Thomas K. Hervey

“ The thousand bells of the city are pealing from its hundred belfries, filling the air with an indescribable sense of festival, and would alone set the whole capital in motion if they were a people that ever sat still. This singing of a thousand bells is likewise a striking feature of the day in London; and no one who has not heard the mingling voices of these high [338] choristers in a metropolis, can form any notion of the wild and stirring effects produced by the racing and crossing and mingling of their myriad notes. It is as if the glad voices of the earth had a chorus of echoes in the sky ”

“ We have before alluded to the bards and harpers who assembled in ancient days at this time of wassail, making the old halls to echo to the voice of music, and stirring the blood with the legends of chivalry or chilling it with the wizard tale. And the tale and the song are amongst the spirits that wait on Christmas still, and charm the long winter evenings with their yet undiminished spells. Many a Christmas evening has flown over our heads on the wings of music, sweeter, far sweeter, dearer, a thousand times dearer, than ever was played by wandering minstrel or uttered by stipendiary bard ”

“ The sole and homely representative of the gorgeous Christmas prince is the mock-monarch of the Epiphany,—the laureate of our times, with his nominal duties, in the last faint shadow of the court bards and masque-makers of yore; and the few lingering remains of the important duties once confided to the master of the royal revels are silently and unostentatiously performed in the office of the Lord Chamberlain of to-day. But the spirit of the season yet survives, and, for reasons which we shall proceed to point out, must survive. ”

“ And the New-year's coming up, mother, but I shall never see
The may upon the blackthorn, the leaf upon the tree.
Last May we made a crown of flowers: we had a merry day:
Beneath the hawthorn on the green they made me Queen of May;
And we danced about the maypole, and in the hazel-copse,
Till Charles's wain came out above the tall white chimney-tops.
There's not a flower on all the hills: the frost is on the pane:
[326] I only wish to live till the snowdrops come again:
I wish the snow would melt and the sun come out on high—
I long to see a flower so before the day I die. ”

“ I remember that even in those days, at times, in the silent night, when broken snatches of melodies imperfectly remembered stole through the chambers of my heart,—ever in the sweet tones in which it had learned to love them,—I have asked myself if the ties that bound us might ever be like those passing and half-forgotten melodies; if the time could ever come when they should be like an old song learned in life's happier day, and whose memory has been treasured, to make us weep in the years when the heart has need to be soothed by weeping ”

“ Much that man might not know and yet bear to abide. That twin face is Janus, he who shuts the gates upon the old year and opens those of the new, he who looks into the past and into the future, and catches the reflections of both, and has the tales of each written on his respective brows. For the past, it is known and has been suffered; and even at a season like this we can pause to retrace the story of its joys and of its sorrows as they are graven on that open forehead,—and from that retrospect, glancing to the future for hope, can still turn to the present for enjoyment. ”

“ No doubt, the high chronicles of chivalry, and the mysterious traditions of the past, comport well with the gloom of the gothic gallery;—and, certainly, the long rambling passages of an old house afford at once room for the wandering of ghosts, and that dim, shadowy light by which imagination sees them best. But the true poetry of life is not confined to ancient dwellings; and every house, in every crowded thoroughfare of every city, has its own tales to tell around the Christmas fire. ”

“ There it is that superstition loves to tell her marvels, and curiosity to gather them. The gloom and desolation without, with the wild, unearthly voice of the blast, as it sweeps over a waste of snows and cuts sharp against the leafless branches, or the wan sepulchral light that shows the dreary earth as it were covered with a pall, and the trees like spectres rising from beneath it, alike send men huddling round the blazing fire, and awaken those impressions of the wild and shadowy and unsubstantial, to which tales of marvel or of terror [238] are such welcome food. ”

