Day 12: The Story Behind "A Christmas Carol"

Through the storm of tribu­la­tion, Charles Dick­ens did his best work, and dis­cov­ered the joy of the Christ­mas sea­son, and new-found faith in himself.


I love this story, writ­ten by Thomas J. Burns, behind the writ­ing of “A Christ­mas Carol,” which makes the time­less story even more meaningful:

From its first pub­li­ca­tion, “A Christ­mas Carol” has charmed and inspired mil­lions. There have been scores of edi­tions and trans­la­tions, and many stage, TV and film adap­ta­tions, mak­ing it one of the best-loved sto­ries of all time. Less well known is the fact that this lit­tle book of cel­e­bra­tion grew out of a dark period in the author’s career — and, in some ways, changed the course of his life forever.
On an early Octo­ber evening in 1843, Charles Dick­ens stepped from the brick-and-stone por­tico of his home near Regent’s Park in Lon­don. The cool air of dusk was a relief from the day’s unsea­sonal humid­ity, as the author began his nightly walk through what he called “the black streets” of the city.
A hand­some man with flow­ing brown hair and nor­mally sparkling eyes, Dick­ens was deeply trou­bled. The 31-year-old father of four had thought he was at the peak of his career. The Pick­wick Papers, Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nick­leby had all been pop­u­lar; and Mar­tin Chuz­zle­wit, which he con­sid­ered his finest novel yet, was being pub­lished in monthly install­ments. But now, the cel­e­brated writer was fac­ing seri­ous finan­cial problems.


Some months ear­lier, his pub­lisher had revealed that sales of the new novel were not what had been expected, and it might be nec­es­sary to sharply reduce Dickens’s monthly advances against future sales.
The news had stunned the author. It seemed his tal­ent was being ques­tioned. Mem­o­ries of his child­hood poverty resur­faced. Dick­ens was sup­port­ing a large, extended fam­ily, and his expenses were already nearly more than he could han­dle. His father and broth­ers were plead­ing for loans. His wife, Kate, was expect­ing their fifth child.

All sum­mer long, Dick­ens wor­ried about his mount­ing bills, espe­cially the large mort­gage that he owed on his house. He spent time at a sea­side resort, where he had trou­ble sleep­ing and walked the cliffs for hours. He knew that he needed an idea that would earn him a large sum of money, and he needed the idea quickly. But in his depres­sion, Dick­ens was find­ing it dif­fi­cult to write. After return­ing to Lon­don, he hoped that resum­ing his nightly walks would help spark his imagination.

The yel­low glow from the flick­er­ing gas lamps lit his way through London’s bet­ter neigh­bor­hoods. Then grad­u­ally, as he neared the Thames River, only the dull light from ten­e­ment win­dows illu­mi­nated the streets, now litter-strewn and lined with open sew­ers. The ele­gant ladies and well-dressed gen­tle­men of Dickens’s neigh­bor­hood were replaced by bawdy street­walk­ers, pick­pock­ets, foot­pads and beggars.

The dis­mal scene reminded him of the night­mare that often trou­bled his sleep: A 12-year-old boy sits at a work­table piled high with pots of black boot paste. For 12 hours a day, six days a week, he attaches labels on the end­less stream of pots to earn the six shillings that will keep him alive.
The boy in the dream looks through the rot­ting ware­house floor into the cel­lar, where swarms of rats scurry about. Then he raises his eyes to the dirt-streaked win­dow, drip­ping with con­den­sa­tion from London’s win­try weather. The light is fad­ing now, along with the boy’s young hopes. His father is in debtors’ prison, and the young­ster is receiv­ing only an hour of school lessons dur­ing his din­ner break at the ware­house. He feels help­less, aban­doned. There may never be cel­e­bra­tion, joy or hope again…
This was no scene from the author’s imag­i­na­tion. It was a period from his early life. For­tu­nately, Dicken’s father had inher­ited some money, enabling him to pay off his debts and get out of prison — and his young son escaped a dreary fate.

Now the fear of being unable to pay his own debts haunted Dick­ens. Wearily, he started home from his long walk, no closer to an idea for the “cheer­ful, glow­ing” tale he wanted to tell than he’d been when he started out.

How­ever, as he neared home, he felt the sud­den flash of inspi­ra­tion. What about a Christ­mas story! He would write one for the very peo­ple he passed on the black streets of Lon­don. Peo­ple who lived and strug­gled with the same fears and long­ings he had known, peo­ple who hun­gered for a bit of cheer and hope.

But Christ­mas was less than three months away! How could he man­age so great a task in so brief a time? The book would have to be short, cer­tainly not a full novel. It would have to be fin­ished by the end of Novem­ber to be printed and dis­trib­uted in time for Christ­mas sales. For speed, he struck on the idea of adapt­ing a Christmas-goblin story from a chap­ter in The Pick­wick Papers.

He would fill the story with the scenes and char­ac­ters his read­ers loved. There would be a small, sickly child; his hon­est but inef­fec­tual father; and, at the cen­ter of the piece, a self­ish vil­lain, an old man with a pointed nose and shriv­eled cheeks.

