CHAPTER 1 .
I AM BORN 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 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 do n’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Consequently the advertisement was withdrawn at a dead loss -- for as to sherry , my poor dear mother ’s own sherry was in the market then -- and ten years afterwards , the caul was put up in a raffle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 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 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 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 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 .
‘ Do n’t do that !
Come , come ! ’
My mother could n’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 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 .
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