Dickens' Carol Manuscript : with Philip Palmer

Dominic is joined by the inimitable Dr. Philip Palmer: Robert H. Taylor Curator & Department Head of Literary and Historical Manuscripts at the Morgan Library & Museum and custodian of Charles Dickens' one and only handwritten manuscript of A Christmas Carol ...

Here Philip shares many of the secrets of the manuscript, such as the ideas and phrases that Dickens struck from his story (that can still be seen in the crossings out), and the expert care that goes into its preservation.

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SPEAKER_01 0:17

Hi everyone. It is snowing in New York right now. Perfect Christmas weather for today's episode. Right now, on 225 Madison Avenue, displayed in a glass case in front of the grand fireplace of Pierpont Morgan's study, sits an open-bound volume that draws thousands of visitors every Christmas to gather round. It is Charles Dickens's own and only copy of his handwritten manuscript of a Christmas Carol. And each year a page is turned for the public to read, where they can see not only the familiar passages of the story, but the phrases that Dickens struck from it, still visible beneath his crossings out. Dickens often referred to his ideas as ghosts and had a lifelong obsession with the paths not taken in life. In his final Christmas book, The Haunted Man and the Ghost Bargain, he talks of the likenesses and forms from the past. Where the things that might have been and never were are always wandering. Here to talk to us about this priceless artifact and help us decipher the sentences from a Christmas carol that might have been and can still be seen wandering is the inimitable Dr. Philip Palmer. Philip is the Robert H. Taylor curator and department head of literary and historical manuscripts at the Morgan. Philip is an expert on 16th and 17th century British literature, with a PhD and an MA in English literature from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a B.A. in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It is time to invite him in. Philip, hello. Welcome to Charles Dickens A Brain on Fire, and a happy Christmas to you. I'm so thrilled to have you here.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

Thank you so much, Dominic. It's a real pleasure to be here. Thanks for inviting me. I'd love to talk about one of my favorite books at this time of year, of course.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

So, A Christmas Carol is one of my all-time favorite books as well, and for many of the listeners to this series. And you have the great privilege, the great honor to be custodian of the original manuscript that Dickens wrote on. The actual paper that has his pressings on as he's writing. I mean, where to begin with that? What's that like, first of all?

SPEAKER_00 2:37

Well, it's it's an incredible artifact. You know, Dickens was writing this book so quickly that he did not create any outlines or additional drafts. So it's all there in this one manuscript. And you can see the way he's going back and revising what he's written the first time. He's having second thoughts, changing passages. Um, what I think is so fascinating is that he spends a lot of time revising the prose descriptions, especially of setting. Uh, but the dialogue is often exactly how it ends up in the final version as he first wrote it. It's almost like, I mean, given his theatrical background, it's almost like he had the dialogue in his head and knew right away what that would sound like. There are some exceptions to that. There's some great changes in dialogue that I'll talk about, but it's it's amazing to see how he is working uh through his thoughts and especially the characterization of someone like Scrooge at the beginning.

SPEAKER_01 3:35

So this one document really contains everything.

SPEAKER_00 3:38

Everything is there. Wow. Obviously, we're dealing with one of the greatest writers in the English language here, but some of his first formulations, uh, maybe the syntax doesn't work exactly right, or you know, he he had second thoughts about the phrasing, and you can see him actually massively improving some of these lines that are now iconic. Um, and I can give some examples, of course.

SPEAKER_01 4:00

Oh, yeah, please do. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:02

One of my favorites is, you know, early in the early in the book, or he's talking with his nephew, and he says he's angry with people that are constantly saying Merry Christmas, and that they should be buried with a stake of holly through their hearts, right? And he says he should, emphatically. And that's how the speech ends in the final version. But in the original manuscript, right after that, he says, I'm sick of Christmas. And it's just like a little too too much, you know. It's it's a little cheesy, even, you know, and he he cut that. So that's something he removed. Also, you know, the iconic phrase ba humbug is originally Merry Christmas, humbug. And you can see him crossing that out and adding ba, you know, in interlinearly right above the line. So I think it's amazing how some of these iconic phrases that are just part of the vernacular did not start off in that particular formula. And probably the most famous one is Tiny Tim was originally little Fred, not Tiny Tim at all. So, and of course, the nephew ends up being named Fred in the final version. So I I think it's really fun to see these documents and kind of see that creative process, and that all of these writers are working hard at their craft and don't always get it right the first time.

