The Old Curiosity Club discussion
The Holly-Tree Inn
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The Holly-Tree Inn Part One
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Merry Christmas to you, too, Peter, and all the other Curiosities. A year or so ago, I read this book
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...
a non-fiction that was, in part, a nostalgic look at vacations of the 60s and 70s, when families packed up their cars and took to America's highways. That's kind of how "The Holly Tree" felt to me, without the benefit of personal recognition. And, of course, without all the murders! But I feel sure that Dickens' contemporary readers would have felt much more attached to these stories for having shared similar experiences. Sometimes I felt like I was trying to join in an "I-guess-you-had-to-be-there" conversation between two other friends.
I couldn't help but think how appropriate this story - at least the first branch - is to read at the close of 2020. Surely we're all feeling a similar sense of restlessness, isolation, and loss of relationships to that our narrator is experiencing (not that we've lost a fiancée to a friend, but some of my friendships have, sadly, definitely suffered from lack of regular contact). He has the added frustrations of not being able to venture outside, and of having no books to keep him occupied! And, though our narrator doesn't miss them, he has no phone or TV to help him kill the long hours. Can you imagine?
The cynic in me couldn't help but think that Dickens had a notebook full of descriptions of Inns that he hadn't found a use for, and they all came out like a bullet list here in the First Branch. The gruesome stories were fascinating at first (and made me wonder why he ever would stay in an Inn after the first time or two), but it soon got to be too many and I lost interest in the little details. Again - this may have been different for readers at the time who may have had similar experiences.
An inn named The Holly-Tree sounds as if it would be warm and lovely, especially during a white Christmas. Here, though, Dickens makes it sound like a grave. The uncomfortable heat from the fireplace reminds us of the fires of Hell, those wormy curtains, writhing like Uriah Heep, and the ever-falling snow, burying him deeper and deeper by the hour.
So far, I'm not feeling Christmas cheer! You suggested a comparison between this and "A Christmas Carol", Peter. In the latter, we had some light to balance the darkness, in the forms of Fred, Cratchet, and the men collecting for charity. Not much light here at the Holly-Tree yet.
Speculation (I don't recall reading this one before): I couldn't help but notice the names of our narrator's fiancée, Angela, and friend, Edwin. Angela, obviously, makes us think of angels, and Edwin means "rich friend". We aren't privy to the events that made the narrator think Angela and Edwin have an attachment. I'm hoping that there has been some comical misunderstanding, and an explanation will result in a happy ending for all.
No clue why our hero would have been given such a large room. Much was also made of the long walk to get there. Perhaps these will be the settings for some unearthly visitations? One can hope. :-)
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A year or so ago, I read this book
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...
a non-fiction that was,..."
Hi Mary Lou
First, thanks for the link to the book on road trips. My first plane flight was after my third year in university. Until then, I’m thinking this book will summarize every vacation I ever had with my family.
I wonder how much we are all spoiled by A Christmas Carol? The series of the other four of Dickens’s Christmas books published after ACC, in my opinion, don’t compare.
You are right about 19C reading taste. During those times ghost stories were popular during the Christmas season. I think now most of us like more syrup in our Christmas tales, not spooks.
Thanks for the discussion of the meaning of the names. Yes the title of the story does offer us some hope that goodness will be coming in the next two instalments. We shall see.
Enjoy this Christmas season with you family and new grandchild.
Mary Lou wrote: "Merry Christmas to you, too, Peter, and all the other Curiosities. A year or so ago, I read this book
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...
a non-fiction that was,..."
First, Mary Lou, I love the look of that book you referred to because my dad loved a good road trip and we made a number of them across the U.S. when I was growing up. I think that book might be very nostalgic for me. I may give it a try.
Then, on to the First Branch reading, I found it somewhat interesting but I have to admit after awhile I found it rather repetitive. I did wonder about the inn where the landlord (or someone) was making pies of the guests. This reminded me of the play, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, which I saw years ago in a small community theatre in Houston, with a couple of friends appearing in it. Quite a memory brought back.
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Hi Kim
Until I moved to Victoria I had not seen a holly tree either. There were holly bushes in Toronto but no trees. When we moved to Victoria that all changed. Yes there are holly trees and some grow to quite a height. Julie and Linda, who live in Washington State, will have them in their area too. In fact, if my memory serves me, Linda once told us how they had cut down/trimmed back a holly tree on their property.
Yes, perhaps I too am a bit spoiled by A Christmas Carol. I love ghost stories, and really liked the ghost story part of last year's Christmas read. This year not so much though, I think because the narrator's boredom seeped through the pages. 'I'm bored and snowed in, let's recount some ghastly stories about inns' just feels very different from 'I encountered this and think you might like the story' somehow. I hope the other parts will be a bit more ... well, different at least, enjoyable. And I do feel a bit of a grump about this xD
Kim wrote: "Oh, I almost forgot, many years ago friends of ours got married. They had booked the hotel for their honeymoon online, so they hadn't seen it until they got there. From the outside it looked almost..."
In Victorian Britain, that would definitely have been a ghost story. No doubt.
