Charles Dickens. A Christmas Carol and Other Short Stories. Black, n.d.

This volume contains five shorter stories by Dickens. He called them short stories, but today we would call them novellas. Each is a little over a hundred pages.

A Christmas Carol in Prose: Being a Ghost Story of Christmas [1843]. I am reluctant to even mention this since it is a tale nearly everyone is somewhat familiar with. I had not actually read this since I was a teenager. It was a pleasure to re-read. It is extremely well composed. I really felt while reading it that there was hardly a word out of place. Our family has a tradition of some thirty years or so of watching The Muppets’ Christmas Carol, which actually follows Dickens’ script fairly closely. I think it might be worth it to read this one more frequently just to be reminded of what a good storyteller Dickens is. It follows in the tradition of Robinson Crusoe which Defoe called an allusive allegorical history. It is a story with allusions and symbols; and what a story it is!

The Chimes [1844] is subtitled A Goblin Story of Some Bells that Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year In. A Christmas Carol is divided into five chapters the author calls staves, suggesting the five staves in an octave of music. So The Chimes is divided into four quarters, each suggesting a clock that chimes every quarter hour.

This is a very clever story that may be a bit hard to follow. If it were written today, it would be called magical realism. Indeed, it would be easy to imagine Gabriel Marquez or Jorge Luis Borges writing something like this. Toby (a.k.a. Trotty) has a daughter Meg who is planning to get married on New Year’s Day.

Trotty is visited by two distinguished gentlemen, Alderman Mr. Cute and Attorney Mr. Filer. Both not only look down on him for serving tripe but also predict that Meg’s marriage will be a trap for both spouses. Echoing Jaggers in Great Expectations, they announce that Meg will grow fat and ugly, her husband will be poor, and they will have too many children—lots of boys, and everyone knows boys are trouble.

They all make their way to Sir Joseph Bowley’s who has an annual feast where he treats the poor to a nice meal and some gifts. While there is an element of charity in this, we get more of a sense of condescending noblesse oblige. Meg and her husband clearly will be unable to improve their lot at all. Today we would call Bowley, Cute, and Filer elitists. Trotty is humbled to the point of embarrassment.

From then on, it is best to say that the magic takes over. Trotty hears the chimes of a nearby church and believes they are speaking to him. He climbs the bell tower and sees things. He flies off the bell tower. Nine years after he dies, we are told he committed suicide by jumping from the tower. Or did he?

Let us just say that in spite of the condescension of “those in the know,” it seems the chimes may know more and better. The Chimes is very much a life and love affirming story in its own distinctive way.

The Cricket on the Hearth: A Fairy Tale of Home [1845] reads like a play. Dickens loved the theater and supported a local theater company. He tells us, for example, that Willkie Collins’ play The Frozen Deep inspired A Tale of Two Cities. His daughter described her father when writing that she could hear him speaking in different voices as he imagined and wrote conversations.

This “fairy tale” is nearly all dialogue. Perhaps I was tired, but I felt that a cast list at the beginning might have helped me keep the characters straight better.

Instead of three chapters, this story is divided into three chirps. The cricket is a symbol in the story. There are several subplots, but they really focus on what makes a home. We have a poor employee of a toymaker and his blind daughter. Because his daughter is blind, he tells her their house and their clothes are much finer than they really are. If anyone has seen Life is Beautiful, there is a similar effect, though only from poverty, not from imprisonment.

The toymaker is an older bachelor who actually hates children. He does not like crickets much, either. He is engaged to be married to a younger woman. It does not appear to be a love match at all, but the young lady and her father think it may be for the best.

There are two older married couples that also figure in the story. Together they help us focus on what is really important. Even blind Bertha, though she cannot see, can hear better than most people, so she can “see” things that others cannot.

To some people, the ending might seem a bit contrived. It is not for nothing that Dickens likens it to a fairy tale, but there is a sense of hope and redemption as with A Christmas Carol. This could be turned into a delightful light play or screenplay.

Dickens calls The Battle of Life [1846] a Christmas story. Like all the stories in this volume, it is set in the holiday season, though A Christmas Carol is probably the only one whose distinctiveness would be lost if set at another time of year. In The Battle of Life only the last chapter (“Part the Third”) takes place in winter near Christmas.

This has echoes of The Chimes in that a young man of poor means is planning on getting married. Our main characters, though, are two sisters Grace and Marion. They are well off daughters of a doctor. Grace is at least four years older than Marion and because their mother has died, Grace acts somewhat like Marion’s mother.

Marion is engaged to Alfred. Grace encourages the liaison, saying “there is no truer heart in all the world” than Alfred. It is clear that Grace has carried a torch for Alfred for a long time. Marion sees this, too, but Alfred is a wonderful person and a good catch for either young lady.

We learn that Marion has another suitor, one perhaps less suitable. He is more interested in her than she in him. It is complicated, yes, but over the span of six years, it all works out. It is in its own way a tender story of love.

The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain [1847] is subtitled A Fancy for Christmas Time. Of all the stories in this volume, this perhaps is the most “Dickensian.” There are upper class and lower class people, many of the same types we have in other stories. But here there is a poor student who is ill and may be dying. While the student is a college level student, in some ways his case is like Little Nell. As with some of the other stories, this could be written for any time of year, but the cold winter makes any illness a little more serious.

The question is whether the man, a teacher at the school, is truly haunted by a ghost, or simply figuratively haunted by his past. It seems that something is haunting the student as well. Things do come together for all in this story.

While A Christmas Carol really does stand out, all of these stories are affirmations of life and love, and most readers should enjoy them. Because of the nearly theatrical approach, it might be worth reading them aloud. After all, back in Dickens’ day, that is what many readers did, especially to entertain one another. Yes, maybe sometimes he can be a bit maudlin, but there is a reason that Dickens is called a romantic realist. He embraces the best of both movements and tells some stirring stories. He is still worth reading today.