For David Copperfield, orphaned and with a cruel stepfather, the future looks bleak. But a new start beckons with the magnificent Mr Micawber, then with his eccentric aunt, Betsey Trotwood. Charles Dickens was an English writer and social critic. David Copperfield is a story of a young man's adventures on his journey from an unhappy childhood to the discovery of his calling as a successful novelist.
Among the gloriously vivid cast of characters he encounters his tyrannical stepfather, Mr Murdstone; his formidable aunt, Betsey Trotwood; the eternally humble yet treacherous Uriah Heep; frivolous, enchanting Dora. This well-loved story invites us to share David's happiness and sorrow, and get to know all the fascinating people, both good and bad, he meets along the way. In , an English orphan boy's life is chronicled from birth to fatherhood through his lessons in love, betrayal, loyalty, and forgiveness.
David Copperfield. Illustrated edition After reading the title of the novel by Charles Dickens, many readers may assume that this book is about a popular magician. But the reality is much simpler. The main characters of this classics, fiction story are Richard Babley, Mr. The book has been awarded with , and many others. I by Charles Dickens pdf. Please note that the tricks or techniques listed in this pdf are either fictional or claimed to work by its creator. We do not guarantee that these techniques will work for you.
Some of the techniques listed in David Copperfield may require a sound knowledge of Hypnosis, users are advised to either leave those sections or must have a basic understanding of the subject before practicing them. DMCA and Copyright : The book is not hosted on our servers, to remove the file please contact the source url.
Peggotty to understand that she was as jolly as I could wish, and that she desired her compliments—which was a polite fiction on my part. Having done the honours of his house in this hospitable manner, Mr.
After tea, when the door was shut and all was made snug the nights being cold and misty now , it seemed to me the most delicious retreat that the imagination of man could conceive. To hear the wind getting up out at sea, to know that the fog was creeping over the desolate flat outside, and to look at the fire, and think that there was no house near but this one, and this one a boat, was like enchantment.
Peggotty with the white apron, was knitting on the opposite side of the fire. Peggotty at her needlework was as much at home with St.
Ham, who had been giving me my first lesson in all-fours, was trying to recollect a scheme of telling fortunes with the dirty cards, and was printing off fishy impressions of his thumb on all the cards he turned. Peggotty was smoking his pipe. I felt it was a time for conversation and confidence.
I was very much surprised that Mr. I was so curious to know, that I made up my mind to have it out with Mr. I felt the difficulty of resuming the subject, but had not got to the bottom of it yet, and must get to the bottom somehow. So I said:. But at this point Peggotty—I mean my own peculiar Peggotty—made such impressive motions to me not to ask any more questions, that I could only sit and look at all the silent company, until it was time to go to bed.
Gummidge was the widow of his partner in a boat, who had died very poor. He was but a poor man himself, said Peggotty, but as good as gold and as true as steel—those were her similes. It appeared, in answer to my inquiries, that nobody had the least idea of the etymology of this terrible verb passive to be gormed; but that they all regarded it as constituting a most solemn imprecation.
As slumber gradually stole upon me, I heard the wind howling out at sea and coming on across the flat so fiercely, that I had a lazy apprehension of the great deep rising in the night. But I bethought myself that I was in a boat, after all; and that a man like Mr. Peggotty was not a bad person to have on board if anything did happen.
Nothing happened, however, worse than morning. I have seen it tear a boat as big as our house, all to pieces. Not that one, I never see that boat. Here was a coincidence! I said I had no doubt that Mr. Peggotty well deserved these treasures. I must acknowledge that I felt it difficult to picture him quite at his ease in the raiment proposed for him by his grateful little niece, and that I was particularly doubtful of the policy of the cocked hat; but I kept these sentiments to myself.
We went on again, picking up shells and pebbles. We would all be gentlefolks together, then. Me, and uncle, and Ham, and Mrs. It was quiet enough to reassure me, but I have no doubt if I had seen a moderately large wave come tumbling in, I should have taken to my heels, with an awful recollection of her drowned relations.
