Scrooge Through The Years

Charles John Huffam Dickens was born at a house in the Mile End Terrace, Commercial Road, Landport (Portsea) on February 7, 1812.  He was an English novelist born to parents of the lower genteel class. Dickens was the second child of eight born to John Dickens and Elizabeth Barrow.  The family lived for a time in Portsea, and London before moving to Kent where Dickens spent his childhood near the dockyard at Chatham from 1816 to 1821. It was here that many of the characters in the Pickwick Papers were born.

When young Charles Dickens' father ended his career in the Marshalsea which was a debtors prison, he ended up earning his living as a young hand at blacking warehouse, at Old Hungerford Stairs, on a salary of six shillings a week. He tied, trimmed and labelled blacking pots for over a year, and consorted with two very rough boys, Bob Fagin and P01 Green. He roomed in an attic in Little College Street, Camden Town, in the house of Mrs Roylance (Pipchin).

Dickens was a bright and talented boy who felt humiliated by the two years he spent working at the blacking warehouse. He tended to wallow in his humiliation at times in later years although that time in the streets and warehouse gave him sights, sounds, and experiences that facilitated his writing in a wonderful way.

In 1831 he became a very good reporter and realized an ambition when he  “entered the gallery” as parliamentary reporter to the True Sun. In time he worked as a reporter to the Mirror of Parliament and then to the Morning Chronicle. In spite of the tribulations Charles Dickens endured through the years, he put every experience and memory to good use with vivid characterization in his many novels. His finances had ups and downs and he and his family had to recoup their fortunes for a time in a villa on the outskirts of Genoa.  Eventually he and his family were able to return to London when the money improved.

It was during one of these periods of financial scarcity that Dickens penned A Christmas Carol at the end of 1843 to pay his debts. It proved to be a financial disappointment but Thackeray called it a national benefit.

Not only is A Christmas Carol a revealing look into the life of Ebenezer Scrooge, miser and eccentric; but it is a window into the world of the early to middle 1800s. A world that no longer exists. While this world is very charming and civil on the surface, it was a very gritty existence for the lowest class. Sickness and disease were rampant. Pollution covered the London of Dickens world and it would not have been a nice place to live.

I am a die hard fan of A Christmas Carol. I have many of these versions in my personal collection. Ebenezer Scrooge is an interesting character and it is fascinating to watch the different interpretations given by different actors. The movie is not only defined by the characterization but by the time period in which the movie was made. Every version while displaying elements of the period reflected in Dickens' book, also reveals the intellectual thought processes of the age in which the movie was made. The earliest of these movies came out in 1938 while the latest version premiered this week in 2009.

Several versions of the video have been presented so you can have a resource to compare these versions all in one place. My all time favorite is the musical with Albert Finney but the Patrick Stewart version is an enjoyable movie. The black and white movie made in 1938 directed by Edwin L. Marin, with Reginald Owen, Gene Lockhart, Kathleen Lockhart is a pleasant journey into the past and worth watching. Henry Winkler gave us an American Christmas Carol which was passable. I love Henry Winkler but was not particularly enchanted with this version of the story. Whichever version you prefer, I hope you take the time to enjoy A Christmas Carol this year. You will find yourself in the Christmas spirit!