Clark Memorandum

ASong o by richard g. wilkins Reemtion

charles dickens’short novella, A Christmas Carol, is a masterpiece of English literature revered by many for its central role in reviving (and reinventing) English (and American) Christmas traditions. Unknown to many, however, is that Dickens’ “little ‘Carol’” was conceived as “A Plea To The People Of England On Behalf Of The Poor Man’s Child.” Underlying the fable of Ebenezer Scrooge and Tiny Tim is a biting critique of a society that dismissed humanity in the quest for economic effi- ciency. But Dickens’ solution for this still ongoing tragedy was not the creation of judi- cially enforceable individual rights for Tim. Rather, the answer was a more intimate (and perhaps more necessary) focus on the communal responsibilities of Ebenezer.

O December 17, 1843, a slim Christmas traditions, it is fascinating that red volume with gilt edges and when he took pen in hand, Dickens did not hand-colored lithographs first appeared in have the restoration of “those golden days of 7 Lonndon bookstalls. The little volume was yore, when Christ’s Mass was a high day,” Charles Dickens’ masterpiece A Christmas as his primary goal. Rather, he wrote the Carol. The world—and Christmas—have book to strike a blow against child labor never been the same. and a suffocating lack of education among Few readers 160 years later realize that the poor. Indeed, some months prior to this short book is perhaps responsible for the publication of the Carol, Dickens had saving the Christmas holidays from extinc- promised to write a pamphlet entitled “A tion. Following the English Civil War in Plea To The People Of England On Behalf 1 8 1642, the Puritans abolished the holiday. Of The Poor Man’s Child.” The Carol Although the English monarchy was later became his plea. restored, Christmas—with its carols, feast- The plea was sorely needed in 1843. ing, and warm good-heartedness—was not The conditions of the poor—particularly similarly refurbished and went into further the children of the poor—were intolerable. decline with the coming of the Industrial Dickens was incensed by reported descrip- 2 Revolution. Indeed, G. K. Chesterton, in tions of parish orphans and other children his introduction to the 1924 edition of A of the destitute, employed generally at Christmas Carol, observed, “If a little more seven years, some as young as three, who success had crowned the Puritan movement were brutalized, ill-fed, and ill-clothed of the seventeenth century, or the Utilitarian during their 15- to 18-hour workdays. movement of the nineteenth century,” the Equally appalling was the uniform lack of old holiday traditions would “have become educational opportunities afforded the merely details of the neglected past, a part poor. In early 1843, Dickens assisted a of history or even archaeology. . . . Perhaps wealthy friend and philanthropist in dis- the very word carol would sound like the tributing funds to the Ragged Schools 3 4 9 word villanelle” (italics added). , of Field Lane, Holborn. These schools But English Christmas traditions sur- existed to provide some meager training, vive—and have been transplanted to but even this endeavor seemed nearly America—because of what Dickens fondly futile. As Dickens wrote: called his “little ‘Carol.’” Michael Hearn, notes that Dickens must be “credited with To gain [the students’] attention in any way . . . almost single-handedly reviving the holiday is a difficulty, quite gigantic. To impress them, 5 customs.” Hearn, in fact, relates that by the even with the idea of a God, when their own time of his death, “Dickens had already condition is so desolate, becomes a monstrous secured so sure a place in the mythology of task. To find anything within them . . . to which the holiday that a story circulated about a lit- it is possible to appeal, is at first, like a search for tle costermonger’s girl in Drury Lane who, the philosopher’s stone. . . . My heart so sinks on hearing of his funeral, asked, ‘Dickens within me when I go into these scenes, that I 6 dead? Then will Father Christmas die too?’” almost lose the hope of ever seeing them changed. Considering the book’s historical set- Whether this effort will succeed, it is quite 10 ting and its effect on English and American impossible to say.

4 clark memorandum On October 5, 1843, as Dickens was for- mulating his social tract attacking child labor and ignorance, he was invited to give an oration at a fund-raising soirée for the Manchester Athenaeum, a charitable insti- tution for the working class. Dickens began his oration by congratulating the people of Manchester for creating the Athenaeum, a place where “the immortal mechanism of God’s own hand, the mind, [would not be] forgotten in the din and uproar [created by] 11 the whirl and rattle of machinery.” The high purpose of the Athenaeum, Dickens stated, was to provide “a little learning” and, therefore, “self respect.”

