Dickens at Christmas (Vintage Classics)

by Charles Dickens

  I have no doubt (said the poor relation) that I shall surprise the assembled members of our family, and particularly John our esteemed host to whom we are so much indebted for the great hospitality with which he has this day entertained us, by the confession I am going to make. But, if you do me the honour to be surprised at anything that falls from a person so unimportant in the family as I am, I can only say that I shall be scrupulously accurate in all I relate.

  I am not what I am supposed to be. I am quite another thing. Perhaps before I go further, I had better glance at what I am supposed to be.

  It is supposed, unless I mistake – the assembled members of our family will correct me if I do, which is very likely (here the poor relation looked mildly about him for contradiction); that I am nobody’s enemy but my own. That I never met with any particular success in anything. That I failed in business because I was unbusiness-like and credulous – in not being prepared for the interested designs of my partner. That I failed in love, because I was ridiculously trustful – in thinking it impossible that Christiana could deceive me. That I failed in my expectations from my uncle Chill, on account of not being as sharp as he could have wished in worldly matters. That, through life, I have been rather put upon and disappointed, in a general way. That I am at present a bachelor of between fifty-nine and sixty years of age, living on a limited income in the form of a quarterly allowance, to which I see that John our esteemed host wishes me to make no further allusion.

  The supposition as to my present pursuits and habits is to the following effect.

  I live in a lodging in the Clapham Road – a very clean back room, in a very respectable house – where I am expected not to be at home in the daytime, unless poorly; and which I usually leave in the morning at nine o’clock, on pretence of going to business. I take my breakfast – my roll and butter, and my half-pint of coffee – at the old established coffee shop near Westminster Bridge; and then I go into the City – I don’t know why – and sit in Garraway’s Coffee House, and on ’Change, and walk about, and look into a few offices and counting-houses where some of my relations or acquaintance are so good as to tolerate me, and where I stand by the fire if the weather happens to be cold. I get through the day in this way until five o’clock, and then I dine: at a cost, on the average, of one and threepence. Having still a little money to spend on my evening’s entertainment, I look into the old-established coffee shop as I go home, and take my cup of tea, and perhaps my bit of toast. So, as the large hand of the clock makes its way round to the morning hour again, I make my way round to the Clapham Road again, and go to bed when I get to my lodging – fire being expensive, and being objected to by the family on account of its giving trouble and making a dirt.

  Sometimes, one of my relations or acquaintances is so obliging as to ask me to dinner. Those are holiday occasions, and then I generally walk in the Park. I am a solitary man, and seldom walk with anybody. Not that I am avoided because I am shabby; for I am not at all shabby, having always a very good suit of black on (or rather Oxford mixture, which has the appearance of black and wears much better); but I have got into a habit of speaking low, and being rather silent, and my spirits are not high, and I am sensible that I am not an attractive companion.

  The only exception to this general rule is the child of my first cousin, Little Frank. I have a particular affection for that child, and he takes very kindly to me. He is a diffident boy by nature; and in a crowd he is soon run over, as I may say, and forgotten. He and I, however, get on exceedingly well. I have a fancy that the poor child will in time succeed to my peculiar position in the family. We talk but little; still, we understand each other. We walk about, hand in hand; and without much speaking he knows what I mean, and I know what he means. When he was very little indeed, I used to take him to the windows of the toyshops, and show him the toys inside. It is surprising how soon he found out that I would have made him a great many presents if I had been in circumstances to do it.

  Little Frank and I go and look at the outside of the Monument – he is very fond of the Monument – and at the Bridges, and at all the sights that are free. On two of my birthdays, we have dined on a-la-mode beef, and gone at half price to the play, and been deeply interested. I was once walking with him in Lombard Street, which we often visit on account of my having mentioned to him that there are great riches there – he is very fond of Lombard Street – when a gentleman said to me as he passed by, ‘Sir, your little son has dropped his glove.’ I assure you, if you will excuse my remarking on so trivial a circumstance, this accidental mention of the child as mine, quite touched my heart and brought the foolish tears into my eyes.

