Blogsy Babbles

     This was not addressed to Scrooge; nor to anyone whom he could see, but it produced an immediate effect.  For again Scrooge was himself.  He was older now, a man in the prime of life.  His face had not the harsh and rigid lines of later years; but it had begun to wear the signs of care and avarice.  There was an eager, greedy, restless action in the eye, which showed the passion that had taken root, and where the shadow of growing trees would fall.

     He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young girl in a mourning dress: in whose eyes there were tears, which sparkled in the light that shone out of the Ghost of Christmas Past.

    “It matters little,” she said, softly, “To you, very little.  Another idol has displaced me; and if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come, as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve.”

     “What idol has displaced you?” he rejoined.

     “A golden one.”

     “This is the evenhanded dealing of the world!” he said.  “There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty, and there is nothing which it professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth!”

     “You fear the world too much,” she answered, gently.  “All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach.  I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master-passion, Gain, engrosses you.  have I not?”

     “What then?” he retorted.  “Even if I have grown so much wiser, what then?  I have not changed towards you.”

     She shook her head.

     “Am I?”

     “Our contract is an old one.  It was made when we were both poor and content to be so, until, in good season, we could improve our worldly fortune by our patient industry.  You ARE changed.  When it was made, you were another man.”

     “I was a boy,” he said impatiently.

     “Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you are,” she returned.  “I am.  That which promised happiness when we were one in heart, is draught with misery now that we are two.  How often and how keenly I have thought of this, I will not say.  It is enough that I HAVE thought of it, and can release you.”

     “Have I ever sought release?”

     “In words.  No.  Never.”

     “In what then?”

     “In a changed nature; in an altered spirit; in another atmosphere of life; another hope as its great end.  In everything that made my love of any worth or value in your sight.  Of this had never been between us,” said the girl, looking mildly, but with steadiness, upon him; “tell me, would you seek me out and try to win me now?  Ah. No!”

     He seemed to yield to the justice of this supposition, in spite of himself.  But he said, with a struggle, “You think not.”

     “I would gladly think otherwise if I could,” she answered,.  “Heaven knows!  WhenI have learned a Truth like this, I know how strong and irresistible it must be.  But if you were free today, to-morrow, yesterday, can even I believe that you would choose a dowerless girl—you who, in your every confidence with her, weigh everything by Gain, or, choosing her, if for a moment you were false enough to your one guiding principle to do so, do I not know your repentance and regret would surely follow?  I do; and I release you, with a full heart, for the love of hm you once were.”

     He was about to speak, but with her head turned from him, she resumed.

     “You may—the memory of what is past half make me hope you will—have pain in this.  A very, very brief time, and you will dismiss the recollection of it, gladly, as an unprofitable dream, from which it happened well that you awoke.  May you be happy in the life you have chosen!”

     She left him; and they parted.

     “Spirit!” said Scrooge, “Show me no more!  Conduct me home.  Why do you delight to torture me?”

     “One shadow more!” exclaimed the Ghost.

     “No more!” cried Scrooge.  “No more.  I don’t wish to see it.  Show me no more!”

     A whole lot of this never makes it to the screen.  Scrooge’s remark about the evenhanded dealing of the world sounds too much like sense to be allowed.  Belle is hardly ever dressed in mourning, And many of her speeches are removed, as they are unnecessary if we have been shown the happy couple plighting their troth earlier on.

     But the sequence must not be omitted entirely, as it is the only place a musical version can logically slip in a love song (a musical without a love song might as well not even bother.)  And it provides a good, solid role for a woman, something the Carol is not replete with.  It also serves an important purpose in moving te plot along: this is the first time Scrooge is shown that part of his misery is his own fault.  (It is traditional to compare Scrooge’s engagement to Fred’s, claiming that Scrooge kept putting off marriage until he achieved some goal of financial stability, from fear of marrying someone while he was poor.  There is only the barest hint of this in the text.)

     Hicks begins with a young couple in the counting house, pleading for more time to pay off their loan.  Scrooge refuses brusquely, unaware that Belle has entered and is listening to everything.  When the despondent couple depart, she informs him that she has refused to believe what she’s heard about the kind of man he has become.  Now she has seen for herself, and she is furious.  “But this is business,” Scrooge tells her, “If I were to allow sentiment to enter this counting house, I should be in bankruptcy court within a year.”  He explains that the couple she has seen is a worthless, shifty pair who “have spent my good money.”  She is adamant; he grows stubborn.  She is to leave business affairs to him.  “When we are married, I shall insist….”  She takes off her ring and plants it on the mantel.  “Have you taken leave of your senses?” he demands.  This doesn’t serve to win her over, somehow; she grows more and more agitated.  He tries to convince her that he has not changed toward her, but she stalks away, hoping he will be happy—alone—in the life he has chosen.

     Owen omits this sequence.

     Sim I and Alice rearrange the text, but the scene runs very much along the lines Dickens has drawn.  At the end, when they have released each other from the engagement, Scrooge snatches up the ring.  “You know I’m right,” says Alice.  “I bow to your conviction,” he replies.  “May you be happy in the life you have chosen.”  “Thank you.  I shall be.”  When she is alone, Alice breaks down; apparently, she expected him to relent.  The older Scrooge demands, “Show me no more.”

     March redesigns the sequence, putting it right during Fezziwig’s party.  The Ghost tells Scrooge “Your happiness was short-lived.  Look again.”  The happy couple argue; Ebenezer tries to explain, “That is not what I meant.”  This does him as much good as it would any man; Belle says she has seen his nobler aspirations fall off, concluding, “You no longer need me.”  “Have I ever said so?”  “In words, no.  In a changed manner” and so on.  She finally walks away, declaring that he would never choose a dowerless girl.  “Perhaps you will never choose any.”

     The Ghost orders Rathbone to “look again”.  He gets a much closer look at Belle as she sits on a bench under green trees.  Her clothes are rather nice, but not so nice as Ebenezer’s.  She explains how another idol has taken her place, and he replies with the line about there being nothing so hard as poverty.  The conversation proceeds much as written; Ebenezer seems quite a pleasant, amiable chap, honestly confused by her attitude.  She notes that their contract is an old one, made “before I was poor,” and she releases him.  Neither of them seem terribly upset by all this, but old Scrooge begs to be taken away.

     Magoo is one of the few Scrooges who is actually sitting with Belle when the scene opens.  “It matters little,” she is telling him, and the dialogue runs much as written through the declaration that the master passion, Gain, has engrossed him.  “True!” he says, “I’ve grown so much wiser!”  She offers to release him.  “Have I ever sought release?”  “In words.  No.  Never.”  “In what, then?”  “In the very things you worship.  Tell me truthfully: if you were free, now, would you choose a girl whose father left her so little money?”  The older Scrooge cries “Yes, Belle!  Yes!” while his younger self turns away.  Belle wanders to the parlor window for the musical number “Winter was Warm”.  Belle finally leaves, with a simple “Goodbye.”  (Was it Scrooge’s parlor, then?)  The older Scrooge calls after her, pleading, and when she does not turn back, cries “Spirit!  Show me no more!”

     Haddrick is in a green park with a Bell dressed in poor, drab garments.  “It doesn’t matter to you; it doesn’t seem to matter at all.  I love you, Ebenezer, but you love something more than me.  I take only second place in your life.”  “What do I love more than you?”  “A golden idol, which you seemingly worship: money.”  She leaves; the Ghost turns to the old Scrooge to say “Well?”  “Bah!  If she’d had sense and stayed with me, she’d be well off now.”  “You have a cold heart, Ebenezer Scrooge.”  “And a cold body, Spirit!  Haunt me no more.  Take me back.”

