Literary Pearls

Read along with me as I begin again the great Dickens novel, David Copperfield.

David Copperfield

Chapter 1

 An aunt of my father's, and consequently a great-aunt of mine, of whom I shall have more to relate

by-and-by, was the principal magnate of our family. Miss Trotwood, or
 Miss Betsey, as my poor mother always called her, when she sufficiently overcame her dread of this formidable personage to mention her at all (which was seldom),
had been married to a husband younger than herself, who was very handsome, except in the sense of the homely adage, "handsome is, that handsome does" -- for he was strongly suspected of having beaten Miss Betsey, and even of having once, on a disputed question of supplies, made some hasty but determined arrangements to throw her out of a two pair of stairs' window. These evidences of an incompatibility of temper induced Miss Betsey to pay him off, and effect a separation by mutual consent. He went to India with his capital, and there, according to a wild legend in our family, he was once seen riding on an elephant, in company with a Baboon; but I think it must have been a Baboo -- or a Begum. Anyhow, from India tidings of his death reached home, within ten years. How they affected my aunt, nobody knew; for immediately after the separation she took her maiden name again, bought a cottage in a hamlet on the sea-coast a long way off, established herself there as a single woman with one servant, and was understood to live secluded, ever afterwards, in an inflexible retirement.