By this time it was getting dark, and snowing pretty heavily; and as Scrooge and the Spirit went along the streets, the brightness of the roaring fires in kitchens, parlours, and all sorts of rooms, was wonderful. Here, the flickering of the blaze showed preparations for a cosy dinner, with hot plates baking through and through before the fire, ad deep red curtains, ready to be drawn, t shut out cold and darkness. There, all the children of the house were running out into the snow to meet their married sisters, brothers, cousins, uncles, aunts, and be the first to greet them. Here, again, were shadows on the window-blind of guests assembling; and there a group of handsome girls all hooded and fur-booted, and all chattering at once, tripped lightly off to dome near neighbour’s house; where, woe upon the single man who saw them enter—artful witches; well they knew it—in a glow!
But if you had judged from the numbers of people on their way to friendly gatherings, you might have thought that no one was at home to give them welcome when they got there, instead of every house expecting company, and piling up its fires half-chimney high. Blessings on it, how the Ghost exulted! How it bared its breadth of breast, and opened its capacious palm, and floated on, outpouring, with a generous hand, its bright and harmless mirth on everything within its reach! The very lamplighter, who ran on before dotting the dusky street with specks of light, and wo was dressed the spend the evening somewhere, laughed out loudly as the Spirit passed: though little kenned the lamplighter that he had any company but Christmas!
And now, without a word of warning from the Ghost, they stood upon a bleak and desert moor, where monstrous masses of rude stone were cast about, as though it were the burial-place of giants; and water spread itself wheresoever it listed—or would have done so, but for the frost that held it prisoner; and nothing grew but moss and furze, and coarse, rank grass. Down in the west the setting sun had left a streak of fiery red, which glared upon the desolation for an instant, like a sullen eye, and frowning lower, lower, lower yet, was lost in the thick gloom of the darkest night.
“What place is this?” asked Scrooge.
“A place where Miner dwell, who labour in the bowels of the earth,” returned the Spirit. “But they know me. See!”
A light shone from the window of a hut, and swiftly they advanced towards it. Passing through the wall of mud and stone, they found a cheerful company assembled round a glowing fire. An old, old man and woman, with their children and their children’s children, and another generation beyond that, all decked out gaily in their holiday attire. The old man, in a voice that seldom rose above the howling of the wind upon a barren waste, was singing them a Christmas song; it had been a very old song when he was a boy; and from time to time they all joined in on the chorus. So surely as they raised their voices, the old man got quite blithe and loud; amd so surely as they stopped, his vigour sank again.
The Spirit did not tarry here, but bade Scrooge hold his robe, and passing on above the moor, sped whither? Not to sea? To sea. To Scrooge’s horror, looking back, he sw the last of the land, a frightful range of rocks, behind them; and his ears were deafened by the thundering of water, as it rolled, and roared, and raged among the dreadful caverns it had worn, and fiercely tried to undermine the earth.
Built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks, some league or so from shore, on which the waters chafed and dashed the wild year through, there stood a solitary lighthouse. Great heaps of sea weed clung to its base, and storm-birds—born of the wind one might suppose, as sea-weed of the water—rose and fell about it, like the waves they skimmed.
But even here, two men who watched the light had made a fire, that through the loophole in the thick stone wall shed a ray of brightness on the awful sea. Joining their horny hands over the rough table at which they sat, they wished each other Merry Christmas in their can of grog; and one of them: the older, too, with his face all damaged and scarred with hard weather, a the figure-head of an old ship might be: struck up a sturdy song that was like a Gale in itself.
Again the Spirit sped on, above the black and heaving sea—on, on—until, being far away, as he told Scrooge, from any shore, they lighted on a ship. They stood beside the helmsman at the wheel, the look-out in the bow, the officers who had the watch; dark, ghostly figures in their several stations; but every man among them hummed a Christas tune, or had a Christas thought, or spoke below his breath to his companion of some bygone Christmas, with homeward hopes belonging to it. And every man on board, waking or sleeping, good or bad, had had a kinder word for another on that day than on any day in the year; and had shared to some extent in its festivities; and had remembered those he cared for at a distance, and had known that they delighted to remember him.
The inclination of most filmmakers is to rush straight to nephew Fred’s party from the Cratchit household, if Fred’s scenes have been included at all, and not pushed in ahead of the Cratchit section. A few more aesthetically-inclined versions do bring this in for atmosphere. More often, bits and pieces of it are dropped into other parts of the Ghost’s visit.
Hicks is told to come and see how others keep Christmas. We watch silhouettes on windowshades, and lights going on all over London. In the background, we get “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”. We get a distant storm-battered lighthouse and a toast by the two keepers. On a wind-tossed ship, the lookout calls out a Merry Christmas and laughs; his laugh melts into Fred’s laugh and the next episode.
In Sim II, a swirl takes us out to a place where miners live. A very old man, surrounded by a large family, sings “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen.” Scrooge looks grim as he is hauled into a very Edward Gorey skyscape; the two men in the lighthouse are singing the same song as the old miner. A swoop takes us to a ship, where the pilot is singing “God Rest Ye”. We then swoop back toward the city and a window hung with wreaths.
To Stewart’s alarm, a white tornado picks up Scrooge and Spirit from a white field. They arrive at the lighthouse, where the men sing “Silent Night”. The tornado then carries them to the ship, where the crew sing “Silent Night” in German. Scrooge is much annoyed by the constant spray of waves hitting the deck. They move next to a place where miners dwell. Here a noble Welsh choir is singing “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen.”
Blogsy Babbles 