Winter 2005 no. 55
clerkly bearing on the grass-plot - and was
introduced to my new master, Dr Strong.
Dr Strong looked almost as rust, to my thinking, as
the tall iron rails and gates outside the house; and
almost as stiff and heavy as the great stone urns
that flanked them, and were set up, on the top of
the red-brick wall, at regular distances all round
the court, like sublimated skittles, for Time to play
at. He was in his library (I mean Doctor Strong
was), with his clothes not particularly well
brushed; his long black gaiters unbuttoned; and
his shoes yawning like two caverns on the heart-
rug. Turning upon me a lustreless eye, that
reminded me of a long-forgotten blind old horse
who once used to crop the grass, and tumble over
the graves, in Blunderstone churchyard, he said he
was glad to see me: and then he gave me his hand;
which I didn't know what to do with, as it did
nothing for itself.'
Old acquaintances from young David's lonely time
in London, the Micawbers, reappear in Canterbury.
It was a little inn where Mr Micawber put up, and
he occupied a little room in it,, partitioned off from
the commercial room, and strongly flavoured with
tobacco-smoke. I think, it was over the kitchen,
because a warm greasy smell appeared to come up
through the chinks in the floor, and there was a
flabby perspiration on the walls. I know it was
near the bar, on account of the smell of spirits and
jingling of glasses. Here, recumbent on a small
sofa, underneath a picture of a race-horse, with
her head close to the fire, and her feet pushing the
mustard off the dumb-waiter at the other end of
the room, was Mrs Micawber, to whom Mr
Micawber entered first, saying,' My dear, allow me
to introduce to you a pupil of Doctor Strong's.
...Mrs Micawber was amazed, but very glad to see
me.'
Although Dr Strong's is not King's School, it has a
similar close link with the Cathedral. Here is adult
David remembering his time there.
'My school-days! The silent gliding on of my
existence - the unseen, unfelt progress of my life -
from childhood up to youth! A moment, and I
occupy my place in the Cathedral, where we all
went together, every Sunday morning, assembling
first at school for that purpose. The earthy smell,
the sunless air, the sensation of the world being
shut out, the resounding of the organ through the
black and white arched galleries and aisles, are
wings that take me back, and hold me hovering
above those days, in a half-sleeping and half-
waking dream.'
Much later in the novel, after the death of Mr
Spenlow, his father-in-law, and while Dora is
staying with her aunts, David walks over from
Dover.
'Coming into Canterbury, I loitered through the old
streets with a sheer pleasure that calmed my
spirits, and eased my heart. There were the old
signs, the old names over the shops, the old people
serving in them. It appeared so long, since I had
been a schoolboy there, that I wondered the place
was so little changed, until I reflected how little I
was changed myself. Strange to say that quiet
influence which was inseparable in my mind from
Agnes, seemed to pervade even e city where she
dwelt. The venerable cathedral towers, and the old
jackdaws and rooks whose angry voices made
them more retired than perfect silence would have
done; the battered gateways once stuck full with
statues, long thrown down, and crumbled away,
like the reverential pilgrims who had gazed upon
them; the still nooks, where the ivied growth of
centuries crept over gabled ends and ruined walls;
the ancient houses, the pastoral landscape of field,
orchard, and garden; everywhere - on everything -
I felt the same serener air, the same calm,
thoughtful, softening spirit.'
Later, when Mr Micawber has triumphantly
revealed Heep's villainy, he invites David with
Aunt Betsey and Mr Dick to his home not far off
from the Wickfield house.
as the street door opened into the sitting-room,
and he bolted in with a precipitation quite his
own, we found ourselves at once in the bosom of
his family. Mr Micawber exclaiming, "Emma! my
life!" rushed into Mrs Micawber's arms. Mrs
Micawber shrieked, and folded Mr Micawber in
her embrace...' When things calm down a little,
Aunt Betsey shows interest in the Micawber's
numerous offspring and enquires particularly
about the eldest son young Wilkins, who has it
seems been something of a disappointment.
"It was my hope when I came here," said Mr
Micawber, "to have got Wilkins into the Church: or
perhaps I shall express my meaning more strictly,
if I Say the Choir. But there was no vacancy for a
tenor in the venerable Pile for which this city is so
justly eminent; and he has - in short, he has
contracted a habit of singing in public houses,
rather than in sacred edifices."
"But he means well," said Mrs Micawber, tenderly.
"I dare say, my love," rejoined Mr Micawber, "that
he means particularly well, but I have not yet
found that he carries out his meaning, in any given
direction whatever."
As David's story movers towards its quietly happy
conclusion, he comes back again to Canterbury, to
the Wickfield house and to Agnes.
'The well-remembered ground was soon traversed,
and I came into the quiet streets, where every
stone was a boy's book to me. I went on foot to the
old house, and went away with a heart too full to
enter. I returned; and looking, is I passed, through
the low window of the turret-room where first
Uriah Heep, and afterwards Mr Micawber, had
been wont to sit, saw that it was a little parlour
now, and that there was no office. Otherwise the
2 6
The Dutch Dickensian Volume XXV
