Becoming Scrooge
by Glen Draeger

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Hello Yuletiders,

I awoke the other night in a strange bed, but not so strange that I had no idea where I was. I felt groggy and disoriented as I attempted to raise myself when who should appear before me but Iris. She did not, however, look like her normal self. Her long, flowing white night gown didn't touch the floor, but neither did her feet and she was translucent like I imagine a ghost would be.

"What's going on?" I asked.

She floated a little higher as she spoke. "You are in Scrooge's bedroom."

"What?" I exclaimed. "But why?"

"Because you are Scrooge."

"Wh—wh—whaaaaat?" I stammered.

"You—are—Scrooge."

I jumped up searching for a light switch before I realized there would be no electricity in London in the 1840's. After much searching I found a match and lit a candle. There was a small mirror next to the door and when I looked into it—I saw the face of an old, bitter, angry and tired man.

"But why?" I asked turning back toward her.

She drifted toward me as if a slight breeze blew her in my direction. "Tonight you are going to meet three ghosts: The Ghost of Dickens' Childhood, The Ghost of Dickens' Manhood and the Ghost of Dickens' Old Age."

"But . . . " and before I could finish she disappeared.

Immediately a drowsiness so overwhelmed me that the bed looked like a pool of water to a man dying of thirst. I forgot I looked like Scrooge, forgot I was in The World of Literature and only wanted one thing: sleep. I stumbled toward the bed, flung myself down upon it and fell into a deep sleep. When I awoke a young teenage boy stood before me. He had dark hair and expressive eyes, wore brown trousers and a shabby, white shirt and motioned that I should follow him.

I rose from my bed and we walked through a wall (why I did not think this strange, I do not know). We descended slowly to the London street like a feather. When we landed the boy took my hand and led me down a narrow alley.

"Here," he said pointing to a building. "This is where I work."

"Who are you?" I had completely forgotten about Iris.

"I am Charles Dickens. This is a boot-blacking factory."

"You should go to school instead of work," I said accusingly. Strange as it may sound, I was not only Scrooge in body, but also in soul. I knew that I was still me, but it was as if I could also feel and observe what it was like to be Scrooge. "If you're not smart enough to go to school," I listened to my Scrooge self say, "then be happy with the work you have, you little vermin."

"I am smart enough to go to school," he protested. "I even won a Latin prize. I had to leave school to work because my parents needed the money. My father was in debtor's prison. I went to visit him there once and we cried and cried together."

"Bah humbug," I heard myself say.

"I was only 12," Charles Dickens said. "My father told me that if a man spends less money than he has he will be happy, but spending more than he earns will 'make him wretched.' I'm not very happy here. I have to work long hours and they only pay me six shillings a week. My father is going to be released soon so I hope he lets me quit, but my mother wants me to continue working."

"You sound like a complainer to me," my Scrooge self said. "Take me away from here!"

He took me back to Scrooge's room where, again, overcome with fatigue, I climbed into bed and slept, it seemed to me, for years and years and years. When, finally, I awoke a man of about 40 years of age stood in front of me. He had extremely dark hair, a goatee and wore a black suit coat, a bow tie, white shirt and beige, baggy pants.

"Ha, ha, ha," he laughed heartily throwing his head back. "Scrooge, Scrooge, Scrooge!! You are without a doubt one of my favorite creations! Do you remember why I wrote 'A Christmas Carol'?"

"No," I said groggily.

"And why should you? Well, I needed the money and you, Scrooge, brought it in. You sold 6,000 copies on the day of publication. Ironic, isn't it? The biggest penny pincher in all of literature helped make me a wealthy man." He chortled happily. "I needed it, let me tell you. I had 10 children and 9 of them survived, not to mention other members of my family who often expected me to take care of them financially." He paused for moment. "By the way," he said, "are you Scrooge before or after your big change of heart?"

"I think, after," I said hesitantly. As I thought about it I realized this was true. I looked on Mr. Dickens with generosity and I felt a kind of happiness, like how you feel on Thanksgiving or Christmas day just before you eat or open presents. My Scrooge self thought, "So this is the wonderful man who gave me breath!"

"Splendid, splendid," Dickens said. "A good Scrooge then, that's splendid. You know, when I was writing your story I would weep and laugh and weep again. Then, late at night when most of London slept, I would walk the streets for 15 or 20 miles just thinking about you. You were quite a success. In the following years I wrote a lot of other Christmas Stories like 'The Chimes,' 'The Cricket on the Hearth,' 'The Battle of Life,' and 'The Haunted Man.'"