  When Little Frank is sent to school in the country, I shall be very much at a loss what to do with myself, but I have the intention of walking down there once a month and seeing him on a half holiday. I am told he will then be at play upon the Heath; and if my visits should be objected to, as unsettling the child, I can see him from a distance without his seeing me, and walk back again. His mother comes of a highly genteel family, and rather disapproves, I am aware, of our being too much together. I know that I am not calculated to improve his retiring disposition; but I think he would miss me beyond the feeling of the moment, if we were wholly separated.

  When I die in the Clapham Road, I shall not leave much more in this world than I shall take out of it; but, I happen to have a miniature of a bright-faced boy, with a curling head, and an open shirt frill waving down his bosom (my mother had it taken for me, but I can’t believe that it was ever like), which will be worth nothing to sell, and which I shall beg may be given to Frank. I have written my dear boy a little letter with it, in which I have told him that I felt very sorry to part from him, though bound to confess that I knew no reason why I should remain here. I have given him some short advice, the best in my power, to take warning of the consequences of being nobody’s enemy but his own; and I have endeavoured to comfort him for what I fear he will consider a bereavement, by pointing out to him that I was only a superfluous something to every one but him, and that having by some means failed to find a place in this great assembly, I am better out of it.

  Such (said the poor relation, clearing his throat and beginning to speak a little louder) is the general impression about me. Now, it is a remarkable circumstance which forms the aim and purpose of my story, that this is all wrong. This is not my life, and these are not my habits. I do not even live in the Clapham Road. Comparatively speaking, I am very seldom there. I reside, mostly, in a – I am almost ashamed to say the word, it sounds so full of pretension – in a Castle. I do not mean that it is an old baronial habitation, but still it is a building always known to every one by the name of a Castle. In it, I preserve the particulars of my history; they run thus:

  It was when I first took John Spatter (who had been my clerk) into partnership, and when I was still a young man of not more than five-and-twenty, residing in the house of my uncle Chill from whom I had considerable expectations, that I ventured to propose to Christiana. I had loved Christiana, a long time. She was very beautiful, and very winning in all respects. I rather mistrusted her widowed mother, who I feared was of a plotting and mercenary turn of mind; but, I thought as well of her as I could, for Christiana’s sake. I never had loved any one but Christiana, and she had been all the world, and O far more than all the world, to me, from our childhood!

  Christiana accepted me with her mother’s consent, and I was rendered very happy indeed. My life at my Uncle Chill’s was of a spare dull kind, and my garret chamber was as dull, and bare, and cold, as an upper prison room in some stern northern fortress. But, having Christiana’s love, I wanted nothing upon earth. I would not have changed my lot with any human being.

  Avarice was, unhappily, my Uncle Chill’s master vice. Though he was rich, he pinched, and scraped, and clutched, and lived miserably. As Christiana had no fortune, I was for some time a little fearful of confessing our engagement to him; but, at length I wrote him a letter, saying h
ow it all truly was. I put it into his hand one night, on going to bed.

  As I came down stairs next morning, shivering in the cold December air; colder in my uncle’s unwarmed house than in the street, where the winter sun did sometimes shine, and which was at all events enlivened by cheerful faces and voices passing along; I carried a heavy heart towards the long, low breakfast room in which my uncle sat. It was a large room with a small fire, and there was a great bay window in it which the rain had marked in the night as if with the tears of houseless people. It stared upon a raw yard, with a cracked stone pavement, and some rusted iron railings half uprooted, whence an ugly out-building that had once been a dissecting room (in the time of the great surgeon who had mortgaged the house to my uncle), stared at it.

  We rose so early always, that at that time of the year we breakfasted by candlelight. When I went into the room, my uncle was so contracted by the cold, and so huddled together in his chair behind the one dim candle, that I did not see him until I was close to the table.

