Mr. Barkis’s death is both a quiet bedside farewell and a consequential disclosure: the carrier who guarded his box to the end leaves nearly three thousand pounds to Clara Peggotty, Daniel Peggotty, Emily Peggotty, and David Copperfield. The event turns the tide into a measure of life’s ending, gathers the family around a final recognition of affection, and gives David an early occasion to act as a proctor in fact as well as aspiration.

The Final Visit

David arrives at the coastal household while Mr. Barkis is gravely ill. Clara Peggotty hopes that the sight of him might revive her husband, who had liked and admired David and had often spoken of him before falling into a stupor. The appeal links the bedside visit to David’s earlier place in their lives: he had carried messages between Clara Peggotty and Mr. Barkis, helping bring them together. His presence is therefore not simply that of a visitor but of someone woven into the couple’s history.

Before going upstairs, David sits by the kitchen fire, counting the clock’s ticks and considering Emily Peggotty’s dread of death, which he takes, together with Mr. Omer’s account, as a reason for her being unlike herself. He becomes more lenient in judging that fear. Clara Peggotty then embraces and thanks him for comforting her and explains that she believes Mr. Barkis might brighten at seeing him, if anything earthly could still do so. The pause by the fire places a younger woman’s fear of death beside the immediate reality of a dying man, while the household’s solemn quiet makes the anticipated loss palpable before David sees the sickroom.

Mr. Barkis lies with his head and shoulders out of bed, awkwardly resting against the box that has occupied so much of his attention. When he could no longer get out of bed to open it or check its safety with the divining rod David had seen him use, he had the box placed on a chair beside him and held onto it day and night. His arm still lies across it. The guarded container, beside which the world is slipping away, makes his attachment to his possessions visible in the final scene. His last words before he begins to recover his senses are an explanatory, possessive reference to its contents: “Old clothes!”

The Tide and the Farewell

Daniel Peggotty quietly tells David that Mr. Barkis is going out with the tide. He explains the coast’s local belief that people cannot die until the tide is nearly out, just as birth belongs to the incoming tide; he calculates that ebb will come at half past three, followed by half an hour of slack water. If Mr. Barkis lives until the tide turns, Daniel thinks he may hold on until the next ebb. The belief gives the waiting a practical rhythm: those beside the bed watch not only a failing body but the changing water and the hours it marks.

They remain with Mr. Barkis for hours. As he begins to wander, he mutters about driving David to school, an old concern that briefly surfaces through his failing consciousness. Clara Peggotty takes this as a sign that he is coming to himself. Daniel Peggotty says, with awe, that both the tide and Mr. Barkis are going out fast. Mr. Barkis then opens his eyes, recognizes the people around him, and calls Clara Peggotty by her initials, praising her as “No better woman anywhere!” He reaches toward David and, with a pleasant smile, gives the familiar answer, “Barkis is willin’!” At low water, he dies.

That last return to a phrase associated with his courtship makes the death intimate rather than merely declarative. The words acknowledge Clara Peggotty at the very moment of parting, while the tide belief places that personal farewell within the coastal community’s shared understanding of life and death. David and Daniel Peggotty are both moved to tears; the scene’s restraint rests on small gestures—the hand across the box, the reaching arm, the smile—and on the words the dying man can still make clear.

Burial and the Contents of the Box

At Clara Peggotty’s request, David stays until Mr. Barkis’s remains have been taken to Blunderstone for burial. She had bought a small plot in the old churchyard from her own savings, near the grave of David’s mother, whom she always called her sweet girl. The burial thus places Mr. Barkis beside a figure central to David’s own bereavement, and makes the churchyard a resting place shared by the household’s history rather than a remote destination.

David suggests looking for the will in the box. After a search, it is found at the bottom of a horse’s nose-bag, among hay and a striking collection of belongings: a gold watch and chain that Mr. Barkis had worn on his wedding day but that had never been seen since; a silver tobacco-stopper shaped like a leg; an imitation lemon containing tiny cups and saucers; an old horseshoe, a bad shilling, a piece of camphor, and an oyster-shell polished until its interior displays prismatic colours. Eighty-seven and a half guineas and two hundred and ten pounds in clean bank notes are also there, along with receipts for Bank of England stock. The assortment combines accumulated money with objects of uncertain use and possible sentiment, including a toy David suspects Mr. Barkis may once have meant to give him but could not bring himself to part with.

The box had travelled with Mr. Barkis on his daily journeys for years. To prevent notice, he had claimed it belonged to a “Mr. Blackboy” and was to be left with him until collected, writing the story on its lid. Its elaborate cover story and careful concealment help explain why the family did not know the extent of his savings. David finds that Mr. Barkis’s property in money amounts to nearly three thousand pounds, a substantial reserve hidden inside the familiar image of a tight-fisted carrier.

The Will and Its Consequences

Mr. Barkis leaves the interest on one thousand pounds to Daniel Peggotty for life. After Daniel’s death, the principal is to be divided equally among Clara Peggotty, Emily Peggotty, and David, or among whichever of them survive. All the rest of Mr. Barkis’s property goes to Clara Peggotty, whom he appoints residuary legatee and sole executrix. The provisions extend his practical care beyond the bedside: Daniel receives support for life, while the principal and remaining estate secure those whom Mr. Barkis has made his family.

David takes conspicuous satisfaction in locating, reading, and explaining the will. He reads it aloud with ceremony, examines its formalities, marks the margin in pencil, and repeatedly sets out the provisions for those concerned. He also prepares an account of Clara Peggotty’s property and helps arrange her affairs, acting as her referee and adviser during the week before the funeral. His description of this work as a personal and professional satisfaction is affectionate and self-aware: the young proctor-in-training delights in finding that he knows more about legal business than he had expected. Mr. Barkis’s death therefore provides David with real responsibility as well as grief.

Narrative Significance

The episode joins a death, a concealed fortune, and a family’s continuing obligations without separating material provision from affection. Mr. Barkis’s final praise of Clara Peggotty and his remembered phrase of willingness give emotional meaning to a life otherwise associated with guarded money and a stubbornly protected box. The inventory and the will then revise the impression of mere hoarding: his wealth has been kept for particular people and is distributed among them through explicit provisions.

For David, the death also gathers several strands of his story. He is present because of a bond formed in childhood; he stays to support Clara Peggotty through the funeral; and he assumes a legal role that anticipates his profession. The burial near his mother’s grave brings the new bereavement into the landscape of an earlier one, while the will turns loss into practical continuity. The tide carries Mr. Barkis away, but the box he guarded becomes the means by which his care survives him.