The Haunted Man and The Ghost's Bargain (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

By Charles Dickens

A Christmas Carol launched Dickens’s Christmas novellas; The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain brings the series to an end. Professor Redlaw is haunted by a ghost-like creature that looks astonishingly like him. The spirit relieves Redlaw of his miseries from years gone by, but there are unforeseen consequences of forgetting the past.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Release date: Feb 8, 2011
• ISBN: 9781411435186

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens nació en Portsmouth en 1812, segundo de los ocho hijos de un funcionario de la Marina. A los doce años, encarcelado el padre por deudas, tuvo que ponerse a trabajar en una fábrica de betún. Su educación fue irregular: aprendió por su cuenta taquigrafía, trabajó en el bufete de un abogado y finalmente fue corresponsal parlamentario de The Morning Chronicle. Sus artículos, luego recogidos en Bosquejos de Boz (1836-1837), tuvieron un gran éxito y, con la aparición en esos mismos años de los Papeles póstumos del club Pickwick, Dickens se convirtió en un auténtico fenómeno editorial. Novelas como Oliver Twist (1837), Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839) o (1841) alcanzaron una enorme popularidad, así como algunas crónicas de viajes, como Estampas de Italia (1846; ALBA CLÁSICA núm. LVII). Con Dombey e hijo (1846-1848) inicia su época de madurez novelística, de la que son buenos ejemplos David Copperfield (1849-1850), su primera novela en primera persona, y su favorita, en la que elaboró algunos episodios autobiográficos, Casa desolada (1852-1853), La pequeña Dorrit (1855-1857), Historia de dos ciudades (1859; ALBA PRIMEROS CLÁSICOS núm. 5) y Grandes esperanzas (1860-1861; ALBA CLÁSICA MAIOR núm. I). Dickens murió en Londres en 1870.

Book preview

THE HAUNTED MAN AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN

A Fancy for Christmas-Time

CHARLES DICKENS

This 2011 edition published by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.

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ISBN: 978-1-4114-3518-6

CONTENTS

I. THE GIFT BESTOWED

II. THE GIFT DIFFUSED

III. THE GIFT REVERSED

INTRODUCTION

BEFORE Dickens left Lausanne for England he had sent his friend Foster the first few slips of The Haunted Man, and The Ghost’s Bargain. The idea for this Christmas story first came to him in the summer of 1846. He began working on it in the autumn of the following year; but he laid it aside to finish Dombey. When he arrived in England he went to Broadstairs and from there he wrote a line to say that At last I am a mentally matooring of the Christmas book—or, as poor Macrone used to write, ‘booke,’ ‘boke,’ ‘buke,’ etc. On leaving Broadstairs he came to London and here he finished the story. The tale is of a man who is haunted with recollections of a sorrowful past in which a great wrong had been done to him. He lives with this past and with the sorrow that fills him until by the continual brooding on it the darker presentment of himself takes the form of an actual being to his mind—a ghost. He strikes a bargain with this ghost by which he is to lose his own recollections of grief and wrong and have the power to destroy the like memory in others afflicted as he is. The story then tells of the effect of the ghost’s gift upon different people, and the moral of it is that grief is joy’s relish and adversity has its sweet uses. It is not for man to question the will that overtakes him but to bear it, knowing that if sorrow come, kindness softens it, and if wrong is done there is love to forgive it. As Forster puts it: The old proverb does not tell you to forget that you may forgive, but to forgive that you may forget. It is forgiveness of wrong, for forgetfulness of the evil that was in it; such as poor old Lear begged of Cordelia. The bibliographical data, taken from Mr. J. C. Eckel’s The First Editions of the Writings of Charles Dickens, are as follows: Custom was followed in the appearance of the little book. It was bound in the usual crimson cloth, with the gilt stamps and edges, and sold, as did the others, for 5s. The title read: The Haunted Man/ And/ The Ghost’s Bargain./ A Fancy For Christmastime./ By/ Charles Dickens./ London:/ Bradbury & Evans, II, Bouverie Street./ 1848. Collation: Two unnumbered pages of advertisements; the first Works by Mr. Dickens, on which is announced the completion of Dombey and Son, and on the second page are advertised Mr. Dickens’s Christmas Books; frontispiece and engraved vignette title by John Tenniel; reverse of the vignette title is blank; title page, on the reverse Bradbury and Evans,/ Printers Extraordinary To The Queen,/ Whitefriars; one unnumbered page Illustrations, reverse is blank; one unnumbered page giving the full title of the book, the reverse of which is blank; pp. 188, with a final imprint. Altogether there were 17 illustrations, including the frontispiece and vignette or engraved title page. In addition to these Tenniel did the commencing pages of all the chapters, which number four drawings; Leech made five pictures, Stanfield three and F. Stone three. Tenniel initialed the picture for Chapter I, but signed none of the others. Leech signed four J. Leech and one with his initials; all of the Stanfield drawings are signed, but only one of Stone’s.

