Dickens and Christmas

by Dickens

  After being left alone Redlaw is visited by a phantom, who is also his doppelgänger or twin. ‘Ghastly and cold, colourless in its leaden face and hands, but with his features, and his bright eyes, and his grizzled hair, and dressed in the gloomy shadow of his dress.’ He offers Redlaw the chance to rid himself of his grief by having all painful memories erased from his mind. Eventually, Redlaw agrees. The phantom tells the chemist that ‘the gift’ he is giving him, he will be able to pass on to others.

  The Haunted Man has many similarities with A Christmas Carol, including the visit by a spirit and the theme of a neglected, dangerous child ignored by society. Milly Swidger is renowned for taking in those in need, from poor people to injured animals, and soon after the phantom has erased his painful memories, Redlaw discovers a child hiding in the darkness, waiting for Milly:

  ‘A bundle of tatters, held together by a hand, in size and form almost an infant’s, but in its greedy, desperate little clutch, a bad old man’s. A face rounded and smoothed by some half-dozen years, but pinched and twisted by the experiences of a life. Bright eyes, but not youthful. Naked feet, beautiful in their childish delicacy, – ugly in the blood and dirt that cracked upon them. A baby savage, a young monster, a child who had never been a child, a creature who might live to take the outward form of man, but who, within, would live and perish a mere beast.

  ‘Used, already, to be worried and hunted like a beast, the boy crouched down as he was looked at, and looked back again, and interposed his arm to ward off the expected blow.

  “I’ll bite,” he said, “if you hit me!”’

  At the start of the story, Redlaw had shown compassion when told by Milly about a student, Edmund Denham, who is ill and too poor to afford to go home for the Christmas holidays and too poor to marry the woman he loves. After the phantom’s visit, however, Redlaw shows no emotion about, and little interest in, the terrified and abused child. He is bemused about his own behaviour, but soon realises that anyone he touches, has the dubious ‘gift’ passed on to them. One by one the characters in the story start to lose their emotional capacity and their kindness. They become grumpy and shorttempered. In having allowed his memories to be erased, Redlaw has lost an integral part of his life, he has become incapable of feeling simple human emotions, such as sympathy, and has become ‘a man turned to stone’. In forgetting the painful memories, he has not stopped feeling anger at the world – he just no longer knows why he feels that way and his bitterness starts to affect all those who know him. He tries to continue his previous behaviour, but his anger and bitterness taint his actions and Redlaw becomes aware not only of what he has lost, but that he is changing everyone around him as well. When Denham asks Redlaw what he has done and says, ‘Give me back myself!’ Redlaw responds:

  ‘… like a madman. “I am infected! I am infectious! I am charged with poison for my own mind, and the minds of all mankind. Where I felt interest, compassion, sympathy, I am turning into stone. Selfishness and ingratitude spring up in my blighting footsteps. I am only so much less base than the wretches whom I make so, that in the moment of their transformation I can hate them.”’

  When the phantom returns, Redlaw asks him for help. He wants to go back to being the man he was before. He asks the phantom why the boy, who has been accompanying him on errands, is unaffected by Redlaw’s ability to change people. The phantom tells him that the boy has no good memories to lose, so cannot be changed. He is a child destroyed by society, a ‘desolate creature … [a] barren wilderness’ to whom no kindness or love has ever been shown. Just as he did with the child characters of Ignorance and Want in A Christmas Carol, Dickens berated his readers for allowing poor children to live in a world of such deprivation and cruelty.

  The person who helps the professor and his unwitting victims recover is Milly Swidger. Although she is a bereaved mother, her grief has not stopped her from remembering the happy memories of her dead child. Milly spreads kindness. When she visits people who have been affected by Redlaw, they are cured, left only with a puzzlement about what had happened. By the end of the story, Redlaw has come to realise that he has to avoid becoming bitter. Like Ebenezer Scrooge, he is a changed man. Having always looked before on Milly only as his servant, he now sees her as a better person than himself ‘as if their two positions were reversed’. The story ends with a magnificent Christmas dinner for everyone, from the poorest to the wealthiest.

