The Thirty-Pound Christmas Turkey: 1893

HAUNTED BY A TURKEY

How the Christmas Present of Thirty Pound Bird Destroyed a Man’s Peace of Mind.

There was an expression of despondency and care on the face of my friend Craggs when, a few days after Christmas, he took me aside and inquired in a quavering voice if I would take the gift of a turkey. He had a discouraged and almost hopeless air, as though he feared I was going to refuse to accept it.

“Thanks, old man,” said I, “I’ll take it and welcome.”

If he had been a street vendor and I had said, “I’ll buy your flowers,” he couldn’t have looked happier.

I could see that something was burdening his mind, but of course had no idea that it was the turkey itself.

He suddenly broke down all at once, grasped me by the hand and said huskily that it was a kindness he would never forget; that he would do as much for me some time, and went on in that style till I began to half fancy that in a fit of temporary insanity he might have stolen a turkey and was trying to get rid of the property in this way.

Then it occurred to me that I might have misunderstood him and he had really asked me to give him a turkey—which, of course, I couldn’t do, for obvious reasons—and the cold chills began to creep up my back.

For a moment it was perhaps the oddest predicament I was ever in. Then my friend Craggs regained his composure and explained himself this wise:

“You see, old fellow,” said he, “I have a turkey that’s an elephant on my hands—an incubus—a monster, and it all came about in this way.

“My wife and I keep house alone by ourselves, and on Christmas Day we had a turkey dinner. The turkey was a modest bird, who had never aspired to be a giant, but had contented himself with remaining juicy and tender.

“As a result of these modest aspirations and achievements of the fowl there remained of him after our Christmas dinner just enough to satisfy our appetites for turkey for some time to come in the way of perhaps another dinner and a few scraps for lunch.

“At this juncture, however, a package arrived at our house addressed to me, which upon being opened, proved to contain a turkey of herculean proportions, sent to me by a sister who lives out of the city on a farm.

“It was a regular Jack Falstaff of a turkey—the biggest I ever laid eyes on—with drumsticks bulging like hams, and a mighty corpulency withal, which told of good living and boundless ambitions in the matter of fat.

“Mrs. Craggs, being a thrifty housewife, was of course, delighted, but I am bound to confess that, though having a sneaking fondness for my stomach, I could not figure it out otherwise than this: That, there being but two of us to eat a turkey which would tip the scales at nearly thirty pounds, here was a prospect of having to endure that diet for weeks.

“I saw that it needs must follow, as the night the day, that that confounded turkey, in some form or other, either roasted or boiled or fried or chopped or fricasseed or mashed or hashed, would form the basis of my daily meals for days and perhaps weeks.

“I even feared, in which case, that the flavour of turkey might get so indelibly absorbed into my palate that it would never die away, forever casting a blighting flavor upon all my favorite dishes.

It took me hours to convince Mrs. Craggs that it was our best interests to give that turkey to some one of our friends. Then I felt relieved, but I soon found that my troubles had only commenced. It was too soon after Christmas, and the turkey was too big. Not one of my friends wanted to take a contract to cook and eat that bird. They were tired of turkey already, they said.

“As it was a present I couldn’t think of selling it. The awful fact stared me in the face that I had got to eat that turkey or bust—perhaps both, in natural sequence.

“I’ve been chasing around all day carrying, mentally, that turkey, but I’ve got you in my clutches at last, and you shall not escape me. But come, first, and we’ll open a small bottle.”

New York [NY] Herald 31 December 1893: p. 14

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Mrs Daffodil is reminded of the axiom: “Eternity is a ham and two people.”

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.

An Uncommon Fine Christmas Morning: 1850s

A Musing of Christmas

Inhale as large a stock of charity as man ever possessed—be as forgiving as a due remembrance of the season should make us—have everything to receive and nothing to pay away: and yet Christmas on this side of the Equator cannot resemble a Christmas on the other. How can you relish a hot plum pudding, with the thermometer at 110°. Can snap-dragon be enjoyed, when there ‘a no place to put your fingers to cool? and, as for hanging up a mistletoe—although the colony holds plenty of pretty girls—there’s no fun in chasing a lass in broad day, nor having to pause in the chase to divest of coat and neckcloth. As for ghosts, or ghost stories, who can believe in a Christmas ghost story in Victoria? Not all the fascination of the Countess D’Anois would make her goblin elves and demons palatable here. A ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ might, perhaps, become an object of the imagination, but Oberon and his fairy crew are not Christmas fairies; and, somehow, Christmas and the winter are so mixed up together that—that—it ought to be cold and snowy on that day. And, really, as this is the age of wonders, it is a pity some enterprising firm cannot import an artificial atmosphere, to be used for that day only, at the public expense. What is the use of a pantomime in our holidays? The gas lamps, saw dust, and blue fire, lose their charm when it is recollected that broad day reigns without, and there is no dark fog, for which a link boy’s services is required to await one. The only time the colony is thoroughly disagreeable is a few days before Christmas and a few days after. No—I ‘ll contradict myself, the colony is not disagreeable, even then. But I like a cold Christmas. Forty years of cold Christmases force one to like them. But, I cannot say I find Victoria disagreeable : for, just as I make up my mind it is, and I ‘ll visit Europe at Christmas, something turns up, rendering the place dearer and dearer ; and twelve years have thus glided on, like a dream of enchantment. But, then, there are no ghost stories; and, old as I am, I like a ghost story. I do not care if I get it after the form of the Arabian Nights. That Fisherman and the Genie is a fine tale. It used to make one frightened; and, told in bed, after the light was blown out on a cold night, what can equal it %—Or Grimm’s Tales ?—The Dwarf Hand !—Or Fortunio!—Or Monk Lewis’ mystic productions! all of which require a cold night, a wassail bowl, and a few auxiliary noises, to render them perfectly pleasant, and horrid enough to make you fearful of being left in the dark one single minute. Alas!—Christmas must be got cold somehow.

I don ‘t know whether Old John Delver thought all this, as he gathered a pretty bunch of bright flowers early last Christmas morning, but there was something on his mind, that was quite clear, and when he cast his eyes as usual round his little garden, and took a sweeping glance at Mount Macedon, where it reared its gigantic head in the background, it was easy to see that his thoughts were not on the flowers, nor on the garden, nor on Mount Macedon either, but farther, much farther, away.

Perhaps John was thinking of his son, who was fighting in the Crimea, or who had been; perhaps he was thinking of his wife, whose remains lay in the pretty parish churchyard of Thorncliffe; perhaps he was thinking of the pretty blue-eyed grand-daughter, that now came bounding from the little cottage to call him in to breakfast; or, it may be he was meditating on the quiet form that was then engaged in pouring out the tea her father-in-law was called to partake of. If he was musing on the last, he might have found a worse subject for his thoughts than Martha Delver: although she would not be called good-looking, and, so far as book learning went, might be termed ignorant.

John was a hale old man, although long past three-score. His cheek was ruddy, and his eyes clear. A day’s work could still be had from him when needed, and, as he sat in the outer room of the little wooden cottage wherein he dwelt, he might, in truth, have passed for the husband of the woman who sat opposite him, and the father of the blue maiden that seated herself on his knee.

“I always took a bunch of flowers to the clergyman every Christmas morning at home,” said John, “and, please God, I will here.”

“The flowers are brighter here than at home at this time?”

“Well—yes: Kent showed nothing like this at Christmas,” replied John; “and yet, to my mind, the winter berry is the prettiest sight one can see.”

“He thought so, too,” replied Martha.

“I wonder if he’ll make us out,” said John, after a pause.

“Wonder! gracious! yes,” screamed his daughter. “Oh! father, how you frighten me by wondering that.”

“Soldiers may never get the letters sent them, and, somehow, Richard was a careless fellow about his home.”

“Not he,” hastily answered Martha; “besides, did I not tell him of little Martha here; and what father could keep away from his child, and such a child?”

The little girl looked first in her mother’s face, now suffused with tears, and then into her grandfather’s, whose eyes were also moist, and inquired what they were crying for?

“His will be done!” reverently observed the old man, and made an end of his meal. “Can I do anything before I go?” he asked.

“No: all is clear—the cows are milked. You may take little Patty, if you will. Will you go to church with grandpapa to-day, love?” And, the little girl answering in the affirmative, she was got ready, and grand-father and grand-daughter started for a two-miles walk, and a visit to the building which served as a church for the denizens of that district. While John Delver is at church, let us take a retrospective glance at himself and family.

John Delver was a native of Kent—that garden of England, a market gardener by trade, and well to do, according to the Kentish notions of wealth. His wife and himself loved on and worked on, and, perhaps, their only care, apart from a night or two’s anxiety about a bed of strawberries or a gathering of cherries, was the doings of their only child—a fine specimen of an English rustic—Richard Delver. This son was a good sample of the open-hearted Englishman: his provincialisms sat upon him not unpleasantly, and the exuberance of spirits, into which youth will often be betrayed, and which Richard often displayed, was but a wild outpouring of an innocent mind. With other parents Richard Delver would soon have sobered into a staid gardener, but John and his wife were of the respectable elect class: so pure, so grim, and so exacting, that their very virtues forced their son into trifling excuses: the stiff rigidity of the parents appearing so repulsive to the child’s openness and candour. To add to other crimes, Richard fell in love with a servant girl—a poor parish child—sent out to a harsh mistress, hardly worked, hardly fed, and hardly clothed.

It is a curious thing (but, nevertheless, a true one) that people who take servants from parish walls consider them much as the Southern American is said to consider his Negro. Instead of bestowing on them much kindness, to make amends for former hardships, it has been the fashion in England to treat the unhappy children with great severity—perhaps not so as to render the act illegal—nothing more than unchristian. And even if the law has been broken, vestry meetings have a horror of lawyer’s bills: and any charge, for prosecuting an inhuman master or mistress, would scarcely pass the audit of enlightened rate-payers in the nineteenth century.

Martha Thorne was the orphan daughter of a gardener, who, with his wife, had died of a fever. The poor-house was the only refuge of his child, to be left for a harder home, where, for the slightest fault, corporeal punishment was unsparingly administered. From such chastisement young Delver one day saved her, and, although Martha was too plain to inspire him with love, her situation was so hard that it inspired him with interest. Beyond this all familiarity would have ceased, but the knowledge of his son’s actions coming to the ears of John Delver, he so worried the young man with homilies, and so disgusted him with close, harsh, worldly maxims, that Richard’s obstinacy joined issue with his father’s, and, in the end, the banns were put up at a neighbouring church, and Richard Delver and Martha Thorne were man and wife, while the unconscious parents were congratulating themselves that the last homily had effectually turned the rebellious character of their son.

