When I came across this beautifully illustrated 1915 edition of A Christmas Carol
by Charles Dickens and I saw that Arthur Rackham illustrated it, I just had to share it. Admittedly, not that familiar with Arthur Rackham, I just love these illustrations. They give 'the classic' Christmas story such life and such vivid imagery; coupled with Dickens' words...well...perfection!
Beautiful Frontpiece 1915 Edition
Marley's Ghost
"How now?" said Scrooge, caustic
and cold as ever. "What do you
want with me?"
PREFACE
I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book to raise the Ghost of an
Idea which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with
each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their house
pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.
Their faithful Friend and Servant,
C. D. December, 1843
Stave One
Marley's Ghost
Bob Cratchit went
down a slide on Cornhill, at the
end of a lane
of boys, twenty
times, in honour of its being
Christmas Eve.
The clerk observed that it was only once a year.
'A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of
December!' said Scrooge, buttoning his greatcoat to the chin. 'But I
suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next
morning.'
The clerk promised that he would; and Scrooge walked out with a growl.
The office was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends
of his white comforter dangling below his waist (for he boasted no
greatcoat), went down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of a lane of boys,
twenty times, in honour of its being Christmas Eve, and then ran home to
Camden Town as hard as he could pelt, to play at blind man's-buff.
Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern; and
having read all the newspapers, and beguiled the rest of the evening
with his banker's book, went home to bed. He lived in chambers which had
once belonged to his deceased partner. They were a gloomy suite of
rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so little
business to be, that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run
there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other
houses, and have forgotten the way out again. It was old enough now, and
dreary enough; for nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the other rooms
being all let out as offices. The yard was so dark that even Scrooge,
who knew its every stone, was fain to grope with his hands. The fog and
frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house, that it seemed
as if the Genius of the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the
threshold.
Now, it is a fact that there was nothing at all particular about the
knocker on the door, except that it was very large. It is also a fact
that Scrooge had seen it, night and morning, during his whole residence
in that place; also that Scrooge had as little of what is called fancy
about him as any man in the City of London, even including—which is a
bold word—the corporation, aldermen, and livery. Let it also be borne
in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed one thought on Marley since his
last mention of his seven-years'-dead partner that afternoon. And then
let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Scrooge,
having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its
undergoing any intermediate process of change—not a knocker, but
Marley's face.
Marley's face. It was not in impenetrable shadow, as the other objects
in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in
a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as
Marley used to look; with ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly
forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air;
and, though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless.
That, and its livid colour, made it horrible; but its horror seemed to
be in spite of the face, and beyond its control, rather than a part of
its own expression.
As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker again.
To say that he was not startled, or that his blood was not conscious of
a terrible sensation to which it had been a stranger from infancy, would
be untrue. But he put his hand upon the key he had relinquished, turned
it sturdily, walked in, and lighted his candle.
He did pause, with a moment's irresolution, before he shut the door;
and he did look cautiously behind it first, as if he half expected to
be terrified with the sight of Marley's pigtail sticking out into the
hall. But there was nothing on the back of the door, except the screws
and nuts that held the knocker on, so he said, 'Pooh, pooh!' and closed
it with a bang.
The sound resounded through the house like thunder. Every room above,
and every cask in the wine-merchant's cellars below, appeared to have a
separate peal of echoes of its own. Scrooge was not a man to be
frightened by echoes. He fastened the door, and walked across the hall,
and up the stairs: slowly, too: trimming his candle as he went.
You may talk vaguely about driving a coach and six up a good old flight
of stairs, or through a bad young Act of Parliament; but I mean to say
you might have got a hearse up that staircase, and taken it broadwise,
with the splinter-bar towards the wall, and the door towards the
balustrades: and done it easy. There was plenty of width for that, and
room to spare; which is perhaps the reason why Scrooge thought he saw a
locomotive hearse going on before him in the gloom. Half-a-dozen
gas-lamps out of the street wouldn't have lighted the entry too well, so
you may suppose that it was pretty dark with Scrooge's dip.
Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for that. Darkness is cheap, and
Scrooge liked it. But, before he shut his heavy door, he walked through
his rooms to see that all was right. He had just enough recollection of
the face to desire to do that.
Sitting-room, bedroom, lumber-room. All as they should be. Nobody under
the table, nobody under the sofa; a small fire in the grate; spoon and
basin ready; and the little saucepan of gruel (Scrooge had a cold in his
head) upon the hob. Nobody under the bed; nobody in the closet; nobody
in his dressing-gown, which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude
against the wall. Lumber-room as usual. Old fire-guard, old shoes, two
fish baskets, washing-stand on three legs, and a poker.
Stave One
Marley's Ghost
Nobody under the bed;
nobody in the closet; nobody in
his dressing-gown,
which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude against
the wall
Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked himself in; double
locked himself in, which was not his custom. Thus secured against
surprise, he took off his cravat; put on his dressing-gown and slippers,
and his nightcap; and sat down before the fire to take his gruel.
It was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such a bitter night. He was
obliged to sit close to it, and brood over it, before he could extract
the least sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel. The fireplace
was an old one, built by some Dutch merchant long ago, and paved all
round with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the Scriptures.
There were Cains and Abels, Pharaoh's daughters, Queens of Sheba,
Angelic messengers descending through the air on clouds like
feather-beds, Abrahams, Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in
butter-boats, hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts; and yet that
face of Marley, seven years dead, came like the ancient Prophet's rod,
and swallowed up the whole. If each smooth tile had been a blank at
first, with power to shape some picture on its surface from the
disjointed fragments of his thoughts, there would have been a copy of
old Marley's head on every one.
'Humbug!' said Scrooge; and walked across the room.
After several turns he sat down again. As he threw his head back in the
chair, his glance happened to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, that
hung in the room, and communicated, for some purpose now forgotten, with
a chamber in the highest storey of the building. It was with great
astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread, that, as he
looked, he saw this bell begin to swing. It swung so softly in the
outset that it scarcely made a sound; but soon it rang out loudly, and
so did every bell in the house.
This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but it seemed an
hour. The bells ceased, as they had begun, together. They were succeeded
by a clanking noise deep down below as if some person were dragging a
heavy chain over the casks in the wine-merchant's cellar. Scrooge then
remembered to have heard that ghosts in haunted houses were described as
dragging chains.
The cellar door flew open with a booming sound, and then he heard the
noise much louder on the floors below; then coming up the stairs; then
coming straight towards his door.
'It's humbug still!' said Scrooge. 'I won't believe it.'
His colour changed, though, when, without a pause, it came on through
the heavy door and passed into the room before his eyes. Upon its coming
in, the dying flame leaped up, as though it cried, 'I know him! Marley's
Ghost!' and fell again.
