Mr. Finkhouser’s Experience as a New Year’s Caller, as Chronicled by Himself.
Young Mr. Finkhouser could have cried with vexation when he got out of bed on New Year’s morning and saw the weather. His heart came right up into his throat, and he only swallowed it by a prodigious effort. He had planned somewhat less than a thousand calls that day, and his line march, as projected, was little less than Sherman’s march to the sea. He moped, and sulked, and swore under his breath, nearly all the morning, and it was not until nearly noon that he reflected that the carriage he had engaged for the occasion was drawing pay right along, improving every drizzling hour. Then he braced up and determined to call any how. And he arrayed himself in fine broadcloth and linen and went down stairs, and there, sure enough, was the waiting carriage, floating around in the street with a drowned man on the box. Mr. Finkhouser climbed and was slowly dragged away.
We did not have the pleasure of accompanying Mr. Finkhouser on this eventful journey, and his own account of its events were somewhat too confused to be implicitly relied on. But his diary was taken from his breast pocket and its brief entries afforded an interesting study of the gradual transition from the cold formalities and conventionalities of the first calls to the cordiality and hearty friendliness and intimacy of the later and closing calls. Mr. Finkhouser was not an old veteran caller, this being his first New Year’s out, and his diary is all the more interesting on that account. It appears that Mr. Finkhouser, anxious to improve, made an entry of his salutations as soon as he returned to the carriage from each visit, and it is quite apparent that he did his best to improve on every effort. And here is the way he improved:
11:15 A.M. – “Ah-haw-aw, yes, yes. Happy New Year, Miss Dresseldorf. Happy New Year. Happy New Year; many happy returns of the day. Haw, yes, to be sure. Good morning.
11:25 A.M. — “Miss McKerrel, permit me to wish you a happy new year. Tears and clouds in the outside world, smiles and light wherever you are. Thank you. I shall be only too much honored.
It was evident that Mr. Finkhouser thought he had just about got it, as all his subsequent efforts were modeled upon this one. Note by the translator.
11:50 A.M. “Ah, my dear Miss Ballana hack, I have the inexpressible felicity to wish you a happy New Year. The light and smiles of your presence dislocates the sombre clouds and dismal tears of the weather god.”
12:40 – “My dear Mish Binnington, I have thinexpressible felicity t’wish you a happy New Year. The smiles and light, f’your presences dispates the sombre clouds and dismal tears of th’ weather god.”
2:30 p.m.—“Ah! Mdear Mish Washingham, f’y ‘low me t’call you so. I have inexpressible flicity t’wish you Happy New Year. Thlight an schmilesh f’your bri’ presence dishpate the sombre clouds an’ dismal tear of th’ weather god.”
3:45 p.m.—“Howdy, howdy, Mish Milleroy! Wish may have th’ flictable expressitive t’wish ye hampy n’y’er, fack! Th’ bri’ shimlesh an’ light f’your preselece dishlocates clomber souds an’ tearful dismals of threather gog!”
4:30 p.m.—“Howja fine y’self? ic! ‘m all rt. Have ‘nfeliseible ‘spression t’wishye haply newy’r. Hoopee doodle! I guess not! Shimleh f’your presesh dishlocatesh weather gog! Goodby, gubby. Bo good t’yersef.”
And at this point the entries, which continue some distance further, become unintelligible.
Janesville [WI] Daily Gazette 10 January 1876: p. 1
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: In Gilded Age America, the making and receiving of New Year’s Day calls was something of a competitive sport. Society ladies boasted of the number of their callers, while young dandies boasted of their numerous visitations and of the liquid refreshments they had consumed. Mr Finkhouser was unusual only in his candid description of the inevitable dishpation resulting from a day’s rounds.
Drink was only one of the attractions of New Year’s Day receptions; eligible young ladies were the objective of multiple beaux, who flitted in and out, bestowing compliments and bonbons in this early version of “speed-dating.”
[T]he Sunday papers of the time began to print lists of those who would receive, and the houses of those mentioned in the lists were sure to be besieged by numbers of men whom the ladies had never met or heard of and desired never to meet again. Men would go calling in couples and parties, and even in droves of thirty or more, remaining as short a time at each stopping place as possible, and announcing everywhere how many calls they had already made and how many they expected to make before they finished. At every place they drank, and at each place, of course, a different brand of wine. The result was a most appalling assortment of “jags” long before sundown, and a crowding of the police stations at night. Naturally enough the second day of January was always a field day in the police courts, and the judges, some of whom probably had post-calling headaches themselves, were wont to mark S.S. for “sentence suspended,” after the name of every one who could show that he had made a beast of himself in the observance of the “good old Knickerbocker custom.”
The Fort Payne [AL] Journal 6 January 1897: p. 4
Mrs Daffodil wishes all of her readers every good thing in the New Year!
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
The other night I was sitting up late–away after nine o’clock–thinking about Christmas because it was getting near at hand. And, like everybody else who muses on that subject, I was thinking of the great changes that have taken place in regard to Christmas. I was contrasting Christmas in the old country house of a century ago, with the fires roaring up the chimneys, and Christmas in the modern apartment on the ninth floor with the gasoline generator turned on for the maid’s bath.
I was thinking of the old stage coach on the snowy road with its roof piled high with Christmas turkeys and a rosy-faced “guard” blowing on a key bugle and the passengers getting down every mile or so at a crooked inn to drink hot spiced ale–and I was comparing all that with the upper berth No. 6, car 220, train No. 53.
I was thinking of the Christmas landscape of long ago when night settled down upon it with the twinkle of light from the houses miles apart among the spruce trees, and contrasting the scene with the glare of motor lights upon the highways of today. I was thinking of the lonely highwayman shivering round with his clumsy pistols, and comparing the poor fellow’s efforts with the high class bandits of today blowing up a steel express car with nitroglycerine and disappearing in a roar of gasoline explosions.
In other words I was contrasting yesterday and today. And on the whole yesterday seemed all to the good.
Nor was it only the warmth and romance and snugness of the old Christmas that seemed superior to our days, but Christmas carried with it then a special kind of thrill with its queer terrors, its empty heaths, its lonely graveyards, and its house that stood alone in a wood, haunted.
And thinking of that it occurred to me how completely the ghost business seems to be dying out of our Christmas literature. Not so very long ago there couldn’t be a decent Christmas story or Christmas adventure without a ghost in it, whereas nowadays—
And just at that moment I looked and saw that there was a ghost in the room.
I can’t imagine how he got in, but there he was, sitting in the other easy chair in the dark corner away from the firelight. He had on my own dressing gown and one saw but little of his face.
“Are you a ghost?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, “worse luck, I am.”
I noticed as he spoke that he seemed to wave and shiver as if he were made of smoke. I couldn’t help but pity the poor fellow, he seemed so immaterial.
“Do you mind,” he went on, in the same dejected tone, “if I sit here and haunt you for a while?”
“By all means,” I said, “please do.”
“Thanks,” he answered, “I haven’t had anything decent to work on for years and years. This is Christmas eve, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said, “Christmas Eve.”
“Used to be my busiest night,” the ghost complained, “best night of the whole year–and now–say,” he said, “would you believe it! I went down this evening to that dinner dance they have at the Ritz Carlton and I thought I’d haunt it–thought I’d stand behind one of the tables as a silent spectre, the way I used to in King George III’s time–“
“Well?” I said.
“They put me out!” groaned the ghost, “the head waiter came up to me and said that he didn’t allow silent spectres in the dining room. I was put out.” He groaned again.
“You seem,” I said, “rather down on your luck?”
“Can you wonder?” said the ghost, and another shiver rippled up and down him. “I can’t get anything to do. Talk of the unemployed–listen!” he went on, speaking with something like animation, “let me tell you the story of my life–“
“Can you make it short?” I said.
“I’ll try. A hundred years ago–“
“Oh, I say!” I protested.
“I committed a terrible crime, a murder on the highway–“
“You’d get six months for that nowadays,” I said.
“I was never detected. An innocent man was hanged. I died but I couldn’t rest. I haunted the house beside the highway where the murder had been done. It had happened on Christmas Eve, and so, every year on that night–“
“I know,” I interrupted, “you were heard dragging round a chain and moaning and that sort of thing; I’ve often read about it.”
