David Copperfield
A boy who loses almost everyone, and finds out, slowly, who was faithful all along
Page 1
David Copperfield was born at Blunderstone Rookery, a quiet brick house in Suffolk, six months after his father had died. His mother, Clara, was young and gentle, and the two of them were looked after by a round, warm-hearted servant named Peggotty, who loved David as if he were her own. For the first years of his life, David was happy there — long evenings by the fire, his mother's soft voice reading to him, Peggotty's arms always ready. Then one evening a tall, dark, handsome gentleman named Mr. Murdstone began to call on his mother, walking her home from church, bringing her flowers. Before long they were married, and Mr. Murdstone and his hard, grim sister came to live at Blunderstone Rookery too. The house grew cold and silent and strict. Peggotty held David's hand tighter than before, and did not say why.
Page 2
Not long after, Peggotty took David on a visit to Yarmouth, to see her own family. They came at last to a strange and wonderful house: an old black boat, long since too old for the sea, turned upside down and fitted with a chimney and a door, standing right on the sand. Inside lived Peggotty's brother, Mr. Peggotty, a big, kind fisherman; his nephew Ham, strong and gentle; a little girl called Little Em'ly, whom David thought the prettiest creature he had ever seen; and an old woman named Mrs. Gummidge, who sat by the fire. David had never seen anywhere so snug or so happy. He and Em'ly ran along the beach together, picking up shells, while the grown-ups sat talking by the fire inside the dark, cosy boat. For a little while, far from Blunderstone, David forgot every unhappy thing.
Page 3
Mr. Murdstone decided David was too much trouble at home, and sent him away to Salem House, a gloomy school near London. The headmaster, Mr. Creakle, was a fierce, red-faced man who loved his cane and made the boys afraid of him. Worse still, on David's very first day, Creakle had a sign hung on David's back that read he was a boy who bit — a punishment left over from a quarrel with Mr. Murdstone, long before. David felt he would never make a friend there. But one boy changed everything: James Steerforth, older, handsome and clever, the most admired boy in the school. Steerforth took David under his wing, protected him from the worst of the bullying, and gave him a nickname David never forgot. It was the beginning of a friendship that would follow David for years — though not always for good.
Page 4
Then came the worst year of David's childhood. His mother died, and Mr. Murdstone, with no more use for him, took him from school and sent him to work in London, at a wine warehouse called Murdstone and Grinby's. David, only ten years old, spent his days washing and labeling old bottles beside rough boys, for six shillings a week, with no one in the world who seemed to care what became of him. He lodged with a family named Micawber — Mr. Micawber was always in debt, always cheerful, always certain that something would turn up, and he became David's great friend in that lonely time. When the Micawbers were finally taken to debtors' prison and then left London to try their luck elsewhere, David could bear the warehouse no longer. He decided, quite alone, that he would run away to find the only relative he had ever heard of — a great-aunt in Dover.
Page 5
David walked all the way from London to Dover — six long days, robbed of his money and his box along the way, sleeping rough, living on what little he could sell or beg. He arrived ragged, filthy and starving, and asked for a woman he had only ever heard his mother mention: his great-aunt, Betsey Trotwood. He found her in her garden, in the middle of chasing a donkey off her beloved green lawn, shouting for her lodger to help her. David stepped forward and told her, trembling, who he was. Miss Betsey stared at him for a long moment — then took him inside, fed him, bathed him, and let him stay. She lived with a gentle, muddled lodger named Mr. Dick, who flew kites and could not finish a single piece of writing without King Charles's head creeping into it. For the first time since his mother died, David had a home.
Page 6
At Dover, Aunt Betsey sent David to school in Canterbury, where he lodged with a lawyer named Mr. Wickfield and his daughter Agnes, a calm, steady girl who became David's dearest friend. In Mr. Wickfield's office worked a clerk named Uriah Heep, a thin young man who called himself 'umble' at every turn while quietly working his way into control of Wickfield's business and his debts. Over the years that followed, Heep's power over the house grew until he even dared to hope Agnes herself might be forced to marry him. It was Mr. Micawber — of all people, taken on as Heep's own clerk — who finally uncovered the truth: years of falsified accounts and forged signatures, all of Heep's doing. In Wickfield's own office, Micawber stood up and read out every fraud, paper by paper, until Heep's humble mask fell away and his cheating was laid bare for everyone to see.
Page 7
When he was grown, David was articled to a proctor named Mr. Spenlow, to train as a lawyer at Doctors' Commons in London. At Mr. Spenlow's house in Norwood, David met his daughter, Dora — small, pretty, and utterly charming — and fell hopelessly, helplessly in love with her at once. He thought of nothing else. He courted her through long afternoons in her father's garden, and after many months of longing, Dora agreed to marry him. Mr. Spenlow died suddenly before he ever truly approved the match, but at last David and Dora were married, and set up a little house of their own in London. Dora was a loving, laughing wife, though she never quite learned how to keep house or manage money — David loved her for it all the same, even as he began, quietly, to wish she understood him a little better.
Page 8
Years later, David returned to Yarmouth just as a terrible storm broke over the coast. Out at sea, a ship was being torn apart on a sandbank, close enough to shore that the whole village gathered on the beach to watch, helpless against the wind and the waves. David realized, with a terrible shock, that his old friend James Steerforth was aboard that ship. Ham, who had grown into a strong and brave young fisherman, tied a rope about himself and went out into the crashing surf again and again to try to save the men on the wreck. On his last attempt, a great wave took the mast down, and both Ham and Steerforth were lost to the sea. By the time the storm passed, the two of them — the loyal fisherman and the charming schoolfriend who had done his family such harm — were found together on the sand, side by side, their quarrel ended forever.
Page 9
After Dora's death, grief-stricken, David left England and traveled abroad for nearly three years, trying to find some peace. He wandered through Switzerland, among its great quiet mountains, taking long walks and thinking of all he had lost and all he had learned. Agnes wrote to him faithfully the whole time, steady and warm letters that reminded him, gently, of the better part of himself — the part that had always tried to be good, and had always failed when he let his own wishes run ahead of his judgment. Sitting alone above a Swiss valley one bright evening, reading one of her letters again, David understood at last what he had never let himself see before: that Agnes had been the truest friend of his whole life, and that what he felt for her was not friendship at all, but love. He resolved to go home and tell her so.
Page 10
David went home and told Agnes everything in his heart, and found, to his joy and his lasting wonder, that she had loved him all along, quietly, for years, through every mistake he had made. They were married at last, in the same quiet way they had lived — simply, and surrounded by the people who had always loved them best. Aunt Betsey still kept her cottage above the cliffs at Dover, her lawn still guarded fiercely against every donkey that wandered near it. Peggotty, old now but just as round and warm as ever, came often to see them, and still called David 'Davy' as she always had. Of all the people David had known — the cruel and the kind, the false and the true — it was Agnes who had been there from the very start, pointing, as she always did, upward.
About this story
- Audience: kids (ages 6–12)
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