World's Greatest Christmas Stories

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 23 December 1933, Page 8

World's Greatest Christmas Stories

THE ROMANCE OF THEIR CRADLING (By Guy Russell, M.A.) Nearly ninety years have passed since Dickens wrote the last words of “I he Chimes,” probably the most beautiful and best-loved of his Christinas stories; and as he put down his pen «nd looked down from his study window on the waters of the Mediterranean, mirroring the blue Italian sky, the tears began to stream down his cheeks and, resting "his head on his hands, lie sobbed like a child.

Some minutes later he look up his pen again and wrote these words to his friend, John Forster: “Half-past two, afternoon. Thank God! i have just finished ‘The Chimes.’ 1 take up my pen again only to say that much, and to add that 1 have had what women call a ‘real good cry!’ ” For weeks he had been writing at high pressure “in a fever of inspiration.” He had lived with and for his ■ book; and as bis pen flew over the sheets he had laughed and cried with his characters and "generally,” as he confessed, “behaved like an idiot.” And when at last he had to say “good-bye" to them, it was as though he stood by the graveside of loved cues. “Day after day,” lie says, “L was in my bath at seven o’clock; and an hour later I was at my desk, blazing away, resolutely and l’ed-hot, for seven or eight hours at a stretch, until my hand refused to work any more. “I had almost finished the story, and rack my brains as I would and did, I simply couldn’t think of a title. Then one morning, as I sat down to my desk, the bells ot Genoa broke, as if by one consent, into a merry, almost defeaning peal, and I had it. ‘The Chimes! The Chimes!’—that was the very title I wanted, but could not find.” A month after Dickens had wiped the tears from his. eyes in Genoa, he was reading “The Chimes” to a group of friends in his study in London to sucii an accompaniment of laughter and tears as surely no book before had ever excited ; and a week later all London was talking of this wonderful Christmas story and clamouring for copies. On the day' of publication, it is said, 20,000 copies were sold; and before the year closed the hook had added £1,500 to Dickens’s bank balance. A little later the story was dramatised ; and, when the play was read to a group of actors, it is said, Maercady and Gilbert a’ Beckett "were so overcome with emotion that Mr Forster was obliged to suspend the reading until they had recovered.” .... It was under very different conditions that Dickens had written the first (“The Chimes” was the second) of bis live Christmas stories a year earlier. It was in the autumn of 1843, when lie was living with his young family in Devon-shirc-tcrrace, Regent’s Park, that A Christmas Carol, in Prose —Being a Ghost Story for Christmas,” was written, like most of Dickens’s work, at high pressure. At the time lie was working hard on 'Chuzzlewit, “a race against time”; but it was no less important that the “Carol” should make its appearance for Christmas. Thus week after week he was at his desk a dozen hours or more a day, exhausting himself and his nerves to a dangerous extent. And when lie could write no more lie would sally forth on long,*’ aimless walks through the London streets, covering a dozen or fifteen miles before, in the early hours of the morning, he sought his bed. "He never left home,” we read, “before the owls went out, and led the most solitary of lives. And, as with “The Chimes” a, year later, as iie wrote "The Carol, he laughed and wept again, and excited himself in the most extraordinary manner." “The Carol” was quick to find its way into the hearts of the reading public. It was a direct appeal of heart to heart sucii as lew, ,i any, could restrain. Copies were soid ui thousands, as fast as they could be produced; Dickens was deluged with letters from ali parts of the world, fu,ll of gratitude and admiration. The manuscript of “The Carol” has had many vicissitudes since Dickens presented it' to his old schoolfellow, Thomas Milton. Over fifty years ago it was sold for £SO to a bookseller, Air Harvey, who re-sold it to Mr George Churchill, a collector. In 1882 it changed hands again for £200; and a little later was sold for £3OO to Alr Stuart Samuel, of Kensington Palace-gardens. Ol its later history nothing definite appears to he known.. Copies of the first edition of “The Carol”—which appeared in brown cloth with eight illustrations, and was published at ss—aie now exceedingly rare and valuable. Nearly 40 years ago the copy Dickens gave to Thackeray, with the inscription : —"\V. M. fl'hackeray from Charles Dickens whom he made very happy once a long way from home,” was sold for £25 10s, at Sotheby’s auction rooms. Probably to-day its value would be expressed in hundreds of pounds. Dickens’s third Christmas story, “The Cricket on the Hearth,” appeared in 1845. At the time of writing it Dickens was busily engaged in making preparations For the starting of the “Daily Nows.” His original intention was to issue a cheap weekly periodical, to be called “Cricket,” with the motto; —“A cheerful creature that chirrups on the hearth —National History.” Pressure of work, however, prevented the novelist from carrying out bis original idea-, with the result that the reading public were again treated to another of bis famous Christmas books, known and still loved the whole world over as “The Cricket on the Hearth.” It was at Rosemont, near Lausanne, in Switzerland, that “The Battle of Life,” the fourth of the great series, was written... At this time the author was busily occupied in writing “DoinPoy and Sun.” Dickens declared that the “hum” of the busy streets, which supplied tin necessary “something” to iiis brain, made the toil of writing the story immense. It was published in the December of 1846. Some 23,000 copies sold on the first day of publication. The original manuscript consists of fifty quarto pages, crowded with corrections, while every leaf was mounted by Dickens himself. It was sold at Sotheby’s in London, in 1899, for £4OO.

“The Haunted Alan and the Ghost’s Bargain” is the title of the fifth and last Christinas story given to us by Dickcns. It first saw tile light in 1848, and was cleverly and artistically illustrated by Tenniel, Stanfield, Leech, and Prank Stone. The opening chapters were written at Broadstairs. The author conceived the idea of writing the story as early as March, 1847. It was commenced in the autumn, hut through pressure of other literary work it was not finished ii: time, for publication that year, and it was not (ill December, 1848, that it made its appearance. Kighty-I'our years have gone since Dickens wrote the last of his live Christmas stories To-dav lew read, or even kunw of, “The Battle of Life” and “Tim Haunted Man.” lhil there are millions who still read and love “The Chimes, “A Christinas Carol,” and “The Cricket On the Hearth” ; and millions of hearts still heat responsive to the heating of that heart which, though long physically stilled hv death, throbs through Ihe ages with a great and beautiful humanity.