1
00:00:00,240 --> 00:00:05,560
Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to coast am on iHeartRadio.

2
00:00:04,880 --> 00:00:08,680
Speaker 2: Stephen, this is reminiscent to me of an equally controversial

3
00:00:08,720 --> 00:00:13,400
Speaker 2: theory that William Shakespeare did not write any of those

4
00:00:13,480 --> 00:00:16,400
Speaker 2: all of his famous plays that were written by I

5
00:00:16,440 --> 00:00:19,439
Speaker 2: think it was the seventeenth Earl of Oxford, Edward de

6
00:00:19,600 --> 00:00:24,440
Speaker 2: Vere And that comes up again, you know, with some

7
00:00:24,600 --> 00:00:31,040
Speaker 2: strong objections from the literary circles in academia and so forth.

8
00:00:31,400 --> 00:00:37,880
Speaker 2: What are the literary what a literary figures say about

9
00:00:37,880 --> 00:00:40,360
Speaker 2: your theory and why are they so resistant to the

10
00:00:40,400 --> 00:00:42,920
Speaker 2: idea that Dickens didn't write a Christmas Carrol.

11
00:00:43,560 --> 00:00:46,400
Speaker 3: That's a good question. Most of the people, I think

12
00:00:46,440 --> 00:00:49,480
Speaker 3: who have focused on Charles Dickens have done so because

13
00:00:49,479 --> 00:00:53,160
Speaker 3: they're fans. So they're emotionally invested. And there's a lot

14
00:00:53,200 --> 00:00:58,840
Speaker 3: of people who are their career as invested and they're

15
00:00:58,920 --> 00:01:02,440
Speaker 3: financially invested. You know, there's there's films, there's you know,

16
00:01:02,800 --> 00:01:05,840
Speaker 3: just just imagine what would have to be changed, you know,

17
00:01:05,959 --> 00:01:08,640
Speaker 3: in academia and in society if this were to come out.

18
00:01:08,680 --> 00:01:11,520
Speaker 3: You know, and people don't like change, they experience change

19
00:01:11,560 --> 00:01:14,679
Speaker 3: has pain, you know, so there's a lot of pain here.

20
00:01:15,760 --> 00:01:17,760
Speaker 3: But as far as what they say, they don't say

21
00:01:17,760 --> 00:01:21,080
Speaker 3: anything because they won't talk to me. You know, I

22
00:01:21,120 --> 00:01:24,600
Speaker 3: can't get a conversation going, except with the exception of

23
00:01:24,640 --> 00:01:26,720
Speaker 3: a few people who have been critical of Dickens. I've

24
00:01:26,760 --> 00:01:30,200
Speaker 3: reached out to a few who are critical, and they

25
00:01:30,240 --> 00:01:32,880
Speaker 3: will talk to me to a point. But when it

26
00:01:32,920 --> 00:01:35,840
Speaker 3: comes to a certain point, the point where I say

27
00:01:35,880 --> 00:01:38,520
Speaker 3: Dickens was a sociopath and that basically he was not

28
00:01:38,560 --> 00:01:41,119
Speaker 3: a great writer at all. You know, he was faking it,

29
00:01:41,800 --> 00:01:43,880
Speaker 3: I lose them, and they won't talk to me anymore.

30
00:01:44,000 --> 00:01:45,320
Speaker 3: You know, I've pushed them too.

31
00:01:45,160 --> 00:01:50,880
Speaker 2: Far, all right, So let's talk about the actual you believe,

32
00:01:51,600 --> 00:01:54,400
Speaker 2: the pair that are the actual authors of A Christmas Carol,

33
00:01:54,480 --> 00:01:57,640
Speaker 2: Matthew Franklin Whitty and his wife Abby. Just give us

34
00:01:57,720 --> 00:02:00,520
Speaker 2: kind of a thumbnail sketch of who these who this was.

