Christmas With Dickens - A Christmas Carol 4
A Christmas Carol recounts the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, an elderly miser who is visited by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come. After their visits, Scrooge is transformed into a kinder, gentler man.
Transcript
This is S.
D.
Hudson Magic.
Welcome to my Christmas series.
These extracts are taken from a Christmas carol written by Charles Dickens in the 19th century.
Here's wishing all my loyal listeners a very peaceful and restful Christmas and Happy New Year.
Stave Three A remote Christmas And now,
Without a word of warning from the ghost,
They stood upon a bleak and desert moor,
Where monstrous masses of rude stone were cast about,
As though it were the burial place of giants.
And water spread itself wheresoever it listed,
Or would have done so,
But for the frost that held it prisoner.
And nothing grew but moss and firs,
And coarse rank grass.
Down in the west,
The setting sun had left a streak of fiery red,
Which glared upon the desolation for an instant,
Like a sullen eye,
And frowning lower,
Lower,
Lower yet,
Was lost in the thick gloom of darkest night.
What place is this?
Asked Scrooge.
A place where miners live,
Whose labour in the bowels of the earth,
Returned the spirit.
But they know me,
See.
A light shone from the window of a hut,
And swiftly they advanced towards it.
Passing through the wall of mud and stone,
They found a cheerful company assembled around a glowing fire.
An old,
Old man and woman,
With their children,
And their children's children,
And another generation beyond that,
All decked out gaily in their holiday attire.
The old man,
In a voice that seldom rose above the howling of the wind upon the barren waste,
Was singing them a Christmas song.
It had been a very old song when he was a boy,
And from time to time they all joined in the chorus.
So surely as they raised their voices,
The old man got quite blithe and loud,
And so surely as they stopped,
His vigour sank again.
The spirit did not tarry here,
But bade Scrooge hold his robe,
And passing on above them all,
Sped wither not to see,
To see.
To Scrooge's horror,
Looking back,
He saw the last of the land,
A frightful range of rocks behind them,
And his ears were deafened by the thundering of water as it rolled and roared and raged among the dreadful caverns it had worn and fiercely tried to undermine the earth.
Built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks,
Some league or two from the shore,
On which the waters chafed and dashed the wild year through,
There stood a solitary lighthouse.
Great heaps of seaweed clung to its base,
And storm birds,
Born of the wind one might suppose,
As seaweed of the water,
Rose and fell about it like the waves they skimmed.
But even here,
Two men who watched the light had made a fire,
That through the loophole in the thick stone wall shed out a ray of brightness on the awful sea.
Joining their horny hands over the rough table at which they sat,
They wished each other Merry Christmas in their can of grog,
And one of them,
The elder too,
With his face all damaged and scarred with hard weather,
As the figurehead of an old ship might be,
Struck up a sturdy song that was like a gale in itself.
Again the ghosts sped on,
Above the black and heaving sea,
On,
On,
Until being far away,
As he told Scrooge,
From any shore,
They lighted on a ship.
They stood beside the helmsman at the wheel,
The lookout in the bow,
The officers who had the watch,
Dark ghostly figures in their several stations,
But every man among them hummed a Christmas tune,
Or had a Christmas thought,
Or spoke below his breath to his companion of some bygone Christmas day,
With homeward hopes belonging to it,
And every man on board,
Waking or sleeping,
Good or bad,
Had a kinder word for another on that day,
Than on any other day in that year,
And had shared to some extent in its festivities,
And had remembered those he cared for at a distance,
And had known that they delighted to remember him.
Fred's Christmas It was a great surprise to Scrooge,
While listening to the moaning of the wind,
And thinking what a solemn thing it was to move on through the lonely darkness,
After an unknown abyss,
Whose depths were secrets as profound as death.
It was a great surprise to Scrooge,
While thus engaged,
To hear a hearty laugh.
It was a much greater surprise to Scrooge to recognise it as his own nephew's,
And to find himself in a bright,
Dry,
Gleaming room,
With the spirit standing smiling by his side,
And looking at that same nephew with a proving affability.
Ha ha!
Laughed Scrooge's nephew.
Ha ha ha!
If you should happen by any unlikely chance to know a man more blessed in a laugh than Scrooge's nephew,
All I can say is,
I should like to know him too.
Introduce him to me,
And I'll cultivate his acquaintance.
It is a fair,
Even-handed,
Notable adjustment of things,
That while there is infection in disease and sorrow,
There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humour.
