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 Wolverhampton1), 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, sweetmeatboxes, peep-show boxes, and all kinds of boxes; to Paris, and which has given a name to the hands, at least, and an endless capacity of great Abbey of St. Germain-des-Prés.11 For long years it was devoted to the purposes of innocent and healthy enjoyment; but evil times came on the University; disorder arose within its precincts, and the fair meadow became the scene of party brawls; heresy stalked through Europe, and Germany and England no longer sending their contingent of students, a heavy debt was the consequence to the academical body. To let their land was the only resource left to them: buildings rose upon it, and spread along the green sod, and the country at length became town. Great was the grief and indignation of the doctors and masters, when this catastrophe occurred. "A wretched there were trinkets for the elder girls, far sight," said the Proctor of the German brighter than any grown-up gold and jewels; nation, 12 a wretched sight, to witness the sale there were baskets and pincushions in all deof that ancient manor, whither the Muses were vices; there were guns, swords, and banners; wont to wander for retirement and pleasure. there were witches standing in enchanted rings Whither shall the youthful student now betake of pasteboard, to tell fortunes; there were himself, what relief will he find for his eyes, teetotums, humming-tops, needle-cases, penwearied with intense reading, now that the wipers, smelling-bottles, conversation-cards, pleasant stream is taken from him?" Two bouquet-holders; real fruit, made artificially centuries and more have passed since this com- dazzling with goldleaf; imitation apples, pears, plaint was uttered; and time has shown that and walnuts, crammed with surprises; in short, the outward calamity, which it recorded, was as a pretty child before me delightedly whisbut the emblem of the great moral revolution, pered to another pretty child, her bosom friend, which was to follow; till the institution itself "There was everything, and more." This mothas followed its green meadows, into the region | ley collection of odd objects, clustering on the of things which once were and now are not.13 tree like magic fruit, and flashing back the CHARLES DICKENS (1812-1870) 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 rosycheeked dolls, hiding behind the green leaves; and there were real watches (with movable 11 Founded about 542 and dedicated to St. Ger- 12 The Dean of the resident German students. France, but in 1896 it became once more the *Contributed by Dickens to Household Words, Dec. 21, 1850. 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 nursesmade a lively realization 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 1 In Staffordshire; a center for the manufacture of hardware. downward towards the earth-I look into my stiff and lazy little set of lazy-tongs;1 no old youngest Christmas recollections! woman, made of wires and a brown-paper com All toys at first I find. Up yonder, among the position, cutting up a pie for two small chilgreen holly and red berries, is the Tumbler dren; could give me a permanent comfort, for with his hands in his pockets, who wouldn't lie a long time. Nor was it any satisfaction to down, but whenever he was put upon the floor, be shown the Mask, and see that it was made persisted in rolling his fat body about, until of paper, or to have it locked up and be ashe rolled himself still, and brought those lobster sured that no one wore it. The mere recolleceyes of his to bear upon me when I affected | tion of that fixed face, the mere knowledge of to laugh very much, but in my heart of hearts its existence anywhere, was sufficient to awake was extremely doubtful of him. Close beside me in the night all perspiration and horror, him is that infernal snuff-box, out of which with, "O I know it's coming! O the mask!" 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 Snuffboxes 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. 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.2 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 furtippet 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 musiccart, I did find out to be made of quill toothpicks 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 goodnatured; but the Jacob's Ladder,s 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. 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 Ah! The Doll's house!-of which I was not been absolutely insupportable, like the mask. proprietor, but where I visited. I don't admire Was it the immovability of the mask? The the Houses of Parliament half so much as that doll's face was immovable, but I was not afraid | stone-fronted mansion with real glass windows, of her. Perhaps that fixed and set change and door-steps, and a real balcony-greener coming over a real face, infused into my quick-than I ever see now, except at watering-places; ened heart some remote suggestion and dread of and even they afford but a poor imitation. And the universal change that is to come on every though it did open all at once, the entire houseface, and make it still? Nothing reconciled me to front (which was a blow, I admit, as cancelling it. No drummers, from whom proceeded a melan1 Scissors-like, 2 Newmarket Heath, choly chirping on the turning of a handle; no where annual horse regiment of soldiers, with a mute band, taken races are held. out of a box, and fitted, one by one, upon a extensible tongs, commonly used for picking up objects at a distance. 