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Hello and welcome to Storytime for Grown Ups. I'm Faith Moore and this season we're reading David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. Each episode I'll read a few chapters from the book, pausing from time to time to give brief explanations so it's easier to follow along. It's like an audiobook with built in notes. So brew a pot of tea, find a cozy chair and settle in. It's story time. Hi there. Welcome back. I know I keep going on lately about the cold, but since I last talked to you, it has become so cold where I am that it is literally as cold as Antarctica, which is kind of interesting. It's been interesting to go outside and think like, okay, this is what it feels like in Antarctica. So now I know that. But now that I know it, I'm kind of ready to stop having to experience it. But it does make, as I said before, it does make my cup of tea that much more warm and wonderful and cozy. I have also been enjoying some hot chocolate. I know we have some hot chocolate fans out there and sometimes I'll go for that instead because sometimes you need to just wrap your hands around a warm mug. And so I hope that wherever you are and whatever you are doing, you are warm and cozy, that your hands are wrapped around a warm mug. Maybe only in your imagination, but that's okay, too. Whatever you're doing, I hope that you're at least virtually or in your imagination, warm and cozy and dry and sitting in your cozy chair with your pot of tea at your side. Even if that's just something that you're imagining right now, I hope you are imagining it and that this podcast feels like that cozy chair and that lovely warm pot of tea. I wish I could pour you a cup right now, but imagine that I am doing that. And welcome. I am so glad that you're here. I'm excited to read another chapter of this wonderful book with you. Thank you for all of your letters and your comments. I love reading those. And I, I know we have a lot of feelings and thoughts about this book. I think perhaps more than any book that we've read so far. There's just a lot of kind of emotional outpouring which I think testament to how wonderful a writer Dickens is, that he's really kind of pulling on our heartstrings and we're really, really invested. So I'm. I'm excited and happy about that and I'm really glad that you're all here with me on this journey. So today we're going to be reading chapter 11. We read chapter 10 last time. I don't have any new announcements or anything. Just please make sure you're subscribed. Please tap the five stars. Please leave a positive review. Please tell a friend. Check out the Merch Store. Check out the links in the Show Notes. All of the usual things stick still apply. Join us for tea time over in the drawing room on February 24th at 8pm Eastern. Find out more about that also in the Show Notes. But really, let's just get into this book. Why wait, right? So let's remind ourselves first of what happened last time and then we'll chat a little bit before we get to chapter 11. Here is the recap. Okay, so where we left off Once the period of mourning for Davy's mother is over, Ms. Murdstone gives Peggy a month's notice, meaning she's fired and she has a month left. Peggy decides that she will go home to visit her brother and figure out what to do next, and she convinces Ms. Murdstone to let Davey go with her on the visit. So Peggy and Davey go to Mr. Peggy's house and on the way it is clear that Mr. Barkis still wants to marry Peggy. Peggy asks Davey what he thinks about it and Davey thinks it's a good idea because then Peggy would be able to come and visit him whenever she wants via Mr. Barkis cart. Peggy Peggety says she agrees and will ask her brother what he thinks. At Mr. Peggety's house, things are basically the same as the last time that Davey was there, except that now little Emily goes to school during the day and seems older and more like a teenager toward Davey. One day, Davey and Emily go out in the carriage with Mr. Barkis and Peggy. Mr. Barkis and Peggy go into a church and leave Davey and Emily in the carriage. Davey tells Emily he loves her and hopes to marry her someday and they kiss, but Emily calls Davey silly. When Peggy and Barkis come out of the church, they reveal that they are now married. Peggy sets up a little room in her new house for Davy and says that he'll always be welcome there as long as he lives. He spends the night there, but soon has to go back to the Murdstones. When he gets there, he finds that they don't care about him one way or the other and he's totally neglected. Peggy visits him once a week and Mr. Chillip, the doctor sometimes has him over, but otherwise he just roams around and no one pays attention to him. Eventually, Mr. Quinion comes to stay. He's one of the men that Davey met back with Mr. Murdstone when he was courting his mother. And it turns out that Mr. Quinion runs Mr. Murdstone's business in London. And it's decided that Davy will go to work there. And he's packed off to London with Mr. Quinion, leaving behind his home and the only world that he has ever known. Okay, I'm going to read two comments today. The first one comes from Amanda B. Amanda writes, I absolutely loved Mr. Barkis in this chapter. I also saw the contrast of Peggy and Mr. Barkis's union in Davies eyes. How she talked to him prior to being married and then how he not noted that she did not change once she was married. I love that Davey has Peggy still. He needs to know someone still loves him. Okay, and this other one comes from our online community, the Drawing Room. This person goes by the handle I'm gonna pronounce this wrong. And I know this person told me how to pronounce it and I've forgotten. I'm so sorry. But at Akhar, I think that's right. Maybe not. I'm really sorry. Anyway, he says okay, so this was the chapter that solidified my view that Murdstone is evil, not via malice, but ign. He simply had no idea what he was doing entering marriage or raising a child. His treatment is abusive, but it's the abuse of trying to solve all of life's problems with a hammer. And a hammer is the only thing you know how to use. It's bad, it's awful, but it's undeniably human. Okay, so what's so poignant about this chapter, I think, is the way in which we see that Davey is loved, he is cared about and cared for. There are people