Free The Man Who Invented Christmas by Les Standiford Page A

himself. In 1840 he placed a series of etchings in Bentley’s Miscellany (his mother was a relative of Richard Bentley), and in 1841 he began to publish his work in Punch. The magazine, which began publication in July of that year, with Mark Lemon its editor, Douglas Jerrold its most acerbic writer, and Leech its principal graphic artist, was the Harvard Lampoon or Onion of its day, attracting Dickens’s favor for its irreverent and often radical stance on social issues.
    As Ackroyd notes, the stance adopted by the creators of Punch, as well as by Dickens himself, was a curious blend of conservatism and liberalism. Though they supported such causes as relief for the poor and an end to restrictive tariffs that favored the vested interests, Dickens and others like him had no use for revolt or violence as suggested by supporters of Marx and Engels. Even those who had turned to crime as a way out of their unfortunate circumstances did not get much sympathy from Dickens, who once said of a “model prison” movement in England that, sadly, imprisoned criminals looked to be gaining a “manifest advantage” in their living conditions over those who were simply poor and ended up in harsh workhouses.
    When Leech, who had recently won a contract to illustrate a novel for the popular writer Robert Smith Surtees, approached Dickens in late 1842 to be considered as the illustrator for Martin Chuzzlewit, Dickens wrote back an encouraging letter: “If it can possibly be arranged, consistently with that regard that I feel bound to pay to Mr. Browne [who assumed that Chapman and Hall would continue to use him on the monthly publications as they had for The Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge ], I shall be truly happy to avail myself of your genius in my forthcoming Monthly Work.”
    Chapman and Hall, however, prevailed in their preference for Browne (or “Phiz,” as he often signed his work), and once again Dickens had to turn Leech down, but he did so in a most considerate way.
    “I have never forgotten having seen you some years ago or ceased to watch your progress with much interest and satisfaction,” Dickens wrote. “I congratulate you heartily on your success and myself on having had my eye upon the means by which you have obtained it.”
    Less than a year later, and aware that Leech had been awarded the design of a Christmas novel titled The Wassail Bowl, by his friend Albert Smith, Dickens decided that the time had come. Dickens wanted four woodcuts and four hand-colored etchings to be included in A Christmas Carol, and Leech would be the man to do them.
    As for the design of the book, Dickens decided that it should be bound in red cloth, with the title stamped in gold on the cover, and the edges of the book papers trimmed in gold as well. In addition, he fixed the price at five shillings, a relative bargain at a time when a modestly packaged three-volume novel might sell for thirty-one shillings (a pound and a half). As a further guide, one might consider that monthly issues of a Dickens novel sold for a single shilling—though the whole would come to twenty shillings in the end, at least it was being purchased on the installment plan. By contrast, Carol character Bob Cratchit’s weekly salary (typical of the time) was fifteen shillings a week, with which he managed to support a wife and six children. Even at five shillings, then, it was not as if an average workingman could snatch up a copy of the new Dickens work without a second thought.
    Still, Dickens placed faith not only in his concept but in the knowledge that there was nothing on the publishing scene quite equivalent to his book. In his book The Annotated Christmas Carol, Michael Patrick Hearn points out that most of the Yule-themed publishing of the time consisted of richly decorated volumes that celebrated such verities as love and goodwill, lacking any direct reference to the holiday itself.
    In Dickens’s mind he had all that was necessary for a grand