The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844

‘Suppose it should not be done enough! Suppose it should break in turning out! Suppose somebody should have got over the wall of the back-yard, and stolen it, while they were merry with the goose: a supposition at which the two young Cratchits became livid! All sorts of horrors were supposed.

‘Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating house, and a pastry cook’s next door to each other, with a laundress’s next door to that? That was the pudding. In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered: flushed, but smiling proudly: with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.

‘‘Oh, a wonderful pudding!’ Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that now the weight was off her mind, she would confide she had had her doubts about the quantity of flour. Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have been flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a thing.

‘At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the jug being tasted and considered perfect, apples and oranges were put upon the table, and a shovel-full of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth, in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a one; and at Bob Cratchit’s elbow stood the family display of glass; two tumblers, and a custard-cup without a handle.

‘These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden goblets would have done: and Bob served it out with beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and crackled noisily. Then Bob proposed:

‘‘A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!’

‘Which all the family re-echoed.

‘‘God bless us every one!’ said Tiny Tim, last of all.

‘He sat very close to his father’s side, upon his little stool. Bob held his withered little hand in his, as if he loved the child, and wished to keep him by his side, and dreaded that he might be taken from him.’

Could any thing be more life-like, more beautiful, more touching, than this description? But let us skip the journeyings of Christmas Present for a moment, that we may accompany Christmas to Come to the dwelling of poor Bob Cratchit:

‘The Ghost conducted him through several streets familiar to his feet; and as they went along, Scrooge looked here and there to find himself, but nowhere was he to be seen. They entered poor Bob Cratchit’s house; the dwelling he had visited before; and found the mother and the children seated round the fire.

‘Quiet. Very quiet. The noisy little Cratchits were as still as statues in one corner, and sat looking up at Peter, who had a book before him. The mother and her daughters were engaged in sewing. But surely they were very quiet!

‘‘And He took a child, and set him in the midst of them.’

‘Where had Scrooge heard those words? He had not dreamed them. The boy must have read them out, as he and the Spirit crossed the threshhold. Why did he not go on?

‘The mother laid her work upon the table, and put her hand up to her face.

‘‘The color hurts my eyes,’ she said.

‘The color? Ah, poor Tiny Tim!

‘‘They’re better now again,’ said Cratchit’s wife. ‘It makes them weak by candle-light; and I wouldn’t show weak eyes to your father when he comes home, for the world. It must be near his time.’

‘‘Past it, rather,’ Peter answered, shutting up his book. ‘But I think he’s walked a little slower than he used, these few last evenings, mother.’

‘They were very quiet again. At last she said, and in a steady, cheerful voice, that only faltered once:

‘‘I have known him walk with—I have known him walk with Tiny Tim upon his shoulder, very fast, indeed.’

‘‘And so have I,’ cried Peter. ‘Often.’

‘‘And so have I!’ exclaimed another. So had all.

‘‘But he was very light to carry,’ she resumed, intent upon her work, ‘and his father loved him so, that it was no trouble—no trouble. And there is your father at the door!’

‘She hurried out to meet him; and Bob in his comforter—he had need of it, poor fellow—came in. His tea was ready for him on the hob, and they all tried who should help him to it most. Then the two young Cratchits got upon his knees and laid, each child a little cheek, against his face, as if they said, ‘Don’t mind it, father. Don’t be grieved!’

‘Bob was very cheerful with them, and spoke pleasantly to all the family. He looked at the work upon the table, and praised the industry and speed of Mrs. Cratchit and the girls. They would be done long before Sunday, he said.

‘‘Sunday! You went to-day then, Robert?’ said his wife.

‘‘Yes, my dear,’ returned Bob. ‘I wish you could have gone. It would have done you good to see how green a place it is. But you’ll see it often. I promised him that I would walk there on a Sunday. My little, little child!’ cried Bob. ‘My little child!’

‘He broke down all at once. He couldn’t help it. If he could have helped it, he and his child would have been further apart, perhaps, than they were.

‘He left the room, and went up stairs into the room above, which was lighted cheerfully, and hung with Christmas. There was a chair set close beside the child, and there were signs of some one having been there lately. Poor Bob sat down in it, and when he had thought a little and composed himself, he kissed the little face. He was reconciled to what had happened, and went down again quite happy.’