  ‘The purpose of Mr. Dickens in the Christmas tale he has produced this year, is conceived in the kindly spirit which has inspired many of his other writings. He strives to cultivate the unselfish properties of human nature; to develop the sympathies in greater force than the antipathies, to array love against hate, good against evil. He would show that the ills of life have their remedies, or their assuagement, and anguish its consolation … To what class of literature this little book should be referred it would perhaps be difficult to decide, but Mr. Dickens has kindly spared of trouble of conjecture on that point, by endorsing his volume with a nomenclature of his own, as – “A Fancy”. Fancies include all rules of criticism, and we shall not, therefore, consume time in a fruitless chase.’

  The Morning Chronicle, 25 December 1848

  Despite some critical reviews, the sales of The Haunted Man, and the Ghost’s Bargain, were steadfast. In 1848, however, a new book by Charles Dickens was not the biggest Christmas news. For the young Queen Victoria, growing up in Kensington Palace with a German mother, a decorated tree was an essential part of Christmas. Her husband, Prince Albert, also came from Germany and they kept the tradition going. In 1841, Queen Victoria wrote in her journal, ‘Today I have two children of my own to give presents to, who, they know not why, are full of happy wonder at the German Christmas tree and its radiant candles.’ In December 1848, The Illustrated London News caused a sensation with its special Christmas supplement. It included a description of how the royal family would be spending the festive season, together with a drawing of the queen, the prince consort and their children gathered around a decorated Christmas tree.

  ‘A Christmas tree is annually prepared, by her majesty’s command, for the royal children. The tree employed for this festive purpose is a young fir, about eight feet high, and has six tiers of branches. On each tier or branch are arranged a dozen wax tapers. Pendent from the branches are elegant trays, baskets, bonbonniers, and other receptacles for sweetmeats of the most varied kind, and of all forms, colours, and degrees of beauty. Fancy cakes, gilt gingerbread, and eggs filled with sweetmeats, are also suspended by variously coloured ribands from the branches. The tree, which stands upon a table covered with white damask, is suported at the root of piles of sweets of a larger kind, and by toys and dolls of all description … On the summit of the tree stands the small figure of an angel, with outstretched wings, holding in each hand a wreath. Those trees are objects of much interest to all visitors at the Castle, from Christmas Eve, when they are first set up, until Twelfth night, when they are finally removed.’

  Illustrated London News, 23 December 1848

  Until this time, the custom of bringing a tree inside and decorating it had been confined to the royal household, the aristocracy and the immigrant German community. After the Illustrated London News article, however, the idea was being talked about all over the country and within a very few years, a Christmas tree had become fashionable in any household that could afford one. Prince Albert also helped to extend the tradition outside the royal household, by sending Christmas trees as presents to military barracks and local schools.

  Queen Victoria was very proud of her Christmas trees, and commissioned artists and photographers to record them for posterity. In 1850, she commissioned the watercolour artists James Roberts to paint her Christmas at Windsor Castle. The painting shows the tree decorated with fake snow and wax candles; all around it are easels and tables displaying the family’s gifts. The royal family did not have only one tree; the queen had her own tree, as did Prince Albert; the royal children had a tree to
themselves; and the Duchess of Kent (Queen Victoria’s mother) had another. In 1850, the queen wrote in her journal that ‘My beloved Albert 1st took me to my tree & table, covered by such numberless gifts … [the] children were then taken to their tree, jumping & shouting with joy over their toys & other presents.’

  The new fashion of photography also helped to preserve an intimate glimpse into the royal family’s Christmas decorations. A photograph, taken by Dr Ernst Becker on Christmas Eve 1857, shows a relatively small tree standing on top of a table, laden with ornaments and candles. All around it are presents including photographs, a richly decorated shawl, a small parasol, some small sculptures and sculpture busts and other trinkets. One of the presents that year was a set of eighteen photographs of Charles Kean, one of the queen’s favourite actors, a Christmas presents from Prince Albert to Queen Victoria. By this date, the Christmas tree was already considered integral to the middle-and upper-class Christmas. In December 1855, The Lady magazine reported that ‘natural fir trees [are] …. very popular’; it also recommended trying one of the newly fashionable artificial trees, such as a ‘palm tree with leaves made from calico’. In the Museum of London’s archives are the diaries of a young woman named Amelia Roper, who lived in Walthamstow, East London and in 1857 wrote to a friend that ‘Miss Ward and I made a Christmas tree for Bobby and little Emily Roper they were highly delighted with it.’ Amelia was a lowermiddle-class girl who, at the time of writing her diary, was living with her parents who had an undertakers’ business. She was preparing for her wedding to the local butcher. Her diary show how, in less than a decade since the Illustrated London News had published its drawing of the royal tree, people of all social classes had embraced the idea of a Christmas tree.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The New Fashion for the ‘Christmas Story’

  ‘A good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable 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.’

  Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (1843)

  In the late 1840s, Mark Lemon wrote a children’s story entitled The Enchanted Doll, which he hoped would become popular as a Christmas present. The story is about a discontented doll maker named Jacob Pout, who is haunted by an enchanted doll who serves a similar purpose to the ghosts who haunt Ebenezer Scrooge. In 1848, Lemon wrote to Charles Dickens asking for permission to dedicate his story to Mamie and Katey Dickens, who were friends with his daughters. The book was published in 1849 and it includes a scene about a children’s Christmas party, in which several of the Dickens children are named (although Sydney is changed to Sidney), as well as their dog Timber:

  ‘As it is Christmas time there is a table loaded with good cheer, to which all comers are welcome; and those happy-looking folk crowding round the large sea-coal fire are drinking to the good Alderman’s health in double ale … Before the huge fire sits the turnspit, dozing and enjoying the warmth after the labours of the morning. Poor dog! he has to work hard at feast-times. He sits up (as our little dog Timber does when he begs) … There go the fiddles! The Alderman and a buxom dame of forty lead off … Tony and Dorothy are in the middle of the set and dancing merrily …. What peals of laughter are heard every now and then as some blunder is made in the figure, when Charles, who should have turned to the right, wheels round to the left, and bumps against Mary, who nearly tumbles over Kate, who falls into the arms of Walter, whilst Frank, and Alfred, and Sidney clap their hands and declare that Kate did it on purpose. What a shout of laughter! Huzza!’

  Another author who embraced the Christmas market was William Thackeray, whose first Christmas story, Mrs Perkins’ Ball was published in 1847. He published six Christmas stories between 1847 and 1854, after which they were collated and published together as The Christmas Books of Mr M.A. Titchmarsh. The last of his Christmas stories, The Rose and the Ring (1854), is the best known of his Christmas works. It was subtitled ‘A Fireside Pantomime for Great and Small Children’. In the introduction, using his pseudonym of Mr M.A.Titchmarsh, Thackeray explains how his story was based upon Twelfth Night figures:

  ‘It happened that the undersigned spent the last Christmas season in a foreign city where there were many English children.

  ‘In that city, if you wanted to give a child’s party, you could not even get a magic-lantern or buy Twelfth-Night characters … My friend Miss Bunch, who was governess of a large family … begged me to draw a set of Twelfth-Night characters for the amusement of our young people. She is a lady of great fancy and droll imagination, and having looked at the characters, she and I composed a history about them, which was recited to the little folks at night, and served as our fireside pantomime … for a brief holiday, let us laugh and be as pleasant as we can. And you elder folk – a little joking, and dancing, and fooling will do even you no harm. The author wishes you a merry Christmas, and welcomes you to the Fireside Pantomime.’

  Not everyone was happy about how many authors were seen to be cashing in on the lucrative Christmas market, and many critics wrote scathing reviews, about the market being flooded by Christmas stories and books. On 5 January 1851, Thackeray felt compelled to add an introduction to his story, The Kickleburys on the Rhine, which had been published for Christmas 1850 and had borne the brunt of The Times’ critic’s ire about the preponderance of Christmas books. In his lengthy, introduction, Thackeray responded to the critic about why authors wrote Christmas stories:

  ‘Any reader who may have a fancy to purchase a copy of this present edition of the “History of the Kickleburys Abroad”, had best be warned in time, that the Times newspaper does not approve of the work, and has but a bad opinion both of the author and his readers … It has been customary, of late years, for the purveyors of amusing literature – the popular authors of the day – to put forth certain opuscules, denominated “Christmas Books”, …. “For the most part bearing the stamp of their origin in the vacuity of the writer’s exchequer rather than in the fulness of his genius, they suggest by their feeble flavor the rinsings of a void brain after the more important concoctions of the expired year.”… suppose you and I had to announce the important news that some writers published what are called Christmas books; that Christmas books are so called because they are published at Christmas: and that the purpose of the authors is to try and amuse people … I protest, for my part, I had no idea what I was really about in writing and submitting my little book for sale, until my friend the critic, looking at the article, and examining it with the eyes of a connoisseur, pronounced that what I had fancied simply to be a book was in fact “an opuscule denominated so-and-so, and ostensibly intended to swell the tide of expansive emotion incident upon the inauguration of the new year.” … what can the Times’ critic know about the vacuity of my exchequer? Did he ever lend me any money? Does he not himself write for money? … Who are you? If you are the man I take you to be, it must have been you who asked the publisher for my book, and not I who sent it in, and begged a gratuity of your worship …’

  Ironically, in 1847 William Thackeray himself had written a disgruntled article about the number of Christmas stories that had appeared for sale since the publication of A Christmas Carol. Thackeray’s article, ‘A Grumble About the Christmas-books’, was published in Fraser’s Magazine and in it he complained about what he saw as a decline in the genre that year. One book he singled out for censure was The Yule Log, by Alexander Chamerovzow, which had been illustrated by Dickens’s friend and illustrator George Cruikshank. It was Chamerovzow’s one attempt to capture the Christmas market; perhaps he was too daunted by Thackeray’s condemnation of his work, as being formulaic and predictable, to try again. In the article, Thackeray lambasted the glut of Christmas stories published in 1847 as being ‘streaky with benevolence, and larded with the most unctuous human kindness’.


  The decision not to produce a Christmas story for 1849, seems to have made Dickens much happier than in the previous year. His letters are full of stories about parties and trips to the theatre, including a letter he wrote to Mark Lemon on Christmas Day, ‘Merry Christmas and a happy new year, to you and all yours! Are you for a pankelmime on Thursday? If so, name your hour of dinner – anywhere – and I think I can bring Stanny with me.’ Stanny was their friend, the artist Clarkson Stanfield RA.

  The party for Charley’s thirteenth birthday was fondly remembered in the family because, on 5 January 1850, Angela Burdett-Coutts sent her godson such a large Twelfth Cake, that the children danced an impromptu jig of delight around the cake as it waited on the table in preparation for the following day’s party. In her memoir, My Father As I Recall Him, Mamie remembered:

  ‘When “the boys” came home for the holidays there were constant rehearsals for the Christmas and New Year’s parties; and more especially for the dance on Twelfth Night, the anniversary of my brother Charlie’s birthday. Just before one of these celebrations my father insisted that my sister … and I should teach the polka step to Mr. Leech and himself. My father was as much in earnest about learning to take that wonderful step correctly, as though there were nothing of greater importance in the world. Often he would practice gravely in a corner, without either partner or music, and I remember one cold winter’s night his awakening with the fear that he had forgotten the step so strong upon him that, jumping out of bed, by the scant illumination of the oldfashioned rushlight, and to his own whistling, he diligently rehearsed its “one, two, three, one, two, three” until he was once more secure in his knowledge.’

  By the end of the 1840s and the start of the 1850s, Charles Dickens was very heavily involved with trying to bring about social change. In addition to his and Angela Burdett-Coutts’ Urania Cottage project, in 1849 he campaigned passionately for a change in the law that governed the death penalty. He was not campaigning against the death penalty itself, but against the practice of executions being carried out in public. He was sickened by the spectacle this presented, and the holiday atmosphere in which whole families would arrive as day-trippers to watch criminals being hanged. In Oliver Twist, at the start of his career, he had written a very compassionate account of Fagin’s last night on earth. The chapter feels claustrophobic to read, as the reader gets sucked into the criminal’s own counting down of the hours to his death, listening to the mob outside baying for him to be hanged. The letters that Dickens wrote to The Times in 1849, about public executions, in which the author queried what made the mob lusting after the spectacle of a hanging any better than the criminals being hanged, helped to sway public opinion and, ultimately, caused the law to be changed; public executions ended in Britain in 1868. From that time on, they were carried out only inside prisons where the public was unable to watch.