As the mild days of Octo­ber gave way to a cool Novem­ber, the man­u­script grew, page by page, and the story took life. The basic plot was sim­ple enough for chil­dren to under­stand, but evoked themes that would con­jure up warm mem­o­ries and emo­tions in an adult’s heart: After retir­ing alone to his cold, bar­ren apart­ment on Christ­mas Eve, Ebenezer Scrooge, a miserly Lon­don busi­ness­man, is vis­ited by the spirit of his dead part­ner, Jacob Mar­ley. Doomed by his greed and insen­si­tiv­ity to his fel­low man when alive, Marley’s ghost wan­ders the world in chains forged of his own indif­fer­ence. He warns Scrooge that he must change, or suf­fer the same fate. The ghosts of Christ­mas Past, Christ­mas Present and Christ­mas Yet to Come appear and show Scrooge poignant scenes from his life and what will occur if he doesn’t mend his ways. Filled with remorse, Scrooge renounces his for­mer self­ish­ness and becomes a kind, gen­er­ous, lov­ing per­son who has learned the true spirit of Christmas.
 
Grad­u­ally, in the course of his writ­ing, some­thing sur­pris­ing hap­pened to Dick­ens. What had begun as a des­per­ate, cal­cu­lated plan to res­cue him­self from debt — “a lit­tle scheme,” as he described it — soon began to work a change in the author. As he wrote about the kind of Christ­mas he loved — joy­ous fam­ily par­ties with clus­ters of mistle­toe hang­ing from the ceil­ing; cheer­ful car­ols, games, dances and gifts; deli­cious feasts of roast goose, plum pud­ding, fresh breads, all enjoyed in front of a blaz­ing Yule log — the joy of the sea­son he cher­ished began to alle­vi­ate his depression.

A Christ­mas Carol cap­tured his heart and soul. It became a labor of love. Every time he dipped his quill pen into his ink, the char­ac­ters seemed mag­i­cally to take life: Tiny Tim with his crutches, Scrooge cow­er­ing in fear before the ghosts, Bob Cratchit drink­ing Christ­mas cheer in the face of poverty.

Each morn­ing, Dick­ens grew excited and impa­tient to begin the day’s work. “I was very much affected by the lit­tle book,” he later wrote a news­pa­per­man, and was “reluc­tant to lay it aside for a moment.” A friend and Dickens’s future biog­ra­pher, John Forster, took note of the “strange mas­tery” the story held over the author. Dick­ens told a pro­fes­sor in Amer­ica how, when writ­ing, he “wept, and laughed, and wept again.” Dick­ens even took charge of the design of the book, decid­ing on a gold-stamped cover, a red-and-green title page with col­ored end­pa­pers, and four hand-colored etch­ings and four engraved wood­cuts. To make the book afford­able to the widest audi­ence pos­si­ble, he priced it at only five shillings.

At last, on Decem­ber 2, he was fin­ished, and the man­u­script went to the print­ers. On Decem­ber 17, the author’s copies were deliv­ered, and Dick­ens was delighted. He had never doubted that A Christ­mas Carol would be pop­u­lar. But nei­ther he nor his pub­lisher was ready for the over­whelm­ing response that came. The first edi­tion of 6000 copies sold out by Christ­mas Eve, and as the lit­tle book’s heart­warm­ing mes­sage spread, Dick­ens later recalled, he received “by every post, all man­ner of strangers writ­ing all man­ner of let­ters about their homes and hearths, and how the Carol is read aloud there, and kept on a very lit­tle shelf by itself.” Nov­el­ist William Make­peace Thack­eray said of the Carol: “It seems to me a national ben­e­fit, and to every man or woman who reads it a per­sonal kindness.”
Despite the book’s pub­lic acclaim, it did not turn into the imme­di­ate finan­cial suc­cess that Dick­ens had hoped for, because of the qual­ity pro­duc­tion he demanded and the low price he placed on the book. Nev­er­the­less, he made enough money from it to scrape by, and A Christ­mas Carol’s enor­mous pop­u­lar­ity revived his audi­ence for sub­se­quent nov­els, while giv­ing a fresh, new direc­tion to his life and career.

Although Dick­ens would write many other well-received and finan­cially prof­itable books — David Cop­per­field, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expec­ta­tions — noth­ing would ever quite equal the soul-satisfying joy he derived from his uni­ver­sally loved lit­tle novel. In time, some would call him the Apos­tle of Christ­mas. And, at his death in 1870, a poor child in Lon­don was heard to ask: “Dick­ens dead? Then will Father Christ­mas die too?”

In a very real sense, Dick­ens pop­u­lar­ized many aspects of the Christ­mas we cel­e­brate today, includ­ing great fam­ily gath­er­ings, sea­sonal drinks and dishes and gift giv­ing. Even our lan­guage has been enriched by the tale. Who has not known a “Scrooge,” or uttered “Bah! Hum­bug!” when feel­ing irri­tated or dis­be­liev­ing. And the phrase “Merry Christ­mas!” gained wider usage after the story appeared.