Xmas books: Twelfth night Decoration


The Glass Peacock by Eleanor Farjeon


from the collection The Little Bookroom, published 1955







[Book Extract:]

Life went on. The New Year rang itself in. At dusk, on Twelfth Night, Annar-Mariar was the only child about…

She heard footsteps go by her. A lady was going slowly along the alley with something astonishing in her hands.

The lady stopped. What she was carrying was a Christmas tree, quite a little tree, the eighteenpenny size, but such a radiant little tree! It was glittering and twinkling with all the prettiest fantasies in glass that the mind of Christmas had been able to invent, little gas lamps and candlesticks, shining balls of every colour, a scarlet-and-silver Father Christmas, also in glasss, chains and festoons of gold and silver beads, stars, and flowers, and long clear drops like icicles; birds, too, in glass, blue and yellow birds, seeming to fly, and one, proudest and loveliest of all, a peacock, shimmering in blue and green and gold, with a crest and long, long tail of fine spun glass, like silk….

That night, that one blissful night, the little tree in all its gleaming beauty shone upon Annar-Mariar’s dreams – waking dreams, for she hardly slept at all. She kept looking at it, and feeling it when she couldn’t see it, running her finger along the glass chains, outlining the fragile flowers and stars, stroking the silken tail of the miraculous peacock. Tomorrow night, she knew, her tree would be harvested, but she thought her own particular fruit might be the peacock. If so, he could sit on the tree beside her bed for ever, and every night she could stroke his spun-glass tail.




comments: I love Twelfth Night, one of my favourite moments of Christmas. I have done special entries most years, starting with the unimprovable O Henry story The Gift of the Magi back in 2013 (if you don’t cry you have a heart of stone). I have written about Twelfth Night in the Guardian newspaper, and last year did an explanatory post. James Joyce’s The Dead – one of the greatest short stories ever written in my important view – is assumed to take place on Twelfth Night, and is single-handedly responsible for the idea that ‘an Epiphany’ is a moment of revelation for an individual. (oh Gabriel… ‘Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age’.)

Eleanor Farjeon is responsible for another of my favourite short stories  – the ghost story ‘...And a Perle in the Myddes’, which is also suitably seasonal, and featured on the blog last year. (And yes, it stands up next to James Joyce.)

When I do the Christmas entries every year, I am forever asking for more suggestions from readers: someone came up with this short story after seeing the Perle story, though to my shame I cannot remember who it was. Please claim your credit if it was you.
***Thank you Christine Harding - see below in comments.

( And of course I am still always hoping to get more suggestions of Xmas books.)

The Glass Peacock is a short and simple tale: Annar-Mariar is a child in a poor part of London, kind and helpful, looking after her brother and the other children in the alley or court where she lives. They all long for Christmas and peer into the shop windows wishing there was any likelihood they might get something nice. Annar-Mariar’s family is plainly very poor. After Christmas has passed, and Twelfth Night comes, a rich lady passes through the court, and gives her a Xmas tree (one she is presumably throwing out in effect). The little girl is thrilled, and shares the excitement with the other children: she gives away all the decorations on the tree except one, the one she loves most... And she knows that the tree is almost dead...

It is actually a strange story, not quite the comforting sentimental fable you might be expecting.

The Little Bookroom, the collection where it sits, is much-loved, and has been ever since publication. It  won Farjeon the British award for children’s books, the Carnegie Medal, in 1955. It is still in print, and the usual edition  has absolutely lovely illustrations by Edward Ardizzone.

**** added later: Blogfriend Callmemadam came in to comment on the story - a favourite of hers - and pointed me in the direction of her own blog entry on it - highly recommended. And she had used these two pictures - somehow much more 1920s and less Victorian than I was imagining: 




She says they were from a book her mother had in the 1930s.

Eleanor’s brother J Jefferson Farjeon wrote the lost-and-rediscovered book Mystery in White. This is the 1937 book republished in the British Library /Crime Classic series which really got the ball rolling: it was a huge and unexpected bestseller at Christmas 2014 – when, of course, it featured as one of the Clothes in Books Christmas books.


I originally thought ‘I’ll do this blogpost IF I can find a nice picture of a glass peacock’. Well my goodness I was not in line with the world – so naive, Clothes in Books, so naive. There are thousands of pictures of glass peacocks, though it’s important not to start thinking they look like brightly-painted turkeys – it ruins them all, I mean just look at this one:  

The top ones are a Christmas decoration designed by Kurt S Adler, from DigsnGifts, and two glass peacocks from Gisela Graham. Which look as though they would make someone a lovely pair of earrings.
















Comments

  1. Hello, Moira! Even if Christmas is a time of giving and sharing, of spirit and sentiment, and so much more, I have never quite understood why Xmas stories are so often about the homeless and the needy. Of course, I'm a sucker for such stories. I enjoyed reading your review of "The Glass Peacock" and will try and get hold of a nice illustrated edition of "The Little Bookroom", preferably a secondhand book smelling like 1955.

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    1. That didn't come out well, Moira. What I meant was I wish stories on or about Christmas would be happy stories in every way for people everywhere.

