A man named Charles Williams, Jr. had the honor of having the first phone number in the United States. (It was 1, of course. Mr. Williams produced telephone equipment for Alexander Graham Bell, so he played guinea pig. (He also, by the way, had the second phone number—2–for his shop.) You can read the whole history around the Interwebs: how numbers were promoted over just asking the operator for the name of your party during a measles epidemic, which would make it easier for trainees if operators went home sick.
Direct dialing began in the 1920s, but calling the operator, at “Central”, lingered as ifferent parts of the country caught up with the latest in phones. (I missed it in my college dorm by only seven years…yeah, yeah, right after the Spanish-American War. Looked up that joke on your phone, did you?) For a while, calling “Central” was so well-known that it appeared in any number of pop songs: “Hello Central, Give Me Heaven” or “Hello, Central, Give Me No Man’s Land”.
Speaking of pop songs, if you recall “Pennsylvania 6-5000”, that represents a brief detour in many telephoned countries. As more and more phones were sold, numbers got longer and longer: three digits became four and then five. When they reached seven digits, executives rebelled. No one, they claimed, should be expected to remember a seven-digit number, so a word was substituted, and the caller was expected to use just the first two letters of the word.
This is why your landline phones still have numbers next to the digits, creating trivia and mystery clues, since Q and X did not appear on the dial. (They do now, again creating problems for people watching old movies.) Other countries used other systems, by the way: in England, logic took charge over math when the Zero was assigned the letter O.
This eventually became cumbersome and, anyhow numbers went on getting longer. Area codes in the 1950s, with the biggest cities getting the numbers people considered easiest to dial. People seemed to find ways to remember these numbers without trouble. (Although, lemme tell you about calling 911, which started in the 1960s, suffered a slight pause for reconsideration because this was originally pronounced “Nine-Eleven”, and people were wasting their time looking for an eleven on the dial. Everyone started saying “Nine-one-one” instead, and children were taught this in school, often with a special pushbutton classroom aid which, as far as I can tell, is numbered backward, so I always see these kids proudly punching what will be, on a real phone, 7-3-3.)
Now, of course, no one HAS to remember phone numbers. You simply type them into your phone once and then you just look up the name. The phonebook, thus, is dwindling away (how do little kids sit up to the table at Thanksgiving now?) and phone numbers ae losing the hyphens and parentheses I remember so well. We do still use a 1-3-3-4 arrangement of our numbers.
Other countries do a different division of their numbers, by the way: They also vary in whether they prefer hyphens or spaces or periods between the…my, we’re taking a long time to get to the question of why phone calls were associated with donkeys. I couldn’t find out anything st all about that: the Interwebs have their limits, somehow. Maybe we just had more donkeys around the house in those days, or maybe the joke sold best in western areas, where there were more donkeys than telephones.
Nor can I do much more than illustrate how one simple photograph could bounce from postcard to postcard, with slightly different jokes. Other cards in my inventory play a similar trick: an identical picture above several different jokes, and nearly every one involves a donkey. A lot are from Frank S. Thayer, of Denver, who, as you can see from just these examples, must have sold pictures of his donkey to every tourist who passed through Colorado.
That’s probably the answer. Maybe when the boys in Thayer’s shop were short a card for the next season’s assortment, they would simply burro a picture.
The Phantom slowly, gravely, silently, approached. When it came near him, Scrooge bent down upon his knees; got in the very air through which this Spirit moved it seemed to scatter gloom and mystery.
It was shrouded in a deep black garment, which concealed its head, its face, its form, and left nothing of it visible save one outstretched hand. But for this it would have been difficult to detach its figure from the night, and separate it from the darkness by which it was surrounded.
He felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside him, and that its mysterious presence filled him with a solemn dread. He knew no more, for the Spirit neither spoke nor moved.
“I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come?” said scrooge.
The Spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its hand.
“You are about to show me the shadows of the thing that have not happened, but will happen in the time before us,” Scrooge pursued. “Is that so, Spirit?”
The upper portion of the garment was contracted for an instant in its folds, as if the Spirit had inclined its head. That was the only answer he received.
Although well used to ghostly company by this time, Scrooge feared the silent shape so much that his legs trembled beneath him, and he found that he could hardly stand when he prepared to follow it. The Spirit paused a moment, as observing his condition, and giving him time to recover.
But Scrooge was all the worse for this. It thrilled him with a vague uncertain horror, to know that behind the dusky shroud, there were ghostly eyes intently fixed upon him, while he, though he stretched his own to the utmost, could see nothing but a spectral hand and one great heap of black.
“Ghost of the Future!” he exclaimed, “I fear you more than any Spectre I have seen. But as I know your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to be another man from what I was, I am prepared to bear you company, and do it with a thankful heart. Will you not speak to me?”
It gave him no reply. The hand was pointed straight before them.
Dickens here wants to embody the mystery, the fearsomeness, the sheer undependability of the future: note how hard it is to get a straight answer from the Time To Come. By now, Scrooge is practically converted, already thinking of changes to his ways. Even so, the future makes him very uneasy, though he has not yet picked up on the hint that this Spectre may moonlight as a Grim Reaper. Screenwriters do very little messing around with the dialogue as Dickens has written it, as Scrooge’s plight could hardly be painted with quicker, starker strokes.
That hand is central to many screen interpretations. Its shadow moves across the face of Hicks as he twitches in his sleep. He starts, terrified, and sits up as if forced to do so, watching the shadow of a pointing finger as if in a trance. Scrooge declares that he fears this Spirit more than any other, assumes it is going to show him the shadows of the things that will be, and allows as how he is prepared to bear it company. He is one of the few Scrooges who does NOT beg the Spirit to speak to him.