“Precisely,” said the ghost, “and for about eighty years it worked out admirably. People became afraid, the house was deserted, trees and shrubs grew thick around it, the wind whistled through its empty chimneys and its broken windows, and at night the lonely wayfarer went shuddering past and heard with terror the sound of a cry scarce human, while a cold sweat–“
“Quite so,” I said, “a cold sweat. And what next?”
“The days of the motor car came and they paved the highways and knocked down the house and built a big garage there, with electricity as bright as day. You can’t haunt a garage, can you? I tried to stick on and do a little groaning, but nobody seemed to pay attention; and anyway, I got nervous about the gasoline. I’m too immaterial to be round where there’s gasoline. A fellow would blow up, wouldn’t he?”
“He might,” I said, “so what happened?”
“Well, one day somebody in the garage actually SAW me and he threw a monkey wrench at me and told me to get to hell out of the garage. So I went.”
“And after that?”
“I haunted round; I’ve kept on haunting round, but it’s no good, there’s nothing in it. Houses, hotels, I’ve tried it all. Once I thought that if I couldn’t make a hit any other way, at least I could haunt children. You remember how little children used to live in terror of ghosts and see them in the dark corners of their bedrooms? Well, I admit it was a low down thing to do, but I tried that.”
“And it didn’t work?”
“Work! I should say not. I went one night to a bedroom where a couple of little boys were sleeping and I started in with a few groans and then half materialized myself, so that I could just be seen. One of the kids sat up in bed and nudged the other and said, ‘Say! I do believe there’s a ghost in the room!’ And the other said, ‘Hold on; don’t scare him. Let’s get the radio set and see if it’ll go right through him.’
“They both hopped out of bed as brisk as bees and one called downstairs, ‘Dad, we’ve got a ghost up here! We don’t know whether he’s just an emanation or partially material. We’re going to stick the radio into him–‘ Believe me,” continued the ghost, “that was all I waited to hear. Electricity just knocks me edgeways.”
He shuddered. Then he went on.
“Well it’s been like that ever since–nowhere to go and nothing to haunt. I’ve tried all the big hotels, railway stations, everywhere. Once I tried to haunt a Pullman car, but I had hardly started before I observed a notice, ‘Quiet is requested for those already retired,’ and I had to quit.”
“Well, then,” I said, “why don’t you just get immaterial or dematerial or whatever you call it, and keep so? Why not go away wherever you belong and stay there?”
“That’s the worst of it,” answered the ghost, “they won’t let us. They haul us back. These spiritualists have learned the trick of it and they just summon us up any time they like. They get a dollar apiece for each materialization, but what do we get?”
The ghost paused and a sort of spasm went all through him. “Gol darn it,” he exclaimed, “they’re at me now. There’s a group of fools somewhere sitting round a table at a Christmas Eve party and they’re calling up a ghost just for fun–a darned poor notion of fun, I call it–I’d like to–like to–“
But his voice trailed off. He seemed to collapse as he sat and my dressing gown fell on the floor. And at that moment I heard the ringing of the bells that meant that it was Christmas midnight, and I knew that the poor fellow had been dragged off to work.
Winowed Wisdom, Stephen Leacock 1926
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Recently, the Smithsonian online magazine made a plea for the return of the tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas. This is a proposition Mrs Daffodil can heartily endorse. It is true that there was a decay in the quality of Christmas ghost stories, leading to amusing articles and essays totting up the cliches of the usual Christmas spectre, such as this one by Jerome K. Jerome. Mrs Daffodil previously told of how the British ghost was doomed by the introduction of the card game Bridge.
Stephen Leacock also wrote in an essay called “The Passing of the Christmas Ghost Story,” that the logistics of modern life simply were not compatible with the Christmas ghost story.
It is a nice question whether Christmas, in the good old sense of the term, is not passing away from us. One associates it somehow with the epoch of stage-coaches, of gabled inns and hospitable country homes with the flames roaring in the open fireplaces. I often think that half the charm of Christmas, in literature at least, lay in the rough weather and in the physical difficulties surmounted by the sheer force of the glad spirit of the day. Take, for example, the immortal Christmases of Mr. Pickwick and his friends at Dingley Dell and the uncounted thousands of Christmas guests of that epoch of which they were the type. The snow blustered about them. They were red and ruddy with the flush of a strenuous journey. Great fires must be lighted in the expectation of their coming. Huge tankards of spiced ale must be warmed up for them. There must be red wine basking to a ruddier glow in the firelight. There must be warm slippers and hot cordials and a hundred and one little comforts to think of as a mark of gratitude for their arrival; and behind it all, the lurking fear that some fierce highwayman might have fallen upon them as they rode in the darkness of the wood.
Take as against this a Christmas in a New York apartment with the guests arriving by the subway and the elevator, or with no greater highwayman to fear than the taxicab driver. Warm them up with spiced ale? They’re not worth it.
The Bookman, Vol. 50, 1920
Harsh, very harsh, but perhaps a fair assessment. Something of the holiday magic was certainly lost with the introduction of electricity. When ghost story writer M.R. James held his memorable Christmas ghost story readings at Cambridge College, he did not simply press a switch to plunge the room into darkness, but extinguished, one by one, all but one of the candles in the room–and a highly effective bit of stage business it was, say those who witnessed it. Even a dimmer switch could not provide such a thrill.
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
I am no longer a young girl. The age of illusions is over with me, and that which I state now, I state with a calm conviction in its truth which no amount of incredulity can shake. It is many years ago since I was a school-girl. It chanced that I formed a friendship with a girl of my own age, but not of my own temperament. Our physiques differed as widely as did our fates. She had been christened Emmeline, but to me, and to others of her familiars, she was always Milly Deane. A handsome brunette, with a wealth of colour and vitality about her that made of her large-pupilled grey eyes two dancing stars, and of her rounded firm cheeks two ever-blooming roses. A fine upright girl, whose attitudes never required correction at the tongue of the stiffest of governesses, and whose back never was condemned by the ignominy of a board. In the days of which I write, if Milly Deane was a fair embodiment of night, I was a fairer one of morning ; for I had waves of feathery ringlets of bright gold, when she had pounds of bonny brown ones ; and pale pink roses in my cheeks in place of her crimson blooms. The daughters of the royal tribe of wanderers–those dusky flowers who break into bloom all over the land simultaneously whenever the sun shines genially–had told our fortunes over and over again. I, Annette Davant, was to love, and be loved by, a dark gentleman, whose lot was cast in India, whither I was to accompany him, and live a life of Oriental splendour, amongst elephants, and punkahs, and Cashmere shawls. Milly, on the contrary, was to marry young young and happily a gentleman who rolled in wealth in the city, and to have a large family, and a long life, and everything else that the heart of woman can desire. We accepted these prophecies with assumed incredulity, and real belief. We left school the same quarter, and came out at the same county ball. Our homes were not very far apart. Milly Deane’ s home was in the high street of a flourishing country town; a tall, square, considerable mansion of red brick, with white stone copings, which her father had bought the freehold of on his attaining the position of first solicitor in the neighbourhood. My home was more exclusively situated. It was an old, rambling, picturesque Grange, in the environs of one of the prettiest villages of Norfolk. A house with an oaken parlour, and a cedar room in it, with a grand old grey-balustraded terrace in front of it, and with our coat-of-arms carved massively on a shield over the entrance door. It was in this house that I came home to live just before Milly Deane and I made our debut at the county ball. Ours was a very small family. It consisted only of my mother and myself. Our household was composed of a number of old, stolidly-unimaginative servants, who had lived with us for years, and to whom our interests and our nerves were of the dearest consequence. They were tenacious, too, about the regulation of the house. Idle rumour asserted it to be haunted by a discreditable ancestress, but none of those then resident in the house had either seen anything or heard anything when I left school with Milly Deane. In the order of things–at least in what appeared to be the order of things to young girls’ minds–my favourite schoolfellow and I deemed it incumbent upon ourselves to spend a large portion of our time together. It was easy enough to ride and drive over to see one another constantly; but that did not satisfy us. Friendship demanded that we should stay at each others’ houses–that our morning aspirations and evening conclusions should be breathed in each others’ ears–and the demands of friendship were attended to. We did these things, and I don’t know that we were ever the worse for doing them, in spite of the current scepticism which mocks at all that it does not understand.
