Saturday, December 24, 2011

Silent Muse Saturday BAH HUMBUG INDEED

Silent Muse
"I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it."
Their faithful Friend and Servant, C.D.

 

ORIGINS
"In his diaries, Dickens states that Scrooge stems from a grave marker which he saw in 1841 while walking in the Canongate Kirkyard in Edinburgh: The headstone was for the vintner Ebenezer Lennox Scroggie, a relative of Adam Smith, who had won the catering contract for the visit of George IV to Edinburgh and the first contract to supply whisky to the Royal Navy.

The marker identified Scroggie as a "meal man" (corn merchant), but Dickens misread this as "mean man", due to the fading light and his mild dyslexia. Dickens wrote that it must have "shrivelled" Scroggie’s soul to carry
"such a terrible thing to eternity".
 
More Speculations Here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebenezer_Scrooge#Origins

SCROOGE
 
1935
Seymour Hicks plays the title role in the first sound version of Dickens classic about the miser who's visited by three ghosts on Christmas Eve. This British import is notable for being the only adaptation of the story with an invisible

Marley's Ghost, and also for
Expressionistic cinematography.  


Uncut - 78 minutes
http://youtu.be/_Sr2ow_ZH9w


Post Script
"It was on this day in 1914 that
the last known Christmas truce occurred
along the Western Front during World War I.
In the week leading up to Christmas, soldiers all over the battlefields had been decorating their trenches with candles and makeshift trimmings when groups of German and British soldiers began shouting seasonal greetings and singing songs to each other. On occasion, a soldier or two would even cross the battlefield to take gifts to the enemy. Then, on Christmas Eve, the men of the Western Front put the war on hold and many soldiers from both sides left their trenches to meet in No Man's Land, where they mingled and exchanged tobacco, chocolate, and sometimes even the buttons from their own uniforms as souvenirs. They played games of football, sang carols, and buried fallen comrades together as the unofficial truce lasted through the night."
-From NPR The Writers Almanac-
May your dreams be peaceful and plain
this fine December night



1 comment:

deanna7trees said...

safe travels and fun times...