THE HAUNTED MAN AND THE GHOST'S BARGAIN 📚 : with Lydia Craig

Today’s episode is on Dickens’ final Christmas Book The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain. A deeply powerful story, where the chemist, Stephen Redlaw is offered the chance to forget all his painful memories by a Phantom who is a ghastly copy of himself drawn from the shadows in his study. Redlaw accepts the ghost’s bargain … but then faces a desperate struggle to have this spell lifted again, when to his horror he discovers that his new gift has a 'King Midas' quality of infecting everyone he meets (or nearly everyone) with the same curse of forgetting …   

Light in the story comes in the form of Millie, one of Dickens’ good little women and a ministering angel to the people around her. Millie, her sparky husband William Swidger and her ancient father in law Philip, quietly try to help Stephen: turning up the lamps or decorating his study with that powerful wintry emblem, holly …

Dominic is joined by the inimitable Dr Lydia Craig, Lecturer in English at the University of Eastern Illinois. Lydia co-authored The Verse of Charles Dickens for Edinburgh University Press and her specialities include Nineteenth Century Race and Gender and The English Novel.She is both Associate editor of The Dickensian and The Charles Dickens Letters project, Co-editor of Dickens Search and Treasurer of The Dickens Society …

This episode was first broadcast in 13th December 2024

Transcript

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SPEAKER_03 0:17

Imagine a bright and brilliant chemist who takes the stage to deliver thrilling lectures to his students. This teacher on whose lips and hands a crowd of aspiring ears and eyes are hung. And now imagine a heavy curtain in a wall that separates this bright theatre from the dark lodgings, where the chemist retires each day to sit by the fire among his drugs, instruments, and books, moving his silent mouth as in speech, but silent as the dead. While all around him the quaint objects by firelight cast monstrous shadows on the walls as he listens to some old echoes in his mind that carry him to a bygone place and time. This is the setting of Dickens's final Christmas book, The Haunted Man and the Ghost Bargain, written in that turbulent year of 1848. It's a deeply powerful story where the chemist Stephen Redlaw is offered a chance to forget all his painful memories by a phantom who is a ghastly copy of himself drawn from the shadows in his study. Redlaw accepts the ghost bargain, but then faces a desperate struggle to have this spell lifted again, when to his horror he discovers that his new gift has a King Midas quality of infecting everyone he meets, or nearly everyone, with the same curse of forgetting. Light in the story comes in the form of Millie, one of Dickens's good little women, and a ministering angel to the people around her. Millie, her sparky husband William Swidger, and her ancient father-in-law Philip, quietly try to help Stephen, turning up the lamps and decorating his study with that powerful wintry emblem. Holly. Here, to light a path through this extraordinary book, is the inimitable Dr. Lydia Craig, lecturer in English at the University of Eastern Illinois. Lydia co-authored the verse of Charles Dickens for Edinburgh University Press, and she specializes in 19th century race and gender and the English novel. She is both associate editor of the Dickensian and the Charles Dickens Letters Project, co-editor of Dickens Search, and treasurer of the Dickens Society. Lydia, hello. Welcome to Charles Dickens A Brain on Fire. It's fantastic to have you here to talk to us about the Haunted Man and the Ghost Bargain.

SPEAKER_00 2:51

Thank you for having me. It's actually one of my favorite Christmas books by Dickens, and I feel like people don't really talk about it as much, at least until recent years. So very happy to be here.

SPEAKER_03 3:01

So where do we start with this one? You say it's one of your favorites. Why is that? What is it about it that's so special to you?

SPEAKER_00 3:08

Well, it's one of the most fascinating psychological short stories I think that Dickens ever wrote.

SPEAKER_03 3:14

Yeah, you're using the term psychological. I mean, that's exactly it, isn't it? I I often read it like everything's happening in Red Law's head almost. I mean, Dickens at the end, I think, even suggests that some people say this was just Red Law sitting by the fire and thinking up all this stuff when we get to the end. Right. But the darkness of his study and and characters creeping in and coming in and going out again. Yeah, it's so powerful. And um, there are some fantastic, fantastic poetic prose sections to it. He's right back on form, isn't he? Because I think the one before it, The Battle of Life, is considered a little bit of an outlier, not a favorite amongst many people.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

One thing that was interesting to me is that Dickens actually came up with this idea for this last Christmas book when he was writing The Battle of Life. So there was this struggle, I think, because I personally think that he wanted to write this book instead of The Battle of Life, but it was too far gone. He had deadlines. And so he actually wrote to Forster in late summer of 1846, and he said, I have been dimly conceiving a very ghostly and wild idea, which I suppose must now be reserved for the next Christmas book. So then he came back to it in September 1847, but he was still writing Dombey and Son. And so then he put this off until October 1848 and then finished it at Brighton on the 30th of November. And then it was published on the 19th of December 1848. So that's almost two years of thinking about this book and just sort of mulling it over in his mind. So I think he had more preparation time for this one than maybe for any of the other ones.

SPEAKER_03 4:51

Do you know if he put pen to paper at all in 1847, or did he have to really hold back and really start in 1848 on it?