The county ball, at which Milly Deane and I were to make our first appearance as grown-up and eligible young ladies, came off in the Christmas week of 1850. It had been the source of joy and woe to us both for at least a fortnight previously– that is to say, we were charmed at the idea of going–but, as became young women to whom it was still left to make the first impression, we stood very much upon the order of our going, and were severe, even in our slumbers, with audacious dressmakers, who presumed to hold adverse opinions to ours on the important subject of when it was needful for our costumes to come home. For several days before the great event Milly had been staying at the Grange with me, sharing my room, as well as my costumes, cares, and creating a feeling of dismay in the minds of one or two of our old servants by her obstinate persistence in stating that the house was haunted. It was about a week before the ball that she confided her conviction to me, first quite calmly. I had run up hurriedly into my room one afternoon, when darkness was just creeping over things, meaning to dress quickly for the dinner, that my dear mother never liked to have kept waiting. I burst into the room, with my hat and habit on, my hair blowing about somewhat loosely, and my whip in my hand, just as I had come in from riding since two o’clock. Candles were burning on my dressing table, and, by the fire, Milly stood ready dressed in a soft amber silk, which became her dark glowing beauty well. She was speaking and laughing as I came into the room; and, to my surprise–for I made sufficient noise–she did not look up at my entrance. The words I caught were, “Will call me the yellow crocus still, for I wore this dress the last night he saw me.” I looked round the room in an instant. There was no one but ourselves in it. She must have been speaking to herself–yet that was never a habit of hers. In that instant my face had time to pale, and my flesh had time to creep. “Milly,” I exclaimed, and she looked straight at me without the slightest start or hesitation. As her gaze fell upon me, though, she gave vent to a surprised ejaculation, “Annette, how have you managed to metamorphose yourself in this minute?” she asked quickly, and I said–“In this minute, indeed! I am very much as I have been ever since I started for my ride, I believe.” Milly Deane came and put her hand on my shoulder. and looked at me with bewildered eyes. ” You came in some time ago, Annette–half an hour ago, at least.” she said earnestly. “I didn’t. I wish I had; I shall be late for dinner, as it is.” I answered, beginning to hurry off my riding gear. “But you did.” she repeated emphatically. “How silly of you to try to mystify me! why you should have taken the trouble to put on your habit again, puzzles me.” “I have never had it off, Milly,” I said, rather crossly; “it is you who are trying to mystify me, talking to yourself aloud, and arraying yourself in amber silk, as if some one was coming.” “I was not talking to myself, I was talking to you,” she said, indignantly; “and you told me yourself to put on this dress, when you said Captain Danvers was coming.” “I have never spoken to you since luncheon,” I said, “and as to Captain Danvers, I have never even heard of him.” Her face blanched, as I spoke, with a sort of horror that quickly reflected itself in mine. “You never told me to put on this dress because he was coming?” she said. interrogatively. “No, I didn’t,” I said, shaking my head. “Do go and ask Mrs. Davant if you didn’t come with that message to me, half an hour ago. Stay! I’ll come too. I dare not be alone now.” “I shall not face mamma until dinner is ready,” I said, going on with my dressing. “Half an hour ago I was two miles away from home, in the middle of the common, on Cock Robin.” “Then the house is haunted,” Milly said; “and I have seen and spoken to a spirit. And it was like you,” she added stammeringly; and then she sat down, and seemed to be trying to collect herself. I had a very natural elucidation to offer, both to her and to myself, of this seeming mystery. “You probably sat down by the fire when you came up to dress?” I asked her. She nodded assent. “There is the clue to your mental maze.” I said, rather scornfully. “The heat overcame you, and you slept and dreamt a dream that has bothered you.” “It may have been a dream; but if it was, I am not awake now,” she said, slowly; “it was so vivid–so horribly vivid. I will just tell you how it all happened or how it seemed to happen,” she said. “I was sitting by the fire in my dressing-gown, when you came quickly into the room, dressed in a blue silk, with a quantity of Christmas roses in your hair and on your bosom. You didn’t look at me, but you said, ‘Make haste, and dress yourself in your amber silk, Milly; mamma wishes it.’ And when I asked, ‘Why?’ you said, ‘Oh! because Captain Danvers is coming to dinner.’ Then you went again, and I dressed: and that is all.” “A dream!” I said laughing. “Now, I am ready: mamma will think you crazy when she sees you such a swell. Who is Captain Danvers?” “An army officer,” Milly said, with a young country girl’s pride in knowing a military man. “I saw him several times while I was up in London with my aunt.” “You never mentioned him to me,” I said. “I know that,” she said, blushing a little. “I made myself a goose about him, so aunt said,” she continued, laughing, “and so I have held my tongue about him since; but I was very glad indeed when you told me just now that he was coming here to dine.” “When you dreamt it,” I insisted; and then we went in to dinner, and told this joke, as we both began to consider it, to mamma.
By the time the ball came off, we had nearly forgotten Milly’s vision, as she would insist on calling it. It does not in the least matter my mentioning now, at this distance of time, that Milly and I were the rival belles of the evening. We were young, we were fresh, we were pretty–above all, we were new. Being both under the wing of the same chaperone, we met at long intervals during the progress of the ball, and in the midst of my own triumphs I found time to notice that Milly was frequently on the arm of a handsome, distinguished looking man, a stranger, who was in the uniform of an infantry regiment. “That is Captain Danvers, Annette,” she had time to whisper to me once in the evening; and from the tone of that whisper I judged that she fancied she had met with her fate. I soon knew Captain Danvers very well indeed; for shortly after that ball, he became Milly Deane’s declared lover. I have called him distinguished looking, and so he was to our girlish eyes. Perhaps if we looked at him with the matured vision of to-day, we might substitute the word unhealthy for distinguished, and be considerably nearer the mark. But in those days he was, if not a god of beauty, a very fair object of admiration to us. He was very tall and very slight, and his hair and eyes were both black and shining, and his face was of almost a ghastly pallor. Unquestionably he was a very striking looking man; and we stricken ones, in those early days, pronounced him an Apollo. He talked in a way that was quite new to us both, too. We trembled, but admired, when he avowed his beliefs, which were few, and his non-beliefs, which were many. His shallow scepticism, and his mystical metaphysical allusions, seemed to be very brilliant things to us in those early hours of our luckless intercourse with him. Yet all the time I felt him to be a dangerous man and wondered how Milly’s infatuation would terminate for herself.
They were married in about four months from the ball at which they had renewed their acquaintance. Milly went off to India almost immediately with her husband, and so we parted, my pretty friend and I. And soon a romance of my own swept her romance from my mind and memory, although for herself I had a warm affection still. I settled down into the happy wife of a prosperous man, and the proud mother of fair good children. Milly and I corresponded with tolerable regularity. Of her husband she never spoke after the first six months or so of her marriage. That she was a disappointed and unhappy woman I could not fail to perceive.
At the end of five years Mrs. Danvers came home alone on a sort of sick leave which had been granted her by her husband. We were living in London at the time, and it seemed to me only natural that my solitary friend should have made our house her home. The very morning after her arrival in town I went to the hotel at which she had given me her address, and solicited her to do so. But she refused decidedly at once, saying that she was better alone for many reasons. I questioned her closely, with the loving curiosity my affection for her entitled me to display, as to how she was wont to pass her time, and whether her husband and herself were sympathetic in their pursuits or not. “Very sympathetic!” she said once, rather harshly. “We both like to please ourselves.” “Have I been superseded, Milly?” I persisted. “Have you any female friend in India who seems nearer and dearer to you than I do?” “I haven’t a female friend besides yourself in the world,” she said, quietly; “not one I assure you, Annette; not one that I would go a yard out of my way to confide a joy or a sorrow to.” “You would confide both to me if we were thrown much together again,” I said, determined not to be rebuffed. “Not trivial ones.” “Great ones, then?” I said. She moved uneasily off the sofa on which she had been reclining, and stood with her back to me, gazing out of the window. “Great ones, perhaps,” she said slowly, after a long pause.