Kim wrote: "Oh, I almost forgot, many years ago friends of ours got married. They had booked the hotel for their honeymoon online, so they hadn't seen it until they got there. From the outside it looked almost..."
In Victorian Britain, that would definitely have been a ghost story. No doubt.
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I hope that you are all in good health and look forward to the Christmas season despite the unusual circumstances. I actually already put up the Christmas tree and decorated it yesterday with my wife and children and then I treated my family to a mellow rendition of "Good King Wenceslas" by humble me. I'll not have that virus despoil us of our Christmas joy!!!
Reading the first chapter, there were quite a lot of passages where I said to myself that this must be Dickens himself writing (after all, it is a collaboration, and the other chapters will probably be written by other authors). But this gamut of inns and ghostly stories, why! that was Dickens. Our last Christmas read, The Christmas-Tree, was far too syrupy for me, but the story of the lonely and heart-sore traveller intrigued me. I particularly loved the story about the innkeeper who killed his guests and turned them into pie, and laughed out loud when I learned that the innkeeper would make sure his guests would be very tired by feeding them ... pie in the evening.
Why the guest was given the largest room? I'd say this was because a larger room needs a larger fire, and the innkeeper can charge him more money in the end. I can think of no other reason, can you?
I see one parallel between the first-person narrator and Ebenezer Scrooge, namely that both seem to be men who are not wont to show their emotions to other people, and who seem to be rather afraid of emotions as such. Both of them withdraw from society, but our narrator here at least feels the urge to talk to someone when he finds himself holed up, high and dry, in a snowed-in room, surrounded by strangers. And, like Mary Lou, I could not help thinking that there is a little similarity between the protagonist's loneliness and our present situation. I take it that most, if not all Curiosities, are living in a household with dear beloved ones around them, but for those who have no one, this Christmas, where we are supposed to stay at home, and where there is no public life, will be all the drearier.
I am looking forward to the second chapter and to finding out whether the interview with the boots will get the narrator's mind on another track.
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I hope that you are all in good health and look forward to the Christmas season despite the unusual circumstances. I actually already put up the Christmas tree and decorated it y..."
Post a picture of the tree and a video of you singing.
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The Holly Tree Inn
Henry Matthew Brock
1916
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While we changed horses
Frontispiece
Henry Matthew Brock
1916
Text Illustrated:
We performed Auld Lang Syne the whole day; seeing nothing, out of towns and villages, but the track of stoats, hares, and foxes, and sometimes of birds. At nine o'clock at night, on a Yorkshire moor, a cheerful burst from our horn, and a welcome sound of talking, with a glimmering and moving about of lanterns, roused me from my drowsy state. I found that we were going to change.
They helped me out, and I said to a waiter, whose bare head became as white as King Lear's in a single minute, "What Inn is this?"
"The Holly-Tree, sir," said he.
"Upon my word, I believe," said I, apologetically, to the guard and coachman, "that I must stop here."
Now the landlord, and the landlady, and the ostler, and the post-boy, and all the stable authorities, had already asked the coachman, to the wide-eyed interest of all the rest of the establishment, if he meant to go on. The coachman had already replied, "Yes, he'd take her through it," — meaning by Her the coach, — "if o be as George would stand by him." George was the guard, and he had already sworn that he would stand by him. So the helpers were already getting the horses out. — "First Branch — Myself"
Commentary:
Dickens's The Holly-Tree Inn, originally published in Household Words, Extra Christmas Number, December 1855. "The Guest," "The Boots," and "The Bill," parts one, three, and seven respectively, were by Dickens, the other contributors being his chief collaborator, Wilkie Collins, William Howitt, Adelaide Anne Procter, and Harriet Parr ("Holme Lee"). The colourful frontispiece, with snow scene of the inn and a carriage, suggests a chronological setting prior to the Railway Age, an impression that the 18th c. costumes of the barmaid, the ostler, and the coachmen reinforce. The illustration indicates that the real name of "The Holly-Tree" is "The Red Lion." There is in fact a seventeenth-century of inn of that name in Burnsall, North Yorkshire, in the Dales. The guest who retails the story told him by the Boots arrives in the midst of a snow-storm and is stranded at the inn, but the actual story of the children running away to Gretna Green, Scotland, does not occur in the winter season.
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The post horses at the Holly Tree Inn
Horace Hammond
Horace Hammond was a Birmingham, UK, landscape artist working in the style of Birket Foster. He used the pseudonym J. Barclay in the early 1900's for his watercolors of country scenes.
Horace Hammond also used the pseudonym A. D. Bell at the request of Arthur Joseph, the Brierly Hill, Birmingham, art dealer for whom he worked.
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Header and footer
Henry Matthew Brock
1916
Commentary:
Dickens's The Holly-Tree Inn, originally published in Household Words, Extra Christmas Number, December 1855. "The Guest," "The Boots," and "The Bill," parts one, three, and seven respectively, were by Dickens, the other contributors being his chief collaborator, Wilkie Collins, William Howitt, Adelaide Anne Procter, and Harriet Parr ("Holme Lee"). The colourful front cover, with snow scene of the inn and a carriage, suggests a chronological setting prior to the Railway Age, an impression that the 18th c. costumes of the the ostler and his wife reinforce. In later editions, the book is entitled The Holly-Tree Inn in Three Branches, so that the first part is entitled "The First Branch — Myself," rather than "The Guest." The first footer establishes the exterior of the inn as the coach appropaches; the second footer describes the interior. Throughout the book these two designs alternate, so that, for example, page 4 has the interior and page 5 the exterior design.