SPEAKER_00 4:59

So we know that he sent a few pages to Forster. And so this was in September 1847, so about a year after he first had the idea. He wrote a few pages and he sent them to Forster. We don't know, though, if he discarded these and started over. Um, from some of the things he wrote, it seems like he just started from the beginning again. But this would make it his second draft that he he did for the story. So I think he had time to sort of shape it, think about it. There was also the fact that his sister had just died when he went back to it in 1848. And he worked that into the plot. There's a scene where Redlaw talks about his sister and her death. And so that was something that I think Dickens was able to bring into the grief that he's experiencing, those negative feelings. It's what he's going through at the time. He's only a few months out from losing his closest sibling.

SPEAKER_03 5:52

Yeah, that is amazing because I think in that moment, Red Law, this is right at the end, isn't it? Red Law's talking about his long-lost sister, the sister that has long lost Red Law over many, many years, and it's very raw and recent for Dickens. And 1848 also is a bit of a seismic year for the world, isn't it? It's a bit of a brutal time of serious social upheaval and revolution across Europe as well. So I think that probably plays into the story a little bit as well.

SPEAKER_00 6:19

One thing that fascinates me about this book is that it seems to recycle some characters from a Christmas Carol. One of them being, you remember the scene with the ghost of Christmas present, where the two children, ignorance and want, are at the foot of the ghost of Christmas present. That's the scene, you know, that when I was a child, I was cowering as I watched the George C. Scott version, you know, these two little.

SPEAKER_03 6:39

Yeah, the same thing happened to me. That George C. Scott version is absolutely terrifying in that moment, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 6:45

My mother was a theater actress. And so she would actually act it out for me sometimes where she would be the ghost of Christmas present, just you know, pointing to the children at the feet. And it was just this horrifying moment. So this actually came from Carlisle, uh, Carlisle's French Revolution. He describes these two figures as children. So Dickens took that and made it, I think, more memorable in a Christmas carol. Now in The Haunted Man, we have the figure of that street urchin, this child that is bestial and wolfish and can't even understand love. You know, you try to put the child in the house and feed them, and this child is unable to even comprehend that kind of care. And so I think this is Dickens saying to his audience, I told you.

SPEAKER_03 7:32

A bundle of tatters held together by a hand. In size and form, almost an infant's, but in its greedy, desperate little clutch, a bad old man's. A face rounded and smooth by some half dozen years, but pinched and twisted by the experiences of a life. Bright eyes, but not youthful, naked feet, beautiful in their childish delicacy, ugly in the blood and dirt that cracked upon them. A baby savage, a young monster, a child who had never been a child, a creature who might live to take the outward form of man, but who within would live and perish a mere beast.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

We're in 1848. Bam, and it's everywhere. Society is collapsing. It's because we failed to learn this Christmas message that if you don't take care of society, if you don't take care of your poor, eventually this comes back and will haunt you as well.

SPEAKER_03 8:33

Yeah. It's interesting you mentioned, you know, the ignorance and want characters because in that child, who obviously is actually probably a prototype for Joe the crossing sweeper as well, uh in in Bleak House coming up, is the Dickens uses the words pinched and twisted at one point to describe him, which are exactly the same words, as you know, to describe ignorance and want in a Christmas carol. So, yes, there are these echoes around the chamber in this one of a Christmas carol all over the place. I can really, I can really see that. Do you think just at this juncture, because obviously a lot of the listeners are are very eminent Dickens scholars, and so they know the haunted man, but there are quite a few out there that might never have looked at it or read it. How and good luck, how on earth would you try to summarize the story in some way and introduce some of the key characters for us?

SPEAKER_00 9:24

So what this begins with is a scene that in a way reminds me of Edinburgh rather than London, but it sort of has this ambiance where um you see the dark, shadowy side of a city at night as things are winding down. But it becomes very sinister. Night is falling, and with that the shadows, which are the ghosts of people's regrets and their fears, their longings.

SPEAKER_03 9:51

You should have seen him in his dwelling about twilight in the dead winter time, when the wind was blowing shrill and shrewd, with the going down of the blurred sun. When it was just so dark as that the form of things were indistinct and big, but not wholly lost, when sitters by the fire began to see wild faces and figures, mountains and abysses, ambuscades and armies in the coals. When people in the streets bent down their heads and ran before the weather, when those who were obliged to meet it were stopped at angry corners, stung by wandering snowflakes alighting on the lashes of their eyes, which fell too sparingly and were blown away too quickly to leave a trace upon the frozen ground.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

Dickens actually, we know, thought about making us a revenge story. He wrote revenge as one of the ideas, and then he crossed through it and wrote no on the side. So people furious about where they are in life right now. Instead of having people do revenge, he has them instead just succumb to depression. So we have this entire city, but we focus on Red Law. He is a chemist, he teaches at the school. Um, boys are his students, and he has a servant, William Swidger, who is also more of a friend in a way. It seems like he's one of the only people who talks to him in a familiar way, even though it's mostly a monologue. And he eventually, there are a few scenes where he meets Swidger's extended family. So this is his father, who is old and 87, and then his wife, Millie, who is actually referred to as Mrs. William sometimes, even though her name is technically Mrs. Swidger. So she is the cook and also the um confidant of most of the young students at this school. And she is the force for good in this book, whereas Red Law is eventually a force of almost pervasive evil. He just sort of sucks the life out of all the people around him. Um but the short version of this is that his thoughts as Red Law sitting there pondering over his uh difficult life become personified as this doppelganger character, who in this very famous illustration stands behind him and they're both very sharp, angular features, just staring at the fire.

