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"It's not convenient," said Scrooge, "and it's not fair. If I was to stop half-a-crown for it, you'd think yourself ill-used, I'll be bound?"
Fred Barnard
1878
13.8 x 10.7 cm (5 ½ by 4 ¼ inches), framed.
Dickens's Christmas Books, A Christmas Carol, "Stave One: Marley's Ghost," p. 1.
Details
Scanned images and text by Philip V. Allingham. [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
At length the hour of shutting up the countinghouse arrived. With an ill-will Scrooge dismounted from his stool, and tacitly admitted the fact to the expectant clerk in the Tank [the outer office of the counting-house], who instantly snuffed his candle out, and put on his hat.
"You'll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?" said Scrooge.
"If quite convenient, sir."
"It's not convenient," said Scrooge, "and it's not fair. If I was to stop half-a-crown for it, you'd think yourself ill-used, I'll be bound?"
The clerk smiled faintly.
"And yet," said Scrooge, "you don't think me ill-used, when I pay a day's wages for no work."
The clerk observed that it was only once a year.
"A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December!" said Scrooge, buttoning his great-coat to the chin. "But I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next morning." [Stave One, Household Edition, 5]
Barnard's purpose here is to reinforce the text's characterisation of Scrooge's emotionally barren relationship with his clerk, Bob Cratchit, so that his transformation from Malthusian miser on Christmas Eve to ebullient philanthropist on Christmas morning will seem that much more marvellous. Barnard prepares us for the ensuing fantasy by grounding us in Scrooge's workaday reality, which focuses on the miser's obsession with keeping costs down, whether it be the specific issue of the excessive consumption of coal, or the inconvenience of shutting down the counting-house for Christmas Day.
The interior illustration, with its extensive caption, pinpoints the cause of Scrooge's ill-humour as he departs at closing time. Scrooge's money morality, then, is presented in stark contrast to the frontispiece's exterior scene dramatising the companionship of father and son: the Bob Cratchit of the second scene, still recognisable by his extended comforter, cowed and submissive before his irascible employer, is a far cry from the man happily serving as his son's beast of burden in a spirit of play rather than out of capitalistic necessity.
Two 1867 illustrations of Scrooge's mundane reality by American artist Sol Eytinge, Jr. (1868). Left: "Vignette for Stave One". Right: "In the Tank." (Stave One).
The three-quarter-page woodcut precedes the moment realised, and, indeed, coincides with the textual introduction of Ebenezer Scrooge himself as Marley's legatee. Consequently, the illustration typifies Scrooge's key identity after the loss of his friend and partner, that of a parsimonious businessman and curmudgeonly employer. Warmly dressed and ready even for the eventuality of rain despite the cold temperatures, Scrooge lectures Bob about the necessity for exercising economy, even if doing so prevents him from joining his family early on Christmas Eve. The snuffed out candle behind Scrooge may well suggest not merely closing time but the end of life, the smoke being the ghost of the candle's flame. Bob's clothing and demeanour contrast with those of his employer, for he has no overcoat but carries a high-crowned beaver. Barnard well describes Bob's discomfort by his glazed expression and bent left leg, implying a shifting rather than a solid stance; although he is adept at hiding his true emotions from his dour employer, he is already thinking of the walk home and the family that awaits him. Despite the lateness of the day and the time of the year, light still floods across the desk of Bob Cratchit's "tank," imparting a luminosity to his form.
Closing time has nonetheless has arrived. Scrooge's nephew Fred and the charity collectors have paid their calls to the Tank, but Scrooge has refused to acknowledge their message of seasonal compassion and concern for one's fellow passengers to the grave. Already Scrooge seems to "growl" at Bob, whose white comforter or scarf is not quite long enough here, if we credit Dickens's description of it "dangling below his waist" (although it is somewhat longer in the frontispiece, where Bob looks much more manly and vigorous). In that first illustration, the lack of an expensive great-coat is appropriate for a young father's playing with his son, and is consistent with the subsequent image of Bob's sliding down Cornhill with "a lane of boys, twenty times." Bob is a great boy himself. The reduced length of the scarf in the second illustration may therefore imply Bob's feelings of emasculation under Scrooge's penetrating gaze. Leech's original sequence of eight plates offers no parallel to this illustration, but Sol Eytinge, Jr., in the 1868 text published by Ticknor and Field, Boston, realises the office and the clerk in The Tank, and the sour-faced employer pausing momentarily at the door of his counting-house, as if contemplating with something less than relish the reader perusing him, in Scrooge and Marley's, the vignette for "Stave I. Marley's Ghost," wood engravings which, taken together, parallel the exterior/interior and man/master dichotomies of Barnard's first two illustrations.
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Scenes and Characters from the Works of Charles Dickens being eight hundred and sixty-six drawings by Fred Barnard, Hablot K. Browne (Phiz), J. Mahoney, Charles Green, A. B. Frost, Gordon Thomson, J. McL. Ralston, H. French, E. G. Dalziel, F. A. Fraser, and Sir Luke Fildes; Printed from the Original Woodblocks Engraved for "The Household Edition". London: Chapman and Hall, 1908.
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Created 16 May 2012
Last modified 2 January 2026
