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. To begin my life with the beginning 
of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed 
and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o’clock at night. It was 
remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, 
simultaneously.
In consideration of the day and hour of my birth, it 
was declared by the nurse, and by some sage women in 
the neighbourhood who had taken a lively interest in me 
several months before there was any possibility of our becoming personally acquainted, first, that I was destined to 
be unlucky in life; and secondly, that I was privileged to see 
ghosts and spirits; both these gifts inevitably attaching, as 
they believed, to all unlucky infants of either gender, born 
towards the small hours on a Friday night.
I need say nothing here, on the first head, because 
nothing can show better than my history whether that prediction was verified or falsified by the result. On the second 
branch of the question, I will only remark, that unless I ran 
 David Copperfield 
through that part of my inheritance while I was still a baby, 
I have not come into it yet. But I do not at all complain of 
having been kept out of this property; and if anybody else 
should be in the present enjoyment of it, he is heartily welcome to keep it.
I was born with a caul, which was advertised for sale, in 
the newspapers, at the low price of fifteen guineas. Whether 
sea-going people were short of money about that time, or 
were short of faith and preferred cork jackets, I don’t know; 
all I know is, that there was but one solitary bidding, and 
that was from an attorney connected with the bill-broking 
business, who offered two pounds in cash, and the balance 
in sherry, but declined to be guaranteed from drowning on 
any higher bargain. Consequently the advertisement was 
withdrawn at a dead loss - for as to sherry, my poor dear 
mother’s own sherry was in the market then - and ten years 
afterwards, the caul was put up in a raffle down in our part 
of the country, to fifty members at half-a-crown a head, the 
winner to spend five shillings. I was present myself, and I 
remember to have felt quite uncomfortable and confused, 
at a part of myself being disposed of in that way. The caul 
was won, I recollect, by an old lady with a hand-basket, who, 
very reluctantly, produced from it the stipulated five shillings, all in halfpence, and twopence halfpenny short - as 
it took an immense time and a great waste of arithmetic, 
to endeavour without any effect to prove to her. It is a fact 
which will be long remembered as remarkable down there, 
that she was never drowned, but died triumphantly in bed, 
at ninety-two. I have understood that it was, to the last, her 
Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 
proudest boast, that she never had been on the water in her 
life, except upon a bridge; and that over her tea (to which 
she was extremely partial) she, to the last, expressed her indignation at the impiety of mariners and others, who had 
the presumption to go ‘meandering’ about the world. It was 
in vain to represent to her that some conveniences, tea perhaps included, resulted from this objectionable practice. 
She always returned, with greater emphasis and with an instinctive knowledge of the strength of her objection, ‘Let us 
have no meandering.’
Not to meander myself, at present, I will go back to my 
birth.
I was born at Blunderstone, in Suffolk, or ‘there by’, as 
they say in Scotland. I was a posthumous child. 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.
An aunt of my father’s, and consequently a great-aunt of 
mine, of whom I shall have more to relate by and by, was the 
principal magnate of our family. Miss Trotwood, or Miss 
Betsey, as my poor mother always called her, when she sufficiently overcame her dread of this formidable personage 
10 David Copperfield 
to mention her at all (which was seldom), had been married 
to a husband younger than herself, who was very handsome, except in the sense of the homely adage, ‘handsome 
is, that handsome does’ - for he was strongly suspected of 
having beaten Miss Betsey, and even of having once, on a 
disputed question of supplies, made some hasty but determined arrangements to throw her out of a two pair of stairs’ 
window. These evidences of an incompatibility of temper 
induced Miss Betsey to pay him off, and effect a separation 
by mutual consent. He went to India with his capital, and 
there, according to a wild legend in our family, he was once 
seen riding on an elephant, in company with a Baboon; but 
I think it must have been a Baboo - or a Begum. Anyhow, 
from India tidings of his death reached home, within ten 
years. How they affected my aunt, nobody knew; for immediately upon the separation, she took her maiden name 
again, bought a cottage in a hamlet on the sea-coast a long 
way off, established herself there as a single woman with 
one servant, and was understood to live secluded, ever afterwards, in an inflexible retirement.
My father had once been a favourite of hers, I believe; but 
she was mortally affronted by his marriage, on the ground 
that my mother was ‘a wax doll’. She had never seen my 
mother, but she knew her to be not yet twenty. My father 
and Miss Betsey never met again. He was double my mother’s age when he married, and of but a delicate constitution. 
He died a year afterwards, and, as I have said, six months 
before I came into the world.
