‘MY dear,’ said Mr Micawber, ‘your papa was very well in his way, and Heaven forbid that I should disparage him. Take him for all in all, we ne’er shall—in short, make the acquaintance, probably, of anybody else possessing, at his time of life, the same legs for gaiters, and able to read the same description of print, without spectacles. But he applied that maxim to our marriage, my dear; and that was so far prematurely entered into, in consequence, that I never recovered the expense.’
Mr Micawber looked aside at Mrs Micawber, and added: ‘Not that I am sorry for it. Quite the contrary, my love.’ After which, he was grave for a minute or so.
‘My other piece of advice, Copperfield,’ said Mr Micawber, ‘you know. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness.* Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.’*
That is, £19 19s 6d, or nineteen pounds, nineteen shillings and sixpence. There were 12 pence to the shilling, and 20 shillings to the pound, so what Mr Micawber is saying that happiness is when your income exceeds your expenditure, even if it is by as little as sixpence.
That is, £20 0s 6d, or twenty pounds, no shillings and sixpence – misery is when your expenditure exceeds your income by as little as sixpence. ‘Ought’ was a 19th-century alternative to ‘nought’, which apparently arose because people misheard ‘a nought’ as ‘an ought’. A number of other words have come into English this way, including (n)apron and (n)umpire, though ought = nought is rare today.