Happy Christmas Eve!

 

Happy Christmas Eve -- it's a lovely time to be still and reflective. In this excerpt from the story Christmas Eve in Dorothy Richardson's collection Journey to Paradise, a group of disparate girls in a boarding house find some glory in the night despite themselves. They are all asked to go up to the room of a German girl who has bought herself a small Christmas tree, just for a few minutes -- 

The curtains were all thrown up over their rails leaving the room clear. Someone had pushed back the beds so that there was space on the linoleum-covered floor  for all the stand about the little tree. Its many candles glowed sharply in the cold air. Fraulein Braun stood near the tree as we all gathered in a rough circle. 

"What are we to do, Fraulein?" asked Miss Spencer briskly to cover a giggle from little Green.

"Are all here?" asked Fraulein in her deep voice.

"Everyone in the house, Fraulein."

Fraulein drew back into the awkward circle between Edith and the little Hindu who was standing with reverently bent head and her little hands clasped downwards before her. At the end of a moment Fraulein's rich voice rose and filled he large cold room.

'Sh - ti- il - le Nacht  / Hei - li - ge Nacht'

As she sang the room seemed to grow less cold. The sharp separate rays of the little candles changed to one rosy golden blur. 

When Fraulein's voice ceased there was silence. Miss Spencer looked about with a cheerful questioning face. She could be heard urging someone to do something. In a moment she would speak. I was aware of a stirring at my side and felt the flush that made Cook's face uniform with her nose. Her impulse had animated more than one but it was her old unused voice that broke the silence with song in which presently all joined as they could: 

'While shepherds watched their flocks by night

  All seated on the ground

The Angel of the Lord came down, 

  And glory shone around.'

Merry Christmas!

 

Photo by Rodion Kutsaev on Unsplash

Merry Christmas to all my readers here! 
 Enjoy your holidays reading, resting, & relaxing. 

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.”

― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

Happy Christmas Eve!

Happy Christmas Eve!

"Aren't we grand tonight?" she laughed. "We might be expecting company, so fine we are. When I was little, it was Santa Claus himself who came round on this night, and weren't we excited! I do love Christmas Eve."...

"It's lovely, Mary. You've made it grand. I've never seen it so nice before. You can make a feast when there's an empty pantry. You make everything pretty you handle."

She leaped to her feet with joy at his words, and danced round the room, putting the final touches to the holly and ivy that decked the walls. Along the edge of the stone mantelpiece hung a chain of scarlet berries which she had threaded that afternoon, and in each brass pitcher and pan she stuck a spray of greenery. 

There were not many pictures in the little room -- a wool-work embroidered picture of Christ blessing the children, a cross-stitch sampler, and a painting of a cart-horse. Round the frames she had twisted garlands of holly and sprays of ivy, and sprigs of berries decked the looking-glass and the dresser.

From the middle of the ceiling hung the Kissing-bunch. It was a large bunch of holly with the choicest berries, all trimmed neatly in to a round smooth ball of greenery. It was suspended by a string from a hook, and underneath it a visitor must take a kiss. Such was the custom of those times, when Christmas trees were hardly known.

"It's as lovely a Kissing-bunch as ever I remember," said Simon, gazing up at it. The ball glittered in the firelight. The rosy apples and yellow oranges hanging in the bunch gleamed, and the silver bells, gilded walnuts and little flags of paper stuck in the Kissing-bunch made a brightness that seemed to shine out like a lamp.

Simon rose to his full height and drawing his little wife close to him he kissed her under the prickly bunch. "Thank you for making so many pleasures out of nothing,"said he. 

~from Christmas Stories by Alison Uttley

A Reacher Philosophy of Fiction

The Attractive Rattle of Tea Things

Today I thought I'd share a few quotes from Pym's work about one of my own favourite subjects, and one she talks about extensively... Tea!

Perhaps there can be too much making of cups of tea, I thought, as I watched Miss Statham filling the heavy teapot. Did we really need a cup of tea? I even said as much to Miss Statham and she looked at me with a hurt, almost angry look, 'Do we need tea? she echoed. 'But Miss Lathbury...' She sounded puzzled and distressed and I began to realise that my question had struck at something deep and fundamental. It was the kind of question that starts a landslide in the mind. I mumbled something about making a joke and that of course one needed tea always, at every hour of the day or night.

 ~Excellent Women

I was so astonished that I could think of nothing to say, but wondered irrelevantly if I was to be caught with a teapot in my hand on every dramatic occasion.

