The Chimes (Best Navigation, Active TOC)

by Charles Dickens

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The Chimes: A Goblin Story of Some Bells that Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year In, a short novel by Charles Dickens, was written and published in 1844, one year after A Christmas Carol. It is the second in his series of "Christmas books": five short books with strong social and moral messages that he published during the 1840's.

Genres: Classics, Fiction, Christmas, Audiobook, Fantasy, Short Stories, Holiday

93 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1844

About the author

Charles John Huffam Dickens (1812-1870) was a writer and social critic who created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the twentieth century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories enjoy lasting popularity.

Dickens left school to work in a factory when his father was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. Despite his lack of formal education, he edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, education, and other social reforms.

Dickens was regarded as the literary colossus of his age. His 1843 novella, A Christmas Carol, remains popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre. Oliver Twist and Great Expectations are also frequently adapted, and, like many of his novels, evoke images of early Victorian London. His 1859 novel, A Tale of Two Cities, set in London and Paris, is his best-known work of historical fiction. Dickens's creative genius has been praised by fellow writers—from Leo Tolstoy to George Orwell and G. K. Chesterton—for its realism, comedy, prose style, unique characterisations, and social criticism. On the other hand, Oscar Wilde, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf complained of a lack of psychological depth, loose writing, and a vein of saccharine sentimentalism. The term Dickensian is used to describe something that is reminiscent of Dickens and his writings, such as poor social conditions or comically repulsive characters.

On 8 June 1870, Dickens suffered another stroke at his home after a full day's work on Edwin Drood. He never regained consciousness, and the next day he died at Gad's Hill Place. Contrary to his wish to be buried at Rochester Cathedral "in an inexpensive, unostentatious, and strictly private manner," he was laid to rest in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. A printed epitaph circulated at the time of the funeral reads: "To the Memory of Charles Dickens (England's most popular author) who died at his residence, Higham, near Rochester, Kent, 9 June 1870, aged 58 years. He was a sympathiser with the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed; and by his death, one of England's greatest writers is lost to the world." His last words were: "On the ground", in response to his sister-in-law Georgina's request that he lie down.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Bionic Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Chimes, or to give it its full title, The Chimes, a Goblin Story of Some Bells That Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year In, is the second Christmas book by Charles Dickens. It was written in 1844, a year after his phenomenally successful "A Christmas Carol", and continued the burgeoning tradition of an annual Christmas book in what he called the "Carol philosophy". He was to write five of these short novels, all of which have a strong social and moral message. He then discontinued them in favour of shorter stories with a Christmassy feel in his weekly magazines, "Household Words" (1850-1858) and "All the Year Round" (1859-1867). Eventually there were to be over twenty of these shorter pieces.

The Chimes does not have quite the same London-based feel as many of Dickens's stories, and Dickens himself said that he missed having London as his inspiration. The idea for it came whilst he was spending a year in Italy, with his wife Kate, their five children, Kate's sister Georgina, and all their servants. Soon after they arrived in Genoa, Dickens became aware of the incessant ringing of the church bells. His biographer Forster recorded Dickens having said that in writing The Chimes he was, "striking a blow for the poor". When he had completed the novel, he rushed back to England, to read it to Forster and his other friends, and organise publication before returning to his family in Genoa just before Christmas 1844.

Dickens had great hopes of The Chimes, and employed four artists to provide illustrations, even though the work is so short. This confident extract is from a letter to his wife,

"The little book is now, as far as I am concerned, all ready. One cut of Doyle's and one of Leech's I found so unlike my ideas, that I had them both to breakfast with me this morning, and with that winning manner which you know of, got them with the highest good humour to do both afresh. They are now hard at it. Stanfield's readiness, delight, wonder at my being pleased with what he has done is delicious. Mac's frontispiece is charming. The book is quite splendid; the expenses will be very great, I have no doubt."

There are several parallels to be drawn with "A Christmas Carol" in this novel. Just as the earlier story is about Scrooge learning a lesson in humanity from the spirits, The Chimes also has a character for the reader to focus on, Toby or "Trotty" Veck. Trotty works as a ticket-porter, waiting all day outside the door of St. Malackey's bell tower for odd jobs. He is a poor, simple, "weak, small, spare old man". Yet it is Trotty Veck, with whom (unlike Ebenezer Scrooge) we have a lot of sympathy, who is to be taught a lesson. This time it is much harder to deduce what he can have done wrong. Trotty has a daughter, "Meg", whom he idolises. Dickens has created his favourite type of heroine here - young, virtuous, beautiful and kind. She has a sweetheart, a worthy blacksmith called Richard, and they want to marry. As Trotty patiently stands outside the church, musing on the bells and unnoticed by all the passers by, Dickens introduces us to the two young people, and we begin to get a picture of the dire poverty by which all subsist, and also the misgivings about the young couples' future which Trotty himself has.

To pile on the pathos, we are introduced the pompous Alderman Cute, who thinks nothing of poking fun at Trotty's situation and stealing his scant food, as he shows off to his two companions, Mr. Filer, a rigid political economist and another overly nostalgic, "red-faced gentleman in a blue coat", who bemoans,

"The good old times, the good old times ... what times they were!"

The three continually "put down" the engaged couples' plan to marry, drumming into them how selfish and irresponsible it would be.

"They have no earthly right or business to be married, ... they have no earthly right or business to be born!"

says Alderman Cute. Here, from later in the story, is a barbed, cynical thumbnail sketch of his arrogance, imbued with true Dickensian sarcasm,

"Seen the Alderman? Oh dear! Who could ever help seeing the Alderman. He was so considerate, so affable; he bore so much in mind the natural desires of folks to see him; that if he had a fault, it was the being constantly On View. And wherever the great people were, there, to be sure, attracted by the kindred sympathy between great souls, was Cute."

Eventually, after all three poor folk have been castigated and made to feel even more wretched, Trotty is given a note to take to a local MP, Sir Joseph Bowley, who makes a great show of dispensing charity to the poor. As we meet Bowley, we become aware through Dickens's facetious portrayal, that he is cast in the same mould as the Alderman - that of a pontificating dictator. Bowley makes a point of chastising Trotty for his debts, whilst ostentatiously paying off his own debts before the new year, completely ignoring the fact that Trotty has no way of paying off what he owes to his local shop. He drums into Trotty his one great moral lesson, which he says the poor need to learn,

"entire dependence on myself!"

Trotty is in despair by this point,

"No, no. We can't go right or do right ... There is no good in us. We are born bad!"

The story has clearly indicated where our sympathies should lie, but just to hammer the point home, Dickens introduces two more characters in desperate need. They are Will Fern, a poor countryman, and his orphaned niece, Lilian. Because Trotty had overheard a conversation at Alderman Cute's house, he is able to warn Will that he is likely to be arrested and put in prison for vagrancy.

This is where the reader discovers what Trotty's lesson is to be. The bells of the church have always seemed to have a fascination for Trotty. Now one night, he feels as if they are calling him. He goes there, finds the church tower door unlocked and climbs up to the bellchamber. There follows one of Dickens's most whimsical atmospheric passages, describing the spirits' goblin helpers and then the spirits of the bells themselves,

"swarming with dwarf phantoms, spirits, elfin creatures of the Bells ... He saw them ugly, handsome, crippled, exquisitely formed. He saw them young, he saw them old, he saw them kind, he saw them cruel, he saw them merry, he saw them grim; he saw them dance, and heard them sing; he saw them tear their hair, and heard them howl ... Mysterious and awful figures! Resting on nothing; poised in the night air of the tower, with their draped and hooded heads merged in the dim roof; motionless and shadowy. Shadowy and dark, although he saw them by some light belonging to themselves - none else was there - each with its muffled hand upon its goblin mouth."

