Чарльз Диккенс
The Personal History of David Copperfield

“Really, my love,” said Mr. Micawber.

“Pray, my dear, allow me to conclude. Here is Mr. Micawber, with a variety of qualifications, with great talent —I should say, with genius, but that may be the partiality of a wife – ”

Traddles and I both murmured “No.”

“And here is Mr. Micawber without any suitable position or employment. Where does that responsibility rest? Clearly on society. Then I would make a fact so disgraceful known, and boldly challenge society to set it right. It appears to me, my dear Mr. Copperfield,” said Mrs. Micawber, forcibly, “that what Mr. Micawber has to do, is to throw down the gauntlet to society, and say, in effect, ‘Show me who will take that up. Let the party immediately step forward.’”

I ventured to ask Mrs. Micawber how this was to be done.

“By advertising,” said Mrs. Micawber – “in all the papers. It appears to me, that what Mr. Micawber has to do, in justice to himself, in justice to his family, and I will even go so far as to say in justice to society, by which he has been hitherto overlooked, is to advertise in all the papers; to describe himself plainly as so and so, with such and such qualifications, and to put it thus: ‘Now employ me, on remunerative terms, and address, post-paid, to W. M., Post Office, Camden Town.’”

“This idea of Mrs. Micawber’s, my dear Copperfield,” said Mr. Micawber, making his shirt-collar meet in front of his chin, and glancing at me sideways, “is, in fact, the Leap to which I alluded, when I last had the pleasure of seeing you.”

“Advertising is rather expensive,” I remarked, dubiously.

“Exactly so!” said Mrs. Micawber, preserving the same logical air. “Quite true, my dear Mr. Copperfield! I have made the identical observation to Mr. Micawber. It is for that reason especially, that I think Mr. Micawber ought (as I have already said, in justice to himself, in justice to his family, and in justice to society) to raise a certain sum of money – on a bill.”

Mr. Micawber, leaning back in his chair, trifled with his eye-glass, and cast his eyes up at the ceiling; but I thought him observant of Traddles too, who was looking at the fire.

“If no member of my family,” said Mrs. Micawber, “is possessed of sufficient natural feeling to negotiate that bill – I believe there is a better business-term to express what I mean – ”

Mr. Micawber, with his eyes still cast up at the ceiling, suggested “Discount.”

“To discount that bill,” said Mrs. Micawber, “then my opinion is, that Mr. Micawber should go into the City, should take that bill into the Money Market, and should dispose of it for what he can get. If the individuals in the Money Market oblige Mr. Micawber to sustain a great sacrifice, that is between themselves and their consciences. I view it, steadily, as an investment. I recommend Mr. Micawber, my dear Mr. Copperfield, to do the same; to regard it as an investment which is sure of return, and to make up his mind to any sacrifice.”

I felt, but I am sure I don’t know why, that this was self-denying and devoted in Mrs. Micawber, and I uttered a murmur to that effect. Traddles, who took his tone from me, did likewise, still looking at the fire.

“I will not,” said Mrs. Micawber, finishing her punch, and gathering her scarf about her shoulders, preparatory to her withdrawal to my bedroom: “I will not protract these remarks on the subject of Mr. Micawber’s pecuniary affairs. At your fireside, my dear Mr. Copperfield, and in the presence of Mr. Traddles, who, though not so old a friend, is quite one of ourselves, I could not refrain from making you acquainted with the course I advise Mr. Micawber to take. I feel that the time is arrived when Mr. Micawber should exert himself and – I will add – assert himself, and it appears to me that these are the means. I am aware that I am merely a female, and that a masculine judgment is usually considered more competent to the discussion of such questions; still I must not forget that, when I lived at home with my papa and mama, my papa was in the habit of saying, ‘Emma’s form is fragile, but her grasp of a subject is inferior to none.’ That my papa was too partial, I well know; but that he was an observer of character in some degree, my duty and my reason equally forbid me to doubt.”

With these words, and resisting our entreaties that she would grace the remaining circulation of the punch with her presence, Mrs. Micawber retired to my bed-room. And really I felt that she was a noble woman – the sort of woman who might have been a Roman matron, and done all manner of heroic things, in times of public trouble.

