The Man Who Invented Christmas (15 page)

Heady times indeed for a ruffian and rascal. But being a novelist as well, Dickens might have begun to wonder if any circumstance that appeared so bright might not have some dark underside about to surface. Sure enough, scarcely had Dickens begun to exult in his good fortune than there appeared equal cause to lament.

For one thing, the great swell of approval in England for the book suggested that the American public, which had clamored for news of Little Nell, would be equally receptive to
A Christmas Carol.
And though this proved to be the case, not all of those clamoring would act in Dickens’s best interests. The first shipment of books arrived in Boston on January 21, and as Michael Patrick Hearn puts it, “the pirates must have been waiting at the dock.”

The American press was by and large favorably impressed by this offering from a Brit who had savaged their country in
American Notes
and
Chuzzlewit.
“It is one of those stories, the reading of which makes every one better, more contented with life, more resigned to misfortune, more hopeful, more charitable,” declared the
New World.

But once Dickens’s authorized edition arrived on American shelves, little time passed before the familiar depredations began. Almost immediately the New York firm of Harper and Brothers was advertising in the newspapers that their own edition of
A Christmas Carol
would hit the stands on January 24. This blatant act of expropriation appeared in the form of a pale imitation of Dickens’s lavish book, with two columns of text crowded on a page, lacking illustrations, bound in cheap blue paper, and selling at six cents a copy.

Given that a pound exchanged for about five American dollars at the time, the price was quite a bargain compared to the $1.25 that buyers forked over for an authorized copy. At that discount, the absence of gilt edging and a few colored engravings could probably be forgiven by many of Dickens’s U.S. fans. Dickens, however, would see not as much as a ha’penny from Harper and Brothers or any of the several other American pirates who gleefully reprinted his new work.

It was not that Americans were altogether heedless of the concept of copyright. Indeed, one of the earliest accomplishments of the U.S. Congress was the passage of the Copyright Act of 1790, which was established to “promote the progress of science and the useful arts,” and to protect the rights of authors and publishers…so long as they were American citizens, that is. Anything published by anyone living elsewhere was simply fair game for reprinting in the United States.

And while Dickens and other writers in England and elsewhere were outraged by the equanimity with which American publishers went about their thievery, a number of American authors, Washington Irving among them, were just as upset with their own treatment by publishers across the pond. England had acknowledged the concept of copyright since the establishment of the Statute of Queen Anne in 1710, which introduced the then-revolutionary concept of an artist retaining a stake in his own creation. Though the legislation was enacted primarily to put an end to the formation of monopolies by publishers that traditionally paid only a flat fee to “own” a literary work, much as a collector of statuary might buy a chiseled rendering of a general on a rearing horse outright, the practical effect of it was to allow writers an ongoing financial interest in their own works.

By 1844, however, England had not yet gotten around to establishing a reciprocal agreement regarding intellectual property rights with the United States, a situation that was exacerbated by the fact that politically powerful publishers on both sides were making significant sums through piracy. Thus, just as Dickens suffered in America, when a British publisher released an edition of “The Masque of the Red Death” or “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Edgar Allan Poe saw not a penny from it. It was a situation that lingered until the 1870s, when price wars reached a critical point in American publishing. Instead of undercutting one another on competing editions of identical material, publishers began to understand the competitive advantage in securing exclusive rights to an author’s work. As a result they were more willing to enter into agreements with writers from England and the Continent as well. This in turn led to the establishment of more-orderly copyright relations with England and the Continent.

For Dickens, however, there would be no immediate remedy in America. The six-cent version of
A Christmas Carol
put out by Harper and Brothers was followed in short order by editions in the New York paper
True Sun,
which first serialized it in five episodes, then reprinted the whole in an edition that it sold for only three cents. Shortly thereafter, the well-known literary magazine the
New World
blithely serialized the story as well, though it did not neglect to add insult to injury by scolding Dickens for his negative portrayals of the United States in
American Notes
and
Chuzzlewit.

