Cratchit’s Carol: Part One

Author’s note: The story which follows shall be released thusly:

Part 1: VERSE THE FIRST: MY DEAR UNCLE SCROOGE. November 30

Part 2: VERSE THE SECOND: CHRISTMAS UN-MERRIED. December 6

Part 3: VERSE THE THIRD: SPIRITS! Memory’s Ghost. December 12

Part 4: SPIRITS! Continued: A Ghost Enfleshed. December 19

Part 5: SPIRITS! Continued: The Lady. December 22

Part 6: VERSES THUS ENDED, WE PROCEED TO THE CHORUS: December 24

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VERSE THE FIRST: MY DEAR UNCLE SCROOGE.

Scrooge was dead, to begin with. I was with him when he died, and there was no doubt when he was laid upon the viewing table in the parlour for his lying-out that he remained so. At the risk of sounding coarse with one so beloved to me as Uncle Scrooge, I can attest that he continued in this state of being quite bereft of life throughout the wake and into his funeral. It was, therefore, somewhat of a shock when I saw him very much alive several years later. But that portion of the story shall come at its due time.

There are a thousand others who, also having attended his funeral, would confirm his being and remaining quite dead. It was foolish of me to believe the funeral could be a modest business. We Cratchits, Martha, Peter, Belinda, Matthew, Lucy and myself, sat with our arms entwined across the back of the pew and our dear mother in the midst of us. We were a small choir of sniffs and whimpers, quite heedless to the great population of the other attendees. It was not until we stood to begin the procession that I realised that St Andrew’s was filled to the brim with mourners: gentlemen of charitable societies and tradesmen, costermongers and flower girls, men of great wealth and women of low fortune. There were folk of all fields, some I recognised and many more whom I did not, but each one had been affected in one manner or another by the kindness and generosity of one Ebenezer Scrooge.

You see, Scrooge had gained a reputation of kindness and generosity for himself in the decades preceding his death, and when he and his nephew instituted the Scrooge & Scrooge Benefaction Society, they gained some renown for their support of a great many beneficent causes throughout London. Scrooge gained such a reputation, in fact, that before he left this world, his name had come to identify any person of largesse and liberality.

“Goodness me,” one might say, “Your generosity is altogether too much! You’re a regular Scrooge!”

Or, “That man’s Scroogishness is well known in the community, and many a poor soul has benefited from his charity.”

Or perhaps, upon spying a friend’s generous tip, you might cajole your companion with, “Well that’s quite Scroogey of you, isn’t it?”

If you found yourself walking with him from one part of town to another, you would find the journey took twice as long. It seemed he knew someone on every corner, and they would give him gladsome looks and say, “My dear Scrooge! How are you?” No beggars needed implore him for a trifle, for he always bore some small gift to them before even they could ask. Even blind men’s dogs when they saw him coming on would tug at their leads so that their owners might come and meet him (though this may have had as much to do with the morsels always present in Scrooge’s pocket as it did with his friendly renown).

“Our business, Tim, is humanity,” he once told me, “and God’s own charity is our money. Mercy, forbearance, generosity and benevolence are the tools of our trade.”

The warmth within this man radiated outward from him in such a way that one might find oneself standing closer to him in a cold room that one might warm oneself by his presence. One might even be tempted to rub one’s hands together and stretch them out to warm them at Scrooge’s heart as at a hearth.

His name had become synonymous with goodness, and I was always proud to call him my dear Uncle Scrooge, though indeed we were of no relation whatsoever. My father, rest his soul, was his employee for many years, and for nearly as far back into my childhood as memory serves, Uncle Scrooge had been like a second father to me, a fact that proved immeasurably important when my natural father died during my thirteenth year.

Nearly as far back as I can recollect, I say, for it was not always so.

I can remember a time in my early childhood when his name was spoken in our house with distaste, even disgust, especially from the lips of my dear mother. My father began working for Scrooge when he was yet in the rather unchristian trade of distress-lending, you see, and he was far from a kindly employer.

But those were the years before that astonishing Christmas of 1843. Uncle Scrooge never told us precisely what transpired, what inspired the change in him, only something about how the Spirit of Christmas had visited his heart, and that between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, he had become a different man. When my father arrived for work on Boxing Day, he was greeted with a tremendous raise in wages and a promise of personal fidelity to our family. I was a sickly child and, had it not been for Uncle Scrooge’s unthwartable kindness, the affliction which had cost me my ability to skip and to run would have cost me my very life. I walk with a cane to this day, and with every tap of its wood on the cobblestone, I am thankful for the good God’s provision in the form of an old man with a hooked nose and a pure heart.

Uncle Scrooge told us stories of the days before his conversion, anecdotes mostly, laughing heartily at his former odiousness.

