“Then you won’t join that symposium?” said B—. “It would be an easy
enough thing to knock off—‘Why Christmas should be abolished.’”
“It sounds simple,” I answered. “But how do you propose to abolish it?”
The lady editor of an “advanced” American magazine once set the
discussion—“Should sex be abolished?” and eleven ladies and gentlemen
seriously argued the question.
“Leave it to die of inanition,” said B—; “the first step is to arouse
public opinion. Convince the public that it should be abolished.”
“But why should it be abolished?” I asked.
“Great Scott! man,” he exclaimed; “don’t you want it abolished?”
“I’m not sure that I do,” I replied.
“Not sure,” he retorted; “you call yourself a journalist, and admit there
is a subject under Heaven of which you are not sure!”
“It has come over me of late years,” I replied. “It used not to be my
failing, as you know.”
He glanced round to make sure we were out of earshot, then sunk his voice
to a whisper.
“Between ourselves,” he said, “I’m not so sure of everything myself as I
used to be. Why is it?”
“Perhaps we are getting older,” I suggested.
He said—“I started golf last year, and the first time I took the club in
my hand I sent the ball a furlong. ‘It seems an easy game,’ I said to
the man who was teaching me. ‘Yes, most people find it easy at the
beginning,’ he replied dryly. He was an old golfer himself; I thought he
was jealous. I stuck well to the game, and for about three weeks I was
immensely pleased with myself. Then, gradually, I began to find out the
difficulties. I feel I shall never make a good player. Have you ever
gone through that experience?”
“Yes,” I replied; “I suppose that is the explanation. The game seems so
easy at the beginning.”
I left him to his lunch, and strolled westward, musing on the time when I
should have answered that question of his about Christmas, or any other
question, off-hand. That good youth time when I knew everything, when
life presented no problems, dangled no doubts before me!
In those days, wishful to give the world the benefit of my wisdom, and
seeking for a candle-stick wherefrom my brilliancy might be visible and
helpful unto men, I arrived before a dingy portal in Chequers Street, St.
Luke’s, behind which a conclave of young men, together with a few old
enough to have known better, met every Friday evening for the purpose of
discussing and arranging the affairs of the universe. “Speaking members”
were charged ten-and-sixpence per annum, which must have worked out at an
extremely moderate rate per word; and “gentlemen whose subscriptions were
more than three months in arrear,” became, by Rule seven, powerless for
good or evil. We called ourselves “The Stormy Petrels,” and, under the
sympathetic shadow of those wings, I laboured two seasons towards the
reformation of the human race; until, indeed, our treasurer, an earnest
young man, and a tireless foe of all that was conventional, departed for
the East, leaving behind him a balance sheet, showing that the club owed
forty-two pounds fifteen and fourpence, and that the subscriptions for
the current year, amounting to a little over thirty-eight pounds, had
been “carried forward,” but as to where, the report afforded no
indication. Whereupon our landlord, a man utterly without ideals, seized
our furniture, offering to sell it back to us for fifteen pounds. We
pointed out to him that this was an extravagant price, and tendered him
five.
The negotiations terminated with ungentlemanly language on his part, and
“The Stormy Petrels” scattered, never to be foregathered together again
above the troubled waters of humanity. Now-a-days, listening to the
feeble plans of modern reformers, I cannot help but smile, remembering
what was done in Chequers Street, St. Luke’s, in an age when Mrs. Grundy
still gave the law to literature, while yet the British matron was the
guide to British art. I am informed that there is abroad the question of
abolishing the House of Lords! Why, “The Stormy Petrels” abolished the
aristocracy and the Crown in one evening, and then only adjourned for the
purpose of appointing a committee to draw up and have ready a Republican
Constitution by the following Friday evening. They talk of Empire
lounges! We closed the doors of every music-hall in London eighteen
years ago by twenty-nine votes to seventeen. They had a patient hearing,
and were ably defended; but we found that the tendency of such amusements
was anti-progressive, and against the best interests of an intellectually
advancing democracy. I met the mover of the condemnatory resolution at
the old “Pav” the following evening, and we continued the discussion over
a bottle of Bass. He strengthened his argument by persuading me to sit
out the whole of the three songs sung by the “Lion Comique”; but I
subsequently retorted successfully, by bringing under his notice the
dancing of a lady in blue tights and flaxen hair. I forget her name but
never shall I cease to remember her exquisite charm and beauty. Ah, me!
how charming and how beautiful “artistes” were in those golden days!
Whence have they vanished? Ladies in blue tights and flaxen hair dance
before my eyes to-day, but move me not, unless it be towards boredom.
