Introducing: Charles Dickens Ghost Stories - A Christmas Carol

0:00Hi, listeners. Today we're bringing you a preview of a brand new series from the Noiser Podcast Network. It's called Charles Dickens' Ghost Stories. Join Sir David Suchet as he performs seven of the great novelists' most spine-tingling tales. Stories of haunted houses, vengeful spirits, and dark premonitions of disaster. If you enjoy this Taster episode, search for Charles Dickens' Ghost Stories on your podcast app and hit follow for more episodes. Or head to www.noiser.com.

0:43It's Boxing Day, 1843, and at an elegant townhouse in London, a party is in full swing. Smartly dressed Victorian revellers nibble on mince pies. That's pies containing genuine minced meat as well as candied orange peel and spices. They chink glasses of hot Negus and smoking Bishop, elaborate mulled wine variants made from sweet, strong port. At one end of the cozy candle-lit living room, a group of children sit cross-legged on the floor, utterly entranced by what they're seeing. A charismatic magician is working through a well-rehearsed routine, pulling coins from behind their ears, baking a plum pudding out of raw eggs and flour in his top hat, even magicking a live guinea pig out of thin air before letting it scurry across the floor.

1:48This magician is the host of the party this evening. And it's not the first time that he's transfixed an audience, though usually it's through another kind of magic entirely. At 31 years old, he is after all the most successful writer of the era. His name is Charles Dickens. Show over, Dickens puts down his magician's props. He picks up a glass of smoking bishop and settles into an armchair. He looks around the room, surveying his guests. Apparently, there's a new way of sending festive greetings this year, in the form of Christmas cards. How novel! He takes in the men in frock coats gathered around the tall pine tree in the corner, decorated with candles.

2:44These festive furs are another relatively recent development, inspired by Queen Victoria's German husband, Albert. Dickens smiles to himself. Will these new things last, he wonders. Time will show that Christmas cards and Christmas trees are here to stay. as is the new book that Dickens himself has just published. His gaze is drawn to a copy lying on the mantelpiece. It's a ghost story. But with this message of redemption and hope, it's also a ghostly reflection of the human soul. It sold out its first print run two days ago, less than a week after it was released. It's called A Christmas Carol.

3:41It'll go on to become a festive tradition all of its own, as successive generations gather close to listen in the flickering candlelight. And it's the first in a selection of remarkable ghost stories written by Dickens that I'll be reading to you in the coming weeks. I'm David Suchet, and from the Noiser Podcast Network, this is Charles Dickens' Ghost Stories.

4:17The version of A Christmas Carol that I'll be reading today isn't quite the same as the one Dickens wrote in the winter of 1843. It's a version that he personally abridged and performed on stage to rave reviews. And so wildly successful were his live performances in Britain and America, that this almost became the true Christmas Carol, as Dickens saw it. The original and best Christmas ghost story, as the author loved to tell it. So let's begin. This is A Christmas Carol, Part One. Marley was dead to begin with. There's no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner.

5:15Scrooge signed it, and Scrooge's name was a good upon change for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a doornail. Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for, oh, I don't know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, his sole mourner. Scrooge never painted out old Marley's name, however. There it yet stood years afterwards above the warehouse door. Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge and sometimes Marley.

6:11He answered to both names. I was all the same to him. Oh, but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone was Scrooge, a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner. External heat and cold had little influence on him. No warmth could warm, no cold could chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he. No falling snow was more intent upon its purpose. No pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to have him. The heaviest rain and snow and hail and sleet could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often came down handsomely, and Scrooge never did.

7:10Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me? No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was a clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place of Scrooge. Even the blind man's dogs appeared to know him, And when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts, and then would wag their tails as though they said, Oh, no eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master. But what did Scrooge care? It was the very thing he liked.

7:57To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones call nuts to Scrooge.

8:13Once upon a time of all the good days in the year, 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, who, in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank, was copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk's fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he couldn't replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal box in his own room. and so surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted that it would be necessary for them to part.

9:10Wherefore, the clerk put on his white comforter and tried to warm himself at the candle, in which effort, not being a man of 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. Blah, said Scrooge, humbug. Christmas, a humbug, Uncle? You don't mean that, I'm sure. I do. Out upon merry Christmas. What's Christmas time to you but a time of paying bills without money? A time for finding yourself a year older and not an hour richer.