SPEAKER_03 13:01

As he leaned his arm upon the elbow of his chair ruminating before the fire, it leaned upon the chair back close above him with its appalling copy of his face, looking where his face looked, and bearing the expression his face bore.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

So this character, whether it's real or not, this evil other, gives Redlaw the ability to have people forget the worst that has happened to them, the negative things in life. And I think there's an expectation from Redlaw, at least, when he accepts this gift, that he will be helping them by taking away this pain and the sorrow that they've experienced. But what he eventually discovers through several scenes is that whenever he is able to, you know, touch somebody or be in their presence, the contagion of that gift spreads to them. And then they become cruel and vicious because they have not been softened by the memory of their grief and their pain. Um, eventually, of course, he realizes that this is not a gift, this is a curse, and tries to undo it before it infects Millie, who is the story's better angel.

SPEAKER_03 14:07

Yeah, well done. It's a tricky one to it's great. So, yes, it begins in Red Law's study, doesn't it? In Jerusalem Gardens, where he teaches, and he's depressed. And and you were saying about Swidger, his serving man Swidger talking at him incessantly, and he's replying in monosyllables. And I I wrote down, I think the his responses. I think he only comes up to about ten syllables sentences uh when old Philip brings in the holly, and there's the key magical ingredient. The chemist pushed his plate away and, rising from the table, walked across the room to where the old man stood, looking at a little sprig of holly in his hand. It recalls the time when many of those years were old and new, then, he said, observing him attentively and touching him on the shoulder. Does it? Oh, many, many, said Philip, half awaking from his reverie. I'm eighty-seven. Merry and happy, was it? asked the chemist in a low voice. Merry and happy, old man. Maybe as high as that? No higher, said the old man, holding out his hand a little way above the level of his knee and looking retrospectively at his questioner.

SPEAKER_01 15:29

When I first remember him Cold, sunshiny day it was, out a walking when someone it was my mother, as sure as you stand there, though I don't know what her blessed face was like, for she took ill and died that Christmas time told me they were food for birds. The pretty little fellow thought that's me, you understand. That birds' eyes were so bright, perhaps, because the berries that they lived on in the winter were so bright. I recollect that. And I'm eighty-seven.

SPEAKER_00 16:07

The holly represents life, I think, or memory. There's a phrase that keeps being repeated over and over, especially ironically, because old Mr. William is obviously losing his faculties somewhat, but he'll say something like Lord keep my memory green. And so it's this a desire maybe for a legacy after your life is over.

SPEAKER_03 16:30

And and it's also that Lord keep my memory green is like the counter spell to the forgetfulness spell that plagues the characters. Yeah. So the fact that if you can remember and actually the green again, that green makes me think of Bob Cratchit talking about how green the place is where Tiny Tim is buried as a way of remembrance as well. And when old Philip gets infected, I think, with the loss, he tries to say something and then he says something about how it's broken off what he wanted to say. So it's like a twig or a leaf on a branch that's snapped off and you're left with the trunk. It's so profound. With this book, you go deeper and deeper into the psychology and you find these things every time you look at it, I think. Um it is a very hopeful, cheerful book at the end, isn't it? The journey you go through is quite hard work. It's not fed to you with sugar.

SPEAKER_00 17:25

Well, I think speaking to that idea of memory, it's such a double-edged sword. There are wonderful things in life that you can remember, experiences that keep people able to continue despite what's happening in their circumstances, but it also can be a torture, which I think is what Red Law is experiencing at the beginning of the book.

SPEAKER_03 17:45

Everybody said he looked like a haunted man. The extent of my present claim for everybody is that they were so far right. He did. Who could have seen his hollow cheek, his sunken, brilliant eye, his black-attired figure, indefinably grim, although well-knit and well-proportioned, his grizzled hair hanging like tangled seaweed about his face, as if he had been through his whole life a lonely mark for the chafing and beating of the great deep of humanity, but might have said he looked like a haunted man.

SPEAKER_00 18:25

I think with the the switchers, you see a decision from the beginning to be cheerful. In particular, Millie has lost a child, and that seems to have been an idea that Dickens came to rather late. That's what Ruth Glancy and a few other scholars think about this. He invented this sort of halfway through the draft, and so it becomes a reason for why she is mothering so many other people, but she herself doesn't seem to have this legacy, you know, this is an era where to be a mother is your purpose as a woman in many ways, as well as a housekeeper and a nurturer, but you're expected to have children. And um, Mr. Swidger seems to have rationalized this, you know, we're happy as we are, and that's a decision to make the most of a bad situation, just like she is able to sort of devote her energies to helping young people, children. They've made peace with it. And so to have Red Law come in there and disturb that, I think is just a piece of impudence. You know, he doesn't even know what they've gone through to reach that kind of peace. But he thinks he knows better because of his own pain, which I think is a very interesting psychological moment in the book.

SPEAKER_03 19:36

Yeah. And and you think he learns that lesson later on, though, because he becomes almost Millie's disciple, doesn't he? I think it even describes his stature essentially shrinking next to her. Little Millie, whose nickname is Little Mouse or something. Very Victorian, isn't it? Of course.

