Chapter 16

_Oliver Twist_ followed, and then _Nicholas Nickleby_; and by this time Dickens began to get, what he did not receive from his first work, something like his fair share of the enormous profits, so that his growing family lived in comfort, if not in luxury. When the _Old Curiosity Shop_, and, later, _Barnaby Rudge_, appeared, the number of purchasers of the serials rose as high as seventy thousand.

Early in 1842 Dickens and his wife made a journey to America, leaving their children in the care of a friend. Shortly after arriving in the United States he wrote to a friend, "I can give you no conception of my welcome here. There was never a king or emperor upon the earth so cheered and followed by crowds, and entertained in public at splendid balls and dinners, and waited on by public bodies and deputations of all kinds;" and again, "In every town where we stay, though it be only for a day, we hold a regular levee or drawing-room, where I shake hands on an average with five or six hundred people."

Dickens had come prepared to like America and Americans--and in many ways he did like them. But in other ways he was disappointed. He ventured to object, in various speeches, to the pirating, in America, of English literature, and fierce were the denunciations which this course drew upon him. Having fancied that in the republic of America he might have at least free speech on a matter which so closely concerned him, Dickens resented this treatment, and the Americans resented his resentment. However, it was with the kindliest feelings toward the many friends he had made in the United States, and with the most out-spoken admiration for many American institutions that he left for England. The publication of his _American Notes_ and of _Martin Chuzzlewit_ did not tend to reconcile Americans to Dickens; but there seems to have been no falling off in the sale of his books in this country.

Dickens's life, like the lives of most literary men, was not particularly eventful. It was, however, a constantly busy life. Book followed book in rapid succession, and still their popularity grew. Sometimes in London, sometimes in Italy or Rome or Switzerland, he created those wonderful characters of his which will live as long as the English language. The first of the Christmas books, _A Christmas Carol_, appeared in 1843, and henceforward one of the things to which people looked forward at Yuletide was the publication of a new Dickens Christmas story.

One diversion--if diversion it can be called--Dickens allowed himself not infrequently, and enjoyed most thoroughly. This was the production, sometimes before a selected audience, sometimes in public, of plays, in which Dickens himself usually took the chief part. Often these plays were given not only in London, but in various parts of the country, as benefits for poor authors or actors, or for the widows and families of such; and always they were astonishingly successful. It is reported that an old stage prompter or property man said one time to Dickens "Lor, Mr. Dickens! If it hadn't been for them books, what an actor you would have made."

Naturally, a man of Dickens's eminence had as his friends and acquaintances many of the foremost men of his time, and a most affectionate and delightful friend he was. His letters fall no whit below the best of his writing in his novels in their power of observation, their brightness, their humorous manner of expression.

In 1849 was begun the publication of _David Copperfield_, Dickens's own favorite among his novels. It contains, as has already been said, much that is autobiographical, and one of the most interesting facts in connection with this phase of it is that there really was, in Dickens's young days, a "Dora" whom he worshiped. Years later he met her again, and what his feelings on that occasion must have been may be imagined when we know that this Dora-grown-older was the original of "Flora" in _Little Dorrit_.

The things that Dickens, writing constantly and copiously, found time to do are wonderful. One of the matters in which he took great interest and an active part was the children's theatricals. These were held each year during the Christmas holiday season at Dickens's home, and while his children and their friends were the principal actors, Dickens superintended the whole, introduced three-quarters of the fun, and played grown-up parts, adopting as his stage title the "Modern Garrick."

Though the story of these crowded years is quickly told, the years were far from being uneventful in their passing. Occasional sojourns, either with his family or with friends, in France and in Italy always made Dickens but the more glad to be in his beloved London, where he seemed most in his element and where his genius had freest play. This does not mean that he did not enjoy France and Italy, or appreciate their beauties, but simply that he was always an Englishman--a city Englishman. His observations, however, on what he saw in traveling were always most acute and entertaining.

His account of his well-nigh unsuccessful attempt to find the house of Mr. Lowther, English chargé d'affaires at Naples, with whom he had been invited to dine, may be quoted here to show his power of humorous description:

"We had an exceedingly pleasant dinner of eight, preparatory to which I was near having the ridiculous adventure of not being able to find the house and coming back dinnerless. I went in an open carriage from the hotel in all state, and the coachman, to my surprise, pulled up at the end of the Chiaja.

"'Behold the house' says he, 'of Signor Larthoor!'--at the same time pointing with his whip into the seventh heaven, where the early stars were shining.

"'But the Signor Larthoor,' returns the Inimitable darling, 'lives at Pausilippo.'

