CHAPTER 11. I BEGIN LIFE ON MY OWN ACCOUNT, AND DON’T LIKE IT

I know enough of the world now, to have almost lost the capacity of

being much surprised by anything; but it is matter of some surprise to

me, even now, that I can have been so easily thrown away at such an age.

A child of excellent abilities, and with strong powers of observation,

quick, eager, delicate, and soon hurt bodily or mentally, it seems

wonderful to me that nobody should have made any sign in my behalf. But

none was made; and I became, at ten years old, a little labouring hind

in the service of Murdstone and Grinby.

Murdstone and Grinby’s warehouse was at the waterside. It was down in

Blackfriars. Modern improvements have altered the place; but it was the

last house at the bottom of a narrow street, curving down hill to the

river, with some stairs at the end, where people took boat. It was a

crazy old house with a wharf of its own, abutting on the water when the

tide was in, and on the mud when the tide was out, and literally overrun

with rats. Its panelled rooms, discoloured with the dirt and smoke of

a hundred years, I dare say; its decaying floors and staircase; the

squeaking and scuffling of the old grey rats down in the cellars; and

the dirt and rottenness of the place; are things, not of many years ago,

in my mind, but of the present instant. They are all before me, just as

they were in the evil hour when I went among them for the first time,

with my trembling hand in Mr. Quinion’s.

Murdstone and Grinby’s trade was among a good many kinds of people, but

an important branch of it was the supply of wines and spirits to certain

packet ships. I forget now where they chiefly went, but I think there

were some among them that made voyages both to the East and West Indies.

I know that a great many empty bottles were one of the consequences of

this traffic, and that certain men and boys were employed to examine

them against the light, and reject those that were flawed, and to rinse

and wash them. When the empty bottles ran short, there were labels to be

pasted on full ones, or corks to be fitted to them, or seals to be put

upon the corks, or finished bottles to be packed in casks. All this work

was my work, and of the boys employed upon it I was one.

There were three or four of us, counting me. My working place was

established in a corner of the warehouse, where Mr. Quinion could see

me, when he chose to stand up on the bottom rail of his stool in the

counting-house, and look at me through a window above the desk. Hither,

on the first morning of my so auspiciously beginning life on my own

account, the oldest of the regular boys was summoned to show me my

business. His name was Mick Walker, and he wore a ragged apron and a

paper cap. He informed me that his father was a bargeman, and walked, in

a black velvet head-dress, in the Lord Mayor’s Show. He also informed me

that our principal associate would be another boy whom he introduced by

the--to me--extraordinary name of Mealy Potatoes. I discovered, however,

that this youth had not been christened by that name, but that it had

been bestowed upon him in the warehouse, on account of his complexion,

which was pale or mealy. Mealy’s father was a waterman, who had the

additional distinction of being a fireman, and was engaged as such at

one of the large theatres; where some young relation of Mealy’s--I think

his little sister--did Imps in the Pantomimes.

No words can express the secret agony of my soul as I sunk into this

companionship; compared these henceforth everyday associates with those

of my happier childhood--not to say with Steerforth, Traddles, and the

rest of those boys; and felt my hopes of growing up to be a learned

and distinguished man, crushed in my bosom. The deep remembrance of the

sense I had, of being utterly without hope now; of the shame I felt in

my position; of the misery it was to my young heart to believe that day

by day what I had learned, and thought, and delighted in, and raised my

fancy and my emulation up by, would pass away from me, little by little,

never to be brought back any more; cannot be written. As often as Mick

Walker went away in the course of that forenoon, I mingled my tears with

the water in which I was washing the bottles; and sobbed as if there

were a flaw in my own breast, and it were in danger of bursting.

The counting-house clock was at half past twelve, and there was

general preparation for going to dinner, when Mr. Quinion tapped at the

counting-house window, and beckoned to me to go in. I went in, and

found there a stoutish, middle-aged person, in a brown surtout and black

tights and shoes, with no more hair upon his head (which was a large

one, and very shining) than there is upon an egg, and with a very

extensive face, which he turned full upon me. His clothes were shabby,

but he had an imposing shirt-collar on. He carried a jaunty sort of a

stick, with a large pair of rusty tassels to it; and a quizzing-glass

hung outside his coat,--for ornament, I afterwards found, as he very

seldom looked through it, and couldn’t see anything when he did.