SPEAKER_01 5:19

I mean, those examples are extraordinary. And and are you still finding more? Because actually, I have been looking at it myself, trying to think, oh, I'm ready for this chat. I want to talk about this bit. And I think I can't read it. So much of it I'm finding really hard to decipher the words, not even the words that are crossed out. Very hard. So have you have you over time have you kind of tuned in to his handwriting if you found yourself doing that?

SPEAKER_00 5:40

It's a great question. So he's writing in black ink at this point in his career. And if you want to see something that's really difficult, look at his later manuscripts, where he uses a blue ink that is uh more susceptible to blotting. It's he's usually using a smaller hand, usually. So the Morgan also owns the manuscript of our mutual friend, his late masterpiece. And that one is very, very hard. There's an early article on that on that manuscript, actually, that says, you know, this would drive um even the most accomplished of printers temporarily insane. They have to try to read his handwriting to decipher it. So Christmas Carol is a little easier, it's a little easier to decipher his deletions, but he uses this looping uh um method of deleting lines that makes it very difficult. You have to sort of isolate the loops from the loops of actual letters underneath. And it's not always easy to see, but I have to say, a few years ago, I learned about a project in the UK um out of the Victorian Albert Museum, in fact, in London, um, called Deciphering Dickens. And the point of this project was to go in with these manuscripts, most of which are at the VA, and try to decipher those deletions. So we did a few different kind of transcribathon type events with them, uh, with the Carroll manuscript to see what some of those deletions might be. But some I think will remain almost impossible to read. Others do emerge. Um, I think one of the funny ones that's not very heavily deleted is on the very first page of the manuscript. Um, in the final version, Dickens mentions Hamlet, the ghost of Hamlet's father, and as, you know, in in relation to the the ghost of Jacob Marley and everything. And in the original manuscript, he goes on this long digression about Hamlet, about his sanity and how he's a big bother to his family and all these things. And it just greatly slows down the beginning of the story. And Dickens just kind of adds a huge box around that section with these hash marks deleting the whole thing. But because he didn't loop through all the words, it's still fairly legible. And I think that's one of those passages where it was a good idea to delete it.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

So don't yeah, no, but it's not as I'm looking at it right now, and you can sort of see it's spanning over about four and a half lines, isn't it? Of just kind of gone.

SPEAKER_00 8:03

Exactly. And you know, in the in the reading version that Dickens prepared for himself to perform this text, you know, he also deletes the digression on uh the dead is a doornail line and all that. So there are elements of the of the book that even the final version were of course removed in performance.

SPEAKER_02 8:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:23

And Dickens would famously change what aspects of the book he included in the performance and would even sometimes dramatically close the book right before beginning to read, showing how much of this was in his head, which I just I love that.

SPEAKER_01 8:39

That's such a theatrical flourish, isn't it? Exactly. So when did you first encounter this manuscript and and what page are we on this year in 2025?

SPEAKER_00 8:49

So I started at the Morgan six years ago. Um, and that was the first time I worked with the manuscript. It had been digitized already, but obviously we put this on display every year. Um, and we're gonna be at page nine this year. We we started just going through the whole thing nine years ago. Uh, it's an easier uh process for our conservators, there's no guesswork about jumping around. And so page nine begins mid-sentence with the phrase Marley's face, which I love. So this is right when it's perfect, right? It's right when Scrooge sees Marley's face in the knocker of his door, and then kind of keeps staring at it, and then it turns back into the knocker. So that's that's where it starts. We have him uh ascending the staircase up to his bedroom, um, and just kind of looking around and making sure uh everything is is okay after that ghastly vision that he has. And I love that the page has a great part where it's talking about um the candle he has, the inexpensive candle he's using to illuminate the passage up the stairwell, um, which is uh described as a dip. And a dip would have been a cheap version of a candle. And you know, Dickens says something like Drooge liked the dark because it was so cheap for him, you know, um to not have to buy all these candles. So I really the the page we're on now, I think, is a really fun one.

SPEAKER_01 10:16

Yeah, that's an excellent one. Gosh. The actual physical object itself. Yes. How do you turn the page? Literally, how do you turn the page and be really careful? Because I I always imagine you have to wear white gloves and things, but apparently I understand that that's actually quite a sometimes can be quite problematic because you might tear the page if you use gloves or that's correct.

