to supper with a flood of tears, and a

declaration that nothing was now left but a jail; and go to bed making a

calculation of the expense of putting bow-windows to the house, ‘in

case anything turned up’, which was his favourite expression. And Mrs.

Micawber was just the same.

A curious equality of friendship, originating, I suppose, in our

respective circumstances, sprung up between me and these people,

notwithstanding the ludicrous disparity in our years. But I never

allowed myself to be prevailed upon to accept any invitation to eat and

drink with them out of their stock (knowing that they got on badly with

the butcher and baker, and had often not too much for themselves),

until Mrs. Micawber took me into her entire confidence. This she did one

evening as follows:

‘Master Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘I make no stranger of you,

and therefore do not hesitate to say that Mr. Micawber’s difficulties

are coming to a crisis.’

It made me very miserable to hear it, and I looked at Mrs. Micawber’s

red eyes with the utmost sympathy.

‘With the exception of the heel of a Dutch cheese--which is not adapted

to the wants of a young family’--said Mrs. Micawber, ‘there is really

not a scrap of anything in the larder. I was accustomed to speak of

the larder when I lived with papa and mama, and I use the word almost

unconsciously. What I mean to express is, that there is nothing to eat

in the house.’

‘Dear me!’ I said, in great concern.

I had two or three shillings of my week’s money in my pocket--from which

I presume that it must have been on a Wednesday night when we held this

conversation--and I hastily produced them, and with heartfelt emotion

begged Mrs. Micawber to accept of them as a loan. But that lady, kissing

me, and making me put them back in my pocket, replied that she couldn’t

think of it.

‘No, my dear Master Copperfield,’ said she, ‘far be it from my thoughts!

But you have a discretion beyond your years, and can render me another

kind of service, if you will; and a service I will thankfully accept

of.’

I begged Mrs. Micawber to name it.

‘I have parted with the plate myself,’ said Mrs. Micawber. ‘Six tea, two

salt, and a pair of sugars, I have at different times borrowed money on,

in secret, with my own hands. But the twins are a great tie; and to me,

with my recollections, of papa and mama, these transactions are very

painful. There are still a few trifles that we could part with. Mr.

Micawber’s feelings would never allow him to dispose of them; and

Clickett’--this was the girl from the workhouse--‘being of a vulgar

mind, would take painful liberties if so much confidence was reposed in

her. Master Copperfield, if I might ask you--’

I understood Mrs. Micawber now, and begged her to make use of me to any

extent. I began to dispose of the more portable articles of property

that very evening; and went out on a similar expedition almost every

morning, before I went to Murdstone and Grinby’s.

Mr. Micawber had a few books on a little chiffonier, which he called the

library; and those went first. I carried them, one after another, to

a bookstall in the City Road--one part of which, near our house, was

almost all bookstalls and bird shops then--and sold them for whatever

they would bring. The keeper of this bookstall, who lived in a little

house behind it, used to get tipsy every night, and to be violently

scolded by his wife every morning. More than once, when I went there

early, I had audience of him in a turn-up bedstead, with a cut in his

forehead or a black eye, bearing witness to his excesses over-night (I

am afraid he was quarrelsome in his drink), and he, with a shaking

hand, endeavouring to find the needful shillings in one or other of the

pockets of his clothes, which lay upon the floor, while his wife, with a

baby in her arms and her shoes down at heel, never left off rating him.

Sometimes he had lost his money, and then he would ask me to call again;

but his wife had always got some--had taken his, I dare say, while he

was drunk--and secretly completed the bargain on the stairs, as we went

down together. At the pawnbroker’s shop, too, I began to be very well

known. The principal gentleman who officiated behind the counter, took

a good deal of notice of me; and often got me, I recollect, to decline a

Latin noun or adjective, or to conjugate a Latin verb, in his ear, while

he transacted my business. After all these occasions Mrs. Micawber made

a little treat, which was generally a supper; and there was a peculiar

relish in these meals which I well remember.

At last Mr. Micawber’s difficulties came to a crisis, and he was

arrested early one morning, and carried over to the King’s Bench Prison

in the Borough. He told me, as he went out of the house, that the God