A few
days ago a guest on BBC Three’s morning programme said that it had
become a lifelong habit to read A Christmas Carol by Charles
Dickens at this time of the year to get him into the Christmas
mood. The opening few sentences of the book were read – ‘Marley
was dead: to begin with.’ – and immediately, in my mind’s
eye, I saw my own childhood copy of the book, almost A4 in size with
rubbed, faded red boards and, inside, the wonderful full-size
illustrations by Emil Weiss (two of these below). As I listened I
remembered how I, too, used to read the book each year as a
pre-Christmas treat, saving it for this special time. I rather liked
the two Ghosts, Past and Present, who seemed very jolly, sympathetic
fellows, but the Phantom of the Fourth Stave frightened me and the
scene described as ‘a den of infamous report, with a low-browed
beetling shop’ is still vivid in my mind – as are its owner,
the laundress, the charwoman and the undertaker’s man.
When
this was first read to me I was too young to grasp the deeper
meanings of this passage – perhaps my mother edited out some of
the gloomier parts – but I instinctively recoiled from it. Yet the
idea of redemption shone through; that life-affirming opportunity to
step free from the the limitations that keep us small and mean, as
Scrooge does in Stave Five: ‘No fog, no mist . . . Golden
sunlight; heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry bells . . . Wonderful
party, wonderful games, wonderful unanimity, won-der-ful happiness.’
I have
the book beside me now as I write and, whilst I was looking for it, I
found another book I used to read in the same spirit. This is
Christmas at Nettleford by Malcolm Saville. The first chapter
is titled ‘Home Again’ and thirteen year-old Elizabeth Ann
Langton wakes up in her dormitory bed on the last day of the
Christmas term thinking of going home to a ‘large vicarage in a
small country town.’ Such a satisfying read, with the Wise Owl
bookshop – well, there would have to be a bookshop, wouldn’t
there? – its two gangs, the Owlers and the Red Handers (who become
friends at the end), the discovery of a valuable antique, which
disappears and then turns up again offered as a present at the crib
by Elizabeth’s well-meaning small brother during the nativity play
– and snow in all the right places! I loved it.
Looking
along the shelves I discovered other books my clever, intuitive
mother had found for me to read all those years ago: wonderfully
strange books, apart from the usual classics. I wonder who can
remember Hilda Van Stockum’s Pegeen, Mary Maple Dodge’s
Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates. Kate Seredy’s The
Good Master. Winifred Letts’ Naughty Sophia. John
Masefield’s The Midnight Folk.
This
last I first heard serialised on the BBC’s Children’s Hour. It’s
theme music was taken from Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite and even now
each time I hear it I am back in the past, crouched by the big
radiogram waiting to hear more about Kay Harker and his friends,
Nibbins the cat and Bitem the fox, and the scary witch Mrs Pouncer
with her sneaky familiars, Greymalkin and Blackmalkin.
I have
no doubt that all these books, along with many, many others, have
influenced my writing, and I thank all those writers who brought such
magic to my childhood. Much more than that, the books became my
friends; there for me when times were sad or bad or happy.
I’d
like to thank you, too, for reading the books that I write, for
sending such generous, heart-warming emails to me and for the
beautiful Christmas cards. May I wish you all a blessed, peaceful
Christmas and say – along with Tiny Tim – and Uncle Theo – ‘God
bless us, every one’.