35
00:02:01,800 --> 00:02:05,800
Speaker 3: Well, Abby came from an upper class family. She was

36
00:02:05,880 --> 00:02:10,120
Speaker 3: raised French Catholic, but her mother was Scottish. And I

37
00:02:10,160 --> 00:02:14,760
Speaker 3: think that she came by these two different streams, you know, honestly,

38
00:02:14,840 --> 00:02:17,760
Speaker 3: in the sense that you know, she went to Mass

39
00:02:17,760 --> 00:02:21,800
Speaker 3: and you know she learned Catholicism, but she also learned

40
00:02:21,800 --> 00:02:24,720
Speaker 3: the old ways Wickan essentially from her mother, from the

41
00:02:24,720 --> 00:02:28,360
Speaker 3: old Scottish teachings scene. So she had both and she

42
00:02:28,520 --> 00:02:31,600
Speaker 3: respected both. And she had studied Eastern mysticism. I had

43
00:02:31,600 --> 00:02:34,720
Speaker 3: some evidence to that she'd studied her meticism. She may

44
00:02:34,760 --> 00:02:39,000
Speaker 3: have studied other teachings, mystical teachings, and she drew from

45
00:02:39,080 --> 00:02:42,080
Speaker 3: different ones exactly the way that I started when I

46
00:02:42,160 --> 00:02:45,280
Speaker 3: was nineteen and started investigating the different religions. I went

47
00:02:45,320 --> 00:02:49,280
Speaker 3: on the assumption that at the esoteric level, they were

48
00:02:49,320 --> 00:02:53,680
Speaker 3: all talking about the same thing, same reality, same experiences,

49
00:02:53,720 --> 00:02:55,480
Speaker 3: you know. So I took it that way when I

50
00:02:55,520 --> 00:02:58,799
Speaker 3: started studying, and she had that same view, I think,

51
00:02:59,240 --> 00:03:02,400
Speaker 3: And I think she was also psychic. There's one poem

52
00:03:02,440 --> 00:03:05,600
Speaker 3: that she wrote that talks about herself as a child

53
00:03:06,000 --> 00:03:08,360
Speaker 3: and her mother told her about the fairies, and so

54
00:03:08,520 --> 00:03:10,840
Speaker 3: she took it quite literally and went out as a

55
00:03:10,880 --> 00:03:14,000
Speaker 3: little girl, went out looking for the fairies the whole day,

56
00:03:14,440 --> 00:03:17,079
Speaker 3: and she had a mystical experience, not of the fairies,

57
00:03:17,120 --> 00:03:19,600
Speaker 3: but like of God's light coming up from the earth,

58
00:03:19,680 --> 00:03:22,080
Speaker 3: you know, or something like that. So I think she

59
00:03:22,280 --> 00:03:26,880
Speaker 3: was psychic. So she also wrote when she was fourteen,

60
00:03:27,000 --> 00:03:31,040
Speaker 3: she wrote very powerful, very sophisticated mystical poetry, which was

61
00:03:31,560 --> 00:03:34,560
Speaker 3: I believe plagiarized by Albert Pike. And you may be

62
00:03:34,560 --> 00:03:38,600
Speaker 3: familiar with Albert Pike or your listener's yeah, yeah, right,

63
00:03:39,320 --> 00:03:42,240
Speaker 3: came up in a number of conspiracy theories and so on. Well,

64
00:03:42,320 --> 00:03:45,480
Speaker 3: he was a school teacher in eighteen thirty eighteen thirty

65
00:03:45,520 --> 00:03:50,720
Speaker 3: one in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and I extrapolate from a whole

66
00:03:50,760 --> 00:03:53,280
Speaker 3: bunch of evidence that she was a student in that class,

67
00:03:53,360 --> 00:03:57,120
Speaker 3: and she was writing what he later termed the Hymns

68
00:03:57,120 --> 00:03:59,160
Speaker 3: to the Gods, and that was a class assignment to

69
00:03:59,240 --> 00:04:02,360
Speaker 3: write to. He wanted her to write to the Roman gods,

70
00:04:02,360 --> 00:04:04,880
Speaker 3: but as soon as she got into it, after the title,

71
00:04:05,000 --> 00:04:08,160
Speaker 3: it became the Greek gods, because she loved, you know,

72
00:04:08,240 --> 00:04:11,160
Speaker 3: ancient Greece, not ancient Rome. So you can see that

