Sketches by Boz, by Charles Dickens (1836) - Characters -
Chapter 2
CHAPTER II—A CHRISTMAS DINNER
Christmas time! That man must be a misanthrope
indeed, in whose breast something like a jovial feeling is not roused—in whose
mind some pleasant associations are not awakened—by the recurrence of
Christmas. There are people who will tell you that Christmas is not to
them what it used to be; that each succeeding Christmas has found some cherished
hope, or happy prospect, of the year before, dimmed or passed away; that the
present only serves to remind them of reduced circumstances and straitened
incomes—of the feasts they once bestowed on hollow friends, and of the cold
looks that meet them now, in adversity and misfortune. Never heed such
dismal reminiscences. There are few men who have lived long enough in the
world, who cannot call up such thoughts any day in the year. Then do not
select the merriest of the three hundred and sixty-five for your doleful
recollections, but draw your chair nearer the blazing fire—fill the glass and
send round the song—and if your room be smaller than it was a dozen years ago,
or if your glass be filled with reeking punch, instead of sparkling wine, put a
good face on the matter, and empty it off-hand, and fill another, and troll off
the old ditty you used to sing, and thank God it’s no worse. Look on the
merry faces of your children (if you have any) as they sit round the fire.
One little seat may be empty; one slight form that gladdened the father’s
heart, and roused the mother’s pride to look upon, may not be there.
Dwell not upon the past; think not that one short year ago, the fair child now
resolving into dust, sat before you, with the bloom of health upon its cheek,
and the gaiety of infancy in its joyous eye. Reflect upon your present
blessings—of which every man has many—not on your past misfortunes, of which
all men have some. Fill your glass again, with a merry face and contented
heart. Our life on it, but your Christmas shall be merry, and your new
year a happy one!
Who can be insensible to the outpourings of good
feeling, and the honest interchange of affectionate attachment, which abound at
this season of the year? A Christmas family-party! We know nothing
in nature more delightful! There seems a magic in the very name of
Christmas. Petty jealousies and discords are forgotten; social feelings
are awakened, in bosoms to which they have long been strangers; father and son,
or brother and sister, who have met and passed with averted gaze, or a look of
cold recognition, for months before, proffer and return the cordial embrace, and
bury their past animosities in their present happiness. Kindly hearts that
have yearned towards each other, but have been withheld by false notions of
pride and self-dignity, are again reunited, and all is kindness and benevolence!
Would that Christmas lasted the whole year through (as it ought), and that the
prejudices and passions which deform our better nature, were never called into
action among those to whom they should ever be strangers!
The Christmas family-party that we mean, is not a mere
assemblage of relations, got up at a week or two’s notice, originating this
year, having no family precedent in the last, and not likely to be repeated in
the next. No. It is an annual gathering of all the accessible
members of the family, young or old, rich or poor; and all the children look
forward to it, for two months beforehand, in a fever of anticipation.
Formerly, it was held at grandpapa’s; but grandpapa getting old, and
grandmamma getting old too, and rather infirm, they have given up house-keeping,
and domesticated themselves with uncle George; so, the party always takes place
at uncle George’s house, but grandmamma sends in most of the good things, and
grandpapa always will toddle down, all the way to Newgate-market, to buy
the turkey, which he engages a porter to bring home behind him in triumph,
always insisting on the man’s being rewarded with a glass of spirits, over and
above his hire, to drink ‘a merry Christmas and a happy new year’ to aunt
George. As to grandmamma, she is very secret and mysterious for two or
three days beforehand, but not sufficiently so, to prevent rumours getting
afloat that she has purchased a beautiful new cap with pink ribbons for each of
the servants, together with sundry books, and pen-knives, and pencil-cases, for
the younger branches; to say nothing of divers secret additions to the order
originally given by aunt George at the pastry-cook’s, such as another dozen of
mince-pies for the dinner, and a large plum-cake for the children.
On Christmas-eve, grandmamma is always in excellent
spirits, and after employing all the children, during the day, in stoning the
plums, and all that, insists, regularly every year, on uncle George coming down
into the kitchen, taking off his coat, and stirring the pudding for half an hour
or so, which uncle George good-humouredly does, to the vociferous delight of the
children and servants. The evening concludes with a glorious game of
blind-man’s-buff, in an early stage of which grandpapa takes great care to be
caught, in order that he may have an opportunity of displaying his dexterity.
On the following morning, the old couple, with as many
of the children as the pew will hold, go to church in great state: leaving aunt
George at home dusting decanters and filling casters, and uncle George carrying
bottles into the dining-parlour, and calling for corkscrews, and getting into
everybody’s way.
When the church-party return to lunch, grandpapa
produces a small sprig of mistletoe from his pocket, and tempts the boys to kiss
their little cousins under it—a proceeding which affords both the boys and the
old gentleman unlimited satisfaction, but which rather outrages grandmamma’s
ideas of decorum, until grandpapa says, that when he was just thirteen years and
three months old, he kissed grandmamma under a mistletoe too, on which
the children clap their hands, and laugh very heartily, as do aunt George and
uncle George; and grandmamma looks pleased, and says, with a benevolent smile,
that grandpapa was an impudent young dog, on which the children laugh very
heartily again, and grandpapa more heartily than any of them.
But all these diversions are nothing to the subsequent
excitement when grandmamma in a high cap, and slate-coloured silk gown; and
grandpapa with a beautifully plaited shirt-frill, and white neckerchief; seat
themselves on one side of the drawing-room fire, with uncle George’s children
and little cousins innumerable, seated in the front, waiting the arrival of the
expected visitors. Suddenly a hackney-coach is heard to stop, and uncle
George, who has been looking out of the window, exclaims ‘Here’s Jane!’ on
which the children rush to the door, and helter-skelter down-stairs; and uncle
Robert and aunt Jane, and the dear little baby, and the nurse, and the whole
party, are ushered up-stairs amidst tumultuous shouts of ‘Oh, my!’ from the
children, and frequently repeated warnings not to hurt baby from the nurse.
And grandpapa takes the child, and grandmamma kisses her daughter, and the
confusion of this first entry has scarcely subsided, when some other aunts and
uncles with more cousins arrive, and the grown-up cousins flirt with each other,
and so do the little cousins too, for that matter, and nothing is to be heard
but a confused din of talking, laughing, and merriment.
A hesitating double knock at the street-door, heard
during a momentary pause in the conversation, excites a general inquiry of
‘Who’s that?’ and two or three children, who have been standing at the
window, announce in a low voice, that it’s ‘poor aunt Margaret.’
Upon which, aunt George leaves the room to welcome the new-comer; and grandmamma
draws herself up, rather stiff and stately; for Margaret married a poor man
without her consent, and poverty not being a sufficiently weighty punishment for
her offence, has been discarded by her friends, and debarred the society of her
dearest relatives. But Christmas has come round, and the unkind feelings
that have struggled against better dispositions during the year, have melted
away before its genial influence, like half-formed ice beneath the morning sun.
It is not difficult in a moment of angry feeling for a parent to denounce a
disobedient child; but, to banish her at a period of general good-will and
hilarity, from the hearth, round which she has sat on so many anniversaries of
the same day, expanding by slow degrees from infancy to girlhood, and then
bursting, almost imperceptibly, into a woman, is widely different. The air
of conscious rectitude, and cold forgiveness, which the old lady has assumed,
sits ill upon her; and when the poor girl is led in by her sister, pale in looks
and broken in hope—not from poverty, for that she could bear, but from the
consciousness of undeserved neglect, and unmerited unkindness—it is easy to
see how much of it is assumed. A momentary pause succeeds; the girl breaks
suddenly from her sister and throws herself, sobbing, on her mother’s neck.
The father steps hastily forward, and takes her husband’s hand. Friends
crowd round to offer their hearty congratulations, and happiness and harmony
again prevail.
As to the dinner, it’s perfectly delightful—nothing
goes wrong, and everybody is in the very best of spirits, and disposed to please
and be pleased. Grandpapa relates a circumstantial account of the purchase
of the turkey, with a slight digression relative to the purchase of previous
turkeys, on former Christmas-days, which grandmamma corroborates in the minutest
particular. Uncle George tells stories, and carves poultry, and takes
wine, and jokes with the children at the side-table, and winks at the cousins
that are making love, or being made love to, and exhilarates everybody with his
good humour and hospitality; and when, at last, a stout servant staggers in with
a gigantic pudding, with a sprig of holly in the top, there is such a laughing,
and shouting, and clapping of little chubby hands, and kicking up of fat dumpy
legs, as can only be equalled by the applause with which the astonishing feat of
pouring lighted brandy into mince-pies, is received by the younger visitors.
Then the dessert!—and the wine!—and the fun! Such beautiful speeches,
and such songs, from aunt Margaret’s husband, who turns out to be such
a nice man, and so attentive to grandmamma! Even grandpapa not only
sings his annual song with unprecedented vigour, but on being honoured with an
unanimous encore, according to annual custom, actually comes out with a
new one which nobody but grandmamma ever heard before; and a young scapegrace of
a cousin, who has been in some disgrace with the old people, for certain heinous
sins of omission and commission—neglecting to call, and persisting in drinking
Burton Ale—astonishes everybody into convulsions of laughter by volunteering
the most extraordinary comic songs that ever were heard. And thus the
evening passes, in a strain of rational good-will and cheerfulness, doing more
to awaken the sympathies of every member of the party in behalf of his
neighbour, and to perpetuate their good feeling during the ensuing year, than
half the homilies that have ever been written, by half the Divines that have
ever lived.