“Annette,” and she turned round suddenly upon me, “shall I promise you that in the greatest trouble of my life I will come to you? I will so promise if you wish it.”
“You may not be able to come to me,” I began protesting. I was going on to say, “but I hope you will always write to me if–,” but she interrupted me. “I may not be able to come to you in the flesh,” she said emphatically ; and I answered “That is exactly what I meant; but you will write?” She nodded her beautiful head and said,–“I promise that, in my greatest trouble, I will come to you, Annette; and you, on your part, promise that you will not shrink from me.” An interruption occurred just then, and we never renewed the subject. “Annette,” she said to me one day, when we were sitting alone, talking over schoolgirl days, “have you a blue dress trimmed about the body and sleeves with Christmas roses?” “No,” I said, laughing; “haven’t you forgotten my ghostly visitation to you yet?” “No, I haven’t forgotten that ghostly visitation, and I never shall forget it.”
Milly Danvers stayed in England about eight months ; then she re-embarked for India, “which I shall probably never leave again,” she said sadly. “Does the climate try you so very much?” I asked anxiously. “Cruelly! cruelly!” she said warmly; “I can’t live there long.” “Does Captain Danvers know this?” I asked, indignantly. “Yes, dear champion of mine;” she said, affectionately. “Why else should he wish me back?” she said, curling her lip a little; “of course he knows it. Captain Danvers would not miss me–” “Oh, yes, he would!” I interrupted, hastily; her tone was so desperately despairing, that I could not bear it. “Oh, yes, he would! why else should he wish you to go back to him?” “Because no questions are asked, either about gradual decay, or sudden death there,” she said; and then she peremptorily decreed that nothing more should be said about it. We parted very soon after this, and when I heard from her that she had arrived in their cantonment in the Madras Presidency safely, the gloomy impression upon my mind by our last interview faded away.
Months passed away, and Christmas-tide was upon us. We had arranged a juvenile party on the occasion of our eldest child’s seventh birthday, and. in decking out my little men and women, and arranging my rooms, I overlooked that usually important matter–my own toilette. A couple of days before our juvenile ball, I laughingly told my husband of my dilemma. “I haven’t a ball dress fresh enough to wear in honour of our little Milly,” I said to him, “and really I have no time to go to my dressmaker.” “I will go and order you one; leave it to me, Annette,” he replied; and I agreed to do so, only stipulating that he should not make me too fine, and that he should avoid pink. The night of little Milly’s ball arrived in due season; and, fatigued with my exertions, I went up to my dressing-room, determined upon resting until it was time for me to dress. My robe had not come home yet, but I could rely on Madame Varcoe’s honour–she had said that it should be home by half-past eight at the latest, and I knew that she would keep her word. Feeling thus easy, I fell asleep, and slept a dreamless sleep of some hour and a half. Then I awoke, and found my dress laid out ready for me to put on, and my maid waiting to do my hair. “It’s one of the prettiest dresses Madame Varcoe has ever made for you,” my maid said, as I cast a glance towards the bed, “a most delicate rich blue, trimmed with the most loveliest Christmas roses.” Strange as it may appear–at least, strange as it does appear to me now–I gave no thought at the time to the coincidence between my actual dress and the dress of Millv Deane’s dream. My head was full of other things, and memory was effectually put to flight by the entrance of my three little girls, vociferously declaring “that I should be late, and that it seemed as if people were never coming.” But the little guests came all in good time, and enjoyed themselves almost as much as I did. I say almost as much as I did advisedly, for that must be the happiest ball for a woman which she organises for the first time for her eldest child. At any rate, I can imagine no higher Terpsichorean happiness than this. Yet the day has been (not so very long ago either) when I enjoyed a ball as gaily as the gayest.
It was over at last, and when I had seen my pleased and sleepy children safely into their respective beds, I went slowly to my own room, and sat down by the fire to wait for my husband. I had told my maid that I would dispense with her services, and so I sat alone, and pleased myself with recalling the little ebullitions of childish pleasure which I had witnessed that night. My husband was down in his study still, looking through the evening papers, the late editions of which had been neglected by him in his endeavours to contribute to the little people’s entertainment. It must have been about two o’clock in the morning when I roused myself from my cheerful reverie, and stood up to commence my preparations for retiring for the night. The chair I had been occupying was a large massive carved oak one, with a very high back. As I stood up, I became conscious, without seeing anything, that some one was leaning on this back, and, thinking that it must be my husband, I said quietly, “You have come at last, dear?” “At last,” a very soft voice whispered–breathed rather; and then I turned round startled, and saw nothing on the spot from whence the voice had proceeded. A nameless horror, a dreadful fear possessed me. I could not cry out; even in my agony of fear I revolted against doing that. When I could move–and for a few moments I was quite unable to do so–my impulse was to get nearer to the gas, which was low, and turn on a brighter light. I had two lamps in my room, one on either side of my cheval glass; and as I reached up to turn on a higher light, I caught sight of myself. I was in just such a dress as Milly had described me as wearing when she saw me, or fancied that she saw me, or dreamt that she saw me. Sick and horrified, and chilled with a more than mortal dread, I staggered back to my chair, and buried my face in my hands. Something swept softly up to me from a darker corner of the room, swept softly up and stood beside my chair. I felt the air grew heavier, as occupied air does grow. I heard low breathings; some one was bending over me nearer and nearer. Then the breathings formed themselves into words, into a word rather, and I heard my own name murmured distinctly,
“Annette, Annette,” and I knew that it was murmured in Milly Danvers’ voice. I shuddered, and tried to look up. I took my hands down from before my face, and strove to lift my eyes and strove in vain. I could not do it. I had a dread of being so awfully frightened that I might never recover it. That Milly Danvers was standing close to me I was well assured. But I was also well assured that it was not Milly Danvers in the flesh. Then I remembered the words she had spoken to me. “I will promise to come to you in the greatest trouble of my life,” she had said ; and I felt, as her words flashed back upon me, that my friend must be in fearful trouble now. Again the impalpable presence spoke, “Annette, remember the hour! note it!” Shiveringly, shudderingly I raised my eyes at last, and there, gilding away into the shade by the side of the bed, I saw a slight frail form. Instantaneously I turned to my clock. The hour hand stood at three, the minute hand at five minutes past twelve. I grasped the bell, “all my soul within me sinking,” and rang such a peal as quickly brought my husband to my side. I wrote to Milly the following day, and I got no answer. I wrote again, and my second letter shared the fate of my first one. Then I gave up the attempt to elucidate whatever of mystery there was in the affair, and tried to forget it–and could not. Just twelve months after this I was spending the Christmas week, together with my husband, at the house of one of his married sisters in the country. We arrived just in time to dress for dinner, and in the brief interval between my going up to my room for that purpose, and being joined by my husband, my sister-in-law came to speak to me for a minute. “We have a goodly party dining here to-day, Annette,” she said. “Captain Danvers expressed the greatest pleasure at meeting you again.” “Captain Danvers! is he here?” ” He is, with his wife,” she said, shutting the door, and running off; and I was left alone, repeating to myself, “His wife! Then Milly is not dead!” and then we dressed, and went down to dinner. I recognised Captain Danvers the instant I got into the drawing-room. He was considerably altered; still I knew him at a glance. I looked round the room. Milly was not there. Impulsively I went up to him and asked, as I took his offered hand, “Where is your wife?” “She will be here in a few moments,” he answered, smiling his old, brilliantly flashing smile and the wild throbbing at my heart ceased. She was alive, and she was here! That was sufficient for me. I curbed my impatience, and stood still, watching the door. Two or three ladies, strangers to me, entered the room, and, a moment after, my brother-in-law asked a gentleman to take me down to dinner. We all went down. Captain Danvers was on the opposite side of the table, at some little distance from me. I looked round the table, and Milly was not there. The dinner that day seemed to be an endless affair to me. I was most impatient to ask our hostess where Mrs. Danvers was. I went to her the moment we got into the drawing-room, ” Where is Mrs. Danvers?” I said; “she is my dearest old friend, and I’m longing to see her.” “You might have renewed your acquaintance at the table, then, surely,” she said, pointing out a fair, pretty young woman whom I had observed sitting very near to me at dinner. “That Mrs. Danvers! impossible!” “But the truth, notwithstanding,” she said, laughing; “she is a bride, and a beauty, and altogether rather an acquisition to my Christmas party, I consider.” I was almost stunned at the revelation of Milly’s death; and when Captain Danvers, later in the evening, came sauntering up to me suavely, saying, “Now, at last, I can renew my very pleasant acquaintance with you,” I cut him short at once by saying, “Captain Danvers, when did Milly die?” “Last Christmas Eve,” he said. ” At five minutes past three?” I asked eagerly, and he said—“Yes.” And as he said it the two ghostly episodes which connected the three (Milly, Captain Danvers, and myself) together, stood out like bodily presences before my eyes.
