Just Finished David Copperfield

Last year I made it a point to read more “commitment” book. Two years ago I made a commitment to read more Charles Dickens’ works. David Copperfield I think fulfills these requirements.

I’ve read David Copperfield before, but I read it in high school when you gloss over much of it and read the Cliff’s Notes to help get through the quizzes. It’s a different animal when it’s read for fun. That being said, I watched David Copperfield on Masterpiece Theater where they had Daniel Radicliff as the young Trot, and Maggie Smith as Aunt Betsy. It was nice to read this sucker with some of those characters in mind. It took me a bit longer than I expected to wade through it, but when I saw the progress bar on my Kindle compared to some other “commitment” books I’ve read (Shogun, Red Storm Rising, Armageddon) I realized it wasn’t so much my reading speed, but that it was much much longer than I remembered.

I noted a couple of passages that I particularly loved. The first was the description of the house where he was born. I liked “giants whispering secrets” line.

The evening wind made such a disturbance just now, among some tall old elm-trees at the bottom of the garden, that neither my mother nor Miss Betsey could forbear glancing that way. As the elms bent to one another, like giants who were whispering secrets, and after a few seconds of such repose, fell into a violent flurry, tossing their wild arms about, as if their late confidences were really too wicked for their peace of mind, some weatherbeaten ragged old rooks'-nests, burdening their higher branches, swung like wrecks upon a stormy sea.

Then this description about how he ate his meals when he came home to live with his step-father. Sounds excruciating.

What meals I had in silence and embarrassment, always feeling that there were a knife and fork too many, and that mine; an appetite too many, and that mine; a plate and chair too many, and those mine; a somebody too many, and that I! What evenings, when the candles came, and I was expected to employ myself, but, not daring to read an entertaining book, pored over some hard-headed, harder-hearted treatise on arithmetic; when the tables of weights and measures set themselves to tunes, as 'Rule Britannia', or 'Away with Melancholy'; when they wouldn't stand still to be learnt, but would go threading my grandmother's needle through my unfortunate head, in at one ear and out at the other! What yawns and dozes I lapsed into, in spite of all my care; what starts I came out of concealed sleeps with; what answers I never got, to little observations that I rarely made; what a blank space I seemed, which everybody overlooked, and yet was in everybody's way; what a heavy relief it was to hear Miss Murdstone hail the first stroke of nine at night, and order me to bed! Thus the holidays lagged away, until the morning came when Miss Murdstone said: 'Here's the last day off!' and gave me the closing cup of tea of the vacation.

There were several quick analogies. This one dealing with Ham Peggotty.

Peggotty meant her nephew Ham, mentioned in my first chapter; but she spoke of him as a morsel of English Grammar.

Then these dealing with Uriah. I think Uriah isn’t half so evil as the movies and the descriptions make him out to be.  

I caught a glimpse, as I went in, of Uriah Heep breathing into the pony's nostrils, and immediately covering them with his hand, as if he were putting some spell upon him.

Then this one just a page later.

I observed that his nostrils, which were thin and pointed, with sharp dints in them, had a singular and most uncomfortable way of expanding and contracting themselves—that they seemed to twinkle instead of his eyes, which hardly ever twinkled at all.

This one though might be my favorite. Dickens uses this one when describing a fight David had with the butcher and his recollection just before he gets knocked out.

The preliminaries are adjusted, and the butcher and myself stand face to face. In a moment the butcher lights ten thousand candles out of my left eyebrow.

Finally there is this one, also in the running for favorite. David’s description of his apartment while he is reelingly drunk.

 The whole building looked to me as if it were learning to swim; it conducted itself in such an unaccountable manner, when I tried to steady it.

Really though for me the character who makes this book is Aunt Betsy. From her Donkey hating to her abrupt, superior manner, she is the most fun character to read. When she came onto the page I read with more verve and attention. Wish she’d been the whole of the book.