Not a bit. Look here! She started from my side, and ran along a jagged timber which protruded from the place we stood upon, and overhung the deep water at some height, without the least defence. The light, bold, fluttering little figure turned and came back safe to me, and I soon laughed at my fears, and at the cry I had uttered; fruitlessly in any case, for there was no one near. But there have been times since, in my manhood, many times there have been, when I have thought, Is it possible, among the possibilities of hidden things, that in the sudden rashness of the child and her wild look so far off, there was any merciful attraction of her into danger, any tempting her towards him permitted on the part of her dead father, that her life might have a chance of ending that day?
There has been a time since when I have wondered whether, if the life before her could have been revealed to me at a glance, and so revealed as that a child could fully comprehend it, and if her preservation could have depended on a motion of my hand, I ought to have held it up to save her. We strolled a long way, and loaded ourselves with things that we thought curious, and put some stranded starfish carefully back into the water—I hardly know enough of the race at this moment to be quite certain whether they had reason to feel obliged to us for doing so, or the reverse—and then made our way home to Mr.
We stopped under the lee of the lobster-outhouse to exchange an innocent kiss, and went in to breakfast glowing with health and pleasure. Peggotty said. I knew this meant, in our local dialect, like two young thrushes, and received it as a compliment.
I am sure I loved that baby quite as truly, quite as tenderly, with greater purity and more disinterestedness, than can enter into the best love of a later time of life, high and ennobling as it is. I am sure my fancy raised up something round that blue-eyed mite of a child, which etherealized, and made a very angel of her.
We used to walk about that dim old flat at Yarmouth in a loving manner, hours and hours. The days sported by us, as if Time had not grown up himself yet, but were a child too, and always at play.
She said she did, and I have no doubt she did. We made no more provision for growing older, than we did for growing younger. We were the admiration of Mrs. Peggotty smiled at us from behind his pipe, and Ham grinned all the evening and did nothing else. They had something of the sort of pleasure in us, I suppose, that they might have had in a pretty toy, or a pocket model of the Colosseum.
I soon found out that Mrs. Gummidge did not always make herself so agreeable as she might have been expected to do, under the circumstances of her residence with Mr. I was very sorry for her; but there were moments when it would have been more agreeable, I thought, if Mrs. Gummidge had had a convenient apartment of her own to retire to, and had stopped there until her spirits revived. Peggotty went occasionally to a public-house called The Willing Mind. I discovered this, by his being out on the second or third evening of our visit, and by Mrs.
Gummidge had been in a low state all day, and had burst into tears in the forenoon, when the fire smoked. It was a very cold day, with cutting blasts of wind. So at dinner; when Mrs.
Gummidge was always helped immediately after me, to whom the preference was given as a visitor of distinction. The fish were small and bony, and the potatoes were a little burnt. We all acknowledged that we felt this something of a disappointment; but Mrs. Gummidge said she felt it more than we did, and shed tears again, and made that former declaration with great bitterness.
Accordingly, when Mr. Gummidge was knitting in her corner, in a very wretched and miserable condition. Peggotty had been working cheerfully. Gummidge had never made any other remark than a forlorn sigh, and had never raised her eyes since tea.
We all said something, or looked something, to welcome him, except Mrs. Gummidge, who only shook her head over her knitting. Peggotty, with a clap of his hands. Peggotty meant old girl. Gummidge did not appear to be able to cheer up. She took out an old black silk handkerchief and wiped her eyes; but instead of putting it in her pocket, kept it out, and wiped them again, and still kept it out, ready for use.
Peggotty with an honest laugh. Gummidge, shaking her head, and wiping her eyes. Yes, yes. I feel more than other people do, and I show it more. Peggotty made no such retort, only answering with another entreaty to Mrs. Gummidge to cheer up. I know what I am. My troubles has made me contrary. I feel my troubles, and they make me contrary.
