Fireside Reading of A Christmas Carol
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Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens was born in 1812 and grew up in poverty. This experience influenced ‘Oliver Twist’, the second of his fourteen major novels, which first appeared in 1837. When he died in 1870, he was buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey as an indication of his huge popularity as a novelist, which endures to this day.
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Fireside Reading of A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
A CHRISTMAS CAROL
In Prose
by
Charles Dickens
BEING A GHOST STORY OF CHRISTMAS
A Fireside Reading Companion
With Introduction by
Gildart Jackson
A whole new way to look at books.
Fireside Reading is an innovative way to enjoy some of the greatest classic novels. This Fireside Reading ebook companion can be used as a read-along guide for the Fireside Reading video starring Gildart Jackson. Follow along with Gildart as he reads the classic ‘A CHRISTMAS CAROL’ to you, in front of the fire. Or enjoy the story at your own pace, chapter by chapter.
This Fireside Reading of A CHRISTMAS CAROL
is available as a videobook, audiobook, and ebook.
INSTALLMENT 1
Gildart's Introduction to Installment 1 of the Fireside Reading videobook:
Welcome to a Fireside Reading of A Christmas Carol
by Charles Dickens.
Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol
in 1843… that's a long time ago. All his books he wrote in Installments. Someone from the family would run down to the newsstand and buy the latest magazine, run home and everyone would sit around the fire and listen as someone read that Installment out loud. That's what we're doing here.
Welcome, to a Fireside Reading of ‘A Christmas Carol
, in prose, by Charles Dickens. Being a Ghost story of Christmas.’
A CHRISTMAS CAROL
In Prose
by
Charles Dickens
BEING A GHOST STORY OF CHRISTMAS
DEDICATION
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.
Their faithful Friend and Servant,
C.D.
December, 1843.
CONTENTS
STAVE ONE: MARLEY’S GHOST
[Includes Installments 1, 2, 3 and 4.]
STAVE TWO: THE FIRST OF THE THREE SPIRITS
[Includes Installments 5, 6 and 7.]
STAVE THREE: THE SECOND OF THE THREE SPIRITS
[Includes Installments 8, 9, 10 and 11.]
STAVE FOUR: THE LAST OF THE SPIRITS
[Includes Installments 12, 13 and 14.]
STAVE FIVE: THE END OF IT
[Includes Installment 15.]
Installment 1 continues:
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 solemnised 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 St. Paul's Church-yard, 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 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, 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, no 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 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 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.
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.
A Merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!
cried a cheerful voice.
What else can I be,
returned the uncle, "when I live in such a