3 Name taken from Gen esis, xxviii, 12. ness, 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. 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 sittingroom and bedroom, 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 mancook in profile, who was always going to fry Good for Christmas time is the ruddy colour two fish. What Barmecide justices have I done of the cloak, in which-the tree making a forest to the noble feasts wherein the set of wooden of itself for her to trip through, with her basplatters figured, each with its own peculiar | ket-Little Red Riding-Hood comes to me one 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 sugartongs 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! 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 fam leopard stuck to warm little fingers; and how the tails of the larger animals used gradually to resolve themselves into frayed bits of string! 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 soily, like idiotic tobacco-stoppers;1 and how the 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 beanstalk 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 sharp 4 In the story of the "Barber's Sixth Brother" in 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,2 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 | you finish the history of the Young King of keys at his girdle now. The lady makes signs the Black Islands." Scheherazade replies, "If 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 are full of treasure, with a little earth scattered on the top; trees are for Ali Baba to hide in; beef-steaks are to throw down into the Valley of Diamonds, that the precious stones may stick to them, and be carried by the eagles to their nests, whence the traders, with loud cries, will scare them. Tarts are made, according to the recipe of the Vizier's son of Bussorah, who turned pastrycook after he was set down in his drawers at the gate of Damascus; cobblers are all Mustaphas, and in the habit of sewing up people cut into four pieces, to whom they are taken blindfold. Any iron ring let into stone is the entrance to a cave which only waits for the magician, and the little fire, and the necromancy, that will make the earth shake. All the dates imported come from the same tree as that unlucky date, with whose shell the merchant knocked out the eye of the genie's invisible son. All olives are of the stock of that fresh fruit, concerning which the Commander of the Faithful overheard the boy conduct the fictitious trial of the fraudulent olive merchant; all apples are akin to the apple purchased (with two others) from the Sultan's gardener for three sequins, and which the tall black slave stole from the child. All dogs are associated with the dog, really a transformed man, who jumped upon the baker's counter, and put his paw on the piece of bad money. All rice recalls the rice which the awful lady, who was a ghoul, could only peck by grains, because of her nightly feasts in the burial-place. My very rocking-horse, there he is, with his nostrils turned completely inside-out, indicative of Blood!-should have a peg in his neck, by virtue thereof to fly away with me, as the wooden horse did with the Prince of Persia, in the sight of all his father's Court. Yes, on every object that I recognize among those upper branches of my Christmas Tree, I see this fairy light! When I wake in bed, at daybreak, on the cold dark winter mornings, the white snow dimly beheld, outside, through the frost on the window-pane, I hear Dinarzade. "Sister, sister, if you are yet awake, I pray my lord the Sultan will suffer me to live another day, sister, I will not only finish that, but tell you a more wonderful story yet." Then, the gracious Sultan goes out, giving no orders for the execution, and we all three breathe again.1 At this height of my tree I begin to see, cowering among the leaves-it may be born of turkey, or of pudding, or mince-pie, or of these many fancies, jumbled with Robinson Crusoe on his desert island, Philip Quarll among the monkeys,2 Sandford and Merton3 with Mr. Barlow, Mother Bunch, and the Mask-or it may be the result of indigestion, assisted by imagination and over-doctoring a prodigious nightmare. It is so exceedingly indistinct, that I don't know why it's frightful-but I know it is. I can only make out that it is an immense array of shapeless things, which appear to be planted on a vast exaggeration of the lazy-tongs that used to bear the toy soldiers, and to be slowly coming close to my eyes, and receding to an immeasurable distance. When it comes closest, it is worst. In connection with it I descry remembrances of winter nights incredibly long; of being sent early to bed, as a punishment for some small offence, and waking in two hours, with a sensation of having been asleep two nights; of the leaden hopelessness of morning ever dawning; and the oppression of a weight of remorse. And now, I see a wonderful row of little lights rise smoothly out of the ground, before a vast green curtain. Now, a bell rings-a magic bell, which still sounds in my ears unlike all other bells-and music plays, amidst a buzz of voices, and a fragrant smell of orange-peel and oil. Anon, the magic bell commands the music to cease, and the great green curtain rolls itself up majestically, and The Play begins! The devoted dog of Montargis avenges the death of his master, foully murdered in the Forest of Bondy; and a humorous Peasant 1 The stories of the Arabian Nights were professedly related on successive nights by Scheherazade to her sister, in order to interest the Sultan, whom she had wedded, and so prevent him from carrying out his practice of behead2 A castaway, like Robinson Crusoe, who was ing his bride the day after the wedding. solaced on his desert island by a monkey. 