The Personal History of David Copperfield

He drew his hand across his face, and with a half-suppressed sigh looked up from the fire.

“Is Martha with you yet?” I asked.

“Martha,” he replied “got married, Mas’r Davy, in the second year. A young man, a farm-laborer, as come by us on his way to market with his mas’r’s drays – a journey of over five hundred mile, theer and back – made offers fur to take her fur his wife (wives is very scarce theer), and then to set up fur their two selves in the Bush. She spoke to me fur to tell him her trew story. I did. They was married, and they live fower hundred mile away from any voices but their own and the singing birds.”

“Mrs. Gummidge?” I suggested.

It was a pleasant key to touch, for Mr. Peggotty suddenly burst into a roar of laughter, and rubbed his hands up and down his legs, as he had been accustomed to do when he enjoyed himself in the long-shipwrecked boat.

“Would you believe it!” he said. “Why, someun even made offers fur to marry her! If a ship’s cook that was turning settler, Mas’r Davy, didn’t make offers fur to marry Missis Gummidge, I’m Gormed – and I can’t say no fairer than that!”

I never saw Agnes laugh so. This sudden ecstacy on the part of Mr. Peggotty was so delightful to her, that she could not leave off laughing; and the more she laughed the more she made me laugh, and the greater Mr. Peggotty’s ecstacy became, and the more he rubbed his legs.

“And what did Mrs. Gummidge say?” I asked, when I was grave enough.

“If you’ll believe me,” returned Mr. Peggotty, “Missis Gummidge, ’stead of saying ‘thank you, I’m much obleeged to you, I ain’t a going fur to change my condition at my time of life,’ up’d with a bucket as was standing by, and laid it over that theer ship’s cook’s head ’till he sung out for help, and I went in and reskied of him.”

Mr. Peggotty burst into a great roar of laughter, and Agnes and I both kept him company.

“But I must say this, for the good creetur,” he resumed, wiping his face when we were quite exhausted; “she has been all she said she’d be to us, and more. She’s the willingest, the trewest, the honestest-helping woman, Mas’r Davy, as ever draw’d the breath of life. I have never know’d her to be lone and lorn, for a single minute, not even when the colony was all afore us, and we was new to it. And thinking of the old ’un is a thing she never done, I do assure you, since she left England!”

“Now, last, not least, Mr. Micawber,” said I. “He has paid off every obligation he incurred here – even to Traddles’s bill, you remember, my dear Agnes – and therefore we may take it for granted that he is doing well. But what is the latest news of him?”

Mr. Peggotty, with a smile, put his hand in his breast-pocket, and produced a flat-folded, paper parcel, from which he took out, with much care, a little odd-looking newspaper.

“You are to unnerstan’, Mas’r Davy,” said he, “as we have left the Bush now, being so well to do; and have gone right away round to Port Middlebay Harbor, wheer theer’s what we call a town.”

“Mr. Micawber was in the Bush near you?” said I.

“Bless you, yes,” said Mr. Peggotty, “and turned to with a will. I never wish to meet a better gen’lman for turning to, with a will. I’ve seen that theer bald head of his, a perspiring in the sun, Mas’r Davy, ’till I a’most thowt it would have melted away. And now he’s a Magistrate.”

“A Magistrate, eh?” said I.

Mr. Peggotty pointed to a certain paragraph in the newspaper, where I read aloud as follows, from the “Port Middlebay Times:”

“☞ The public dinner to our distinguished fellow-colonist and townsman, Wilkins Micawber, Esquire, Port Middlebay District Magistrate, came off yesterday in the large room of the Hotel, which was crowded to suffocation. It is estimated that not fewer than forty-seven persons must have been accommodated with dinner at one time, exclusive of the company in the passage and on the stairs. The beauty, fashion, and exclusiveness of Port Middlebay, flocked to do honor to one so deservedly esteemed, so highly talented, and so widely popular. Doctor Mell (of Colonial Salem-House Grammar School, Port Middlebay) presided, and on his right sat the distinguished guest. After the removal of the cloth, and the singing of Non Nobis (beautifully executed, and in which we were at no loss to distinguish the bell-like notes of that gifted amateur, Wilkins Micawber, Esquire, Junior), the usual loyal and patriotic toasts were severally given and rapturously received. Doctor Mell, in a speech replete with feeling, then proposed ‘Our distinguished Guest, the ornament of our town. May he never leave us but to better himself, and may his success among us be such as to render his bettering himself impossible!’ The cheering with which the toast was received defies description. Again and again it rose and fell, like the waves of ocean. At length all was hushed, and Wilkins Micawber, Esquire, presented himself to return thanks. Far be it from us, in the present comparatively imperfect state of the resources of our establishment, to endeavour to follow our distinguished townsman through the smoothly-flowing periods of his polished and highly-ornate address! Suffice it to observe, that it was a masterpiece of eloquence; and that those passages in which he more particularly traced his own successful career to its source, and warned the younger portion of his auditory from the shoals of ever incurring pecuniary liabilities which they were unable to liquidate, brought a tear into the manliest eye present. The remaining toasts were Doctor Mell; Mrs. Micawber (who gracefully bowed her acknowledgments from the side-door, where a galaxy of beauty was elevated on chairs, at once to witness and adorn the gratifying scene); Mrs. Ridger Begs (late Miss Micawber); Mrs. Mell; Wilkins Micawber, Esquire, Junior (who convulsed the assembly by humorously remarking that he found himself unable to return thanks in a speech, but would do so, with their permission, in a song); Mrs. Micawber’s Family (well-known, it is needless to remark, in the mother-country), &c. &c. &c. At the conclusion of the proceedings the tables were cleared as if by art-magic for dancing. Among the votaries of Terpsichore, who disported themselves until Sol gave warning for departure, Wilkins Micawber, Esquire, Junior, and the lovely and accomplished Miss Helena, fourth daughter of Doctor Mell, were particularly remarkable.”