10:00A time for balancing your books and having every item in them through a round dozen months presented dead against you. 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 snake of holly through his heart. He should! Uncle! Deaf you! Keep Christmas in your own way and let me keep it in mine. Keep it, but you don't keep it. Let me leave it alone, then. Much good may it do you. Much good has it ever done you. Well, there are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say. Christmas among the rest.

10:41But I'm sure I've always thought of Christmas time when it has come round, apart from the veneration due to its sacred origin, if anything belonged to it, called me apart from that, as a good time, a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time. The only time I know of in the long calendar of the year when men and women seem, by one consent, to open their shut-up hearts freely and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow travellers to the grave and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, Uncle, though it's 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.

11:33The 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. You're quite a powerful speaker, sir, he added, turning to his nephew. I wonder you don't go into Parliament. Oh, don't be angry, uncle. Come, dine with us tomorrow. Scrooge said that he would see him. Yes, indeed he did. He went the whole length of the expression and said that he would see him in that extremity first. But why? cried Scrooge's nephew. Why? 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.

12:30Good afternoon. Uncle, but you never came to see me before that happened. Why give it a reason for not coming now? Good afternoon. I want nothing from you. I ask nothing of you. Why cannot we be friends? Good afternoon. I'm sorry with all my heart to find you so resolute. We've never had any quarrel to which I've been a party. But I have made the trial in homage to Christmas, and I'll keep my Christmas humour to the last. So, a Merry Christmas, Uncle. Good afternoon. And a happy new year. Good afternoon.

13:16His nephew left the room without an angry word notwithstanding. The clerk, in letting Scrooge's nephew out, had let two other people in. They were portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now stood with their hats off in Scrooge's office. They had books and papers in their hands and bowed to him. Scrooge and Marley's, I believe, said one of the gentlemen referring to his list. Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge or Mr. Marley? Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years. He died seven years ago, this very night. Oh, well, at this festive season of the year, 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 who suffer greatly at this present time.

14:19Many thousands are in want of common necessaries. Hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir. Are there no prisons? Plenty of prisons, but under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the unoffending multitude, a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the poor some meat and drink and means of warmth. We choose this time because it is a time of all others when want is keenly felt and abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for? Nothing. Ah, you wish to be anonymous. I wish to be left alone. Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer.

15:15I don't make memory myself at Christmas and I can't afford to make idle people memory. I help to support the prisons and the workhouses. They cost enough. And those who are badly off must go there. Well, many can't go there and many would rather die. If they would rather die, they'd better do it and decrease the surplus population.

15:49At length, the hour of shutting up the counting house arrived. With an ill will, Scrooge, dismounting from his stool, tacitly admitted the fact to the expectant clerk in the tank, who instantly snuffed his candle out and put on his hat. You'll want all day tomorrow, I suppose. If quite convenient, sir. It's not convenient and it's not fair. If I was to stop half a crowd for it, you'd think yourself might be ill-used. I'd be bound. Oh, yes, sir. And yet you don't think me ill-used when I pay a day's wages for no work? Well, it's only once a year, sir. A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every 25th of December.

16:36Yeah, but I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next morning. The clerk promised that he would, and Scrooge walked out with a growl.

16:52The office was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends of his white comforter dangling below his waist, for he boasted no grey coat, went down a slide at the end of a lane of boys, twenty times in honor of its being Christmas Eve, and then ran home as hard as he could pelt to play at Blind Man's Buff. Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern, and having read all the newspapers and beguiled the rest of the evening with his banker's book, went home to bed. He lived in chambers which had once belonged to his deceased partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms in a lowering pile of buildings up a yard.

17:46The building was old enough now and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the other rooms being all let out as offices. 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 seen it night and morning during his whole residence in that place. 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, without its undergoing any intermediate process of change, not a knocker, but Marley's face.

18:43Marley's face, with a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but it looked as Scrooge as Marley used to look, with ghostly spectacles turned up upon its ghostly forehead. As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker again. He said, And closed the door with a bang. The sound resounded through the house like thunder. Every room above and every cask in the wine merchant's cellar below appeared to have a separate peal of echoes of its own. Scrooge was not a man to be frightened by echoes. He fastened the door and walked across the hall and up the stairs.

