What the Dickens

 

Thanks to my phone not liking (apparently) the Italian word for Vespers, I discovered a startling new Monteverdi manuscript, the Velcro della beata Vergine. Weirdly percussive.
Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

"Speak comfort to me, Jacob!"
“I have none to give,” the Ghost replied. “It comes from other regions, Ebenezer Scrooge,
and is conveyed by other ministers, to other kinds of men.”

— Chas Dickens, A Christmas Carol

I doubt very much, now, that I ever actually read Dickens’ A Christmas Carol before. I don’t have any misguided memory nagging me, “you’ve read it.” The one certain memory I do have of long ago is seeing an illustration with Scrooge quashing the Ghost of Christmas Past with his cap. Cinematically, for some few years I have been practically exclusively a fan of the 1951 production with Alastair Sim as Scrooge, and while I have since come to accept and enjoy other actors in the role, I don’t feel that Sim is in any substantial sense surpassed. In the past couple of years, I have come firmly to revel also in the film versions headed by Geo. C. Scott and Patrick Stewart. The wiseacre in me cannot help feeling that, for the latter, it was a lost opportunity, not to cast Brent Spiner as Bob Cratchit. Not surprisingly, the first thing I noticed was the absence of “favorite bits” I’ve long known in the 1951 version from the recenter productions. With, I think, admirably adroit emotional adaptability, I made immediate mental allowance for the fact that different productions would bring out different details. And then, inspired by a virtual acquaintance’s resolve to reread the Ur-text, methought, “me, too!” I was therefore pleased to find that Sim’s Scrooge addressing his sister as “Fan” was true to the original, and mildly surprised that he was “wrong” in addressing the girl who breaks off their engagement as “Alice.” It’s a good job that I didn’t allow the absence of certain scenes from 1951 to interfere with my assessment of the later productions because, as suited as they are to the story, they are liberties, though artfully designed to illustrate (mostly) Scrooge’s character, and the partnership with Marley: young Scrooge and Marley meeting when the former has left Fezziwig to work for a Mr Jorkin the aversion of scandal on the exposure of Jorkin’s embezzlement. Fan’s death-bed request of her brother that he take care of her boy, the actual death of Marley (separately, one of many things to like about the Patrick Stewart version is, it opens with Marley’s funeral) and a poignant scene in which Peter Cratchit reads from Psalm 91 at the time of Tiny Tim’s death. Against the “omission” of these narrative liberties, the later versions brought more details from the source whereof I had been ignorant. It is perhaps obvious, but I’ll go ahead and say that reading the Dickens original is an entirely rewarding activity.