14. Kate Douglas Wiggin — The Birds’ Christmas Carol
Note: Lost Ladies of Lit transcripts are generated using human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.
AMY HELMES [CO-HOST]: Happy Holidays, Kim!
KIM ASKEW [CO-HOST]: Happy Holidays, Amy! It’s been QUITE a year!
AMY: No doubt, no doubt. Boy. It’s going to be a different sort of holiday season for a lot of us this year. Sort of feels like when all the Whos down in Who-ville got robbed of their Christmas but they still held hands in a circle and celebrated. As cliche as that sounds, we’re going to have to make the best of it and remember the real meaning of the Yuletide spirit during this pandemic holiday.
KIM: I know a lot of people are going to be feeling sad about having to forego traditions, not getting to travel this year, perhaps, and also maybe not getting to see their loved ones.
AMY: I don’t know, it always feels to me like Christmas is an event that has some sad undertones to it anyway. Is it just me, or are there certain things about Christmas that just feel kind of maudlin and bittersweet? Personally, I tend to always get choked up listening to Christmas carols in my car, which is kind of embarrassing. But there’s so many sad ones!
KIM: That’s why we’re friends. I’m exactly the same way, and even George Winston’s piano music from the Charlie Brown Christmas Special feels a bit wistful to me, so I totally get it.
AMY: Yeah. The ones that really get me: “I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams.” You’re just like, “Aww, man!” And then Elvis’s “Blue Christmas” is a doozy.
KIM: Yep. Mm-hmm.
AMY: But the worst of all — the absolute worst — is the song about the Christmas shoes. Which, fortunately doesn’t get played too much on the radio, but do you know which one I’m talking about?
KIM: Remind me.
AMY: Okay. So the guy singing the song is telling this story about standing in line at a store on Christmas Eve buying some last-minute gifts. And there’s this little boy in front of him dressed in rags and counting out his pennies. He’s trying to buy a pair of women’s shoes and he notes that they’re for his mother for Christmas, but he doesn’t have enough money. And the little boy tells the cashier that he needs to hurry, because his daddy says there’s not much time. Mommy’s been sick for a while and I want her to look beautiful if she meets Jesus tonight!
KIM: Okay, you’ve got to stop! First of all, that’s ridiculous, and second of all, I’m going to start crying any second! I don’t know if you remembered, but Johnny Cash had a song like that, too, called “Ringing the Bells for Jim.” It’s about a little girl ringing the church bells at midnight for her dying brother.
AMY: Oh, god. But that image of the church bells makes me wonder, honestly, if Johnny Cash read the story that we’re going to be discussing on Lost Ladies of Lit this week. Everybody’s of course familiar with Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol...
KIM: Speaking of, Tiny Tim’s “God bless us, every one!” always chokes me up too.
AMY: You and Scrooge both. But the book we’re featuring this week has a similar title: The Birds’ Christmas Carol and it’s by Kate Douglas Wiggin, who I’d never heard of before.
KIM: She actually wrote Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, which I’ve read as a child.
AMY: Okay, so I have heard of that, Never read it, though, but I know Shirley Temple starred in the movie version of it.
KIM: I loved Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, and I feel like because you like Anne of Green Gables — okay, you love Anne of Green Gables, and who doesn’t? — I think you’d really like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. I’d recommend it.
AMY: Okay! Anyway, The Birds’ Christmas Carol was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1888 after being printed privately two years earlier.So Wiggin, she published the book (it was really one of her first literary endeavors) and she wrote it in order to raise money for the Silver Street Free Kindergarten which she ran in San Francisco.
KIM: Yeah, that’s really sweet. And Wiggin and her sister, Nora, establish over 60 kindergartens for children living in poverty in the San Francisco and Oakland area. This was a time when schooling wasn’t really seen as essential for kids living in poverty. So she was really ahead of her time in her thinking. She also established a training school for kindergarten teachers.
AMY: That reminds me a bit of Dorothy Canfield Fisher, who we featured a few episodes ago!
KIM: Yeah, for sure. Definitely the educational interest. So you’d mentioned Charles Dickens earlier. Wiggin, who was born in Philadelphia and raised in Portland, Maine, actually met Dickens once, and it’s a really interesting anecdote as you’d expect: Her mother and a friend were going to hear Dickens speak in Portland, but Wiggin, who was only 11, was not included in that outing (the tickets were too expensive.) But the following day, she found herself on the same train as Dickens and she chatted with him for a good portion of the journey.
AMY: That’s cute. She sounds like she was probably a pretty precocious child. I love imagining her talking his ear off on the train, and I wonder what he thought of the whole thing.
KIM: Well, she wrote a short memoir of that experience (so we can hear her side of the story) in 1912, and it’s called A Child’s Journey With Dickens.
AMY: I love that. So getting back to this other Christmas book that Wiggin wrote, The Birds’ Christmas Carol, despite its title, it doesn’t bear any relation to Charles Dickens’ story, but her book was also a hit when it was published.
KIM: Which is kind of amazing, because it’s a bit of a downer, shall we say?
AMY: Yeah. Like I said, people are suckers for sad things at Christmas and this book is no exception. This one is about the well-to-do Bird family, who welcome a beautiful baby girl on Christmas Day at the beginning of the book. They name her Carol, after the Christmas carols her mother hears wafting through her window from the church.
