David Copperfield, Charles Dickens [best historical fiction books of all time TXT] 📗

“And what does she say, requiring consideration?”

“Why, she reminds me, Steerforth,” said I, “that I came out on this expedition to look about me, and to think a little.”

“Which, of course, you have done?”

“Indeed I can’t say I have, particularly. To tell you the truth, I am afraid I have forgotten it.”

“Well! look about you now, and make up for your negligence,” said Steerforth. “Look to the right, and you’ll see a flat country, with a good deal of marsh in it; look to the left, and you’ll see the same. Look to the front, and you’ll find no difference; look to the rear, and there it is still.” I laughed, and replied that I saw no suitable profession in the whole prospect; which was perhaps to be attributed to its flatness.

“What says our aunt on the subject?” inquired Steerforth, glancing at the letter in my hand. “Does she suggest anything?”

“Why, yes,” said I. “She asks me, here, if I think I should like to be a proctor? What do you think of it?”

“Well, I don’t know,” replied Steerforth, coolly. “You may as well do that as anything else, I suppose?”

I could not help laughing again, at his balancing all callings and professions so equally; and I told him so.

“What is a proctor, Steerforth?” said I.

“Why, he is a sort of monkish attorney,” replied Steerforth. “He is, to some faded courts held in Doctors’ Commons⁠—a lazy old nook near St. Paul’s Churchyard⁠—what solicitors are to the courts of law and equity. He is a functionary whose existence, in the natural course of things, would have terminated about two hundred years ago. I can tell you best what he is, by telling you what Doctors’ Commons is. It’s a little out-of-the-way place, where they administer what is called ecclesiastical law, and play all kinds of tricks with obsolete old monsters of acts of Parliament, which three-fourths of the world know nothing about, and the other fourth supposes to have been dug up, in a fossil state, in the days of the Edwards. It’s a place that has an ancient monopoly in suits about people’s wills and people’s marriages, and disputes among ships and boats.”

“Nonsense, Steerforth!” I exclaimed. “You don’t mean to say that there is any affinity between nautical matters and ecclesiastical matters?”

“I don’t, indeed, my dear boy,” he returned; “but I mean to say that they are managed and decided by the same set of people, down in that same Doctors’ Commons. You shall go there one day, and find them blundering through half the nautical terms in Young’s Dictionary, apropos of the Nancy having run down the Sarah Jane, or Mr. Peggotty and the Yarmouth boatmen having put off in a gale of wind with an anchor and cable to the Nelson Indiaman in distress; and you shall go there another day, and find them deep in the evidence, pro and con, respecting a clergyman who has misbehaved himself; and you shall find the judge in the nautical case, the advocate in the clergyman’s case, or contrariwise. They are like actors: now a man’s a judge, and now he is not a judge; now he’s one thing, now he’s another; now he’s something else, change and change about; but it’s always a very pleasant, profitable little affair of private theatricals, presented to an uncommonly select audience.”

“But advocates and proctors are not one and the same?” said I, a little puzzled. “Are they?”

“No,” returned Steerforth, “the advocates are civilians⁠—men who have taken a doctor’s degree at college⁠—which is the first reason of my knowing anything about it. The proctors employ the advocates. Both get very comfortable fees, and altogether they make a mighty snug little party. On the whole, I would recommend you to take to Doctors’ Commons kindly, David. They plume themselves on their gentility there, I can tell you, if that’s any satisfaction.”

I made allowance for Steerforth’s light way of treating the subject, and, considering it with reference to the staid air of gravity and antiquity which I associated with that “lazy old nook near St. Paul’s Churchyard,” did not feel indisposed towards my aunt’s suggestion; which she left to my free decision, making no scruple of telling me that it had occurred to her, on her lately visiting her own proctor in Doctors’ Commons for the purpose of settling her will in my favour.

“That’s a laudable proceeding on the part of our aunt, at all events,” said Steerforth, when I mentioned it; “and one deserving of all encouragement. Daisy, my advice is that you take kindly to Doctors’ Commons.”

I quite made up my mind to do so. I then told Steerforth that my aunt was in town awaiting me (as I found from her letter), and that she had taken lodgings for a week at a kind of private hotel at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where there was a stone staircase, and a convenient door in the roof; my aunt being firmly persuaded that every house in London was going to be burnt down every night.

We achieved the rest of our journey pleasantly, sometimes recurring to Doctors’ Commons, and anticipating the distant days when I should be a proctor there, which Steerforth pictured in a variety of humorous and whimsical lights, that made us both merry. When we came to our journey’s end, he went home, engaging to call upon me next day but one; and I drove to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where I found my aunt up, and waiting supper.

If I had been round the world since we parted, we could hardly have been better pleased to meet again. My aunt cried outright as she embraced me; and said, pretending to laugh, that if my poor mother had been alive, that silly little creature would have shed tears, she had no doubt.

“So you have left Mr. Dick behind, aunt?” said I. “I am sorry for that. Ah, Janet, how do you do?”

As Janet curtsied, hoping I was well, I observed my aunt’s visage lengthen very much.

“I am