I was looking back to the name of Doctor Mell, pleased to have discovered, in these happier circumstances, Mr. Mell, formerly poor pinched usher to my Middlesex magistrate, when Mr. Peggotty pointing to another part of the paper, my eyes rested on my own name, and I read thus:

“TO DAVID COPPERFIELD, ESQUIRE,

“THE EMINENT AUTHOR

“My Dear Sir,

“Years have elapsed, since I had an opportunity of ocularly perusing the lineaments, now familiar to the imaginations of a considerable portion of the civilised world.

“But, my dear sir, though estranged (by the force of circumstances over which I have had no controul) from the personal society of the friend and companion of my youth, I have not been unmindful of his soaring flight. Nor have I been debarred,

Though seas between us braid ha’ roared,

(Burns) from participating in the intellectual feasts he has spread before us.

“I cannot, therefore, allow of the departure from this place of an individual whom we mutually respect and esteem, without, my dear sir, taking this public opportunity of thanking you, on my own behalf, and, I may undertake to add, on that of the whole of the Inhabitants of Port Middlebay, for the gratification of which you are the ministering agent.

“Go on, my dear sir! You are not unknown here, you are not unappreciated. Though ‘remote,’ we are neither ‘unfriended,’ ‘melancholy,’ nor (I may add) ‘slow.’ Go on, my dear sir, in your Eagle course! The Inhabitants of Port Middlebay may at least aspire to watch it, with delight, with entertainment, with instruction!

“Among the eyes elevated towards you from this portion of the globe, will ever be found, while it has light and life,

    “The
    “Eye
    “Appertaining to
    “Wilkins Micawber,
    “Magistrate.”

I found, on glancing at the remaining contents of the newspaper, that Mr. Micawber was a diligent and esteemed correspondent of that Journal. There was another letter from him in the same paper, touching a bridge; there was an advertisement of a collection of similar letters by him, to be shortly republished, in a neat volume, “with considerable additions;” and, unless I am very much mistaken, the Leading Article was his also.

We talked much of Mr. Micawber, on many other evenings while Mr. Peggotty remained with us. He lived with us during the whole term of his stay, – which, I think, was something less than a month, – and his sister and my aunt came to London to see him. Agnes and I parted from him aboardship, when he sailed; and we shall never part from him more, on earth.

But before he left, he went with me to Yarmouth, to see a little tablet I had put up in the churchyard to the memory of Ham. While I was copying the plain inscription for him at his request, I saw him stoop, and gather a tuft of grass from the grave, and a little earth.

“For Em’ly,” he said, as he put it in his breast. “I promised, Mas’r Davy.”

CHAPTER LXIV.

A LAST RETROSPECT

And now my written story ends. I look back, once more – for the last time – before I close these leaves.

I see myself, with Agnes at my side, journeying along the road of life. I see our children and our friends around us; and I hear the roar of many voices, not indifferent to me as I travel on.

What faces are the most distinct to me in the fleeting crowd? Lo, these; all turning to me as I ask my thoughts the question!

Here is my aunt, in stronger spectacles, an old woman of fourscore years and more, but upright yet, and a steady walker of six miles at a stretch in winter weather.

Always with her, here comes Peggotty, my good old nurse, likewise in spectacles, accustomed to do needlework at night very close to the lamp, but never sitting down to it without a bit of wax candle, a yard measure in a little house, and a work-box with a picture of St. Paul’s upon the lid.

The cheeks and arms of Peggotty, so hard and red in my childish days, when I wondered why the birds didn’t peck her in preference to apples, are shrivelled now; and her eyes, that used to darken their whole neighbourhood in her face, are fainter (though they glitter still); but her rough forefinger, which I once associated with a pocket nutmeg grater, is just the same, and when I see my least child catching at it as it totters from my aunt to her, I think of our little parlor at home, when I could scarcely walk. My aunt’s old disappointment is set right, now. She is godmother to a real living Betsey Trotwood; and Dora (the next in order) says she spoils her.

There is something bulky in Peggotty’s pocket. It is nothing smaller than the Crocodile-Book, which is in rather a dilapidated condition by this time, with divers of the leaves torn and stitched across, but which Peggotty exhibits to the children as a precious relic. I find it very curious to see my own infant face, looking up at me from the Crocodile stories; and to be reminded by it of my old acquaintance Brooks of Sheffield.

Among my boys, this summer holiday time, I see an old man making giant kites, and gazing at them in the air, with a delight for which there are no words. He greets me rapturously, and whispers, with many nods and winks, “Trotwood, you will be glad to hear that I shall finish the Memorial when I have nothing else to do, and that your aunt’s the most extraordinary woman in the world, sir!”

Who is this bent lady, supporting herself by a stick, and showing me a countenance in which there are some traces of old pride and beauty, feebly contending with a querulous, imbecile, fretful wandering of the mind? She is in a garden; and near her stands a sharp, dark, withered woman, with a white scar on her lip. Let me hear what they say.

“Rosa, I have forgotten this gentleman’s name.”

Rosa bends over her, and calls to her, “Mr. Copperfield.”