‘Let not that man be trusted’ who can read this affecting picture of parental love for a poor little cripple-boy, without feeling the tear-drops swelling to his eyes. But let us return and take one more excursion with the former Spirit. Observe the faithfulness and the range of the writer’s imagination:

‘And now, without a word of warning from the Ghost, they stood upon a bleak and desert moor, where monstrous masses of rude stone were cast about, as though it were the burial-place of giants; and water spread itself wheresoever it listed—or would have done so, but for the frost that held it prisoner; and nothing-grew but moss and furze, and coarse, rank grass. Down in the west the setting sun had left a streak of fiery red, which glared upon the desolation for an instant, like a sullen eye, and frowning lower, lower, lower yet, was lost in the thick gloom of darkest night.

‘‘What place is this?’ asked Scrooge.

‘‘A place where Miners live, who labor in the bowels of the earth,’ returned the Spirit. ‘But they know me. See!’

‘A light shone from the window of a hut, and swiftly they advanced toward it. Passing through the wall of mud and stone, they found a cheerful company assembled round a glowing fire. An old, old man and woman, with their children and their children’s children, and another generation beyond that, all decked out gaily in their holiday attire. The old man, in a voice that seldom rose above the howling of the wind upon the barren waste, was singing them a Christmas song; it had been a very old song when he was a boy; and from time to time they all joined in the chorus. So surely as they raised their voices, the old man got quite blithe and loud; and so surely as they stopped, his vigor sank again.

‘The Spirit did not tarry here, but bade Scrooge hold his robe, and passing on above the moor, sped whither? Not to sea? To sea. To Scrooge’s horror, looking back, he saw the last of the land, a frightful range of rocks, behind them; and his ears were deafened by the thundering of water, as it rolled, and roared, and raged among the dreadful caverns it had worn, and fiercely tried to undermine the earth.

‘Built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks, some league or so from the shore, on which the waters chafed and dashed, the wild year through, there stood a solitary lighthouse. Great heaps of seaweed clung to its base, and storm-birds—born of the wind one might suppose, as sea-weed of the water—rose and fell about it, like the waves they skimmed.

‘But even here, two men who watched the light had made a fire, that through the loophole in the thick stone wall shed out a ray of brightness on the awful sea. Joining their horny hands over the rough table at which they sat, they wished each other a Merry Christmas in their can of grog; and one of them—the elder, too, with his face all damaged and scarred with hard weather, as the figurehead of an old ship might be—struck up a sturdy song that was like a Gale in itself.

‘Again the Ghost sped on, above the black and heaving sea—on, on—until, being far away, as he told Scrooge, from any shore, they lighted on a ship. They stood beside the helmsman at the wheel, the look-out in the bow, the officers who had the watch; dark, ghostly figures in their several stations: but every man among them hummed a Christmas tune, or had a Christmas thought, or spoke below his breath to his companion of some bygone Christmas Day, with homeward hopes belonging to it. And every man on board, waking or sleeping, good or bad, had had a kinder word for another on that day than on any day in the year; and had shared to some extent in its festivities: and had remembered those he cared for at a distance, and had known that they delighted to remember him.’

The second of these spirits accompanies Scrooge to a scene that is well worth seeing, and the like of which many of our readers have doubtless often encountered—a regular Christmas frolic; in the present instance at the residence of his nephew, who has a sister, a lovely, plump damsel, with a lace tucker: she was pretty, exceedingly pretty. ‘With a dimpled, surprised-looking, capital face; a ripe little mouth, that seemed made to be kissed, as no doubt it was; all kinds of good little dots about her chin, that melted into one another when she laughed; and the sunniest pair of eyes you ever saw in any little creature’s head. Altogether she was what you would have called provoking, you know; but satisfactory, too. Oh, perfectly satisfactory!’ Is not the following a most glowing sketch of a well known pastime?

