The Old Curiosity Club discussion

Chapter 58

Absence

Hello again, fellow Curiosities. I’m taking over for Kim and Tristram and will have the pleasure to bring our discussions to their conclusion. There are still lots of twists, turns, and surprises in store for us. At least, I hope there will be something to delight us yet. Reading over some comments from the most recent chapters - including my own confession - it appears this novel may be getting a bit long in the tooth. Well, pour yourself a glass of eggnog and let’s see what’s up this week.

This chapter begins with David recounting that he went away from England “not knowing even then, how great the shock was, that I had to bear.” I found the tone of David’s voice to be sorrowful and reflective. Perhaps now we find a clear maturity in his voice. He is fully aware that the “airy castle” of his life is now “a ruined blank and waste, lying wide around me, unbroken, to the dark horizon.” He has much to mourn: the loss of a child, the death of his child wife, the death of Steerforth, and the “wandering remnants of the simple home” of the Pegotty’s. He tells us he roamed from place to place carrying my burden with me everywhere.” Here I found echoes of Coleridge’s ancient mariner. Both the Mariner and David have tales to tell. David passes time and likens his journey to a pilgrimage. He finds himself in Switzerland amid beauty in a valley where the evening sun is shining on the snow which created “eternal clouds.” Once again, to me at least, I hear echoes of the Romantic poets. David tells us that “Nature spoke to me, and soothed me to lay down my weary head upon the grass.” And here, David wept for Dora. Some may see this chapter as a touch maudlin. Partly yes indeed. For me, it also shows the fact that David is maturing, now becoming both reflective and more aware. As for Dickens, I see this chapter as being one of strength and artful writing. What do you think?

We learn that David has received a packet of letters from Agnes. While Agnes does not give David any advice in the letters she does give David her trust, her concern, and her faith. David reveals his love for Agnes, but there still remains a hesitation for him to return to England and be with the one he loves. What David does do is pick up his pen and begin to write again. His writing back in England is gaining traction and his reputation is growing. Traddles acts as his agent in England.

David confesses that he believes he has “thrown away the treasure of [Agnes’s ] love.” To me, David is clearly conflicted. He knows he loves Agnes but worries that the opportunity to move towards a relationship with her may have passed. He believes he may have “cast it away.” At one point he comments that “the time was past. I had let it go by, and had deservedly lost her.” What has not happened in his life David sees as a reality, as much of a reality as “those that are accomplished.” We learn that after a span of three years abroad David decides to return home. He believes that Agnes is not his - she might have been, “but that was past!”


Thoughts

I have read David Copperfield before. This is the first time, however, that this chapter has not left me somewhat snarky and rolling my eyes at Dickens for overwriting David’s emotional situation. Perhaps I’m seeing my own emotional follies of youth more clearly. Who knows? We know that David loves Agnes. What do you think Agnes’s feelings are towards David?

Many chapters ago David ran from London and Murdstone to seek a new life with his aunt. In this chapter David again runs from an untenable situation. In what ways are these two incidences similar? Different?

Chapter 59

Return

David returns to London and tells his readers that “he saw more fog and mud in a minute than I had seen in a year.” I imagine more than a few readers would nod in agreement with this statement. Like many of us who have been away from our homes for years, David notices change all around him. David’s first stop in London is to visit with Traddles. Traddles is both surprised and delighted to see David. As for David, he learns that Traddles is married to Sophy. The household is overrun with Sophy’s family, but harmony abounds. The congregation of people in Traddles’ home and their happiness in their diversity reminds me of the Peggotty household. Sophy is the perfect wife and David observes how much in love she and Traddles are. This novel is brimming with large, loving families - Micawber, Peggotty and now Traddles. Such a contrast to the tomb-like Steerforth home.

David learns that both his aunt and Agnes are doing well and that their thoughts have always been focussed on him. By the end of the evening, David tells the reader that any doubt he ever had about Traddles finally achieving success in life had been answered. Traddles was a man whose future life will be marked with success. Success can be defined in many ways. Perhaps David learns a slight lesson here. David has much to learn. Will he learn enough about love to change his life?

After such a night David again falls into reflection about his own life and his choices in life. He again thinks of Agnus and foresees a time when she will marry. He wonders if Agnes will ever know the love that was in his heart for her. David thinks to himself, “what I reaped, I had sown.”

David sees Mr Chillip, formally of Blunderstone like David, and speaks to him. After a moment Chillip recognizes David and congratulates him on his success as a writer. Chillip comments how much David looks like his father. This is a nice touch on Dickens’s part. The novel is slowly drawing to a conclusion. Here we see an instance that begins to stitch the past with the present. Those who live or once lived in Blunderstone recognize how David has gained success. Chillip also serves as a device to update some elements of the plot. From Chillip David learns that Murdstone has again married, and the person is “a young lady ... with a very good little property, poor thing.” Chillip also reveals that both Murdstone and his sister “are very severe ... both as to this life and the next.” Chillip concludes by telling David that the present Mrs Murdstone is being driven “to a state of imbecility.”

The next day David surprises his aunt, Mr Dick, and Peggotty and the chapter ends on a happy note.

Thoughts

Dickens has begun the task of tidying up the loose ends of the story. In doing so, he also shows us David in the process of becoming a man worthy of being considered a hero. What we also see in this chapter are the separate links of the novel being forged together.