The same face: the very same. Marley in his pigtail, usual waistcoat,
tights, and boots; the tassels on the latter bristling, like his
pigtail, and his coat-skirts, and the hair upon his head. The chain he
drew was clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound about him like
a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash-boxes,
keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel. His
body was transparent: so that Scrooge, observing him, and looking
through his waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his coat behind.
Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he had
never believed it until now.
No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he looked the phantom through
and through, and saw it standing before him; though he felt the chilling
influence of its death-cold eyes, and marked the very texture of the
folded kerchief bound about its head and chin, which wrapper he had not
observed before, he was still incredulous, and fought against his
senses.
'How now!' said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. 'What do you want
with me?'
'Much!'—Marley's voice; no doubt about it.
'Who are you?'
'Ask me who I was.'
'Who were you, then?' said Scrooge, raising his voice. 'You're
particular, for a shade.' He was going to say 'to a shade,' but
substituted this, as more appropriate.
'In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.'
'Can you—can you sit down?' asked Scrooge, looking doubtfully at him.
'I can.'
'Do it, then.'
Scrooge asked the question, because he didn't know whether a ghost so
transparent might find himself in a condition to take a chair; and felt
that in the event of its being impossible, it might involve the
necessity of an embarrassing explanation. But the Ghost sat down on the
opposite side of the fireplace, as if he were quite used to it.
'You don't believe in me,' observed the Ghost.
'I don't,' said Scrooge.
'What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your own
senses?'
'I don't know,' said Scrooge.
'Why do you doubt your senses?'
'Because,' said Scrooge, 'a little thing affects them. A slight disorder
of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef,
a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato.
There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!'
Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel in
his heart by any means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be
smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, and keeping down his
terror; for the spectre's voice disturbed the very marrow in his bones.
To sit staring at those fixed, glazed eyes in silence, for a moment,
would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him. There was something
very awful, too, in the spectre's being provided with an infernal
atmosphere of his own. Scrooge could not feel it himself, but this was
clearly the case; for though the Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its
hair, and skirts, and tassels were still agitated as by the hot vapour
from an oven.
'You see this toothpick?' said Scrooge, returning quickly to the charge,
for the reason just assigned; and wishing, though it were only for a
second, to divert the vision's stony gaze from himself.
'I do,' replied the Ghost.
'You are not looking at it,' said Scrooge.
'But I see it,' said the Ghost, 'notwithstanding.'
'Well!' returned Scrooge, 'I have but to swallow this, and be for the
rest of my days persecuted by a legion of goblins, all of my own
creation. Humbug, I tell you: humbug!'
At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain with such
a dismal and appalling noise, that Scrooge held on tight to his chair,
to save himself from falling in a swoon. But how much greater was his
horror when the phantom, taking off the bandage round his head, as if it
were too warm to wear indoors, its lower jaw dropped down upon its
breast!
Scrooge fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands before his face.
'Mercy!' he said. 'Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?'
'Man of the worldly mind!' replied the Ghost, 'do you believe in me or
not?'
'I do,' said Scrooge; 'I must. But why do spirits walk the earth, and
why do they come to me?'
'It is required of every man,' the Ghost returned, 'that the spirit
within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and
wide; and, if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do
so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world—oh, woe is
me!—and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth,
and turned to happiness!'
Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain and wrung its
shadowy hands.
'You are fettered,' said Scrooge, trembling. 'Tell me why?'
'I wear the chain I forged in life,' replied the Ghost. 'I made it link
by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of
my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?'
Scrooge trembled more and more.
'Or would you know,' pursued the Ghost, 'the weight and length of the
strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this
seven Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it since. It is a
ponderous chain!'
Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in the expectation of finding
himself surrounded by some fifty or sixty fathoms of iron cable; but he
could see nothing.
'Jacob!' he said imploringly. 'Old Jacob Marley, tell me more! Speak
comfort to me, Jacob!'
'I have none to give,' the Ghost replied. 'It comes from other regions,
Ebenezer Scrooge, and is conveyed by other ministers, to other kinds of
men. Nor can I tell you what I would. A very little more is all
permitted to me. I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere.
My spirit never walked beyond our counting-house—mark me;—in life my
spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole;
and weary journeys lie before me!'
It was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he became thoughtful, to put his
hands in his breeches pockets. Pondering on what the Ghost had said, he
did so now, but without lifting up his eyes, or getting off his knees.
Marley's Ghost
The air was filled with
phantoms, wandering hither and thither in
restless haste and moaning as they went.
The apparition walked backward from him; and, at every step it took, the
window raised itself a little, so that, when the spectre reached it, it
was wide open. It beckoned Scrooge to approach, which he did. When they
were within two paces of each other, Marley's Ghost held up its hand,
warning him to come no nearer. Scrooge stopped.
Not so much in obedience as in surprise and fear; for, on the raising of
the hand, he became sensible of confused noises in the air; incoherent
sounds of lamentation and regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and
self-accusatory. The spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in
the mournful dirge; and floated out upon the bleak, dark night.
Scrooge followed to the window: desperate in his curiosity. He looked
out.
The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in
restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains
like Marley's Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were
linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to
Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost in
a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who
cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an
infant, whom it saw below upon a doorstep. The misery with them all was
clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and
had lost the power for ever.
Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist enshrouded them, he
could not tell. But they and their spirit voices faded together; and
the night became as it had been when he walked home.
Scrooge closed the window, and examined the door by which the Ghost had
entered. It was double locked, as he had locked it with his own hands,
and the bolts were undisturbed. He tried to say 'Humbug!' but stopped at
the first syllable. And being, from the emotions he had undergone, or
the fatigues of the day, or his glimpse of the Invisible World, or the
dull conversation of the Ghost, or the lateness of the hour, much in
need of repose, went straight to bed without undressing, and fell asleep
upon the instant.
Stave Two
The First of the Three Spirits
Then Old Fezziwig stood out to dance with Mrs Fezziwig.
There were more dances, and there were forfeits, and more dances, and
there was cake, and there was negus, and there was a great piece of Cold
Roast, and there was a great piece of Cold Boiled, and there were
mince-pies, and plenty of beer. But the great effect of the evening came
after the Roast and Boiled, when the fiddler (an artful dog, mind! The
sort of man who knew his business better than you or I could have told
it him!) struck up 'Sir Roger de Coverley.' Then old Fezziwig stood
out to dance with Mrs. Fezziwig. Top couple, too; with a good stiff
piece of work cut out for them; three or four and twenty pair of
partners; people who were not to be trifled with; people who would
dance, and had no notion of walking.
