Unusually for a miser, Elwes could be affable, considerate and generous with his cash.ĭickens would have known of Elwes through a biography written by Edward Topham, Life of the Late John Elwes (1790), which became a bestseller, going through 12 editions and establishing ‘Elwes the miser’ as the archetypal penny-pincher: But there are plans to recognise Scroggie and his life by erecting a memorial and drawing attention to his literary influence. Unfortunately, the grave marker was lost during restoration of the Kirk in 1932. He may have taken advantage of one of his servants too, having a child out of wedlock - not the behaviour you would expect from Dickens’ Scrooge well, maybe after the visitations. He was a jovial man and a scallywag who once interrupted the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland by goosing the Countess of Mansfield. Scroggie imported wine in bulk and exported whisky in return, building a reputation and gaining royal patronage, leading to two years acting as Edinburgh’s Lord Provost. Research by political economist Peter Clark has shown that he had been a corn trader and vintner whose family had supplied Captain Cook’s ship Endeavour as it charted the Pacific. ![]() He couldn’t have been more wrong about the real Scroggie. ![]() Somehow Dickens misread this as ‘mean man’ and later wrote in his notebook: "To be remembered through eternity only for being mean seemed the greatest testament to a life wasted." The gravestone gave ‘meal man’ as Scroggie’s profession, referring to his trade as a merchant. ![]() It’s been suggested that during a walk in Edinburgh’s Canongate kirkyard in June 1841, Dickens came across the gravestone of one Ebenezer Lennox Scroggie. Dickens couldn’t have been more wrong about the real Scroggieīut how did the author create Ebenezer Scrooge – "a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner," as Dickens describes him?
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