Also by the Author
The Bookman’s Tale
First Impressions
VIKING
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Copyright © 2015 by Charles Lovett
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ISBN: 978-0-698-19574-5
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To Mim
Who showed me how to keep Christmas
And to Lucy & Jordan
For whom it has been a joy to keep
Christmas isn’t just a day; it’s a frame of mind.
—VALENTINE DAVIES
Contents
Also by the Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Preface
STAVE I
Marley’s Ghost
STAVE II
The First of the Three Spirits
STAVE III
The Second of the Three Spirits
STAVE IV
The Last of the Three Spirits
STAVE V
The End of It
Afterword
Acknowledgments
Preface
It seems that Charles Dickens always loved Christmas. He wrote essays, stories, and scenes in his novels dealing with various aspects of the holiday from early in his career until shortly before his death. But in 1843, he did something different—he created a philosophy of Christmas in what would become his most enduring and popular single work, the novella A Christmas Carol. Dickens wrote this tale in just six weeks, beginning in September, and presented it to the world on December 19. By Christmas Eve, the first edition of six thousand copies had sold out.
Just a few paragraphs into the story, Scrooge’s nephew Freddie remarks that to him Christmas has always been
a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.
Dickens described this idea as the “Carol Philosophy” of Christmas, and to many of us it continues to sum up the way we feel about the holiday season. The philosophy played out in the life of Charles Dickens, through both his continued literary attention to Christmas and his concern for social reform. But how did the Carol Philosophy resonate in the life of Ebenezer Scrooge after that fateful Christmas of 1843? At the end of Stave IV of A Christmas Carol, Scrooge vows to “honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.” So perhaps it is fitting to turn to the Scrooge of 1863 for a little lesson on keeping Christmas.
STAVE I
Marley’s Ghost
Scrooge was alive, to begin with. There could be no doubt whatever about that—alive and kicking. Not that I know why that particular verb should exemplify life; for Scrooge’s part it might better be said that he was alive and singing, or alive and laughing, or alive and generally making a nuisance of himself.
Yes, though Scrooge had approached, then reached, and finally surpassed the age at which most of us, in particular his former partner, Jacob Marley, like Hamlet and his unhappy clan, “shuffle off this mortal coil,” he nonetheless lived on, with no noticeable diminution of energy, or ecstasy, or enthusiasm. Cratchit knew this well. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and Cratchit had been partners for nigh on twenty years and in all that time Cratchit, though he had watched as the lines of age had waged their admittedly only modestly successful assault on Scrooge’s visage, had noted no decrease in his partner’s liveliness. Which brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Scrooge was as alive as ever—some might say more alive.
Oh, but he was an openhanded benefactor, Scrooge! A generous, charitable, jolly, gleeful, munificent old fool, yielding as a feather pillow that welcomed the weariest soul to its downy breast. The light within him melted his hardened features, reddened his nose, puffed out his cheeks, loosened his gait (as well as his purse strings), made his eyes sparkle and his lips glow, and bubbled forth in his dulcet voice. A tuneful rhyme was ever in his throat, and his frosty eyebrows fooled no one. He carried his own warmth always about him; he could thaw ice blocks with his presence as easily at Christmastide as in the dog days of summer.
External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge—no summer swelter could dissuade his glee nor winter weather chill his cheery countenance. No breeze that swayed the grasses of spring was gentler than he, no falling snow more soft and soothing, no rain more apt to nurture. And like the rain and snow and hail and sleet and beating sun combined, like our own relentless English weather, Scrooge never stopped, never altered that perfect disposition—not to please himself, and certainly not to please those inhabitants of London on whom his constant kindnesses had grown wearisome from years of use.
Nobody ever stopped in the street to say, with gladsome looks, “My dear Mr. Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?” For they knew that come he would, and bring gifts to the children he would, and press a coin into each of their outstretched hands he would, and sing a pleasant song he would, and such unrelenting happiness would he bring that the household would find it difficult to bear. No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, for a ten-pound note would end their careers. No children asked him what was the o’clock, having no time to spare for stories and songs and tossing upon the knee. Even the blind men’s dogs appeared to know him, and when they saw him coming on, they would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; for where would such dogs be once Scrooge laid eyes upon their masters—Scrooge, who would gladly lead a blind man to Dover, if that were his destination? No, the dogs would wag their tails and hide their masters until Scrooge had passed, their employment ensured for another day.
But what did Scrooge care? There was always another blind man or beggar or child just round the corner, always room in the crowded paths of life for his bottomless well of human sympathy.