73
00:04:11,200 --> 00:04:12,760
Speaker 3: in the poems, you know, all of a sudden the

74
00:04:12,840 --> 00:04:14,720
Speaker 3: name of the god changes to the Greek one, and

75
00:04:14,760 --> 00:04:16,760
Speaker 3: so on, you know, in the poetry. Well, those were

76
00:04:16,839 --> 00:04:20,800
Speaker 3: class assignments, and then she wrote a lot of beautiful,

77
00:04:21,440 --> 00:04:26,720
Speaker 3: deeply mystical private poetry. Albert Pike apparently went into her

78
00:04:26,839 --> 00:04:31,360
Speaker 3: workbook and stold Oliver Poetry and published it under their

79
00:04:31,480 --> 00:04:34,440
Speaker 3: joint initials, because AP for Albert Pike and AP for

80
00:04:34,560 --> 00:04:37,560
Speaker 3: Abby Point. And I think he must have thought to himself,

81
00:04:37,600 --> 00:04:39,919
Speaker 3: if I get caught, I'll just say that I was

82
00:04:39,920 --> 00:04:42,800
Speaker 3: publishing them for her. Well, he never got caught. The

83
00:04:42,880 --> 00:04:45,800
Speaker 3: editors all assumed it was his, and he basked in

84
00:04:45,839 --> 00:04:50,360
Speaker 3: the glory and became somewhat famous for that poetry as

85
00:04:50,400 --> 00:04:52,320
Speaker 3: though it was his own. Well it wasn't his, it

86
00:04:52,360 --> 00:04:56,200
Speaker 3: was Abbey's at age fourteen. So we've got one mystical,

87
00:04:56,240 --> 00:04:59,800
Speaker 3: psychic child prodigy who has a deep understanding of mysticism

88
00:05:00,040 --> 00:05:03,159
Speaker 3: and the occult as well. So then Matthew was the

89
00:05:03,160 --> 00:05:06,479
Speaker 3: younger brother of the Quaker poet John Greenquitdier. He obviously

90
00:05:06,600 --> 00:05:10,920
Speaker 3: was raised Quaker. He was disowned by the Quakers when

91
00:05:10,960 --> 00:05:14,719
Speaker 3: he married Abby, who was Catholic, but he retained his

92
00:05:15,160 --> 00:05:19,200
Speaker 3: Quaker values in Quaker worldview. He was, you know, a

93
00:05:19,240 --> 00:05:23,880
Speaker 3: pacifist generally except when war really had a good noble purpose.

94
00:05:23,960 --> 00:05:26,880
Speaker 3: But he was very much against the supposed glory of

95
00:05:26,920 --> 00:05:29,960
Speaker 3: war for its own sake. And he was a skeptic.

96
00:05:30,000 --> 00:05:33,159
Speaker 3: He was a philosopher, and he would actually make fun

97
00:05:33,560 --> 00:05:37,960
Speaker 3: of Abby's occultism like he made fun of Pressian dreams,

98
00:05:38,000 --> 00:05:40,600
Speaker 3: which I think Abbey actually had, and he made fun

99
00:05:40,640 --> 00:05:43,640
Speaker 3: of astrology to the point where Abbey actually was, you know,

100
00:05:43,760 --> 00:05:48,200
Speaker 3: temporarily convinced that it wasn't true, so he would make

101
00:05:48,240 --> 00:05:51,000
Speaker 3: fun of her. But gradually she brought him around. So

102
00:05:51,200 --> 00:05:54,799
Speaker 3: by eighteen thirty eight, when they would have started working

103
00:05:54,800 --> 00:05:57,640
Speaker 3: on a Christmas Carol, he was at least intellectually. He

104
00:05:57,720 --> 00:05:59,839
Speaker 3: was a believer in many of the things that she

105
00:06:00,120 --> 00:06:03,800
Speaker 3: tried to teach him. But he was also a child prodigy.

