Micawber's procrastination maxim

Micawber’s procrastination maxim is the rule that present duties should not be postponed, most sharply expressed by a man whose repeated financial crises show how poorly he follows his own advice. Its force lies in that contradiction: it offers a practical discipline, yet Micawber delivers it as a lesson learned through failure rather than a principle he has mastered.

The Maxim and Its Speaker

As he prepares to part from David Copperfield, Micawber presents himself as a man of experience in difficulties, waiting for some change in his circumstances. He says his advice deserves attention precisely because he has never taken it himself, then names the rule: “My advice is, never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time. Collar him!” The abrupt command turns a familiar warning into a little performance of resolve, though the confession immediately before it keeps the speaker’s own record in view.

Mrs. Micawber attributes the maxim to her father. Micawber acknowledges that source while adding that her father applied the principle to their marriage, which he says was entered into prematurely and left him unable to recover the expense. The exchange gives the rule a domestic as well as financial context: its wording urges timely action, but its inheritance and application are entangled with the Micawbers’ continuing money troubles.

Debt as the Test of the Rule

The household’s difficulties make the maxim’s practical stakes plain. Mrs. Micawber says that creditors cannot obtain payment from a man who has nothing to give, and that bringing matters to a crisis may be better than allowing them to drag on. Creditors do come persistently to the house; one boot-maker calls early and demands payment. The pressure produces intense distress, but it does not establish that Micawber has learned to manage his affairs promptly.

David, still a child and earning only a few shillings a week at Murdstone and Grinby’s warehouse, describes having to provide his own food. When Mrs. Micawber tells him there is almost nothing in the larder, he offers her two or three shillings as a loan. She refuses the money but asks him to help by selling the family’s possessions. He carries Micawber’s books to a City Road bookstall and also becomes familiar with the pawnbroker’s shop. These immediate acts of assistance contrast with the adults’ unresolved financial difficulty: the child’s small resources are put to work at once, while the household continues to depend on borrowing, pawning, and the hoped-for arrival of relief.

The crisis eventually becomes an arrest. Micawber is taken to the King’s Bench Prison, where he tells David that his prospects have collapsed; later that morning, he is seen playing skittles. During David’s prison visit, Micawber urges him to keep expenditure below income: spending nineteen pounds nineteen shillings and sixpence out of an annual twenty pounds, he says, would leave a man happy, whereas spending twenty pounds one would make him miserable. He then borrows a shilling from David for porter and gives him a written order for repayment. The advice is more disciplined than the borrowing that follows it, preserving the maxim’s characteristic tension between sound principle and immediate need.

Delay, Obligation, and the Maxim’s Limits

Micawber’s release under the Insolvent Debtors Act follows the hearing of his petition, and his creditors are described as not implacable. The episode distinguishes a formal resolution of the case from a sudden transformation in Micawber’s habits: the petition has to be heard, and fees and formalities remain before he can actually leave prison. The maxim’s insistence on doing today’s work today therefore sits within a story where debt is also governed by procedures, creditor patience, and the limits of a debtor’s means.

The rule is tested again in Micawber’s dealings with Thomas Traddles. Before leaving London, Micawber acknowledges that Traddles has twice put his name to bills for his accommodation, with the first obligation already leaving Traddles in the lurch. Micawber checks the amounts and gives him an IOU for their combined total, saying that departure without settling the pecuniary part would weigh on his mind. The promise does not amount to immediate payment, but it does make the obligation explicit and records Micawber’s wish to restore his moral standing. Here, the maxim’s concern with delay is reframed as a question of what a person owes to others and whether that debt is acknowledged rather than evaded.

Narrative Function

The maxim is not presented as a simple formula for Micawber’s success. His repeated crises, prison term, and recourse to borrowed money expose the gap between his memorable advice and his conduct, while his acknowledgment of failure prevents the contradiction from being merely concealed. The rule remains useful because it names a real discipline, but its speaker embodies the difficulty of putting that discipline into practice.

That gap also shapes David’s recollection of the Micawber household. As a boy, he sees financial strain not as an abstraction but through his own meagre food allowance, the sale of books, and the family’s appeals for help. In this setting, Micawber’s maxim becomes more than a comic tag: it sits beside the daily work of making limited money last, and beside obligations—such as Traddles’s accommodation—that cannot be made to disappear simply by postponing them.