David Copperfield

You may not know this about me, but I love to watch any show from BBC. Perhaps it is stems from my days living in Belgium when that was the only channel we got on TV in english. Whether it is a mystery (Poirot, Agatha Christie, etc) or a Jane Austen type movie. You won't believe me if I told you how many times I've watch the 6 hour version of Pride and Prejudice.

Well, one day I was watching David Copperfield from BBC. David is played by Daniel Radcliffe (yes, Harry Potter when he was younger. The first few minutes of the movie, David describes his earliest memories of his mother before all the sadness in his life began. I wish I could quote it, but it was something about all his memories of her having such LIGHT. It showed her picking flowers surrounded by light and doing chores with a glow of light on her. I really loved the eloquent way the screenplay described his memories of his mother.

And so began my search for the actual words in David Copperfield about mothers so I could memorize them. I know. I know. I'm a weird person who likes to quote movies and books. I just really loved the idea of a young child thinking of their mother in such a pure, glowing, and admiring way. What woman doesn't want to be remembered with a halo surrounding her?

The frustrating thing about this word hunt is that I have not been able to find it. I've checked unabridged versions of Charles Dickens book, various abridged versions of his book and still haven't heard quite the same thing that I saw on that BBC show. I haven't found the screenplay yet...perhaps I can locate that somewhere on the web.

Here is the closest thing I could find from chapter two of the book, David Copperfield by Charles Dickens but it's just not the same:


And now I see the outside of our house, with the latticed
bedroom-windows standing open to let in the sweet-smelling air, and
the ragged old rooks'-nests still dangling in the elm-trees at the
bottom of the front garden. Now I am in the garden at the back,
beyond the yard where the empty pigeon-house and dog-kennel are -
a very preserve of butterflies, as I remember it, with a high
fence, and a gate and padlock; where the fruit clusters on the
trees, riper and richer than fruit has ever been since, in any
other garden, and where my mother gathers some in a basket, while
I stand by, bolting furtive gooseberries, and trying to look
unmoved. A great wind rises, and the summer is gone in a moment.
We are playing in the winter twilight, dancing about the parlour.
When my mother is out of breath and rests herself in an
elbow-chair, I watch her winding her bright curls round her
fingers, and straitening her waist, and nobody knows better than I
do that she likes to look so well, and is proud of being so pretty.

That is among my very earliest impressions. That, and a sense that
we were both a little afraid of Peggotty, and submitted ourselves
in most things to her direction, were among the first opinions - if
they may be so called - that I ever derived from what I saw.


David Copperfield
Chapter 2 I Observe
Charles Dickens