Funny you should mention that. Years ago, when I was still in undergrad school in the nineties, the English Club took a trip to Mount Hope Estate and Winery’s Dickens Festival. They had Scrooge (post-transformation) and Miss Havisham there, along with Dickens himself and other literary/historical characters, like Captain Nemo, Sigmund Freud, the Mad Hatter and Alice, and American balladeer Stephen Foster. They did various sketches/poetry readings through the night (my favorite was Sigmund getting all choked up at the Victorian tearjerker poem “Little Boy Blue” by Eugene Field). But at the tail end of the night, Scrooge proposed to Miss Havisham (after getting the ring back from the Artful Dodger).
The Dickens novel Nicholas Nickleby has the generous and rich Cheeryble brothers who were modelled after the Manchester philanthropists David and William Grant. It’s not like rich philanthropists were unknown in Victorian times.
At least Jo (from Bleak House) didn’t have to sweep it up.
J. Wesley Smith’s take on it:
It was a trap so he’d have to replace the Ghost of Christmas Future.
His inadvertent changes to the timeline result in Biff Tannen becoming mayor of the town.
Seriously though I always thought he was an elderly character and the future where he’s dead is not that far off.
So he pays his employees better. Maybe gives a chance to someone from the workhouse. And gives people a break if they can’t make their payments sometimes*.
Long enough for people to like him, then he pops his clogs.
- Not saying this is necessarily a good or sustainable idea. Just saying what’s implied in the story.