Inventing Scrooge: The Incredible True Story Behind Charles Dickens' Legendary A Christmas Carol

by Carlo DeVito

  But by 1843 something between Dickens and Fred had started to go wrong. His father’s continued irresponsibility and the careers of his brothers worried him greatly. According to Johnson, “Fred, although his Treasury salary had been increased, was falling into his father’s extravagant ways.” A creditor at Gray’s Inn sent Dickens “for the second time a bill which I think is Frederick’s.” Dickens told Mitton (friend to both) that Fred seemed to resent the way that Dickens had resolved the matter. Fred responded by staying away from Devonshire Terrace, now the abode of the large Dickens family.

  Devonshire Terrace was a large home fit for a London gentleman. In it Dickens had installed “mahogany doors, bookshelves, mantelpieces, great mirrors on the walls, thick carpets, white print roller-blinds at every window, and the best available bathroom fittings. A dining room table with five additional leaves was especially made for the columned dining room, and twelve leather chairs. The library became his study, its French windows opening on to a flight of steps down into the garden. There were nurseries in the attics, kitchens in the basement, cellars, a butler’s pantry and a coach house. . . .” wrote biographer Claire Tomalin.

  “Your absence from here,” Dickens wrote to Fred, “had been your own act always. I shall be perfectly glad to see you; and should have been, at any time.”

  And it is at this stage in the relationship with Charles and Fred, that Scrooge meets his nephew Fred. In this scene, Charles plays out his anger with his brother for his spendthrift ways, as he veers ever closer to their father’s extravagance:

  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 ’em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you?

  One cannot help but hear the brother chastise the brother and father in this condemnation from Charles. Given Fred and Charles’ childhood, this fear of indebtedness, prison, poverty, and the inability to manage one’s business affairs was like a mark on the family that Charles was so sad to see in his brother’s personality.

  To be sure, Dickens’ condemnation was severe. Charles himself had faced debt and borrowed money to get out of it all his life. But to see his brother fall victim to this particular demon was a difficult pill for Charles to swallow.

  More bitter still was Fred’s sudden absence. Fred was as big a personality as Charles in their home. He was well loved by the family. The laughter he caused through his jokes and general buffoonery had left the house quieter in his absence than it had been. Dickens and Kate missed that.

  For his part, Dickens put his most heartfelt feelings in Fred’s mouth, when in the story Fred says to Scrooge:

  “There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,” returned the nephew. “Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round—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 really were 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 that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”

  The enmity between them vexed Dickens as he walked the streets. There is no question that there is a part of Charles in Scrooge, angry at his brother. But there is also a part of Charles that missed his well-natured brother:

  “I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be friends?”

  “Good afternoon,” said Scrooge.

  “I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. We have never had any quarrel, to which I have been a party. But I have made the trial in homage to Christmas, and I’ll keep my Christmas humor to the last. So a Merry Christmas, uncle!”

  It was yet another worry that kept Dickens up at night, and a difficult and painful relationship to sift through as he walked the streets of London.

  * * *

  The Solicitors

  “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.”

  If John Elwes was a well-remembered but odd character, Robert Malthus provided the venom that Dickens put in Scrooge’s mouth.

  The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus was born on February 13, 1766 and died on December 23, 1834. Malthus was an English cleric and influential scholar in the fields of political economy and demography. And there is no question that Dickens used the fact of Malthus’ death date, the day before Christmas Eve, as one similar in bearing to Marley.

  “Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years,” Scrooge replied. “He died seven years ago, this very night.”

  Malthus became widely known for his theories about change in population. His An Essay on the Principle of Population observed that sooner or later population will be checked by famine and disease, leading to what is known as a Malthusian Catastrophe. He wrote in opposition to the popular view in eighteenth-century Europe that saw society as improving and in principle as perfectible. He wrote of how the dangers of population growth precluded progress toward a utopian society:

  “The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man. . . . That the increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence, That population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase, and, That the superior power of population is repressed, and the actual population kept equal to the means of subsistence, by misery and vice.”

  Malthus placed the long-term stability of the economy above short-term expediency. He criticized the Poor Laws (which were set up to help the poor) and, alone among important contemporary economists, he supported the Corn Laws (which introduced a system of taxes on British imports of wheat to benefit wealthy landowners and artificially drive up the price of bread for all, making it all but unaffordable for the poor and working class).

  “The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation,” Malthus wrote in his 1789 book An Essay on the Principle of Population. “They are the precursors in the great army of destruction, and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and tens of thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world.”

