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

by Carlo DeVito

  “To say . . . ” wrote Edgar Johnson, “that Scrooge is paying Cratchit all he is worth on the open market (or he would get another job) is to take for granted the very conditions Dickens is attacking. It is not only that timid, uncompetitive people like Bob Cratchit may lack the courage to bargain for their own rights. But, as Dickens well knows, there are many things other than the man’s work that determine his wage—the existence of a large body of other men able to do the same job. And if Cratchit is getting the established remuneration for his work, that makes the situation worse. . . . What Dickens has at heart is not any economic conception like Marx’s labor theory of value, but a feeling of the human value of human beings.”

  “To be sure the Cratchits are fictional creations. But as social types, even though they are surely exaggerated, they are not altogether unreal,” wrote Stephen Nissenbaum. Cratchit is not a working-class employee. The working class in Victorian Britain were industrial laborers. Cratchit was a clerk, a mid-level trained employee. As Nissenbaum argues, Cratchit was indeed a trusted employee, regardless of his treatment. “Cratchit is literate . . . and so at least is one of his sons.”

  “A poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every twenty-fifth of December!” said Scrooge, buttoning his great-coat to the chin. “But I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next morning.”

  The clerk promised that he would; and Scrooge walked out with a growl. The office was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends of his white comforter dangling below his waist (for he boasted no great-coat), went down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of a lane of boys, twenty times, in honor of its being Christmas Eve, and then ran home to Camden Town as hard as he could pelt, to play at blindman’s-buff.”

  Bob Cratchit walked to work, and he went by the route that took him through Cornhill Road. Like Dickens himself, there was a large portion of the society that walked great distances every day. Cratchit was typical of his age in this way. He walked three or more miles every day from Bayham Street all the way to Newman’s Court.

  “Most people walked to and from work. The first commuters were walkers and the distances they covered were long by modern standards. As London grew in the opening years of the nineteenth century, so the distances between home and work increased. In A Christmas Carol Bob Cratchit seems to think nothing of walking from Camden Town to Scrooge’s counting house off Cornhill in the city,” wrote Dickens scholar Andrew Sanders. “These tended to be lower-middle-class Londoners. Bob Cratchit in A Christmas Carol daily retraces much of the boy Dickens’ route into central London from his house in Camden Town.”

  “Cities fostered new breeds of walkers. The disciplined pedestrian, the speeding commuter, the idylling window shopper,” and many others walked long distances, wrote Anthony Amato in A History of Walking. Historian Paul Langford notes the existence of what one editor of Traveler’s Tales called “a craving for locomotion” and another commentator described as “a perfect mania the English have for moving about from one place to another.” According to Langford the need of the restless English to be up and about—“jaunting around” to use a phrase from the period—made them Europe’s first commuters.

  Like Bob Cratchit, John Dickens was one such commuter, walking three to four miles each way to work each day from 16 Bayham Street to Somerset House on the south side of the Strand in central London, overlooking the River Thames, just east of Waterloo Bridge.

  Despite all his failings as a provider and role model, or later as a troublesome dependent, Dickens wrote lovingly of his father years later. “I know my father to be as kind-hearted and generous a man as ever lived in the world. Everything that I can remember of his conduct to his wife, or children, or friends, in sickness or affliction, is beyond all praise. By me, as a sick child, he has watched night and day, unweariedly and patiently, many nights and days. He never undertook any business, charge, or trust that he did not zealously, conscientiously, punctually, honorably discharge.”

  * * *

  Jacob Marley

  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.

  This fanciful beginning was grabbed by Dickens from a dream he had had the summer just past. While visiting Broadstairs, where he had had the dream of the skewered baby. As Dickens described it, “a private gentleman and a particular friend” was pronounced, “as dead Sir . . . as a door nail.” The dream had stuck with him, and shaken him at the time. It was still so severe upon him that he expunged it, in a way, by using it to start the book.

  According to Dickens, “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 legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner.” Robert Malthus died on December 24, 1836. But who was Marley and where did he come from?

  In addition to Richardson’s contribution to understanding the origin of Marley’s name—based on Dickens’ time near east Marleybone street—there are still other theories. It has been suggested that Jacob Marley was named for Marley Tunnel, a small tunnel on the railway line from Exeter to Plymouth. Once again, the newly expanding British railways may have played a hand in the formation of A Christmas Carol. The Exeter to Plymouth line, also called the South Devon Main Line, is a central part of the trunk railway line between London Paddington and Penzance in the southern United Kingdom. It is a major branch of the Great Western Main Line and runs from Exeter, to Plymouth, from where it continues as the Cornish Main Line. In 1948 it became part of the Western Region of British Railways and is now part of the Network Rail system.

