Neil Gaiman Reads Charles Dickens’s Original Performance Script for “A Christmas Carol”
By: Maria Popova“No space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused.”
Though Charles Dickens figures among literary history’s most notable pet-lovers with his raven Grip, he also had several cats, which he held dear — so much so, that he famously exclaimed, “What greater gift than the love of a cat?,” a line so popular that it even made it into a New Yorker cartoon. When one of Dickens’s most beloved cats, Bob, died in 1862, the author’s sister-in-law, Georgina Hogarth, had Bob’s paw taxidermied and turned into a letter-opener. She engraved it “C. D. In Memory of Bob. 1862″ and presented it to the author as a gift intended to forever remind him of his feline friend. This odd object, which sat by Dickens’s side in the library at Gad’s Hill where he wrote, is one of the artifacts featured in Molly Oldfield’s wonderful The Secret Museum (public library) — that magnificent inventory of sixty never-before-seen “treasures too precious to display,” culled from the archives and secret storage locations of some of the world’s greatest libraries and museums, including such gems as Van Gogh’s never-before-seen sketchbooks, Anne Frank’s friendship book, and the surprisingly dark story of how the Nobel Prize was born.
Charles Dickens's letter opener. The handle is made out of his cat Bob's paw.
Today, Dickens’s bizarre literary instrument survives as a prized possession in the collection of the New York Public Library, where it shares space with the writing desk and chair the author used while traveling, as well as thirteen of the “prompt copies” that Dickens, the first famous writer to perform his own works, had made for his public readings — special performance scripts created by taking apart an existing novel, cutting and pasting select sections into a blank-leaf book, then filleting the text by highlighting the most dramatic scenes and annotating them with reading cues and stage directions. NYPL curator Isaac Gewirtz tells Oldfield:
Dickens wasn’t only a great writer, he was a fantastic actor: he loved to perform his work, rather than simply read extracts from it.
Among NYPL’s most treasured Dickensian prompt copies is that of A Christmas Carol (free download) — the classic 1843 novella, which blends elements of science fiction, philosophy, mysticism, satire, and cultural critique to tell a timeless story about the benevolence of the human spirit and our heartening capacity for transformation and self-transcendence.
Neil Gaiman, dressed as Charles Dickens, with Molly Oldfield. (Photograph: NYPL)
At a recent NYPL event hosted by Oldfield, one of the greatest writers of our time, Neil Gaiman — champion of the creative life, man of discipline, adviser of aspiring writers, contemplator of genius — reads one of the greatest writers of all time, in exactly the way Dickens intended for his classic work to be read, based on the annotations and directions in that precious NYPL prompt copy of A Christmas Carol. Here is Oldfield, introducing Gaiman, who proceeds to give an enchanting and entertaining reading of the Dickens classic:
It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humour.
The Secret Museum is absolutely fantastic in its entirety, and A Christmas Carol is available as a free download, as is the entire NYPL readings series — how’s that for a priceless gift?
For more Gaiman goodness, see his 8 rules of writing, his charming children’s book, and the lovely story of his bachelor party.
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