The Greatest Little Book in the World
FOUR ardent Dickensians were seated about a long table; all were talking at once; there were no listeners. Listeners are not important — it is the talkers who make themselves heard. All four were collectors. Why should I not name them? To do so will ‘give artistic verisimilitude’ to an (otherwise) ‘bald and unconvincing narrative.’
There was the host, Mr. William M. Elkins of Philadelphia, the owner of the most interesting ‘Pickwick’ in the world, the immortal book ‘in parts as issued, with all the points,’ as the old-book catalogues have it, given — part by part, as they appeared, with sundry inscriptions — to Mary Hogarth, Dickens’s sister-in-law, until her untimely death caused the suspension of its publication, while its author recovered from the effects of the shock, and — but it would be fatiguing to refer to the items in Mr. Elkins’s collection: let me say, in a word, that he has what is generally regarded as the finest Dickens collection in the world. There was, too, Judge John M. Patterson, President of the Dickens Fellowship, whose knowledge of first editions is exceeded only by that of another of the group, Mr. John C. Eckel, the author of a Bibliography of Dickens, as readable as it is accurate. There was also the writer of this paper, resembling in appearance, it is said, Mr. Pickwick himself, badly distanced in the race as a collector by these other men either longer of purse or fleeter of foot than he.
The large room in which we were sitting served as a living-room and library. Pause for a moment and think! What is living without a library? What is a library unless one lives in it? The walls were lined with open cases filled with rare books, and it needed only a glance to show that they had been assembled with great discrimination. Easy-chairs, placed with due regard to tables, with carefully screened lamps, seemed to invite one to read and rest; but, instead, a violent discussion was going on. It was on that old, old subject — Which is the best of Dickens’s novels? ‘Pickwick,’ someone urged; then it was admitted that ‘Pickwick’ is not a novel. What is it? Certainly it is n’t romance, or ‘travels’! Finally it was agreed that it is in a class by itself, that there never has been a book like it; and just as it seemed as if all four were agreed that David Copperfield was Dickens’s best novel, someone mentioned A Tale of Two Cities, which met with the objection that that was n’t in Dickens’s manner at all.
Then, above a voice urging Bleak House, someone was heard to say that A Christmas Carol was the greatest little book in the world. ‘And if you think,’ said the speaker, ‘that is a “rather large order,” name a greater!’
There was silence for a moment, and then a chorus of praise. It was the writer of this paper who made the all-embracing statement. He has the advantage of knowing only one — his mother — tongue; he was talking of books of to-day, not of great little books of ages past; and he was talking with companions who were much too great Dickensians to challenge any statement in praise of the master.
Let there be no misunderstanding. I know all that can be said in dispraise of Dickens: that his characters are not real people, but personifications of virtue and vice and the whole range in between; that he wallows in sentimentality; that all is exaggeration; that eccentric characters pepper his pages; that his women are ‘impossible,’ and that his heroes wear side whiskers; that he himself had long, curly hair, perfumed, and greasy with macassar oil. I admit all this, and yet I am disposed to say that in the resplendent firmament of English literature there is only one name I would rank above his for sheer genius: Shakespeare. And I make this statement with the less hesitation for the reason that it passed unchallenged — was applauded almost — when I made it first several years ago, in London. But that story must begin a new paragraph.
That learned and kindly ‘Wanderer in London,’ E. V. Lucas, to avenge a fancied obligation, was giving me a dinner, and I was asked to say not only ‘when,’ but where — and who. I chose the Garrick Club and the guests, and on the appointed evening I found myself next to an old gentleman, one of the handsomest men in London, — he himself admits it, — Sir Squire Bancroft.
Well, after the cloth was removed and the nuts and wine appeared (how much more friendly than our custom of putting another lump of ice in the tumbler), we fell into our anecdotage, as men will, and Sir Squire challenged attention by saying, ‘It was at a little dinner in this very room, more years ago than I like to remember, that I first met Charles Dickens.’ To be sitting next to a man who had known Charles Dickens, to hear anecdotes of him at first hand, was, for me, an unusual experience. Several other men then spoke of the great man, and when it came my turn to say something, or when I thought I could make myself heard, I boldly spoke of him as, next to Shakespeare, the greatest light in our literary heaven, expecting to precipitate a violent argument or at least a discussion. But nothing of the sort followed; on the contrary Augustine Birrell, that wise old bookman, seemed to acquiesce — and he is not always acquiescent; and the late Sir Walter Raleigh, the Oxford scholar, looked at me across the table as if the idea was not new to him.
