It is December. I wake up to frost on the ground, crunchy underfoot. The sky is an icy blue and the low intensity sunlight is amber. It is beautiful out there; fresh, cold and bright, but unfortunately, I am ill and should really stay inside drinking multiple cups of tea. My soul wants to be out there though.
I went to see A Christmas Carol, probably the best story ever written. Dickens was a genius but the thing that strikes me as surprising each time I watch it (adapted for stage, film, etc.) is that it’s set in London. A big city. Where lots of folk intermingle and bustle about wearing shawls and striking matches.
It surprises me because of the familial feel to the narrative. There is this old miserly man and his nephew’s house is over there and his clerk’s house is somewhere walkable with a giant turkey. When they enter a flashback with the help of the Ghost of Christmas Past, I’m pretty sure the Fezziwig’s ball dance is held in the city of London, which is also where Scrooge & Marley’s investment offices are. Everybody just lives on top of each other. Also, Scrooge has never left London, so he was born and will die there, wow.
I’ve heard that Victorian living conditions were pretty bad. People living in slums, raw sewage flowing in the streets, outbreaks of cholera, but then there were also the magical inventions of industry like gas lighting, which helped Scrooge see the illusion of Marley in his door knocker. Then there’s the climatic epoch that Charles Dickens lived through known as the Little Ice Age, which enchanted him and made us all believe in a snowy white Christmas.
I bet a frozen Victorian city was so much nicer for its well-heeled inhabitants because all the waste in the streets would freeze and the noxious smells would lessen. That probably added to the magical Christmas feel Dickens was talking about. But how about how cold it got? I’m chilly in a centrally heated house wearing several layers under a Berghaus fleece. I bet a lot of people froze to death or lost a limb during the Little Ice Age in London too.
Lovely!
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