"'It is true,' says the coachman (still pointing to the evening star), 'but he lives high up the Salita Sant' Antonio, where no carriage ever yet ascended, and that is the house' (evening star as aforesaid), 'and one must go on foot. Behold the Salita Sant' Antonio!'

"I went up it, a mile and a half I should think. I got into the strangest places, among the wildest Neapolitans--kitchens, washing-places, archways, stables, vineyards--was baited by dogs, answered in profoundly unintelligible Neapolitan, from behind lonely locked doors, in cracked female voices, quaking with fear; could hear of no such Englishman or any Englishman. By-and-by I came upon a Polenta-shop in the clouds, where an old Frenchman, with an umbrella like a faded tropical leaf (it had not rained for six weeks) was staring at nothing at all, with a snuff-box in his hand. To him I appealed concerning the Signor Larthoor.

"'Sir,' said he, with the sweetest politeness, 'can you speak French?'

"'Sir,' said I, 'a little.'

"'Sir,' said he, 'I presume the Signor Lootheere'--you will observe that he changed the name according to the custom of his country--'is an Englishman.'

"I admitted that he was the victim of circumstances and had that misfortune.

"'Sir,' said he, 'one word more. _Has_ he a servant with a wooden leg?'

"'Great Heaven, sir,' said I, 'how do I know? I should think not, but it is possible.'

"'It is always,' said the Frenchman, 'possible. Almost all the things of the world are always possible.'

"'Sir,' said I--you may imagine my condition and dismal sense of my own absurdity by this time--'that is true.'

"He then took an immense pinch of snuff, wiped the dust off his umbrella, led me to an arch commanding a wonderful view of the Bay of Naples, and pointed deep into the earth from which I had mounted.

"'Below there, near the lamp, one finds an Englishman, with a servant with a wooden leg. It is always possible that he is the Signor Lootheere.'

"I had been asked at six, and it was now getting on for seven. I went down again in a state of perspiration and misery not to be described, and without the faintest hope of finding the place. But as I was going down to the lamp, I saw the strangest staircase up a dark corner, with a man in a white waistcoat (evidently hired) standing on the top of it fuming. I dashed in at a venture, found it was the place, made the most of the whole story, and was indescribably popular."

"Indescribably popular" Dickens was almost every place he went. And in 1858 there came to him increased popularity by reason of a new venture. In this year he began his public readings from his own works, which brought him in immense sums of money. Through England, Scotland, Ireland and the United States he journeyed, reading, as only he could read, scenes humorous and pathetic from his great novels, and everywhere the effect was the same.

Descriptive of an evening at Edinburgh, he wrote: "Such a pouring of hundreds into a place already full to the throat, such indescribable confusion, such a rending and tearing of dresses, and yet such a scene of good humor on the whole!... I read with the platform crammed with people. I got them to lie down upon it, and it was like some impossible tableau or gigantic picnic; one pretty girl in full dress hang on her side all night, holding on to one of the legs of my table. And yet from the moment I began to the moment of my leaving off, they never missed a point, and they ended with a burst of cheers."

Meanwhile Dickens's domestic life had not been happy. He and his wife were not entirely congenial in temper, and the incompatibility increased with the years, until in 1858 they agreed to live apart. Most of the children remained with their father, although they were given perfect freedom to visit their mother.

Among Dickens's later novels are the _Tale of Two Cities_, _Great Expectations_, which is one of his very best books, and _Our Mutual Friend_, which, while as a story it has many faults, yet abounds with the humor and fancy which are characteristic of Dickens. In October, 1869, was begun _Edwin Drood_, which was published like most of its predecessors, as a serial. Six numbers appeared, and there the story closed; for on June 9, 1870, Charles Dickens died, after an illness of but one day, during all of which he was unconscious.

His family desired to have him buried near his home, the Gad's Hill which he had admired from his childhood and had purchased in his manhood; but the general wish was that he should be laid in Westminster Abbey, and to this wish his family felt that it would be wrong to object. For days there were crowds of mourners about the grave, shedding tears, scattering flowers, testifying to the depth of affection they had felt for the man who had given them so many happy hours.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL

_By_ CHARLES DICKENS

STAVE ONE

_Marley's Ghost_

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnized it with an undoubted bargain.

The mention of Marley's funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet's Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot--say Saint Paul's Churchyard for instance--literally to astonish his son's weak mind.

Scrooge never painted out Old Marley's name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names: it was all the same to him.

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had even struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.

External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, nor wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often "came down" handsomely, and Scrooge never did.

Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, "My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?" No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o'clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind men's dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, "No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!"