Owen is laughing in his sleep. The scenes of merriment shown to him by the first Spirits pass through his mind; his smile is bright. Suddenly, though, he is standing, still laughing and still with his eyes shut, in a windblown crag. A clock strikes three. Alarmed, he opens his eyes and watches the fog blow around d him. A hooded figure of great stature steps from behind a rock,. “You are the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come?” The Ghost points. “You are about to show me things that have not happened but will happen in the future: is that so, Spirit?” The Ghost nods. “Ghost of the Future, I…I know you are here to do me good, and as I hope to be another man from what I was, I am ready to accompany you. Won’t you speak?” There is no response.
Sim I sees the spirit before we do; we can see no more than that corpselike hand. Scrooge covers his eyes. “I am in the presence of the Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come?” He looks to the Spirit and nods, as if imitating the Spirit’s reply. He speaks the next two speeches, and then adds his complaint that he is too old now to change. “Wouldn’t it be better if I just went home to bed?” He shakes his head, again obviously duplicating the Spirit’s response.
March omits this scene.
Rathbone reappears in his room, the window and curtains closing behind him. The clock which was striking midnight a moment ago now strikes three. A robed figure with huge white gloves and a high peaked hood is suddenly with him. Scrooge speaks most of the written dialogue, noting “The night is nearly over, and it is precious time to me, I know.” The Ghost raises its sleeve and in the shadow of that we move quickly to the Cratchit home.
Magoo has been abandoned on a featureless plain. A shapeless red ooze resolves itself into a floating red cloak with red bony fingers. The Ghost replies only with nods to Scrooge’s first two speeches, but at the third nods and turns away.
Haddrick is told by the Ghost of Christmas Present, “You don’t seem to respond to kindness and generosity. So there are other ways.” Scrooge is naturally apprehensive about this, and asks questions, which are to be answered, he is told, by the next Ghost. “I pity you in his merciless hands, Ebenezer Scrooge.” “No, don’t leave me, kindly light! Don’t leave me! Oh no! Please! No!” Scrooge cowers to the floor; when he looks up, a translucent hooded form hovers before him. At his second speech, the Ghost nods; after the third, it points.
A tall hooded figure appears before Sim II; Scrooge kneels. At his first speech, a bony hand, way too long and thick a hand to be human, points. After the second, iot points again. “is that so, Spirit?” There is a nod. “Ghost of the Future! I fear you more than any Spectre I have seen, but as I know that your purpose is to do me good, lead on. Lead on, Spirit.” The hand moves into darkness.
Finney faces a hood in shadow. Scrooge drops to his knees and tries to peer into the hood as he delivers the speeches much as written.
Matthau finds himself weeping in his own armchair. B.A.H. Humbug asks, “What next?” A dark, hooded figure appears in front of the view of the clock tower, and simply points.
McDuck is surrounded by billows of fog, but we see in a moment this is really smoke from the stogie of a new Ghost. Scrooge is still standing in the footprints of the last Spirit, fretting about Tiny Tim. He finds himself looking up at a very well-fed Giant, which shows two eyes shining from under a hood. Realizing suddenly that he is leaning on a gravestone, Scrooge pulls back. “Are you the Ghost of Christmas Future?” Nod. “What will happen to Tiny Tim?” Point.
Scott finds a cloaked, hooded figure. “Are you the Spirit which Jacob Marley foretold would visit me?” The speeches follow as written, and the phantom slides toward him.
Fog billows at Caine as if on the attack; he runs from it to no avail. There is thunder. Towering over him is an abnormally shaped figure in a robe. “Am I in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come?” The whole upper torso inclines a little forward. “Spirit! I fear you more than any Spectre I have yet met!” Rizzo and Dickens agree, and excuse themselves, promising to return after this spooky bit is over. “I am prepared to follow and to learn, with a thankful heart. Will you not speak to me?” One hand comes to his shoulder; the other points.
Curry hears thunder; he is afraid, swallowing hard. “Speak to me, Spirit!” he calls to the Ghost of Christmas Present. He finds instead he is addressing a faceless spectre, tattered but noble. “Am I correct that you are the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come?” Nod. “Will you not speak to me? Is it you who will show me shadows of things that have not yet happened?” Nod. “Ghost of the Future, I fear you most of all. But if your goal is to do me good, then I hope to be a better person than before. Lead on.”
Stewart sees a very tall figure; two eyes are tiny lights far back in its hood. “You are the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.” Head, neck, and shoulders incline toward him. “You are about to show me the shadows of things which have not happened, but will happen in the time to come.” He speaks now in a hollow whisper. “I fear you more than any of the Spirits I have seen. Will you not speak?” The Ghost simply turns its hood away.
FUSS FUSS FUSS #16: The Look of Things To Come
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is a cipher: unspeaking (usually), faceless (for the most part), and devoid of expressions of its opinion (by and large). This Ghost has less to do than any of the rest: pointing and moving solemnly are nearly the whole of its act. Fark and ominous, generally with huge hands (Sim II’s Yet To Come has hands larger than Scrooge’s whole head, including nightcap), it is really less judgmental than any previous Ghost.
A lot of filmmakers will substitute atmospheric conditions for any emotion on the part of the Ghost. The Future is usually dark, its scenes taking place at night. Rainy nights are favored, allowing for thunder and lightning, particularly in the graveyard. Is there is fog in London at Christmas, it is to be found in these visions, and hardly ever in the others. McDuck’s future is awash with fog, while Matthau and March also have to push through it. Owen has high winds with his fog. Scott, Caine, Magoo, and Haddrick are surrounded merely by darkness.
On the other hand, Finney and Curry face normal weather, even cold crisp sunshiny winter mornings. The visions of the Ghost of Christmas On The Way will bring their own gloom, without reinforcement from the climate.
Last time, we observed the existence of Thanksgiving postcards, and noted that most people do not send such greetings nowadays, partly because there’s so much going on at the end of the year (one reason the Farmer’s Almanac keeps promoting a “rational” relocation of Thanksgiving to the first Monday in October) and partly because the price has gone up. You CAN buy a Thanksgiving greeting card, but the cost plus postage will run you around seven or eight dollars now, whereas in 1908 the price of card and postage would have been about two cents. MUCH easier to just email someone a turkey cartoon and get back to your regular holiday shopping. (And why DON’T stores sell Black Friday cards?)
