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The Last of the Spirits
Harry Furniss
1910
14.4 cm high x 9.3 cm wide, framed
Eighth and final illustration for A Christmas Carol in The Christmas Books, Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910), facing VIII, 64.
[Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
The finger pointed from the grave to him, and back again.
"No, Spirit! Oh no, no!"
The finger still was there.
"Spirit!" he cried, tight clutching at its robe, "hear me. I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I am past all hope?"
For the first time the hand appeared to shake. [Stave Four, "The Last of the Spirits," 70]
The illustration marks the end of Scrooge's dream and the beginning of his social reintegration underscores his determination to erase the writing from the stone by henceforth leading "an altered life" (70) and engaging with humanity rather than alienating himself from it. The insistent finger of The Spirit of Christmas Yet To Come (simply designated "The Phantom" by the narrator), the finger of Fate, centrally positioned, dominates the entire composition. As opposed to Leech's original "Last of the Spirits" (see below) Furniss's version is more dynamic and impressionistic, as he sharply delineates only the foregrounded grave-marker and the figures. Reversing the positions of the two figures, Furniss maintains their postures, but makes the spirit materialise or hover above rather than stand above Scrooge's grave: the skeletal tree has receded in this cinematic closeu Beneath the title, a collapsed quotation occurs, as if pointing the reader to specific elements of a passage some five pages hence: "Good Spirit, I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!" (Christmas Carol, 70).
The elements of the picture, despite Furniss's distinctive and impressionistic touches, will be familiar to most readers: the grave-marker bearing Scrooge's name (left of centre), with a gravestone and the corner of a monument in the foreground, and the London churchyard's area railing in the upper right; and, of course, the anguished Scrooge, kneeling above his own grave (left) and the implacable spirit, shrouded and unknowable, in the right-hand register. Eytinge's In The Churchyard (see below), which is also clearly derivative, lacks the drama and dynamic energy of Furniss's and the effective detailing of Leech's. The unfinished look of the illustration, with the multiple lines at the bottom of the Spirit's shroud, for example, and the staccato treatment of the background, with the merest suggestion of a denuded tree (upper left) is highly appropriate to the tentative nature of this Spirit's projections of Scrooge's future: these events may indeed be altered by his actions in the present. The overall effect here is dark and dismal, but the light plays on Scrooge's bald head and grave, highlighting his capacity for making a philosophical and spiritual change in his motivations and behaviours.
Although there is no equivalent illustration in the Household Edition sequences of E. A. Abbey (1876) and Fred Barnard (1878), surprisingly (given his tendency to avoid unpleasant subjects in this picture-book intended for a child audience) Arthur Rackham has provided a wood-engraved Headpiece for the Fourth Stave (see below) in which the mute spirit, his shroud agitated by the winds of destiny, compels his mortal companion to read the writing on the tombstone (left), on which are inscribed not merely Scrooge's name, but the bare data of his life — the unadorned facts that Scrooge as an Utilitarian man of business has so valued above the spirit of the words. Rackham and Furniss have both adopted the strategy of turning the dread figure away from the viewer, so that he or she must construct the face under the hood, whereas Leech completely enshrouds the visage of this future spirit, perhaps suggestive of the deep mourning that one encounters in such Dickens novels as Oliver Twist and Great Expectations.
Left: John Leech's "Last of the Spirits" (1843); centre: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s "In the Churchyard" (1868); right: Arthur Rackham's "Heading to Stave Four" (1915).
Cohen, Jane Rabb. Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Canton, Ohio: Ohio U. , 1980.
Davis, Paul. The Lives and Times of Ebenezer Scrooge. New Haven: Yale U. , 1990.
Dickens, Charles. The Christmas Books. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. Vol. 8.
__________. The Christmas Books. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 16 vols. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867.
__________. Christmas Books. Illustrated by E. A. Abbey. The Household Edition. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1876.
__________. Christmas Books. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1878.
__________. A Christmas Carol in Prose. Being A Ghost Story of Christmas. Illustrated by John Leech. London: Chapman and Hall, 1843.
__________. A Christmas Carol. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867.
__________. A Christmas Carol. Illustrated by Charles Edmund Brock. London: J. M. Dent, 1905.
__________. A Christmas Carol. Illustrated by Charles Green. London: A. & F. Pears, 1912.
__________. A Christmas Carol. Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. London: William Heinemann, 1915.
Guiliano, Edward, and Philip Collins, eds. The Annotated Dickens. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1986. Vol. 1.
Hearn, Michael Patrick, ed. The Annotated Christmas Carol. New York: Avenel, 1976.
Thomas, Deborah A. Chapter 4, "The Chord of the Christmas Season." Dickens and The Short Story. Philadelphia: U. Pennsylvania Press, 1982, 62-93.
Created 19 June 2013
Last modified 1 January 2020