A Christmas Pudding - Charles Knight

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
A Christmas Pudding by Charles Knight. Mister Oldnow had been
romping with his children on Christmas Eve. At last they
had gone to bed with flushed faces and disordered curls,
and the drawing room was deserted. Missus oldnow a careful matron,
looked thoughtful as she saw that the pride of the

(00:21):
sponge cake was utterly fallen, and that unquestionably another must
be procured for the next day's festival. Mister Oldnow, on
hospitable thoughts, intent half soliloquising, said, my dear, we must
have a second pudding to morrow. Indeed, how is it

(00:42):
to be made? Replied the lady. How made? Why? Of course,
with plums and flour and plenty of brandy. Oh you
are a precious cook, said missus Oldnow you think a
Christmas pudding can be made as easily as a pancake?
Do you why? Our pudding is made already? Come into

(01:04):
the kitchen. The cook is gone to bed, and I
will show it you. The kitchen mantle was radiant with
the brightness of brass candlesticks that were never used but
were duly cleaned. Pewter water plates also for ornament, gleamed
over the dresser, an ancient clock, something too big for

(01:25):
the corner in which he stood, stretched up from the
floor to the ceiling, with the crown of his respectable
old head pressed against its whitewashed surface, and his vigorous
pendulum passing and repassing behind its own peculiar little window
like a sentry always on guard. A walnut tree bureau
was still smart in another and larger recess, under the

(01:47):
polishing of half a century. Mister old Nose sighed as
he recollected that in his father's time he had often
taken his frugal meals in that kitchen, and when the
family home had acknowledged him as master for twenty years,
the refinement of our days had banished him from a

(02:08):
room where his father used to sit in patriarchal dignity.
There was the identical armchair, the fine, old high backed chair, which,
to his boyish imagination, was a king's throne. Missus Oldna
took out her family receipt book from the polished bureau
and then read aloud for her husband's edification. A pound

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Christmas pudding, one pound raisins, one pound currants, one pound suet,
one pound bread crumbs, quarter pound orange peel, two antces
citron peel, two antces lemon peel, one nutmeg, one teaspoonful
powdered ginger, one teaspoonful powdered cinnamon, one wineglassful brandy, seven eggs,

(02:57):
one teaspoonful salt, quarter pound raw sugar milk enough to
liquefy the mass. If the eggs and brandy be not
sufficient for this purpose, and why, my love, can't we
have two pound Christmas puddings or four half pound puddings,
said mister Oldno, I want the porters to have a pudding,

(03:18):
And old Nurse Franklin and the corderies fruit is cheap,
And why not, my dear old No, they always do
have a pudding, every one of them. Look here, missus
oldnow then lifted a cloth off a vast earthen pan,
and behold a rich, semi liquefied mass, speckled throughout with

(03:41):
plums and currants, presented itself to her husband's view. He
was content. He learned that at the peep of dawn,
the copper fire would be lighted, and the fruity treasure
would be divided into several portions, the mightiest of which
would be for the home table, and the others for
the porters, and the Franklins and the corderies. My love,

(04:05):
said the contented mister Oldknow, As I am in the
old kitchen for the first time these dozen years, I
think our light a cigar, for there is a fire
I see in this new fashioned cooking range. And rest
for a quarter of an hour after all the pulking
and blind man's buff we have had. And so missus

(04:26):
Oldknow went to bed. Now. Mister Oldknow was a great
reader of travels, ancient and modern, a kind of social antiquarian. Also,
he read the travelers, partly for commercial information and general
views of life, and partly with an imaginative taste for
unfamiliar scenes. The moving panoramas, the Niles and Mississippis and

(04:52):
overland roots had given a new intensity to these studies.
The vast pudding dish was before him, and he mused
and mused over the mercantile history of the various substances
of which that pudding was composed. The light wreath of
the cigar crept round the old kitchen, forming fantastic shapes

(05:15):
before it melted in the dim distance. More and more
obscure became the well remembered room, As old nose sent
forth feebler and feebler puffs from the weed, its dying
fragrance mingled with thoughts of nutmeg and cinnamon, and became
severe odors from the spicy shore of Araby. The blessed

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The walls of the kitchen then gradually expanded. The bright
pewter plates became mirrors in which landscapes of every climb
were reflected at length. All the other mirrors were absorbed
by one central mirror of vast proportions, upon whose vivid

(06:00):
pictures the contemplative mister oldno long gazed with a blissful serenity.
And first the shores of Malaga floated before his vision.
Groves of orange trees clustered around secluded convents. The sugar
cane and the cotton plant covered the plains. Vineyards creeping

