"A Christmas Carol" Stave One (Excerpt) : Read by Rosie Holt

Award-winning actress, comedian, and satirist Rosie Holt returns to the series to read the opening of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol on the 180th anniversary of its publication today in 1843 ...

Rosie makes regular appearances on BBC Radio 4 and as a satirist her work is so powerful that half the country seem to think she’s an actual Conservative Member of Parliament. This is both hilarious and deeply worrying. Her podcast, NONCENSORED with Eshaan Akbar and Brendan Murphy, was nominated for an ARIA this year, and her show That’s Politainment  will tour in the Spring of 2024.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:12

Hi everyone. To mark the 180th birthday of the publication of A Christmas Carol Today, I'm thrilled to welcome back to the podcast the wonderful Rosie Holt, who is now going to read the opening from this ghostly little book. Rosie is an award-winning actor, comedian and satirist with regular appearances on BBC Radio 4. Her work is so powerful that half the country seem to think she's an actual Conservative member of Parliament. This is both hilarious and deeply worrying. She has over six and a half million views of her satire on Twitter. Ex. Sorry, elon, what have you done? Her podcast, nonsense it, with Esen Aqbar and Brendan Murphy, was nominated for an Aria this year and her show, that's Poletainment, will tour in the spring of 2024. Rosie is also one of the very first guests I ever interviewed on this series. So once you've heard her reading, scroll back to the fourth episode to hear her take on A Christmas Carol, which she absolutely loves, although I have a suspicion she may like the count of Monte Cristo even more. Anyway, let's settle back and hear Stave One Mali's Ghost.

Speaker 2: 1:24

Mali 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 Mali was as dead as a doornail. Mind I don't mean to say that I know of my knowledge what there is particularly dead about a doornail. I might have been inclined myself to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of iron mongery and the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it or the country is done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat emphatically that Mali was as dead as a doornail. Scrooge knew he was dead. Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for oh, I don't know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuery legity, 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.

Speaker 2: 2:37

The mention of Mali's funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Mali was dead. This must be distinctly understood or nothing wonderful can come from the story I'm 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 and a breezy spot, say St Paul's churchyard, for instance, literally to astonish his son's weak mind. Scrooge never painted out Old Mali's name there. It stood years afterwards above the warehouse door Scrooge and Mali. The firm was known as Scrooge and Mali. Sometimes people knew to the business called Scrooge Scrooge and sometimes Mali, but he answered to both names it was all the same to him.

Speaker 2: 3:29

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, for which no steel had ever struck out generous fire, secret and self-contained and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze as old features nipped, his pointed nose shriveled, his cheek stiffened, his gate made his eyes red and thin lips blue and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rhyme 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 thought at one degree at Christmas.

Speaker 2: 4:16

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. Valweather didn't know where to have him. The heaviest rain and snow and hail in sleet could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect they often came down handsomely and Scrooge never did.

Speaker 2: 4:46

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 would tug their owners into doorways and upcourts and they 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 called nuts to Scrooge. It's upon a time of all the good days in the year.

Speaker 2: 5:34

On Christmas Eve, old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather, foggy with all, 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 warn 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 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 courts 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 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 Before the clerk put on his white comforter and tried to warm himself at the candle, in which effort, not being a man of strong imagination, he failed.

Speaker 2: 7:04

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.

Speaker 2: 7:30

"'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 you have to be dismal? What reason have you to be in a rose. You're rich enough'.

Speaker 2: 7:52

Scrooge, having no better answer ready, on the spur of the moment said "'Baaah' 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, how'd upon merry Christmas. What's a Christmas time to you, but a time for paying bills without money, a time for finding yourself a year older and not an hour richer, a time for balancing your books and having every item in them through a round dozens 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.

Speaker 2: 8:41

"'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'. "'leave me alone then', said Scrooge, "'much good it may do you, much good it had ever done you'.

Speaker 2: 9:00

"'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 where 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 involuntary applauded, becoming immediately sensible of the impropriety. He poked the fire and extinguished the last frail spark forever.

Speaker 2: 10:01

"'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' "'Oh, don't be angry, uncle. Come dine with us tomorrow'. 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 the 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', grouled Scrooge, "'as if it were the only one thing in the world more ridiculous than a merry Christmas'.