Industrial Britain was powered by coal. Coal mostly comes from underground. Somebody has to dig it out, if it's to be used. So, after seeing so much Christmas cheer in The City :
"...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 darkest night.
'What place is this?' asked Scrooge.
'A place where Miners live, 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 the 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 the chorus. So surely as they raised their voices, the old man got quite blithe and loud; and so surely as they stopped, his vigour sank again."
Here is my image of the mining country :
It's a composite image. The background is gouache over pencil. The mining pump at the left is an overlaid addition, drawn after an actual British mine pump called Fairbottom Bobs, which I had the opportunity to see in person. It is on permanent display at the Henry Ford Museum, in Dearborn, Michigan. Fairbottom Bobs was no longer in operation by the time of "A Christmas Carol", but it was still on site. In fact, it was not taken down until it was shipped to Michigan, a gift from Lord Stamford (who owned it) to Henry Ford. This information is from Wikipedia, and the full article, with a late nineteenth-century photograph, is here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairbottom_Bobs.
Other influences on this image are the inestimable J.M.W. Turner, the Japanese printmakers Hokusai and Hiroshige, and the Massachusetts painter William Bradford (for some of his arctic scenes; do check out his work at http://www.william-bradford-gallery.org).