Had the Delvers been of the blood royal, and Martha Thorne of the Delvers, a greater outcry could not have been made than was made at the misalliance of the young gardener; harsh words arose on both sides. Family disunions are always bad things to contemplate. Richard was driven from his father’s roof, and sent forth to starve. He tried to get any work he could, but the respectability of his parents swayed the feelings of the neighbours, and nobody would employ him. Rustics are not a moving people: where they are born, there would they die. While Richard was musing upon his future, he took to drinking. There are always men to be found who, while unwilling to lend a shilling to purchase a loaf, or to bestow a slice of meat, will ‘stand’ drink to any one that will partake of it. Richard took to drinking: began to neglect his wife, and, in one of these drinking bouts, was inveigled with a shilling of Her Majesty’s, and ordered off, ere quite sober, to the depot of his regiment at Chatham, under sailing orders to Gibraltar.

All the regret imaginable, when reason had assumed its sway, was of no avail; and, to add to to the misery of the wedded pair, the complement of women allowed had already been made up: so that Martha was not permitted to leave the place where she had lived so long, but was, a second time, left penniless in a hard country, and without a friend. But marriage had effected this good in the poor young woman: it had given her firmness, and she sought employment at hop pulling, or among the fruit trees, with a courage she never before possessed. She longed to hear from her husband, who, at parting, had promised to write to her soon. Write to him she could not: parochial schools, especially in country places, seldom teaching more than the mode of ‘capping ‘ to the great people of the district. And time wore away—old Delver regarding her as the author of what he now called ‘his trials’; and his wife preaching at her, whenever she had an opportunity, and people were present to be edified thereby. The year succeeding this a fever broke out in the district; John and his wife were stricken with it, and a sore wrestle with death Delver had. He recovered, it is true, to find the partner of his toils dead by his side; to hear of a blight, that had destroyed his finest trees; and to behold, in the nurse who had so faithfully succoured him and his deceased spouse, the ‘good for nothing hussey’ who ‘had the audacity to marry his son.’ Yes. If there was little learning in Martha’s breast, God had implanted there the two great principles of religion; and, when others kept aloof from the tainted house, and all the neighbours declared the fever to be infectious, she had boldly crossed the threshold, and, day by day, and night by night, attended upon the suffering pair. John rose from his bed a poorer but a wiser man. None of his neighbours had done one thing for him during all his sickness; not a helping hand had been given to his garden. That was spoiled: and he was ruined. Once, and once only, did he utter an expression of surprise and regret at the neglect shewn him. It was to his clergyman; but the rebuke he met with for ever silenced him—” Pray, John, who have you befriended in your long life?—’As you sow, so surely will you reap.'”

A ruined man, Delver gave up the orchards he so long had rented, and was content to lean on his daughter’s arm—a staff he had long rejected. It happened that, at this time, there came on a visit in the neighbourhood an old resident of Australia. The little episode of John’s misfortunes had become a topic of conversation, and it occurred to the Australian settler, while hearing it, that men of Delver’s practical experience as a gardener would be a great adjunct to Port Phillip. To act upon this thought was not a work of time: and old John found himself, before long, upon a vessel bound to Melbourne; his accompaniments, his daughter-in-law and an infant grandchild, now verging on sixteen months old.

The old man was glad to quit Kent when he found the real estimation in which his neighbours held him. His respectability had vanished, not only in a monetary point of view, but in the importance which, he imagined, attended all his actions. Perhaps he regretted leaving the remains of his wife behind him; and, yet, sometimes a thought—it was a consoling one to him, though, perhaps, an unjust one to the dead—a thought flashed across his mind that, without his wife’s admonitions, he might have acted differently to his son, and so have escaped much sorrow. On the whole, he was, therefore, glad to quit England; and, having written to his son of his destination, and got his new master to make certain applications at the War Office, Delver quitted his home for a new world, looking forward with hope to the future.

***********

Planted near Gisborne, on the homestead of an excellent master, Delver partially forgot his sorrows. Everything was new around him. The manners and customs of all that crossed him, excepting, indeed, the richness of the soil, which rivalled his own Kentish ground, against which (he talked and boasted) no other soil could compare. But here, sixteen thousand miles from his own land, there flourished around him flowers of as brilliant a hue, and fruit as rich in taste, as even he himself had reared at home. To the soil the Delvers took kindly, and the digging rush, which unsettled so many, scarcely affected him, unless it was by adding to his already good wages what his master felt he could afford him from the increased profit of his station, and the value of his garden produce.

But John’s master died, and John Delver, not caring for other service; having, too, ‘a few pounds’ from his own and daughter’s industry (for right well had Martha Delver taken to the Australian colony, and few around shewed better butter and eggs than she); got, at a moderate rent, land sufficient for a garden, and pasturage for the cows they now owned, and so we find them, on the morning of Christmas day, cheerful, well to do, and contented, their only regret being Richard’s absence: for the war with Russia had broken out. His regiment was sent from Gibraltar to the Crimea before his release had been obtained; and the sanguinary conflicts that had taken place in that fertile part of Europe had often blanched the cheek of both father and daughter with doubt and apprehension.

Martha had that to do which kept her from church on that morning: a pair of chickens and some peas, a strawberry tart, with just the smallest of plum puddings, to remind John of the Kentish Christmases, was the dinner she designed for her father. A few grapes were to serve as his dessert; and, as the preparations for the meal had been kept a secret from him, she took more than peculiar care with it. The dinner was in a fair state of preparation when he returned, and, waiting its readiness, he sat himself in his garden, musing and dozing alternately. The child, who ever played about his knee, in a short time directed his attention to a cart, coming along at a smart pace; and, presently, the two horses that drew it were jerked up at the entrance leading into Delver’s garden, and a voice inquired if one ‘Delver lived there.’

“Ah! surely,” said old John.

“I’ve a little news for him,” said a burly-looking carter, blue-shirted and cabbage-treed, according to custom, entering the garden.

“From my husband!”—” From my son!”—cried father and daughter simultaneously.

“From one Richard Delver,” said the carter, “and I don’t know a better day than this to bring news, ‘specially if they are good ones; for, on such a day as this, good tidings were brought to all around; at least, they used to sing so in our village; so, I suppose, it’s all right.”

“Are the news good?—Is my son alive—well?” inquired the old man.

“That’s where it is, you see,” answered the carter, who seemed in no hurry to tell his tale—if he had any to tell. “Well, it’s a fine morning, an uncommon fine morning.—And the Mount, too, I’ve seen it a power o’ times, and never thought it looked so grand afore—and, thankye marm, a little milk, if you please!”

Martha and John looked at the man, and the man looked at them. He was evidently in a difficulty. The milk was got, and drank. The carter whistled.

“And my son,” said John.

“Ah!” replied the carter, wiping his face and taking a long breath, “that’s where it is. I was jogging along, thinking this warn’t exactly the Christmas I liked to pass, when who should I see on the road but a man—

“A man?”

“A man, marm.—’ Wantin’ a lift, mate?’ said I. Said he, ‘Which way?’ ‘’Through,’ says I. ‘And take it kindly, too,’ says he. ‘Not at all,’ says I.” Here the carter whistled. “I hadn’t got a Christmas dinner at home to hurry me, so I didn’t mind jogging on a little slower, to ease his wounds.”

“Wounds!” cried both the Delvers, “has he seen Richard? Is it Richard?—Where is he?”

“That’s where it is,” said the carter, “I can’t tell a tale properly. There’s—there’s a man in the cart, who can “—

In an instant John and Martha were at the cart. In two minutes more they had a man suffering from wounds and still weak, but yet a fine-made fellow, on their arms; and, in five minutes more, Richard Delver had embraced his patient wife and was at peace with his now fond old father; had hugged the little maid that called him parent; and looked around the pretty cottage already with an owner’s eye.

It is of no use to detail what Richard told his wife. He had been severely wounded, but the kind Sisters of Mercy had brought him through, as they had brought thousands of others, although their services, now passed away, are being ignored by those who gladly accepted their aid. He had been in the first draft from the Crimea home; had got his discharge; had taken a passage in one of the fastest of the White Ball Line, and landed in Melbourne. Here he was at fault two days, but, hearing where his father lived at last, he had started off that he might join them on merry Christmas, trusting to that which he had got, a lift on the road for speed.

Nor is it of any use for me to say that there sat down to that Christmas dinner as happy a party as any in the colony. The soldier fought his battles o’er again, while the father, in his turn, detailed the changes that he had witnessed. As for the friendly carrier, he was made to stop to dinner, and did; and turned out, long before the grapes had been all eaten, a most astonishing character. He made little wooden dolls for little Martha with his clasp knife and a piece of old stick before one could whistle Jack Robinson; put a new lid on the water butt; and mended a milk pan that had been, like its new owner, in the wars. In short, I question if Christmas Day in the old country ever shone upon more contented or happy faces than last Christmas did on the happy party in the little cottage in the Australian bush: for, what can people require more than this little party had?—a sufficiency for their outward enjoyment, and stronger and holier principles within them: the principles of Faith, Hope, and Charity.

******

Now, draw up the curtain, Mr. Manager: I think I can look upon a pantomime, although it is warm. 

The Journal of Australasia, Volume 2, 1857

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: And with that happy ending, Mrs Daffodil wishes all of her readers, whether in the Antipodes or the Arctic, the happiest of holiday seasons. She will return in the New Year with more stories to educate, elevate, and amuse.

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 Lost Song: c. 1800

The Evening Hymn, Alfred Joseph Woolmer https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/the-evening-hymn-8206/view_as/grid/search/keyword:playing-music/page/3

THE LOST SONG.

It was my grandmother’s story, and this how she came to tell it to me:

I, Annie Rae, had come down to spend Christmas at “Raeburn,” the old family homestead. My grandmother and grand-father had been abroad for years, and this being the first Christmas for so long that the old house was opened, they wanted to fill it with bright young faces and merry laughter, to crowd out the voiceless memories which lurked in every corner, and so a whole party of us had come–cousins, first, second and third, in fact of all degrees. Speaking of cousins, isn’t it strange that very often the further removed the nearer they seem? At least George Stewart was only my third cousin by blood, and yet he always assumed more on the strength of our relationship than any of my first cousins, and somehow, in my own heart I did not mind it at all, though I did tease him so.

But I must go on with my story. It was Christmas Eve, and the old house was quiet at last. We girls had all gone to our rooms after a merry evening together. Fannie and Rose had the room near grandma’s, while Kate and Lillie were just opposite. Some one had to sleep alone at the other of the hall, and after long consultation, it was decided that I should go, for I had rashly boasted of never being afraid. I will confess to feeling a little lonely when all was quiet, and the deep shadows in the corners of the room seemed very dark, for the light of my candle did not reach far. There were three doors in my room, and fastening securely the one leading into the entry, I merely turned the handles of the others, and finding them locked inside, did not care to explore any further just then.  I must have been a long time undressing, for the clock struck the hour of midnight as I put my light out. Even then I could not sleep, but found myself wondering what was behind those doors that I had not opened, and I determined to have a regular exploring expedition the next day. There were so many romantic stories to this old house. I had even heard hints of staircases, shut up rooms, &c., and had always delighted in mysteries.