This was the state of matters, on the afternoon of, what 
Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 11
I may be excused for calling, that eventful and important 
Friday. I can make no claim therefore to have known, at 
that time, how matters stood; or to have any remembrance, 
founded on the evidence of my own senses, of what follows.
My mother was sitting by the fire, but poorly in health, 
and very low in spirits, looking at it through her tears, and 
desponding heavily about herself and the fatherless little 
stranger, who was already welcomed by some grosses of 
prophetic pins, in a drawer upstairs, to a world not at all 
excited on the subject of his arrival; my mother, I say, was 
sitting by the fire, that bright, windy March afternoon, very 
timid and sad, and very doubtful of ever coming alive out 
of the trial that was before her, when, lifting her eyes as she 
dried them, to the window opposite, she saw a strange lady 
coming up the garden.
MY mother had a sure foreboding at the second glance, 
that it was Miss Betsey. The setting sun was glowing on the 
strange lady, over the garden-fence, and she came walking 
up to the door with a fell rigidity of figure and composure of 
countenance that could have belonged to nobody else.
When she reached the house, she gave another proof of 
her identity. My father had often hinted that she seldom 
conducted herself like any ordinary Christian; and now, 
instead of ringing the bell, she came and looked in at that 
identical window, pressing the end of her nose against the 
glass to that extent, that my poor dear mother used to say it 
became perfectly flat and white in a moment.
She gave my mother such a turn, that I have always been 
convinced I am indebted to Miss Betsey for having been 
12 David Copperfield 
born on a Friday.
My mother had left her chair in her agitation, and gone 
behind it in the corner. Miss Betsey, looking round the 
room, slowly and inquiringly, began on the other side, and 
carried her eyes on, like a Saracen’s Head in a Dutch clock, 
until they reached my mother. Then she made a frown and 
a gesture to my mother, like one who was accustomed to be 
obeyed, to come and open the door. My mother went.
‘Mrs. David Copperfield, I think,’ said Miss Betsey; the 
emphasis referring, perhaps, to my mother’s mourning 
weeds, and her condition.
‘Yes,’ said my mother, faintly.
‘Miss Trotwood,’ said the visitor. ‘You have heard of her, 
I dare say?’
My mother answered she had had that pleasure. And she 
had a disagreeable consciousness of not appearing to imply 
that it had been an overpowering pleasure.
‘Now you see her,’ said Miss Betsey. My mother bent her 
head, and begged her to walk in.
They went into the parlour my mother had come from, 
the fire in the best room on the other side of the passage 
not being lighted - not having been lighted, indeed, since 
my father’s funeral; and when they were both seated, and 
Miss Betsey said nothing, my mother, after vainly trying 
to restrain herself, began to cry. ‘Oh tut, tut, tut!’ said Miss 
Betsey, in a hurry. ‘Don’t do that! Come, come!’
My mother couldn’t help it notwithstanding, so she cried 
until she had had her cry out.
‘Take off your cap, child,’ said Miss Betsey, ‘and let me 
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see you.’
MY mother was too much afraid of her to refuse compliance with this odd request, if she had any disposition to do 
so. Therefore she did as she was told, and did it with such 
nervous hands that her hair (which was luxuriant and beautiful) fell all about her face.
‘Why, bless my heart!’ exclaimed Miss Betsey. ‘You are a 
very Baby!’
My mother was, no doubt, unusually youthful in appearance even for her years; she hung her head, as if it were her 
fault, poor thing, and said, sobbing, that indeed she was 
afraid she was but a childish widow, and would be but a 
childish mother if she lived. In a short pause which ensued, 
she had a fancy that she felt Miss Betsey touch her hair, and 
that with no ungentle hand; but, looking at her, in her timid 
hope, she found that lady sitting with the skirt of her dress 
tucked up, her hands folded on one knee, and her feet upon 
the fender, frowning at the fire.
‘In the name of Heaven,’ said Miss Betsey, suddenly, ‘why 
Rookery?’
‘Do you mean the house, ma’am?’ asked my mother.
‘Why Rookery?’ said Miss Betsey. ‘Cookery would have 
been more to the purpose, if you had had any practical ideas 
of life, either of you.’
‘The name was Mr. Copperfield’s choice,’ returned my 
mother. ‘When he bought the house, he liked to think that 
there were rooks about it.’
The evening wind made such a disturbance just now, 
among some tall old elm-trees at the bottom of the gar-
14 David Copperfield 
den, 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.
‘Where are the birds?’ asked Miss Betsey.
‘The -? ‘ My mother had been thinking of something 
else.
‘The rooks - what has become of them?’ asked Miss Betsey.
‘There have not been any since we have lived here,’ said 
my mother. ‘We thought - Mr. Copperfield thought - it was 
quite a large rookery; but the nests were very old ones, and 
the birds have deserted them a long while.’