Where be the tripping witches of twenty years ago, whom to see once was
to dream of for a week, to touch whose white hand would have been joy, to
kiss whose red lips would have been to foretaste Heaven. I heard only
the other day that the son of an old friend of mine had secretly married
a lady from the front row of the ballet, and involuntarily I exclaimed,
“Poor devil!” There was a time when my first thought would have been,
“Lucky beggar! is he worthy of her?” For then the ladies of the ballet
were angels. How could one gaze at them—from the shilling pit—and doubt
it? They danced to keep a widowed mother in comfort, or to send a
younger brother to school. Then they were glorious creatures a young man
did well to worship; but now-a-days—
It is an old jest. The eyes of youth see through rose-tinted glasses.
The eyes of age are dim behind smoke-clouded spectacles. My flaxen
friend, you are not the angel I dreamed you, nor the exceptional sinner
some would paint you; but under your feathers, just a woman—a bundle of
follies and failings, tied up with some sweetness and strength. You keep
a brougham I am sure you cannot afford on your thirty shillings a week.
There are ladies I know, in Mayfair, who have paid an extravagant price
for theirs. You paint and you dye, I am told: it is even hinted you pad.
Don’t we all of us deck ourselves out in virtues that are not our own?
When the paint and the powder, my sister, is stripped both from you and
from me, we shall know which of us is entitled to look down on the other
in scorn.
Forgive me, gentle Reader, for digressing. The lady led me astray. I
was speaking of “The Stormy Petrels,” and of the reforms they
accomplished, which were many. We abolished, I remember, capital
punishment and war; we were excellent young men at heart. Christmas we
reformed altogether, along with Bank Holidays, by a majority of twelve.
I never recollect any proposal to abolish anything ever being lost when
put to the vote. There were few things that we “Stormy Petrels” did not
abolish. We attacked Christmas on grounds of expediency, and killed it
by ridicule. We exposed the hollow mockery of Christmas sentiment; we
abused the indigestible Christmas dinner, the tiresome Christmas party,
the silly Christmas pantomime. Our funny member was side-splitting on
the subject of Christmas Waits; our social reformer bitter upon Christmas
drunkenness; our economist indignant upon Christmas charities. Only one
argument of any weight with us was advanced in favour of the festival,
and that was our leading cynic’s suggestion that it was worth enduring
the miseries of Christmas, to enjoy the soul-satisfying comfort of the
after reflection that it was all over, and could not occur again for
another year.
But since those days when I was prepared to put this old world of ours to
rights upon all matters, I have seen many sights and heard many sounds,
and I am not quite so sure as I once was that my particular views are the
only possibly correct ones. Christmas seems to me somewhat meaningless;
but I have looked through windows in poverty-stricken streets, and have
seen dingy parlours gay with many chains of coloured paper. They
stretched from corner to corner of the smoke-grimed ceiling, they fell in
clumsy festoons from the cheap gasalier, they framed the fly-blown mirror
and the tawdry pictures; and I know tired hands and eyes worked many
hours to fashion and fix those foolish chains, saying, “It will please
him—she will like to see the room look pretty;” and as I have looked at
them they have grown, in some mysterious manner, beautiful to me. The
gaudy-coloured child and dog irritates me, I confess; but I have watched
a grimy, inartistic personage, smoothing it affectionately with
toil-stained hand, while eager faces crowded round to admire and wonder
at its blatant crudity. It hangs to this day in its cheap frame above
the chimney-piece, the one bright spot relieving those damp-stained
walls; dull eyes stare and stare again at it, catching a vista, through
its flashy tints, of the far-off land of art. Christmas Waits annoy me,
and I yearn to throw open the window and fling coal at them—as once from
the window of a high flat in Chelsea I did. I doubted their being
genuine Waits. I was inclined to the opinion they were young men seeking
excuse for making a noise. One of them appeared to know a hymn with a
chorus, another played the concertina, while a third accompanied with a
step dance. Instinctively I felt no respect for them; they disturbed me
in my work, and the desire grew upon me to injure them. It occurred to
me it would be good sport if I turned out the light, softly opened the
window, and threw coal at them. It would be impossible for them to tell
from which window in the block the coal came, and thus subsequent
unpleasantness would be avoided. They were a compact little group, and
with average luck I was bound to hit one of them.
I adopted the plan. I could not see them very clearly. I aimed rather
at the noise; and I had thrown about twenty choice lumps without effect,
and was feeling somewhat discouraged, when a yell, followed by language
singularly unappropriate to the season, told me that Providence had aided
my arm. The music ceased suddenly, and the party dispersed, apparently
in high glee—which struck me as curious.