One or two people felt I was rushing the season. Well, let’s REALLY look ahead, then, and consider the existence of cards intended for people to send to wish each other a Happy Leap Year.
The Leap Year postcard is a fairly limited proposition (so to speak). It was wildly popular in 1908, and then again, though apparently not quite so voluminously, in 1912. A few companies bothered with them after that, but it isn’t all that profitable to produce a line of cards which are useful only every fourth year. And the raucously funny tradition started to slip away.
See, for a couple of generations, there was a jovial tradition that during Leap Year, it was socially acceptable for a woman to propose marriage to a bachelor. The tradition began when…well, the fact is that nobody really knows. This doesn’t mean there are not explanations and historical tales, as collected by Stanley Buttinski in the book we mentioned in one of last week’s columns.
One tale claims that the lady who would one day be known as St. Brigid had a long discussion with the man who would be named St. Patrick (getting his own holiday and postcards one day), demanding, in the way Irish women had, some equal rights. She wanted Irish women to have a right to ask Irish men to marry them, as Irish men are considered to be really slow about getting around to such things.
St. Patrick, who had traveled far in Ireland and met a lot of Irish women, felt they were pretty powerful already, but finally allowed as how this would be permissible: on February 29. One day out of every four was all he felt Irish men could afford to lose the advantage. Some subsequent authority decreed that this would be true ONLY in Ireland.
This story does not apparently appear in any of the earliest lives of either of these saints, and the tradition DOES exist in other countries as well. Scotland lays claim to it due to an old tradition that Queen Margaret decreed in 1288 (a Leap Year) that any man who turned down a woman’s proposal would be fined by the government. Your non-romantic historians point out that Queen Margaret was only five years old in 1288 (she died three years later, without having proposed to many possible consorts). In Finland, however there is a tradition that any man who turns down a woman’s proposal in Leap Year must buy her the material to make a new dress. Other countries insist on reparations in the form of cash or twelve pairs of new gloves (one for each month of Leap Year, you see.)
Other stories trace the tradition of “Bachelor’s Day” or “Ladies’ Privilege” to some seventeenth century comedy, which is deemed responsible as well for an idea that said proposal is only valid if the lady is wearing breeches, or a scarlet petticoat.
But the most conservative historians still claim the whole thing sprang up as a joke some time after the Civil war, which puts it in pretty much the right era to be snatched up by postcard manufacturers. These are the same sort of people who claim there never was a Stanley Buttinski, as noted last week.
I ran into a number of bewildered bloggers who claim that it is only with the advent of social media that women feel comfortable proposing to men (honest? YOU guys invented it?) and others who confuse the whole thing with Sadie Hawkins Day, when, on college campuses around the United States, women could ask men to go to a dance. This day was NOT February 29, as a few of these bloggers state, but an unspecified date in late October or mid-November, which brings us back around to THIS month. (It derives from Al Capp’s Li’l Abner, and like any good comic strip artist, Al Capp left the date vague, so he could slip it into the strip without interrupting whatever story he happened to be telling in fall. Shortly before his death, and the end of the comic strip, he stated that November 26 was the correct date. He was too late; for years before that Sade Hawkins Day had been settled on as November 13.)
What the POSTCARDS say about the tradition leans toward the “whole year” version of the story, rather than just February 29, and they ignore the question of who started the tradition. Getting in on it, as Minnie Pearl said in one of her jokes, was more important than any other considerations.
I did not get around to my annual column on the non-Halloween cards one could repurpose to LOOK like Halloween cards, since real vintage Halloween cards are so pricey and I have none in my inventory anyhow. I was very busy reading this new witchcraft bestseller: 101 Transformation Books To Read Before You Croak.
Anyhow, I have far more Thanksgiving postcards. There are plenty of postcards for holidays we USED to celebrate with cards. I am always startled by the number of postcards meant to be sent on George Washington’s birthday, for example. So far, I have not found a single card yet for Franklin Pierce’s birthday.
Yes, you CAN still send greeting cards for Thanksgiving; I worked for an institution which sent out Thanksgiving cards to its constituents, in part because this beat all the competition who sent out Christmas cards. But the card companies’ hearts aren’t in it. They have LOTS of customers for Halloween and Christmas cards, and there just isn’t time to get the holiday racks in the stores changed that quickly. (Anyway, this is the excuse they gave me when I proposed my million dollar idea of producing St. Andrew’s Day cards so the Scots in America could share saint’s day honors with the Irish. But the patron saint of Scotland had the bad taste to choose November 30 for his day, and they said they just couldn’t fit it into their schedules. This may explain the Franklin Pierce thing: his birthday is November 23. And my suggestion for an Advent Calendar of New Year’s Resolutions…where were we?)
It’s not as if Thanksgiving cards are hard to design. As you can see, turkeys were a very popular choice: easy to draw and instantly recognizable. (Speaking of which, what ARE those flowers there on the left?)
The version you actually saw at the table could be more difficult to make quite as cheerful as turkey on the hoof.
The Pilgrims and their ship got SOME attention, but this was more likely to be covered in sets of postcards showing Scenes from American History. The Puritans were NOT known for being holiday types, and during the Golden Age of Postcards, cartoonists had a way of ridiculing anyone they considered too prim by drawing a Pilgrim outfit on them.
This, by the way, is NOT a Thanksgiving postcard, but a line of fantasies showing loving couples through history. It does, though, go nicely with the EATING part of the holiday. That’s a luxury we don’t have now in greeting card racks. Back when there was a vast variety of non-holiday postcards, there were plenty to choose from which, like the non-Halloween cards I’ve observed in October, could be repurposed for the traditions of Thanksgiving. There’s the joy of reuniting with family, for example.
Traditions which became associated with Thanksgiving long after the invention of the holiday are still fair game.
Even snacking through later quarters of the game, as the stomach became ready for more, could be represented.
