DICKENS is owned by Hubbub and is protected by  copyright. This book was originally published in  

1843 and is now in the public domain. Artwork  by JOHN LEECH which accompanied the original  

publication has been inlcuded. PREFACE  

I HAVE endeavoured in this Ghostly little book,  to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not  

put my readers out of humour with themselves,  with each other, with the season, or with me.  

May it haunt their houses pleasantly,  and no one wish to lay it.  

Their faithful Friend and Servant, C. D. December 1843  

STAVE ONE. MARLEY’S GHOST.  

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no  doubt whatever about that. The register of his  

burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the  undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed  

it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change,  for anything he chose to put his hand to.  

Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my  

own knowledge, what there is particularly dead  about a door-nail. I might have been inclined,  

myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest  piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the  

wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile;  and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it,  

or the Country’s done for. You will  therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically,  

that Marley was as dead as a door-nail. Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did.  

How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were  partners for I don’t know how many years. Scrooge  

was his sole executor, his sole administrator,  his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee,  

his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even  Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the  

sad event, but that he was an excellent man  of business on the very day of the funeral,  

and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain. The mention of Marley’s funeral brings me back  

to the point I started from. There is no doubt  that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly  

understood, or nothing wonderful can come of  the story I am going to relate. If we were  

not perfectly convinced that Hamlet’s Father died  before the play began, there would be nothing more  

remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an  easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there  

would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly  turning out after dark in a breezy spot—say Saint  

Paul’s Churchyard for instance—literally  to astonish his son’s weak mind.  

Scrooge never painted out Old Marley’s  name. There it stood, years afterwards,  

above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. The  firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes  

people new to the business called Scrooge  Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered  

to both names. It was all the same to him. Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the  

grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching,  grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous,  

old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no  steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret,  

and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.  The cold within him froze his old features,  

nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his  cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red,  

his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in  his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head,  

and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried  his own low temperature always about with him;  

he iced his office in the dog-days; and  didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.  

External heat and cold had little influence on  Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather  

chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he,  no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose,  

no pelting rain less open to entreaty.  Foul weather didn’t know where to have  

him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail,  and sleet, could boast of the advantage over  

him in only one respect. They often “came  down” handsomely, and Scrooge never did.  

Nobody ever stopped him in the street to  say, with gladsome looks, “My dear Scrooge,  

how are you? When will you come to see me?”  No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle,  

no children asked him what it was o’clock, no  man or woman ever once in all his life inquired  

the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge.  Even the blind men’s dogs appeared to know him;  

and when they saw him coming on, would tug their  owners into doorways and up courts; and then would  

wag their tails as though they said, “No eye at  all is better than an evil eye, dark master!”  

But what did Scrooge care! It was  the very thing he liked. To edge his  

way along the crowded paths of life, warning  all human sympathy to keep its distance, was  

what the knowing ones call “nuts” to Scrooge. Once upon a time—of all the good days in the year,  

on Christmas Eve—old Scrooge sat busy in  his counting-house. It was cold, bleak,  

biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear  the people in the court outside, go wheezing up  

and down, beating their hands upon their breasts,  and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones  

to warm them. The city clocks had only just gone  three, but it was quite dark already—it had not  

been light all day—and candles were flaring  in the windows of the neighbouring offices,  

like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. The  fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole,  

and was so dense without, that although  the court was of the narrowest, the houses  

opposite were mere phantoms. To see the dingy  cloud come drooping down, obscuring everything,  

one might have thought that Nature lived  hard by, and was brewing on a large scale.  

The door of Scrooge’s counting-house was open  that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who in  

a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank, was  copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire,  

but the clerk’s fire was so very much smaller  that it looked like one coal. But he couldn’t  

replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in  his own room; and so surely as the clerk came  

in with the shovel, the master predicted that it  would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore  

the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to  warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not  

being a man of a strong imagination, he failed. “A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!” cried  

a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge’s  nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was  

the first intimation he had of his approach. “Bah!” said Scrooge, “Humbug!”  

He had so heated himself with rapid walking in  the fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge’s,  

that he was all in a glow; his face was  ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled,  

and his breath smoked again. “Christmas a humbug, uncle!” said Scrooge’s  

nephew. “You don’t mean that, I am sure?” “I do,” said Scrooge. “Merry Christmas! What  

right have you to be merry? What reason have  you to be merry? You’re poor enough.”  

“Come, then,” returned the nephew gaily. “What  right have you to be dismal? What reason have  

you to be morose? You’re rich enough.” Scrooge having no better answer ready on the  

spur of the moment, said, “Bah!” again;  and followed it up with “Humbug.”  

“Don’t be cross, uncle!” said the nephew. “What else can I be,” returned the uncle,  

“when I live in such a world of fools as this?  Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas!  

What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying  bills without money; a time for finding yourself a  

year older, but not an hour richer; a time for  balancing your books and having every item in  

’em through a round dozen of months presented  dead against you? If I could work my will,”  

said Scrooge indignantly, “every idiot who goes  about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should  

be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a  stake of holly through his heart. He should!”  

“Uncle!” pleaded the nephew. “Nephew!” returned the uncle sternly,  

“keep Christmas in your own way,  and let me keep it in mine.”  

“Keep it!” repeated Scrooge’s  nephew. “But you don’t keep it.”  