In the fervor of this impression, I congratulated Mr. Micawber on the treasure he possessed. So did Traddles. Mr. Micawber extended his hand to each of us in succession, and then covered his face with his pocket-handkerchief, which I think had more snuff upon it than he was aware of. He then returned to the punch, in the highest state of exhilaration.

He was full of eloquence. He gave us to understand that in our children we lived again, and that, under the pressure of pecuniary difficulties, any accession to their number was doubly welcome. He said that Mrs. Micawber had latterly had her doubts on this point, but that he had dispelled them, and reassured her. As to her family, they were totally unworthy of her, and their sentiments were utterly indifferent to him, and they might – I quote his own expression – go to the Devil.

Mr. Micawber then delivered a warm eulogy on Traddles. He said Traddles’s was a character, to the steady virtues of which he (Mr. Micawber) could lay no claim, but which, he thanked Heaven, he could admire. He feelingly alluded to the young lady, unknown, whom Traddles had honored with his affection, and who had reciprocated that affection by honoring and blessing Traddles with her affection. Mr. Micawber pledged her. So did I. Traddles thanked us both, by saying, with a simplicity and honesty I had sense enough to be quite charmed with, “I am very much obliged to you indeed. And I do assure you, she’s the dearest girl! – ”

Mr. Micawber took an early opportunity, after that, of hinting, with the utmost delicacy and ceremony, at the state of my affections. Nothing but the serious assurance of his friend Copperfield to the contrary, he observed, could deprive him of the impression that his friend Copperfield loved and was beloved. After feeling very hot and uncomfortable for some time, and after a good deal of blushing, stammering, and denying, I said, having my glass in my hand, “Well! I would give them D.!” which so excited and gratified Mr. Micawber, that he ran with a glass of punch into my bed-room, in order that Mrs. Micawber might drink D., who drank it with enthusiasm, crying from within, in a shrill voice, “Hear, hear! My dear Mr. Copperfield, I am delighted. Hear!” and tapping at the wall, by way of applause.

Our conversation, afterwards, took a more worldly turn; Mr. Micawber telling us that he found Camden Town inconvenient, and that the first thing he contemplated doing, when the advertisement should have been the cause of something satisfactory turning up, was to move. He mentioned a terrace at the western end of Oxford Street, fronting Hyde Park, on which he had always had his eye, but which he did not expect to attain immediately, as it would require a large establishment. There would probably be an interval, he explained, in which he should content himself with the upper part of a house, over some respectable place of business, – say in Piccadilly, – which would be a cheerful situation for Mrs. Micawber; and where, by throwing out a bow window, or carrying up the roof another story, or making some little alteration of that sort, they might live, comfortably and reputably, for a few years. Whatever was reserved for him, he expressly said, or wherever his abode might be, we might rely on this – there would always be a room for Traddles, and a knife and fork for me. We acknowledged his kindness; and he begged us to forgive his having launched into these practical and business-like details, and to excuse it as natural in one who was making entirely new arrangements in life.

Mrs. Micawber, tapping at the wall again, to know if tea were ready, broke up this particular phase of our friendly conversation. She made tea for us in a most agreeable manner; and, whenever I went near her, in handing about the tea-cups and bread-and-butter, asked me, in a whisper, whether D. was fair, or dark, or whether she was short, or tall: or something of that kind; which I think I liked. After tea, we discussed a variety of topics before the fire; and Mrs. Micawber was good enough to sing us (in a small, thin, flat voice, which I remember to have considered, when I first knew her, the very table-beer of acoustics) the favorite ballads of “The Dashing White Serjeant,” and “Little Tafflin.” For both of these songs Mrs. Micawber had been famous when she lived at home with her papa and mama. Mr. Micawber told us, that when he heard her sing the first one, on the first occasion of his seeing her beneath the parental roof, she had attracted his attention in an extraordinary degree; but that when it came to Little Tafflin, he had resolved to win that woman or perish in the attempt.