  As I held out my hand to him, he caught up his stick (being infirm, he always walked about the house with a stick), and made a blow at me, and said, ‘You fool!’

  ‘Uncle,’ I returned, ‘I didn’t expect you to be so angry as this.’ Nor had I expected it, though he was a hard and angry old man.

  ‘You didn’t expect!’ said he; ‘when did you ever expect? When did you ever calculate, or look forward, you contemptible dog?’

  ‘These are hard words, uncle!’

  ‘Hard words? Feathers, to pelt such an idiot as you with,’ said he. ‘Here! Betsey Snap! Look at him!’

  Betsey Snap was a withered, hard-favoured, yellow old woman – our only domestic – always employed, at this time of the morning, in rubbing my uncle’s legs. As my uncle adjured her to look at me, he put his lean grip on the crown of her head, she kneeling beside him, and turned her face towards me. An involuntary thought connecting them both with the Dissecting Room, as it must often have been in the surgeon’s time, passed across my mind in the midst of my anxiety.

  ‘Look at the snivelling milksop!’ said my uncle. ‘Look at the baby! This is the gentleman who, people say, is nobody’s enemy but his own. This is the gentleman who can’t say no. This is the gentleman who was making such large profits in his business that he must needs take a partner, t’other day. This is the gentleman who is going to marry a wife without a penny, and who falls into the hands of Jezabels who are speculating on my death!’

  I knew, now, how great my uncle’s rage was; for nothing short of his being almost beside himself would have induced him to utter that concluding word, which he held in such repugnance that it was never spoken or hinted at before him on any account.

  ‘On my death,’ he repeated, as if he were defying me by defying his own abhorrence of the word. ‘On my death – death – Death! But I’ll spoil the speculation. Eat your last under this roof, you feeble wretch, and may it choke you!’

  You may suppose that I had not much appetite for the breakfast to which I was bidden in these terms; but, I took my accustomed seat. I saw that I was repudiated henceforth by my uncle; still I could bear that very well, possessing Christiana’s heart.

  He emptied his basin of bread and milk as usual, only that he took it on his knees with his chair turned away from the table where I sat. When he had done, he carefully snuffed out the candle; and the cold, slate-coloured, miserable day looked in upon us.

  ‘Now, Mr Michael,’ said he, ‘before we part, I should like to have a word with these ladies in your presence.’

  ‘As you will, sir,’ I returned; ‘but you deceive yourself, and wrong us, cruelly, if you suppose that there is any feeling at stake in this contract but pure, disinterested, faithful love.’

  To this, he only replied, ‘You lie!’ and not one other word.

  We went, through half-thawed snow and half-frozen rain, to the house where Christiana and her mother lived. My uncle knew them very well. They were sitting at their breakfast, and were surprised to see us at that hour.

  ‘Your servant, ma’am,’ said my uncle, to the mother. ‘You divine the purpose of my visit, I dare say, ma’am. I understand there is a world of pure, disinterested, faithful love cooped up here. I am happy to bring it all it wants, to make it complete. I bring you your son-in-law, ma’am – and you, your husband, miss. The gentleman is a perfect stranger to me, but I wish him joy of his wise bargain.’

  He snarled at me as he went out, and I never saw him again.

  It is altogether a mistake (continued the poor relation) to suppose that my dear Christiana, over-persuaded and influenced by her mother, married a rich man, the dirt from whose carriage wheels is often, in these changed times, thrown upon me as she rides by. No, no. She married me.

  The way we came to be married rather sooner than we intended, was this. I took a frugal lodging and was saving and planning for her sake, when, one day, she spoke to me with great earnestness, and said:

  ‘My dear Michael, I have given you my heart. I have said that I loved you, and I have pledged myself to be your wife. I am as much yours through all changes of good and evil as if we had been married on the day when such words passed between us. I know you well, and know that if we should be separated and our union broken off, your whole life would be shadowed, and all that might, even now, be stronger in your character for the conflict with the world would then be weakened to the shadow of what it is!’

