The common joke against the Christmas number is that it is
planned in July and made up in September. This enables it to be
published in the middle of November and circulated in New Zealand
by Christmas. If it were published in England at Christmas, New
Zealand wouldn't get it till February. Apparently it is more
important that the colonies should have it punctually than that
we should.
Anyway, whenever it is made up, all journalists hate the
Christmas number. But they only hate it for one reason--this
being that the ordinary weekly number has to be made up at the
same time. As a journalist I should like to devote the autumn
exclusively to the Christmas number, and as a member of the
public I should adore it when it came out. Not having been asked
to produce such a number on my own I can amuse myself here by
sketching out a plan for it. I follow the fine old tradition.
First let us get the stories settled. Story No. 1 deals with the
escaped convict. The heroine is driving back from the country-
house ball, where she has had two or three proposals, when
suddenly, in the most lonely part of the snow-swept moor, a
figure springs out of the ditch and covers the coachman with a
pistol. Alarms and confusions. "Oh, sir," says the heroine,
"spare my aunt and I will give you all my jewels." The convict,
for such it is, staggers back. "Lucy!" he cries. "Harold!" she
gasps. The aunt says nothing, for she has swooned. At this point
the story stops to explain how Harold came to be in
knickerbockers. He had either been falsely accused or else he had
been a solicitor. Anyhow, he had by this time more than paid for
his folly, and Lucy still loved him. "Get in," she says, and
drives him home. Next day he leaves for New Zealand in an
ordinary lounge suit. Need I say that Lucy joins him later? No;
that shall be left for your imagination. The End.
So much for the first story. The second is an "i'-faith-and-stap-
me" story of the good old days. It is not seasonable, for most of
the action takes place in my lord's garden amid the scent of
roses; but it brings back to us the old romantic days when
fighting and swearing were more picturesque than they are now,
and when women loved and worked samplers. This sort of story can
be read best in front of the Christmas log; it is of the past,
and comes naturally into a Christmas number. I shall not describe
its plot, for that is unimportant; it is the "stap me's" and the
"la, sirs," which matter. But I may say that she marries him all
right in the end, and he goes off happily to the wars.
We want another story. What shall this one be about? It might be
about the amateur burglar, or the little child who reconciled old
Sir John to his daughter's marriage, or the ghost at Enderby
Grange, or the millionaire's Christmas dinner, or the accident to
the Scotch express. Personally, I do not care for any of these;
my vote goes for the desert-island story. Proud Lady Julia has
fallen off the deck of the liner, and Ronald, refused by her that
morning, dives off the hurricane deck--or the bowsprit or
wherever he happens to be--and seizes her as she is sinking for
the third time. It is a foggy night and their absence is
unnoticed. Dawn finds them together on a little coral reef. They
are in no danger, for several liners are due to pass in a day or
two and Ronald's pockets are full of biscuits and chocolate, but
it is awkward for Lady Julia, who had hoped that they would never
meet again. So they sit on the beach back to back (drawn by Dana
Gibson) and throw sarcastic remarks over their shoulders at each
other. In the end he tames her proud spirit--I think by hiding
the turtles' eggs from her--and the next liner but one takes the
happy couple back to civilization.
But it is time we had some poetry. I propose to give you one
serious poem about robins, and one double-page humorous piece,
well illustrated in colours. I think the humorous verses must
deal with hunting. Hunting does not lend itself to humour, for
there are only two hunting jokes --the joke of the horse which
came down at the brook and the joke of the Cockney who overrode
hounds; but there are traditions to keep up, and the artist
always loves it. So far we have not considered the artist
sufficiently. Let us give him four full pages. One of pretty
girls hanging up mistletoe, one of the squire and his family
going to church in the snow, one of a brokendown coach with
highwaymen coming over the hill, and one of the postman bringing
loads and loads of parcels. You have all Christmas in those four
pictures. But there is room for another page--let it be a
coloured page, of half a dozen sketches, the period and the
lettering very early English. "Ye Baron de Marchebankes calleth
for hys varlet." "Ye varlet cometh righte hastilie---" You know
the delightful kind of thing.
I confess that this is the sort of Christmas number which I love.
You may say that you have seen it all before; I say that that is
why I love it. The best of Christmas is that it reminds us of
other Christmases; it should be the boast of Christmas numbers
that they remind us of other Christmas numbers.
But though I doubt if I shall get quite what I want from any one
number this year, yet there will surely be enough in all the
numbers to bring Christmas very pleasantly before the eyes. In a
dull November one likes to be reminded that Christmas is coming.
It is perhaps as well that the demands of the colonies give us
our Christmas numbers so early. At the same time it is difficult
to see why New Zealand wants a Christmas number at all. As I
glance above at the plan of my model paper I feel more than ever
how adorable it would be--but not, oh not with the thermometer at
a hundred in the shade.