‘This,’ said Mr. Quinion, in allusion to myself, ‘is he.’

‘This,’ said the stranger, with a certain condescending roll in his

voice, and a certain indescribable air of doing something genteel, which

impressed me very much, ‘is Master Copperfield. I hope I see you well,

sir?’

I said I was very well, and hoped he was. I was sufficiently ill at

ease, Heaven knows; but it was not in my nature to complain much at that

time of my life, so I said I was very well, and hoped he was.

‘I am,’ said the stranger, ‘thank Heaven, quite well. I have received a

letter from Mr. Murdstone, in which he mentions that he would desire

me to receive into an apartment in the rear of my house, which is at

present unoccupied--and is, in short, to be let as a--in short,’

said the stranger, with a smile and in a burst of confidence, ‘as a

bedroom--the young beginner whom I have now the pleasure to--’ and the

stranger waved his hand, and settled his chin in his shirt-collar.

‘This is Mr. Micawber,’ said Mr. Quinion to me.

‘Ahem!’ said the stranger, ‘that is my name.’

‘Mr. Micawber,’ said Mr. Quinion, ‘is known to Mr. Murdstone. He takes

orders for us on commission, when he can get any. He has been written to

by Mr. Murdstone, on the subject of your lodgings, and he will receive

you as a lodger.’

‘My address,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘is Windsor Terrace, City Road. I--in

short,’ said Mr. Micawber, with the same genteel air, and in another

burst of confidence--‘I live there.’

I made him a bow.

‘Under the impression,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘that your peregrinations in

this metropolis have not as yet been extensive, and that you might have

some difficulty in penetrating the arcana of the Modern Babylon in the

direction of the City Road,--in short,’ said Mr. Micawber, in another

burst of confidence, ‘that you might lose yourself--I shall be happy to

call this evening, and install you in the knowledge of the nearest way.’

I thanked him with all my heart, for it was friendly in him to offer to

take that trouble.

‘At what hour,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘shall I--’

‘At about eight,’ said Mr. Quinion.

‘At about eight,’ said Mr. Micawber. ‘I beg to wish you good day, Mr.

Quinion. I will intrude no longer.’

So he put on his hat, and went out with his cane under his arm: very

upright, and humming a tune when he was clear of the counting-house.

Mr. Quinion then formally engaged me to be as useful as I could in

the warehouse of Murdstone and Grinby, at a salary, I think, of six

shillings a week. I am not clear whether it was six or seven. I am

inclined to believe, from my uncertainty on this head, that it was six

at first and seven afterwards. He paid me a week down (from his own

pocket, I believe), and I gave Mealy sixpence out of it to get my

trunk carried to Windsor Terrace that night: it being too heavy for my

strength, small as it was. I paid sixpence more for my dinner, which was

a meat pie and a turn at a neighbouring pump; and passed the hour which

was allowed for that meal, in walking about the streets.

At the appointed time in the evening, Mr. Micawber reappeared. I washed

my hands and face, to do the greater honour to his gentility, and we

walked to our house, as I suppose I must now call it, together; Mr.

Micawber impressing the name of streets, and the shapes of corner houses

upon me, as we went along, that I might find my way back, easily, in the

morning.

Arrived at this house in Windsor Terrace (which I noticed was shabby

like himself, but also, like himself, made all the show it could), he

presented me to Mrs. Micawber, a thin and faded lady, not at all

young, who was sitting in the parlour (the first floor was altogether

unfurnished, and the blinds were kept down to delude the neighbours),

with a baby at her breast. This baby was one of twins; and I may remark

here that I hardly ever, in all my experience of the family, saw both

the twins detached from Mrs. Micawber at the same time. One of them was

always taking refreshment.

