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A Christmas Carol

129 illustrations · 13 chapters

Chapter 1Christmas Eve at Scrooge and Marley's

  1. The old City of London lies sunk in thick brown fog on a dark Christmas Eve afternoon.
  2. Scrooge stands bareheaded on the step of his own door in the foggy court.
  3. Scrooge sits hunched over his ledger by one candle in the foggy counting-house
  4. Scrooge's nephew bursts in from the fog, glowing, wishing his uncle a merry Christmas
  5. Fred ends his defence of Christmas with his hat pressed to his heart
  6. Fred and Bob Cratchit exchange season's greetings across the cold counting-house
  7. Two portly, bareheaded gentlemen have just come in out of the fog.
  8. Scrooge tells two portly gentlemen that Marley died seven years ago this very night
  9. Scrooge calmly says the poor had better die and decrease the surplus population
  10. Scrooge snatches up his ruler behind the grimy window.
  11. The moment the office shuts, the timid clerk turns into a boy again.

Chapter 2Marley's Ghost Warns of Three Spirits

  1. Scrooge's gloomy old house sits at the end of a dark yard on a freezing Christmas Eve
  2. With Scrooge's key in the lock, the knocker becomes Marley's dimly glowing face
  3. Marley's Ghost walks through Scrooge's locked oak door, dragging his chain of cash-boxes
  4. Marley's Ghost unbinds the kerchief from its head, and its lower jaw drops down upon its breast.
  5. Scrooge kneels on the hearth rug with clasped hands, begging the Ghost for mercy
  6. The Ghost's glowing hands hold his chain: padlock, key, steel purse, iron-bound ledger
  7. Marley's Ghost wrings his hands above his dropped jaw and cries out that mankind was his business.
  8. Marley's ghost bends over the kneeling Scrooge and raises three glowing fingers
  9. Marley's Ghost drifts backward through the open window into the black night
  10. From his lit window, Scrooge sees a night sky full of chained, moaning phantoms
  11. A ghost chained to an iron safe weeps and reaches toward a poor woman and her infant

Chapter 3The Ghost of Christmas Past Arrives

  1. Scrooge's dark old building sits beside the church tower whose bell just struck twelve
  2. Scrooge has scrambled out of bed and rubbed the frost off the window with his dressing-gown sleeve.
  3. Scrooge lies propped on his bolster in the dark curtained bed.
  4. At the first stroke of One, a sudden white blaze fills Scrooge's dark bedroom.
  5. Half risen from his pillow, Scrooge finds the first Spirit an arm's length away
  6. The Ghost of Christmas Past stands by the bed in white light, holding a sprig of holly
  7. Scrooge's eyes widen in dread as the Spirit quietly answers that it is his past
  8. The Spirit's glowing hand gently grasps the sleeve of Scrooge's dressing-gown
  9. The Ghost of Christmas Past touches Scrooge's heart, and his fear begins to turn to awe

Chapter 4The Lonely Schoolboy and Little Fan

  1. A clear, snowy winter country with fields, a road, a cart and a little market-town
  2. The city has vanished.
  3. For the first time, the old miser's hard face gives way.
  4. Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Past walk up a snowy lane toward the red brick school
  5. The Ghost brings Scrooge into the long, bare schoolroom of his boyhood.
  6. A figure from a storybook stands outside the schoolroom window in the grey winter yard.
  7. In the schoolroom, Scrooge wishes he had given something to the boy who sang a carol
  8. Little Fan bursts into the cold schoolroom and runs toward her lonely brother
  9. Little Fan bursts into the grey, crumbling schoolroom.
  10. The Spirit reminds Scrooge that Fan's only child is the nephew he turned away
  11. Scrooge gives a guarded yes, eyes sliding away to the wheel-ruts in the snowy drive

