Willing

I read Dickens' David Copperfield (1850) a bit after I "should have." (My quotation marks.) I was a little ... slow ... to come to Dickens, as I've written here (and elsewhere). It all didn't begin in ninth grade when our lit book, Exploring Literature, featured an abbreviated version of Great Expectations, which I just could not read (as my miserable scores on reading quizzes most patently certified).

I vowed I would never read another damn word by Dickens (not that I'd read too many so far). Then, at Hiram College, just a few years later, here came Great Expectations in a lit class. I audibly groaned (and no doubt cursed) when I saw the reading list posted at the book store.

But, surprise, I loved it this time. (I was so much more mature in college!)

And in the ensuing years I read all of Dickens' novels--and a lot of his nonfiction as well. (And as I recently wrote, I wept like a wuss last week when Joyce and I saw the new film about Dickens, The Man Who Invented Christmas.)

So ... David Copperfield ... just wait a minute for the relevance here ...

During that run of reading Dickens, I bought the Oxford Illustrated Dickens (pic below--not our set but the same thing).

I just looked in my copy of Copperfield from that set and see my little note in the front: I read it in December 1998 and January 1999; my note also says "2nd time." I cannot remember the first--but it wasn't too long before this second reading.

I just looked in my journal from 1998-99, and I see I began it on Christmas Eve 1998 and was reading it pretty much every day in January 1999, finishing it on the 13th (not a Friday!). But--curse my laziness!--I said nothing about it really except that I was reading it again. 

Okay, what does all of this have to do with anything?

It has to do with marriage ... with spousal responsibilities ...

But first, a moment from the novel. Barkis is driving a carriage (see photo at top), taking David away from home. David has with him some treats baked by Peggotty, a servant back at home. Barkis is impressed--they taste good. He asks David if she has any sweethearts; David, mishearing, thinks he's said "sweetmeats"; they straighten it out.

Then Barkis asks David if he will be writing to Peggotty while he's away; he says he will be. And let's let Dickens handle the next little bit ...

‘So she makes,’ said Mr. Barkis, after a long interval of reflection, ‘all the apple parsties, and doos all the cooking, do she?’

I replied that such was the fact.

‘Well. I’ll tell you what,’ said Mr. Barkis. ‘P’raps you might be writin’ to her?’

‘I shall certainly write to her,’ I rejoined.

‘Ah!’ he said, slowly turning his eyes towards me. ‘Well! If you was writin’ to her, p’raps you’d recollect to say that Barkis was willin’; would you?’

‘That Barkis is willing,’ I repeated, innocently. ‘Is that all the message?’

‘Ye-es,’ he said, considering. ‘Ye-es. Barkis is willin’.’

‘But you will be at Blunderstone again tomorrow, Mr. Barkis,’ I said, faltering a little at the idea of my being far away from it then, and could give your own message so much better.’

As he repudiated this suggestion, however, with a jerk of his head, and once more confirmed his previous request by saying, with profound gravity, ‘Barkis is willin’. That’s the message,’ I readily undertook its transmission. While I was waiting for the coach in the hotel at Yarmouth that very afternoon, I procured a sheet of paper and an inkstand, and wrote a note to Peggotty, which ran thus: ‘My dear Peggotty. I have come here safe. Barkis is willing. My love to mama. Yours affectionately. P.S. He says he particularly wants you to know—BARKIS IS WILLING.’ (Chap 5, p. 65 in my edition).

Okay, you now have all the context you need. Joyce and I--like most husbands and wives, I would guess--have divvied up our quotidian tasks--from emptying the dishwasher to doing the laundry, etc.

There is one job, though, that both of us do from time to time--taking our cars in for routine servicing, as per our warranty. Sometimes I do it; sometimes she does. (She has been doing so more often lately because she works out early in the morning, and the health club is about 1/3 of the way to the dealer ... so ....)

But I feel guilty. I think I ought to do it more often.

So I always tell her--always--that I'm, well, willing.

And yesterday, almost simultaneously as we were going through this all-too-common exchange, we both hit upon that line from David Copperfield: "Barkis is willing."

So ... this morning ... she was out in the car, ready to leave, waiting for the windshield to defrost. I went outside, motioned for her to lower the window.

She did.

I said, "Barkis is willing."

She laughed. And drove away.

our copy