in the world who value him for his own sake. But because of the circumstances of his life and their lives, Davey can't live with those people or be part of that family. The Peggoties are the close knit, loving, kind, caring family that Davey wishes that he had and that we wish that Davey could have. But because of the difference in social class and because of the financial burden it would be on them, Davey would never be allowed by Mr. Murdstone to live with them permanently. And they probably wouldn't be able to take care of him permanently even if they wanted to, because they wouldn't be able to to afford it. Remember? And this is another one of those things that seems really sort of remote to us in the modern day. But Davey is a middle class boy. Even he expects to be brought up with an education and some prospect of a middle class job. And even though he loves Peggy and would want to live with her if he could, he wouldn't want to become a servant or a fisherman or something like that, which is what he'd have to do if he was actually adopted into Peggy's family, because he wouldn't have the money or the education to do anything else. So there's a class element here that is tricky for us to understand but is nonetheless real. And it makes it so that Davey can't be adopted by the Pegadies. But even so, it's so poignant to get to witness this loving family and the way that they welcome Davy into the family for a time, juxtaposed to the life of neglect that he leads with the Murdstones. We want so badly for him to have what little Emily has, for example, and instead he can only visit it. But he does get to visit it, and it's a real respite for him. And it kind of ties up some loose ends, particularly where Peggy is concerned. And it sets the stage for another shift in Davies life. You know, there have been several points now where a kind of chapter of Davies life has closed forever and a new one has begun. We had the end of his idyllic childhood with the arrival of Mr. Birdstone. We had the end of his life living entirely at home with his being sent to school. We had the end of his relationship with his MOT and all ties to that earlier life that he'd lived with her because of her death. And in this chapter we get what seems to be the end of his life in Blunderstone entirely because Mr. Murdstone is sending him out to work for his living, and he's going to be living in his own lodgings and making his own money, although certain things like his clothing and his lodging will be taken care of by the Murdstones. And each one of these changes is like a little ending, a door closes on some part of his childhood, essentially. And even though the things that have happened to Davie so far have been, for the most part, particularly harsh, this is essentially what childhood is like, right? It's what growing up is like. Things end, you move on, you start something new. Sometimes it's exciting, sometimes it's really painful, sometimes it's both. But if you're doing it right, growing up is a series of separations, a series of goodbyes, a series of new beginnings. And that is what's happening so far. What's been happening so far for Davey. I mean, these things are happening too soon. Nine years old is far too young to be sent to live on your own and get a job and all of this. But this concept of all these little endings and these new beginnings, it's a relatable one, I think, and something that happens to us all, although of course in different ways. So in essence, what's going on in this chapter is that both Peggy and Davy need to be in some way provided for. Peggy has been dismissed from the Murdstone service, so she now has no job and therefore no income. And Davy has no one to take care of. Peggy has to leave. And Mr. And Ms. Murdstone seem totally uninterested in taking care of him, which, as Acher points out, is yet another piece of evidence that Mr. Murdstone was actually trying to raise Davey, albeit badly and incorrectly, but he was trying to raise him and in his mind, improve him while he was married to Clara and therefore part of the family. But now that Clara is gone and the baby is gone, Mr. Murdsnow neglects Davy and he leaves him to fend for himself because he doesn't see see that as his responsibility anymore. His role as Davey's stepfather has essentially ended. Even though of course, if he were a good stepfather, he might continue to care for him and try to be a father to him as best he could. But basically he is legally responsible for this kid, even though he now feels he has no connection to him or reason to try to raise him or to be a father to him. So what will happen to Peggy and what will happen to Davey? So for Peggy, she really only has two options. One is to find a new job, which she says that she tried to do, but she can't find anything close enough to Blunderstone. And she doesn't want to go farther than that because she wants to be able to still see Davey sometimes and she wants to be able to visit the grave of Davey's mother and to keep it neat and tidy and all of this. So she doesn't want to go far away, but she can't find a new job nearby. So that's one option, but it seems like it's not really a viable one given her criteria. And the other option is to get married. And there actually is someone who wants to marry her, right, Mr. Barkis. Now, I agree with Amanda. Mr. Barkis is hilarious. And even though he's like the most inept suitor that ever walked the pages of a book, he actually does really seem to like Peggy. And want to marry her. I mean, yes, he wants her to cook for him. He fell in love with her because he tasted her pastries or whatever, right? But. But all signs actually point to him being a very attentive and kind, weird husband. Like the way that he brings her the little gifts and he takes her wax candle so that he can hand it to her when she needs it. And he takes her out for walks and things like it's awkward and odd and all of this. But there's also a way in which it's kind of sweet, too. He's shy. It's hard for him to know what to say to her and how to be with her. And he's doing his best to woo her, essentially with very limited social skills at his disposal. So I at least feel that Peggy could do far worse than Mr. Barkis. And of course, there are very practical reason Peggy should marry Mr. Barkis. One of them, obviously, is that she needs