     Sim II shows us a couple under a weeping willow; the field is green.  This Belle is dressed in mourning, and looks a bit middle-aged.  “You ae changed,” she announces, and explains about his nobler aspirations falling off.  Ebenezer is now a heftier, harder man, who rolls his eyes impatiently as she speaks what he regards as missish nonsense.  They go through the dialogue offering him release; when he fails to answer her question about whether he would do it all over, she concludes, “May you be happy in the life you have chosen.”  Old Scrooge demands to be taken home, and wants to know why the Spirit delights in torturing him.

     Finney is in the counting house.  (This is one of a small number of versions, like hicks, in which young Ebenezer and old Scrooge are played by the same actor.)  Isabel enters and calls his name.  He grunts acknowledgement, and she announces, “I’ve come to day goodbye.  I’m going away, Ebenezer.  You will not see me again.”  This attracts his attention.  “But you’re going to marry me!”  “No.  You’ve found another love to replace me.  She is much more desirable than I am.”  He has no idea what she’s talking about, until she runs a hand through his gold coins.  “How shall I ever understand this world?” he exclaims.  “There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty, and yet there is nothing it condemns with such severity as the pursuit of wealth!”   They work through the dialogue much as written, save for Isabel’s cry of “Yes you are!” when he says he is not changed toward her.  This is obviously difficult for them both, but harder on the two spectators.  When Isabel asks if Ebenezer thinks he would still seek her out now, old Scrooge cries “I would!  I do!  I still do!”  The Ghost shushes him.  “I’m trying to listen.”  Ebenezer finally refuses to discuss this any further in the office.  Isabel tosses her ring into one pan of his scales, and puts two coins in the other.  The coins outweigh the ring.  “I am not good enough for you,” she tells him, and goes on with the “I would gladly think otherwise” speech.  Ebenezer is silent; his older counterpart shouts, “Say something, you fool”  Isabel delivers her last speech; old Scrooge calls “Don’t go!  It’s a mistake!”  When she leaves, Ebenezer calls after her, and does follow as far as the stairs.  Then he returns to his desk.  The older Scrooge calls him a fool, and reprises her song from earlier, watching her from the window.  Ebenezer joins him for a moment, but then goes back and, resentfully, snatches up the ring from the scales and drops it into a drawer.  “Spirit, remove me from this place!  I can bear it no more!”

     Matthau is informed, “There is another Christmas.  You had just formed your partnership with Marley.  Your business was new, but your ways were set.”  “Oh, Spirit!  Spare me the rest!”  “You must drink this cup to the dregs.”  Belle has just confronted Ebenezer in his office.  “Yes!  Another idol has taken my place!”  Ebenezer is sarcastic.  “Oh, really?  That’s going a bit far, don’t you think, Belle?”  Working on figures, he starts to explain that business is more important than Christmas, which is a humbug.  This turns into a song, wherein much of the scene’s dialogue is delivered.  As Belle sings about what might have been, we see visions of the possible Mr. and Mrs. Scrooge with two children, next to a Christmas tree.  She eventually ends the engagement and flees the room.  Ebenezer takes two steps after her, changes his mind, and sits at his desk again.

      McDuck is in his counting house, counting.  Isabel enters, saying she has been waiting for years in the honeymoon cottage she bought.  She must have an answer: has he made up his mind?  He has.  She was an hour late with her last payment; he’s repossessing the cottage.  In case old Scrooge has missed the point, the Ghost gives him a lecture about his failure.

     “But you did forget, often,” Scott is told.  “Oh?”  “Look: another Christmas Eve.  Delayed by the pressure of business.  Do you remember?”  “No!” he shouts, not answering the question but recognizing the scene.  The couple are outside in the snow.  Belle’s face is tragic as she tells Ebenezer she thought he might not come at all, now that he’s so busy.  Ebenezer is brisk, well-dressed, somewhat after the manner of his father.  He tries to explain about business; she exclaims, “Another idol has taken my place!”  “What idol has replaced you?”  “A golden one.  You fear the world too much.”  The scene goes on as written.  She asks if he would seek her out, and, after a long pause, he answers as in the text.  “Oh, Ebenezer,” she cries, “What a safe and terrible answer!”  Both faces show great pain.  “Ebenezer, I release you!  You are a free man!  I let you go with a full heart.  May you be happy, etc.”  The music swells; she walks away, still tragic.  Old Scrooge remarks to the Spirit, “I almost went after her.”  “Almost carries no weight,” the Ghost informs him, “Especially in matters of the heart.”  She asks why he didn’t follow, and he explains how his father’s death left him a small inheritance, which he had invested toward their future.  He was laying the foundation for success, which he has achieved.  “Congratulations.”  “I’ll thank you not to sneer, Spirit, show me no more.  Conduct me home.”  “You have explained what you gained.  Now I will show you what you have lost.”

     Caine is told, “There was, of course, another Christmas with this young woman, some years later.”  “Oh, please.  Do not show me that Christmas.”  The Spirit concentrates; her eyes are all that show in the flash of white that follows.  Then they are outdoors.  Belle explains that Ebenezer has put off their wedding again, but that he is, after all, a partner in his own firm now.  He keeps setting higher standards for his business before they can marry; he points out that he is doing this for her.  “I love you,” he tells her.  “you did once.”  This leads to a song, “The Love Is Gone”.  She moves to a bridge.  Every time Ebenezer joins her, she moves farther along.  He finally quits trying.  The old Scrooge steps up behind her, joining the song until he is weeping too much to continue.  Dickens and Rizzo are crying as well.  “Spirit!  Show me no more!  Why do you delight in torturing me?”

     It seems to be autumn.  Curry is also late for a meeting with Belle; they are outside, and meet on a bridge.  “Good news, mt darling!  Guess what I’ve got!”  “Give me a hint, Ebenezer.”  “It’s small and round and gold, and holds the future.”  “A ring?”  “No.  The profits from my first business venture.”  Belle’s eyes dim as Ebenezer tells her all about it; Scrooge snaps at his younger self, “Stop talking, you mindless bump!”  The song “I’ll Cross This bridge with You” presents the debate between Love/Passion and Gold/Security.  Old Scrooge grows depressed; as belle leaves, he tells his younger self, “Go after her, you fool!”  he then turns to the Ghost.  “Stop.  Don’t show me any more.”

      We are outdoors with Stewart as well; it is snowing.  Recognizing the place, Scrooge turns to the Ghost.  “The years change people.  I don’t wish to look, Sir.”  “You must.”  Ebenezer is complaining about the condemnation od the pursuit of wealth; the dialogue moves through Belle’s offer to release him.  Old Scrooge cries “No!  No!”  Ebenezer asks if he has ever sought release, and they continue through the question of whether Ebenezer would seek Belle out now.  Old Scrooge tries to answer for him, but Ebenezer is silent until Belle concludes “No.”  “You think not,” Ebenezer counters.  As belle goes through the next speech, Scrooge desperately coaches his younger self.  “Speak to her!  Why doesn’t he speak to her?”  Belle explains that if he did choose her, “There’d be no profit in it, and if you forgot your principle of profit and did marry me, you’d regret it, my love.”  She walks away; old Scrooge commands, “Go after her!”  Ebenezer starts to rise from the bench, but sits again.  “Don’t be afraid!” Old Scrooge implores, “Go after her!”  Belle does look back twice to see if he is following; Old Scrooge watches her move on, until she disappears in snow and mist.  “No more.  Show me no more.  Take me home.  Why do you delight in torturing me?”

