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A Miss Mary's Gazette Feature for December 2004 |
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This story was published in Snowdrifts, being the Extra Christmas Number of The Girl's Own Paper, 1884 A Lonely ChristmasBy the Author of "The Harvest of a Quiet Eye," &c.
"ALONE in large London ." I remember hearing a German girl thus speak, pathetically, of her first English experience. "I was alone in large London ." I know that, at the time, the words seemed to me to describe the very uttermost of loneliness. A stranger, from a foreign land-language, customs, faces, all strange-I could not picture a loneliness more lonely. Yet I have changed my opinion, and I give the palm of loneliness to my own experience now. Alone in London -in London , great overcrowded city; millions of men, my brothers, of women, my sisters, hemming me in-and yet, alone! I think the very fact of my being no stranger in a foreign land, but an English girl among English folk, intensifies the lonely feeling. Here are no strange faces and costumes, no foreign language, no unfamiliar customs. I am surrounded by my own countrymen and countrywomen. It is Christmas Day. I watch, from my window, the glad-hearted people, and I know exactly what are their greeting words. But none are given to me. I hear the joyous Christmas bells. But when I presently descend from my third story into the street and make one of the throng that, in two streams divided by the road, tends churchward, I shall see the grasp of friendly hands, I shall hear the heartiness of kindly words, but for me there will be no handshake, no greeting. Alone in London , I shall be alone in the great church to which I mean to go. The bells will "clash, and clang, and roar, and a welcome will outpour." But solitary shall I sit among the crowd-the crowd of husbands and children, of sisters and brothers, of friends and acquaintances; no eye lighting up for me with pleased recognition; no warm clasp of the hand; no cheery voice, "A happy Christmas to you, my child!" No; I am alone. And alone in large London . It would not strike me as so strange, so depressing, if it were not Christmas time. For this time is so especially the time of kindly greetings, of bright gatherings, I can fancy it all in so many houses. The boys have come back from school; the bride has brought her babe and her husband to the old home to spend Christmas. The son, lately ordained, has come from his curacy, spared, of course, for a week at Christmas time. He is to help his father to-day in the church within whose familiar walls he has so often sat and listened as a boy. The village schoolmistress, else lonely to-day, will be asked to join the Rectory party at the Christmas dinner. The old bachelor friend, the schoolfellow, years ago, of the master of the house, will be summoned from his lonely lodgings to share the hearty greeting and the warm handshaking. But here I sit at the window, my two hands lying on my lap, and a large tear or two slowly stealing down my cheeks. Why? Well, because I am alone on a day of gatherings. The first Christmas Day was a day of gatherings. From all parts of Judea they went up, whole families together, everyone to his own city. What a gathering of friends and neighbours, as well as of kinsfolk. But I may not go to my own city. I am "alone in large London ." Am I wrong to sit thinking thus? Am I indifferent to the many mercies that surround me-food and fire and warm clothing; aye, and the "glad tidings of great joy," which the angels once proclaimed, and which the bells are telling now? I hope not. I hope not. I will try to be quietly happy presently. I may think a little bit now. It is such a luxury to think; even if the tears will glide out one by one, trickling down, slow and cold, on my warm cheek. "Everyone to his own city." But my thought wanders away from cities, great, unkind cities; and it seeks Severn-side, and dear old Worcestershire. I wish, when I go out presently into the dull streets, with the dirty churned snow in them, that I might enjoy poor Susan's experience. That was called up by the song of a thrush, at the corner of Wood-street, with its solitary tree. Let me see, how do the verses run- " 'Tis a note of enchantment; what ails her? Ah, my grand Malverns, indigo against the sunset, with the tall, white Upton spire against them, and the town nestling under them! And the Beacon, with the rush of fresh air from the Herefordshire side, and the lovely Hereford hills, and the Welsh mountains beyond, and, far away, the Bristol Channel, into which the silver Severn glides. Then, on the other side, dear old Bredon Hill, and the Cotswolds, and grand Tewkesbury Tower, and Gloucester Cathedral, and the Cathedral of the "Faithful City." There, I do seem to have had a glimpse of it, only those parts always seem, to my fancy, seen under summer skies. And the Severn at the bottom of the lawn, and