19:39Slowly, too, trimming his candle as he went. Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for its being very dark. Well, darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it. But before he shut his heavy door, he walked through his rooms to see that all was right. Well, he had just enough recollection of the face to desire to do that. Sitting room, bedroom, lumber room, all as they should be. Nobody under the table, nobody under the sofa. A small fire in the grate, spoon and basin ready. And the little saucepan of gruel, Scrooge had a cold in his head, upon the hob. Nobody under the bed, nobody in the closet, nobody in his dressing gown, which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude against the wall.

20:32Lumber room as usual, old fire guard, old shoes, two fish baskets, its washing stand on three legs and a poker. Quite satisfied, he closed his door and locked himself in. A double locked himself in, which was not his custom. Thus, secured against surprise, he took off his cravat, put on his dressing gown and slippers and his nightcap and sat down before the very low fire to take his gruel. As he threw his head back in the chair, his glance happened to rest upon a bell, 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.

21:21It was with great astonishment and with a strange inexplicable dread that as he looked he saw this bell begin to swing. Soon it rang out loudly. And so did every bell in the house.

21:46This was succeeded by a clanking noise deep down below, as if some person were dragging a heavy chain over casks in the wine merchant's cellar. Then he heard the noise much louder on the floors below. Then coming up the stairs, then coming straight towards his door. It came on through the heavy door, and a spectre passed into the room before his eyes. And upon its coming in, the dying flame leapt up as though it cried, I know him, Marley's ghost. The same face. The very same. Marley in his pigtail, usual waistcoat, tights and boots. His body was transparent so that Scrooge observing him and looking through his waistcoat could see the two buttons on his coat behind.

22:57Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he'd never believed it until now. No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he looked the phantom through and through and saw it standing before him, though he felt the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes, and noticed the very texture of the folded kerchief bound about its head and chin, he was still incredulous. How dull, said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. What do you want with me? Much. Marley's voice, no doubt about it. Who are you? Ask me who I was. Oh, who were you then? In life, I was your partner, Jacob Marley. Can you...

23:49Can you sit down? I can. Do it then. Scrooge asked the question because he didn't know whether a ghost so transparent might find himself in the condition to take a chair, and felt that in the event of its being impossible, it might involve the necessity of an embarrassing explanation. But the ghost sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace, as if he were quite used to it. You don't believe in me? I don't. What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses? I don't know. Well, why do you doubt your senses? Because a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats.

24:33You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever. you are. Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel in his heart by any means waggish then. The truth is that he tried to be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention and keeping down his horror. But how much greater was his horror when the phantom, taking off the bandage round its head as if it were too warm to wear indoors, its lower jaw dropped down upon its breast. Oh, mercy, dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?

25:27Why do spirits walk the earth and why do they come to me? It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow men and travel far and wide. And if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. I cannot tell you all I would. A very little more is permitted to me. I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger. Anywhere. My spirit never walked beyond our counting house. Mark me, in life my spirit never roved. Beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole. and weary journeys lie before me. Seven years dead and traveling all the time?

26:19You travel fast? On the wings of the wind. Well, you might have gone over a great quantity of ground in seven years. Oh, blind man, blind man. Not to know that ages of incessant labor by immortal creatures for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunities misused. Yet I was like this man. I once was like this man.

27:17But you were always a good bad of business, Jacob, faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself. A business, cried the ghost, wringing its hands again. Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business. Charity, mercy, forbearance, benevolence were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business. Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the spectre going on at this rate, and began to quake exceedingly. Hear me. My time is nearly gone. I will, but don't be hard upon me. Don't be flowery, Jacob, pray. I'm here tonight to warn you that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate.

28:24a chance and hope of my procuring Ebenezer. Well, you were always a good friend to me, thank you. You will be haunted by three spirits. Er, is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob? I think I'd rather not. Without their visits, you cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first tomorrow night when the bell tolls one. Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next night when the last stroke of twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more. and look that for your own sake you remember what has passed between us. 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.

29:39The spectre floated out upon the bleak, dark night.

29:50Scrooge closed the window and examined the door by which the ghost had entered. It was double locked, as he had locked it with his own hands, and the bolts were undisturbed. Scrooge tried to say, humbug, but stopped at the first syllable. And being from the emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or his glimpses of the invisible world, or the dull conversation of the ghost, or the lateness of the hour, much in need of repose, he went straight to bed without undressing and fell asleep on the instant.

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