As Dickens told Forster, his family had no want of bodily comforts in the Marshalsea. His father's income, still going on, was amply sufficient for that; and in every respect, indeed, but elbow room, they lived more comfortably in prison than they had done for a long time while out of it. As he told the public in "David Copperfield": "I was now relieved of much of the weight of Mr. and Mrs. Micawber's cares; for some relatives or friends had engaged to help them at their present pass, and they lived more comfortably in the prison than they had lived for a long time out of it." As Forster tells us, directly from Dickens's own statements to him: "They were waited on still by the maid-of-all-work from Bayham street, the orphan girl of the Chatham workhouse, from whose sharp little worldly and also kindly ways he took his first impression of the Marchioness in the 'Old Curiosity Shop.' She also had a lodging in the neighborhood that she might be early on the scene of her duties; and when Charles met her, as he would do occasionally, in his lounging place by London bridge, he would occupy the time before the gates opened by telling her quite astonishing fictions about the wharves and the Tower." As David Copperfield tells us:
"I used to breakfast with them, now, in virtue of some arrangement, of which I have forgotten the details. I forget, too, at what hour the gates were opened in the morning, admitting of my going in, but I know that I was often up at six o'clock, and that my favorite lounging place in the interval was the old London Bridge, where I was wont to sit in one of the stone recesses, watching the people go by, or to look over the balustrades at the sun shining in the water, and lighting up the golden flame on the top of the Monument. The Orfling met me here sometimes, to be told some astonishing fictions respecting the wharves and the Tower; of which, I can say no more than I hope I believed them myself. In the evening I used to go back to the prison, and walk up and down the parade with Mr. Micawber; or play casino with Mrs. Micawber and hear reminiscences of her mamma and her papa."