But what did Scrooge care? It was the very thing he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones call "nuts" to Scrooge.

Once upon a time--of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve--old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the people in the court outside go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them. The City clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already: it had not been light all day: and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighboring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense without, that although the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms. To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring everything, one might have thought that Nature lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale.[247-1]

The door of Scrooge's counting-house was open that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank, was copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk's fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he couldn't replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room; and so surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted that it would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being a man of strong imagination, he failed.

"A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!" cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge's nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach.

"Bah!" said Scrooge. "Humbug!"

He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge's, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.

"Christmas a humbug, uncle!" said Scrooge's nephew. "You don't mean that, I am sure."

"I do," said Scrooge. "Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough."

"Come, then," returned the nephew gaily. "What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You're rich enough."

Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said, "Bah!" again; and followed it up with "Humbug."

"Don't be cross, uncle," said the nephew.

"What else can I be," returned the uncle, "when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas! What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in 'em through a round dozen months presented dead against you? If I could work my will," said Scrooge, indignantly, "every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!"

"Uncle!" pleaded the nephew.

"Nephew!" returned the uncle, sternly, "keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine."

"Keep it!" repeated Scrooge's nephew. "But you don't keep it."

"Let me leave it alone, then," said Scrooge. "Much good may it do you! Much good it has ever done you!"

"There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say," returned the nephew: "Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round--apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that--as 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. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it _has_ done me good, and _will_ do me good; and I say, God bless it!"

The clerk in the Tank involuntarily applauded: becoming immediately sensible of the impropriety, he poked the fire, and extinguished the last frail spark for ever.

"Let me hear another sound from _you_," said Scrooge, "and you'll keep your Christmas by losing your situation. You're quite a powerful speaker, Sir," he added, turning to his nephew. "I wonder you don't go into Parliament."

"Don't be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us to-morrow."

Scrooge said that he would see him--yes, indeed he did. He went the whole length of the expression, and said that he would see him in that extremity first.

"But why?" cried Scrooge's nephew. "Why?"

"Why did you get married?" said Scrooge.

"Because I fell in love."

"Because you fell in love!" growled Scrooge, as if that were the only one thing in the world more ridiculous than a merry Christmas. "Good afternoon!"

"Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before that happened. Why give it as a reason for not coming now?"

"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.

"I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be friends?"

"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.

"I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. We have never had any quarrel to which I have been a party. But I have made the trial in homage to Christmas, and I'll keep my Christmas humour to the last. So A Merry Christmas, uncle!"

"Good afternoon!" said Scrooge.

"And A Happy New Year!"

"Good afternoon!" said Scrooge.

His nephew left the room without an angry word, notwithstanding. He stopped at the outer door to bestow the greetings of the season on the clerk, who, cold as he was, was warmer than Scrooge; for he returned them cordially.

"There's another fellow," muttered Scrooge; who overheard him: "my clerk, with fifteen shillings a week, and a wife and family, talking about a merry Christmas. I'll retire to Bedlam."[251-2]

This lunatic, in letting Scrooge's nephew out, had let two other people in. They were portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now stood, with their hats off, in Scrooge's office. They had books and papers in their hands, and bowed to him.

"Scrooge and Marley's, I believe," said one of the gentlemen, referring to his list. "Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge, or Mr. Marley?"

"Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years," Scrooge replied. "He died seven years ago, this very night."

"We have no doubt his liberality is well represented by his surviving partner," said the gentleman, presenting his credentials.

It certainly was; for they had been two kindred spirits. At the ominous word "liberality," Scrooge frowned, and shook his head, and handed the credentials back.

"At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge," said the gentleman, taking up a pen, "it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, Sir."

"Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge.

"Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.

"And the Union workhouses?"[252-3] demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?"

"They are. Still," returned the gentleman, "I wish I could say they were not."

"The Treadmill[252-4] and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?" said Scrooge.

"Both very busy, Sir."

"Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course," said Scrooge. "I'm very glad to hear it."

"Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude," returned the gentleman, "a few of us are endeavoring to raise a fund to buy the poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when want is keenly felt, and abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?"

"Nothing!" Scrooge replied.

"You wish to be anonymous?"

"I wish to be left alone," said Scrooge. "Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at Christmas, and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned: they cost enough: and those who are badly off must go there."

"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."

"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides--excuse me--I don't know that."

"But you might know it," observed the gentleman.

"It's not my business," Scrooge returned. "It's enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people's. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!"

Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their point, the gentlemen withdrew. Scrooge resumed his labours with an improved opinion of himself, and in more facetious temper than was usual with him.