How has the revelation of Traddles’ happy marriage both looked back into the novel and possibly anticipated the final chapters of the text?

With the reintroduction of Chillip we are linked to David’s start in life. Form what we learn from Chillip has your opinion of David’s mother changed at all? Were you surprised to see that Murdstone and his sister have not changed? To what extent do you find them even more odious?

In David’s return to his aunt, Mr Dick and Peggotty we see David as a more mature, reflective and wiser person. How do you think these characteristics will be helpful as the novel draws to its conclusion?

This chapter only briefly mentions Agnes, yet her presence nevertheless seems to permeate it. What do you think will occur when David and Agnes finally meet?

Chapter 60

Agnes

The title of this chapter is “Agnes” and I for one have been looking forward to the time when David and Agnes meet again. Are there many, or any, of us who do not want them to be joined together? Will David finally open his eyes to the virtues and strengths of Agnes? This chapter will reveal all.

In the beginning of the chapter we see that David, his aunt, and Mr Dick now have a settled domestic harmony. They talk about how the emigrants have settled in comfortably to their new lives and we learn that even Micawber has been paying off his “pecuniary liabilities.” Janet is now married and has returned to aunt Betsey’s service. There is only one item to be attended. Aunt Betsey asks David when he will be going to Canterbury to see Agnes. David hears echoes of his aunt saying “ Blind, blind, blind.” Aunt Betsey reports that Mr Wakefield is now a “reclaimed man” and that Agnes is “as good, as beautiful, as earnest, as disinterested, as she has always been.” To David’s inquiry whether Agnes has any lovers his aunt replies “A score.” Aunt Betsey tells David that she suspects Agnes has an attachment. She trembles when she says this. Can it be that Agnes has found someone to commit her life to since David has been out of England? The evening comes to an end with David and his aunt sitting together. Their pose is striking. Aunt Betsey has one hand over her eyes and one hand on David’s shoulder “and so we sat,” observes David, “looking into the past, without saying a word, until we parted for the night.” What a powerful line!

The beginning of this chapter draws our attention to two facts. The first is that after all the turmoil that David and his aunt have been through in recent times they have returned to the place they once were in their minds. They are now together again and a family at peace. What once was is now restored. The second fact this there is one piece of unfinished business. Can a family, any family, be whole if the two principal characters are not reunited?

Thoughts

To what extent do you find Dickens overwriting this chapter so far? Do you find it too dramatic, too melodramatic?


The next morning David rides over to visit Agnes. What will he find? What will have changed? David finds that “[e]verything was as it used to be, in the happy time.” After looking around David for a moment the door opens and there is Agnes. Agnes’ “beautiful serene eyes met [David’s] as she came towards me. She stopped and laid her hand upon her bosom, and I caught her in my arms.” David recounts to his readers how beautiful Agnes is, how good, and how much gratitude he owes her. He tries to bless her, tries to thank her and tries to tell her how much influence she has had upon him “but all my efforts were in vain. My love and joy were dumb.” What perfect lines to read. David, the very successful author, a man of words, is struck dumb in the presence of Agnes. In their following conversation David looks for conformation of where the heart Agnes resides, but she will not say. She only blushes, and then the blush fades, and presents David with a “sad smile.” What she does say is that she has “found a pleasure ...while you have been absent, in keeping every thing as it used to be when we were children. For we were happy then, I think.” To this, David replies “Heaven knows we were!”

Thoughts

This chapter demands the reader’s patience. I think we all (?) want Agnes and David to pledge their love for one another. Do you find Dickens’s method of drawing out the inevitable to be satisfying, infuriating, or too melodramatic?


David and Agnes dine with Mr Wickfield and David becomes even more aware of Agnes’s character. As she stood behind her father during the Heep days, so she has waited through the years of David’s wandering heart. Wickfield recounts to David the story of himself and Agnes’s mother. We learn how Wickfield’s father-in-law was opposed for the marriage. We learn that Agnes’ mother was a kind woman but was broken by the harsh treatment of her own father. Agnes’ mother died when Agnes was two weeks old. This background information further explains to David how deep the faith and love of Agnes is. Perhaps David even now realizes where the patience of Agnes comes from.

David pledges to Agnes that he has no plans to go way again. He recounts the night that Agnes descended the stairs to tell him that Dora had passed. David recounts how he still recalls how Agnes had pointed upward and that action has led him to believe that Agnes has been ever directing him to higher things. David tells Agnes that for the rest of his life he will be guided by her as he has already been guided through the darkness of the past. During this time Agnes has been plying the piano softly. And now for a look back to the Browne illustration for chapter 53. In it you will see Agnes and David at the time of Dora’s death. At the centre bottom is a guitar with broken strings. Traditionally, lyres and guitars are symbolic of romance love in paintings. In this illustration, the strings being broken suggest the end of music, the end of life. Ah, but here, in this chapter, we have Agnes playing music. For the rest of the chapter Agnes continues to play. As Agnes points out neither she or David had mothers when they were children. As David rides home that evening “the wind goes by [him] like a restless memory.” The chapter ends with David commenting “I might yet love her with a love unknown on earth, and tell her what the strife had been within me when I loved her here.”

