The Wykehamist
The Wykehamist’ s Archive
Snow
A
Christmas of snow— a Christmas card Christmas— is it to be ours again? Are we to see once more a Christmas with memories of Scrooge and Tiny Tim, a Christmas of white roads, white fields, and white churches? Are we to see once more in their romantic setting of snow the roads that Tom Faggus and Dick Turpin and Claude Duval haunted in better days? For snow is full of romance; and snow at Christmas time— what could be more romantic than that? At last Santa Claus will feel at home with is surroundings; at last the Yuletide log will come into its own; at last the Christmas card will be justified. Trains will be held up, cars will become useless, the old days of Merrie England will be ours. The child may think of snow as Mother Moon plucking her geese for Christmas; to the sentimentalist it will be nothing but beautiful, beautiful snow; to the manufacturer of goloshes it will be a source of no small gain. But to everyone snow makes its romantic appeal; and snow at Christmas— think of the unrivalled opportunity for the Press;‘ A Dickens Christmas’ will be hailed in articles of glowing sentiment; and at last the New Year will be rung in as it deserves to be rung,‘ Ring, happy bells, across the snow.’
But snow melts. And it melts more distressingly, more devastatingly than anything else. We may complain of the snow that impedes our cars; but there is something so exhilarating in its powdery lightness, its gleaming colour, and the soft crunch of it beneath our heel that we can forgive it much. For snow is very beautiful; and a snowbound England has little to vie with it in loveliness. But we curse melting snow, we curse the yellow slush that transforms our brooks into muddy torrents and our basements into stagnant lakes. For when our pipes are bursting, and our streets running with water we see how illusory is the fair white goddess and how like to a whited sepulchre. In the days of wet feet and hacking coughs that ensue, even the goloshes manufacturer, albeit his trade is growing apace and his feet well clad in a pair of his own goloshes, even he perhaps will feel damped in spirit, if not in feet.
But even though snow is within only the abode of dead men’ s bones, our prayer is for a snowy Christmas. Let the footballer cry out because his ground is unfit for play; do not listen to the complaints of colonels who are robbed of their beloved links. They are of small account indeed. But our hopes are far nobler than theirs; we pray for a Christmas of old time, a Christmas of snow and frost with all its memories of snow-bound travellers, welcome inns, and lurking high-waymen.
Published December 21 st, 1925.
Epitaph
Who in this age of hurry and bustle ever stops to read an epitaph? Yet on tombstones may be found the only memorial of many worthy souls, and on tombstones must one day be written the ultimate verdict of the world upon ourselves. Of the great majority of lives epitaphs are, in fact, the sole surviving record, and as such they should at least evoke some picture of the life that they recall. Yet too often they sadly overlay truth with sickly sentiment, and hypocritical panegyrics have so much been the fashion that real feeling finds no room. This, perhaps, explains the fascination of the frank and straightforward epitaph, which, like the ugly duckling, was probably despised at first, but has grown with time to be the most beautiful of the flock. It matters little,
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