Horses

Horses in David Copperfield are presented chiefly as working animals, carrying passengers and luggage along the roads around Yarmouth. Though they are not developed as individual characters, their pace, harnessing, and movement help stage several consequential episodes in David Copperfield’s childhood: a return journey with Mr. Barkis, a holiday outing that becomes a marriage journey, and a departure that leaves David feeling bereft. The animals’ practical role in transport gives the scenes continuity, while the carts they draw become intimate spaces in which human relationships are revealed.

Working Animals and Everyday Travel

When Mr. Barkis comes to collect David Copperfield for a journey, the boy is ready before the appointed nine o’clock hour. Once David and his box are aboard, the horse walks off at its accustomed, unhurried pace. The description makes the journey feel routine: Mr. Barkis resumes his familiar company, and the animal proceeds without drama. The horse supplies the steady motion that carries David from one household and stage of his childhood to another.

The horse-drawn cart also brings passengers into close quarters. On the approach to Yarmouth, Mr. Barkis repeatedly edges toward Clara Peggotty under the pretext of asking whether she is comfortable, crowding David until he has to stand on the footboard and pretend to look at the view. The animal itself remains a working presence in the background, but the cart’s constrained space shapes the comedy of Mr. Barkis’s awkward courtship. Near the end of the journey, the travelers are shaken and jolted as they reach Yarmouth’s pavement, making the horse’s movement part of the physical texture of arrival.

The Cart as a Courtship Setting

During David’s visit, Mr. Barkis’s courtship of Clara Peggotty is associated with journeys and rides. He is generally sparing with words, and one of his characteristic approaches is to ask whether she is comfortable while sitting beside her in the cart. On a later holiday excursion, he arrives in a chaise-cart to take Clara Peggotty, David, and Emily Peggotty out for the day. The vehicle announces the outing before it begins: Mr. Barkis has come in person, driving toward the woman he hopes to marry.

The animals’ role in these scenes is functional, but the journeys they make possible bring the characters together. The earlier ride to Yarmouth lets David observe Mr. Barkis’s clumsy attentions; the holiday ride gives the courtship a new destination and occasion. David, meanwhile, is absorbed in his own childish affection for Emily Peggotty. Left together in the chaise while the adults go into a church, he puts an arm around her and declares his attachment. The horse-drawn outing thus gathers two different forms of courtship into one episode, without confusing the serious adult decision with David’s youthful fantasy.

The Church Stop and the Marriage Announcement

The turning point of the outing comes when Mr. Barkis stops at a church, ties the horse to the railings, and goes inside with Clara Peggotty, leaving David and Emily Peggotty in the chaise. When the couple return to the road, Mr. Barkis asks what name he had written on the cart and what name he would write now. David answers that it would still be Clara Peggotty’s name; Mr. Barkis supplies the married form, Clara Peggotty Barkis, and laughs so heartily that the chaise shakes.

The horse has been briefly secured while the marriage takes place, but the pause marks a change in the journey’s human meaning. The church visit, which David did not understand as a wedding ceremony, has quietly transformed Clara Peggotty’s name and relationship. The couple continue to an inn in a by-road for dinner and spend the day together. The cart and its horse have carried the party into an outing that began as courtship and returns to the road with a marriage already accomplished.

Departure and Narrative Significance

After the visit, David spends the night in a small room at Daniel Peggotty’s home. Clara Peggotty tells him that the room will be kept for him, and the following morning she and Mr. Barkis take him home in the cart. They leave him at the gate and continue on. David watches the cart carry Clara Peggotty away, then stands alone beneath the elm trees, feeling that the house contains no face that looks on him with love or liking. The vehicle’s departure makes the loss immediate: it is not merely a change of household, but the visible removal of the affectionate nurse who had made him feel welcome.

Across these episodes, horses connect everyday travel with changes in David’s relationships and circumstances. The leisurely pace of Mr. Barkis’s cart, its jolting arrival at Yarmouth, the horse tied outside the church, and the cart moving away from David each give a distinct physical setting to the action. The animals do not speak or direct events; their narrative importance lies in the journeys they enable and the human transitions those journeys carry.