‘But they didn’t devote the whole evening to music. After a while they played at forfeits; for it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself. Stop! There was first a game at blindman’s buff. Of course there was. And I no more believe Topper was really blind than I believe he had eyes in his boots. My opinion is, that it was a done thing between him and Scrooge’s nephew; and that the Ghost of Christmas Present knew it. The way he went after that plump sister in the lace tucker, was an outrage on the credulity of human nature. Knocking down the fire-irons, tumbling over the chairs, bumping up against the piano, smothering himself among the curtains, wherever she went, there went he. He always knew where the plump sister was. He wouldn’t catch any body else. If you had fallen up against him, as some of them did, and stood there; he would have made a feint endeavoring to seize you, which would have been an affront to your understanding: and would instantly have sidled off in the direction of the plump sister. She often cried out that it wasn’t fair; and it really was not. But when, at last, he caught her; when, in spite of all her silken rustlings, and her rapid flutterings past him, he got her into a corner whence there was no escape; then his conduct was the most execrable. For his pretending not to know her; his pretending that it was necessary to touch her head-dress, and farther to assure himself of her identity by pressing a certain ring upon her finger, and a certain chain about her neck; was vile, monstrous! No doubt she told him her opinion of it, when, another blindman being in office, they were so very confidential together, behind the curtains.’

The Ghost of Christmas to Come is the third spirit. It is a stately figure, surrounded in black and impenetrable drapery. It leads Scrooge into the heart of the city, and he hears his acquaintance talking jestingly of one departed; into the Exchange, and he sees another standing against his peculiar pillar; into a haunt of infamy, where wretches are dividing the spoils and hoardings of the dead; into a wretched room, where a corpse lies shrouded, whose face Scrooge dares not uncover; into dwellings made miserable by the grasping avarice of those who had wealth they could not use; into his nephew’s house, shorn of its comforts, where the inmates, care-worn and weary, are wringing their hands with distress; into poor Bob Cratchit’s abode, made cheerless by death; and lastly, into a sad churchyard, where, on the stone of a neglected grave, is inscribed his own name! He implores the spirit to say whether these shadows may not be changed by an altered life. Its trembling hand seems to give consent. He pleads earnestly for a more decisive sign, and while he does so, the phantom dwindles down into a bed-post, and Scrooge sits upright in his bed. Who cannot imagine the conclusion? It is broad day. He looks out of the window: the bells are ringing; the people are going to church; all proclaim it as Christmas Day. The future is yet before him, and he is resolved to make the most of it. The prize turkey is got in haste from the neighboring poulterer’s, and sent by a cab to Bob Cratchit’s; and Scrooge hastens off to his nephew’s to dinner, where he finds the vision of the spirit realized. Scrooge from that hour is another and a better man. We have in conclusion but three words to say to every reader of the Knickerbocker who may peruse our notice of this production: Read the Work.

Wanderings of a Journeyman Tailor Through Europe and the East. Between the years 1824 and 1840. By P. D. Holthaus, Journeyman Tailor, from Werdohl, in Westphalia. Translated from the third German edition, by William Howitt. J. Winchester: ‘New World’ Press.

An air of great simplicity and truth pervades this wander-book of the German schneider. Mr. Howitt tells us, that when in the autumn of 1840 he returned to his native village, a great reputation preceded him, and all came, eager to see the brave traveller, and to listen to the relation of his adventures. He never sought purposely to turn conversation upon the subject of his travels, nor to impress an idea of his own importance; but when he was drawn into discourse, it was speedily found that he had noted and deeply impressed on his mind every thing with a truly admirable interest, and an acute spirit of observation, for one of his rank and education; that he had not merely passed through the countries, but had gleaned valuable matter on his journey; various things which he had brought with him testified this interest, such as different kinds of coin, engravings, plans of cities, etc. We have found, on an examination necessarily cursory, the commendatory remarks of the Berlin Gesellschafter upon this work to be well deserved: ‘We see in the individual expressions almost every where the evidence of its being the production of immediate observation. There prevails through the whole a noble simplicity and singleness of purpose, a genuinely German sound mode of thinking; here and there is not wanting a humorous and pithy remark. The author sees in every place nature and men without spectacles, and thence it arises that we acquire from his book a more living and actual view of foreign countries, especially of Egypt, Palestine, and Turkey, than was the case from the travelled labors of many a learned and celebrated man. Frequently, nay almost always, it is a fact, that the learned are destitute of the opportunity of acquiring a knowledge of the real life of the people, while it is exactly here that the greatest peculiarity of the manners and customs of foreigners is to be found. Our honest hand-worker lived among the people, and therefore possessed the best means to describe them in graphic characters.’ There is something very forcible and comprehensive in the subjoined passage from the author’s preface. It is indeed a sort of compendium of the most interesting portion of the writer’s journeyings:

‘From my youth up, it was my most living desire to see the world. When I heard or read of foreign lands, I became sad at heart, and thought: ‘Wert thou but of years that thou couldst travel!’ Now are all the wishes of my youth fulfilled. I have made the attempt by land and water, and that in three quarters of the world. I have wandered several times through Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Wallachia; I was a long time in Budapest and Constantinople; and undertook, with the money which I had saved there, a pilgrimage through Egypt to the Holy Land. I kneeled at the Birth-Place and the Sepulchre of the Saviour; stood in adoration on the holy Mount Zion, on Tabor, Golgotha, and the Mount of Olives; bathed in Jordan; washed myself in the Lake of Gennesareth; looked in vain around me on the Dead Sea for living objects; was in the workshop of St. Joseph; and in many other holy places of which the sacred Scriptures make mention. Thence I returned to Constantinople, and betook myself through Athens, where I worked nearly a year, and thence through Italy, France, and Belgium, homeward to my Fatherland.’

The first German edition of fifteen hundred copies of the work was at once exhausted; a second speedily followed; a third was soon announced; and the fourth is doubtless ere this before a wide class of German readers. We cheerfully commend the book to the public acceptance.

Benthamiana: or Select Extracts from the Works of Jeremy Bentham. With an Outline Opinion on the Principal Subjects discussed in his Works. In one volume, pp. 446. Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard. New-York: Wiley and Putnam.

This work contains a copious selection of those passages in the works of Jeremy Bentham which appear to be chiefly distinguished for merit of a simply rhetorical character; which, appearing often in the midst of long and arduous processes of reasoning, or in the course of elaborate descriptions of minute practical arrangements, demanding from an active mind severe thought and unflagging attention, have scarcely had their due weight with the general reader, nor secured their just meed of admiration. He was singularly careless, writes his editor, in distributing his pleasing illustrations of playfulness, or pathos, or epigrammatic expression. His ‘mission’ he considered to be that of an instructor and improver; and the flowers which, equally with more substantial things, were the produce of his vigorous intellect, he looked upon as scarcely worthy of passing attention, and deserving of no more notice than to be permitted to grow wherever the more valued objects of his labors left them a little room. The volume comprehends a vast variety of sound opinion, and able though brief argument upon themes which relate to the social, moral and religious well-being of mankind. Touching the style of the writer, as evinced in these selections, we should say that it was formed mainly upon a due avoidance of prolixity, (an observance not always characteristic of Bentham’s writings,) concerning which he himself very justly remarks: ‘Prolixity may be where redundancy is not. Prolixity may arise not only from the multifarious insertion of unnecessary articles, but from the conservation of too many necessary ones in a sentence; as a workman may be overladen not only with rubbish, which is of no use for him to carry, but with materials the most useful and necessary, when heaped up in loads too heavy for him at once.’ A useful hint this, to unpractised writers.

The Correspondence between Burns and Clarinda. With a Memoir of Mrs. M’Lehose, (Clarinda.) Arranged and edited by her Grandson, W. C. M’Lehose. In one volume, pp. 293. New-York: R. P. Bixby and Company.