‘David Copperfield all over!’ cried Miss Betsey. ‘David 
Copperfield from head to foot! Calls a house a rookery 
when there’s not a rook near it, and takes the birds on trust, 
because he sees the nests!’
‘Mr. Copperfield,’ returned my mother, ‘is dead, and if 
you dare to speak unkindly of him to me -’
My poor dear mother, I suppose, had some momentary 
intention of committing an assault and battery upon my 
aunt, who could easily have settled her with one hand, even 
if my mother had been in far better training for such an encounter than she was that evening. But it passed with the 
action of rising from her chair; and she sat down again very 
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meekly, and fainted.
When she came to herself, or when Miss Betsey had restored her, whichever it was, she found the latter standing 
at the window. The twilight was by this time shading down 
into darkness; and dimly as they saw each other, they could 
not have done that without the aid of the fire.
‘Well?’ said Miss Betsey, coming back to her chair, as if 
she had only been taking a casual look at the prospect; ‘and 
when do you expect -’
‘I am all in a tremble,’ faltered my mother. ‘I don’t know 
what’s the matter. I shall die, I am sure!’
‘No, no, no,’ said Miss Betsey. ‘Have some tea.’
‘Oh dear me, dear me, do you think it will do me any 
good?’ cried my mother in a helpless manner.
‘Of course it will,’ said Miss Betsey. ‘It’s nothing but fancy. What do you call your girl?’
‘I don’t know that it will be a girl, yet, ma’am,’ said my 
mother innocently.
‘Bless the Baby!’ exclaimed Miss Betsey, unconsciously quoting the second sentiment of the pincushion in the 
drawer upstairs, but applying it to my mother instead of me, 
‘I don’t mean that. I mean your servant-girl.’
‘Peggotty,’ said my mother.
‘Peggotty!’ repeated Miss Betsey, with some indignation. 
‘Do you mean to say, child, that any human being has gone 
into a Christian church, and got herself named Peggotty?’ 
‘It’s her surname,’ said my mother, faintly. ‘Mr. Copperfield 
called her by it, because her Christian name was the same 
as mine.’
16 David Copperfield 
‘Here! Peggotty!’ cried Miss Betsey, opening the parlour 
door. ‘Tea. Your mistress is a little unwell. Don’t dawdle.’
Having issued this mandate with as much potentiality 
as if she had been a recognized authority in the house ever 
since it had been a house, and having looked out to confront the amazed Peggotty coming along the passage with 
a candle at the sound of a strange voice, Miss Betsey shut 
the door again, and sat down as before: with her feet on the 
fender, the skirt of her dress tucked up, and her hands folded on one knee.
‘You were speaking about its being a girl,’ said Miss Betsey. ‘I have no doubt it will be a girl. I have a presentiment 
that it must be a girl. Now child, from the moment of the 
birth of this girl -’
‘Perhaps boy,’ my mother took the liberty of putting in.
‘I tell you I have a presentiment that it must be a girl,’ returned Miss Betsey. ‘Don’t contradict. From the moment of 
this girl’s birth, child, I intend to be her friend. I intend to 
be her godmother, and I beg you’ll call her Betsey Trotwood 
Copperfield. There must be no mistakes in life with THIS 
Betsey Trotwood. There must be no trifling with HER affections, poor dear. She must be well brought up, and well 
guarded from reposing any foolish confidences where they 
are not deserved. I must make that MY care.’
There was a twitch of Miss Betsey’s head, after each of 
these sentences, as if her own old wrongs were working 
within her, and she repressed any plainer reference to them 
by strong constraint. So my mother suspected, at least, as 
she observed her by the low glimmer of the fire: too much 
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scared by Miss Betsey, too uneasy in herself, and too subdued and bewildered altogether, to observe anything very 
clearly, or to know what to say.
‘And was David good to you, child?’ asked Miss Betsey, when she had been silent for a little while, and these 
motions of her head had gradually ceased. ‘Were you comfortable together?’
‘We were very happy,’ said my mother. ‘Mr. Copperfield 
was only too good to me.’
‘What, he spoilt you, I suppose?’ returned Miss Betsey.
‘For being quite alone and dependent on myself in this 
rough world again, yes, I fear he did indeed,’ sobbed my 
mother.
‘Well! Don’t cry!’ said Miss Betsey. ‘You were not equally 
matched, child - if any two people can be equally matched 
- and so I asked the question. You were an orphan, weren’t 
you?’ ‘Yes.’
‘And a governess?’