SPEAKER_04 19:51

But but Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 19:53

But but uh Redlaw learns, despite all his learning, he he really learns from Millie there. There's something also that I was very struck by, which is the nature of this Midas touch that Redlaw gets with this curse of people forgetting their painful memories, is the substance of it, and I only got it reading it again, preparing for this talk with you right now, Lydia, is that the substance of this curse isn't like a fairy godmother waving a wand and then suddenly you've turned into a tree or something. It's not instantaneous and it's not complete. That actually, even under the curse, the contagion, it has the substance of a fog. It's sort of referred to as a kind of fog that passes and goes, and then there's this internal struggle of light trying to break through that cloud in your vision of memory. Somewhere in there, there's a question, but I wondered if we could try and sort of unpick that a little bit because that is fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 20:51

Absolutely. I think it's about emotional contagion. You know, as an actor, you're probably aware that you can tell if something's off with a member of the cast or, you know, with yourself. Since sometimes that thing you can't put your finger on changes the entire mood of the production and things start dragging or people start questioning what they're involved in. Um, and so I think Dickens was playing with some of this knowledge that if you are emotionally attuned to someone and you can tell that they're off in some way or that they're depressed, that eventually can become contagious. And it doesn't happen all at once, it happens by degrees. And this is what I think happens in the story. So even by Fred Low being in the room with someone, being close to them in proximity, they're going to get infected. It's really horrific.

SPEAKER_03 21:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

But brilliant.

SPEAKER_03 21:42

And I suppose there are degrees of infection depending on his closeness to you, whether he's physically touched you or whether you've just seen I think because there's the characters of the Tetepes, which we haven't talked about yet, but Mrs. Tetepe, I think she doesn't even get that close to him, does she? To be thrown out of sorts for a little bit. I think she just sees him looking at her or something, and that sends her off. It sends her into a little bit of a spiral and she comes back out of it and then goes back into it again when he returns. She pointed to a pale man in a black cloak who had come into the room.

SPEAKER_01 22:14

Look at that man. Look there What does he want?

SPEAKER_03 22:19

My dear, returned her husband. I'll ask him if you'll let me go.

SPEAKER_01 22:24

What's the matter? How you shake? I saw him in the street when I was out just now. He looked at me and stood near me. I'm afraid of him. Afraid of him? Why? I don't know why.

SPEAKER_03 22:38

I stop, husband for he was going towards the stranger. She had one hand pressed upon her forehead and one upon her breast, and there was a peculiar fluttering all over her, and a hurried, unsteady motion of her eyes, as if she had lost something. Are you ill, my dear? What is it that is going from me again? She muttered in a low voice.

SPEAKER_01 23:04

What is this that is going away?

SPEAKER_03 23:08

Then she abruptly answered, Ill? No, I am quite well. And stood looking vacantly at the floor. That idea that even when Redlaw himself, who has the superdose of it, it's not instantaneous, that he still has regret. He has regret at what he cannot remember to be regretful of, strangely. Which is so hard to grasp, isn't it? It's so hard to sort of understand, and it takes a couple of reads to try and take that in.

SPEAKER_00 23:37

It's fascinating, I think, this idea of grievance. I think that by now, over years presumably, of brooding over this kind of situation, you know, having this kind of evil familiar who's constantly whispering discontent into his ears, this has become Red Law's personality. He is a very depressed person who perhaps doesn't even understand the full extent of why he is upset and depressed. And in the case of Mrs. Tetterby, she has so many children. And I think one of the saddest characters is actually poor Johnny, because he's always having to mind the baby, and he's a child.

SPEAKER_03 24:17

Whenever Johnny wanted to go out, Moloch was asleep and must be watched. Whenever Johnny wanted to stay at home, Moloch was awake and must be taken out. Yet Johnny was verily persuaded that it was a faultless baby without its peer in the realm of England, and was quite content to catch meek glimpses of things in general from behind its skirts, or over its limp flapping bonnet, and to go staggering about with it like a very little porter with a very large parcel, which was not directed to anybody, and could never be delivered anywhere.

SPEAKER_00 24:57

I think he pinches or slaps the baby at one point because it won't stop teething and crying and they're not in a great situation, and the effort that it might take them to appear pleasant or kind to each other might be greater than for some other people who don't have as many cares. So I do think it's interesting that you know only a slight touch or a slight influence can still have serious consequences.

SPEAKER_03 25:21

Yeah. And the tetabies themselves, I mean, as I was reading it, and I don't know if this is fair to say or not, but they're almost like a a more psychologically complex version of the Cratchits in many ways. Yeah. They have way more light and shade to them, don't they? And like you said, when they turn on each other, it's it's horrible. And they obviously come back out of it again. But yes, poor Johnny crushing himself under the weight of the baby that's that's has double tooth, as Dickens says at one point, and uses a nutmeg grater at the end to help with its teething.

SPEAKER_04 25:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 25:52

Yeah. If you had to explain the tetabies a little bit to us, what would you say about them? What what springs out first of all?

SPEAKER_00 25:59

So they have a shop and they sell literature. So I think there's some kind of sly allusion, perhaps, to Dickens. He's looking at this family with a lot of children who are in the literature trade, though a bit below where he is. And, you know, there might be some ironic displacement of his own feelings, having so many children to support and you know always having to worry about bills and such. So there is that. But you know, obviously they're very poor compared to Dickens even. So there's a description of this shop which not only has literature but all kinds of things in it, just like Mr. Venus's shop in our mutual friend.

