a night-cap, too) was so crushed and bent, that no old battered handleless saucepan on a dunghill need have been ashamed to vie with it. My shirt and trousers, stained with heat, dew, grass, and the Kentish soil on which I had slept—and torn besides—might have frightened the birds from my aunt’s garden, as I stood at the gate. My hair had known no comb or brush since I left London. My face, neck, and hands, from unaccustomed exposure to the air and sun, were burnt to a berry-brown. From head to foot I was powdered almost as white with chalk and dust, as if I had come out of a lime-kiln. In this plight, and with a strong consciousness of it, I waited to introduce myself to, and make my first impression on, my formidable aunt.
The unbroken stillness of the parlour window leading me to infer, after a while, that she was not there, I lifted up my eyes to the window above it, where I saw a florid, pleasant-looking gentleman, with a grey head, who shut up one eye in a grotesque manner, nodded his head at me several times, shook it at me as often, laughed, and went away.
I had been discomposed enough before; but I was so much the more discomposed by this unexpected behaviour, that I was on the point of slinking off, to think how I had best proceed, when there came out of the house a lady with her handkerchief tied over her cap, and a pair of gardening gloves on her hands, wearing a gardening pocket like a toll-man’s apron, and carrying a great knife. I knew her immediately to be Miss Betsey, for she came stalking out of the house exactly as my poor mother had so often described her stalking up our garden at Blunderstone Rookery.
‘Go away!’ said Miss Betsey, shaking her head, and making a distant chop in the air with her knife. ‘Go along! No boys here!’
I watched her, with my heart at my lips, as she marched to a corner of her garden, and stooped to dig up some little root there. Then, without a scrap of courage, but with a great deal of desperation, I went softly in and stood beside her, touching her with my finger.
‘If you please, ma’am,’ I began.
She started and looked up.
‘If you please, aunt.’
‘EH?’ exclaimed Miss Betsey, in a tone of amazement I have never heard approached.
‘If you please, aunt, I am your nephew.’
‘Oh, Lord!’ said my aunt. And sat flat down in the garden-path.
‘I am David Copperfield, of Blunderstone, in Suffolk—where you came, on the night when I was born, and saw my dear mama. I have been very unhappy since she died. I have been slighted, and taught nothing, and thrown upon myself, and put to work not fit for me. It made me run away to you. I was robbed at first setting out, and have walked all the way, and have never slept in a bed since I began the journey.’ Here my self-support gave way all at once; and with a movement of my hands, intended to show her my ragged state, and call it to witness that I had suffered something, I broke into a passion of crying, which I suppose had been pent up within me all the week.
My aunt, with every sort of expression but wonder discharged from her countenance, sat on the gravel, staring at me, until I began to cry; when she got up in a great hurry, collared me, and took me into the parlour. Her first proceeding there was to unlock a tall press, bring out several bottles, and pour some of the contents of each into my mouth. I think they must have been taken out at random, for I am sure I tasted aniseed water, anchovy sauce, and salad dressing. When she had administered these restoratives, as I was still quite hysterical, and unable to control my sobs, she put me on the sofa, with a shawl under my head, and the handkerchief from her own head under my feet, lest I should sully the cover; and then, sitting herself down behind the green fan or screen I have already mentioned, so that I could not see her face, ejaculated at intervals, ‘Mercy on us!’ letting those exclamations off like minute guns.
After a time she rang the bell. ‘Janet,’ said my aunt, when her servant came in. ‘Go upstairs, give my compliments to Mr. Dick, and say I wish to speak to him.’
Janet looked a little surprised to see me lying stiffly on the sofa (I was afraid to move lest it should be displeasing to my aunt), but went on her errand. My aunt, with her hands behind her, walked up and down the room, until the gentleman who had squinted at me from the upper window came in laughing.
‘Mr. Dick,’ said my aunt, ‘don’t be a fool, because nobody can be more discreet than you can, when you choose. We all know that. So don’t be a fool, whatever you are.’
The gentleman was serious immediately, and looked at me, I thought, as if he would entreat me to say nothing about the window.
‘Mr. Dick,’ said my aunt, ‘you have heard me mention David Copperfield? Now don’t pretend not to have a memory, because you and I know better.’
‘David Copperfield?’ said Mr. Dick, who did not appear to me to remember much about it. ‘David Copperfield? Oh yes, to be sure. David, certainly.’
‘Well,’ said my aunt, ‘this is his boy—his son. He would be as like his father as it’s possible to be, if he was not so like his mother, too.’
‘His son?’ said Mr. Dick. ‘David’s son? Indeed!’
‘Yes,’ pursued my aunt, ‘and he has done a pretty piece of business. He has run away. Ah! His sister, Betsey Trotwood, never would have run away.’ My aunt shook her head firmly, confident in the character and behaviour of the girl who never was born.
‘Oh! you think she wouldn’t have run away?’ said Mr. Dick.
‘Bless and save the man,’ exclaimed my aunt, sharply, ‘how he talks! Don’t I know she wouldn’t? She would have lived with her god-mother, and we should have been devoted to one another. Where, in the name of wonder, should his sister, Betsey Trotwood, have run from, or to?’
‘Nowhere,’ said Mr. Dick.
‘Well then,’ returned my aunt, softened by the reply, ‘how can you pretend to be wool-gathering, Dick, when you are as sharp as a surgeon’s lancet? Now, here you see young David Copperfield, and the question I put to you is, what shall I do with him?’
‘What shall you do with him?’ said Mr. Dick, feebly, scratching his head. ‘Oh! do with him?’
‘Yes,’ said my aunt, with a grave look, and her forefinger held up. ‘Come! I want some very sound advice.’
‘Why, if I was you,’ said Mr. Dick, considering, and looking vacantly at me, ‘I should—’ The contemplation of me seemed to inspire him with a sudden idea, and he added, briskly, ‘I should wash him!’
‘Janet,’ said my aunt, turning round with a quiet triumph, which I did not then understand, ‘Mr. Dick sets us all right. Heat the bath!’
Although I was deeply interested in this dialogue, I could not help observing my aunt, Mr. Dick, and Janet, while it was in progress, and completing a survey I had already been engaged in making of the room.
My aunt was a tall, hard-featured lady, but by no means ill-looking. There was an inflexibility in her face, in her voice, in her gait and carriage, amply sufficient to account for the effect she had made upon a gentle creature like my mother; but her features were rather handsome than otherwise, though unbending and austere. I particularly noticed that she had a very quick, bright eye. Her hair, which was grey, was arranged in two plain divisions, under what I believe would be called a mob-cap; I mean a cap, much more common then than now, with side-pieces fastening under the chin. Her dress was of a lavender colour, and perfectly neat; but scantily made, as if she desired to be as little encumbered as possible. I remember that I thought it, in form, more like a riding-habit with the superfluous skirt cut off, than anything else. She wore at her side a gentleman’s gold watch, if I might judge from its size and make, with an appropriate chain and seals; she had some linen at her throat not unlike a shirt-collar, and things at her wrists like little shirt-wristbands.
Mr. Dick, as I have already said, was grey-headed, and florid: I should have said all about him, in saying so, had not his head been curiously bowed—not by age; it reminded me of one of Mr. Creakle’s boys’ heads after a beating—and his grey eyes prominent