106
00:06:03,880 --> 00:06:06,359
Speaker 3: I found work that he did at age twelve in

107
00:06:06,440 --> 00:06:10,039
Speaker 3: eighteen twenty five, very sophisticated work, but it was the

108
00:06:10,080 --> 00:06:13,960
Speaker 3: poetry was mostly humorous poetry. He was extremely good at it.

109
00:06:14,400 --> 00:06:17,600
Speaker 3: But I think Abby taught him poetry. Abby became his

110
00:06:17,640 --> 00:06:21,600
Speaker 3: tutor because he couldn't you desperately wanted to go to college,

111
00:06:21,600 --> 00:06:23,640
Speaker 3: but he couldn't afford it. So she stepped in. She'd

112
00:06:23,680 --> 00:06:27,000
Speaker 3: had a privately tutored education, upper class education, and she

113
00:06:27,960 --> 00:06:32,640
Speaker 3: taught him, and then he educated himself, so he was

114
00:06:33,839 --> 00:06:37,880
Speaker 3: Matthew educated himself, and Abby also taught him right well.

115
00:06:37,960 --> 00:06:41,320
Speaker 2: What was their version called their version of a Christmas Carol?

116
00:06:41,360 --> 00:06:43,960
Speaker 3: Before it it was called a Christmas Carol. And the

117
00:06:44,000 --> 00:06:46,560
Speaker 3: reason I say that is for a couple of reasons.

118
00:06:46,560 --> 00:06:48,680
Speaker 3: First of all, they appeared to have used a story

119
00:06:48,720 --> 00:06:51,360
Speaker 3: they had written back in the early eighteen thirties as

120
00:06:51,360 --> 00:06:54,480
Speaker 3: a template. It's called The New Year's Bells. It's the

121
00:06:54,560 --> 00:06:59,560
Speaker 3: next to the last story in a compilation called Three

122
00:06:59,560 --> 00:07:02,480
Speaker 3: Brides Loving a Cottage and Other Tales. It was published

123
00:07:02,480 --> 00:07:06,040
Speaker 3: by a fellow named Francis A. Derivage in eighteen fifty two.

124
00:07:06,320 --> 00:07:09,280
Speaker 3: This goes way into another rabbit hole. Okay, so we

125
00:07:09,320 --> 00:07:12,360
Speaker 3: won't go into it, but I can prove that Francis

126
00:07:12,400 --> 00:07:16,120
Speaker 3: Derivage published a whole bunch of Matthew's work. He apparently

127
00:07:16,200 --> 00:07:19,560
Speaker 3: swindled him out of an entire portfolio in mid eighteen

128
00:07:19,640 --> 00:07:21,960
Speaker 3: forty eight and started publishing it as his own along

129
00:07:21,960 --> 00:07:25,440
Speaker 3: with a partner. So this would have been Matthew's story

130
00:07:26,000 --> 00:07:29,240
Speaker 3: in the compilation published by Francis Durrivage after he got

131
00:07:29,320 --> 00:07:34,760
Speaker 3: control of that portfolio. And there's so many parallels, you know,

132
00:07:34,800 --> 00:07:38,440
Speaker 3: if you look at it, it's obvious if The New

133
00:07:38,520 --> 00:07:42,280
Speaker 3: Year's Bells came first, which I believe it did, that

134
00:07:42,640 --> 00:07:44,920
Speaker 3: obviously a Christmas Carol was a pattern after it.

135
00:07:46,480 --> 00:07:52,520
Speaker 2: Three visiting spirits, tiny Tim Jacob Marley, any of those parallels.

136
00:07:52,760 --> 00:07:54,680
Speaker 3: Well, what you have let's see, I have to go

137
00:07:54,760 --> 00:07:59,320
Speaker 3: back through the plot. You have a miserly landlord and

138
00:07:59,720 --> 00:08:03,240
Speaker 3: his tenant who is an old woman living with her grandchildren,

139
00:08:03,440 --> 00:08:05,520
Speaker 3: and he evicts her in the middle of winter. So

140
00:08:06,600 --> 00:08:10,560
Speaker 3: after he leaves there, he walks to his place through

141
00:08:10,600 --> 00:08:13,640
Speaker 3: the graveyard and he decides he gets sleepy and cold.

