David Copperfield

C >> Charles Dickens >> David Copperfield

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | 77

'Well! look about you now, and make up for your negligence,' said
Steerforth. 'Look to the right, and you'll see a flat country,
with a good deal of marsh in it; look to the left, and you'll see
the same. Look to the front, and you'll find no difference; look
to the rear, and there it is still.'
I laughed, and replied that I saw no suitable profession in the
whole prospect; which was perhaps to be attributed to its flatness.

'What says our aunt on the subject?' inquired Steerforth, glancing
at the letter in my hand. 'Does she suggest anything?'

'Why, yes,' said I. 'She asks me, here, if I think I should like
to be a proctor? What do you think of it?'

'Well, I don't know,' replied Steerforth, coolly. 'You may as well
do that as anything else, I suppose?'

I could not help laughing again, at his balancing all callings and
professions so equally; and I told him so.

'What is a proctor, Steerforth?' said I.

'Why, he is a sort of monkish attorney,' replied Steerforth. 'He
is, to some faded courts held in Doctors' Commons, - a lazy old
nook near St. Paul's Churchyard - what solicitors are to the courts
of law and equity. He is a functionary whose existence, in the
natural course of things, would have terminated about two hundred
years ago. I can tell you best what he is, by telling you what
Doctors' Commons is. It's a little out-of-the-way place, where
they administer what is called ecclesiastical law, and play all
kinds of tricks with obsolete old monsters of acts of Parliament,
which three-fourths of the world know nothing about, and the other
fourth supposes to have been dug up, in a fossil state, in the days
of the Edwards. It's a place that has an ancient monopoly in suits
about people's wills and people's marriages, and disputes among
ships and boats.'

'Nonsense, Steerforth!' I exclaimed. 'You don't mean to say that
there is any affinity between nautical matters and ecclesiastical
matters?'

'I don't, indeed, my dear boy,' he returned; 'but I mean to say
that they are managed and decided by the same set of people, down
in that same Doctors' Commons. You shall go there one day, and
find them blundering through half the nautical terms in Young's
Dictionary, apropos of the "Nancy" having run down the "Sarah
Jane", or Mr. Peggotty and the Yarmouth boatmen having put off in
a gale of wind with an anchor and cable to the "Nelson" Indiaman in
distress; and you shall go there another day, and find them deep in
the evidence, pro and con, respecting a clergyman who has
misbehaved himself; and you shall find the judge in the nautical
case, the advocate in the clergyman's case, or contrariwise. They
are like actors: now a man's a judge, and now he is not a judge;
now he's one thing, now he's another; now he's something else,
change and change about; but it's always a very pleasant,
profitable little affair of private theatricals, presented to an
uncommonly select audience.'

'But advocates and proctors are not one and the same?' said I, a
little puzzled. 'Are they?'

'No,' returned Steerforth, 'the advocates are civilians - men who
have taken a doctor's degree at college - which is the first reason
of my knowing anything about it. The proctors employ the
advocates. Both get very comfortable fees, and altogether they
make a mighty snug little party. On the whole, I would recommend
you to take to Doctors' Commons kindly, David. They plume them-
selves on their gentility there, I can tell you, if that's any
satisfaction.'

I made allowance for Steerforth's light way of treating the
subject, and, considering it with reference to the staid air of
gravity and antiquity which I associated with that 'lazy old nook
near St. Paul's Churchyard', did not feel indisposed towards my
aunt's suggestion; which she left to my free decision, making no
scruple of telling me that it had occurred to her, on her lately
visiting her own proctor in Doctors' Commons for the purpose of
settling her will in my favour.

'That's a laudable proceeding on the part of our aunt, at all
events,' said Steerforth, when I mentioned it; 'and one deserving
of all encouragement. Daisy, my advice is that you take kindly to
Doctors' Commons.'

I quite made up my mind to do so. I then told Steerforth that my
aunt was in town awaiting me (as I found from her letter), and that
she had taken lodgings for a week at a kind of private hotel at
Lincoln's Inn Fields, where there was a stone staircase, and a
convenient door in the roof; my aunt being firmly persuaded that
every house in London was going to be burnt down every night.

We achieved the rest of our journey pleasantly, sometimes recurring
to Doctors' Commons, and anticipating the distant days when I
should be a proctor there, which Steerforth pictured in a variety
of humorous and whimsical lights, that made us both merry. When we
came to our journey's end, he went home, engaging to call upon me
next day but one; and I drove to Lincoln's Inn Fields, where I
found my aunt up, and waiting supper.