20 ½: Interlude

     Sim I now interpolates some business episodes in the life of our protagonist.  Having been ordered by Old Scrooge to take him away, the Spirit replies, “Very well.  But we are not done yet, Ebenezer Scrooge.  We do but turn another page.”

     The Board of the firm managed by Mr. Jorkens has conducted an inquiry, turning up a deficit of 3200 pounds.  Jorkens is not only a bankrupt, but an embezzler.  This does not worry him much apparently, though it is a hanging offense.  He warns the Board that if he prosecuted, they will gain only the eleven pounds, eight shillings, and tenpence left in the till, and a panic on the part of the shareholders which will put an end to any hope of a recovery.  His young associates, however, have a proposition which offers a way out.  Scrooge and Marley will make up the deficit from their savings, provided they can purchase shares to give them 51% od the enterprise.  The Board expostulates; Scrooge and Marley sit back, knowing the Board members have no other choice.

     The movie then jumps some years forward.  Marley’s housekeeper, Mrs. Dilber, hurries to the counting house on Christas Eve.  She tells a young Bob Cratchit that Mr. Marley lies dying; he is calling for Mr. Scrooge.  Scrooge, however, refuses to leave the office before closing time.  Business is business.

     At seven, he deliberately takes his leave, declining Bob’s attempt to discuss Martley’s impending demise, and growling, “You’ll want all day tomorrow, I suppose.”

     “If quite convenient, sir.”

     “Every Christmas you say the same thing,” Scrooge replies, almost smiling, “And every Christmas it’s just as inconvenient as the Christmas before.”

     He eventually reaches Marley’s quarters, where Mrs. Dilber and a man he mistakes for a doctor are waiting.  The man turns out to be an undertaker, whom a grimly amused Scrooge apparently regards as a fellow businessman.  “Is he dead yet?” he inquires

     The undertaker and housekeeper offer to check, but he marches back to see for himself.  A little uncertain, he leans warily over to listen for signs of life.  Marley opens one eye.

     “Have they seen to you properly?” asks a hearty Scrooge.  “Last rites and all that, hmmm?  There’s nothing I can do, hmmmm?”  This last is not so much a question as a statement.

     But Marley does want something.  As we saw at the start of the picture, Marley has had some kind of deathbed vision of his fate; he desperately tries to warn Scrooge.  Scrooge cannot figure out from what he is supposed to save himself.  It seems to involve some moral principle, and he explains to Marley that they have been as good as the next man; probably better.  Marley dies before he can explain.  Scrooge walks out leaving the undertaker to pull the sheet up over his old partner.

     “One shadow more,” says the Ghost.  “No.  Mo more.  I cannot bear it.”  The Ghost lectures him on his lack of feeling at the death of the man he worked with for eighteen years, and shows the Scrooge of seven years ago signing the register as he takes possession of Marley’s property.  Scrooge, signing the book, does look a bit smug; the Ghost calls him a wretched, grasping, scraping, covetous old sinner.  Scrooge replies “nonononono.”

      Although they had but that moment left the school behind them, they were now in the busy thoroughfares of a city, where shadowy passengers passed and repassed; where shadowy carts and coaches battled for the way, and all the strife and tumult of a real city were.  It was made plain enough, by the dressing of the shops, that here it was Christmas again; but it was evening, and the streets were lighted up.

     The Ghost stopped at a certain warehouse door, and asked Scrooge if he knew it.

     “Know it!” said Scrooge.  “Was I apprenticed here?”

     They went in.  At the sight of an old gentleman in a welch wig, sitting behind such a high desk, that if he had been two inches taller, he must have knocked his head against the ceiling, Scrooge cried in great excitement.

     “Why, it’s old Fezziwig!  Bless his heart; it’s Fezziwig alive again!”

     Old Fezziwig aid down his pen, and looked up at the clock, which pointed to the hour of seven.  He rubbed his hands; adjusted his capacious waistcoat; laughed all over himself, from his shoes to his organ of benevolence; and called out in a comfortable, oily, rich, fat, jovial voice:     :Ho ho, there!  Ebenezer!  Dick!”

     Scrooge’s former self, now grown a young man, came briskly in, accompanied by his fellow-‘prentice.

     “Dick Wilkins, to be sure!” said Scrooge to the Ghost.  “Bless me, yes.  There he is.  He was very much attached to me, was Dick.  Poor Dick!  Dear, dear!”

     “Ho ho, my boys!” said Fezziwig.  “No more work tonight.  Christmas Eve, Dick.  Christmas, Ebenezer!  Let’s have the shutters up,” cried old Fezziwig, with a sharp clap of his hands, “before a man can say, Jack Robinson!”

     You wouldn’t believe hoe those two fellows went at it!  They charged into the street with the shutters—one, two, three—had ‘e, up in their places—four, five, six—barred ‘em and pinned ‘em—seven, eight, nine—and came back before you could have got to twelve, panting like racehorses.

     “Hilli-ho!” cried old Fezziwig, skipping down from the high desk, with wonderful agility.  “Clear away, my lads, and let’s have lots of room here!  Hill-ho, Dick!  Chirrup, Ebenezer!”

     Clear away!  There was nothing they wouldn’t have cleared away, or couldn’t have cleared away, with old Fezziwig looking on.  It was done in a minute.  Every moveable was pushed off, as if it were dismissed from public life for evermore; the floor was swept and watered, the lamps were trimmed, fuel was heaped upon the fire; and the warehouse was as snug, and warm, and dry, and bright a ball-room as you would desire to see upon a winter’s night.

     In came a fiddler with a music-book, and went up to the lofty desk, and made an orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty stomach-aches.  In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile.  In came the three Miss Fezziwigs, beaming and lovable.  In came the six young followers whose hearts they broke.  In came all the young men and women employed in the business.  In came the housemaid, with her cousin,  the baker.  In came the cook, with her brother’s particular friend, the milkman.  In came the boy from over the way, who was suspected of not having board enough from his master; trying to hide himself behind the girl from next door but one, who was proved to have had her ears pulled by her mistress.  In they all came, one after another; some shyly, some boldly, some gracefully, some awkwardly, some pushing, some pulling; in they all came, anyhow and everyhow.  Away they all went, twenty couples at once, hands half round and back again the other way; down the idle and up again; rund and round in various stages of affectionate grouping, old top couple always turning up in the wrong place; new top couple starting off again, as soon as they got there; all top couples at last, and not a bottom one to help them.  When this result was brought about, old Fezziwig, clapping his hands to stop the dance, cried out, “Well done!” and the fiddler plunged his face into a pot of porter, especially provided for that purpose.  But scorning rest upon his reappearance, he instantly began again, though there were no dancers yet, as if the other fiddler had been carried home, exhausted, on a shutter; and he were a bran-new man resolved to best him out of sight, or perish.