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up the bright mountain slopes basked in the autumnal sun,
and their ponderous fruitage grew browner and browner, as the
white or red skin of the delicious muscat shriveled in
the noontide heat. Ruins of Moorish towers and mosques were
studied amidst whitewashed houses, and the brilliant columns of the

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Alhambra glittered as in mockery amidst its fallen roofs. By
the side of the tributaries of the guadal Quivere, the Carmenes,
the vineyard gardens of the Arabs formed in chanting walks,
and as are traveler heard the night breeze, laden with
a thousand perfumes, whispering amidst the orange groves. An articulate

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sound gradually dropped upon his ear, and he saw the
genius of the raisin, with the fresh vine wreaths of
a Greek pecante on the head, and the cashmere shawl
of an Arabian sultana round the waste sun of a
vine less land, said the form, Behold, how I labor

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for THEE. I gather the sunbeams in my hand, and
range over the salt wave of the Mediterranean to scatter
ripeness wherever the vineyards bow beneath the pulpy clusters which
are too rich for the wine press. Your ships throng
my Andalusian ports of Malagar and Valencia, ranging onward to

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the eastern Chisme, and they bear to your cold and
cloudy land, the richest gifts of our sunny south. Why
come ye every year more and more with your linens
and your woolens, your glass and your pottery, to exchange
with our native fruit. Why strip ye the gardens which

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the faithful planted, of the grapes which ought to be
reserved for the unfermented wine which the prophet delighted to drink.
Immortal child of the Arab, replied the son of the
wineless land. Your nation gave us the best element of
commerce when you gave us your numerals, your learning, and

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your poetry. Your science, and your industry no longer fructify
in heaven favored and lucia. The sun which ripens your
grapes and your oranges makes the people lazy and the
priests rapacious. We come to your ports with the products
of our looms and our furnaces, and we induce a

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taste for comfort that will become the habit. When our
glass and our porcelain shall find its way into your
peasant's hut, then will your olives be better tended and
your grapes more carefully dried. Man only worthily labors when
he labors for exchange. With other labor. Behold that pudding.

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It is our England's annual luxury. It is the emblem
of our commercial eminence. The artisan of Birmingham and Manchester,
the seamen of London and Liverpool, whose festive board will
be made joyous tomorrow with that national dish, has contributed
by his labor to make the raisins of Malagar and

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the currents of Zante, the oranges of our garve, the
cinnamon of Ceylon, and the nutmegs of the Maloccas of
commercial value. And he has thus called them into existence
as effectually as the labor of the native cultivator, child
of the Arab civilizer. Be great. Mister Oldno looked for

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an approving answer, But the genius of the raisin had fled.
The hillsides of Andalusia rapidly change into the great plain
of Zante. No longer is it the woodies a synthus
of Homer, but a land of olives and vines. There
lies the flower of the Levant before our home traveler,

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with its gardens of pomegranates and peaches, and oranges and melons,
and its fields of vines and currants. The genius of
the current arose a diminutive figure, winged like the Pegasus
of Corinth, and having the rows of England en twined
with the olive leaf amongst his hair. The Genius smiled

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upon the listener. Welcome is your Christmas, said he to
Zanti and Cephalonia. We have twelve thousand acres of our
little grapes under culture for your festivities, and your ships
have this year carried off our fifty million pounds of
currants for your puddings and your cakes. Welcome, I ye

(11:11):
with your sugar and your coffee, your rice and your cheese. Welcome,
I ye with your gold. Our corn crops are gone,
and without ye the maria would not yield us the
wheat and the maize which we shall need till the
next harvest. It is better to grow currants in the
soil which they delight in, and buy our wheat, than

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plow up our little vines for a bread producing crop.
We are sure of our bread for our currants, whilst
England demands plum puddings, as England is sure of her puddings,
whilst she weaves calico and forges steel. So are happy
Christmas to you, and good night the same to you,

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and bravo my little free trader, cried mister Oldnow to
the genius of the current. An English scene, It is
harvest time all over the wide chalkfields of Kent, wherever
the eye can stretch. In land, the golden corn is
bending under the sea breeze, or the sheaves are patiently

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waiting for the coming wagon. On every side, a visible
plenty smiles upon the traveler. The genius of bread arises.
He is a stalwart figure in a white smock frock.
From his straw hat to his laced boots, all is
tight and trim about him. He is slow of speech,