I make the house uncomfortable. I had better go into the house and die. If thinks must go contrary with me, and I must go contrary myself, let me go contrary in my parish.
Gummidge retired with these words, and betook herself to bed. When she was gone, Mr. Peggotty, who had not exhibited a trace of any feeling but the profoundest sympathy, looked round upon us, and nodding his head with a lively expression of that sentiment still animating his face, said in a whisper:.
I did not quite understand what old one Mrs. Gummidge was supposed to have fixed her mind upon, until Peggotty, on seeing me to bed, explained that it was the late Mr. Gummidge; and that her brother always took that for a received truth on such occasions, and that it always had a moving effect upon him.
Gummidge was overcome in a similar manner during the remainder of our stay which happened some few times , he always said the same thing in extenuation of the circumstance, and always with the tenderest commiseration. So the fortnight slipped away, varied by nothing but the variation of the tide, which altered Mr.
When the latter was unemployed, he sometimes walked with us to show us the boats and ships, and once or twice he took us for a row. At last the day came for going home. I bore up against the separation from Mr. Peggotty and Mrs. We went arm-in-arm to the public-house where the carrier put up, and I promised, on the road, to write to her.
I redeemed that promise afterwards, in characters larger than those in which apartments are usually announced in manuscript, as being to let. We were greatly overcome at parting; and if ever, in my life, I have had a void made in my heart, I had one made that day. Now, all the time I had been on my visit, I had been ungrateful to my home again, and had thought little or nothing about it.
But I was no sooner turned towards it, than my reproachful young conscience seemed to point that way with a ready finger; and I felt, all the more for the sinking of my spirits, that it was my nest, and that my mother was my comforter and friend.
This gained upon me as we went along; so that the nearer we drew, the more familiar the objects became that we passed, the more excited I was to get there, and to run into her arms. But Peggotty, instead of sharing in those transports, tried to check them though very kindly , and looked confused and out of sorts.
How well I recollect it, on a cold grey afternoon, with a dull sky, threatening rain! The door opened, and I looked, half laughing and half crying in my pleasant agitation, for my mother. It was not she, but a strange servant. Between her agitation, and her natural awkwardness in getting out of the cart, Peggotty was making a most extraordinary festoon of herself, but I felt too blank and strange to tell her so.
When she had got down, she took me by the hand; led me, wondering, into the kitchen; and shut the door. Oh, Peggotty! Speak, my pet! Peggotty cried out No! I gave her a hug to take away the turn, or to give her another turn in the right direction, and then stood before her, looking at her in anxious inquiry. You have got a Pa! I trembled, and turned white. Peggotty gave a gasp, as if she were swallowing something that was very hard, and, putting out her hand, said:.
I ceased to draw back, and we went straight to the best parlour, where she left me. On one side of the fire, sat my mother; on the other, Mr. My mother dropped her work, and arose hurriedly, but timidly I thought. Davy boy, how do you do? I gave him my hand. After a moment of suspense, I went and kissed my mother: she kissed me, patted me gently on the shoulder, and sat down again to her work. I could not look at her, I could not look at him, I knew quite well that he was looking at us both; and I turned to the window and looked out there, at some shrubs that were drooping their heads in the cold.
As soon as I could creep away, I crept upstairs. My old dear bedroom was changed, and I was to lie a long way off. I rambled downstairs to find anything that was like itself, so altered it all seemed; and roamed into the yard.
I very soon started back from there, for the empty dog-kennel was filled up with a great dog—deep mouthed and black-haired like Him—and he was very angry at the sight of me, and sprang out to get at me. If the room to which my bed was removed were a sentient thing that could give evidence, I might appeal to it at this day—who sleeps there now, I wonder!