~ Excellent Women

‘Do you know, Wilmet—’ the dark eyes looked so seriously into mine that I wondered what horror was going to be revealed next — ‘he hadn’t even got a teapot?’

‘Goodness! How did he make tea, then?’

‘He didn’t — he never made tea! Just fancy!’

‘Well, one doesn’t really associate Piers with drinking tea,’ I said.

‘He drinks it now,’ said Keith, in such a governessy tone that I began to feel almost sorry for Piers.

~ A Glass of Blessings

Ianthe was not the type to pour herself a glass of sherry or gin as soon as she got home from a day's work, nor yet to make a cup of tea. One did not make tea at half-past six in the evening like the 'working classes', as her mother would have called them.

~ An Unsuitable Attachment

It was to be a confrontation in daylight and at the tea table, Leonora realised, dealing as calmly as she could with the business of getting an extra cup and saucer and pouring tea.

-- The Sweet Dove Died

‘There is tea over here,’ said a voice at Dulcie’s elbow, and she found Miss Wellcome standing by her. ‘You take a plate and choose what you want, then pay for what you have — a good idea, I think.’

‘Yes, isn’t it — and rather like life,’ said Dulcie. ‘Except that there you can’t always choose exactly what you want.

— No Fond Return of Love

The subject of Miss Clovis’s quarrel with the President was known only to a privileged few and even those knew no more than that it had something to do with the making of tea. Not that the making of tea can ever really be regarded as a petty or trivial matter and Miss Clovis did seem to have been seriously at fault. Hot water from the tap had been used, the kettle had not been quite boiling, the teapot had not been warmed…whatever the details, there had been words, during the course of which other things had come out, things of a darker nature.

-- Less Than Angels

She went out of the room and I could hear her filling a kettle and collecting china. I also heard a step on the stairs and Julian's voice saying, “May I come up? I can hear the attractive rattle of tea things. I hope I'm not too late?”

~ Excellent Women

**********************************

And of course I must share once again the delightful mixture of tea and libraries that I found recently in a history of my local library from 40 years ago -- the last page had only this:

Sir Charles Grandison: second thoughts

I've been steadily reading along in my 1500 pg. epistolary novel, Sir Charles Grandison. Since my first update, just 100 pages in, lots has happened... which tends to be the case when you read 900 pages... :)

Harriet Byron, our lovely heroine and intrepid letter writer, has had some major upsets in her anticipated trip to London. Recall Sir Hargrave Pollexfen, the angry and possessive suitor? Well, he decided that the best way to win Harriet was to kidnap her and force her to marry him. Harriet was abducted from a masquerade ball and taken to a location in the country in which Pollexfen intended her to marry him, but hasn't yet succeeded. As they leave that house en route to his yet more distant forest estate where he will force her hand, their carriage is delayed by another on the road at that late hour.

Thankfully for Harriet, it is Sir Charles Grandison, heading to his brother-in-law's country house, Colnebrook. He sees her distress, rescues her, deflects Pollexfen's sword and tosses him face first out of the carriage, damaging his fine appearance in the process. Harriet, swooning, is carried away by Grandison into the care of his sisters at Colnebrook.

At this point the story really gets started. Really! Harriet recovers slowly and becomes close friends with both of Grandison's sisters, Charlotte and Caroline. She writes excessively long letters to her cousin Lucy at home, regaling her with all the news of her experiences, as well as the family history of the Grandisons. It begins to dawn on everyone that Harriet is very, very grateful to Sir Charles for his rescue, and although he is  immensely kind he seems to distance himself from her somewhat. What is happening?

Ah, but then we find out that Sir Charles, despite his growing feelings for Harriet, has a previous claim on him from an Italian family. Their daughter Clementina is in the picture, and now Charles must return to Italy...

This book is a veritable soap opera. I love the different voices that come clear in the various letters. Harriet started out very pert and amusing but grew increasingly serious as she recovered from her trauma and then was stricken with an unrequited love. Sir Charles' sisters insist that she should be the next Lady Grandison, so keeping her secret from him is proving difficult. But honour must prevail. When Harriet finally goes back to her cousin Reeves in London, and then home to Selby House in Northamptonshire, her letters are exchanged primarily with Charlotte, now married and referred to as Lady G.