SPEAKER_00 10:35

That's correct. So, yeah, I mean the the use of white gloves still has a still persists, I think, in most people's popular imagination of how rare books and manuscripts are handled. Gloves reduce the tactile sensation in our fingertips. So it's easier to tear pages, to drop objects. Um, I hate to say it, but a lot of places that have white gloves don't always wash the white gloves. And you know, some books have uh you know detritus on them or red rod, and those gloves can get kind of dirty. So the important thing is to have clean, dry hands with books and manuscripts. With photographs of metal, we still use uh still use gloves. But the paper on this manuscript is certainly delicate. Um, at a certain point in its life, the paper was silked. And what I mean by that is that each leaf was essentially sandwiched between two very thin pieces of silk to protect the original paper. Now, this is one of those conservation practices that is no longer current today. So in 2011, our conservation team very carefully desilked the entire manuscript. And I have to say, this is the most nerve-wracking video I've ever seen in my life. Your your listeners can go find it on our website, but we actually see the conservators disbinding the manuscript and submerging each sheet into a chemical solution to get rid of that original adhesive and then carefully remove the silk, which is I like I said, I have watched that video once, I don't want to see it ever again, but I know the manuscript is better for it.

SPEAKER_01 12:11

If I've understood right then, so you are you were taking the a page and soaking it essentially to That's right, and not damaging it.

SPEAKER_00 12:18

We have a world-class paper conservation lab um because the Morgan really does focus on works on paper, and this is their specialty. So it's now in even better condition than it was. But yeah, turning the pages is a very careful process. The main thing is to never try to grab the very top corner of a page. It's important to kind of get under the page and turn it with one's entire hand, or at least turn it from the middle of the page so it doesn't put too much pressure on any one point. Um, some pages are so fragile we have to use even page turners, which are little um paper or metal objects that can kind of help us get under the page and turn it. But we do it very carefully. We we strap the manuscript into a cradle for display, and uh yeah, it's taken care of uh very well during that process.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

Does it help the object of fact that from November into January it's actually open? The actual book is open. Does that help kind of slightly with the page turning overall? I just thought that if it was an object that was shut for a decade or something, then you'd probably really Sure, sure.

SPEAKER_00 13:21

Yeah, I mean it really depends on the binding, I would say for the most part. Some manuscripts historically have been rebound in very tight bindings, and we end up changing that binding later on because the tightness makes it difficult for for one thing to display it, uh, for another, for researchers to read it in our reading room. And we do allow you know researchers to look at our collection, of course, um, from around the world in our reading room. So the the binding, uh currently the manuscript is in what we call a conservation binding, and it's really designed to open um carefully and well so that pressure is not put on the text block of original paper. All that is very carefully calibrated. But I would say the main thing is that we don't want to overexpose any one opening to light. So that's why we do a different page every year. We keep careful track of what pages are shown and for how long. And we're really talking about a three to four month time period for showing these pieces because beyond that, um, light really can affect the ink and make it fade. And you know, we want to preserve this collection in perpetuity into the future. That's that's the name of the game for us.

SPEAKER_01 14:31

Yeah, of course. And I'm picturing what I've seen of this this object. It's in its glass case and in front of an enormous fireplace. Is it the study that it's in? Where that's correct.

SPEAKER_00 14:40

It's in Pierpont Morgan's study, um, also known as the West Room. So this is one of the four uh main rooms in the historic library at the Morgan, which was built in 1906. And this was built as a library, it was never Morgan's home, his home was next door. So, yeah, the manuscript is in a glass case in front of a fireplace, which has, you know, is decorated for the holidays with red ribbon, and and uh right underneath, actually, a painting of Pierpont Morgan by Frank Hole, and it's one of Pierpont's favorite images of himself. And he's the one, of course, who purchased it at some point before the year 1900. But Morgan was someone who read Christmas Carol as a as a boy, um, loved Dickens from a young age, and he acquired his first Dickens manuscript in 1890. Um, and this was a play co-written with the writer Wilkie Collins, uh, the play called The Frozen Deep. And this manuscript is really cool because it has both Wilkie Collins's and Dickens's handwriting. They're collaboratively writing it, and so that started Morgan on Dickens' manuscripts, and he continued collecting his librarian, Bel DeCosta Green, uh fascinating figure in her own right, also continued that collecting. And the Morgan is now known to have the most significant collection of Dickens material outside of the UK. So we're very proud about that collection, and we continue to develop it even today.

SPEAKER_01 16:13

And the the manuscript itself has been digitized, hasn't it? Really, really impressively. If you go onto the website, you can really zone into those loops and crossings and try and work out what that word is.

SPEAKER_00 16:22

There's nothing more satisfying than actually figuring out what something says. I love that. And and try to figure out what what what thought process was going on in the writer's mind.

SPEAKER_01 16:31

Do you think there are quite a lot of crossings out then still to decipher in this particular manuscript? Is that something that there definitely are.

SPEAKER_00 16:37

The problem is when Dickens will add between the lines, he'll add a new part of the line or a a changed phrase, and then he'll cross that out again. So you have like something written even smaller and then crossed out. Those are really hard to read. Um, but some of them are you know fascinating. If if you'll indulge me, I I have one that I really like. This is from the beginning.