142
00:08:13,720 --> 00:08:17,440
Speaker 3: He lies down on a tombstone and he starts to dream,

143
00:08:18,080 --> 00:08:23,400
Speaker 3: and he dreams of let's see, he dreams of himself

144
00:08:23,440 --> 00:08:27,240
Speaker 3: as a boy, and he's walking with his young friend

145
00:08:27,320 --> 00:08:30,000
Speaker 3: who was actually the husband of the you know, of

146
00:08:30,080 --> 00:08:31,920
Speaker 3: the old lady he's kicked or the son I think

147
00:08:31,960 --> 00:08:35,280
Speaker 3: of the old lady. He's kicking out. And he has

148
00:08:35,320 --> 00:08:39,520
Speaker 3: several other dreams, and he's one of them is he's

149
00:08:39,920 --> 00:08:43,559
Speaker 3: watching a lecture. Anyway, I won't go into all that

150
00:08:43,559 --> 00:08:45,840
Speaker 3: because it's not a direct parallel. But he's woken up

151
00:08:45,880 --> 00:08:50,160
Speaker 3: by the townspeople and he's a changed man because his

152
00:08:50,280 --> 00:08:52,000
Speaker 3: last dream was that he was in hell, so he's

153
00:08:52,040 --> 00:08:55,320
Speaker 3: now a changed man. And he directs the townspeople to

154
00:08:55,360 --> 00:08:59,079
Speaker 3: go and send some wood, you know, for the old lady,

155
00:08:59,120 --> 00:09:02,280
Speaker 3: and also to say, and I think it's either a

156
00:09:02,320 --> 00:09:06,000
Speaker 3: turkey or a goose and a pig for her to eat,

157
00:09:06,400 --> 00:09:08,920
Speaker 3: you know, just like in a Christmas Carol. And then

158
00:09:09,320 --> 00:09:14,160
Speaker 3: the ending is almost verbat on the same as the

159
00:09:14,160 --> 00:09:17,040
Speaker 3: next to last paragraph of Christmas Carol. Well, the next

160
00:09:17,040 --> 00:09:19,600
Speaker 3: to last paragraph of a Christmas Carol was the original.

161
00:09:19,880 --> 00:09:22,679
Speaker 3: What Dickens tacked on as the last was that was his.

162
00:09:23,520 --> 00:09:29,920
Speaker 3: But in the New Year's Spells it ends like this Israel,

163
00:09:30,000 --> 00:09:33,079
Speaker 3: that was the name of the miser lee. Landlord Israel

164
00:09:33,160 --> 00:09:35,679
Speaker 3: was as good as his word and never relapsed into

165
00:09:35,679 --> 00:09:38,480
Speaker 3: his old habits. The widow and the orphaned children were

166
00:09:38,480 --> 00:09:41,480
Speaker 3: provided for by his bounty. He gave liberally to every

167
00:09:41,520 --> 00:09:45,359
Speaker 3: object to charity, hospital, schools, and colleges with the recipients

168
00:09:45,400 --> 00:09:47,480
Speaker 3: of his bounty. And when he died in the fullness

169
00:09:47,520 --> 00:09:50,400
Speaker 3: of years, the blessings of old and young followed him

170
00:09:50,400 --> 00:09:52,600
Speaker 3: to his last resting place in the old churchyard, where

171
00:09:52,640 --> 00:09:55,800
Speaker 3: he had dreamed the mysterious dream and had been awakened

172
00:09:55,880 --> 00:09:58,200
Speaker 3: to a better life by the pealing of the New

173
00:09:58,280 --> 00:10:02,720
Speaker 3: Year's Spells. Well, the next to last paragraph of Christmas

174
00:10:02,720 --> 00:10:05,679
Speaker 3: Carol is very similar. He says Screws was better than

175
00:10:05,720 --> 00:10:08,679
Speaker 3: his word, he did it all and infinitely more, etcetera, etcetera.

176
00:10:09,800 --> 00:10:12,360
Speaker 3: And that's not the only story Matthew ended that way.

