Chapter 13

Giving from a Charitable Heart

EVEN WHEN HE BECAME FAMOUS, Charles Dickens feared being unable to support his family. He suffered from flashbacks, remembering how he once labored long hours in the blacking factory and never knew if he would have enough to eat. He worried that something bad could happen—something he couldn’t control—that would put him back on the streets, but this time with a wife and children to care for.

By the age of thirty-one, he had authored eight books, several of them bestsellers. He was the publisher and editor of a popular news magazine, to which he frequently contributed articles, and he was in constant demand as a speaker. But that year, 1843, he was especially concerned about money. He and Catherine had been married six years and were expecting their fifth child. Dickens’ large household included servants, his wife’s sister, and assorted pets. His father, perpetually in debt, always needed financial help, as did several of Dickens’ brothers and sisters. Dickens gave generously to charities and was quick to help out friends. With so many bills to pay, Dickens was forced to borrow money again. If there was one thing he hated, it was debt.

As popular as he was, his last couple of books had brought in less income than he had counted on. He needed to produce something that could make money quickly.

Ideas tumbled in his mind. As always his concerns included the welfare of the lower classes, especially the children. He intended to continue exposing the greed and indifference of wealthy people who exploited the poor for their own benefit. Those with the most often gave the least, believing the poor should help themselves. Dickens wanted to change their feelings about the lower classes—to make them want to help the less fortunate. He also wanted to remind the upper classes that unless they supported social reforms to improve the lives of the poor, a rebellion like the French Revolution was very possible.

Gradually a story started to take shape in his mind. Excited, he realized that it would address his goals and still be highly entertaining, for he was envisioning a ghost story—and not just a story with one ghost, but with three. The Victorians were very interested in the paranormal. A ghost story was just the thing.

As soon as he started to write, he became so engaged in his creation that he was “reluctant to lay it aside for a moment” and found, “I was very much affected by the little Book myself.” He worked nonstop, completing what he referred to as “this ghostly little book” in just six weeks.

He set it at Christmas, then a minor holiday in England. Once it had been an occasion of feasting and merriment. That had changed two centuries earlier when austere religious reformers had decreed through an act of Parliament that Christmas must be a somber occasion, marked by repentance of wrongdoing. But many people, including Dickens, still celebrated Christmas with a traditional dinner of roast goose, plum pudding, and mince pie, and with the long-held tradition of charitable giving to the poor.

Dickens called his lengthy short story A Christmas Carol. As was so often true in his books, a child played a pivotal role. Tiny Tim was a small boy slowly dying of what was possibly rickets, a crippling disease caused by a vitamin deficiency related to malnutrition.

The story opened with the words, “Marley was dead, to begin with.” Marley was the former partner of Ebenezer Scrooge, “a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint . . . and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.” Scrooge had grown rich by hoarding his earnings. He had no life outside of work. His only relative was his charitable, good-hearted nephew, who was Dickens’ model for what he wanted upper-class people to be.

“Once upon a time—” wrote Dickens, “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.” Scrooge kept a careful eye on his clerk, Bob Cratchit, to make sure that he burned no more than one ember of coal in a futile attempt to stay warm, and that he did not pause for a moment from his work.

 

Scrooge meets the larger-than-life Ghost of Christmas Present in this famous illustration from the first edition of A Christmas Carol.

 

Scrooge’s nephew stopped by to wish Scrooge a merry Christmas and to invite him to dine with him and his wife, but Scrooge replied, “Bah! Humbug!” He insisted that there was nothing to celebrate at Christmas, but his nephew responded that it was “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 I say, God bless it!”

Two gentlemen approached Scrooge seeking a contribution to help buy food and fuel for the poor, stating, “Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundred of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.”

Scrooge replied angrily, “Are there no prisons?”

The gentlemen agreed there were plenty. “‘And the Union workhouses?’ demanded Scrooge. ‘Are they still in operation?’” The gentlemen protested that no Christmas cheer was to be found there and that many would rather die than go to them. “‘If they would rather die,’ said Scrooge, ‘they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.’”

Scrooge, as we all know, was in for a fanciful night, full of ghosts and time travel. He returned to his childhood with the Spirit of Christmas Past, and he saw his dismal future with the Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come. Many moments startled and amazed him, helping him to understand how he came to be greedy and unhappy, why it was so wrong, and how it affected the way he would be remembered after death. In an especially dramatic moment he saw two strange shapes emerge from under the long robe worn by the Spirit of Christmas Present. Scrooge realized that they were a boy and a girl, “yellow, meager, ragged, scowling, wolfish.” Appalled, he asked, “‘Spirit, are they yours?’”

“‘They are Man’s,’ said the Spirit, looking down upon them. ‘This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware 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.’”

“Have they no refuge or resource?” Scrooge asked with concern.

“‘Are there no prisons?’ responded the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. ‘Are there no workhouses?’”