If I had been round the world since we parted, we could hardly have
been better pleased to meet again. My aunt cried outright as she
embraced me; and said, pretending to laugh, that if my poor mother
had been alive, that silly little creature would have shed tears,
she had no doubt.

'So you have left Mr. Dick behind, aunt?' said I. 'I am sorry for
that. Ah, Janet, how do you do?'

As Janet curtsied, hoping I was well, I observed my aunt's visage
lengthen very much.

'I am sorry for it, too,' said my aunt, rubbing her nose. 'I have
had no peace of mind, Trot, since I have been here.'
Before I could ask why, she told me.

'I am convinced,' said my aunt, laying her hand with melancholy
firmness on the table, 'that Dick's character is not a character to
keep the donkeys off. I am confident he wants strength of purpose.
I ought to have left Janet at home, instead, and then my mind might
perhaps have been at ease. If ever there was a donkey trespassing
on my green,' said my aunt, with emphasis, 'there was one this
afternoon at four o'clock. A cold feeling came over me from head
to foot, and I know it was a donkey!'

I tried to comfort her on this point, but she rejected consolation.

'It was a donkey,' said my aunt; 'and it was the one with the
stumpy tail which that Murdering sister of a woman rode, when she
came to my house.' This had been, ever since, the only name my
aunt knew for Miss Murdstone. 'If there is any Donkey in Dover,
whose audacity it is harder to me to bear than another's, that,'
said my aunt, striking the table, 'is the animal!'

Janet ventured to suggest that my aunt might be disturbing herself
unnecessarily, and that she believed the donkey in question was
then engaged in the sand-and-gravel line of business, and was not
available for purposes of trespass. But my aunt wouldn't hear of
it.

Supper was comfortably served and hot, though my aunt's rooms were
very high up - whether that she might have more stone stairs for
her money, or might be nearer to the door in the roof, I don't know
- and consisted of a roast fowl, a steak, and some vegetables, to
all of which I did ample justice, and which were all excellent.
But my aunt had her own ideas concerning London provision, and ate
but little.

'I suppose this unfortunate fowl was born and brought up in a
cellar,' said my aunt, 'and never took the air except on a hackney
coach-stand. I hope the steak may be beef, but I don't believe it.
Nothing's genuine in the place, in my opinion, but the dirt.'

'Don't you think the fowl may have come out of the country, aunt?'
I hinted.

'Certainly not,' returned my aunt. 'It would be no pleasure to a
London tradesman to sell anything which was what he pretended it
was.'

I did not venture to controvert this opinion, but I made a good
supper, which it greatly satisfied her to see me do. When the
table was cleared, Janet assisted her to arrange her hair, to put
on her nightcap, which was of a smarter construction than usual
('in case of fire', my aunt said), and to fold her gown back over
her knees, these being her usual preparations for warming herself
before going to bed. I then made her, according to certain
established regulations from which no deviation, however slight,
could ever be permitted, a glass of hot wine and water, and a slice
of toast cut into long thin strips. With these accompaniments we
were left alone to finish the evening, my aunt sitting opposite to
me drinking her wine and water; soaking her strips of toast in it,
one by one, before eating them; and looking benignantly on me, from
among the borders of her nightcap.

'Well, Trot,' she began, 'what do you think of the proctor plan?
Or have you not begun to think about it yet?'

'I have thought a good deal about it, my dear aunt, and I have
talked a good deal about it with Steerforth. I like it very much
indeed. I like it exceedingly.'

'Come!' said my aunt. 'That's cheering!'

'I have only one difficulty, aunt.'

'Say what it is, Trot,' she returned.

'Why, I want to ask, aunt, as this seems, from what I understand,
to be a limited profession, whether my entrance into it would not
be very expensive?'

'It will cost,' returned my aunt, 'to article you, just a thousand
pounds.'

'Now, my dear aunt,' said I, drawing my chair nearer, 'I am uneasy
in my mind about that. It's a large sum of money. You have
expended a great deal on my education, and have always been as
liberal to me in all things as it was possible to be. You have
been the soul of generosity. Surely there are some ways in which
I might begin life with hardly any outlay, and yet begin with a
good hope of getting on by resolution and exertion. Are you sure
that it would not be better to try that course? Are you certain
that you can afford to part with so much money, and that it is
right that it should be so expended? I only ask you, my second
mother, to consider. Are you certain?'

