Charles Dickens' Christmas E-Book

Andrew Hubert von Staufer

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 201

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

'I will honour Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all year.' - Charles Dickens Between Charles Dickens' birth in 1812 and his death in 1870, Christmas had transformed from what was essentially a quiet family day to a bustling commercial celebration with cards, advertisements, pantomimes and even public decorative displays. Through Dickens' writing, family recipes, time at the pantomime and festive tours of America, Charles Dickens' Christmas explores the sweeping social and technological changes of Dickens' lifetime that led to this surge of Christmas popularity – which Dickens so ably harnessed. This festive season, step back in time with this delightful compilation to explore the delights of a Victorian Christmas through the eyes of a literary icon.

Leseprobe

First published 2025

The History Press

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© Andrew Hubert von Staufer, 2025

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ISBN 978 1 83705 016 1

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Contents

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

THE PRECURSOR: WASHINGTON IRVING’SOLD CHRISTMAS

EARLY INFLUENCES ON DICKENS

A PICKWICKIAN COMMENT

SCHOOLING AND RELIGION

THE PICKWICKIAN PRECURSORS

DICKENS AND NOSTALGIA

A TERRIFYING TALE FOR CHRISTMAS

SKAITING AND MISFORTUNE

DICKENS’ OWN DOMESTIC FRONT

FOOD, GLORIOUS FOOD

THE FIRST AMERICAN TOUR

DICKENS, THE AMERICANS AND THEIR VIEW OF WINTER

DICKENS AND EDGAR ALLAN POE

EDGAR ALLAN POE’S ‘THE PURLOINED LETTER’

EDGAR ALLAN POE’S ‘THE BELLS’

AN AMERICAN SNOWSTORM

EMILY BRONTË ON SNOW

REVISITING OLD THEMES

ANOTHER THEME REVISITED: THE CHIMES: A GOBLIN STORY

THE ITALIAN CONNECTION

DICKENS AND THE AFTERLIFE

DICKENS AND THACKERAY

A SIDESWIPE AT DICKENS?

THE ROSE AND THE RING: THACKERAY’S TAKE ON THE FAIRY TALE

A LITERARY CRITICISM OFA CHRISTMAS CAROL

A CHRISTMAS CAROL: THE MOST SUCCESSFUL SELF-PUBLISHING VENTURE

ANOTHER CHRISTMAS TALE: THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH

FROM ELIZABETH GASKELL’S ‘CHRISTMAS STORMS AND SUNSHINE’ (1848)159

A SECOND AMERICAN JOURNEY: ABSENCE AT CHRISTMAS, FRUSTRATION AND EXHAUSTION

POSTSCRIPT

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Preface

Between Charles Dickens’ birth in 1812 and his death in 1870, Christmas had changed from basically a quietly observed day with food and possibly some family musical accompaniment to a commercial celebration with Christmas editions, cards, advertisements, pantomimes and even some public decorations. His contemporaries such as Thackeray often wrote tongue-in-cheek pieces on the demands of children who were rarely satisfied by their presents and, of course, inevitable family tensions.

Dickens himself was probably one of if not the first literary celebrities able to travel on a book tour courtesy of more reliable steamship and railway travel in the 1840s and 1860s. This would have been impossible in the years around Dickens’ birth when wooden sailing ships and horse-drawn land transport were the only options.

The pace of change during his adult life pioneered many aspects of our modern consumerism, advertising, communication and mass production. By 1858 the first successful transatlantic cable was laid, enabling schedules to be confirmed and itineraries agreed before Dickens even left our shores for his second US tour.

We will explore these aspects with a slight reflection on how they were the ancestors of today’s celebrations. Indeed, there was certainly more change between 1812 and 1870 than there has been since, right up to the present day.

Introduction

There is a tendency to label Charles Dickens as ‘The Man Who Invented Christmas’. Plainly he didn’t, as there are many records of both rural and religious Christmas celebrations many centuries before, so what did he invent and what was his legacy in terms of the modern reality?

