David Copperfield
by Charles Dickens (1850)
Penguin Classics (2004)
974 pp

It’s probably been five or six years ago now, but I remember one evening chatting with Paul Wilson, co-host of The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast, about Dickens. I told him that I hadn’t read him for years and wasn’t sure I ever would again, feeling like maybe I knew what Dickens was about based on the few books of his I’d read (only A Christmas Carol, A Tale of Two Cities, and Our Mutual Friend at the time) as well as his reputation. Paul said I should at least give David Copperfield a try, and, feeling encouraged, I said I would. I went out that evening and bought a copy. It was only then that I realized David Copperfield was one of his big ones, and so, no longer feeling the timing was just right, I set it aside. Well, last month Paul reminded me of my promise, and so I pulled it off the shelf and began. It hit me just right.

I knew almost exactly nothing about the book when I read its first lines:

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.

What we have is the eponymous narrator’s autobiography (which, I’ve seen, takes some bits and pieces from Dickens’s own life story). And sinking into Copperfield’s account of his own birth, I was captivated when he wrote, “I was a posthumous child,” and then, with haunting beauty, described his father’s grave:

My father’s eyes had closed upon the light of this world six months, when mine opened on it. There is something strange to me, even now, in the reflection that he never saw me; and something stranger yet in the shadowy remembrance that I have of my first childish associations with his white grave-stone in the churchyard, and of the indefinable compassion I used to feel for it lying out alone there in the dark night, when our little parlour was warm and bright with fire and candle, and the doors of our house were — almost cruelly, it seemed to me sometimes — bolted and locked against it.

I knew then, in the first few pages of Chapter 1: My Birth, that this would be a special read. And so over the last month and a half I read at least a chapter per day. While I enjoyed the plot and the characters immensely, what stood out to me was how, again and again, I was struck by shocking movement of time, how memories, even of the distant past, resonate in the present, even while whole years drift drift speedily and unremembered into the past. I loved it when Copperfield would inject his present self into the narrative flow, bringing the past right into the present. For example, here is Copperfield recalling his past through a series of images that have the feel of being right now:

And now I see the outside of our house, with the latticed bedroom-windows standing open to let in the sweet-smelling air, and the ragged old rooks’-nests still dangling in the elm-trees at the bottom of the front garden. Now I am in the garden at the back, beyond the yard where the empty pigeon-house and dog-kennel are — a very preserve of butterflies, as I remember it, with a high fence, and a gate and padlock; where the fruit clusters on the trees, riper and richer than fruit has ever been since, in any other garden, and where my mother gathers some in a basket, while I stand by, bolting furtive gooseberries, and trying to look unmoved. A great wind rises, and the summer is gone in a moment. We are playing in the winter twilight, dancing about the parlour. When my mother is out of breath and rests herself in an elbow-chair, I watch her winding her bright curls round her fingers, and straitening her waist, and nobody knows better than I do that she likes to look so well, and is proud of being so pretty.

Amidst this sense of the past being present there is, inevitably, the terrible epiphany that the past is irretrievably past, despite how it might feel. Here is another series of images that, to me, underlines how fleeting it all can be:

Once again, let me pause upon a memorable period of my life. Let me stand aside, to see the phantoms of those days go by me, accompanying the shadow of myself, in dim procession.

Weeks, months, seasons, pass along. They seem little more than a summer day and a winter evening. Now, the Common where I walk with Dora is all in bloom, a field of bright gold; and now the unseen heather lies in mounds and bunches underneath a covering of snow. In a breath, the river that flows through our Sunday walks is sparkling in the summer sun, is ruffled by the winter wind, or thickened with drifting heaps of ice. Faster than ever river ran towards the sea, it flashes, darkens, and rolls away.

And please allow me to leave another extended passage, this one to show just how concise Dickens can be. Yes: Dickens :: concise. I love these five paragraphs in which our narrator recounts an entire relationship with a youthful crush. Again, it feels so immediate, underscoring how quickly it slipped into the past.

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

Miss Shepherd is a boarder at the Misses Nettingalls’ establishment. I adore Miss Shepherd. She is a little girl, in a spencer, with a round face and curly flaxen hair. The Misses Nettingalls’ young ladies come to the Cathedral too. I cannot look upon my book, for I must look upon Miss Shepherd. When the choristers chaunt, I hear Miss Shepherd. In the service I mentally insert Miss Shepherd’s name — I put her in among the Royal Family. At home, in my own room, I am sometimes moved to cry out, ‘Oh, Miss Shepherd!’ in a transport of love.

For some time, I am doubtful of Miss Shepherd’s feelings, but, at length, Fate being propitious, we meet at the dancing-school. I have Miss Shepherd for my partner. I touch Miss Shepherd’s glove, and feel a thrill go up the right arm of my jacket, and come out at my hair. I say nothing to Miss Shepherd, but we understand each other. Miss Shepherd and myself live but to be united.

Why do I secretly give Miss Shepherd twelve Brazil nuts for a present, I wonder? They are not expressive of affection, they are difficult to pack into a parcel of any regular shape, they are hard to crack, even in room doors, and they are oily when cracked; yet I feel that they are appropriate to Miss Shepherd. Soft, seedy biscuits, also, I bestow upon Miss Shepherd; and oranges innumerable. Once, I kiss Miss Shepherd in the cloak-room. Ecstasy! What are my agony and indignation next day, when I hear a flying rumour that the Misses Nettingall have stood Miss Shepherd in the stocks for turning in her toes!

Miss Shepherd being the one pervading theme and vision of my life, how do I ever come to break with her? I can’t conceive. And yet a coolness grows between Miss Shepherd and myself. Whispers reach me of Miss Shepherd having said she wished I wouldn’t stare so, and having avowed a preference for Master Jones—for Jones! a boy of no merit whatever! The gulf between me and Miss Shepherd widens. At last, one day, I meet the Misses Nettingalls’ establishment out walking. Miss Shepherd makes a face as she goes by, and laughs to her companion. All is over. The devotion of a life—it seems a life, it is all the same—is at an end; Miss Shepherd comes out of the morning service, and the Royal Family know her no more.

And so I leave this post here, more of a reflection on my reflections, which I can hopefully return to when I want to bring the magic of this book to mind.

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