Thoughts


Well, no proposal yet. Will there be one?

Why do you think Dickens again mentions the night that Dora died to the reader?

To what extent could the music that Agnes is playing be seen in any way as a harbinger of events yet to come?

Chapter 61

I am shown two interesting Penitents

This chapter opens with David informing his readers that he intends to tell his story and not the “delights, anxieties, and triumphs, of my art.” “If the books I have written be of any worth,” we are told, “they will supply the rest.” I find these opening words fascinating and tinged with both magic and playfulness on the part of Dickens. Throughout the novel we have discovered and discussed how the novel contains much of Dickens’s own life in events, locations, and people. The novel is fiction, but it is liberally sprinkled with fact. Is the writer David Copperfield telling his readers that he does not and will not discuss “his art” in his books as Charles Dickens, to an extent, has in this novel? An interesting conundrum.

Thoughts


Are you enjoying the interesting and somewhat coy manner in which the novel has been unfolding?

We learn that the relationship between Traddles and David continues to grow stronger and that Sophy is helping Tom in his career. Traddles praises Sophy by declaring her “the dearest girl! The way she manages this place; her punctuality, domestic knowledge, economy, and order; her cheerfulness.” Is this Dickens subtlety contrasting Dora to Sophy? Could this be Dickens subtlety pointing David towards the merits of Agnes? I think so. David does say that he sees Traddles and Sophy as “two of the happiest people in the world.” David has much to learn and Traddles and Sophy are one of his north stars. Sometime an awareness found in others is an awareness to soon be found in the self. I think we are getting close to good news for David. But first ...

As Traddles and David reminisce their conversation turns to their early school days and Creakle their old schoolmaster. He is now a magistrate who no doubt got the position not through competence but by favour or politics. Creakle has invited David to visit him and see how the latest in prison discipline works and so off David and Tom go to visit the prison. I canker help but smile at the concept that Creakle has just changed from being in charge of one form of prison to yet another. For his part, David Copperfield channels Dickens’s own opinion that if an industrial school or a house of refuge for the deserving old was built rather than an enormous prison how much better society would be. Here again we hear the author’s voice through the narrator’s words.

Creakle is very eager to show David and Tom the success of the prison system and how it manages to produce a model prisoner. I feel a drum roll is in order here ... one prisoner is none other than Uriah Heep. He immediately recognizes David and Tom and assures everyone that he is very humble and comfortable in prison and has finally seen the follies of his ways. The next prisoner to be put on display as an example of Creakle’s prison successes is none other than Littimer. He too claims he clearly sees the follies of the past. Between the words and claims of humility, found knowledge, and veiled comments about the links of Heep and Littimer to David and Tom I found this part of the chapter very funny. We even learn that it was Miss Mowcher who caught Littimer and held him for the authorities after he stole £250 from his young master.

This chapter ends with David and Tom realizing that both Heep and Littimer are crooked and will remain crooked. The likes of Creakle will continue to be pompous and yet naive and Mrs Mowcher has been proven to be a good and honest person. Dickens is wrapping up this novel in a quickening pace. Do you feel he is rushing to the end too quickly?

Thoughts

This is another chapter of cleaning up and bringing together the loose ends of more characters in the novel. Heep, Littimer, Mrs Mowcher, and Creakle’s lives have been brought up to the present. The reader is now able to project their future. To what extent are you happy with how Dickens has shown a glimpse of the future of these characters? If not, how would you have rounded off their narrative arcs?

I also had a lot of fun about Heep and Littimer. When he started about prisoner 27, I already thought 'well, I bet it's Heep. Or Littimer, since he's to be wrapped up too, but probably Heep.' And then came prisoner 28, and I thought 'well, probably both then'. And of course those men were too dim to realise they were conned by both ot them xD

And yes, I was inwardly shouting to David, 'tell her you love her already, and stop with the sister if you want to have a chance, ewwww!' Especially since she socially isn't allowed to tell him (it happened, but usually not by perfect angels like Agnes) and if he looks at her like a sister, of course she's not taking the chance of being rejected.

Hi Jantine

Yes. : -). It’s not often I want to shout at a character in a novel but David is an exception.

Perhaps this is an indication of how fully invested we were in the story even though the protagonist made us want to pull out our hair at times.

Yes, I was glad to see the wrap up with Heep and Littimer, but I would like to see that they are both being transported. I am somewhat confused if they will be or if they will remain in the prison. Also, what happens to Mrs. Heep? I feel somewhat sorry for her.

I am also awaiting the proposal which I expect in the next chapter or two. After all, we only have three left.

Hi Bobbie

I think Heep and Littimer are the true wardens of the jail. They seem to be in charge of pulling the wool over the eyes of Creakle.

As for Mrs Heep I think she has enough of her son’s traits to survive in the future. I wonder how she would stack up against Miss Murdstone if they ever met? :-)

Yes. David better hurry up. He is indeed running out of chapters.

Mrs. Heep and Miss Murdstone, hmm, I have to think about that. Do you think we could get Uriah married to Miss Murdstone and see what happens between the Heeps and Murdstones? Once he is out of prison of course. I had been thinking of marrying Murdstone to Rosa Dartle a little while ago.