Every modern writer, artist, publisher and Christmas card illustrator owes a debt of gratitude to Charles Dickens, who lobbied hard and paid lawyers to draft a copyright law. That is his legacy, and it really began with the publication and subsequent pirating of A Christmas Carol in 1843, whose success almost bankrupted the author as he tried to keep supply meeting demand.

So, dear reader, to paraphrase Dickens, we stand upon that junction in the passage of life and prosperity where the actions of the few have consequences in the telling of his story.

Dickens became a phenomenon, a celebrity and eventually something of a crusader for social justice; his influences were many and his prototype characters appeared under different guises in a series of serialisations early in his career, but it took a number of technological and social changes to create that wave of Christmas popularity that Dickens so ably harnessed, to the joy of many subsequent generations.

His first forays into the world of Christmas were buried in a very long yet humorous saga published seven years before the success of his characters Bob Cratchit, Tiny Tim, the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come, and not forgetting Ebenezer Scrooge, whose name passed into the vernacular to describe anyone who doesn’t enjoy life and celebration.

Dickens’ Christmas writings per se may be found in the weekly serialisation of The Pickwick Papers in 1836. Dickens was working as a journalist and was not credited under his own name, using the pseudonym ‘Boz’ in the series initially known as ‘Sketches by Boz’. These first examples were commissioned to support editions of plate illustrations by the artist Robert Seymour, published by Chapman and Hall. The stories quickly took on a momentum of their own and the plates themselves were soon abandoned. There is actually a little more behind the story as first told. The sad fact is that Robert Seymour shot himself in 1836. Chapman and Hall did commission other artists to fill the gap, but Dickens’ natural storyteller’s talent shone through and what were to become The Pickwick Papers took flight as volumes over several editions and revisions. Where possible I have drawn on the first edition to give historical context and show how the later Christmas stories would build on this initial and very successful foray into Christmas and its associations.

So, with not much further ado, we will delve at times into

The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, Containing a Faithful Record of the Perambulations, Perils, Travels, Adventures and Sporting Transactions of the Corresponding Members

while paying due acknowledgement to Dickens’ contemporaries, critics and the mushrooming developments that ensured the many enjoyed what was to come. We do begin, however, with an American who wrote more than a decade before Dickens, having travelled extensively in Europe.

The Precursor: Washington Irving’s Old Christmas

There tends be a great deal of skating over Washington Irving as a precursor to Dickens, while even cursory research takes one to a publication of Old Christmas some years after Irving’s death in 1859.

The truth is that Irving predates Dickens by almost a quarter of a century in terms of his travels in Britain and Europe. He spent a great number of his early years, in common with Dickens, avoiding penury and took to writing, sending manuscripts back to be published in New York.

Some of them did not refer to his European experiences but concerned stories based on old German and Dutch folk tales that found often repeated echoes in their expatriate rural communities around New York and the Hudson River.

As a friend of Walter Scott and while staying with relatives at Aston Hall owned by the Bracebridge family, he followed up an initial collection of sketches published by John Murray with the book Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists, A Medley, published in June 1822.

Among these early writings we can find elements of Old Christmas, an excerpt of which follows, based loosely on the sort of celebration that would have been well recognised throughout the Regency and the reigns of George IV and William IV, right up to the earliest years of Victoria’s reign.

CHRISTMAS

There is nothing in England that exercises a more delightful spell over my imagination than the lingerings of the holiday customs and rural games of former times. They recall the pictures my fancy used to draw in the May morning of life, when as yet I only knew the world through books, and believed it to be all that poets had painted it; and they bring with them the flavour of those honest days of yore, in which, perhaps with equal fallacy, I am apt to think the world was more home-bred, social, and joyous than at present. I regret to say that they are daily growing more and more faint, being gradually worn away by time, but still more obliterated by modern fashion. They resemble those picturesque morsels of Gothic architecture which we see crumbling in various parts of the country, partly dilapidated by the waste of ages, and partly lost in the additions and alterations of latter days. Poetry, however, clings with cherishing fondness about the rural game and holiday revel, from which it has derived so many of its themes,—as the ivy winds its rich foliage about the Gothic arch and mouldering tower, gratefully repaying their support by clasping together their tottering remains, and, as it were, embalming them in verdure.

