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resolve to fight the butcher.

It is a summer evening, down in a green hollow, at the corner of a wall.

I meet the butcher by appointment. I am attended by a select body of our

boys; the butcher, by two other butchers, a young publican, and a sweep.

The preliminaries are adjusted, and the butcher and myself stand face to

face. In a moment the butcher lights ten thousand candles out of my left

eyebrow. In another moment, I don’t know where the wall is, or where

I am, or where anybody is. I hardly know which is myself and which the

butcher, we are always in such a tangle and tussle, knocking about upon

the trodden grass. Sometimes I see the butcher, bloody but confident;

sometimes I see nothing, and sit gasping on my second’s knee; sometimes

I go in at the butcher madly, and cut my knuckles open against his face,

without appearing to discompose him at all. At last I awake, very queer

about the head, as from a giddy sleep, and see the butcher walking off,

congratulated by the two other butchers and the sweep and publican, and

putting on his coat as he goes; from which I augur, justly, that the

victory is his.

I am taken home in a sad plight, and I have beef-steaks put to my eyes,

and am rubbed with vinegar and brandy, and find a great puffy place

bursting out on my upper lip, which swells immoderately. For three or

four days I remain at home, a very ill-looking subject, with a green

shade over my eyes; and I should be very dull, but that Agnes is a

sister to me, and condoles with me, and reads to me, and makes the time

light and happy. Agnes has my confidence completely, always; I tell her

all about the butcher, and the wrongs he has heaped upon me; she thinks

I couldn’t have done otherwise than fight the butcher, while she shrinks

and trembles at my having fought him.

Time has stolen on unobserved, for Adams is not the head-boy in the days

that are come now, nor has he been this many and many a day. Adams has

left the school so long, that when he comes back, on a visit to Doctor

Strong, there are not many there, besides myself, who know him. Adams is

going to be called to the bar almost directly, and is to be an advocate,

and to wear a wig. I am surprised to find him a meeker man than I had

thought, and less imposing in appearance. He has not staggered the world

yet, either; for it goes on (as well as I can make out) pretty much the

same as if he had never joined it.

A blank, through which the warriors of poetry and history march on in

stately hosts that seem to have no end--and what comes next! I am

the head-boy, now! I look down on the line of boys below me, with a

condescending interest in such of them as bring to my mind the boy I was

myself, when I first came there. That little fellow seems to be no part

of me; I remember him as something left behind upon the road of life--as

something I have passed, rather than have actually been--and almost

think of him as of someone else.

And the little girl I saw on that first day at Mr. Wickfield’s, where

is she? Gone also. In her stead, the perfect likeness of the picture,

a child likeness no more, moves about the house; and Agnes--my sweet

sister, as I call her in my thoughts, my counsellor and friend, the

better angel of the lives of all who come within her calm, good,

self-denying influence--is quite a woman.

What other changes have come upon me, besides the changes in my growth

and looks, and in the knowledge I have garnered all this while? I wear

a gold watch and chain, a ring upon my little finger, and a long-tailed

coat; and I use a great deal of bear’s grease--which, taken in

conjunction with the ring, looks bad. Am I in love again? I am. I

worship the eldest Miss Larkins.

The eldest Miss Larkins is not a little girl. She is a tall, dark,

black-eyed, fine figure of a woman. The eldest Miss Larkins is not a

chicken; for the youngest Miss Larkins is not that, and the eldest must

be three or four years older. Perhaps the eldest Miss Larkins may be

about thirty. My passion for her is beyond all bounds.

The eldest Miss Larkins knows officers. It is an awful thing to bear. I

see them speaking to her in the street. I see them cross the way to meet

her, when her bonnet (she has a bright taste in bonnets) is seen coming

down the pavement, accompanied by her sister’s bonnet. She laughs and

talks, and seems to like it. I spend a good deal of my own spare time in

walking up and down to meet her. If I can bow to her once in the day (I

know her to bow to, knowing Mr. Larkins), I am happier. I deserve a bow

now and then. The raging agonies I suffer on the night of the Race Ball,

where I know the eldest Miss Larkins will be dancing with the military,

ought to have some compensation, if there be even-handed justice in the

world.