  Malthus’ disciples perceived the ideas of charity toward the poor, typified by Tory paternalism, were futile, as these would only result in increased numbers of the poor. These ideas found vice in Whig economic ideas best exemplified by the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. The Act was described by opponents as “a Malthusian bill designed to force the poor to emigrate, to work for lower wages, to live on a coarser sort of food,” and it initiated the construction of workhouses despite riots and arson.

  Dickens was diametrically opposed, writing to his friend Forster years later, “I don’t believe now they ever would have carried the repeal of the corn law, if they could,” referring to Whigs and Tories alike. According to Forster, “he ascribed it to a secret belief ‘in the gentle politico-economical principle that a surplus population must and ought to starve.’ ”

&nb
sp; “The great Malthusian dread was that ‘indiscriminate charity’ would lead to exponential growth in the population in poverty, increased charges to the public purse to support this growing army of the dependent, and, eventually, the catastrophe of national bankruptcy,” wrote Dr. Dan Ritschel, at the University of Maryland. “Though Malthusianism has since come to be identified with the issue of general over-population, the original Malthusian concern was more specifically with the fear of over-population by the dependent poor!”

  It was clear at the time that the Industrial Revolution was taking hold in England. As it began to rise, some of the negative effects became obvious—growing urbanization begat rising unemployment and with that poverty increased; “Poor Laws” (first established in 1601) were an attempt to provide a safety net for those at the bottom of the economy.

  But the laws were unpopular with many. The English propertied class denied responsibility for poverty and actively opposed what they viewed as income redistribution. In 1832 a Royal Commission published its findings, which had probably been predetermined, stating that the old system was badly and expensively run. In 1834 the Poor Law Amendment Act (PLAA) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed by the Whig government of Earl Grey that reformed the country’s poverty-relief system. The PLAA curbed the cost of poor relief, which had been spiraling throughout the nineteenth century, and led to the creation of workhouses. Many who wrote and passed the laws were acolytes of Malthus.

  “I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge. “Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. 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.”

  In England and Wales a workhouse, colloquially known as a “spike,” was a place where those unable to support themselves were offered accommodation and employment. The earliest known use of the term dates from 1631. Life in a workhouse was intended to be harsh, to deter the able-bodied poor, and to ensure that only the truly destitute would apply. But in areas such as the provision of free medical care and education for children, neither of which was available to the poor in England living outside workhouses in Victorian times, workhouse inmates were advantaged over the general population, a dilemma that the Poor Law authorities never managed to reconcile. As the nineteenth century wore on, workhouses increasingly became refuges for the elderly, infirm, and sick rather than the able-bodied poor.

  Victorian Workhouses were dreary places, and many of the blueprints for these “state of the art” buildings of the period were in fact the blueprint for the modern prison today, with giant walls, a central tower, and long three-story shed rows spiking out of the central tower. They were actually referred to as “pauper bastilles.” The work in workhouses was menial at best, and few ever really learned a trade. Many were asked to tend the sick or teach, but many of those chosen did not have the skill set to do either.

  For instance, a breakfast of bread and gruel was followed by a midday dinner that might consist of cooked meats, pickled pork or bacon with vegetables, potatoes, yeast dumplings, soup, suet, and rice pudding. Supper was normally bread, cheese, and broth, and sometimes butter or potatoes. The larger workhouses had separate dining rooms for males and females; workhouses without separate dining rooms would stagger the meal times to avoid any contact between the sexes.

  But it was no coincidence that Malthus had died on December 23, 1834, eight years before A Christmas Carol was written, and only a year before Jacob Marley. There was no doubt in Victorian England whose voice had been imparted to Scrooge and Marley.

  * * *

  Bob Cratchit

  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.

  For inspiration in creating Bob Cratchit, Dickens did not have to walk very far. He strode out of his home at 1 Devonshire near Regent’s Park and walked northward toward the dour neighborhood of Camden Town. It was not more than a three mile or so walk, a short brisk walk for Dickens in 1843. But he would return here now and again. Despite the poverty, crime, and everything else he saw late at night on his walks along various routes, nothing could have been more disturbing than to visit Camden Town.

  It may be supposed that Camden Town, for Dickens, was filled with images of his youth that were still very hard indeed to deal with. It held certain stories in his life he would not offer up to anyone until he neared his death. The area, for Dickens, was charged with emotion. There was no question that Scrooge’s mistreated clerk would live in Camden Town, which Dickens had passed on the train not so long ago on his way to Manchester.