My aunt finished eating the piece of toast on which she was then
engaged, looking me full in the face all the while; and then
setting her glass on the chimney-piece, and folding her hands upon
her folded skirts, replied as follows:

'Trot, my child, if I have any object in life, it is to provide for
your being a good, a sensible, and a happy man. I am bent upon it
- so is Dick. I should like some people that I know to hear Dick's
conversation on the subject. Its sagacity is wonderful. But no
one knows the resources of that man's intellect, except myself!'

She stopped for a moment to take my hand between hers, and went on:

'It's in vain, Trot, to recall the past, unless it works some
influence upon the present. Perhaps I might have been better
friends with your poor father. Perhaps I might have been better
friends with that poor child your mother, even after your sister
Betsey Trotwood disappointed me. When you came to me, a little
runaway boy, all dusty and way-worn, perhaps I thought so. From
that time until now, Trot, you have ever been a credit to me and a
pride and a pleasure. I have no other claim upon my means; at
least' - here to my surprise she hesitated, and was confused - 'no,
I have no other claim upon my means - and you are my adopted child.
Only be a loving child to me in my age, and bear with my whims and
fancies; and you will do more for an old woman whose prime of life
was not so happy or conciliating as it might have been, than ever
that old woman did for you.'

It was the first time I had heard my aunt refer to her past
history. There was a magnanimity in her quiet way of doing so, and
of dismissing it, which would have exalted her in my respect and
affection, if anything could.

'All is agreed and understood between us, now, Trot,' said my aunt,
'and we need talk of this no more. Give me a kiss, and we'll go to
the Commons after breakfast tomorrow.'

We had a long chat by the fire before we went to bed. I slept in
a room on the same floor with my aunt's, and was a little disturbed
in the course of the night by her knocking at my door as often as
she was agitated by a distant sound of hackney-coaches or
market-carts, and inquiring, 'if I heard the engines?' But towards
morning she slept better, and suffered me to do so too.

At about mid-day, we set out for the office of Messrs Spenlow and
Jorkins, in Doctors' Commons. My aunt, who had this other general
opinion in reference to London, that every man she saw was a
pickpocket, gave me her purse to carry for her, which had ten
guineas in it and some silver.

We made a pause at the toy shop in Fleet Street, to see the giants
of Saint Dunstan's strike upon the bells - we had timed our going,
so as to catch them at it, at twelve o'clock - and then went on
towards Ludgate Hill, and St. Paul's Churchyard. We were crossing
to the former place, when I found that my aunt greatly accelerated
her speed, and looked frightened. I observed, at the same time,
that a lowering ill-dressed man who had stopped and stared at us in
passing, a little before, was coming so close after us as to brush
against her.

'Trot! My dear Trot!' cried my aunt, in a terrified whisper, and
pressing my arm. 'I don't know what I am to do.'

'Don't be alarmed,' said I. 'There's nothing to be afraid of.
Step into a shop, and I'll soon get rid of this fellow.'

'No, no, child!' she returned. 'Don't speak to him for the world.
I entreat, I order you!'

'Good Heaven, aunt!' said I. 'He is nothing but a sturdy
beggar.'

'You don't know what he is!' replied my aunt. 'You don't know who
he is! You don't know what you say!'

We had stopped in an empty door-way, while this was passing, and he
had stopped too.

'Don't look at him!' said my aunt, as I turned my head indignantly,
'but get me a coach, my dear, and wait for me in St. Paul's
Churchyard.'

'Wait for you?' I replied.

'Yes,' rejoined my aunt. 'I must go alone. I must go with him.'

'With him, aunt? This man?'

'I am in my senses,' she replied, 'and I tell you I must. Get mea
coach!'

However much astonished I might be, I was sensible that I had no
right to refuse compliance with such a peremptory command. I
hurried away a few paces, and called a hackney-chariot which was
passing empty. Almost before I could let down the steps, my aunt
sprang in, I don't know how, and the man followed. She waved her
hand to me to go away, so earnestly, that, all confounded as I was,
I turned from them at once. In doing so, I heard her say to the
coachman, 'Drive anywhere! Drive straight on!' and presently the
chariot passed me, going up the hill.

What Mr. Dick had told me, and what I had supposed to be a delusion
of his, now came into my mind. I could not doubt that this person
was the person of whom he had made such mysterious mention, though
what the nature of his hold upon my aunt could possibly be, I was
quite unable to imagine. After half an hour's cooling in the
churchyard, I saw the chariot coming back. The driver stopped
beside me, and my aunt was sitting in it alone.