“Oh, Tim,” Uncle Scrooge told me, “I was small and terrible. A grasping, scraping, covetous sinner! Old before my time and decrepit of soul. I thank God in heaven I was rescued from such wretchedness.”

By Uncle Scrooge’s further kindness I was able to receive an education, and upon graduation I took up residence with Uncle Scrooge, ostensibly to assist him as his years began to encroach upon his vigour, but also to offset the financial necessities which would have come from living a single gentleman’s life in London.

I soon gained a position at the renowned Charterhouse School as an assistant schoolmaster. It was a position any young man well up in his learning should have enjoyed immensely as his first excursion into the field of institutional pedagogy, but my enthusiasm for it waned rather quickly. It was as if I had been courting a woman who I discovered, upon her acceptance of my advances, was rather a bore.

I tried for weeks to convince myself that I enjoyed my work at Charterhouse, until one evening I sat staring pensively at the fire, my cup of tea undrunk and cooling in my hand. It was our practice each evening for Uncle Scrooge and I to share tea together, and we sat this day by the old fire-place, paved all around with its quaint Dutch tiles. Each tile was illustrated with a scene from the Holy Scriptures, and my eyes settled on Jonah being swallowed up by the Great Fish.

It wasn’t long before Scrooge noticed my disquietude, set down The Daily News and addressed me.

“What is it that’s wrinkling your brow tonight, dear Tim?”

I sighed and stared. “I don’t know, Uncle. Or I do know, I suppose. I know that I don’t know why I’m not enjoying this job as I should.”

Scrooge raised an eyebrow.

“It’s a fine school!” I said. “Splendid facilities. The schoolbooks are of the newest issue. The children are well behaved. And I believe I am utterly miserable!”

Scrooge sat in silence for a long period, put his hands in his waistcoat pockets, and said at last, “If you’d allow me to, I suspect I know the cause of your dissatisfaction.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“Your heart’s too big for that place, lad,” he said. “It could be that you need something which requires more of your whole self. A place that could use both your head and your heart.”

“But it pays so well,” I said. “I’d be a fool to leave it.”

“Perhaps you would,” nodded Scrooge. “And perhaps the world is in need of more fools.”

He smiled and stood, and set his teacup on the small table between us, resting it next to the newspaper. “A letter to the editor of some interest in there today,” he remarked. With a consoling pat on my shoulder, he bid me good-night.

I pulled the paper toward me. Next to the teacup, I saw the letter, written by a London novelist of some notoriety. It was captioned ‘Crime and Education’ and read, in part, thus:

The attempt is being made in certain of the most obscure and squalid parts of the Metropolis, where rooms are opened for the gratuitous instruction of all comers, under the title of RAGGED SCHOOLS. The name implies the purpose. They who are too ragged, wretched, filthy, and forlorn, to enter any other place: who could gain admission into no charity school, and who would be driven from any church door; are invited to come in here, and find some people not depraved, willing to teach them something, and show them some sympathy, and stretch a hand out, which is not the iron hand of Law, for their correction.

The writer described conditions which were far from ideal. However, the school managed to get by with what it had and its present state was a great improvement from the days of its founding. He wrote that the children were “sellers of fruit, herbs, lucifer-matches, flints; sleepers under the dry arches of bridges; young thieves and beggars–with nothing natural to youth about them: with nothing frank, ingenuous, or pleasant in their faces; low-browed, vicious, cunning, wicked; abandoned of all help but this; speeding downward to destruction; and UNUTTERABLY IGNORANT.”

I had resolved to take up teaching there before ever I read the valediction of the letter’s author. I was enchanted. Thirty days later I had taken up my post as a Junior Master at the Field Lane Ragged School, teaching the “ragged” little souls in the younger classes. I looked out upon the room full of children on that first day with a joy that felt as warming and invigorating as any cordial. It was at that moment when a student flung mud in my face. It was the pattern of what lay ahead in more ways than I could have known, yet still I was in love, and I smiled like a fool as I wiped my face clean of my christening sludge.

To say I was in the employ of the institution as a teacher would be to suggest a considerable under-statement regarding my responsibilities, and a great over-statement regarding my income. When not instructing the children in mathematics, English, and the Scriptures, I also served as their guide, comforter, and friend. I broke up skirmishes between the boys, and, just as often, between the girls. These were no easy children to educate, but if they did not receive an education here, they would receive none at all.

When Uncle Scrooge came to visit the school during my first spring at Field Lane, there were large runlets of melting ice coursing down the windows of my classroom, warmed by an unusually radiant sun. He stood quietly at the back, tears streaming from his eyes in runlets nearly as thick as those on the windows. Those tears communicated to me all the joy Scrooge felt in seeing me finally standing in my true vocation, and I do not think I ever felt prouder.