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    2. Thanks Prashant - and I understood exactly what you meant, no need to explain. I wonder if the Victorians thought Xmas stories needed to stress the miseries of life for the poor people, and the tradition has continued. I like a big old happy ending, and people to be made happy! (Xmas and all the rest of the time too.)

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  2. Oh, I love this story! I first read it as a child in a pre-war Odhams annual which was my mother's. of course, I'd never heard of Eleanor Farjeon, I was just fascinated by this story with its rather heartbreaking ending. Years later, my daughter said she'd read it in The Little Bookroom (which I do now have) and loved it, too. There's a picture from the old book on my blog, I think.

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    1. I found your blog entry and have added a link and the pictures above! I am so pleased to have found a story that many people remembered and loved. I wasn't familiar with it at all, but it is very memorable.

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  3. You know, Moira, I don't think enough attention is given to Twelfth Night, so I'm glad you love it as you do. I think it's underrated. And I couldn't agree more about Gift of the Magi. What a powerful story, isn't it? Thanks for sharing this one, too. It does sound like an unusual sort of children's (or is it?) story...

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    1. Hello Margot - yes, Twelfth Night is a date more of us could enjoy I think. And yes, I do wonder what I would have made of this story if I had read it as a child. Plenty of people loved it, but it is not in any way cosy...

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  4. Oh, I am so glad you read and featured this - I think it may have been me who recommended it, but I have mentioned it to so many people over the years I really can't remember. It is the most magical, enchanting description of a Christmas tree I've ever read, and I love the way there is no conventional happy ending. It remains one one of my favourite childhood tales.

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    1. Well thank you so much then! I am very glad to have read it, even so late on in life, and it's obvious from the reaction that the story has brought pleasure to many people. I'm glad to be one of them now!

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  5. I've remembered this story ever since reading it as a child but without remembering title or author - I loved it. If I'm remembering correctly at one point Annar Mariar has a penny or something, and she spends it on one good sweet for her brother and a bag of hundreds and thousands. All the children lick a finger and dip it in the bag so they get one finger full of sugar each. Then Annar licks the bag which is all that's left. She seems so practical and resigned to not having anything. And then the ending! The ending of this children's story is as sad, poignant and memorable as that of 'The Dead'.

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    1. Thanks Ann - and I'm so glad the story stands up so well to long-term reading. As you'll see from the comments, it made a big impression on many people. And yes, that ending...

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  6. Moira, When you say that Twelfth Night is a favourite moment of Christmas, what do you mean? What do you do to mark it? My parents got engaged on Twelfth Night and always had a little party in remembrance of that but I wondered what you meant and why you like it so much. Thank you.

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    1. It's always the day we take down all the Christmas decorations, which sounds like a chore but is a nice marking of the end of the festive season, putting them all away till next year, and probably celebrating by eating up some of the final Xmas treats. In the past I have had Twelfth NIght parties, and should do so again. It also marks the feast of the Epiphany, and the visit of the Wise Men, Kings, Magi to the Holy Family - I love that feast, which has great church readings,and is a time to think about many aspects of Christmas and of life!
      What a lovely tradition in your family, I am so glad to hear of it.

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  7. I was going to mention Saki's Emmeline as an interesting contrast to Annar-Mariar in portraits of Edwardian poor children, but I see you've been there already! http://clothesinbooks.blogspot.com/2012/05/shes-bad-lot-that-one-is.html

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    1. That was early days! I do love Saki, and and was very pleased with the picture of the doll.
      And now I must tell you that I downloaded the RSThomas biog on your recommendation, and I absolutely loved it. An exemplary biography, but also so very very funny. I don't usually do a top 10 booklist, but it would certainly be on it. I raced through it, and now feel I need to read other books by Byron Rogers - should I move on to the Carr one?

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  8. As I said, I think The Last Englishman is even better than The Man Who Went Into The West. You might enjoy the antcipation of not reading it even more, though! Superb descendants of The Quest For Corvo - biographies that include how the book was written. Rogers has also written a sort-of-autobiography - ME - and very funny collections of essays

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    1. I know what you mean. Really favourite authors have to be rationed. There's one about the Bank Manager and the Holy Grail that looks intriguing...
      Yes the Quest for Corvo was such a good read, and I also very much enjoyed Hadrian VII - it's funny to think that it was really hard to get hold of either book when I first heard about them. Neither is very well-known now, but I'm guessing it would be a matter of moments to find either. I read Corvo and then was desperately searching for Corvo...
      I am always slightly wary of Geoff Dyer, but he has a good line in writing about his attempts to find something to write about.

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    2. I mean, of course, was desperately searching for Hadrian after reading Corvo.

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  9. This sounds like a good story, and the collection, The Little Bookroom, also sounds interesting. It is new to me, I will seek it out.

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    1. Another case where I hope you can find a copy, and you should be able to, because it has been so popular for many years. It was interesting to find so many people coming into the comments who knew and loved it - I didn't come across it in my own childhood, or my children's. It was lovely to tap into a much-loved book that was new to me.

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  10. Another I'll continue to allow you to read so I don't have to. A new year and the same old bah humbug!

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    1. No, quite right, can't see you getting on with this one at all. Leave it to me.

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