Christmas Midnight Feast


What Katy did at school Susan B Coolidge

published 1873





[Katy and Clover Carr are away at a boarding school known as the Nunnery. Their family sends them a huge box of goodies for Christmas: they are opening it with their friend Rose]



"Just look here!" cried Katy.

The top of the box was mostly taken up with four square paper boxes, round which parcels of all shapes and sized were wedged and fitted. The whole was a miracle of packing. It had taken Miss Finch three mornings, with assistance from old Mary, and much advice from Elsie, to do it so beautifully.

Each box held a different kind of cake. One was of jumbles, another of ginger-snaps, a third of crullers, and the fourth contained a big square loaf of frosted plum-cake, with a circle of sugar almonds set in the frosting. How the trio exclaimed at this!

"I never imagined any thing so nice," declared Rose, with her mouth full of jumble. "As for those snaps, they're simply perfect. What can be in all those fascinating bundles? Do hurry and open one, Katy."

Dear little Elsie! The first two bundles opened were hers, a white hood for Katy, and a blue one for Clover, both of her own knitting, and so nicely done. The girls were enchanted.

"How she has improved!" said Katy. "She knits better than either of us, Clover."

"There never was such a clever little darling!" responded Clover, and they patted the hoods, tried them on before the glass, and spent so much time in admiring them that Rose grew impatient.

Clover's bundle was for herself, "Evangeline," in blue and gold; and pretty soon "Golden Legend," in the same binding, appeared for Katy. Both these were from Dorry. Next came a couple of round packages of exactly the same size. These proved to be ink-stands, covered with Russia leather: one marked, "Katy from Johnnie," and the other, "Clover from Phil." It was evident that the children had done their shopping together, for presently two long narrow parcels revealed the carved pen-handles, precisely alike; and these were labelled, "Katy from Phil," and "Clover from Johnnie."

What fun it was opening those bundles! The girls made a long business of it, taking out but one at a time, exclaiming, admiring, and exhibiting to Rose, before they began upon another. They laughed, they joked, but I do not think it would have taken much to make either of them cry. It was almost too tender a pleasure, these proofs of loving remembrance from the little one; and each separate article seemed full of the very look and feel of home.

Never was such a wonderful box. It appeared to have no bottom whatever. Under the presents were parcels of figs, prunes, almonds, raisins, candy; under those, apples and pears. There seemed no end to the surprises.

At last all were out.

"Now," said Katy, "let's throw back the apples and pears, and then I want you to help divide the other things, and make some packages for the girls. They are all disappointed not to have their boxes. I should like to have them share ours. Wouldn't you, Clover?"

"Yes, indeed. I was just going to propose it."

So Clover cut twenty-nine squares of white paper, Rose and Katy sorted and divided, and pretty soon ginger-snaps and almonds and sugar-plums were walking down all the entries, and a gladsome crunching showed that the girls had found pleasant employment. None of the snowed-up boxes got through till Monday, so except for Katy and Clover the school would have had no Christmas treat at all.

“The Carrs' Box" was always quoted in the Nunnery afterward, as an example of what papas and mammas could accomplish, when they were of the right sort, and really wanted to make school-girls happy.

"How awfully good people are!" said Clover. "I do think we ought to be the best girls in the world."




comments: This was my favourite book when I was a child, as I explained in this entry - with a picture of the copy that I completely wore out. (In my childhood, What Katy Did and What Katy Did at School were bound together as the same book). And this scene retains its magic over the years: the excitement of the box, the delights within, the fact that there was enough for everyone and still some leftover. I am very grateful to two of my favourite blogfriends and faithful readers, Chrissie Poulson and Susanna Tayler, for reminding me of it in past years and suggesting I must do a post.

I have given the post the title Midnight Feast - in fact that is not what it is in the book (they wait till the morning like proper young ladies), but it is in my mind. And I had to quote from it at length because I love this episode so much. 

