Something will turn up

Something will turn up is the recurring expectation that sustains Mr. Micawber through financial uncertainty, but it is more than a catchphrase of optimism. It names his habit of waiting for an opening, shapes the advice he gives David Copperfield, and gradually meets a counterargument from Mrs. Micawber: circumstances will not improve unless someone acts to change them. Across these episodes, the expression moves between passive hope, comic evasion, and a more concrete willingness to prepare for a new life.

Meaning and Verbal Signature

Mr. Micawber repeatedly imagines that some unforeseen event will alter his prospects. He anticipates it while describing his difficulties to David, treats it as the reason to postpone repayment, and invokes it when he meets David unexpectedly in the street. The recurrence gives his speech a recognizable rhythm: financial uncertainty is acknowledged, then held at a distance by confidence in an approaching reversal.

That confidence does not mean he lacks awareness of hardship. When offering David advice, Mr. Micawber admits that he has never followed his own counsel and calls himself miserable. His bright manner falters before returning, making the contrast between a polished assurance and his distress visible within the same exchange. He urges David not to postpone what can be done today, even as his own life is organized around waiting for an opportunity. The maxim is therefore both advice and inadvertent self-portrait: it identifies the discipline he recognizes but has not managed to practice.

Advice, Example, and Contradiction

Mr. Micawber gives this advice as David is preparing to leave the household and return to work at Murdstone and Grinby’s. He tells the younger man that experience with difficulties has left him, for the present, with advice rather than material help. His warning against delay carries weight because it comes from someone who openly acknowledges the cost of his own procrastination. David says the precepts visibly affect him, but the departure scene gives the counsel a more intimate setting than a simple moral lesson: the family leaves by coach, and Mrs. Micawber calls David up to kiss him with a newly motherly tenderness.

The farewell also shows that Mr. Micawber’s expectation is not confined to his own fortunes. He hopes that his blighted destiny may serve as a warning to David, and says that if anything turns up he will be glad to improve the younger man’s prospects. His recurring confidence thus carries an offer of future help, however uncertain its fulfillment. At a moment when David resolves to escape his work and seek Betsey Trotwood, the Micawbers’ departure leaves behind both a caution about delay and an example of affection in hardship.

Hope as a Waiting Strategy

When Mr. Micawber and David meet again in the street, the chance encounter itself becomes a miniature enactment of the expression. Mr. Micawber says he had been reflecting on the probability of an opportunity appearing, and now finds David appearing before him. The comic coincidence makes his formula seem briefly confirmed by events. Yet the reunion also returns attention to practical circumstances: Mrs. Micawber is his travelling companion, the twins have been weaned, and he proposes looking through newspaper advertisements while she explains their position to David.

Later, in a modest home near Canterbury, he describes himself as having fallen back in preparation for a spring. He says that earlier periods of waiting have preceded an energetic advance, and casts his current financial embarrassment as another such interval. The imagery makes delay sound strategic, but his circumstances are specific: he is selling corn on commission, the work does not pay, and he has an immediate prospect he cannot disclose. He is also concerned about the security and prospects of Thomas Traddles, who is staying under his roof. The language of an approaching leap therefore serves both as self-encouragement and as a way of presenting precarious circumstances as a temporary stage.

Mrs. Micawber’s Challenge to the Maxim

Mrs. Micawber supplies the sharpest correction to the idea that circumstances will turn themselves around. She argues that the family must live, and that they cannot continue without something different from their existing conditions. But, she says, such changes cannot simply be expected to arrive on their own: people must assist in bringing them about. David and Thomas Traddles applaud the argument. Her intervention does not discard the hope of improvement; it changes hope from something awaited into something that can be pursued.

Her proposed action is to advertise Mr. Micawber’s qualifications in newspapers and invite employers to contact him through the post office in Camden Town. When Mr. Micawber identifies this as the leap he had previously mentioned, the expression becomes attached to a concrete proposal rather than an unspecified future event. Mrs. Micawber also recognizes the obstacle: advertising costs money. She recommends raising the necessary sum on a bill, while David questions the expense. Their exchange exposes the risk in converting optimism into action: the attempt to secure employment itself requires further borrowing.

From Expected Turn to Prepared Departure

The expression returns in a more consequential form when Betsey Trotwood offers financial support connected to the Micawbers’ possible emigration. Mr. Micawber will not accept a gift; instead, he proposes an advance at five per cent interest, secured by his personal liability and notes payable at twelve, eighteen, and twenty-four months, allowing time for an opportunity to arrive. Betsey offers to provide the capital on his terms and points out that people David knows are soon going to Australia, where the families might help one another.

After deciding to go, Mr. Micawber revises the proposed repayment schedule to eighteen, twenty-four, and thirty months. He explains that a shorter interval may not leave enough time for the expected opportunity—or even for a harvest—to materialize. The hopeful phrase remains, but it now sits beside detailed negotiation about interest, security, repayment, labor, and agricultural work. His confidence has not vanished; it has acquired a timetable and financial conditions.

The preparations described by Mr. Micawber extend the change from expectation to practical rehearsal. His eldest daughter attends a nearby establishment at five in the morning to learn milking. The younger children observe pigs and poultry, sometimes returning after narrowly avoiding being run over. Mr. Micawber has turned his attention to baking, while his son Wilkins tries to help drive cattle, though the workers often drive him away. These efforts do not prove that the family’s prospects will succeed, but they show what the recurring expectation can accompany: not only waiting for a reversal, but preparing for one. The expression’s enduring tension lies there—between the hope that circumstances will change and the labor required to meet them when they do.