SPEAKER_01 16:59

Oh, you tell us as many you've got. I'll I'll I'll tell I'll have them all. Don't you worry.

SPEAKER_00 17:03

Okay, perfect. One I really like is at the beginning of the fourth stave with the ghost of Christmas yet to come.

SPEAKER_02 17:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:10

And Dickens is clearly playing around with how this ghost should be introduced to the reader. So there are three versions that you can really detect in the manuscript. The first one is reads as as follows The Phantom glided on and has gloomily approached. So that's the first version. It's a bit awkward syntactically with that comma after glided on. So he changes it to the following The Spectre slowly, silently, and steadily approached. So he's getting closer to the final version where there's this kind of gradual movement of the ghost mirrored in the syntax. But I think he crossed this out too because it's too alliterative. Spectre, slowly, silently, steadily. It's a little too too alliterative, I think, to my ear. And then he changes finally in the the final version, at least in the manuscript, the phantom slowly, gravely, silently approached. So retaining that same rhythm, but changing up, I think, the the consonants at the beginning. And I think there's a a bit of a pun, of course, there in gravely, which is a little a little hue, a little touch of humor. Of course, this is a book that has a lot of great humor that is sometimes overlooked by readers, especially from Scrooge. But I think it's interesting to see how he changed that one, just that one little part of that sentence to introduce this important figure in the in the book. Um, and then there's a later in that same uh on the same page, I believe, he changes the way he characterizes the ghost. So um the final version reads, For in the very air through this spirit moved, it seemed to scatter gloom and mystery. What a great, what a great line. Originally he he said something like For there was a solemn majesty and gloomy dignity in its appearance. This idea of the the spirit having a majesty and a dignity is a really interesting characterization, and he ends up cutting that. And I don't know, it almost humanizes that that spirit in a way that maybe is not as productive in this particular stave of the book.

SPEAKER_01 19:26

It makes him a bit too obvious, doesn't it? A bit too obvious, and that and the finishing on the word mystery, I think, is much more effective, isn't it? I agree, I agree. I really like that. As you were filling that in, I was following the manuscript and I couldn't get anything of what you just said, which just illustrates how hard it is to read it. So thank you for that.

SPEAKER_00 19:45

Of course, of course. And and those high-res images are really the the key here is to zoom in and really stare at them. And you know, transcription of manuscripts is such an interesting psychological phenomenon, and which is something I do a lot, of course, in my job. And sometimes manuscripts just look completely impenetrable in terms of the handwriting. And then one can leave the manuscript, though, maybe go have a coffee, go do something else, and then come back, and miraculously it just jumps off the page as perhaps obvious. Um, so I would love to talk with a neuroscientist at some point about like what happens in our brains with reading handwriting, because there are these moments of kind of these aha moments of recognition that sometimes need a little time uh to actually happen, which is interesting. But you know, zooming in is is crucial. Dickens' handwriting is not extremely easy compared to some uh 19th century hands, I have to say. Uh, but at least it's not 19th century German handwriting. That is the hardest handwriting really that that that exists, in my opinion. So um, but some some other good ones in that same stave. Uh, this is a really famous change to the very end of it, uh, when of course Scrooge is absolutely terrified by seeing his own grave and worrying about what will happen to him in the future. So that that stave ends with him seeing a bedpost. And of course, we don't know until the beginning of the next stave that it is his bedpost and that he's back in his room comfortable in a familiar setting and relieved. In the original version of the manuscript, Dickens writes bedpost, which he knew to be his own, at the end of the fourth stave. So he decides to move that to build dramatic tension, of course. So there are little moments like that where he's he moves passages around um to kind of, I think, increase the cliffhanger-like elements, you know, at the end of certain staves. My my daughter, who's nine years old and honestly hates cliffhangers because she wants me to keep reading, you know, at the end of a chapter, she would call that a mega cliffhanger.