Trotty's "crime", he is told, is in not taking personal responsibility, in not having any inner convictions, and in losing confidence, faith in a higher power, and hope and determination that life would improve. He is reprimanded for his condemnation of people less fortunate than himself, offering them neither help nor pity. On his walk to Sir Joseph Bowley's house he had condemned a "cutpurse" (thief), and ignored the plight of a prostitute in the power of her pimp. He had read the account in a newspaper of a woman, driven from her home by poverty and misfortune, who had killed her child and herself. Trotty had seen this as final proof of the badness of the working class, and had cursed the woman as "unnatural and cruel". The goblins and spirits tell him that he has begun to emulate the behaviour of those such as Alderman Cute,

"Who turns his back upon the fallen and disfigured of his kind; abandons them as vile; and does not trace and track with pitying eyes the unfenced precipice by which they fell from good - grasping in their fall some tufts and shreds of that lost soil, and clinging to them still when bruised and dying in the gulf below; does wrong to Heaven and man, to time and to eternity."

He is also told to try to improve conditions in the here and now, not to sorrowfully remember a fictitiously "better" time in years past.

Just as we have "staves" in "A Christmas Carol", The Chimes is divided into four parts entitled "quarters", after the quarter chimes of a striking clock. And just as in "A Christmas Carol", Ebenezer Scrooge learns his lesson from the spirits by being shown a series of visions, including images of what might be to come, Trotty Veck is now shown a series in the same vein; visions of what may be to come.

These parts of the story are very downbeat. We learn the future troubled lives of Meg, Richard, Will and Lilian, who nine years later have all been driven beyond endurance. They have the friendship of Mrs. Chickenstalker, once a great friend to Toby, who is now married to Mr Tugsby, a general grocer. But despite their help, Richard becomes an alcoholic,

"A slouching, moody, drunken sloven, wasted by intemperance and vice, and with his matted hair and unshorn beard in wild disorder; but, with some traces on him, too, of having been a man of good proportion and good features in his youth."

and Meg becomes even more worn down. She eventually marries Richard, to try to rescue him, but he dies leaving her with a baby. Mrs Tugby laments their fate, although Dickens spouts the inevitability of it all through her,

"I hoped that such prophecies as parted them when they were young, may not often fulfil themselves as they did in this case ..."

Will Fern is in and out of prison, unable to abide by petty laws. He turns up during the annual New Year's Day Banquet and turns on Sir Joseph Bowley, hailed as "the Poor Man's Friend". Will gives an impassioned lengthy speech, detailing the unfairness and inevitability of his life, and against the treatment of the working classes,

"To jail with him, for he's a vagrant, and a jail-bird known; and jail's the only home he's got ... don't set Jail, Jail, Jail 'afor us everywhere we turn."

Lilian turns to prostitution, saying she can no longer,

"... bear to live in such helpless, hopeless poverty."

Eventually, suffering from tuberculosis and delirious, she dies in Meg's arms. And Meg, desperate and destitute, contemplates drowning herself and her child. She debates whether risking her soul would be better than the workhouse, which may be worse than death, but it would mean committing the dual sins of murder and suicide. Although the readers knows this is a dream, in this way Dickens has emphasised grim reality too, with the real-life case of the woman in the newspaper killing her baby. Because of the length of time these episodes take, and the lack of a light touch - although there is much sarcasm and hyperbole - the novella becomes increasingly bleak and difficult to read.

Like "A Christmas Carol", The Chimes was an immediate success. Almost 20,000 copies were sold in the first three months and within weeks of publication five different stage productions had been mounted. The critics were divided, as the social and political message was thought to be dangerously radical. Yet now, the only Christmas story by Dickens which captures the public's imagination year after year is its predecessor, the very first novel, "A Christmas Carol". The Chimes is not particularly well-known nowadays, except to Dickens enthusiasts. Why could that be?

The early stories all "strike a sledgehammer blow", as Dickens put it, for the disadvantaged in society; for the poor, the uneducated and - particularly in The Chimes - the repressed. They all prick our consciences, at a time of year when more of us are likely to be approachable. All are full of drama, have elements of whimsy and humour, plus a satisfactorily happy ending, often with someone seeing the error of their ways, or learning a valuable moral lesson.

Perhaps one difference might be that although this one has many of the same factors as "A Christmas Carol", it overplays the social problems more, and they are specific to the 1840's. Referred to as the "Hungry Forties" the 1840's were a time of great social and political unrest. This is a campaigning novel; a novel urging social change, as so many of Dickens's novels are. In addition to "A Christmas Carol" his early novels such as "Oliver Twist" are full of criticisms of Utilitarianism. According to Jeremy Bentham, man's actions were governed by the will to avoid pain and strive for pleasure, so the government's task was to increase the benefits of society by punishing and rewarding people according to their actions. In "Oliver Twist" it was clearly depicted that consequent institutions such as the workhouse led to denial of all civil liberties and any human dignity. In The Chimes, Dickens is taking to task the English cleric and scholar, the political economist Thomas Robert Malthus. Malthus disagreed with short-term expediency, fearing that there were no acceptable measures to population growth other than virtuous behaviour. Otherwise misery, starvation, disease and war were inevitable. He wrote,

"The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man".

The character of Mr. Filer is clearly a satirical view of Thomas Malthus. This is indicated by his constant spouting of statistics, and instances such as telling Richard he had no business to marry. Other characters are also satirical portrayals of other topical figures, who embodied political or philosophical ideas of the time. Dickens dwelt on their vices - the condescension and patronising attitude of Sir Joseph Bowley; the pomposity and high-handedness of Alderman Cute.

Apparently Alderman Cute is a satirical portrait of Sir Peter Laurie, whom Dickens considered had a very dismissive attitude towards the poor people in London. Laurie had publicly denied that Jacob's Island existed at all, even though Dickens had written about the slum in "Oliver Twist". In the first cheap edition of the novel in 1850, Dickens wrote a new preface ridiculing Laurie's denial.

However, these satirical representations of actual public figures are not at all recognisable today. We might recognise the types even now; the blustering and deeply hypocritical stances of various individuals in power at any one time. But we are not quite so aware of the particular parallels drawn. Neither are we so aware of the details of the political and social unrest of that era. One instance of this is when Will Fern, eaten up by hatred and a desire for revenge, promises, "there will be fires tonight". Here Dickens is referring to the rick burnings during riots by agricultural workers in the 1830's. "The Swing Riots", which started initially in Kent, were caused by the working class public perception of the new threshing machines putting people out of work. Rioters objected to the tithe system, the Poor Law guardians, and the rich tenant farmers who lowered wages whilst introducing agricultural machinery. But rioting could be punished by death. Only a present-day reader who is also an historian, may nowadays have the insight to easily pick up references such as this in The Chimes.

Also, although both stories offer a hint of the supernatural, one seems less alien to a contemporary audience than the other. The Chimes features goblins, whereas "A Christmas Carol" has abstract ethereal spirits which remain timeless. But goblins? Dickens was enamoured of his goblins. They crop up all over the place in his writings. Yet now they are consigned to Fantasy fiction and the mention of them in a novel about social conditions and conscience makes us look askance. We are not quite so engaged, and more likely to look for external reasons for a character's being beset by goblins.

