For this special Christmas ‘Literature Out Loud’, we’re reading an abridged version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
This is part one, read by author Jo Nadin, check back next week for the next part!
Stave One
Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. There was no doubt whatever about that.
Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. Scrooge and he were partners for I don’t know how many years. Scrooge never painted out old Marley’s name, however. There it yet stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley.
Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, was Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, “My dear Scrooge, how are you?” No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle.
Once upon a time upon a Christmas eve old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak, biting, foggy weather; and the city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already.
The door of Scrooge’s counting-house was open, that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, in a dismal little cell beyond. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk’s fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. 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 Scrooge had of his approach.
“Bah!” said Scrooge; “humbug! If I had my will, 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! I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, apart from the veneration due to its sacred origin, 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.
“Let me hear another sound from you ” said Scrooge, “and you’ll keep your Christmas by losing your situation!
“Don’t be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us, to-morrow.”
“Why did you get married?”
“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!”
His nephew left the room without an angry word, notwithstanding. The clerk, in letting Scrooge’s nephew out, had let two portly gentlemen in.
“Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge, or Mr. Marley?” said one of the gentlemen, referring to a list.
“Mr. Marley died seven years ago, this very night.”
“At this festive season, 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, sir. What shall I put you down for?”
“Nothing! I don’t make merry myself at Christmas, and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the prisons and the workhouses, – they cost enough, – and those who are badly off must go there.”
“Many would rather die.”
“If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
At length the hour of shutting up the counting-house arrived.
“You’ll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?”
“It’s only once a year, sir.”
“A poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every twenty-fifth of December! Be here all the earlier next morning.”
Scrooge took his melancholy dinner and went home to bed. He lived in a gloomy suite of rooms which had once belonged to his deceased partner.
Now it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door of this house, except that it was very large; also, that Scrooge had as little of what is called fancy about him as any man in the city of London. And yet Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, not a knocker, but Marley’s face. As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker again. He said, “Pooh, pooh!” and closed the door with a sound like thunder.
Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked himself in; double-locked himself in, which was not his custom. Thus secured against surprise, he sat down before the very low fire to take some gruel.
As he threw his head back in the chair, his glance happened to rest upon a disused bell, that hung in the room, and communicated, for some purpose now forgotten, with a chamber in the highest story of the building. It begin to swing. Soon it rang out loudly, and so did every bell in the house. This was succeeded by a clanking noise as if some person were dragging a heavy chain over the casks in the wine-merchant’s cellar below.
Through the heavy door a spectre passed into the room before his eyes. His body was transparent; so that Scrooge, looking through his waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his coat behind.
“How now!” said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. “What do you want with me?”
“In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.”
“Can you – can you sit down?”
“I can. Why do you doubt your senses?”
“Because a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”
“Hear me! My time is nearly gone. I am here to-night to warn you that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer. You will be haunted by Three Spirits.”
“Jacob? I – I think I’d rather not.”
“Expect the first to-morrow night, when the bell tolls One.”
It walked backward from him; and at every step it took, the window raised itself a little, so that, when the apparition reached it, it was wide open.
Scrooge closed the window, and examined the door by which the Ghost had entered. It was double-locked, and the bolts were undisturbed. Scrooge tried to say, “Humbug!” but stopped at the first syllable, and fell asleep on the instant.
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