177
00:10:13,000 --> 00:10:16,280
Speaker 3: Another of the ones that Francis Duabage played your eyes

178
00:10:17,000 --> 00:10:20,040
Speaker 3: ends like this says he was as good as his word.

179
00:10:20,120 --> 00:10:24,040
Speaker 3: And from a miserly, surly old curmudgeon, Harman Brinkerhoff became,

180
00:10:24,120 --> 00:10:25,880
Speaker 3: to the astonishment of all who knew him, one of

181
00:10:25,960 --> 00:10:29,520
Speaker 3: the most genial of the Knickerbockers. Now when I learned

182
00:10:29,520 --> 00:10:31,880
Speaker 3: about Matthew from studying his work, I got over three

183
00:10:31,920 --> 00:10:34,959
Speaker 3: thousand of his published words. He was like a lot

184
00:10:34,960 --> 00:10:38,080
Speaker 3: of comedians. He would improve on his gags. He would

185
00:10:38,120 --> 00:10:41,480
Speaker 3: take a gag that was particularly successful before, and he

186
00:10:41,520 --> 00:10:44,320
Speaker 3: would improve on it and rework it and reintroduce it

187
00:10:44,520 --> 00:10:46,480
Speaker 3: later on, like maybe ten years down the road in

188
00:10:46,559 --> 00:10:49,440
Speaker 3: another publication, he would use it again. So this is

189
00:10:49,559 --> 00:10:53,600
Speaker 3: just one example of Matthew fine tuning something. You know,

190
00:10:53,640 --> 00:10:55,920
Speaker 3: he'd already used it twice, and then a Christmas Carroll

191
00:10:55,960 --> 00:10:57,600
Speaker 3: he said, well, let's bring it back and end his

192
00:10:57,640 --> 00:10:58,320
Speaker 3: story that way.

193
00:10:59,040 --> 00:11:05,240
Speaker 2: How did dickens and get his hands on the Whittier's

194
00:11:05,360 --> 00:11:06,559
Speaker 2: version New Year's.

195
00:11:06,240 --> 00:11:11,720
Speaker 3: Bells New Year's Well, Well, here's a gap. But there's

196
00:11:12,240 --> 00:11:16,360
Speaker 3: apparently when Dickens wrote the twenty ninth chapter of the

197
00:11:16,400 --> 00:11:18,959
Speaker 3: Pickwick Papers, and there's a whole bunch of evidence behind this.

198
00:11:19,080 --> 00:11:22,679
Speaker 3: I'll just give you my interpretation because I don't don't

199
00:11:22,760 --> 00:11:24,600
Speaker 3: have time for me to go into all the background.

200
00:11:25,160 --> 00:11:27,400
Speaker 3: So when Dickens wrote that first time, he was in

201
00:11:27,440 --> 00:11:31,480
Speaker 3: a hurry and he had run out of Robert Seymour's material,

202
00:11:31,559 --> 00:11:34,080
Speaker 3: so suddenly it was serialized, so he had to come

203
00:11:34,120 --> 00:11:36,760
Speaker 3: up with something for Christmas, right, So I believe he

204
00:11:36,840 --> 00:11:40,720
Speaker 3: had in front of him this unpublished manuscript New Year's Bells,

205
00:11:40,720 --> 00:11:45,680
Speaker 3: which Matthew must have submitted to a magazine in London probably,

206
00:11:46,120 --> 00:11:48,400
Speaker 3: So that's the weak point. I can't prove that. The

207
00:11:48,480 --> 00:11:50,360
Speaker 3: other thing he apparently had in front of him was

208
00:11:50,360 --> 00:11:54,400
Speaker 3: a published story by Matthew which was called The Unbidden Guest.