The passages starting,

"Heaven preserve us, sitting snugly round the fire! It has an awful voice, that wind at Midnight, singing in a church!"

describing the wind in the church in winter are very atmospheric, and there is some evidence of Dickens's trademark whimsical humour. But the balance of this story is not right. It is not nearly as enjoyable as "A Christmas Carol". Dickens seems too overly concerned with his moral points, and his indignant attempts to highlight the current social ills, to appeal to a modern audience. There is rather too much acrimony, satire and grim description. Perhaps he was aware of this even at the time it was written. Initially the story was apparently a big success, but by the time it appeared with the other four novels, Dickens had written this apologetic preface, which seems to be him excusing himself for any - or perhaps all - little stylistic defects,

"The narrow space within which it was necessary to confine these Christmas Stories when they were originally published, rendered their construction a matter of some difficulty, and almost necessitated what is peculiar in their machinery. I could not attempt great elaboration of detail, in the working out of character within such limits. My chief purpose was, in a whimsical kind of masque which the good humour of the season justified, to awaken some loving and forbearing thoughts, never out of season in a Christian land."

There is a happy ending of sorts. After all, we have been assured by the bells that this was a dream. But contrast it with the dream of "A Christmas Carol". With that story we delight along with Ebenezer Scrooge in his changed character, Bob Cratchit's fortune, and Tiny Tim not dying after all. But in The Chimes we are more circumspect; more likely to feel apprehensive and rather sober. It is not an uplifting tale, and we do not feel that the characters in it will be able to fulfil both their and the author's hopeful - but unrealistic - expectations. But to finish, here is Trotty Veck's optimism,

On New Year's Day, the best and brightest day in the year!

Cheer up! Don't give way. A new heart for a New Year, always!

I know that our inheritance is held in store for us by Time. I know there is a sea of Time to rise one day, before which all who wrong us or oppress us will be swept away like leaves. I see it, on the flow! I know that we must trust and hope, and neither doubt ourselves, nor doubt the good in one another. I have learnt it from the creature dearest to my heart.

[Maureen · Rating 3 out of 5]

*3.5 stars *

The Chimes is the second of five, in Charles Dickens's "Christmas Books". Published in 1844, it’s not as widely known as A Christmas Carol, but nevertheless it was an interesting read.

Our protagonist Trotty, is a ticket porter with low self worth. He is told by an alderman that the working classes are simply wicked by nature. That sets him thinking, and he begins to wonder if the poor are naturally wicked and a plague on society and he feels perhaps, he himself is wicked. That is until he’s visited by spirits on New Years Eve, who try restore his faith, insisting that man isn’t born evil.

There are the usual heartfelt messages of A Christmas Carol, but this was a much darker and gloomier tale, and though interesting, it didn’t quite have the impact of A Christmas Carol.

[Ruby Granger · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was expecting to like this more than I did. Dickens's festive & excessive descriptions are of course delightful... he diligently lists all of the items being sold in the shops, listing so many that it eventually becomes slightly sickening. This works as a brilliant contract to Trotty's life lessons (which are learnt in a very similar way to Scrooge, through spirits). You can definitely see ACC's influence here and it feels like a new year's retelling. Not as good as ACC, of course, but still a fairly quick and enjoyable read.
My favourite bit was his personification of the Old Year and the New Year. Absolute genius <3

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The “chimes’ which gave Dickens the title for his second “Christmas book” were not true English bells at all; rather, this characteristically English book by our quintessentially English author was inspired by Italian bells: the cacophonous chorus of Genoese bells, drifting up toward Dickens’ villa on the hill.

Although the mention of an Italian villa may suggest wealth and comfort, that suggestion would be deceptive. Dickens took his large family to Italy because life was much cheaper there, and his finances had yet to recover from his Christmas Carol losses of the previous year. The book itself had been popular, but its piracy—and the costs of the subsequent lawsuit—had left Dickens somewhat poorer than before. Dickens had experienced poverty when he was younger—most painfully when he was compelled to work in a blacking factory—but it had been years since its specter had come to haunt his own middle-class door. Dickens had always sympathized with the poor; now once again, he had reason to empathize with them too.

Perhaps that is one reason why the protagonist of The Chimes is no wealthy old skinflint like Ebeneezer Scrooge but instead a member of the subsistence poor: Tobias “Trotty” Veck, a “ticket porter” (a messenger), trying to stay warm at his place of hire—the steps of a church—as he offers himself to run errands on New Year’s Eve. Trotty is an old man of good spirits, who is inclined to look upon the bright side and is excited by the upcoming marriage of his daughter Meg to a stout young blacksmith, but after he encounters four men of means, each of whom emphasizes how the poor are “wrong” in his own philosophical way—he begins to doubt, not only himself, but all of the other poor people like himself too. Then, when he reads an article in the paper about a destitute woman who has killed her own baby in the course of a suicide attempt, he loses heart, and wishes that he could die himself. It is then that Toby is visited by the spirit of the “chimes”--the voices of the bells of his own church—and is shown what the next few years would be like for his family once he were dead and gone. (Perhaps it has occurred to you that The Chimes influenced It’s a Wonderful Life even more directly than A Christmas Carol; when Clarence the Angel gets his wings, perhaps it is Dickens chimes that ring him into flight.)

The Chimes may be a grim tale, but it was “The Hungry Forties,” a grim time: famine in Ireland, hunger in the English villages, agricultural arson (“rick-burning) in Dorset, industrial riots in Manchester, widespread prostitution in London itself. The book was a popular and financial success for Dickens—although never quite as popular as A Christmas Carol, possibly because its criticism of English attitudes toward the poor was more biting and more radical than in the previous novella. At any rate, it firmly established the tradition of the Dickens Christmas books and stories, a tradition he would continue—in one form or another--for almost twenty years.

[Iris P · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Chimes

A few years ago, Audible released a new audio version of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens and gave it for free to its members.

I had read the book and watched several movie adaptations of this holiday classic, but had never heard it on audio. And while I enjoyed listening, I didn’t quite click with the narrator.
Last week, I received an email from Audible offering another freebie, this time of The Chimes.

I immediately felt in love with the narrator, Richard Armitage, who I thought did an excellent job at bringing this rather heart-wrenching, dark story and its characters to life.

As part of the public domain, you can get The Chimes anywhere for free, but Amazon added its Whispersync feature, which allows you to simultaneously listen and read.


Portrait of Charles Dickens published during his last visit to America (1867-68)

So I was curious and decided to do a little bit of research about the story behind The Chimes. I learned that after the success of A Christmas Carol, Dickens wrote three more stories. This one is the second installment of the series.

Although not as popular as its predecessor, The Chimes turned out to be a pretty enthralling tale: part ghost story/part morality tale/part social commentary.

The main character is Trotty Veck, a kind, poor old man who makes a living by making delivery jobs. The title of the story refers to the bells at his local church, who have an almost spiritual hold on him.

The Chimes is set in Victorian London sometime during the early 1840’s. These were times of hardship and much economic instability when Europe was still suffering the effects of the Great Potato Famine.

The book is divided in four “quarters”, each one representing the four quarters that make an hour and the four chimes of a clock.

As the story opens its New Year’s Eve and Trotty’s daughter Meg, has announced the news that she and her fiancée are getting married in New Year’s Day, which to them sounds like an auspicious date.

Their joy is short-lived though after they meet Alderman Cute and a few other members of the political and intellectual elite who strongly oppose the idea that the young couple should get married. According to them, people of the lower class are so wicked, undeserving and cursed they certainly would not get any joy from marriage.