But it is not my wish to start anything now. I just want to say a few seasonable words about A Christimas Carol.
Dickens had made his first trip to America and was engaged upon that study of selfishness, Martin Chuzzlewit, when it occurred to him to write a short story which was to make the world better and happier at Christmas time. The result was the ‘little Carol,’ as he affectionately called it. Its composition affected him in a most extraordinary manner: he roamed about London, as was his habit, thinking and talking to himself about it — and no one knew and loved London better than he; and none could describe it better, especially the streets on a winter’s day, when the poor suffer; for while Dickens was a boisterous person, overflowing with animal spirits, the poor were always in his mind.
Bear with me while I sing the London streets in winter. Is there, can there be anything colder? The thermometer is not to be depended upon: with true British pluck the mercury keeps up appearances and declines to record the all-pervading dampness which freezes one to the marrowbones. I know; for I have played at hide-andseek in the fog with well-known landmarks for my playmates, — to keep myself from freezing, — and I am not especially fitted for the game; solitaire I could play better but for the exertion it entails.
But no one has written of a winter’s day as has Dickens: listen a moment.
It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy withal. . . . 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 neighboring 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. . . . It was piercing, searching, biting cold.
Such was the weather in London on that day before Christmas many years ago when Dickens elected to sing a carol which all the world has heard and which all English-speaking people join in singing. Dickens was a man of simple emotions: what did not move him to laughter moved him to tears; some things moved him to both at once. Of nature, in the ordinary acceptance of that word, he knew nothing, cared nothing. London was to him a vast field in which wild flowers grew, the children of the poor, and he gathered them by armfuls. He was a man without what we call taste and, like Shakespeare, he took little interest in either religion or politics, but he had an intense love for humanity. He did not write for the stage, but he wrote dramatically: in tragedy he was apt to be maudlin; in humor he was with the gods. The ‘Carol’ is Dickens in essence, for in it his love of humanity and his love of fun are all-embracing.
May I hum the first stanza of the ‘Carol’?
Marley was dead: to begin with . . . 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 doornail.
But I take it for granted that you can sing the ‘Carol’ as well as I can, and go on with my story.
It was published a few days before Christmas 1843; six thousand copies were sold the first day, and fifteen thousand more before there was the least sign of the demand slackening. Dickens was in high spirits and wrote to a friend, ‘The “ Carol ” is the greatest success, I am told, that this ruffian and rascal has ever achieved.’ But a minor note was struck when the financial reckoning came in. Its author had been led to expect a clear thousand pounds, whereas considerably less resulted. No care seems to have been taken to ascertain the cost of the publication, when the selling-price was fixed. It is Dickens’s prettiest book, tastefully printed and well bound in cloth and gilt; but the illustrations were the chief cause of the trouble. In addition to four woodcut vignettes, engraved by the master hand of W. J. Linton, there were four full-page etchings from drawings by Leech, colored by hand. Such a book costs money to produce, and the retail price was fixed at only five shillings. Dickens was disgusted: it was his first and last experience with ‘colored plates.’
It is permissible to refer to the original manuscript of the ‘Carol.’ Dickens gave most of the manuscripts of his novels to his friend and biographer, John Forster, at whose death they passed to the British nation, and can be seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum; the manuscript of the ‘Carol,’ however, he kept himself, endorsing it, ‘My own and only MS. of the Book,’ followed by his well-known signature.
But a more impulsive, generous man than Dickens never lived: it was not long before the precious copy was bound and given to an old friend, Thomas Mitton, who, not fully appreciating his possession, sold it for fifty pounds! Subsequently it passed into the hands of a Mr. Churchill, who had every one of its sixty-six quarto pages photographed and reproduced in facsimile. Then, in the hands of a bookseller, it went to Birmingham; but it soon returned to London, and the price by now having advanced to three hundred pounds, it passed into the collection of Sir Stuart Samuel, who ultimately disposed of it to Pierpont Morgan, and it now rests in the shrine, frequently called a library, erected by that great man a few years before his death.
