Christmas With Dickens - A Christmas Carol 1

This is a collection of extracts from A Christmas Carol read by English Author Stephanie Hudson. In this, the first in the series, we meet Scrooge and come to understand how miserly he is when dealing with his employee, Bob Cratchit, his nephew, and those seeking donations for a worthy charity.

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 One Scrooge's introduction 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 ever 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,

Shriveled his cheek,

Stiffened his gait Made his eyes red,

His thin lips blue,

And spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice A frosty rhyme 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,

No wintry weather chilled 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 glance and 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 tuck 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 is what the knowing ones called 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 with all 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 warn 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 neighbouring 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 at 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 Bob Cratchit and Friend 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 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 a 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 Humbug,

Uncle!

Said Scrooge's nephew.

You don't mean that,

I'm 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 them around a dozen of 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 in his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart 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,

But of which I have not profited,

I dare say,

Returned the nephew Christmas among the rest,

But I'm sure I have always thought of Christmas time,

When it's come around,

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 were really 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 it has done me good and will do me good and I say,

God bless it The charity gentleman,

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's 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,

Demanded Scrooge,

Are they still in operation?

They are still,

Returned the gentleman,

I wish I could say they were not The treadmill and the poor law are in full vigour then,

Said Scrooge Both are very busy,

Sir Oh,

I was afraid from what you said at first,

Something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,

Said Scrooge I am very glad to hear it Under the impression they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,

Returned the gentleman A few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the poor some meat and milk 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 want Gentlemen,

That is my answer I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I can't afford to make idle people merry either 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 Marley's Face Scrooge took his melancholy dinner at 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 forgotten the way out 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 famed 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 knock on the door except that it was very large It is also a fact that Scrooge has 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 Alderman 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 locker,

Without its undergoing any intermediate process of change not a locker,

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 of 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 at first,

As if he were half expected to be terrified with the sight of Marley's pigtails 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,

Poof,

Poof,

And closed it with a bang