It’s a rather horrible school that Katy and Clover attend, and I used to wonder how it could be so far away from home that they had to stay at the school for Christmas. (I had only the vaguest idea of US geography at that time.) The school is on the Connecticut River, though this, which sounds quite specific, is not that helpful as the river is 400 miles long and flows through four states.

The girls, who live in Ohio, have to travel through half a dozen states to get there, by boat and by railroad. There is a boys’ college in the same town, and it is very cold and snowy: bracing. I wonder if it would be obvious to US readers where it must be set. The author lived in New Haven in Connecticut for many years, so perhaps it is there – then, Yale would be the boys’ college.

The book was one of the very first I ever covered on the blog nearly nine years ago, and in that post I talked about a most unlikely connection with the UK poet Philip Larkin, who has a poem called Forget What Did. This, in the form of Forgit What Did, is a repeated entry in the diary of one of the children in the first book.

I started re-reading this book online for this entry, and I know it and remember it so well that I immediately could tell that the text was a slightly different version. My childhood one was perhaps slightly edited for modern (well, I say modern – this is quite a while ago) and UK audiences. So this was my prime example: ‘They stared at her as people stare at Van Amburgh when he comes safely out of the lion's den’ is changed in my book to ‘They stared at her as people stare at a lion tamer when he comes safely out of the lion's den’. You can look him up, but won’t be surprised to hear that Van Amburgh was a famous lion tamer of the day.

I love Little Women, but this was even more of a favourite. And a box like the one the girls get could almost make it worth staying in school over Christmas. It resonated with me because they get up so early to open it, and one year I found the book amongst my Christmas presents at the end of the bed when I woke, probably around 5am, and I started reading it immediately, so it was a metaphorical Christmas box…

One picture is an old Christmas card from NYPL – far too young-looking in truth for Katy or Clover.

So to redress the balance, the other picture is a midnight feast for college-age young women in 1912, from a US yearbook.

Comments

  1. Thank you for this. I also loved What Katy Did, and WKDAS perhaps even more. I think at one time I knew everything in that box, and who sent it to whom. American schools and girls' colleges used to fascinate me (Anne and Emily of Green Gables and New Moon, Daddy Long Legs and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, The Girl of the Limberlost) but The Nunnery was the oddest. To go all that way for just one year. I suppose it was a sort of finishing school. A very icy one, didn't their toothbrushes freeze solid?
    The other lovely Katy Christmas is the one in her bedroom, when she and Aunt Izzie arrange presents for the little ones. It's years since I read the book- my copy crumbled to bits ages ago, but I still remember the sledge and the little writing desk for Elsie, the surprise Christmas tree with stars on the pot. Those children felt so modern and alive, and I think very much because their background was painted in such loving detail.
    What a perfect entry for Christmas Eve.

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    1. Thanks for the kind words Hilary, and yes both those scenes are as clear in my mind as when I first read them. Where Katy thinks no-one has hung up a stocking for her, and decides to be brave about it. And I remember being interested that there was a sled called Skyscraper (though in the end they got one called Snowskimmer) and I was surprised that they had the word skyscraper then. (A perfectly reasonable question from me I think - it only started referring to a taller building at the end of the 19th c) I loved and remembered all the details from the books - like what they ate at the picnic near the beginning. It's hard to work out why some writers and some books have that total magic...
      Yes the school was awful, I remember being horrified and agonized by that long term where they didn't get enough to eat ('Pie again!') and the windows covered with cottonwool.
      I could probably recite half the rhymes, riddles and jokes from the SSUC.

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  2. I love that description of what's in the box, Moira! And the boarding school setting is just perfect for that sort of story. I can completely see how you loved it so much as a child. It sounds as much a growing-up story as anything else, and those can be fantastic. Thanks for sharing this one.

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    1. Thanks Margot - receiving that book is always one of my favourite Christmas memories.