But if they had been twice as many—ah! four times—old Fezziwig would
have been a match for them, and so would Mrs. Fezziwig. As to her, she
was worthy to be his partner in every sense of the term. If that's not
high praise, tell me higher, and I'll use it. A positive light appeared
to issue from Fezziwig's calves. They shone in every part of the dance
like moons. You couldn't have predicted, at any given time, what would
become of them next. And when old Fezziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig had gone
all through the dance; advance and retire, both hands to your partner,
bow and curtsy, cork-screw, thread-the-needle, and back again to your
place: Fezziwig 'cut'—cut so deftly, that he appeared to wink with his
legs, and came upon his feet again without a stagger.
When the clock struck eleven, this domestic ball broke up. Mr. and Mrs.
Fezziwig took their stations, one on either side the door, and, shaking
hands with every person individually as he or she went out, wished him
or her a Merry Christmas. When everybody had retired but the two
'prentices, they did the same to them; and thus the cheerful voices died
away, and the lads were left to their beds; which were under a counter
in the back-shop.
During the whole of this time Scrooge had acted like a man out of his
wits. His heart and soul were in the scene, and with his former self. He
corroborated everything, remembered everything, enjoyed everything, and
underwent the strangest agitation. It was not until now, when the bright
faces of his former self and Dick were turned from them, that he
remembered the Ghost, and became conscious that it was looking full upon
him, while the light upon its head burnt very clear.
'A small matter,' said the Ghost, 'to make these silly folks so full of
gratitude.'
'Small!' echoed Scrooge.
The Spirit signed to him to listen to the two apprentices, who were
pouring out their hearts in praise of Fezziwig; and when he had done so,
said:
'Why! Is it not? He has spent but a few pounds of your mortal money:
three or four, perhaps. Is that so much that he deserves this praise?'
'It isn't that,' said Scrooge, heated by the remark, and speaking
unconsciously like his former, not his latter self. 'It isn't that,
Spirit. He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our
service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power
lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it
is impossible to add and count 'em up: what then? The happiness he gives
is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.'
He felt the Spirit's glance, and stopped.
'What is the matter?' asked the Ghost.
'Nothing particular,' said Scrooge.
'Something, I think?' the Ghost insisted.
'No,' said Scrooge, 'no. I should like to be able to say a word or two
to my clerk just now. That's all.'
His former self turned down the lamps as he gave utterance to the wish;
and Scrooge and the Ghost again stood side by side in the open air.
'My time grows short,' observed the Spirit. 'Quick!'
This was not addressed to Scrooge, or to any one whom he could see, but
it produced an immediate effect. For again Scrooge saw himself. He was
older now; a man in the prime of life. His face had not the harsh and
rigid lines of later years; but it had begun to wear the signs of care
and avarice. There was an eager, greedy, restless motion in the eye,
which showed the passion that had taken root, and where the shadow of
the growing tree would fall.
He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young girl in a mourning
dress: in whose eyes there were tears, which sparkled in the light that
shone out of the Ghost of Christmas Past.
'It matters little,' she said softly. 'To you, very little. Another idol
has displaced me; and, if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come
as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve.'
'What Idol has displaced you?' he rejoined.
'A golden one.'
'This is the even-handed dealing of the world!' he said. 'There is
nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it
professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth!'
'You fear the world too much,' she answered gently. 'All your other
hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid
reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until
the master passion, Gain, engrosses you. Have I not?'
'What then?' he retorted. 'Even if I have grown so much wiser, what
then? I am not changed towards you.'
She shook her head.
'Am I?'
'Our contract is an old one. It was made when we were both poor, and
content to be so, until, in good season, we could improve our worldly
fortune by our patient industry. You are changed. When it was made you
were another man.'
'I was a boy,' he said impatiently.
'Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you are,' she
returned. 'I am. That which promised happiness when we were one in heart
is fraught with misery now that we are two. How often and how keenly I
have thought of this I will not say. It is enough that I have thought
of it, and can release you.'
'Have I ever sought release?'
'In words. No. Never.'
'In what, then?'
'In a changed nature; in an altered spirit; in another atmosphere of
life; another Hope as its great end. In everything that made my love of
any worth or value in your sight. If this had never been between us,'
said the girl, looking mildly, but with steadiness, upon him; 'tell me,
would you seek me out and try to win me now? Ah, no!'
He seemed to yield to the justice of this supposition in spite of
himself. But he said, with a struggle, 'You think not.'
'I would gladly think otherwise if I could,' she answered. 'Heaven
knows! When I have learned a Truth like this, I know how strong and
irresistible it must be. But if you were free to-day, to-morrow,
yesterday, can even I believe that you would choose a dowerless
girl—you who, in your very confidence with her, weigh everything by
Gain: or, choosing her, if for a moment you were false enough to your
one guiding principle to do so, do I not know that your repentance and
regret would surely follow? I do; and I release you.
With a full heart,
for the love of him you once were.'
Stave Two
The First of the Three Spirits
A flushed and boisterous group.
But now a knocking at the door was heard, and such a rush immediately
ensued that she, with laughing face and plundered dress, was borne
towards it the centre of a flushed and boisterous group, just in time to
greet the father, who came home attended by a man laden with Christmas
toys and presents. Then the shouting and the struggling, and the
onslaught that was made on the defenceless porter! The scaling him, with
chairs for ladders, to dive into his pockets, despoil him of
brown-paper parcels, hold on tight by his cravat, hug him round his
neck, pummel his back, and kick his legs in irrepressible affection! The
shouts of wonder and delight with which the development of every package
was received! The terrible announcement that the baby had been taken in
the act of putting a doll's frying pan into his mouth, and was more than
suspected of having swallowed a fictitious turkey, glued on a wooden
platter! The immense relief of finding this a false alarm! The joy, and
gratitude, and ecstasy! They are all indescribable alike. It is enough
that, by degrees, the children and their emotions got out of the
parlour, and, by one stair at a time, up to the top of the house, where
they went to bed, and so subsided.
And now Scrooge looked on more attentively than ever, when the master of
the house, having his daughter leaning fondly on him, sat down with her
and her mother at his own fireside; and when he thought that such
another creature, quite as graceful and as full of promise, might have
called him father, and been a spring-time in the haggard winter of his
life, his sight grew very dim indeed.
'Belle,' said the husband, turning to his wife with a smile, 'I saw an
old friend of yours this afternoon.'
'Who was it?'
'Guess!'
'How can I? Tut, don't I know?' she added in the same breath, laughing
as he laughed. 'Mr. Scrooge.'
'Mr. Scrooge it was. I passed his office window; and as it was not shut
up, and he had a candle inside, I could scarcely help seeing him.
His
partner lies upon the point of death, I hear; and there he sat alone.
Quite alone in the world, I do believe.'
