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SOME CHRISTMAS STORIES
SOME CHRISTMAS STORIES CHARLES DICKENS Contents:
A Christmas Tree
What Christmas is as we Grow Older
The Poor Relation's Story
The Child's Story
The Schoolboy's Story
Nobody's Story
A CHRISTMAS TREE
I have been looking on this evening at a merry company of children
assembled round that pretty German toy a Christmas Tree. The tree
was planted in the middle of a great round table and towered high
above their heads. It was brilliantly lighted by a multitude of
little tapers; and everywhere sparkled and glittered with bright
objects. There were rosy-cheeked dolls hiding behind the green
leaves; and there were real watches (with movable hands at least
and an endless capacity of being wound up) dangling from innumerable
twigs; there were French-polished tables chairs bedsteads
wardrobes eight-day clocks and various other articles of domestic
furniture (wonderfully made in tin at Wolverhampton) perched
among the boughs as if in preparation for some fairy housekeeping;
there were jolly broad-faced little men much more agreeable in
appearance than many real men--and no wonder for their heads took
off and showed them to be full of sugar-plums; there were fiddles
and drums; there were tambourines books work-boxes paint-boxes
sweetmeat-boxes peep-show boxes and all kinds of boxes; there were
trinkets for the elder girls far brighter than any grown-up gold
and jewels; there were baskets and pincushions in all devices; there
were guns swords and banners; there were witches standing in
enchanted rings of pasteboard to tell fortunes; there were
teetotums humming-tops needle-cases pen-wipers smelling-bottles
conversation-cards bouquet-holders; real fruit made artificially
dazzling with gold leaf; imitation apples pears and walnuts
crammed with surprises; in short as a pretty child before me
delightedly whispered to another pretty child her bosom friend
"There was everything and more." This motley collection of odd
objects clustering on the tree like magic fruit and flashing back
the bright looks directed towards it from every side--some of the
diamond-eyes admiring it were hardly on a level with the table and
a few were languishing in timid wonder on the bosoms of pretty
mothers aunts and nurses--made a lively realisation of the fancies
of childhood; and set me thinking how all the trees that grow and
all the things that come into existence on the earth have their
wild adornments at that well-remembered time.
Being now at home again and alone the only person in the house
awake my thoughts are drawn back by a fascination which I do not
care to resist to my own childhood. I begin to consider what do
we all remember best upon the branches of the Christmas Tree of our
own young Christmas days by which we climbed to real life.
Straight in the middle of the room cramped in the freedom of its
growth by no encircling walls or soon-reached ceiling a shadowy
tree arises; and looking up into the dreamy brightness of its top--
for I observe in this tree the singular property that it appears to
grow downward towards the earth--I look into my youngest Christmas
recollections!
All toys at first I find. Up yonder among the green holly and red
berries is the Tumbler with his hands in his pockets who wouldn't
lie down but whenever he was put upon the floor persisted in
rolling his fat body about until he rolled himself still and
brought those lobster eyes of his to bear upon me--when I affected
to laugh very much but in my heart of hearts was extremely doubtful
of him. Close beside him is that infernal snuff-box out of which
there sprang a demoniacal Counsellor in a black gown with an
obnoxious head of hair and a red cloth mouth wide open who was
not to be endured on any terms but could not be put away either;
for he used suddenly in a highly magnified state to fly out of
Mammoth Snuff-boxes in dreams when least expected. Nor is the frog
with cobbler's wax on his tail far off; for there was no knowing
where he wouldn't jump; and when he flew over the candle and came
upon one's hand with that spotted back--red on a green ground--he
was horrible. The cardboard lady in a blue-silk skirt who was
stood up against the candlestick to dance and whom I see on the
same branch was milder and was beautiful; but I can't say as much
for the larger cardboard man who used to be hung against the wall
and pulled by a string; there was a sinister expression in that nose
of his; and when he got his legs round his neck (which he very often
did) he was ghastly and not a creature to be alone with.
When did that dreadful Mask first look at me? Who put it on and
why was I so frightened that the sight of it is an era in my life?
It is not a hideous visage in itself; it is even meant to be droll
why then were its stolid features so intolerable? Surely not
because it hid the wearer's face. An apron would have done as much;
and though I should have preferred even the apron away it would not
have been absolutely insupportable like the mask. Was it the
immovability of the mask? The doll's face was immovable but I was
not afraid of HER. Perhaps that fixed and set change coming over a
real face infused into my quickened heart some remote suggestion
and dread of the universal change that is to come on every face and
make it still? Nothing reconciled me to it. No drummers from whom
proceeded a melancholy chirping on the turning of a handle; no
regiment of soldiers with a mute band taken out of a box and
fitted one by one upon a stiff and lazy little set of lazy-tongs;
no old woman made of wires and a brown-paper composition cutting
up a pie for two small children; could give me a permanent comfort
for a long time. Nor was it any satisfaction to be shown the Mask
and see that it was made of paper or to have it locked up and be
assured that no one wore it. The mere recollection of that fixed
face the mere knowledge of its existence anywhere was sufficient
to awake me in the night all perspiration and horror with "O I
know it's coming! O the mask!"
I never wondered what the dear old donkey with the panniers--there
he is! was made of then! His hide was real to the touch I
recollect. And the great black horse with the round red spots all
over him--the horse that I could even get upon--I never wondered
what had brought him to that strange condition or thought that such
a horse was not commonly seen at Newmarket. The four horses of no
colour next to him that went into the waggon of cheeses and could
be taken out and stabled under the piano appear to have bits of
fur-tippet for their tails and other bits for their manes and to
stand on pegs instead of legs but it was not so when they were
brought home for a Christmas present. They were all right then;
neither was their harness unceremoniously nailed into their chests
as appears to be the case now. The tinkling works of the music-
cart I DID find out to be made of quill tooth-picks and wire; and
I always thought that little tumbler in his shirt sleeves
perpetually swarming up one side of a wooden frame and coming down
head foremost on the other rather a weak-minded person--though
good-natured; but the Jacob's Ladder next him made of little
squares of red wood that went flapping and clattering over one
another each developing a different picture and the whole
enlivened by small bells was a mighty marvel and a great delight.
Ah! The Doll's house!--of which I was not proprietor but where I
visited. I don't admire the Houses of Parliament half so much as
that stone-fronted mansion with real glass windows and door-steps
and a real balcony--greener than I ever see now except at watering
places; and even they afford but a poor imitation. And though it
DID open all at once the entire house-front (which was a blow I
admit as cancelling the fiction of a staircase) it was but to shut
it up again and I could believe. Even open there were three
distinct rooms in it: a sitting-room and bed-room elegantly
furnished and best of all a kitchen with uncommonly soft fire-
irons a plentiful assortment of diminutive utensils--oh the
warming-pan!--and a tin man-cook in profile who was always going to
fry two fish. What Barmecide justice have I done to the noble
feasts wherein the set of wooden platters figured each with its own
peculiar delicacy as a ham or turkey glued tight on to it and
garnished with something green which I recollect as moss! Could
all the Temperance Societies of these later days united give me
such a tea-drinking as I have had through the means of yonder little
set of blue crockery which really would hold liquid (it ran out of
the small wooden cask I recollect and tasted of matches) and
which made tea nectar. And if the two legs of the ineffectual
little sugar-tongs did tumble over one another and want purpose
like Punch's hands what does it matter? And if I did once shriek
out as a poisoned child and strike the fashionable company with
consternation by reason of having drunk a little teaspoon
inadvertently dissolved in too hot tea I was never the worse for
it except by a powder!
Upon the next branches of the tree lower down hard by the green
roller and miniature gardening-tools how thick the books begin to
hang. Thin books in themselves at first but many of them and
with deliciously smooth covers of bright red or green. What fat
black letters to begin with! "A was an archer and shot at a frog."
Of course he was. He was an apple-pie also and there he is! He
was a good many things in his time was A and so were most of his
friends except X who had so little versatility that I never knew
him to get beyond Xerxes or Xantippe--like Y who was always
confined to a Yacht or a Yew Tree; and Z condemned for ever to be a
Zebra or a Zany. But now the very tree itself changes and
becomes a bean-stalk--the marvellous bean-stalk up which Jack
climbed to the Giant's house! And now those dreadfully
interesting double-headed giants with their clubs over their
shoulders begin to stride along the boughs in a perfect throng
dragging knights and ladies home for dinner by the hair of their
heads. And Jack--how noble with his sword of sharpness and his
shoes of swiftness! Again those old meditations come upon me as I
gaze up at him; and I debate within myself whether there was more
than one Jack (which I am loth to believe possible) or only one
genuine original admirable Jack who achieved all the recorded
exploits.
Good for Christmas-time is the ruddy colour of the cloak in which--
the tree making a forest of itself for her to trip through with her
basket--Little Red Riding-Hood comes to me one Christmas Eve to give
me information of the cruelty and treachery of that dissembling Wolf
who ate her grandmother without making any impression on his
appetite and then ate her after making that ferocious joke about
his teeth. She was my first love. I felt that if I could have
married Little Red Riding-Hood I should have known perfect bliss.
But it was not to be; and there was nothing for it but to look out
the Wolf in the Noah's Ark there and put him late in the procession
on the table as a monster who was to be degraded. O the wonderful
Noah's Ark! It was not found seaworthy when put in a washing-tub
and the animals were crammed in at the roof and needed to have
their legs well shaken down before they could be got in even there--
and then ten to one but they began to tumble out at the door
which was but imperfectly fastened with a wire latch--but what was
THAT against it! Consider the noble fly a size or two smaller than
the elephant: the lady-bird the butterfly--all triumphs of art!
Consider the goose whose feet were so small and whose balance was
so indifferent that he usually tumbled forward and knocked down
all the animal creation. Consider Noah and his family like idiotic
tobacco-stoppers; and how the leopard stuck to warm little fingers;
and how the tails of the larger animals used gradually to resolve
themselves into frayed bits of string!
Hush! Again a forest and somebody up in a tree--not Robin Hood
not Valentine not the Yellow Dwarf (I have passed him and all
Mother Bunch's wonders without mention) but an Eastern King with a
glittering scimitar and turban. By Allah! two Eastern Kings for I
see another looking over his shoulder! Down upon the grass at the
tree's foot lies the full length of a coal-black Giant stretched
asleep with his head in a lady's lap; and near them is a glass box
fastened with four locks of shining steel in which he keeps the
lady prisoner when he is awake. I see the four keys at his girdle
now. The lady makes signs to the two kings in the tree who softly
descend. It is the setting-in of the bright Arabian Nights.
Oh now all common things become uncommon and enchanted to me. All
lamps are wonderful; all rings are talismans. Common flower-pots
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