“Something turning up”

“Something turning up” is Mr. Micawber’s recurring name for the future opportunity he expects to rescue him from financial difficulty. The phrase gives a buoyant verbal shape to his precarious life: it can sound like hope, an excuse to wait, or a joke sharpened by the fact that money has not arrived. Its repetition connects Micawber’s crises across different places and circumstances, while his more practical advice and later effort to repay a friend complicate any simple picture of him as merely idle or irresponsible.

Phrase and Speaker

Mr. Micawber uses the expression when he tries to advise David Copperfield before they part. He says that until something turns up, he has nothing to give David but advice, then admits that he has never followed his own counsel. The comic reversal is characteristic: Micawber offers a maxim as a man whose misfortunes demonstrate its neglect, and his cheerful manner briefly gives way to a frown as he calls himself miserable.

His accompanying instruction is more active than the promise of a lucky break. He urges David not to postpone what can be done today, describing procrastination as the thief of time and calling on him to seize it. The contrast makes the expression unstable in meaning: Micawber can urge immediate action while continuing to trust that an unspecified future event will alter his own circumstances.

Hope Amid Debt

The phrase is not abstract optimism detached from need. Micawber’s household is repeatedly short of money, and David, himself a working child with little to live on, once offers Mrs. Micawber the few shillings he has as a loan when she says there is almost nothing in the larder. The offer is heartfelt, though she refuses to take it. Such scenes place Micawber’s expectation of future relief against the small, immediate economies and acts of assistance on which the family depends.

Imprisonment makes the same tension more pointed. When David visits Mr. Micawber in the King’s Bench Prison, the two cry together; Micawber asks the boy to learn from his fate and sets out a precise budget rule: a person living on twenty pounds a year may be happy if spending nineteen pounds, nineteen shillings, and sixpence, but miserable if spending exceeds income by even a little. He then borrows a shilling from David for porter and writes an order for repayment. The numerical precision of the maxim sits beside the small borrowing, turning financial prudence into both earnest counsel and comic self-portrait.

Repetition and Irony in Canterbury

After David has reached Canterbury, Micawber unexpectedly encounters him in the street. He describes himself as reflecting on the probability of something turning up when David himself appears. The meeting supplies a literal, personal turn of fortune—a valued friend returns—but does not solve the Micawbers’ immediate financial trouble. Mrs. Micawber explains that they have been in town for three days, that their coal-trade prospects seem to require capital they lack, and that they are waiting for a remittance to pay their hotel bill. Nothing has yet turned up in the practical sense that matters to their purse.

The recurrence therefore separates emotional consolation from material rescue. David is glad to see Micawber, and the meeting renews their friendship, but his sympathy cannot meet the sum the couple needs. Micawber’s confident anticipation persists even as the narration specifies the unpaid obligation and the family left waiting for money. The phrase can register a genuine openness to possibility while exposing how often possibility has not become payment.

Advice, Obligation, and the Refrain’s Meaning

Micawber’s farewell to David repeats the expectation that something may occur and improve David’s prospects, presenting his own blighted destiny as a possible warning rather than a useful model. The leave-taking also gives the phrase an affectionate dimension: Micawber imagines that a future change might allow him to help the young friend who has shown concern for his family. His hope is not only self-directed, even if he cannot promise when it will bear fruit.

Later, when preparing to leave London, Micawber addresses a different part of his financial history. Thomas Traddles had twice put his name to bills for Micawber’s accommodation; Micawber calculates the combined amount as forty-one pounds, ten shillings, and eleven pence halfpenny, checks the sum with David, and gives Traddles an IOU. He says that leaving without acknowledging the debt would weigh on his mind and that the document restores his moral dignity. The episode does not erase his recurring dependence on a hoped-for turn, but it shows him acting to recognize an obligation rather than leaving it entirely to fortune.

Across these episodes, “Something turning up” names the gap between present want and imagined relief. Its comic force comes from the repetition of confidence in circumstances that remain precarious; its warmth comes from the hope and fellowship that survive those circumstances. The phrase endures not because every expectation is fulfilled, but because Micawber continues to speak as though the future might yet make room for change.