Around 1906, a young Harvard graduate student was browsing a used book store in Cambridge and came across a rare treasure: a prompter’s script used by Charles Dickens in his tour of the United States to perform readings from his work. It was an abbreviated version of A Christmas Carol. The student, a speech major, snapped it up. Shortly after, he began reading it at Christmastime for his students at the College of Wooster in Ohio, where he spent his teaching career.
Near the end of the tradition of his annual readings, in 1953 – he was by then years into emeritus – I first heard him. To say that I was charmed by the story read by such an old hand would be a great understatement. I couldn’t help but wonder who would pick up the baton when he passed it.
A couple of his family members and some young faculty did try, but something was lacking, and the tradition shortly died. Meanwhile, far away in Hanover, New Hampshire, the embers of the memory of hearing it still smoldered. They smoldered for twenty-two years. Finally in 1975, at the age of forty, I decided to give it a try. But I had no script.
I did, however, have a 33-rpm record of the old professor’s reading. So, armed with a stack of typing paper and an elderly Smith-Corona portable, I set out to create the script. I’ll tell you: It’s hard to appreciate the difficulty of typing (I’m a hunt-and-pecker) from a 33-rpm record. It does wonders for the memory. Finally I had it, and began rehearsing, using a music stand borrowed from the church.
Professor Sykes of the Dartmouth Music Department lent me his set of tails. We trucked a couple dozen folding chairs, also from the church, up to the house and set them up in the living room. My wife made a large trifle, we sent out invitations, and hoped for the best.
If success is measured in numbers, we succeeded. The second year, we had to do it two nights, after which my wife, a bit frazzled from making huge trifles, suggested we move it to the church, where it’s been for fifty years now. I’m getting a bit frazzled myself, so this anniversary year is probably my last.
Just yesterday in Montpelier, I had a chance to read the story again to an audience, at the local theater. Everything technical was taken care of perfectly – the lighting, sound, and seating – which let the brilliance of Dickens’ language shine through. I always appreciate a savvy audience, one that chuckles at bits of humor (sorry; humour), smells the roast goose, the gravy, and hot gin-and-lemons, and exudes sympathy at the plight of poor, crippled Tiny Tim. Such a group changes a performance to a sharing of an inspired piece of writing.
Many of us are facing this Christmas season with a sense of dread and uncertainty. What more, we wonder, can this administration spring on us? Will the widows and orphans (to use a cliché, but you know what I mean) really be left to their own local devices, when judgmental bureaucrats ignorant of their experiences set them adrift?
Many of the traditional churches are in the middle of the Advent season, when they prayerfully prepare for the birth of the holy child. I’ve got an Advent calendar on my kitchen countertop, a gift from my children. Each day I remove a tiny bottle of Bonne Maman preserves from one of its windows, spread it on my toast, and while I’m having the toast, try to focus meditatively upon the gifts of the season.
This is the gift and the spirit that Dickens is trying to get us to remember. His Ebenezer Scrooge is such a caricature that even the dullest of us can recognize elements of ourselves in his behavior. The ghost of Jacob Marley sets the stage: “It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow men and travel far and wide…blind man!…not to know that any kindly spirit, working in its little sphere…will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness.” The three predicted spirits arrive, affirming the lesson, till finally Scrooge, facing the inevitable end of his miserliness of both riches and spirit, wakes up a completely changed person and begins to share generously.
Somehow we have to persuade our government to share more generously with those who have little or nothing. And while we’re at it, share our own good fortune.