I think I must have been asleep for a short time, when I suddenly found myself awake with a start, and a curious impression that I was listening for something. There certainly was a sound overhead, but what was it? It came more clearly, and I distinguished a faint, broken melody, and yet imperfect, like some one playing a long forgotten air on a piano where some of the strings were broken. Three times it came like the verses of a song, and though there were no words, it seemed to speak to my very heart, and I thought of George, and how sorrowfully he had looked at me that evening as I had passed him without saying “good night.” It was only to tease him, I had pretended not to see his proffered hand, but had taken Willie Thorne’s instead, and we had walked up the broad staircase together.

Again all was still, only a long drawn sigh seemed to echo my own through the room, and came from the direction of the furthest door. Without a sensation of fear, only an ill-defined feeling of pain and regret, I sank to sleep, and when I woke the morning sun was shining brightly enough to dispel illusions. I resolved to say nothing to the girls, but quietly to explore and see what was to be found, for I knew perfectly well that what I had heard was no dream. So I got up long before breakfast, and after completing my toilet, threw wide the shutters and opened the first door nearest the entry. Only an empty closet! Disappointed but slightly relieved, I closed it and went over to the other. The key turned hard in the lock as if it had not been opened for a long time. Then the door stood wide open, and I saw a flight of stairs but only prosaic wooden steps, like those leading to any garret. I started bravely up and soon found myself in a large loft attic, with odds and ends. First, an old spinning wheel caught my eye, relic of our most industrious great grandmothers. Then a stack of old fire- arms, with which our ancestors, the bold Races, may have shed the blood of daring foes, or, perhaps, and I am afraid more likely, have only done damage among the crows that came to steal from their spacious cornfields. Lastly, beyond these, and behind a pile of mattings and boxes, I came upon an old piano. It quite startled me at first but then the broad daylight was very reassuring, and I am not nervous. It was very old and of a most curious shape, and evidently had been very elegant in its day. I tried to lift the lid, and found it locked, but as I touched it a shiver ran through me, for I was convinced now that this was what my ghostly music had come from last night, and I am determined to find out before another day had passed who it had belonged to, and what restless spirits still haunted its worn strings.

So after breakfast, when all the others gone to church, I went into my grandmother’s room to sit with her, for she was not very strong, dear old lady, and rarely went out of the house in winter.

After we were nicely settled and had got through our morning’s reading, I told her of my last night’s adventure, and my subsequent researches, and begged her to tell me all about the old piano I had found in the attic. She smiled at my eagerness, but did not seem at all surprised or incredulous, for though she herself had never heard the music I spoke of, there had been others long ago, she said, who, sleeping in that room on Christmas Eve, had been known to hear faint sounds, coming as if from the old piano above, though it was locked, and the key had been lost. The coincidence, at least, was very strange, taken in connection with the history attached to it, and which my grandmother then proceeded to relate to me.

“Many years ago,” said my grandmother, “when your great-great-great-grandfather was alive, this house was full of life and merriment; for your Aunt Annie–your great-great-aunt for whom you are named, child—lived here with her father and brothers. She was as bright and funny as the day was long, but so full of mischief and coquetry that she gave the heartache to all the young men, far and near and yet had suffered never a pang herself. I am afraid that a spice of her coquetry has descended to this generation too, my dear,” said the lady gazing fondly, but reproachfully at me. “I felt sorry to see the look in poor George’s eyes, last night, as you turned from him on the stairs–”

“Oh I please go on, grandmother dear,” said I, ”I am so much interested in the story.” But in my own wicked little heart I was sorry too, and inwardly resolved to make up for it to him on the first opportunity. “Well your Aunt Annie always had the house full, and some of her cousins and young friends were always staying there. Among the gentlemen who were their frequent visitors was a young naval officer, Robert Carrol, whom they inspected Annie of preferring. Of course, as girls will, they teased her most unmercifully about him and consequently she would hardly speak to him sometimes, and just because in her own heart she knew that to talk with him just one hour was better to her than a whole day with the others.

“The poor fellow evidently had no eyes for any one else, but he was very reserved and sensitive, and did not go in boldly and make love to her, as any other man would done, but stood and worshiped afar off. They say he was very fine musician, and sang beautifully, and not only that but he composed a song for Annie to sing; for she had a lovely voice, and would sing lovely old ballads for us in the long summer evenings with wonderful pathos and feeling.

“As the days went by the time drew near for Robert to join his ship. Early in December his orders came, and he was to leave the day after Christmas.

“He loved Annie so dearly that he felt he could not go away from her so long without asking for some assurance that his love was returned, and yet he could not bear to think of hearing her say she could never love him. Sometimes she treated him so coldly, almost rudely, and yet again, when they were alone, he could have sworn her eyes spoke a different language.

“The day before Christmas came and still no word had been spoken. On the morning of that day Robert wrote a note to her and inclosed in it a little song he had written and in the note he said,–“But stay,” said my grandmother, “I think I can show you the very note itself,” and going to her desk she took from it an old yellow piece of manuscript music, so faded as to be illegible and a little sheet of paper. “These,” she said, “were found up in the attic among other old letters and private family papers when we came back, and though I destroyed the rest I kept these,” and taking up the note she read it aloud. It was very short, and ran thus:

Annie, darling will you be my wife? And may I go away with hope warm at my heart that when I come back I may claim you as my own? Little one if it is to be, and can love me, will you sing my song for me to-night when I come. If there is no hope for me you will sing something else, and I will know my fate at once, and it will be better to learn it so than to give you pain of telling me. But somehow I feel hopeful, and shall come with a brave heart in spite of the fate which your sweet voice is to sing me into life or death.

Forever yours, in this world and the next.

Robert.

“He sealed the note inclosing the song and sent it over by his servant.  As the man was going into the gate he met Annie’s youngest brother, Harry, a little fellow of ten years old, who snatched the note from him, and said, ‘Oh! I’ll take it to Annie, Tom,’ and ran off. So Thomas walked away with an easy conscience, thinking he had delivered the note safely at least to a ‘member of the family.’

“Harry trotted off toward the house with the best intentions in the world, but was diverted on the way by some important business with a small boy of his own age, who suddenly turned up, so by the time he did go home all memory of the note had vanished from his youthful mind.

“Evening came and the younger children were all in bed, and Harry lay sound asleep, while on a chair hung his little jacket, and in the pocket still, poor Robert’s note undelivered. Annie, with ‘cheeks like twin roses,’ and’ eyes bright with love and hope was waiting for the company.

All the young people were coming from neighborhood to have a frolic, but she only thought of Robert. ‘He must speak to me to-night,’ she said to herself. ‘I am sure he loves me, and in spite of my bad behaviour to him sometimes he must know my heart.’

“Early in the evening Annie’s father according to his custom, asked her for a song and as she rose and went to the piano she caught sight of Robert’s pale handsome face. He was near the door, where he had just entered standing with his arms folded and his eyes fixed upon her with a look that to her dying day she never forgot. As she sat down to the instrument an unaccountable feeling of depression came over her, some unseen influence seemed to hold her hands so that she could scarcely strike the notes, but with an impulse she threw it off and dashed into some gay and nonsensical song that was popular at the time, and sang it through to the very end.

“When she looked up Robert was gone, and she never saw him again in this world. He left home that night and never returned, for his ship, with all on board was lost on the way out; and he went to his grave thinking her cold and heartless. And she–all the next day she waited for him, wondering that he did not come. That night as she was wearily going to her room a little voice from the nursery called her, and going in she found Harry wide awake.

“Oh! sister Annie,’ said he ‘don’t scold me, but I forgot your note yesterday, and there it is still in my pocket.’ And he pointed to the jacket which hung on a chair. Mechanically, she reached and took it, but when she saw the address in his hand, she grew as pale as death. She only stopped and kissed the little fellow, who was sobbing bitterly, and no word of reproach passed her lips.

“From that day she was a different being. Her whole life seemed to be a period of waiting; waiting for news of him.

“You must remember, my dear,” added grandmother, “that in those times there were no such conveniences for communications as we have now-a-days, when lovers can change their minds two or three times a day by mail, and can telegraph ‘yes’ and ‘no’ sixty times a minute (more or less) if they please.

“And when at last the news of Robert’s death came, it was as if some blight had fallen on her, for she seemed to fade away, and grew weaker and weaker, until it got to be so that she never left her room. Then her piano was moved up there, the room you were in last night–for her music seemed the only thing left in which she took any interest, and often at night when all was still they would hear her playing, for she had never been known to sing since that time when, with her own sweet voice, she had smilingly sounded the death knell of two hearts.”

“On Christmas morning, just one year after, when they came to her room they found her seated at her piano, with his song before her, and her white hands cold and stiff resting on the keys. She had gone to meet him, and her weary waiting was over at last.”

“This was my grandmother’s story of the piano–and that evening as George and I were sitting together on the board staircase, while the others were dancing in the parlor, I told it all over to him, and would you believe it? when I came to the part about poor Robert’s last letter, George actually said it served him right for not being man enough to ask for what he wanted when he had the chance, “as I intended to ask you right here, little Annie,” said he, and then–well, somehow I did not finish the story that evening.

Since then, however, we have often talked it over since, but George always smiles when I tell him of the ghostly music I heard on Christmas eve in the old house, and suggests though the piano was locked, yet the back had fallen out from old age, and there was room enough for a whole regiment of mice to creep in and run over the rusty strings, and he further says that I was sleepy and troubled in my mind for treating him so badly, and thought it was my aunt’s ghost come to warn me. But that is nonsense, of course, and I shall always believe that it was poor Robert’s last song that I heard.

The Indiana [PA] Democrat 14 November 1872: p. 1

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: It seems to Mrs Daffodil that there is blame enough to go around, with some to spare. Coquettes! Thoughtless younger brothers!  Timid suitors!  One wonders how, without the spur of “on-line” dating and “swiping,” the species ever propagated itself.

Still, it was curious that the mice, if mice there were, only came out to run over the piano’s strings on Christmas eve.

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 Simply Splendid Christmas Treat: 1897

Making It Easy.

“Dear me, I don’t see how you can do it!”

“Do what? Just let the young people have an out and out merry time of it on Christmas night?” “You say your sister’s family are coming to dinner, your girl of course goes out in the evening, and yet half a dozen or more young folks are coming to visit in the evening. Of course you’ll have to get up the treat.”

“Oh, the treat won’t trouble anybody. I’m going to do exactly as we did last year.”

“Yes, but those stylish Merlin girls on the hill told our Ida—she was away last Christmas, you remember—that they spent last Christmas evening at your house, and never had a pleasanter time in their lives. They mentioned particularly that the refreshments were splendid! Ida wondered what you had.”

“Well, it’s easily told. When Tom and the girls said they wished six or eight of their friends, the Merlins among the rest, could come to the house Christmas night, I said they could and welcome if they were willing to do as we used to in our New England home.”