the orchard, with the great globes of yellow and purple plums, and the very roads sprinkled with apples, from the big trees that grow in the hedgerows. But now I have gone on to the Autumn. Oh, the Christmas time, when the home was unbroken! The glad meetings, the joy of the day; the delights even of the presents; and the snow-how different from this city snow- how pure, and white, and smooth, and sparkling. "She looks, and her heart is in heaven-but they fade ; Yes, the dull London streets come back, and the kind faces fade from my fancy's sight; and those hands are unsubstantial that were extended for a moment from the happy past. I wonder whether it is quite kind of people to send a governess away for the holidays, when they know that she has no home, and must seek lonely lodgings in large London . I suppose they cannot help it; it is not well, doubtless, for the children to be with me with no break. I shall seem fresh to them, and they will be ready to welcome me after the holidays. They will have so much to tell of their parties, and presents, and treats. I can be a good listener. The events are not many that come to me in my quiet little room. I should have felt lonely, I dare say, among them all. But there would have been the piano, and change of rooms, and, at any rate, some one to talk to. But enough of this. My little heart must keep brave, and these thoughts are relaxing rather than tonic. Away, I blow them away like thistle-down; let them scatter to the four winds. The merriment, rather the melancholy gladness of the bells is settling down into more sober and serious earnest. Their chime now tells me that it is time to seek-they are not far to seek-warm ulster and comfortable muff, and to go forth a stranger among strangers to the strange church in the large city. But no. There will be One there with a welcome. * * * * So the evening has come, and the quiet close of the happy day. Yes, the happy day, after all. I have closed in the room; there is a warm red curtain, which does not look so old in the firelight; I have had my solitary Christmas dinner; I have stirred the fire into a kindly glow and cheery blaze, and on it have placed a pretence Christmas log. How many lonely companions have I now to think of: clerks, alone in London ; governesses; yes, and shopwomen, and old bachelors and widowers that have no children. And schoolboys with parents in India , left alone at school; how lonely, in the silent playground, in the echoing schoolroom, in a desert of forsaken and empty desks! Yes, I am one of a congenial band of the lonely. What a crowd we make! But I play with thought. I did feel sad this morning. Lonely on Christmas Day, I longed, I remember, for a piano, to which I might have unlocked my heart. But now-but now-how is it with me? That forlorn sense of loneliness has passed away, as a mist on Worcester Beacon, that hid the fair view, but a freshening breeze arises, and lo! the dull curtain is drawn. And, if the sunlight is wanting, the more for this is the lovely landscape visible. And I, I have learnt much this Christmas Day-this lonely Christmas Day. Lonely, yet not lonely. For the silence of it, laden with no greetings to me, seemed, later on, to bring sweetly and forcibly over my consciousness the dearness of the day's story. The divine content of the nearness of the One Ever-present Friend and Sympathiser. A Christmas Day alone with Him-that is not, I find, after all, a lonely Christmas Day. There was nothing to distract my thoughts, as the glad anthems burst forth, and the familiar Christmas texts traced on the walls of the church, and the Lessons and the Psalms, just as I used to hear them in my childhood, linked the lonely Present with the peopled Past. Aye, and with the peopled Future, too- "Hark! the herald angels sing Glory to the new-born King; They were all about me again, as the happy dew came into my eyes. And the herald of God told, in fresh words, the old good news. How, for the lonely-hearted and the sad, for the bereaved and the desolate, a great gathering was yet in store. How each might come- would God it may be with his kinsfolk and friends-to his own city, new Jerusalem. And there the Christ-child should be found by men of child-hearts- "Not in that poor, lonely stable, With the oxen standing by." No, a merry Christmas is not mine. But there is much to be said for just a peaceful Christmas. A Christmas alone with Christ. Do I not seem to feel His nearness more, now that no other dear one is with me to distract my thoughts; no other voice but that of the Beloved; no other hand but the Hand that was pierced for me? "We will come unto Him, and make our abode with Him." May I dare take these words home to my poor heart? I may, I feel, in my low spiritual degree. For does it not come warm to my heart, the truth of that verse- "Who hath the Father and the Son May be left-but not alone ."
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