Once upon a time—of all the days in the year, that longest day when shadows in the narrowest alleys do not lengthen until well past the hour when men like Scrooge have taken their evening meal—old Scrooge whistled his way down a narrow street of Westminster. It was hot, sultry, sweaty weather and the shimmer on the Thames was enough to cloud the mind of the most clear-thinking man. The city clocks had just gone three, but the sun seemed disinclined to rest in its glaring pursuit of those souls who slogged along the paving stones. The heat came pouring in at every chink and keyhole and spared no one, from the lowliest clerk to the wealthiest miser who ever captained a countinghouse.
In a government office in Whitehall, labouring to keep a certain column of numbers from encroaching upon another, similar column and thus bringing down the empire, sat Scrooge’s nephew, Freddie, and as he had left his door standing open, in the vain hope that some stirring of the air might bring a hint of relief from the stifling heat, he had not the turn of the handle to warn him of his uncle’s approach.
“A Merry Christmas, nephew! God sa
ve you!” cried Scrooge in a cheerful voice.
“Christmas?” replied the startled nephew. “I’ve no time now for Christmas, uncle.”
Scrooge inexplicably wore a muffler wound round his ruddy neck, and this he now unwound in a leisurely fashion, as if it were one and the same to him whether it adorned him or not. His eyes sparkled as he endured the impatient stare of his nephew.
“No time for Christmas!” said Scrooge. “You don’t mean that, I am sure.”
“I do,” said Freddie. “Merry Christmas on the longest day of summer? What right have you to be merry, when all around you are working? What reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.”
“Come, then,” replied Scrooge gaily. “What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose?”
“Not this again, uncle,” said Freddie.
“I’m poor because I choose to be, because I take more pleasure in giving away my gold than in hoarding it to pay for my meagre needs,” answered Scrooge, ignoring his nephew. “And so I say again, Merry Christmas.”
Fearing that his superior, the assistant to the undersecretary of a governmental department the purpose of which Scrooge had never entirely understood, might overhear their conversation, Freddie pulled shut the connecting door and lowered his voice. “It is all the same to me, uncle, if you wish me a Merry Christmas on every day of the year. I’ve no objection if you keep Christmas in your way; but there are others who say that Bedlam is the place for a fool who walks about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips on the hottest days of summer. There are those who mutter behind your back that such an idiot as Scrooge should be stuffed like a goose, wrapped in mistletoe, and floated across the Thames.”
“Nephew,” replied his uncle gently, “why should Christmas be the only good time of the year, the only kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time? Why should Christmas be the only time when men and women open their shut-up hearts freely and think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave?”
“Your sentiments are admirable, uncle, I have no doubt, but I have bills to pay and books to balance. I’m a year older than last summer and not a farthing richer, though of all the quantities that surround me—my wife’s allowance, my children’s appetites, my haberdasher’s bill—the only one which seems never to increase is my bank balance. I should love to have your leisure for cheerfulness, uncle, but most of us”—and here he glanced at the closed door which hid his superior—“can afford no more than a few days of ‘Merry Christmas.’”
“I shall come to dine with you, tomorrow,” said Scrooge, paying no more mind to his nephew’s speech than a duck to a raindrop.
“We’ve little to spare, uncle.”
“And little is exactly what I require. Good works, kindness, my cheerful Christmas greetings that you so abhor—these are enough to fill me.” Scrooge retrieved his muffler from his nephew’s desk and twirled it in the air about his head. Then, with a twinkle in his eye, he pulled open the door to the assistant to the undersecretary’s office and bellowed, “Merry Christmas!” to that bureaucratic soul. And as his nephew tried in vain to quiet the old man, Scrooge skipped back into the street with a hearty “And a Happy New Year,” and was soon gone from view.
An hour later, rounding the corner of Threadneedle Street, Scrooge caught sight of two gentlemen approaching. They were dressed in black from the glossy leather on the tips of their boots to the shiny silk at the tops of their hats. One swung a silver-handled walking stick in his right hand; the other, an identical stick in his left. In bearing they reminded Scrooge of nothing less than the figurehead on the prow of some ancient sailing ship—chests thrust proudly forward, they glided down the street towards him. In another moment they were upon him and Scrooge burst forth with a hearty “Merry Christmas.”
“Have I the honour of addressing Mr. Pleasant or Mr. Portly?” asked Scrooge, for, you see, as both men were pleasant and portly, and as Scrooge could not, for his life, recall their surnames, he generally addressed the pair (and they were always seen as a pair) as the Messrs. Pleasant and Portly.
“Mr. Scrooge,” replied Mr. Portly (if it was not Mr. Pleasant), “it is fortuitous that we should meet.”
“Fortuitous indeed,” added Mr. Pleasant (if it was not Mr. Portly), who seemed almost to mouth the words that emerged from his companion’s lips. “We should very much like to confer with you, Mr. Scrooge. I am afraid your munificence is, once again, at odds with your account at the bank.”
