The Cricket on the Hearth
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Charles Dickens >> The Cricket on the Hearth
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THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH
By CHARLES DICKENS
ILLUSTRATED BY
GEORGE ALFRED WILLIAMS
New York
THE PLATT & PECK CO.
Copyright, 1905, by THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY
INTRODUCTION
The combined qualities of the realist and the idealist which Dickens
possessed to a remarkable degree, together with his naturally jovial
attitude toward life in general, seem to have given him a remarkably
happy feeling toward Christmas, though the privations and hardships of
his boyhood could have allowed him but little real experience with this
day of days.
Dickens gave his first formal expression to his Christmas thoughts in
his series of small books, the first of which was the famous "Christmas
Carol," the one perfect chrysolite. The success of the book was
immediate. Thackeray wrote of it: "Who can listen to objections
regarding such a book as this? It seems to me a national benefit, and to
every man or woman who reads it, a personal kindness."
This volume was put forth in a very attractive manner, with
illustrations by John Leech, who was the first artist to make these
characters live, and his drawings were varied and spirited.
There followed upon this four others: "The Chimes," "The Cricket on the
Hearth," "The Battle of Life," and "The Haunted Man," with illustrations
on their first appearance by Doyle, Maclise, and others. The five are
known to-day as the "Christmas Books." Of them all the "Carol" is the
best known and loved, and "The Cricket on the Hearth," although third in
the series, is perhaps next in point of popularity, and is especially
familiar to Americans through Joseph Jefferson's characterisation of
Caleb Plummer.
Dickens seems to have put his whole self into these glowing little
stories. Whoever sees but a clever ghost story in the "Christmas Carol"
misses its chief charm and lesson, for there is a different meaning in
the movements of Scrooge and his attendant spirits. A new life is
brought to Scrooge when he, "running to his window, opened it and put
out his head. No fog, no mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring cold;
cold, piping for the blood to dance to; Golden sun-light; Heavenly sky;
sweet fresh air; merry bells. Oh, glorious! Glorious!" All this
brightness has its attendant shadow, and deep from the childish heart
comes that true note of pathos, the ever memorable toast of Tiny Tim,
"God bless Us, Every One!" "The Cricket on the Hearth" strikes a
different note. Charmingly, poetically, the sweet chirping of the little
cricket is associated with human feelings and actions, and at the crisis
of the story decides the fate and fortune of the carrier and his wife.
Dickens's greatest gift was characterization, and no English writer,
save Shakespeare, has drawn so many and so varied characters. It would
be as absurd to interpret all of these as caricatures as to deny Dickens
his great and varied powers of creation. Dickens exaggerated many of his
comic and satirical characters, as was his right, for caricature and
satire are very closely related, while exaggeration is the very essence
of comedy. But there remains a host of characters marked by humour and
pathos. Yet the pictorial presentation of Dickens's characters has ever
tended toward the grotesque. The interpretations in this volume aim to
eliminate the grosser phases of the caricature in favour of the more
human. If the interpretations seem novel, if Scrooge be not as he has
been pictured, it is because a more human Scrooge was desired--a Scrooge
not wholly bad, a Scrooge of a better heart, a Scrooge to whom the
resurrection described in this story was possible. It has been the
illustrator's whole aim to make these people live in some form more
fully consistent with their types.
GEORGE ALFRED WILLIAMS.
_Chatham, N.J._
THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH
Table of Contents
_Chirp the First_ 103
_Chirp the Second_ 132
_Chirp the Third_ 165
List of Illustrations
_"Father, I am lonely in the dark. I want my eyes, my patient,
willing eyes."_ 103
_"A dot and--" here he glanced at the baby--"A dot and carry--I
won't say it, for fear I should spoil it; but I was very near
a joke."_ 108
_Tilly Slowboy_ 112
_"That's the way I found him, sitting by the roadside! Upright as
a milestone."_ 118
_When suddenly, the struggling fire illuminated the whole chimney
with a glow of light; and the Cricket on the Hearth began
to chirp!_ 166
[Illustration]
THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH
A FAIRY TALE OF HOME
CHIRP THE FIRST
The kettle began it! Don't tell me what Mrs. Peerybingle said. I know
better. Mrs. Peerybingle may leave it on record to the end of time that
she couldn't say which of them began it; but I say the kettle did. I
ought to know, I hope? The kettle began it, full five minutes by the
little waxy-faced Dutch clock in the corner, before the Cricket uttered
a chirp.