“ And then the "limen amabile," and the "matris oscula," and the "Penates," towards which they are advancing; the yearning hearts that wait within those homes to clasp them; the bright eyes that are even now looking out from windows to catch the first token of "their coming, and look brighter when they come;" the quiet halls that shall ring to-night to their young voices; and the lanes and alleys whose echoes they shall awaken to-morrow, and still more loudly when the ice comes; and, above all, the Christmas revelries themselves! ”

“ And it is in this very causelessness that consists the spell of childhood's laughter, and the secret of youth's unmingled joy. We seldom begin to seek reasons for being gay till we have had some for being grave; and the search after the former is very apt to bring us upon more of the latter. There are tares among that wheat. The moment we commence to distrust our light-heartedness, it begins to evade us. From the day when we think it necessary to reason upon our enjoyments, to philosophize [167] upon our mirth, to analyze our gladness, their free and unmingled character is gone. ”

“ For these reasons—and some others, which are more personal and less philosophical—we love all old traditions and holiday customs. Like honest Sir Andrew Aguecheek, we "delight in masques and revels, sometimes altogether." Many a happy chance has conducted us unpremeditatedly into the midst of some rustic festival, whose recollection is amongst our pleasant memories yet,—and many a one have we gone venturously forth to seek,—when we dwelt in the more immediate neighborhood of the haunts to which, one by one, these traditionary observances are retiring before the face of civilization! ”

“ Still these very absurdities furnish the strongest evidences of the right good-will with which men—ay, grave and learned men—surrendered themselves to the merry spirit of the time, of that entire abandonment which forgot to make a reservation of their outward dignities and gave them courage to "play the fool." Our readers need scarcely be told that it must be a man of a very strong mind, or a man who could not help it, who should dare to make a jack-pudding of himself in these days, when all his fellows are walking about the world with telescopes in their hands and quadrants in their pockets. ”

“ The very absurdity of the bellman's verses is only pleasant, nay, only bearable, when we suppose them written by some actual doggrel-poet, in good faith. Mere mediocrity hardly allows us to give our Christmas-box, or to believe it now-a-days in earnest; and the smartness of your cleverest wordly-wise men is felt to be wholly out of place. No, no! give us the good old decrepit bellman's verses, hobbling as their bringer, and taking themselves for something respectable, like his cocked-hat,—or give us none at all. ”

“ If we may judge from the aspect of the aged sybil herself, and the pale and earnest faces that surround her, the narrative which she is imparting is one of the fearful class, and not to be listened to beyond the cheering inspirations of that bright fire; although the moving shadows which it flings upon the old walls are amongst the terrors which are born of her story. For the scene of these emotions, the artist has chosen, as artists still love to do, the chamber of an ancient mansion, with its huge chimney and oriel-window. ”

“ Seeing-in the New Year.—Page 331.
But, in any case, we have never failed to observe that, as the midnight hour draws near, a hush falls upon these assemblies; and when men rise to usher in the new comer, it is for the most part in silence. We do not believe that moment is ever a merry one. The blithe spirits of the night stand still. The glasses are full,—but so is the heart, and the eye is strained upon the finger of the dial whose notes are to sound the arrival, as if held there by a spell. ”

“ All things are tinged with thy loss. All fair things have a look, and all sweet sounds a tone, of mourning since thou leftest me. How long it seems, as if ages, instead of years, of the grave had grown between us, as if, indeed, I had known thee in some former and far-removed state of being! I do not love to think of thee as dead, I strive to think of thee rather as of one whom I have left behind in the quiet valley of our youth and our love,—from whom I have wandered forth and lost my way amid the mazes of the world. ”

“ We love those festivals which have been made, as Washington Irving says, "the season for gathering together of family connections, and drawing closer again those bonds of kindred hearts which the cares and pleasures and sorrows of the world are continually operating to cast loose; of calling back the children of a family who have launched forth in life and wandered widely asunder, once more to assemble about the paternal hearth, that rallying place of the affections, there to grow young and loving again among the endearing mementos of childhood." ”