What is more fascinating than the manuscript of a book? In looking at a picture, we see a work of art, finished and complete, as its creator intended us to see it, but in looking at the holograph of a book, we see the mind of the master at work. We see how he obtained the effects which so thrill us, and can study the lights and shades as he applied them. Dickens was a rapid and clear penman, but in the excitement of composition he made so many corrections that most of his manuscripts are almost illegible except to one expert in reading his writing. The ‘Carol’ is far from being the chief literary treasure of Mr. Morgan’s library, but it is an ornament to any collection, and when I held it in my hands, not long ago, I was told it was one of the items that all visitors wish to see.
I have referred to the four full-page etchings from John Leech. I have the original drawing of one of these, and a fine one, the Last of the Spirits; but where are the remaining three? Who is the happy possessor of the best of them all, Mr. Fezziwig’s Ball? the gayest little picture in all the world: it fairly exudes Christmas cheer. Who would not love to dance a Sir Roger de Coverley with Mrs. Fezziwig, ‘one vast substantial smile’? I defy anyone to read the description of that Christmas party and not be a better man for the experience. It is a ripping piece of prose, seemingly written in jig time to the music of fiddles. It should be read — all of the ‘Carol’ should be read — aloud every year before Christmas, when it is cold without and warm within; and there should be children about, girls and boys, especially boys, wide-eyed boys like Pip in Great Expectations. The boy who is permitted to grow up without being ‘read Dickens to’ should bring a suit in equity against his parents, preferably before Lord Jeffrey, who has given it as his opinion that A Christmas Carol has done more good than all the pulpits in Christendom; and this judgment has been confirmed by the high court of public opinion. I like to think that Lord Jeffrey had in mind the best part of the ‘Carol,’ — if one part can be better than another, — the description of the Christmas dinner at Bob Cratchit’s; throw aside this magazine and read it. Read it now. Was there ever such a goose or such a plum pudding? ‘Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family.’
It is just eighty years since the ‘Carol’ was given to the world, and it still remains a ‘best seller.’ It has been translated into almost every language under heaven, though I am at a loss to understand its popularity in Chinese. In London, when it first appeared, people stopped one another in the street with the question, ‘Have you read it?’ and the answer was, ‘Yes, God bless him, I have.’ No one spoke more highly of it than Thackeray, except Tom Hood, who maintained that Dickens was inspired when he wrote it. Not long ago, at a sale of autographs, a letter of Stevenson turned up which read something like this: ‘I don’t know that I would recommend you to read the “ Carol,” because it is too much, perhaps. But oh, dear God, it is good — and I feel so good after it, and would do anything, yes, and shall do everything to make the world a little better. . . . I shall never listen to the nonsense people tell me about not giving money — I shall give money: not that I have n’t done so always, but I shall give now with a high hand.’
That is the greatness of the ‘Carol’: it makes everyone want ‘to make the world a little better’ — that ‘s the idea; and when everyone wants to do a thing, they usually do it.
Dickens gave Christmas a new meaning: from being merely a festival of the Church, kept to some extent by Church people, he made it a universal holiday, and he did this without in any way derogating from its sacred character. What an achievement!
We hear rather too much to-day that art has nothing to do with morals, and it is admitted that an obvious moral may spoil an artistic effect — but not in the ‘Carol.’ We, who know it by heart, hurry to get to the moral we know so well. When the Phantom shrinks, collapses, and dwindles into a bedpost, and Scrooge awakes and ‘laughs a splendid laugh,’ we laugh with him. He rushes to a window, throws it open and calls to a boy outside: —
‘What’s to-day, my fine fellow? ‘
‘ To-day! ‘ replied the boy. ‘Why, Christmas Day.’
‘It’s Christmas Day! ‘ said Scrooge to himself. ‘I have n’t missed it.’
How happy he is! How happy we are, too! It is not too late to make amends!
Dickens puts the moral plainly when he makes the ghost of Marley say in reply to Scrooge’s ‘You were always a good man of business, Jacob ‘: —
‘Business! — Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!’
It is such passages — and they abound in this, the loveliest of fairy tales — which justify the judgment which the world has passed upon this great little book.
The greatness of Dickens is only now beginning to be properly understood. Thousands of books have been written about him, most of them bad, very bad. Indeed, in the ‘comprehensive ocean ‘ of Dickensiana I know only two books which arc thoroughly admirable. I refer to Chesterton’s Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens and Gissing’s Charles Dickens, A Critical Study. These men are, it seems to me, the forerunners of a new school of Dickens-appreciators.