What? You say that reminds you of another tradition of the turkey-based day?
Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes they visited, but always with a happy end. The Spirit stood beside sick beds, and they were cheerful; on foreign lands, and they were close to home; by struggling men, and they were patient in their greater hope; by poverty, and it was rich. In almshouse, hospital, and jail, in misery’s every refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority had not made fast the door, and barred the Spirit out, he left his blessing, and taught Scrooge his precepts.
It was a long night, if it were only a night; but Scrooge had his doubts of this, because the Christmas Holidays appeared to be condensed into the space of time they passed together. Ot was strange, too, that while Scrooge remained unaltered in his outward form, the Ghost grew older, clearly older. Scrooge had observed this change, but never spoke of it, until they left a children’s Twelfth Night party, when, looking at the Spirit as they stood together in an open place, he noticed that its hair was whiter.
:Are spirits’ lives so short?” asked scrooge.
“My life upon this globe, is very brief,” replied the Ghost. “It ends to-night.”
“To-night!” cried scrooge.
“To-night at midnight. Hark! The time is drawing near.”
The chimes were ringing the three-quarters past eleven at that moment.
“Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask,” said Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit’s robe, “but I see something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw?”
“It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it,” was the Spirit’s sorrowful reply. “Look here.”
From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children: wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.
“Oh, Man! Look here. Look, look, down here!” exclaimed the Ghost.
They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish, but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked; and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.
Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.
“Spirit! Are they yours?” Scrooge could say no more.
“They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!” cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. “Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And bide the end!”
“Have they no refuge or resource?” cried Scrooge.
“Are there no prisons?” asked the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. “Are there no workhouses?”
The bell struck twelve.
Scrooge looked around him for the Ghost, and saw it not. As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the prediction of old Jacob Marley, and lifting up his eyes, beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming like a mist along the ground, towards him.
Most of this is condensed or skipped in a brief farewell from the Ghost. Many Scrooges, including Lionel Barrymore in the radio version, are genuinely grieved to see Christmas present pass. The Significant Children are frequently slighted, either because screenwriters feel they will distract from the ghastly phantom to come, or because they agree with Dickens (who slashed much of this from his public readings) because the audiences just won’t go for it.
Hicks, Owen, March, Magoo, Haddrick, Matthau, and McDuck omit this section. Their Ghosts merely leave them.
Rathbone, thoughtful, turns to ask “Where will you take me now?” The Spirit replies that it is time for him to leave. They exchange the remarks about a Spirit’s life being short, and the Ghost notes that his life will end at midnight; when a clock strikes, he looks up. “Mark what you have seen,” he commands, and vanishes. Scrooge folds his hands, as if in prayer, and, looking up, also vanishes.
Finney looks around and finds himself in front of his house. “Yes, Scrooge,” says the Ghost, “I have brought you home.” “You’re not going!” Scrooge cries, earnestly upset. “My life on this little planet is very brief. I must leave you now.” “But we still have so much to talk about, haven’t we?” The Ghost replies that there is never time enough to do or say all that we would wish. The thing is to try to do as much as you can in the tie that you have. Time is short, and suddenly you’re not there any more. Scrooge wakes under his blanket, struggling toward the light. “Was I dreaming again? I must have been!” He goes into the net room, hunting for the giant or any of the giant’s props. He finds only the bare room and dust. “I must be mad. There are no ghosts. There are no ghosts.” Turning, he pulls up at the sight of something in his bedroom.
A greyer Spirit conducts Caine to a churchyard; the Spirit moves with difficulty and his whiskers are frost-white. But after explaining that his life on Earth is very brief, he laughs, enjoying the experience of aging as much as the rest. He believes his life will end on the stroke of midnight. “Now? But Spirit, I have learned so much from you!” Dickens tell us that nothing Scrooge could do or say would halt the terrible bells. “Oh, Spirit: do not leave me!” “I think I must, in fact.” The Spirit begins to sparkle. “You have meant so much to me! You have changed me!” “And now I leave you with the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come.” “You mean…the future? Must I?” “Go forth, and know him better, man!” Laughing at that last joke, the Ghost vanishes, leaving a brief outline of sparkles.
Curry cannot see the Ghost, who has pulled into a shadow. She emerges from it whitehaired and wrinkled; her voice rasps. She explains that her stay on this Earth is very brief. The clock strikes three times. “Are spirits’ lives so short?” “Farewell, Ebenezer Scrooge.” She vanishes, and as Scrooge reaches for her, the house disappears as well, leaving him in darkness.
Sim I takes us to a poorhouse instead of a prison; here we see Alice (this version’s Belle, remember) working as a volunteer. Scrooge calls to her; the Spirit reproves him for having cut himself off from his fellow beings when he lost the love of this gentle creature. They move to a street. “Where are you taking me now?” “My time with you Ebenezer, is nearly done. Will you profit by what I have shown you of the good in most men’s hearts?” “I don’t know. How can I promise?” “If it’s too hard a lesson for you to learn, then learn this lesson.” He opens his robe; two children, nearly naked, look up listlessly. “Are they yours?” The Ghost replies with a brief version of the textual explanation. Scrooge buries his face in his hands at the first re[petition of “Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?” Finding himself suddenly alone except for echoing repetitions of these questions, he runs, covering his ears. He stops in terror at the sight of an uplifted hand.
Sim II now has the Ghost completely white-haired, still a giant. “My life upon this globe is very brief; it ends tonight, at midnight.” “Forgive me, but I…I…I see something strange.” The Ghost points to him, and, thoroughly scowling now, says “Look here! Look! Look! Look here!” He reveals two hollow-eyed spectres with talons, long teeth, long toes: the boy is the more demonic of the two, while the girl is more a large-eyed starving waif. We are given an abbreviated explanation of what they are. Scrooge asks if they have no refuge, and winces when the Spirit quotes him. The clock strikes and the Spirit vanishes.