My story is finished. Call it a ghost story, a fable, a fancy—what you will. I can only declare that the spiritual visitations actually occurred. Milly’s fate was never cleared up. She died, we learnt afterwards, after a long, tedious illness which defied the medical skill that was called in, nearly at the last, by her philosophically calm husband, Captain Danvers.
The Bradford [West Yorkshire England] Observer 18 November 1869: p. 6
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: How very solicitous of Captain Danvers to recall his ill and unhappy wife to that place where no questions are asked, either about gradual decay, or sudden death–and where physicians called to a death-bed, are commendably discreet about the belated summons. One wonders whether the Captain (who had surely attained the rank of Colonel) retained the services of the same medical gentleman when he tired of his beauty of a bride.
Touching though it is to see the two friends reunited by the late Milly’s apparition, it would be far more satisfying to see the first Mrs Danvers haunt the Captain so that he would be found dead in his bed with an expression of stark, staring horror on his ghastly, pallid face and a scrap of amber silk clutched between his fingers.
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
At a cotillion recently given in Calcutta Lady Curzon invented some new figures that may serve as hints to American hostesses….
The third and most brilliant figure was an auction sale of charming girls hidden wholly inside of huge Christmas stockings. Ten young women would be called up and carried into an adjoining room. They were persuaded to step into enormous stockings made of different goods–one a silk stocking, another a brilliant golf hose, another a plain, stout, yarn affair; a fourth was an old-style white stocking with a pink top, a fifth was a baby’s sock, a sixth showed wonderful clocks, a seventh was a clown’s stocking, an eighth was an open-work bas de soie, the ninth was a blue stocking, and the tenth was an old stocking patched and worn.. Every man at the ball was allowed freely to comment on the appearance and possible usefulness of the 10 Brobdingnagian hose, while the auctioneer swung his hammer and highly recommended the contents of these strange Christmas stockings. Cheerful giggles and pleased comments or indignant protests issued from the tops of the stockings as the crowd criticised, laughed, peered or guessed at the identity of the persons inside, and finally, when the bidding was over, the many-colored bags were opened. Tremendous surprise ensued, and the men who had bid highest waltzed off with their purchases, who were pleased or reproachful, in accordance with the good prices they had brought.
The Baltimore [MD] Sun 10 January 1901: p. 3
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: “In olden days, a glimpse of stocking…” Mrs Daffodil wonders about how the young women were “persuaded” to step into the stockings–with chloroform or a cosh? And was anything more than a waltz contractually implicit in those “purchases?” One would give much to know the sequel to such pairings. It could not have been pleasant to spend the remainder of the evening with the contents of the stocking sold for the lowest figure, or to find that a more liberal bidder had carried off the young lady of one’s heart. A salutary lesson to parsimonious gentlemen.
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
The great social-amusement event of the season in the far West is the opening of the Ice Castle at Leadville. Colorado, under the auspices of the Crystal Carnival Association, and life in the Carbonate Camp is, for the months of January, February, and March, to be one continuous round of pleasure, fun and entertainment for all who have leisure.
The present season marks a new era in the camp, in its recovery from the effects of the silver slump, and in its attaining new fame as a great gold producer. It also marks a temporary departure from the intense attention to mining and money getting that has possessed the people of the camp for nearly two decades. It tends toward an appreciation of the artistic, toward indulgence in amusement for amusement’s sake, and to a too unfrequent recognition of the social side of life.
The Leadville Carnival, according to its managers, bids fair to be the most successful concern of its kind ever undertaken in America. The idea was born of the restless energy that characterizes the people of the high, altitudinous portion of the West. It was seized, in lieu of a mining boom, with rare avidity and enthusiasm, and. backed by the plethoric purses of bonanza kings, it has crystallized into a magnificent structure of cold splendors—an artist’s chef d’ouevre in ice. It is a veritable palace, patterned in a measure after those of St. Petersburg and Moscow. Its site is nearly two miles above sea level, on a ridge in the Leadville basin, and overlooking the city of Leadville and the valley of the Arkansas, picturesque in winter snow and belts of sombre conifers. The grim snow-clad peaks of the Musquito and Saguache ranges rise to majestic heights on either side of the valley, and the cycloramic view from the ice castle is one of alpestrine, wintry grandeur.
For two months about two hundred men have been employed in erecting the building, which is of the Old Norman school of architecture, and in which three hundred thousand feet of lumber and five thousand tons of ice are used. The greatest length is four hundred and fifty feet and the width is three hundred and fifty feet. It is a permanent frame structure, encased with solid walls of ice. Two massive octagonal towers ninety feet high flank the main entrance. Flag-staffs rise from the towers to the height of one hundred and twenty feet.
The effect is of massive architectural beauty. Within the portals stands a huge female figure in ice, representing the glorification of Leadville. With one arm she points to the eastern hills, and in the other she holds a scroll bearing the legend “$207,000,000.” These being the figures which represent the total metallic wealth produced by the camp—since its conversion front a placer-mining into a lode-mining camp.
Ice statues in the Leadville ice palace
The main chamber is a skating rink with fifteen thousand square feet of ice surface. Its ceiling is decorated with a heavy frost-work of artificially produced rime. Corinthian columns of solid ice, inclosing incandescent lights before tin reflectors, support the roof.
The grand ballroom has a floor of grooved Texas pine. The annexes include an auxiliary ballroom and dining hall, and a complement of modern conveniences; icicle effects are given in the decorations. The eastern annex is finished in terra-cotta and blue, and the western annex in orange and blue. Throughout the edifice an effort has been made to combine beauty of scene with comfort, a fitting abode for the devotees of the Frost King.
A museum annex has a lot of snow statuary carved out of snow slushed solidly and then sprayed, and exhibits of fruit. flowers, and mechanical appliances in solid cakes of ice. A programme of divertisements throughout the winter on an elaborate scale has been planned, and a season of festivities, glittering pageantry, and winter sports has been inaugurated. Chief among them will be the storming of the ice castle by the Snow-Shoe and other clubs, the castle being held and defended by the Leadville Press Club. Various gala and occasional days have been set, and brilliant balls and receptions will be given from time to time. Among the outdoor attractions is a toboggan slide two thousand feet long with a double rush.
Leadville is gay with bunting, the colors being old gold, silver, copper, and lead, representing the royal and chief base metals produced by the camp. The official souvenir badge is of silver and gold, a bucket of ore hung on a bar composed of a shovel, pick. and hammer, emblematic of the miners’ calling. On the streets gay carnival costumes mingle with the picturesque garb of the miners.
The director-general of the Crystal Carnival. Mr. Tingley S. Wood, is a representative and successful miner, operating on a large scale, and owning productive properties in the gold belt and silver contact zone. He is a native of southeastern Ohio, and resides with his family part of the time in Springfield, Illinois, where he is a member of the famous Sangamon Club. Mr. Wood is a gentleman of dignified demeanor, handsome, courteous, and urbane. Always well dressed, he is thoroughly versed in geology, mineralogy, and the mysteries of smelting, and is the ideal successful miner.
That the fair sex will be brilliantly represented at the Carnival will be understood by any one who will glance at our page of pictures of the prominent women of Leadville.
Julius Von Linden
The Illustrated American 11 January 1896: p. 345
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Undoubtedly a glittering occasion, to judge by the lavish prose of Mr Von Linden. Mrs Daffodil is reminded of the fancy-dress skating carnivals of Canada and the luxury ice hotels of the frozen north. While acknowledging the novelty (and the appeal of seeing the Northern Lights in their native habitat), Mrs Daffodil is at a loss for why one would travel so far to spend the night in an unheated chamber, when one might experience the same sensations at any week-end spent at an English country-house.
