During his long and prolific writing
career, Charles Dickens wrote many Christmas stories, but the best known one
must surely be A Christmas Carol, first published in 1843. The main character of the story is Ebenezer
Scrooge, a man whose penny-pinching and mean spiritedness was such that his
surname has become synonymous with
mendacity in the English language. You
will often hear people say things like "Oh, he's a right old
Scrooge". During the course of a
series of chapters, or staves, Scrooge is visited by a series of ghostly
apparitions who take him to see a variety of Christmas scenes designed to make
him change his ways, the most heartbreaking of which is when the Ghost of
Christmas Yet to Come shows him a time in the future when Tiny Tim, the son of
Scrooge's long-suffering and poorly paid clerk Bob Cratchit, has died because
Cratchit's pay is insufficient to look after his sickly son properly. By the end of all this, Scrooge undergoes a
transformation, his new-found largesse leading him to donate a Christmas turkey
to the Cratchit family.
The opening paragraph includes a reference
to 'Change. This was how the Victorians
referred to the Royal Exchange, a London
centre of commerce founded in the 16th century by the merchant Thomas
Gresham. The building was devastated by
the Great Fire of London, and suffered another fire in 1838, but has been
returned to its former glory. Commerce
is still alive and kicking today at the building, which is next to the Bank of
England: it is now a luxury shopping centre with designer stores and smart
restaurants. The building's grand
facade, with the appearance of an ancient Greek temple, is as pretty as a
picture at this time of year, with its columns all lit up and a huge Christmas
tree in front.
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| The Royal Exchange - geograph.org.uk - 863444. Photo by Peter McDermott, via Wikimedia Commons |
As for Scrooge's hangouts, his counting
house lay in an alley in the heart of the City, off Cornhill, which runs east
from the Bank underground station.
Dickens describes the building as facing an ancient church tower,
"whose gruffold bell was always peeping down at Scrooge out of a Gothic
window in the wall". His house was
at 45 Lime Street,
off Leadenhall Street,
"a gloomy suite of rooms", where the yard was so dark that even
Scrooge, who lived there, "was fain to grope with his hands". The well-known Leadenhall Market (known as
much as anything for its role in the Harry Potter films) lies nearby, and may
well have been where Scrooge went to get the turkey for the Cratchits. Today, Lime Street is home to the futuristic
Lloyds Insurance building, on the site of the former East India House.
The wretched Bob Cratchit and his family
lived in Camden Town, which in those days was a filthy
slum. The area around Agar Grove in the
east part of Camden
is described by Dickens as "a complete bog of mud and filth". Hard to believe today, since Camden Town
is now an achingly hip and trendy part of London,
most famous for its amazing market which is guaranteed to be heaving on
weekends. Another place referred to in
the novel is Mansion House in Walbrook, the Lord Mayor's official
residence. This neoclassical house was
built by George Dance in 1753 and it has its own court and prison cells. Dickens recounts how the fifty cooks and
butlers were ordered to "keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor's household
should".
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| Starbucks at Camden Market. Photo by CherryX, via Wikimedia Commons |
Charles Dickens fans visiting London who want to
explore the areas featured in the novel can join an A Christmas Carol walking tour. The Charles Dickens Museum at 48 Doughty Street
in Holborn occupies the house where Dickens lived from 1837 to 1839.
Map of the area around Lime Street.
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