"Scrooge and Bob Cratchit" — Green's thirty-first and final illustration for "A Christmas Carol" (original) (raw)

Context of the Illustration

"Hallo," growled Scrooge, in his accustomed voice, as near as he could feign it. "What do you mean by coming here at this time of day?"

"I'm very sorry, sir," said Bob. "I am behind my time."

"You are?" repeated Scrooge. "Yes. I think you are. Step this way, if you please."

"It's only once a year, sir," pleaded Bob, appearing from the Tank. "It shall not be repeated. I was making rather merry yesterday, sir."

"Now, I'll tell you what, my friend," said Scrooge, "I am not going to stand this sort of thing any longer. And therefore," he continued, leaping from his stool, and giving Bob such a dig in the waistcoat that he staggered back into the Tank again: "and therefore I am about to raise your salary."

Bob trembled, and got a little nearer to the ruler. He had a momentary idea of knocking Scrooge down with it, holding him, and calling to the people in the court for help and a strait-waistcoat.

"A merry Christmas, Bob," said Scrooge, with an earnestness that could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. "A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you for many a year. I'll raise your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob. Make up the fires, and buy another coal-scuttle before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit!" ["Stave Five: The End of It," 137-8]

Commentary: The Text Extended

The finalé of the five scenes that Green has included for the fifth stave is a small-scale vignette (following Dickens's description of Scrooge's uncharacteristic behaviour) that shows how profoundly the visitations have affected Scrooge, who, having gone to church and reconciled with his nephew, surprises Bob on the day following Christmas with promise of an increase in both salary and in the personal interest that he will take in the Cratchits, especially Tiny Tim. His new attitude towards the rest of humanity is signalled by his consistently interacting with people in the illustrations for the final stave, beginning with the boy whom he enlists to help him order the prize turkey and culminating in this scene, perhaps later on in the day, as the text intimates. The point here is that this is not a realisation of a scene or situation narrated or dramatised in the text, but rather an _extension_of the text, albeit an extension which enjoys authorial sanction because Green has clearly based his scene on the John Leech original, a cartoon-like fireside scene entitled Scrooge and Bob Cratchit, or, The Christmas Bowl (see below). Whereas Punchcartoonist Leech provided only a single image of the post-visitation Scrooge, Green, with a much longer program of illustration (thirty-one illustrations versus the 1843 edition's eight), seems to have felt that he could best describe the spiritual state of the redeemed Scrooge by showing how he now relates to others: the boy in the street before the church service, the little girl in the pinafore after church, his sister's son, Fred — and his trusted and much-abused clerk, Bob Cratchit.

In the original text, the narrator indicates in Scrooge's direct discourse an intention on the part of the formerly Malthusian miser to become the sort of good, old-fashioned, albeit somewhat paternalistic employer that old Fezziwig was to his employees and that Thomas Carlyle advocated. We can reasonably assume, then, that this scene occurs that very afternoon, although Green does not indicate its location, whereas Leech situates the convivial scene in Scrooge's own parlour, that same room in which he encountered both Marley's Ghost and the Ghost of Christmas Present. Although John Leech has included just one small wood-block engraving to demonstrate Scrooge's change of heart as an employer, of the other nineteenth-century illustrators of the novella, only the American (nevertheless, an associate of Dickens) Sol Eytinge, Junior in the 1868 Ticknor and Fields edition has devoted a significant proportion of his program to the new, improved Ebenezer Scrooge, showing him with child-like glee putting on his socks on Christmas morning and smiling broadly as he steps out of his office the next day to shock his clerk with news of a salary increase, in "I'll raise your salary" (see below). Indeed, three Eytinge illustrations accompany "The End of It."

Unlike Eytinge and Leech, Green offers no background details to indicate where Scrooge is entertaining his long-time employee, although we may surmise from Scrooge's wearing a dressing-gown that the scene is the same as in Leech's final illustration, the employer's home. Perhaps Green simply could not decide where top situate the scene, but his other vignettes in this volume of The Christmas Books are often lacking background detail, forcing the reader to examine the figures themselves more closely. Scrooge looms almost larger than life here, his figure expanded by the shadow that he casts. Bob seems awkward in his pose, perhaps because the situation in which he now finds himself is so novel: he is his employer's guest rather than his subordinate, and the two are now establishing a personal rather than a commercial connection. Having already served Bob a glass of punch (a red-wine and port concoction that, with the addition of the bitter oranges, turns a deep purple), Scrooge is about to ladle himself a glass — a sure indication that he now serves others ahead of himself, but that the "Total Abstinence Principle" applies only to visitors from the spirit world, and not to alcoholic beverages.

Images from other editions (1843-1905) of the Benevolent Scrooge

Left: Leech's elegant tailpiece of Scrooge and his employee sharing punch,Scrooge and Bob Cratchit, or The Christmas Bowl. Right: Eytinge's depiction of the reformed Scrooge's acting in a more benevolent manner as an employer, "I'll raise your salary".

Above: E. A. Abbey's 1876 engraving of Scrooge's "mending fences" with his nephew, "It's I. Your Uncle Scrooge! I have come to dinner. Will you let me in, Fred?" [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Above: C. E. Brock's vigorous line drawing of Scrooge's poking Bob Cratchit in the ribs in jest, "I am about to raise your salary!"(1905).

Bibliography

Dickens, Charles. Christmas Books. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Junior. Diamond Edition. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867.

_____. Christmas Books. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1878. Vol. XVII.

_____. Christmas Books. Illustrated by A. A. Dixon. London & Glasgow: Collins' Clear-Type Press, 1906.

_____. Christmas Books. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. VIII.

_____. A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. Illustrated by John Leech. London: Chapman and Hall, 1843.

_____. A Christmas Carol in Prose: Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1868.

_____. A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being A Ghost Story of Christmas. Illustrated by John Leech. (1843). Rpt. in Charles Dickens'sChristmas Books, ed. Michael Slater. Hardmondsworth: Penguin, 1971, rpt. 1978.

____. A Christmas Carol and The Cricket on the Hearth. Illustrated by Charles Edmund Brock. London: J. M. Dent, and New York: Dutton, 1905, rpt. 1963.

_____. A Christmas Carol. Illustrated by Charles Green, R. I. London: A & F Pears, 1912.

_____. A Christmas Carol. Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. London: William Heinemann, 1915.

_____. Christmas Stories. Illustrated by E. A. Abbey. The Household Edition. 16 vols. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1876.

Created 31 August 2015

Last modified 14 March 2020