“‘Pray how was that?’ asked Tom, bridling a little.

“I reminded him that Norah expected to go on her little Christmasing as soon as dinner was over, and that I always helped her clear away so lengthy a feast. The table I told him should be neatly spread with nothing on it but the cloth, cups and saucers, plates and paper napkins. On the sideboard should be a platter of cold turkey which I would slice after dinner, chips, fancy crackers, salteens, a pie or two, cake, nuts and raisins, figs and grapes, all ready prepared for serving. A pot of coffee, also one of chocolate, should be on the range. Whenever he or any of the other ladies chose to invite a young lady to the dining room they could treat her to whatever the sideboard afforded, or make merry by running to the kitchen for a cup of hot drink.

“I certainly think those young people were going and coming from the dining room the whole evening through. Tom had sniffed a little and observed something about ‘a regular counter lunch’ when the proposal was made, but this year he proposed carrying out the same program, or I might perhaps more properly say menu.

“I remember Tom called out, ‘The pie’s given out, mammy.’ ‘All right,’ I said, ‘go to the pantry and get another.’ And pretty soon Lizzie wailed, ‘The coffee’s all gone, mammy.’ ‘All right,’ said I placidly, ‘go to work and make some more.’ Then a prolonged cry, ‘O mammy, the turkey has all disappeared.’ ‘Never mind, go to the cellar-way and get the bones.’ There were some pickings left, and I did set up a chicken ‘gainst a special call.

“They picked both turkey frame and chicken bare; Susie’s children were here, you know, so there were fourteen young people in all, and now I have described what the Merlin girls styled ‘splendid refreshments.’ Tom last year ventured something about ice cream, but I told him no, there could be no fussing about anything extra, the general provision of the season would be enough. And we found it a very simple matter to clear away the sideboard treat the next morning, while it gave me scarcely anything extra to do on Christmas afternoon.”

This is a very true showing of what has been done time and time again in a large family, when the young people wanted a little company on Christmas night, and after the long, abundant dinner it was too much for the tired housewife to think of getting up a regularly laid “treat.” It has been proven often that an entirely informal company is the merriest one imaginable, and it is a great mistake to crowd so much into a joyous holiday that all pleasure is lost in a sense of cruel fatigue…

There is quite an art in making things easy, and on holidays the most scrupulous housewife is fully justified in refusing to undertake anything like an extra spread. Just set young people to helping themselves, and my! how the good things will disappear. It is doubly jolly to see Tom or Will pouring chocolate into a tiny cup which he must fill and refill until he must needs search about for more of the raw material. There is always a kind of good comradeship in sharing these merry feasts, especially when it becomes the part of prudence for some matronly girl to advise as to how much coffee or chocolate goes into making another potful. Do not refuse the merry-making because of the work involved. Make things easy, and they will be all the merrier, and young people are much the same all the world around.

Christian Work 16 December 1897: p 1020

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire:  This will be Mrs Daffodil’s last post for 2017. Should readers wish for more tips on making the holidays merry and bright, she can recommend the “Christmas” tab for stories on Christmas tree dances , New Year’s Eve “wish” trees and other entertainments.

Mrs Daffodil wishes her readers the best of everything for the holidays and peace, health, and prosperity in the New Year.

And cake.

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.

 

Corn Balls for Christmas: A Thrilling Tale: 1870s

HARRIET ANN’S CHRISTMAS

by Mary E. Wilkins

I was 12 years old three weeks before that Christmas , but I was small for my age and looked no more than 10. There were four of us. I was the eldest. Then there were a girl of 10, one of 8 1/2 and a boy of 7. In October we had moved to the house on the shore of Lonesome lake, which was very lonesome indeed. It was a solitary little sheet of water on the top of a hill, almost a mountain. There were no neighbors nearer than a mile. Father had moved to this farm on Lonesome lake because his father had died that fall, and the property had to be divided between him and his brother, Uncle William. Uncle William was not married, though he was older than father, and he and father and grandfather had always lived together and work the home farm, sharing the profits.

After grandfather’s death father and Uncle William had some difference. I never knew what it was about. One night after I had gone to bed I heard them talking loud, and the next morning father and Uncle William looked very sober at breakfast and mother had been crying. That afternoon she told us that we were going to move because the property was to be divided, and were to have the farm on Lonesome lake, near Lebanon. Lebanon is a little village about ten miles from Wareville, where we were living then. Mother said she was sorry to go away because she had lived there so long, and she was afraid she would be pretty lonesome in the new home, but she said we must make the best of it. Uncle William was the eldest son and had a right to the first choice of the property, and of course since he was a bachelor, it would be very hard for him to go to live at Lonesome lake.

We children rather liked the idea of moving and began packing at once. Flory and Janey had their dolls and their wardrobes all packed within an hour. Flory was the sister next to me, and I thought her rather old to play with dolls. I had given up dolls long before I was as old as she.

Two weeks after grandfather died we were all moved and nearly settled in our new home. There had been no one living in the house for several years, except when father and Uncle William, went up there every year in haying time to cut and make hay. Everything seemed pretty damp and dismal at first, but when we got our furniture set up and the fires started it looked more cheerful. The house was large, with two front rooms looking on the lake, which was only about 20 feet distant. One of these rooms was our sitting room; the other was our parlor. Back of these rooms was a very large one, which was our kitchen and dining room. There were a dark bedroom in the middle of the house, a bedroom out of the kitchen, one where father and mother slept, out of the sitting room, and four chambers.

Thanksgiving came about a week after we had moved, and we had a rather forlorn day. We all missed grandfather and Uncle William. I am sure mother cried a little before we sat down to the table, and father looked sober.

When Thanksgiving was over, we began to think about Christmas . Mother had promised us a Christmas tree. The year before we had all the measles and been disappointed about going to the tree at the Sunday school, and mother had said, “Next year you shall have a tree of your own if nothing happens.” Of course, something had happened. Poor grandfather had died, and we had moved, and we wonder if that would put a stop to the tree. Mother looked a little troubled at first when we spoke of it. Then she said if we should not be disappointed if we did not have many presents and the tree did not have much on it except popcorn and apples she would see what she could do.

Then we children began to be full of little secrecies. Mysterious bits of wool and silk and colored paper and cardboard were scattered about the house, and we were always shutting doors and jumping and hiding things when a door was opened. Each of us was making something for father and mother, even Charles Henry. He was working a worsted motto, “God Bless Our Home.” Then, of course, we were all making presents for one another.

It was a week and one day before Christmas . We had our presents at most done, and mother had promised to take two of us the very next day and go down to the village to do some shopping-we had been saving money all the year to come boughten presents -when the news about Uncle William came. A man rode over from Wareville quite late at night and brought word that Uncle William was dangerously sick and father and mother must come at once if they wanted to see him alive. Mother said there was nothing for it but they must go. She said if they had not come away just as they had, with hard words between father and Uncle William, she would have let father go alone and staid with us children; but, as it was, she felt that she must go too. She and father, though I can understand now that they felt anxious while trying to conceal it from us, did not think there was any real danger in our staying alone. They reasoned that nobody except the people in the village would know we were alone, and there was not probably one ill disposed person there, certainly not one who would do us harm. Then, too, it was winter and we were off the main traveled road, and tramps seemed very improbable. We had enough provisions in the house to last us for weeks, and there was a great stock of firewood in the shed. Luckily the barn was connected with the house, so I did not have to go out of doors to milk–it was fortunate that I knew how–and we had only one cow.

Mother staid up all that night and baked, and father split up kindling wood and got everything ready to leave. They started early next morning, repeating all their instructions over and over. We felt pretty lonesome when they had gone, I especially, not only because I was the eldest and felt a responsibility for the rest, but because father had given me a particular charge. I was the only one who knew that there was $583, some money which father had from the sale of a wood lot in Wareville a month after we had moved and had kept in the house ever since, locked up in the secret drawer in the chest in the dark bedroom.

Father had been intending to drive over to Wilton, where there was a bank, and deposit the money, but had put it off from one week to another, and now Wilton was too far out of his way for him to go there before going to see poor Uncle William.

Father called me into the parlor the morning they started, told me about the money and charged me to say nothing concerning it to the others. “It is always best when there is money to be taken care of to keep your own counsel,” said father. He showed me the secret drawer in the chest in the dark bedroom, the existence of which I had never suspected before, thought I was 12 years old, and he taught me how to open it and shut it. If the house caught fire, I was to get the children out first, then go straight to the secret drawer and save the money. If there had been no possibility of fire, I doubt if father would have told me about the money at all, and I would have been saved a great deal of worry.

The money was on my mind constantly after father and mother were gone. I kept thinking, “Suppose anything should happen to that money while I have the charge of it.” I knew what a serious matter it would be, because father had not much money and was saving this to buy cows in the spring, when he expected to open a milk route. I was all the time planning what I should do in case the house caught fire and in case the robbers came. The first night after father and mother went I did not sleep much, though the others did. We three girls slept in one room, with Charley in a little one out of it, and we were all locked in.

The next night I slept a little better and did not feel so much afraid, and the next day Samuel J. Wetherhed came, and we all felt perfectly safe after that. He came about 10 o’clock in the morning and knocked on the south door, and we all jumped. I don’t suppose anybody had knock on that door three times since we had lived there, it was such a lonesome place. We were scared and did not dare to go to the door, but when he knocked the second time I blustered up enough courage. I told Flory, who was as large as I and stronger, to take the carving knife, hide it under her apron and stand behind me. Of course I thought at once of the money and that this might be a robber. Then I opened the door a crack and peeped out. The minute I saw the man who stood there I did not feel afraid at all, and Flory said afterward that she felt awful ashamed of the carving knife and afraid that he might see it and be hurt in his feelings.

He stood there, smiling with such a pleasant smile. He did not look very old, not near as old as father, and he was quite well dressed. He was very good looking, and that, with his pleasant smile, won our hearts at once. He more than smiled-be fairly laughed in such a good natured way when he saw how we were all peeking, for the younger children was behind Flory, and I found afterward that Charley, who had great notions of being smart and brave, though he was so little, because he was a boy, had the poker, shaking it at the stranger. The man laughed and said in such a pleasant voice, pleasanter this his smile even: “Now, don’t you be scared, children. I am Samuel J. Wetherhed.”

The man said that as if it settled everything, and we all felt that it did, though we had never heard of Samuel J. Wetherhed in our lives. We felt that we ought to know all about him, and Janey said that night that she was sure she had seen his name in The Missionary Herald, and he must be a deacon who gave a great deal to missions.