Dickens probably expected such treatment from the U.S. market, and in any case there was little he could do about it there. But when he discovered the outrage that Lee and Haddock, a London publisher, had perpetrated, he dropped his long-standing practice of ignoring domestic poachers and went directly to chancellor’s court.

What he sought there was an injunction to restrain Richard Egan Lee and his partners from selling an issue of a periodical titled
Parley’s Illuminated Library
and dated January 6, 1844. The item, which sold for two pennies, contained something called “A Christmas Ghost Story, re-originated from the original by Charles Dickens, and analytically condensed expressly for this work.” In this case, “re-originating” apparently meant writing two or three lines of introduction and then reprinting the complete text of Dickens’s book with minor alterations.

Dickens, as might be imagined, was beside himself, but it was not as if this were his first brush with domestic piracy and plagiarism. Though his literal texts were protected by British copyright law, his immense popularity had encouraged any number of hacks and fly-by-night publishers to profit from the most blatant imitations of his work. One of the earliest of these was
The Posthumous Notes of the Pickwick Club,
by “Bos,” a miserably executed lift from the original, which sold for a penny (one-twelfth of the going rate for the real thing). It was followed by other such efforts as
Pickwick in America, Oliver Twiss, Nickelas Nicklebery, Barnaby Budge,
and more by Bos, Buz, Poz, and others.

Though the penny imitations were truly dreadful, and read primarily by the poor and semi-illiterate who would have been hard-pressed to appreciate the difference from the actual Boz, there were also imitations aimed at the same middle-class audience who loved Dickens and who simply could not get enough of their favorite author. A journalist and editor by the name of G. W. M. Reynolds began a cottage industry of his own by aping Dickens in the pages of
Monthly Magazine.
Reynolds defended his serialization of something he titled “Pickwick Abroad” by saying that while he might have appropriated Dickens’s characters, the stories and the writing were his alone. If Dickens had been too shortsighted to continue Pickwick’s run on his own, “it is not my fault,” said Reynolds.

Dickens was not particularly happy about any of these shenanigans, and had in days past inquired halfheartedly of his solicitors what might be done, but he had never taken the trouble to pursue any actions in court. In the case of
A Christmas Carol,
however, he was not only the writer but the publisher as well, and so was particularly vulnerable to such thievery. Furthermore, his circumstances were far more dire than they had been. As they would learn, Lee and Haddock were trifling with a desperate man.

“I have not the least doubt that these Vagabonds can be stopped, they must be,” Dickens wrote to Mitton the day after the abominable issue of
Parley’s Illuminated
had appeared. “Let us go to work in such terrible earnest that everything tumble down before it…. Let us be
sledge-hammer
in this, or I shall be beset by hundreds of the same crew, when I come out with a long story.”

If Dickens had invoked the term
sledge-hammer,
then Mitton well knew that this was an undertaking that truly mattered to his client. Accordingly, the attorney filed a bill of complaint on January 9, in which Dickens, as the orator, or plaintiff, stated that while he had invented and written
A Christmas Carol,
the defendants had nevertheless on the sixth of that month published a “colourable imitation” of one half of his book in the sixteenth issue of a periodical known as
Parley’s Illuminated Library.
Therefore, Dickens was asking for an injunction to restrain the defendants from “printing, publishing, selling, or otherwise disposing of said publication, or any continuation thereof.”

In his affidavit, Dickens pointed out that “the subject, characters, personages, and incidents” were identical to those in his own novel, “except that the name ‘Fezziwig’ has been altered to ‘Fuzziwig.’” By “colourable,” he continued, he meant that while much of the original language of his own had been altered, it was only to conceal the fact of the theft. In total, Dickens sought injunctions against five separate parties, including a number of booksellers who had planned to sell what Lee and Haddock had published.

Injunctions against all five were granted immediately by the judge with whom the complaint was filed, and four of the parties agreed to destroy or deliver up their stocks of the offending magazines. Only publisher Lee countered (Haddock seems to have disappeared), asking that the injunction be dissolved, and going so far as to argue that “A Christmas Ghost Story,” as written by its author, Henry Hewitt, contained a number of “very considerable improvements and large original additions.”