As if the clock hadn't finished striking, and the convulsive little
Hay-maker at the top of it, jerking away right and left with a scythe in
front of a Moorish Palace, hadn't mowed down half an acre of imaginary
grass before the Cricket joined in at all!
Why, I am not naturally positive. Every one knows that I wouldn't set my
own opinion against the opinion of Mrs. Peerybingle, unless I were quite
sure, on any account whatever. Nothing should induce me. But, this is a
question of fact. And the fact is, that the kettle began it at least
five minutes before the Cricket gave any sign of being in existence.
Contradict me, and I'll say ten.
Let me narrate exactly how it happened. I should have proceeded to do
so, in my very first word, but for this plain consideration--if I am to
tell a story I must begin at the beginning; and how is it possible to
begin at the beginning without beginning at the kettle?
It appeared as if there were a sort of match, or trial of skill, you
must understand, between the kettle and the Cricket. And this is what
led to it, and how it came about.
Mrs. Peerybingle, going out into the raw twilight, and clicking over the
wet stones in a pair of pattens that worked innumerable rough
impressions of the first proposition in Euclid all about the yard--Mrs.
Peerybingle filled the kettle at the water-butt. Presently returning,
less the pattens (and a good deal less, for they were tall, and Mrs.
Peerybingle was but short), she set the kettle on the fire. In doing
which she lost her temper, or mislaid it for an instant; for, the water
being uncomfortably cold, and in that slippy, slushy, sleety sort of
state wherein it seems to penetrate through every kind of substance,
patten rings included--had laid hold of Mrs. Peerybingle's toes, and
even splashed her legs. And when we rather plume ourselves (with reason
too) upon our legs, and keep ourselves particularly neat in point of
stockings, we find this, for the moment, hard to bear.
Besides, the kettle was aggravating and obstinate. It wouldn't allow
itself to be adjusted on the top bar; it wouldn't hear of accommodating
itself kindly to the knobs of coal; it _would_ lean forward with a
drunken air, and dribble, a very Idiot of a kettle, on the hearth. It
was quarrelsome, and hissed and spluttered morosely at the fire. To sum
up all, the lid, resisting Mrs. Peerybingle's fingers, first of all
turned topsy-turvy, and then, with an ingenious pertinacity deserving of
a better cause, dived sideways in--down to the very bottom of the
kettle. And the hull of the Royal George has never made half the
monstrous resistance to coming out of the water which the lid of that
kettle employed against Mrs. Peerybingle before she got it up again.
It looked sullen and pig-headed enough, even then; carrying its handle
with an air of defiance, and cocking its spout pertly and mockingly at
Mrs. Peerybingle, as if it said, "I won't boil. Nothing shall induce
me!"
But, Mrs. Peerybingle, with restored good-humour, dusted her chubby
little hands against each other, and sat down before the kettle
laughing. Meantime, the jolly blaze uprose and fell, flashing and
gleaming on the little Hay-maker at the top of the Dutch clock, until
one might have thought he stood stock-still before the Moorish Palace,
and nothing was in motion but the flame.
He was on the move, however; and had his spasms, two to the second, all
right and regular. But his sufferings when the clock was going to strike
were frightful to behold; and when a Cuckoo looked out of a trap-door in
the Palace, and gave note six times, it shook him, each time, like a
spectral voice--or like a something wiry plucking at his legs.
It was not until a violent commotion and a whirring noise among the
weights and ropes below him had quite subsided that this terrified
Hay-maker became himself again. Nor was he startled without reason; for
these rattling, bony skeletons of clocks are very disconcerting in their
operation, and I wonder very much how any set of men, but most of all
how Dutchmen, can have had a liking to invent them. There is a popular
belief that Dutchmen love broad cases and much clothing for their own
lower selves; and they might know better than to leave their clocks so
very lank and unprotected, surely.
Now it was, you observe, that the kettle began to spend the evening. Now
it was that the kettle, growing mellow and musical, began to have
irrepressible gurglings in its throat, and to indulge in short vocal
snorts, which it checked in the bud, as if it hadn't quite made up its
mind yet to be good company. Now it was that after two or three such
vain attempts to stifle its convivial sentiments, it threw off all
moroseness, all reserve, and burst into a stream of song so cosy and
hilarious as never maudlin nightingale yet formed the least idea of.