Charlotte is witty, intemperate, snarky and very funny, although often rebuked by Harriet and reminded to be "good" and "wifely". Charlotte, however, is a woman with her own notions, and she is the source of many discussions on the roles for women and men in their society (Richardson's argument essentially comes down to the old "different but equal") Charlotte insists that if women were given the same educational opportunities as men they would easily show their equality, but Sir Charles and other "good" men don't see that as a necessarily good thing. They believe that women should excel in their own domestic sphere and set a good example for their husbands and children. Still, considering the times, these families are pretty open both with discussion and with the roles of both women and men.

The variety of characters allows Richardson to touch on a large number of topical issues -- religion, Englishness vs. foreign habits, so-called male Honour, the double standard, class, noblesse oblige, gambling, travel, and indeed, even the practice of letter writing! For example, the ladies explain how it is that they've found the time and place to note down all this information.

But within all these rambling discussions, the story of Harriet and Charles, and the rewards of living a good life, carries us forward. After writing both Pamela and Clarissa, Richardson was challenged to write a book featuring a good man and this is what resulted. From time to time the language becomes heightened, with "thees" and "thous" popping up, usually when there is some religious fervour going on. But in the main, Sir Charles' honourable behaviour can be considered as such even by readers 265 years later! And sadly, some of the questions of women's self-agency are still current as well...

Some of the quotes I've enjoyed deal with the state of men and women and marriage at the time. In one letter of Harriet's to cousin Lucy, she says:

What can a woman do, who is addressed by a man of talents inferior to her own? Must she throw away her talents? Must she hide her light under a bushel, purely to do credit to the man? She can-not pick and choose, as men can. She has only her negative; and, if she is desirous to oblige her friends, not always that. Yet it is said, women must not encourage fops and fools. They must encourage men of sense only. And it is well said. But what can they do, if their lot be cast only among foplings? If the men of sense do not offer themselves? And pray, may I not ask, if the taste of the age, among the men, is not dress, equipage, and foppery? Is the cultivation of the mind any part of their study? The men, in short, are sunk, my dear: and the women but barely swim....

But let not those worthy young women, who may think themselves destined to a single life, repine over-much at their lot; since, possibly, if they have had no lovers, or having had one, two, or three, have not found a husband, they have had rather a miss than a loss, as men go.

I can't put this book down. I love reading all the different letters and getting to know each of the characters from their descriptions through different eyes. I can't wait to find out how the various strands are going to be tied up. And I can hardly wait for the romantic highlight that I am sure is on its way. Final thoughts on this book will be posted much earlier than I first thought they would -- this long book is compulsively readable.

Sir Charles Grandison: first thoughts

I've started reading Sir Charles Grandison as part of my Postal Reading Challenge this year. I've had it on my shelf for many years and needed some incentive to finally pick it up...as it is over 1500 pages long! Because of this, I don't want to wait until I've finished it (some months hence) to share my thoughts on it. Instead, I thought I'd share some of the gems I've found so far. 

It's written in epistolary format and has a fabulous heroine, Harriet Byron. She is funny and clever, and apparently all that is beautiful and good as well, with men proposing to her left and right. She's headed off to London with her cousins, Mr. and Mrs. Reeves, and will be experiencing the whirl of a season, with lots to write home about.

Thus far (about 30 letters in) she has written nearly all the letters, and nearly all addressed to her cousin Lucy. Something I was surprised by was the nonchalant statement by Harriet that the Reeves' would be reading all her letters, essentially vetting them, before she sent them. And that Lucy would, of course, be reading them aloud to her family -- Harriet is always throwing in asides to "my Uncle" to be kind to her female judgments. Letters were indeed a kind of public discourse at this time.

So far Harriet has met a handful of new people, and has already been proposed to twice, upon the strength of one or two meetings. She has refused, even in the face of £8000 a year and two estates. I'm finding her quite modern in her insistence that she will not wed where she can't love and respect a spouse's character and intelligence.

She is forced to reveal her wit at one small house party when one of the men in attendance is rather pompously showing off his scholarly bent, and they get into a discussion about whether or not Latin and Greek are absolutely necessary to be a true scholar. Harriet argues that surely the pagans in pre-Greek and Roman times were able to communicate and live and create and learn without the wisdom of the ancients. Mr. Walden gets so infuriated that Harriet relates:

I could almost wish, said he (and but almost, as you are a lady) that you knew the work of the great antients in their original languages.

Upon which Harriet's friend replies:

Something, said Miss Clements, should be left for men to excel in.