We have no doubt that the contents of this well-executed little volume are altogether authentic; full particulars relative to the custody and authenticity of the correspondence and the state of preservation of the original manuscripts being given in the preface. But we are very sorry to say so much against the book as this fact implies. It would be far better for the reputation of the immortal Bard of Scotland, if some hereditary friend, chary of his undying fame, were to come before the public with a pamphlet disproving entirely the agency of Burns in this correspondence. To those who are acquainted with previous records in the private history of the world-renowned poet, it is painful to convict him, out of his own mouth, of duplicity in matters of the heart; of insincerity in the profession of simultaneous passion for various lovers; and of other acts which are alike indefensible and disreputable. We must needs marvel too that the ‘Clarinda’ of the correspondence should have been doomed by a near descendant to the exposure inseparable from the revelations of this volume. That the treatment which she received at the hands of one whose duty it was to ‘love, cherish, and protect’ her, was equally undeserved and inexcusable, we can well believe; but that the ‘platonic attachment,’ which sprung up in a night, like the gourd of Jonah, and gradually waxed to ‘passion at fever-heat,’ was justified by these facts, or sanctioned by propriety, or that its history in detail is calculated to elevate the character of woman, or exercise a healthful moral influence, we have just as little reason to doubt. There is a sprinkling of verse in an appendix, which Burns was good enough to praise. It is of that kind ‘which neither gods nor men permit;’ and is conclusive, not of Burns’s judgment, but of his ‘tender’ sycophancy.

EDITOR’S TABLE

Some ‘Sentiments’ on Sonnets, with sundry Specimens.—Thanks to our ever-welcome correspondent, ‘T. W. P.’ for his pleasant, pertinent and improving sentiments on sonnets. Arriving at too late an hour for a place among our guests at the table d’ hôte, perhaps he will not object to sit at our humble side-table, and converse familiarly with the reader; since, as honest Sancho remarked of the Duke, ‘Wherever he sits, there will be the first place.’ Our friend has a fruitful theme. How many borrowed prose-passages have we seen, with their original brightness dimmed or deflected in a sorry sonnet! Nine in ten of our modern examples in this kind, when one comes to analyze them, will be found to consist of stolen ideas, combined with what Southey would call ‘bubble, and bladder, and tympany.’ But perpend the subjoined: ‘Ever since the fatal days of Petrarch and Guido Cavalianti, mankind have suffered more or less from the chronic infliction of Sonnets. With them indeed the complaint was constitutional, and came in the natural way; under so mild and gentle a form withal, that little danger was to be apprehended for Italian temperaments, except a degree of languor, general debility, and a disagreeable singing in the ears. It was only when it worked its way into English blood, that the virus assumed its most baneful character. Shakspeare, among other illustrious victims, was afflicted by it in his youth, but seems to have recovered during his residence in the metropolis. Possibly the favor of the royal hand might have proved more beneficial than that of the Earl of Southampton. Perhaps he was touched for it by Elizabeth, as Johnson was by Queen Anne for the scrofula. However that may be, we know very well that the disorder is now rooted among us, and that every week produces decided cases of Sonnets, sometimes so severe as to be intolerable. In this condition of the mental health of our country, since the evil cannot be cured, it were a work at once philanthropical and patriotic, so to modify it and regulate its attacks, that it may settle down into a moderate degree of annoyance, like the lighter afflictions of mild measles and mumps. We can always calculate upon the duration of each ‘fytte,’ as none ever exceeds the fourteenth spasm. When the just dozen-and-two convulsions are past, the danger is over, and the offensive matter may be removed by a newspaper, or discharged into some appropriate magazine. There is good reason for designating the complaint as a periodical one.

We intend, one of these days, provided our remarks attract sufficient attention, to publish a volume upon this subject. We have the materiel by us and about us; and as soon as we can make arrangements with Mr. Poh for a puff in the ‘North-American Review,’ or the ‘Southern Literary Messenger,’ we shall broach the affair to Mr. Fields, the enterprising publisher. We have moreover desired Mr. Whipple to write to his friend Mr. Macaulay in England, who will doubtless be proud to foster American letters by a hoist in the ‘Edinburgh.’ There is only one other thing absolutely requisite for the success of the book, and that is the appearance of this article in the Knickerbocker. Befriend me then with your fine taste, renowned Herr Diedrich! and give me room. I shall not dive deeply into the matter now; but for the good of my young countrymen, the labor of whose brains is incompatible with a fruitful development of whiskers, I wish to put forth a page of advice that may save them a world of fatigue. It is common with those who are far gone in this tuneful disorder to set up late o’ nights and tipple coffee. Under my new system, I will engage that they may retire to bed on mulled-punch nightly, at eleven, and yet effect all that they now perform with the greatest injury to their eyes and complexions. But pocas pallabras—enough of this preface: will not the thing speak for itself? There needs no farther introduction for these brief extracts from the aforesaid work: