The Failed Text Rewriting Dickens Mtnez Cabeza

CHAPTER NINE
FAILING TO REWRITE DICKENS:

THE REAL DAVID COPPERFIELD,
BY ROBERT GRAVES
MIGUEL A. MARTÍNEZ-CABEZA
In a letter to the TLS published in June, 1948, Robert Graves expressed his
wish that Dickens lovers come to appreciate his “scholarly” David
Copperfield, although he feared readers had joined the ranks of reviewers
who had given him “the worst Press imaginable” fifteen years previously,
when the first and only edition of The Real David Copperfield came out in
Britain. Graves still sounded aggrieved and almost astonished at the abuse
against his “painstaking attempt to give the original story some sort of
Copyright © 2013. Cambridge Scholars Publisher. All rights reserved.
coherence after its collapse at the point where Steerforth goes off with
little Em’ly”. Graves was answering a letter to the Editor of the TLS in
favour of the abridgement of Victorian novels, many of which, in his
opinion, were not written for art’s sake but “to satisfy the market demands
of the day”.1 Although no writers or titles were mentioned, removing the
“padding” which editors persuaded the authors to insert would, he argued,
detract little from novels and would attract new readers. Graves took the
opportunity to reproduce a considerable fragment of the Foreword to his
David Copperfield in order to make his case. Drawing from generalized
criticism of the novel, he noted the complaint about the implausible
prosperity of Mr Micawber in Australia as confirmation that most readers
had paid little attention to the last two hundred pages of Dickens’ novel
(“among the feeblest and dreariest Dickens ever wrote”, in Graves’ view)
and thus to the final fortunes of the characters. It is true that Mr Micawber
eventually made good in Dickens’s story, but the fortune of the “real”
David Copperfield was very different.
My purpose here is to elucidate the reasons for the failure of The Real
David Copperfield as a novel and to give a tentative explanation of
Graves’ failure to understand these reasons. First, some attention will be
Espejo, J. L. M., & Sumillera, R. G. (Eds.). (2013). The failed text : Literature and failure. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com
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148 Chapter Nine
given to Dickens as a serial novelist; then Graves’ literary principles and

motivations for rewriting David Copperfield will be examined; and finally
the changes in Chapter I and the added scene between David and Em’ly
(Chapter LIII) will be scrutinized in order to establish how Graves’ literary
principles were put into practice.
Dickens as a Serial Novelist

In the eighteenth century, novels usually appeared in five volumes, or even
as many as seven, although by the time of Jane Austen the usual number
was three or four. At a price of half a guinea a volume, novels were
exceedingly expensive to those who did not belong to a circulating library.
These were the prevailing conditions when Dickens began to publish his
first fictional pieces, collected in Sketches by Boz in 1937 but published
during the previous year in newspapers and magazines such as The
Evening Chronicle and Bell’s Life in London. This probably gave him the
idea for publishing his first novel, Pickwick Papers, in serial form. The
purpose was to reach a wider number of readers by cutting to a third the
price of the whole novel and selling it in shilling monthly parts at one
shilling. Such a format seemed perfectly adapted to the plan: “to string
together whimsical sketches of the pencil by entertaining sketches of the
pen” (Forster 1969 vol. I: 70). At the outset of the work, the question of
where or how the story was to end was as little known to Dickens as it was
to his readers.
One may conjecture that over time Dickens might have wanted to
finish a novel before serializing it, yet this never happened. The method
was soon established with Pickwick Papers. Each monthly “number”
consisted of three or four chapters, covering thirty-two pages of print, with
two plates, and several pages of advertisements. This form of publication
was also used for Nicholas Nickleby, Martin Chuzzlewict, Dombey and
Son, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Little Dorritt, Our Mutual Friend,
and Edwin Drood. With the exception of Edwin Drood, all these novels
appeared in nineteen monthly numbers, the last being a double number
with forty-eight pages and four plates priced at two shillings. Edwin
Drood was planned for publication in eleven numbers, the last to be a
double number, but only six were written before Dickens’ unexpected
death in 1870. His other novels were also published in serial form but in
weekly magazines.
Dickens never wrote more than four or five numbers before the first
was published, and by the middle of every novel he was hardly more than
one number ahead of his readers. In addition, the writing of Pickwick
Failing to Rewrite Dickens 149
Papers overlapped with Oliver Twist, and Oliver Twist with Nicholas
Nickleby. Despite his numerous commitments, Dickens always managed to
submit his manuscripts to the editors in time. The only exception was
following the death of his sister-in-law, Mary Hogarth, on 7 May 1837. He
was so deeply moved that he could not meet the deadline for the June
numbers of Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist.
The obvious disadvantage of this method was an impossibility of
fitting the beginning to the end. Writing in serial form involved
maintaining two focuses: the design and purpose of the novel had to be
kept in mind; but at the same time every number had to retain unity and
interest. Each number should lead to a climax or at least to a point of rest.
The writer also had to bear in mind that his readers suffered constantly
from long interruptions, so that characterization and plotting had to be
adjusted appropriately. Dickens himself admitted that not every story
suited this type of publication. From the point of view of the reader, the
system created an eager expectation of whatever was coming next and a
sense that the story was in the making from month to month, not unlike
modern followers of popular TV series. The public was both large and
responsive, expressed in the form of letters and through rising or falling
sales. Whatever the disadvantages, Dickens valued this relationship with
readers enormously. But in Graves’ view, such a lack of planning
demonstrated Dickens’ poor opinion of his readers, who, when the
monthly parts were assembled in book form, would accept flaws in the
extended development of plots and in the eventually wearisome repetitions
in characterization and reiterations in the announcement of the same
character. If Dickens could get away with this, it was because, in the
words of Graves, the Dear Reader public was “most leisurely and, in a
literary sense, most uncritical” (Graves 1933: 5). Graves’ poor opinion of
Victorian readers seems to be confirmed by their acceptance of
inconsistent twists in plots, such as the final whitewashing of Annie
Strong.
Apparently Dickens did not complete his novels before serializing
them, but rather developed a kind of planning scheme for every work as it
progressed. This working method has been described by Butt and Tillotson
(1968). Notes were written on a sheet of paper folded across the centre
forming two half sheets. The left-hand side was filled with general
memoranda, and the right-hand side was headed by the title of the novel
and the title of the monthly part, and was then subdivided into chapters.
The chapter notes seem to fill a double purpose. Sometimes they serve to
outline the direction the chapter will take, emphasizing its salient points;
but most often they summarize the contents so that Dickens could see in
150 Chapter Nine
outline the main elements of the previous number when composing the
next. The function of the notes on the left-hand side is not so clear. They
do not correspond to chapter divisions, but set out the ingredients that will
go into the number.
Here is an approximate reproduction of the notes corresponding to the
second number of David Copperfield (Butt and Tillotson 1969: 120-1):
Experience
(Personal History and <adventures> of
David Copperfield –Nº II.)
Miss Murdstone Chapter IV.

Their religion I fall into disgrace
Picture of all that, and its Progress of his mother’s weakness under
effect on Davy’s life. the Murdstones.
Qy His books and reading? Miss Murdstone
His offence, and confinement Beat’s him
upstairs. Child’s remembrance of Bites
the latter. Shut up and dismissed
Sent away
Chapter V.
<I attend church> -And am sent away from home.
The carrier and Peggotty.
<hospital received> Waiter –glass of ale–chops–pudding–
<I am received by Mr himself

Peggoty> journey
to be left till called for
School with the boys all at home
‘Take care of him. He bites’
Chapter VI.
I enlarge my circle of acquaintance.
Mr Creacle
return of the boys
spending his money
Steerforth
Steerforth.
The first number ended by arousing the reader’s curiosity as to David’s

dealings with Mr Murdstone. This is immediately continued in Chapter
IV. The memoranda relate entirely to this chapter and include all the
incidents in order of narration. The lack of memoranda for chapters V and
VI contrasts with the detail of the “things to remember” for future
development, such as “the carrier and Peggotty”. Steerforth is introduced
with a heroic aura but the confiscation of David’s money hints at his less
than heroic future actions.
When Dickens was planning David Copperfield during the latter part
of 1848, John Forster suggested that he should write it in the first person
(Forster 1969 vol.2: 77) but nothing was mentioned regarding the use of
personal and private recollections. On the completion of the novel,
Dickens reached his highest reputation and popularity. The subject was
more attractive than that of Martin Chuzzlewit, there was more variety of
incident, with a freer play of character, and there was an added interest in
the suspicion that “underneath the fiction lay something of the author’s
life” (Forster 1969 vol.2: 77).
Robert Graves Criticism of Dickens

In the Foreword to The Real David Copperfield, Graves justifies his
rewriting of the classic as owing to the lack of straightforwardness that
characterizes the Dickensian text, conditioned by a “tradesman-like
exploitation of the now extinct Dear Reader” (Graves 1933: 5). Dickens
compromised the unity of texts in his wish to obtain an immediate and
regular income of serial novels. As an undesired result, the author would
have to make the best of what had already been composed, no matter how
hastily, and rely on the reader’s forgetfulness of what had been read four
months before. But perhaps the most serious charge is that Dickens
“economize[d] in inventive effort by diluting” (Graves 1933: 5).
In Graves’ count, a quarter-million of the half a million words in David
Copperfield add nothing to the story, so cutting it down to a half would
restore the novel “to what appears to be its natural length and plot”(Graves
1933: 6). By the same token, it would not be hard to conclude that the
narrative material in Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) could easily be accommodated
in a short story, and that perhaps Laurence Sterne should not have
bothered to write Tristram Shandy (1759-67) at all, since the “real” story
never gets told. In this notion of “restoring” the text in search for some
ideal, Brearton (2011) sees a common pattern of logic shared with Graves’
other projects involving the classics: the claim that there is an “original”
source, a source that has been, through history (or as a consequence of
history), adulterated, tampered with, and separated from its true meaning.
Graves’ project would have been to recover an original or “authentic” text
or meaning, the “true story” lost from view. Indeed, he argues that because
of the autobiographical component, Dickens was personally committed to
the truth in David Copperfield, but such commitment was abandoned
when the protagonist grows up and establishes himself as a successful
152 Chapter Nine
member of the upper middle-class. At this point the autobiography

develops into “a popular sermon on the seven virtues and vices” (Graves
1933: 7). However, none of the characters develops into a representative
of moral values: Steerforth and Jack Maldon, Doctor Strong and Annie, or
Rosa Dartle and Miss Mowcher and Emily have become too real to
function as allegories.
Immediately after publishing his David Copperfield, Graves wanted to
see another Dickensian classic rewritten. While in Mallorca in 1933 he
persuaded the Scottish poet Norman Cameron (who was building a house
next to the one in which Graves and Laura Riding were living at Deyá) to
do the same with The Pickwick Papers. Graves himself wrote the first two
chapters to give Cameron a start (the first two chapters constitute pages 1-
101 of the manuscript2). As with David Copperfield, the idea was to cut
out two thirds of the verbiage to make the story more readable. Cameron
wrote just over 1000 pages of the manuscript. However, it appears that he
abandoned the project, since the story progresses no further than the trial
scene.
In the case of Pickwick, one can argue that the lack of any sustained
plotline apart from the case of Bardell v. Pickwick, the “tales” frequently
inserted in the narrative, and the shallow characterisation—except that of
Sam Weller and Mr Pickwick—make Pickwick Papers apt for
abridgement. On the other hand, David Copperfield has not in general
been criticized for flaws in plot or characterization and, what is more,

trying to “correct” the Inimitable sounded like boundless presumption.
Graves sought to make a distinction between a regular abridgement and
his rewriting of David Copperfield. Abridging for him meant choosing the
more readable passages and linking them together with brief synopses of
the less readable parts, but this would not work with the Dickensian text
since Dickens’ diluted style would often require reduction but occasionally
expansion. Thus The Real David Copperfield differed from usual
abridgments in that it was not a condensation for schools but a rewriting
for the ordinary reader. Ironically, the American publishers of the book
decided on an abridgement of The Real David Copperfield to be used as
textbook, as described below.
The TLS reviewer identified Graves’ motivation for rewriting David
Copperfield in “an intense dislike of the Romantic Dickens” (Murray
1933: 196). Even worse, this tampering with the nineteenth century classic
had gone too far. One thing was to try and finish Edwin Drood and quite
another “to be the first to show how badly the novels Dickens did finish
require rewriting by a competent pen” (Murray 1933: 196). This ironical
assessment was illustrated by citing several trivial changes of single words
which certainly did nothing to justify the whole rewriting. The most
important modification in fact concerned the plot. The changes here were
made so as to give the three main characters—David, Emily and
Steerforth—the first part of the book, and provide the second with “what it
most lacks—a climax and dénouement” (Graves 1933: 9), and bring about
the conclusion in twenty pages instead of two hundred. This is a quotation
of the explanation Emily gives of her running away:
Because he wanted to marry me, and because I didn’t want to marry Ham.
I didn’t love Ham, except as a dear friend. I tried but I couldn’t. I ran off
with James because I thought it would be better to be married to him than
to Ham. They both loved me, you see, and I didn’t love either of them. I
have never really loved anyone but you. A woman only gives her love
once. (Graves 1933: 399)
There is little doubt that Dickens would never have made any of his
characters say anything like this, and one might wonder whether we would
be celebrating his bicentenary so enthusiastically if he had. Almost every
critic, and this includes Graves, has cherished Dickens’ dialogues and this
fragment sounds nothing like any of them. Nevertheless, the publishers at
Arthur Barker Ltd. clearly expected readers of the TLS to buy the book and
judge for themselves, since on the very page where this review appeared
they paid for an advertisement praising The Real David Copperfield for
having been written with a “simplicity and directness” Dickens could not
afford. Graves had taken away the rhetorical style, full of sentimentalities
and digressions, and, conversely, he had restored the treatment of
situations to an integrity prevented by Victorian prejudice. The
“autobiographical honesty” that spurred Dickens’ writing seemed to have
been exhausted after six months. In The Real David Copperfield
publishers claimed that “a dingy and moribund school classic, nearly half a
million words long, has been reorganised into a novel of sensible length
and perspective that should hold the interest of the most sophisticated
modern readers”.
American publishers Harcourt Brace were not so convinced about
bringing out a U. S. edition. They scheduled one but withdrew it at the last
minute and published instead a school textbook of Graves’ version, further
edited by a school teacher and with the less ambitious title David
Copperfield, by Charles Dickens, Condensed by Robert Graves. The
reviewer at Time Magazine (March 26, 1934) ventured to suggest that
readers who took the trouble to compare The Real David Copperfield with
Dickens’ original would find Graves’ version an improvement.3
Apparently even the revision of the revision managed to make David
154 Chapter Nine
Copperfield a better book than it had originally been, in spite of the

editor’s omission of a crucial interpolation made by Graves of a meeting
between David and Emily, just after Dora’s death, in which they confess
their love and spend the night together. This reviewer’s judgment, then,
sounds about as wise as his prediction that The Real David Copperfield
“should keep bright for many a long year the names of both Charles
Dickens and Robert Graves”.
The “Real” David Copperfield

Passages A and B reprint the beginning of the two versions of the novel:
(A) I was born at Blunderstone, a village a few miles from the Suffolk
coast, one windy March night in the year 1820. It was Friday night, just
before midnight, which country women believe a particularly unlucky
birth-hour, though with the ill-luck goes the privilege, they say, of being
able to see ghosts and spirits. I am not sure whether they have been right in
my case about the ill-luck—that is a matter of opinion—but at least I have
never in my life seen a ghost. And I was only a Friday night’s child by
accident: if it had not been for my father’s aunt, Miss Betsey Trotwood, I
should have been born at some later, probably more propitious hour. [122
words] (Graves 1933: 11)
(B) Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that
station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my
life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been
informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night. It was
remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.
In consideration of the day and hour of my birth, it was declared by the
nurse, and by some sage women in the neighbourhood who had taken a
lively interest in me several months before there was any possibility of our
becoming personally acquainted, first, that I was destined to be unlucky in
life; and secondly, that I was privileged to see ghosts and spirits; both these
gifts inevitably attaching, as they believed, to all unlucky infants of either
gender, born towards the small hours on a Friday night.
I need say nothing here, on the first head, because nothing can show
better than my history whether that prediction was verified or falsified by
the result. On the second branch of the question, I will only remark, that
unless I ran through that part of my inheritance while I was still a baby, I
have not come into it yet. But I do not at all complain of having been kept
out of this property; and if anybody else should be in the present
enjoyment of it, he is heartily welcome to keep it. [258 words] (Dickens
1991: 1)
Any reader minimally acquainted with the work and style of Charles
Dickens will have recognized B as the Dickensian text. The long
conditional sentence that the reader has to keep in mind until the main
clause states the self-conscious narrative announces a recognizable style
that a century later could be deemed long-winded and inappropriate for the
writing of a novel, but which is hardly a reason for rewriting the classic. It
is not the purpose of this paper to provide a detailed stylistic analysis of
the twin texts, yet even the most superficial reading will reveal that the
length and complexity of sentences, the parallelisms, the complexity and
formality of the vocabulary, the allusions (e.g., to legal matters), are all
absent in Text A. Graves’ rewriting certainly conveys the main facts of the
story but does little else because the simple and neutral vocabulary (with
the exception of “propitious”), the short sentences and repeated attributive
patterns (be + adj./noun) are reminiscent more of a run of the mill story for
children than an assumedly restored classic.
In passages C and D, from the beginning of Chapter II, David narrates

his memories from church-going:
(C) At church we sat in a high-backed pew close to the pulpit. There was a
window through which I could see the upper storey of our house. But I was
not supposed to look out of the window, or through the open door of the
porch in the other direction, where the church-yard sheep sometimes

walked up the path and stared nervously in at us. I was expected to keep
my eyes on the clergyman, and Pegotty frowned at me if I did not, but it
was such a strain that often I wanted so shout out something very loud and
run away down the aisle. (Graves 1933: 18-19)
(D) Here is our pew in the church. What a high-backed pew! With a
window near it, out of which our house can be seen, and is seen many
times during the morning’s service, by Pegotty, who likes to make herself
as sure as she can that it’s not being robbed, or is not in flames. But though
Peggoty’s eye wanders, she is much offended if mine does, and frowns to
me, as I stand upon the seat, that I am to look at the clergyman. But I can’t
always look at him—I know him without that white thing on, and I am
afraid of his wondering why I stare so, and perhaps stopping the service to
inquire—and what am I to do? It’s a dreadful thing to gape, but I must do
something. I look at my mother, but she pretends not to see me. I look at a
boy in the aisle, and he makes faces at me. I look at the sunlight coming in
at the open door through the porch, and there I see a stray sheep—I don’t
mean a sinner, but mutton—half making up his mind to come into the
church. I feel that if I look at him any longer, I might be tempted to say
something out loud; and what would become of me then? (Dickens 1991:
15)
156 Chapter Nine
The “real” version C seems to have done away with all the visual
richness that characterizes D. Incidentally, Dickens entitled this chapter I
Observe. Instead, Graves tells us about a boy who looks at different
objects in a church and remembers what he has been told on previous
occasions. Dickens, then, makes the reader see what the protagonist saw
and experience the boy’s anxiety between his natural inclination and good
manners, all this with the immediacy given by the present tenses. The
narrative is controlled by David’s point of view and the scene has the
added element of the child’s humour provided by the literal “stray sheep”.
Virginia Woolf (1994) in her review of David Copperfield supports
one of the criticisms made by Graves. Dickens, it is true, fails when he has
to deal with mature emotions: the seduction of Em’ly, the death of Dora,
the explanation of Mrs Strong, the despair of Mrs Steerforth, or the
anguish of Ham. All these scenes seem endowed with an extreme unreality
because, as Woolf notes, Dickens seems unable to stand still and look into
things. At the same time, though, she applauded his power of making the
reader remember:
the excitement, the humour, the oddity of people’s characters, the smell
and savour and soot of London, the incredible coincidences which hook the
most remote lives together, the city, the law courts, this man’s mouth like a
post-box, the conviviality, the merriment, the punch-making. (Woolf 1994:
286-7)
If the works of Dickens are still classics, it is because this power has
not faded in two hundred years. And if The Real Copperfield was so soon
forgotten it was because Robert Graves did not realize that in his
“condensation” he was throwing out the baby with the bath water. The
thousands of words that add so little to the story are essential in helping to
create his characters visually: allowing the reader to watch David
Copperfield looking into the mirror to see how red his eyes were after his
mother’s death, or permitting the reader to see into Mr. Micawber’s soul.
When Uriah Heep is first introduced, we catch a glimpse of him
“breathing into the pony’s nostrils, and immediately covering them with
his hand, as if he were putting some spell upon him” (Dickens 1991: 219).
This image of the sinister Uriah can hardly be surpassed or forgotten.
Alongside the falsehood of the melodrama and the flattery of the
reader, Graves finds authenticity in the conversations, so these are kept,
suffering little modifications. One in particular, the first conversation
between David and Uriah Heep in Chapter XVI, deserves repeating here:
(E) ‘I suppose you are an authority on law by now, Uriah?’

‘Me, Master Copperfield? Oh no! I am a very humble person.’
(He pronounced the word, a favourite one of his, without the ‘h’: for
which, though it sounded rather queer, I believe he had the support of Mr.
Wickfield’s pronouncing dictionary. I seem to remember finding that
humble was listed with herb, humour and humility as ‘more properly
unaspirated.’ Uriah took pains with his pronunciation). ‘Oh no, you would
scarcely find an humbler. My mother and I live in a very low style, but we
have much to be thankful for. My father’s former calling was lowly too.
He was a sexton, Master Copperfield.’ (Graves 1933: 132-3)
(F) ‘I suppose you are quite a great lawyer?’ I said, after looking at him for
some time.
‘Me, Master Copperfield?’ said Uriah. ‘Oh, no! I’m a very umble
person.’
It was no fancy of mine about his hands, I observed; for he frequently
ground the palms against each other as if to squeeze them dry and warm,
besides often wiping them, in a stealthy way, on his pocket-handkerchief.
‘I am well aware that I am the umblest person going,’ said Uriah Heep,
modestly; ‘let the other be where he may. My mother is likewise a very
umble person. We live in a numble abode, Master Copperfield, but have
much to be thankful for. My father’s former calling was umble. He was a
sexton.’ (Dickens 1991: 234)
Dickens’ characterization of the clerk Uriah Heep has become so

familiar in British culture that the name is often used to refer to a person
who pretends to show great respect but is not sincere, and the phrase “ever
so umble”, with unaspirated “h”, is his unmistakable trait. Accordingly, we
are told in passage E that the “real” Uriah Heep used the word ever so
often; in fact in the recorded conversations he does not, and synonyms are
used precisely to avoid repetitions (low style, lowly). The word “humble”
keeps the “h” but a lengthy note indicates Uriah’s unaspirated pronunciation
and his likely reason. As in the examples above, Graves’ narrative opts for
telling instead of showing, producing a detachment between reader and
story that runs in the opposite direction to the engagement of the reader in
Dickens’ original text. In the particular case of Uriah Heep’s
characterization, the reader may feel disappointed—or even cheated—by
the authorial remark (that the word “humble” was a favourite of his) which
Uriah’s actual words disconfirm.
Graves’ “tightening-up” has also targeted the melodrama, and by his
own count he omitted nine fits of weeping out of every ten in rewriting the
early chapters. However, there was also to be an important addition.
Although Graves denies any attempt at modernisation, the added scene of
the night David and Em’ly spend together is explicitly justified because
158 Chapter Nine
What [Dickens] wrote was for family reading, and his ingenuity in
eliminating the facts of life was as much admired at the time as ingenuity
in accentuating them is admired now. (Graves 1933: 8)
One of these “facts of life” was Dora’s miscarriage, narrated in the

following two passages excerpted from Chapter XLVIII:
(G) Dora found she was going to have a baby. I was overjoyed at the
prospect of Dora as a mother (…) So we were happier, more really happy,
that we had ever been. Then Dora tripped on the stair-carpet—as might
have been expected in our house, the rods had not been properly slid back
after one of the rare stair-brushings—and fell down a whole flight. So the
baby was not born, and the Doctor told me that she had done herself
serious internal injury. He could not promise that she would ever be fit to
bear a child now. (Graves 1933: 364)
(H) But, as that year wore on, Dora was not strong. I had hoped that lighter
hands than mine would help to mould her character, and that a baby-smile
upon her breast might change my child-wife to a woman. It was not to be.
The spirit fluttered for a moment on the threshold of its little prison, and,
unconscious of captivity, took wing. (Dickens 1991: 698)
Passage H complies with the Victorian moral sensitivity, which would

naturally steer Dickens towards an exaggerated decency in the narrative
when any subject connected with sex was present, be it mentioning Dora’s
miscarriage or calling Martha a prostitute. This is a moral judgment in
itself, of course, and obviously morals had changed considerably between
Victorian times and the first third of the twentieth century. A different
issue is that of whether the rewriting of a classic should “amend” the
morals of a narrator. But the most important and “necessary” modification
of the plot for Graves was to provide a climax after which he could bring
the story to an end in twenty pages instead of the “dreary” two hundred
pages Dickens wrote. The added scene extends for most of Chapter LIII in
a conversation between David and Em’ly, but it is at the beginning of
Chapter LIV that the protagonist’s thoughts show David coming to terms
with the previous night:
(I) I cannot view the matter in any very different light. It is not merely that
a common reaction to sudden grief is any sensitive man or woman is a
violent gust of feeling for some person of the opposite sex—a passion to
which all the decencies are often sacrificed: I would insist that the love
between Emily and myself, so far from being born of a moment’s
hysterical fancy, was, though continuously suppressed since childhood, the
strongest, most enduring passion of my life, as it was of hers, and took
precedence, on that single brief occasion granted for its fulfilment, over all
other feelings and considerations whatsoever. (Graves 1933: 405)
Here we do not have a parallel text from Dickens, but since the
previous fifty chapters have dealt largely with David, who shares with his
Dickensian predecessor a great concern for “other feelings and
considerations”, we will have to conclude that this is the “real” David, in
spite of everything we have been led to believe about him. This raises
important issues regarding the consistency of the characterization of the
protagonist that would extend the present discussion beyond its purpose,
which has been to show that the reality to be found in Dickens is based on
its power to make readers believe they are in front of living creatures, who
feel, think and speak in unique ways. By focusing solely on the plot,
Graves’ rewriting kept the skeleton of the narrative but eliminated the
flesh. For this reason The Real David Copperfield was stillborn.
Notes
1. ‘Digested Classics’, TLS 15 May, 1948: 275.
2. This manuscript is kept at the library of the University of Victoria, Canada.
3. ‘Dickens brushed up’. Review of David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens,
Condensed by Robert Graves. Time Magazine March 26, 1934, Vol. XXIII, No 13.
32.
Works Cited
Brearton, F. 2011: ‘A New Sword on an Old Anvil: W.B. Yeats, Robert
Graves, and the Anglo-Irish Tradition’. Irish University Review: a
Journal of Irish Studies 41: 1-24.
Butt, J. and K. Tillotson 1968: Dickens at Work. 2nd ed. London:
Methuen.
Dickens, C. 1991 (1849-1850): David Copperfield. New York/London:
Alfred A. Knopf.
Forster, J. 1969: The Life of Charles Dickens. 2 Vols. London: Dent.
Graves, R. 1933: The Real David Copperfield. London: Arthur Barker.
—. 1948: ‘Digested Classics’. Letter to the Times Literary Supplement. 12
June. 331.
Murray, D.L. 1933: ‘Dealings with Dickens’ (The Real David Copperfield,
by Robert Graves). Times Literary Supplement. 23 March. 196.
Paine, M.P. 1934: David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens, Condensed by
Robert Graves. New York: Harcourt, Brace.
160 Chapter Nine
Woolf, V. 1994 (1925): ‘David Copperfield’. A. McNeillie, ed. The Essays

of Virginia Woolf. Vol. IV: 1925-1928. Orlando: Harcourt. 284-9.

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CHAPTER NINE

FAILING TO REWRITE DICKENS:

given to Dickens as a serial novelist; then Graves’ literary principles and

Dickens as a Serial Novelist

Miss Murdstone Chapter IV.

<I am received by Mr himself

The first number ended by arousing the reader’s curiosity as to David’s

Robert Graves Criticism of Dickens

member of the upper middle-class. At this point the autobiography

been criticized for flaws in plot or characterization and, what is more,

Copperfield a better book than it had originally been, in spite of the

The “Real” David Copperfield

In passages C and D, from the beginning of Chapter II, David narrates

porch in the other direction, where the church-yard sheep sometimes

(E) ‘I suppose you are an authority on law by now, Uriah?’

Dickens’ characterization of the clerk Uriah Heep has become so

One of these “facts of life” was Dora’s miscarriage, narrated in the

Passage H complies with the Victorian moral sensitivity, which would

Woolf, V. 1994 (1925): ‘David Copperfield’. A. McNeillie, ed. The Essays

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