Chapter 5Fezziwig's Ball and a Thought of the Clerk

  1. The lamplit city at Christmas dusk, with crowds, glowing shop windows and jammed coaches
  2. Scrooge cries out in delight at old Fezziwig, perched high behind his desk
  3. In Fezziwig's warehouse, old Scrooge in his nightcap points at two young apprentices
  4. Fezziwig's cleared warehouse fills with guests who come in "anyhow and everyhow".
  5. Old Fezziwig springs into the air, his calves shining like moons
  6. The ball is over and the two apprentices turn away to their beds.
  7. For a moment the old miser speaks with the heat of the young apprentice he once was.
  8. Scrooge breaks off in the middle of his warm defence of Fezziwig.
  9. After Fezziwig's ball, Scrooge admits he would like a word with his clerk

Chapter 6Belle's release and the snuffed-out light

  1. Scrooge in his prime sits on the settle beside Belle.
  2. Young Scrooge, now in his prime, sits on a plain settle beside Belle in her mourning dress.
  3. Belle speaks her last words and draws her hands back from the young man's side
  4. Belle walks away from the settle into the fading light, and young Scrooge stays seated and silent.
  5. Scrooge twists away, but the Ghost of Christmas Past holds him and turns him to the dark
  6. Scrooge, held fast by the Ghost, stands unseen by the cold window of a noisy, firelit parlour.
  7. At Belle's fireside, Scrooge thinks a daughter like hers might have called him father
  8. Unseen Scrooge bows his head as Belle's husband says he sat quite alone in the world
  9. The Spirit's calm gaze holds fragments of the lonely schoolboy, Fan and Belle
  10. Scrooge desperately raises the extinguisher-cap over the Ghost's blazing light.
  11. Scrooge presses down on the extinguisher-cap, but the Spirit's light still pours out

Chapter 7Scrooge Meets the Ghost of Christmas Present

  1. A quarter of an hour after the bell strikes One, no Spirit has come.
  2. At one o'clock, Scrooge's hand freezes on the lock as a strange voice calls his name
  3. Scrooge peeps round his bedroom door into his own sitting-room, now a blazing green grove.
  4. The Ghost of Christmas Present sits on a throne of Christmas food in Scrooge's room
  5. Scrooge obeys the command "Look upon me!" and sees the whole Spirit at once.
  6. The Ghost of Christmas Present rises on his throne and holds his torch to the holly
  7. Scrooge stops resisting.
  8. Scrooge's thin hand grips the green, fur-trimmed robe of the Ghost of Christmas Present

Chapter 8The Spirit's Torch in the Christmas Streets

  1. Christmas morning spreads out below: a grey, soot-hazed London under snow.
  2. The feast-room is gone.
  3. Christmas bells ring as churchgoers and the poor fill a snowy London street
  4. In a snowy Christmas-morning street, two jostled dinner-carriers square up to each other.
  5. In close-up, Scrooge narrows his reddened eyes and looks straight at the Spirit
  6. In the shuttered baker's doorway, the Ghost of Christmas Present rises to full height

Chapter 9Christmas Dinner at the Cratchits

  1. Quiet chimney smoke rises over the poor, snowy suburb where Scrooge's clerk lives
  2. The giant Spirit sprinkles golden drops from his torch over Bob Cratchit's door
  3. Christmas Day in the Cratchits' small whitewashed room.
  4. Tiny Tim rides into the warm room on his father's shoulder.
  5. Mrs. Cratchit proudly brings in the pudding, blazing with brandy and topped with holly
  6. Tiny Tim sits on his low stool by the fire, raising a custard-cup of punch in both hands
  7. Unseen, Scrooge asks the Spirit, for the first time, about someone else's life
  8. Tiny Tim's small crutch leans against his low stool by the firelit hearth
  9. The Ghost of Christmas Present bends under the low beam and throws Scrooge's own words back at him.
  10. Mrs. Cratchit gives a grudging toast to Scrooge, and the children sip it without joy
  11. The Spirit shakes his torch, and the Cratchits fade happily in a shower of golden drops

