Open Letters
Counsel to a Literary Aspirant who Wishes to Enrich the Yuletide
Dear Chalmers:
For years you have made no secret of the fact that you were studying Editors,—root and branch, genus and specimens. I know that you have diagnosed and pondered their little infamies, one by one. I know that you have pored over gossip of their habits and wiles—as chronicled by Sunday newspaper articles. I think I am not exaggerating when I surmise that you feel you know the tribe—analytically speaking—through and through.
Writing a Letter
And yet—and yet—you confessed to me not more than a month ago, with chagrin in your voice, that you have never dared attempt a Christmas story. Frankly, my friend, I was, and still am, surprised. You have been successful in more difficult things, yet you balk at a mere Christmas tale. I’ve thought about it so much that I am finally taking the liberty of sending you this letter, which you may, if you choose, regard as a monograph on “How to Write a Christmas Story.” As I have just sold my ninety-eighth tale of Christmas, I think you will allow that my counsel deserves some consideration.
First of all: be kind to the editor. Don’t put off sending him your story till the eleventh hour; but give him his chance to shop early. It is not his fault that his Christmas purchases have to be made before Labor Day. Therefore be considerate.
Spring is, of course, the best season to begin to think of tuning up for your December fiction. In any case, between the time the first dandelion shows its head and the end of July it is essential that you should tear yourself away from the play you are working on and oil your typewriter preparatory to the Christmas story. That accomplished, your task is all but finished. The only thing that remains before mailing off your tale of the Yuletide is to write it—a mere formality.
Of course you have to choose which Christmas story you will write. But that is a bagatelle. Fortunately the stereotyped varieties have become as easily classified as the different sorts of evergreen. A row of mental pigeonholes will contain the stock formulas. You have only to reach in and draw one out. Roughly speaking, the tales may be divided into those of the city and the country.
One favorite is the crusty millionaire story. You should make him a second Crœsus, dyspeptic, with a heart of flint. He bullyrags his servants unmercifully, and has no kind word for any one. He gets no happiness out of life, and will not permit anybody else to get any. Such carking selfishness is easily worth three thousand words. Then comes the great transformation scene, with incidental music of Christmas bells. A little child, a faithful old servant, the woman he did not marry:—one of these is the agent who sets him to giving away his money with both hands and—so we are led to believe—cures his indigestion.
If you have no fancy for this story, why not select the regeneration of the hardened man about town? He is irreproachably dressed, unspeakably bored, illimitably cynical, and inexpressibly selfish. The rise of the curtain finds him kicking some little dog that gets in his way. It is night. He wanders through the town in melancholy irritation. Then the story should run thus, to put it like an old-fashioned playbill of the melodrama: SCENE 1. Night in a great city.—Heartless Jack Mortimer.—The beggar repulsed.—The snow-storm.—The weeping newsboy.—“I haven’t any Christmas present for Mother!”—Jack Mortimer touched. SCENE 2. The slums.—Thebrutal policeman.—The comic washerwoman.—The garret.—“Hush, my child, there’s not so much as a single crust in the house.”—The arrival of Jack Mortimer.—The Christmas tree.—“God bless you, sir, you’re a real gentleman!” SCENE 3. On Fifth Avenue.—High Life among the 400.—The funny butler.—Florence in the conservatory.—The proposal.—“At last, Jack Mortimer, you have proved yourselfa man!”—Great chime effect.—Curtain.
A variant on this is the story of the traveler who is stranded on Christmas eve in a strange city far from his family. Don’t forget to play up his extreme loneliness for a page or two. Then he either falls in with another homesick stranger, or helps out the party in distress who always appears at just the proper instant in this story. And at the end, his entire family, which has traveled all night, appears to surprise him.
So much for the city. After all, you were country-bred yourself, and if you prefer the country or the wilds for your story, they also are rich in stock devices. What better place than a Christmas story to tell of the old couple who have never had a child? We hear the ring at their door-bell, but as we turn the page no one is found at the door. But wait!—there in a basket is a cooing baby. A scrap of paper pinned to its dress begs, “Be good to baby!” And so on December 25, 19—, the old couple at last have their child.
It is also on December 25 that the selectmen of almost any town—yourselectmen—have decided that at last poor old Marthy Pettibone—whose only son disappeared years ago—must be taken to the poor-farm. The carriage waits at the gate. Dejected Mrs. Pettibone has just gone back to get her bird-cage. At that instant a tall stranger, bronzed and bearded, wearing a massive gold watch-chain, strides up the path and knocks at the door. Need I go on?
Perhaps most reliable is the Christmas tale of thehinterland. A gang of unkempt lumbermen or miners are snowed up by the worst blizzard of the decade. It looks as if they would have to fall back on bad whisky as Yuletide recreation. At this point the fearless young girl appears on the scene, arriving somehow. (If necessary, use a flying-machine.) The whisky is put out of sight and mind, and clean red shirts are donned. Follows the scene of the Christmas tree with an improvised Santa Claus and comic gifts, succeeded by a spelling-match and Virginia Reel. And what end so appropriate as the picture of the young girl lifted on to a table while the rough diamonds drink her health in ginger-pop which the cookee produces at the right moment. That ought to be enough of a Christmas story for any one; but if more seems needed, insert at the proper point the defense of the girl—from a half-breed whowouldhave whisky—by the young civil engineer of Harvard or Yale.
Or if you are not suited with any of these, why not take a shot at the yarn of Christmas at sea or below the equator? If, however, you sympathize with those who like an occasional pellet of religion sugar-coated as fiction, nothing is simpler than to give them the allegorical Christmas story. And I mustn’t conclude this survey of the property-room of holiday fiction without reference to the house-party story. The man must be very tall, very athletic, very handsome, and “virile.” The girl must have blue eyes and gold hair, be petite, and pert as a boarding-school miss. Remember to have them talk to each other as if they—and you—were being paid by the paragraph. The gatling-gun warfare of love-making must be carried on while they arrange the Christmas tree for little Tommy. And the hero’s final successful assault—with force used if necessary—must be made in the vicinity of the mistletoe.
Such, then, is the range before you,—of allegory, the city, the country, and that no-man’s land where picture men, seven feet tall, philander with debutantes.
The choice is yours; or, if you have no preference, it is easy enough to draw lots to decide. The whole business is almost too simple. At latest, midsummer should turn the trick. And you will be doing good all round.
The editor will be spared the pangs of reading Christmas fiction while making up his Easter number.
As for you, you will have no one but yourself to blame if you do not utilize holly, mistletoe, and chimes to finance your pleasant summer vacation.
Hopefully yours,Leonard Hatch.
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