It was between ten and eleven o’clock when Mrs. Micawber rose to replace her cap in the whitey-brown paper parcel, and to put on her bonnet. Mr. Micawber took the opportunity of Traddles putting on his great coat, to slip a letter into my hand, with a whispered request that I would read it at my leisure. I also took the opportunity of my holding a candle over the bannisters to light them down, when Mr. Micawber was going first, leading Mrs. Micawber, and Traddles was following with the cap, to detain Traddles for a moment on the top of the stairs.

“Traddles,” said I, “Mr. Micawber don’t mean any harm, poor fellow; but, if I were you, I wouldn’t lend him anything.”

“My dear Copperfield,” returned Traddles, smiling, “I haven’t got anything to lend.”

“You have got a name, you know,” said I.

“Oh! You call that something to lend?” returned Traddles, with a thoughtful look.

“Certainly.”

“Oh!” said Traddles. “Yes, to be sure! I am very much obliged to you, Copperfield; but – I am afraid I have lent him that already.”

“For the bill that is to be a certain investment?” I inquired.

“No,” said Traddles. “Not for that one. This is the first I have heard of that one. I have been thinking that he will most likely propose that one, on the way home. Mine’s another.”

“I hope there will be nothing wrong about it,” said I.

“I hope not,” said Traddles. “I should think not, though, because he told me, only the other day, that it was provided for. That was Mr. Micawber’s expression. ‘Provided for.’”

Mr. Micawber looking up at this juncture to where we were standing, I had only time to repeat my caution. Traddles thanked me, and descended. But I was much afraid, when I observed the good-natured manner in which he went down with the cap in his hand, and gave Mrs. Micawber his arm, that he would be carried into the Money Market neck and heels.

I returned to my fireside, and was musing, half gravely and half laughing, on the character of Mr. Micawber and the old relations between us, when I heard a quick step ascending the stairs. At first, I thought it was Traddles coming back for something Mrs. Micawber had left behind; but as the step approached, I knew it, and felt my heart beat high, and the blood rush to my face, for it was Steerforth’s.

I was never unmindful of Agnes, and she never left that sanctuary in my thoughts – if I may call it so – where I had placed her from the first. But when he entered, and stood before me with his hand out, the darkness that had fallen on him changed to light, and I felt confounded and ashamed of having doubted one I loved so heartily. I loved her none the less; I thought of her as the same benignant, gentle angel in my life; I reproached myself, not her, with having done him an injury; and I would have made him any atonement if I had known what to make, and how to make it.

“Why, Daisy, old boy, dumb-foundered!” laughed Steerforth, shaking my hand heartily, and throwing it gaily away. “Have I detected you in another feast, you Sybarite! These Doctors’ Commons fellows are the gayest men in town, I believe, and beat us sober Oxford people all to nothing!” His bright glance went merrily round the room, as he took the seat on the sofa opposite to me, which Mrs. Micawber had recently vacated, and stirred the fire into a blaze.

“I was so surprised at first,” said I, giving him welcome with all the cordiality I felt, “that I had hardly breath to greet you with, Steerforth.”

“Well, the sight of me is good for sore eyes, as the Scotch say,” replied Steerforth, “and so is the sight of you, Daisy, in full bloom. How are you, my Bacchanal?”

“I am very well,” said I; “and not at all Bacchanalian to-night, though I confess to another party of three.”

“All of whom I met in the street, talking loud in your praise,” returned Steerforth. “Who’s our friend in the tights?”

I gave him the best idea I could, in a few words, of Mr. Micawber. He laughed heartily at my feeble portrait of that gentleman, and said he was a man to know, and he must know him.

“But who do you suppose our other friend is?” said I, in my turn.

“Heaven knows,” said Steerforth. “Not a bore, I hope? I thought he looked a little like one.”

“Traddles!” I replied, triumphantly.

“Who’s he?” asked Steerforth, in his careless way.

“Don’t you remember Traddles? Traddles in our room at Salem House?”

“Oh! That fellow!” said Steerforth, beating a lump of coal on the top of the fire, with the poker. “Is he as soft as ever? And where the deuce did you pick him up?”