  The steep climb up Rattery Bank starts right from the end of the platform, a stiff challenge in those days to trains that called at Totnes. At the top is Rattery Viaduct and the 869-yard-long Marley Tunnel. The original single-track tunnel had a second bore added alongside it in 1893 when the line was doubled. The line today runs along the southern edge of Dartmoor.

  Dickens often found names while traveling, much like he did Ebenezer Scrooge’s name. However, Marley’s first name, Jacob, has a different history. In fact it is not known whether Dickens chose the name with a purpose or not. The biblical story of Jacob is told in the Book of Genesis. The story “Jacob’s Ladder” is named after his vision of a ladder that climbs to heaven and provides escape for the Israelites. After being estranged from his mother, father, and brother, Jacob returned to his home-land seeking reconciliation, especially with his brother, Esau. He was alone at the time, hoping to find peace with God the night before their family’s reunion. That night, in the dark, he wrestled with what he thought was a man until the break of day. As the light of dawn broke, and Jacob could see the shadow he’d been wrestling with all night, Jacob insisted that the man bestow a blessing on him. The “man” revealed himself to be an angel of God. The angel then blessed Jacob and gave him the name “Israel” (Yisrael), meaning “the one who wrestled with God.”

  Is it a coincidence that Jacob Marley, who comes to visit Scrooge in the dark black hours of the night, is himself struggling with God and his own deeds? Though Dickens struggled with organized religion, he was probably well acquainted with Genesis and Jacob.

  At the very least, it proves to be an interesting coincidence.

  Certainly among the most visual scenes in “Stave 1: Marley’s Ghost” is when Scrooge comes to the threshold of his lodgings and sees Marley’s face in the doorknocker. It must be remembered that the house where Scrooge lives was previously Marley’s home, and that Scrooge had inherited it upon Marley’s death.

  The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew its every stone, was fain to grope with his hands. The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house, that it seemed as if the Genius of the Weather sat in mournf
ul meditation on the threshold.

  Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door, except that it was very large. It is also a fact, that Scrooge had seen it, night and morning, during his whole residence in that place; also that Scrooge had as little of what is called fancy about him as any man in the city of London, even including—which is a bold word—the corporation, aldermen, and livery. Let it also be borne in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed one thought on Marley, since his last mention of his seven years’ dead partner that afternoon. And then let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process of change—not a knocker, but Marley’s face.

  Marley’s face. It was not in impenetrable shadow as the other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look: with ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air; and, though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless. That, and its livid color, made it horrible; but its horror seemed to be in spite of the face and beyond its control, rather than a part of its own expression.

  As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker again.

  Where does this scene come from? It goes back to the walks Dickens himself made night after night, especially during the writing of A Christmas Carol, as his writing powers, self-admittedly, were never greater upon him.

  The illustration of Marley’s Ghost by John Leech in the first edition of A Christmas Carol.

  “Dickens’s walks served him in two ways. On one level, they were fact-finding missions during which he recorded with his keen eye the teeming urban landscapes whose descriptions were his stock-in-trade,” wrote Merrell Noden in Sports Illustrated. In a letter to a friend, while visiting Paris years later, Dickens admitted to walking the streets, “wandering into Hospitals, Prisons, Dead-houses, Operas, Theatres, Concert-rooms, Burial-grounds, Palaces and Wine Shops. In my unoccupied fortnight of each month, every description of gaudy and ghastly sight has been passing before me in rapid Panorama.”

  “But Dickens’s walks played another, more important role in his life. They were, in a sense, acts of self-preservation,” reasoned Noden.

  “If I could not walk far and fast,” Dickens once confessed, “I think I should just explode and perish.”

  Dickens absolutely walked through the neighborhoods near where Charing Cross Station is today. One of the streets around there is Craven Street. The street is lined on both sides with red-brick eighteenth century townhouses. The address 40 Craven Street was the home of Dr. Charles West, founder of the Hospital for Sick Children.

  West and Dickens had a common interest in the welfare of London’s children. Dr. Charles West was an expert on diseases affecting women and children. He trained in medicine at Paris and Bonn where hospitals exclusively for children had long been in existence. Having returned to London in the early 1840s, West worked at the Universal Dispensary for Children and Women in Waterloo Road. He was determined to set up England’s first inpatient hospital for children, but failed to persuade the managers of the dispensary to support his plan. Through his own efforts, and through social contacts made by his fellow doctor, Henry Bence-Jones, a committee was formed in 1850 with support from eminent philanthropists and public-health reformers such as Lord Shaftesbury, Baroness Burdett-Coutts (a close friend of Dickens), and Edwin Chadwick of the Board of Health.