     There were more dances, and there were forfeits, and more dances, and there was cake, and there was negus, and there was a great piece of Cold Roast, and there was a great piece of Cold NBoiled, and there were mince-pies, and plenty of beer.   But the great effect of the evening came after the Roast and the Boiled, when the fiddler (an artful dog, mind!  The sort of man who knew his business better than you or I could have told him!) struck up “Sir Roger de Coverley”.  Then old Fezziwig stood out to dance with Mrs. Fezziwig.  Top couple, too; with a good stiff piece of work cut out for them; three or four and twenty pair of partners; people who were not to be trifled with; people who WOULD dance, and had no notion of walking.

     But if they had been twice as many: ah, four times: old Fezziwig would have been a match for them, and so would Mrs. Fezziwig.  As to HER, she was worthy to be his partner, in every sense of the term.  If that’s not high praise, tell me higher, and I’ll use it.  A positive light appeared to issue from Fezziwig’s calves.  They shone in every part of the dance like moons.  You couldn’t have predicted at any given time, what would become of ‘em next.  And when old Fezziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig had gone all through the dance: advance and retire, hold hands with your partner; bow and curtsey; corkscrew, thread-the-needle, and back again to your place; Fezziwig “cut”—cut so deftly, that he appeared to wink with his legs, and came down upon his feet without a stagger.

     When the clock struck eleven, this domestic ball broke up.  Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig took their stations, one on either side of the door, and shaking hands with every person individually as he or she went out, wished him or her a Merry Christmas.  When everybody had retired but the two ‘prentices, they did the same to them, and thus the cheerful voices died away, and the lads were left to their beds; which were under a counter in the back-shop.

     During the whole of this time, Scrooge had acted like a man out of his wits.  His heart and soul were in the scene, and with his former self.  He corroborated everything, remembered everything, enjoyed everything, and underwent the strangest agitation.  It was not until now, when the bright faces of his former self and Dick were turned from them, that he remembered the Ghost, and became conscious that it was looking full on him, while the light upon its head burnt very clear.

     “A small matter,” said the Ghost, “to make these silly folks so full of gratitude.”

     “Small!” echoed Scrooge.

     The Spirit signed to him to listen to the two apprentices, who were pouring out their hearts in praise of Fezziwig: and, when he had done so, said

     “Why?  Is it not?  He has spent but a few pounds of your mortal money: three or four, perhaps.  Is that so much that he deserves this praise?”

     “It isn’t that,” said Scrooge, heated by the remark, and speaking unconsciously like his former, not his latter, self.  “It isn’t that, Spirit.  He has the power to render us happy or unhappy, to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil.  Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count ‘em up: what then?  The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.”

     He felt the Spirit’s glance, and stopped.

     “What is the matter?” asked the Ghost.

     “Nothing particular,” said Scrooge.

     “Something, I think?” the Ghost insisted.

     “No,” said Scrooge.  “No.  I should like to be able to say a word or two to my clerk just now!  That’s all.”

     His former self turned down the lamps as he gave utterance to the wish; and Scrooge and the Ghost again stood side by side in the open air.

     “My time grows short,” observed the Spirit, “Quick!”

      And what shall we say about the Fezziwig Christmas Party?  It is the joy of the illustrator, the prize of the anthologist, the great and grand opportunity for the songwriter.  The film-maker gets a glorious chance to slip in a production number, or display an array of painstakingly accurate props and costumes, or set up an elaborate and joyful set piece, with a cast of, anyhow, dozens.

     And, at that, some versions cut it, while others give it a mere glance in passing.  Quite a lot rewrite it to remove the very reason Dickens set it here, to show us that Ebenezer was not always the mind-on-business loner he became.  In these, young Ebenezer is already dour, his mind often on the waste of time and expense of such an event (though Dickens has the Ghost point out that it was NOT expensive.)  Belle is usually inserted into these, as a brief brightness in Ebenezer’s dim worldview, so that her removal from his life later becomes Scrooge’s excuse to become so fatally cranky.

     What is odder, though, is the omission, in many versions, of the punchline, when Scrooge realizes how short of Fezziwig he falls as a manager.  Just about everyone, though, whatever has been planned to follow it, uses “My time grows short.”

     It’s just a thought in passing, by the way, but scriptwriters have elaborated the role of just about everyone else in this story, so why has nobody really definitively given us the story of “poor” Dick Wilkins?  Beyond Owen, who shows Dick at school with Ebenezer, and Scott, who gives him a couple of lines after the party, no one does much more with Dick than Dickens, when Scrooge notes that Dick used to be quite fond of him.  Sim II, indeed, drops Dick entirely, and has Scrooge use this line about Fezziwig.

     Hicks, sticking to a rule of one vision per spirit, omits this scene.

     Owen is led through the streets until he stands before “J. Fezziwig & Co.”  The Ghost asks Scrooge if he remembers the place.  “Fezziwig’s warehouse!  I was apprenticed here!”  Fezziwig is short and jolly, youngish, with a dark wig, and dressed in the style of the late eighteenth century.  Dick and Ebenezer are extremely young.  Looking eagerly to the clock, Fezziwig sprinkles sand to blot what he’s been writing, and shuts his book.  Calling his apprentices, he orders them in a sharp voice to look at the clock themselves.  “Do you know I’ve let you work five minutes after closing time?”  Laughing, he orders them to put up the shutters.  When they’ve finished, he tells them, “About tomorrow: it’s a holiday, of course, but I shall expect you to spend some part of it, at least, with me.”  He pauses to watch their faces fall, and goes on, “Eating Christmas dinner!  And as probably you’ll eat too much to be of any good next day, we’ll make that a holiday too.”  He hands them their Christmas bonuses; each is  rendered breathless by the discovery that this is a gold sovereign.  “Solid gold is old Fezziwig,” they declare, once he has left.  The Ghost asks Scrooge what the matter is, and persists until the old man admits that something is bothering him.  “Old Fezziwig was very kind to me.”  “Yes, he was.  But he’s dead now.”  She then lectures him on how he should repay old Fezziwig’s kindness by being kinder to his own clerk.  Scrooge rejects this at once.  “Business is business.  I’m a good businessman.”

     With Sim I, we arrive at an evocation of the dance, performing the dialogue about Scrooge remembering this place.  Scrooge bounces in time to the music, elated to be here.  His Fezziwig is rather young, and short, but very round, as is his wife.  “Was there ever a kinder man?” Scrooge exclaims.  The Ghost points out that the man has spent only three or four pounds of mortal money, and Scrooge snaps back as in the text.  He stops abruptly at the word “fortune” and finally admits that he’d like to have a word or two with his clerk.  Out of Scrooge’s sight, the Ghost nods approval.

     With March, we enter Fezziwig’s home; some sort of country dance is in progress.  This is a mannered exercise, but everyone is clearly having a good time.  Wigged servants carry trays through the assembly; Fezziwig has clearly done well for himself.  A governess conducts a small girl to dance with a heavyset older man, perhaps her grandfather.  “There’s old Fezziwig, bless his heart, alive again!  And Mrs. Fezziwig!”  “Not alive again,” the literal-minded Ghost reminds him, “This is Christmas Past.”  Scrooge spots Dick Wilkins, his fellow apprentice.  “You haven’t forgotten,” notes the Ghost.  Scrooge has not; he rhapsodizes “No more work tonight!’, he’d say, ‘It’s Christmas Eve!’  What a jolly old fellow he was.  Look!  There I am!  Just as I used to be!”  Young Ebenezer is filling the punch glass of a young lady who tells him not to be so stingy.  Another asks why he isn’t dancing.  He’s waiting for belle, who had to work late.  When she arrives, we see she is indeed the very image (being played by the same actress) of the Ghost of Christmas past.  At a call for a song, belle and Ebenezer oblige with “What Shall I Give My Lad/My Girl for Christmas?”  Old Fezziwig holds mistletoe over their heads, and then calls for a polka.  “He made us happy, did old Fezziwig.  I wish….”  At this critical moment, the Ghost interrupts to take us to the next scene.