Samuel J. Wetherhed went on to tell us more about himself, though I am sure we should have been satisfied with the name. “I have married sister who lives in Wareville. She married a man of the name of Stackpole.” said he, and we all nodded wisely at that and felt that it was an introduction. We knew Mr. Stackpole. He was the man to whom father had sold his woodland. “I went to visit my sister last week,” said the man. “I haven’t got any settled work. Yesterday my sister’s husband saw your father, and he told me how he had left you all alone up here and felt sort of worried, and I thought as long as I was just loafing around and no use to anybody I might just as well come up here and look after you a little and stay till your folks got back and look out there didn’t say wolves or robbers or anything get you.” The man laughed again in such a pleasant, merry way when he said that, and then he went on to tell us that his sister’s husband said Uncle William was better and the doctor thought he would get well, but he guessed father and mother would have to stay there for awhile. We asked the man in, and he made himself at home at once.

It seemed to me I had never seen a man so very kind as he was, and he was so quick to see things that needed to be done. He went out of his own accord and drew a pail of water, and he brought in wood for the sitting room fire. We children all agreed when we went up stairs to bed that night that there never was a man so good, except father. We had told him our plans for Christmas , and he was so much interested. He said of course we could have a tree. He would cut a fine tree, and if Uncle William was not well enough for father and mother to leave him on Christmas day he would go to Wareville himself and stay with Uncle William, so they could come home. He said, too, that he could go down to the village on foot, and if we would make out a list of the things we wanted he would go down and buy them for us. He went the very next day. We gave him all our money, and be brought back everything we wanted. We decided to make him some presents , too and I began a little wash leather money bag, like the one I had made for father. Flory made a penwiper and Janey a worsted bookmark.

Samuel J. Wetherhed cut a beautiful tree for us, taking us all into the woods to pick it out. Then he set it up in the parlor so firmed that it did not shake. He rigged some sockets for candles and help us string popcorn for decorations and make candy bags. He could sew as well as mother. Samuel J. Wetherhed was the most industrious man I ever saw. He was not idle a minute. He milked and did all the barn chores, he made the fires and drew water and swept the floors and washed the milk pails for me, and all his spare time he was at work upon our Christmas preparations as busily as we were. He found some boards and tools of father’s and made some wonderful things with them. There was a nice box, which he showed us how to line with flannel, for mother to keep knives and forks in, a little boat for Charley and a number of other things.

I felt much easier in my mind about the money after Samuel J. Wetherhed came.

We have given Samuel the bedroom out of the kitchen to sleep in. He said he would rather have that, because it was so handy for him to build the fire in the morning, and I did not have the first suspicion that anything was wrong until the night of the day but one before Christmas . I had been sleeping well since Samuel came through feeling so safe, though I had as I afterward remembered, often started awake, because I thought I heard a noise, but that night I did not go to sleep as soon as usual. I was very much excited thinking about Christmas and father and mother coming home. Samuel had gone down to the village that morning and got a letter for me from mother in which she said that they were coming home Christmas morning, since Uncle William was well enough to be left. We were all delighted the more so because we thought now that Samuel could stay and have our Christmas tree with us. He laughed and thanked us when we said so, but in a moment afterward I notice that he looked very sober, even sad. Well, thinking over everything made me very wide awake, and I guess it must have been as late as 11 o’clock when I was sure I heard somebody down stairs in the sitting room, which was directly under our room. I thought at once that it might be a robber and perhaps I ought to speak to Samuel in case he should not hear the noise. I waited till I heard the noise again very plain and was sure that I knew where it was-some one was trying to open the door of the dark bedroom, which stuck and had to be forced down before pulling. The children did not awake, and I made up my mind that I would not speak to them and get them scared to death. I thought that I would go down stairs very softly, steal past the sitting room door and go through the other day to the kitchen and wake up Samuel.

I got up and put on my dress. Then I went down stairs, and I don’t believe I made any more noise than a cat. I saw a faint light shining from the dark bedroom, and I knew I had not been mistaken. Then all of a sudden I thought that father and mother might have come home and father be looking to see if the money was safe. I thought I would make sure before I called Samuel.

I went into the sitting room and crept across to the dark bedroom, keeping close to the wall. I peeked in, and there was Samuel rummaging in the chest where the money was. Then I knew that, however good Samuel might be in other ways, he could take things. It was an awful shock. I wonder why I did not scream and run, but I kept still. I went back up stairs and locked myself into the chamber and sat down on the edge of the bed to think. It did not seem to me that it was of any use for me to stay down stairs and watch Samuel. I did not think he could find the secret drawer without any help. I could not stop his taking the money if he was determined. Then, too, I reasoned that if he did not find it that night there would be time enough for me to hide it tomorrow, and father and mother were coming home next day.

I did not sleep any that night. I took off my dress and lay down. Before daybreak I had my plans all made. I tried to treat Samuel just as usual when I saw him in the morning, and I guess I did. After breakfast I carried a pitcher of water into the parlor as if I were going to water the plants. Then I lighted a match and touched it to one of the candles on the Christmas tree to make it appear as if I had only wanted to see how it would look, and then I touched it to the tree, and it blazed up. I waited until I dared wait no longer, and then I dashed on the water and screamed fire at the top of my lungs. They all came running in Samuel first. He rushed for more water and the fire was out in a minute, but the tree was badly singed, and the children began to cry.

“Now, don’t you cry,” said Samuel “I’ll go this minute and cut another tree.”

So Samuel started off and Charley with him, and then I made Flory and Janey go upstairs. “You two have just got to go up stairs and stay there while I fix a surprise,” said I. Surprises were a favorite amusement with us children. Flory and Janey laughed and ran off up stairs for a minute.

I set some molasses on to boil. Then I got the money out of the secret drawer and made six little parcels of it, rolled as tightly as I could and wrapped in letter paper. Then as soon as the molasses was boiled I made popcorn balls. Luckily I had enough corn popped. When I called the girls down stairs, I had two plates of corn balls. The bills in one were of extra size with strings attached all ready to hang on the tree, and in six of them were hidden the little rolls of money. The balls in the other plate were smaller, and those were to be eaten at once.

When Samuel and Charley came home, I gave them some of the little corn balls, and when Samuel had set up the tree I hung on the others. Then I thought the money was safe, but I wondered all the time what I should do if Samuel should come to me and ask me right out where the money was for I did not want to tell a lie.

That night we all went up stairs as usual, but I did not go to sleep. It was not very late when I heard Samuel moving about below, and presently he came to the foot of the stairs and called me.

I went to my door. My heart was beating so hard it seemed to choke me. “What do you want,” I made out say as softly as I could, so as not to wake the children.

“Come down here a minute,” said Samuel, and I went down to the sitting room. I want to ask you a question,” said Samuel. He tried to smile, but he was very pale and looked as if he was as frightened as I was. I was so afraid he would asked me right out, “Where is the money?” but he did not.

“I only want to ask if your father left some money in the house when he went away,” said he, looking away from me as if he were ashamed.

“Yes he did,” said I. I had to or tell a lie.

“Well,” said Samuel in a queer , shaking voice, “I would like to borrow that money for a little while. I need some money right away, and as long as your father ain’t using it”-

“I would rather you waited and ask father,” I said. “I don’t think father would like it if I lent you money.”

“I will make it right with your father,” said Samuel. “Did your father tell you where the money was?”

“Yes he did,” I answered. I had to or tell a lie. I trembled for the next question.

“Where did he tell you it was?” asked Samuel.

“In the chest in the dark bedroom,” said I. That was the truth, and it did no harm.

“Whereabouts in the chest?”

“In the secret drawer.”

“Oh! So there’s a secret drawer. Did you father tell you how to open it?”

I said he did.

“Well, you just come in here and show me how to open it,” said Samuel.

I went with Samuel into the dark bedroom and showed him how to open the drawer. I could see nothing else to do. I stood back while he opened it. I wonder if it would be wrong for me to cry out as if I were astonished when he discovered that the money was gone. Then all of a sudden I heard a sound that made my heart jump with joy. I heard sleighbells and then father’s voice shouting to the horse. “Father has come,” said I.

Samuel made one leap and was gone, rushing through the kitchen and out the back door.

I ran and unbolted the south door, and there was father and mother come home sooner than I expected. When I saw their faces, I just broke down and sobbed and sobbed and told them all about it in such queer snatches that they thought it first I was out of my mind. Father said afterward that he never heard such a jumble of popcorn balls and secret drawers and Samuel. When father fairly understood what had happened, he lighted the lantern and searched out in the barn and the sheds to be sure that Samuel was not lurking about the premises, but he did not find him. Father said he knew the man; that he belonged to a good family, but had been sort of shiftless and unlucky.

When we were all settled down again for the night and I felt so safe and happy with father and mother at home, I could not help feeling troubled about poor Samuel out in the storm. I hope he would not die of cold and be found dead when the snow melted in the spring. There was quite a severe snowstorm. That was the reason why father and mother had reached home so late. They had been obliged to drive slowly on account of the gathering snow.

We were just sitting down to our Christmas dinner next day when we all stopped and listened. Then the sound came again, and we were sure that somebody was out in the storm calling faintly for help.

“It is the man!” said mother. “Do go quick as you can.” Mother has been worrying about Samuel all day. She said she did not want him to perish if he had tried to wrong us, and father had been all around the farm looking for him. He thought, however, that he had gone down to the village the night before.

We opened the door, and we could hear the calls for help quite plainly. Father pulled on his big boots and started out. The storm was very thick. Soon we could not see father, but we could hear his shouts and the faint cries in response, and then we saw father coming back half carrying Samuel J. Wetherhed.

Samuel was pretty well exhausted, beside being frightened and ashamed when he saw where he was, back in the house of the man he had tried to rob. He tried to stop on the threshold of the outer door, spent as he was. “I guess you-don’t-know,” he began, but father interrupted him. “Come along in!” cried father in a hearty way that he has. “You have been good to my children and as long as you didn’t do what you set out to there’s no use talking about it.”

Samuel was pretty well exhausted. He had spent the night in an old barn on the other side of the mountain and had been floundering about in circles all day, trying to find the road. However, he was able to eat some Christmas dinner with us, though he hesitated about that, as he had done about entering the door, and all of a sudden his knife and fork, bent his head down over his plate, and we saw that he was crying, though we tried to take no notice.

Samuel stayed with us that night and was present at the Christmas tree, though he seemed very sober and dashed his hand across his eyes a good many times when his name was called and he got his little presents .

The next day the storm had stopped, and father put the horse in the sleigh and took Samuel down to Lebanon to take the train. We never saw him again after he had shaken hands with us all and thanked mother in a voice that trembled so that he could scarcely speak and father had driven him off in the sleigh.

That day we girls pulled the corn balls to pieces and found the bills inside, not sticky at all. The next day father took the money to the bank, though he said he didn’t know corn balls were safer, since robbers knew that money was in banks, but he didn’t think they had any suspicion of its being in corn balls.

We spent the next Christmas in our old home in Wareville, for father and Uncle William had made up and we had gone back there to live. We had a tree, and the day before Christmas a great box came by express with a handsome present for each of us. There was no name sent with them, but we always knew as well as we wanted to, and father and mother thought so, too, that they had come from Samuel J. Wetherhed, who, we had heard, had settled out west and was doing very well.

