CHAPTER 1. I AM BORN

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that

station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my

life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have

been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o’clock at night.

It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry,

simultaneously.

In consideration of the day and hour of my birth, it was declared by

the nurse, and by some sage women in the neighbourhood who had taken a

lively interest in me several months before there was any possibility

of our becoming personally acquainted, first, that I was destined to be

unlucky in life; and secondly, that I was privileged to see ghosts and

spirits; both these gifts inevitably attaching, as they believed, to

all unlucky infants of either gender, born towards the small hours on a

Friday night.

I need say nothing here, on the first head, because nothing can show

better than my history whether that prediction was verified or falsified

by the result. On the second branch of the question, I will only remark,

that unless I ran through that part of my inheritance while I was still

a baby, I have not come into it yet. But I do not at all complain of

having been kept out of this property; and if anybody else should be in

the present enjoyment of it, he is heartily welcome to keep it.

I was born with a caul, which was advertised for sale, in the

newspapers, at the low price of fifteen guineas. Whether sea-going

people were short of money about that time, or were short of faith and

preferred cork jackets, I don’t know; all I know is, that there was but

one solitary bidding, and that was from an attorney connected with the

bill-broking business, who offered two pounds in cash, and the balance

in sherry, but declined to be guaranteed from drowning on any higher

bargain. Consequently the advertisement was withdrawn at a dead

loss--for as to sherry, my poor dear mother’s own sherry was in the

market then--and ten years afterwards, the caul was put up in a raffle

down in our part of the country, to fifty members at half-a-crown a

head, the winner to spend five shillings. I was present myself, and I

remember to have felt quite uncomfortable and confused, at a part of

myself being disposed of in that way. The caul was won, I recollect, by

an old lady with a hand-basket, who, very reluctantly, produced from it

the stipulated five shillings, all in halfpence, and twopence halfpenny

short--as it took an immense time and a great waste of arithmetic, to

endeavour without any effect to prove to her. It is a fact which will

be long remembered as remarkable down there, that she was never drowned,

but died triumphantly in bed, at ninety-two. I have understood that it

was, to the last, her proudest boast, that she never had been on the

water in her life, except upon a bridge; and that over her tea (to which

she was extremely partial) she, to the last, expressed her indignation

at the impiety of mariners and others, who had the presumption to go

‘meandering’ about the world. It was in vain to represent to her

that some conveniences, tea perhaps included, resulted from this

objectionable practice. She always returned, with greater emphasis and

with an instinctive knowledge of the strength of her objection, ‘Let us

have no meandering.’

Not to meander myself, at present, I will go back to my birth.

I was born at Blunderstone, in Suffolk, or ‘there by’, as they say in

Scotland. I was a posthumous child. My father’s eyes had closed upon

the light of this world six months, when mine opened on it. There is

something strange to me, even now, in the reflection that he never saw

me; and something stranger yet in the shadowy remembrance that I have

of my first childish associations with his white grave-stone in the

churchyard, and of the indefinable compassion I used to feel for it

lying out alone there in the dark night, when our little parlour

was warm and bright with fire and candle, and the doors of our house

were--almost cruelly, it seemed to me sometimes--bolted and locked

against it.

An aunt of my father’s, and consequently a great-aunt of mine, of whom

I shall have more to relate by and by, was the principal magnate of our

family. Miss Trotwood, or Miss Betsey, as my poor mother always called

her, when she sufficiently overcame her dread of this formidable

personage to mention her at all (which was seldom), had been married

to a husband younger than herself, who was very handsome, except in the

sense of the homely adage, ‘handsome is, that handsome does’--for he

was strongly suspected of having beaten Miss Betsey, and even of having

once, on a disputed question of supplies, made some hasty but determined

arrangements to throw her out of a two pair of stairs’ window. These

evidences of an incompatibility of temper induced Miss Betsey to pay him

off, and effect a separation by mutual consent. He went to India with

his capital, and there, according to a wild legend in our family, he was

once seen riding on an elephant, in company with a Baboon; but I think

it must have been a Baboo--or a Begum. Anyhow, from India tidings of his

death reached home, within ten years. How they affected my aunt, nobody

knew; for immediately upon the separation, she took her maiden name

again, bought a cottage in a hamlet on the sea-coast a long way off,

established herself there as a single woman with one servant, and

was understood to live secluded, ever afterwards, in an inflexible

retirement.

My father had once been a favourite of hers, I believe; but she was

mortally affronted by his marriage, on the ground that my mother was ‘a

wax doll’. She had never seen my mother, but she knew her to be not

yet twenty. My father and Miss Betsey never met again. He was double

my mother’s age when he married, and of but a delicate constitution. He

died a year afterwards, and, as I have said, six months before I came

into the world.