My passion takes away my appetite, and makes me wear my newest silk

neckerchief continually. I have no relief but in putting on my best

clothes, and having my boots cleaned over and over again. I seem, then,

to be worthier of the eldest Miss Larkins. Everything that belongs to

her, or is connected with her, is precious to me. Mr. Larkins (a gruff

old gentleman with a double chin, and one of his eyes immovable in his

head) is fraught with interest to me. When I can’t meet his daughter,

I go where I am likely to meet him. To say ‘How do you do, Mr. Larkins?

Are the young ladies and all the family quite well?’ seems so pointed,

that I blush.

I think continually about my age. Say I am seventeen, and say that

seventeen is young for the eldest Miss Larkins, what of that? Besides,

I shall be one-and-twenty in no time almost. I regularly take walks

outside Mr. Larkins’s house in the evening, though it cuts me to the

heart to see the officers go in, or to hear them up in the drawing-room,

where the eldest Miss Larkins plays the harp. I even walk, on two or

three occasions, in a sickly, spoony manner, round and round the house

after the family are gone to bed, wondering which is the eldest Miss

Larkins’s chamber (and pitching, I dare say now, on Mr. Larkins’s

instead); wishing that a fire would burst out; that the assembled crowd

would stand appalled; that I, dashing through them with a ladder, might

rear it against her window, save her in my arms, go back for something

she had left behind, and perish in the flames. For I am generally

disinterested in my love, and think I could be content to make a figure

before Miss Larkins, and expire.

Generally, but not always. Sometimes brighter visions rise before me.

When I dress (the occupation of two hours), for a great ball given at

the Larkins’s (the anticipation of three weeks), I indulge my fancy with

pleasing images. I picture myself taking courage to make a declaration

to Miss Larkins. I picture Miss Larkins sinking her head upon my

shoulder, and saying, ‘Oh, Mr. Copperfield, can I believe my ears!’ I

picture Mr. Larkins waiting on me next morning, and saying, ‘My dear

Copperfield, my daughter has told me all. Youth is no objection. Here

are twenty thousand pounds. Be happy!’ I picture my aunt relenting,

and blessing us; and Mr. Dick and Doctor Strong being present at the

marriage ceremony. I am a sensible fellow, I believe--I believe,

on looking back, I mean--and modest I am sure; but all this goes on

notwithstanding. I repair to the enchanted house, where there are

lights, chattering, music, flowers, officers (I am sorry to see), and

the eldest Miss Larkins, a blaze of beauty. She is dressed in blue, with

blue flowers in her hair--forget-me-nots--as if SHE had any need to wear

forget-me-nots. It is the first really grown-up party that I have ever

been invited to, and I am a little uncomfortable; for I appear not to

belong to anybody, and nobody appears to have anything to say to me,

except Mr. Larkins, who asks me how my schoolfellows are, which he

needn’t do, as I have not come there to be insulted.

But after I have stood in the doorway for some time, and feasted my eyes

upon the goddess of my heart, she approaches me--she, the eldest Miss

Larkins!--and asks me pleasantly, if I dance?

I stammer, with a bow, ‘With you, Miss Larkins.’

‘With no one else?’ inquires Miss Larkins.

‘I should have no pleasure in dancing with anyone else.’

Miss Larkins laughs and blushes (or I think she blushes), and says,

‘Next time but one, I shall be very glad.’

The time arrives. ‘It is a waltz, I think,’ Miss Larkins doubtfully

observes, when I present myself. ‘Do you waltz? If not, Captain

Bailey--’

But I do waltz (pretty well, too, as it happens), and I take Miss

Larkins out. I take her sternly from the side of Captain Bailey. He

is wretched, I have no doubt; but he is nothing to me. I have been

wretched, too. I waltz with the eldest Miss Larkins! I don’t know where,

among whom, or how long. I only know that I swim about in space, with a

blue angel, in a state of blissful delirium, until I find myself alone

with her in a little room, resting on a sofa. She admires a flower (pink

camellia japonica, price half-a-crown), in my button-hole. I give it

her, and say:

‘I ask an inestimable price for it, Miss Larkins.’

‘Indeed! What is that?’ returns Miss Larkins.

‘A flower of yours, that I may treasure it as a miser does gold.’

‘You’re a bold boy,’ says Miss Larkins. ‘There.’

She gives it me, not displeased; and I put it to my lips, and then into

my breast. Miss Larkins, laughing, draws her hand through my arm, and

says, ‘Now take me back to Captain Bailey.’

