First, two David Copperfield-related anecdotes: When I was teaching part-time in the English department of a girls’ boarding school, our Head of Department decided that we should prepare a module of “off-piste” work for our 40 incoming A level students in the first week of the autumn term based on a book which they would all be required to read over the summer. I suggested David Copperfield and got the job of preparing the work which I duly did, after joyfully rereading the text. Then Sir, who had a personal loathing of anything longer than a novella, patronisingly decided that we couldn’t possibly ask our students to read a 950-page novel. “It’s not even on the syllabus. The parents wouldn’t wear it.” So that was the end of that. And I was outraged.
A few years later I was interviewed on the Radio 4 Today programme about children’s reading and the importance of the so-called classics along with author Melvyn Burgess who was there to argue for modern “relevance”. At the end of it, John Humphrys, renowned for putting interviewees through the mangle, turned to me kindly and said. “Well Susan, one final word: Name one book everyone should have read” I shot back David Copperfield and he terminated the interview with the warm comment: “Well no one could disagree with that.” Game, set and match to Susan (and Mr Humphrys).
David Copperfield (1850) is a gloriously meaty novel, definitely one of the 19th century’s greatest and, in my view, Dickens’s best. Narrated by the eponymous David (also known in the novel as Davy, Trot, Trotwood and Daisy among other things) in autobiographical format it owes some of its material to Dickens’s own life: the horrendous spell in a factory when he was still a child, the debtors’ prison and the success as a novelist are all there. It is written like a soap opera because it was first published in serial form and Dickens knew exactly how to keep his readers panting for more.
It’s also full of colourful minor characters who tend to get omitted from the frequent bland dramatisations, adaptations and spin-offs. It’s worth going back to the novel every ten years or so, as I do, to meet Dickensian wonders such as Miss Mowcher, the dwarf who tells David, in a very 21st century way, that he shouldn’t assume that because she’s short of stature she’s short of brain. Then there’s the appalling “respectable” (not) Littimer and the poor girl Sarah who turns in desperation to prostitution. Or think of the carrier Mr Barkis who is “always willing” (to marry Peggoty) and leaves her and others a surprising amount of money when he dies. Or what about Mrs Gummidge? She’s profoundly depressed but give her a purpose and she can rise to an occasion with aplomb. It’s a rich, three dimensional tapestry whose main theme is, I suppose, parents/quasi parents and children who feature in many forms.
At the heart of the novel is a whole cast of characters who are so famous that they have somehow acquired a life beyond their context in the 175 years since David Copperfield first landed. Meet Peggoty, David’s old nurse, dear friend and mother substitute and Betsey Trotwood, his forthright, decisive aunt with her hilarious loathing of donkeys. Mr Micawber, whose loquaciousness belies his fecklessness, and said to be based on Dickens’s father, who was imprisoned for debt, is a magical creation. So, in a completely different way, is kind, caring, decent Mr Peggotty – the sort of man we’d all like in our lives. Uriah Heep, characterised by his feigned humbleness and clammy handwringing, is a calculating crook and so it goes on.
David, orphaned young and virtually abandoned thanks to his step-father the cruel Mr Murdstone, eventually finds love but he doesn’t get it right the first time. Dora, his boss’s daughter is a silly goose and never likely to pull her wifely weight although she’s sweet. The reader can see ruefully past the narrator’s passion. He or she can also see where David’s affections are likely to end up and Agnes is one of the more convincing of Dicken’s virtuous women. In general he tends to be better at flawed females.
The most interesting character in this long, free flowing but utterly compelling novel, is James Steerforth. David meets first meets him at Salem House, the appalling Blackheath school he is banished to by Mr Murdstone. Steerforth is older, good looking, highly charismatic and takes David under his protection. We know he’s bad news almost from the start because he tricks David into parting with his money at first encounter but the younger boy is entranced. Years later their paths cross again and David introduces him to the Peggotys, and, fatally, to their pretty little niece, Emily. Steerforth behaves appallingly and David comes to recognise what his old friend is really like from the injury to Mrs Steerforth’s companion, Rosa, onwards. On the other hand, Steerforth is a rounded, complex character and David’s feelings are very mixed because this is a man he actually adores like a beloved older brother. In a way it’s yet another take on parent/child relationships and it’s quite nuanced.
Notice the way Dickens evokes places in this novel too. He travelled a lot on book tours and dramatised readings so he really does know Canterbury, Dover, Yarmouth and rural Suffolk and Kent – as well, obviously as London which was rapidly expanding to include former villages such as Highgate where the narrator buys a house. The backdrop is anything but bland.
Of course David Copperfield is studded with coincidences. It’s a Dickensian trademark that his huge cast of characters should encounter each other quite by chance in unlikely places. In general the complex plotting is immaculate although there are flaws. For example, when she recovers her fortune, Betsy Trotwood cannot move back to her Dover house because she sold it for £70 hundreds of pages earlier but that’s a very minor criticism in a novel which races along. Despite the length, I reread it this time in ten days (while, as always, reading other things concurrently). It’s a page turner like no other. If only those 40 students had been led to discover it. Let’s hope many of them have found their own way to it since.
Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: We Germans by Alexander Starritt
