CHAPTER 18. A RETROSPECT

My school-days! The silent gliding on of my existence--the unseen,

unfelt progress of my life--from childhood up to youth! Let me think,

as I look back upon that flowing water, now a dry channel overgrown with

leaves, whether there are any marks along its course, by which I can

remember how it ran.

A moment, and I occupy my place in the Cathedral, where we all went

together, every Sunday morning, assembling first at school for that

purpose. The earthy smell, the sunless air, the sensation of the world

being shut out, the resounding of the organ through the black and white

arched galleries and aisles, are wings that take me back, and hold me

hovering above those days, in a half-sleeping and half-waking dream.

I am not the last boy in the school. I have risen in a few months, over

several heads. But the first boy seems to me a mighty creature, dwelling

afar off, whose giddy height is unattainable. Agnes says ‘No,’ but I say

‘Yes,’ and tell her that she little thinks what stores of knowledge have

been mastered by the wonderful Being, at whose place she thinks I, even

I, weak aspirant, may arrive in time. He is not my private friend

and public patron, as Steerforth was, but I hold him in a reverential

respect. I chiefly wonder what he’ll be, when he leaves Doctor Strong’s,

and what mankind will do to maintain any place against him.

But who is this that breaks upon me? This is Miss Shepherd, whom I love.

Miss Shepherd is a boarder at the Misses Nettingalls’ establishment. I

adore Miss Shepherd. She is a little girl, in a spencer, with a round

face and curly flaxen hair. The Misses Nettingalls’ young ladies come to

the Cathedral too. I cannot look upon my book, for I must look upon

Miss Shepherd. When the choristers chaunt, I hear Miss Shepherd. In the

service I mentally insert Miss Shepherd’s name--I put her in among the

Royal Family. At home, in my own room, I am sometimes moved to cry out,

‘Oh, Miss Shepherd!’ in a transport of love.

For some time, I am doubtful of Miss Shepherd’s feelings, but, at

length, Fate being propitious, we meet at the dancing-school. I have

Miss Shepherd for my partner. I touch Miss Shepherd’s glove, and feel a

thrill go up the right arm of my jacket, and come out at my hair. I say

nothing to Miss Shepherd, but we understand each other. Miss Shepherd

and myself live but to be united.

Why do I secretly give Miss Shepherd twelve Brazil nuts for a present, I

wonder? They are not expressive of affection, they are difficult to pack

into a parcel of any regular shape, they are hard to crack, even in

room doors, and they are oily when cracked; yet I feel that they are

appropriate to Miss Shepherd. Soft, seedy biscuits, also, I bestow upon

Miss Shepherd; and oranges innumerable. Once, I kiss Miss Shepherd in

the cloak-room. Ecstasy! What are my agony and indignation next day,

when I hear a flying rumour that the Misses Nettingall have stood Miss

Shepherd in the stocks for turning in her toes!

Miss Shepherd being the one pervading theme and vision of my life, how

do I ever come to break with her? I can’t conceive. And yet a coolness

grows between Miss Shepherd and myself. Whispers reach me of Miss

Shepherd having said she wished I wouldn’t stare so, and having avowed a

preference for Master Jones--for Jones! a boy of no merit whatever! The

gulf between me and Miss Shepherd widens. At last, one day, I meet the

Misses Nettingalls’ establishment out walking. Miss Shepherd makes

a face as she goes by, and laughs to her companion. All is over. The

devotion of a life--it seems a life, it is all the same--is at an end;

Miss Shepherd comes out of the morning service, and the Royal Family

know her no more.

I am higher in the school, and no one breaks my peace. I am not at all

polite, now, to the Misses Nettingalls’ young ladies, and shouldn’t

dote on any of them, if they were twice as many and twenty times as

beautiful. I think the dancing-school a tiresome affair, and wonder why

the girls can’t dance by themselves and leave us alone. I am growing

great in Latin verses, and neglect the laces of my boots. Doctor Strong

refers to me in public as a promising young scholar. Mr. Dick is wild

with joy, and my aunt remits me a guinea by the next post.

The shade of a young butcher rises, like the apparition of an armed head

in Macbeth. Who is this young butcher? He is the terror of the youth

of Canterbury. There is a vague belief abroad, that the beef suet with

which he anoints his hair gives him unnatural strength, and that he is

a match for a man. He is a broad-faced, bull-necked, young butcher, with

rough red cheeks, an ill-conditioned mind, and an injurious tongue.

His main use of this tongue, is, to disparage Doctor Strong’s young

gentlemen. He says, publicly, that if they want anything he’ll give it

‘em. He names individuals among them (myself included), whom he could

undertake to settle with one hand, and the other tied behind him. He

waylays the smaller boys to punch their unprotected heads, and calls

challenges after me in the open streets. For these sufficient reasons I

resolve to fight the butcher.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

victory is his.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and trembles at my having fought him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

same as if he had never joined it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

think of him as of someone else.

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

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

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

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

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

self-denying influence--is quite a woman.

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

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

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

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

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

worship the eldest Miss Larkins.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

world.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

that I blush.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

before Miss Larkins, and expire.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘With no one else?’ inquires Miss Larkins.

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

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

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

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

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

Bailey--’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

her, and say:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copperfield.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

consoled for this disappointment by the sacred pledge, the perished

flower.

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

to be married tomorrow? Someone you admire.’

‘Not you, I suppose, Agnes?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

gloriously defeat him.

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

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

seventeen.