'Spirit!' said Scrooge in a broken voice, 'remove me from this place.'
'I told you these were shadows of the things that have been,' said the
Ghost. 'That they are what they are do not blame me!'
'Remove me!' Scrooge exclaimed, 'I cannot bear it!'
He turned upon the Ghost, and seeing that it looked upon him with a
face, in which in some strange way there were fragments of all the faces
it had shown him, wrestled with it.
'Leave me! Take me back. Haunt me no longer!'
In the struggle, if that can be called a struggle in which the Ghost
with no visible resistance on its own part was undisturbed by any effort
of its adversary, Scrooge observed that its light was burning high and
bright; and dimly connecting that with its influence over him, he seized
the extinguisher-cap, and by a sudden action pressed it down upon its
head.
Stave Two
The First of the Three Spirits
Laden with Christmas toys and presents.
The Spirit dropped beneath it, so that the extinguisher covered its
whole form; but though Scrooge pressed it down with all his force, he
could not hide the light, which streamed from under it, in an unbroken
flood upon the ground.
He was conscious of being exhausted, and overcome by an irresistible
drowsiness; and, further, of being in his own bedroom. He gave the cap a
parting squeeze, in which his hand relaxed; and had barely time to reel
to bed, before he sank into a heavy sleep.
Stave Three
The Second of the Three Spirits
The way he went after that plump sister in the lace tucker!
But they didn't devote the whole evening to music. After a while they
played at forfeits; for it is good to be children sometimes, and never
better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself.
Stop! There was first a game at blind man's-buff. Of course there was.
And I no more believe Topper was really blind than I believe he had eyes
in his boots. My opinion is, that it was a done thing between him and
Scrooge's nephew; and that the Ghost of Christmas Present knew it. The
way he went after that plump sister in the lace tucker was an outrage on
the credulity of human nature. Knocking down the fire-irons, tumbling
over the chairs, bumping up against the piano, smothering himself
amongst the curtains, wherever she went, there went he! He always knew
where the plump sister was. He wouldn't catch anybody else. If you had
fallen up against him (as some of them did) on purpose, he would have
made a feint of endeavouring to seize you, which would have been an
affront to your understanding, and would instantly have sidled off in
the direction of the plump sister. She often cried out that it wasn't
fair; and it really was not. But when, at last, he caught her; when, in
spite of all her silken rustlings, and her rapid flutterings past him,
he got her into a corner whence there was no escape; then his conduct
was the most execrable. For his pretending not to know her; his
pretending that it was necessary to touch her head-dress, and further to
assure himself of her identity by pressing a certain ring upon her
finger, and a certain chain about her neck; was vile, monstrous! No
doubt she told him her opinion of it when, another blind man being in
office, they were so very confidential together behind the curtains.
Scrooge's niece was not one of the blind man's-buff party, but was made
comfortable with a large chair and a footstool, in a snug corner where
the Ghost and Scrooge were close behind her. But she joined in the
forfeits, and loved her love to admiration with all the letters of the
alphabet. Likewise at the game of How, When, and Where, she was very
great, and, to the secret joy of Scrooge's nephew, beat her sisters
hollow; though they were sharp girls too, as Topper could have told you.
There might have been twenty people there, young and old, but they all
played, and so did Scrooge; for wholly forgetting, in the interest he
had in what was going on, that his voice made no sound in their ears, he
sometimes came out with his guess quite loud, and very often guessed
right, too; for the sharpest needle, best Whitechapel, warranted not to
cut in the eye, was not sharper than Scrooge, blunt as he took it in
his head to be.
The Ghost was greatly pleased to find him in this mood, and looked upon
him with such favour that he begged like a boy to be allowed to stay
until the guests departed. But this the Spirit said could not be done.
'Here is a new game,' said Scrooge. 'One half-hour, Spirit, only one!'
It was a game called Yes and No, where Scrooge's nephew had to think of
something, and the rest must find out what, he only answering to their
questions yes or no, as the case was. The brisk fire of questioning to
which he was exposed elicited from him that he was thinking of an
animal, a live animal, rather a disagreeable animal, a savage animal, an
animal that growled and grunted sometimes, and talked sometimes and
lived in London, and walked about the streets, and wasn't made a show
of, and wasn't led by anybody, and didn't live in a menagerie, and was
never killed in a market, and was not a horse, or an ass, or a cow, or a
bull, or a tiger, or a dog, or a pig, or a cat, or a bear. At every
fresh question that was put to him, this nephew burst into a fresh roar
of laughter; and was so inexpressibly tickled, that he was obliged to
get up off the sofa and stamp. At last the plump sister, falling into a
similar state, cried out:
'I have found it out! I know what it is, Fred! I know what it is!'
'What is it?' cried Fred.
'It's your uncle Scro-o-o-o-oge.'
Which it certainly was. Admiration was the universal sentiment, though
some objected that the reply to 'Is it a bear?' ought to have been
'Yes'; inasmuch as an answer in the negative was sufficient to have
diverted their thoughts from Mr. Scrooge, supposing they had ever had
any tendency that way.
'He has given us plenty of merriment, I am sure,' said Fred, 'and it
would be ungrateful not to drink his health. Here is a glass of mulled
wine ready to our hand at the moment; and I say, "Uncle Scrooge!"'
'Well! Uncle Scrooge!' they cried.
'A merry Christmas and a happy New Year to the old man, whatever he is!'
said Scrooge's nephew. 'He wouldn't take it from me, but may he have it,
nevertheless. Uncle Scrooge!'
Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly become so gay and light of heart, that
he would have pledged the unconscious company in return, and thanked
them in an inaudible speech, if the Ghost had given him time. But the
whole scene passed off in the breath of the last word spoken by his
nephew; and he and the Spirit were again upon their travels.
Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes they visited, but
always with a happy end. The Spirit stood beside sick-beds, and they
were cheerful; on foreign lands, and they were close at home; by
struggling men, and they were patient in their greater hope; by poverty,
and it was rich. In almshouse, hospital, and gaol, in misery's every
refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority had not made fast
the door, and barred the Spirit out, he left his blessing and taught
Scrooge his precepts.
It was a long night, if it were only a night; but Scrooge had his doubts
of this, because the Christmas holidays appeared to be condensed into
the space of time they passed together. It was strange, too, that, while
Scrooge remained unaltered in his outward form, the Ghost grew older,
clearly older. Scrooge had observed this change, but never spoke of it
until they left a children's Twelfth-Night party, when, looking at the
Spirit as they stood together in an open place, he noticed that its hair
was grey.
'Are spirits' lives so short?' asked Scrooge.
'My life upon this globe is very brief,' replied the Ghost. 'It ends
to-night.'
'To-night!' cried Scrooge.