I dismissed the children for their half-an-hour’s play, but two of them ran to embrace me as Scrooge watched with delight. They remained clinging to my sides, hiding themselves playfully in the folds of my frock coat.

Scrooge knelt to introduce himself face-to-face with the two smiling children.

“Hullo there! My name is Ebenezer. What’s yours?”

“Hugh!” said Hugh. “I’m very intelligent.”

Scrooge laughed. “I’m certain you are!”

“Iceland has hot springs!” Hugh declared. “And they’re so hot you can cook eggs in ‘em!”

“You don’t say!” marvelled Scrooge with genuine astonishment.

“I do say! For it’s true! It’s written in my geography book of learning!”

“What a great honour and rare privilege it is to meet such an intelligent man as yourself, young Hugh!”

“It is a very great honour for you!” exclaimed the very earnest and delighted Hugh.

Scrooge offered his hand for a shake, Hugh thrust forth his own, and Scrooge shook his hand with exaggerated relish unto the giggling comic effect he was hoping for.

The girl, still playfully flapping the tail of my coat, sought a handshake of her own. “I’m Beatrice and I have a book and an apple and my doll is named Felicity!”

“How wonderful to meet you, Beatrice!” Scrooge engaged her with his comic hand-shaking, and her tittering filled the room like the song of a lark.

Scrooge lifted himself with his cane to look down upon these two smiling children, and he was suddenly overcome with an awestruck gravity.

“What is it, Uncle?” I said as I patted the heads of my students.

“These children,” said Scrooge, his voice quavering with emotion, “They shall never know ignorance or want.”

“That is my most cherished hope,” said I.

From that day forward, Scrooge visited the school a great deal more often, a grandfatherly presence, as it were. When he visited, the children ran to embrace him as their own grandpapa, and he happily obliged.

In my turn I tried to be in some way for these children what Uncle Scrooge had been for me: a figure which did not replace my own father, but which stood worthily in his stead when my own had been taken too soon. If my lessons in mathematics and history did not reach them, I hoped that at least my kindness could. Scrooge had been right, of course; I needed work that employed both my heart and my head, and the Field Lane Ragged School was a worthy challenge for both.

I would remain at Field Lane for years to come, though at times it could scarcely be called employment. When donations were scarce, my position was more akin to a volunteer. But, thought I, I was unmarried, with no wife or children relying on a breadwinner, and I could make do. I had moved in with Uncle Scrooge to be of assistance, but truth be told, he was as much a help to me as I to him. Days when a darling child stamped upon my toe or kicked me in the shins were the easy ones. I could laugh at incidents like that when I recounted them to dear Uncle Scrooge.

Other days, however, the sadness of it all felt like a great sack of stones on my back. For you see, “unruly” and “unloved” are nearly the same word regarding these children. My beloved Uncle, on days when I walked through the door carrying that tremendous weight, welcomed me home with a heartening word and a warm embrace.

“My good, good Tim,” he would say as he held me in his arms. “Tell me all about it.”

We would sit by the fire, and as he listened I could feel my burden fall to the floor.

After nearly ten years at the school, I knew he was getting older, getting weaker, and I didn’t want to think about the day when he would not be there to meet me with his cheering smile. But the day was coming all the same, and at last I found myself holding his hand as he lay on his bed of sickness.

It was his favourite time of year, and the snow fell silently outside the window behind us. Carollers could be heard faintly in the streets below. His hand gripped mine tight. “You have often asked me,” he said, “what made that change in me so many Christmases ago, what turned my wretched heart away from greed and avarice.”

He clenched my hand a little tighter.

“Christmas has a Spirit, Tiny Tim,” he said, and I smiled. He hadn’t called me “Tiny Tim” in many a year. “It has a Spirit that animates its life as much as you or I have. It calls light out of darkness and hope from despair. And it even calls life out of a dead heart like mine.”

Then a strange thing happened. He looked past me to the door, and smiled as if an old friend had walked into the room. I turned my head, but no one was there.

“Ah!” he chuckled, addressing the visitor I could not see. “You! You don’t look so fearsome as when we first met! But it is you, isn’t it? Perhaps you’re not so frightening because I’ve not been so frightened of seeing you again. I dare say I’ve been looking forward to it! But I talk too much, and you offer your hand.”

He removed his hand from mine and reached out to the unseen one. His eyes shone with a radiant joy; more radiant than I had ever seen. Years ago, at fifty-five, Ebenezer Scrooge had been an old man before his time. Now on his dying day at eighty-one, he was the most youthful man I’d known. He looked at me one last time, smiled, and said, “Merry Christmas, Tim Cratchit. And God bless us. Everyone.”

He closed his eyes, and breathed his last. The clock struck midnight. It was Christmas Day.