Experience Does It

Wilkins Micawber had little to give David Copperfield at their parting, save two words of advice.

1849

Introduction

Wilkins Micawber has just been released from a spell in prison for debt, and has resolved to take his wife away from London to Plymouth, leaving David Copperfield to find new lodgings. There is little that Mr Micawber can give David in leave-taking, except two words of heartfelt advice.

by Charles Dickens 1812-1870

‘MY dear young friend,’ said Mr Micawber, ‘I am older than you; a man of some experience in life, and—and of some experience, in short, in difficulties, generally speaking. At present, and until something turns up (which I am, I may say, hourly expecting), I have nothing to bestow but advice. Still my advice is so far worth taking, that—in short, that I have never taken it myself, and am the’—here Mr Micawber, who had been beaming and smiling, all over his head and face, up to the present moment, checked himself and frowned—‘the miserable wretch you behold.’

‘My dear Micawber!’ urged his wife.

‘I say,’ returned Mr Micawber, quite forgetting himself, and smiling again, ‘the miserable wretch you behold. My advice is, never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time. Collar him!’

‘My poor papa’s maxim,’ Mrs. Micawber observed.*

❰

1 2

❱

Another of her papa’s favourite maxims was ‘experientia does it’, a misquotation of Latin ‘experientia docet’, ‘experience teaches’. It goes back at least to Tacitus, in his remarks on the Dead Sea in History V.6: “At a certain season of the year the lake throws up bitumen, and the method of collecting it has been taught by that experience which teaches all other arts”.

Précis

Mr Micawber gave David Copperfield some parting advice, drawn from his own experience – not because he had benefited from it himself, but because he had suffered from not heeding it. His first word of counsel to never put something off until later, but to seize every opportunity, a rule by which his own father-in-law had sworn.

Sevens

Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.

Why in Mr Micawber’s opinion was his advice worth taking?

Suggestion

Because ignoring it had made him wretched.

Jigsaws

Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.

Mr Micawber said goodbye to David Copperfield. Mr Micawber was broke. He could give only advice.

Clay Lane The Copybook