'To-night at midnight. Hark! The time is drawing near.'
The chimes were ringing the three-quarters past eleven at that moment.
'Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask,' said Scrooge, looking
intently at the Spirit's robe, 'but I see something strange, and not
belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a
claw?'
'It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it,' was the Spirit's
sorrowful reply. 'Look here!'
From the foldings of its robe it brought two children, wretched, abject,
frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung
upon the outside of its garment.
'O Man! look here! Look, look down here!' exclaimed the Ghost.
They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish, but
prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have
filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a
stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched and twisted
them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat
enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no
degradation, no perversion of humanity in any grade, through all the
mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and
dread.
Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he
tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves,
rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.
'Spirit! are they yours?' Scrooge could say no more.
'They are Man's,' said the Spirit, looking down upon them. 'And they
cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This
girl is Want. Beware of them both, and all of their degree, but most of
all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom,
unless the writing be erased. Deny it!' cried the Spirit, stretching out
his hand towards the city. 'Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for
your factious purposes, and make it worse! And bide the end!'
'Have they no refuge or resource?' cried Scrooge.
'Are there no prisons?' said the Spirit, turning on him for the last
time with his own words. 'Are there no workhouses?'
The bell struck Twelve.
Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not. As the last
stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the prediction of old Jacob
Marley, and, lifting up his eyes, beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and
hooded, coming like a mist along the ground towards him.
Stave Four
The Last of the Spirits
"Who are you?" said one.
"Who are you?" returned the
other.
"Well!" said the first. "Old
Scratch
has got his own at last, hey?"
'Well, I am the most disinterested among you, after all,' said the first
speaker, 'for I never wear black gloves, and I never eat lunch. But I'll
offer to go if anybody else will. When I come to think of it, I'm not
at all sure that I wasn't his most particular friend; for we used to
stop and speak whenever we met. Bye, bye!'
Speakers and listeners strolled away, and mixed with other groups.
Scrooge knew the men, and looked towards the Spirit for an explanation.
The phantom glided on into a street. Its finger pointed to two persons
meeting. Scrooge listened again, thinking that the explanation might lie
here.
He knew these men, also, perfectly. They were men of business: very
wealthy, and of great importance. He had made a point always of standing
well in their esteem in a business point of view, that is; strictly in a
business point of view.
'How are you?' said one.
'How are you?' returned the other.
'Well!' said the first, 'old Scratch has got his own at last, hey?'
'So I am told,' returned the second. 'Cold, isn't it?'
'Seasonable for Christmas-time. You are not a skater, I suppose?'
'No, no. Something else to think of. Good-morning!'
Not another word. That was their meeting, their conversation, and their
parting.
Scrooge was at first inclined to be surprised that the Spirit should
attach importance to conversations apparently so trivial; but feeling
assured that they must have some hidden purpose, he set himself to
consider what it was likely to be. They could scarcely be supposed to
have any bearing on the death of Jacob, his old partner, for that was
Past, and this Ghost's province was the Future. Nor could he think of
any one immediately connected with himself to whom he could apply them.
But nothing doubting that, to whomsoever they applied, they had some
latent moral for his own improvement, he resolved to treasure up every
word he heard, and everything he saw; and especially to observe the
shadow of himself when it appeared. For he had an expectation that the
conduct of his future self would give him the clue he missed, and would
render the solution of these riddles easy.
He looked about in that very place for his own image, but another man
stood in his accustomed corner; and though the clock pointed to his
usual time of day for being there, he saw no likeness of himself among
the multitudes that poured in through the Porch. It gave him little
surprise, however; for he had been revolving in his mind a change of
life, and thought and hoped he saw his new-born resolutions carried out
in this.
Quiet and dark, beside him stood the Phantom, with its outstretched
hand. When he roused himself from his thoughtful quest, he fancied,
from the turn of the hand, and its situation in reference to himself,
that the Unseen Eyes were looking at him keenly. It made him shudder,
and feel very cold.
They left the busy scene, and went into an obscure part of the town,
where Scrooge had never penetrated before, although he recognised its
situation and its bad repute. The ways were foul and narrow; the shop
and houses wretched; the people half naked, drunken, slipshod, ugly.
Alleys and archways, like so many cesspools, disgorged their offences of
smell and dirt, and life upon the straggling streets; and the whole
quarter reeked with crime, with filth, and misery.
Far in this den of infamous resort, there was a low-browed, beetling
shop, below a penthouse roof, where iron, old rags, bottles, bones, and
greasy offal were bought. Upon the floor within were piled up heaps of
rusty keys, nails, chains, hinges, files, scales, weights, and refuse
iron of all kinds. Secrets that few would like to scrutinise were bred
and hidden in mountains of unseemly rags, masses of corrupted fat, and
sepulchres of bones. Sitting in among the wares he dealt in, by a
charcoal stove made of old bricks, was a grey-haired rascal, nearly
seventy years of age, who had screened himself from the cold air without
by a frouzy curtaining of miscellaneous tatters hung upon a line and
smoked his pipe in all the luxury of calm retirement.
Scrooge and the Phantom came into the presence of this man, just as a
woman with a heavy bundle slunk into the shop. But she had scarcely
entered, when another woman, similarly laden, came in too; and she was
closely followed by a man in faded black, who was no less startled by
the sight of them than they had been upon the recognition of each other.
After a short period of blank astonishment, in which the old man with
the pipe had joined them, they all three burst into a laugh.
'Let the charwoman alone to be the first!' cried she who had entered
first. 'Let the laundress alone to be the second; and let the
undertaker's man alone to be the third. Look here, old Joe, here's a
chance! If we haven't all three met here without meaning it!'
'You couldn't have met in a better place,' said old Joe, removing his
pipe from his mouth. 'Come into the parlour. You were made free of it
long ago, you know; and the other two an't strangers. Stop till I shut
the door of the shop. Ah! how it skreeks! There an't such a rusty bit of
metal in the place as its own hinges, I believe; and I'm sure there's no
such old bones here as mine. Ha! ha! We're all suitable to our calling,
we're well matched. Come into the parlour. Come into the parlour.'
The parlour was the space behind the screen of rags. The old man raked
the fire together with an old stair-rod, and having trimmed his smoky
lamp (for it was night) with the stem of his pipe, put it into his mouth
again.
While he did this, the woman who had already spoken threw her bundle on
the floor, and sat down in a flaunting manner on a stool, crossing her
elbows on her knees, and looking with a bold defiance at the other two.
'What odds, then? What odds, Mrs. Dilber?' said the woman. 'Every person
has a right to take care of themselves. He always did!'
'That's true, indeed!' said the laundress. 'No man more so.'
'Why, then, don't stand staring as if you was afraid, woman! Who's the
wiser? We're not going to pick holes in each other's coats, I suppose?'