I went up there, hearing the dog in the yard bark after me all the way while I climbed the stairs; and, looking as blank and strange upon the room as the room looked upon me, sat down with my small hands crossed, and thought. I thought of the oddest things. Of the shape of the room, of the cracks in the ceiling, of the paper on the walls, of the flaws in the window-glass making ripples and dimples on the prospect, of the washing-stand being rickety on its three legs, and having a discontented something about it, which reminded me of Mrs.
Gummidge under the influence of the old one. I was crying all the time, but, except that I was conscious of being cold and dejected, I am sure I never thought why I cried. This made such a very miserable piece of business of it, that I rolled myself up in a corner of the counterpane, and cried myself to sleep. My mother and Peggotty had come to look for me, and it was one of them who had done it.
I dare say no words she could have uttered would have affected me so much, then, as her calling me her child. I hid my tears in the bedclothes, and pressed her from me with my hand, when she would have raised me up. How can you reconcile it to your conscience, I wonder, to prejudice my own boy against me, or against anybody who is dear to me?
What do you mean by it, Peggotty? Copperfield, and for what you have said this minute, may you never be truly sorry! Davy, you naughty boy! Peggotty, you savage creature!
Oh, dear me! It was Mr. Clara, my love, have you forgotten? He drew her to him, whispered in her ear, and kissed her.
She has taken mine, you know. Will you remember that? Peggotty, with some uneasy glances at me, curtseyed herself out of the room without replying; seeing, I suppose, that she was expected to go, and had no excuse for remaining. When we two were left alone, he shut the door, and sitting on a chair, and holding me standing before him, looked steadily into my eyes.
I felt my own attracted, no less steadily, to his. As I recall our being opposed thus, face to face, I seem again to hear my heart beat fast and high. I had answered in a kind of breathless whisper, but I felt, in my silence, that my breath was shorter now. What is that upon your face? He knew it was the mark of tears as well as I. But if he had asked the question twenty times, each time with twenty blows, I believe my baby heart would have burst before I would have told him so.
Wash that face, sir, and come down with me. He pointed to the washing-stand, which I had made out to be like Mrs. Gummidge, and motioned me with his head to obey him directly. I had little doubt then, and I have less doubt now, that he would have knocked me down without the least compunction, if I had hesitated. We shall soon improve our youthful humours. God help me, I might have been improved for my whole life, I might have been made another creature perhaps, for life, by a kind word at that season.
A word of encouragement and explanation, of pity for my childish ignorance, of welcome home, of reassurance to me that it was home, might have made me dutiful to him in my heart henceforth, instead of in my hypocritical outside, and might have made me respect instead of hate him.
I thought my mother was sorry to see me standing in the room so scared and strange, and that, presently, when I stole to a chair, she followed me with her eyes more sorrowfully still—missing, perhaps, some freedom in my childish tread—but the word was not spoken, and the time for it was gone.
We dined alone, we three together. He seemed to be very fond of my mother—I am afraid I liked him none the better for that—and she was very fond of him. I gathered from what they said, that an elder sister of his was coming to stay with them, and that she was expected that evening. After dinner, when we were sitting by the fire, and I was meditating an escape to Peggotty without having the hardihood to slip away, lest it should offend the master of the house, a coach drove up to the garden-gate and he went out to receive the visitor.
My mother followed him. I was timidly following her, when she turned round at the parlour door, in the dusk, and taking me in her embrace as she had been used to do, whispered me to love my new father and be obedient to him.
She did this hurriedly and secretly, as if it were wrong, but tenderly; and, putting out her hand behind her, held mine in it, until we came near to where he was standing in the garden, where she let mine go, and drew hers through his arm.
It was Miss Murdstone who was arrived, and a gloomy-looking lady she was; dark, like her brother, whom she greatly resembled in face and voice; and with very heavy eyebrows, nearly meeting over her large nose, as if, being disabled by the wrongs of her sex from wearing whiskers, she had carried them to that account.
