Blackheath is associated with Salem House and with two sharply contrasting moments in David Copperfield’s life: his arrival at the school as a punished child, and his later night sleeping beside its wall as a homeless runaway. The school’s deserted rooms and the exposed haystack turn the place into more than a backdrop: Blackheath holds both the memory of imposed discipline and David’s brief, unsuccessful search for shelter in the world he has left behind.

Salem House on Blackheath

David reaches the level of Blackheath after a difficult day and has trouble finding Salem House, the school where he had once been a pupil. On his first arrival, the school is nearly empty because it is holiday-time. Mr. Creakle, its proprietor, is away by the seaside with his family, while David has been sent there during the holiday as punishment for his misdoing. The unusual timing makes his isolation immediate: other boys are at home, and the school offers no ordinary company or welcome.

The schoolroom deepens that impression. It is a long, dirty room with three rows of desks, six rows of forms, and pegs for hats and slates. Old exercises and copy-books litter the floor; silkworm houses remain on the desks. Two abandoned white mice search a pasteboard-and-wire castle for food, while a caged bird hops without singing. The stale, unwholesome smell and ink-splashed surfaces make the school seem neglected as well as empty. Through these details, Blackheath is tied to an institution where a child’s punishment is expressed not only by being sent away, but by being left in a place stripped of care and companionship.

The school as a landscape of memory

When David later returns to Blackheath, Salem House is no longer a school he can enter as a pupil. He walks around its wall, looks up at the windows, and sees that everything inside is dark and silent. A haystack stands in the corner where he had imagined he might pass the night, near the school and the bedroom where he used to tell stories to the boys. The remembered room promises the idea of company, but cannot provide actual shelter: the boys do not know he is outside, and the bedroom is beyond his reach.

This return makes the same place carry two kinds of loneliness. The first came from being placed at Salem House while the other boys were away; the later one comes from being an outcast outside its walls, separated from the school’s former community even as he seeks proximity to its familiar spaces. Blackheath’s school is present to David as memory, but memory cannot open its doors.

An exposed night and a renewed departure

David lies beside the haystack without a roof over him, a decisive contrast with the imagined safety of his old school-bed. He dreams of talking to the boys in his room, then wakes sitting upright with James Steerforth’s name on his lips and sees the stars above him. The dream briefly brings the absent school community into his thoughts, but waking restores the fact of his situation. As dawn approaches, the weakening starlight and pale sky reassure him enough to lie down again; the warmth of the sun and the Salem House getting-up bell eventually wake him.

He considers waiting for Steerforth, but knows that Steerforth must have left long before. Thomas Traddles may still be there, yet David does not trust his uncertain discretion or luck with the truth of his circumstances. As Mr. Creakle’s boys begin to rise, David slips away from the wall and joins the dusty Dover Road. Blackheath thus marks a brief pause in his flight rather than a refuge: the familiar school can recall former friendships, but it cannot restore them or protect him, and he must continue on foot.