'No, indeed!' said Mrs. Dilber and the man together. 'We should hope
not.'
'Very well then!' cried the woman. 'That's enough. Who's the worse for
the loss of a few things like these? Not a dead man, I suppose?'
'No, indeed,' said Mrs. Dilber, laughing.
'If he wanted to keep 'em after he was dead, a wicked old screw,'
pursued the woman, 'why wasn't he natural in his lifetime? If he had
been, he'd have had somebody to look after him when he was struck with
Death, instead of lying gasping out his last there, alone by himself.'
'It's the truest word that ever was spoke,' said Mrs. Dilber. 'It's a
judgment on him.'
'I wish it was a little heavier judgment,' replied the woman: 'and it
should have been, you may depend upon it, if I could have laid my hands
on anything else. Open that bundle, old Joe, and let me know the value
of it. Speak out plain. I'm not afraid to be the first, nor afraid for
them to see it. We knew pretty well that we were helping ourselves
before we met here, I believe. It's no sin. Open the bundle, Joe.'
But the gallantry of her friends would not allow of this; and the man in
faded black, mounting the breach first, produced his plunder. It was
not extensive. A seal or two, a pencil-case, a pair of sleeve-buttons,
and a brooch of no great value, were all. They were severally examined
and appraised by old Joe, who chalked the sums he was disposed to give
for each upon the wall, and added them up into a total when he found
that there was nothing more to come.
'That's your account,' said Joe, 'and I wouldn't give another sixpence,
if I was to be boiled for not doing it. Who's next?'
Stave Four
The Last of the Spirits
"What do you call this?" said
Joe.
"Bed-curtains!"
"Ah!" returned the woman,
laughing ... "Bed-curtains!"
"You don't mean to say you took
'em
down, rings and all, with him
lying
there?" said Joe.
"Yes, I do," replied the woman.
"Why not?"
Mrs. Dilber was next. Sheets and towels, a little wearing apparel, two
old fashioned silver teaspoons, a pair of sugar-tongs, and a few
boots. Her account was stated on the wall in the same manner.
'I always give too much to ladies. It's a weakness of mine, and that's
the way I ruin myself,' said old Joe. 'That's your account. If you asked
me for another penny, and made it an open question, I'd repent of being
so liberal, and knock off half-a-crown.'
'And now undo my bundle, Joe,' said the first woman.
Joe went down on his knees for the greater convenience of opening it,
and, having unfastened a great many knots, dragged out a large heavy
roll of some dark stuff.
'What do you call this?' said Joe. 'Bed-curtains?'
'Ah!' returned the woman, laughing and leaning forward on her crossed
arms. 'Bed-curtains!'
'You don't mean to say you took 'em down, rings and all, with him lying
there?' said Joe.
'Yes, I do,' replied the woman. 'Why not?'
'You were born to make your fortune,' said Joe, 'and you'll certainly do
it.'
'I certainly shan't hold my hand, when I can get anything in it by
reaching it out, for the sake of such a man as he was, I promise you,
Joe,' returned the woman coolly. 'Don't drop that oil upon the blankets,
now.'
'His blankets?' asked Joe.
'Whose else's do you think?' replied the woman. 'He isn't likely to take
cold without 'em, I dare say.'
'I hope he didn't die of anything catching? Eh?' said old Joe, stopping
in his work, and looking up.
'Don't you be afraid of that,' returned the woman. 'I an't so fond of
his company that I'd loiter about him for such things, if he did. Ah!
you may look through that shirt till your eyes ache, but you won't find
a hole in it, nor a threadbare place. It's the best he had, and a fine
one too. They'd have wasted it, if it hadn't been for me.'
'What do you call wasting of it?' asked old Joe.
'Putting it on him to be buried in, to be sure,' replied the woman, with
a laugh. 'Somebody was fool enough to do it, but I took it off again. If
calico an't good enough for such a purpose, it isn't good enough for
anything. It's quite as becoming to the body. He can't look uglier than
he did in that one.'
Scrooge listened to this dialogue in horror. As they sat grouped about
their spoil, in the scanty light afforded by the old man's lamp, he
viewed them with a detestation and disgust which could hardly have been
greater, though they had been obscene demons marketing the corpse
itself.
'Ha, ha!' laughed the same woman when old Joe producing a flannel bag
with money in it, told out their several gains upon the ground. 'This
is the end of it, you see! He frightened every one away from him when he
was alive, to profit us when he was dead! Ha, ha, ha!'
'Spirit!' said Scrooge, shuddering from head to foot. 'I see, I see. The
case of this unhappy man might be my own. My life tends that way now.
Merciful heaven, what is this?'
He recoiled in terror, for the scene had changed, and now he almost
touched a bed—a bare, uncurtained bed—on which, beneath a ragged
sheet, there lay a something covered up, which, though it was dumb,
announced itself in awful language.
The room was very dark, too dark to be observed with any accuracy,
though Scrooge glanced round it in obedience to a secret impulse,
anxious to know what kind of room it was. A pale light, rising in the
outer air, fell straight upon the bed; and on it, plundered and bereft,
unwatched, unwept, uncared for, was the body of this man.
Scrooge glanced towards the Phantom. Its steady hand was pointed to the
head. The cover was so carelessly adjusted that the slightest raising of
it, the motion of a finger upon Scrooge's part, would have disclosed the
face. He thought of it, felt how easy it would be to do, and longed to
do it; but he had no more power to withdraw the veil than to dismiss the
spectre at his side.
Oh, cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar here, and
dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy command; for this is thy
dominion! But of the loved, revered, and honoured head thou canst not
turn one hair to thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious. It is
not that the hand is heavy, and will fall down when released; it is not
that the heart and pulse are still; but that the hand was open,
generous, and true; the heart brave, warm, and tender, and the pulse a
man's. Strike, Shadow, strike! And see his good deeds springing from the
wound, to sow the world with life immortal!
No voice pronounced these words in Scrooge's ears, and yet he heard them
when he looked upon the bed. He thought, if this man could be raised up
now, what would be his foremost thoughts? Avarice, hard dealing, griping
cares? They have brought him to a rich end, truly!
He lay in the dark, empty house, with not a man, a woman, or a child to
say he was kind to me in this or that, and for the memory of one kind
word I will be kind to him. A cat was tearing at the door, and there was
a sound of gnawing rats beneath the hearthstone. What they wanted in
the room of death, and why they were so restless and disturbed, Scrooge
did not dare to think.
'Spirit!' he said, 'this is a fearful place. In leaving it, I shall not
leave its lesson, trust me. Let us go!'
Still the Ghost pointed with an unmoved finger to the head.