She had not yet sufficiently recovered from her agitation to be
quite prepared for the visit we had to make. She desired me to get
into the chariot, and to tell the coachman to drive slowly up and
down a little while. She said no more, except, 'My dear child,
never ask me what it was, and don't refer to it,' until she had
perfectly regained her composure, when she told me she was quite
herself now, and we might get out. On her giving me her purse to
pay the driver, I found that all the guineas were gone, and only
the loose silver remained.

Doctors' Commons was approached by a little low archway. Before we
had taken many paces down the street beyond it, the noise of the
city seemed to melt, as if by magic, into a softened distance. A
few dull courts and narrow ways brought us to the sky-lighted
offices of Spenlow and Jorkins; in the vestibule of which temple,
accessible to pilgrims without the ceremony of knocking, three or
four clerks were at work as copyists. One of these, a little dry
man, sitting by himself, who wore a stiff brown wig that looked as
if it were made of gingerbread, rose to receive my aunt, and show
us into Mr. Spenlow's room.

'Mr. Spenlow's in Court, ma'am,' said the dry man; 'it's an Arches
day; but it's close by, and I'll send for him directly.'

As we were left to look about us while Mr. Spenlow was fetched, I
availed myself of the opportunity. The furniture of the room was
old-fashioned and dusty; and the green baize on the top of the
writing-table had lost all its colour, and was as withered and pale
as an old pauper. There were a great many bundles of papers on it,
some endorsed as Allegations, and some (to my surprise) as Libels,
and some as being in the Consistory Court, and some in the Arches
Court, and some in the Prerogative Court, and some in the Admiralty
Court, and some in the Delegates' Court; giving me occasion to
wonder much, how many Courts there might be in the gross, and how
long it would take to understand them all. Besides these, there
were sundry immense manuscript Books of Evidence taken on
affidavit, strongly bound, and tied together in massive sets, a set
to each cause, as if every cause were a history in ten or twenty
volumes. All this looked tolerably expensive, I thought, and gave
me an agreeable notion of a proctor's business. I was casting my
eyes with increasing complacency over these and many similar
objects, when hasty footsteps were heard in the room outside, and
Mr. Spenlow, in a black gown trimmed with white fur, came hurrying
in, taking off his hat as he came.

He was a little light-haired gentleman, with undeniable boots, and
the stiffest of white cravats and shirt-collars. He was buttoned
up, mighty trim and tight, and must have taken a great deal of
pains with his whiskers, which were accurately curled. His gold
watch-chain was so massive, that a fancy came across me, that he
ought to have a sinewy golden arm, to draw it out with, like those
which are put up over the goldbeaters' shops. He was got up with
such care, and was so stiff, that he could hardly bend himself;
being obliged, when he glanced at some papers on his desk, after
sitting down in his chair, to move his whole body, from the bottom
of his spine, like Punch.

I had previously been presented by my aunt, and had been
courteously received. He now said:

'And so, Mr. Copperfield, you think of entering into our
profession? I casually mentioned to Miss Trotwood, when I had the
pleasure of an interview with her the other day,' - with another
inclination of his body - Punch again - 'that there was a vacancy
here. Miss Trotwood was good enough to mention that she had a
nephew who was her peculiar care, and for whom she was seeking to
provide genteelly in life. That nephew, I believe, I have now the
pleasure of' - Punch again.
I bowed my acknowledgements, and said, my aunt had mentioned to me
that there was that opening, and that I believed I should like it
very much. That I was strongly inclined to like it, and had taken
immediately to the proposal. That I could not absolutely pledge
myself to like it, until I knew something more about it. That
although it was little else than a matter of form, I presumed I
should have an opportunity of trying how I liked it, before I bound
myself to it irrevocably.

'Oh surely! surely!' said Mr. Spenlow. 'We always, in this house,
propose a month - an initiatory month. I should be happy, myself,
to propose two months - three - an indefinite period, in fact - but
I have a partner. Mr. Jorkins.'

'And the premium, sir,' I returned, 'is a thousand pounds?'

'And the premium, Stamp included, is a thousand pounds,' said Mr.
Spenlow. 'As I have mentioned to Miss Trotwood, I am actuated by
no mercenary considerations; few men are less so, I believe; but
Mr. Jorkins has his opinions on these subjects, and I am bound to
respect Mr. Jorkins's opinions. Mr. Jorkins thinks a thousand
pounds too little, in short.'