The Christian Recorder [Philadelphia PA] 21 December 1899

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire:  Well-done, Harriet Ann!  Mrs Daffodil considers that she was being over-scrupulous in not at least slightly paltering with the truth, but a happy ending and a happy Christmas all round.

 

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.

 

 

“Blind man’s bluff is little better than an insurrection:” Christmas Games: 1900

Why people should celebrate Christmas by playing games, is at first sight by no means plain. What possible connection is there between the Christmas anniversary and the noise, confusion, and laughter of Christmas games? When the Queen’s birthday arrives we do not feel it to be necessary to have our hair cut, or to sit on our top-hats and smash them. The recurrence of Whit Sunday does not bring with it an irresistible desire to break the household crockery or to kill the cat. Yet it would be quite as rational to do these things on the anniversaries just mentioned as it is to play games at Christmas. What, then, is the explanation of our universal custom of celebrating Christmas with games?

It will be noted that an invariable characteristic of Christmas games is their noisiness. The game with which the mistletoe is associated is necessarily noisy; Sir Roger de Coverley involves more or less uproar of an alleged musical character; and blind man’s bluff is little better than an insurrection. A quiet Christmas game is apparently never played. We thus see that noise is an essential feature of Christmas games, and this fact will probably give us a clue to their origin.

The savage has but two ways of celebrating any important event—either he over-eats himself, or he makes a horrible noise. If he can do both, so much the better. When Christmas arrives we imitate the savage with disgraceful fidelity. We gorge ourselves with roast goose or roast turkey, and we play the noisiest games that can be played outside of the football ground. Of course, we are unconscious that we are imitating savages; our conduct is simply the result of heredity. Thousands of years ago our remote ancestor, the cave man, celebrated his chief holiday— say the anniversary of the day on which he killed and ate his worst enemy—by feasting on boiled leg of rhinoceros, and by subsequently drumming as loudly as possible on the upturned and empty kettle. In these days we are not cannibals, but at Christmas we approach as closely as possible to cannibalism by eating too much roast goose. We no longer take pleasure in beating on the bottom of a copper kettle, but we feel instinctively that our greatest festival must be celebrated with noise. Thus we can explain, by the theory of heredity, the origin of our two chief Christmas customs. And the explanation is doubtless right, for, as we all know, heredity is now the correct scientific explanation of everything—from the shape of our skulls to the way in which we lie in our beds.

While we can thus account for the noise of Christmas games, we have not yet accounted for the games themselves. Why, when there are so many ways of producing noise, do we select games as the appropriate method of producing a satisfactory Christmas uproar?

What are the conditions necessary to Christmas games? They are—first, the presence of a large number of persons of both sexes, and second, their desire to endure one another with decency. Take twenty people of assorted sexes and shut them up in the drawing room on Christmas night, and each one feels that he must do something to enable him to live through the evening. To sit still and reflect that the quiet and secluded corner, which the safe digestion of the Christmas dinner so imperiously demands, is unattainable, and that the evening must be spent in conversing with uninteresting people upon tiresome themes, is something that no man will willingly do if there is a possible alternative. Games are intended to supply this alternative, and to enable the Christmas sufferer temporarily to forget his sorrows. Probably they accomplish this end to some extent, but it may be fairly questioned whether the remedy is not worse than the disease.

The supposition that there can be any pleasure derived from playing Christmas games cannot be for a moment entertained. We all know that it is not true. Take the ceremonies of the mistletoe — ceremonies which have no real title to the name of game, although they are arbitrarily classed under that head. Can there be any pleasure in kissing the wrong girl under the mistletoe? Of course, it will be said that you may kiss the right girl, but if she is only one among a dozen girls, the proportion of undesirable kisses to the one desired kiss is preposterously large. Then, can a man take any pleasure in seeing the girl of his heart kissed by other men? No matter how heavily he may have drugged himself with roast goose, the spectacle is one which fills him with secret and inexpressible rage.

There may be a sort of mild pleasure in seeing a man whom you cordially detest groping around the room with a bandage over his eyes, and occasionally abrading himself against the sharp corners of the furniture, but it is a pleasure wholly unworthy of a Christian man. The game of blindman’s bluff is exhausting, undignified, and certain to involve one in difficulties with the girls whose dresses are torn by the unconscious feet of the blindfolded man. It is true that there are redeeming points, even in blindman’s bluff; for is there not a case on record of a man who, while blindfolded, caught the family cat, and in his excitement mistook the cat’s fur for the back hair of his maiden aunt? His triumphant proclamation that he had caught Aunt Jane induced the latter to change her will the very next day, thereby depriving the blindfolded nephew of a comfortable legacy to which he had looked forward for years. Still, poetic justice seldom overtakes the man who consents to be blindfolded, and those occasions when a Christmas guest finds it possible to extract even the feeblest pleasure from blindman’s-buff are extremely rare.

Mr Fezziwig’s Ball, British Library

Sir Roger is simply an athletic exercise, falsely called a game. It is as tiresome as golf, and nearly as exhausting as cycling. And yet even middle-aged men who have within an hour or two eaten a Christmas dinner, are made to engage in the violent inanities of Sir Roger on Christmas evening. On the following day, when in the agonies of abdominal remorse, a man is ready to take a solemn oath never again to meddle with that fatal sport, but as sure as the next Christmas sees him still alive, he will end Christmas evening with the inevitable Sir Roger.

It may be unhesitatingly asserted that no one enjoys Christmas games who is more than ten years of age. It need hardly be said that children of that age should be in bed on Christmas evening instead of being permitted to infest the drawing-room. Their enjoyment of Christmas  games is, therefore, no excuse for the latter. We might as well excuse bull baiting on the ground that it gives pleasure to the dogs. We play Christmas games solely because an hereditary custom compels us so to do. Nobody who has arrived at years of discretion enjoys them, and ninety-nine people in a hundred detest them.

When we think of the quiet, comfortable games with which Christmas might be celebrated, the objectionable character of our present Christmas games becomes the more apparent. There is the delightful game known as ” Two in the Conservatory.” It is played by a young man and a young woman. The two retire to a quiet corner in the conservatory where they are concealed from view by flowers and vines, and there discuss in a low tone such pleasing themes as the Best Route to the North Pole, or the Kinetic Theory of Gases. Any number of young men and young women can play at this simple but charming game provided a sufficient number of quiet corners can be found in the conservatory. It can even be played on the stairs almost as well as in the conservatory, and the same young man, if he is a sufficiently accomplished player, can play a half a dozen sets with half a dozen different young women in the course of a single evening. The enormous superiority of this game to anything that is done under the mistletoe must be apparent even to the most careless observer. It involves none of the publicity, the romping, and the other disagreeable features of the latter game, though it must be confessed that, in some instances, the loser has had good cause to regret that he ever attempted to play it.

Then there is the pipe game. This is played only by men, but, perhaps, that is one of the advantages of it. The player withdraws to some quiet place, either within or without the house. Having seated himself he fills an ordinary brier-wood pipe with good tobacco, and lights the tobacco with a match. Almost any match may be used, but as a rule the wooden match is used by the best players.

The player can either finish his game in one innings with the pipe, or he can refill it and enjoy another innings. Men who habitually play this game assert that it is peculiarly adapted for Christmas evening, especially if the Christmas dinner has been a good one.

That it is vastly preferable to blindman’s-buff, or Sir Roger, is admitted by nearly all medical men; except, of course, young practitioners, who are anxious to add to the number of their patients, and look upon the usual Christmas games, with their subsequent harvest of sufferers from dyspepsia, as something especially designed for the good of the medical faculty.

I may mention one more admirable Christmas game. It is called Bedfordshire, and is one of the earliest games with which we make acquaintance in our childhood. The player retires from the drawing-room about an hour after dinner is over, and just before the orthodox Christmas games begin. When he reaches his room he removes the greater part of his clothing, puts on his night-gown, and after extinguishing the light, gets into bed. There he remains until half an hour before breakfast time on the following morning. This game ought to be a great favourite, and when a man has once learned to play it on Christmas evening, he can never be induced to play any other.

I have suffered much from Christmas games. I have played blindman’s-buff and caught the corner of a particularly hard pianoforte with my forehead. I have undergone the toil of Sir Roger, and caught pneumonia in consequence of being overheated. I have been compelled to kiss girls under the mistletoe who, I am certain, did not want to be kissed by me, and whom I certainly did not want to kiss. On the other hand, I have the memory of one delightful Christmas Eve which I spent in a rational manner. I was nearly seven hundred miles distant from my home, and I went to dine with a bachelor uncle who warned me that he detested the practice of giving Christmas presents, and uniformly refused to accept any. There was no one at the dinner-table except my uncle and myself, and about eight o’clock that excellent man said to me, “Now, nephew, I’m going to bed. There is the port, and there are the cigars, and you’ll find plenty of books in the library. Good-night!” The port and the cigars were admirable, and in the library I found a volume of Guy De Maupassant which I had never previously seen. I went to bed at ten o’clock, and I have ever since considered that my excellent uncle’s idea of entertaining Christmas guests was worthy of universal imitation.

Cassell’s Magazine, Volume 20 1900: pp 68-71

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: The Sir Roger de Coverley is one of the oldest and most popular country-dances. Two lines of dancers face one other and when the music starts, dash into the centre aisle, twirling their partners round about, and then dashing back to their places. Depending on the tempo which the musicians set, it can devolve into a rout. The Mistletoe Game (which has, Mrs Daffodil believes, an American cousin called “Spin the Bottle”) is equally fraught with danger.

Mrs Daffodil thoroughly approves of the game of Bedfordshire and wishes that she could play it more often in the busy holiday season. She also applauds the Liberty Hall philosophy of the narrator’s bachelor uncle, although she does not mind receiving Christmas presents—in a rational manner, of course.

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.

 

Christmas at Windsor for Tommy’s Wife and Children: 1900

The Queen’s Christmas tree, 24 December 1857, Windsor https://www.royalcollection.org.uk/collection/search#/1/collection/2906247/the-queens-christmas-tree-windsor-castle

A ROYAL CHRISTMAS TREE.

TOMMY’S WIFE AND CHILDREN

A FEAST AT WINDSOR

On Bank Holiday the Queen gave a sumptuous feast in Windsor Castle to the wives and children of the soldiers who are fighting her battles in South Africa. All the women married to soldiers now at the front who lived in Windsor and its neighbourhood were invited to the Castle with their children. The crown and glory of the Yuletide festival was a giant Christmas tree.

St. George’s noble hall sheltered the Christmas tree and tea party. The tree was the third of its kind seen by the Castle this year, the others being respectively for the Royal children and the household. For more than 50 Christmases they have risen and shone under her care, first for her children, then for her children’s children.

A GIANT CHRISTMAS TREE.

