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A lonely boy was reading by a feeble fire.
Harold Copping
1893
Black-and-white lithograph
15.2 cm by 11.3 cm (6 by 4 ⅜ inches), vignetted
From A Christmas Carol (1911), facing p. 44.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
The Ghost smiled thoughtfully, and waved its hand: saying, as it did so, "Let us see another Christmas!"
Scrooge's former self grew larger at the words, and the room became a little darker and more dirty. The panels shrunk, the windows cracked; fragments of plaster fell out of the ceiling, and the naked laths were shown instead; but how all this was brought about Scrooge knew no more than you do. He only knew that it was quite correct: that everything had happened so; that there he was, alone again, when all the other boys had gone home for the jolly holidays. ["Stave Two: The First of the Three Spirits," 44]
Copping, perhaps on account of his commissions for Raphael Tuck, makes the most of any opportunity in A Christmas Carol to describe children, as for example, the street-singer outside Scrooge's counting-house and Tiny Tim. And, as William Wordsworth had postulated in the lyric "My Heart Leaps Up" (1802), "The child is the father of the man"; in this context, the miser and misanthrope of Scrooge and Marley is the product of reversals, disappointments, and rejections from childhood onwards. Although John Leech in his original program did not dwell upon Scrooge's backstory, later illustrators have considered Scrooge's being left at school over the holidays as a foundational experience.
Left: Furniss's The First of the Three Spirits (1910), featuring a psychologically introverted child and a country school in the mists of memory. Centre: Rackham's more humorous scene from Scrooge's school days, He produced a decanter of curiously light wine, and a block of curiously heavy cake (1915). Right: Sol Eytinge, Junior's The Spirit of Christmas Past (1868).
Left: Charles Green's comparable study of the young Scrooge: A lonely boy was reading near a feeble fire or The Spirit of Scrooge's Former Self (lithograph, 1912). Right: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s appreciation of the influence of loneliness and reading on the boy: The Vision of Ali Baba (1868). Right: Eytinge's The Spirit of Christmas Past (1868) shows the influence of all that childhood reading.
Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being A Ghost Story for Christmas. Illustrated by John Leech. London: Chapman & Hall, 1843.
Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol in Prose: being a ghost story for Christmas. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Junior. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1869.
Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol. Illustrated by Harold Copping. London, Paris, New, York: Raphael Tuck, 1911.
Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol. Illustrated by Charles Green, R. I. London: A & F Pears, 1912.
Created 5 October 2023