Martha is helped to leave Yarmouth through the intervention of Emily Peggotty, Ham Peggotty, and Clara Peggotty. The episode gives practical force to Emily’s compassion for a woman whom the town has cast out: a private message, a place by Clara’s fire, and money help Martha escape streets where she feels publicly marked. It also complicates the help itself. Emily and Ham act with tenderness, but Martha’s departure comes after social rejection has narrowed her choices, and the later account of her anguish shows that physical escape cannot simply undo that history.

Circumstances and Recognition

When David Copperfield arrives at Mr. Barkis’s house, he finds Ham walking outside while Emily is within, talking with a visitor. Ham explains that the visitor is Martha, a young woman Emily once knew but is now expected not to know. The town has turned against Martha so completely that people shrink from her as they would from someone already buried. Her return is therefore not an ordinary visit: it exposes the social prohibition surrounding her and the difficulty of offering aid openly.

Ham tells David that Martha had followed them and, after seeing a light in Emily’s window, pleaded for Emily’s compassion. She reminded Emily that she too had once been like her. The appeal restores a personal history beneath the town’s verdict: Martha and Emily had worked together for many days at Mr. Omer’s. David recognizes Martha from that earlier time. The recollection matters because the meeting is not simply between a disgraced woman and a charitable stranger; it is a reunion between former companions whose shared past makes Emily’s response intimate and immediate.

Emily cannot receive Martha openly while Daniel Peggotty is home. Ham believes that Daniel, however tender-hearted, could not bear to see the two women together while Emily’s disgrace remains so painful to him. That constraint does not erase the family’s concern, but it shapes the form their assistance can take. Emily writes a brief message on a scrap of paper and passes it out of the window, directing Martha to Clara Peggotty, who will let her sit by the fire until Daniel has gone out and Emily can come to her.

The Aid and Martha’s Departure

Ham carries the message and brings Martha to Clara Peggotty’s. He has also been entrusted with a small purse for her. Its modest contents make the help concrete: Emily is not merely willing to hear Martha but is trying to provide for her. Ham’s care is visible in the way he handles the purse, and in his tenderness when he explains why he could not refuse Emily’s request while she was in tears.

In the later part of the meeting, Ham puts a small canvas bag into Emily’s hand. She initially takes it for the purse, then realizes her mistake and turns back toward him. Ham tells her that everything he has belongs to her. Emily then turns to Martha and places money in her clothing, asking whether it will be enough. Martha says it is more than enough, takes Emily’s hand, and kisses it. The scene makes the support a shared act: Ham gives freely to Emily, and Emily passes help onward to the woman she has chosen not to abandon.

Martha accepts the offer to be helped away because she cannot bear to remain in streets where everyone has known her since childhood. She gathers her shawl over her face and leaves weeping. At the door she pauses, as if she might speak or turn back, but says nothing; she goes out still making a low, distressed sound. Emily then hides her face and sobs, while Ham gently tries to comfort her. The departure offers Martha an opening beyond Yarmouth, but it is not staged as a clean or cheerful escape. The tears on both sides register the cost of the separation as well as the relief of being given a way out.

Relationships and the Meaning of Help

The episode brings three distinct relationships into view. Emily’s help rests on remembered companionship and an ability to see Martha as more than the shame attached to her. Ham supports Emily’s decision even though Martha is someone Emily has been told she should avoid; his gift and his willingness to carry the message turn his loyalty into material assistance. Clara Peggotty supplies the immediate refuge that permits the meeting to happen without forcing Daniel Peggotty to witness it before he is ready.

Martha’s request is shaped by the town’s hostility, not merely by a wish to change her surroundings. Ham describes her as someone the townspeople reject, and Martha herself says she wants to be taken out of streets where she has been known since childhood. In that context, leaving is a response to public stigma and the confinement it creates. The kindness she receives matters because it provides money and a route away, rather than stopping at sympathy. At the same time, the meeting remains private and carefully arranged: the window note, the borrowed welcome by the fire, and the covered face at the door all show how social judgment constrains what can be done openly.

The scene also places compassion beside grief. Emily’s concern is not abstract benevolence; she recognizes someone from her own working life and answers a plea grounded in their past. Ham’s tenderness toward Emily does not make the moment easy for him, while Martha’s gratitude does not remove her pain. The episode therefore presents aid as a real but limited intervention: it changes Martha’s immediate circumstances without pretending that money or departure can restore what the town’s condemnation has taken from her.

Later Distress and Narrative Significance

Martha’s later words deepen the significance of this departure. She describes the river as seeming to belong to people like herself: it passes through dismal, defiled streets and moves toward a troubled sea, as though its course mirrored her life. Her repeated sense that she must go with it reveals how little safety or belonging she feels, even after the earlier help. The later scene does not cancel the value of Emily’s assistance; it shows instead that escape from Yarmouth was not an instant cure for despair.

Martha also looks back on Emily with regret. She remembers that Emily had always been kind to her and says she might have benefited from her more if she had possessed a better heart. She denies having tried to make Emily like herself and grieves that, after Emily’s flight, people might think Martha had corrupted her. In this way, the earlier aid acquires an added poignancy: Emily had helped Martha leave a place of public shame, while Martha’s later fear is that the same stigma will attach itself to Emily through their association. The episode makes the act of helping consequential in both directions, joining practical relief to a bond whose meaning remains troubled by the judgment of others.