Dickens's "Mr. Micawber Conducts David Home" by Harold Copping (original) (raw)

Commentary: The Serpentine Uriah Heep, Canny Clerk and Plotting Villain

The actual childhood of Charles Dickens and the imagined childhood of his protagonist now part company somewhat as David lodges with the Whitfields while attending Doctor Strong's academy. Having been transported by Aunt Betsy to Canterbury, David meets the diabolical, 'writhing' Uriah Heep, "the umblest person going," who, although the son of a sexton and a mere scrivener, aspires in secret to be a lawyer, and marry his employer's daughter. The picture seems to combine the boy's initially meeting Heep in Chapter 15 with the more extensive interview of the following chapter, since Copping has drawn the background details from the former chapter.

This scene in Mr. Whitfield's counting-house originally occurred in instalment six (Chapter 16, "I Am a New Boy in More Senses Than One"), October 1849. As the desk-lamp highlights Uriah's angular head, pale face, and shock of red hair, Copping's use of chiaroscuro throws the remainder of the room into shadow, so that the map on the wall is not in evidence.

Passage Illustrated: David makes Uriah's acquaintance

Uriah . . . was at work at a desk in this room, which had a brass frame on the top to hang papers upon, and on which the writing he was making a copy of was then hanging. . . . every now and then, his sleepless eyes would come below the writing, like two red suns, and stealthily stare at me for I dare say a whole minute at a time, during which his pen went, or pretended to go, as cleverly as ever" (Ch. 15).

Various Versions of the Writhing Heep (1867 through 1910)

Left: Later illustrator W. H. C. Groome depicts Micawber's denunciation of the plotting clerk: "You — you Heep of infamy." (1907). Centre: Harry Furniss's study of Uriah and his mother in their own humble parlour: David visits Uriah and Mrs. Heep (1910). Centre right: Sol Eytinge, Junior's dual portrait of the Heeps in the 1867 Diamond Edition: Uriah Heep and His Mother. Right: Clayton J. Clarke's (Kyd's) caricatural study of "the 'umblest person going," Uriah Heep.

Relevant Illustrated Editions of this Novel (1849 through 1910)

Bibliography

Dickens, Charles. David Copperfield. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ("Phiz"). London: Chapman & Hall, May 1849 to April 1850.

Dickens, Mary Angela et al. Children's Stories from Dickens. Introduction by Percy Fitzgerald. Illustrated by Harold Copping. London, Paris New, York: Raphael Tuck & Sons, Ltd., 1893.

Matz, B. W., and Kate Perugini; illustrated by Harold Copping. Character Sketches from Dickens. London: Raphael Tuck, 1924. Copy in the Paterson Library, Lakehead University.

Created 16 February 2009

Last modified 29 September 2023