209
00:11:54,920 --> 00:11:58,480
Speaker 3: It appeared in the April eighteen thirty sixth edition of

210
00:11:58,720 --> 00:12:02,320
Speaker 3: Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, which is something that Dickens almost for

211
00:12:02,400 --> 00:12:06,840
Speaker 3: sure would would have read. Excuse me, so we know

212
00:12:06,960 --> 00:12:09,360
Speaker 3: he was exposed to that one, And that one I

213
00:12:09,360 --> 00:12:12,000
Speaker 3: can prove was Matthew's work. He signed a Tris Magistus,

214
00:12:12,040 --> 00:12:14,440
Speaker 3: which is a pseudonym he used as early as eighteen

215
00:12:14,480 --> 00:12:17,440
Speaker 3: twenty eight, were now in eighteen thirty six. So Dickens

216
00:12:17,520 --> 00:12:19,640
Speaker 3: had both of these together. If you put both of

217
00:12:19,640 --> 00:12:24,400
Speaker 3: them together, they comprised like ninety percent of Dickens's story,

218
00:12:24,520 --> 00:12:27,280
Speaker 3: the story of the goblins who stole the sextent. So

219
00:12:28,400 --> 00:12:30,480
Speaker 3: one of them we could basically prove he had seen.

220
00:12:30,559 --> 00:12:32,160
Speaker 3: The other one we have to extrapoli.

221
00:12:33,880 --> 00:12:39,080
Speaker 2: So when a Christmas Carol is published in eighteen forty three,

222
00:12:40,440 --> 00:12:44,120
Speaker 2: how do Matthew and Abbie Whittier react? Are they angry?

223
00:12:45,200 --> 00:12:48,280
Speaker 3: Well? I think that first of all, Abby had died

224
00:12:48,320 --> 00:12:51,719
Speaker 3: in March of the previous year forty one, and I

225
00:12:51,760 --> 00:12:53,720
Speaker 3: don't think she would have okated. Matthew was a big

226
00:12:53,720 --> 00:12:55,840
Speaker 3: fan of Dickens. I think there were a lot of

227
00:12:55,880 --> 00:12:59,839
Speaker 3: things that Abby knew were not really you know, or

228
00:13:00,040 --> 00:13:02,880
Speaker 3: people that she knew were not really up to snuff,

229
00:13:03,280 --> 00:13:06,880
Speaker 3: and Matthew didn't believe her. So he was a big

230
00:13:06,920 --> 00:13:08,600
Speaker 3: fan of Dickens, and I think this is one of

231
00:13:08,600 --> 00:13:12,079
Speaker 3: those things where she wouldn't have agreed, but she wasn't there.

232
00:13:12,840 --> 00:13:16,080
Speaker 3: I believed that they had written a Christmas Carol with

233
00:13:16,120 --> 00:13:19,320
Speaker 3: the idea of changing the world, that they were going

234
00:13:19,440 --> 00:13:24,480
Speaker 3: to bring each reader, massive numbers of readers through a

235
00:13:24,600 --> 00:13:29,240
Speaker 3: vicarious conversion experience, and by identifying with the character of

236
00:13:29,240 --> 00:13:34,240
Speaker 3: Ebenezer Scrooge, they were going to get to this point

237
00:13:34,320 --> 00:13:38,200
Speaker 3: and this by identification with him, have this conversion of

238
00:13:38,240 --> 00:13:40,760
Speaker 3: the heart, and that they were going to transform the world.

239
00:13:41,120 --> 00:13:43,319
Speaker 3: Which they were young, they were in their early twenties,

240
00:13:43,360 --> 00:13:47,760
Speaker 3: and it's an extremely naive idea, but I think that's

241
00:13:47,800 --> 00:13:54,000
Speaker 3: what they wanted to do, so it's almost sort of worked.

242
00:13:54,280 --> 00:13:58,240
Speaker 3: But anyway, when Abbie died, Matthew didn't know what to

243
00:13:58,280 --> 00:14:01,199
Speaker 3: do with this manuscript, but he wanted to somehow fulfill

244
00:14:01,280 --> 00:14:06,000
Speaker 3: Abbey's hopes for it. And he was personal friends with

245
00:14:06,040 --> 00:14:10,760
Speaker 3: Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Holmes was instrumental in arranging for

246
00:14:10,840 --> 00:14:15,959
Speaker 3: dickens reception in Boston. So he would almost one hundred

247
00:14:15,960 --> 00:14:19,080
Speaker 3: percent sure have been given an introduction to Dickens. That much,