“Let me leave it alone, then,”  said Scrooge. “Much good may it  

do you! Much good it has ever done you!” “There are many things from which I might  

have derived good, by which I have not profited,  I dare say,” returned the nephew. “Christmas among  

the rest. But I am sure I have always thought  of Christmas time, when it has come round—apart  

from the veneration due to its sacred name and  origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart  

from that—as a good time; a kind, forgiving,  charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know  

of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and  women seem by one consent to open their shut-up  

hearts freely, and to think of people below  them as if they really were fellow-passengers  

to the grave, and not another race of creatures  bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle,  

though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver  in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good,  

and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!” The clerk in the Tank involuntarily applauded.  

Becoming immediately sensible of  the impropriety, he poked the fire,  

and extinguished the last frail spark for ever. “Let me hear another sound from you,” said  

Scrooge, “and you’ll keep your Christmas by losing  your situation! You’re quite a powerful speaker,  

sir,” he added, turning to his nephew. “I  wonder you don’t go into Parliament.”  

“Don’t be angry, uncle. Come!  Dine with us to-morrow.”  

Scrooge said that he would see him—yes, indeed he  did. He went the whole length of the expression,  

and said that he would see him  in that extremity first.  

“But why?” cried Scrooge’s nephew. “Why?” “Why did you get married?” said Scrooge.  

“Because I fell in love.” “Because you fell in love!”  

growled Scrooge, as if that were the only  one thing in the world more ridiculous than  

a merry Christmas. “Good afternoon!” “Nay, uncle, but you never came to see  

me before that happened. Why give it  as a reason for not coming now?”  

“Good afternoon,” said Scrooge. “I want nothing from you; I ask nothing  

of you; why cannot we be friends?” “Good afternoon,” said Scrooge.  

“I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you  so resolute. We have never had any quarrel,  

to which I have been a party. But I have  made the trial in homage to Christmas,  

and I’ll keep my Christmas humour to the  last. So A Merry Christmas, uncle!”  

“Good afternoon!” said Scrooge. “And A Happy New Year!”  

“Good afternoon!” said Scrooge. His nephew left the room without an angry word,  

notwithstanding. He stopped at the outer door to  bestow the greetings of the season on the clerk,  

who, cold as he was, was warmer than  Scrooge; for he returned them cordially.  

“There’s another fellow,” muttered Scrooge; who  overheard him: “my clerk, with fifteen shillings  

a week, and a wife and family, talking about  a merry Christmas. I’ll retire to Bedlam.”  

This lunatic, in letting Scrooge’s nephew out,  had let two other people in. They were portly  

gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now stood,  with their hats off, in Scrooge’s office.  

They had books and papers in  their hands, and bowed to him.  

“Scrooge and Marley’s, I believe,”  said one of the gentlemen,  

referring to his list. “Have I the pleasure  of addressing Mr. Scrooge, or Mr. Marley?”  

“Mr. Marley has been dead these  seven years,” Scrooge replied. “He  

died seven years ago, this very night.” “We have no doubt his liberality is well  

represented by his surviving partner,” said  the gentleman, presenting his credentials.  

It certainly was; for they had been  two kindred spirits. At the ominous  

word “liberality,” Scrooge frowned, and shook  his head, and handed the credentials back.  

“At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,”  said the gentleman, taking up a pen, “it is more  

than usually desirable that we should make some  slight provision for the Poor and destitute,  

who suffer greatly at the present time. Many  thousands are in want of common necessaries;  

hundreds of thousands are in  want of common comforts, sir.”  

“Are there no prisons?” asked Scrooge. “Plenty of prisons,” said the gentleman,  

laying down the pen again. “And the Union workhouses?” demanded  

Scrooge. “Are they still in operation?” “They are. Still,” returned the gentleman,  

“I wish I could say they were not.” “The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full  

vigour, then?” said Scrooge. “Both very busy, sir.”  

“Oh! I was afraid, from what you said  at first, that something had occurred  

to stop them in their useful course,” said  Scrooge. “I’m very glad to hear it.”  

“Under the impression that they scarcely  furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to  

the multitude,” returned the gentleman, “a few  of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy  

the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth.  We choose this time, because it is a time, of all  

others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance  rejoices. What shall I put you down for?”  

“Nothing!” Scrooge replied. “You wish to be anonymous?”  

“I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge.  “Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen,  

that is my answer. I don’t make merry myself at  Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people  

merry. I help to support the establishments I  have mentioned—they cost enough; and those who  

are badly off must go there.” “Many can’t go there;  

and many would rather die.” “If they would rather die,” said Scrooge,  

“they had better do it, and decrease the  surplus population. Besides—excuse me—I  

don’t know that.” “But you might know  

it,” observed the gentleman. “It’s not my business,” Scrooge  

returned. “It’s enough for a man to  understand his own business, and not  

to interfere with other people’s. Mine occupies  me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!”  

Seeing clearly that it would be useless to  pursue their point, the gentlemen withdrew.  

Scrooge resumed his labours with an  improved opinion of himself, and in a  

more facetious temper than was usual with him. Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that  

people ran about with flaring links, proffering  their services to go before horses in carriages,  

and conduct them on their way. The ancient  tower of a church, whose gruff old bell was  

always peeping slily down at Scrooge out of a  Gothic window in the wall, became invisible,  

and struck the hours and quarters in the clouds,  with tremulous vibrations afterwards as if its  

teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there.  The cold became intense. In the main street,