So plain, too! Bless you, you might have understood it like a
book--better than some books you and I could name, perhaps. With its
warm breath gushing forth in a light cloud which merrily and gracefully
ascended a few feet, then hung about the chimney-corner as its own
domestic Heaven, it trolled its song with that strong energy of
cheerfulness, that its iron body hummed and stirred upon the fire; and
the lid itself, the recently rebellious lid--such is the influence of a
bright example--performed a sort of jig, and clattered like a deaf and
dumb young cymbal that had never known the use of its twin brother.
That this song of the kettle's was a song of invitation and welcome to
somebody out of doors: to somebody at that moment coming on towards the
snug small home and the crisp fire: there is no doubt whatever. Mrs.
Peerybingle knew it perfectly, as she sat musing before the hearth. It's
a dark night, sang the kettle, and the rotten leaves are lying by the
way; and, above, all is mist and darkness, and, below, all is mire and
clay; and there's only one relief in all the sad and murky air; and I
don't know that it is one, for it's nothing but a glare; of deep and
angry crimson, where the sun and wind together; set a brand upon the
clouds for being guilty of such weather; and the widest open country is
a long dull streak of black; and there's hoar frost on the finger-post,
and thaw upon the track; and the ice it isn't water, and the water isn't
free; and you couldn't say that anything is what it ought to be; but
he's coming, coming, coming!--
And here, if you like, the Cricket DID chime in! with a Chirrup,
Chirrup, Chirrup of such magnitude, by way of chorus; with a voice so
astoundingly disproportionate to its size, as compared with the kettle;
(size! you couldn't see it!) that, if it had then and there burst itself
like an overcharged gun, if it had fallen a victim on the spot, and
chirruped its little body into fifty pieces, it would have seemed a
natural and inevitable consequence, for which it had expressly laboured.
The kettle had had the last of its solo performance. It persevered with
undiminished ardour; but the Cricket took first fiddle, and kept it.
Good Heaven, how it chirped! Its shrill, sharp, piercing voice resounded
through the house, and seemed to twinkle in the outer darkness like a
star. There was an indescribable little trill and tremble in it at its
loudest, which suggested its being carried off its legs, and made to
leap again, by its own intense enthusiasm. Yet they went very well
together, the Cricket and the kettle. The burden of the song was still
the same; and louder, louder, louder still, they sang it in their
emulation.
The fair little listener--for fair she was, and young; though something
of what is called the dumpling shape; but I don't myself object to
that--lighted a candle, glanced at the Hay-maker on the top of the
clock, who was getting in a pretty average crop of minutes; and looked
out of the window, where she saw nothing, owing to the darkness, but her
own face imaged in the glass. And my opinion is (and so would yours have
been) that she might have looked a long way and seen nothing half so
agreeable. When she came back, and sat down in her former seat, the
Cricket and the kettle were still keeping it up, with a perfect fury of
competition. The kettle's weak side clearly being that he didn't know
when he was beat.
There was all the excitement of a race about it. Chirp, chirp, chirp!
Cricket a mile ahead. Hum, hum, hum--m--m! Kettle making play in the
distance, like a great top. Chirp, chirp, chirp! Cricket round the
corner. Hum, hum, hum--m--m! Kettle sticking to him in his own way; no
idea of giving in. Chirp, chirp, chirp! Cricket fresher than ever. Hum,
hum, hum--m--m! Kettle slow and steady. Chirp, chirp, chirp! Cricket
going in to finish him. Hum, hum, hum--m--m! Kettle not to be finished.
Until at last they got so jumbled together, in the hurry-skurry,
helter-skelter, of the match, that whether the kettle chirped and the
Cricket hummed, or the Cricket chirped and the kettle hummed, or they
both chirped and both hummed, it would have taken a clearer head than
yours or mine to have decided with anything like certainty. But of this
there is no doubt: that, the kettle and the Cricket, at one and the same
moment, and by some power of amalgamation best known to themselves,
sent, each, his fireside song of comfort streaming into a ray of the
candle that shone out through the window, and a long way down the lane.
And this light, bursting on a certain person who, on the instant,
approached towards it through the gloom, expressed the whole thing to
him, literally in a twinkling, and cried, "Welcome home, old fellow!
Welcome home, my boy!"
This end attained, the kettle, being dead beat, boiled over, and was
taken off the fire. Mrs. Peerybingle then went running to the door,
where, what with the wheels of a cart, the tramp of a horse, the voice
of a man, the tearing in and out of an excited dog, and the surprising
and mysterious appearance of a baby, there was soon the very
What's-his-name to play.
