Half a Widow

December 24, 1484.

To my right worshipful husband, John Paston,

ight worshipful husband, I recomment me unto you: please it you to weet that I sent your eldest son to my Lady Morley, to have knowledge of what sports were used in her house in Christmas next following after the decease of my lord her husband; and she said that there were none disguisings, nor harping, nor luting, nor singing, nor none loud disports; but playing at the tables, and chess, and cards; such disports she gave her folks leave to play and none other.

I pray you that ye will assure to you some man at Caister to keep your buttery, for the man that ye left with me will not take upon him to breve daily as ye commanded; he saith he hath not used to give a reckoning neither of bread nor ale till at the week's end, and he saith he wot well that he should not condeneth [give satisfaction], and therefore I suppose he shall not abide, and I trow ye shall be fain to purvey another man for and I trow ye shall be fain to purvey another man for Symond, for ye are never the nearer a wise man for him.

I am sorry that ye shall not at home be for Christmas.

I pray you that ye will come as soon as ye may; I shall think myself half a widow, because ye shall not be at home, &c. God have you in his keeping. Written on Christmas even.
By your servant and bedeswoman,
Margery Paston

The Paston Letters (1424-1505)

-from A Christmas Book: An Anthology for Moderns by D. B. Wyndham Lewis & G. C. Heseltine (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1928)

Letter in the Wind

[D. H. Lawrence to Katherine Mansfield]

c/o Mrs Clarke, Grosvenor Rd.,
Ripley, Nr Derby.

Friday, 27 Dec., 1918.

My Dear Katherine,

e got your parcel on Christmas morning. We had started off, and were on the brow of the hill, when the postman loomed round the corner, over the snow. It was all white and snowy and sunny, with a wind like an axe. I floated out my hanky for a flag over the snow, and Frieda dropped the tangerines in her anxiety to get the wheatsheaf unwrapped, and it was terribly cold and windy just on that edge. . . But my hanky fluttered very nice and lively. I wish you could have been there on the hill summit--the valley all white and hairy with trees below us, and grey with rocks--and just around us on our side the grey stone fences drawn in a network over the snow, all very clear in the sun. We ate the sweets, and slithered downhill, very steep and tottering. The children had the tangerines and the fan.

We read your letter in the wind, dropping down to Cromford. It made me feel weary, that we couldn't be all there, with rucksacks--I'd got mine on--setting off for somewhere good, over the snow. It is disappointing. And unless one decorates one's house for oneself alone, best leave it bare, for other people are all wan-eyed. I do so want to GET OUT--out of England--really, out of Europe. And I will get out. We must do it.

There was hardly any snow in the valley--all green, with the yew-berries still sprinkling the causeway. At Ambergate my sister had sent a motor-car for us--so we were at Ripley in time for turkey and Christmas pudding. My God, what masses of food here, turkey, large tongues, long wall of roast loin of pork, pork-pies, sausages, mince-pies, dark cakes covered with almonds, cheese-cakes, lemon-tarts, jellies, endless masses of food, with whiskey, gin, port wine, burgundy, muscatel. It seems incredible. We played charades--the old people of 67 playing away harder than the young ones--and lit the Christmas tree, and drank healths, and sang, and roared--Lord above. If only one hadn't all the while a sense that next week would be the same dreariness as before. What a good party we might have had, had we felt really free of the world.

We had a second turn-to-yesterday--and at half past eleven went roaring off in the dark wind to Dr Feroze's --he is a Parsee--and drank two more bottles of muscatel, and danced in his big empty room till we were staggered, and quite dazed. Tonight we are going back to Middleton--and I feel infuriated to think of the months ahead, when one waits paralysed for some sort of release. I feel caged, somehow--and I cannot find out how to earn enough to keep us--and it maddens me.

Still, it might be very much worse. One might be tied tight to a job, or to a sickness. I do wish you were better. But you sound stronger. I long to make plans--new plans. But not Europe: oh, God!

I pledge you 'the days to come.'

D. H. L.

--from The Letters of D. H. Lawrence edited by Aldous Huxley (London: William Heinemann, 1956.)

The Castle Watches

[D. H. Lawrence to Lady Cynthia Asquith]

Lerici, per Fiascherino,

Golfo della Spezia, Italy.

The Shortest Day.

21st December, 1913.

Dear Mrs. Asquith,

ou never answered my highly diverting and beautiful letter, only shed a tear over Frieda--which I call skimpy. So I refuse to write you a letter. I'd send you a visiting card if I'd got one, with "All Seasonable Greetings" written on it.