Of all the old festivals, however, that of Christmas awakens the strongest and most heartfelt associations. There is a tone of solemn and sacred feeling that blends with our conviviality, and lifts the spirit to a state of hallowed and elevated enjoyment. The services of the church about this season are extremely tender and inspiring. They dwell on the beautiful story of the origin of our faith, and the pastoral scenes that accompanied its announcement. They gradually increase in fervour and pathos during the season of Advent, until they break forth in full jubilee on the morning that brought peace and good-will to men. I do not know a grander effect of music on the moral feelings than to hear the full choir and the pealing organ performing a Christmas anthem in a cathedral, and filling every part of the vast pile with triumphant harmony.

It is a beautiful arrangement, also derived from days of yore, that this festival, which commemorates the announcement of the religion of peace and love, has been made the season for gathering together of family connections, and drawing closer again those bands of kindred hearts which the cares and pleasures and sorrows of the world are continually operating to cast loose; of calling back the children of a family who have launched forth in life, and wandered widely asunder, once more to assemble about the paternal hearth, that rallying-place of the affections, there to grow young and loving again among the endearing mementoes of childhood.

There is something in the very season of the year that gives a charm to the festivity of Christmas. At other times we derive a great portion of our pleasures from the mere beauties of nature. Our feelings sally forth and dissipate themselves over the sunny landscape, and we ‘live abroad and everywhere.’ The song of the bird, the murmur of the stream, the breathing fragrance of spring, the soft voluptuousness of summer, the golden pomp of autumn; earth with its mantle of refreshing green, and heaven with its deep delicious blue and its cloudy magnificence, all fill us with mute but exquisite delight, and we revel in the luxury of mere sensation. But in the depth of winter, when nature lies despoiled of every charm, and wrapped in her shroud of sheeted snow, we turn for our gratifications to moral sources. The dreariness and desolation of the landscape, the short gloomy days and darksome nights, while they circumscribe our wanderings, shut in our feelings also from rambling abroad, and make us more keenly disposed for the pleasures of the social circle. Our thoughts are more concentrated; our friendly sympathies more aroused, we feel more sensibly the charm of each other’s society, and are brought more closely together by dependence on each other for enjoyment. Heart calleth unto heart; and we draw our pleasures from the deep wells of living kindness, which lie in the quiet recesses of our bosoms: and which when resorted to, furnish forth the pure element of domestic felicity.

The pitchy gloom without makes the heart dilate on entering the room filled with the glow and warmth of the evening fire. The ruddy blaze diffuses an artificial summer and sunshine through the room, and lights up each countenance into a kindlier welcome. Where does the honest face of hospitality expand into a broader and more cordial smile—where is the shy glance of love more sweetly eloquent—than by the winter fireside? and as the hollow blast of wintry wind rushes through the hall, claps the distant door, whistles about the casement, and rumbles down the chimney, what can be more grateful than that feeling of sober and sheltered security with which we look around upon the comfortable chamber and the scene of domestic hilarity?

The English, from the great prevalence of rural habits throughout every class of society, have always been fond of those festivals and holidays which agreeably interrupt the stillness of country life; and they were, in former days, particularly observant of the religious and social rites of Christmas. It is inspiring to read even the dry details which some antiquarians have given of the quaint humours, the burlesque pageants, the complete abandonment to mirth and good-fellowship with which this festival was celebrated. It seemed to throw open every door, and unlock every heart. It brought the peasant and the peer together, and blended all ranks in one warm generous flow of joy and kindness. The old halls of castles and manor-houses resounded with the harp and the Christmas carol, and their ample boards groaned under the weight of hospitality. Even the poorest cottage welcomed the festive season with green decorations of bay and holly—the cheerful fire glanced its rays through the lattice, inviting the passenger to raise the latch, and join the gossip knot huddled around the hearth, beguiling the long evening with legendary jokes and oft-told Christmas tales.