Chapter 10Christmas at the Ends of the Earth

  1. London at dusk on Christmas Eve, seen from high above the snowy rooftops as heavy snow falls.
  2. The giant Spirit of Christmas Present floats down a snowy London street at dusk.
  3. Scrooge and the Spirit stand on a bleak frozen moor among huge tumbled stones
  4. Scrooge and the Spirit step through a mud-and-stone wall into a miner's hut on the dark moor.
  5. The old miner's thin voice turns glad and loud as his family sings the chorus around him
  6. Scrooge clings to the hem of the Spirit's green robe as they fly off the last rocks
  7. Carried out over the ocean, Scrooge twists round to see the last rocks of land fall away
  8. On a lonely reef, two lighthouse keepers clasp hands and wish each other Merry Christmas
  9. Two lighthouse keepers sit on a reef far out at sea, with their hands clasped over a rough table.
  10. On the black open sea, the Spirit and Scrooge land on a lone ship beside the helmsman
  11. Sailors on a dark ship remember loved ones, and Scrooge begins to see how alone he is

Chapter 11The nephew's party, Ignorance and Want

  1. Over London's sleeping rooftops, one golden window glows behind crimson curtains
  2. Scrooge finds himself in his nephew's firelit sitting-room beside the smiling Spirit
  3. Fred stops laughing and says quietly that he will invite his uncle every year out of pity.
  4. Unseen by the harp, Scrooge softens as his niece plays the little air Fan once knew
  5. Fred raises his mulled wine to "Uncle Scrooge!", and the whole party toasts the absent man.
  6. The aged Spirit opens his green robe to show Scrooge two starving children at his feet
  7. The two children crawl out of the Spirit's green robe for the first time.
  8. The Spirit turns Scrooge's own words back on him, and the whole blow lands in his eyes.
  9. As the last stroke of Twelve fades, Scrooge stands alone on open ground and lifts his eyes.

Chapter 12The Unwept Dead Man and Scrooge's Own Grave

  1. A tall black shape glides across a frost-grey place toward Scrooge, sunk on one knee
  2. Old Joe smokes his pipe by his charcoal stove among heaps of rusty iron and rags
  3. In the rag shop's back parlour, Scrooge looks up with wet eyes at the silent Phantom
  4. In the stripped bedroom, the silent Phantom points at the covered head of the dead man
  5. Tiny Tim's little three-legged stool stands empty on the swept hearthstone beside a low fire.
  6. Bob Cratchit sits by the fire and his brave front gives way.
  7. Scrooge reads his own name, EBENEZER SCROOGE, on a neglected gravestone
  8. Scrooge kneels in the grey, tilted churchyard beside his own neglected grave and cries out.
  9. The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come's pointing hand trembles over Scrooge's grave
  10. Scrooge kneels in the rank grass of the churchyard and clings to the Phantom's pale hand, begging.
  11. In the grey churchyard, Scrooge kneels with his hands clasped in a last prayer.

Chapter 13Scrooge wakes reformed and makes amends

  1. Tear-stained and trembling, Scrooge hugs the post of his own four-poster bed
  2. At dawn Scrooge hugs his bed-curtain, still on its rings, weeping and laughing
  3. On Christmas morning Scrooge leans out of his window into golden sunlight and bells
  4. A boy in his Sunday best shouts up to Scrooge's window that it is Christmas Day
  5. The prize turkey reaches Scrooge's door in the bright frost.
  6. The portly gentleman loses his breath at the sum Scrooge whispers to him
  7. Scrooge stands in Fred's dining-room doorway, hat in hand, humbly asking to come in
  8. Fred pumps his uncle's hand and pulls him into the lamplit dining-room
  9. Scrooge leaps off his stool and jabs Bob Cratchit in the waistcoat
  10. Scrooge claps his startled clerk on the back and grips his arm, tearful and glowing with goodwill.
  11. London's roofs, chimneys and steeples on a clear Christmas morning