Review: A Christmas Carol and Other Holiday Treasures, by Charles Dickens

Review: A Christmas Carol and Other Holiday Treasures, by Charles Dickens

by Rich Horton

Charles Dickens wrote five novellas, of almost equal length (about 30,000 words) in the 1840s. The most famous of these by far is of course A Christmas Carol (1843). It was followed, one a year except 1847, by The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life, and The Haunted Man. Each novella was published as a slim illustrated book, the first two by Chapman and Hall, the latter three by Bradbury and Evans. The illustrators were a varied lot, often several to a given volume. (The most famous of them might be John Tenniel and Edwin Landseer.) 

I read A Christmas Carol first in my teens, and have reread it since plus seen many film and TV adaptations. (My personal favorite is The Muppet Christmas Carol, with Michael Caine as Scrooge, though many of the others are very good too, perhaps especially the Alastair Sim movie from 1951.) I had never read any of the other novellas, however, and so I went looking for them. But I found that most of the collections I saw were confusingly assembled. Some included on a couple of the novellas besides A Christmas Carol; others included some of Dickens' other Christmas writings, such as extracts from The Pickwick Papers, or other shorter stories Dickens wrote about the season -- "The Holly-Tree" and "A Christmas Tree" seem the most famous of those. I was feeling stubborn: I felt like there ought to be a collection of the main five holiday novellas! (Though, mind you, I do plan eventually to read some of these other stories!) So I gave up for a while and then by happenstance ran across a book called A Christmas Carol and Other Holiday Treasures, in a Half-Price Books. It was very reasonably priced, and attractive enough, so I bought it.

This book is published by Canterbury Classics, located in San Diego, though the book itself was
produced in China. It is part of a series of reprints called "Word Cloud Classics". As I said above, it's not bad looking -- bound in green faux leather, with the title embossed in red on the cover, and a number of quotes in smaller print (presumably the "Word Cloud"). It is barely edited at all -- there are a number of minor typographical errors throughout, and the introduction consists of a single page very briefly recounting the publishing history of these stories. But it does reproduce exactly the five "holiday" novellas I was looking for, in the order they were first published.

I read the book on purpose just as Christmas was approaching. It turns out, however, that the only story truly "about" Christmas is A Christmas Carol. The Chimes is about the New Year, quite explicitly. The Cricket on the Hearth is not really a holiday story at all, and neither is The Battle of Life, though one scene is set at Christmas. And The Haunted Man is indeed set at Christmas, but the story doesn't really concern that holiday, except that the winter setting and the proximity of the new year are important.

Thomas Parker told me that the Christmas novellas, while all worth reading, are each worse than their predecessor, and I'd agree that that's roughly true, though I think I'd rank The Cricket on the Hearth ahead of The Chimes, and The Haunted Man ahead of The Battle of Life. One thing the stories do have in common, save The Battle of Life, is the central importance of ghosts, fairies, or goblins to the plot, and a theme of regret for mistakes made in one's past, tied to a deep concern for the plight of poor people.

I'll very briefly discuss each story. I don't actually think I need say much about A Christmas Carol. It is subtitled "In Prose, being a Ghost Story of Christmas". It obviously deserves its enduring popularity. I won't bother to summarize the plot -- everyone knows it, I trust -- I'll only say that it's written with Dickens' customary exuberance, and his customary (but generally earned) sentimentality. It's a delight to read, its message is powerful, and its effects are affecting. It survives very well its adaptations, even those that make twists on the story, such as the Bill Murray vehicle Scrooged! I'd recommend anyone who hasn't read the original story to be sure to do so -- but don't be ashamed to have enjoyed the films!

The Chimes, subtitled "A Goblin Story of Some Bells that Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year In", centers on a very poor man name "Trotty" Veck, who works near an old church with great chimes that ring out periodically. Trotty's daughter Meg is ready to marry her similarly poor fiancé Richard. Trotty meets Will Fern, a man from the country charged with vagrancy, even as he cares for his young niece.. And despite his sympathy for his daughter's poverty, and for Will Fern's even more desperate straits (and political fervor), he begins to be affected by the lectures he gets from the sanctimonious Alderman Cute, who is certain that poor people are responsible for their misfortunes, and the hypocritical MP Joseph Bowley, who eagerly dispenses charity, but with conditions. Trotty climbs into the belltower and falls, and as the chimes ring out, he is transported to the future, and as a ghost sees the fate of Meg, convinced by arguments that she should not marry Richard because they are poor, and the fates of Will and his niece. The resolution -- as the New Year arrives heralded by the chimes -- is hopeful, much as with A Christmas Carol, as Trotty's vision of the future allows him to help.