I am lost in the recollection of this delicious interview, and the

waltz, when she comes to me again, with a plain elderly gentleman who

has been playing whist all night, upon her arm, and says:

‘Oh! here is my bold friend! Mr. Chestle wants to know you, Mr.

Copperfield.’

I feel at once that he is a friend of the family, and am much gratified.

‘I admire your taste, sir,’ says Mr. Chestle. ‘It does you credit. I

suppose you don’t take much interest in hops; but I am a pretty

large grower myself; and if you ever like to come over to our

neighbourhood--neighbourhood of Ashford--and take a run about our

place,--we shall be glad for you to stop as long as you like.’

I thank Mr. Chestle warmly, and shake hands. I think I am in a happy

dream. I waltz with the eldest Miss Larkins once again. She says I

waltz so well! I go home in a state of unspeakable bliss, and waltz in

imagination, all night long, with my arm round the blue waist of my dear

divinity. For some days afterwards, I am lost in rapturous reflections;

but I neither see her in the street, nor when I call. I am imperfectly

consoled for this disappointment by the sacred pledge, the perished

flower.

‘Trotwood,’ says Agnes, one day after dinner. ‘Who do you think is going

to be married tomorrow? Someone you admire.’

‘Not you, I suppose, Agnes?’

‘Not me!’ raising her cheerful face from the music she is copying. ‘Do

you hear him, Papa?--The eldest Miss Larkins.’

‘To--to Captain Bailey?’ I have just enough power to ask.

‘No; to no Captain. To Mr. Chestle, a hop-grower.’

I am terribly dejected for about a week or two. I take off my ring, I

wear my worst clothes, I use no bear’s grease, and I frequently lament

over the late Miss Larkins’s faded flower. Being, by that time, rather

tired of this kind of life, and having received new provocation from

the butcher, I throw the flower away, go out with the butcher, and

gloriously defeat him.

This, and the resumption of my ring, as well as of the bear’s grease

in moderation, are the last marks I can discern, now, in my progress to

seventeen.

CHAPTER 19. I LOOK ABOUT ME, AND MAKE A DISCOVERY

I am doubtful whether I was at heart glad or sorry, when my school-days

drew to an end, and the time came for my leaving Doctor Strong’s. I had

been very happy there, I had a great attachment for the Doctor, and I

was eminent and distinguished in that little world. For these reasons

I was sorry to go; but for other reasons, unsubstantial enough, I

was glad. Misty ideas of being a young man at my own disposal, of

the importance attaching to a young man at his own disposal, of the

wonderful things to be seen and done by that magnificent animal, and the

wonderful effects he could not fail to make upon society, lured me away.

So powerful were these visionary considerations in my boyish mind, that

I seem, according to my present way of thinking, to have left school

without natural regret. The separation has not made the impression on

me, that other separations have. I try in vain to recall how I felt

about it, and what its circumstances were; but it is not momentous in my

recollection. I suppose the opening prospect confused me. I know that my

juvenile experiences went for little or nothing then; and that life was

more like a great fairy story, which I was just about to begin to read,

than anything else.

My aunt and I had held many grave deliberations on the calling to which

I should be devoted. For a year or more I had endeavoured to find a

satisfactory answer to her often-repeated question, ‘What I would like

to be?’ But I had no particular liking, that I could discover, for

anything. If I could have been inspired with a knowledge of the science

of navigation, taken the command of a fast-sailing expedition, and gone

round the world on a triumphant voyage of discovery, I think I might

have considered myself completely suited. But, in the absence of any

such miraculous provision, my desire was to apply myself to some pursuit

that would not lie too heavily upon her purse; and to do my duty in it,

whatever it might be.

Mr. Dick had regularly assisted at our councils, with a meditative

and sage demeanour. He never made a suggestion but once; and on that

occasion (I don’t know what put it in his head), he suddenly proposed

that I should be ‘a Brazier’. My aunt received this proposal so very

ungraciously, that he never ventured on a second; but ever afterwards

confined himself to looking watchfully at her for her suggestions, and

rattling his money.

‘Trot, I tell you what, my dear,’ said my aunt, one morning in the

Christmas season when I left school: ‘as this knotty point is still

unsettled, and as we must not make a mistake in our decision if we can