How is the winter treating you? If badly, you'd better come here and set up in a beautiful little tower over the Pine Wood and the Sea--for 140 francs a month.

We went to a castle the last week-end--ancient Italian Fortress, walls three yards thick. There it sits keeping an eye on the two rivers that come crawling insidiously out of the foggy Apennines, as if expecting them to pounce. But they don't--they only swallow each other and go with trailing skirts haughtily through the mountain doors to the sea. But the castle watches, whether or not. And it gives one the fidgets. And the artist gentleman painted in the manner of various definite gentleman artists--their ghosts haunted his canvases like the ghosts of old dead soldiers his castle hall. And the servants crouched in a corner of the great dark kitchen, making polenta cakes.

A merry Christmas--though you don't deserve it, for sending Frieda only a little bottle of tears and me not even a sugared almond. Also a merry Christmas to Don John, and to Mr. Asquith.

Yours,

D. H. Lawrence

-from The Letters of D. H. Lawrence edited by Aldous Huxley (London: William Heinemann, 1956.) p. 171-72.

Church Greens

From The Spectator, [Richard Steele]

January the 14th, 1712.

Mr. Spectator,

I am a young woman, and have my fortune to make, for which reason I come constantly to church to hear divine service, and make conquests; but one great hindrance in this my design is, that our clerk, who was once a gardener, has this Christmas so over-decked the Church with greens, that he has quite spoil'd my prospect, insomuch that I have scarce seen the young Baronet I dress at these three weeks, though we have both been very constant at our devotions, and do not sit above three pews off. The Church, as it is now equipped, looks more like a green-house than a place of worship; the middle isle is a very pretty shady walk, and the pews look like so many arbours on each side of it. The pulpit itself has such clusters of ivy, holly, and rosemary about it, that a light fellow in our pew took occasion to say, that the congregation heard the word out of a bush, like Moses. Sir Anthony Love's pew in particular is so well hedg'd, that all my batteries have no effect. I am obliged to shoot at random among the boughs, without taking any manner of aim. Mr. Spectator, unless you will give orders for removing these greens, I shall grow a very aukward creature at Church, and soon have little else to do there but say my prayers. I am in haste,

Dear Sir,

Your most obedient servant,

Jenny Simper.

-from A Christmas Book: An Anthology for Moderns by D. B. Wyndham Lewis & G. C. Heseltine (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1928) p. 20-21.

Glimpse of a Carlyle Christmas (!)

Jane Welsh Carlyle To Mrs. Austin,

The Gill, Annan.
5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea:

Christmas Day, 1857.

My dear Mary,

I understood that your brother would write himself to-day, to announce the safe arrival of your box, the contents of which were exhibited to him in succession last night. When it came to the goose, carried in on my arms like a strange new kind of baby (with that belly-band about it!), he burst into such a laugh! 'That fellow I think has got his quietus' (he said). But now he has just come down, and is off for his ride, and when I asked 'had he written to Mary?' he exclaimed wildly that he had 'fifteen hours of the most awful work of correcting proofs ahead of him, that I who had nothing to do should have written to Mary!' With all the pleasure in life! had I known in time, instead of within just half an hour of post-time - from which is to be subtracted ten minutes for putting on my things and running to the post-office! But better a line than no letter at all till to-morrow - you thinking the while that those blessed birds may be coming to harm from being too long on the road!

No, my dear! one 'Chucka' is boiling at this moment for the master's dinner (I dine on anything at two o'clock; not being up to waiting for Mr. C.'s six or seven o'clock dinners). But I had one of the eggs to my breakfast, and it was the very best and biggest I ever ate in my life! There were only two broken, and not wasted even these; I lifted up the yolks, which lay quite round and whole, in a spoon (for puddings).

I wish I had begun in time, for I had plenty of things to say; but I must keep for this time to mere acknowledgment of your present - another day I may tell you the rest.

Yours ever affectionately,
JANE CARLYLE

-from Letters and Memories of Jane Welsh Carlyle / edited by James Anthony Froude (London: Longman's Green and Co., 1883) p. 342-43.

Mince-Pie Mystery

[Fanny Kemble to H.]

1812 Rittenhouse Square,
[Philadelphia]

Saturday, January 10, 1874.

MY BELOVED H—,

y Christmas present to O— was three dozen of the finest wine I could procure here. The things I got for him in Dublin were so trifling, that I had quite a misgiving about offering them to him, though, when I mustered up courage to show him the old-fashioned seal I had had engraved with his monogram, and found that he liked it, I was very much pleased and relieved, for really people's presents to each other are on such a magnificent scale here that one hardly knows what to offer them. . . .

