I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve
o'clock at night, at Blunderstone, in Suffolk. I was a posthumous child.
My father's eyes had been closed upon the light of this world six months
when mine opened upon it. Miss Betsey Trotwood, an aunt of my father's,
and consequently a great-aunt of mine, arrived on the afternoon of the
day I was born, and explained to my mother (who was very much afraid of
her) that she meant to provide for her child, which was to be a girl.

My aunt said never a word when she learnt that it was a boy, and not a
girl, but took her bonnet by the strings in the manner of a sling, aimed
a blow at the doctor's head with it, put it on bent, walked out, and
never came back. She vanished like a discontented fairy.

The first objects that assume a distinct presence before me, as I look
far back into the blank of my infancy, are my mother, with her pretty
air and youthful shape, and Peggotty, my old nurse, with no shape at
all, and with cheeks and arms so red and hard that I wondered the birds
didn't peck her in preference to apples.

I remember a few years later, a gentleman with beautiful black hair and
whiskers walking home from church on Sunday with us; and, somehow, I
didn't like him or his deep voice, and I was jealous that his hand
should touch my mother's in touching me--which it did.

It must have been about this time that, waking up from an uncomfortable
doze one night, I found Peggotty and my mother both in tears, and both
talking.

"Not such a one as this Mr. Copperfield wouldn't have liked," said
Peggotty. "That I say, and that I swear!"

"Good heavens!" cried my mother. "You'll drive me mad! How can you have
the heart to say such bitter things to me, when you are well aware that
out of this place I haven't a single friend to turn to?" But the
following Sunday I saw the gentleman with the black whiskers again, and
he walked home from church with us, and gradually I became used to
seeing him and knowing him as Mr. Murdstone. I liked him no better than
at first, and had the same uneasy jealousy of him.

It was on my return from a visit to Yarmouth, where I went with Peggotty
to spend a fortnight at her brother's, that I found my mother married to
Mr. Murdstone. They were sitting by the fire in the best parlour when I
came in.

I gave him my hand. After a moment of suspense, I went and kissed my
mother. I could not look at her, I could not look at him