248
00:14:19,120 --> 00:14:22,640
Speaker 3: I can, you know, be pretty confident about. So what

249
00:14:22,760 --> 00:14:25,760
Speaker 3: happened was that Matthew would have handed this manuscript over

250
00:14:25,800 --> 00:14:29,480
Speaker 3: to Dickens at that point. What he told Dickens I

251
00:14:29,480 --> 00:14:31,280
Speaker 3: don't know. I do know that he wrote Dickens a

252
00:14:31,320 --> 00:14:34,720
Speaker 3: letter because there's an acknowledgment of a letter that he

253
00:14:34,800 --> 00:14:38,760
Speaker 3: had written to Dickens. I think that Dickens took it

254
00:14:38,840 --> 00:14:41,360
Speaker 3: back along with maybe one hundred other manuscripts that he

255
00:14:41,440 --> 00:14:44,600
Speaker 3: was given, and then in eighteen forty three, he was

256
00:14:45,000 --> 00:14:49,720
Speaker 3: his what he thought was his, you know, his masterpiece,

257
00:14:50,080 --> 00:14:53,600
Speaker 3: because Dickens told his friend John Forster, this is Martin

258
00:14:53,680 --> 00:14:56,320
Speaker 3: chuzzle With is my masterpiece, best thing I've ever done.

259
00:14:56,520 --> 00:14:59,720
Speaker 3: But nobody liked it, okay, So he was in financial

260
00:14:59,760 --> 00:15:03,640
Speaker 3: trub because it wasn't selling and he had to make

261
00:15:03,680 --> 00:15:08,200
Speaker 3: money quick. So he conceived what he privately told somebody

262
00:15:08,320 --> 00:15:11,200
Speaker 3: was a little scheme, and his little scheme was to

263
00:15:11,280 --> 00:15:20,320
Speaker 3: rework Matthew and Abbey's sacred Manuscript, their inspirational manuscript, into

264
00:15:20,360 --> 00:15:23,080
Speaker 3: a ghost story because he was a you know, aggressive

265
00:15:23,120 --> 00:15:25,280
Speaker 3: skeptic of spiritualism, so he didn't believe in any of

266
00:15:25,280 --> 00:15:27,600
Speaker 3: those elements that are in a story, and he dumbed

267
00:15:27,600 --> 00:15:31,080
Speaker 3: it down in six weeks, you know, and published it

268
00:15:31,160 --> 00:15:33,920
Speaker 3: as a ghost story. And he really didn't expect it

269
00:15:33,960 --> 00:15:37,040
Speaker 3: any more from it, I don't think, than to just

270
00:15:37,160 --> 00:15:39,080
Speaker 3: pay his bills, you know. I think he was as

271
00:15:39,120 --> 00:15:41,960
Speaker 3: shocked as the next person when it was popular and

272
00:15:41,960 --> 00:15:43,400
Speaker 3: he didn't really understand why.

273
00:15:45,520 --> 00:15:48,480
Speaker 2: All right, very quickly, because I've got less than a

274
00:15:48,480 --> 00:15:51,240
Speaker 2: minute here. Do you do you prefer when you read

275
00:15:51,440 --> 00:15:54,640
Speaker 2: or a Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens or his version,

276
00:15:54,760 --> 00:16:01,040
Speaker 2: and New Year's Bells by the Wittiers? Which which do

277
00:16:01,040 --> 00:16:02,120
Speaker 2: you prefer? Which is better?

278
00:16:03,640 --> 00:16:07,040
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, inasmuch as I can kind of extrapolate

279
00:16:07,080 --> 00:16:09,240
Speaker 3: what a Christmas Carol was, I think that was the

280
00:16:09,320 --> 00:16:12,800
Speaker 3: full fruition of their ideas. New Year's Bells is kind

281
00:16:12,800 --> 00:16:13,440
Speaker 3: of a treatment.

282
00:16:15,240 --> 00:16:18,520
Speaker 1: Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at

283
00:16:18,520 --> 00:16:21,480
Speaker 1: one a m. Eastern and go to Coast to coastam

284
00:16:21,520 --> 00:16:22,600
Speaker 1: dot com for more