“ We love those Lethes of an hour which have a virtue beyond their gift of oblivion, and while they furnish a temporary forgetfulness of many of the ills of life, revive the memory of many a past enjoyment, and reawaken many a slumbering affection. We love those milestones on the journey of life beside which man is called upon to pause, and take a reckoning of the distance he has passed, and of that which he may have yet to go. ”

“ Our Revels now are ended; and our Christmas prince must abdicate. In flinging down his wand of misrule, we trust there is no reason why he should, like Prospero, when his charms were over and he broke his staff, drown this, his book, "deeper than did ever plummet sound." The spells which it contains are, we believe, all innocent; and, we trust, it may survive to furnish the directions for many a future scheme of Christmas happiness. ”

“ Our readers had better take a biscuit and a glass of sherry before they venture upon the glimpses into those regions of banqueting which we are tempted to lay before them. The ballad opens like the ringing of a dinner-bell, and, we conceive, should be sung to some such accompaniment:—
"All you that to feasting and mirth are inclin'd,
Come here is good news for to pleasure your mind,—
Old Christmas is come for to keep open house,
He scorns to be guilty of starving a mouse:
Then come, boys, and welcome for diet the chief,
Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minc'd-pies, and roast beef." ”

“ In the flood of the sunshine, when a thousand birds are about us, we go upon our way with a sense that there is melody around, but singling perhaps [185] no one note to take home to the heart and make a worship of. But the one bird that sings to us in the dim and silent night—oh! none but they on whom the night has fallen can know how dear its song becomes, filling with its music all the deserted mansions of the lonely soul. ”

“ The very presence of a lengthened festivity—for festivity can never be solitary—would, apart from its sacred causes, promote these wholesome effects. The extended space of time over which this festival is spread, the protracted holiday which it creates, points it out for the gathering together of distant friends whom the passing nature of an occasional and single celebration would fail to collect from their scattered places of the world. ”

“ We love to enter those houses of refreshment by the way-side of existence, where we know we shall encounter with other wayfarers like ourselves,—perchance with friends long separated, and whom the chances of the world keep far apart,—and whence, after a sweet communion and lusty festival and needful rest, we may go forth upon our journey new fortified against its accidents, and strengthened for its toils. ”

“ This ancient festival of all ranks, consecrated by all religious feelings and all moral influences; this privileged season of the lowly; this Sabbath of the poor man's year,—was recognized by his superiors with high observance and honored by his governors with ceremonious state. The mirth of the humble and uneducated man received no check from the assumption of an unseasonable gravity or ungenerous reserve on the part of those with whom fortune had dealt more kindly, and to whom knowledge had opened her stores. The moral effect of all this was of the most valuable kind. ”

“ A cheerful sporting with the light bubbles that wit flings up to its surface are perfectly consistent with the sacred character of the night, and, for ourselves, we will have a wassail-bowl this Christmas Eve. ”

“ These prodigious specimens of corpulency we behold, after being thus glorified, led like victims of antiquity decked with ribbons and other tokens of triumph, or perhaps instead of led, we should, as the animals are scarcely able to waddle, have used the word goaded, to be immolated at the altar of gluttony in celebration of Christmas! To admiring crowds, on the eve itself, are the results of oil-cake and turnip-feeding displayed in the various butcher's shops of the metropolis and its vicinity ”

“ Clouds and shadows surround us. The air has lost its rich echoes, and the earth its diversified aspects; and to the immediate threshold of the house of feasting and merriment we have travelled through those dreary days which are emphatically called "the dark days before Christmas." ”

“ We need scarcely mention that most of the other forms in which the mirth of the season exhibits itself, are in demand for this occasion; and that among the merry evenings of the Christmas-tide, not the least merry is that which closes New Year's Day. To the youngsters of society, that day and eve have probably been the most trying of all; and the strong excitements of a happy spirit drive the weary head to an earlier pillow than the young heart of this season at all approves. But his is the weariness that the sweet sleep of youth so surely recruits ”