MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
LONDON is seen at its best perhaps on winter evenings. The river mists creep up to veil the architecture and to aureole the long line of street lamps, giving to each a halo of its own. In other damp capitals I have noted the same vignette effect, and have experienced—in Berlin sometimes and often in Stock- holm—that clutch at the heart which means a dumb longing for the Cromwell Road. When I pace wet and alien pavements, noting how the dead leaves, or none or few, stick flat upon their shining surfaces, I am reminded of many midnight walks in London and of the phrase, so felicitously used by our Poet Laureate, "shadows of plane trees under lamps." I admit that the charm of our December streets is much enhanced by the immediate prospect of returning to a well-lit room and of enjoying, while the fire flickers on familiar objects, the autumnal pleasure of reading, not verse now, only prose. (Three separate literary allusions have been embodied in the above passage without quotation marks. I pre- sent them to the doryphores. I take this occasion, since 1 have been asked to do so, to explain that useful word. It signifies, to my mind at least, the Colorado beetle—a parasite which picks holes in plants. It was also the name applied to the Nazis by the French underground.) Returning along the wet and misty streets the other evening, my ears were greeted with the sound of voices singing, in a mode which, even to my untutored senses, was out of tune. Three ragged children were grouped in the portico of a house and yelling the words, " Once in royal David's city." I handed them a coin, at which they all stopped singing suddenly and said, " Thank you, sir." On I walked into the mist, reflecting upon the awkward situation which had arisen in Jerusalem and upon the futility of reaching decisions at Lake Success by the system of a majority vote. As I turned into my own street, the voices echoed distantly, shrouded in fog:
" Where a mother laid her Baby In a manger for His bed." * * * *
I have observed that the practice of singing carols at Christmas has increased in London, whereas in the country it seems to have diminished. I can recall the days when no Christmas supplement to any of the illustrated papers was complete without a picture of carol-singers standing with lanterns outside the door of some rich mansion. The light from the ancestral hall (in which there was much wassail going on) would stream down the steps and out on to the encircling snow, thus illuminating the rubicund faces of the singers and any robins which happened to be watching the scene. Few villagers today will thus gather on Christmis Eve to serenade the nobility and gentry ; they prefer to enjoy their television at home. But in London this ancient rite appears to have been placed upon an organised, and indeed a commercial, basis. Even as, in the last weeks of October, the children of the lower income groups will blacken their faces and begin to celebrate the triumph of Protestantism and the rights of Parliament, so also do they, early in December, begin to huddle in the doorways of the fallen rich and yell their ,hymns. I have often wondered, and have sometimes enquired, what significance the 5th of November possesses for these questing ragamuffins. "The Guy" certainly retains for them a certain symbolic meaning, associated with fire- works and arson. Yet I doubt whether they retain any deep con- victions regarding the Protestant succession, or whether, if pressed, they would know in what century Guido Fawkes lived, and suffered and died. Nor would they, if examined on the subject, be aware that it was not until late in the second century that Theophilus of Antioch fixed December 25th as one of the great feasts of the Church or that a hundred years later Origen protested that it was unseemly to celebrate the birthday of Our Lord " as‘if he were a King Pharaoh." They persist, and it is agreeable that they should do so, in gathering in little clumps and singing "Once in royal David's city," without caring in the least when that " once " was. Returning from my club one night last week, I heard the sound of distant singing which appeared to proceed from a trained choir. 1 imagined at first that, in front of the columns of Carlton House (here is another present to the doryphores), men and women were celebrating the inauguration of the enormous conifer which, in true Uniscan spirit, has been sent to us from Norway. But as I pro- ceeded further, I discovered that these songs came from the back of the National Portrait Gallery, and there, around the statue of Sir Henry Irving, was grouped a bunch of men and maidens singing aloud for all that they were worth. Upon the pavement, as I approached, were two young ladies who rattled collecting-tins in the faces of the passers-by. These men and women, 1 was informed, were devoting their December evenings to singing carols together in aid of a fund for destitute children. I watched them as they sang. Their choraegus, or choir-leader, stood facing them in a neat over- coat with a long strap hanging down. With his gloved hands he beat time to the tunes, and when one carol was finished he would start them off on the next. He did this with great skill, first in- toning the opening bars of the carol, in a voice as thin and accurate as a tuning-fork. "Is that O.K. ? " he would ask them ; they would nod assent ; and then, to my surprise, they all burst into Latin, glancing from time to time at their conductor, and repeating the words, " Venire adoremus" frequently and in a strong foreign accent. I stood there admiring the Donatello movements of their cheeks and mouths, and hoping that the destitute children would derive great benefit from their self-sacrifice.
* * *
Having finished their Latin hymn, they embarked, with conjoint fervour, upon another hymn, sung in honour of an obscure German princeling who died in 1419. I trust that some well-informed doryphore will tell us why, among the carols which we sing at Christmas, there should be a song of honour in celebration of King Wenceslaus, who was a shambling potentate, and whose only claim to fame is that he sold for cash the title of Duke of Milan to Gian Galleazzo Visconti. I hoped at one moment that the little circle of singers who gathered at the base of Henry Irving's statue would begin to dance. Authorities on the subject of carols are agreed that the original Christmas songs, the Wiegenlieder In Germany, the nods in France, were pagan survivals, and that the participants used, while singing, to dance in a ring. It is true that the Councils of Toledo and Auxerre forbade dancing in churches, but that prohibition is more than a thousand years old, and even at the time bore no reference at all to dancing in that ungainly triangle which surrounds the statue of Sir Henry Irving. But when I suggested to one of the young ladies who jingled her collecting- box that it would be pretty and original if the singers were to dance with each other, she did not agree. She shook her head firmly, feeling perhaps that I was making mock of the performance. I was not making mock. It was a splendid performance, and one which gave pleasure to many passers-by. All that I wished to suggest was that a more archaic note might be introduced to add fresh colour to their incantations. But they refused to dance.
* * * *
They invited me to join them. Being unable to sing, or hum, or even whistle in such a manner as to convey to my auditors even the most imaginative conception of the tune I am trying to render or suggest, I was obliged to decline this invitation. I was sorry about this. I should have liked to stand there in my great-coat intoning a requiem to the King of Bohemia or taking a part in some ancient Wiegenlied. I walked away in the thin rain, conscious once again of my bewildering incompetence, conscious of the vast amount of valuable things which I am utterly unable to do. Around me flashed the lights of Leicester Square. I could still hear the jingle of the collection-boxes, and as I walked onwards the words came to me again, " Veni►e adoremus Vent►e adoremus I" They are moving words.
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