Peter wrote: "I have read David Copperfield before. This is the first time, however, that this chapter has not left me somewhat snarky and rolling my eyes at Dickens for overwriting David’s emotional situation. Perhaps I’m seeing my own emotional follies of youth more clearly. Who knows? We know that David loves Agnes. What do you think Agnes’s feelings are towards David? ..."

I guess I'm also past my youth, but I liked this chapter. First, I like it that David takes time to mourn Dora. They were a bad fit, but he did love and I think in the end respect her as "already formed," I think were the words. I kind of expected him to swap her out for Agnes within the month and I'm glad that didn't happen, and this chapter feels like it doesn't happen not just because that would be inappropriately soon, but because David really does need to come to terms with his loss.

Also I am kind of fascinated by the kind of bind David put himself into by being clueless about Agnes and prone to infatuations with other women: "If [Agnes] had ever loved me, then, I should hold her the more sacred; remembering the confidences I had reposed in her, her knowledge of my errant heart, the sacrifice she must have made to be my friend and sister, and the victory she had won. If she had never loved me, could I believe that she would love me now?" If she were capable of loving him, then she would have loved him from the start (because, as we ALL KNOW, Victorian women must be constant in their loves!)--and then she would have had to put that love aside when he married someone else, and who is he to dredge up all that pain again?

I am curious about what people think all these mental gymnastics say about David's own constancy. Seems to me this is kind of being played as he really loved Agnes most from the start, but he also loved Dora, but maybe kind of like Dora loved Jip, except deep enough to be terribly thrown by her death.

It kind of sounds absurd but surprisingly I find this all believable. People are complicated and can feel more than one thing at once. David's trying to sort it all out but I guess we shouldn't be surprised that love doesn't sort all that easily.

Julie wrote: "Peter wrote: "I have read David Copperfield before. This is the first time, however, that this chapter has not left me somewhat snarky and rolling my eyes at Dickens for overwriting David’s emotion..."

Hi Julie

I agree with you that people are complicated and can feel more than one thing at once. I am struggling to come to terms with David in this reading of the novel.

It has been about five years since I read this novel. In my memory, I was not as conflicted in my impression of David as I am this time around. In his question to the reader of whether he will be seen as a hero or not I have never doubted, until this reading.

In part, I think, it is because in this reading the final chapters seem to be more of an apology than an apotheosis of his own self discovery. Since we still have three chapters to go I won’t say more for now, but I do look forward to how we respond to the entire novel.

I agree that I liked David truly grieving about Dora. In my memories he immediately hopped over to Agnes, and I'm glad he didn't. I also, like Peter, am way more conflicted about David as a 'hero'. But no, I am not. While when I read this novel years ago I saw David as a kind of hero, now I simply don't. He is more of an antihero of sorts. And that is what makes him much better as a character in a novel - he is not perfect at all. Even now he is not, with these chapters being as Peter said more an apology than a grand finale of him becoming the great person he was always meant to be. He still is not that, and he seems to know. While he is infuriating and I often wanted to kick his *ahum* donkey, it has been clear that he at least tried and wished the people around him well, even if he sometimes (okay, often) was very inconsiderate at best. Unlike some people, who (tried to) put up the appearance of being good/dependable/'umble to hid them being rotten to the core.

Peter wrote: "This chapter demands the reader’s patience. I think we all (?) want Agnes and David to pledge their love for one another. Do you find Dickens’s method of drawing out the inevitable to be satisfying, infuriating, or too melodramatic?"

Mostly I am just frustrated about David being so dense:

Aunt Betsey tells David that she suspects Agnes has an attachment. She trembles when she says this.

Yes, David, because it's YOU. The attachment is YOU. Aunt Betsy has known this for years and years.

In their following conversation David looks for conformation of where the heart Agnes resides, but she will not say. She only blushes, and then the blush fades, and presents David with a “sad smile.”

Yes, David, because it's YOU. The heart resides with YOU. And Jantine is right: STOP CALLING HER "SISTER"!

I guess I am joining the shout-at-David camp.

I guess I am still either too young or too superficial, but I did again get snarky at most of these final chapters, and I found myself skipping some passages in my reading because David takes so long to get to a point that is written on the wall. And then there is all that terrible gushing, I just can't stand sentimentality.

Nevertheless, like Jantine, I think that David is a good character in a novel because there is human ambiguity in him. To be a hero, though, he would have to act more and not stand aside watching other people be tortured - like Emily, by Miss Dartle - or come to grief. He is one of the most passive Dickens characters we have - especially if you compare him to the impulsive Nicholas Nickleby or to Martin Chuzzlewit. Even Florence is more active than he, and her boundaries of doing something were very narrow since she was a woman in Victorian England.

It was probably not too satisfying to see the evil people like Creakle and Murdstone going on and doing their mischief, but that is probably the way the cookie crumbles in real life. In that respect, David Copperfield is more mature than Dickens's earlier novels, where everyone got their just deserts.

"I walked up to where he was sitting, and said, 'How do you do, Mr. Chilip?'"

Chapter 59

Fred Barnard

1872 Household Edition

Text Illustrated:

Little Mr. Chillip the Doctor, to whose good offices I was indebted in the very first chapter of this history, sat reading a newspaper in the shadow of an opposite corner. He was tolerably stricken in years by this time; but, being a mild, meek, calm little man, had worn so easily, that I thought he looked at that moment just as he might have looked when he sat in our parlour, waiting for me to be born.