‘I was nursery-governess in a family where Mr. Copperfield came to visit. Mr. Copperfield was very kind to me, 
and took a great deal of notice of me, and paid me a good 
deal of attention, and at last proposed to me. And I accepted 
him. And so we were married,’ said my mother simply.
‘Ha! Poor Baby!’ mused Miss Betsey, with her frown still 
bent upon the fire. ‘Do you know anything?’
‘I beg your pardon, ma’am,’ faltered my mother.
‘About keeping house, for instance,’ said Miss Betsey.
‘Not much, I fear,’ returned my mother. ‘Not so much as I 
could wish. But Mr. Copperfield was teaching me -’
18 David Copperfield 
(’Much he knew about it himself!’) said Miss Betsey in a 
parenthesis.
- ‘And I hope I should have improved, being very anxious 
to learn, and he very patient to teach me, if the great misfortune of his death’ - my mother broke down again here, and 
could get no farther.
‘Well, well!’ said Miss Betsey.
-’I kept my housekeeping-book regularly, and balanced it 
with Mr. Copperfield every night,’ cried my mother in another burst of distress, and breaking down again.
‘Well, well!’ said Miss Betsey. ‘Don’t cry any more.’
- ‘And I am sure we never had a word of difference respecting it, except when Mr. Copperfield objected to my 
threes and fives being too much like each other, or to my 
putting curly tails to my sevens and nines,’ resumed my 
mother in another burst, and breaking down again.
‘You’ll make yourself ill,’ said Miss Betsey, ‘and you know 
that will not be good either for you or for my god-daughter. 
Come! You mustn’t do it!’
This argument had some share in quieting my mother, 
though her increasing indisposition had a larger one. There 
was an interval of silence, only broken by Miss Betsey’s occasionally ejaculating ‘Ha!’ as she sat with her feet upon the 
fender.
‘David had bought an annuity for himself with his money, I know,’ said she, by and by. ‘What did he do for you?’
‘Mr. Copperfield,’ said my mother, answering with some 
difficulty, ‘was so considerate and good as to secure the reversion of a part of it to me.’
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‘How much?’ asked Miss Betsey.
‘A hundred and five pounds a year,’ said my mother.
‘He might have done worse,’ said my aunt.
The word was appropriate to the moment. My mother was so much worse that Peggotty, coming in with the 
teaboard and candles, and seeing at a glance how ill she was, 
- as Miss Betsey might have done sooner if there had been 
light enough, - conveyed her upstairs to her own room with 
all speed; and immediately dispatched Ham Peggotty, her 
nephew, who had been for some days past secreted in the 
house, unknown to my mother, as a special messenger in 
case of emergency, to fetch the nurse and doctor.
Those allied powers were considerably astonished, when 
they arrived within a few minutes of each other, to find an 
unknown lady of portentous appearance, sitting before the 
fire, with her bonnet tied over her left arm, stopping her ears 
with jewellers’ cotton. Peggotty knowing nothing about her, 
and my mother saying nothing about her, she was quite a 
mystery in the parlour; and the fact of her having a magazine of jewellers’ cotton in her pocket, and sticking the 
article in her ears in that way, did not detract from the solemnity of her presence.
The doctor having been upstairs and come down again, 
and having satisfied himself, I suppose, that there was a 
probability of this unknown lady and himself having to sit 
there, face to face, for some hours, laid himself out to be 
polite and social. He was the meekest of his sex, the mildest 
of little men. He sidled in and out of a room, to take up the 
less space. He walked as softly as the Ghost in Hamlet, and 
20 David Copperfield 
more slowly. He carried his head on one side, partly in modest depreciation of himself, partly in modest propitiation of 
everybody else. It is nothing to say that he hadn’t a word to 
throw at a dog. He couldn’t have thrown a word at a mad 
dog. He might have offered him one gently, or half a one, or 
a fragment of one; for he spoke as slowly as he walked; but 
he wouldn’t have been rude to him, and he couldn’t have 
been quick with him, for any earthly consideration.
Mr. Chillip, looking mildly at my aunt with his head on 
one side, and making her a little bow, said, in allusion to the 
jewellers’ cotton, as he softly touched his left ear:
‘Some local irritation, ma’am?’
‘What!’ replied my aunt, pulling the cotton out of one ear 
like a cork.
Mr. Chillip was so alarmed by her abruptness - as he told 
my mother afterwards - that it was a mercy he didn’t lose 
his presence of mind. But he repeated sweetly:
‘Some local irritation, ma’am?’
‘Nonsense!’ replied my aunt, and corked herself again, at 
one blow.
Mr. Chillip could do nothing after this, but sit and look 
at her feebly, as she sat and looked at the fire, until he was 
called upstairs again. After some quarter of an hour’s absence, he returned.