SPEAKER_03 26:37

Tetterby's was the corner shop in Jerusalem buildings. There was a good show of literature in the window, chiefly consisting of picture newspapers out of date and serial pirates and foot pads. Walking sticks likewise, and marbles were included in the stock in trade. Except a sort of small glass lantern containing a languishing mass of bullseyes, which had melted in the summer and congealed in the winter until all hope of ever getting them out, or of eating them without eating the lantern too, was gone forever.

SPEAKER_00 27:21

He's trying everything he possibly can to get ahead. He's got multiple different kinds of stock in the store, and because he has so much, it it seems like he isn't even able to get a start in any direction because he's just too diversified. Yeah, yeah. But he has so many young children and a wife who's having to find a way to survive, you know, just the day-to-day. And Mr. Tatterby loves his wife. He he describes her as his little woman. Um, they clearly still love each other, but their love continues to produce children, so it's that kind of Victorian conundrum.

SPEAKER_03 27:57

Yes. And that idea of it being a slightly distorted projection of Dickens's own household when they get the curse and they fall out with each other. And Mr. Teterby thinks of his wife as getting fat, and she thinks of him as getting bald and starting to stoop, and all the children are now a menace around them and everything. Yeah, it's so interesting, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 28:19

It is, because I do think that sometimes Dickens worked out personal things he was dealing with through literature. You see moments from his own life, like for example, Fanny's death um creeping into his own work as he's going through it himself. Right now, Charles and Catherine were not at the crisis point yet that their marriage would later be in, but they were continuing to have children at regular intervals. And uh Catherine could not keep up with Dickens and his walks and his exercise, and you know, she was constantly pregnant. So yes, she's going to be gaining some weight, especially considering how much food they typically used to serve at those Dickens dinners at his house. I do think there is some personal reading here. I think one thing that also struck me is how she describes her marriage as a sacrifice. And her husband takes her up on this and actually does something rather amusing, I think, with it, where she says, you know, I do mean that my marriage is a sacrifice. And he says, Why? Then I mean to say that there are two sides to that affair and that I was the sacrifice, and I wish the sacrifice hadn't been accepted. So they're both trying to act as though their marriage to each other kept them from some other glorious kind of future. And I think we all have this kind of doubt sometimes as to whether the course we took in life or the course that we were able to take in life was the correct one. But back then, if you think about it, you know, marriage was for life. And you might have several suitors as a woman. If you chose the wrong one, that was a lifetime mistake in many cases. And I think it's more daunting when you think of it that way. I don't think it would be quite as impactful today for someone to say, you know, this was a sacrifice, I've doomed myself. But back then, there's that added element of no divorce, which Dickens himself confronted later in life.

SPEAKER_03 30:06

Yeah, of course. And I suppose that no divorce pressure is still within living memory, isn't it? You know, older generations still alive today know that that whole idea of, you know, you save yourself from marriage, you get married, and then you do not divorce.

SPEAKER_00 30:17

You get married. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:20

And so and again, that's another very relatable thing, isn't it? That that awful moment. And of course, it's not the case that they come under this spell and then they're just awful to each other and unfeeling towards each other. They have regret and and shame and they're upset for feeling the way they do. But yes, when when Mrs. Tetiby is talking about all the different suitors she had when she was young and all the men that she turned down, you know, and some of them are in the army and they're very brave and strong and tall, and you're just small, my husband's small. In fact, the second chapter starts with the word small. I didn't count how many smalls, but it's just constantly small, small, small, small, small, small, small.

SPEAKER_00 30:55

If you call somebody small over and over again, especially if it's your husband, this is a very cruel thing to say to someone. And just like when he tells his wife, she's fat, she's aging, she won't bear comparison with most other women. Um, I think if someone said that to me, I know what I would do.

SPEAKER_01 31:12

Um, yeah, of course. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:14

This is the thing you're afraid someone's going to say about yourself. I think what's fascinating about this is I think this was always there. I think Red Law brought it out. A grievance that they've had for a long time, this doubt that they have about the way their life has gone. I think this is one of the worst parts of the book because it's so relatable. It happens at a breakfast table. And we've seen scenes like this in daily life.

SPEAKER_03 31:36

It goes a little bit further than most of our daily experiences, I hope. But but yes, definitely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:41

That's true.

SPEAKER_03 31:42

But but something else I noticed. Something else I noticed.

SPEAKER_04 31:44

It's a bad day.

SPEAKER_03 31:45

It's a very, very bad day, but then it's a good day. Again, it's all and it's also quick, isn't it? It only happens over the course of Christmas Eve into Christmas Day, I think, doesn't it? All of this. Yeah. But also poignantly in a way, there's the reconciliation with the Tetipees, isn't there? Where Mr. Tetipee is saying, Your life might have been easier if you hadn't married me, actually, because our lives we work so hard.