Mr. Chillip had left Blunderstone six or seven years ago, and I had never seen him since. He sat placidly perusing the newspaper, with his little head on one side, and a glass of warm sherry negus at his elbow. He was so extremely conciliatory in his manner that he seemed to apologize to the very newspaper for taking the liberty of reading it.

I walked up to where he was sitting, and said, ‘How do you do, Mr. Chillip?’

He was greatly fluttered by this unexpected address from a stranger, and replied, in his slow way, ‘I thank you, sir, you are very good. Thank you, sir. I hope YOU are well.’

‘You don’t remember me?’ said I.

‘Well, sir,’ returned Mr. Chillip, smiling very meekly, and shaking his head as he surveyed me, ‘I have a kind of an impression that something in your countenance is familiar to me, sir; but I couldn’t lay my hand upon your name, really.’

‘And yet you knew it, long before I knew it myself,’ I returned.

‘Did I indeed, sir?’ said Mr. Chillip. ‘Is it possible that I had the honour, sir, of officiating when—?’

‘Yes,’ said I.

‘Dear me!’ cried Mr. Chillip. ‘But no doubt you are a good deal changed since then, sir?’

‘Probably,’ said I.

‘Well, sir,’ observed Mr. Chillip, ‘I hope you’ll excuse me, if I am compelled to ask the favour of your name?’

On my telling him my name, he was really moved. He quite shook hands with me—which was a violent proceeding for him, his usual course being to slide a tepid little fish-slice, an inch or two in advance of his hip, and evince the greatest discomposure when anybody grappled with it. Even now, he put his hand in his coat-pocket as soon as he could disengage it, and seemed relieved when he had got it safe back.

Traddles and the Girls

Chapter 59

Sol Eytinge Jr.

1867 Diamond Edition

Commentary:

Sol Eytinge has chosen a very different scene of domestic bliss in a study of Tommy Traddles and his extended family, albeit a synthetic scene that incorporates his mother-in-law (left) before the Crewler family hearth that the marriage has deprived of Mrs. Crewler's oldest daughter.

For the mid-Victorian, the reward for a virtuous life was domestic bliss— hearth, home, and family. Consequently, Eytinge in describing Traddles and his sisters-in-law is demonstrating the power of poetic justice in the lives of Dickens's characters. The moment realized would appear to be in Traddles' reporting to Copperfield about his lifestyle resulting from his marriage six weeks before to Miss Sophy Crewler, "the best of all girls":

"And in short, my dear friend," said I, "you feel as blest as you deserve to feel!"

O, that's your partiality," laughed Traddles. "But, indeed, I am in a most enviable state. I work hard, and read law insatiably. I get up at five every morning, and don't mind it at all. I hide the girls in the daytime and make merry with them in the evening. And I assure you I am quite sorry that they are going home on Tuesday, which is the day before the first day of Michaelmas Term. But here," said Traddles, and speaking aloud, "are the girls! Mr. Copperfield, Miss Crewler — Miss Sarah — Miss Louisa — Margaret and Lucy!"

They were a perfect nest of roses; they looked cso wholesome and fresh. They were all pretty, and Miss Caroline was very handsome; but there was a loving, cheerful, fireside quality in Sophy's bright looks, which was better than that, and which assured me that my friend had chosen well.

Presumably the woman sitting aloof from all this youthful boisterousness is Mrs. Crewler, while the young woman immediately behind Traddles is Sophy, eldest daughter of Devonshire curate the Reverend Horace Crewler, a character whom Dickens may have based loosely on Jane Austen's Mr. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice.

The final illustration's horizontal orientation and group composition both distinguish it from the rest of Eytinge's character studies from The Personal History of David Copperfield and point to a flaw in his "ornamental" or "incidental" approach to illustrating the great mid-century novel that established the first-person confessional as one of the nineteenth-century novel's dominant strategies, in line with Jane Eyre. With the exception of "David's Bargain", Eytinge's other illustrations are generally not calculated to conjure up a precise moment; rather, they synthesize narrative-pictorial elements to present an appreciation of a character, or (more often in the series) a pair of related characters, such as Mrs. Heep and her devious son in the fifteenth illustration, "Uriah Heep and His Mother". Here, instead of bringing the narrative-pictorial sequence to a climax with some depiction of the resolution, Eytinge feels obliged to follow through with his scheme to analyze the last major character of the story — the kind-hearted, true friend from David's school days who proves instrumental in the downfall of Uriah Heep and the restoration of Betsey Trotwood's fortunes.

"For an instant, a distressful shawdow crossed her face, but, even in the start it gave me, it was gone."

Chapter 60

Fred Barnard

1872 Household Edition

Text Illustrated:

She put her hand in mine, and told me she was proud of me, and of what I said; although I praised her very far beyond her worth. Then she went on softly playing, but without removing her eyes from me. ‘Do you know, what I have heard tonight, Agnes,’ said I, strangely seems to be a part of the feeling with which I regarded you when I saw you first—with which I sat beside you in my rough school-days?’

‘You knew I had no mother,’ she replied with a smile, ‘and felt kindly towards me.’