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but he, ever and anon mutters the word protection. Protection,
exclaimed mister Oldna, who taught you that song? Do you
want protection against cheap bread, my friend? Against warm and
clean clothing, against a sound roof with windows, against a

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coal fire, Against your tea, your sugar, your butter, your cheese,
your bacon, and your Christmas pudding? What are you thinking
of anything? Call up the ghost of your grandfather, show
him your wheat and bread, and ask him to compare
it with his black loaf of rye. You have small wages,

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it is true, But your wages do not depend upon
the cheapness of your produce. Your real wages are as
great as you ever got in the protection days, and
they go twice as far. You stand up now as
a man, instead of breaking stones upon the road at
the bidding of the parish, leave the beer shop, cultivate

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your garden, have a pig in the stye, send your
children to school, and believe me, you will be better
off than any other laborer of Europe. Mister Oldno was excited,
but he was fairly angry when the genius of Suet
presented himself in the guise of a smithfield drover with
an over driven ox falling upon his knees in a

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crowded street, as if imploring for rest. Mister old No
groaned and was wicked enough to wish that the drover's
dog was scattering the court of Aldermen. The Banda Islands
now filled the scene. Grouped in the Indian Archipelago, they
reared their volcanic peaks abruptly from the ocean, their mountain

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sides clothed with timber trees and the sago palms, yielding
sustenance to the people of the plains. In the covert
of the forest, trees sat the brilliant birds of paradise
occasional visitants. But the great feature of the landscape was
contributed by the nutmeg trees. It is the gathering time

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the Bandonese mingled with their Dutch masters, applucking the peachlike
fruit from their shelter of green and gray leaves. The
ripe fruit has split in half as it hangs on
the tree, and there is the kernel surrounded by the mace.
But the precious nutmeg has a second protection, its shell.

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The mace is removed, the kernel is dried in the sun.
The shell splits, and there is the nutmeg of commerce.
The genius of the nutmeg appeared. He was a fantastic figure,
half man, half bird, a Dutchman's head on a woodpigeon's body.

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Englishman said he, you have wrestled with me for the
spice islands, but they are mine. You have taken from
me the cinnamon groves of Ceylon, they are yours. In
the sea traditions of your country. You have the flying Dutchman.
I am he. We of the Zayderzey built up our

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commerce upon restrictions and anapolis. When we drove the Portuguese
from the archipelago. We rooted up all the clove trees
but those of Amboyna, and all the nutmeg trees but
those of Banda. We limited the world to a fixed
quantity of cloves and nutmegs, as we limited also the

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commerce of cinnamon. Rather than fill the market and lower
the price, we have thrown our nutmegs into the deep
and made a bonfire of our cinnamon in the streets
of Amsterdam. When in the Indian seas, in the dim
twilight or under the hazy moon, a figure has been
seen flying along the still waters in which the keel

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left no furrow. I was that navigator. I was pursuing
the woodpigeon who defied all the rigors of my unsocial
laws and carried the nutmeg seed to lands which owed
Holland no tribute. I have given up the contest against nature.

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My spice monopoly was ruin us to myself and injury
us to my colonists in Ceylon. I saw your English
diffusing comfort and equal laws, opening roads, encouraging industry, destroying
forced labor, and selling cinnamon to all the world. I

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have made an alliance with the woodpigeon. I have planted
the nutmeg in Java, and there will I contest with
you the commerce of cinnamon. I have learnt that a
small demand at high prices for any useful commodity is
neither so safe nor so profitable as a large demand

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at moderate prices. I have learnt further that the end
of commerce is not to make individuals rich and support
public expenditure by heavy duties, but to diffuse all the
productions of nature and art amongst all the inhabitants of
the globe. You have taught me a lesson. The old

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trade of the United Provinces has died under monopolies and restrictions.
We may once more be your honest rivals under a
wiser code. You want two hundred thousand pounds weight of nutmegs, yelly,
we will deal like merchant princes and good men and

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true ergreed, said mister Oldner. A West Indian sugar plantation
is now mirrored, with its canes ripening under a tropical sun,
and its mills with their machinery of cylinders and boilers.
The genius of sugar is a freed negro. It was

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said that in freedom he would not work. He has
vindicated his privileges in his industry and his obedience. The
grand experiment has succeeded in all moral effects. But the
nation that demanded cheap corn would not be content with
deer sugar. We must buy our sugar wherever the cane ripens.