SPEAKER_00 32:07

There's a a section that for me I think is really fascinating. Yeah. That just sort of chills my blood, which is what Dickens loved doing to people. So it begins. When Twilight Everywhere released the shadows, prisoned up all day, that now closed in and gathered like mustering swarms of ghosts, when they stood lowering in corners of rooms and frowned out from behind half-open doors, when they had full possession of unoccupied apartments, when they danced upon the floors and walls and ceilings of inhabited chambers while the fire was low and withdrew like ebbing waters when it sprang into a blaze, when they fantastically mocked the shapes of household objects, making the nurse an ogress, the rocking horse a monster, the wandering child, half scared and half amused, a stranger to itself, the very tongues upon the hearth, a straddling giant with his arms akimbo, evidently smelling the blood of Englishmen and wanting to grind people's bones to make his bread. When these shadows brought into the minds of older people other thoughts and showed them different images, when they stole from their retreats and the likenesses of forms and faces from the past, from the grave, from the deep, deep gulf, where the things that might have been and never were are always wandering. I mean, you come from a nursery to the void between life and death, which you know Dickens probably imagines his sister wandering at this point. These shadows have influences, though as the light decreases, they increase. If you increase the light, they spring away. I think that metaphor applies to the attempt to keep yourself cheerful. Because if you don't, if you don't feed that fire, if you don't make sure that you are dwelling on the positive side of life, if you're not focusing on good things in life, then the shadows will take advantage. They will creep as if it's some kind of natural law into your consciousness.

SPEAKER_03 34:00

I love that bit that you just read so much. That was the bit that hooked me when I was reading it, you know, especially that thing about the ghosts that are of of things that were and never would be are always wandering. That bit is so great. But they're also, I feel like he's really rehearsed shadows in previous Christmas books by this point. You know, obviously the ghost of Christmas yet to come, but the shadows that point down to Trotty in the climax of the chimes is as well. And here you have obviously at the start uh the shadows as very terrifying. But I think in the end, they have a kind of cheerful appearance, dancing with the children and the families at Christmas time when everything's been resolved well. It made me also think that actually nature nature mirroring Redlaw's inner life and and his condition because when chapter three, it's in three chapters, isn't it, this one, um when chapter three starts, it's fantastic this bit where he goes uh night was still heavy in the sky, on open plains from hilltops and from the decks of solitary ships at sea, a distant, low lying line that promised by and by to change to light, was visible in the horizon, but its promise was remote and doubtful, and the moon was striving with the night clouds busily. And then if we didn't get the illusion, it then goes on to say the shadows upon Redlaw's mind succeeded thick and fast to one another, and obscured its light as the night clouds hovered between the moon and earth and kept the latter veiled in darkness. So this heavenly struggle going on is happening for Redlore as well, where he's got the curse, but he sees there are there are these breaks in the clouds, he can latch on to something and then it disappears again. I just think that's so you have the promise of dawn, but it's still doubtful.

SPEAKER_00 35:38

Yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_03 35:39

It's great, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 35:40

Well, it's wonderful. I mean, he wrote to William Bradbury that he spent three days crying his eyes out over it after he finished it. And he said he did it not painfully but pleasantly. And then he kept writing to different people about his experience, you know, what the meaning of it was. He seemed to be very anxious that people could understand it, at least when they read it. So he wrote, Um, of course, my point is that bad and good are inextricably linked in remembrance, and that you could not choose the enjoyment of recollecting only the good to have all the best of it. You must remember the worst, also. So, you know, people have read it, they want to talk to him about it. He's like, No, no, no, this is this is the message right here that you need to get the whole idea that memory is the good and the bad. So I think he really loved this book.

SPEAKER_03 36:27

Yeah. Yeah. Of course, it's so interesting to hear that about him crying for days afterwards. And it's the only story that that I can recall in this moment where whenever towards the end, Red Law essentially collapses with his face in his hands, sobbing, you go, Yes, he's free, he's done it. You know, this is a good thing to happen. In most other fiction, that would be a total tragedy, and you'd want to get them away from that. You're pushing him towards a breakdown, basically, to find himself again. And that quote so good as well. There's another moment that really struck me. And I talking about where if you lose the negative, you only have the positive, you end up with essentially blanks in existence. And with those blanks, you can't understand anything, you can't connect with anything properly, you can't empathize, you can't, you know, we we don't go around hitting people when we're frustrated with them because we have some sense, I think, of of actually that it actually really hurts what it actually means to be here. You know, we have enough in our in our experience of pain, you know. Trying to, I suppose, explain the phantom, Red Law's ghostly double would be quite interesting. But the other thing to say, as an extra point, is that did occur to me reading at this time that the spirit world in this story is so contained, it is linking to what you've said before, it's so contained inside. So Millie, she ha carries something very powerful and supernatural inside her, and I feel like old Philip does as well. The way he holds up the Holly and the way he talks to to Red Law, and he's almost like Redlore's last chance to not make a terrible mistake with the Phantom when he's about to leave the room, you know, saying, No, no, no, Lord keep my memory green and all of that. So So what what do you think on all of that? First, I I suppose first Redlore's double and then but also Millie, Millie's double appears, doesn't she, at one point with with Redlore's Phantom as well. So it's gosh, it's you know, you try and pin these things down. I get confused asking the questions, so good luck with the answers.

