Collaborative Dickens. Melisa Klimaszewski
and second, as the journal’s first Christmastime reference to the Franklin Expedition, which Dickens later defended passionately and alluded to in many future Christmas stories. McCormick’s story is about how the men celebrate Christmas in 1841 with “the usual old English fare[,] Roast beef . . . followed by the homely never-to-be-forgotten plum-pudding” (307). Surrounded by icebergs, the crew carves a ballroom into the ice for New Year and sculpts a snow woman complete with “a profusion of ringlets” about her head (307–8). The story closes with an insistence that the missing members of the Franklin Expedition may still be alive (a Christmas wish disappointed years later as news of the expedition’s demise spread).21
McCormick and Dickens weave storytelling and exploration together to maintain English Christmas traditions, and Samuel Sidney’s “Christmas Day in the Bush” continues those themes in Australia. Two men living a sparse life at a “new station” in the bush take a shortcut through the countryside “guided by Bushman’s signs and instincts” to crash a gentleman’s Christmas party (309). True to the tropes of transformation that under-gird colonial dreams, the host states in his toast that he had been “a beggar and an outcast” at home in Devon (310). The story augments the others by encouraging continued use of colonial lands for the reformation of those who fail in the home country. A happy ending reinforces that point as one of the visitors marries the pretty woman whose presence had drawn him to the party, and they pass “every succeeding Christmas Day under his own roof in the Bush” (310).
The number’s concluding piece, Richard H. Horne’s “Household Christmas Carols,” lacks strong thematic connections to the preceding stories, indicating that Wills and Dickens explore the possibilities of the Christmas number genre without a map dictating how the pieces fit together. Still, the mix of voices in the carol form and the collaboration inherent in group song-making draw out the conversational dynamics that run through the collection. Horne’s piece is one long carol with distinct verses spoken in the first-person voices of ailing children. “The Lame Child’s Carol” is followed by verses (all with the same chorus) for children who are “deaf,” “deformed,” “deaf and dumb,” “blind,” and “sick.” The final verse from a “healthy” child includes the aforementioned ill friends in his winter play, and each verse firmly links the patient, hopeful endurance of children to Christian love (310–12).
In addition to delineating subjects deemed appropriate for Christmastime, the first number’s formal qualities embed dialogue in the genre. Considering Knight’s story of the Christmas pudding, Waters notes that “dialogism is . . . a defining feature of the periodical context of the story,” which holds true in varying degrees for each piece in the collection.22 The implicit conversation between the stories validates and reinforces the necessity for specifically English customs to determine proper celebration of the holiday. As Sabine Clemm remarks, “Household Words frequently shows itself aware of the arbitrariness of national characteristics and its own struggle to define these. However, even the most astute writers never quite abandon the assumption that an essential Englishness does exist, even though Household Words’ definitions of it are usually fairly feeble.”23 The Christmas numbers will continue to construct, respond to, and sometimes fetishize this “essential Englishness.” The 1850 number concludes without remarking that a tradition of holiday writing has begun, but the following year’s publication takes steps to distinguish the Christmas issue as special.
Extra Number for Christmas of Household Words
The 1851 issue, called the “Extra Number for Christmas of Household Words,” is the first to be designated an “extra.” An advertisement declares that it will please readers by “Showing What Christmas Is to Everybody,”24 and six of the nine titles indeed begin with “What Christmas Is. . . .” Lacking a mission strong enough to sustain interest for twenty-four pages, the collection’s repetitive traits emerge in multiple descriptions of Christmas, exposing a need for the type of frame concept that Dickens develops the following year. Each piece displays a different angle from which one might glorify an English Christmas, but the reappearance of domestic fires, trees, festive foods, and principles of charity signals a lack of originality and creativity. Even giving voice to usually mute symbols, such as tree branches, fails to provide relief from the abundance of holiday clichés that plague the number. Some of the stories touch on an occasional unpleasant experience, but such moments are sandwiched by joyous recollections, and, on the whole, one can stomach only so many mentions of redemptive currants.
Still, the number’s common focus, “What Christmas Is,” suggests that the stories reinforce one another and that no individual speaker is alone in believing that Christmas merits pondering in print. Dickens begins with “What Christmas Is as We Grow Older,” a rumination on the role of memory and regret in celebration that continues to build a foundational Christmas vision. The piece defines “the Christmas spirit” as “the spirit of active usefulness, perseverance, cheerful discharge of duty, kindness, and forbearance” (1). Outgrowing romantic fantasies of life, one should place hope in future generations and encourage dreams in children rather than turning bitter and regretful. The piece also insists on a particular type of remembrance of the dead, barring grief and tears while insisting that residents of “the City of the Dead” be welcomed in the celebration (2). Recounting the sad deaths of individuals ranging from young children to sailors, the narrator commands, “You shall hold your cherished places in our Christmas hearts, and by our Christmas fires; and in the season of immortal hope, and on the birthday of immortal mercy, we will shut out Nothing!” (2). Leading up to the framing concept for 1852, the joining of people around the Christmas fire is crucial to this vision, and one is struck by the insistent tone that sanctions only one type of mourning.
Following Dickens’s piece, neither Richard H. Horne’s, Edmund Ollier’s, nor Harriet Martineau’s contribution offers insight that moves beyond nostalgia or clichéd observation. Rather, they are noteworthy because Dickens and Wills were astute enough to recognize these contributions as the type the Christmas collections needed to depart from in order to become consistently successful. Horne’s “What Christmas Is to a Bunch of People” is no more complex than its title, commenting on the hopes and concerns of two comfortable households. Community members—including the beadle, postman, publican, and shepherd—feature in the story’s contemplations of Christmas perspectives, and the shopkeeping class appears, but the upper ranks of the working classes merit attention only as their points of view relate to serving wealthier customers. No lower servants or factory workers are granted perspective, and the most stressful outburst from any of the included figures is the pastry cook’s “Sugar-frost and whitening!” when confection-induced anxiety startles him out of a deep sleep (6). The story ends with a brief recognition of kitchen labor, but once the cook serves a perfect Christmas dinner, she “loves all mankind; and retires to rest, after a small glass of cordial, at peace with herself and all the world” (7). Ollier’s “An Idyll for Christmas Indoors” shifts from human to plant voices. On Christmas Eve, a Sylvan Spirit sits atop the greenery decorating a sitting room, and the poem grants the spirits of holly, laurel, and mistletoe one stanza each before they speak together. The voice of the holly describes birds dying and a climate so cold as to kill its natural residents, which causes the sprig to gloat about its warm position indoors, where laurel affirms that it feels like a “glowing household June” (7–8). Ironically, natural items from outdoors accentuate the unnatural traits of idyllic domestic Christmas atmospheres. In “What Christmas Is in Country Places,” Martineau locates “the good old Christmas—the traditional Christmas—of Old England” in strictly rural locales (8).25 Noting variations in local customs, the speaker explains that some regions believe good luck will grace a family if “a dark man” is the first to enter their home on New Year’s Day (10–11). Therefore, “it is a serious thing to have a swarthy complexion and black hair” because such men are compelled to enter so many people’s houses early in the morning (for a fee if the man is poor) (11). One senses possible danger for dark-skinned residents as their neighbors demand human good luck charms, and Martineau’s piece explicitly reveals the role of racialized identities in popular visions of “Old England” and its Christmas traditions. The story nevertheless concludes with another idealization of the rural scene “sheeted with snow,” producing a “social glow which spreads