I had some very beautiful flowers given to me. M— sent me, in a magnificent china flower-pot of English fabric (a pale delicate green, with birds, butterflies, and flowers scattered all over it), a large Catalonia jasmine in full bloom. It was Mr. Butler's first gift to me before we were married; and on Christmas Day, M—, to whom I had given it years ago, and in whose gardener's care it has been ever since, sent it back to me in this beautiful vase, and covered with fragrant blossoms, a strange flowering again of former memories–of the tempo passato che non torna piu. . . .

The weather here now is perfectly lovely, mild and bright, only unnaturally warm for the time of year. I suppose we shall have the rest of our pinching cold (of which we had a bitter instalment while I was at Champlost in November) in the early spring, which I shall be sorry for. Dr. W— and S— and their boy dined with me on Christmas Day, and Ellen insisted on hanging green Christmas garlands round the dining-room, but was very unhappy because she could not find a handsome sprig of holly with bright berries to send up on the plum pudding, for the honor of England.

Mr. S—'s Christmas gift of a turkey does not seem so strange to me as to you. Our old friends, the Mayows, who were Norfolk people, invariably sent us at Christmas a huge turkey, for which kind of domestic fowl, as you probably know, that county is famous. My old and dear friend, William Donne, I know always sends a similar tribute to Arthur M— from his small Norfolk estate. Here, where I think the turkey is quite as much the national bird as the eagle, people are not unapt to send each other mince-pies of very large size and especially rich and delicate composition. M—, whose cook is famous for their manufacture, sent me one made like a huge tart, and one to Dr. W—, who is a great favorite of hers, and has a tenderness for that unwholesome Christmas dainty. I heard a ludicrous and touching story of an American diplomatic lady, who received at Christmas, while at her embassy abroad, a huge mince-pie from "home," all the way across the Atlantic. Her husband invited some of their compatriots (exiles like themselves) to dine with them and share this national dainty, but when it appeared on the table a considerable piece of it was missing. The gentleman looked surprised and not altogether pleased, when his wife, with a charming mixture of shame and simple naïveté (as she was described to me), exclaimed, "Oh, George, I couldn't help it; it was so like home!"
. . . God bless you, dearest friend.

[Fanny Kemble]

-from Further Records, 1848-1883: A Series of Letters by Frances Anne Kemble (New York: Henry Holt, 1891).

Trifling Specimens

Susanna Moodie to the Editor of the Albion, New York

Hamilton,

Upper Canada

February 14th, 1833.

Sir,

The pleasure I derived from the perusal of several of the last numbers of your clever and interesting paper, has made me ambitious, of the honour of contributing to its pages; and if the assistance of a pen, deemed not unworthy of public notice in my native land, when held by Susanna Strickland, can in any way be acceptable to you, and your readers, it will afford me much pleasure to transmit to you, from time to time, a few small original poems.

I now enclose the first flight* of my muse on Canadian shores. But the chilly atmosphere, at present, is little favourable to the spirit of Poesy. The minds of the inhabitants being too much engrossed, in providing their families the necessaries of life, to pay much attention to the cultivation of literature. However mortifying to the vanity of an Author, this indifference may be, it would be unjust to censure my fellow settlers for suffering more urgent and important duties to render them deaf to the voice of the syren, whose wild flights and vagaries have charmed me from my youth upwards. The close confinement of a log cabin, and the cares of a family, though they engross much of my time, have not been able to chill those inspirations, which in my own beautiful and beloved land were a never failing source of amusement and delight. The little sympathy which such feelings can meet with, in a new colony, where every energy of the mind is employed to accumulate wealth, has made me anxious to seek a more liberal channel of communication with the public, and I know no one to whom I can better apply than to the Editor of a Journal, which finds its way into the study of every respectable family on this side of the Atlantic, and is not inferior in literary merit, to any publication of the same class in Great Britain.

Should the trifling specimens* enclosed meet with your approbation and be deemed worthy of insertion in the Albion, they are at your service.

I remain, Sir, Yours respectfully,

Susanna Moodie

*Song: The Strains We Hear in Foreign Lands and Sleigh Bells: A Canadian Song. These poems were published in the Albion in March of that year, though under the incorrect name of Agnes Strickland, her rather more well known sister back in England. A correction later followed. The poems were later published with many others, in her memoir, Roughing it in the Bush, or Life in Canada(1852).

--from Susanna Moodie: Letters of a Lifetime edited by Carl Ballstadt, Elizabeth Hopkins, and Michael Peterman. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993) p. 90.