SPEAKER_00 38:20

The reason why I think it's so difficult to ask questions or answer questions with this book is is that it's so circular, and there are many different contrasts that are being set up at the same time. Um, for example, you mentioned how the old man is sort of using that adjuration, Lord, keep my memory green, his eternal prayer, which is probably one of the first things that he remembers. You know, it's it's sort of a routine that people have had um for a long time around Christmas. So it might seem that that has been effective. And then there's this horrible scene where the chemist leaves and it says, as he fell amusing in his chair alone, the healthy holly withered on the wall and dropped dead branches. So here we have Fred Law sitting there, literally shriveling up the holly around him. So this is the first time we see the ghost. Before then, we felt the chill in the atmosphere, but it's almost as though it sort of has to feed on something that is healthy and cheerful in order to manifest. So it's almost like magic. The price is shriveling up the holly on the wall. And then there it is, sort of taking human form. But I don't think it's totally evil, at least by the end of this piece. So the phantom basically works him up into this feeling of desperation where he is willing to accept this gift. Red Law refers to him as the tempter. Um, almost echoes some words from a Christmas carol, you know, whose hollow look and voice I dread more than words can express. That's very much like what Scrooge would say to the ghost of Christmas future. But there also seems to be some doubt as to whether this is actually a manifestation of himself or if there's some other kind of agency involved here, which I think is fascinating because obviously a manifestation of his depression. But there's also an aspect to the spectra where perhaps it's not so much a tempter as an angel, because it's showing him how this will work, you know. And then by the end of this, it basically allows him to reverse this curse, to have his own life back. So I don't think it's it's a wholly evil situation.

SPEAKER_03 40:33

No, again, you're you're so right. Yes, we should get to that moment also as well, because that's quite perplexing to understand how that comes about. But there's a key moment where you have this the feral child, the the ignorant and want child, devil child sleeping crouched by the fire, and the phantom appears again, reappears visibly to to Red Law, holding a phantom representation of the angelic Millie. In that moment, that startling moment, because I have to say, every time I pick this book up and read it, I just go, I'm sorry, what? And there's always something that starts a whole chain of thought that I'm trying to understand. But in that moment, what do you take from that moment? Does that tie into what you're saying about the role of the phantom and it and its behavior?

SPEAKER_00 41:15

For the most part, it's this very dangerous, evil kind of representation at first. And then towards the end, when he brings the image of Millie in there, it's more positive. It's more like what the ghost of Christmas present would have done, I think. Um, less darkness, more opportunity. And so the phantom says, When the morning shines, seek out the reality whose image I present before you. Is it my inexorable doom to do so? cried the chemist. It is, replied the Phantom. To destroy her peace, her goodness, to make her what I am myself and what I have made of others. I have said seek her out, returned the Phantom. I have said no more. It's very mysterious, and I think it's almost as if the Phantom doesn't want to say too much to Red Law because Redlaw has to work it out. Just in the way that Scrooge with the ghost of Christmas future has to sort of reach this internal realization. If the phantom says it, if the phantom articulates what Red Law should realize or articulate, then the lesson is lost. The Phantoms are always listening for that moment of repentance.

SPEAKER_01 42:21

Phantoms, punishers of impious thoughts, cried Redlaw, gazing round in anguish.

SPEAKER_03 42:26

Look upon me! From the darkness of my mind, let the glimmering of contrition that I know is there shine up and show my misery. In the material world, as I have long taught, nothing can be spared. No step or atom in the wondrous structure could be lost without a blank being made in the great universe. I know now that it is the same with good and evil, happiness and sorrow in the memories of men. Relieve me, undo what I have done. Leave me benighted, but restore the day to those whom I have cursed.

SPEAKER_00 43:02

So the Phantom explains to the chemist why this boy seems to be immune to the influence, because he's the only person so far who isn't infected. And it's confusing to the reader the first time through, I think, especially why the boy has no ill effects or doesn't seem to change in some way. So the Phantom explains.

SPEAKER_02 43:23

This, said the Phantom, pointing to the boy, is the last completest illustration of a human creature utterly bereft of such remembrances as you have yielded up. No softening memory of sorrow, wrong, or trouble enters here, because this wretched mortal from his birth has been abandoned to a worse condition than the beasts, and has, within his knowledge, no one contrast, no humanizing touch to make a grain of such a memory spring up in his hardened breast. Woe, tenfold to the nation that shall count its monsters such as this, lying here, by hundreds and By thousands.

SPEAKER_00 44:18

So in one way, the phantom sort of turns around and looks at Britain and it's like, hey, this just like in a Christmas carol, this is what you are churning out. The reason why the boy isn't changing is because he has no good memories. There's nothing there to work with. There's no opposite thing. Um, if you take away the bad memories, well, that is all the memory of this child. I think it's a bit confusing, but the point Dickens is making is everyone else in the story has good memories, but this poor child. Um, and I think so that's Fred Law's moment of thinking. Maybe I don't have it so terribly compared to some of these other people. I've met someone in a worse condition than myself. And so I think that kind of begins the final realization that he has some work to do socially and not so much internally.

SPEAKER_03 45:06

Something else about the Phantom that's interesting is when Redlaw is frustrated or angry with him in the first first scene, he goes to strike him or grab him by the throat, I think. And the Phantom says something along the lines of, You kill me, you kill yourself. Which again adds yet another layer of mystery. Mocker, said the chemist, leaping up and making with a wrathful hand at the throat of his other self. Forbear exclaimed the Spectre in an awful voice. Lay a hand on me and die. Something else that really struck me reading at this time, and it always has actually, I think, is that moment where Mrs. Tetsby is talking about going around the shops and and what a dark contrast to all the the love of all the things that for sale in a Christmas carol with you when you wander around the shops then. Here she's talking about her stock of money being too small to to purchase anything. This being Christmas time, when all people who can make holiday, and when all people who have got money like to spend some.