‘Well?’ said my aunt, taking the cotton out of the ear 
nearest to him.
‘Well, ma’am,’ returned Mr. Chillip, ‘we are- we are progressing slowly, ma’am.’
‘Ba—a—ah!’ said my aunt, with a perfect shake on the 
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contemptuous interjection. And corked herself as before.
Really - really - as Mr. Chillip told my mother, he was 
almost shocked; speaking in a professional point of view 
alone, he was almost shocked. But he sat and looked at her, 
notwithstanding, for nearly two hours, as she sat looking at 
the fire, until he was again called out. After another absence, 
he again returned.
‘Well?’ said my aunt, taking out the cotton on that side 
again.
‘Well, ma’am,’ returned Mr. Chillip, ‘we are - we are progressing
slowly, ma’am.’
‘Ya—a—ah!’ said my aunt. With such a snarl at him, that 
Mr. Chillip absolutely could not bear it. It was really calculated to break his spirit, he said afterwards. He preferred to 
go and sit upon the stairs, in the dark and a strong draught, 
until he was again sent for.
Ham Peggotty, who went to the national school, and was 
a very dragon at his catechism, and who may therefore be 
regarded as a credible witness, reported next day, that happening to peep in at the parlour-door an hour after this, 
he was instantly descried by Miss Betsey, then walking to 
and fro in a state of agitation, and pounced upon before 
he could make his escape. That there were now occasional 
sounds of feet and voices overhead which he inferred the 
cotton did not exclude, from the circumstance of his evidently being clutched by the lady as a victim on whom to 
expend her superabundant agitation when the sounds were 
loudest. That, marching him constantly up and down by the 
22 David Copperfield 
collar (as if he had been taking too much laudanum), she, 
at those times, shook him, rumpled his hair, made light of 
his linen, stopped his ears as if she confounded them with 
her own, and otherwise tousled and maltreated him. This 
was in part confirmed by his aunt, who saw him at half past 
twelve o’clock, soon after his release, and affirmed that he 
was then as red as I was.
The mild Mr. Chillip could not possibly bear malice at 
such a time, if at any time. He sidled into the parlour as 
soon as he was at liberty, and said to my aunt in his meekest manner:
‘Well, ma’am, I am happy to congratulate you.’
‘What upon?’ said my aunt, sharply.
Mr. Chillip was fluttered again, by the extreme severity 
of my aunt’s manner; so he made her a little bow and gave 
her a little smile, to mollify her.
‘Mercy on the man, what’s he doing!’ cried my aunt, impatiently. ‘Can’t he speak?’
‘Be calm, my dear ma’am,’ said Mr. Chillip, in his softest accents.
‘There is no longer any occasion for uneasiness, ma’am. 
Be calm.’
It has since been considered almost a miracle that my 
aunt didn’t shake him, and shake what he had to say, out of 
him. She only shook her own head at him, but in a way that 
made him quail.
‘Well, ma’am,’ resumed Mr. Chillip, as soon as he had 
courage, ‘I am happy to congratulate you. All is now over, 
ma’am, and well over.’
Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 23
During the five minutes or so that Mr. Chillip devoted to 
the delivery of this oration, my aunt eyed him narrowly.
‘How is she?’ said my aunt, folding her arms with her 
bonnet still tied on one of them.
‘Well, ma’am, she will soon be quite comfortable, I hope,’ 
returned Mr. Chillip. ‘Quite as comfortable as we can expect 
a young mother to be, under these melancholy domestic 
circumstances. There cannot be any objection to your seeing her presently, ma’am. It may do her good.’
‘And SHE. How is SHE?’ said my aunt, sharply.
Mr. Chillip laid his head a little more on one side, and 
looked at my aunt like an amiable bird.
‘The baby,’ said my aunt. ‘How is she?’
‘Ma’am,’ returned Mr. Chillip, ‘I apprehended you had 
known. It’s a boy.’
My aunt said never a word, but took her bonnet by the 
strings, in the manner of a sling, aimed a blow at Mr. Chillip’s head with it, put it on bent, walked out, and never came 
back. She vanished like a discontented fairy; or like one of 
those supernatural beings, whom it was popularly supposed 
I was entitled to see; and never came back any more.
No. I lay in my basket, and my mother lay in her bed; 
but Betsey Trotwood Copperfield was for ever in the land of 
dreams and shadows, the tremendous region whence I had 
so lately travelled; and the light upon the window of our 
room shone out upon the earthly bourne of all such travellers, and the mound above the ashes and the dust that once 
was he, without whom I had never been