     The Spirit leads Rathbone to a tall metal door with a row of bricks on each side but no walls.  A brass plate shows this to be the “Fezziwig & Co. Emporium.”  “Do you know this door?” the Ghost inquires.  “Know it?” Scrooge chuckles, “I was apprenticed here.”  The Ghost gestures and the door swings open.  We move to an office which has windows but no walls, and three counting desks.  The two nearest us are occupied by Ebenezer and Dick Wilkins; the proprietor sits at the desk along the far open-space-not-wall.  This man, a chap in late middle age, announces in a gravelly voice that it is time to clear away these desks to make room for the dancing.  While the young men are about this, Belle enters, bearing a cake.  When Fezziwig takes this, Belle seizes Ebenezer’s hands, dancing him round and round just as Fan did in the classroom, singing “La la la la”.  Fezziwig commands that Ebenezer hang the mistletoe, and calls him a rogue when Ebenezer instead holds it over Belle’s head and kisses her.  The Ghost notes that this is a small matter.  “What?” demands Scrooge.  “He has spent but a few pounds, but the happiness he gives is as great as if he had spent a fortune.”  Scrooge admits this.  The ghost goes on, “My time grows short.  Quickly.”

     Magoo and the Ghost stand outside a shop.  The Ghost asks if he remembers it.  Scrooge replies with joy that he was apprenticed here.  Next he cries out at swing old Fezziwig, alive again.  This Fezziwig is a jolly, roly-poly old soul in a white wig.  He calls to the two apprentices, who rush into the room; Scrooge is touched to see Dick Wilkins again.  Fezziwig gives his orders; we watch the apprentices put up the shutters and cheerfully clear away the stock to make room for dancing.  Much food and greenery, including a Christmas tree, is put into place.  The fiddler strikes up a tune; we find a Mrs. Fezziwig who is indeed a good match for her husband.  Scrooge watches them, recalling, “Oh, he does love to dance!  Oh, look at him dance!”  In another part of the room, Belle is turning away suitors, hiding coyly behind her fan.  “She won’t dance with ‘em,” Scrooge confides to the Ghost, slapping the Spirit on the back when Belle picks the young Ebenezer.  Then to scrooge’s disappointment, the happy group fades away.  Only Dick and Ebenezer are left, obviously after the party, locking up and praising old Fezziwig.  The Ghost makes a disparaging remark about small matters; Scrooge replies with the “It isn’t that” speech, but draws no moral therefrom.  The Ghost notes “My time grows short.”

     Haddrick is asked by the Ghost if he remembers this place.  He does.  Young Ebenezer sits at a high desk.  “Ah, such loneliness!” exclaims the Ghost.  “That’s what made me what I am today,” Scrooge objects.  “Lonely?”  “No!  Successful.  Comfortably off.  Because I chose to spend my time in more useful pursuits than pleasure and enjoyment.”  Then he spots old Fezziwig, alive again.  This Fezziwig is stout, with dark receding hair.  Scrooge cries “Bless my soul!” orn seeing him, and again when he sees Dick Wilkins.  The fiddler arrives; the two apprentices dash out to put up the shutters.  The food is set out; for once this is pretty much limited to what is described in the text.  Mrs. Fezziwig is plump, and taller than her husband.  “They seem happy enough on Christmas Eve,” the Ghost observes.  Scrooge steals the Ghost’s dialogue, grumbling “It takes little to make these people happy.”  “You were one of them.”  “I was young, but I’ve grown wiser.”  “Have you, though?”  “I have no time for making people merry.  That’s humbug.”  “My time grows short.”

     Sim II’s Fezziwig is exuberantly rotund, with a dark wig, mustache, and monocle.  Scrooge admits to knowing the place, and cries out on seeing his old boss alive again; he laughs.  Fezziwig orders the lads to clear away, clapping Ebenezer on the shoulder.  “He was very much attached to me.”  There is a fiddler, lots of food, and a very plump Mrs. Fezziwig; we are given just a brief vision of the dancers.  The Ghost makes her remark about small matters and silly folks; Scrooge responds as in the text.  But instead of proceeding to the punchline, he experiences a brief vision of his treatment of Bob Cratchit at closing time.  The Ghost notes “My time grows short.”

     Finney’s is one of the oldest, thinnest, most serious-looking Fezziwigs, a Fezziwig that looks like George Arliss by way od Woodrow Wilson.  Scrooge exclaims to see him alive again, and explains, “I was his apprentice!”  Fezziwig, in a state of excitement, cries out to his apprentices, who hurry to put up the shutters and clear the room; only now does Scrooge recognize Dick Wilkins.  Outside, the fiddlers leads the guests, dancing, up the street to the tune of “I Saw Three Ships”.  Mrs. Fezziwig is rather petite; she and her husband rush into each other’s arms.  The Ghost and Scrooge take up a position in the loft.  Fezziwig, by now having proven his businesslike mien was but the mask of a Christas fanatic, leads the throng in the musical number “December the Twenty-Fifth”.  The Ghost inquires “Why didn’t you join the dance?”  Scrooge snaps “Because I couldn’t do it!”  “Tsk tsk tsk tsk.”  There is a lively dancing game, which Fezziwig loses, to his own great amazement.  “What a marvelous man!” Scrooge declares.  “What’s so marvelous?  He’s merely spent but a few pounds of your mortal money.”  This irritates Scrooge, who exclaims, “You don’t understand!  He had the power to make us happy or unhappy, to make our work a pleasure or a burden.  It’s nothing to DO with money!”  The dancers prance on, but after a moment are moving in slow motion.  We watch Fezziwig’s daughter Isabel draw Ebenezer into the dance.  Old Scrooge recalls his love, singing “You…you….”  We watch the pair on a summer picnic, chaperoned by Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig,.

     Matthau sees himself with Belle, his fiancée. There is no mention whatever of Fezziwig, though we do see the old man and his wife dancing in a room dotted with Christmas trees.  Scrooge recalls that the dance was so lively that the couple had to step out into the winter weather to cool themselves.  Ebenezer explains to Belle why they can’t marry right away; old Scrooge shouts at him.  The lovers sing about their different dreams, Belle being willing to settle for love in a cottage while Ebenezer wants to surround her with comforts in a rich man’s mansion.

     McDuck stands outside the Fezzywig (sic) Tea Company.  “I couldn’t have worked for a kinder man.”  Mr. Toad plays Fezzywig AND the fiddler.  Scrooge notes, “That shy lad in the corner: that’s me.”  “That’s before you became a miserable miser, consumed by greed.”  “Well, nobody’s perfect.”  Lovely Isabella has to drag him into the dance; under the mistletoe, she kisses him.  Scrooge recalls how much in love he was.