SPEAKER_01 46:06

I did somehow get a little out of sorts when I was in the streets just now. There were so many things to be sold, such delicious things to eat, such fine things to look at, such delightful things to have and there was so much calculating and calculating necessary before I durst lay out a sixpence for the commonest thing. And the basket was so large and wanted so much in it, and my stock of money was so small, and would go such a little way.

SPEAKER_03 46:39

So much there on sale, and she's not able to afford any of it. And then of course there's that pressure to do special things for Christmas, to have the money to do that. And that's really that really cuts through to our time. It's probably even worse these days.

unknown 46:53

I think one thing.

SPEAKER_03 46:54

Something I notice is the repetition of the gesture of the hand kind of passing across the forehead, either when it's infecting you or when it's leaving you, which is so interesting again, isn't it? And trying to work out how that works, just that gesture. And and when Mrs. Teterby's really out of sorts being married to her husband, she turns the wedding ring around on her finger. All of that is so oh, the imagery is so powerful, isn't it? That you every time I pick it up, I find something new.

SPEAKER_00 47:23

Well, Dickens is doing something similar to how I see modern novelists sometimes writing. And it makes me laugh sometimes when you're reading a book, you know, book of the month club, you know, something that's on the New York Times bestseller list on my side of things. And you see you a scene and you know the author wrote that scene for the hopeful film adaptation. And some of the conventions, it's just like you you saw this as the Netflix episode, didn't you? Um, so Dickens is doing the same thing with this. He is writing it for the stage. He's he's writing it in a way that can be transferred very easily on the stage directions. If someone's turning their wedding ring and looking concerned, I think we would make an assumption that it wasn't just a nervous, you know, gesture. This is about the ring being turned on your finger, and you know, the the doubt of whether you want to take it off or not. This actually was um put on stage, I think the day after it was published. The whole point is Dickens knows this is going to be put on stage. I think this works so well for us in terms of reading it because we can actually see the characters' gestures, their placement, their reactions to each other in a way that transfers fairly well to the stage.

SPEAKER_03 48:40

Yeah. There's something else that I really love about this is the Christmas music that runs through it that's invisible. I mean, as in you never you're never there. You know, it's always happening outside or across the way. You never see the Christmas waits, the carol singers there, and uh and music is is so important to the changes in in Red Law bringing him back to himself in the end. The Christmas music he had heard before began to play. He listened to it at first, as he had listened in the churchyard, but presently, it playing still and being borne towards him on the night air in a low, sweet, melancholy strain. He rose and stood stretching his hands about him as if there was some friend approaching within his reach on whom his desolate touch might rest yet not do harm. As he did this, his face became less fixed and wondering. A gentle trembling came upon him, and at last his eyes filled with tears, and he put his hands before them and bowed down his head. His memory of sorrow, wrong, and trouble had not come back to him. He knew that it was not restored. He had no passing belief or hope that it was. But some dumb stir within him made him capable again of being moved by what was hidden, afar off in the music. If it were only that it told him sorrowfully the value of what he had lost, he thanked heaven for it with a fervent gratitude. As the last chord died upon his ear, he raised his head to listen to its lingering vibration. Perhaps my parting question for you, Lydia, is this Does it make you feel Christmassy when you've got to the end and you've been through all the trauma and the drama of it?

SPEAKER_00 50:40

I don't know if it makes me feel Christmassy, but I think we've lost a lot of that association of Christmas as being in a way like all Hallows Eve. Dickens celebrated the 12 days of Christmas, so we have a lot of records from him reappraising his life on New Year's, you know, especially in the I think the 1838 diary, which we have. He talks about his life. Um, he's beginning a new year. He's excited about it, but also he's still dealing with depression. And I think for many people, Christmas was a time of reevaluation. Also, just like today, it's usually a time that puts you in a house with your relatives, which may or may not be the best thing in the entire world for your mental health. And so I think in that sense, it is extremely Christmassy. I think it's a time where you have to confront yourself and where you've come in life. It's a um a sort of milestone. But I think a Christmas care will always be the definitive Christmas feeling because it has so many scenes of Christmas celebration. I think if it weren't for the ghost of Christmas present, we might look at it in a similar way to this, which is so much about the duty you have to keep yourself cheerful and care about your society. But yes, not entirely a Christmas thing for me. I don't think it has quite enough Christmas cheer, but I do like it. This is this is a really No, I like it too.

SPEAKER_03 52:02

Yeah, it's like a darker, it's a darker Christmas, isn't it? But uh it's very jolly at the end. As they were assembled in the old hall, by no other light than that of a great fire, having dined early, the shadows once more stole out of their hiding places and danced about the room, showing the children marvellous shapes and faces on the walls, and gradually changing what was real and familiar there to what was wild and magical. But that there was one thing in the hall to which the eyes of Redlaw and of Millie and her husband, and of the old man, and of the student and his bride that was to be, were often turned, which the shadows did not obscure or change. Deepened in its gravity by the firelight, and gazing from the darkness of the panelled wall like life, the sedate face in the portrait, with the beard and ruff, looked down at them from under its verdant wreath of holly as they looked up at it, and clear and plain below, as if a voice had uttered them were the words Lord, keep my memory green. Lydia, thank you so much. It's been so great to meet you and and talk to you about this one. It's such a great, great I recommend it. I absolutely recommend it to anyone that's not that's not read it. So thank you again. It's been it's been brilliant. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 53:33

Well, thanks for asking me.

SPEAKER_03 53:34

Not at all. Bye for now. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas, bye.