Scott is shown people living under a bridge. A small family, huddling around a fire, is trying to make a meal of eggs. The man is bitter about their situation; he says he would work if he could find work, an obvious reference to Scrooge’s earlier declaration about making idle people merry. “Why ae these people here?” Scrooge demands: “Men and women in rags, children eating scraps: there are institutions.” “Have you visited any of them, these institutions you speak of?” “No, but I’m taxed for them. Isn’t that enough?” “Is it?” The husband, well-spoken and apparently healthy, has become desperate enough to go to the poorhouse, where men and women are housed separately. His wife won’t hear of the family breaking up this way. “We’re together.” Scrooge grows stone-faced, refusing to sympathize. “What has this to do with me?” “Are they not of the human race?” the Spirit demands, voice booming now, “Look here, beneath my robe!” Scraggly children with haunted eyes look out. “What are they?” “They are your children. They are the children of all who walk the earth unseeing.” He goes on with the speech of explanation, emphasizing Doom. “Have they no refuge,” Scrooge inquires, “No resource?” The Ghost smiles. “Are there no workhouses? Are there no prisons?” Scrooge tries, without much success, to smile back. “Cover them. I do not wish to see them.” “I thought as much.” The Ghost closes his robes. “They are hidden. But they live. Oh, thy live.” He announces that the time has come for him to leave Scrooge. “Leave me? Leave me here?” The Ghost smiles. “Oh, yes.” “You can’t do that. Take me home to my bed.” The Ghost laughs, “It’s too late.” “It’s cold, the place is strange…please don’t leave me.” There is another laugh, a shining light, and the Spirit is gone. “Spirit!” Scrooge cries, angry. “Come back! I wish to talk!” Receiving no answer, he walks along the river, admitting that he may have made mistakes here and there, spoken too quickly about things to which he had given little thought, but they could have come to some working arrangement. “Spirit, have pity on me. Don’t leave me.” There is still no answer. He sits. “What have I done to be abandoned like this? Why? Why?” The mist over the river bubbles and thickens. Light approaches from the far end of the bridge, revealing a figure. Scrooge looks up and sees it.
Stewart is taken to a prison, where the Ghost, throwing him a look of defiance, tosses his watery blessing over a prisoner, who takes up a tin whistle and starts to play “The First Noel”. One prisoner and then another start to sing along. This does not create a warm, cozy holiday, but does bring a moment of music to the dark, cold, cheerless place. The Ghost, haggard now, walks slowly away through what looks like a Victorian parking garage, empty and silent. He announces that his time on this Earth is limited. Scrooge inquires about what he sees under the Spirit’s robes. “Is it a foot or a claw?” The Ghost is weary in response, but reveals what appear to be starving vampire children. The Ghost has to hold them back when they see Scrooge, and explains them, pausing now and again to gasp for breath, of which he is desperately short. At the sound of a bell, Ghost and children are gone. Scrooge, terrified, jogs away through empty streets.
It has been a little while since we considered the art of postcard poetry. New examples come to hand all the time at Blogsy’s Postcard Bin, and I want to be sure you don’t miss any of the amazing discoveries which…I’ve told you about making faces like that.
The art of verse for postcards is not unlike that of writing verse for greeting cards. For every poet who puts heart and soul into the job, there are ten postcard artists who are thinking, “Come on: come up with some words that rhyme so we can get this month’s rent paid.” (Paying the rent can be just as strong an impulse to write good verse as bad verse. It’s just that so many people who would write better verse keep getting the reminder “Don’t do it good; do it Tuesday.”)
Given that postcards AND greeting cards are designed to be mailed to someone somewhere else, it is exceedingly fortunate that “here” rhymes with “dear”. But some poets DO push on to more complex work.
To those who complain a card just 2 ½ inches by 5 ½ inches doesn’t allow for a good picture and a good verse, we must point out that SOME artists are able to produce work of great urgency and drama in that space (even if the sender of the postcard may edit the text.)
And you can always squeeze your words INSIDE the picture.
Satire and sarcasm seem to inspire good work along these lines. These works of art may be descendants of the Vinegar Valentine tradition of the nineteenth century, when unpleasant pictures and mocking verse made for some of the best-selling greeting cards.
There was space, apparently, to attack the latest fads to threaten the sedate procession of days.
Or toss some pin-up art into the bargain.
This artist not only got the complaint and the illustration on a mere postcard, but some fancy lettering as well.
Sometimes an artist would spot a modern trend which would provide a theme for a series of postcards. As the automobile became more widespread, so too did the motorized play on words.
Which could be used as often as you could come up with new rhymey words for camouflage. (Remember the Jim Henson rule of comedy: A joke not worth telling once may be worth telling seventeen times.) This artist seemed to like drawing cars and houses best anyhow.
Of course, there’s always someone who overdoes it. This artist got so busy throwing Halloween decorations into the verse that we need to look at it two or three times to find out that it rhymes. Still and all, the picture was more likely to sell the postcard than the poetry. (This card sold within a few hours of my listing. Yeah, it was the pumpkins.)
Flipping through my unsold inventory this weekend, I was made aware of something we have not yet covered in this column’s occasional pursuit of the butt in joke history. We have observed that our ancestors in the supposedly prudish era when postcards were born had no particular fear of using this particular four-letter word, IF it could be excused with a pun, as in the postcard seen above.
But (and I use that word with some trepidation) I noticed a goodly number of postcards warning us not to “butt in”, and references to some people being “buttinskys”. Several of these were cards featuring the heroes of our Dutch Kids craze, which puts the phrases back to around 1912, but others were cards with undivided backs, which, as you will certainly recall from our sketchy history of postcards in the United States, puts them before 1907.
Okay, this may not alarm YOU. But do you realize this means I have been using slang expressions which are at least a century old? Okay, you’ve seen my picture somewhere and that does NOT surprise you. Fine for you, pal.
So I headed out on a noble quest to track down the buttinsky to his native land, and figure out when he (or she) first started to butt in.
