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Scrooge's Poor Debtor: "Is it good or bad" she said. "Bad," he answered. "We are quite ruined?" "No. There is hope yet, Caroline."
Charles Green
1912
9.5 x 7.5 cm., vignetted
Dickens's A Christmas Carol, The Pears' Centenary Edition of The Christmas Books, I, 118.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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"If there is any person in the town, who feels emotion caused by this man's death," said Scrooge quite agonised, "show that person to me, Spirit, I beseech you."
The Phantom spread its dark robe before him for a moment, like a wing; and withdrawing it, revealed a room by daylight, where a mother and her children were.
She was expecting some one, and with anxious eagerness; for she walked up and down the room; started at every sound; looked out from the window; glanced at the clock; tried, but in vain, to work with her needle; and could hardly bear the voices of the children in their play.
At length the long-expected knock was heard. She hurried to the door, and met her husband; a man whose face was careworn and depressed, though he was young. There was a remarkable expression in it now; a kind of serious delight of which he felt ashamed, and which he struggled to repress.
He sat down to the dinner that had been boarding for him by the fire; and when she asked him faintly what news (which was not until after a long silence), he appeared embarrassed how to answer.
"Is it good." she said, "or bad?" — to help him.
"Bad," he answered.
"We are quite ruined."
"No. There is hope yet, Caroline."
"If he relents," she said, amazed, "there is. Nothing is past hope, if such a miracle has happened."
"He is past relenting," said her husband. "He is dead."
She was a mild and patient creature if her face spoke truth; but she was thankful in her soul to hear it, and she said so, with clasped hands. She prayed forgiveness the next moment, and was sorry; but the first was the emotion of her heart. ["Stave Four: The Last of The Three Spirits," 117-118]
The revelations of the final spirit guide are dark and grimly realistic, as people whom Scrooge knew in his business persona express little genuine sympathy for him, or, as in the case of the char lady, laundress, and poor debtor are glad that he is no longer alive — but, of course, none of these overheard conversations actually involves Scrooge's name. At least the poor debtor and his wife feel embarrassed about feeling elated about Scrooge's death and the temporary reprieve it has granted them. There is no comparable scene in any previous illustrated edition. Whereas the text indicates that the debtor has eaten his dinner prior to telling his wife about Scrooge's death, the illustration suggests that the conversation occurs across the table, the lithograph presents the husband as telling his wife of the good fortune at the unusually tall doorway.
In his vignette integrated within the passage it illustrates, Green depicts the debtor as solidly middle-class by his dress, implying that the debt has been incurred for the sake of business — and, indeed, there was no limited liability at the time, so that a business debt counted as a personal debt. The reader is inclined to sympathize with the couple as their young children appear in the background. They are, as Dickens describes them: "care-worn and depressed" (117), but we do not see in their facial expressions the elation and "serious delight," but the weary look they exchange suggests that they know their relief from a dunning Scrooge is only temporary because their debt will be transferred, not remitted. In other words, another grasping miser will take Scrooge's place in their lives.
Dickens, Charles. Christmas Books. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Junior. Diamond Edition. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867.
_____. Christmas Books. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1878. Vol. XVII.
_____. Christmas Books. Illustrated by A. A. Dixon. London & Glasgow: Collins' Clear-Type Press, 1906.
_____. Christmas Books. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. VIII.
_____. A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. Illustrated by John Leech. London: Chapman and Hall, 1843.
_____. A Christmas Carol in Prose: Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1868.
_____. A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being A Ghost Story of Christmas. Illustrated by John Leech. (1843). Rpt. in Charles Dickens's Christmas Books, ed. Michael Slater. Hardmondsworth: Penguin, 1971, rpt. 1978.
____. A Christmas Carol and The Cricket on the Hearth. Illustrated by Charles Edmund Brock. London: J. M. Dent, and New York: Dutton, 1905, rpt. 1963.
_____. A Christmas Carol. Illustrated by Charles Green, R. I. London: A & F Pears, 1912.
_____. A Christmas Carol. Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. London: William Heinemann, 1915.
_____. Christmas Stories. Illustrated by E. A. Abbey. The Household Edition. 16 vols. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1876.
Created 27 August 2015
Last modified 11 March 2020