KIM: But then we flash-forward a few years later to when Carol’s a little girl. We find out that she doesn’t actually have long to live. She’s a sickly child, she sits in her bedroom and she looks down into the alley at these poor children from a family that lives just a stone’s throw from them. She loves to watch them play.
AMY: Okay, and this family is called The Ruggles. There are 9 Ruggles children, and seriously, in my opinion, the Ruggles are pretty much THE reason why anybody should read this little novel. They are extremely entertaining. They’re the best part of the book.
KIM: Yeah, they’re complete scene-stealers. So, Wiggins’ depiction of the Ruggles — complete with their mom’s Irish dialect — is fantastic. The rest of the story has this high “sap” quotient, but you’ve got to love these Ruggles children and their mother is an absolute riot. Amy’s going to read a brief excerpt concerning them. This is at a point in the story when Mrs. Ruggles, the mother, is desperately trying to school them in manners and etiquette for the party at the Birds’ that’s happening later that night. So she asks them to leave the room and then enter in an orderly fashion. Amy?
AMY:
The bedroom was small, and there presently ensued such a clatter that you would have thought a herd of wild cattle had broken loose. The door opened, and they straggled in, all the younger ones giggling, with Sarah Maud at the head, looking as if she had been caught in the act of stealing sheep; while Larry, being last in line, seemed to think the door a sort of gate of heaven which would be shut in his face if he didn’t get there in time; accordingly he struggled ahead of his elders and disgraced himself by tumbling in head foremost.
Mrs. Ruggles looked severe. “There, I knew yer’d do it in some sech fool way! Now go in there and try it over again, every last one o’ye, ‘n, if Larry can’t come in on two legs he can stay home, — d’yer hear?
The matter began to assume a graver aspect; the little Ruggleses stopped giggling and backed into the bedroom, issuing presently with lock step, Indian file, a scared and hunted expression on every countenance.
“No, no, no!” cried Mrs. Ruggles, in despair. “That’s worse yet; yer look for all the world like a gang o’ pris’ners! There ain’t no style ter that: spread out more, can’t yer, ‘n’ act kind o’ careless-like — nobody’s goin’ ter kill ye! That ain’t what a dinner-party is!”
KIM: I love it. That’s great, Amy.
AMY: So the Ruggles children totally reminded me of the outrageous shenanigans of the Herdman siblings from The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. Kim, did you ever read that book when you were a kid?
KIM: No, I did not.
AMY: Okay, that’s a 1971 novel by Barbara Robinson, who, I guess you could say is another “lost lady of lit” we ought to mention here. It’s a really cute and comical book that you should check out if you haven’t read it yet. It’s fantastic. But the Herdman siblings in that book are very similar in that… they’re actually quite worse, to be honest, because they're known for cussing, shoplifting, drinking jug wine, smoking cigars. So they’re really unpolished.
KIM: Oh wow, yeah! I hadn’t heard of that one, but it sounds great. Getting back to Wiggin’s book and the Ruggles, though, little angelic Carol — who knows this will probably be her last Christmas, tells her parents that the only thing she really wants this year is to be able to have the Ruggles children over for a fine dinner. So she wants to plan the whole thing. So that’s just what they do. The whole family gets involved. But when the Ruggles show up, comedy ensues, and it ends, basically, with Wiggin attempting to leave her reader in tears.
AMY: So yeah, Wiggin is really trying to turn on our waterworks and she may or she may not be successful with that, depending on how cynical of a reader you are. To be fair, little Carol is probably no more of a sympathy case than Dickens’ Tiny Tim was, but still, I was rolling my eyes during some of these maudlin moments. Yet, I will say, the Ruggles made this book totally worth the read, and it got me in the holiday mood.
KIM: Oh, for sure! I was into it from the first page. It’s a great holiday read. I definitely recommend it. It’s also a very quick read. I easily read it in one sitting one night. And since you mentioned the movie version of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, the one with Shirley Temple, we should also point out that The Birds’ Christmas Carol was adapted for film as well. It was a silent movie called A Bit o’ Heaven.
AMY: If I was rolling my eyes reading the book, but I can only imagine how over the top they probably made the melodrama for movies.
KIM: Oh, yes.
AMY: But you know, a lot of Christmas stories for children are morality tales, and this one really fits the bill as well. I can totally picture this being read around the hearth by families in the late Victorian era, maybe making it a little Christmas Eve tradition It seems exactly like the sort of book people would have loved.
KIM: Absolutely. So if you’re celebrating Christmas this week, we wish you a memorable and merry one, and we’ll see you back here next week to round out our 2020 with a very special guest.
AMY: That’s right! Author and journalist Victoria Namkung will be joining us to chat about Sui Sin Far, a Chinese American writer from the late 19th century. We’ll be discussing her collection of stories entitled Mrs. Spring Fragrance.
KIM: Ooh, a whiff of spring in the dead of winter sounds pretty good to me, actually. So until next week, check out our website, LostLadiesofLit.com for more information as well as further reading material. And if you’re loving this podcast, make our holiday extra special by leaving us a review!
AMY: Thanks for listening, and “God bless us, everyone!”
AMY: Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone, and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. “Lost Ladies of Lit” is produced by Kim Askew and Amy Helmes.