My mistake regarding the money lender comment, I must have my film versions mixed with the book. There was a scene in one version where Scrooge asks to see people happy and he is taken to a couple who were in debted to Scrooge who are overjoyed at his death meaning they could get a little relief.
I’m sure he was wealthy and did invest. Did he not have a regular spot at the exchange which he found himself missing from? Or is the Exchange something different.
I guess they were just waiting for CGI technology to improve to the point where they could finally tell the story.
You’re quoting again from some movie version. No such reference in the book, which does mention “Scrooge and Marley” painted above a warehouse door. Given that Scrooge has only one office worker, Bob Cratchit, it’s probably not that big of a business.
I cannot think of a single story that I am more dead sick of than A Christmas Carol. I said like 4 adaptations ago that if they never adapt it again it’d be too soon.
Actually it’s an old term that was apparently just discovered on the SDMB, because I’m seeing it like 5 times a day around here lately.
There’s no reference being made as such. Just a joke that what the 1951 movie needed, and this upcoming version obviously has, is a guy falling from 80 zillion feet. The irony is that the 1951 movie didn’t need such so it’s unclear the upcoming film (or indeed any adaptation of this story) does either.
Actually, the first scene kingpengvin mentioned is a rather important scene in the book:
At length the long-expected knock was heard. She hurried to the door, and met her husband; a man whose face was careworn and depressed, though he was young. There was a remarkable expression in it now; a kind of serious delight of which he felt ashamed, and which he struggled to repress.
He sat down to the dinner that had been boarding for him by the fire; and when she asked him faintly what news (which was not until after a long silence), he appeared embarrassed how to answer.
“Is it good.” she said, “or bad?” – to help him.
“Bad,” he answered.
“We are quite ruined.”
“No. There is hope yet, Caroline.”
“If he relents,” she said, amazed, “there is. Nothing is past hope, if such a miracle has happened.”
“He is past relenting,” said her husband. “He is dead.”
She was a mild and patient creature if her face spoke truth; but she was thankful in her soul to hear it, and she said so, with clasped hands. She prayed forgiveness the next moment, and was sorry; but the first was the emotion of her heart.
“What the half-drunken woman whom I told you of last night, said to me, when I tried to see him and obtain a week’s delay; and what I thought was a mere excuse to avoid me; turns out to have been quite true. He was not only very ill, but dying, then.”
"To whom will our debt be transferred?"
"I don’t know. But before that time we shall be ready with the money; and even though we were not, it would be a bad fortune indeed to find so merciless a creditor in his successor. We may sleep to-night with light hearts, Caroline."
As for the “spot at the exchange,” his avian majesty is probably slightly misremembering this:
They scarcely seemed to enter the city; for the city rather seemed to spring up about them, and encompass them of its own act. But there they were, in the heart of it; on Change, amongst the merchants; who hurried up and down, and chinked the money in their pockets, and conversed in groups, and looked at their watches, and trifled thoughtfully with their great gold seals; and so forth, as Scrooge had seen them often. …
He looked about in that very place for his own image; but another man stood in his accustomed corner, and though the clock pointed to his usual time of day for being there, he saw no likeness of himself among the multitudes that poured in through the Porch.It actually refers to Change Street in the commercial center of London.
I was referring to the “exchange” claim. But as to the mention of a debt, that doesn’t mean Scrooge is in the money-lending business; a wholesaler can also extend credit to a customer.
Although it’s not clear what Scrooge does, it is reasonably clear that his work does involve the Royal Exchange. The references in the book are not to “Change” but to “**’**Change,” with the apostrophe – shorthand for the Exchange. Here’s the quotes:
(Stave Four, quoted above).
And from the very beginning of the book:
(Stave One.)
Also, the scene TWDuke set forth refers to an existing debt being transferred from Scrooge as a “creditor,” not a merchant or vendor, to someone else who will be more lenient. It therefore seems reasonable that Scrooge was a trader upon the Exchange, not necessarily in stocks and bonds but in other types of commercial paper – the buying, selling, and foreclosing of debts. That Dickens was talking about the Exchange also also explains the reference to Scrooge having an accustomed corner and merchants pouring in from the Porch: The Exchange was entered from a landing or porch at the top of a flight of stairs, into a large courtyard, in which merchants would do business. It is not a stretch to assume that men doing business there every day would have their accustomed corners or spots in tha courtyard. The foreclosure of debts he has purchased would still occasion Scrooge to have a warehouse for goods he obtains, even if he is not otherwise in the business of selling such goods himself. And being a paper trader would require no particular staff beyond himself and, of course, his one poor clerk.
Two minutes Googling with tell you that it isn’t clear what Scrooge does for a living. A merchant, a moneylender, a wholesaler, an invester – there’s no more evidence for one than the other in the book. But it does seem clear from the book that whatever Scrooge does, he does it on (or at) the Exchange.
Sorry, I inferred from “You’re quoting again from some movie version” that you meant memories of both scenes were from a movie. My point was that one is directly from the book and the other could be a slight and very understandable mistake based on a passage in the book.
(I was in a stage production of “A Christmas Carol” that was adapted by a literary aesthete who would ne’er have deigned to incorporate a scene from a photoplay, and she interpreted “on Change” as “in the 'change.”)
In any case, the true nature of Scrooge & Marley’s business is left vague, as it should be. (After all, mankind was their business.) But we have references “money-changing hole,” “counting-house,” "“Three days after sight of this First of Exchange pay to Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge on his order,” “cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses.” The only vivid picture we get of any of Scrooge’s customers is a young couple that paints him as a usurer. There is no mention of Scrooge providing any actual goods or non-financial services to anyone. The only indication that he is a wholesaler is a passing mention of a warehouse - but a warehouse could also be used to store property seized from debtors.
Scrooge at the Exchange was prominent in the George C. Scott version (my favorite color, non-animated version. :))
Having Jim Carrey voice all 3 spirits in addition to Scrooge is, I think, a mistake. Implying that the spirits are somehow manifestations of Scrooge, rather than independent entities, is not what Dickens had in mind.
Interesting. The text I referred to claims to follow the original punctuation and spelling and definitely says “on Change” (no apostrophe). Note that the scene includes merchants hurrying up and down - not brokers engaging in trade.
The first paragraph definitely includes an apostrophe, in any version of the text I have seen.
Thanks to all to belay my fear that I was totally off base… been a while since I’ve read the original but I have seen it in almost all of its various film and TV versions.
So would the information we do have make Scrooge et Marley Capitalists or no? Or have I been reading the book through Marxist eyes all this time?
(Definitions courtesy of American Heritage)
cap·i·tal·ist
I daresay he had at least three cubic perches of money, wot?
A perch is about 25 cubic feet, so did he trade in some kind of 9-dimensional currency?