A Cricket on the Hearth seems to be the best-known of these novellas besides A Christmas Carol. It is subtitled "A Fairytale of Home". (Vladimir Lenin reportedly hated it, which I'll take as a recommendation.) The title comes from John Milton's poem "Il Penseroso", and reflects a legend that to a cricket chirping on your hearth was good luck. (It is somewhat annoying to try to search for the source of Dickens' title and have AI and such confidently tell you it's from a Charles Dickens novella!)

The story is about John Peerybingle, a steady and hardworking carrier, but not learned, who has a very pretty but much younger wife, Dot. They have a child, and employ a rather silly nurse, Tilly. They are poor but not desperately so, and seem quite happy. One of their friends is Caleb Plummer, a talented but very poor toymaker, whose daughter Bertha is blind. Caleb's son Edward had been going to marry Dot's school friend May, but Edmund had gone to South America and not return, presumed dead. The miserly owner of the toy company where Caleb works now wishes to marry May, and her mother insists she do so. Meanwhile a strange elderly man comes and asks to stay with the Peerybingles. Dot eagerly allows him to stay, somewhat to John's surprise, and later distress, when he notices a young man (the elderly man out of his diguise) spending time with Dot. John gets very angry, but, influenced by the cricket on their hearth, refrains from violence and vows to set Dot free to be with a younger man if she so wishes. There is a secret here, of course, and one soon resolved to most everyone's satisfaction. It's a fine story, enlivened by the comic antics of the Peerybingle's nurse, and the moving care Caleb Plummer gives to his Bertha, including describing their poor dwelling as a place of luxury.

The Battle of Life is simply subtitled "A Love Story". It's set in a small village built up on the site of a centuries past battle -- a ground once thought haunted, though now that old battle has passed out of memory. Grace and Marion are the daughters of Doctor Jeddler, who thinks the whole of life a joke. The older sister, Grace, is very solicitous of her pretty younger sister, regarding her as almost a daughter (their mother is dead.) And Grace believes that Marion loves a young man named Alfred, and she has determined that they will marry. But the reader perceives immediately that Marion is not so enthusiastic. Alfred does feel for Marion, but first he will spend a couple of years studying in France, hoping to marry her upon his return. But when he does return, Marion suddenly vanishes, at the same time as Michael Warden, a dissolute young man who has run through his inheritance and must flee England. The mystery of Marion's actions is explained several years later, when Michael Warden returns, his debts have been worked off, but without Marion. I'll leave the revelation for the reader to find, but I will say that I found the conclusion, though the general outline of it was easy to see in advance, a bit disappointingly handled in detail.

The best parts of The Battle of Life involve a few secondary characters: Doctor Jeddler's servants Mr. Britain and Clemency Newcome; and the local lawyers, Snitchey and Craggs, along with their wives. All are generally good people, and very amusingly depicted, in the best Dickensian fashion. Unfortunately the plot of the story is a bit too routinely worked out.

The Haunted Man's full title is The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain. (Some sources give "A Fancy for Christmas-Time" as the subtitle, and that does appear to have been the case in the 1849 Harper Brothers edition. It's not clear to me that that subtitle was included in the English first edition.) The title character is Mr. Redlaw, a highly-respected Chemist and a sort of professor of his science. But he's an old and rather bitter man, due to having lost the woman he loved to a fellow student back in their college days. A ghost shows up -- apparently a spirit formed somehow from the Chemist's bitterness -- and offers him a bargain -- he can have the memory of all the ills done him removed, which should make him less bitter. But if he does so, anyone he touches will also have those memories removed. The Chemist accepts, and begins wandering the town, soon accompanied by an almost savage young child. He encounters his servant William Swidger, Mr. Swidger's father Philip, and his wife Millie, plus William's brother George, who is about to die after a life of ruin. One of Mr. Redwall's students, Mr. Denham, has abandoned his studies, and has taken ill. He's staying at the house of Mr. Tetterby, a not very successful newspaper seller who has several children. Millie Swidger is nursing Mr. Denham. But on each of these people (except Millie) meeting Mr. Redwall, they lose their memory of past troubles -- and somehow this makes their present situation seem worse, and they treat their fellows harshly. Mr. Redwall realizes what a plague he has become, and begs for a cure ... The moral is simple -- that our memory of ills as well as joys is important to deal with. As with so much Dickens, including other stories in this collection, the plight of the poorest people, especially children, is also highlighted.

I'm glad to have read this collection -- it's Dickens, so it can hardly be a waste of time. As noted, none of this stories besides A Christmas Carol is truly Dickens at his best, but all have their good points.