I had the opportunity to write about Charles Dickens, the origins of his classic novella A Christmas Carol, and his performance of his piece, for Fine Books and Collections Magazine recently.
From the story...
“Promptly at 8 P.M.,” a writer for San Francisco’s Alta California newspaper wrote that night of December 31st, 1867, “unannounced, and without waiting for any stamping or clapping of hands to call him out, a tall, ‘spry’ (if I may say it,) thin-legged old gentleman, gotten up regardless of expense, especially as to shirt-front and diamonds, with a bright red flower in his button-hole, gray beard and moustache, bald head, and with side hair brushed fiercely and tempestuously forward, as if its owner were sweeping down from a gale of wind, the very Dickens came!”
The very Charles Dickens, arguably the most famous author in the world at that time. According to Harper’s Weekly, crowds began gathering the previous night to buy tickets for this performance. “Not less than 500 persons, including two women, were in the line.”
Dickens was an old 55 when he appeared on stage unannounced - he would die less than three years later. The reporter for the newspaper was a 32-year-old named Mark Twain. Dickens read aloud to Twain, and the rest of the audience at Steinway Hall in New York City, from his well-known novel David Copperfield. “Mr. Dickens,” Twain continued, “had a table to put his book on, and on it he had a tumbler, a fancy decanter, and a small bouquet.”
For more on Dickens and A Christmas Carol, go to NPR.
And, yes, for even more on Dickens, there was an auction at Christie's. On the block was a pre-publication presentation copy, one of the eight earliest known presentation copies of Dickens' immortal tale. It went for quite a sum.
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