In keeping with the historical referencing that I'm trying to do with these illustrations, I thought I should find a special person as a model for the Ghost of Christmas Present. Robert Blum, one of the leaders of the Revolutions of 1848 in Germany and Austria, seemed to have both the right appearance and personality. Here is my initial sketch, after a portrait by August Hunger (Hunger's painting was provided by Wikimedia Commons).
And this is my finished drawing of him as the Ghost, appearing in Scrooge's magically decorated room.
I don't actually consider myself to be a Christian, but I appreciate the holiday for its message of kindness to others. There is always too much greed and nastiness in the world, so it is important to remind ourselves of the joy of being nice to each other. So let me thank you for reading my blog, and please accept my warmest wishes to you, your families, and your friends for a happy and healthy 2016 holiday season.
I must apologize to anyone who has checked in on this blog recently, because I've taken a (hopefully brief) hiatus from this illustration project. I'm working on some paintings, including a commissioned piece, and I've also been doing some costume and backstage work at a local theater. And there are only so many hours in the day.
This is from Stave 3. After visiting the lighthouse, Christmas Present flies with Scrooge over the ocean, where they see a ship.
I made my drawing after studying this Dutch drawing of a barque (my eternal thanks to Wikipedia, Wikimedia, and their contributors!) : https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Barkskibs_staende_rigning2.png
I am also indebted, once again, to Turner, Hokusai, and Hiroshige. They aren't the only artists I look at, but they're pretty good.
"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 saw 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 out 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 elder, too, with his face all damaged and scarred with hard weather, as the figure-head of an old ship might be: struck up a sturdy song that was like a Gale in itself."
Maritime trade was, of course, critical for the development of modern Europe, and especially for the development of Great Britain. Before the widespread introduction of railroads, sea routes provided the fastest means of transporting goods. Coastlines, however, don't care one way or the other for the safety of human travel, and numerous coastal regions have lots of underwater hazards.
I modeled my lighthouse after J.M.W. Turner's watercolor painting of Bell Rock Lighthouse, off the east coast of Scotland. Dickens doesn't give a specific location for the lighthouse, so my choice was influenced by Turner. I like his blending of realism and abstraction, so I looked for an image by him of a lighthouse, preferably in a storm, and found it. My version of Bell Rock Light is from the air, and I've tried to interpret the same wave action shown in Turner's sea-level view. I made this image before I made the mining country image (see the previous post, Post 10, of this blog), and Hokusai and Hiroshige also influenced my image of Bell Rock Lighthouse. My image above is gouache on watercolor paper.
Bell Rock and other lighthouses were relatively new things, despite the longstanding historical need. Lighthouses had often been constructed as aids to navigation, and as warnings of subsurface hazards. But it wasn't until the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that the engineering difficulties of building long-term storm-proof structures on sites like Bell Rock began to be overcome. Bell Rock was completed in 1810, and Turner painted his watercolor in 1819. The costs were staggering - 42,000 pounds, according to Wikipedia. Wikipedia in turn references Lynn F. Pearson's Lighthouses Volume 312 of Shire book (Osprey Publishing, 2003) for this number. This was no small amount of money during the middle of the Napoleonic Wars. Obviously, lighthouses of this type were high-priority national infrastructure investments.
The construction began only 35 years before A Christmas Carol. I'm writing this in 2016 on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where we have a number of lighthouses, which are nothing new to us here and now. But, I think, in 1843, a lighthouse like Bell Rock would have been a symbol to many people of the progress that could come from industrial technology and human willpower overcoming the forces of nature.
The Wikipedia article on Bell Rock Lighthouse can be found here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Rock_Lighthouse. It has links to Wikimedia Commons for both Turner's watercolor, and an 1824 technical illustration showing the construction as of 1809, drawn by Bell Rock's designer, Robert Stevenson. It also has an additional link to a Wikipedia article on the earlier Eddystone Lighthouse off the coast of Cornwall.
Turner's watercolor is located in the National Gallery of Scotland.
Following is my preparatory sketch.
In Stave 3, the Ghost of Christmas Present takes Scrooge on a tour of Christmas, as it can be experienced in all manner of situations. He doesn't shy away from showing Britain's industrial poverty to Scrooge - shy is the last word one could use to describe Christmas Present - so that Scrooge can see that everyone deserves Christmas cheer whether rich or poor. After a tour of London, including a stop to bless the home and family of Bob Cratchit in Camden Town, Christmas Present and Scrooge fly over Britain and then out to sea.
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).
"You may talk vaguely about driving a coach-and-six up a good old flight of stairs, or through a bad young Act of Parliament; but I mean to say you might have got a hearse up that staircase, and taken it broadwise, with the splinter-bar towards the wall and the door towards the balustrades: and done it easy. There was plenty of width for that, and room to spare; which is perhaps the reason why Scrooge thought he saw a locomotive hearse going on before him in the gloom. Half-a-dozen gas-lamps out of the street wouldn’t have lighted the entry too well, so you may suppose that it was pretty dark with Scrooge’s dip."