I extolled Traddles in reply, as highly as I could; for I felt that Steerforth rather slighted him. Steerforth, dismissing the subject with a light nod, and a smile, and the remark that he would be glad to see the old fellow too, for he had always been an odd fish, inquired if I could give him anything to eat? During most of this short dialogue, when he had not been speaking in a wild vivacious manner, he had sat idly beating on the lump of coal with the poker. I observed that he did the same thing while I was getting out the remains of the pigeon-pie, and so forth.

“Why, Daisy, here’s a supper for a king!” he exclaimed, starting out of his silence with a burst, and taking his seat at the table. “I shall do it justice, for I have come from Yarmouth.”

“I thought you came from Oxford?” I returned.

“Not I,” said Steerforth. “I have been seafaring – better employed.”

“Littimer was here to-day, to inquire for you,” I remarked, “and I understood him that you were at Oxford; though, now I think of it, he certainly did not say so.”

“Littimer is a greater fool than I thought him, to have been inquiring for me at all,” said Steerforth, jovially pouring out a glass of wine, and drinking to me. “As to understanding him, you are a cleverer fellow than most of us, Daisy, if you can do that.”

“That’s true, indeed,” said I, moving my chair to the table. “So you have been at Yarmouth, Steerforth!” interested to know all about it. “Have you been there long?”

“No,” he returned. “An escapade of a week or so.”

“And how are they all? Of course, little Emily is not married yet?”

“Not yet. Going to be, I believe – in so many weeks, or months, or something or other. I have not seen much of ’em. By-the-by;” he laid down his knife and fork, which he had been using with great diligence, and began feeling in his pockets; “I have a letter for you.”

“From whom?”

“Why, from your old nurse,” he returned, taking some papers out of his breast pocket. “‘J. Steerforth, Esquire, debtor, to the Willing Mind;’ that’s not it. Patience, and we’ll find it presently. Old what’s-his-name’s in a bad way, and it’s about that, I believe.”

“Barkis, do you mean?”

“Yes!” still feeling in his pockets, and looking over their contents: “it’s all over with poor Barkis, I am afraid. I saw a little apothecary there – surgeon, or whatever he is – who brought your worship into the world. He was mighty learned about the case, to me; but the upshot of his opinion was, that the carrier was making his last journey rather fast. – Put your hand into the breast pocket of my great coat on the chair yonder, and I think you’ll find the letter. Is it there?”

“Here it is!” said I.

“That’s right!”

It was from Peggotty; something less legible than usual, and brief. It informed me of her husband’s hopeless state, and hinted at his being “a little nearer” than heretofore, and consequently more difficult to manage for his own comfort. It said nothing of her weariness and watching, and praised him highly. It was written with a plain, unaffected, homely piety that I knew to be genuine, and ended with “my duty to my ever darling” – meaning myself.

While I deciphered it, Steerforth continued to eat and drink.

“It’s a bad job,” he said, when I had done; “but the sun sets every day, and people die every minute, and we mustn’t be scared by the common lot. If we failed to hold our own, because that equal foot at all men’s doors was heard knocking somewhere, every object in this world would slip from us. No! Ride on! Rough-shod if need be, smooth-shod if that will do, but ride on! Ride over all obstacles, and win the race!”

“And win what race?” said I.

“The race that one has started in,” said he. “Ride on!”

I noticed, I remember, as he paused, looking at me with his handsome head a little thrown back, and his glass raised in his hand, that, though the freshness of the sea-wind was on his face, and it was ruddy, there were traces in it, made since I last saw it, as if he had applied himself to some habitual strain of the fervent energy which, when roused, was so passionately roused within him. I had it in my thoughts to remonstrate with him upon his desperate way of pursuing any fancy that he took – such as this buffetting of rough seas, and braving of hard weather, for example – when my mind glanced off to the immediate subject of our conversation again, and pursued that instead.

“I tell you what, Steerforth,” said I, “if your high spirits will listen to me” —

“They are potent spirits, and will do whatever you like,” he answered, moving from the table to the fireside again.

