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From
Circa Victoria
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One seems to step back in time when reading the
following 1891 Christmas Tide commentary. This wintry mix of
nostalgia and contemporaneous criticism offers us an interesting
Victorian perspective on holiday respites.
Christmas Tide
(1891)
|
He  would
be a bold man who would venture to predicate anything of our English
climate. At the moment of writing the icy thumb of King Frost is
stamped upon at least some parts of  England;
but, as nearly a week must elapse before we celebrate Christmas,
there is no knowing what changes maybe in store for us. The snow may
lie "round about, deep and crisp and even," as the
Christmas carol tells us it did when "Good King Wenceslaus went
out on the Feast of Stephen"; or, on the other hand, we may
have one of those Green Christmases which, it is said, make a
churchyard fat, and will cause skaters to envy the lot of Smart, who
will practice his art abroad at other people's expense. Our railway
stations are liberally billed with train arrangements for Christmas.
Early, at midday, and late, will
travelers be borne to join their families to some more or less
distant quarter of England, and this is possibly the merriest aspect
of the season which is now upon us. Those whose chief difficulty is
how to find something to do, and who, so long as money lasts, can
flit whither they will, can scarcely understand how great is the
pleasure to the bread-winner to leave his occupation at this time of
year, and to spend a couple of days at home, there to meet brothers
and sisters who may not have met for several years. These, at any
rate, can well afford to accept with gratefulness the unsentimental,
often uncomfortable, yet comparatively expeditious mode of traveling
by rail. Their object is to gain their destination as soon as
possible; they regard locomotion from a practical standpoint, and
care not for the glories of the old coaching days. Nevertheless,
with the advent of Christmas, the fancy, the pencil, and the brush
of the artist delight to give us some reminiscences of olden days.
It no doubt requires a considerable amount of imagination to
transplant ourselves from the sitting-room of a villa residence to
the hall of some Elizabethan house, such as we see in pictures. The
modern grate, holding a thimbleful of coals, and given to smoke
whenever the wind is in the wrong quarter, is in great contrast to
the open hearth and its huge burning logs; while the
great-grandfather who,
with rosy face and black smalls, welcomes his guests on the steps of
his mansion, certainly looks a more dignified sort of person than
the modern host clad in a suit of "dittos." At first
glance, too, the post chaise and four in Christmas pictures all
guests travel behind four horses may seem a much more luxurious
mode of travel than our prosaic railway; though if we knew of the
cost incurred, the number of tips to be given, and the number of
times the "bounder" stuck in snowdrifts, we might possibly
become more reconciled to our modern conveyance and the conveniences
of the station fly. We may, on the whole, be thankful that we have
been "born so late," and content ourselves with reading of
the olden times, and building castles in the air after looking at
our picture books.
The winter
coaches running in and out of London must look desolate indeed in
the eyes of those surviving members of the old school who remember
coaching as it existed before the railways drove stage coaches off
the road. Full inside and out; luggage packed on the roof with a
skill possessed by no modern coach guard; both boots crammed full;
the cradle carrying as much as could be bound upon it; and with a
fringe of game all round, the old coaches must have indeed suggested
peace and plenty, and have taxed the abilities of the coachman.
Snow played a prominent part in the old-fashioned Christmas, and it
is rather more than possible that much of the credit given to the
coachman belonged to the horses which tugged and toiled at their
load with all the pluck characteristic of that noble animal, whether
on the road, the racecourse, or in the field. The sight of the game,
too, would remind us of the days when game dealers did not exist
for game was not allowed to be sold and when, without recourse
to the poacher, one could eat pheasants and partridges only when
they were sent as a gift from some friend in the country. Here, at
any rate, there was an explanation, if not an excuse, for the
poacher's calling; and when the game laws were altered it was fondly
hoped that by allowing game to become an article of commerce like
beef and mutton, the poacher and all his wiles would be abolished.
How fallacious that hope has been we all know; and one statesman
alone foretold how widely the result would differ from the general
expectation. Poachers have and increased and multiplied, and though
game be bought as easily as bread and butter, the poacher finds an
apparently remunerative market for his stolen property.