a home and some money. She needs to be taken care of, and marriage will do that. But also there's the one that Davey comes up with, which is that if she marries the guy who drives the cart between Yarmouth and Blunderstone, then Peggy would always have a way to come and visit Davey. Here's what he says. I should think it would be a very good thing for then, you know, Peggy, you would always have the horse and cart to bring you over to see me and could come for nothing and be sure of coming. And Peggy agrees with this. And she also adds another reason, which is that this way she will have her own house to take care of rather than having to work in some stranger's house, which would be very hard since she loved working for Davies mother so much. This way, Mr. Barkis's house will be her house and she'll be a housewife essentially, instead of a servant. Here is what she says. I think I should be more independent altogether, you see, let alone my working with a better heart in my own house than I could in anybody else's. Now, I don't know what I might be fit for now as I a servant to a stranger. And I shall be always near my pretty's resting place. Okay, so there are all these practical reasons for this marriage. But if Mr. Barkis was going to turn out to be like another Mr. Murdstone or some other sort of horrible, abusive sort of person, then I don't think we would want that for Peggy, even if it was practically helpful. But as I say, even though Mr. Barkis is so bad at courting, her. He actually seems to respect and like her and want her to be his wife. And he also seems to really like Davy too, and to feel grateful to him for bringing. Bringing them together. And he allows Peggety to keep a room for Davey always made up. I mean, someone like Mr. Murdstone would never have allowed that, right? Keep a room in the house totally unused for some kid who may or may not ever come. Forget it. But Mr. Barkis does allow it, seemingly willingly. So he's a good guy ultimately, I think so. I think we can feel pretty good about Peggy's next phase of life in this whole scenario. And it's also good for Davey because in addition to her being able to come for a. A visit, which she says she's going to do every week, this room she keeps for him means that he has a home essentially. Even if he's not allowed to live there, this is his home. Here's what Peggy says. Young or old Davey, dear, as long as I am alive and have this house over my head, you shall find it as if I expected you here directly. Minute I shall keep it every day as I used to keep your old little room, my darling. And if you was to go to China, you might think of it as being cast just the same all the time you were away. So even though we might wish that he could just move into that room to stay, it's nice to know that it's there because it means that he knows that there's always someone who loves him, always somewhere he's welcome. And for someone whose life is turning out like Davies is, that is a real comfort. I think so now let's take a look at Devi, because Devi's situation seems less certain, perhaps less hopeful than Peggy's, though we don't really know yet. So first he's totally neglected, right? Both before his trip to Yarmouth to visit the Pegadies and then again afterwards. The Murdstones essentially just leave Davy to his own devices. They don't send him back to school, they don't make him learn his lessons at home. It's as if they wish that he just wasn't there and they don't have to deal with him. And I think that is how they feel. Mr. Murdstone understands that he has a legal obligation to take care of Davy, but like I was saying before, his sense of his actual obligation to take care of Davey is basically over here. He's not trying to raise him anymore and he doesn't really want to have to deal with what he sees as a kind of leftover piece of this life that's now over for him and that he's sad about being over. And Davey begins to worry that his prospects in life are going to be severely limited because of this neglect. I mean, Davey is a middle class boy. He's supposed to be educated and then he's supposed to find a respectable middle class job like a lawyer or a clergyman or a businessman of some kind. He's supposed to do that and enter society and be a respectable gentleman. But he can't do this if he doesn't get an education. And he can't get an education if no one pays for one. And the very real danger then is that he will end up kind of falling down the social ladder and having to take on a more working class job or resorting to some kind of shady dealings or something when what he wants is to make his honest way in the world. And I think something that is hard for us to understand in the modern day is that there will always be a way in which Davy is middle class, even if he falls to the level of the working class. And so he'll always be kind of held apart from people in a lower social class. And he'll never really fit in anywhere unless he can follow the approved path, which he can't do if he isn't educated and if he doesn't have someone helping him to enter into the world. Here's how he puts it. He says, I can recollect indeed to have speculated at odd times on the possibility of my not being taught anymore or cared for anymore and growing up to be a shabby, moody man lounging an idle life away about the village as well as on the feasibility of my getting rid of this picture by going away somewhere like the hero in a story, to seek my fortune. But these were transient visions, daydreams I sat looking at sometimes as if they were faintly painted or written on the wall of my room and which as they melted away, left the wall blank again. And I think it's really brilliant that Dickens juxtaposes the very practical and sort of down to earth courtsh marriage of Peggy and Barkis with the very airy, romantic, childish courtship of Davy and little Emily. Because in the same way that Davy is supposed to be a middle class gentleman, he's not really supposed to marry someone of Emily's social class. She's far below him socially. So the ardent love that he professes for her, though he feels it, it's also kind of just them playing at love. I mean, he thinks about marrying her. But listen to how he thinks about it. He says, ah, how I loved her. What happiness, I thought, if we were married and were going away anywhere to live