Children’s Christmas Party in the Golden Age...

 

We are in the middle of the annual Clothes in Books trope of Christmas in Books: seasonal scenes from random books, for no better reason than I like looking for the pictures, and I and some readers find them cheery and Xmas-y - particularly, of course, those books featuring murders and other miseries, such as a children's party...

 

Catt Out of the Bag by Clifford Witting

 

published 1939

 

[Christmas plans are being discussed] ‘So we shall be two, four, five – six for lunch. In the afternoon, of course, we have the children’s party.’

There followed one of those long silences.

‘The - er – children’s party?’

‘Yes – every Christmas day I give one for the less fortunate kiddies of Paulsfield. They have tea, with a Christmas tree and crackers, and afterwards games in which we all join. Then, as a finale, Santa Claus comes in with a big sack over his shoulder and produces a present for every child.’

‘You should watch their faces!’ Charles took her up eagerly. ‘The way they tuck in! They’re a real handful – jammy finger-marks everywhere -but it’s worth it.’

It came to me in a rush. I was to be Santa Claus.

 

comments: The narrator, John Rutherford, has come to his wife’s aunt’s house, and a series of awful Christmas activities are forced on him. The thrust of the book is the disappearance of a fellow carol-singer during an expedition round the town, but sometimes that seems minor in comparison with all the difficulties of staying with a very bossy older relative over Christmas. The children’s party will be just as you would expect. I have often commented on the mysterious lack of children in Golden Age Christmas fiction (one of my niche topics) and although the party is a riot, it is contained in several pages, and thus not a counter-argument to my ideas on this.

Afterwards, a body will be found, and the house party will become even less fun – ‘I’d got some paper hats for us to wear at dinner’ his hostess says regretfully. Another guest receives a telegram on Boxing Day summoning him back to London, and Rutherford is convinced he has arranged it to get away, and wonders whether he can do the same… But of course he can’t, and the investigation continues. It is a very readable and enjoyable detective story, with a complex plot and an unexpected solution.

I featured the carol-singing scenes from Catt Out of the Bag during last year's Christmas season, and another Witting book, Measure for Murder, earlier that year. I was reminded that in last year's entry I highlighted a particularly excellent sentence about someone who has gone missing during carol-singing:

‘He is probably exchanging badinage with a servant’ Mrs de Frayne viciously replied.

It is SO Golden Age - I am thinking now that I need to start a collection of the most GA lines. A previous Christmas entry started me off with this:

‘Splendid! Recent footprints in the snow, of course?’

Such an archetypal Golden Age sentence – you know where you are with a book that contains that line. Along with: ‘To add to the general terror several persons reported the alarm of having heard ghastly shrieks from the Slype, each end of which was now guarded by special police.’

Further contributions welcome.

Top picture from the State Library of New South Wales, a children’s Christmas party in 1936, by Sam Hood (whose journalistic photos give an unmatched picture of life in the 1930s).

Second picture has a look of the respectable citizens of Paulsfield – though the photo shows  make-up queen Helena Rubinstein. It’s from the State Library of New South Wales, again, and by Sam Hood again.