ILLUSTRATIONS

likely to be wrong as right. In the general experience, everybody has been wrong so often, and it has taken, in most instances, such a weary while to find out how wrong, that the authority is proved to be fallible. Everybody may sometimes be right; "but that’s no rule," as the ghost of Giles Scroggins says in the ballad.

The dread word, GHOST, recalls me.

Everybody said he looked like a haunted man. The extent of my present claim for everybody is, that they were so far right. He did.

Who could have seen his hollow cheek; his sunken brilliant eye; his black-attired figure, indefinably grim, although well-knit and well-proportioned; his grizzled hair hanging, like tangled seaweed, about his face—as if he had been, through his whole life, a lonely mark for the chafing and beating of the great deep of humanity—but might have said he looked like a haunted man?

Who could have observed his manner, taciturn, thoughtful, gloomy, shadowed by habitual reserve, retiring always and jocund never, with a distraught air of reverting to a bygone place and time, or of listening to some old echoes in his mind, but might have said it was the manner of a haunted man?

Who could have heard his voice, slow-speaking, deep, and grave, with a natural fulness and melody in it which he seemed to set himself against and stop, but might have said it was the voice of a haunted man?

Who that had seen him in his inner chamber, part library and part laboratory—for he was, as the world knew, far and wide, a learned man in chemistry, and a teacher on whose lips and hands a crowd of aspiring ears and eyes hung daily—who that had seen him there, upon a winter night, alone, surrounded by his drugs and instruments and books; the shadow of his shaded lamp a monstrous beetle on the wall, motionless among a crowd of spectral shapes raised there by the flickering of the fire upon the quaint objects around him; some of these phantoms (the reflection of glass vessels that held liquids), trembling at heart like things that knew his power to uncombine them, and to give back their component parts to fire and vapour; who that had seen him then, his work done, and he pondering in his chair before the rusted grate and red flame, moving his thin mouth as if in speech, but silent as the dead, would not have said that the man seemed haunted and the chamber too?

Who might not, by a very easy flight of fancy, have believed that everything about him took this haunted tone, and that he lived on haunted ground?

His dwelling was so solitary and vault-like—an old, retired part of an ancient endowment for students, once a brave edifice, planted in an open place, but now the obsolete whim of forgotten architects; smoke-age-and-weather-darkened, squeezed on every side by the overgrowing of the great city, and choked, like an old well, with stones and bricks; its small quadrangles, lying down in very pits formed by the streets and buildings, which, in course of time, had been constructed above its heavy chimney stalks; its old trees, insulted by the neighbouring smoke, which deigned to droop so low when it was very feeble and the weather very moody; its grass-plots, struggling with the mildewed earth to be grass, or to win any show of compromise; its silent pavements, unaccustomed to the tread of feet, and even to the observation of eyes, except when a stray face looked down from the upper world, wondering what nook it was; its sundial in a little bricked-up corner, where no sun had straggled for a hundred years, but where, in compensation for the sun’s neglect, the snow would lie for weeks when it lay nowhere else, and the black east wind would spin like a huge humming-top, when in all other places it was silent and still.

His dwelling, at its heart and core—within doors—at his fireside—was so lowering and old, so crazy, yet so strong, with its worn-eaten beams of wood in the ceiling, and its sturdy floor shelving downward to the great oak chimneypiece; so environed and hemmed in by the pressure of the town yet so remote in fashion, age, and custom; so quiet, yet so thundering with echoes when a distant voice was raised or a door was shut—echoes, not confined to the many low passages and empty rooms, but rumbling and grumbling till they were stifled in the heavy air of the forgotten Crypt where the Norman arches were half-buried in the earth.