This was the state of matters, on the afternoon of, what I may be

excused for calling, that eventful and important Friday. I can make no

claim therefore to have known, at that time, how matters stood; or to

have any remembrance, founded on the evidence of my own senses, of what

follows.

My mother was sitting by the fire, but poorly in health, and very low in

spirits, looking at it through her tears, and desponding heavily about

herself and the fatherless little stranger, who was already welcomed by

some grosses of prophetic pins, in a drawer upstairs, to a world not at

all excited on the subject of his arrival; my mother, I say, was sitting

by the fire, that bright, windy March afternoon, very timid and sad, and

very doubtful of ever coming alive out of the trial that was before her,

when, lifting her eyes as she dried them, to the window opposite, she

saw a strange lady coming up the garden.

My mother had a sure foreboding at the second glance, that it was

Miss Betsey. The setting sun was glowing on the strange lady, over the

garden-fence, and she came walking up to the door with a fell rigidity

of figure and composure of countenance that could have belonged to

nobody else.

When she reached the house, she gave another proof of her identity.

My father had often hinted that she seldom conducted herself like any

ordinary Christian; and now, instead of ringing the bell, she came and

looked in at that identical window, pressing the end of her nose against

the glass to that extent, that my poor dear mother used to say it became

perfectly flat and white in a moment.

She gave my mother such a turn, that I have always been convinced I am

indebted to Miss Betsey for having been born on a Friday.

My mother had left her chair in her agitation, and gone behind it in

the corner. Miss Betsey, looking round the room, slowly and inquiringly,

began on the other side, and carried her eyes on, like a Saracen’s Head

in a Dutch clock, until they reached my mother. Then she made a frown

and a gesture to my mother, like one who was accustomed to be obeyed, to

come and open the door. My mother went.

‘Mrs. David Copperfield, I think,’ said Miss Betsey; the emphasis

referring, perhaps, to my mother’s mourning weeds, and her condition.

‘Yes,’ said my mother, faintly.

‘Miss Trotwood,’ said the visitor. ‘You have heard of her, I dare say?’

My mother answered she had had that pleasure. And she had a disagreeable

consciousness of not appearing to imply that it had been an overpowering

pleasure.

‘Now you see her,’ said Miss Betsey. My mother bent her head, and begged

her to walk in.

They went into the parlour my mother had come from, the fire in the best

room on the other side of the passage not being lighted--not having

been lighted, indeed, since my father’s funeral; and when they were both

seated, and Miss Betsey said nothing, my mother, after vainly trying to

restrain herself, began to cry. ‘Oh tut, tut, tut!’ said Miss Betsey, in

a hurry. ‘Don’t do that! Come, come!’

My mother couldn’t help it notwithstanding, so she cried until she had

had her cry out.

‘Take off your cap, child,’ said Miss Betsey, ‘and let me see you.’

My mother was too much afraid of her to refuse compliance with this odd

request, if she had any disposition to do so. Therefore she did as she

was told, and did it with such nervous hands that her hair (which was

luxuriant and beautiful) fell all about her face.

‘Why, bless my heart!’ exclaimed Miss Betsey. ‘You are a very Baby!’

My mother was, no doubt, unusually youthful in appearance even for her

years; she hung her head, as if it were her fault, poor thing, and said,

sobbing, that indeed she was afraid she was but a childish widow, and

would be but a childish mother if she lived. In a short pause which

ensued, she had a fancy that she felt Miss Betsey touch her hair, and

that with no ungentle hand; but, looking at her, in her timid hope, she

found that lady sitting with the skirt of her dress tucked up, her hands

folded on one knee, and her feet upon the fender, frowning at the fire.

‘In the name of Heaven,’ said Miss Betsey, suddenly, ‘why Rookery?’

‘Do you mean the house, ma’am?’ asked my mother.

‘Why Rookery?’ said Miss Betsey. ‘Cookery would have been more to the

purpose, if you had had any practical ideas of life, either of you.’

‘The name was Mr. Copperfield’s choice,’ returned my mother. ‘When he

bought the house, he liked to think that there were rooks about it.’

The evening wind made such a disturbance just now, among some tall old

elm-trees at the bottom of the garden, that neither my mother nor Miss

Betsey could forbear glancing that way. As the elms bent to one another,

like giants who were whispering secrets, and after a few seconds of such

repose, fell into a violent flurry, tossing their wild arms about, as if

their late confidences were really too wicked for their peace of mind,

some weatherbeaten ragged old rooks’-nests, burdening their higher

branches, swung like wrecks upon a stormy sea.

