Chapter 50 - Summary, David Copperfield | David Copperfield - Summary, Themes & Characters - Novels PDF Download

Mr. Peggotty's Dream Comes True

• David doesn't hear anything from Martha Endell for several months, but she's in touch with Mr. Peggotty.
• David thinks more and more that Emily must be dead.
• Mr. Peggotty's faith that she's alive never changes.
• Dora grows to like Mr. Peggotty and sees him quite often.
• One night, Mr. Peggotty tells David that Martha has been to see him, and to ask that Mr. Peggotty absolutely not leave England.
• Martha won't say why though.
• David doesn't want to get Mr. Peggotty's hopes up, so he says nothing about this.
• About two weeks later, and two days after David saw Mr. Micawber, he is walking in his garden.
• A woman beckons him over: it is Martha Endell.
• She asks David to come with her immediately.
• David and Martha drive into downtown London.
• Martha guides David down one of the dark and grungy streets to a poor lodging-house.
• David walks up to the top story of the house.
• In the shadows on the staircase, he can see a woman walking ahead of them.
• Martha exclaims that she doesn't know the woman who has gone into this room.
• David knows her, though: it's Miss Dartle.
• Martha leads David softly up the stairs, but she indicates that he must not say anything.
• Miss Dartle is inside telling someone that she has come to see her.
• A voice speaks, and David recognizes it as Emily's.
• Miss Dartle asks how Emily can show her face to Miss Dartle, after she has done so much.
• Miss Dartle won't let Emily leave; if she tries, Miss Dartle will tell the whole world Emily's history.
• Emily sounds frightened.
• Miss Dartle asks how Steerforth can have fallen for such fake modesty.
• Emily begs Miss Dartle to be merciful, because of her suffering.
• Miss Dartle tells Emily that she can't be moved by Emily's tears. She reproaches Emily with the home Emily has ruined.
• Emily weeps to think of the pain her uncle and her family has gone through on her behalf.
• Miss Dartle looks down on Emily and mocks her for thinking that Miss Dartle meant Emily's family; she meant her own.
• Emily protests: when Steerforth first came to her, she truly loved him! She believed that she would be his wife!
• Miss Dartle threatens that, if she had her way, Emily would be whipped to death.
• Then she mocks Emily for daring to claim that she knows how to love.
• Miss Dartle warns Emily to hide herself among her family or to die, because Miss Dartle will hunt her down wherever Emily goes and tell everyone what kind of a creature she is.
• David is in agony waiting for Mr. Peggotty, because he cannot bear to hear this torture.
• Miss Dartle tells Emily that she should spend the rest of her days thinking of Steerforth's treatment of her, or of her own lost virtue – and then she should die.
• Miss Dartle hears a footstep on the stairs and walks out the door, but not without warning Emily again of her plans.
• Finally (thank God!) Mr. Peggotty comes in and embraces a fainting Emily.
• Mr. Peggotty thanks God that he has finally found his darling niece.
• He carries Emily down the stairs.