After the meeting, Trotty reluctantly agrees with the engagement but throughout the day he has begun to wonder if the poor are in fact naturally wicked and a plague on society.

Later on, Trotty meets a man and his little orphaned niece. The homeless man is very poor and is on the verge of going to jail for some petty crime. Trotty invites the man and girl to come home with him and spends the little money he has on a hearty New Year’s Eve dinner for them.


Trotty Veck and daughter Meg - 1867 Illustration


After the heavy dinner, Trotty falls into a deep dream state, where ghosts appear to him, this is followed by a series of visions in which he is forced to watch, helpless to interfere with the troubled lives of Meg, Richard and other friends over the subsequent years. Upon waking up, Trotty is happy to realize it was only a dream and is ecstatic to celebrate the new year with his daughter, neighbors and friends.

Trotty learns that, far from being naturally wicked, mankind is call to strive and aspire for nobler things, and that there's nothing intrinsically evil in him or people from his station.

Although very simplistic and certainly lacking the charm of A Christmas Carol, I found The Chimes with its strong moral and social message, captivating and enjoyable.

I grew up reading Spanish translations of classics like Oliver Twist, Alice in Wonderland, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Little Women and The Little Prince.

In my adult years however, I have shied away from reading classics so perhaps this is a good reminder that as the New Year approaches I should considered reading more of them, these books have withstood the test of time and become "classics" for a reason!

[Lyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the 1840s Charles Dickens wrote five Christmas related stories that promulgated his social and moral messages of his time.

The first and still most famous and recognized, A Christmas Carol has become a staple of holidays entertainment. People worldwide are familiar with the story of Ebenezer Scrooge and how he got his groove back.

Less recognizable, but as every bit as enjoyable are the other four, The Chimes being the second, published a year after Scrooge. Toby "Trotty" Veck is a poor ticket-porter, messenger, who learns that his daughter has decided to marry her long time fiancé. His apprehension is fueled by Trotty’s cynical and world-weary outlook, and based upon all of the evils of Dickens time. The upper classes’ condescension and active apathy towards the poor and downtrodden is personified in Dickens’ creation of Alderman Cute, a Justice of the Peace, as unlikeable a villain as any that he wrote.

The bells in the church, the chimes, are the scene of a Scrooge-like vision that helps Toby regain his Christmas spirit and is a vehicle whereby Dickens can share his themes of progressive activism and social conscience.

Darker in tone than A Christmas Carol, with messages that are more subtle, this also may not be as timeless as Ebenezer’s tale. However, The Chimes may be a better glimpse into the historical verisimilitude of Dickens’ world.

** 2018 - The dark days and cold nights of winter seem to be the perfect time to re-visit Dickens' Christmas stories. His vivid writing and masterful characterization makes these all the more entertaining.

[Paul Weiss · Rating 4 out of 5]

"There's nothing more regular in its coming round than dinner-time, and nothing less regular in its coming round than dinner”

If there is a reader in the world who isn’t familiar with Charles Dickens’ THE CHRISTMAS CAROL, I can’t imagine who it would be. THE CHIMES, Dickens’ second Christmas story … well, not so much! It’s about Trotty Veck, a discouraged, indeed despairing, elderly man who has allowed himself to be persuaded of the truth of the hateful upper class propaganda regarding the problem of poverty and poor people in Victorian England – that they are the author of their own ills; that to have a meal is stealing it from the mouths of their neighbours who have even less than they do; that they have no right to birth, to marriage, to children, to work, to pride, or to joy; that they lack ambition; that their problems would be solved if they only would make the decision to bootstrap themselves out of the doldrums.

In THE CHRISTMAS CAROL, Scrooge was a nasty, mean-spirited, tight-fisted, inconsiderate piece of work, to be sure. But Dickens told the story as a sentimental ghost story which allowed Scrooge, as an individual, to discover, through visions of past, present and possible futures, that the source of true happiness and joy was the giving of that happiness and joy to others around you. It was a morality tale and was clearly not intended to be a critical comment on Victorian class structure. THE CHIMES, on the other hand, was definitely a clear commentary on what Dickens saw as some of the social problems of the day – class divisions; the work house; legislation regarding debt and poverty; debtors’ prison; misogyny; and even prostitution into which so many impoverished, desperate women were forced with no other alternatives for food and shelter. Rather than using the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future, THE CHIMES uses “goblins” emanating from the bells in the belfry of the local church to present Trotty with what a modern reader might call alternative possible realities. While these outcomes would not effect any immediate change on the desperate realities which they had to shoulder on a daily basis, more positive attitudes and a belief in themselves would definitely make for a happier, more uplifting life and even the possibility of working together with neighbours to effect possible longer term positive changes in society.

In more modern, rather rougher parlance, it was clear that Dickens was pointing an accusing finger at the upper class and calling them collectively “heartless, greedy bastards”. The message to the lower class poor folks was to have heart in spite of that greed from above. In short, “Don’t let the bastards grind you down”! With the knowledge that there would be upper class readers who would take mortal offense at this portrayal, he closed the story by breaking the fourth wall, pulling a velvet glove over his mailed fist, and speaking, nay pleading, with the upper class reader in a much calmer, and much more subdued voice:

"... try to bear in mind the stern realities from which these shadows come; and in your sphere - none is too wide, and none too limited for such an end - endeavour to correct, improve , and soften them."

"So may the New Year be a Happy one to You, Happy to many more whose Happiness depends on You! So may each Year be happier than the last, and not the meanest of our brethern or sisterhood debarred their rightful share, in what our Great Creator formed them to enjoy."

THE CHIMES is a powerful story and it deserves a greater readership.

Paul Weiss

[Connie G · Rating 3 out of 5]

I reread Charles Dickens' holiday story of 1844 which featured a New Years Eve setting. The chimes of a church in Genoa inspired Dickens to write a story about a poor working class man, Trotty Veck. Politicians have Trotty convinced that the poor cannot do right, and they are born bad. He climbs the bell tower where the spirits of the bells show him visions of a possible future for his family and new friends. Goblins show Trotty how society failed the poor, leading the unfortunate people to resort to prostitution, waste away from hunger, attempt suicide, or retaliate with violence. The visions have messages about people's lack of empathy and understanding of the challenges faced by the poor. There is nothing naturally evil in poor people. Unfortunately, the sadness is not balanced by as much humor as most of Dickens' other works. "The Chimes" is a bleak story about important 19th Century social problems, and readers know that changes in society come slowly. However, Dickens manages to end it on a happy note when Trotty realizes that the visions are dreamlike:

"I know there is a sea of Time to rise one day, before which all who wrong us or oppress us will be swept away like leaves. I see it, on the flow! I know that we must trust and hope, and neither doubt ourselves, nor doubt the good in one another."

"So may the New Year be a happy one to you, happy to many more whose happiness depends on you! So may each year be happier than the last, and not the meanest of our brethren or sisterhood debarred their rightful share, in what our Great Creator formed them to enjoy."

3.5 stars

[Bionic Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

For my review of the text of The Chimes, the second Christmas book by Charles Dickens, please link here

The beautiful monochromatic-shaded watercolour illustrations in this edition from 1912, are by Charles Green:



The book forms part of a series of the five main Christmas books by Charles Dickens, which the soap manufacturer “Pears” produced: a “Centenary Edition” to celebrate one hundred years since the author’s birth. Now, of course, more than another hundred years has passed. The Pears’ logo is the painting “Bubbles”, originally called “A Child’s World”, by the Pre-Raphaelite artist, Sir John Everett Millais. It features on the front cover of each volume in an inset medallion. Each volume of the series is cloth-bound in a different colour, red, blue, green or burgundy, and has gold lettering.