‘Where are the birds?’ asked Miss Betsey.

‘The--?’ My mother had been thinking of something else.

‘The rooks--what has become of them?’ asked Miss Betsey.

‘There have not been any since we have lived here,’ said my mother. ‘We

thought--Mr. Copperfield thought--it was quite a large rookery; but

the nests were very old ones, and the birds have deserted them a long

while.’

‘David Copperfield all over!’ cried Miss Betsey. ‘David Copperfield from

head to foot! Calls a house a rookery when there’s not a rook near it,

and takes the birds on trust, because he sees the nests!’

‘Mr. Copperfield,’ returned my mother, ‘is dead, and if you dare to

speak unkindly of him to me--’

My poor dear mother, I suppose, had some momentary intention of

committing an assault and battery upon my aunt, who could easily have

settled her with one hand, even if my mother had been in far better

training for such an encounter than she was that evening. But it passed

with the action of rising from her chair; and she sat down again very

meekly, and fainted.

When she came to herself, or when Miss Betsey had restored her,

whichever it was, she found the latter standing at the window. The

twilight was by this time shading down into darkness; and dimly as they

saw each other, they could not have done that without the aid of the

fire.

‘Well?’ said Miss Betsey, coming back to her chair, as if she had only

been taking a casual look at the prospect; ‘and when do you expect--’

‘I am all in a tremble,’ faltered my mother. ‘I don’t know what’s the

matter. I shall die, I am sure!’

‘No, no, no,’ said Miss Betsey. ‘Have some tea.’

‘Oh dear me, dear me, do you think it will do me any good?’ cried my

mother in a helpless manner.

‘Of course it will,’ said Miss Betsey. ‘It’s nothing but fancy. What do

you call your girl?’

‘I don’t know that it will be a girl, yet, ma’am,’ said my mother

innocently.

‘Bless the Baby!’ exclaimed Miss Betsey, unconsciously quoting the

second sentiment of the pincushion in the drawer upstairs, but

applying it to my mother instead of me, ‘I don’t mean that. I mean your

servant-girl.’

‘Peggotty,’ said my mother.

‘Peggotty!’ repeated Miss Betsey, with some indignation. ‘Do you mean to

say, child, that any human being has gone into a Christian church,

and got herself named Peggotty?’ ‘It’s her surname,’ said my mother,

faintly. ‘Mr. Copperfield called her by it, because her Christian name

was the same as mine.’

‘Here! Peggotty!’ cried Miss Betsey, opening the parlour door. ‘Tea.

Your mistress is a little unwell. Don’t dawdle.’

Having issued this mandate with as much potentiality as if she had been

a recognized authority in the house ever since it had been a house,

and having looked out to confront the amazed Peggotty coming along the

passage with a candle at the sound of a strange voice, Miss Betsey shut

the door again, and sat down as before: with her feet on the fender, the

skirt of her dress tucked up, and her hands folded on one knee.

‘You were speaking about its being a girl,’ said Miss Betsey. ‘I have no

doubt it will be a girl. I have a presentiment that it must be a girl.

Now child, from the moment of the birth of this girl--’

‘Perhaps boy,’ my mother took the liberty of putting in.

‘I tell you I have a presentiment that it must be a girl,’ returned Miss

Betsey. ‘Don’t contradict. From the moment of this girl’s birth, child,

I intend to be her friend. I intend to be her godmother, and I beg

you’ll call her Betsey Trotwood Copperfield. There must be no mistakes

in life with THIS Betsey Trotwood. There must be no trifling with HER

affections, poor dear. She must be well brought up, and well guarded

from reposing any foolish confidences where they are not deserved. I

must make that MY care.’

There was a twitch of Miss Betsey’s head, after each of these sentences,

as if her own old wrongs were working within her, and she repressed any

plainer reference to them by strong constraint. So my mother suspected,

at least, as she observed her by the low glimmer of the fire: too

much scared by Miss Betsey, too uneasy in herself, and too subdued and

bewildered altogether, to observe anything very clearly, or to know what

to say.

‘And was David good to you, child?’ asked Miss Betsey, when she had been

silent for a little while, and these motions of her head had gradually

ceased. ‘Were you comfortable together?’

‘We were very happy,’ said my mother. ‘Mr. Copperfield was only too good

to me.’

‘What, he spoilt you, I suppose?’ returned Miss Betsey.

‘For being quite alone and dependent on myself in this rough world

again, yes, I fear he did indeed,’ sobbed my mother.