By the end of the night, Scrooge understood the consequences of poverty on society and his personal obligation to help the poor. He had reconnected with his caring self and, with his icy heart thawed at last, he pleaded with the goulish Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come to let him atone for his sins. He cried, “I will honor 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.”

When he awoke Christmas morning in his own bed and realized that he did indeed have another chance, he was as good as his word. In fact, “Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more.” During his night’s journey he had come to care about Tiny Tim, the crippled son of his clerk, Bob Cratchit, and had been horrified when the Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come had revealed that the boy died because he did not get proper medical attention. Scrooge determined to change this fate. He generously helped the Cratchit family, and particularly Tiny Tim, who soon regained his health.

Scrooge “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.”

 

Tiny Tim, carried on the shoulders of his loving father, Bob Cratchit, proved to be one of Dickens’ most enduring and popular characters.

 

Dickens concluded, “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!”

 

When Dickens finished his story, he was certain his readers would like it. He’d been having some problems with his publishers, and because he felt so confident about his story, he decided to print the first edition at his own cost—a risky venture for someone who hated debt and already owed money. Not only that, he determined that the book should be lavishly produced, with color illustrations and pages with gilt edging. He selected a cover of red cloth with the title stamped in gold. Each of these choices drove up the cost of production—yet Dickens wanted to keep the price affordable, a decision that would severely limit how much money he could make on each copy. If the book did not sell well, he would be financially ruined.

It was the gamble of his career.

A Christmas Carol went on sale the week before Christmas in 1843. Dickens held his breath, waiting to see what would happen. Would reviewers like it? Would people buy it? Then the first review appeared, proclaiming it “a tale to make the reader laugh and cry—open his hands, and open his heart to charity.” Word spread quickly, and Dickens’ fans lined up. Within four days, the first edition of six thousand copies sold out. Dickens was ecstatic.

The public loved A Christmas Carol. Just as Dickens had hoped, people took seriously its messages that the poor genuinely deserved help and that it was never too late to experience redemption and become a better person. And what more appropriate time for these realizations than at Christmas, a holiday celebrating the spirit of goodwill toward all!

On Sunday mornings, ministers used A Christmas Carol to illustrate Christian virtues. After reading it, a factory owner gave his laborers an extra holiday. A reader wrote to Dickens, “You may be sure you have done more good by this little publication, fostered more kindly feelings, and prompted more positive acts of beneficence, than can be traced to all the pulpits and confessionals in Christendom.”

An American reviewer wrote, “It is one of those stories, the reading of which makes every one better, more contented with life, more resigned to misfortune, more hopeful, more charitable.”

 

A favorite scene from the first edition of the book was the Christmas Eve ball given by Mr. Fezziwig, Scrooge’s long-ago employer. The first edition was printed in color, at the time both unusual and expensive.

 

Dickens was flooded with letters from ordinary people who told him about themselves and their lives and how meaningful the book was to them. Many mentioned giving the book an honored place in their homes and reading it aloud to their families.

Dickens’ warning to the British to beware of man’s offspring, Ignorance and Want, did not fall on deaf ears. The wheels of change moved slowly, but by the turn of the century and the end of Victoria’s reign in 1901, the reforms that began in Dickens’ lifetime had eased the suffering of the poor. While many powerful people were responsible for this, Dickens rightfully received credit, long after he had died, for goading the upper classes to do the right thing—and making them want to do it.

 

Because of printing costs, Dickens did not make the quick money he had hoped, and for a while his finances remained precarious. But through the years A Christmas Carol sold very well. It also revived the celebration of Christmas, which became once again a popular, festive holiday. The book nearly put suppliers of geese out of business, however, for in the story, Scrooge sends Bob Cratchit’s family the prize turkey hanging in the window of a local poultry shop instead of a traditional goose. Ever since, the British have favored roast turkey over roast goose for their Christmas feast.

Today A Christmas Carol is one of literature’s most endearing creations. It inevitably appears on lists of “best” and “favorite” stories. “Bah! Humbug!” is part of our language, and we call a miser “Scrooge.” All over the world, the story is performed each holiday season on stage. Audiences also gather to hear it being read aloud or to watch one of the many movie adaptations made of it. Dickens’ name has become synonymous with a Victorian Christmas—sometimes referred to as a Dickens Christmas—which usually features Dickens carolers singing Christmas carols and trees decorated with Tiny Tim ornaments Dickens Christmas festivals are held many places. The most famous is in Rochester, England, the market town Dickens knew so well. In Galveston, Texas, islanders celebrate the end of hurricane season with a Victorian Christmas featuring all things Dickens. The Great Dickens Christmas Fair is an annual event in San Francisco—and on and on the list goes.

Best of all, the popularity of A Christmas Carol continues to remind readers of their responsibility to help the less fortunate It inspires them to honor the spirit of Christmas “all the year,” just as Scrooge pledged to do, and to proclaim with Tiny Tim, “God Bless Us, Every One!”