'I understand you,' Scrooge returned, 'and I would do it if I could. But
I have not the power, Spirit. I have not the power.'
Again it seemed to look upon him.
'If there is any person in the town who feels emotion caused by this
man's death,' said Scrooge, quite agonised, 'show that person to me,
Spirit, I beseech you!'
The Phantom spread its dark robe before him for a moment, like a wing;
and, withdrawing it, revealed a room by daylight, where a mother and her
children were.
She was expecting some one, and with anxious eagerness; for she walked
up and down the room, started at every sound, looked out from the
window, glanced at the clock, tried, but in vain, to work with her
needle, and could hardly bear the voices of her children in their play.
At length the long-expected knock was heard. She hurried to the door,
and met her husband; a man whose face was careworn and depressed, though
he was young. There was a remarkable expression in it now, a kind of
serious delight of which he felt ashamed, and which he struggled to
repress.
He sat down to the dinner that had been hoarding for him by the fire,
and when she asked him faintly what news (which was not until after a
long silence), he appeared embarrassed how to answer.
'Is it good,' she said, 'or bad?' to help him.
'Bad,' he answered.
'We are quite ruined?'
'No. There is hope yet, Caroline.'
'If he relents,' she said, amazed, 'there is! Nothing is past hope, if
such a miracle has happened.'
'He is past relenting,' said her husband. 'He is dead.'
She was a mild and patient creature, if her face spoke truth; but she
was thankful in her soul to hear it, and she said so with clasped hands.
She prayed forgiveness the next moment, and was sorry; but the first was
the emotion of her heart.
'What the half-drunken woman, whom I told you of last night, said to me
when I tried to see him and obtain a week's delay—and what I thought
was a mere excuse to avoid me—turns out to have been quite true. He was
not only very ill, but dying, then.'
'To whom will our debt be transferred?'
'I don't know. But, before that time, we shall be ready with the money;
and even though we were not, it would be bad fortune indeed to find so
merciless a creditor in his successor. We may sleep to-night with light
hearts, Caroline!'
Yes. Soften it as they would, their hearts were lighter. The children's
faces, hushed and clustered round to hear what they so little
understood, were brighter; and it was a happier house for this man's
death! The only emotion that the Ghost could show him, caused by the
event, was one of pleasure.
'Let me see some tenderness connected with a death,' said Scrooge; 'or
that dark chamber, Spirit, which we left just now, will be for ever
present to me.'
The Ghost conducted him through several streets familiar to his feet;
and as they went along, Scrooge looked here and there to find himself,
but nowhere was he to be seen. They entered poor Bob Cratchit's house;
the dwelling he had visited before; and found the mother and the
children seated round the fire.
Quiet. Very quiet. The noisy little Cratchits were as still as statues
in one corner, and sat looking up at Peter, who had a book before him.
The mother and her daughters were engaged in sewing. But surely they
were very quiet!
'"And he took a child, and set him in the midst of them."'
Where had Scrooge heard those words? He had not dreamed them. The boy
must have read them out as he and the Spirit crossed the threshold. Why
did he not go on?
The mother laid her work upon the table, and put her hand up to her
face.
'The colour hurts my eyes,' she said.
The colour? Ah, poor Tiny Tim!
'They're better now again,' said Cratchit's wife. 'It makes them weak by
candle-light; and I wouldn't show weak eyes to your father when he comes
home for the world. It must be near his time.'
'Past it rather,' Peter answered, shutting up his book. 'But I think he
has walked a little slower than he used, these few last evenings,
mother.'
They were very quiet again. At last she said, and in a steady, cheerful
voice, that only faltered once:
'I have known him walk with—I have known him walk with Tiny Tim upon
his shoulder very fast indeed.'
'And so have I,' cried Peter. 'Often.'
'And so have I,' exclaimed another. So had all.
'But he was very light to carry,' she resumed, intent upon her work,
'and his father loved him so, that it was no trouble, no trouble. And
there is your father at the door!'
She hurried out to meet him; and little Bob in his comforter—he had
need of it, poor fellow—came in. His tea was ready for him on the hob,
and they all tried who should help him to it most. Then the two young
Cratchits got upon his knees, and laid, each child, a little cheek
against his face, as if they said, 'Don't mind it, father. Don't be
grieved!'
Bob was very cheerful with them, and spoke pleasantly to all the family.
He looked at the work upon the table, and praised the industry and speed
of Mrs. Cratchit and the girls. They would be done long before Sunday,
he said.
'Sunday! You went to-day, then, Robert?' said his wife.
'Yes, my dear,' returned Bob. 'I wish you could have gone. It would have
done you good to see how green a place it is. But you'll see it often. I
promised him that I would walk there on a Sunday. My little, little
child!' cried Bob. 'My little child!'
He broke down all at once. He couldn't help it. If he could have helped
it, he and his child would have been farther apart, perhaps, than they
were.
He left the room, and went upstairs into the room above, which was
lighted cheerfully, and hung with Christmas. There was a chair set close
beside the child, and there were signs of some one having been there
lately. Poor Bob sat down in it, and when he had thought a little and
composed himself, he kissed the little face. He was reconciled to what
had happened, and went down again quite happy.
They drew about the fire, and talked, the girls and mother working
still. Bob told them of the extraordinary kindness of Mr. Scrooge's
nephew, whom he had scarcely seen but once, and who, meeting him in the
street that day, and seeing that he looked a little—'just a little
down, you know,' said Bob, inquired what had happened to distress him.
'On which,' said Bob, 'for he is the pleasantest-spoken gentleman you
ever heard, I told him. "I am heartily sorry for it, Mr. Cratchit," he
said, "and heartily sorry for your good wife."
By-the-bye, how he ever
knew that I don't know.'
'Knew what, my dear?'
'Why, that you were a good wife,' replied Bob.
'Everybody knows that,' said Peter.
'Very well observed, my boy!' cried Bob. 'I hope they do. "Heartily
sorry," he said, "for your good wife. If I can be of service to you in
any way," he said, giving me his card, "that's where I live. Pray come
to me." Now, it wasn't,' cried Bob, 'for the sake of anything he might
be able to do for us, so much as for his kind way, that this was quite
delightful. It really seemed as if he had known our Tiny Tim, and felt
with us.'
'I'm sure he's a good soul!' said Mrs. Cratchit.
'You would be sure of it, my dear,' returned Bob, 'if you saw and spoke
to him. I shouldn't be at all surprised—mark what I say!—if he got
Peter a better situation.'
'Only hear that, Peter,' said Mrs. Cratchit.
'And then,' cried one of the girls, 'Peter will be keeping company with
some one, and setting up for himself.'
'Get along with you!' retorted Peter, grinning.