‘More than that, Agnes, I knew, almost as if I had known this story, that there was something inexplicably gentle and softened, surrounding you; something that might have been sorrowful in someone else (as I can now understand it was), but was not so in you.’

She softly played on, looking at me still.

‘Will you laugh at my cherishing such fancies, Agnes?’

‘No!’

‘Or at my saying that I really believe I felt, even then, that you could be faithfully affectionate against all discouragement, and never cease to be so, until you ceased to live?—-Will you laugh at such a dream?’

‘Oh, no! Oh, no!’

For an instant, a distressful shadow crossed her face; but, even in the start it gave me, it was gone; and she was playing on, and looking at me with her own calm smile.

As I rode back in the lonely night, the wind going by me like a restless memory, I thought of this, and feared she was not happy. I was not happy; but, thus far, I had faithfully set the seal upon the Past, and, thinking of her, pointing upward, thought of her as pointing to that sky above me, where, in the mystery to come, I might yet love her with a love unknown on earth, and tell her what the strife had been within me when I loved her here.

I am shewn two interesting penitents

Chapter 61

Phiz

Commentary:

The first illustration for the nineteenth (double) monthly number, issued in November 1850, completes the narrative-pictorial sequence that one might entitle "Uriah Heep's Progress" from arch hypocrisy to rebellious humility to boldfaced fraud, punishment and social ostracism, and, ultimately, further duplicity. For this first November illustration, Phiz focuses on the figures of two supposedly reformed offenders called "Twenty Seven" and "Twenty Eight," the numbers assigned by the penal institution to the long-headed Uriah Heep and the suave James Littimer. According to J. A. Hammerton (1910), the illustration of the undiluted roguery portrayed by these deceptive egoists may be associated with the following passage:

Traddles and I beheld in the converted Number Twenty-Seven, Uriah Heep! Twenty-eight was Mr. Littimer, who walked fourth reading a good book!

In fact, Phiz has utilized the following fuller passage that Hammerton has reduced to its essentials:

But, at last, we came to the door of his cell; and Mr. Creakle, looking through a little hole in it, reported to us, in a state of the greatest admiration, that he was reading a Hymn Book.

There was such a rush of heads immediately, to see Number Twenty Seven reading his Hymn Book, that the little hole was blocked up, six or seven heads deep. To remedy this inconvenience, and give us an opportunity of conversing with Twenty seven in all his purity, Mr. Creakle directed the door of the cell to be unlocked, and Twenty Seven to be invited out into the passage. This was done; and whom, should Traddles and I then behold, to our amazement, in this converted Number Twenty Seven, but Uriah Heep! . . . .

Twenty Seven stood in the midst of us, as if he felt himself the principal object of merit in a highly meritorious museum. That we, the neophytes, might have an excess of light shining upon us all at once, orders were given to let out Twenty Eight.

I had been so much astonished already, that I only felt a kind of resigned wonder when Mr. Littimer walked forth, reading a good book!

Thus, Phiz has collapsed two textual moments into one scene, and had Uriah pocket the hymnal to distinguish him from Littimer (right), reading a rather thin Bible (perhaps just that tome of suffering and forgiveness, the New Testament). Neither "penitent" is dressed in prison uniform, but, perhaps merely for the sake of visual continuity, wear the swallowtail coats and dark waistcoats associated with middle-class respectability. Last seen in "Steerforth and Mr. Mell", the sadistic schoolmaster Mr. Creakle has unexpectedly reappeared, just as in other Dickens novels, characters from earlier in the narrative have a habit of turning up later in the story, often to effect a plot resolution; he is the somewhat rotund, benign-looking member of the establishment standing immediately beside David Copperfield. The only other youthful face in the congregation, seen immediately over Copperfield's shoulder, must be that of Traddles. On the extreme right of the plate stand the two uniformed turnkeys (not actually mentioned in the text), whose knowing looks exchanged with each other suggest a more normative response to this theatre of contrition, with the lead actors making a palpable hit, if one may judge by the appreciative smiles and gestures of the prison commissioners, not delineated in any detail by Dickens and therefore more or less cut from the same cloth in this illustration of disinterested establishmentarian public benevolence. Our delight in the scene is that the persuasive rogues have so easily deceived the prison governors.

Mr. Creakle, former headmaster at Salem House, has graduated to another title and another post of responsibility: as a Middlesex Magistrate, he finds himself on the board of governors for a "solitary system" penitentiary which Dickens has presumably modelled on Pentonville Prison (a large penal institution located near Holloway, in the County of Middlesex), functioning on the modern and "highly scientific" principle of "solitary confinement" since its opening in August 1842. The two "interesting penitents" whom Creakle extols to Traddles and Copperfield earlier in the sixty-first chapter, "I Am Shown Two Interesting Penitents," as worthy of inspecting as exemplars of "the only true system of prison discipline" turn out to be none other than Uriah Heep and Steerforth's gentleman's gentleman, Littimer. Guilty of crimes other than those with which David the narrator has already associated them, Prisoners No. 27 and 28 have been incarcerated for bank fraud and robbery respectively. Phiz has made the pose of the one to reflect that of the other, just as their statements of contrition and confessions of their "follies" seem to have been jointly developed. Both hypocrites, too, develop the notion that they are the ones who have been wronged, and that Copperfield, Traddles, and Mr. Wickfield should bear the responsibility for their misdeeds; but, of course, the pious frauds make much of uttering their professions of forgiveness, striking exactly the desired effect for the sober-sided, silk-hatted Board of Commissioners. Traddles and Copperfield, centre, are the only two among the distinguished guests who appear unimpressed by this cant and outward gestures of spiritual reform.

original sketch

Tristram wrote: "I guess I am still either too young or too superficial, but I did again get snarky at most of these final chapters, and I found myself skipping some passages in my reading because David takes so lo..."