Another thing that has struck me is that this book was published 260 years ago -- and yet there is so much that is still current in human nature, good and bad. Sir Hargrave Pollexfen, upon being rejected by Harriet, demands to know who she has given her affections to. She states "to no-one". He can not understand how, not already being the property of another man, she can possibly not become his. He angrily concludes:

For I will not cease pursuing you till you are mine, or till you are the wife of some other man.

It reminds me of those awful men who hit on you and won't leave you alone until you bring the existence of a boyfriend or husband (imaginary or not) into the mix. As if anyone who isn't already claimed as male property is fair game no matter what opinion they may be expressing! This infuriates me, and this scene was so evocative of modern life that I was rather discouraged by this idea's persistence.

Anyhow, I am finding this a ripping good read and can't wait to find out what Harriet is going to do now that she's found out that her two (unwelcome) country swains are coming up to London to see what is happening... and I still have 1400 pages to go ;)

Happy Christmas Eve Day!

I love Christmas, and Christmas Eve is the perfect day: still some anticipation of joys to come, but not too much longer to wait for them! I hope everyone is having a wonderful day and taking time to enjoy the season. I thought I'd share a few little Christmas quotes from some of my favourite books in celebration.

"Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents."
~Louisa May Alcott, Little Women








“Through the windows of many of the houses rosy lights were flickering; and silver tinsel and evergreen wreaths and brilliant little glass globes of silver and wine colour could be seen, and glimpses were caught of Christmas trees, with people decking them by firelight—reminders that this was Christmas Eve.”
~ Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Ambersons





"Christmas," said Doctor Drinkwater as his red-cheeked face sped smoothly toward Smoky's, "is a kind of day, like no other in the year, that doesn't seem to succeed the days it follows, if you see what I mean." He came close to Smoky in a long, expert circle and slid away... "I mean," Doctor Drinkwater said, reappearing beside him, "that every Christmas seems to follow immediately after the last one; all the months that come between don't figure in. Christmases succeed each other, not the falls they follow." 
~ John Crowley, Little, Big

November Is Here

"Why November exactly?"

"I need rainstorms and fairly cool air. I need rotting leaves and muddy roads. The kind of shivering quality that characterises November. The grey, naked landscape stripped of everything that grows and comforts us, but not yet blessed with white, icing-sugar snow. A bleak time in many ways, a brutal time. It is as if everything surrenders in November and we huddle in corners and light candles. I love November."

"But why?" he repeats.

"I was born in that month, on the sixth. It was a wild night, God-awful weather, when I saw the world for the first time. November is in my blood, a darkness, a melancholy. A permanent feeling of sadness. My hands are like bare branches, I have fog in my head and storm in my heart. ... But I love all the months, each has its own tone, its own hue. Imagine this wheel. January, for example, bright blue and white and a trumpet with clear, sharp notes. February, almost identical, with the sun a little more yellow and I hear a cornet. March, grey and white, I hear a viola, there lies a faint hope in its deep note. April, yellow and white. "

"Violins" I say, "with a hint of trapped despair. May, yellow and green. People dancing around a maypole. June, airy and sky blue, accordion. A big flaming bonfire, sparks flying off out into the night. July is a deep yellow, the colour of sand, the sound of a radio. August, the summer is fading, I hear a faint guitar. Then comes your month, September. It is the colour of earth and now I hear a cello. October," I continue, "rusty red and with a strong beat. Someone is playing an oboe. November, as I mentioned just now, bare. In November I hear kettledrums and a moaning trombone. Then we finally reach December, with candles and tinsel. And so the years pass, in an ever-recurring circle."

Karin Fossum
from Broken

Middlemarch in Eliot's own words

Further to my post of yesterday, I wanted to share some of the quotes that caught my eye while reading Middlemarch over the last month. There are so many excellent bits; I love the way that George Eliot can capture a personality or a thought in just a few words, or share an extended reflection that says what we've always wanted to say, if we'd only known it! Here is a sampling from the many bits I've extracted into my commonplace book:

Will was not without his intentions to be always generous, but our tongues are little triggers which have usually been pulled before general intentions can be brought to bear.


But indefinite visions of ambition are weak against the ease of doing what is habitual or beguilingly agreeable; and we all know the difficulty of carrying out a resolve when we secretly long that it may turn out to be unnecessary.