She brought with her two uncompromising hard black boxes, with her initials on the lids in hard brass nails. When she paid the coachman she took her money out of a hard steel purse, and she kept the purse in a very jail of a bag which hung upon her arm by a heavy chain, and shut up like a bite. I had never, at that time, seen such a metallic lady altogether as Miss Murdstone was. She was brought into the parlour with many tokens of welcome, and there formally recognized my mother as a new and near relation.
Then she looked at me, and said:. Under these encouraging circumstances, I replied that I was very well, and that I hoped she was the same; with such an indifferent grace, that Miss Murdstone disposed of me in two words:. Having uttered which, with great distinctness, she begged the favour of being shown to her room, which became to me from that time forth a place of awe and dread, wherein the two black boxes were never seen open or known to be left unlocked, and where for I peeped in once or twice when she was out numerous little steel fetters and rivets, with which Miss Murdstone embellished herself when she was dressed, generally hung upon the looking-glass in formidable array.
As well as I could make out, she had come for good, and had no intention of ever going again. Almost the first remarkable thing I observed in Miss Murdstone was, her being constantly haunted by a suspicion that the servants had a man secreted somewhere on the premises. Under the influence of this delusion, she dived into the coal-cellar at the most untimely hours, and scarcely ever opened the door of a dark cupboard without clapping it to again, in the belief that she had got him.
Though there was nothing very airy about Miss Murdstone, she was a perfect Lark in point of getting up. She was up and, as I believe to this hour, looking for that man before anybody in the house was stirring.
On the very first morning after her arrival she was up and ringing her bell at cock-crow. When my mother came down to breakfast and was going to make the tea, Miss Murdstone gave her a kind of peck on the cheek, which was her nearest approach to a kiss, and said:. From that time, Miss Murdstone kept the keys in her own little jail all day, and under her pillow all night, and my mother had no more to do with them than I had.
My mother did not suffer her authority to pass from her without a shadow of protest. One night when Miss Murdstone had been developing certain household plans to her brother, of which he signified his approbation, my mother suddenly began to cry, and said she thought she might have been consulted.
Firmness, I may observe, was the grand quality on which both Mr. The creed, as I should state it now, was this. Murdstone was firm; nobody in his world was to be so firm as Mr. Murdstone; nobody else in his world was to be firm at all, for everybody was to be bent to his firmness. Miss Murdstone was an exception. She might be firm, but only by relationship, and in an inferior and tributary degree. My mother was another exception. She might be firm, and must be; but only in bearing their firmness, and firmly believing there was no other firmness upon earth.
I am sure I managed very well before we were married. I go tomorrow. I should be very miserable and unhappy if anybody was to go. I am not unreasonable. I only want to be consulted sometimes.
I am very much obliged to anybody who assists me, and I only want to be consulted as a mere form, sometimes. I thought you were pleased, once, with my being a little inexperienced and girlish, Edward—I am sure you said so—but you seem to hate me for it now, you are so severe.
How dare you? Miss Murdstone made a jail-delivery of her pocket-handkerchief, and held it before her eyes. You astound me! Yes, I had a satisfaction in the thought of marrying an inexperienced and artless person, and forming her character, and infusing into it some amount of that firmness and decision of which it stood in need. I am sure I am not ungrateful. No one ever said I was before. I have many faults, but not that. Whatever I am, I am affectionate.
I know I am affectionate. Ask Peggotty. You lose breath. I am so sorry. It is not my fault that so unusual an occurrence has taken place tonight. Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.
It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously. In consideration of the day and hour of my birth, it was declared by the nurse, and by some sage women in the neighbourhood who had taken a lively interest in me several months before there was any possibility of our becoming personally acquainted, first, that I was destined to be unlucky in life; and secondly, that I was privileged to see ghosts and spirits; both these gifts inevitably attaching, as they believed, to all unlucky infants of either gender, born towards the small hours on a Friday night.
I need say nothing here, on the first head, because nothing can show better than my history whether that prediction was verified or falsified by the result.
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