  Indeed, later in life Dickens and West became very well acquainted. When West opened his hospital eight years after Dickens purloined one of the residences on West’s street for A Christmas Carol, Dickens wrote a powerful article in his popular magazine Household Words to publicize it. Dickens and other eminent personalities of the time, including Oscar Wilde, senior clergymen of London, and members of the Royal Family, spoke at fundraisers such as the Annual Festival Dinner. In 1858 the Hospital survived its first major financial crisis after Dickens gave a public reading in aid of the hospital at St. Martin-in-the-Fields church hall. This raised enough money to enable the purchase of the neighboring house, 48 Great Ormond Street, increasing the bed capacity from 20 to 75.

  But before that, perhaps in the fall of 1843, during one of his walks Dickens spied something unusual on Craven Street. “Legend holds that it was a grotesque old door knocker on one of the adjoining houses that gave Dickens the idea for Scrooge’s door knocker turning into Marley’s face in A Christmas Carol,” wrote well-known London tour guide Richard Jones. “Unfortunately, when an enthusiastic photographer approached the owner for permission to photograph the knocker, she is said to have removed it and placed it in a bank vault for safe keeping. Its whereabouts are now unknown.”

  Edgar Johnson wrote, “It should not be imagined that Christmas has for Dickens more than the very smallest connection with Christian dogma or theology. For Dickens Christmas is primarily a human not a supernatural feast. . . .” But even Johnson admits that “Marley’s ghost is the symbol of divine grace, and that the three Christmas Spirits are the working of that grace through the agencies of memory, example, and fear.”

  There is also some question as to whether Marley’s coming might have been inspired by some of the text from the Book of Revelation.

  The lines “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, then I will come in to him . . .” come from Revelations (3:20). And the message that Marley bears also comes from Revelation ( 3:17), where John writes to the Laodiceans, one of the seven major churches of Asia and a major center of wealth in those days, “Because thou say, ‘I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing;’ and knowest not that thou are the wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked; I counsel thee to buy from me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eye salve, that thou mayest see. . . .”

  Again, in Dickens’ era, familiarity with the Bible, especially among the middle and upper-middle class, was not to be expected. Indeed, the entire visit is presaged by the scene at the fireplace:

  The fireplace was an old one, built by some Dutch merchant long ago, and paved all round with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the Scriptures. There were Cains and Abels, Pharaoh’s daughters, Queens of Sheba, Angelic messengers descending through the air on clouds like feather-beds, Abrahams, Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in butter-boats, hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts; and yet that face of Marley, seven years dead, came like the ancient Prophet’s rod, and swallowed up the whole. If each smooth tile had been a blank at first, with power to shape some picture on its surface from the disjointed fragments of his thoughts, there would have been a copy of old Marley’s head on every one.

  The Bible stories and symbolism lent themselves nicely to the tale, but the fireplace had come from Dickens’ past. While still in what he remembered as his idyllic childhood in Chatham, John Dickens’ fortunes were already going downhill. In 1821 he was already spending too much money, and so they traded in their house on Ordnance Terrace to live at 18 St. Mary’s Place, called “The Brook.” This was the home where Charles and Fanny had looked out over a graveyard next to a church.

  “There was a marked difference between Ordnance Terrace and the cramped cottage close to the parish church and the dockyard entrance. It stood in a mean thoroughfare called The Brook, which only twenty years before had been desirable; but the stream which ran down the lane had become a ditch of sewage, dependent on the rain to flush it, and The Brook was now full of taverns the Bell, the Golden Lion, the Three Cups, and the King’s Head— beer-shops and lodging houses,” explained Norman and Jeanne MacKenzie.

  Dickens’ upbringing was not particularly religious. But in the time they lived at
St. Mary’s Place, they may have spent more time in the church next door and they certainly befriended the Reverend Giles and his son. Still, Charles’ memory of early religious training was rarely positive, as most boys of that age would agree. But for all his schooling, the most telling memory he had of religion came from the family fireplace in the house on St. Mary’s Place whose tiles were illustrated with scenes from the scriptures, just like Scrooge’s own fireplace! So Scrooge’s fireplace comes from Dickens’ childhood.

  Dickens, like Twain later, found sitting through church services excruciating. He remembered being “dragged by the hair of my head” to listen to the preacher’s sermons. And despite his best efforts to resist the church and its teachings, it seemed the fireplace, and its stories, stuck with him. As biographer Peter Ackroyd jokingly remarked, “[H]e gave it to Scrooge, perhaps in revenge. . . .”

  It is clear that some moral and biblical reckoning is at hand, if not just for Scrooge, for all of us. That Marley is shackled is part of that message.

  The chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel. His body was transparent; so that Scrooge, observing him, and looking through his waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his coat behind.

  Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he had never believed it until now.