“Yes, your account,” said Mr. Portly, reaching into a folio that he carried and presenting three cheques that bore the flourish with which Mr. Scrooge endorsed his generosity.
“You see, Mr. Scrooge,” said Mr. Pleasant, pulling a sheet of figures from the depths of a pocket, “your current balance is exactly . . .” He ran his finger down the column of numbers, but before it reached the bottom Mr. Portly interrupted.
“Twopence. Which is not quite enough to cover these cheques. Fifty pounds to the Society for the Relief of Distress. Forty pounds for the . . .” And here Mr. Portly squinted, hesitating just long enough for Mr. Pleasant to continue.
“For the Metropolitan Sanitary Association. One hundred pounds for the Home for Deserted Destitute Children.”
“Your largesse,” continued Mr. Portly, “though well intentioned, is not well supported by your means, Mr. Scrooge.”
“Liberality, my good gentlemen, liberality,” responded Scrooge with his usual tone of good cheer. It was a word that brought a frown to the face of Mr. Portly and caused Mr. Pleasant to shake his head.
“Liberality is not the business of a bank,” said Mr. Pleasant, who was beginning to look distinctly undeserving of his sobriquet.
“Mankind should be your business,” said Scrooge with a smile. “The common welfare should be your business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence should all be your business.”
“Surely,” said Mr. Portly, “there are those who rightly make such things their business. There are charities and philanthropists all over London. The bank is a different sort of institution.”
“You of all people should know that, Mr. Scrooge,” said Mr. Pleasant.
“Indeed,” added Mr. Portly, “there was a time when few in London understood the business of finance better than yourself.”
Scrooge paid little attention to this allusion to his pecunious past, but instead returned to the theme he had attempted to introduce at the beginning of the conversation.
“You do not seem to have a Merry Christmas in your hearts, gentlemen. If you would but remember that festive season of the year, you would certainly admit that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute.”
“We do make ourselves merry at Christmas, and at that time we do make such provisions, to be sure,” said Mr. Portly.
“But we can hardly afford,” concluded Mr. Pleasant, “to make idle people merry all the year round.”
“Can’t you?” asked Scrooge with a knowing wink, to which the bankers responded only with a mutual shrug. Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue his point, Scrooge made a slight bow to the two gentlemen and betook himself down the street in the general direction of his place of business. When Mr. Portly waved the three offending cheques in the air and cried at the retreating figure, “But, Mr. Scrooge, your account!” Scrooge could only be heard wishing “Merry Christmas”—not so much to the two bankers as to the general populace.
Let us consider Scrooge as he recedes into the unremitting glare of the summer sun. He seems a living oxymoron. Once a wealthy man who dressed in a pauper’s threadbare black, he can now count twopence to his name yet wears a waistcoat embroidered in such exquisite colours that, were it not for his strange behaviour, one might take him for some lord or baron. There are those who mistake him, in his festive attire, for a well-known writer, a certain Mr. Dickens, who is known fo
r his eccentricities of dress, and were Scrooge’s hair a bit less white and his beard a bit more full the resemblance would have been close enough to fool any casual observer. On closer inspection, however, we find that Scrooge’s attire, though festive, is dis tinc tly out of date, and shows such signs of wear as might be seen in the garb of one whose riches are but a distant memory.
The heat and the haze thickened so, people slowed their gait to a near crawl as they made their way through the streets. Gentlemen carried hats only to fan their florid faces; ladies were not seen about at all. Newsboys sought out what slivers of shadow the cruel sun had overlooked; horses dreamed of crisp air and open spaces and pawed at the ground as if it might contain some hidden well of coolness. The ancient tower of a church became all but invisible in the grimy haze and when its old bell struck the hours and the quarters, the sound was muffled by the very air, as if someone had wrapped a cloak about the clapper.
The offices of Scrooge and Cratchit were in an altogether less savoury area of London than the bank of Messrs. Pleasant and Portly—a neighbourhood where the streets and doorways were narrow, where the “finery” of the local inhabitants was more likely to consist of rags than of silk, and where the stench of humanity, ripened by the harsh summer sun, was such that decency prohibits describing it. Here, in the larger of two rooms—the smaller being really no more than a cupboard—Bob Cratchit toiled away. Sometimes people new to London called Cratchit Scrooge, a misappellation that invariably caused amusement amongst the neighbours (for the firm was located on a street so narrow that its tenants enjoyed few secrets). Anyone who had lived in the neighbourhood for more than a fortnight, even if he had not met Scrooge, knew of him, and no one who knew of him could possibly mistake the one partner, grimly adding and subtracting figures with barely a mutter and with a brow as tightly knit as the weave of the finest cloth on Savile Row, for the other.
The Further Adventures of Ebenezer Scrooge Page 1