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We use seven hundred millions of pounds of sugar annually,
which yield a duty of four millions sterling. Mister oldno
thought this, but was silent when he saw the negroes
sitting under his own figtory. For the political questions which
his freedom involved were somewhat complicated. He would trust to

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the ultimate power of a noble example, and in the
meantime rejoice that the great body of the British people
could buy their sugar at half the price that their
fathers paid. Mister oldknow being somewhat at fault upon the
sugar question, grew confused as new forms flitted before him.

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The solitary egg collector of Cork was there, in her
blue cloak and her kit on her back. Her step
was brisker than in the famine years, and her light
gray eye was once more laughing under her long black eyelashes.
She had walked from cottage to cottage some twenty miles
and her kish was to form part of the many

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hundred egg crates that England required for her Christmas puddings.
May the daughters and sons of erin soliloquized mister Oldner,
never again suffer as they have suffered. May plenty smile
upon their fields and comfort in their cottages. May they
have just masters and wise rulers. May they rely upon

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industry and not upon agitation. May they the blue cloak
was gone. A figure started up, half gnome, half ne reared.
Mister Oldno was thinking of his evening gambols of yes
and no, So with half consciousness he asked animal kingdom,

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no vegetable, no mineral Yes in England. Yes. Here continued
the figure, I am free. I fly through the land,
scattering blessings as widely as the dews of heaven. I

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bring my treasures out of the bowels of the earth
and from the depths of the sea. I make the
fields fruitful. I forbid your food to perish without me.
The sustenance of man and beast is imperfect. The herds
of unfathomable forests wander to the plains in search of me.

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The child that loves me not loses the bloom of
its cheek and the odor of its breath. I am
the universal friend. And yet kings have impiously dared to
deny me to their subjects. And though they should perish,
their crimes have been punished. Even now. The Hindu, whom

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you have benefited in so many things, is deprived of
me by your fiscal injustice. Learn to be wiser. You
have freed me from the burdens of your home taxation,
and your industrial wealth is quadrupled. I am salt, guessed
mister Oldknow. To salt succeeded a singular figure as the

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Milky Genius. It seemed one half dairy woman, with her
pale and stool, decently clad in woolen petticoat and black stockings.
But above was a Naiad of the Thames, with dripping
locks held loosely together with a wreath of rushes. Mister
Oldknow was about to harangue when a brisk power loom

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weaver stepped forth with pudding cloth in hand. The water boils,
said he. The ingredients are mixed, be it mine to
bind them together? Right, cried mister Oldner again. Our country's emblem,
the bundle of sticks and the pudding cloth, have each
the same moral. Our ancestors, in their civil dudgeon made

(23:18):
plum porridge, we, in our united interests, well bound together,
produce Christmas pudding. There was a silence and a pause.
Mister Oldknow peered out. The mirror had lost its brilliancy.
But suddenly the great pudding bowl expanded into a mighty

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flat dish. The puddings swelled into an enormous globe, black
with plums and odorous with streaming sauce. A holly tree
with its prickly leaves at bottom, its smooth leaves on high,
and its bright red berries grew up under a crystal dough.
On the edge of the dish were grouped the Andalucian

(24:04):
with the cashmere shawl, the Ionian islander with the wings
of Corinth, the Kentish plowman in the smock frock, the
flying Dutchman, the Negro without the chains, the Irish market woman,
the Gnome Nereered, the London Naiad, and the weaver with
the cloth. And they all took hands, and thrice danced

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round the edge of the dish, and lo out of
the holly tree dropped a mustached denizen of the Palais royal.
He had a flask of brandy in one hand and
a huge silver bowl in the other, Oh, nation of
anti chemical cooks, He cried, you put the cognac into
the pudding, and nine hours boiling drives off all the

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spirit into unprofitable gas. Look at me, it is the
genius of our nation to flare up with that. He
emptied the flask into the bowl and set it on fire,
and poured it over the pudding. And the makers of
the pudding again danced round it in the blue flame.

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And the pudding was nothing hurt by the flare up,
but remained as sound and unscathed as the land itself
after a month's polemical fire. And then mister Oldknow volunteered
a song, of which four lines remained in his memory,
for he had learnt it as a child. When England
was threatened with invasion. Britain to peaceful arts inclined, where

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commerce opens all her stores in social bands shall lead
mankind and join the sea divided shores. Mister Oldno opened
his eyes. The kitchen was in darkness, and his cigar
smoked out. Bless my heart, said he. The weights are

(25:58):
playing the wooden walls, and the clock strikes two end
of a Christmas Pudding by Charles Knight