Despite the presence of a number of urban legends out there in the Interwebs, which would have us peruse the savory tale of Polish peasant Stanislaus Buttinski, who was eventually executed (beheaded or burned at the stake, depending on which part of the legend you like) for always butting in with advice at the Polish royal court in the 1680s, thus making his last name a watchword for…never mind. Despite that story, the phrase “buttinsky” was invented in the United States by a newspaperman who combined the OLDER phrase “butt in” with the name form of numerous Russian immigrants. He had someone accused of being a member of “the Buttinski family”.
Yeah, yeah, this does not prove that Stanislaus never existed. Just that nobody used his “famous name” for the first couple of centuries after he had his last meal of a hot steak or a cold chop. (Thank you, Home for Elderly Jokes.)
As to the phrase “butt in”, the slang experts online cannot find this being used before 1899. And the phrase owes nothing to the sitting end of the body. It refers to cattle trying to get to the head of a herd by putting their heads down and butting their way forward. It is a slightly younger brother of the phrase “horn in”, which is ALSO still used today, and lends a little more credence to this story. (All apologies to Stanislaus.)
You see where postcards fall into this history. We have a couple of slang expressions presumed new between 1899 and 1901, and a craze for postcards, which really began to build in 1903 or thereabouts. We owe to the cartoonists, I guess, the association of butting in with goats, which people in the city had a better chance of being butted by.
And Stanislaus Buttinski, along with all the experts who tried to tell me about people getting in line by pushing their backsides into a queue, will just have to butt out. (A phrase which has been traced to 1906, by the way, as an inversion of “butt in”. Pity. I was looking forward to the tale of Ladislaus Buttoutski.)
After tea, they had some music. For they were a musical family, and knew what they were about, when they sang a Glee or Catch, I can assure you: especially Topper, who could growl away in the bass like a good one, and never swell the large veins in his forehead, or get red in the face over it. Scrooge’s niece played well upon the harp; and played among other tunes a simple little air (a mere nothing; you might have learned to whistle it in two minutes), which had been familiar to eh child who had fetched Scrooge from the boarding school, as he had been reminded by the Ghost of Christmas past. When this strain of music sounded, all the things that Ghost had shown him, came upon his mind,; he softened more and more; and thought that if he could have listened to it often, years ago, he might have cultivated the kindnesses of life for his own happiness; with his own hands, without resorting to the sexton’s spade that buried Jacob Marley.
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 of blind-man’s buff. Of course there was. And I no more believe Topper was really blind man than I believe he had eyes in his boots. Ny 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 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 anybody else. If you had fallen against him, as some of them did, and stood there; he would have made a feint of endeavouring to seize you, which would have been an affront to your understanding; and would instantly have sidled off in the direction of the pump 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 most execrable. For his pretending not to know her; his pretending that it was necessary to touch her head-dress, and further 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 blind-man being in his office, they were so very confidential together, behind the curtains.
Scrooge’s niece was bot one of the blind-man’s buff party, but was made comfortable with a large chair and a footstool, in a snug corner, where the Ghost and Scrooge were close behind her. But she joined in the forfeits, and loved her love to admiration with all the letters of the alphabet. Likewise at the game of How, When, and Where, she was very great, and to the secret joy of Scrooge’s nephew beat her sisters hollow; though they were sharp girls, too, as Topper could have told you. There might have been twenty people there, young and old, but they all played, and so did Scrooge; for wholly forgetting in the interest he had in what was going on, that his voice made no sound in their ears, he sometimes came out with his guess quite loud, and very often guessed right, too; for the sharpest needle, best Whitechapel, warranted not to cut in the eye, was not sharper than Scrooge: blunt as he took it in his head to be.
The Ghost was greatly pleased to find him int his mood, and looked upon him with such favour that he begged like a boy to be allowed to stay until the guests departed. But this the Ghost said could not be done.
“Here’s a new game,” said Scrooge. “One half hour, Spirit, only one!”
It was a game called Yes and No, where Scrooge’s nephew had to think of something, and the rest must find out what; he only answering to their questions yes or no as the case was. The brisk fire of questioning to which eh was exposed, elicited from him that he was thinking of an animal, a live animal, rather a disagreeable animal, a savage animal, an animal that growled and grunted sometimes, and talked sometimes, and lived in London, and walked about the streets, and wasn’t made a show of, and wasn’t led by anybody, and didn’t live in a menagerie, and was never killed in a market, and was not a horse, or an ass, or a cow, or a bull, or a tiger, or a dog, or a pig, or a cat, or a bear. At every fresh question that was put to him, the nephew burst into a fresh roar of laughter; and was so inexpressibly tickled, that he was obliged to get up off the sofa and stamp. At last the plump sister, falling into a similar state, cried out:
“I have found it out! I know what it is, Fred! I know what it is!”
“What is it?” cried Fred.
“It’s your Uncle Scro-o-o-o-oge!”
Which it certainly was. Admiration was the universal sentiment, though some objected that the reply to “Is it a bear?” ought to have been “Yes”; inasmuch as an answer in the negative was sufficient to have diverted their thoughts from Mr. Scrooge, supposing they had ever had any tendency that way.
“He has given us plenty of merriment, I am sure,” said Fred, “and it would be ungrateful not to drink his health. Here is a glass of mulled wine ready to our hand at the moment; and I say Uncle Scrooge!”
“Well! Uncle Scrooge!” they cried.
“A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to the old man, whatever he is!” said Scrooge’s nephew. “He wouldn’t have it from me, but he may have it, nevertheless. Uncle Scrooge!”
Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly become so gay and light of heart, that he would have pledged the unconscious company in return, and thanked them in an inaudible speech, if the Ghost had given him time. But the whole scene passed off in the breath of the last word spoken by his nephew; and he and the Spirit were once again upon their travels.