My image of the locomotive hearse is a composite image, the hearse drawn on tracing paper, which I then set over my drawing of the stairs :
Long before the internal combustion engine, there was steam. Part of my interest in A Christmas Carol is Dickens's descriptions of the material culture around him. I've already talked about the gas lines in London, and steam had been in use since about a century before the introduction of coal gas. The nineteenth century, especially in Britain, was an era of new technology and people were undoubtedly fascinated by it, just as our society is fascinated by digital technology. Dickens doesn't ignore the environmental impacts - note his description of the London winter fog as "palpable brown air."
This "locomotive hearse" engaged my curiosity. When I was a little kid, three or four years old, I loved trains. Anything to do with trains. So I was struck by that adjective "locomotive." Why that word? Because there were such things. Once again, I am indebted to Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. Following are the links to the research I found, including specific pages for the images.
WIKIPEDIA ARTICLES :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_steam_road_vehicles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Steam_Carriage
On Richard Trevithick, creator of the London Steam Carriage :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Trevithick
On John Scott Russell, another steam carriage builder :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Scott_Russell
On Walter Hancock, yet another steam carriage builder :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Hancock
Sir Goldsworthy Gurney, and his steam carriages :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldsworthy_Gurney#Gurney.27s_steam_carriage
Another application of steam power, the traction engine :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traction_engine
Article on balusters, which I looked at while developing the stairs (and, BTW, some of Robert Seymour's illustrations include useful depictions of architectural details, including balusters) :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baluster
IMAGES ON WIKIMEDIA COMMONS :
Caricature of the steam power fad, 1831 :
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1831-View-Whitechapel-Road-steam-carriage-caricature.jpg
Richard Trevithick's London Steam Carriage :
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Trevithicks_Dampfwagen.jpg
John Scott Russell's steam carriage :
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Russell%27s_steam_carriage.png
Walter Hancock's steam omnibus :
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PSM_V57_D418_Steam_ominubus_made_by_hancock.png
Hancock's steam carriage named Enterprise :
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Entreprise.JPG
A period illustration of Gurney's steam carriage :
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Goldsworthy_Gurney_steam_carriage_-_Project_Gutenberg_eText_12496.png
I used this image, a painting by John Frederick Herring, Sr., as material for a study of the suspension system of a nineteenth-century coach :
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Edinburgh_and_London_Royal_Mail_by_John_Frederick_Herring,_Sr.jpg
The following images are all by me. They show (in reverse order) the development of my final image of the Locomotive Hearse. I tried to incorporate the logical mechanical parts of such a vehicle (wheels, axle, suspension, chain drive to accommodate the suspension, flywheel gear, connecting rod, piston, steam chest, smokestack, firebox, and coal box) with historical accuracy, but without imitating the above examples. My drawing of course shows a hearse, not a passenger carriage (indeed, I've found no examples of a steam-powered hearse besides Dickens's mention of it in this story). I've designed it asymmetrically, with the coffin compartment built above the suspension, on the right-hand side of the vehicle, with the coal box mounted below it. The firebox is set crosswise on the left-hand side, on the stoker's platform, which hangs off the chassis platform but well below the level of the leafspring mounts. The steam chest is mounted directly above the firebox, to the left of the coffin compartment, with a narrow gap in between to accommodate the drive chain. The smokestack is to the left of the steam chest. If the final image (see above) is obscure, it is supposed to be - the stairway is very dark, so dark that Scrooge cannot be sure if he has seen this contraption or not.
Here is the drawing of the stairs :
And the hearse, on tracing paper :
My draft study for the hearse :
My very rough initial sketch :
My sketch study after John Frederick Herring, Sr.'s, painting (see link above) :
My sketch after Herring Sr. doesn't do what I intended - I was trying to get figure out the mechanics underneath one of these carriages, and I got some things wrong. But this is one reason why artists make sketches, to find the problems and figure them out.
Task to come, time permitting : to read the first chapters of The Pickwick Papers, through to the end of the sections completed at the time the illustrator Robert Seymour killed himself on April 20, 1836. This, because I am curious about the coincidence of Jacob Marley's death occurring seven years before the events in A Christmas Carol and Seymour's committing suicide seven years before Dickens wrote it. I've modeled Bob Cratchit after a self-portrait by Seymour. There were problems between Dickens and Seymour over The Pickwick Papers, and Dickens was one of the last people to see Seymour alive. However, Seymour had some pre-existing mental health problems. I wonder, did Dickens find himself feeling guilty about Seymour? See the link below to the Wikipedia article on Seymour for more information. It's a bit complicated.