     Scott’s Fezziwig is a cheerful old chap with dark hair; he also has an establishment which supports a large staff, including a couple of female clerks, all busy about some kind of work with dry goods.  Fezziwig calls out, “Pens down!  No more work tonight, boys!” and goes on to order the shutters up and things cleared away.  He also makes a point of ordering young Ebenezer to enjoy himself; he appreciates how much Ebenezer puts into the work, but there is more to life.  Ebenezer promises to try, while the old Scrooge exclaims at seeing Mrs. Fezziwig.  And her three daughters!  And…Belle.  “I’d forgotten how beautiful she was.”  Ebenezer invites her to dance; Belle is breathlessly excited at being in love.  At length, they slip away from the group.  The Ghost suddenly inquires, “How long since you danced, Ebenezer?”  The smiling Scrooge turns dour.  “Waste of time, dancing.”  “You didn’t think so then.”  “There was a reason then.”  Meanwhile, Belle is telling Ebenezer how much less gloomy he seems since coming to Fezziwig’s.  He replies that he is of a serious turn of mind, but will try henceforth to go through life with a grin.  Old Scrooge smiles at the recollection.  Fezziwig slips up behind the couple, making little jokes to embarrass the young lovers, and draws them back into the group, declaring all the while the joys of a happy marriage.  The Ghost observes “Old Fezziwig: a silly man.”  Scrooge is startled.  “Silly?  Why silly?”  “What has he done?  Spent a few pounds?  Danced like a monkey?  Beamed a great smile?”  Scrooge leaps to Fezziwig’s defense, but his voice slows as he realizes how he compares to his old boss.  “Just…small things,” he concludes.  Dick, in the previous era, demands, “Are you in love, Ebenezer?”  “The thought had occurred to me.”  “She’s too good for you.”  “One day, “Ebenezer muses, “When I’ve made my fortune, then I’ll deserve her.”  “It was a night,”  the Ghost notes, “Never to be forgotten.”  “Never,” says Scrooge.

     Caine flies through a flash of light.  “Do you know this place?”  “Know it?  My first job was here!”  This is Fozziewig’s Rubber Chicken factory; at the sight of his old boss, Scrooge laughs and describes the businessman as being “as hard and as ruthless as a rose petal.”  He realizes with excitement that they have arrived in time for the Fozziewig Christmas Party.  Fozziewig makes a welcoming speech, jeered by the young Marley brothers.  A severe young Ebenezer asks if Fozziewig understands how much this party is costing.  Fozziewig reproves him, ordering him to enjoy himself.  Later, Fozziewig introduces Ebenezer to a distant relative, one Belle.  Ebenezer is transfixed, and we hear the rest of the dialogue in echoes as love clouds his senses.  “Do you remember this meeting?” the Ghost inquires.  “Remember?  Yes, I remember.”

     With Curry, we see the warehouse and its four or five employees.  “Bust my buttons!” Scrooge exclaims, on spotting Fezziwig, “He hasn’t changed a bit!”  His boss is an elderly gent in late Victorian garb, a bit short of breath.  Checking a pocket watch, he calls for his apprentices to put up the shutters and clear away.  “I was an apprentice here,” Scrooge explains, “A good one, too.  Old Fezziwig treated me like his own son.”  He reaches to pet Debit, who shies away.  There is a fiddler, a modest spread of food, and some dancing.  Mrs. Fezziwig is younger than her husband.  Scrooge, his expression mild, taps his feet to the music and laughs, “Good old Fezziwig!  Show me a better boss than that, eh?”  The Ghost is unimpressed.  “So he spent a bit of coin on some song and dance.”  “Bit of coin?  You couldn’t buy that happiness with a fortune!  He had the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our jobs a pleasure or a drudgery.”  “He must have set quite an example for you.”  Scrooge does not reply; the Ghost demands, “Now what?”  “Oh, nothing particular.  I’d like to be able to say something to Bob Cratchit, that’s all.”  “My time grows short.”

      Stewart is asked whether he knows this place; he is so obviously excited to be here that the Ghost chuckles.  He pauses at the door, yanks it open, and cries out at seeing old Fezziwig alive again.  This old Fezziwig is a stout fellow indeed, with a pronounced double chin and a high dark wig.  Scrooge spots Dick Wilkins just before Fezziwig rushes over to sprinkle sand on their books, ordering them over and over to do no more work tonight.  The older Scrooge takes it all in hungrily, nodding.  The food arrives followed by a suitably plump Mrs. Fezziwig.  There is a great deal of laughter.  Scrooge names the Fezziwig children as they arrive; there is a bit of business with young Eli Fezziwig, whom Ebenezer delights by drawing a coin from behind the small boy’s ear.  A band (flutes, clarinet, and serpent) plays for the dancing.  Scrooge is now watching his younger self with apparent passivity until the camera pans down to show his feet bouncing to the music.  He is breathless as Ebenezer and Dick Wilkins compete in a dancing contest; Ebenezer is then called upon to talk (the not unwilling) Fezziwig into performing a comic song.  The Ghost’s hope rises with old Scrooge’s excitement.  Belle arrives late.  Ebenezer takes her cloak, kissing her.  Scrooge takes this all in, murmuring that Fezziwig once told him “When happiness shows up, always give it a comfortable seat.”  The Ghost responds with a variant of the speech about silly folk, and how little was spent.  Scrooge answers fiercely, nbut slows as he realizes what he is exposing about his own managerial style.  In reply to questioning, he mumbles, “Looking back, perhaps things seem better than they really were.”  “All this was a lie, then?”  “The world changes.  You can’t trust anything,” growls Ebenezer Scrooge.  But that is as far as he can go in that direction; he cannot resist going on, “But no.  It was just like this, down to the last mince pie and dance.”  Regret is obvious in his face; we se snow falling on the waltzing Belle and Ebenezer, which leads us into the next scene.

            19 ½: Interlude

     At this point, Sim I veers away from the text into three episodes, all bridging the gap between Fezziwig’s apprentice and the hard young man who rejects or is rejected by Belle in the next scene.  We begin with the eager young apprentice sitting with Alice (the name Belle goes by in this production.)  He hands her an engagement ring which cost him a shilling.  She hands it back.

     Dismayed, Ebenezer asks if the ring is not good enough, or he not rich enough.

    “You’re still so young,” she tells him.  “You may have a change of heart one day.”

     “Dearest Alice, if ever I have a change of heart towards you, it will be because my heart has ceased to beat.”  Scrooge always did have a way with words.

     She asks if it makes no difference to him that she is so poor.  He says he loves her BECAUSE she’s poor, and not proud.  “Will you always feel like that?” she inquires.

     “As long as I live.  Forever and ever.”

     She accepts him then, and they vow to love each other to eternity.

     “I’ve seen enough,” snarls old Scrooge.

     “But more awaits you,” the Ghost informs him.

     “I won’t look.”
     “You shall.  Now see yourself in business.”

     The devil enters Fezziwig’s in the form of the elegant Mr. Jorkens.  He wants to buy out old Fezziwig, at considerable profit to both himself and the old man.  Fezziwig declines to sell; he may be old-fashioned, but money isn’t everything.  When he leaves the room to check on something, young Scrooge tries to stick up for Fezziwig’s point of view.  Jorkens offers him twice his current salary to come work for the firm Jorkens represents.

     We shift to Fan’s deathbed; Ebenezer is devastated, leaving before Fan’s last words, pausing for a moment to glower in the direction of a crying baby.  A man (his brother-in-law?) tries to prevent him from leaving; Scrooge jerks away and marches out.  After he is gone, Fan murmurs a plea that Ebenezer look after her boy.  (Nice commentary on her husband.)  The old scrooge, sobbing, begs her forgiveness.