This is likely to get skipped by filmmakers, too, except in films which want to have another jab at Ebenezer Scrooge. Some find in it an excuse to have another sort of party than that at Fezziwig’s, a private gathering from some lost novel of Jane Austen. (The characters in Stewart do seem to have wandered in from Pride and Prejudice, or, less anachronistically, perhaps the Barretts of Wimpole Street.) Several versions do throw in some of the games, but other matters are ignored. Fred seems to be living fairly well for someone his uncle described as “poor enough”. (In Owen, at least, the party is held in the home of his fiancee’s parents.) And no one notices what Dickens was hinting about Fred’s immediate family from the fact that Mrs. Fred is not allowed to join in a rough game of blind-man’s buff. (Perhaps Dickens was too subtle here: something he is seldom accused of being.)
The scene is skipped entirely in March, Magoo, Haddrick, Matthau, and McDuck, while sim II gives us only the Toast.
Two versions substitute music for the games. Sim I’s group dances a polka behore the scene fades away in smoke. In Curry, Fred explains<”This is a song my mother and her brother Ebenezer used to perform at home…when their father was not there.” They produce a sort of Music Hall tongue twister song called “Santa’s Sooty Suit.” It is hearty and nonsensical, and the guests roar away at it, having no trouble with the intricate lyrics. Scrooge capers wildly, and when told it is time to leave, protests that he was just starting to enjoy himself.
Two games in the text interest filmmakers: the Blind-Man’s Buff, and Yes and No. Few versions contain both, and some introduce a new variation of one or the other.
Hicks turns Yes and No into a rather silly riddle game. When the answer is revealed, one old fellow falls on the floor laughing. The camera draws back to show us the whole group through the flames in the fireplace; a huge face (the Ghost’s?) is superimposed, laughing.
In Owen, Blind-Man’s Buff is suggested, but first there is a toast to Ebenezer Scrooge, who makes people feel so happy by contrast. Fred and “Tom” have fixed the ensuing game between them. As Tom begins to play, Fred and his fiancée pull back behind the curtains into the window seat intended in the text for another engaged couple. Scrooge would like to watch what they get up to there, but the Ghost pulls him away, reminding him, “But you don’t like Christmas: it’s a time for fools!” “I won’t go with you. I’m going to stay. I’m going to stay, I tell you!” “Don’t be a fool, man! You don’t like Christmas!” “But I do! I do like Christmas! I love Christmas!” He laughs, and is laughing in bed as the scene ends.
Rathbone watches Fred recap the riddle game as it has proceeded to this point; it is not badly done. A lady guesses the correct answer, and everyone laughs. Fred proposes a toast, “A Merry Christmas to the old man, whatever he is!”
The Spirit calls Finney over for another sip of the Milk of Human Kindness; the Spirit himself chomps a chicken leg. Mrs. Fred plays, and the guests dance Scrooge marking time. He knows the tune–”December the Twenty-Fifth”—saying he used to sing it as a lad. The guests then play a game of “The Minister’s Cat” (a game similar to the one Dickens mentions, of admiring one’s love with letters of the alphabet.) Scrooge jumps around the circle of players, prompting them, approving their answers, and calling to the Spirit to witness the progress of the game. The Ghost, yawning, dozes off. Scrooge even joins the reception line at the end of the party, thanking the guests as they leave, for having given him a wonderful tome. He recalls Fezziwig’s parties, and Fred’s mother, and Isabel. He reprises Isabel’s song, and grows morose at the thought of all he has cut himself off from.
Scott has a brief argument with the Ghost over whether the gests are happy because of each other’s company, or the free food and drink. The guests play “Similes”, in which Fred calls out the first part of a phrase—Proud as a—and the player has five seconds to come up with the proper finish (Peacock.) Scrooge is a bit superior to games, ut shows by his expression that he is paying attention; he snaps at the Ghost for speaking so loudly he can’t hear the game. There is a bit of business over “Tight as”, when Fred refuses to allow his wife’s answer of “Uncle Scrooge’s purse-strings”. In the end, Scrooge admits Fred’s conduct of the game shows some intelligence, and “as for the laughter at my expense, I’m inclined to overlook it in view of the general gaiety.” The Ghost tells him they have another stop to make. As they move on, another round of Similes begins. “As silent as….” “I know! The grave!”
Caine watches Fred call “We’ve had the plum pudding and sung the carols: what now, my lovelies?” His guests call for a game. Scrooge asks “Do people play games at Christmas?” “I love games!” the Ghost cries. The game of Yes and No begins as described, but moves toward “an unwanted animal.” Fred heartily enjoys the suggestions of a leech or a rat. Scrooge pays along with enthusiasm, but is devastated when the answer is revealed, and asks to see no more.
Stewart and the Ghost leave the room through the piano, causing the strings to reverberate. They are outside, but Scrooge can hear the guests back inside starting a game. “It’s been a long time since…. Let’s stay a little.” The Ghost’s expression is blank; he seems genuinely anxious to move on. But they move back inside, and both laugh at the spectacle of Blind-Man’s Buff, Scrooge pointing out to the Ghost that Topper is cheating. Topper finishes by catching his intended beneath the mistletoe; everyone calls for a kiss, and the Ghost calls to Scrooge to depart. They are on the way out when Mrs. Fred strikes up a tune. Scrooge stops in the snow. “Wait, Spirit. I need to hear….that was my sister’s favorite tune.” “Fran.” “Yes>” The Ghost nods approval, but still seems impatient. He starts away, saying “You should have accepted Fred’s invitation to dine.” Scrooge looks at him; he goes on, “For Fran’s sake, if not for yours.” Scrooge’s “I should” is more question than answer. The Ghost tells him, “We still have much to do.”
I have been fighting my way through a book I have tried to read several times before. It was a bestseller in its day, and was still touted as a classic of its genre when I was in school and trying to read every book in the humor sections of my school libraries and the public library. (AND the ones we had at home: we valued a good laugh.)
Maybe this book will be reviewed in this space at some future time (people misunderstand me when I say something like “Well, it has its points if you have the strength to put up with it”. They think that’s a negative review when, really…well, some nother blog.) But I did rear my head at one point and say “Whuh?”