One man I noticed remained behind. He stood under the lamp-post, and
shook his fist at the block generally.
“Who threw that lump of coal?” he demanded in stentorian tones.
To my horror, it was the voice of the man at Eighty-eight, an Irish
gentleman, a journalist like myself. I saw it all, as the unfortunate
hero always exclaims, too late, in the play. He—number Eighty-eight—also
disturbed by the noise, had evidently gone out to expostulate with the
rioters. Of course my lump of coal had hit him—him the innocent, the
peaceful (up till then), the virtuous. That is the justice Fate deals
out to us mortals here below. There were ten to fourteen young men in
that crowd, each one of whom fully deserved that lump of coal; he, the
one guiltless, got it—seemingly, so far as the dim light from the gas
lamp enabled me to judge, full in the eye.
As the block remained silent in answer to his demand, he crossed the road
and mounted the stairs. On each landing he stopped and shouted—
“Who threw that lump of coal? I want the man who threw that lump of
coal. Out you come.”
Now a good man in my place would have waited till number Eighty-eight
arrived on his landing, and then, throwing open the door would have said
with manly candour—
“_I_ threw that lump of coal. I was—,” He would not have got further,
because at that point, I feel confident, number Eighty—eight would have
punched his head. There would have been an unseemly fracas on the
staircase, to the annoyance of all the other tenants and later, there
would have issued a summons and a cross-summons. Angry passions would
have been roused, bitter feeling engendered which might have lasted for
years.
I do not pretend to be a good man. I doubt if the pretence would be of
any use were I to try: I am not a sufficiently good actor. I said to
myself, as I took off my boots in the study, preparatory to retiring to
my bedroom—“Number Eighty-eight is evidently not in a frame of mind to
listen to my story. It will be better to let him shout himself cool;
after which he will return to his own flat, bathe his eye, and obtain
some refreshing sleep. In the morning, when we shall probably meet as
usual on our way to Fleet Street, I will refer to the incident casually,
and sympathize with him. I will suggest to him the truth—that in all
probability some fellow-tenant, irritated also by the noise, had aimed
coal at the Waits, hitting him instead by a regrettable but pure
accident. With tact I may even be able to make him see the humour of the
incident. Later on, in March or April, choosing my moment with judgment,
I will, perhaps, confess that I was that fellow-tenant, and over a
friendly brandy-and-soda we will laugh the whole trouble away.”
As a matter of fact, that is what happened. Said number Eighty-eight—he
was a big man, as good a fellow at heart as ever lived, but
impulsive—“Damned lucky for you, old man, you did not tell me at the
time.”
“I felt,” I replied, “instinctively that it was a case for delay.”
There are times when one should control one’s passion for candour; and as
I was saying, Christmas waits excite no emotion in my breast save that of
irritation. But I have known “Hark, the herald angels sing,” wheezily
chanted by fog-filled throats, and accompanied, hopelessly out of tune,
by a cornet and a flute, bring a great look of gladness to a work-worn
face. To her it was a message of hope and love, making the hard life
taste sweet. The mere thought of family gatherings, so customary at
Christmas time, bores us superior people; but I think of an incident told
me by a certain man, a friend of mine. One Christmas, my friend,
visiting in the country, came face to face with a woman whom in town he
had often met amid very different surroundings. The door of the little
farmhouse was open; she and an older woman were ironing at a table, and
as her soft white hands passed to and fro, folding and smoothing the
rumpled heap, she laughed and talked, concerning simple homely things.
My friend’s shadow fell across her work, and she looking up, their eyes
met; but her face said plainly, “I do not know you here, and here you do
not know me. Here I am a woman loved and respected.” My friend passed
in and spoke to the older woman, the wife of one of his host’s tenants,
and she turned towards, and introduced the younger—“My daughter, sir. We
do not see her very often. She is in a place in London, and cannot get
away. But she always spends a few days with us at Christmas.”
“It is the season for family re-unions,” answered my friend with just the
suggestion of a sneer, for which he hated himself.
“Yes, sir,” said the woman, not noticing; “she has never missed her
Christmas with us, have you, Bess?”
“No, mother,” replied the girl simply, and bent her head again over her
work.
So for these few days every year this woman left her furs and jewels, her
fine clothes and dainty foods, behind her, and lived for a little space
with what was clean and wholesome. It was the one anchor holding her to
womanhood; and one likes to think that it was, perhaps, in the end strong
enough to save her from the drifting waters. All which arguments in
favour of Christmas and of Christmas customs are, I admit, purely
sentimental ones, but I have lived long enough to doubt whether sentiment
has not its legitimate place in the economy of life.