Of course, in 1931, Ina doesn’t have a clue about Christmas in 1946, but I happen to know she spent it in Portland, OR, with her daughter Myrtle, a.k.a. Lynn. The following Ina quote from Christmas 1946 is one of my favorites:
Next day was fine and sunny and we went down town to do our
last shopping. The shops were beautiful with all sorts of gay and clever
Christmas displays. The markets were a dream of luscious foods, and I wished
for Dickens to describe them for me; turkeys, geese, ducks, fat chickens, beef
roasts and cuts of all kinds, hams, bacon, pork roasts and chops, cranberries
as big as cherries, bags and baskets of nuts (the biggest walnuts and filberts
I ever saw), jars of mincemeat, pies, cakes, and cookies of every sort, baskets
filled with the finest fruits, and all wrapped in colored cellophane. I kept
falling behind to admire things, while Lynn went blithely on her way among the
happy people.
So, what did Dickens describe, I wondered. Here’s an excerpt from A Christmas Carol, Stave Three, “The Second of the Three Spirits.”
“There were
ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish Onions, shining in the fatness of
their growth like Spanish Friars, and winking from their shelves in wanton
slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up
mistletoe. There were pears and apples, clustered high in blooming pyramids;
there were bunches of grapes, made, in the shopkeepers’ benevolence to dangle
from conspicuous hooks, that people’s mouths might water gratis as they passed;
there were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance,
ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through
withered leaves; there were Norfolk Biffins, squat and swarthy, setting off the
yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great compactness of their juicy
persons, urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried home in paper bags
and eaten after dinner. The very gold and silver fish, set forth among these
choice fruits in a bowl, though members of a dull and stagnant-blooded race,
appeared to know that there was something going on; and, to a fish, went
gasping round and round their little world in slow and passionless excitement.”
Perhaps you wonder, as I did, what
Dickens meant by the word “stave” instead of “chapter.” I looked it up. The
BBC says that “a 'stave' is a name for the five lines on which
musical notes are written, so Dickens called his chapters 'staves'
to link in with the musical meaning of the title. It suggests that each chapter
is a 'line' of the whole 'carol'.” KW
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