There were two other children; Master Micawber, aged about four, and

Miss Micawber, aged about three. These, and a dark-complexioned young

woman, with a habit of snorting, who was servant to the family, and

informed me, before half an hour had expired, that she was ‘a Orfling’,

and came from St. Luke’s workhouse, in the neighbourhood, completed the

establishment. My room was at the top of the house, at the back: a close

chamber; stencilled all over with an ornament which my young imagination

represented as a blue muffin; and very scantily furnished.

‘I never thought,’ said Mrs. Micawber, when she came up, twin and all,

to show me the apartment, and sat down to take breath, ‘before I was

married, when I lived with papa and mama, that I should ever find it

necessary to take a lodger. But Mr. Micawber being in difficulties, all

considerations of private feeling must give way.’

I said: ‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Mr. Micawber’s difficulties are almost overwhelming just at present,’

said Mrs. Micawber; ‘and whether it is possible to bring him through

them, I don’t know. When I lived at home with papa and mama, I really

should have hardly understood what the word meant, in the sense in which

I now employ it, but experientia does it,--as papa used to say.’

I cannot satisfy myself whether she told me that Mr. Micawber had been

an officer in the Marines, or whether I have imagined it. I only know

that I believe to this hour that he WAS in the Marines once upon a time,

without knowing why. He was a sort of town traveller for a number

of miscellaneous houses, now; but made little or nothing of it, I am

afraid.

‘If Mr. Micawber’s creditors will not give him time,’ said Mrs.

Micawber, ‘they must take the consequences; and the sooner they bring it

to an issue the better. Blood cannot be obtained from a stone, neither

can anything on account be obtained at present (not to mention law

expenses) from Mr. Micawber.’

I never can quite understand whether my precocious self-dependence

confused Mrs. Micawber in reference to my age, or whether she was so

full of the subject that she would have talked about it to the very

twins if there had been nobody else to communicate with, but this was

the strain in which she began, and she went on accordingly all the time

I knew her.

Poor Mrs. Micawber! She said she had tried to exert herself, and so,

I have no doubt, she had. The centre of the street door was perfectly

covered with a great brass-plate, on which was engraved ‘Mrs. Micawber’s

Boarding Establishment for Young Ladies’: but I never found that any

young lady had ever been to school there; or that any young lady ever

came, or proposed to come; or that the least preparation was ever made

to receive any young lady. The only visitors I ever saw, or heard of,

were creditors. THEY used to come at all hours, and some of them were

quite ferocious. One dirty-faced man, I think he was a boot-maker,

used to edge himself into the passage as early as seven o’clock in the

morning, and call up the stairs to Mr. Micawber--‘Come! You ain’t out

yet, you know. Pay us, will you? Don’t hide, you know; that’s mean. I

wouldn’t be mean if I was you. Pay us, will you? You just pay us, d’ye

hear? Come!’ Receiving no answer to these taunts, he would mount in

his wrath to the words ‘swindlers’ and ‘robbers’; and these being

ineffectual too, would sometimes go to the extremity of crossing the

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

of day had now gone down upon him--and I really thought his heart was

broken and mine too. But I heard, afterwards, that he was seen to play a

lively game at skittles, before noon.

On the first Sunday after he was taken there, I was to go and see him,

and have dinner with him. I was to ask my way to such a place, and just

short of that place I should see such another place, and just short of

that I should see a yard, which I was to cross, and keep straight on

until I saw a turnkey. All this I did; and when at last I did see a

turnkey (poor little fellow that I was!), and thought how, when Roderick

Random was in a debtors’ prison, there was a man there with nothing

on him but an old rug, the turnkey swam before my dimmed eyes and my

beating heart.

Mr. Micawber was waiting for me within the gate, and we went up to his

room (top story but one), and cried very much. He solemnly conjured me,

I remember, to take warning by his fate; and to observe that if a man

had twenty pounds a-year for his income, and spent nineteen pounds

nineteen shillings and sixpence, he would be happy, but that if he

spent twenty pounds one he would be miserable. After which he borrowed a

shilling of me for porter, gave me a written order on Mrs. Micawber for

the amount, and put away his pocket-handkerchief, and cheered up.

