Steerforth and his Oxford friends arrive and the party begins. Steerforth is in sparkling form: "Everything was very good; we did not spare the wine; and he exerted himself so brilliantly to make the thing pass off well, that there was no pause in our festivity." Gradually, however, not sparing the wine produces its natural consequences. Joviality yields to absurdity, and still Copperfield presses on, "passing the wine faster and faster yet, and continually starting up with a corkscrew to open more wine, long before any was needed." Meanwhile, the handy young man who "went out of the room very often", and whose "shadow always presented itself, immediately afterwards, on the wall of the entry, with a bottle at its mouth", has passed out, and the "young gal" has broken all the dishes.
Eventually Copperfield is thoroughly drunk, and Dickens renders the sense of baffled self-estrangement which accompanies complete intoxication with wonderful vividness: "Somebody was smoking. We were all smoking. I was smoking. . . . Somebody was leaning out of my bedroom window, refreshing his forehead against the cool stone of the parapet, and feeling the air upon his face. It was myself." Drink and smoke seem to be about to do for the new tenant what they had done for his predecessor.
With the spontaneity of the addled, the party decides to go to the theatre. There Copperfield is unlucky enough to meet Agnes Wickfield, the good and wise woman whom he will eventually marry. Agnes shows her benevolence and wisdom by not being affronted at his drunkenness, but by telling him to "Go away now, Trotwood, for my sake, and ask your friends to take you home." Steerforth puts Copperfield to bed, while Copperfield pesters him to "bring the corkscrew, that I might open another bottle of wine."
