The sea-beach at Yarmouth formed both the opening and the closing scene of this Reading, in six chapters, from “David Copperfield.” In its varied portraiture of character and in the wonderful descriptive power marking its conclusion, it was one of the most interesting and impressive of the whole series in its delivery. Through it, we renewed our acquaintance more vividly than ever with handsome, curry-headed, reckless, heartless Steerforth! With poor, lone, lorn Mrs. Gummidge, not only when everythink about her went contrairy, but when her better nature gushed forth under the great calamity befalling her benefactor. With pretty little Emily, and bewitching little Dora. With Mr. Micawber, his shirt-collar, his eye-glass, the condescending roll in his voice, and his intermittent bursts of confidence. With Mrs. Micawber, who, as the highest praise we can bestow upon her, is quite worthy of her husband, and who is always, it will be remembered, so impassioned in her declaration that, come what may, she never will desert Mr. Micawber! With Traddles, and his irrepressible hair, even a love-lock from which had to be kept down by Sophy’s preservation of it in a clasped locket! With Mr. Peggotty, in fine, who, in his tender love for his niece, is, according to his own account, “not to-look at, but to think on,” nothing less than a babby in the form of a great sea Porkypine! Remembering the other originals, crowding the pages of the story in its integrity, how one would have liked to have seen even a few more of them impersonated by the protean Novelist! That “most wonderful woman in the world,” Aunt Betsey, for example; or that most laconic of carriers, Mr. Barkis; or, to name yet one other, Uriah Heep, that reddest and most writhing of rascally attornies. As it was, however, there were abundant realizations within the narrow compass of this Reading of the principal persons introduced in the autobiography of David Copperfield. The most loveable, by the way, of all the young heroes portrayed in the Dickens’ Gallery was there, to begin with, for example the peculiar loveableness of David being indicated as plainly as by any means through the extraordinary variety of pet names given to him by one or another in the course of the narrative. For, was he not the “Daisy” of Steerforth, the “Doady” of Dora, the “Trotwood” of Aunt Betsy, and the “Mas’r Davy” of the Yarmouth boatmen, just as surely as he was the “Mr. Copper-full” of Mrs. Crupp, the “Master Copperfield” of Uriah Heep, and the “Dear Copperfield” of Mr. Wilkins Micawber?

That “The Personal History and Experiences of David Copperfield the Younger” was, among all its author’s works, his own particular favourite, he himself, in his very last preface to it, in 1867, formally acknowledged. Several years previously, while sauntering with him to and fro one evening on the grass-plot at Gadshill, we remember receiving from him that same admission. “Which of all your books do you think I regard as incomparably your best?” “Which?” “David Copperfield.” A momentary pause ensuing, he added, readily and without the smallest reservation, “You are quite right.” The acknowledgment then made as to this being in fact his own opinion was thus simply but emphatically expressed. Pen in hand, long afterwards, he made the same admission, only with yet greater emphasis, when the Preface to the new edition of the story in 1867 was thus closed by Charles Dickens “Of all my books, I like this the best. It will be easily believed that I am a fond parent to every child of my fancy, and that no one can ever love that family as dearly as I love them. But, like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is ‘David Copperfield.’” Having that confession from his own lips and under his own hand, it will be readily understood that the Novelist always took an especial delight when, in the course of his Readings, the turn came for that of “David Copperfield.”

One of the keenest sensations of pleasure he ever experienced as a Reader as he himself related to us with the liveliest gratification, evidently, even in the mere recollection of the incident occurred in connection with this very Reading. Strange to say, moreover, it occurred, not in England or in America, in the presence of an English-speaking audience, but in Paris, and face to face with an audience more than half of which was composed of Frenchmen. And the hearer who caused him, there, that artistic sense, one might almost call it thrill of satisfaction was a Frenchman! All that was expressed on the part of this appreciative listener, being uttered by him instantaneously in a half-whispered, monosyllabic ejaculation. As we have already explained upon an earlier page, the Readings which took place in Paris, and which were in behalf of the British Charitable Fund in that capital, were given there before a densely crowded but very select audience at the British Embassy, Lord Cowley being then her Majesty’s ambassador. The Reading on the occasion referred to was “David Copperfield,” and the Reader became aware in the midst of the hushed silence, just after he had been saying, in the voice of Steerforth, giving at the same moment a cordial grasp of the hand to the briny fisherman he was addressing: “Mr. Peggotty, you are a thoroughly good fellow, and deserve to be as happy as you are to-night. My hand upon it!” when, turning round, he added, still as Steerforth, but speaking in a very different voice and offering a very different hand-grip, as though already he were thinking to himself what a chuckle-headed fellow the young shipwright was “Ham, I give you joy, my boy. My hand upon that too!” The always keenly observant Novelist became aware of a Frenchman, who was eagerly listening in the front row of the stalls, suddenly exclaiming to himself, under his breath, “Ah h!” having instantly caught the situation! The sound of that one inarticulate monosyllable, as he observed, when relating the circumstance, gave the Reader, as an artist, a far livelier sense of satisfaction than any that could possibly have been imparted by mere acclamations, no matter how spontaneous or enthusiastic.