Bubbles

[Katie Lumsden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not my favourite of Dickens's Christmas novellas, but certainly an enjoyable read.

[Lorna · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Chimes is a novella written by Charles Dickens and first published in 1844 one year after the beloved A Christmas Carol. It is second in Dickens' series of Christmas books, each with strong social and moral messages as well as the plight of the poor and one's responsibility to the betterment of mankind. The book is divided into four quarters that is significant time intervals of the quarter-hour of a clock with the ringing of the bells. The chimes are the old bells in the church where Trotty Veck plies his trade as a messenger. He is surprised by his daughter, Meg and her fiance Richard, as they share lunch on the church steps. They have excitedly announced that they are getting married after New Years Day rather than waiting until they can afford it thinking that day may never come. Trotty is disillusioned by what he sees as rampant reports of crime and immorality. During the night, the bells seem to be calling Trotty as he goes up the spiral stairs to the bell tower. As he climbs to the bellchamber Trotty discovers the spirits of the bells and their goblin attendants. Much of what transpires is a lot like in A Christmas Carol.

"Ugh! Heaven preserve us, sitting snugly round the fire! It has an awful voice, that wind at Midnight, singing in a church!"

"High up in the steeple of an old church, far above the light and murmur of the town and far below the flying clouds that shadow it, is the wild and dreary place at night: and high up in the steeple of an old church, dwelt the Chimes I tell of."

[Kenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

So may the New Year be a happy one to you, happy to many more whose happiness depends on you!
Charles Dickens ~~ The Chimes



I have a tradition of reading something by Dickens over the Christmas holidays. Sometimes a full novel, often a short story, mostly re-readings of A CHRISTMAS CAROL, this being my favorite of all Dickens' writings. This year I went on a Dickens' spree, reading The Old Curiosity Shop, A CHRISTMAS CAROL & lastly, The Chimes. A Goblin Story of some Bells that Rang an Old Year Out & a New Year In.

No English author is more associated with Christmas than Charles Dickens. Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is one of the most familiar works of English literature. But A Christmas Carol was only the first of Dickens’ five Christmas novellas. And, while we think of A Christmas Carol as Dickens’ masterpiece, Dickens himself far preferred his second Christmas novella, The Chimes: A Goblin Story of Some Bells that Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year In. After Dickens completed The Chimes, he wrote, I believe that I have written a tremendous book, and knocked the Carol out of the field.” In fact, The Chimes was an immediate success, selling 20,000 copies.



The Chimes’ central character is an elderly ticket-porter, Trotty Veck, who is much taken with questions about time ~~ questions that are suggested to him by how time is measured by the chiming of church bells. In a witty mood, Trotty observes There’s nothing … more regular in its coming round than dinner-time, and nothing less regular in its coming round than dinner .

More seriously, Trotty debates who is worthy of time—that is, who is worthy of life. On a New Year’s Eve, he considers himself and his working-class fellows and muses that they are perhaps unworthy, We seem to give a deal of trouble; we are always being complained of and guarded against … supposing it should really be that we have no right to a New Year .



In this frame of mind, Trotty echoes the opinions of the wealthy and the aristocrats who use Malthusian political economy to argue that the working class are troublesome and perhaps far too numerous.

As New Year’s Eve advances toward midnight, Trotty is confronted by the Spirits of the Bells, who take him on a journey to witness what will become of those dear to him if they are infected by his opinion that they are unworthy of a New Year. In a final crisis, Trotty declares I know that our inheritance is held in store for us by Time. I know there is a sea of Time to rise one day, before which all who wrong us or oppress us will be swept away like leaves. … I know that we must trust and hope, and neither doubt ourselves, nor doubt the good in one another. … O Spirits, merciful and good, I am grateful !



The final words of The Chimes seem fitting So may the New Year be a happy one to you, happy to many more whose happiness depends on you! So may each year be happier than the last, and not the meanest of our brethren or sisterhood debarred their rightful share, in what our Great Creator formed them to enjoy .

I wish you all a Happy Christmas and a Joyous New Year.

[Jake · Rating 4 out of 5]

If A Christmas Carol is about making restitution after sins of commission, The Chimes is about the potential cost of sins of omission. That is what I got from this year's reading of a Dicken's holiday story. I read one every Christmas to get into the holiday spirit. (See also: The Haunted Man ).

I'm not a huge fan of Dickens, because I find reading him laborious. Yet, that is really my only gripe with him. I love the characters, settings and situations he created. I just wish he hadn't been so in love with complex sentences.

That being said, The Chimes had just the right impact on me this year. The protaganist spends a great deal of the story not understanding what he did wrong, or rather, what he didn't do right. But after re-reading many of Dicken's rambling sentences, the uplifting message struck home to me. The overall message of The Chimes is that hope is both a virtue and a choice, especially in a life of travail.

Getting back to my "sin of omission" thought, it's easy to detach oneself from Scrooge. Not quite so easy with Trotty Veck, the main character in The Chimes. He spends the entire story likable, or at least sympathetic. Yet, Dickin's makes the case that Trotty still needs to change/improve. He must be proactive and hopeful, not a willing victim of circumstance. This a compelling and thought-provoking theme, and oh so relevant today.

So I recommend this New Year's tale, especially for folks like me, who have a tendency to wallow in despondency. There is much to be said for thinking of Time as a gift, not a harbinger.

[Paul Haspel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The chiming of the bells of some London church may have inspired Charles Dickens to write his 1844 novella The Chimes. Like its better-known counterpart A Christmas Carol (1842), The Chimes is a tale of personal redemption set against the backdrop of the holiday season – in this case, New Year’s Eve rather than Christmas Day – and if it is not as well-known to the modern reader as A Christmas Carol is, that should not take away from the virtues of this short novel that, like so much of Dickens’s work, encourages the reader, at a time of celebration, to identify with the less fortunate.

As A Christmas Carol has the memorable subtitle A Ghost Story of Christmas, so The Chimes has its own subtitle: A Goblin Story of Some Bells That Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year In. In both cases, the subtitle indicates that this story too will be doing a bit of a genre mash-up, incorporating Gothicism into a tale of the holiday season.

The story begins with a characteristically Dickensian bit of evocative description: “High up in the steeple of an old church, far above the light and murmur of the town, and far below the flying clouds that shadow it, is the wild and dreary place at night: and high up in the steeple of an old church, dwelt the Chimes I tell of” (p. 2).

The story’s main character, Toby Veck – nicknamed “Trotty” for his irregular employment as a courier – is an old man, who hangs about the church whilst awaiting work opportunities. Trotty feels a kinship, a link, with the bells in the church near where he pursues his calling – “Perhaps he was the more curious about these bells, because there were points of resemblance between themselves and him” (p. 7) – chiefly the fact that, like him, the bells are always there, in the same place, no matter the weather.

