Copy Book Archive

Experience Does It Wilkins Micawber had little to give David Copperfield at their parting, save two words of advice.

In two parts

1849
Music: John Baptist Cramer

© Tim Tregenza, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 3.0. Source

About this picture …

The shop frontage of Berry Bros and Rudd in St James’s Street, London. Founded in 1698 as a coffee house, the family-run firm is Britain’s oldest wine and spirits merchant. In Dickens’s story, Wilkins Micawber worked in a lowly capacity for David Copperfield’s step-father, Mr Murdstone, in his London wine business, and the Micawbers took young David on as a lodger when Wilkins was sentenced to a debtor’s prison.

Experience Does It

Part 1 of 2

Wilkins Micawber has just been released from a spell in prison for debt, and has resolved to take his wife away from London to Plymouth, leaving David Copperfield to find new lodgings. There is little that Mr Micawber can give David in leave-taking, except two words of heartfelt advice.

‘MY dear young friend,’ said Mr Micawber, ‘I am older than you; a man of some experience in life, and—and of some experience, in short, in difficulties, generally speaking. At present, and until something turns up (which I am, I may say, hourly expecting), I have nothing to bestow but advice. Still my advice is so far worth taking, that—in short, that I have never taken it myself, and am the’—here Mr Micawber, who had been beaming and smiling, all over his head and face, up to the present moment, checked himself and frowned—‘the miserable wretch you behold.’

‘My dear Micawber!’ urged his wife.

‘I say,’ returned Mr Micawber, quite forgetting himself, and smiling again, ‘the miserable wretch you behold. My advice is, never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time. Collar him!’

‘My poor papa’s maxim,’ Mrs. Micawber observed.*

Jump to Part 2

Another of her papa’s favourite maxims was ‘experientia does it’, a misquotation of Latin ‘experientia docet’, ‘experience teaches’. It goes back at least to Tacitus, in his remarks on the Dead Sea in History V.6: “At a certain season of the year the lake throws up bitumen, and the method of collecting it has been taught by that experience which teaches all other arts”.

Précis

Mr Micawber gave David Copperfield some parting advice, drawn from his own experience – not because he had benefited from it himself, but because he had suffered from not heeding it. His first word of counsel to never put something off until later, but to seize every opportunity, a rule by which his own father-in-law had sworn. (57 / 60 words)

Part Two

© Russell Kenny, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 3.0. Source

About this picture …

All that remains of the infamous Marshalsea Prison in London today is a wall, and these gates. The debtor’s prison was a terrible idea: debtors could not work their way back to prosperity, and life in the overcrowded and unhygienic accommodation was miserable and degrading – unless you had some sort of pull and could bribe your way into better quarters. By definition, everyone needed money, so corruption inside the prisons was completely out of control. Receipts from the Dublin premiere of Handel’s ‘Messiah’ were used to liberate over a hundred and forty-two debtors from prison.

‘MY dear,’ said Mr Micawber, ‘your papa was very well in his way, and Heaven forbid that I should disparage him. Take him for all in all, we ne’er shall—in short, make the acquaintance, probably, of anybody else possessing, at his time of life, the same legs for gaiters, and able to read the same description of print, without spectacles. But he applied that maxim to our marriage, my dear; and that was so far prematurely entered into, in consequence, that I never recovered the expense.’

Mr Micawber looked aside at Mrs Micawber, and added: ‘Not that I am sorry for it. Quite the contrary, my love.’ After which, he was grave for a minute or so.

‘My other piece of advice, Copperfield,’ said Mr Micawber, ‘you know. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness.* Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.’*

Copy Book

That is, £19 19s 6d, or nineteen pounds, nineteen shillings and sixpence. There were 12 pence to the shilling, and 20 shillings to the pound, so what Mr Micawber is saying that happiness is when your income exceeds your expenditure, even if it is by as little as sixpence.

That is, £20 0s 6d, or twenty pounds, no shillings and sixpence – misery is when your expenditure exceeds your income by as little as sixpence. ‘Ought’ was a 19th-century alternative to ‘nought’, which apparently arose because people misheard ‘a nought’ as ‘an ought’. A number of other words have come into English this way, including (n)apron and (n)umpire, though ought = nought is rare today.

Précis

After advising David Copperfield to follow his own father-in-law’s maxim, and never do tomorrow what can be done today, Mr Micawber expressed regret that his father-in-law had encouraged him to rush into marriage. However, he quickly passed on to his second piece of advice: never to let annual expenditure exceed annual income, even by a sixpence. (56 / 60 words)

Source

From ‘David Copperfield’, by Charles Dickens (1812-1870).

Suggested Music

1 2

Grand Sonata in D major, Op. 20

Largo assai - Allegro quasi presto

John Baptist Cramer (1771-1858)

Performed by Jovanka Banjac.

Media not showing? Let me know!

Grand Sonata in D major, Op. 20

Aria con Variazioni (Moderato)

John Baptist Cramer (1771-1858)

Performed by Jovanka Banjac.

Media not showing? Let me know!

How To Use This Passage

You can use this passage to help improve your command of English.

IRead it aloud, twice or more. IISummarise it in one sentence of up to 30 words. IIISummarise it in one paragraph of 40-80 words. IVMake notes on the passage, and reconstruct the original from them later on. VJot down any unfamiliar words, and make your own sentences with them later. VIMake a note of any words that surprise or impress you, and ask yourself what meaning they add to the words you would have expected to see. VIITurn any old-fashioned English into modern English. VIIITurn prose into verse, and verse into prose. IXAsk yourself what the author is trying to get you to feel or think. XHow would an artist or a photographer capture the scene? XIHow would a movie director shoot it, or a composer write incidental music for it?

For these and more ideas, see How to Use The Copy Book.

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