Authors and After Words

By one round estimate, Charles Dickens surely holds the record for theatrical and cinematic adaptations of his work – 180 such projects during and since his lifetime. I will never forget my experience of David Lean’s wonderful film version of Great Expectations (1946, released in USA in 1947). That first appearance in the graveyard of Finley Curry as Able Magwitch and that dark room with the cobweb covered, rat infested wedding table, cake and all, overseen by Martita Hunt as Miss Havisham was enough to shake me to my young rafters!

Earlier there was that great adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities (1935) with Ronald Coleman as Sydney Carton – which I saw much later. What a film! We adapted Tale for our Young People’s Theater Project with high school students in the Fox Valley and the only director’s note I remember giving – over and over – was “Keep it moving; keep it moving!”

The inspiration for our production of Tale came from an adaptation of The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickelby which appeared on public television. That production was a project of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and featured Roger Rees in the title role. Presented as a mini-series, it was by far the most complete adaptation of a Dickens novel (setting A Christmas Carol aside) that we are ever likely to see. This production was conceived as a means of filling a financial hole for the RSC and did just that with further performances in New York and on television.

The most frequently adapted Dickens novel, however, is A Christmas Carol. The best of them appeared in England in 1951 under the title Scrooge but was re-titled (oddly enough) A Christmas Carol when it came out in America. It featured Alastair Sim as Scrooge and his is still (in my judgment) the best characterization to date. Albert Finney is credible in the musical version, and Patrick Stewart wasn’t bad in a recent television adaptation. But, oh my, George C. Scott may have provided a stirring Patton but his Scrooge was better left unseen. Christopher Lloyd is set to play Scrooge in an all star stage production in Los Angeles this year. Locally speaking, The Milwaukee Rep is famous for its annual production of A Christmas Carol. Tom Mula created his own take on the fable, telling it from Jacob Marley’s point of view and some years ago Gerald Pelrine produced a Door County version at the Door Community Auditorium in Fish Creek. The Third Avenue Playhouse will premier its “radio version” of the perennial favorite this December.

There are plenty of other Christmas stories, even Christmas ghost stories, and by Charles Dickens, no less, but Carol remains the favorite. To what does it owe its continuing vitality? Surely there is something in this parable that goes beyond its surface sentimentality to reach deeply into our own common sense of what it means to be human. Perhaps a quick look at Dickens’ own circumstances might provide some answers.

Children and poverty are two of the most consistent themes in Dickens’ work. Their appearance in A Christmas Carol may be the most personal and subtle of all. Dickens was born in 1812 into a seemingly prosperous and idyllic childhood. And yet, by the time he was 12, the family had fallen into financial ruin when his impecunious father was sentenced to Marshalsea debtor’s prison. Just prior to that calamity, the 12-year-old had taken a job working 10 hours a day pasting labels on jars of shoe polish. For all practical purposes, he was the only member of his family at liberty and a major source of support. How lonely that must have been for him and I am convinced that the lonely boy presented in the early recollections the Ghost of Christmas Past are Dickens’ recollection of his state of mind at the time. Just so, the presentation of the family Fezziwig must project something of his own longing for a healed family later on. Finally, Scrooge’s retreat from love into the service of that “other idol” greed, referred to by his disillusioned fiancé is a description of the great “might have been” that haunted him before his own success came to pass through his writing. Later on, at the end of the visit of the Ghost of Christmas Present, two hideous children emerge from the spirit’s robes. When Scrooge asks the ghost whose they are, the spirit replies:

Finally, there is Tiny Tim. Of course, any writer knows the power of an angelic child, but Tiny Tim is more than that, he is a child wounded by poverty and without serious intervention, the doom the Spirit mentions will fall on this wise and innocent babe.

At the very heart of A Christmas Carol, there is one question so central that one might see the tale as an extended meditation on that question alone. The question is “What is the purpose of human enterprise? What is the meaning of business in the life of mankind? The answer comes early on in the words of Jacob Marley.

For Dickens, then, the meaning of business is by no means simply the generation of wealth for the sake of wealth. The meaning of business is to heal the wound of poverty and its effect on all, but especially upon the children. That insight came directly out of his own early experience of the world.