...whatever else remained the same, the light had changed, and you can not find the pearly dawn at noonday. The fact is unalterable, that a fellow-mortal with whose nature you are acquainted solely through the brief entrances and exits of a few imaginative weeks called courtship, be disclosed as something better or worse than what you have preconceived, but will certainly not appear altogether the same. And it would be astonishing to find how soon the change is felt if we had no kindred changes to compare with it. To share lodgings with a brilliant dinner-companion, or to see your favourite politician in the Ministry, may bring about changes quite as rapid: in these cases too we begin by knowing little and believing much, and we sometimes end by inverting the quanitities.


...wrong reasoning sometimes lands poor mortals in right conclusions: starting a long way off the true point, and proceeding by loops and zigzags, we now and then arrive just where we ought to be.


"I call it improper pride to let fools' notions hinder you from doing a good action. There's no sort of work," said Caleb, with fervour, putting out his hand and moving it up and down to mark his emphasis, "that could ever be done well, if you minded what fools say. You must have it inside you that your plan is right, and that plan you must follow."


There is no general doctrine which is incapable of eating out our morality if unchecked by the deep-seated habit of direct fellow-feeling with individual fellow-men.


"The best piety is to enjoy -- when you can. You are doing the most then to save the earth's character as an agreeable planet. And enjoyment radiates. It is of no use to try and take care of all the world; that is being taken care of when you feel delight -- in art or in anything else." [Will Ladislaw]

Saturday's Sexy Quote

A wry one to finish off the week...

...the word sex is more exciting than the word book. Or is it? Surely that depends on what kind of sex and what kind of book?

Jeanette Winterson
from Art Objects

Friday Quote: On the Difficulties of Finding Time to Write

To every writer who has ever published a book, there comes eventually that amusing though irritating moment when someone says pensively, "I have always thought that I could write a book -- if only I had time."

I have never been able to decide whether the subtle implication is that only those with an unfair amount of time at their disposal ever reach the point of seeing themselves in print, or whether it is a delicate way of saying that in order to write a book one must have neglected more pressing duties.

Ida Cook
from We Followed Our Stars

Just a bit of seaweed

I've been quoting a few authors on the joys of reading, so to equal things out here's one on the dubious joys of writing:

The very glory of what he wanted to say seemed to get in the way of his saying it. Try as he might, he could not write down what he knew. He was like a man trying to catch the moonlight on the water with a fishing-net. When he pulled the net into the boat there was nothing in it except two repulsive jelly-fish and a bit of seaweed.

Elizabeth Goudge
from The Rosemary Tree

Why Read?

True too of literature: we like what we're like. Why do we read? Not for truth or beauty, but the opposite: for lies and ugliness, for reflections of ourselves. For glimpses that would make us less forlorn. For reminders that others read literature too, for evidence that we're not the only ones who sometimes feel like we're the only ones who feel like this.

Craig Boyko
from Blackouts

Interweavings

Through books we felt we lived multiple existences not precisely our own, lives of monastic austerity or courtly riot or flyblown squalor. To talk about those books, those lives, was a further interweaving that made them even more profoundly part of us.

Geoffrey O'Brien
from The Browser's Ecstasy

A Bookish Bent

For those of us with a bookish bent, reading is a reflexive response to everything. This is how we deal with the world and anything that comes our way. We have always known that there is a book for every occasion and every obsession. When in doubt, we are always looking things up.

Diane Schoemperlen

from Our Lady of the Lost & Found

Quote the First

Dewey's Weekly Geeks projects just keep getting more creative and entertaining! Here's this week's assignment.

This week’s activity is: A Quote a Day.

You may want to come up with a theme, such as favorite passages from books, author quotes, political quotes, quotes about books or reading, humorous quotes, whatever. Or you may not want a theme at all; maybe you just want to gather up seven assorted quotes that appeal to you. You may want to start each of your posts of the week with a quote, or you may want to give quotes posts of their own in addition to your regular posts. It’s all up to you!

The only rule is this: thou shalt not steal! If you see a quote you like on someone else’s blog, you can post it in addition to your quote for the day, even with your quote for the day, but please link to where you originally saw it. Of course, it’s possible that more well-known quotes may appear on more than one blog just by chance, but these things happen among honorable people such as ourselves.

I'm just going to choose readerish quotes which I have copied down in the past; either they will deal with books and reading in general, or with the subject of a book I am reviewing. Here is the first one.

Somehow, the books that prove most agreeable, grateful, and companionable, are those we pick up by chance here and there; those which seem put into our hands by providence; those which pretend to little, but abound in much.

Herman Melville (from White Jacket)