David Copperfield B&N edition
That’s the chapter title from which this excerpt from David Copperfield comes. Though Dickens writes hecka long stories, the basic characterizations are tight and—wow!—effective. Peggoty, Uriah Heep, on and on. I cut away lots of secondary characters in my last manuscript because they took too much space in the story. Copperfield is a textbook in how to keep them in. And oh, if only modern romance-writers could wax so poetic! Alas, we must haul tons of irony…
“Mr. Copperfield, my daughter Dora, and my daughter Dora’s confidential friend!” It was no doubt, Mr. Spenlow’s voice, but I didn’t know it, and I didn’t care whose it was. All was over in a moment. I had fulfilled my destiny. I was a captive and a slave. I loved Dora Spenlow to distraction!
She was more than human to me. She was a Fairy, a Sylph, I don’t know what she was—any thing that no one ever saw, and everything that every body ever wanted. I was swallowed up in an abyss of love in an instant. There was no pausing on the brink: no looking down, or looking back; I was gone, headlong, before I had sense to say a word to her. …
I don’t remember who was there, except Dora. I have not the least idea what we had for dinner, besides Dora. My impression is, that I dined off Dora, entirely, and sent away half-a-dozen plates untouched. I sat next to her. I talked to her. She had the most delightful little voice, the gayest little laugh, the pleasantest and most fascinating little ways, that ever led a lost youth into hopeless slavery. She was rather diminutive altogether. So much the more precious, I thought.
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