‘Well! Don’t cry!’ said Miss Betsey. ‘You were not equally matched,

child--if any two people can be equally matched--and so I asked the

question. You were an orphan, weren’t you?’ ‘Yes.’

‘And a governess?’

‘I was nursery-governess in a family where Mr. Copperfield came to

visit. Mr. Copperfield was very kind to me, and took a great deal of

notice of me, and paid me a good deal of attention, and at last proposed

to me. And I accepted him. And so we were married,’ said my mother

simply.

‘Ha! Poor Baby!’ mused Miss Betsey, with her frown still bent upon the

fire. ‘Do you know anything?’

‘I beg your pardon, ma’am,’ faltered my mother.

‘About keeping house, for instance,’ said Miss Betsey.

‘Not much, I fear,’ returned my mother. ‘Not so much as I could wish.

But Mr. Copperfield was teaching me--’

(‘Much he knew about it himself!’) said Miss Betsey in a parenthesis.

--‘And I hope I should have improved, being very anxious to learn, and

he very patient to teach me, if the great misfortune of his death’--my

mother broke down again here, and could get no farther.

‘Well, well!’ said Miss Betsey. --‘I kept my housekeeping-book

regularly, and balanced it with Mr. Copperfield every night,’ cried my

mother in another burst of distress, and breaking down again.

‘Well, well!’ said Miss Betsey. ‘Don’t cry any more.’ --‘And I am

sure we never had a word of difference respecting it, except when Mr.

Copperfield objected to my threes and fives being too much like each

other, or to my putting curly tails to my sevens and nines,’ resumed my

mother in another burst, and breaking down again.

‘You’ll make yourself ill,’ said Miss Betsey, ‘and you know that will

not be good either for you or for my god-daughter. Come! You mustn’t do

it!’

This argument had some share in quieting my mother, though her

increasing indisposition had a larger one. There was an interval of

silence, only broken by Miss Betsey’s occasionally ejaculating ‘Ha!’ as

she sat with her feet upon the fender.

‘David had bought an annuity for himself with his money, I know,’ said

she, by and by. ‘What did he do for you?’

‘Mr. Copperfield,’ said my mother, answering with some difficulty, ‘was

so considerate and good as to secure the reversion of a part of it to

me.’

‘How much?’ asked Miss Betsey.

‘A hundred and five pounds a year,’ said my mother.

‘He might have done worse,’ said my aunt.

The word was appropriate to the moment. My mother was so much worse

that Peggotty, coming in with the teaboard and candles, and seeing at a

glance how ill she was,--as Miss Betsey might have done sooner if there

had been light enough,--conveyed her upstairs to her own room with all

speed; and immediately dispatched Ham Peggotty, her nephew, who had been

for some days past secreted in the house, unknown to my mother, as a

special messenger in case of emergency, to fetch the nurse and doctor.

Those allied powers were considerably astonished, when they arrived

within a few minutes of each other, to find an unknown lady of

portentous appearance, sitting before the fire, with her bonnet tied

over her left arm, stopping her ears with jewellers’ cotton. Peggotty

knowing nothing about her, and my mother saying nothing about her,

she was quite a mystery in the parlour; and the fact of her having a

magazine of jewellers’ cotton in her pocket, and sticking the article

in her ears in that way, did not detract from the solemnity of her

presence.

The doctor having been upstairs and come down again, and having

satisfied himself, I suppose, that there was a probability of this

unknown lady and himself having to sit there, face to face, for some

hours, laid himself out to be polite and social. He was the meekest of

his sex, the mildest of little men. He sidled in and out of a room, to

take up the less space. He walked as softly as the Ghost in Hamlet,

and more slowly. He carried his head on one side, partly in modest

depreciation of himself, partly in modest propitiation of everybody

else. It is nothing to say that he hadn’t a word to throw at a dog. He

couldn’t have thrown a word at a mad dog. He might have offered him one

gently, or half a one, or a fragment of one; for he spoke as slowly as

he walked; but he wouldn’t have been rude to him, and he couldn’t have

been quick with him, for any earthly consideration.

Mr. Chillip, looking mildly at my aunt with his head on one side, and

making her a little bow, said, in allusion to the jewellers’ cotton, as

he softly touched his left ear:

‘Some local irritation, ma’am?’

‘What!’ replied my aunt, pulling the cotton out of one ear like a cork.

Mr. Chillip was so alarmed by her abruptness--as he told my mother

afterwards--that it was a mercy he didn’t lose his presence of mind. But

he repeated sweetly:

‘Some local irritation, ma’am?’

