CHARLES DICKENS

PREFACE

I HAVE endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which

shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season,

or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.

Their faithful Friend and Servant,

C. D.

December, 1843.

STAVE ONE. MARLEY’S GHOST.

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.

Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly

dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail

as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is

in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for.

You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? 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 residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole

mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an

excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an

undoubted bargain.

The mention of Marley’s funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is

no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful

can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet’s

Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a

stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any

other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot—say Saint

Paul’s Churchyard for instance—literally to astonish his son’s weak mind.

Scrooge never painted out Old Marley’s name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the

warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes

people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered

to both names. It was all the same to him.

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching,

grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which

no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as

an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled

his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly

in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry

chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the

dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.

External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry

weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon

its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn’t know where

to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage

over him in only one respect. They often “came down” handsomely, and Scrooge never did.

Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, “My dear Scrooge, how

are you? When will you come to see me?” No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle,

no children asked him what it was o’clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life

inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind men’s dogs appeared

to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and

up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, “No eye at all is better

than an evil eye, dark master!”

But what did Scrooge care! It was the very thing he liked. To edge his way along the

crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing

ones call “nuts” to Scrooge.

Once upon a time—of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve—old Scrooge sat

busy in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy withal: and he could

hear the people in the court outside, go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their

breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them. The city clocks

had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already—it had not been light all day—and

candles were flaring in the windows of the neighbouring offices, like ruddy smears upon

the palpable brown air. The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so

dense without, that although the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were

mere phantoms. To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring everything, one might

have thought that Nature lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale.

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. Scrooge had

a very small fire, but the clerk’s fire was so very much smaller that it looked like

one coal. But he couldn’t replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room;

and so surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted that it would

be necessary for them to part. Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried

to warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being a man of a strong imagination, he

failed.

“A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!” cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of

Scrooge’s nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had

of his approach.

“Bah!” said Scrooge, “Humbug!”

He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge’s,

that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath

smoked again.

“Christmas a humbug, uncle!” said Scrooge’s nephew. “You don’t mean that, I am sure?”

“I do,” said Scrooge. “Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason

have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.”

“Come, then,” returned the nephew gaily. “What right have you to be dismal? What

reason have you to be morose? You’re rich enough.”

Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said, “Bah!” again;

and followed it up with “Humbug.”

“Don’t be cross, uncle!” said the nephew.

“What else can I be,” returned the uncle, “when I live in such a world of fools as

this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas! 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? If I could work my will,” said Scrooge indignantly,

“every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled

with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!”

“Uncle!” pleaded the nephew.

“Nephew!” returned the uncle sternly, “keep Christmas in your own way, and let

me keep it in mine.”

“Keep it!” repeated Scrooge’s nephew. “But you don’t keep it.”

“Let me leave it alone, then,” said Scrooge. “Much good may it do you! Much good it has

ever done you!”

“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 clerk in the Tank involuntarily applauded. Becoming immediately sensible of the impropriety,

he poked the fire, and extinguished the last frail spark for ever.

“Let me hear another sound from you,” said Scrooge, “and you’ll keep your Christmas

by losing your situation! You’re quite a powerful speaker, sir,” he added, turning

to his nephew. “I wonder you don’t go into Parliament.”

“Don’t be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us to-morrow.”

Scrooge said that he would see him—yes, indeed he did. He went the whole length of

the expression, and said that he would see him in that extremity first.

“But why?” cried Scrooge’s nephew. “Why?”

“Why did you get married?” said Scrooge.

“Because I fell in love.”

“Because you fell in love!” growled Scrooge, as if that were the only one thing in the

world more ridiculous than a merry Christmas. “Good afternoon!”

“Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before that happened. Why give it as a reason

for not coming now?”

“Good afternoon,” said Scrooge.

“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 humour to the last. So A Merry Christmas, uncle!”

“Good afternoon!” said Scrooge.

“And A Happy New Year!”

“Good afternoon!” said Scrooge.

His nephew left the room without an angry word, notwithstanding. He stopped at the outer

door to bestow the greetings of the season on the clerk, who, cold as he was, was warmer

than Scrooge; for he returned them cordially.

“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.”

This lunatic, in letting Scrooge’s nephew out, had let two other people in. They were

portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now stood, with their hats off, in Scrooge’s

office. They had books and papers in their hands, and bowed to him.

“Scrooge and Marley’s, I believe,” said one of the gentlemen, referring to his list.

“Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge, or Mr. Marley?”

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

this very night.”

“We have no doubt his liberality is well represented by his surviving partner,” said

the gentleman, presenting his credentials.

It certainly was; for they had been two kindred spirits. At the ominous word “liberality,”

Scrooge frowned, and shook his head, and handed the credentials back.

“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.”

“Are there no prisons?” asked Scrooge.

“Plenty of prisons,” said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.

“And the Union workhouses?” demanded Scrooge. “Are they