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Marley's Ghost —
John Leech
1843
Hand-coloured steel engraving, facing p. 25 in "Stave One: Marley's Ghost."
9.9 x 8.2 cm (3 ⅞ by 3 ¼ inches), vignetted.
Dickens's A Christmas Carol, first edition (1843).
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL.] Image courtesy of Toronto bibliophile and Dickens collector Dan Callinescu.
"It's humbug still!" said Scrooge. "I won't believe it."
His colour changed, though, when, without a pause, it came on through the heavy door, and passed into the room before his eyes. Upon its coming in, the dying flame leaped up, as though it cried, "I know him! Marley's Ghost!" and fell again.
The same face: the very same. Marley in his pigtail, usual waistcoat, tights, and boots; the tassels on the latter bristling, like his pigtail, and his coat-skirts, and the hair upon his head. The chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel. His body was transparent; so that Scrooge, observing him, and looking through his waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his coat behind.
Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he had 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 marked the very texture of the folded kerchief bound about its head and chin, which wrapper he had not observed before; he was still incredulous, and fought against his senses.
"How now!" said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. "What do you want with me?"
"Much!" — Marley's voice, no doubt about it. ["Stave One: Marley's Ghost," pp. 25-26]
Leech's illustration captures the precise moment when the curmudgeon, wearing his nightgown and sitting down before his fitful fire to enjoy a bowl of gruel, encounters the ghost of his dead partner. His arrival is the initiating incident for the plot that will carry the wondering dreamer through dioramic scenes of past, present, and future. It is, moreover, the necessary adjunct to a Christmas ghost story, a supernatural visitation on a par with Shakespeare's igniting the revenge plot of Hamlet with an other-worldly mentor who is tied intimately to the protagonist through both function awnd sentiment; however, here, as Robert L. Patten notes, the nocturnal interview is "partner to partner" (79) rather than between heir to the throne and kingly father. The appearance of the ghost, first in Scrooge's door-knocker and then in his very bedroom, both initiates the story's plot and "ties that story to ghost stories" (Patten, 79). This ghost, however, has a genuine mission; he is not a mere stage property for inducing terror in the protagonist. "Marley wants to give Scrooge a chance to live. Dickens converts the ghost from a scary or retributive figure to one trying to make amends" (Patten, 79).
In concert with Dickens's revision of the figure of the ghostly visitant, Leech brilliantly converts a terrifying spectre come from Purgatory into a rather comical old man (dressed in Regency fashion, and affecting a pigtail) rattling his chains for effect. But these prominent chains and ledgers are more than comic props, for they represent how both Scrooge and Marley have been slaves to the inexorable laws of profit and loss, to the arcane rules of commerce: "good men of business," they keep records rather than "keep" Christmas. And the cartoon face in the flaring candle on the table that supports Scrooge's gruel at his elbow is comically terrified, in contrast to the phlegmatic Scrooge himself. Trying to warm his hands with a coal fire too small to give real warmth, the haunted miser seems only moderately disgruntled by the unexpected vistor — and hardly as frightened as those who receive such visitors usually are in ghost stories.
Davis, Paul. The Lives and Times of Ebenezer Scrooge. London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990.
Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol. London: Chapman and Hall, 1843.
Patten, Robert L. Chapter 6, "Marley Was Dead." Dickens, Death, and Christmas. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023. 74-126. [Review]
Created 3 March 2014
Last modified 21 May 2024