one to a wealthy household as it endures the loss of a child. At the moment of death, an angel flies away with the boy then tells him the story of a poverty-stricken orphan who also used to dwell in London. That boy, in low health, wanders up to the garden gate of a rich family, and when the servants send him away with a little money because they are “tired of seeing / His pale face of want and woe,” the young boy living in the house takes pity on his poor counterpart and shares a handful of blooming roses (18). The roses comfort the orphan as he dies the next day, and he turns into the angel that now bears the wealthier boy to his own death while adorning him with the same red roses. Although the story initially appears to sanctify children’s solidarity across class lines as their pure souls console each other in heaven, a more disturbing interpretation emerges when one recognizes that the children also act as catalysts for death. The poor child is ill when he first meets the rose-bearing boy, and their encounter seems to speed up his decline. As an angel, he tells the wealthy boy,
Ere your tender, loving spirit
Sin and the hard world defiled,
Mercy gave me leave to seek you;—
I was that little child!
(19)
These closing words of the poem yoke the wealthy boy’s death to a vision of his corrupt future, making the angel an agent of death who takes the life of the generous boy as a means of proactive “mercy.” The wealthy boy, however, has already proven himself to be more compassionate than his servants even when living in luxury. The angel’s appearance pessimistically implies that humanity’s sin is too strong for even the most righteous children to withstand.35 Crucially, we do not know who narrates “The Angel’s Story” at the fireside, information that could assist in determining its tone and message. The poem shifts from an unidentified third-person speaker to the voice of the angel, and its title does not match the others in the collection unless readers believe that an actual angel joins the assembled family. Gill Gregory, one of the only scholars to situate an analysis of a Christmas number story in relation to those of other collaborators, notes that the placement of Procter’s piece after Sala’s potentially creates a tension between those two contributors, as Sala’s emphasis on “essentially generous” qualities of children contrasts with the image of children as fatal deliverers of retributive justice.36
The number moves quickly from the celestial realm back to worldly interests in Elizabeth Gaskell’s “The Squire’s Story,” and Dickens’s correspondence with her again reveals an excessively complimentary editor, perhaps anxious to be sure that she will contribute to the collection despite Dickens’s vociferous attempts to get her to change her story the previous year. In September, after Gaskell asks for more specificity about the frame concept, Dickens replies, “No. I won’t give any outline. Because anything that you like to write in the way of story-telling, when you come out of that tea-leaf condition will please me. All I say, is, it is supposed to be told by somebody at the Xmas Fireside, as before. And it need not be about Xmas and winter, and it need not have a moral, and it only needs to be done by you to be well done, and if you don’t believe that—I can’t help it.”37 Countering Gaskell’s wish for more information with a playful but firm insistence on his vision, Dickens stresses her talent and creative vision rather than his own, declining to insist upon a theme or “moral” for her story. The setting—being “told by somebody at the Xmas Fireside”—Dickens finds important enough to mention, which associates the domestic hearth with appropriate subject matter. Given that the deadline for contributors to submit their pieces was not until early December,38 Dickens may also have declined to send more details simply because he did not yet know how the number would shape up. Set in 1769, Gaskell’s story follows Dickens’s vague instructions by shying away from Christmas themes in its depiction of a sadistic thief who deceives an entire small village by masquerading as a respectable gentleman. The periodic absences of Mr. Higgins, necessary for “collecting his rents” in another region, are the times when he commits highway robbery (22). Eventually, he is caught and hanged after murdering an old woman in Bath who had reputedly been hiding a fortune. The story is fairly anticlimactic because it is so obvious from the start that Higgins is a sadistic, suspicious man. More surprising than his criminality are the story’s odd details; Higgins, for instance, is a kind husband with mysterious health-preservation habits that might contribute to the couple’s childlessness. The squire concludes by asking the listeners at the fireside if they would like to join the hunt for the fortune Higgins is rumored to have stashed in the house he rented: “Will any of you become tenants, and try to find out this mysterious closet? I can furnish the exact address to any applicant who wishes for it” (25). Listeners, then, are invited to participate actively in what could become a sequel to the squire’s tale as the stories in Another Round continue to unfold in circular patterns.
Treating a different aspect of criminality, “Uncle George’s Story,” by W. H. Wills and Edmund Saul Dixon, emerges from multiple layers of collaboration and shows the number again endorsing non–biological family bonds. George shares the story of his adventurous wedding day when his bride, Charlotte, stands alone at the altar because George has fallen into a shaft on unstable cliffs. George’s rescuer, the outcast Richard Leroy, explains that the town’s reason for ostracizing him stems from his work as a smuggler, which accounts for his familiarity with the hidden tunnel and exposes the previous occupation of George’s father. After Leroy becomes a close friend and stops smuggling, the families hope that their children might marry. The story evidences collaboration so thorough that no awkward transitions or recognizable marks of distinct voices diminish its delivery. Wills was clearly able to move between creating and editing with success, yet the story raises more unanswered questions about the frame. George is uncle to someone around the fire, which means that a grandfather figure for some people around the fire was a smuggler. This grandfather, however, must be different from the one who narrates “The Grandfather’s Story” because that speaker is a bank clerk. The criminality of a patriarch would certainly affect one’s reading of the other stories in the collection that touch upon illegal activities, such as Gaskell’s tale of the highwayman. At the same time, as with Linton’s aunt character, one cannot be sure whether the family relationships of the story titles are biological or metaphorical. George has no siblings, nor are any siblings of Charlotte’s mentioned in the story, but they have joined a kin group so completely that they fill familial roles and are comfortable enough to discuss their family’s criminal past. Overcoming such social hurdles in a celebration of Christmas camaraderie lends an enhanced sense of togetherness—because it is so purposeful—to the storytelling gathering.
The adoptive family story in Samuel Sidney’s “The Colonel’s Story” is not so uplifting. Orphaned, the Colonel is a teenager when his uncle adopts him and funds an indulgent lifestyle but forbids him to marry anyone who is not wealthy. After falling in love with a young widow, the young man marries her secretly then discovers that she is a spendthrift who is slightly mad and prone to violent quarrels. On the way home from visiting her at a remote cottage, the young lover falls from his horse, and when he wakes up, the blood covering him is taken as proof that he murdered his wife, whose dead body is discovered not long after he leaves her. Acquitted once the real murderer is found, the Colonel now enjoys the sharing of stories with the extended family at the fireside, but readers never learn whether the Colonel is a member of the host’s family or an honored guest.
The scholar’s position in the family is likewise unclear, but Elizabeth and William Gaskell’s “The Scholar’s Story” presents a more complicated scenario of collaboration. William Gaskell translated the ballad from Théodore Hersart de La Villemarqué’s Barzaz-Breiz (1845), a text based on ancient Breton oral folk tradition.39 The letter in which Dickens first asks Elizabeth Gaskell to keep the Christmas number in mind also brings William Gaskell into the collaborative relationship: “I receive you, ever, (if Mr Gaskell will allow me to say so) with open arms.”40 Asking Mr. Gaskell’s permission to violate a social code (wrapping metaphorical arms around another man’s wife) after he has already expressed that desire lessens the respect
