I am counting down to Christmas and enjoying the festive build up in my usual way with A Christmas Carol. Reading the book or watching one or more of the many film versions is a seasonal pleasure of mine. First filmed in 1901 it has had many incarnations as a movie, animation, musical and stage show since then.
The story began life as the result of the author’s desperate need of money. In the fall of 1843 Dickens and his wife Kate were expecting their fifth child. Requests for money from his family, a large mortgage on his Devonshire Terrace home, and lagging sales from the monthly instalments of Martin Chuzzlewit, had left Dickens seriously short of cash. The seeds for the story were supposedly planted in Dickens’ mind during a trip to Manchester to deliver a speech in support of the Athenaeum, which provided adult education for the manufacturing workers there. Thoughts of education as a remedy for crime and poverty caused Dickens to resolve to “strike a sledge hammer blow” for the poor. As the idea for the story took shape and the writing began in earnest, Dickens became engrossed in the book. He wrote at the time that as the tale unfolded he wept and laughed, and wept again and that he walked about the black streets of London fifteen or twenty miles many a night when all sober folks had gone to bed.
A Christmas Carol is the first of 5 Christmas stories by Dickens and was written in just 2 months. Published on 19th December 1843 it was followed by The Chimes on 16th December 1844, The Cricket on the Hearth 20th December 1845, and The Battle of Life 19th December 1846 with the series concluded on 19 December 1848 with The Haunted Man. This one novella is credited with inspiring the Victorian Christmas that we still base so much of our current celebrations on. To quote the author – “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 houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.”
It was an instant success on publication but not an instant financial success for Dickens. Despite selling out its initial print run of 6,000 copies by Christmas Eve and becoming one of the best-loved (and best-selling) tales in the history of English literature for Dickens it was a financial disappointment. Due to his insistence on a lavish format there was very little profit left for him. He wanted a beautiful little gift book so he stipulated fancy binding, gold lettering on the spine and front cover, gilded page edges, four full-page hand-coloured etchings and four woodcuts by John Leech, half-title and title pages printed in bright red and green and hand-coloured green endpapers to match the title page. But upon receiving preliminary copies he did not like the green of the title pages which had turned a drab olive and the green from the endpapers smudged when touched. Changes were immediately made two days before the book’s release. The publisher produced new copies with a red and blue title page, a blue half-title page, and yellow endpapers. These changes, along with a number of text corrections satisfied Dickens. To encourage a large volume of sales he set the price at a reasonable 5 shillings. Dickens received the initial receipts of production and sale from publishers only to find that after the deductions for printing, paper, drawing and engraving, steel plates, paper for plates, colouring, binding, incidentals, advertising and publishers commission, the “Balance of account to Mr Dickens’s credit” was a mere £137. Dickens wrote “I had set my heart and soul upon a £1,000 clear. What a wonderful thing it is that such a great success should occasion me such intolerable anxiety and disappointment!” By the end of 1844 having sold 15,000 copies Dickens had still only received £726. To prove its popularity there were at least eight theatrical versions of A Christmas Carol in production within 2 months of publication. When Dickens undertook his reading tours A Christmas Carol was the first story he read in public. It was also the very last he read on his final tour.
The theme of A Christmas Carol came from Dickens’ observations of the plight of the children of London’s poor. There were thousands of children living in unimaginable poverty, filth, and disease. In 1839 it was estimated that nearly half of all funerals in London were for children under the age of ten. Those who survived grew up without education and virtually no chance to escape from the cycle of poverty. Families like the Cratchits did not have an oven so they took their Christmas goose or chicken to the baker’s shop. Bakers were forbidden to sell on Sundays and holidays but would open their shops on these days and bake dinners for a small fee. Throughout his life Dickens attacked Sabbatarianism which was the doctrine of strict observance of Sunday as a holy day reserved for worship. In 1836 he published a pamphlet to oppose a Bill that would have extended the already strict limitations to Sunday recreation. Dickens felt that these Bills were an attempt by the upper classes to control the lives of the lower classes disguised as religious piety. He argued that Sunday was the only day that the poor and working classes could enjoy simple pleasures that the upper and middle classes enjoyed all week.
Tiny Tim’s illness was also a genuine condition linked to poverty. Having studied the description of Tiny Tim’s symptoms Dr. Donald Lewis, an assistant professor of paediatrics and neurology at the Medical College of Hampton Roads in Norfolk, Virginia, diagnosed that he suffered from distal renal tubular acidosis (type I), a kidney disease that makes the blood too acidic. Although not recognized until the early 20th century treatments were available in Dickens’ time. Dr. Lewis explained that due to the poverty of the Cratchit household Tim would have gone untreated and developed the symptoms described in the story, eventually dying young. With Scrooge’s reform came his promise to help Bob’s family including providing the treatment Tim required thus saving his life.
I do not think there is any better way to fill oneself with pre-Christmas spirit than enjoying A Christmas Carol either as a read, a show or a film and taking part in a traditional carol service. Although we have moved forward a long way since the era of A Christmas Carol we must never forget there is still homelessness and poverty here in the UK and suffering and depravation across the globe. It is incumbent on us all to remember those worse off than ourselves and give what we can to help them. Christmas is the time to remind us all that love and compassion can bring pleasure to the provider as well as the recipient.
Christmas is very much about children but we adults can still experience the magic as seen through a child’s eyes. We just need to open our eyes a little wider and look beyond our own walls. In the words of the great man himself “It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas when its mighty Founder was a child himself.”
I wish everyone a very merry and peaceful Christmas filled with love, laughter, pleasant company and the spirits of Christmas past, present and future.