Twenty-five feet was the height of the Christmas tree, brought from Windsor Forest. It seemed to touch the roof, but that was an illusion, there being seven feet to spare. A most imposing spectacle it was, its branches bearing countless silvered globes, little flags, and, what the humble guests—especially the young ones—approved still more, toys, packages, of sweets, and other presents, for all the delightful fruit hanging on the tree was for the visitors, in addition to more bulky and useful gifts for the mothers in particular. It would have been hopeless to attempt to persuade any child that these bigger things were the natural product of a larch; therefore no attempt was made to hang them on the boughs. To the Princesses who spent Christmas with the Queen belonged the honour of dressing, or directing the dressing, of the fairy tree, but they were assisted, or hindered, by male relatives occasionally looking in with suggestions grave and gay.

THE QUEEN’S GUESTS.

There were no half-measures about the Queen’s kindness to her humble guests. She sent each an invitation on the glossiest of cards, with border, crown, and the words “Windsor Castle” all in gold. It informed them that they would be received at a quarter-past four, but it named no time for the close of the entertainment, as that might have led to hurry and an ungracious end. Nor did the card say that the Queen invited Mrs. Brown, or whoever the good lady might be. It began simply with the words, “Mrs. Brown is invited to Windsor Castle,” etc. The tickets were distributed among the women and children connected with the Blues, the 2nd Life Guards, and various regiments of the line. The guests included 40 wives and about 45 children, about two-thirds of whom belong to Reservists. Invitations for persons connected with the 1st Life Guards were received from the Castle and sent on by the officers of that regiment. In this case there were about 25 mothers and 50 little ones; so that the total number of Her Majesty’s guests was something like 160.

PRINCESSES AS WAITERS.

Arrayed in their Sunday clothes the mothers and little ones, the former trembling in some cases with excitement, and the latter bursting with expectation, found themselves punctually in the great hall, where they were visited by the Queen. There, in addition to the marvellous tree, they at once discovered delightful preparations for the tea promised by the Sovereign. They were overwhelmed when they found that nearly all the Royal inhabitants of the Castle were present, and not, as far as the ladies were concerned, as mere lookers-on.

The Queen, after seeing the women and children seated, left the hall for a time, and, on returning, was wheeled round the tables by her attendants, Her Majesty occasionally speaking a few words to the visitors. It was a delightful gathering and a private one, the Queen wishing the wives and children of her soldiers to be treated as if they were of the highest rank.

New Zealand Herald, 24 February 1900: p. 2

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire:  The casually-mentioned “battles in South Africa,” were the Boer War.

The party was a gracious gesture by Her Gracious Majesty, who would celebrate only one more Christmas before her death in January 1901.

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 Baby in the Snow: 1872

A porcelain Victorian snow baby figure. http://www.ornament.ch/rubrik.php?rubnum=SB&res=1024

A BABY IN THE SNOW

A STRANGE CHRISTMAS EXPERIENCE OF A TRACKWALKER.

A Railroad Man’s Story of a Cold, Stormy Night Over Twenty Years Ago, when the Snow Was Piles in Banks Along the Railroad Track

A Christmas Gift.

“Every time I think of Christmas I think of the year 1872,” said an old trackwalker. “That’s more than twenty years ago, isn’t it? Twenty years is a good long stretch. Lots can happen to a man in twenty years. He could get rich and spend it all and get rich again in that space of time and still have lots of time to spare. But I haven’t. I’ve just stayed poor right along.

“But as I was saying, speaking of Christmas always reminds me of 1872. I was trackwalking then for the Vandalia line on a section between Terre Haute and Farrington, in the state of Indiana. That Christmas night was a corker, I’ll tell you. I heard at noon from the section boss that the thermometer was 10 degs. Below zero, and as night came on it seemed to get colder and colder. It had snowed the day before—one of the deepest in that year—and the engines had had a pretty tough time of it plowing their way through in the morning.

“After they did get by my section the snow was banked up seven or eight feet deep in some places, by the side of the track. I was so cold that I wrapped coffee sacks around my feet before starting out, just to keep them from a frostbite. You bet I hated to start out, but I did muster up the courage after awhile. It was about 9 o’clock when I started to go back to Farrington, and the wind was in my face. ‘It’s a durn poor Christmas for me,’ I thought to myself as the wind caught me a belt in the side of the head. ‘Here I’m fated to walk this cold track until midnight without even a kind word from anybody to say “Merry Christmas to you.” It’s pretty tough. I guess track walking is just about the worst trade a man who loves company can adopt.’

“As I was stamping along thinking like this, away off ahead of me I saw a sparkle. ‘It’s the St. Louis express,’ I said to myself, ‘and she’ll be rumbling over me at about sixty miles an hour. You had better go out in the snow, old man, unless you like being ground into little bits. Boo! But that snow was deep. Way up over my waist. But when I got down off the track and snugly tucked away in the drift, I was a heap warmer, because the wind couldn’t reach me. And the old train came right ahead with a buzz and a roar, and her old yellow headlight getting brighter and bigger every second. It was a train of six or seven passenger coaches. All were lit up as bright as kerosene oil could make ‘em. One, two, three, four of the cars whizzed past me. But the fifth seemed to stop. It didn’t, of course, but the sight I saw seemed to nail it to my eye!

“A man and a woman. They stood at the rear window. It was open. I saw the man with his arms put out, supplicating like. The woman had a bundle in her arms. Then she didn’t have it. The man gave a cry of horror that rang out high above the clamor of the wheels and the rattle of the rails and the creaking of the coaches. Something shot down just past my head and landed in the snowdrift beside me. I shut my eyes, but still saw the woman with the bundle and the man with outstretched, pleading arms. When I opened my eyes again the train was a quarter of a mile away, with her rear green light sinking swiftly into a dot and then disappearing. The wind cut me sharp on the cheek, and five miles off I heard the church chime in Farrington tolling the quarter hour. ‘That sight was a dream, old man,’ I said to myself as I pulled my legs out of the drift. ‘But the bundle,’ I exclaimed. Involuntarily I looked down in the drift and saw another hole in the show, not the one I came out of, but a smaller one.

“Maybe you’ve guessed the thing by this time and maybe you haven’t. Well, sir, that bundle was just as cute a 20-pound kid as I want to look upon. Hurt? Well, I guess not a little bit. When I found him he was laughing contentedly as you please and chewing a chunk of snow for a sugar cake.”

“Who did he belong to?”

“You tell. I can’t. I never knew and never expect to know. He had good clothes on, and the odd little collar of lace he wore was marked with a pretty silk T. He was fat as a Christmas turkey and the biggest eater you ever saw.”

“Why didn’t you find his parents?”

“Didn’t I try my durndest? Didn’t I spend half my wages for the next month advertising in the newspapers? But no answer did I get to any of them. It seems to me that the man ought to have come and got the child, for he evidently didn’t want to see it fired off like that. His outstretched, supplicating arms showed that. But perhaps he only wanted to prevent its being killed. Who knows? Perhaps he was glad to get rid of it, and when he saw that somebody had it all right he was glad enough to leave it to its chance fate.”

“What became of the child?”

“Named it Tom after myself. Tom McCormack is a pretty good, solid sort of a name, you know. My family may not be very stylish, but none of them have been hanged anyway. And, you see, the kid’s collar had a T on it. I almost had to name him Tom.”

“Where is he now?”

“Trackwalking on the Vandalia, not more than twenty-five miles from the very spot where his little baby head plumped into that snowbank Christmas night, 1872.” St. Louis Globe-Democrat.

Daily Journal and Journal and Tribune [Knoxville, TN] 26 January 1893: p. 6

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Mrs Daffodil must say, despite the unpolished American vernacular of the narrator, that it is refreshing to read a Christmas story in the popular press that does not contain a ghost, a reformed burglar, or a dying child.  A “track-walker,” incidentally, is one who walks up and down the railway lines, looking for damage or obstructions. It was a thankless, but necessary task. Despite Mr McCormack’s frigid Christmas, he seems to have derived considerable satisfaction from the events of the day.

This story simply cries out for a sequel published in a later Christmas number where the gentleman on the train found his lost boy, recognised the collar with the silk “T,” fell upon his neck, weeping, and left him his entire fortune.

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.

 

Christmas Bells and Prussic Acid: The Christmas Number: 1837, 1897

Mr Fezziwig’s Christmas Ball, John Leech, 1843, The British Library

SEASONABLE LITERATURE

The Last Chapter Of A Christmas Number. (1837 )

“Harry,” said Sir Jasper, with a sob strangely foreign to his wonted lack of feeling, “you must forgive me. I don’t deserve it, I know. Through forty-seven pages my ingenious schemes have kept you and your Mary apart, and if that missing will hadn’t turned up, I should have won the game. But you won’t be hard on a poor old villain, Harry, my boy? There’s only a page or two more, so you can afford to be generous. And, if my words are weak, that sound will reach your heart— the sound of Christmas bells!”

He flung open the window as he spoke, and the chimes from the sweet old village church sounded merrily across the snow-covered fields.

“jasper,” answered Harry, in impressive tones, “I forgive you. If, indeed, I followed my natural inclination, I should throw you out of window. But no true hero in a Christmas number was ever yet unmoved by the sound of church bells in the last chapter. I forgive you, and Mary forgives me, and we forgive everybody else, and it’s away with melancholy, and up with the holly, and let’s be jolly. There’s only a page more to fill, and we’ll end the story in the proper way. To-night will the dear old Hall re-echo with mirth and happiness, and the elders will unbend and become young again. Excuse me now. We dine at six, and I must drink a gallon of milk-punch before then.”

“I thank you!” cried Sir Jasper. “Now that you’ve foiled all my schemes, I was sure you ‘d forgive me. My regards to Miss Mary, and after a few glasses of hot brandy-and-water, I’ll step round to the Hall.”

And that night they revelled in the most thorough-going style. All of them were there, the hero Harry, and the heroine Mary, and the villain Jasper, together with the old-fashioned uncle, the humorous mother-in-law, and lots of other characters who have been mentioned incidentally in the story, and lone since forgotten. Every one of them turned up for the old-fashioned Christmas revel. And there was roast beef, and mistletoe, and Sir Roger de Coverley, and snapdragon, and blind-man’s buff, and ghost stories, and love-making, and, above all, gallons and gallons of punch. Not till every drop of the latter was finished did the company disperse. Finally they left in pairs, to be married next morning, and to live happily ever after, which is the only proper way of finishing up an old-fashioned Christmas number.

Too much Christmas cheer, 1856

The Same Chapter. (1897.)

At the window of the foulest garret in the slums of London (for full description, vide previous pages), Harry the hero stood and twiddled his thumbs. With a languid interest he watched a cat in the yard lick its paw, and miaow twice. Then he turned to his companion and regarded him curiously.

“Jasper,” he said, with a yawn, “don’t you think we might as well end somewhere here?”