'It's just as likely as not,' said Bob, 'one of these days; though
there's plenty of time for that, my dear. But, however and whenever we
part from one another, I am sure we shall none of us forget poor Tiny
Tim—shall we—or this first parting that there was among us?'
'Never, father!' cried they all.
'And I know,' said Bob, 'I know, my dears, that when we recollect how
patient and how mild he was; although he was a little, little child; we
shall not quarrel easily among ourselves, and forget poor Tiny Tim in
doing it.'
'No, never, father!' they all cried again.
'I am very happy,' said little Bob, 'I am very happy!'
Mrs. Cratchit kissed him, his daughters kissed him, the two young
Cratchits kissed him, and Peter and himself shook hands. Spirit of Tiny
Tim, thy childish essence was from God!
'Spectre,' said Scrooge, 'something informs me that our parting moment
is at hand. I know it but I know not how. Tell me what man that was whom
we saw lying dead?'
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come conveyed him, as before—though at a
different time, he thought: indeed there seemed no order in these latter
visions, save that they were in the Future—into the resorts of business
men, but showed him not himself. Indeed, the Spirit did not stay for
anything, but went straight on, as to the end just now desired, until
besought by Scrooge to tarry for a moment.
'This court,' said Scrooge, 'through which we hurry now, is where my
place of occupation is, and has been for a length of time. I see the
house. Let me behold what I shall be in days to come.'
The Spirit stopped; the hand was pointed elsewhere.
'The house is yonder,' Scrooge exclaimed. 'Why do you point away?'
The inexorable finger underwent no change.
Scrooge hastened to the window of his office, and looked in. It was an
office still, but not his. The furniture was not the same, and the
figure in the chair was not himself. The Phantom pointed as before.
He joined it once again, and, wondering why and whither he had gone,
accompanied it until they reached an iron gate. He paused to look round
before entering.
A churchyard. Here, then, the wretched man, whose name he had now to
learn, lay underneath the ground. It was a worthy place. Walled in by
houses; overrun by grass and weeds, the growth of vegetation's death,
not life; choked up with too much burying; fat with repleted appetite. A
worthy place!
The Spirit stood among the graves, and pointed down to One. He advanced
towards it trembling. The Phantom was exactly as it had been, but he
dreaded that he saw new meaning in its solemn shape.
'Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point,' said Scrooge,
'answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will
be, or are they shadows of the things that May be only?'
Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which it stood.
'Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in,
they must lead,' said Scrooge. 'But if the courses be departed from, the
ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!'
The Spirit was immovable as ever.
Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he went; and, following the
finger, read upon the stone of the neglected grave his own name,
Ebenezer Scrooge.
'Am I that man who lay upon the bed?' he cried upon his knees.
The finger pointed from the grave to him, and back again.
'No, Spirit! Oh no, no!'
The finger still was there.
'Spirit!' he cried, tight clutching at its robe, 'hear me! I am not the
man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this
intercourse. Why show me this, if I am past all hope?'
For the first time the hand appeared to shake.
'Good Spirit,' he pursued, as down upon the ground he fell before it,
'your nature intercedes for me, and pities me. Assure me that I yet may
change these shadows you have shown me by an altered life?'
The kind hand trembled.
'I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I
will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all
Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they
teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!'
In his agony he caught the spectral hand. It sought to free itself, but
he was strong in his entreaty, and detained it. The Spirit stronger yet,
repulsed him.
Holding up his hands in a last prayer to have his fate reversed, he saw
an alteration in the Phantom's hood and dress. It shrunk, collapsed, and
dwindled down into a bedpost.
Stave Five
The End of It
"It's I, your uncle Scrooge. I
have come to dinner. Will you let me in,
Fred?"
'It's I. Your uncle Scrooge. I have come to dinner. Will you let me in,
Fred?'
Let him in! It is a mercy he didn't shake his arm off. He was at home in
five minutes. Nothing could be heartier. His niece looked just the same.
So did Topper when he came. So did the plump sister when she came.
So did every one when they came. Wonderful party, wonderful games,
wonderful unanimity, won-der-ful happiness!
But he was early at the office next morning. Oh, he was early there! If
he could only be there first, and catch Bob Cratchit coming late! That
was the thing he had set his heart upon.
And he did it; yes, he did! The clock struck nine. No Bob. A quarter
past. No Bob. He was full eighteen minutes and a half behind his time.
Scrooge sat with his door wide open, that he might see him come into the
tank.
His hat was off before he opened the door; his comforter too. He was on
his stool in a jiffy, driving away with his pen, as if he were trying to
overtake nine o'clock.
'Hallo!' growled Scrooge in his accustomed voice as near as he could
feign it. 'What do you mean by coming here at this time of day?'
'I am very sorry, sir,' said Bob. 'I am behind my time.'
'You are!' repeated Scrooge. 'Yes, I think you are. Step this way, sir,
if you please.'
'It's only once a year, sir,' pleaded Bob, appearing from the tank. 'It
shall not be repeated. I was making rather merry yesterday, sir.'
'Now, I'll tell you what, my friend,' said Scrooge. 'I am not going to
stand this sort of thing any longer. And therefore,' he continued,
leaping from his stool, and giving Bob such a dig in the waistcoat that
he staggered back into the tank again—'and therefore I am about to
raise your salary!'
Bob trembled, and got a little nearer to the ruler. He had a momentary
idea of knocking Scrooge down with it, holding him, and calling to the
people in the court for help and a strait-waistcoat.
'A merry Christmas, Bob!' said Scrooge, with an earnestness that could
not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. 'A merrier Christmas,
Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you for many a year! I'll raise
your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling family, and we will
discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of
smoking bishop, Bob! Make up the fires and buy another coal-scuttle
before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit!'
Stave Five
The End of It
"Now, I'll tell you what, my
friend,"
said Scrooge. "I am not going to stand this sort of thing any
longer.
Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more;
and to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, he was a second father. He became as
good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man as the good old
City knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough in the good old
world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them
laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that
nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did
not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as
these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they
should wrinkle up their eyes in grins as have the malady in less
attractive forms. His own heart laughed, and that was quite enough for
him.
He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the
Total-Abstinence Principle ever afterwards; and it was always said of
him that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed
the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as
Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!
Feel free to leave comments,
When it comes to Alfred's later years including his life with wife Emily, her side of the family (The Sellwoods), their children, and even grandchildren; it's all here in a well written and engaging account of the greatest poet of the nineteenth century and the Victorian era Alfred Lord Tennyson. He was an introspective man who loved nature, who felt at one with it, who loved words, his family, and who cherished his friends all his life. So, if anyone is attempting to discover who the
man Alfred was before and after becoming Poet Laureate, I urge you to read John Batchelor's 'Tennyson: To strive, to seek, to find.'
