''The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain, A Fancy for Christmas-Time'' (better known as ''The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain'' or simply as ''The Haunted Man'') is a

novella A novella is a narrative prose fiction whose length is shorter than most novels, but longer than most short stories. The English word ''novella'' derives from the Italian ''novella'' meaning a short story related to true (or apparently so) fact ...

Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian er ...

first published in 1848. It is the fifth and last of Dickens's Christmas novellas. The story is more about the spirit of Christmas than about the holiday itself, harking back to the first in the series, ''

A Christmas Carol ''A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas'', commonly known as ''A Christmas Carol'', is a novella by Charles Dickens, first published in London by Chapman & Hall in 1843 and illustrated by John Leech. ''A Christmas ...

''. The tale centres on a Professor Redlaw and those close to him.

Plot summary

The Gift Bestowed

Redlaw is a

teacher A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching. ''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. whe ...

chemistry Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the elements that make up matter to the compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions: their composition, structure, proper ...

who often broods over wrongs done him and grief from his past. He is attended to by his servants Mr. Swidger and his 87-year-old father who helps the cook, Milly William, decorate Redlaw's rooms with holly. He is haunted by a spirit, who is not so much a ghost as Redlaw's phantom twin and is "an awful likeness of himself...with his features, and his bright eyes, and his grizzled hair, and dressed in the gloomy shadow of his dress..." This Ghost appears and proposes to Redlaw that he can allow him to "forget the sorrow, wrong, and trouble you have known...to cancel their remembrance..." The Ghost also promises that Redlaw will have the power to bestow this same gift on anyone he meets. Redlaw is hesitant at first, but finally agrees. After the Ghost bestows his gift, a child dressed in rags with no shoes appears in Redlaw's house. He seems terrified of Redlaw but becomes his unwilling companion.

The Gift Diffused

The Tetterbys live in their shop, which has been all manner of unsuccessful businesses in the past. They have many children and are quite poor. Mrs. Tetterby comes home from marketing and confesses her deep shame that she fantasized about never having married Mr. Tetterby when she saw all the things she could not afford. Redlaw has followed her inside the house and startles the couple. He inquires after their boarder, Mr. Denham, who is one of his students. Denham has been severely ill. Redlaw visits with him and bestows his gift of forgetting all that Denham has suffered. When Milly arrives to tend to Denham, Redlaw has started to realize that his gift is more of a curse. He begs Denham to help him hide so that he does not curse Milly with forgetting her woes. Denham is rude and dismissive of Milly, who has been his faithful nurse over the course of his illness. Redlaw is now horrified by how transformed people are when they forget the pain in their lives. He pays the mysterious child to take him to the Swidgers. With no pockets to keep his coins in, the child puts them in his mouth. At the Swidgers' lodgings, Redlaw bestows his gift. The 87-year old patriarch goes from doting on his eldest son who is suffering from a fatal illness to not recognizing him at all.

The Gift Reversed

Redlaw is disgusted with all the misery he has caused by making people forget. He begs the Ghost to remove the gift from everyone he has infected, even if it means that Redlaw will remain forgetful. The Ghost explains that the barefooted child is the embodiment of Redlaw's curse of forgetfulness. When mankind cannot remember its sorrows, it becomes insensate and feral. The child is an example of what indifference reaps. Redlaw takes pity on the child and covers him as he sleeps. The curse is lifted, and all of the characters' memories are restored. Denham apologizes to Milly for being so dreadfully ungrateful. Redlaw realizes that "Christmas is a time in which, of all times in the year, the memory of every remediable sorrow, wrong, and trouble in the world around us, should be active with us," and he makes peace with his painful memories.

Performances

In what would be the first public performance of the technique known as

Pepper's ghost Pepper's ghost is an illusion technique used in the theatre, cinema, amusement parks, museums, television, and concerts. It is named after the English scientist John Henry Pepper (1821–1900) who began popularising the effect with a theatr ...

John Henry Pepper John Henry "Professor" Pepper (17 June 1821 – 25 March 1900) was a British scientist and inventor who toured the English-speaking world with his scientific demonstrations. He entertained the public, royalty, and fellow scientists with a wide r ...

staged a Christmas Eve production of the play in 1862 at the Royal Polytechnic Institution (currently known as the

University of Westminster The University of Westminster is a public university based in London, United Kingdom. Founded in 1838 as the Royal Polytechnic Institution, it was the first polytechnic to open in London. The Polytechnic formally received a Royal charter in Aug ...

) in 309 Regent Street. It was very well received, if only for the new apparatus's ability to project a ghost so as to look as though it is interacting with those on stage.

References

External links

Online editions
''The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain''
at

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

. * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Haunted Man 1848 British novels 1840s fantasy novels British novels adapted into plays Christmas characters Christmas novels English novels Ghost novels Ghosts in written fiction Novels by Charles Dickens