We sat before a little fire, with two bricks put within the rusted

grate, one on each side, to prevent its burning too many coals; until

another debtor, who shared the room with Mr. Micawber, came in from the

bakehouse with the loin of mutton which was our joint-stock repast.

Then I was sent up to ‘Captain Hopkins’ in the room overhead, with Mr.

Micawber’s compliments, and I was his young friend, and would Captain

Hopkins lend me a knife and fork.

Captain Hopkins lent me the knife and fork, with his compliments to Mr.

Micawber. There was a very dirty lady in his little room, and two wan

girls, his daughters, with shock heads of hair. I thought it was better

to borrow Captain Hopkins’s knife and fork, than Captain Hopkins’s comb.

The Captain himself was in the last extremity of shabbiness, with large

whiskers, and an old, old brown great-coat with no other coat below it.

I saw his bed rolled up in a corner; and what plates and dishes and pots

he had, on a shelf; and I divined (God knows how) that though the two

girls with the shock heads of hair were Captain Hopkins’s children, the

dirty lady was not married to Captain Hopkins. My timid station on his

threshold was not occupied more than a couple of minutes at most; but

I came down again with all this in my knowledge, as surely as the knife

and fork were in my hand.

There was something gipsy-like and agreeable in the dinner, after all.

I took back Captain Hopkins’s knife and fork early in the afternoon,

and went home to comfort Mrs. Micawber with an account of my visit.

She fainted when she saw me return, and made a little jug of egg-hot

afterwards to console us while we talked it over.

I don’t know how the household furniture came to be sold for the family

benefit, or who sold it, except that I did not. Sold it was, however,

and carried away in a van; except the bed, a few chairs, and the kitchen

table. With these possessions we encamped, as it were, in the two

parlours of the emptied house in Windsor Terrace; Mrs. Micawber, the

children, the Orfling, and myself; and lived in those rooms night and

day. I have no idea for how long, though it seems to me for a long

time. At last Mrs. Micawber resolved to move into the prison, where Mr.

Micawber had now secured a room to himself. So I took the key of the

house to the landlord, who was very glad to get it; and the beds were

sent over to the King’s Bench, except mine, for which a little room was

hired outside the walls in the neighbourhood of that Institution, very

much to my satisfaction, since the Micawbers and I had become too used

to one another, in our troubles, to part. The Orfling was likewise

accommodated with an inexpensive lodging in the same neighbourhood.

Mine was a quiet back-garret with a sloping roof, commanding a pleasant

prospect of a timberyard; and when I took possession of it, with the

reflection that Mr. Micawber’s troubles had come to a crisis at last, I

thought it quite a paradise.

All this time I was working at Murdstone and Grinby’s in the same common

way, and with the same common companions, and with the same sense of

unmerited degradation as at first. But I never, happily for me no doubt,

made a single acquaintance, or spoke to any of the many boys whom I

saw daily in going to the warehouse, in coming from it, and in prowling

about the streets at meal-times. I led the same secretly unhappy life;

but I led it in the same lonely, self-reliant manner. The only changes

I am conscious of are, firstly, that I had grown more shabby, and

secondly, that I was now relieved of much of the weight of Mr. and Mrs.

Micawber’s cares; for some relatives or friends had engaged to help them

at their present pass, and they lived more comfortably in the prison

than they had lived for a long while out of it. I used to breakfast with

them now, in virtue of some arrangement, of which I have forgotten

the details. I forget, too, at what hour the gates were opened in the

morning, admitting of my going in; but I know that I was often up at six

o’clock, and that my favourite lounging-place in the interval was old

London Bridge, where I was wont to sit in one of the stone recesses,

watching the people going by, or to look over the balustrades at the sun

shining in the water, and lighting up the golden flame on the top of the

Monument. The Orfling met me here sometimes, to be told some astonishing

fictions respecting the wharves and the Tower; of which I can say no

more than that I hope I believed them myself. In the evening I used

to go back to the prison, and walk up and down the parade with Mr.

