FullReads

We Britons must of course express some of our emotions by eating and drinking freely. No political party can pretend to adjust the affairs of the Empire until the best-advertised members have met together at a dinner-table; no prominent man can be regarded as having achieved the highest work in politics, or art, or literature, or histrionics, until he has been delicately fed in company with a large number of brother mortals; and no anniversary can possibly be celebrated without an immense consumption of eatables and drinkables. The rough men of the North Sea have the national instinct, and their mode of recognizing the festive season is quite up to the national standard. The North Sea fisherman would not nowadays approve of the punch-bowls and ancient ale which Dickens loved so much to praise, for he is given to the most severe forms of abstinence; but it is a noble sight when he proceeds to show what he can do in the way of Christmas dining. If he is one of the sharers in a parcel from on shore, he is fortunate, for he may possibly partake of a pudding which might be thrown over the masthead without remaining whole after its fall on deck; but it matters little if he has no daintily-prepared provender. Jack Fisherman seats himself on a box or on the floor of the cabin; he produces his clasp-knife and prepares for action. When his huge tin dish is piled with a miscellaneous assortment of edibles, it presents a spectacle which might make all Bath and Matlock and Royat and Homburg shudder; but the seaman, despising the miserable luxuries of fork and spoon, attacks the amazing conglomeration with enthusiasm. His Christmas pudding may resemble any geological formation that you like to name, and it may be unaccountably allied with a perplexing maze of cabbage and potatoes–nothing matters. Christmas must be kept up, and the vast lurches of the vessel from sea to sea do not at all disturb the fine equanimity of the fellows who are bent on solemnly testifying, by gastronomic evidence, to the loyalty with which Christmas is celebrated among orthodox Englishmen. The poor lads toil hard, live hard, and they certainly feed hard; but, with all due respect, it must be said also that they mostly pray hard; and, if any one of the cynical division had been among the seamen during that awful time five years ago, he would have seen that among the sea-toilers at least the “glad” season is glad in something more than name–for the gladness is serious. Sights of the same kind may be seen on great ships that are careering over the myriad waterways that net the surface of the globe; the smart man-of-war, the great liner, the slow deep-laden barque toiling wearily round the Horn, are all manned by crews that keep up the aged tradition more or less merrily; and woe betide the cook that fails in his duty! That lost man’s fate may be left to the eye of imagination. Under the Southern Cross the fair summer weather glows; but the good Colonists have their little rejoicings without the orthodox adjuncts of snow and frozen fingers and iron roads. Far up in the bush the men remember to make some kind of rude attempt at improvising Christmas rites, and memories of the old country are present with many a good fellow who is facing his first hard luck. But the climate makes no difference; and, apart from all religious considerations, there is no social event that so draws together the sympathies of the whole English race all over the world.

At Nainee Tal, or any other of our stations in our wondrous Indian possession, the day is kept. Alas, how dreary it is for the hearts that are craving for home! The moon rises through the majestic arch of the sky and makes the tamarisk-trees gorgeous; the warm air flows gently; the dancers float round to the wild waltz-rhythm; and the imitation of home is kept up with zeal by the stout general, the grave and scholarly judge, the fresh subaltern, and by all the bright ladies who are in exile. But even these think of the quiet churches in sweet English places; they think of the purple hedges, the sharp scent of frost-bitten fields, the glossy black ice, and the hissing ring of the skates. I know that, religiously as Christmas is kept up even on the frontier in India, the toughest of the men long for home, and pray for the time when the blessed regions of Brighton and Torquay and Cheltenham may receive the worn pensioner. One poet says something of the Anglo-Indian’s longing for home at Christmas-time; he speaks with melancholy of the folly of those who sell their brains for rupees and go into exile, and he appears to be ready, for his own part, to give up his share in the glory of our Empire if only he can see the friendly fields in chill December. I sympathize with him. Away with the mendicants, rich and poor–away with the gushing parasites who use a kindly instinct and a sacred name in order to make mean profit–away with the sordid hucksters who play with the era of man’s hope as though the very name of the blessed time were a catchword to be used like the abominable party-cries of politicians! But when I come to men and women who understand the real significance of the day–when I come to charitable souls who are reminded of One who was all Charity, and who gave an impulse to the world which two thousand years have only strengthened–when I come among these, I say, “Give us as much Yule-tide talk as ever you please, do your deeds of kindness, take your fill of innocent merriment, and deliver us from the pestilence of quacks and mendicants!” It is when I think of the ghastly horror of our own great central cities that I feel at once the praiseworthiness and the hopelessness of all attempts to succour effectually the immense mass of those who need charity. Hopeless, helpless lives are lived by human creatures who are not much above the brutes. Alas, how much may be learned from a journey through the Midlands! We may talk of merry frosty days and starlit nights and unsullied snow and Christmas cheer; but the potter and the iron-worker know as much about cheeriness as they do about stainless snow. Then there is London to be remembered. A cheery time there will be for the poor creatures who hang about the dock-gates and fight for the chance of earning the price of a meal! In that blank world of hunger and cold and enforced idleness there is nothing that the gayest optimist could describe as joyful, and some of us will have to face the sight of it during the winter that is now at hand. What can be done? Hope seems to have deserted many of our bravest; we hear the dark note of despair all round, and it is only the sight of the workers–the kindly workers–that enables us to bear up against deadly depression and dark pessimism.

December, 1888.