‘Nonsense!’ replied my aunt, and corked herself again, at one blow.

Mr. Chillip could do nothing after this, but sit and look at her feebly,

as she sat and looked at the fire, until he was called upstairs again.

After some quarter of an hour’s absence, he returned.

‘Well?’ said my aunt, taking the cotton out of the ear nearest to him.

‘Well, ma’am,’ returned Mr. Chillip, ‘we are--we are progressing slowly,

ma’am.’

‘Ba--a--ah!’ said my aunt, with a perfect shake on the contemptuous

interjection. And corked herself as before.

Really--really--as Mr. Chillip told my mother, he was almost shocked;

speaking in a professional point of view alone, he was almost shocked.

But he sat and looked at her, notwithstanding, for nearly two hours,

as she sat looking at the fire, until he was again called out. After

another absence, he again returned.

‘Well?’ said my aunt, taking out the cotton on that side again.

‘Well, ma’am,’ returned Mr. Chillip, ‘we are--we are progressing slowly,

ma’am.’

‘Ya--a--ah!’ said my aunt. With such a snarl at him, that Mr. Chillip

absolutely could not bear it. It was really calculated to break his

spirit, he said afterwards. He preferred to go and sit upon the stairs,

in the dark and a strong draught, until he was again sent for.

Ham Peggotty, who went to the national school, and was a very dragon at

his catechism, and who may therefore be regarded as a credible witness,

reported next day, that happening to peep in at the parlour-door an hour

after this, he was instantly descried by Miss Betsey, then walking to

and fro in a state of agitation, and pounced upon before he could make

his escape. That there were now occasional sounds of feet and voices

overhead which he inferred the cotton did not exclude, from the

circumstance of his evidently being clutched by the lady as a victim on

whom to expend her superabundant agitation when the sounds were loudest.

That, marching him constantly up and down by the collar (as if he had

been taking too much laudanum), she, at those times, shook him, rumpled

his hair, made light of his linen, stopped his ears as if she confounded

them with her own, and otherwise tousled and maltreated him. This was

in part confirmed by his aunt, who saw him at half past twelve o’clock,

soon after his release, and affirmed that he was then as red as I was.

The mild Mr. Chillip could not possibly bear malice at such a time, if

at any time. He sidled into the parlour as soon as he was at liberty,

and said to my aunt in his meekest manner:

‘Well, ma’am, I am happy to congratulate you.’

‘What upon?’ said my aunt, sharply.

Mr. Chillip was fluttered again, by the extreme severity of my aunt’s

manner; so he made her a little bow and gave her a little smile, to

mollify her.

‘Mercy on the man, what’s he doing!’ cried my aunt, impatiently. ‘Can’t

he speak?’

‘Be calm, my dear ma’am,’ said Mr. Chillip, in his softest accents.

‘There is no longer any occasion for uneasiness, ma’am. Be calm.’

It has since been considered almost a miracle that my aunt didn’t shake

him, and shake what he had to say, out of him. She only shook her own

head at him, but in a way that made him quail.

‘Well, ma’am,’ resumed Mr. Chillip, as soon as he had courage, ‘I am

happy to congratulate you. All is now over, ma’am, and well over.’

During the five minutes or so that Mr. Chillip devoted to the delivery

of this oration, my aunt eyed him narrowly.

‘How is she?’ said my aunt, folding her arms with her bonnet still tied

on one of them.

‘Well, ma’am, she will soon be quite comfortable, I hope,’ returned Mr.

Chillip. ‘Quite as comfortable as we can expect a young mother to be,

under these melancholy domestic circumstances. There cannot be any

objection to your seeing her presently, ma’am. It may do her good.’

‘And SHE. How is SHE?’ said my aunt, sharply.

Mr. Chillip laid his head a little more on one side, and looked at my

aunt like an amiable bird.

‘The baby,’ said my aunt. ‘How is she?’

‘Ma’am,’ returned Mr. Chillip, ‘I apprehended you had known. It’s a

boy.’

My aunt said never a word, but took her bonnet by the strings, in the

manner of a sling, aimed a blow at Mr. Chillip’s head with it, put it on

bent, walked out, and never came back. She vanished like a discontented

fairy; or like one of those supernatural beings, whom it was popularly

supposed I was entitled to see; and never came back any more.

No. I lay in my basket, and my mother lay in her bed; but Betsey

Trotwood Copperfield was for ever in the land of dreams and shadows, the

tremendous region whence I had so lately travelled; and the light upon

the window of our room shone out upon the earthly bourne of all such

travellers, and the mound above the ashes and the dust that once was he,

without whom I had never been.