David Copperfield

Monday 1st May

I have been reading Dickens.  As a child my Nana had a set of Dickens and I think I read Great Expectations and David Copperfield and probably Oliver Twist too.  And through the years I have seen quite a few TV adaptations and films of David Copperfield.  So, I knew, or thought I knew the story pretty well….The Murdstones, working in the bottling workshop, his Aunt Betsey Trotwood, Mr. Dick of course, and Peggoty too.  But I had forgotten how lovingly the book was written, in part auto-biographical it has a warmth that oozes out of every page.  And though there are the villains Steerforth and Uriah Heep, they aren’t really that villainous.  Steerforth has a violent end but at the hands of nature, not our hero.  And Uriah Heep is so comically rendered that you cannot help but admire Dickens’ skill in painting such a vivid portrait.  Who can ever forget those words “ever so ‘umble”.

There are the usual helpings of sentimentality, laid on thick with a trowel, but we must remember the audience which Dickens was writing for.  But the real tragi-comic masterstroke is the creation of Mr. Micawber, with his florid language, his mood-swings and optimism that ‘something will turn up’.  Micawber and his loving but critical wife and the brilliantly original Mr. Dick brighten the story in so many ways that without them the book would be just average.  We mustn’t forget either the minor characters, Tommy Traddles, Dora, Jip, Betsey Trotwood, Rosa Dartle, Mrs Gummidge and Ham and Mr. Peggoty, Peggoty herself and even Barkis are all wonderfully drawn.  As Dicken himself wrote in a much later Author’s Note it was his favourite book, and I too was sad when I came to the end.  Sad to leave behind such a host of wonderful characters.