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These illustrations have put me in the Christmas mood.
Delightful. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. There’s a song there I think. :-)
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I hope that you are all in good health and look forward to the Christmas season despite the unusual circumstances. I actually already put up the Christmas tree a..."
It ought to be a mute video then. A few years ago, we bought an artificial tree after long cogitation. Our two main reasons were these: First, I like to put up the Christmas tree very early, and shortly after Christmas our real trees were already needling a lot, and we wanted to avoid that. Second, I like to keep the tree well into January, and I once had a tree that was a mere skeleton by then. My wife is still not too happy about the artificial tree but you really have more of the tree during the Christmas season that way. This year, there was the additional advantage that I did not have to go into a crowded shop to get my tree; it would be sad, indeed, to catch the virus when all you want is a Christmas tree.
Tristram wrote: "A few years ago, we bought an artificial tree after long cogitation."The nice thing about an artificial tree is that you can put them up whenever the mood hits. No need to wait until everyone has time to go out and find a real one. And they're SO much easier now to get up than the ones I had growing up, where each branch had to be found and put in the correct hole. Pre-lit, too - what's not to love?? But I'm sure Kim would agree with me, Tristram, that if you miss a real tree, there's nothing wrong with having one of each.
If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say that a holly is a holly, and whether it's a tree or a bush depends on how it's pruned and trained. I have a holly that's a bush, I suppose, as it has branches down to the ground. But it's also maybe 12-15 feet high (apparently 3.5 to 4.5 meters for you metric users). I assume if I'd trimmed it all along to have a central trunk, it would look like a tree. Just a guess, though - perhaps they're different. But that reminds me.... I should go snip off some boughs and deck my halls.
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On the right of the driveway is a big pine tree with colored lights on it. The bush in front of it with the white lights is a holly bush. If that could have been made into a tree at one time I had no clue.
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First, let me take this opportunity to wish you all a Merry Christmas and happy holiday season. This Christmas will be very different from ones we have experienced with our families, friends and neighbours in the past. I long to hug loved ones.
Dickens tells us to hold the spirit of Christmas in our hearts all year round. That I will do, and hope you do as well. Thank you my friends for being on this journey through the works of Dickens with me. It is a wonderful gift we share with each other.
My best
Peter
The Holly-Tree Inn first appeared in ‘Household Words’ in 1855. At the time, Dickens stated that “enormous sales” were achieved by it. From our 21 Century perspective, however, I believe you will agree with me that A Christmas Carol remains the favourite of his Christmas stories. In Michael Slater's wonderful biography titled Charles Dickens I read that the narrator of the First Branch is “Dickens himself, writing under the thinnest of fictional disguises, and mingling autobiography and fancy.”
The Victorians really enjoyed a good ghost story, or story that would raise the hairs on the back of their necks. Even at Christmas, such stories were welcomed as ones of joy and celebration. A Christmas Carol is, of course, about spirits, a dead man returning from the grave to visit his business partner, a lonely man, and a flood of reminiscences about one’s past. Thinly compared, that is what The Holly-Tree is also about. So let’s see what we have in the First Branch - Myself.
Our narrator is a lonely man who has, he believes, lost the love of his fiancée Angela to his friend Edwin. Being a bashful man, a fact we are reminded of far too often, he decides to leave his fiancée and travel to America. Before he does so, however, he plans to go to north England and stay at an inn close to where he once was with Angela. Symbolically, he is not far from Gretna Green where many young couples often fled to marry, especially if they were under age. The narrator is not fleeing to Gretna Green to marry; rather he is near it before he leaves England without marrying.
It is the Christmas season and it is snowing. And snowing. In fact it is snowing so much our narrator holes up in an inn called The Holly-Tree. He is the only guest, and for some strange reason he is placed in the largest of the rooms. There he enjoys his solitude and self-pity. Being isolated, snowed in, and in need of some mental diversion, he decides to recall all the experiences he has had in inns and recall some of the stories he heard while a traveller.
Well, each story has a similar theme. Each one is in some way gruesome, bloody, and often a tale of an evil landlord or a vengeful maid servant. One is even about a strangled parrot. As remembrances of inns past tumble into his mind we learn that our narrator must be a man of some wealth or standing because he has travelled to Paris, Italy, and Germany where he stayed at inns.
As the first part of this story comes to its conclusion the narrator admits he is very lonely. To have some companionship he makes an arrangement for the boots of the Holly-Tree Inn to come to him.
Thoughts
I could not help comparing A Christmas Carol to this story. What similarities did you find in the stories?
The setting of the story is very clearly drawn. Why do you think the narrator was placed in the largest room? Why such isolation? What might be suggested or indicated by the title of the story?
Do you think the fact that the narrator repeatedly tell us he is bashful have any significant impact on the story?