Toby reflects frequently upon his poverty, as when, one hungry night, he thinks about how “There’s nothing…more regular in its coming round than dinner-time, and nothing less regular in its coming round than dinner” (p. 8). He even wonders if poor people like himself even have a place in the world, considering the way he hears the poor denounced in the newspapers of his time:

“It seems as if we can’t go right, or do right, or be righted….I hadn’t much schooling, myself, when I was young; and I can’t make out whether we have any business on the face of the Earth, or not. Sometimes I think we must have – a little; and sometimes I think we must be intruding. I get so puzzled sometimes that I am not even able to make up my mind whether there is any good at all in us, or whether we are born bad. We seem to be dreadful things; we seem to give a deal of trouble; we are always being complained of and guarded against. One way or other, we fill the papers.” (p. 10)

Trotty’s daughter is named Meg, and she is his sole consolation. Yet his love for Meg does not keep him from speculating: do poor people like him and his daughter have any place in the world, or any contribution to make? Or, he asks himself, are poor people like him and his daughter poor because of some innate moral failing?

Trotty’s speculations reflect author Dickens’s awareness, as a man deeply engaged in the social and political life of his times, that there were many people in the Great Britain of his time who felt that the poverty of the poor was clearly the fault of the poor. By this “logic,” the reason for poverty was that the poor were supposedly “lazy” people, given to bad habits, and incapable of lifting themselves up by their own bootstraps. In terms of the social conversation about poverty, Dickens’s time was, in short, a time much like our own.

The society’s scorn and disregard for the situation of people living in poverty is personified by a justice of the peace named Alderman Cute. Modelled in part on a real-life London politician who was known for claiming that there was no social problem that he couldn’t “put down,” Cute thinks of himself as a “Famous man for the common people”, but shows his real attitude toward the common people when he discourages Meg from marrying her fiancé Richard, telling Meg that she will inevitably quarrel with her husband, become a distressed wife, have sons who will get in trouble, become homeless, and attempt suicide – all of which, Cute adds, “I am determined to Put Down” (pp. 25, 28). Cute’s solution to poverty seems to be that the poor should never fall in love, marry, or have children. There are still politicians with his sort of attitude at work today in London, and in Washington, D.C.

Amidst this social misery, Dickens takes time to critique New Year’s commercialism: “There were books and toys for the New Year, glittering trinkets for the New Year, dresses for the New Year, schemes of fortune for the New Year; new inventions to beguile it.” The New Year is regarded as a time of easy personal renewal, and as a money-making opportunity: “The New Year, the New Year! The Old Year was already looked upon as dead; and its effects were selling cheap….Its patterns were Last Year’s, and going at a sacrifice, before its breath was gone. Its treasures were mere dirt, beside the riches of its unborn successor!” (p. 33)

All this “New-Yearism” obscures the reality that nothing will change for the better, with the coming of any given New Year, unless people of good will work together to bring about positive change. And against the backdrop of all those New Year’s celebrations, poor Trotty Veck continues to feel useless: “Trotty had no portion, to his thinking, in the New Year or the Old” (p. 33).

After trying in vain to help a couple of poor people who are in trouble, Trotty reads of a woman who killed her child and herself, and finds himself concluding that impoverished people like himself are, as he puts it, “Unnatural and cruel! None but people who were bad at heart, born bad, who had no business on the Earth, could do such deeds….We’re Bad!” (p. 54)

And with Trotty’s words, the chimes of the nearby church “took up the words so suddenly – burst out so loud, and clear, and sonorous – that the Bells seemed to strike him in his chair” (p. 54). And on that note, the haunting of Trotty by possibly supernatural forces begins.

Trotty, thinking that the bells are speaking to him, goes into the bell tower of the church and is addressed by the Phantom of one of the bells. The Phantom offers some grim observations regarding the human obligation to use the passage of time to make life better for others, and adds that Trotty himself has done wrong in assuming that he and other impoverished people like him are somehow fundamentally bad, and in withholding compassion from those who suffer:

“Who turns his back upon the fallen and disfigured of his kind; abandons them as vile; and does not trace and track with pitying eyes the unfenced precipice by which they fell from good – grasping in their fall some tufts and shreds of that lost soil, and clinging to them still when bruised and dying in the gulf below – does wrong to Heaven and man, to time and eternity. And you have done that wrong!” (p. 66)

The Phantoms of the Bell, and the Goblins who serve them, then tell Trotty that he died in the bell tower nine years ago, and that it is now his lot to witness what has happened to those he loved. Meg is now a young woman, and a mother, but she is worn by the cruel life that she has endured – “The light of the clear eye, how dimmed. The bloom, how faded from the cheek” (p. 68). She did indeed marry Richard, but Richard has become “A slouching, moody, drunken sloven, wasted by intemperance and vice” (p. 80).

Things get worse and worse for Meg, until she finds herself standing at the edge of the river, preparing to throw herself and her baby into the cold waters below. At that point, like Ebenezer Scrooge with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, Trotty begs the Spirits to relent, saying, “I know that we must trust and hope, and neither doubt ourselves, nor doubt the good in one another” (p. 106). And the manner in which the story resolves itself may seem somewhat familiar to readers of A Christmas Carol.

The Chimes concludes with some closing reflections by the narrator: “Had Trotty dreamed? Or are his joys and sorrows, and the actors in them, but a dream – himself a dream – the teller of this tale a dreamer, waking but now?” Even if such might be the case, the narrator suggests, these dreamlike images reflect “the stern realities” of the society of that time, and there is no such reality that is too large or too small for people of good will to address and try to remedy. And, in that spirit, the narrator of The Chimes offers a year’s-end salute to the reader: “So may the New Year be a happy one to you, happy to many more whose happiness depends on you! So may each year be happier than the last, and not the meanest of our brethren or sisterhood debarred their rightful share, in what our Great Creator formed them to enjoy” (p. 112).

The Chimes will not cause any reader to forget A Christmas Carol; but it represents an interesting variation on a characteristically Dickensian trope of invoking the holiday season, combined with elements of literary Gothicism, as a means of calling for a less judgmental, more compassionate society. And taken in those terms, Dickens’s The Chimes certainly rings the proverbial bell.

[Duane Parker · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you're looking to add some "merry" to your Christmas reading you might want to look elsewhere. Dickens's delivers his holiday messages in bitter doses. Alrhough you will find his ability to create interesting stories and memorable characters intact, it's still depressing. This one's along the lines of A Christmas Carol but not as good.

[Chrissie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dickens everybody seems to love but me.

I find his writing style wordy. Sometimes unclear.

To read this for the festive holiday season is a downer. Be sure you don't mind that when picking this. It is depressing and dismal for almost all of it.

OK, Dickens does succeed in drawing an atmosphere that is palpable. The drudgery and hardships of existence for the poor resonates throughout. The atmosphere drawn is mysterious, filled with spirits and dreams. What is a dream and what isn't? That is the question. Readers must decide for themselves. Dickens is packing this novella with a heavy moral lesson.

Richard Armitage narrates this audiobook. He is a well-known, popular British film, television, theater and voice actor. I prefer less dramatization.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most people equate Charles Dickens and Christmas with his popular story, A Christmas Carol. However, in the years that followed its publication, Dickens penned another story about the holiday season and ghostly apparitions. This is that story, which I thought would be a good thing to try during the holiday season. Dickens pulls on the ghoul factor in this piece, which seeks to portray a deeper message for his readers, and which resonates, if you pardon the pun, quite well.

Toby "Trotty" Veck, is a working-class man who has become dispirited with his lowly caste in life. He feels that his family is poor, not only because they cannot gather enough money, but also his unworthiness of having anything special. This extends to a disbelief in the common person and Trotty finds himself ending another year in woe.