The book deals heavily with the reminiscences of the author about being a kid somewhere around 1913. Some time is spent comparing HIS childhood and “Kids Today”. And in a section where he discusses how much time he was allowed for doing nothing, he describes the things he did when he was doing nothing. One of these things was watching other people, and among the people he watched were his older sisters, who, being that kind of teen, spent THEIR time on craft projects, including, he notes, bead-making and something called “tie-dyeing”, which he recalls produced handkerchiefs of amazing ugliness.
This is where my eyes lifted from the page. “Tie-dyeing”? Isn’t he about fifty-five years too early? I had recently been shocked by someone’s revelation that they had done a lot of tie-dyeing during the pandemic. You mean tie-dyeing wasn’t limited to Sixties communes and Seventies grade schools?
The Interwebs, as usual, was a fund of way too much information, all about the origins of tie-dyeing and the masterworks which have been produced in countries where the art was developed until masterpieces now found only in museums of African, Asian, and Middle Eastern art are preserved. But when did it hit the American craft worker?
Two authors in America wrote articles about tie-dyeing in 1909, and though the article by Charles Pellew (Columbia chemistry professor who became the Seventh Viscount of Exmouth: long story) was the more informed and respectful, the article by Amelia Beard in Harper’s Bazar, claiming this was an unskilled trade requiring only dye and cloth and string, was probably responsible for our author’s sisters getting involved in the tradition. Tie-dyeing apparently starts over every couple of decades, the artcles say, due to boredom (the pandemic), a dye shortage (in wartime; how does that help, by the way?), or a reaction to severe discipline (the Sixties; the “severe discipline” of the Fifties touted in this article, by the way, is related to the lax discipline of the Fifties our author was complaining about. But he was looking at it from another direction.)
In the hopes of further clarification in modern history, I have been working on two other historical projects. I find that toothpaste was first put into tubes in 1880, when a Dr. Sheffield noticed painters squeezing paint from tubes. The original toothpaste tubes were made of a metal easy to squeeze (lead) and so on and so forth. I have not yet learned what I want to know: who was the first person to squeeze the tube from the wrong end? I suspect the answer may lie among those distant French painters who inspired Washington Sheffield.
Similarly, I can learn everywhere that toilet paper started being sold on rolls around cardboard tubes in 1890 by the Scott brothers, and that by 1930, toilet paper was advertised as “splinter free”. But I can NOT learn who was the first person to put a roll on the spindle the wrong way round. Several authorities have gone to the original patent, which shows the paper hanging with the loose end out, toward the user, but no one goes into the identity and motivations of the pioneer who spindled it the other way round.
But I will persevere: in my research and in trying to finish that book I mentioned earlier (it’s only 96 pages, for crying out loud.) And, in the vein of the author of that book, I will state here and now that I squeeze the toothpaste from the middle, hang the toilet paper whichever way I happen to pick it up out of the package, and have never knowingly tie-dyed ANYTHING.
A couple of weeks ago, we discussed the Snowbird, an American species of migrant human which likes its weather warm, and at the first frost heads south, to maintain that tan, avoid the flu, and send snarky postcards back north to people who are suffering from snow and sleet. There is, as always, another side to the story.
Some people actually prefer temperatures below seventy, and there are even those who enjoy the conditions of winter. True, as my warm weather friends keep informing me, there are not a LOT of stories written about the joys of being stuck in the snow on your way to work or skidding on black ice on your way home. But winter does have its rewards. There is, for example, the occasional elegance seen in the postcard at the top of this column, and the joys of cuddling for warmth, as seen here. (If you cannot read the Fine Old Joke in the caption, the gentleman is asking his girlfriend the difference between the Freezing Point and the Squeezing Point. The answer, according to him, is that the Freezing Point is thirty above zero, while the Squeezing Point is two in the shade. (I said it was a Fine Old Joke, not a good one.)
But those are artists’ renderings of winter. What about REAL winter? For that we must go to the rppc (real photo postcard, where ordinary citizens could get their own snapshots printed on postcards.) These do exist, and a goodly number of them deal with winter wardrobes. This card is part of a small collection which was created in St. Paul, Minnesota, where these couples stepped into the studio to show off their winter preparedness. No one here looks as if they wish they were on the beach.
Mind you, they are indoors, under the hot lights of a photographer. (This is another from the Minnesota collection.)
These two adventurers, however, are from somewhere else entirely, and, from the looks of them, belong to that class of people which are quite the opposite of the snowbird. These folks actually seek out the cold regions of the world for their explorations and/or hijinks. One important feature of this sort of person is the ability to look, at least in the studio, as if they are ready for a brisk walk up Mount Everest this afternoon and, if time permits, a second and third. (They MAY, in reality, just be dressed for a jaunt to the bar on a windy day.)
Alas that there is no label here. These ladies are obviously on some sort of jaunt themselves in chilly regions, and have paused at a stone fence which had some significance at the time. Now, about a century later, we have no idea if this is the lookout point on Pumpkin Peak or the parking lot outside the rest stop on Flaptrap Road. OR they may have simply said “Let’s stop at the first good place and get a picture of our new winter coats.”
See, showing off that new winter wardrobe is a frequent motivation behind winter rppcs, and children are frequently the sufferers from this. A child generally needs a new winter coat every year, especially in the early years, when growth is constant and loving aunts and grandmothers with knitting needles can turn out a wonderful ensemble. This infant looks willing, but confused: why did he have to put on all this stuff to go sit indoors in front of a man who keeps talking about watching birdies?
MUCH better to get that picture of little Mildred’s new winter coat and hat outdoors, where it makes some sense.
This tot feels the same way about it. “Come on, I’m all dressed up for snow! Let’s go go go!”
Richard Adams, in Watership Down, had sharp words for winter lovers, which can hardly be denied. One of the chief joys in winter, he said, is getting in out of it. I feel like going inside for some hot chocolate about now myself.
Blogsy Babbles 