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  3. I do remember that you had featured this book before, and it is very interesting that these books are so popular in the UK but not here in the US. I don't think you mentioned before that the girls lived in Ohio, because I always notice any connection to Ohio. Glen is from Ohio, he left Ohio for California just about the same time I left Alabama.

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    1. Oh that's interesting, did you meet in California? I don't think I knew for sure it was Ohio till I looked up the book for this entry, I spent a little time trying to work out the geography this time.

      I am always mystified that it is so much better-known in the UK than in the USA.

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    2. Yes we met when we both worked for a government contractor in the late 1970's, although we both worked there several years before I got to know him. Then we moved on up to Santa Barbara together before we got married, and never left this beautiful though expensive city. Fond memories.

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    3. Thank you Tracy, I love hearing people's histories, and solving the mystery of how they ended up where they are!

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  4. I loved this chapter of WKDAS so much. I enjoyed imagining opening that box as much as the girls in the story actually did. It's made almost better by never actually knowing what jumbles or crullers were. Frosted plumcake I could guess at being the sort of thing one read about in books; but no-one ever called icing 'frosting' when I was young and I've never actually had a cake made with plums.

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    1. I know Ann - it had the authentic magic didn't it? Half the things in the book were mysteries, and yes, that just made it even better. I think - I may be wrong - that 'plum cake' and also 'plum pudding' don't have plums in, only dried fruit...

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  5. I also read the Katy books (they were two separate books in Swedish) and loved them, and that Christmas box is just perfect. It's not just the contents, wonderful as they are, but it's also somehow the perfection of the packing. Though Judy's Christmas boxes from Daddy-Long-Legs are also quite wonderful. We don't really have boarding schools in Sweden, nor do universities offer accommodation, so the whole idea of living in an all girls' community like that was very exotic to me, and very attractive.

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    1. Yes, when I went to read the passage again to write the post, it completely sucked me in again, and I read the whole of the second book. And I remember the contents of the box so well...
      I haven't read Daddy Long Legs in 30 years, I should look at it again.

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  6. Did you ever go on to "What Katy Did Next?"

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    1. Yes, but honestly found it very boring. I never re-read it, it just didn't do it for me... Did you like it?

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  7. Glad you've got round to this and have done it justice. It is a book that I loved as a child (still love it actually) and it is nice to think of you and I both reading it around the same time . . . How strange it is that it is well-known here, but not in America.

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    1. I know, and yes it is nice to think that. And - a mystery. I had a long discussion with a children's librarian in the USA about it, and she had no knowledge of it. I had left my own copy of it in the UK when we moved to America, and wanted to buy it for my daughter when she was old enough - but it was quite hard to find. I had assumed it would have equal status with Little Women, but far from it. Eventually I found a Puffin edition of it in an indie bookshop with a renowned children's section. American girls are missing out!

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  8. East coast American here and I cannot pinpoint this location, but I can tell you that the Connecticut River does not run through or around New Haven. Also, southern Connecticut has gloomy chilly winters but isn't famous for cold and snow like northern New England. Bearing the snow in mind, I could suggest the environs of White River Junction, Vermont, which is a few miles from Dartmouth College (famous for, among other things, its ski team) in Hanover, New Hampshire. Less snowy but also famous for old colleges and on the river's route are Amherst, Massachusetts, and Middletown, Connecticut (as you no doubt discovered). I should say this vignette sounds utterly English to me and I would not have guessed it took place in the US.

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    1. Thanks for the information! I have read this book many times but only this time did I become really curious about the location. And how fascinating that it sounds English to you!

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  9. You've a far better memory than me. I can't actually remember with any clarity what I read growing up.

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    1. Oh that's interesting, as you say I have a lot of childhood reading memories, and I would have expected you would too - often people who read a lot say it was the early reading that started them on a lifetime of literature. Perhaps you had all your children's books in tubs and never got round to them 😉😉😉

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