Dickens Drops by the Burbs – Scrooge, Marley and Tiny Tim, too.

By Fred Bruning

Dec. 15, 2024

Charles Dickens often walked through London at night, 15 or 20 miles.

I log 3-4 each morning – through the quiet byways of Long Island.

As a hiker, that puts me at 20 percent of Dickens. As an adventurer, likewise no comparison. As a literary giant – oh, please, let’s just keep moving along, if you don’t mind.

On his remarkable walkathons, Dickens absorbed the great city and took particular note of the poor and anguished, subject matter that became a specialty.

My jaunts are along the water and across the harbor front – marina, boat ramps, swanky yachts and sailboats – and around the other side past the high-priced restaurant that draws a crowd disproportionate of slender young men with untucked shirts and dazzling women in daring skirts and then the firehouse, post office, 7-11, pub, luncheonette (older crowd, well-covered), and then past the deli for the home stretch.

All easy-going and serene, none of the “cold, solitary desolation” that so moved Dickens, not a forlorn child sleeping under a cabbage basket, beetle-browed young man dressed in rags and snapping like a “worried dog,” no “brawling drunkards,” no distracted souls at Bethlehem Hospital insisting they can fly or that Queen Victoria comes to dine on peaches and macaroni, no “wretched creatures” of a “pitiless and inconsistent world.”

Dickens had his own hard knocks story – second of eight children, father with money problems and hauled off to debtor’s prison (what grand ideas prevailed in 1824), pulled out of school for a while to help support the family and employed at a shoe polish plant.

That, you might say, is first-hand reporting, the sort of undercover work that, on the page, accosts readers with authenticity and offers little escape from truth.

Breather, here.

Let’s stop for a moment at the deli.

Not exactly the sort of brawling pub Dickens might have visited but a good-natured place fragrant in mornings with the aroma of coffee, toasted bagels and fried egg sandwiches.

There are a few regulars sitting on stools at a window counter.

“Join us?” says our neighbor, big-hearted guy who arrives, unannounced, after snowstorms to clear our driveway and daily stops his car to chat – Mets, dogs, weather – and always asks how we’re doing and to let us know if he can help.

“Can’t, gotta’ get back.”

“Next time.”

Such a reassuring tableaux, the deli, well-stocked, abuzz with idle chatter – “yessir, what can I getcha’? oat bran muffin? comin’ up” – not Dickensian by a long shot but small testament to the sort of human bonds he valued even if his fiction was apt to take chilling turns before decency was revealed.

What brings this all about?

My wife, Wink, and I lately attended a reading of, “A Christmas Carol,” at a local theater, and, wait, not just a reading, mind you, but a one-man reenactment by – ready for this? – the great-great grandson of Charles Dickens.

Gerald Charles Dickens, 61, from Britain, never met his famous ancestor, of course – the writer died in 1870 – but as an actor seems to have inhabited the old fellow, and remarkably so. Overseas and in unexpected spots around the United States – Independence, Mo.; Waynesboro, Va.; Winterthur, Del. – Gerald Dickens performs, and happily our whistlestop was on this year’s itinerary.

With nimble voice and graceful hand and skittering steps across the performance floor, Gerald Dickens brought the classic Christmas story to life – Scrooge, Marley, Cratchit, past, present, future ghosts, musical instruments, carolers and, most tenderly, Tiny Tim.

Here was the beloved tale of sin and redemption lifted from the page and delivered in just over an hour to an eager holiday audience, some members comically decked out in 19^th Century costumes, heralding the season, full of good cheer, God bless us every one!

“Great,” people said.

“Bravo.”

“Wow,” said Wink, as we joined a standing ovation – and not the hesitant, oh-I better-get-up variety, either, but the kind where you feel hoisted to your feet. “Guy’s something else.”

So, thank you Gerald Charles Dickens and Great-Great Granddad for a lovely night in the quiet suburbs and reminder, too, of how much we have while others, too little; of ghosts that swirl and souls triumphant, of great cities and small towns, and coffee and muffins, of snow and fine neighbors, and, again, of Christmas.

Previous Invisible Ink posts at: https://fredbruning.substack.com/archive