Where the baby came from, or how Mrs. Peerybingle got hold of it in that
flash of time, _I_ don't know. But a live baby there was in Mrs.
Peerybingle's arms; and a pretty tolerable amount of pride she seemed to
have in it, when she was drawn gently to the fire, by a sturdy figure of
a man, much taller and much older than herself, who had to stoop a long
way down to kiss her. But she was worth the trouble. Six foot six, with
the lumbago, might have done it.
"Oh goodness, John!" said Mrs. P. "What a state you're in with the
weather!"
[Illustration: _"A dot and"--here he glanced at the baby--"a dot and
carry--I won't say it, for fear I should spoil it; but I was very near a
joke."_]
He was something the worse for it undeniably. The thick mist hung in
clots upon his eyelashes like candied thaw; and, between the fog and
fire together, there were rainbows in his very whiskers.
"Why, you see, Dot," John made answer slowly, as he unrolled a shawl
from about his throat, and warmed his hands; "it--it an't exactly summer
weather. So no wonder."
"I wish you wouldn't call me Dot, John. I don't like it," said Mrs.
Peerybingle: pouting in a way that clearly showed she _did_ like it very
much.
"Why, what else are you?" returned John, looking down upon her with a
smile, and giving her waist as light a squeeze as his huge hand and arm
could give. "A dot and"--here he glanced at the baby--"a dot and
carry--I won't say it, for fear I should spoil it; but I was very near a
joke. I don't know as ever I was nearer."
He was often near to something or other very clever, by his own account:
this lumbering, slow, honest John; this John so heavy, but so light of
spirit; so rough upon the surface, but so gentle at the core; so dull
without, so quick within; so stolid, but so good! Oh, Mother Nature,
give thy children the true poetry of heart that hid itself in this poor
Carrier's breast--he was but a Carrier, by the way--and we can bear to
have them talking prose, and leading lives of prose; and bear to bless
thee for their company!
It was pleasant to see Dot, with her little figure and her baby in her
arms: a very doll of a baby: glancing with a coquettish thoughtfulness
at the fire, and inclining her delicate little head just enough on one
side to let it rest in an odd, half-natural, half-affected, wholly
nestling and agreeable manner, on the great rugged figure of the
Carrier. It was pleasant to see him, with his tender awkwardness,
endeavouring to adapt his rude support to her slight need, and make his
burly middle age a leaning-staff not inappropriate to her blooming
youth. It was pleasant to observe how Tilly Slowboy, waiting in the
background for the baby, took special cognizance (though in her
earliest teens) of this grouping; and stood with her mouth and eyes wide
open, and her head thrust forward, taking it in as if it were air. Nor
was it less agreeable to observe how John the Carrier, reference being
made by Dot to the aforesaid baby, checked his hand when on the point of
touching the infant, as if he thought he might crack it; and, bending
down, surveyed it from a safe distance, with a kind of puzzled pride,
such as an amiable mastiff might be supposed to show if he found
himself, one day, the father of a young canary.
"An't he beautiful, John? Don't he look precious in his sleep?"
"Very precious," said John. "Very much so. He generally _is_ asleep,
an't he?"
"Lor, John! Good gracious, no!"
"Oh!" said John, pondering. "I thought his eyes was generally shut.
Halloa!"
"Goodness, John, how you startle one!"
"It an't right for him to turn 'em up in that way," said the astonished
Carrier, "is it? See how he's winking with both of 'em at once! and look
at his mouth! Why, he's gasping like a gold and silver fish!"
"You don't deserve to be a father, you don't," said Dot, with all the
dignity of an experienced matron. "But how should you know what little
complaints children are troubled with, John? You wouldn't so much as
know their names, you stupid fellow." And when she had turned the baby
over on her left arm, and had slapped its back as a restorative, she
pinched her husband's ear, laughing.
"No," said John, pulling off his outer coat. "It's very true, Dot. I
don't know much about it. I only know that I've been fighting pretty
stiffly with the wind to-night. It's been blowing north-east, straight
into the cart, the whole way home."
"Poor old man, so it has!" cried Mrs. Peerybingle, instantly becoming
very active. "Here, take the precious darling, Tilly, while I make
myself of some use. Bless it, I could smother it with kissing it, I
could! Hie then, good dog! Hie, Boxer, boy! Only let me make the tea
first, John; and then I'll help you with the parcels, like a busy bee.