among the trees and in the fields, never growing older, never growing wiser, children ever rambling hand in hand through sunshine and among flowery meadows, laying down our heads on moss at night in a sweet sleep of purity and peace. And buried by the birds when we were dead. Okay, that's pretty different than Pegady and Barcas, right? And that's why it's brilliant that all of this happens with while Peggy and Barcas are in the church actually getting married. Because it just shows you that David is still very much a child and very much not thinking seriously about his feelings for Emily, even though they feel incredibly real and serious and passionate to him in the moment. And it also serves to highlight the contrast between his little boy fantasies, which, honestly, he should be having. He is a little boy, but the contrast between those and the reality he comes home to, which is essentially that he's being asked to grow up right then and there. And it's really sad. It's sad coming after this idyllic vacation with the Peggy's, where Davey's allowed to be a little boy and where Peggy is like a mother to him. And he has this childish, sort of wistful love for little Emily. And he's got a room of his own in Peggy's house. After all that, he comes back to learn that, in fact, he can't be a child any longer, regardless of the fact that he. He is a child. He has to go and earn a living in Mr. Murdstone's warehouse. Because we learn, right, that Mr. Murdstone, who is himself middle class, he has a wine warehouse or something like this, and he is in charge of it, which is an acceptable middle class source of income. And Mr. Quinion is the guy who actually runs the place. So he's lower down socially because he actually goes into the warehouse every day and supervises everyone. And Mr. Quinion is going to. To take Davey to London, where he's going to work in some capacity at this warehouse. Mr. Murdstone is going to pay for his lodgings, but he'll have lodgings, meaning there won't be any sort of parent figure taking care of him. He'll be on his own and he'll have to earn money, work to earn enough money to pay for his food. So all of a sudden he's leaving his home and he's leaving everything he knew. And his childhood, basically. And he's heading for London. Here is what Mr. Murdstone says. So you are now going to London, David, with Mr. Quinion, to begin the world on your own account. On your own account means as an adult, essentially. And then he's whisked away at the end of the chapter to whatever this new life is gonna be. Here's what it see how our house and church are lessening in the distance, how the grave beneath the tree is blotted out by intervening objects. How the spire points upwards from my old playground no more, and the sky is empty. Okay, so what is this new life going to be like? What will happen to him now? We have to keep reading to find out. So let's do that. But of course, don't forget to write to me. It's faith k.moore.com. click on contact. Send me all your questions and thoughts and reactions to the chapter. And I would love to hear from you. All right, let's get started with chapter 11 of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. It's story time, 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 10 years old, a little laboring 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 downhill to the river, with some stairs at the end where people took boats, meaning these stairs lead down to the water and people use them to get into boats. 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 gray 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. A packet ship is like a delivery ship that carries mail and goods from place to place. 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. 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 accounts a living, 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 headdress 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. Millie's father was a waterman who had the additional distinction of being a fireman. And was engaged as such at one of the large theaters 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 12 and there was general preparation for going to dinner. So dinner is the midday meal here. 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 which is like a brown overcoat 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, which is kind of like a magnifying 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 role 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. That 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 logic 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, meaning your wanderings 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 the 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. 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 Mely sixpence out of it to get my trunk carried to Windsor Terrace that night, it being too heavy for my strength, length 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 names 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 parlor. The first floor was altogether unfurnished and the blinds were kept down to delude the neighbors 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, meaning an orphan, and came from St. Luke's Workhouse in the neighborhood. 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 mamma, 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 Mamma, 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 believed 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, meaning he has no money so the creditors can ask him to pay but he won't be able to. 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. So he's saying that it was odd that she should be talking to a child about all of this, but she did then and she continued to talk to him about it for as long as he 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 bootmaker, used to edge himself into the passage as early as 7 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, do you 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 of 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 3 o' clock and to eat lamb chops breaded and drink warm ale paid for with two teaspoons 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 6 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, 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 Sunday 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 Grimby's of a morning, I could not resist the stale pastry put out for sale at half price at the pastry cook's 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, meaning it was expensive, 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 stuck 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, which is a kind of sausage, 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 a la mode 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 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. Tea is the afternoon meal. 