You're not too young.

I really did enjoy being brought up to date on everyone in the finally chapters, but a few of the people I had almost forgotten. It was fun to reread but there were sections that were rather tiresome. I am glad I reread it with the group, it adds so much. I have been waiting to finish before I watched a couple of movie/TV versions. We started a BBC mini series last night, the one with Daniel Radcliffe and Bob Hoskins, very good so far. Oh, and Maggie Smith, I love her. Then I plan to watch the latest one with Dev Patel, who I really like.

Bobbie wrote: "I really did enjoy being brought up to day on everyone in the finally chapters, but a few of the people I had almost forgotten. It was fun to reread but there were sections that were rather tiresom..."

Yes, I want to watch that new Copperfield now as well. Am counting on some good editing. ;)

Kim wrote: "You're not too young."

Young at heart.

From The Life of Charles Dickens by John Forster:

What has to be said hereafter of those writings generally, will properly restrict what is said here, as in previous instances, mainly to personal illustration. The Copperfield disclosures formerly made will for ever connect the book with the author's individual story; but too much has been assumed, from those revelations, of a full identity of Dickens with his hero, and of a supposed intention that his own character as well as parts of his career should be expressed in the narrative. It is right to warn the reader as to this. He can judge for himself how far the childish experiences are likely to have given the turn to Dickens's genius; whether their bitterness had so burnt into his nature, as, in the hatred of oppression, the revolt against abuse of power, and the war with injustice under every form displayed in his earliest books, to have reproduced itself only; and to what extent mere compassion for his own childhood may account for the strange fascination always exerted over him by child-suffering and sorrow. But, many as are the resemblances in Copperfield's adventures to portions of those of Dickens, and often as reflections occur to David which no one intimate with Dickens could fail to recognize as but the reproduction of his, it would be the greatest mistake to imagine anything like a complete identity of the fictitious novelist with the real one, beyond the Hungerford scenes; or to suppose that the youth, who then received his first harsh schooling in life, came out of it as little harmed or hardened as David did. The language of the fiction reflects only faintly the narrative of the actual fact; and the man whose character it helped to form was expressed not less faintly in the impulsive impressionable youth, incapable of resisting the leading of others, and only disciplined into self-control by the later griefs of his entrance into manhood. Here was but another proof how thoroughly Dickens understood his calling, and that to weave fact with fiction unskillfully would be only to make truth less true.

Kim wrote: "From The Life of Charles Dickens by John Forster:

What has to be said hereafter of those writings generally, will properly restrict what is said here, as in previous instances, mainly to personal ..."

Yes. The fact and fiction and fact-in-fiction or fiction-in-fact puzzle is endlessly confusing - just like my observations.

I often wonder if Dickens had written an autobiography how much of it we would accept or believe. The hunt and the speculation is often more intriguing and interesting than the facts.

In an 1849 letter to the reader of her publisher, Charlotte Brontë commented:

"I have read David Copperfield; it seems to me very good—admirable in some parts. You said it had affinity to Jane Eyre: it has—now and then—only what an advantage has Dickens in his varied knowledge of men and things!"

Leo Tolstoy judged it to be:

"the best work of the best English novelist"

Franz Kafka wrote in his diary in 1917, that the first chapter of his novel Amerika had been inspired by David Copperfield.

Henry James said that as a child, he had been moved to tears by the novel. He was hidden under a table, listening, as it was read aloud in the family.

W. Somerset Maugham also saw it as a "great" work. Although he thought the character of David to be rather weak, he loved the depiction of Mr. Micawber:

"The most remarkable of them is, of course, Mr Micawber. He never fails you."

In a letter to Hugh Walpole in 1936, Virginia Woolf said that she was re-reading it for the sixth time:

"I'd forgotten how magnificent it is."

Nigella Lawson:

I came to Dickens relatively late in life, but in a way, I think that's the best time. When you're a child, all you see is the plum-pudding characterization and twisting-and-turning storylines, and though that is part of the juicy pleasure of Dickens, you need to be an adult to get the heartbreaking measure of his genius. And nothing shows that more, for me, than David Copperfield. It's the fullest, most breathtakingly truthful story of life—not for nothing was it Freud's favorite novel.

Leah Price, Professor of English, Harvard University

“Of all my books,” confessed Dickens in the preface, “I like this the best. It will be easily believed that I am a fond parent to every child of my fancy, and that no one can ever love that family as dearly as I love them. But, like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is DAVID COPPERFIELD.”