The bibliography of the ‘Carol,’ John C. Eckel says, has just enough twists about it to make it interesting; but just as we collectors get one twist straightened out, somebody introduces a new one. We are agreed, I take it, that a few, a very few copies were issued with the title page printed in red and green, with the date 1844, with yellow end-papers. These copies all have the chapter heading ‘Stave I,’ the numeral ‘I’ not spelled out, ‘ one,’ as in the second issue. Such copies now fetch from four to five hundred dollars; but speaking by and large a man may be said to have a first edition of the ‘Carol’ if the title page is printed in red and blue, if, in addition to the numeral ‘ I,’ his copy has the date 1843, with green, not yellow, endpapers — at an investment of, say, a hundred dollars.
But tell me, ye bibliographers, how it is that all the copies which Dickens himself gave away that Christmas have yellow end-papers? I have one, and I have examined a large number, and I have searched in vain for a presentation copy with green endpapers. Dickens presumably gave the books away on the day of publication; many of them are dated ‘Nineteenth December, 1843.’ It is admitted that ‘Carols’ with green end-papers are rarer than those with yellow endpapers, but I cannot see that that makes them earlier. Maybe we collectors have been fooling ourselves; but after all, what difference does it make? The important thing is that the book was written, and we have it.
It is said that twenty-four editions were published in its original form. Now, the copyright having long since expired, scarcely a year goes by without a new edition being announced. There are superbly illustrated, printed, and bound books made for the rich, and cheap editions made to sell for a penny to the poor, and both classes buy: its sale has run into the millions. But I have my own idea of the form in which the book should be read. It is admitted that a first edition, be the end-papers of what color they may, is too rare and costly to be read with comfort by the fireside, especially if, when one lays it down for a moment, it may be picked up and carried off by some member of the family, unaware of its value. And equally I do not wish a sumptuous reprint. I have always resented the book being got up in modern fashion, however beautiful; nor should it be read in a large volume out of a ‘set,’ or expensively bound in leather. The first issues were all bound in red-brown cloth, with a gold stamp on the side, with gilt edges; and subsequent issues were bound in red, as more in the spirit of the season. So I should want my ‘Carol’ bound either in red-brown or holly-red cloth with gilt edges, and I would ask that it be in format as like as possible the little masterpiece which woke the world to its music just eighty years ago. Fortunately they are not difficult to find; several years ago the Atlantic Monthly Press made just such a book as I have in mind. It was an exact facsimile of the first edition; I was honored by being asked to write a brief introduction to it, and gladly did so. And last year, in England, another facsimile was made, the profits arising from the sale of which went to some benevolent book-trade society.
Such editions are and should forever be in demand, for the more A Christmas Carol is read, the more it becomes soiled and torn and dog-eared from reading, the better will be the world.
‘Are you running a corner in “Christmas Carols” ?’ a friend once asked me, as he stood in my library facing a little cluster of books in red and red-brown cloth. ‘No, not exactly,’ I replied, ‘but that is the greatest little book in the world. As a Dickens-collector, I am obliged to have all the early issues, and I always keep a few “ spares” on hand for emergencies.’ ‘What would you call an emergency?’ he inquired. ‘Well,’ I answered, ‘if I were to meet a man at Christmas time who had not read the book, I should consider that an emergency requiring immediate action.’
‘Would you go so far as to give him a copy?’
‘No; but I ‘d lend him one and not expect to get it back; it comes to the same thing.’
Of the reprint of the first edition I usually buy two copies at one time: one to read, the other to lend, when the time comes to read it — and it comes once a year.
I frequently find I have lent both copies, and I have to go out and buy another pair.
The ‘Carol’ is a tribute to the race and a glory to the man who wrote it. Its author turned more or less empty phrases into realities. ‘Good will toward men,’ for example, he took out of the clouds, brought it down to earth, and set it to work. What an achievement! When we say, ‘Merry Christmas,’ we are unconsciously quoting Charles Dickens, who attached to Christmas its modern habit of giving and forgiving. Had he written only the ‘Carol,’ on the basis of good accomplished he would have deserved his place in the Abbey Church of Westminster, where England lays her immortal sons.