Micawber; or play casino with Mrs. Micawber, and hear reminiscences of

her papa and mama. Whether Mr. Murdstone knew where I was, I am unable

to say. I never told them at Murdstone and Grinby’s.

Mr. Micawber’s affairs, although past their crisis, were very much

involved by reason of a certain ‘Deed’, of which I used to hear a great

deal, and which I suppose, now, to have been some former composition

with his creditors, though I was so far from being clear about it

then, that I am conscious of having confounded it with those demoniacal

parchments which are held to have, once upon a time, obtained to a great

extent in Germany. At last this document appeared to be got out of the

way, somehow; at all events it ceased to be the rock-ahead it had been;

and Mrs. Micawber informed me that ‘her family’ had decided that Mr.

Micawber should apply for his release under the Insolvent Debtors Act,

which would set him free, she expected, in about six weeks.

‘And then,’ said Mr. Micawber, who was present, ‘I have no doubt I

shall, please Heaven, begin to be beforehand with the world, and to live

in a perfectly new manner, if--in short, if anything turns up.’

By way of going in for anything that might be on the cards, I call to

mind that Mr. Micawber, about this time, composed a petition to the

House of Commons, praying for an alteration in the law of imprisonment

for debt. I set down this remembrance here, because it is an instance to

myself of the manner in which I fitted my old books to my altered life,

and made stories for myself, out of the streets, and out of men and

women; and how some main points in the character I shall unconsciously

develop, I suppose, in writing my life, were gradually forming all this

while.

There was a club in the prison, in which Mr. Micawber, as a gentleman,

was a great authority. Mr. Micawber had stated his idea of this petition

to the club, and the club had strongly approved of the same. Wherefore

Mr. Micawber (who was a thoroughly good-natured man, and as active a

creature about everything but his own affairs as ever existed, and never

so happy as when he was busy about something that could never be of any

profit to him) set to work at the petition, invented it, engrossed it

on an immense sheet of paper, spread it out on a table, and appointed a

time for all the club, and all within the walls if they chose, to come

up to his room and sign it.

When I heard of this approaching ceremony, I was so anxious to see them

all come in, one after another, though I knew the greater part of

them already, and they me, that I got an hour’s leave of absence from

Murdstone and Grinby’s, and established myself in a corner for that

purpose. As many of the principal members of the club as could be got

into the small room without filling it, supported Mr. Micawber in front

of the petition, while my old friend Captain Hopkins (who had washed

himself, to do honour to so solemn an occasion) stationed himself close

to it, to read it to all who were unacquainted with its contents. The

door was then thrown open, and the general population began to come in,

in a long file: several waiting outside, while one entered, affixed his

signature, and went out. To everybody in succession, Captain Hopkins

said: ‘Have you read it?’--‘No.’---‘Would you like to hear it read?’ If

he weakly showed the least disposition to hear it, Captain Hopkins, in

a loud sonorous voice, gave him every word of it. The Captain would

have read it twenty thousand times, if twenty thousand people would have

heard him, one by one. I remember a certain luscious roll he gave to

such phrases as ‘The people’s representatives in Parliament assembled,’

‘Your petitioners therefore humbly approach your honourable house,’ ‘His

gracious Majesty’s unfortunate subjects,’ as if the words were something

real in his mouth, and delicious to taste; Mr. Micawber, meanwhile,

listening with a little of an author’s vanity, and contemplating (not

severely) the spikes on the opposite wall.

As I walked to and fro daily between Southwark and Blackfriars, and

lounged about at meal-times in obscure streets, the stones of which

may, for anything I know, be worn at this moment by my childish feet, I

wonder how many of these people were wanting in the crowd that used to

come filing before me in review again, to the echo of Captain Hopkins’s

voice! When my thoughts go back, now, to that slow agony of my youth, I

wonder how much of the histories I invented for such people hangs like a

mist of fancy over well-remembered facts! When I tread the old ground,

I do not wonder that I seem to see and pity, going on before me, an

innocent romantic boy, making his imaginative world out of such strange

experiences and sordid things!