  ‘God help me, Christiana!’ said I. ‘You speak the truth.’

  ‘Michael!’ said she, putting her hand in mine, in all maidenly devotion, ‘let us keep apart no longer. It is but for me to say that I can live contented upon such means as you have, and I well know you are happy. I say so from my heart. Strive no more alone; let us strive together. My dear Michael, it is not right that I should keep secret from you what you do not suspect, but what distresses my whole life. My mother: without considering that what you have lost, you have lost for me, and on the assurance of my faith: sets her heart on riches, and urges another suit upon me, to my misery. I cannot bear this, for to bear it is to be untrue to you. I would rather share your struggles than look on. I want no better home than you can give me. I know that you will aspire and labour with a higher courage if I am wholly yours, and let it be so when you will!’

  I was blest indeed, that day, and a new world opened to me. We were married in a very little while, and I took my wife to our happy home. That was the beginning of the residence I have spoken of; the Castle we have ever since inhabited together, dates from that time. All our children have been born in it. Our first child – now married – was a little girl, whom we called Christiana. Her son is so like Little Frank, that I hardly know which is which.

  The current impression as to my partner’s dealings with me is also quite erroneous. He did not begin to treat me coldly, as a poor simpleton, when my uncle and I so fatally quarrelled; nor did he afterwards gradually possess himself of our business and edge me out. On the contrary, he behaved to me with the utmost good faith and honour.

  Matters between us, took this turn: – On the day of my separation from my uncle, and even before the arrival at our counting-house of my trunks (which he sent after me, not carriage paid), I went down to our room of business, on our little wharf, overlooking the river; and there I told John Spatter what had happened. John did not say, in reply, that rich old relatives were palpable facts, and that love and sentiment were moonshine and fiction. He addressed me thus:

  ‘Michael,’ said John. ‘We were at school together, and I generally had the knack of getting on better than you, and making a higher reputation.’

  ‘You had, John,’ I returned.

  ‘Although,’ said John, ‘I borrowed your books, and lost them; borrowed your pocket money, and never repaid it; got you to buy my damaged knives at a higher price than I had given for them new; and to own to the windows that I had broken.’

  ‘All not worth mentioning, John Spatter,’ said I, ‘but certainly
true.’

  ‘When you were first established in this infant business, which promises to thrive so well,’ pursued John, ‘I came to you, in my search for almost any employment, and you made me your clerk.’

  ‘Still not worth mentioning, my dear John Spatter,’ said I; ‘still, equally true.’

  ‘And finding that I had a good head for business, and that I was really useful to the business, you did not like to retain me in that capacity, and thought it an act of justice soon to make me your partner.’

  ‘Still less worth mentioning than any of those other little circumstances you have recalled, John Spatter,’ said I; ‘for I was, and am, sensible of your merits and my deficiencies.’

  ‘Now my good friend,’ said John, drawing my arm through his, as he had had a habit of doing at school; while two vessels outside the windows of our counting-house – which were shaped like the stern windows of a ship – went lightly down the river with the tide, as John and I might then be sailing away in company, and in trust and confidence, on our voyage of life; ‘let there, under these friendly circumstances, be a right understanding between us. You are too easy, Michael. You are nobody’s enemy but your own. If I were to give you that damaging character among our connexion, with a shrug, and a shake of the head, and a sigh; and if I were further to abuse the trust you place in me –’

  ‘But you never will abuse it at all, John,’ I observed.

  ‘Never!’ said he, ‘but I am putting a case – I say, and if I were further to abuse that trust by keeping this piece of our common affairs in the dark, and this other piece in the light, and again this other piece in the twilight, and so on, I should strengthen my strength, and weaken your weakness, day by day, until at last I found myself on the high road to fortune, and you left behind on some bare common, a hopeless number of miles out of the way.’