4 3 The heroes of a popular juvenile book by Thomas Day. Mr. Barlow was the boys' instructor. Aubrey de Montdidier was murdered in 1371 in the forest of Bondy (or of Montargis) and avenged by his dog, which attracted such suspicion to the slayer that the king finally required the slayer to fight with the dog. The story has been dramatized. with a red nose and a very little hat whom I | Exile of Siberia.10 In spite of a few besetting take from this hour forth to my bosom as a accidents and failures (particularly an unreafriend (I think he was a Waiter or an Hostler sonable disposition in the respectable Kelmar, at a village Inn, but many years have passed and some others, to become faint in the legs, since he and I have met), remarks that the and double up, at exciting points of the sassigassity of that dog is indeed surprising; drama), a teeming world of fancies so suggestand evermore this jocular conceit will live in ive and all-embracing, that, far below it on my remembrance fresh and unfading, overtop- my Christmas Tree, I see dark, dirty, real ping all possible jokes, until the end of time. Theatres in the day-time, adorned with these Or now, I learn with bitter tears how poor associations as with the freshest garlands of Jane Shore, dressed all in white, and with her the rarest flowers, and charming me yet. brown hair hanging down, went starving through the streets; or how George Barnwell killed the worthiest uncle that ever man had, and was afterwards so sorry for it that he ought to have been let off.6 Comes swift to comfort me, the Pantomime-stupendous Phenomenon!-when clowns are shot from loaded mortars into the great chandelier, bright constellation that it is; when Harlequins, covered all over with scales of pure gold, twist and sparkle, like amazing fish; when Pantaloon (whom I deem it no irreverence to compare in my own mind to my grandfather) puts red-hot pokers in his pocket, and cries "Here's somebody coming!" or taxes the Clown with petty larceny, by saying, "Now, I sawed you do it!" when Everything is capable, with the greatest ease, of being changed into Anything; and "Nothing is, but thinking makes it so." Now, too, I perceive my first experience of the dreary sensation-often to return in after-life-of being unable, next day, to get back to the dull, settled world; of wanting to live for ever in the bright atmosphere I have quitted; of doting on the little Fairy, with the wand like a celestial Barber's Pole, and pining for a Fairy immortality along with her. Ah, she comes back in many shapes, as my eye wanders down the branches of my Christmas Tree, and goes as often, and has never yet stayed by me! Out of this delight springs the toy-theatre, there it is, with its familiar proscenium,s and ladies in feathers, in the boxes!-and all its attendant occupation with paste and glue, and gum, and water colours, in the getting-up of The Miller and His Men,9 and Elizabeth, or the 5 In a tragedy (founded on fact) by Nicholas Rowe. See also the ballad of "Jane Shore" in Percy's Reliques. 6 George Barnwell, or The London Merchant, by 7 The clowns, in pantomimes, who play tricks upon 9 Originally a popular melodrama by Isaac Pocock, A gang of bandits, disguised as millers, try to carry off the daughter of Kelmar, an old cottager. But hark! The Waits11 are playing, and they break my childish sleep! What images do I associate with the Christmas music as I see them set forth on the Christmas Tree? Known before all the others, keeping far apart from all the others, they gather round my little bed. An angel, speaking to a group of shepherds in a field; some travellers, with eyes uplifted, following a star; a baby in a manger; a child in a spacious temple, talking with grave men; a solemn figure, with a mild and beautiful face, raising a dead girl by the hand; again, near a city gate, calling back the son of a widow, on his bier, to life; a crowd of people looking through the opened roof of a chamber where he sits, and letting down a sick person on a bed, with ropes; the same, in a tempest, walking on the water to a ship; again, on a seashore, teaching a great multitude; again, with a child upon his knee, and other children round; again, restoring sight to the blind, speech to the dumb, hearing to the deaf, health to the sick, strength to the lame, knowledge to the ignorant; again, dying upon a Cross, watched by armed soldiers, a thick darkness coming on, the earth beginning to shake, and only one voice heard, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do." Still, on the lower and maturer branches of the Tree, Christmas associations cluster thick. School-books shut up; Ovid and Virgil silenced; the Rule of Three,12 with its cool impertinent inquiries, long disposed of; Terence and Plautus acted no more, in an arena of huddled desks and forms, all chipped, and notched, and inked; cricket-bats, stumps,13 and balls, left higher up, with the smell of trodden grass and the softened noise of shouts in the evening air; the tree is still fresh, still gay. If I no more come home at Christmas time, there will be 10 Taken from a French novel published by Madame Cottin in 1806. Elizabeth walks from Siberia to Russia to get the Czar's pardon for her exiled family. 11 Street musicians who sing from house to house on Christmas Eve. 12 The rule of "proportion." 13 The three posts constituting a wicket in the game of cricket. |