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
Before the custom of making calls on New Year’s day had quite come to an end in New York, we were directing envelopes for our cards, during Christmas week, when some one noticed that we had forgotten our friend, Mr. Blomgren. We hastened to correct our omission, and fell to speaking of Mr. Blomgren as one we liked particularly. He was amiable and unassuming, and had the most winning manners. In fact, he was a very fine specimen of the Swedish gentleman, and each of us had something pleasant to say of him, and we rejoiced that we had discovered our mistake in time for him to get his card, which we directed to his boarding place.
New Year’s day came, and, during the afternoon, Mr. Blomgren did not present himself. However, we had rather thought that he would come in the evening and were not surprised.
It was about eight o’clock, I think, when one of us went up-stairs to put two little nieces, who were visiting us, to bed.
The children were sound asleep, and their aunt was growing drowsy, when she became aware of a tall figure standing in the door-way, and, starting up, saw that it was Mr. Blomgren, and fancied that, as the room was sometimes used as a dressing-room at our receptions, he had supposed that this would be the case to-night.
She arose and advanced toward him, saying words to the effect that every one was down stairs. He answered, without a smile—”I came because you sent me a card.”
“We are delighted to see you, Mr. Blomgren,” she replied ; “shall we go down?” But he was already gone, and she followed.
As he was not to be found in any of the lower rooms, and none of us had seen him, we decided that the mistake he had made had mortified him and that he had gone away at once, and we were all very sorry. Yet, it was not like him to be so sensitive, he was too much a man of the world, and not by any means a boy— thirty years of age, probably.
A few days after, a lady friend called, and one of us spoke of Mr. Blomgren. She had got so far as to say —”of course, we sent him cards “—when the visitor cried out:
“Sent him cards?—why, he had been dead a week or more on New Year’s day.”
He died of pneumonia, after a brief illness, and, having no relatives here, he was taken to a hospital.
I know that many people who knew him had no knowledge of his death until weeks after it occurred.
It is only fair to say that the lady who saw him afterwards decided that she must have been asleep and dreamed it all—though, she declared, it resembled no other dream that she had ever had, and she was not conscious of any waking.
The Freed Spirit: Or Glimpses Beyond the Border, Mary Kyle Dallas, 1897
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: We think of the notion of a round of New Year’s Day calls as a stream of decorous visitors wishing the householders the joys of the season and leaving their cards in the tray. In reality, the addresses of prominent persons holding “open houses” on New Year’s were printed in the newspapers and droves of young males went about from house to house, just long enough to greet the party and swill the alcoholic refreshments that etiquette demanded be offered. Their social depredations were planned with military precision to see how many houses they could “hit.” By the end of the day, most of the revelers were so intoxicated they could not stand up. They could not be left to litter the streets so most of them were swept up by the officers of the law and hauled off to court. These distasteful celebrations spelt an end to formal New Year’s Day calls.
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
A Devonshire man sent his club, just before Christmas, a fine large swan in a hamper. The hamper was addressed to the secretary, who notified the club members of the treat that was in store, and a special swan dinner was arranged. The swan came on, at this dinner, looking magnificent — erect and stately on a great silver-gilt salver. But tough! It was so tough you couldn’t carve the gravy.
A few days later the sender of the swan dropped in at the club. “Got my swan all right. I hope?” he said to the secretary.
“Yes, and a nice trick you played us.”
“Trick? What do you mean?”
“Why, we boiled that swan for sixteen hours, and when it came on the table it was tougher than a block of granite.”
“Good gracious! Did you have my swan cooked?”
“Yes, of course.”
The other was in despair.
“Why, that bird was historic,” he groaned. “I sent him up to be stuffed and preserved. He had been in my family for 200 years. He had eaten out of the hand of King Charles I.”
The Argonaut [San Francisco, CA] 8 January 1910
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Mrs Daffodil does not like to call a gentleman a liar, but swans only live for perhaps two or three decades at best. If the swan truly had eaten out of the hand of King Charles I, he must have been frozen solid for at least two centuries.
The club secretary and members would have felt like royalty: roast swan was a feature of royal Christmas feasts from time immemorial. The Crown may lay claim to all swans in public waters; currently the Queen shares her swans with two livery companies: the vintners and the dyers; the yearly ceremony of “swan upping” divides the Thames swans between the Queen and the livery companies. Queen Victoria and King Edward VII enjoyed a nice Christmas swan. This article gives the receipt for its preparation, should you happen to have a 200-year-old swan lying about the larder.
KING’S CHRISTMAS SWAN.
Every Year One is Served at Sandringham—The Recipe.
The royal swan has ever been a conspicuous item in the Christmas menu at Sandringham. Every year the largest and plumpest young cygnet that can be obtained from the swannery on the Thames is killed.
When it leaves the hands of the special messenger at Sandringham it is taken charge of by the head cook, who personally looks after it until it is laid before the king.
Trussed like a goose, it is stuffed with a rich mixture of which the principal ingredient is ¾ of a pound of rump steak. It is finally covered with a piece of oily paper, sprinkled with flour, wrapped in a second piece of paper; and then roasted on a spit for four or five hours in front of a blazing fire.
A gravy of beef is provided to which is added a pint of good port wine. Folk who have tasted this dish describe the flavor as being half way between goose and hare. New York World.
The Boston [MA] Globe 24 January 1909: p. 48
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
Eat a few apples for refreshment’s sake, while skating, and be sure to throw the cores on the ice for fast skaters to break their shins on.
There is no law to prevent a beginner from sitting down whenever he is so inclined.
Skate over all the small boys at once. Knock ‘em down. It makes great fun, and they like it.
If you skate into a hole in the ice take it coolly. Think how you would feel if the water were boiling hot.
If your skates are too slippery buy a new pair. Keep buying new pairs until you find a pair that is not slippery.
In sitting down do it gradually. Don’t be too sudden; you may break the ice.
When you fall headlong, examine the straps of your skates very carefully before you get up. That will make everybody think you fell because your skate was loose.
Wear a heavy overcoat or cloak until you get thoroughly warmed up, then throw it off, and let the wind cool you. This will insure you a fine cold!
After you get so you can skate tolerably well, skate three or four hours—skate frantically—skate till you can’t stand.
The Spirit of Democracy [Woodsfield OH] 10 February 1874: p. 1
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Inexperienced skaters might also take advantage of the useful
SAFETY SKATING FRAME. FOR BEGINNERS.
Our readers can see the proportions in the cut. The bottom of the runners being slightly curved, the frame is easily turned in any direction. The ends of the runners being turned up, enables the frame to pass over any reasonable impediment, thus saving it from stopping, and being thrown over forwards; the long tails would not allow it to be pulled over backwards. The skater’s hands being placed on the hand rail, between its supports, prevents her from upsetting the frame sideways.
Godey’s Lady’s Book December 1863
Advice on skating abounded, such as How to be Decorative While Ice-Skating and what NOT to do on the ice–A Swell Party on Ice. Mrs Daffodil’s soundest advice is to stay indoors where you may spread oil-cloth on the parlour floor and slide about to your heart’s content, with no danger of frost-bite or pneumonia from an icy plunge. There a simple tug at the bell brings a convenient tray of tea, cocoa, and biscuits, something that cannot be said for frozen ponds, which are generally not equipped with servants’ bells.
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
“KETTLE-DRUM.” Another Fashionable Folly – Winter Picnics.