“Then I tell you what, Steerforth. I think I will go down and see my old nurse. It is not that I can do her any good, or render her any real service; but she is so attached to me that my visit will have as much effect on her, as if I could do both. She will take it so kindly that it will be a comfort and support to her. It is no great effort to make, I am sure, for such a friend as she has been to me. Wouldn’t you go a day’s journey, if you were in my place?”

His face was thoughtful, and he sat considering a little before he answered, in a low voice, “Well! Go. You can do no harm.”

“You have just come back,” said I, “and it would be in vain to ask you to go with me?”

“Quite,” he returned. “I am for Highgate to-night. I have not seen my mother this long time, and it lies upon my conscience, for it’s something to be loved as she loves her prodigal son. – Bah! Nonsense! – You mean to go to-morrow, I suppose?” he said, holding me out at arm’s length, with a hand on each of my shoulders.

“Yes, I think so.”

“Well, then, don’t go till next day. I wanted you to come and stay a few days with us. Here I am, on purpose to bid you, and you fly off to Yarmouth!”

“You are a nice fellow to talk of flying off, Steerforth, who are always running wild on some unknown expedition or other!”

He looked at me for a moment without speaking, and then rejoined, still holding me as before, and giving me a shake:

“Come! Say the next day, and pass as much of to-morrow as you can with us! Who knows when we may meet again, else? Come! Say the next day! I want you to stand between Rosa Dartle and me, and keep us asunder.”

“Would you love each other too much, without me?”

“Yes; or hate,” laughed Steerforth; “no matter which. Come! Say the next day!”

I said the next day; and he put on his great-coat, and lighted his cigar, and set off to walk home. Finding him in this intention, I put on my own great-coat (but did not light my own cigar, having had enough of that for one while) and walked with him as far as the open road: a dull road, then, at night. He was in great spirits all the way; and when we parted, and I looked after him going so gallantly and airily homeward, I thought of his saying, “Ride on over all obstacles, and win the race!” and wished, for the first time, that he had some worthy race to run.

I was undressing in my own room, when Mr. Micawber’s letter tumbled on the floor. Thus reminded of it, I broke the seal and read as follows. It was dated an hour and a half before dinner. I am not sure whether I have mentioned that, when Mr. Micawber was at any particularly desperate crisis, he used a sort of legal phraseology: which he seemed to think equivalent to winding up his affairs.

“Sir – for I dare not say, my dear Copperfield,

“It is expedient that I should inform you that the undersigned is Crushed. Some flickering efforts to spare you the premature knowledge of his calamitous position, you may observe in him this day; but hope has sunk beneath the horizon, and the undersigned is Crushed.

“The present communication is penned within the personal range (I cannot call it the society) of an individual, in a state closely bordering on intoxication, employed by a broker. That individual is in legal possession of the premises, under a distress for rent. His inventory includes, not only the chattels and effects of every description belonging to the undersigned, as yearly tenant of this habitation, but also those appertaining to Mr. Thomas Traddles, lodger, a member of the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple.

“If any drop of gloom were wanting in the overflowing cup, which is now ‘commended’ (in the language of an immortal Writer) to the lips of the undersigned, it would be found in the fact, that a friendly acceptance granted to the undersigned, by the before-mentioned Mr. Thomas Traddles, for the sum of £23 4s. 9½d. is over due, and is NOT provided for. Also, in the fact, that the living responsibilities clinging to the undersigned, will, in the course of nature, be increased by the sum of one more helpless victim; whose miserable appearance may be looked for – in round numbers – at the expiration of a period not exceeding six lunar months from the present date.

 

“After premising thus much, it would be a work of supererogation to add, that dust and ashes are for ever scattered

“On

“The

“Head

“Of

“Wilkins Micawber.”

Poor Traddles! I knew enough of Mr. Micawber by this time, to foresee that he might be expected to recover the blow; but my night’s rest was sorely distressed by thoughts of Traddles, and of the curate’s daughter, who was one of ten, down in Devonshire, and who was such a dear girl, and who would wait for Traddles (ominous praise!) until she was sixty, or any age that could be mentioned.