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, which was a theater, 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, said 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 till 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 had 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 here, 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 Suffolkar. A certain man named Gregory, who was foreman of the packers, and another man named Tip, who was the Carmen 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 in addition to the distressed state of my mind. 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 confidence 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. Toward 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 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 mamma, and I used 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 click it. 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. So she's asking him to help her sell some of their belongings to get money for food. 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 that 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. Overnight, 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 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 raiding 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 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 place 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 turnkeypoor 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 £20 a year for his income, and spent £19 19 shillings and sixpence he would be happy, but that if he went £20 one, he would be miserable. After which he borrowed a shilling of me for porter and 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 bowls, 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, meaning this is their meal. 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. Visit. She fainted when she saw me return and made a little jug of egg hot. This is a kind of sweet, warm alcoholic drink. 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 parlors of the emptied house in Windsor Terrace. Terrace. Mrs. Micawber, the children, the orphling 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 neighborhood of that inn institution. Very much to my satisfaction. Since the macabre and I had become too used to one another in our troubles to part. Okay, so Mrs. Macawer and the children are allowed to move into the debtors prison with Mr. Macawer. So that's what they're doing. Davey obviously can't move in. But he's getting a room nearby so that he can be close to them. Because they're really the only family he has right now. The orfling was likewise accommodated with an inexpensive lodging in the same neighborhood. Neighborhood? Mine was a quiet back garret with a sloping roof commanding a pleasant prospect of a timber yard. 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 mealtimes. 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 career. Years 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 orphling met me here sometimes to be told some astonishing fictions respecting the wharves and the tower, of which I can say no more than 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. Casino is a card game. And hear reminiscences of her papa and mamma. 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 creditor, 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. Act, which would set him free, she expected, in about six weeks. So the Insolvent Debtors act was an act which allowed debtors to go to court and make an agreement with their creditors for paying them back out of their current funds or future funds they will get, and then they can get out of jail. And then, said Mr. Micawber, who was present, I have no doubt I shall please heaven, begin to be beforehand with the world and live in a perfectly new manner of 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, interested 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 merely 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 this 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 ever 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 20,000 times if 20,000 people would have heard him him one by one. I remember a certain luscious role he gave to such phrases. As the people's representatives in Parliament assembled. Your petitioners therefore humbly approach your honorable house, his gracious Majesty's unfortunate subjects, as if the words were something real in his mouth and delicious to taste. Waste 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. Thank you so much for listening. I'd love to know what you thought of the chapters. Is there anything you'd like me to clarify? Did something particularly interest you? Please go to my website faithkmoore.com click on contact and send me your questions and thoughts. Or you can click on the link in the Show Notes to contact me. I'll feature one or two of your entries at the start of the next episode. Speaking of links, don't forget to take a look at the other links in the Show Notes. You can learn more about me, check out our Merch store, or become a member of the Storytime for Grown Ups online community. Before I go, I'd like to ask a quick favor. This is an independent podcast. It's produced, recorded and marketed by me, so I need your help. Spread the word about the show by posting about it on social media or texting a link to your friends. Subscribe, tap those five stars and leave a positive review wherever you're listening. If you are able to support the show financially, there's a link in the Show Notes to make a donation. I would really, really appreciate it. Alright everyone, story time is over to be continue. Sa.