Bertie’s [belated] Christmas Eve by Saki

Bertie’s Christmas Eve by Saki

 

(short story collected in the Toys of Peace anthology,1919)

 

Blogfriend Roger Allen is a long-time supporter of Clothes in Books, and the source of many great suggestions for entries. The major thing about his generous ideas is that almost uniformly they are books that absolutely no-one else would ever suggest. He is someone who personifies deep dives in literature.

When I was doing last year’s Christmas entries, he suggested this Saki short story – he and I have a great shared love of Saki – and I filed it away in my head for this year.

BUT – I made a terrible error: I thought it was called Bertie’s New Year’s Eve, so I had it in mind for today’s entry! I was wrong!

After due consideration I have decided to run it anyway, rather than waiting till Christmas 2026….

 

 

The scene is a Christmas house party:

"In Russia," said Horace Bordenby, who was staying in the house as a Christmas guest, "I've read that the peasants believe that if you go into a cow-house or stable at midnight on Christmas Eve you will hear the animals talk. They're supposed to have the gift of speech at that one moment of the year."

"Oh, do let's all go down to the cow-house and listen to what they've got to say!" exclaimed Beryl, to whom anything was thrilling and amusing if you did it in a troop.

Mrs. Steffink made a laughing protest, but gave a virtual consent by saying, "We must all wrap up well, then." The idea seemed a scatterbrained one to her, and almost heathenish, but if afforded an opportunity for "throwing the young people together," and as such she welcomed it. Mr. Horace Bordenby was a young man with quite substantial prospects, and he had danced with Beryl at a local subscription ball a sufficient number of times to warrant the authorised inquiry on the part of the neighbours whether "there was anything in it." Though Mrs. Steffink would not have put it in so many words, she shared the idea of the Russian peasantry that on this night the beast might speak.

[The Christmas poem on the blog this year dealt (rather more respectfully) with a similar idea, that if you went to the stable at midnight, the animals would kneel down.]

 

So off they go, leaving behind the unsatisfactory Bertie: a classic Saki character who has ‘early in life adopted the profession of ne'er-do-weel…At the age of eighteen Bertie had commenced that round of visits to our Colonial possessions, so seemly and desirable in the case of a Prince of the Blood, so suggestive of insincerity in a young man of the middle-class.’

He is a nephew of the house, and after another unsuccessful trip abroad, ‘arrangements had been promptly made for packing the youth off to a distant corner of Rhodesia, whence return would be a difficult matter’. Unhappy about this, he is rather sulky. And so - Bertie secretly follows the merry party, and locks them in the cowshed, to their utter horror.

A neighbouring clock struck the hour of midnight. If the cows had received the gift of human speech at that moment they would not have been able to make themselves heard. Seven or eight other voices were engaged in describing Bertie's present conduct and his general character at a high pressure of excitement and indignation.

And then:

Towards one o'clock the sound of rather boisterous and undisciplined carol-singing approached rapidly, and came to a sudden anchorage, apparently just outside the garden-gate. A motor-load of youthful "bloods," in a high state of conviviality, had made a temporary halt for repairs…

 

Of course Bertie invites these people in and they party away, drinking the absent host’s best champagne (the prisoners can hear the pop of the corks), and playing raucous music.

Eventually they leave, and Bertie releases his furious family, while informing them that Russian Christmas Eve isn’t for another two weeks.

That’s it – it’s not an elaborate plot (unlike some Saki stories) but it is an easy read, with the usual clever wordplay. Very seasonal.

Saki died in the First World War. This piece was collected for a posthumous book: I have not been able to track down where and when it first appeared.

There is a fear that the cowshed will be a ‘Rowton House for the vagrant rats of the neighbourhood’.

Rowton Houses were (Wiki) ‘ a chain of hostels built in London, England, by the Victorian philanthropist Lord Rowton to provide decent accommodation for working men in place of the squalid lodging houses of the time’, and started up in the 1890s.

The disreputable revellers play a tune called There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight, composed in the 1890s.

So around the turn of 1900 might be about right.

 

Thanks again to Roger for the excellent suggestion.

Living Nativity, Florida Memories

Christmas Shrine, NYPL

Young people, Wikimedia