[T]his I know, that the first unpurchaseable bless- ing earned by every man who makes an effort to improve himself in such a place as the Athenaeum is self-respect—an inward dignity of character which once acquired and righteously maintained, nothing, no, not the hardest drudgery, nor the direst poverty, can vanquish. Though [a man] should find it hard for a season even to keep the wolf of hunger from his door, let him but once have chased the dragon of ignorance from his hearth, 12 and self-respect and hope are left him. Dickens, in short, argued that society pacing his room, and upon returning to would improve and mankind would flourish, London he “wept and laughed and wept Thus, according to Dickens, once the not when men and women were imbued again, and excited himself in a most extraor- “dragon of ignorance” was “chased . . . from with sufficient rights to facilitate full auton- dinary manner in the composition, and think- [the] hearth,” even the cold, hard specter of omy, but rather when educated members of ing whereof he walked about the black streets want would recede and be replaced by “self- the polity recognized the reciprocal benefits of London, fifteen and twenty miles many a 16 respect and hope.” But how was such an end flowing from mutual obligations. night, when all sober folks had gone to bed.” to be achieved? By educating each individual Newspaper accounts report that the The rudimentary plot came from 17 that he or she is part of an interdependent speech was greeted with shouts and a thun- Dickens’ earlier writings. The prototype 14 community. The more a man learns: the bet- derous ovation. That night as Dickens left was his short story “The Goblins Who Stole ter, gentler, kinder man he must become. . . . the Trade Hall, his “mind still burning with A Sexton,” in which goblins reveal scenes of Understanding that the relations between thoughts of Ignorance and Want and the Christmas cheer to an “ill-tempered grave 18 [men] involve a mutual duty and responsibil- necessity of throwing himself ‘upon the truth- digger named Gabriel Grubb.” However, 15 ity, he will discharge his part of the implied ful feelings of the people,’” he determined the unlike the goblin story, A Christmas Carol contract cheerfully, faithfully, and honourably; form in which he would deliver his “Plea To is infused with the communitarian message for the history of every useful life warns him The People Of England.” He would write the and hope in mankind so forcefully delivered 13 to shape his course in that direction. Carol. Dickens spent the night in Manchester at the Athenaeum. Although Scrooge and

clark memorandum 5

Scrooecret towars it, tremin as e wen; an oowin e finger, rea uon e stone of the

ebenezer scrooge ne ec e grave is own name, .

Tiny Tim dominate the tale, they are but “Christmas a humbug, uncle!” said Scrooge’s say . . . Christmas among the rest. But I am sure lenses through which Dickens focuses his nephew. “You don’t mean that, I am sure.” I have always thought of Christmas time, when it plea to the people of England. “I do,” said Scrooge. “Merry Christmas! what has come round . . . as a good time: a kind, forgiv- Scrooge is initially presented in broad, right have you to be merry? what reason have you ing, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know melodramatic strokes: to be merry? You’re poor enough.” of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and “Come, then,” returned the nephew gaily. women seem by one consent to open their shut-up Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind- “What right have you to be dismal? what reason hearts freely. . . . And therefore, uncle, though it has stone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, have you to be morose? You’re rich enough.” never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and Scrooge having no better answer ready on I believe that it has done me good, and will do 22 sharp as flint, . . . and solitary as an oyster. The the spur of the moment, said, “Bah!” again; and me good; and I say, God bless it! cold within him froze his old features, nipped his followed it up with “Humbug.” pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; “Don’t be cross, uncle,” said the nephew. Scrooge, of course, will have none of it, 19 made his eyes red, his thin lips blue. “What else can I be . . . when I live in such a and after taking his “melancholy dinner in world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon his usual melancholy tavern; and having But Scrooge is more than a cardboard cutout. merry Christmas! What’s Christmas time to you read all the newspapers, and beguiled the For all his hard-heartedness, he was not but a time for paying bills without money; a time rest of the evening with his banker’s-book, 23 an unfair man or employer. Contrary to for finding yourself a year older, and not an hour went home to bed.” There, stripped of his many contemporary retellings, Scrooge is richer; a time for balancing your books and having accounts, pens, rulers, and other outward never portrayed as taking an undue advan- every item in ’em through a round dozen of months symbols of economic success—clothed only tage. He paid Bob Cratchit 15 shillings a presented dead against you? If I could work my in his dressing gown, slippers, and a night- week—the common and customary wage will . . . every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry cap—he confronts the end result of an inde- for clerks at the time. Moreover, Scrooge’s Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his pendent, profitable, but isolated life: the grumbles regarding Bob’s request for own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly ghost of his former partner, Jacob Marley. 21 Christmas day off were hardly extraordi- through his heart. He should.” Scrooge, the utilitarian, first asserts that nary: in 1843 most workers were denied the Marley is nothing more than indigestion or 24 day off. Thus, once past the disagreeable Because his only goal is finding himself a bit of swallowed toothpick. But after a adjectives, Scrooge is presented as no more several “hours richer” at the end of Christmas fearful wail from the ghost, Scrooge drops (but no less) than the ultimate rational eco- day, Scrooge disregards any broader commu- to his knees for a learning moment. nomic man: the definitive businessman who nal obligations. But mere economic efficiency fixes the value of all human relationships by does not blind his nephew. When challenged “Man of the worldly mind!” [said] the Ghost, a single measure—profit. to explain “what good” Christmas had ever “do you believe in me or not?” As a result, when Scrooge’s nephew hails done him, the nephew replies: “I do,” said Scrooge. “I must. But why do spir- him on Christmas Eve with a hearty, “[M]erry its walk the earth, and why do they come to me?” Christmas, uncle! God save you!,” Scrooge’s There are many things from which I might have “It is required of every man,” the Ghost 20 reply is a muttered, “Bah! Humbug.” derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare returned, “that the spirit within him should walk