One of the least pleasing effects of modern refinement is the havoc it has made among the hearty old holiday customs. It has completely taken off the sharp touchings and spirited reliefs of these embellishments of life, and has worn down society into a more smooth and polished, but certainly a less characteristic surface. Many of the games and ceremonials of Christmas have entirely disappeared, and like the sherris sack of old Falstaff, are become matters of speculation and dispute among commentators. They flourished in times full of spirit and lustihood, when men enjoyed life roughly, but heartily and vigorously; times wild and picturesque, which have furnished poetry with its richest materials, and the drama with its most attractive variety of characters and manners. The world has become more worldly. There is more of dissipation, and less of enjoyment. Pleasure has expanded into a broader, but a shallower stream, and has forsaken many of those deep and quiet channels where it flowed sweetly through the calm bosom of domestic life. Society has acquired a more enlightened and elegant tone; but it has lost many of its strong local peculiarities, its homebred feelings, its honest fireside delights. The traditionary customs of golden-hearted antiquity, its feudal hospitalities, and lordly wassailings, have passed away with the baronial castles and stately manor-houses in which they were celebrated. They comported with the shadowy hall, the great oaken gallery, and the tapestried parlour, but are unfitted to the light showy saloons and gay drawing-rooms of the modern villa.

Shorn, however, as it is, of its ancient and festive honours, Christmas is still a period of delightful excitement in England. It is gratifying to see that home feeling completely aroused which seems to hold so powerful a place in every English bosom. The preparations making on every side for the social board that is again to unite friends and kindred; the presents of good cheer passing and repassing, those tokens of regard, and quickeners of kind feelings; the evergreens distributed about houses and churches, emblems of peace and gladness; all these have the most pleasing effect in producing fond associations, and kindling benevolent sympathies. Even the sound of the waits, rude as may be their minstrelsy, breaks upon the mid-watches of a winter night with the effect of perfect harmony. As I have been awakened by them in that still and solemn hour, ‘when deep sleep falleth upon man,’ I have listened with a hushed delight, and, connecting them with the sacred and joyous occasion, have almost fancied them into another celestial choir, announcing peace and good-will to mankind.

How delightfully the imagination, when wrought upon by these moral influences, turns everything to melody and beauty: The very crowing of the cock, who is sometimes heard in the profound repose of the country, ‘telling the night-watches to his feathery dames,’ was thought by the common people to announce the approach of this sacred festival:

‘Some say that ever ’gainst that season comesWherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,This bird of dawning singeth all night long:And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;The nights are wholesome—then no planets strike,No fairy takes, no witch hath power to charm,So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.’

Amidst the general call to happiness, the bustle of the spirits, and stir of the affections, which prevail at this period, what bosom can remain insensible? It is, indeed, the season of regenerated feeling—the season for kindling, not merely the fire of hospitality in the hall, but the genial flame of charity in the heart.

The scene of early love again rises green to memory beyond the sterile waste of years; and the idea of home, fraught with the fragrance of home-dwelling joys, reanimates the drooping spirit,—as the Arabian breeze will sometimes waft the freshness of the distant fields to the weary pilgrim of the desert.

Stranger and sojourner as I am in the land,—though for me no social hearth may blaze, no hospitable roof throw open its doors, nor the warm grasp of friendship welcome me at the threshold,—yet I feel the influence of the season beaming into my soul from the happy looks of those around me. Surely happiness is reflective, like the light of heaven; and every countenance, bright with smiles, and glowing with innocent enjoyment, is a mirror transmitting to others the rays of a supreme and ever shining benevolence. He who can turn churlishly away from contemplating the felicity of his fellow beings, and sit down darkling and repining in his loneliness when all around is joyful, may have his moments of strong excitement and selfish gratification, but he wants the genial and social sympathies which constitute the charm of a merry Christmas.