When Scrooge's nephew laughed in this way,
Holding his sides,
Rolling his head,
And twisting his face into the most extravagant contortions,
Scrooge's niece by marriage laughed as heartily as he,
And their assembled friends,
Being not a little bit behind hand,
Roared out lustily.
Ha ha ha!
He said that Christmas was a humbug as I live,
Cried Scrooge's nephew.
He believed it too.
All shame for him,
Fred,
Said Scrooge's niece indignantly.
Bless those women,
They never do anything by halves,
They are always in earnest.
She was very pretty,
Exceedingly pretty,
With a dimpled,
Surprised-looking capital face,
A right little mouth that seemed made to be kissed,
As no doubt it was,
All kinds of good little dots about her chin that melted into one another when she laughed,
And the sunniest pair of eyes you ever saw in any little creature's head.
Altogether she was what she would have called provoking,
You know,
But satisfactory too,
Perfectly satisfactory.
He's a comical old fellow,
Said Scrooge's nephew,
That's the truth,
And not so pleasant as he might be.
However,
His offences carry their own punishment,
And I have nothing to say against him.
I'm sure he is very rich,
Fred,
Hinted Scrooge's niece,
At least you always tell me so.
What of that,
My dear,
Said Scrooge's nephew,
His wealth is of no use to him.
He don't do any good with it,
He don't make himself comfortable with it,
He hasn't the satisfaction of thinking that he is ever going to benefit us with it.
I have no patience with him,
Observed Scrooge's niece.
Scrooge's niece's sisters and all the other ladies expressed the same opinion.
Oh,
I have,
Said Scrooge's nephew,
I'm sorry for him,
I couldn't be angry with him if I tried.
Who suffers by his ill whims,
Himself,
Always.
Here he takes it into his head to dislike us and he won't come and dine with us.
What's the consequence,
He doesn't lose much of a dinner.
Indeed,
I think he loses a very good dinner,
Interrupted Scrooge's niece.
Everybody else says the same and they must be allowed to have been competent judges because they just had dinner and with the dessert upon the table clustered round the fire by lamplight.
The chimes were ringing the three quarters past eleven at that moment.
Forgive me if I'm 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.
Oh man,
Look here,
Look here now,
Down here,
Exclaimed the ghost.
They were a boy and a girl,
Yellow,
Meagre,
Ragged,
Scowling,
Wolfish,
But prostrate too in their humility.
Where graceful you 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 shown them to him 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 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.
The ghost of Christmas yet to come.
The phantom slowly,
Gravely,
Silently approached.
When it came near him,
Scrooge bent down upon his knee,
For in the very air through which this spirit moved,
It seemed to scatter gloom and mystery.
It was shrouded in a deep black garment which concealed its head,
Its face,
Its form,
And let nothing of it visible save one outstretched hand.
But for this it would have been difficult to detach its figure from the night and separate it from the darkness by which it was surrounded.
He felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside him,
And that its mysterious presence filled him with a solemn dread.
He knew no more,
For the spirit neither spoke nor moved.
I am in the presence of the ghost of Christmas yet to come?
Said Scrooge.
The spirit answered not,
But pointed onward with its hand.
You are about to show me shadows of the things that have not happened,
But will happen in the time before us,
Scrooge pursued.
Is that so,
Spirit?
The upper portion of the garment was contracted for an instant in its folds,
As if the spirit had inclined its head.
That was the only answer he received.
Although well used to ghostly company by this time,
Scrooge feared the silent shapes so much that his legs trembled beneath him,
And he found that he could hardly stand when he prepared to follow it.
The spirit paused a moment as observing his condition and giving him time to recover.
But Scrooge was all the worse for this.
It thrilled him with a vague uncertain horror to know that behind the dusty shroud there were ghostly eyes intently fixed upon him,
While he,
Though he stretched his own to the utmost,
Could see nothing but a spectral hand and one great heap of black.
Ghost of the future!
He exclaimed.
I fear you more than any spectre I have seen,
But as I know your purposes to do me good,
And as I hope to live to be another man from what I was,
I am prepared to bear you company and do it with a thankful heart.
Will you not speak to me?
It gave him no reply.
The hand was pointed straight before them.
Lead on,
Said Scrooge,
Lead on.
The night is waning fast,
And it is precious time to me,
I know.
Lead on,
Spirit.