In Dickens’s book, Lee pointed out, “Tiny Tim is merely described as having sung a song,” whereas Mr. Hewitt had “written a song of sixty lines, such song being admirably adapted to the occasion and replete with pathos and poetry.” Furthermore, Lee, in what might seem an excess of zeal, called attention to the fact that Hewitt had “re-originated” several of Dickens’s works before, including
The Old Curiosity Shop
and
Barnaby Rudge,
and there had been no complaint. In fact, Lee suggested, Dickens had probably found his inspiration for
A Christmas Carol
in Hewitt’s writings, rather than the other way around.

And if Dickens’s jaw might have dropped in astonishment at such a preposterous claim, Hewitt in his own affidavit gives some clue to what his publisher might have meant. Since he had “re-originated” the works of a number of well-known authors for his employers, and had even sent gift copies of these versions—as well as his abridgements of
The Old Curiosity Shop
and
Barnaby Rudge
—to Dickens for his enjoyment, it is quite likely that Dickens was introduced to the books of Washington Irving through Hewitt’s work, including Irving’s books celebrating Christmas.

Dickens, Hewitt proposed, was complaining about the theft of material that Dickens had himself stolen from Washington Irving, albeit from versions of Irving “re-originated” by Hewitt. Thus, Hewitt had the gall to say, he “verily believes Dickens to be more indebted to Washington Irving for the materials of his
Christmas Carol
than the deponent [Hewitt] is to Dickens as regards the
Christmas Ghost Story.
” Furthermore, Hewitt said, in the tones of a humble fellow just trying to eke out a living (he was probably paid about ten shillings to “pot down”
A Christmas Carol
), that he was actually doing a great favor for the “humbler classes” who had neither the time nor the money to spend on “larger, or high-priced works.” There is no record describing Dickens’s expression as he read these depositions, but one can well imagine it.

Still, as Mitton would have explained to his client, there were certain things in the statements of Lee and Hewitt that would have to be responded to, outlandish as they might seem. As Supreme Court solicitor E. T. Jaques explained in a turn-of-the-century monograph,
Charles Dickens in Chancery,
Lee and Hewitt’s allegation of “laches and acquiescence” on Dickens’s part was a perfectly acceptable issue to raise in a court of claims. If indeed Dickens had been aware of the previous “re-originations” and had done nothing to stop them, then the court might legitimately find that he had in fact condoned their piracy through inaction.

Thus Dickens was reduced to making a counterclaim in which he denied having received any inscribed volumes of
Parley’s Illustrated Library,
including Hewitt’s “re-originations” of Washington Irving, his own work, or that of anyone else. And, furthermore, if any such items had been deposited on his doorstep, he had certainly never read them. It was to be clearly understood, Dickens said, “that he has never sanctioned, or knowingly permitted, anyone to copy or imitate the
Carol, The Old Curiosity Shop,
or
Barnaby Rudge,
or any of them.”

The motion by Lee and the absent Haddock to dissolve the injunction against them was heard before Judge Knight Bruce on January 18. If we go by Dickens’s account to Forster, the lead attorney for the petitioners had a difficult time of it: “He [Judge Bruce] had interrupted Anderton [actually Thomas Oliver Anderson] constantly by asking him to produce a passage which was not an expanded or contracted idea from my book. And at every successive passage he cried out: ‘That is Mr. Dickens’s case. Find another!’”

When Anderson and his subcounsel had finally run down, and as Thomas Noon Talfourd, hired by Dickens to argue his side of the matter, was scraping back his chair to begin, Judge Bruce motioned him to stay still. According to Dickens, the judge’s subsequent words warmed the cockles of his heart: “He said that there was not a shadow of doubt upon the matter,” he reported gleefully to Forster. “That there was no authority which could bear a construction in their favour; the piracy going beyond all previous instances. They might mention it again in a week…if they liked, and might have an issue if they pleased, but they would probably consider it unnecessary after that strong expression of his opinion.”