In this country we have few gentlemen of leisure, and in society, ladies’ clubs to the contrary notwithstanding, you can do little without gentlemen. While these are daily absorbed in some pursuit, ladies have been compelled to abandon themselves to lounging, dressing, calling, lunching, reading novels, and other weak efforts to kill time, cultivating society principally as an evening amusement, which usually resolves into the crush and jam of a party. Now, however, in large eastern cities, ladies are turning young men who have leisure, into account. They are invited to “kettle-drums,” a species of entertainment something like a high tea, where ladies are in the preponderance, where the rigidity of full evening dress is not required, where the proceedings are easy and informal, servants only being admitted with trays of refreshments, and then excluded, the hostess herself pouring tea or chocolate for her guests, and where society plans are discussed, suggestions made, and people decapitated without mercy. The “kettle-drum” has in it the elements of immense success, but it is necessarily confined in its sphere of operations. It was at a party of that character that the notion of a “winter picnic”—another scheme to kill time of those who have nothing to do during the day—was proposed. The modus operandi of the latter is thus described: A lady volunteers the use of her house, which she is expected to decorate with evergreens in profusion—holly, mistletoe, cedar, pine and the like—and also provide tea. The rest of the eatables the gentlemen contribute. One sends a hamper of ready cooked game, another fruit, another cakes and biscuits, another the creams and ices, and so on, until the collation is complete. Wine is not favored; instead, “Russian” tea is the vogue, simply Pekoe, choice Bohea or Mandarin tea, with thin slices of lemon floating in it instead of milk. As much of the house as possible is thrown open, halls are festooned with green, tubs and pots containing plants from the conservatory, or hired from a neighboring greenhouse, are placed here and there, and the table is spread picnic fashion by the company themselves, who also restore the dishes to the baskets and wind up with a dance. We heard it rumored that a lady, prominent in society in this city, is making preparations for a “winter picnic” at an early day.
Morning Republican [Little Rock AR] 13 January 1874: p. 4
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: To be Relentlessly Informative, the origins of the term “Kettle-drum” are shrouded in the mists of the seventeenth century:
The origin of the Kettle-drum as somewhat obscure, but if history speaks truly, they were very common during the reign of that gay monarch, Charles the Second. The ladies returning from the hunt, gathered together for a tea-drinking and some light refreshment, the entertainment being known as a “drum,” to which the term kettle was later prefixed. The term Kettle-drum can not, therefore, be applied to anything but a tea-drinking; and, strictly speaking, should include only a light refreshment of sandwiches, cake, and biscuits. At no afternoon entertainment, at present, unless a full dress reception, is coffee or wine fashionable, chocolate or bouillon being the substitutes; and these, as well as tea, should be served in small dainty cups, the cream and sugar being handed each guest on a salver. Cook Book of the Northwest 1887: p. 167
Naturally, it was an English importation.
The kettledrum, or five o’clock tea, is really a very admirable institution, and a great relief in the severe formality and heaviness of average English entertainments. The guests drop in a little after four, the ladies retaining their hats and wraps. There are pictures and books to discuss, music at intervals; the rooms and balconies are filled with flowers; there is presently an ethereal little refection of wafer-thin bread and butter, delicate cakes, coffee and tea, served upon exquisite porcelain; and then after a little more talk and music the company melts unceremoniously away, and the little meeting has been simple, inexpensive—not–gay, for that would not be English, but pleasantly content—an excellent thing in the right houses, and in the wrong ones an evil of bearable weight and duration. The Galaxy, Vol. 15, February 1873: p. 260
Mrs Daffodil has long served the leisured class and no fashionable folly such as a “winter picnic” would surprise her. Still, one is rather shocked at the “soft” socialites holding such a soirée indoors. Where is that rugged American spirit? Here is how a proper “winter picnic” might be achieved:
WINTER PICNIC HINTS
A winter picnic may be great fun
Ice and snow offer as many inducements for out-of-doors sports as any thing we have in summer. Two things, however, are essential really to enjoy a winter picnic. The first is proper clothing. Sweaters, woolen gloves and arctics are essentials. The second is the lunch. This should be much more substantial than the summer fare. If possible, have a good fire and cook at least one hot dish. In cold weather metal is disagreeable to handle, so use enameled ware cups and plates, which won’t break if dropped by cold fingers. Ham and eggs fried over a camp fire make a hearty lunch, and if an enameled ware frying pan is used it will be found easier to manager than the heavier iron variety. A little ingenuity will suggest many tasty hot dishes and winter picnics once tried will become a favorite pastime.
Trenton [NJ] Evening Times 23 November 1915: p. 11
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
Bertie was sitting alone in her room, with the oddest little puckers upon her face that had ever clouded its sunny beauty. She was a pretty, fair-haired little girl, not quite ten years old, and she was thinking very deeply. In about a month it would be Christmas, and Daisy Nichols, who lived very near, had been telling Bertie of all the presents she intended to buy for her friends. “I have four dollars and sixty-nine cents in my bank,” Daisy had said, “and seven presents to buy. We are going up to the city soon, and mamma says I may go shopping with her. It is splendid to go shopping for Christmas presents.” Bertie was quite willing to admit that it was splendid, but, after Daisy had gone, a little pang of envy had crept into her heart.
She lived in the country, in a large, old-fashioned house, that was well filled, for Grandma and Grandpa, Uncle John and Aunt Sue, Cousin Will and Cousin Lizzie, all had a home there, besides Bertie’s own papa and mamma, Charlie, who was her oldest brother and past twelve, Maggie and Fannie, her twin sisters, seven years old, and wee, toddling Freddie, who was not quite two. These, with the two servants, Bridget and Jane, were all so dear to Bertie, that really the question of present giving assumed very large proportions. Bertie counted them all on her fingers, and sighed. For Mrs. Hallway, Bertie’s mamma, did not approve of giving children money. She gave her children games, toys, books, some candies, and many pleasures, but she did not like them to have money, and Bertie had never owned a bank, much less four dollars and sixty-nine cents to put into one.
“But I should dearly like to make some Christmas presents!” sighed little Bertie, aloud.
“Would you, my dear?” said a soft little voice very near to her, and the little girl saw standing upon a table beside her, a little woman, who looked very much like the china shepherdess upon the mantlepiece. She had on a blue petticoat, and scarlet slippers, a straw hat, and white waist, and really, on the whole, was so very like the shepherdess that Bertie stole a glance at the mantlepiece. The china shepherdess was gone.
“Yes, my dear; that is me!” said the little woman, following her glance. “My name is Ingenuity. I am very fond of you because you are so neat and so industrious. You always keep me sweet and clean, and you have so many pretty notions about your work, that I really felt as if I must give you a helping hand in your trouble.”
“But I don’t see how you can help me,” said Bertie; “you can’t have any money, you know, and mamma would not let me take it if you had.”
“Very true. But I thought you only wanted the money to buy presents!”
“That is all I do want of it,” said Bertie, wondering how the little shepherdess could know her thoughts so well.
“But you can have the presents without any money,” said Ingenuity. “You need not open your blue eyes so very wide. Clear this table, and let me show you what a little Ingenuity can do to help you.” But Bertie’s eyes would open wider and wider, as she watched this wonderful little fairy. First she darted over to the closet, and turned out in a heap upon the floor all Bertie’s girl treasures, that she kept in nice order. Her work-basket with the pieces of chintz for patchwork, her box of pictures, most of them chromo cards papa had brought home from the city, her box of fancy work materials, scraps of silk, zephyrs, beads, sewing silk, not a very large assortment, but mostly the odds and ends left from the larger pieces of fancy work her mamma, aunt, or Cousin Lizzie had given her.
While Bertie was secretly hoping the fairy would help to put the closet in order again, Ingenuity had flown over to the bureau, and found an old pomatum pot quite empty. With the swiftest of motion, she washed it clean, and then took from the heap of pictures a few with butterflies and flowers on them. She laid these flat, face down, upon the table, and moistened the back, and the paper curled off in layers, till only one thin layer with the picture upon it was left. With a pair of tiny scissors, she cut out the butterflies and flowers, gummed them on the pomatum pot, and then with a wee brush varnished them all over.
“There, my dear!” she said; “that is a jewel-case to put rings and brooches in at night. I am sure Aunt Sue will think it lovely on her dressing table. You can get the varnish, you know, down in Charlie’s workshop, he has some for his carpenter play.” Then she darted off again, and tugged a cigar-box up to the table. “While we are daubing,” she said, “we will make another kind of jewel-box for mamma. First, I line this, as you see, with some of this old flannel petticoat, the one mamma gave you to make over for your dollies. This we cut nicely to fit the box, gum it down on the inside, bottom, sides, and cover. Now we cover that again with this piece of shiny calico, that won’t do very well for patchwork, because it does not wash nicely. The flannel, you see, does not come quite to the edge, so we turn the edge of the chintz in, and gum it down neatly. There! Is not that a soft, pretty bed for jewels?”