     Fan’s death seems to have resulted from a lack of ready cash; Ebenezer is immediately moved to go accept Jorkens’s offer.  (He mentions that Fezziwig wished him well as he left.)  Here he meets the older and somewhat world-weary senior clerk, Jacob Marley, who voices some of Jorkens’s philosophy, noting the industrial revolution has made the world a tougher place.  Mr. Scrooge replies that the world is hard and cruel; one must steel oneself or be crushed with the weak and infirm.  Mr. Marley notes they have much in common.

     At length, we see the sign for “J. Fezziwig & Co., est. 1765” being removed from its building.  The new managers, Scrooge and Marley, walk by as Fezziwig watches from inside a carriage; he is obviously the victim of a hostile takeover.  A clerk asks if he will be kept on in the new firm, and is informed that his job is secure if he takes a twenty percent cut in salary.  Scrooge, recognizing Fezziwig, almost takes a step forward.  When he pauses, the carriage pulls away.

     We shift to Alice,. Looking out a window; then we step inside, where Ebenezer is saying “Then you no longer love me.”

     “You no longer love me,” says Alice, before we move into the next section.

      (Finney has a briefer interlude to cover this period, as we watch the Fezziwigs, Belle, and Ebenezer on their picnic.  The Ghost looks touched ass Ebenezer gives Alice a ring.  “I did love her, you know,” Scrooge tells the Ghost.  “Did you?  Why did you let her go?”  “I’ve never been quite sure.”  “Then let us go see.”

FUSS FUSS FUSS #10: In the Matter of Fezziwig, Ltd.

     So here is Mr. Fezziwig, his face and figure set down forever by John Leech: boss of all bosses, a man who really knows how to handle staff relations and throw a mean Christmas party.  That is really all Dickens tells us about him, so whoever wants more will need to make it up as they go along.

     So Owen gives us J. Fezziwig, Sim I has S. Fezziwig, McDuck Fezzywig, Stewart one Albert Fezziwig, and Caine has Fozziewig (who is Fozzie in a wig; comedy can be very logical.)  All but a few Fezziwigs clearly bear a relation to the Leech illustration, without the least nonsense about a welch, or Welsh, wig (which, as The Annotated Christas Carol informs us, is a cloth cap.)

     What the firm (est. 1765, according to sim I) actually does is even more of a mystery than what Scrooge & Marley did.  There is a warehouse, but this tells us nothing.  Scott’s Fezziwig deals in dry goods, while McDuck’s runs a tea company.  Fozziewig manufactures rubber chickens.  In Sim I, he is a “merchant”, manufacturing waistcoats; in Rathbone he owns an “Emporium”, perhaps a retail store (perhaps not.)  In some versions, Ebenezer and Dick Wilkins appear to be his sole employees, while in others, he has a large staff (Dickens leans a little toward the latter.)  Curry and Finney have memories of hauling boxes for the firm.

     His family is largely ignored by screenwriters, save in Stewart, where his daughters have names (and a brother.)  When Belle makes an early appearance, she may be a daughter, a niece, another relation, or just another one of the poor working girls attending the party.

     In most movies, Fezziwig throws a much larger affair than Dickens shows us.  (Three or four pounds wouldn’t cover a fraction of the spread in March.)  But whatever the size of his party or his company; the essential Fezziwig is represented, a manager who justifies the joy in Scrooge’s cry of “It’s old Fezziwig, alive again!”

     Scrooge’s former self grew larger at the words, and the room became a little darker and more dirty.  The panels shrunk, the windows cracked; fragments of plaster fell out of the ceiling, and the naked laths were shown instead; but how this was all brought about, Scrooge knew no more than you do.  He only knew that it was quite correct; that everything had happened so; that there he was, alone again, when all the other boys had gone home for the jolly holidays.

     He was not reading now, but walking up and down despairingly.  Scrooge looked at the Ghost; and with a mournful shaking of the head, glanced anxiously towards the door.

     It opened; and a little girl, much younger than the boy, came darting in, ad putting her arms around his neck, and often kissing him, addressed him as her “Der, dear brother.”

     “I have come to take you home, dear brother!” said the child, clapping her tiny hands and bending down to laugh, “To bring you home, hoe, home!”

     “Home, little fan?” retorted the boy.

     “Yes!” said the girl, brimful of glee.  “Home, for good and all.  Home, for ever and ever.  Father is so much kinder than he used to be, that home’s like Heaven!  He spoke so gently to me on dear night when I was going to bed, that I was not afraid to ask him once more if you might come home; and he said Yes, you should; and sent me in a coach to bring you.  And you’re to be a man!” said the child, opening her eyes, “and are never to come back here; but first, we’re to be together all the Christmas long, and have the merriest time in the world.”

     “You are quite a woman, little Fan!” exclaimed the boy.

     She clapped her hands together and laughed, and tried to touch his head’ but being so little, laughed again, and stood on tiptoe to embrace him.  Then she began to drag him, in her childish eagerness, towards the door, and he, nothing loth to go, accompanied her.

     A terrible voice in the hall cried, “Bring down Master Scrooge’s box, there!” and in the hall appeared the schoolmaster himself, who glared on Master Scrooge with a ferocious condescension, and threw jo, into a dreadful state of mind by shaking hands with him.  He then conveyed him and his sister into the verist old well of a shivering  best-parlour that ever was seen, where the maps upon the wall, and the celestial and terrestrial globes in the windows were waxy with cold.  Here he produced a decanter of curiously light wine, and a block of curiously heavy cake, and administered instalments of these dainties to the young couple; at the same time, sending out a meagre servant to offer a glass of “something” to the postboy, who answered that he thanked the gentleman, but if it was the same tap he had tasted before, he had rather not.  Master Scrooge’s trunk being by this time tied on to the top of the chaise, the children bade the schoolmaster good-bye right willingly; and getting into it, drove gaily down he garden-sweep; the quick wheels dashing the hoar-frost and snow from off the dark leaves of the evergreens like spray.

     “Always a delicate creature whom a breath might have withered,” said the Ghost.  “But she had a large heart!”

     “So she had,” cried Scrooge.  “You’re right.  I’ll not gainsay it, Spirit.  God forbid!”

     “She died a woman,” said the Ghost, “And had, as I think, children.”

     “One child,” Scrooge returned.

     “True,” said the Ghost.  “Your nephew.”

     Scrooge seemed uneasy in his mind, and answered, briefly, “Yes.”

     The scene is particularly prone to pruning by people who want the story to move faster.  Some screenwriters simply combine this Christmas with the previous one.  (Dickens did so in his readings in public, as a matter of fact.)  Others skip from the schoolroom to Fezziwig’s, without stopping for Fan, leaving us wholly in the dark about how nephew Fred and Ebenezer are related.  Many make up for dropping these family strains and their effect on Scrooge’s personality by turning the apprentice Ebenezer, to be seen later, into a dour and serious lad, uninterested in Christmas.

     That bit of business with the schoolmaster appears in none of the pictures described here; in fact, he has very little part in the story until we reach Caine.