As a Reading, it always seemed to us, that “David Copperfield” was cut down rather distressingly. That, nevertheless, was unavoidable. Turning in off Yarmouth sands, we went straight at once through the “delightful door” cut in its side, into the old black barge or boat, high and dry there on the sea-beach, and which was known to us nearly as familiarly as to David himself, as the odd dwelling-house inhabited by Mr. Peggotty. All the still-life of that beautifully clean and tidy interior we had revealed to us again, as of old: lockers, boxes, table, Dutch clock, chest of drawers even tea-tray, only that we failed to hear anything said about the painting on the tea-tray, representing “a lady with a parasol, taking a walk with a military-looking child, who was trundling a hoop.” The necessities of condensation in the same way restricted the definition of Mr. Peggotty’s occupation in the Reading, to the simple mention of the fact that he dealt in lobsters, crabs, and craw-fish, without any explanation at all as to those creatures being heaped together in a little wooden out-house “in a state of wonderful conglomeration with one another, and never leaving off pinching whatever they laid hold of.” Little Emily appeared as a beautiful young woman, and no longer as the prattling lassie who, years before had confided to her playfellow, David, how, if ever she were a lady, she would give uncle Dan, meaning Mr. Peggotty, “a sky-blue coat, with diamond buttons, nankeen trousers, a red velvet waistcoat, a cocked hat, a large gold watch, a silver pipe, and a box of money.” Mrs. Gummidge, as became a faithful widow, was still fretting after the Old ’Un. Ham, something of Mr. Peggotty’s own build, as the latter described him, “a good deal o’ the sou-wester in him, wery salt, but on the whole, a honest sort of a chap, too, with his ’art in the right place,” had just made good his betrothal to the little creature he had seen grow up there before him, “like a flower,” when, at the very opening of the Reading, into the old Yarmouth boat, walked “Mas’r Davy” and his friend Steerforth. Mr. Peggotty’s explanation to his unexpected but heartily welcomed visitors as to how the engagement between Ham and Emily, had but just then been brought about, opened up before the audience in a few words the whole scheme of the tragic little dramatic tale about to be revealed to them through a series of vivid impersonations.

The idiomatic sentences of the bluff fisherman, as in their racy vernacular they were blithely given utterance to by the manly voice of the Reader, seemed to supply a fitting introduction to the drama, as though from the lips of a Yarmouth Chorus. Scarcely had the social carouse there in the old boat, on that memorable evening of Steerforth’s introduction, been recounted, when the whole drift of the story was clearly foreshadowed in the brief talk which immediately took place between him and David as they walked townwards across the sands towards their hotel. “Daisy, for though that’s not the name your godfathers and godmothers gave you, you’re such a fresh fellow, that it’s the name I best like to call you by and I wish, I wish, I wish you could give it to me!” That of itself had its-significance. But still more significant was David’s mention of his looking in at Steerforth’s bed-room on the following morning, before himself going away alone, and of his there finding the handsome scapegrace fast asleep, “lying easily, with his head upon his-arm,” as he had often seen him lie in the old school dormitory. “Thus in this silent hour I left him,” with mournful tenderness, exclaimed the Reader, in the words and accents of his young hero. “Never more, O God forgive you, Steerforth! to touch that passive hand in love and friendship. Never, never more!” The revelation of his treachery, towards the pretty little betrothed of the young shipwright, followed immediately afterwards, on the occasion of David’s next visit, some months later, to the old boat on the flats at Yarmouth.