'How doth the little'--and all the rest of it, you know, John. Did you
ever learn 'How doth the little,' when you went to school, John?"
"Not to quite know it," John returned. "I was very near it once. But I
should only have spoilt it, I dare say."
"Ha, ha!" laughed Dot. She had the blithest little laugh you ever heard.
"What a dear old darling of a dunce you are, John, to be sure!"
Not at all disputing this position, John went out to see that the boy
with the lantern, which had been dancing to and fro before the door and
window, like a Will of the Wisp, took due care of the horse; who was
fatter than you would quite believe, if I gave you his measure, and so
old that his birthday was lost in the mists of antiquity. Boxer, feeling
that his attentions were due to the family in general, and must be
impartially distributed, dashed in and out with bewildering inconstancy;
now describing a circle of short barks round the horse, where he was
being rubbed down at the stable door; now feigning to make savage rushes
at his mistress, and facetiously bringing himself to sudden stops; now
eliciting a shriek from Tilly Slowboy, in the low nursing-chair near the
fire, by the unexpected application of his moist nose to her
countenance; now exhibiting an obtrusive interest in the baby; now going
round and round upon the hearth, and lying down as if he had established
himself for the night; now getting up again, and taking that nothing of
a fag-end of a tail of his out into the weather, as if he had just
remembered an appointment, and was off at a round trot, to keep it.
"There! There's the teapot, ready on the hob!" said Dot; as briskly busy
as a child at play at keeping house. "And there's the cold knuckle of
ham; and there's the butter; and there's the crusty loaf, and all!
Here's a clothes basket for the small parcels, John, if you've got any
there. Where are you, John? Don't let the dear child fall under the
grate, Tilly, whatever you do!"
It may be noted of Miss Slowboy, in spite of her rejecting the caution
with some vivacity, that she had a rare and surprising talent for
getting this baby into difficulties: and had several times imperilled
its short life in a quiet way peculiarly her own. She was of a spare and
straight shape, this young lady, insomuch that her garments appeared to
be in constant danger of sliding off those sharp pegs, her shoulders, on
which they were loosely hung. Her costume was remarkable for the partial
development, on all possible occasions, of some flannel vestment of a
singular structure; also for affording glimpses, in the region of the
back, of a corset, or a pair of stays, in colour a dead green. Being
always in a state of gaping admiration at everything, and absorbed,
besides, in the perpetual contemplation of her mistress's perfections
and the baby's, Miss Slowboy, in her little errors of judgment, may be
said to have done equal honour to her head and to her heart; and though
these did less honour to the baby's head, which they were the occasional
means of bringing into contact with deal doors, dressers, stair-rails,
bed-posts, and other foreign substances, still they were the honest
results of Tilly Slowboy's constant astonishment at finding herself so
kindly treated, and installed in such a comfortable home. For the
maternal and paternal Slowboy were alike unknown to Fame, and Tilly had
been bred by public charity, a foundling; which word, though only
differing from fondling by one vowel's length, is very different in
meaning, and expresses quite another thing.
To have seen little Mrs. Peerybingle come back with her husband, tugging
at the clothes basket, and making the most strenuous exertions to do
nothing at all (for he carried it), would have amused you almost as much
as it amused him. It may have entertained the Cricket, too, for
anything I know; but, certainly, it now began to chirp again vehemently.
[Illustration: _Tilly Slowboy._]
"Heyday!" said John in his slow way. "It's merrier than ever to-night, I
think."
"And it's sure to bring us good fortune, John! It always has done so. To
have a Cricket on the Hearth is the luckiest thing in all the world!"
John looked at her as if he had very nearly got the thought into his
head that she was his Cricket in chief, and he quite agreed with her.
But it was probably one of his narrow escapes, for he said nothing.
"The first time I heard its cheerful little note, John, was on that
night when you brought me home--when you brought me to my new home here;
its little mistress. Nearly a year ago. You recollect, John?"
Oh, yes! John remembered. I should think so!
"Its chirp was such a welcome to me! It seemed so full of promise and
encouragement. It seemed to say, you would be kind and gentle with me,
and would not expect (I had a fear of that, John, then) to find an old
head on the shoulders of your foolish little wife."
John thoughtfully patted one of the shoulders, and then the head, as
though he would have said No, no; he had had no such expectation; he had
been quite content to take them as they were. And really he had reason.
They were very comely.
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