On New Year’s Eve, Trotty is visited by a number of spirits, speaking through the local church bell, who try to put things in perspective. Trotty is sure that all has befallen him because of a higher plan. The spirits wish to show him that it is the choices people make that push them in one direction or the other, something that Trotty will have to come to terms with if he is to enter the following year with any sense of hope. Buried throughout the story is a set of life lessons for the reader to enjoy, which Dickens makes clear will help formulate a happier person during the holiday season.

While I would not be telling the truth if I said that I enjoyed this novella as much as the classic holiday piece that Dickens made famous. That being said, I can see the themes woven into the narrative, which builds through four strong chapters. The narrative flows and takes the reason on many interesting journeys before presenting an epiphany for the reader to enjoy. Using the spirts once again Dickens shows how sometimes people need being from other realms to see what is before their own faces. Some wonderful writing and remarkable themes that many will likely want to synthesise at their own pace to see if they mean anything.

Kudos, Mr. Dickens, for a great piece to add to my holiday reading collection.

Love/hate the review? An ever-growing collection of others appears at:
http://pecheyponderings.wordpress.com/

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sort of a Christmas story, sort of a ghost story and sort of a parable.
Does not have the impact of A Christmas Carol, but I did like the characters of Toby and Meg and found the story sweet and typically Dickensian.

[Petra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dickens did it again. A Holiday story of redemption, despair, woes and love. This is a wonderful New Year's story to ring in a New Year.

Told from the alternative perspective of A Christmas Carol. The perspective is from the side of the Poor, those being persecuted by the Well To Do who make the rules & the laws.

Toby and his daughter Meg are wonderful, warm, happy people, living a hard life. The Society they live in looks down on Poverty and woes; blaming the Poor for their plight and, with that blame, removing a helping hand. Toby, listening to the rhetoric and put-downs, begins to believe that the Poor are to blame and are, therefore, "bad".

The bells of the church tower, under which he has lived and worked, come to life one New Year's Eve to show Toby that the Poor are driven to despair, not by their actions, but by the inactivity of those who could help.

A wonderful tale to ring in the New Year.

[Mpauli · Rating 3 out of 5]

Due to my large tbr, reviews will follow in 2015, but all I can say is that there aren't enough drugs in the world that will help me to understand the second part of the story completely.^^

[Tristram Shandy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Four Quarters May Not Always Make a Whole

In the autumn of 1844 Dickens was staying in Genoa and working on a second Christmas story which was due to an agreement with his new publishers and with which he wanted to reprise the success of A Christmas Carol. For quite a long time, the prolific author was at a loss about how to begin – maybe because he was working in surroundings unwonted to him – until he finally came up with the idea of writing the story of old and poor Toby Veck, a ticket porter, whose daughter was going to marry in spite of their poverty and their insecure future, and whose skepticism about that marriage as well as his readiness to believe in theories set up by his social betters as to why poor people are poor will be cured by a supernatural, dreamlike experience which is linked to the bells of a church that have fascinated him.

Now wait a minute! Does that not sound slightly familiar? An old man, some more or less misanthropic tenets, and a miraculous conversion to a more genial mindset? If you are thinking of A Christmas Carol then don’t get your hopes up too much because The Chimes does not come anywhere near it in the least. It was meant as “a blow for the poor” and it was probably received as such by Dickens’s contemporaries who could still make head or tail of the many allusions that are spread everywhere in the text and that refer to people or incidents which fuelled Dickens’s inspiration and indignation. One of these was the case of Mary Furley, a young woman who wanted to avoid a return to the workhouse and tried to commit suicide by drowning herself instead, eventually surviving and killing her child in the process; Mrs. Furley was later condemned to death for infanticide. A newspaper report on this ghastly case also plays a role in The Chimes, where it confirms the naïve Trotty Veck in his belief in the innate evil of poor people like himself.

Dickens’s motivation in writing this story was undoubtedly noble and the story might also have roused contemporaries’ social sensibilities with regard to gross injustices such as the Furley case, and yet I can understand why The Chimes has not become such a classic as Dickens’s first Christmas book. It may not be lacking social impetus but to me it seems to be lacking a reasonable story-line, characters in whom we are invited to take interest and what Poe used to call unity of effect. It is almost as if Dickens had tried to put too many elements into too little space: We have, for example, desperate mothers, alcoholism, prostitution, infanticide, rick-burning, attacks on contemporary theories and politicians, and even goblins in a story that barely runs over 100 pages. Add to this a sermonizing tone that is even obtrusive for Victorian standards and that stifles any spark of life in the characters by turning them into ciphers which stand for ideas and which drift into and out of the story depending on what political idea the author is about to attack or what wrongs he intends to expose – and you’ll have a pretty fair idea of what The Chimes is like. There is hardly any room left for Dickens’s engaging humour and compared to Mrs. Gamp, Mr. Pecksniff or Major Bagstock, his Alderman Cute, Sir Joseph Bowley and Mr. Filer are rather lame and clumsy cardboard cut-outs, to say nothing of Will Fern and Trotty himself. Mr. Tugby, too, used to be livelier when he went by the name of Bumble.

The only good thing about the story are some very fine passages of writing in which Dickens, for instance, writes about the wind haunting an old church, or about goblins seeming to parody human affairs, but these passages are few and far between. All in all, I would consider this story one of the few weaker achievements of the Inimitable’s, and if it happens to be your first Dickens experience, please do not think that it is typical of his style of writing.

[Sotiris Karaiskos · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second of the Christmas stories of Charles Dickens, that was released one year after the well-known A Christmas Carol. As in this, we are following the story of a man who is questioning too many things about human nature, but ultimately a metaphysical intervention makes him think again and understand that he can do many things to improve his life but also the lives of people that are around him. Unlike the most famous story, however, the protagonist is not a rich but a poor old worker. The writer does not consider the justification of poverty to be sufficient and considers this treatment of life as something plain and of people as incapable of accomplishing anything beyond the survival and the satisfaction of their selfish demands. Naturally, we do not have here the opinion that all society has the same share of responsibility, the writer treats ironically this idea by parodying those people of the higher classes who proclaim themselves experts and blaming poor people for the way of life they are forced to adopt because of social inequality.

What I mean is that in this story there is a strong sociopolitical critique, deeper and more complex, perhaps, than the one that we find in A Christmas Carol. The problem is that "brain" superiority is balanced by a small lack of emotion, although surely towards the end the story is particularly touching, but without the same effect on the reader. So this is a very interesting story that definitely deserves our attention.

Η δεύτερη από τις χριστουγεννιάτικες ιστορίες του Καρόλου Ντίκενς η οποία κυκλοφόρησε ένα χρόνο μετά το πολύ γνωστό Α Christmas Carol. Όπως και σε αυτό παρακολουθούμε την ιστορία ενός ανθρώπου που αμφισβητεί πάρα πολλά πράγματα για την ανθρώπινη φύση αλλά τελικά μία μεταφυσική παρέμβαση τον κάνει να ξανασκεφτεί τα πράγματα και να καταλάβει ότι μπορεί να κάνει πολλά πράγματα για να βελτιωθεί η ζωή του αλλά και οι ζωές των ανθρώπων που είναι γύρω του. Σε αντίθεση με την πιο γνωστή ιστορία, όμως, ο πρωταγωνιστής δεν είναι κάποιος πλούσιος αλλά ένας φτωχός γέρος εργαζόμενος. Ο συγγραφέας δεν θεωρεί επαρκή την δικαιολογία της φτώχειας και θεωρεί κατακριτέα αυτή την αντιμετώπιση της ζωής ως κάτι το πεζό και των ανθρώπων ως ανίκανων να καταφέρουν οτιδήποτε πέρα από την επιβίωση και την ικανοποίηση των εγωιστικών τους απαιτήσεων. Φυσικά σε καμία περίπτωση δεν έχουμε την άποψη ότι όλη η κοινωνία έχει το ίδιο μερίδιο ευθύνης, κάθε άλλο, ο συγγραφέας αντιμετωπίζει ειρωνικά αυτή την ιδέα, παρωδώντας εκείνους τους ανθρώπους των ανώτερων τάξεων που αυτοανακηρύσσονται ειδικοί και κατηγορούν τους φτωχούς ανθρώπους για τον τρόπο ζωής που αναγκάζονται να υιοθετήσουν εξαιτίας της κοινωνικής ανισότητας.