clark memorandum 7 familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, 26 in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.

The sequence—and consequence—of the spirits that thereafter visit Scrooge are well known. From the Ghost of Christmas Past, who appears in the ambiguous form of a young boy (or is it an old man?), Scrooge learns, as he watches himself dismiss love as “an unprofitable dream, for which it 27 happened well that [he] awoke,” that com- mitment may be more important than self-regard. From the Ghost of Christmas Present, garbed in green and resplendent in holly, Scrooge discovers that family (and community) are more sustaining than a bankbook: Bob Cratchit, despite poverty, toasts his hearth and hold with a hearty “Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God 28 bless us!” Tiny Tim, in his famous echo of that toast, reinforces the essential interde- pendence of all humanity: “God bless us, 29 every one!” Here, at the midpoint of the tale, and following Tiny Tim’s simple but eloquent toast, Dickens delivers the same message he presented at the Manchester Athenaeum. As the Ghost of Christmas Present departs, he brings forth the twin demons of Want 30 and Ignorance. Scrooge, faced with the wan specters of the Girl Want and the Boy Ignorance is warned, “Beware them both, abroad among his fellow-men and travel far and all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but and all of their degree, but most of all wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my beware this boy, for on his brow I see that condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to business! . . . Why did I walk through crowds of fel- written which is Doom, unless the writing 31 wander through the world . . . and witness what it low-beings with my eyes turned down, and never be erased.” cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise The import of this pivotal warning turned to happiness.” Men to a poor abode? Were there no poor homes to is brought forcibly to Scrooge’s—and to 25 “You are fettered,” said Scrooge, trembling. which its light would have conducted me!” our—attention by the last Spirit, the “Tell me why?” Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come. That “I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the At the conclusion of this interview, the specter, draped in black, forces all of us to Ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard. . . . departing Marley presents Scrooge with a confront the consequences of a solitary, Is its pattern strange to you? . . . Or would you vision of the opportunities lost by a self-cen- independent life: Scrooge’s corpse is plun- know . . . the weight and length of the strong coil you tered focus: dered by thieves who, like himself, pursue bear yourself?” their own utilitarian ends. On the other “But you were always a good man of business, The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hand, Tiny Tim, who was part of the Jacob,” faultered Scrooge . . . hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning unprofitable but intensely interdependent “Business!” cried the Ghost. . . .“Mankind was as they went. Every one of them wore chains like community known as the Cratchit family, my business. The common welfare was my business; Marley’s Ghost. . . . Many had been personally is mourned with a more potent (and last- charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite ing) mixture of sorrow and joy:

8 clark memorandum “And I know,” said Bob, “ I know, my dears, isolated miser, he is the personification of observation that he pays his taxes to support that when we recollect how patient and how mild he the social ills that produced the miser. As the prisons and the poorhouses and that 36 was; although he was a little, little child; we shall Michael Hearn has written: “those who are badly off must go there.” not quarrel easily among ourselves, and forget poor To the simple invocation of human pity that Tiny Tim in doing it.” Scrooge does not merely express the ideas of “[m]any can’t go there; and many would “No, never, father!” they all cried. . . . popular political cant, . . . but also his character is rather die,” Scrooge comes forth with the 34 “I am very happy,” said little Bob, “ I am motivated by its hardhearted facts. classic utilitarian reply: “If they would rather 32 very happy!” die, . . . they had better do it, and decrease 37 Scrooge’s shortcomings, therefore, were the surplus population.” In contrast to the sustaining strength essentially those of English society. By This same answer, now draped in the flowing from Tiny Tim’s passing, all that is showing how Scrooge ultimately overcame all-too-enticing garlands of autonomy and left of Scrooge and his economic success is a those failings, Dickens marked a way out for individual liberty, is given with distressing barren graveyard. Faced with this reality, England as well. Scrooge’s transformation frequency by the modern world. We once Ebenezer Scrooge at last understands that a taught a utilitarian world, obsessed with cherished even the most marginal members meaningful life requires more than untram- the efficient creation and maintenance of of our communities simply because they meled pursuit of individual ends: wealth, how it could once again gain sight were human and alive—and we sanctified of the human soul. The Carol taught that this norm with the force of law. Unborn The Spirit stood among the graves, and pursuit of liberty—without more—makes children, the aged, the elderly, and the pointed down to One. money, but not a decent society. infirm—without exception or legal, med- “Before I draw nearer to that stone to which Some may suppose that this economic ical, economic, or philosophical quarrel— you point,” said Scrooge, “answer me one question. message is all there is to the Carol. There could rely upon the bedrock rule that all Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or is more. The essential flaw in Ebenezer human life is sacred. But no longer. No are they shadows of the things that May be, only?” Scrooge—and in English society—was not more. Modern due process jurisprudence, Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave that he (or it) valued economic liberty. He, cloaked in the rhetoric of rights, all too by which it stood. and that society, simply valued that liberty often gives the same answers as old 38 “Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, too much. Economic liberty is a good thing. Ebenezer : the marginal members of this to which, if persevered in, they must lead.” . . . But it is not the only thing. Scrooge’s focus society had better die, and decrease the 39 “But if the courses be departed from, the ends will on economic liberty as the only legitimate surplus population. Dickens was clearly change. Say it is thus with what you show me!” social value resulted in his bitter isolation incensed by such reasoning. As the Ghost of The Spirit was immovable as ever. rather than Bob Cratchit’s friendly hearth. Christmas Present chides Scrooge: “Oh Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he America in 2002 is replicating an analo- God! To hear the insect on the leaf pro- went; and following the finger, read upon the stone gous evil. We are, I fear, walking the same nouncing on the too much life among his 40 of the neglected grave his own name, ebenezer path as Ebenezer Scrooge. We no longer lay hungry brothers in the dust.” scrooge. our offerings on the altar of economic lib- Thus, while the modern solution for “Am I that man . . .? No, Spirit! Oh, no, no! . . . erty worshipped by old Ebenezer. No, our troubled pregnancies and the difficulties I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must current infatuation with self-centeredness associated with age, illness, and despair is have been. . . . Why show me this if I am past all is more sophisticated: we idolize not eco- dressed in more fashionable garb than hope? . . . Good Spirit, intercede for me! Assure me nomic efficiency but rather autonomy and Scrooge’s harsh rhetoric, the message is that I may yet change these shadows you have shown individual “rights.” This modern focus on the same. Modern society, when con- me, by an altered life! I will honour Christmas in my isolation and unfettered liberty, however, fronted with social ills closely analogous to heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the does little to distance us from Mr. Scrooge. the sweatshops and ragged schools that Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Old Ebenezer was not only the ultimate prompted Dickens’ “Plea To The People Of Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the economic man;’ he was also the ultimate England,” has tersely responded that such lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge autonomous rights-bearer. Talk about auton- matters are individual problems that must 33 away the writing on this stone!” omy! Talk about rights! He had both—and be resolved by the individual sufferers. Not to spare. According to Dickens, even nature only that, society itself has no business inter- Scrooge, of course, does change. And could not touch him. “External heat and vening to protect and sustain life. How like Tiny Tim does not die. But there is more to cold had little influence on Scrooge. No old Ebenezer. this happy ending. There is a prescription warmth could warm, nor wintry weather Dickens gave an answer for the ills 35 for the evils that besought England in 1843 chill him.” engendered by untrammeled economic lib- and, I suggest, for the similar evils that Scrooge also had the same answers that erty in 19th-century England. The same plague 2002. are given, in only slightly more palatable answer goes a good part of the way toward Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol during form, by modern civil liberty utilitarians. solving the problems of today. As Dickens the heyday of England’s infatuation with When confronted by charitable solicitors informed the Athenaeum and reiterated laissez-faire liberty. Scrooge is not merely an for the poor, Scrooge rebuffs them with the at length in the Carol, “relations between

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