Dickens doesn't give much of a physical description for Bob (his most notable feature is his clothing, a white "comforter," or scarf, and "no great-coat"), but Seymour would have been about the right age, based on the number and ages of Bob Cratchit's children. English law on suicide during that period prevented his wife from inheriting anything from him, leaving Bob Seymour's family probably as badly off as Bob Cratchit's. Again, please see the Wikipedia article.
And what about Seymour's illustrations for Thomas Hervey's 1835 Book of Christmas - did these have an influence on A Christmas Carol? I'd be surprised if Dickens hadn't been familiar with it. So I have another task to come, time permitting : to read all of Hervey's Book of Christmas.
Here are some relevant links :
Wikipedia : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Seymour_(illustrator)
Wikisource : https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Seymour,_Robert_(DNB00)
The Pickwick Papers, from Project Gutenberg : http://www.gutenberg.org/files/580/580-h/580-h.htm
Thomas K. Hervey's Book of Christmas (1835, reprinted 1888) with illustrations by Seymour, also from Project Gutenberg (found via its mention in the above link to Wikisource) : http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42622/42622-h/42622-h.htm
And here is my original sketch of Bob Cratchit, showing both the outlines of his comforter and his entire face :
I wonder about whether or not Dickens intended for specific allusions and references within his work. I am by no means an expert on Dickens, or on anything else in the Victorian period for that matter, and so my drawings become, in a sense, an exploration of questions that I ask myself about Dickens and this story.
For instance, in naming Bob Cratchit, he makes the pun between the nickname Bob as being for both a person and a British shilling : "and on the threshold of the door the Spirit smiled, and stopped to bless Bob Cratchit's dwelling with the sprinkling of his torch. Think of that! Bob had but fifteen 'Bob' a-week himself; he pocketed on Saturdays but fifteen copies of his Christian name; and yet the Ghost of Christmas Present blessed his four-roomed house!"
And then, there is the word "cratch," which seems to be a relative of the French word "crèche" (I have never heard it used in American English) - see this article on Wikipedia : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat%27s_cradle - so I wonder, did Dickens expect his audience to make a second connection with the character of Bob Cratchit? Lots of authors do this kind of thing (Shakespeare, Melville, and Joyce come to my mind), so I wouldn't be surprised if "Cratchit" had a deliberate second meaning.
This image is cut white paper on a black background, showing Scrooge's fiancée, Belle, breaking up with him in Stave 2 :
From details in the text, I have decided, for my version, to place the offices of Scrooge and Marley at 9 Idol Lane, across the street from the church of St. Dunstan-in-the-East. I have no idea whether Dickens intended this location, it's pure conjecture on my part. But it's kind of interesting, or at least I think so. And I hope the current owner doesn't mind. Here's why I've chosen that location :
1. In Stave 1, there is this sentence, about the weather : "If the good Saint Dunstan had but nipped the Evil Spirit's nose with a touch of such weather as that, instead of using his familiar weapons, then indeed he would have roared to lusty purpose." I'll grant the obvious, that this line by itself doesn't indicate anything about the office's location, but Londoners would have known of this church, and being near the Thames riverfront, may well have been colder than further inland.
2. Another line in Stave 1 : "The ancient tower of a church, whose gruff old bell was always peeping slily down at Scrooge out of a Gothic window in the wall, became invisible, and struck the hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterwards as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there." St. Dunstan-in-the-East is gothic, damaged in the Great Fire of 1666, and repaired by Christopher Wren. Here is the Wikipedia page : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Dunstan-in-the-East. I don't know how many other candidates there would be for the church near Scrooge's office, fitting the description, or, again, if Dickens even cared to be so specific. The Great Fire certainly destroyed a number of medieval buildings, including churches, but many of the rebuildings (many by Wren) adopted newer architectural styles.
(St. Dunstan-in-the-West is also gothic, but it was built in 1842, a year before A Christmas Carol, and therefore isn't "ancient" as described by the text.)
3. This illustration is to accompany the following text, from Stave 2 :
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."
St. Dunstan-in-the-East sits between St. Dunstan's Hill and Idol Lane. It may be coincidence, but I noticed that Belle's use of "idol" is in lowercase, but when Scrooge says it, "Idol" has a capital I. Spending too much time at the office, to the destruction of something far more valuable : his relationship with the love of his life.
4. And there is, at Number 9, Idol Lane, a building that was there in the period - it is a Grade II listed building, from the 18th or early 19th century. The information can be found on these (and also probably other) websites : http://www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/en-199524-9-idol-lane-ec3-greater-london-authority#.V3qxqVdllyw and https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1064644
Maybe I'm reading too much into all this. But this kind of delving makes for a fun virtual tour of London. Well, for me at least.