'I suppose, sir,' said I, still desiring to spare my aunt, 'that it
is not the custom here, if an articled clerk were particularly
useful, and made himself a perfect master of his profession' - I
could not help blushing, this looked so like praising myself - 'I
suppose it is not the custom, in the later years of his time, to
allow him any -'

Mr. Spenlow, by a great effort, just lifted his head far enough out
of his cravat to shake it, and answered, anticipating the word
'salary':

'No. I will not say what consideration I might give to that point
myself, Mr. Copperfield, if I were unfettered. Mr. Jorkins is
immovable.'

I was quite dismayed by the idea of this terrible Jorkins. But I
found out afterwards that he was a mild man of a heavy temperament,
whose place in the business was to keep himself in the background,
and be constantly exhibited by name as the most obdurate and
ruthless of men. If a clerk wanted his salary raised, Mr. Jorkins
wouldn't listen to such a proposition. If a client were slow to
settle his bill of costs, Mr. Jorkins was resolved to have it paid;
and however painful these things might be (and always were) to the
feelings of Mr. Spenlow, Mr. Jorkins would have his bond. The
heart and hand of the good angel Spenlow would have been always
open, but for the restraining demon Jorkins. As I have grown
older, I think I have had experience of some other houses doing
business on the principle of Spenlow and Jorkins!

It was settled that I should begin my month's probation as soon as
I pleased, and that my aunt need neither remain in town nor return
at its expiration, as the articles of agreement, of which I was to
be the subject, could easily be sent to her at home for her
signature. When we had got so far, Mr. Spenlow offered to take me
into Court then and there, and show me what sort of place it was.
As I was willing enough to know, we went out with this object,
leaving my aunt behind; who would trust herself, she said, in no
such place, and who, I think, regarded all Courts of Law as a sort
of powder-mills that might blow up at any time.

Mr. Spenlow conducted me through a paved courtyard formed of grave
brick houses, which I inferred, from the Doctors' names upon the
doors, to be the official abiding-places of the learned advocates
of whom Steerforth had told me; and into a large dull room, not
unlike a chapel to my thinking, on the left hand. The upper part
of this room was fenced off from the rest; and there, on the two
sides of a raised platform of the horse-shoe form, sitting on easy
old-fashioned dining-room chairs, were sundry gentlemen in red
gowns and grey wigs, whom I found to be the Doctors aforesaid.
Blinking over a little desk like a pulpit-desk, in the curve of the
horse-shoe, was an old gentleman, whom, if I had seen him in an
aviary, I should certainly have taken for an owl, but who, I
learned, was the presiding judge. In the space within the
horse-shoe, lower than these, that is to say, on about the level of
the floor, were sundry other gentlemen, of Mr. Spenlow's rank, and
dressed like him in black gowns with white fur upon them, sitting
at a long green table. Their cravats were in general stiff, I
thought, and their looks haughty; but in this last respect I
presently conceived I had done them an injustice, for when two or
three of them had to rise and answer a question of the presiding
dignitary, I never saw anything more sheepish. The public,
represented by a boy with a comforter, and a shabby-genteel man
secretly eating crumbs out of his coat pockets, was warming itself
at a stove in the centre of the Court. The languid stillness of
the place was only broken by the chirping of this fire and by the
voice of one of the Doctors, who was wandering slowly through a
perfect library of evidence, and stopping to put up, from time to
time, at little roadside inns of argument on the journey.
Altogether, I have never, on any occasion, made one at such a
cosey, dosey, old-fashioned, time-forgotten, sleepy-headed little
family-party in all my life; and I felt it would be quite a
soothing opiate to belong to it in any character - except perhaps
as a suitor.

Very well satisfied with the dreamy nature of this retreat, I
informed Mr. Spenlow that I had seen enough for that time, and we
rejoined my aunt; in company with whom I presently departed from
the Commons, feeling very young when I went out of Spenlow and
Jorkins's, on account of the clerks poking one another with their
pens to point me out.

We arrived at Lincoln's Inn Fields without any new adventures,
except encountering an unlucky donkey in a costermonger's cart, who
suggested painful associations to my aunt. We had another long
talk about my plans, when we were safely housed; and as I knew she
was anxious to get home, and, between fire, food, and pickpockets,
could never be considered at her ease for half-an-hour in London,
I urged her not to be uncomfortable on my account, but to leave me
to take care of myself.

'I have not been here a week tomorrow, without considering that
too, my dear,' she returned. 'There is a furnished little set of
chambers to be let in the Adelphi, Trot, which ought to suit you to
a marvel.'