'Certain of Us by Nature More Sardonic'

“Herman Patrick Tappé would be sorry to have us outgrow the Christmas of Bracebridge Hall and a garland, tinsel diadem, or ‘so personal’ wreath of mistletoe refuting skepticism, he is justly reminded of Lord Chesterfield’s conviction that ‘the manner of giving shows the genius of the giver more than the gift itself.’” 

Some will recognize Marianne Moore’s manner, her casual weave of allusions. Tappé (1876-1954) I had to look up. He was fashion designer and interior decorator to New York’s upper crust. Washington Irving’s Bracebridge Hall (1821) I recognized but haven’t read. The same goes for Lord Chesterfield’s Letters to His Son (1774). Moore is writing a column in the December 1927 issue of The Dial, the literary magazine she edited from 1925 to 1929. Her recondite references don’t bother me. She’s making good sense. Read cold, you can follow most of her thinking. Thanks to the internet, it’s simple to decrypt much of the rest. Moore pays us the compliment of respecting our intelligence and willingness to dig a little. She continues:

 

“The Christmas battered, that is to say the Christmas-gift-battered-heart, however, inclines to the scene outside ‘where white winds blow’ and to James Joyce’s dislike of gifts that are appropriate—‘a spellingbee book for Rosy Brooke’; ‘scruboak beads for beatified Biddy’; ‘for Camilla, Dromilla. Ludmilla, Mamilla, a bucket, a packet, a book and a pillow.’”

 

The Joyce passages are from “Anna Livia Plurabelle,” a future section of Finnegans Wake published in transition (sic) earlier in 1927. In the vernacular, all Moore is saying is: Don’t sweat it. Choose and give Christmas gifts selflessly, imaginatively, happily. I know from experience that anxious, self-centered gift givers can ruin Christmas. Moore goes on:

 

“‘I am compelled to celebrate Christmas in some way, but I had much rather not,’ Bernard Shaw is quoted as saying and the complaint is far from outrageous. We have observed the bareness of giving which is not inclusive of the giver, yet the preposterous aspect of a thing ought not to do away with the thing itself; it is apparent that counterfeits are not able to make people dislike money. What we probably need, as Mr. Shaw shows, is not judiciousness but continuity. ‘I have no quarrel with the Christmas feeling’ he goes on to say, ‘but I think it should be spread over the whole year,’ and Washington Irving, Lowell, Dickens, Mr. Tappé, and certain of us by nature more sardonic than these, would agree with him.”

 

That’s the entire column. It’s Moore’s way of saying, sardonically or not, what Ebenezer Scrooge declares in Stave IV, near the conclusion of A Christmas Carol:  

 

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!”