Αυτό που θέλω να πω είναι ότι σε αυτή την ιστορία υπάρχει έντονη κοινωνικοπολιτική κριτική, πιο βαθιά και πιο περίπλοκη, ίσως, από αυτήν που συναντάμε στο Α Christmas Carol. Το πρόβλημα είναι ότι η "εγκεφαλική" ανωτερότητα αντισταθμίζεται με μία μικρή έλλειψη συναισθήματος, αν και σίγουρα προς το τέλος η ιστορία είναι ιδιαίτερα συγκινητική, χωρίς, όμως, να έχει την ίδια επίδραση στον αναγνώστη. Οπότε πρόκειται για μία πολύ ενδιαφέρουσα ιστορία που σίγουρα αξίζει την προσοχή μας

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Story: 5 stars
Narration: 2 stars

Most of us who have read, seen, and heard A Christmas Carol are unaware as to how shocking a piece of literature it was when it was originally published. Familiarity has softened its blow to the point that the story is viewed with a jaundiced eye, its effectiveness long worn off. The Chimes is even more brutal in its portrayal of 1840s England.

The Chimes is the second of five in Charles Dickens's "Christmas Books". Written in 1844, it was published a year after A Christmas Carol and a year before The Cricket on the Hearth. While not nearly as widely read, The Chimes packs more of an emotional punch.

Instead of being set on Christmas, The Chimes is set on a New Year's Eve, and is a story about the consequences of the choices one makes. The main character, Trotty Veck, is the polar opposite to the more familiar Ebeneezer Scrooge. Veck is poor and thinks so little of himself that he threatens to destroy himself and his family. Only through supernatural intervention can things hope to be set right, and instead of the three ghosts of Christmas, he is visited by the four spirits that dwell in the old unused chimes in a nearby bell tower.

This is the first time I’ve read or listened to this story, which was offered as a free download from Audible. While I enjoyed the story, the narration by Richard Armitage was very distracting, especially the voices he used for the justice and the other well-off characters. I almost stopped listening to it, it was so off-putting and over-the-top. As short as it is (less than 4 hours), I decided to soldier on. I’m glad I did.

The Chimes is a tale that will grip you, wringing your heart. While I don’t recommend the specific Audible narration by Armitage (there are other versions available, if you are interested), this is a powerful story, and I do recommend the story itself.

[Allison ༻hikes the bookwoods༺ · Rating 5 out of 5]

This holiday classic is reminiscent of A Christmas Carol in its approach. After reading the Wikipedia article on it, I found the following statement particularly poignant, summarizing what the book says we ought not to do : "Harking back to a golden age that never was, instead of striving to improve conditions here and now." A crime of which, I think, we all are guilty.

[Kathleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

“…how often have I heard them bells say, ‘Toby Veck, Toby Veck, keep a good heart, Toby!’”

In A Christmas Carol, Dickens gives us the reformation of a miserly man who scorns the poor. In The Chimes, he gives us the reformation of a poor man who has been taught to scorn himself. It’s a step further in that sense, broadening the picture for us.

Maybe it’s because I grew up with A Christmas Carol, but this one, written a year after that masterpiece, felt a little bit manufactured to fit the pattern. Nevertheless, it’s an enjoyable story, both atmospheric and enlightening. Toby Veck is a loveable and profound character, as are the chimes--the church bells he has always loved--that become a beautiful instrument to teach him a new lesson.

Many thanks to the Dickensians group for greatly enriching this read for me!

[Anthony · Rating 3 out of 5]

My second Dickens read and I didn't quite enjoy this as much as my read of A Christmas Carol last year. I kind of expected as much, since one has been the highlighted Christmas classic for a reason. But this had a heartwarming message behind it, and gave a little inspiration for a better year in the New Year, to not be so down trodden due to past events, and not to let hard times bring you further down going forward...so it's fitting. I think this story should gather a little more attention, maybe even an adaptation for modern audiences, because the message here is one that folks nowadays need to be reminded of.

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book difficult to concentrate upon. I am a great fan of Dickens ‘A Christmas Carol’ being my one of my favourite books however this book lacked Dickens humour and warmth even in his darkest books Dickens writing omits some kind of warmth. I read Gothic literature 99% of the time but I’m terribly sorry I couldn’t take to Trotty Veck and his family and acquaintances. The Candace of his writing was lacking and even the description of London was lacking. I don’t think it was the subject matter and I enjoy Dickens social commentaries but this didn’t work for me.

[Celeste · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Mini)Review now posted!

I know that Dickens has other Christmas stories besides A Christmas Carol, but I have never read any of his other offerings. That is, until this year. After looking at his other seasonal offerings, I settled on The Chimes, his New Year story. Man, was this sad. And dark. But thankfully it had a happy ending, which made reading it worthwhile.

Would the world be better without you in it? We’ve seen stories broach this topic numerous times, most famously in the quintessential Christmas movie, It’s a Wonderful Life. Evidently, Dicken’s was one of the first to broach this question. I went into this story completely blind, so I was taken aback by the twist. The story mirrored A Christmas Carol in some ways, showing New Year’s Eves of the future if our main character wasn’t present in them. The scenes were darker, and their spirit guides more disturbing, than those of the story’s Christmas counterpart.

Even though this tale was a dark one, it had so much to say about how we view those less fortunate than ourselves. So often we forget to view people who have fallen on hard times as just that: people. They are no different than us except in the fact that they have to struggle more to obtain less than we’ve been blessed with. And as I stated earlier, there was a happy ending, which I was thankful for; because even in the midst of darkness and pain, there should always be hope. Isn’t that the promise that a new year brings?

For more of my reviews, as well as my own fiction and thoughts on life, check out my blog, Celestial Musings.

[Renee M · Rating 3 out of 5]

SPOILERS BELOW!


Overall, I'm disappointed. But I suspect it's because I'm so fond of A Christmas Carol. The language and description here are sumptuous. But the characters have no depth or nuance. And the "blow for the poor" misses the mark. It's too obviously preachy.

In CC, Dickens us more successful because he shows his audience the path to change. He has spirits show Scrooge a bleak future to affect his present. In this, we see a bleak future for no apparent reason. Trotty does not change, nor do the heartless characters who need a lesson. We get our happy ending simply because the young man does not take bad advice.

There were a few lovely scenes, such as the one with the tripe and the scene where Trotty hosts Will and his daughter. I'm glad to have read this for those, and, of course, for the undeniable power of Dickens's description. But, unlike A Christmas Carol, it certainly won't become something I revisit every year.

[Colleen Houck]

Such lovely writing. It's almost unapproachable. Charles Dickens definitely has a recognizable style. This book invoked Christmas and second chances. Love it.