"Did you have any reason to write them, besides money?"

"Oh Scrooge! The perfect question coming from you!" We both laughed like old friends meeting after years of separation. "Of course, of course. 'My purpose was, in a whimsical kind of masque which the good-humour of the season justified, to awaken some loving and forbearing thoughts, never out of season in a Christian land.'"

"So why did you write my story?"

"Similar reasons. In the preface to 'A Christmas Carol,' I wrote, 'I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book to raise the Ghost of an Idea which shall not put my readers out of humor with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their house pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.'"

"That seems a noble purpose," I said.

"Oh Scrooge. It is so good to hear you speak that way. I am involved in many noble purposes. I oppose capital punishment, I push for reforms in prisons, I believe that everyone should be able to get an education, I think that hospitals should be better, that factory workers should have shorter working hours and I believe in the humane treatment of orphans, widows, the insane, the blind and debtors."

"How do you get involved in all those things?"

"I write novels—lots of novels in serial form and I have been editor of several newspapers: Daily News; Household Words; and All the Year Round. In those papers I wrote passionately about the things I believed in."

"What novels have you written?"

"It's a long list, but here are some of my most famous ones: David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations. These are tales about common people, often children. I've been told that I've created some very memorable characters—second only to those of Shakespeare."

"Wow," I said.

"Why Scrooge, that's a strange word for you to use," Dickens said.

"I don't think it was me that said it," I heard my Scrooge self say.

"Interesting. Well, no matter, 'It's a mad world. Mad as Bedlam.'" We laughed and laughed as if we, too, were mad. "You look tired, Scrooge. I'll let you get back to sleep."

Again, exhaustion swept over me like an ocean wave and I slept more soundly than I have ever slept. I had no dreams, no restlessness, just peaceful rest and when I awoke I was no longer Scrooge, nor was I in his bedroom. I was in a great hall and up on the stage I saw a man of about sixty years of age. It was Charles Dickens. People around me were laughing one moment and crying the next. A man next to me said he had "laughed as if he must crumble to pieces." I later found out he was Ralph Waldo Emerson, the famous American essayist. What were they laughing and crying at? Dickens was reading "A Christmas Carol," something he did over 400 times in a decade. He did different voices for all the characters and he did them with such power and persuasion that to listen to him made you feel as if those characters were standing on the stage, as if you were Tiny Tim or Scrooge or as if the Ghosts themselves were speaking not only to Scrooge, but to you as well.

I noticed something else. Dickens looked tired and weary during the intermission. When he was reading he was animated and vibrant, but when he ceased it was as if his pleasure in life also ceased. Then, suddenly, I was in another great hall, this one in England and Mr. Dickens had just finished his reading. The audience sat, it seemed to me, in a kind of emotional weariness having just lived through Scrooge's life. Mr. Dickens, after bowing, returned to the podium and spoke these words with tears streaming down his cheeks:

"'From these garish lights I now vanish forevermore, with a heartfelt, grateful, respectful, affectionate farewell.'"

And he did. He died less than three months later on June 9, 1870.

There are two very famous sentences from Charles Dickens' novel, A Tale of Two Cities. The first goes like this:

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

The second is:

"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known."

Charles Dickens was a man of the people. He distrusted government and people of place, but he had an almost unbounded faith in the common man and he was always willing to defend that man or woman. The public, it was sometimes said of him, was his one great love. To that public he gave one of its most enduring Christmas tales, "A Christmas Carol." I wonder if what Charles Dickens wrote about Scrooge might also have been said about himself: "'he knew how to keep Christmas well . . .'"

"'May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!'"

Have a merry, merry Christmas and a stupendous New Year!

Warm Regards,

Mr. Draeger

The actual words and writings of Dickens appear in double quotation marks("'—-'").

Sources:

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 16th Edition, John Bartlett, Justin Kaplan, General Editor, Little, Brown and Company, New York, 1992.

Boorstein, Daniel, The Creators, Random House, New York, 1992

The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Ill., 1988, 15th edition, Vol. 17, pp. 267-272.

Dickens, Charles, Christmas Books, The Oxford Illustrated Dickens, Oxford University Press, New York, 1987.

©2005-2010 Glen Draeger (all rights reserved)
Millstone Education: World Literature / http://www.millstoneeducation.com/worldLit