     Owen makes the two schoolroom scenes into one Christmas.  The depressed young Scrooge is standing at the end of the previous scene when a servant announces, “Master Scrooge, your sister is here.”  This Fan is a 1930s movie child playing at Little Red Riding Hood, perky enough for a Shirley Temple or two, but with a British accent.  After Fan delivers the “Home, for ever and ever” speech, she goes on in some detail about the holiday food ad Wonderful Christmas to come.  Young Scrooge exclaims, “God bless you, Fan!” twice.  The older Scrooge and the Ghost reappear now, the Ghost observing “She loved you.”  “She did.”  “I believe she had children before she died.”  “One child.”  “Yes, your nephew.”  Scrooge just looks at her.  Realizing he has gotten the point, she says, “Come.”

     In Sim I, a timid knock tells us something is about to happen.  Fan peeks around the door and, seeing her brother, cries “Ebenezer!”  She rushes in; old Scrooge runs to embrace her, and is devastated when she passes through him.  After she delivers the “Home, for ever and ever” speech, ebenezer breaks in to object that their father hardly knows him, and observes that their mother must have looked much as Fan does now.  Fan suggests this is why Father relented, and finishes that passage, adding that Ebenezer will never be lonely again “as long as I live.”  He tells her she must live forever then; nobody else has ever cared about him, and nobody else ever will.  When she tells him that’s nonsense, he sobs on her shoulder.  “She died a married woman,” the Ghost observes, “And had, as I think, children.”  “One child.”  :”True.  Your nephew.”  “She died giving him life.”  “As your mother died, giving you life, which your father never forgave you, as if you were to blame.”  Scrooge simply gazes straight ahead.

     In Rathbone we see a girl two or three years older than the boy; she slips in to slap a hand down on Ebenezer’s desk.  “I’ve come to bring you home, brother Ebenezer!”  “Home?”  “Yes, for good and all.  Father sent me in a coach to fetch you.  We’re going to be together all Christmas long and have the merriest Christmas ever!”  She has pulled Ebenezer from his seat and they are now dancing around the room.  Eventually, she draws him outside.  The Ghost gazes into the sky through most of the dialogue with old Scrooge.  He turns to face Ebenezer only on the words “Your nephew, Fred.”  Scrooge admits this, abashed.

     Sim II ages the schoolboy at a desk to the apprentice at a desk in Fezziwig’s, bypassing Fan.

     Finney’s Fan peeks in at the door and cries “Ebbie!”  The scene moves quickly, but largely as written.  The Ghost is stern reminding old Scrooge of “Your nephew!”  Scrooge looks guilty as he says “Yes.”  The Ghost then announces “Here’s a Christmas you really enjoyed.”

     Scott’s version of young Scrooge at this point resembles Abel Gance as the young Napoleon.  Fan is a brittle, large-eyed creature.  “Eb” refuses to believe her when she tells him he’s coming home, and when he does come to believe it, he isn’t all that perked up by it.  “Come,” his sister says, “We mustn’t keep Father waiting.”  The older Mr. Scrooge is outside: he is abrupt, severe, and sour (if he’s so much kinder than before, it’s a good thing we didn’t see him before.)  Ebenezer, he declares, will be allowed three days at home and then start his job at Fezziwig’s.  Fan objects, but Mr. scrooge is immovable; we can see that he and Eb are not going to enjoy being home for the holidays.  Old Scrooge’s face clearly shows he is not indulging happy memories.  The Ghost is intent on driving home the moral of the story; she points out that Fred Holywell “bears a strong resemblance to your sister.”  “Does he?  I never noticed.”  “You never noticed.  I’m beginning to think you’ve gone through life with your eyes closed.  Open them wide.”

     Caine drops Fan but DOES include the schoolmaster, who is shown to be the inspiration of Ebenezer’s work ethic.  We are also shown how the schoolhouse disintegrates, which is left out of other versions.  As far as the traditional course of the story, we simply bridge to the next scene by noting that young scrooge is about to be apprenticed to a fine businessman.

     In Curry, we see an older schoolboy throwing down his beloved copy of Robinson Crusoe, driven by his plight to scoff “Bah!  Humbug!” at it.  He looks out the window.  Old Scrooge sighs “So many lonely Christmases.”  The Ghost, subdued for once, replies, “Right.  But not this one!”  He points to the door as Fan flings it open,  Old Scrooge runs to embrace her, but she passes through him.  As she explains to Ebenezer why she’s there, he objects, “But Father….”  “Oh, pooh on Father!” she cries.  “I’M inviting you!”  (Presumably she hired the coach with hert mad money.)  The Ghost and Old Scrooge exchange remarks about her large heart; Scrooge recalls that they had a happy Christmas “in spite of Father” and goes on to wish that she was still alive, to invite him in for Christmas.  “But she has!” the Ghost objects.  “Her goodness lives on in Fred!”  Scrooge smiles.  “Yes.  I wish….”  Debit growls, and so does Scrooge, turning away.  The Ghost suggests “Let us visit another kind soul.”

     Stewart, watching his slightly older schoolboy self, seems to know who is coming (or has heard her theme music in the background.)  He turns to the door in time to see “Fran” enter.  Fran eventually takes her brother out to the coach and they ride for home, her head on his shoulder.  Old Scrooge turns away from the scene, his face hard.  “Such a delicate creature,” the Ghost remarks, “But she had a large heart.”  “So she had.  You’re right.  I’ll not gainsay it, Spirit, God forbid!”  “She died young.”  “Too young.”  “Your sister married and had children.”  “One child.”  “True.  Your nephew.”  Scrooge pauses.  “Fred.  Yes.”  He seems on the verge of realizing something, but they walk on.  Scrooge stops to stare.

FUSS FUSS FUSS #9: How Old WAS Ebenezer Scrooge?

     Let’s talk this over.  Why was young Ebenezer left to moulder at school over so many Christmases?  Children were routinely sent to school away from home, of course; one suspects many of them were kept there as long as possible to keep them out from underfoot.  (Day Care Centers have that problem with parents in our own day.)  All Dickens tells us is that this had something to do with an unpleasant father.  That, plus the fact that Scrooge’s mother is never so much as mentioned, has ;ed to a common tradition that Mr. Scrooge turned against Ebenezer because Mrs. Scrooge died in childbirth at Ebenezer’s debut in the world.

     The difficulty with that theory is that Dickens clearly makes Fan younger than her brother.  They COULD be half-siblings, of course, but most filmmakers prefer to swap their ages, or ignore the question altogether.  (In the version Basil Rathbone recorded for Columbia Records in 1942, he explains that he is at school because his father doesn’t like children.  Stewart states simply that his father turned against him when his mother died, without giving any cause of death for her.

     Now, most versions follow Dickens in giving us two different young Ebenezers: the younger one reading Robinson Crusoe and a somewhat older one reuniting with Fan.  The first schoolboy generally looks to be between seven and nine.  The Ebenezer of the Fan scenes varies more widely, with Stewart and Owen the youngest, at twelve or thirteen, Caine and Finney next, Curry well into his teens, with Scott and Sim I both sturdy young men.  When Fan arrives she is almost always an exuberant, excited child, glowing with health and the spirit of Christmas, looking not the least bit frail.  She seems to be two or three years younger than whatever Ebenezer she meets.  The exceptions are Owen, where Fan can’t be much more than nine, and Sim I and Scott, who are the most definite about the death in childbirth theory about Mrs. Scrooge.  In these, Fan might be a little older than her brother, or at least very close in age.  (There’s another answer: maybe they were twins.)

     Not that it makes any difference at all, at all, but the character of Fan was based on Dickens’s own sister Fan.  She was older than Charles.