Dickens's Christmas Books - complete online versions

The Christmas Carol, The Chimes, Cricket On the Hearth, Battle Of Life
& The Haunted Man & the Ghosts's Bargain with Illustrations.

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	xvi	INTRODUCTION.
	Surrey Theatre and of the Adelphi, not much to the satis­faction of Charles Dickens, who wrote regarding the latter performance : "I saw the Carol last night. Better than usual, and Wright seems to enjoy Bob Cratchit, but heart­breaking to me. Oh heaven ! if any forecast of this was ever in my mind. Yet 0. Smith was drearily better than I expected. It is a great comfort to have that kind of meat underdone, and his face is quite perfect." 2.—THE CHIMES. Charles Dickens was living at Genoa, in the beautiful old Palazzo Peschiere, when the time came for the production of a companion to the Christmas Carol. The general notion of the story was in his mind for some time before he had in­vented the machinery by which it was to be told,*or had hit upon a satisfactory title. Both were accidentally suggested to him by the maddening effect which the sudden clashing out of the bells of Genoa had upon him one October morning, when he was endeavouring to set himself to work in earnest. There was nothing done that morning, of course, but the time was not really wasted, for a couple of days after he was able to send to Mr. Forster a note containing only the words, " We have heard The Chimes at midnight, Master Shallow," and to go to work upon the book with tremendous energy immediately. He had experienced at first no little difficulty in accom­modating his working habits to his strange and new sur­roundings. " Never did I stagger so upon a threshold before," he wrote. " I seem as if I had plucked myself out of my proper soil when I left Devonshire Terrace, and could take root no more until I return to it; " and again, " I can't help thinking of the boy in the school-class whose button was cut off by Walter Scott and his friends. Put me down at Waterloo Bridge at eight o'clock in the evening, with leave to roam about as long as I like, and I would come home, as you know, panting to go on. I am sadly strange as it is, and can't settle." But the strong purpose and definite aim which he had in his mind soon overcame these troubles, and enabled him to devote himself to his task in serious earnest.