Scrooge and the Turkey, by M. F. or E. M. Taylor

Scrooge and the Turkey

M. F. or E. M. Taylor

Photographic reproduction of line drawing

Approximately 3.5 inches wide x 3.5 inches high

From Dickens' Dream Children, p. 256, at the head of Mary Angela Dickens's sixteenth chapter, "Tiny Tim"; realizing the scene in the street between Scrooge and the poulterer's man on Christmas morning, after the visitation of the three spirits.

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 in a web document or cite it in one in a print medium.]

"Why, I am as light as a feather, and as happy as an angel, and as merry as a schoolboy," he said to himself. "A merry Christmas to every-body! A happy New Year to all the world." And a few minutes later he was ordering a turkey to be taken round to Tiny Tim's house, a turkey so large that the man who took it had to go in a cab.

This does not seem to be the "prize turkey"of Dickens's original A Christmas Carol since it is not nearly as large as Tiny Tim, and therefore dispatching the delivery-man in a cab would seem to be an unnecessary expense of the type the former Ebenezer Scrooge, cautious and self-disciplined man of business, would have eschewed! Scrooge, in expensive silk dressing-gown, hands the poulterer the delivery slip rather than cash, and no evidence of frost and snow is evident in the background. Finally, Mary Angela Dickens reshapes her grandfather's text so that Tiny Tim rather than his father Bob is specified as the recipient of Scrooge's benevolence.

Bibliography

Dickens, Mary Angela [Charles Dickens' grand-daughter]. Dickens' Dream Children. Illustrated by Harold Copping, E. M. Taylor, and M. F. Taylor. London, Paris New, York: Raphael Tuck & Sons, Ltd., 1926.

Last modified 17 September 2010