“Just as you like,” answered Jasper, who was sitting on a dust-heap in the far corner. “It really doesn’t matter where we stop in a story of this kind, one place does as well as another.”

“There isn’t much to go on with,” replied Harry, thoughtfully chewing a piece of string. “Now that you’ve murdered Mary, and all the others are disposed of, it’s about time to finish. I can’t go on talking to you for many more pages.”

“Why not?” Jasper replied. “We can always fill up the gaps with ‘dreary silences.’ Surely you don’t hate me?”

Harry sighed. “Nobody hates in modern stories—that is far too strong an emotion. But, as you’ve killed my fiancee, besides murdering three other characters, and driving five more to suicide, I do slightly dislike you. Here’s the poison bottle, and there ‘s just enough left, for us both. You’re sure none of the others are left out by mistake? How about that costermonger mentioned on the second page?”

“Sent to penal servitude,” responded Jasper. “And his wife has gone mad in Consequence, and killed off three minor characters who weren’t accounted for. As you say, we may as well stop; we’ve provided a splendid story for a modern Christmas number. Pass the poison bottle when you’ve taken your share. And don’t forget to make a vague remark just before you die—readers expect it.”

Harry nodded, and having consumed a pint of pure prussic acid, handed the remainder to Jasper, who quickly swallowed the rest.

For a few moments there was silence. Then Harry sat up.

“Why didn’t he boil the butter?” he murmured.

Then there was a dreary silence.

Punch 18 December 1897

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Mrs Daffodil is undecided as to which era of Christmas Number fiction is more odious: the Dickensian or the Decadent.  One surfeits on the aggressive heartiness of Mr Dickens, while the Decadents make Mrs Daffodil want to spray the pages with carbolic acid.

Sir Roger de Coverley was the quintessential Christmas dance, or made so by being immortalised thus by Dickens. Snapdragon was a game requiring participants to snatch raisins or other preserved fruit from a shallow bowl of flaming brandy. Mrs Daffodil has looked on indulgently as footmen and parlour-maids scorched their fingers and their tongues and has laid in a discreet supply of dampened blankets under the sideboard when tipsy young officers visiting the Hall for Christmas demanded a blazing bowl of spirits. Mrs Daffodil is pleased to say that she has never lost a visitor to a flaming raisin.

 

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 Romance of the Christmas Cracker: 1899

From the Erddig Museum

COSTLY CHRISTMAS CRACKERS.

THE ROMANCE OF CHRISTMAS PRESENTS.

One somewhat naturally associates the Christmas cracker with the good old times when sentiment was a recognised attribute of human nature.

Nowadays, when the hurry-scurry and bustle of business, the cult of the prosaic and the matter-of-fact, have killed many another fine old custom, it is refreshing to find that the cracker is still with us.

Not only has it kept pace with the times, it is even ahead of them. To this fact it undoubtedly owes its increasing popularity and its avoidance of the fate of many another famous institution—relegation to the shades of oblivion.

The cracker started life in the guise of a slip of fancy paper, containing a sweet and a love motto, called a “kiss motto.” The kiss motto flourished in what we are wont to dolefully describe as the good old days, yet its popularity was as nothing compared with the ever-increasing vogue of the up – to – date cracker.

It is not often that a fancy trade of this description flourishes in this country. Where ideas, artistic treatment, and delicacy of suggestion are required, the phlegmatic British temperament seems to be out of it, and the foreigner rules the roost. However, the cracker trade is largely a British monopoly, which satisfactory condition of affairs is principally due to the enterprise and inventive genius of the firm of Messrs. Tom Smith and Co.  They practically supply the world with its Christmas crackers, and their output has increased year by year till it has reached the colossal annual total of 13,000,000.

This in itself is an amazing fact. Thirteen million crackers placed end to end would reach from London to New York. Packed tightly into one pile they would form a solid vertical column considerably larger and wider than Nelson’s monument. For the purposes of illustration we have taken the liberty of erecting a gigantic cracker in Trafalgar Square in the place of the historic column. It is composed of the crackers used in the British Isles annually, and gives a capital idea of what we spend in this way; yet there are pessimists who tell us that the Christmas cracker is a thing of the past.

Mr. Walter Smith, who may be described as the Napoleon of the trade, was good enough to show me over the works devoted to the industry. They reminded me more of a newspaper office than anything else. As a matter of fact the work of both offices is largely analogous. Both require an extensive printing plant, lithographic and engraving departments, and editorial and artistic staffs.

The Editor-in-chief is Mr. Walter Smith. From his fertile brain emanate the thousand and one ideas that make the firm’s crackers popular throughout the world, and to him every literary and artistic suggestion must be submitted ere it is finally adopted. Many months of hard work and study are often expended on a single idea before it assumes a tangible commercial form. Nor is this to be wondered at when the enormous amount of detail work is taken into consideration. For example, among other novelties for 1898 Messrs. Tom Smith and Co. are producing “crackers from Klondyke,” “Motor-car crackers,” and “Arctic Expedition crackers.”

Contents of some of the up-to-date crackers mentioned.

Each of these crackers requires the most careful study in order to ensure accuracy. The legal crackers contain, in addition to paper wigs, various legal documents. There is a comic bill of costs, a lovers’ agreement, and so forth. Each is beautifully engrossed, and the whole is an absolutely correct model of legal phraseology. Mr. Smith informed me that many weeks of hard work had been expended on the composition of the documents, and I can readily understand it.

Many of the verses are written by casual contributors, and our readers who have a turn for versifying might do much worse than submit their literary efforts to the great cracker firm. Anyway, if accepted, there is something more substantial in prospect than the barren honour of a public appearance in print; a reward too often considered sufficient for the minor poet.

Once the idea and its artistic and literary details are decided upon, a dummy cracker is prepared, and on being finally approved the actual manufacture begins.

As may be supposed, the production of 13,000,000 of these gaily decorated rolls engages the services of an immense staff. Considerably over 1,000 people are employed all the year round in their manufacture, and the consumption of raw material is enormous. In the course of the year more than 100 tons of cardboard are used in the making of cracker boxes. These figures are not surprising when it is remembered that in the height of the season as many as 30,000 boxes are often turned out complete. Another five tons of cardboard go to form the tiny explosive strips known in the trade as detonators. Glue and paste form another heavy item, more than twenty tons being used in crackermaking in the course of the year.

Although Messrs. Smith and Co. are chiefly concerned with the manufacture of the ordinary cracker containing the usual complement of verses, toys, sweetmeats, and caps, they occasionally leave the beaten track and in the case of special orders produce a variety containing presents of much higher value. Not long since they were asked to manufacture a box containing one cracker in which were a pair of gloves and a motto specially composed for the occasion. Needless to say the order came from a masculine source; we safely hazard a guess that it was yet another rendering of the old, old story. How the gentleman ordered affairs so that the particular fair one chose the right cracker from the box must ever remain a mystery.

Generally speaking the largest crackers made are some 12 inches long. They glory in wrappers of the most beautiful design, and are sold singly in specially made boxes. However, on occasion the firm have produced much larger specimens. They have manufactured crackers over three feet in length, containing a full-sized suit of clothes. Their record cracker, however, was that constructed for the harlequinade at Drury Lane pantomime; it was seven feet long. On being pulled by the clown and pantaloon a miniature explosion took place, and a youngster dressed as a sprite emerged from the centre.

7-foot cracker framework

The wickerwork skeleton of this famous cracker is still preserved by the firm, and those who remember its appearance at Drury Lane will regard our photograph with additional interest.

Our inquiries to the existence of Christmas crackers of unusual value and design have resulted in some facts of unusual interest. Last year a firm in the Midlands were deputed to prepare a special presentation box of crackers for a well-known millionaire. The box took the form of an elegant silver casket, the handiwork of an eminent firm of London silversmiths.

It contained six crackers, the wrappers of which were composed of figured satin, edged with valuable old lace. The centres were formed of octagonal caskets, fitted with tiny silver doors. Each door was fitted with a tiny lock, and a tiny silver key hung suspended from the body of the cracker by a silken cord. Each cracker contained a valuable ring or brooch.

The crackers were presented to the bridesmaids at a fashionable Christmas wedding. It was, undoubtedly, the most expensive box of crackers ever produced, having cost over £250.

However, this is by no means a record, since more money has been paid for a single cracker, which enjoyed the distinction of being the smallest ever made. It measured exactly four inches. By the courtesy of its present owner, we are enabled to publish a photograph showing its actual size. It is constructed of gold, in imitation of a sheaf of wheat.

A golden sheaf cracker which contained a gold ring set with pearls and cost £400.

It was made by one of the first living goldsmiths, who spent six months of hard work upon it before its completion. It is considered one of the most beautiful specimens of modelling extant, and, as a work of art, is valued at nearly double its actual cost. It contained a ring set with rare pearls, and from start to finish ran its purchaser into the comfortable little fortune of £400.

The world’s record cracker is in course of erection in the North of England at the present moment. It is the idea of a well-known sporting baronet, who has gained considerable notoriety in the locality by reason of the sumptuousness and novelty of his Christmas parties. The baronet is particularly fond of the little ones, and the piece de resistance at these functions is invariably designed for their edification.

This year he has built an immense cracker, over thirty feet in height. It is being erected under the dome of the ball-room in his country house, and has already occupied the services of some half-dozen workmen for some time. It is composed of an understructure of light wire lattice-work, stayed and riveted to a centre pole, and stands firmly on a specially constructed wooden base, which forms a receptacle for the electric batteries to be used for lighting purposes.

It is covered with coarse paper, which has been specially painted by scenic artists. The whole is to be lighted by electricity, and some dozens of lamps will be utilised. Our illustration shows the great cracker in course of erection, and gives a very tolerable idea of how it will appear when completed.

A huge detonator runs through the centre of the structure. A cord hooks on to the upper end, passes upwards through a pulley, and then descends to a stand by the base of the cracker. On being pulled, the detonator will explode with a loud report, and the whole structure will be momentarily enveloped in coloured fires.

The explosion of the detonator will also connect the electric circuit and switch on the festoons of coloured lamps. The effect of the simultaneous illumination of the electric lamps amid the mist of coloured fire should provide a spectacle of unusual beauty. The cracker itself is to be filled with sweets, paper caps, and expensive toys. There will also be a number of presents for adult guests.

A tiny spiral staircase runs round the central support in the interior of the structure, and by this means the attendants will be able to reach the contents and hand them down. G. M.

The Harmsworth Monthly Pictorial Magazine, Volume 1, 1899

SOME NEW CAPS IN THIS SEASON’S CRACKERS.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Well over a century later, the Christmas cracker continues to be a popular favour at the festal board. Even the luxe cracker is still with us, as in these 2014 crackers containing a Cartier necklace or an Aston Martin. Mrs Daffodil will not be purchasing these for Christmas festivities at the Hall. If his Lordship wishes a yacht or an Aston Martin, he can always purchase one, but what good is a Christmas cracker without a paper crown or a joke?

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.