Prophets seem to
be divided in their opinions whether we shall or shall not have a
hard winter. Whichever it is, some will rejoice and some will
grieve. The exponents of skating had their innings last
year and the year before, while hunting men were getting the minimum
of fun for the maximum of expenditure horses invariably stand at
the sign of the "Hand-in-Pocket," while there is no
reduction of hunt subscriptions or servants' wages because the
country is frost bound. Skaters, however, must on the whole envy
those to whom mild weather and mud bring pleasure. They are as fond
as gliding, with more or less grace, over the ice as others are of
skimming over, or, as at present, of wallowing over the country; yet
a week's skating off the reel is seldom obtainable, and just as one
has begun to feel at home on skates, the ice is labeled
"dangerous," and a thaw comes. Considering, therefore, the
disadvantages under which our native skaters, amateur and
professional, labor, they are deserving of every credit for showing
as much ability as they do, and if the frost should hold over
Christmas a good deal of cheap amusement will be afforded at a time
when the majority will be able to embrace the opportunity. Skating
by torchlight may be better than no skating at all; but skating in
the crisp morning air, with all the day before one, is better still,
and ten times more invigorating. Curling can scarcely be yet said to
have become naturalized down south, though, as a recent publication
shows, it is a pastime with a history and an attraction in
Scotland, at all events. It is
the fashion, we know, to speak of Christmas as an unmitigated bore;
but surely most of those upon whom dyspepsia has not laid its finger
can find some cause for pleasure, if not actual merriment.
Cynically-disposed persons may affect to lament that the time has
arrived when the school-doors are closed, and Masters Tom and Harry return to the paternal
household, ready to face without flinching the bilious attack which,
an all probability, will attend the consumption of Christmas fare,
following the less luxurious, if unquestionably more wholesome food,
upon which they have, for the past ten weeks or so, been nourished
at school. To English boys who are enabled to enjoy country life the
Christmas holidays are pleasant indeed; and the evident enjoyment of
the juveniles may surely make the blood of their seniors run a
little quicker, and cause them to be thankful that there are some at
least who can answer in the affirmative Mr. Mallock's question,
"Is Life Worth Living?" For the boys and girls it most
assuredly is, or should be. These embryo sportsmen and sportswomen
have already made their appearance in the hunting-field; and in
their joy at finding themselves once more in the saddle, they have
ridden their ponies into and over obstacles in a manner which shows
plainly enough that they are not blasι,
and do not hunt only because it is the correct thing to do. To this
younger generation a long spell of frost
would mean bitter disappointment. For weeks past they may have been
wondering what the new pony is like; is it a grey, a chestnut, a
bay, or a brown? Is it faster than the old one now turned over to
the younger brother? And, most important of all, can it jump as
well, and is it as clever possibly as wayward as the one which
acted as schoolmaster to two or three of the family? In the event of
a frost these weighty problems must await solution at the cost of
much greater disappointment than will be felt by the seniors who can
at any rate get their hunting later on when the schools shall have
again "met," and the boys and girls shall be back to work
again. It is to the children of the present day that we must look
for our future masters of hounds; and for those who will hereafter
have to maintain the honor of sport, and to uphold the positions of
squire, host, and hostess; and well will it be if they are now able
to undergo the requisite training. Their opportunity for indulging
in field sports, other than the games played at school, is
necessarily limited. In the summer their time is, as often as not,
spent away from home, at the seaside for instance; so, in addition
to pleasure derived, there is not a little social education in the
Christmas holidays, which, for the sake of those most intimately
concerned, we trust may be pleasant ones. In conclusion, Christmas
commonly brings with it a modicum of pleasure
to those whose lot is cast in anything but pleasant lines to the
very poor. Special appeals bring more or less satisfactory results;
the much-abused squire generally manages to find something for his
less fortunate neighbors; while the good old institution of
Christmas boxes brings with it pleasure and profit to many.
From
Circa Victoria
|