You should have seen him in his dwelling about twilight, in the dead winter time.

When the wind was blowing, shrill and shrewd, with the going down of the blurred sun. When it was just so dark, as that the forms of things were indistinct and big, but not wholly lost. When sitters by the fire began to see wild faces and figures, mountains and abysses, ambuscades and armies, in the coals. When people in the streets bent down their heads, and ran before the weather. When those who were obliged to meet it, were stopped at angry corners, stung by wandering snow-flakes alighting on the lashes of their eyes—which fell too sparingly, and were blown away too quickly, to leave a trace upon

Reviews for The Haunted Man and The Ghost's Bargain (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

[kristykay22 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This (the last of Dickens' five Christmas novellas) is also the longest and densest of the bunch, and has a return to a focus on the Christmas spirit, morality, and redemption that echo back to the best known of the bunch, A Christmas Carol. Redlaw is a lonely and sad Chemistry teacher at a lonely and sad old college tucked into the city of London. Many years ago his best friend betrayed him by marrying Redlaw's fiancée instead of Redlaw's beloved sister, as he had planned. Redlaw's sister ended up dying young and Redlaw has nursed his hurt and anger at his former friend for years. On this cold and dark Christmas eve, a phantom (who looks a lot like the haunted Redlaw) appears to him and offers to make him forget all his sorrows and wrongs. As a twist, he will also bestow this same "gift" upon anyone he encounters. Redlaw agrees but, as you might expect, soon comes to regret his decision. Like many of these novellas, the real fun of the story is in the characters that orbit around our protagonist. In this case, we have the family of servants that keep the college and take care of the on-site faculty, as well as a large and poor but happy family who are boarding a sick student of Redlaw's. There is a lot of humor and love in the description of these characters and a willingness to sink into descriptive reveries that probably have something to do with this being the longest of the novellas. The pacing and flow on this one is a little... odd, which makes it sometimes difficult to follow the thrust of the story or get one's mind around the more philosophical parts of the text, but a little patience is well-rewarded. There is a semi-happy ending to this one, but even in that semi-happiness, this is a pretty dark tale.It also includes one of the best and most semi-colon-laden location descriptions ever, in this paragraph about the old college where Redlaw lives and works. If this kind of writing is your jam, then add this one to your list: "His dwelling was so solitary and vault-like,—an old, retired part of an ancient endowment for students, once a brave edifice, planted in an open place, but now the obsolete whim of forgotten architects; smoke-age-and-weather-darkened, squeezed on every side by the overgrowing of the great city, and choked, like an old well, with stones and bricks; its small quadrangles, lying down in very pits formed by the streets and buildings, which, in course of time, had been constructed above its heavy chimney stalks; its old trees, insulted by the neighbouring smoke, which deigned to droop so low when it was very feeble and the weather very moody; its grass-plots, struggling with the mildewed earth to be grass, or to win any show of compromise; its silent pavements, unaccustomed to the tread of feet, and even to the observation of eyes, except when a stray face looked down from the upper world, wondering what nook it was; its sun-dial in a little bricked-up corner, where no sun had straggled for a hundred years, but where, in compensation for the sun’s neglect, the snow would lie for weeks when it lay nowhere else, and the black east wind would spin like a huge humming-top, when in all other places it was silent and still."

[souloftherose · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The fifth and final of Dickens' Christmas Books and the one I thought was most like A Christmas Carol in quality and in its themes.Mr Redlaw has had many sorrows in his life although he is known as a generous man if gloomy and solitary. He is thinking of his sorrows one Christmas when he is visited by a ghost or spirit which offers him the gift of forgetting all the wrongs and sorrows which weigh on him so heavily."I bear within me a Sorrow and a Wrong. Thus I prey upon myself. Thus, memory is my curse; and, if I could forget my sorrow and my wrong, I would!"Believing that he would be happier without this remembrance, Redlaw agrees and the spirit takes these memories from him but also leaves him with the gift of passing this forgetfulness on to all others that he meets. Dickens uses this gift of forgetfulness powerfully among the strong cast of characters he has included in this novella to teach that it is the memory of our sorrows and sufferings that is the source of our compassion and enables us to forgive others and that without suffering, there can be no true joy.A very powerful story.