The wonder still is to us, now that we are recalling to mind the salient peculiarities of this Reading, as we do so, turning over leaf by leaf the marked copy of it, from which the Novelist read; the wonder, we repeat, still is to us how, in that exquisite scene, the very words that have always moved us most in the novel were struck out in the delivery, are rigidly scored through here with blue inkmarks in the reading copy, by the hand of the Reader-Novelist. Those words we mean which occur, where Ham, having on his arrival, made a movement as if Emly were outside, asked Masr Davy to come out a minute, only for him, on his doing so, to find that Emly was not there, and that Ham was deadly pale. Ham! whats the matter? was gasped out in the Reading. But not what follows, immediately on that, in the original narrative: “‘Mas’r Davy!’ Oh, for his broken heart, how dreadfully he wept!” Nor yet the sympathetic exclamations of David, who, in the novel, describes himself as paralysed by the sight of such grief, not knowing what he thought or what he dreaded; only able to look at him, yet crying out to him the next moment, “Ham! Poor, good fellow! For heaven’s sake tell me what’s the matter?” Nothing of this: only “My love, Mas’r Davy the pride and hope of my ’art, her that I’d have died for, and would die for now she’s gone!” “Gone?” “Em’ly’s run away!” Ham, not then adding in the Reading, “Oh, Mas’r Davy, think how she’s run away, when I pray my good and gracious God to kill her (her that is so dear above all things) sooner than let her come to ruin and disgrace!” Yet, for all that, in spite of these omissions it can hardly by any chance have been actually by reason of them the delivery of the whole scene was singularly powerful and affecting. Especially in the representation of Mr. Peggotty’s profound grief, under what is to him so appalling a calamity. Especially also in the revelation of Mrs. Gummidge’s pity for him, her gratitude to him, and her womanly tender-heartedness.

In charming relief to the sequel of this tragic incident of the bereavement of the Peggottys, came David’s love passages with Dora, and his social unbendings with Mr. Micawber. Regaling the latter inimitable personage, and his equally inimitable wife, together with David’s old schoolfellow, Tradelles, on a banquet of boiled leg of mutton, very red inside and very pale outside, as well as upon a delusive pigeon-pie, the crust of which was like a disappointing phrenological head, “full of lumps and bumps, with nothing particular underneath,” David afforded us the opportunity of realising, within a very brief interval, something at least of the abundant humour associated with Mrs. Micawber’s worldly wisdom, and Mr. Micawber’s ostentatious impecuniosity. A word, that last, it always seems to us describing poverty, as it does, with such an air of pomp especially provided beforehand for Mr. Micawber (out of a prophetic anticipation or foreknowledge of him) by the dictionary.

The mere opening of the evening’s entertainment at David Copperfield’s chambers on this occasion, enabled the Humorist to elicit preliminary roars of laughter from his audience by his very manner of saying, with a deliciously ridiculous prolongation of the liquid consonant forming the initial of the last word “As to Mrs. Micawber, I don’t know whether it was the effect of the cap, or the lavender water, or the phis, or the fire, or the wax-candles, but she came out of my room comparatively speaking l-l-lovely!”

As deliciously ridiculous was the whole scene between Dora and David, where the latter, at length, takes courage to make his proposal “Jip barking madly all the time “ Dora crying the while and trembling. David’s eloquence increasing, the more he raved, the more Jip barked each, in his own way, getting more mad every moment! Even when they had got married by licence, “the Archbishop of Canterbury invoking a blessing, and doing it as cheap as it could possibly be expected,” their domestic experiences were sources of unbounded merriment.

As, for example, in connection with their servant girl’s cousin in the Life Guards, “with such long legs that he looked like the afternoon shadow of somebody else.” Finally, closing the whole of this ingenious epitome of the original narrative, came that grand and wonderfully realistic description of the stupendous storm upon the beach at Yarmouth, upon the extraordinary power of which as a piece of declamation we have already at some length commented. There, in the midst of the dying horrors of that storm there, on those familiar sands, where Mas’r Davy and Little Em’ly had so often looked for shells when they were children, on the very spot where some lighter fragments of the old boat, blown down the night before, had been scattered by the tempest, David Copperfield was heard describing, in the last mournful sentence of the Reading, how he saw him lying with his curly head upon his arm, as he had often seen him lie when they were at school together.