Summary: Loosely based on the Advent 2025 stories of BettyHT and AC1830 as well as the work of Charles Dickens. Many years after Abel writes to Adam about how Elizabeth’s spirit influenced him to change, Adam pitches a story idea to Dickens.
Rating: PG Word count: 936

A Letter To Dickens

March 15, 1843

Mister Charles Dickens:

Sir, I have recently read some of your works, and I have been astonished at your brilliance. I live in the territory of Nevada in the United States of America. It is difficult to get good reading material where I live, but my current tutor let me borrow his William Shakespeare collection, and our minister had translations of some Greek classics as well as some French works. My father brought a few English classics with him when he moved west, but finding any of the current literary works is nearly impossible. Winter can be very long here without any new books to read. However my salvation this year was that recently, a traveler from your country traded four of your works to get supplies at a store in a local community, Eagle Station, and I was able to get them. Sadly, two of the works were incomplete, but there was enough there for me to understand what you were attempting to accomplish with your writing. The Pickwick Papers were so clever in using comedy to address injustice. I stayed up late every night until I finished reading Oliver Twist. It was a masterpiece in illustrating struggle. However, in Nicholas Nickleby, do you think that there could be a woman as confused as Mrs. Nickleby? Where I live, a woman like that would not live long. Women here have to be much more capable than that. I do not think that I could ever write a work like The Old Curiosity Shop because of what happened to Little Nell. Your ability to write such a story shows the depth of your skill and your exemplary craftmanship. But all of this praise is not the purpose of my letter although all of it is well deserved and much more could be said about your works. However, I cannot use more than one piece of paper as the post is quite expensive from here. I am sorry to be writing so small, but there is much to say and very little room on this paper to say all that I hope to say.

Several years ago, my grandfather wrote a letter to me at Christmas, and then he wrote a few more over the next couple of years. He told me how he was changing. It seemed the memory of my mother who died at my birth was haunting him in a way and making him regret his behavior. He was remembering how she acted at Christmas and why she did it. He decided to reform his behaviors to comply with her beliefs and to feel better about himself and to feel better in general. By his admission, and frankly my father mentioned a few things as well, he had been a man who was selfish and drank too much. He was gruff and belligerent and never understood the joy of the season nor that giving could make a person feel good about themselves, about the future, and about people in general.

Because of her spirit or what he perceived as her spirit visiting him, my grandfather changed his ways. He drank less. But more importantly, he became more generous not only with his money but with his time and his words. He wrote a letter to my father expressing his sadness at their parting on less than good terms. He said good things. He sent money that he said was because my mother’s inheritance would be his one day anyway so he was sending it to ensure it would be used to help secure my future. He sent a man who worked for him to work for my father. It was to get that man out of a situation in which he frequently got into trouble and into one where he do better but could help my father too. He parted with some of my mother’s things and sent them with that man too. He said the things were for me, but I’m sure he knew that my father would appreciate having those things in our house here. That was generous.

Then my gruff, stoic grandfather wrote a very kind letter to me and told me about my mother and the things she liked to do best at Christmas. She liked to give gifts to loved ones and more importantly, she loved to give to the poor and less fortunate so that they too could have some joy. He said he wanted me to do those kinds of things too to be like my mother, but I knew he was doing them as well and for the same reason. So he was becoming a different kind of person because of my mother’s spirit being around. He needed to find peace with her spirit and with himself because of her spirit. Do you think you could write a Christmas story based on this kind of idea — that a person could change at Christmas because of the spirit of someone who has passed on? I think with your brilliance, you could make it a masterpiece. I know it wouldn’t probably resemble the story I’ve told you once you are done working your writing magic to develop the idea, but I hope that maybe it could inspire you to write another novella at least. Perhaps, like some of your other works, the story could be a lesson to others on how to be better in a world where so many have lost the idea that generosity, integrity, trust, and caring are essential values.

Your greatest fan in Nevada,

Adam Cartwright

Note: Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol featuring Scrooge and Marley in October of 1843 so the timeline could work if Adam wrote to him when he was 13.