David Copperfield

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. So begins one of the greatest stories in the English language. In the middle of the 19th century, Charles Dickens wrote a novel much like his own difficult, triumphant boyhood. He called it David Copperfield, setting it in the early 1800s, a time of stage coaches, flickering oil lamps, and vast smoky cities. It is a story about how a boy grows up, learns who to trust and unlearns the wrong lessons taught by the world. Our story begins in Suffc, in a village called Blunderstone. There stood a house known as the Rookery, though no rooks had lived in its trees for years. Here lived young David Copperfield, born after his father had died, leaving his mother, Clara, to raise him alone. Clara was young, sweet, and as fragile as a porcelain teacup. Knowing little of the harsh world, she relied entirely on her loyal maid, Peggotty. Peggotty was a woman of magnificent proportions, with cheeks like red apples and arms so warm, they felt like wooden beams when she hugged you. She was so plump that whenever she laughed or worked hard, the buttons on her dress would fly off with a sharp pop, bouncing across the floor like checkers. David spent his earliest years in the warmth of these two women, sitting by the parlor fire while Peggotty sewed and his mother read, wrapped in safety and unconditional love. But the first great adventure of David's life began on a crisp autumn morning, when Peggotty proposed a journey to Great Yarmouth, a bustling seaside town, to visit her brother. David's mother stood at the gate, waving her lace handkerchief, until the carrier's cart rumbled around the bend, leaving David both excited and strangely sad. The carrier, a quiet man named Mr. Barkis, drove them through the winding lanes. During the journey, he took a liking to Peggotty's comfortable ways. He leaned close to David and whispered a secret message for her. Barkis is willing. It was a strange phrase, but it meant Barkis was ready to marry her. A message David delivered faithfully, even if he did not quite understand it yet. When they arrived at the coast, David smelled the wild salty sea for the very first time. There, on a lonely stretch of sandy beach, stood the most wonderful house a boy could imagine, an old black wooden boat turned completely upside down. A small brick chimney poked out of the keel, puffing white smoke, and real windows and a door were cut into its sides. Inside, it was the coziest place in the world, smelling of seaweed and lobsters, with whitewashed walls hung with pictures of ships. In this boathouse lived Mr. Peggotty, a rugged fisherman with a heart as wide as the ocean. His nephew, Ham, a giant good-natured young man, and little Emily, a beautiful blue-eyed orphan girl, whom Mr. Peggotty had taken in as his own daughter. David and little Emily became fast friends, running along the sandy shore to collect polished pebbles and shells, while the cold waves chased their bare feet. To David, she was like a fairy princess. She told him she was afraid of the water because she had lost her father to it, but she loved it nonetheless. "I want to be a lady," she whispered one evening as they watched the sun sink, "so I can keep us all safe from the storm." David promised he would protect her forever. In that upside-down boat, surrounded by the tide and the warmth of a family who had nothing but shared everything, David felt a pure, unbroken happiness. He did not know that a shadow was already falling over his home in Blunderstone, a shadow that would soon tear his childhood away. When David returned to the Rookery, his mother was not waiting at the gate. When he finally found her in the parlor, she was not alone. Sitting in his father's old armchair was a tall, dark man with a handsome but cold face, thick black whiskers, and eyes…

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