SPEAKER_01 21:56

That's a lovely one, because that's the only one I've been able to read so far of the ones you've shown me I can see, which he knew to be his own. I can see those words there. That crossing that's quite quite light, isn't it? It's just jumping off the sentence. Yeah. Yeah. No, but it's such the it's so these these changes are are absolutely right changes to make, aren't they? Oh yeah, I I think so. I'm not looking at them and going, oh, I wish he'd kept that bit about Hamlet's father's beaver up and stuff like this or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 22:23

That would have been just too much at the beginning, I think. So yeah, yeah. Um, no, there's some, I mean, and you know, some of these my favorite part of the book personally is the beginning. I think the especially the opening characterization of Scrooge. And that even changed actually um a bit as well. So he originally wrote he's a tight-fisted fellow, Scrooge, right? But he changed, he changed it to tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge. And hand at the grindstone is inserted above. So that's clearly something where Dickens is going back, rereading, and he's adding that in. So I really, I really love that. Um, and sometimes he's you know, just making the language a little more concise. You know, the famous there is no doubt that Marley was dead, was originally slightly different. There can be no question that Marley was dead. And it's just a little it's a little slower, not quite as forceful and direct. And uh Dickens was a master of prose characterization and visualization, of course, and was accustomed to walking around London at night for hours at a time, miles at a time, and would compose portions of this in his head, portions of all of his books in his head, and then and then come back and write. And he was writing this very quickly, you know, he only had six weeks to get it done, um, and would even cancel social engagement so he could continue writing, uh, because he was so serious about this.

SPEAKER_01 23:49

Yeah, it's so interesting that that the word doubt becoming question, which it was before, because if he's about to go on a big rant about Hamlet, yeah, the questions is a key word there, isn't it? With thinking to be or not to be that's a great point. Yeah, yeah. Okay. And actually, the hand of the grindstone as well, there's an example of more is more. We're glad we we we we filled in more because a lot of these cuts are taking things away, aren't they? Saying, Oh, that's too much, I've going on too long, I need to trim this down. But then when he finds the moment to sort of fill out a section more, it's yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:18

That's right. That amplification, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:21

Yeah, you've really illustrated how much of it is all in this document. If we can just read all of it, you know, it's amazing. It's always workings out, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:29

That's what's kind of neat about visitors being able to see this manuscript. They can kind of see that whole process unfolding right in front of their eyes. Um, with one exception, there's one line that Dickens did not add to the manuscript. Okay, that he clearly added in the proof stage. The proofs don't survive, so we don't know that for sure, but clearly it's in the final version. And that's at the end, when he forgot to reassure the reader about Tiny Tim's fate. And in the final version, of course, he says, Tiny Tim, who did not die, not as an all caps, right? And that line is not in the manuscript. So someone reading this, perhaps his solicitor Thomas Mitten, or another friend who is reading the book, must have suggested, but what about Tiny Tim? You forgot him at the end. Um, and obviously people are going to be invested in his fate. So I think that's such an interesting um other another anecdote about how this book was revised and what a what a crucial line to include.

SPEAKER_01 25:29

Yeah, that's amazing. That's incredible. In in your collection, thinking of all the Dickens objects you have at the Morgan, do you have a favorite?

SPEAKER_00 25:38

I mean, other than the Christmas Carol, I I have one that I particularly love. So Dickens at one point is uh basically renovating his home at Tavistock House in 1851, and he is envisioning these dummy bookshelves, and he writes fake book titles for the dummy books on these shelves. And we have a manuscript that has a list of these books. I don't I don't believe we have all of the lists of books, I think some are in other collections, but they're they're all pretty silly. Some of the jokes I think are lost on us in the 21st century. But um, let me read a couple if you you'll indulge me here. So, first we we have Shelley's Oysters. So bad. Uh this one I'm confused about. Hoyle on the Turnip, but it just has a funny ring to it. It sounds like a Monty Python joke or something to me. Um History of a short chancery suit in 20 volumes.

SPEAKER_01 26:40

Yeah, that that was on his mind a lot, wasn't it? Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 26:43

Exactly, exactly. And then my personal favorite as a cat owner is Cat's Lives in Nine Volumes.

SPEAKER_01 26:50

That's good.

SPEAKER_00 26:51

So silly.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

That's that's great. That's great.

SPEAKER_00 26:53

Those are good. Uh I I have a particular, particular fondness for imaginary books and imaginary libraries and literature, and this I think just really uh tickled my fancy, I think, in that in that area. So uh, but I really that's really fun. Um, you know, we've uh we've accumulated about 1400 Dickens letters over the years. It's a great collection, and we uh we love to share it with the world and share it with our researchers, and it's fun to to you know keep developing this collection and interpreting it.

SPEAKER_01 27:25

Yeah. Well, Philip, thank you so much for your time. I know this is a mad busy time for you in the run-up to Christmas. Um, so thank you and for all those insights and for all those sentences that never made it into the final, um, the final the final book. That that's so fascinating. So so thank you so much again. Really enjoyed talking to you.

SPEAKER_00 27:46

Well, thank you for inviting me. It was really a pleasure to to speak with you and your your listeners today.

SPEAKER_01 27:50

So not at all.