  And there was also no question that Cratchit would be the anvil that Scrooge would hammer down upon. Scrooge would mistreat the poor clerk, blow after unyielding blow, yet Bob Cratchit remained. For all mistreatment at Scrooge’s hands, Cratchit would symbolize the best part of the working class in that day and age.

  Bob Cratchit is surely one of the most sympathetic characters in all of Dickens’ works, and it is surely ironic, then, that Bob Cratchit and the Cratchit family are based on John Dickens and his family through Charles’ experiences as a child.

  John Dickens was the son of William Dickens (1719–1785) and Elizabeth Ball (1745–1824). He was a clerk in the Royal Navy Pay Office at Portsmouth in Hampshire. He married Elizabeth Barrow in June 1803 in London. They had seven children. The Royal Navy moved Dickens around somewhat. He was transferred to London, and then to Chatham, returning to live in Camden Town in London in 1822 to work in Somerset House.

  John Dickens.

  Charles Dickens was the oldest boy born to John and Elizabeth. While they lived in Chatham, Charles enjoyed what he considered an idyllic childhood. He was happy in his schooling, they lived a comfortable life, and Dickens played with Fanny along with a number of their brothers and sisters. And he was quite content. His memories of Chatham were the fondest of his entire childhood.

  Eventually, John Dickens was relocated, once again, back to London. The family moved into a tenement with eight people living in the house at 16 Bayham Street.

  “I thought in the little back garret of Bayham Street of all that I had lost in losing Chatham,” Dickens wrote years later of his depression at this time.

  “Bayham Street was about the poorest part of the London suburbs then,” recalled Forster, “and the house was a mean small tenement, with a wretched little back-garden abutting on a squalid court. Here was no place for new acquaintances to him: no boys were near with whom he might hope to become in any way familiar. A washerwoman lived next door, and a Bow-Street officer lived over the way. Many, many times has he spoken to me of this, and how he seemed at once to fall into a solitary condition apart from all other boys of his own age, and to sink into a neglected state at home which had been always quite unaccountable to him. . . . That he took, from the very beginning of this Bayham-Street life, his first impression of that struggling poverty which is nowhere more vividly shown than in the commoner streets of the ordinary London suburb.”

  Charles Dickens’ boyhood home at 16 Bayham Street in Camden Town.

  The neighborhood was marked by the St. Martin’s almshouses, or poor houses, set up to help the aged and the unemployed. Founded in 1818 they stayed fixed in Dickens’ memory for his lifetime.

  “The housing was uninspiring, so it was no great loss when the railway cut through the area in the 1840s,” wrote Daniel Tyler, a London historian. “Its tenements were demolished at the start of the twentieth century.” The building at 16 Bayham Street exists no more, a victim of time and progress. But there are still three examples of these types of homes on that street surviving in the city to this day.

>   John Dickens was a clerk, and living in London was expensive. He found it difficult to provide for his growing family on his meager income. Soon his debts had become so severe that all the household goods were sold in an attempt to pay his bills, including furniture and silverware. Dickens’ memories of those days were dark and gloomy.

  Dickens himself later described the neighborhood in Dombey and Son, writing, “a little row of houses, with little squalid patches of ground before them, fenced off with old doors, barrel staves, scraps of tarpaulin, and dead bushes; with bottomless tin kettles and exhausted iron fenders, thrust into the gaps.”

  There is no question that Dickens, angry at his own father for the strife inflicted on his family through his spendthrift ways, still paints a sympathetic portrait of the man as working-class hero.

  “Let me hear another sound from you,” said Scrooge, “and you’ll keep your Christmas by losing your situation! . . . There’s another fellow,” muttered Scrooge; who overheard him: “my clerk, with fifteen shillings a week, and a wife and family, talking about a merry Christmas. I’ll retire to Bedlam.”

  What Dickens was railing against in those days was his utter sense at the devaluation of human life during the roaring days of the Industrial Revolution in England at the time. England was at the mercy of the “economic man” who placed all value on things in what the market would bear. Services as well as goods were subject only to the laws of the free economy. There was no just or fair pricing for either goods or services. Buy low and sell high was the only rule. Workers in many cases were not treated with much more respect than things, and were instantly replaceable in this economy with a vast pool of hands waiting for the next worker to go down. And industrials liked this because it kept that waiting throng as cheap as the workers they hired. There were no protections. Especially in the days before unionization, workers had little leverage.