It is interesting to speculate as to how much influence Washington Irving had on Dickens before the writing of A Christmas Carol in 1843. The issue is further complicated by the fact that Irving’s Old Christmas was published after his death in 1859. We do know, however, that Irving was a prolific writer with a canon of work written in many forms, sometimes as notes and often serialised. In order to try to untangle the influences on Dickens, it is useful to take note of the following information.

Washington Irving and Charles Dickens met in New York City in 1842. The two writers began corresponding after Irving wrote a letter to Dickens to compliment his novel The Old Curiosity Shop. Dickens stayed at Irving’s home, ‘Sunnyside’, in New York on 1 February 1842. Dickens was also guest of honour at a dinner party at the Carlton House in New York City, where Irving was in attendance. Dickens gave a speech in praise of Washington Irving and there is little doubt that the two writers admired each other and remained friends. Dickens was inspired by Irving’s stories of the English Christmas and the slave trade, which he witnessed during his American tour. Dickens also wrote to Irving, saying that he had ‘worn to death’ Irving’s Sketchbook in which he had recorded many of his earlier impressions. It is certainly tempting to try to ascribe a sort of literary genealogy in working towards a thesis of ‘the first’ in any field. The reality is far more complex, often with independent ideas lying dormant, only to be activated by drawing upon others’ experiences when it comes to writing or publishing. There is a danger of doing Dickens a great disservice by claiming Irving as his foundation stone. The truth is that little really occurs in isolation and we are all compounds of many experiences, some learned alone, others seen in the context of encountered lives.

We will see, however, that in Dickens’ psyche, childhood memories that had an association with Christmas were already at work and it is probably fairest to say that these, in combination with a literary friendship with Irving, helped spur on the idea of A Christmas Carol little more than a year after Dickens met Irving.

Early Influences on Dickens

Dickens’ boyhood was marred by several house moves and the ever-looming prospect of his father’s battles with creditors. Indeed, his pre-teen experiences working in a boot black factory were formative in his early works, most notably David Copperfield.

In terms of Christmas, however, there are earlier and more cheerful influences which he records in his memoirs. Throughout his later adult years, Dickens had been working on his autobiography intermittently and sent notes to friends and publishers which informed most of his output. He first showed a draft that would be included in his initial autobiographical work My Early Times to his friend John Forster in January 1849, from which we can learn some of the earliest influences that coloured his first published writing, such as The Pickwick Papers, and of course his later Christmas books.

Most notably it was the pantomime clowns who really caught the juvenile Dickens’ attention, probably providing a temporary release from the inevitable tensions of near penury that would have been his day-to-day reality in the family home.

Pantomime itself has undergone several modifications and iterations that stretch way beyond the Italian ‘Commedia dell’Arte’ of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but quite probably going even further back than that. Nevertheless, pantomime had become a very popular event in Dickens’ time and was evolving considerably away from the more classical forms with the emergence of characters that would be recognisable today. Even so, alongside caricatures of fairy-tale characters and, more often than not, unpopular political figures, clowns featured widely, tumbling around and cracking jokes that were laced with asides and double entendres.

Principal among these was Joseph Grimaldi, who was reckoned to be ‘the’ clown throughout the late Georgian and Regency periods. Years later, the publisher Richard Bentley asked Dickens to revise and refine Thomas Egerton Wilks’ poorly written biography of Grimaldi. This had been largely copied and paraphrased from Grimaldi’s own writings. Dickens published this under the pseudonym he often used, ‘Boz’.

To Dickens’ astonishment, Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi sold a large number of copies, undoubtedly aided in no small part by George Cruikshank’s illustrations.