David Copperfield fits the bill for a “best of” contest because it’s all about who’s first, who’s favorite, who’s primary. It’s one of Dickens’s few novels to be narrated entirely in the first person; it’s the only one whose narrator’s initials reverse Charles Dickens’s, and whose plot resembles the story that Dickens told friends about his own family and his own career. (But Dickens takes the novelist’s privilege of improving on the facts, notably by killing off David’s father before the novel opens in order to prevent him from racking up as many debts as Dickens senior did over the course of his inconveniently long life.)

That means that it’s also one of the few Dickens novels dominated by one character’s story and one character’s voice (This stands in contrast to Bleak House, say, which shuttles back and forth between two alternating narrators, one first-person and past-tense, the other third-person and couched in the present). As a result David Copperfield is less structurally complex, but also more concentrated, with an intensity of focus that can sometimes feel claustrophobic or monomaniacal but never loses its grip on a reader’s brain and heart. Its single-mindedness makes it more readable than a novel like Pickwick Papers, where the title character is little more than a human clothesline on which a welter of equally vivid minor characters are hung. Yet at the same time, it’s a novel about how hard it is to be first: Can you come first in your mother’s heart after she marries a wicked stepfather? And can your own second wife come first for you after her predecessor dies?

On David’s birthday, he tells us, “I went into the bar of a public-house, and said to the landlord: ‘What is your best — your very best — ale a glass?’ ‘Twopence-halfpenny,’ says the landlord, ‘is the price of the Genuine Stunning ale.'” David Copperfield is the genuine stunning: there’s nothing quite like it, in Dickens’s work or out.

Maia McAleavey, Assistant Professor of English, Boston College

“Of course I was in love with little Em’ly,” David Copperfield assures the reader of his childhood love. “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.” Loving a person or a book (and “David Copperfield” conveniently appears to be both) may have nothing at all to do with bestness. The kind of judicious weighing that superlative requires lies quite apart from the easy way the reader falls in love with David Copperfield.

To my mind, David is far more loveable than Pip (Great Expectations’ fictional autobiographer), and better realized than Esther (Bleak House’s partial narrator). And it does help to have a first-person guide on Dickens’s exuberantly sprawling journeys. David, like Dickens, is a writer, and steers the reader through the novel as an unearthly blend of character, narrator, and author. This is not always a comforting effect. “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,” David announces in his unsettling opening sentence.

Here he is, at once a young man thoroughly soused after a night of boozing and a comically estranging narrative voice: “Owing to some confusion in the dark, the door was gone. I was feeling for it in the window-curtains…We went down-stairs, one behind another. Near the bottom, somebody fell, and rolled down. Somebody else said it was Copperfield. I was angry at that false report, until, finding myself on my back in the passage, I began to think there might be some foundation for it.”

Is the novel nostalgic, sexist, and long? Yes, yes, and yes. But in its pages, Dickens also frames each of these qualities as problems. He meditates on the production, reproduction, and preservation of memories; he surrounds his typically perfect female characters, the child-bride Dora and the Angel-in-the-House Agnes, with the indomitable matriarch Betsey Trotwood and the sexlessly maternal nurse Peggotty; and he lampoons the melodramatically longwinded Micawber while devising thousands of ways to keep the reader hooked. If you haven’t yet found your Dickensian first love, David’s your man.

Kim wrote: "Leah Price, Professor of English, Harvard University

“Of all my books,” confessed Dickens in the preface, “I like this the best. It will be easily believed that I am a fond parent to every child o..."

Yes. This observation makes sense. I still struggle with the fact I found DC not as satisfying as my earlier reads of it. Not exactly sure why.

On a different note (and novel) enjoyed what was said about BH. With DC and BH we are truly in a glorious period of Dickens’s writing life.

Maia McAleavey mentions the drinking binge David has undertaken, and coming to think of it, I find this one of my favourite episodes in David's life because it makes him more human in that we see that on his way through adolescence he sometimes took a wrong turn and learned from it. I don't know, however, about his being more likeable than Pip because there is a streak of passiveness in his character that makes him prone to sins of omission. I cannot forget and forgive the scene in which he allows Miss Dartle to berate and well-nigh physically attack Emily - on the weak pretext that it should be her uncle who first speaks to her. I am still in two minds about David.

I really agree about that Miss Dartle episode. I really hated that.
As for Pip since he was brought up, I really prefer him to David but I really need to reread that but will be waiting until the group gets to that one. But, as I said somewhere, I really love Great Expectations.

Bobbie wrote: "I really agree about that Miss Dartle episode. I really hated that.
As for Pip since he was brought up, I really prefer him to David but I really need to reread that but will be waiting until the ..."

Yes, I too like Pip more than David.

I can't remember right now what my feelings for Pip are. I guess I'll find out when we get there again.

Tristram wrote: "Maia McAleavey mentions the drinking binge David has undertaken, and coming to think of it, I find this one of my favourite episodes in David's life because it makes him more human in that we see t..."

I liked that drinking binge chapter too. I'm not sure whether I like David or Pip better, but I do think David enjoyed his life a lot more than Pip did, and it was fun to see that vicariously. Even when he's suffering through Dora he has a sense of humor about it.

It's really hard to say which one of the two I like more as a person: David is so passive at times, but Pip is growing more and more arrogant and snobbish in the course of his social rise, and his attitude to Magwitch is grossly unpalatable. As a literary character, however, I find Pip much more interesting because he shows what can happen to people with good intentions when they have adopted a crooked perspective.