“But it is so ugly outside,” said Bertie.
“It is now, but see what I am going to do! This yellow paper you had wrapped around your bundle of school-books last week, and folded away, like a neat little girl as you are, is envelope paper, and quite stiff. We gum that this way, all over the box outside, sides and cover, making it perfectly smooth. Now on the very edge, we put a little narrow slip of this blue paper you have for paper doll dresses. Isn’t that pretty? Now we will cut out some more of the picture cards. This bird for the top, this bunch of cherries for the front, and here are two pretty bouquets for the sides. Now is it ugly outside?”
But before Bertie could half say how pretty she thought it, the little shepherdess was down on the heap again, tugging at a piece of calico, from the patchwork basket. “Isn’t this lovely?” she said, spreading it on the table. “You just cut it into a perfect circle, this way, about twenty-one inches in diameter, and hem the edge.” “I wish I could hem as fast as that,” thought Bertie; for the tiny needle fairly flew round the edge. “Now you put on a facing of tape, about three inches from the edge, all round, on the wrong side. Leave a tiny space open, run in a cord, draw it up a little, and there, my dear, is a Lady Washington sweeping cap for Jane!”
“Oh!” said Bertie; “I did hate to cut up that piece of chintz for patchwork; I am glad I saved it.”
“Now for Bridget,” said the little fairy; “we will take some more of this old flannel, ever so many layers, cut square; whip the edges together strongly, and cover it all with this piece of blue delaine in your doll-baby box. We quilt this nicely, bind it with a little strip of red silk, and here is the most gorgeous iron-holder you ever saw.”
Putting the iron-holder beside the other treasures, Ingenuity opened a box of tiny beads, and with a threaded needle began to pick them out. Upon two threads she made a necklace, by putting three white beads upon each string, then one red one upon both threads together, joining them; then three more on each string, till the whole was long enough for a doll. She joined the ends with one big gold bead for a locket, and then made two wee bracelets to match.
“These are for Maggie’s doll,” she said, sewing them down upon a piece of card; “and we will make Fannie’s a set of furs.”
“Oh, you can’t!” said Bertie.
But Ingenuity took up a piece of new Canton flannel, and cut a tippet, and a straight piece for a muff. She lined them with some tiny pieces of pink silk in the fancy work pile, and sewed the ends of the straight piece together. The ends now formed of the muff, she trimmed with a cord and tassels of pink sewing silk, and put the same on the tippet to tie it at the doll’s neck. From the zephyr she selected some very short pieces of black zephyr [a very fine wool], and separated the threads with a coarse needle. The little fluffy tails thus made she sewed to the Canton flannel with yellow silk, and there was a lovely set of ermine furs for Fannie’s doll. “You know, my dear,” she said, “you can make some doll’s aprons or sacques that would delight Fannie and Maggie, but you know all about those. I dare say you could get some white stuff and make a ruffled apron for Bridget and Jane, if your mamma helped you a little, too.
For grandpa, I’ll tell you something splendid. Run down stairs and get me two adamantine candles. Ask mamma for them. Oh, here are two in the wash-stand drawer! Now get your box of decalcomanie pictures. Here are some tiny vines and birds put them on the candles very carefully, as you do any decalcomanie work. There! You have a pair of painted candles, all in the fashion, for that pair of silver candlesticks on grandpa’s mantlepiece. Be sure he will like them!
For grandma, let me see! Here is a square of coarse linen. If you fringe the edge, this way, about an inch, and then, each way, draw out three threads, and leave three threads, till it is all cross bars of open work, then catch each square with a cross stitch of cotton, sewed and fastened neatly, there is a cake basket cover for grandma, such as she used to make when she was a little girl.”
“Now,” thought Bertie, “what can she be going to do with my old knit scarf? It is all full of holes, and mamma said I must not wear it any more. Why, she is ravelling it all out.”
Like lightning flew the fairy fingers, till the scarf was all a heap of crimson and brown wool upon the floor. Then Ingenuity selected from the pile of articles a pill-box, and into that she put some little pieces of tin, and two broken buttons. Over it she wound the ravelling of the scarf, tightly, smoothly, till she had a ball about the size of an orange. Then she took Bertie’s crochet needle and crochetted a cover, slipping it on when half done, having widened every row to the middle, then narrowing till the ball was covered. Fastening the end carefully, she made a chain with the zephyr about four feet long.
“There,” she said, “is Freddie’s present! A beautiful, soft ball that rattles, and that you can tie to his waist, so he can pull it back when it rolls away.”
Then she darted off to the window sill, and tugged to the table a lovely, red apple Charlie had given Bertie. One slash of a knife, and it was split in two. Ingenuity took out all the seeds, and wiped them very dry. Then she threaded a very fine cambric needle with brown sewing silk. On the pointed end of the seed, she made two tiny ears by passing the thread through, and snipping it off. Whiskers were made in the same way, the silk being separated by the needle into fluffy, fine threads. A long tail was made at the round end by running the needle through the seed lenghtwise, and snipping it off.
”Apple-seed mice!” cried Bertie. “We saw some at the fair.”
When about a dozen mice were made, Ingenuity made a little white cotton bag stuffed full of cotton wool, upon which she wrote “flour,” and sewed it down to a card. Then the mice had some feet given them, by stitches of silk through the card, and through the seeds crossways, fastening them down to the card. They were running over the bag by stitches taken through that and through the mice in the same way.
“Oh, that is for Charlie!” cried Bertie; “he was so pleased with those at the fair, and Mrs. Watson showed me how to make them.”
“Now for papa,” said Ingenuity, “we will make a pen-wiper of some pieces of this scarlet flannel and black silk, cut into circles, each one a little smaller than the one under it. So, first black, then scarlet, and here is a big steel button to finish it off. I think for Uncle John I will make a pocket pincushion. Take these two pieces of card, cut them into circles exactly alike. Cover one with this piece of brown ribbon, the other with this piece of gay plaid silk. Sew them neatly together at the edges, and there is your pincushion. You can embroider the sides if you have time. For Cousin Will, make a book mark of perforated card and ribbon. And for Cousin Lizzie, I would work a “scratch my back.” Just embroider those three words on some perforated card in bright silk, line it with sand paper, and bind it with ribbon, leaving a little loop to hang it up by. Or you can make her a match-box by covering an old tin mustard-box with a perforated card cover, with “matches” worked on it, and cord and tassels of zephyr at each side. Why, my dear Bertie, there are lots of pretty things an industrious little girl like you can make with just what every little girl has in her own treasures. And you may be sure such presents are worth much more to those who love you, than what you buy in the stores.”
“Bertie! Bertie! the tea-bell has rung twice,” called Maggie. Bertie started to her feet, rubbing her eyes. All the pretty things were gone, the closet was in perfect order, the china shepherdess stood smiling on the mantlepiece. Was it all a dream? Mamma thought so. But what was not a dream was the real collection of treasures Bertie did make, just as Ingenuity had taught her, and which she distributed to each and every one on Christmas morning. Mamma helped a little, and papa gave a few new ribbons and pictures, but Bertie made fourteen presents, the cost of all being twenty cents.
Godey’s Lady’s Book [Philadelphia, PA] December 1878
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Mrs Daffodil wonders if Cousin Lizzie was rather “fast,” since the two gifts contemplated were a match-box and a match-striker. One fancies one can picture her: shapeless Dress Reform garments of Jaeger wool, a mannish tie, and a straw boater, lighting a gasper in the street while other ladies draw their skirts and their children away in horror.
Although the miniature set of furs do sound charming, Mrs Daffodil is well aware that home-made gifts are not always a success. Young ladies are particularly prone to giving unnecessary fancy-work articles to young men. Mrs Daffodil can do no better than to quote a squib from a 1904 journal:
An exchange for Christmas gifts, where you might unload your celluloid tokens of affection and where harassed young men could swap off the nameless embroidered mysteries that their feminine friends send them for an honest garment, would meet a long-felt want.
British Association for Victorian Studies Postgraduate Pages, hosted by Carys Hudson (Queen's University Belfast) and Hollie Geary-Jones (University of Chester)
Mrs Daffodil Digresses 