Chapter Synopsis

Memoirs of a London Doll
December 15, 2008

Chapter 3: Twelfth-Night

I have arrived at the home of Ellen Plummy, my new mama, and spent my first night wrapped in Ellen’s arms. Since the next day is the day before Twelfth-day, Ellen will be very busy so I am placed a dark box while she attends to her duties in the bakery. I am beginning to wonder how long I will spend in the box. Ellen managed to sneak up a couple of times to take me from the box and give me a kiss. About nine that night Ellen came back, and during the course of her busy day in the shop she had managed to make me a nightgown and cap.

The next day is Twelfth Day. I am put back in the box as Ellen will be very busy in the bakery again today. I am growing tired of long days in a dark box. My thoughts go back to my beginning at the Sprat shop, and of the work bench and the other dolls in various stages of completion. I thought of the conversations between the Sprats after the children were asleep. Suddenly my box opens and a fairy appears. It is Ellen, dressed all in white, with silver bracelets and roses in her hair. She announced I was to celebrate Twelfth-night, and I was christened “Maria Poppet.” She ran straight into the bakery shop. I was so happy, I fainted. I was placed between two large glass jars, one of glittery barley sugar sticks and one of large sugarplums of all colors. From this vantage point I could watch Ellen serve customers, and look over the vast array of beautiful cakes with intricate scenes on top of each cake depicting scenes from countries all over the world and scenes of make believe fairy worlds. I was dazzled by all the sights, of many people coming into the shop to purchase fancy cakes, and the great pastry cook and cake maker dressed in his best and going about the shop and passing out sugarplums to the children outside who had no money. Finally, from a state of indescribable happiness I fell fast asleep.

DISCUSSION:

Imagine our doll’s excitement, from going from the dark box in Ellen’s bedroom, to the brightly lit bakery and all the wonderful sights to see. No wonder Maria “fainted.” I think little Ellen is going to be a good Mama. She seems to genuinely love and care for her new doll.

Just imagine a little girl of her age working in the bakery from early morning to nine o’clock at night, and managing to sew a nightgown and nightcap for her new doll all in the same day. She must have been exhausted by the time she managed to get into bed. At least the bakery sounds like a happy place, which is a whole lot different from those workhouse places where children of all ages would work from very early morning to very late at night under dire circumstances.

The bakery, as told by Maria, sounds like a magical fairyland indeed, not like the inside of a bakery as we would picture it today. Ellen’s grandfather appears to be a very caring man in that he shared sugarplums with the children standing outside who had no money. Truly the Christmas spirit. Our Maria certainly had a very happy Twelfth-night.
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I loved chapter three--and could just picture Maria's excitement as she got the new nighty. Of course, now we are horrified by children working long hours, but I imagine it was quite common back when the book was written. There isn't really any social commentary from the author. She just presents the children as working long hours as a matter of fact.
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Couldn't you just feel the excitement and warmth of the busy shop? The description was so good; I could smell all the aromas. OK - I have a pumpkin pie baking in the oven, but I felt like I could be there.
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I felt the same way when I read the chapter. It was written so vividly I could picture in my mind all the beautiful cakes and the beautiful tops, plus all the people bustling in to purchase their treats. No wonder Maria fainted -- to go from the dark box, to be told that she would see Twelfth-night, to get a new name, and then to burst into the bakery shop. It was all just too much for her little wooden head.

Of course, you probably did cheat a little with the smell of that wonderful pumpkin pie baking in the oven. If we all only knew before we read the chapter, we could have popped something good into the oven and then started reading the chapter to get the full effect like you did.
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Yes, something about feeling the warm shop, with the burst of cold air when someone came in. Of course, the scent from the shop each time the door opened would draw in more people. No wonder little Maria fainted.

I wonder if there is something I can do for each chapter to get the "full" effect?
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The description of the bakery reminds me of the part in "A Christmas Carol" when the Ghost of Christmas Present takes Scrooge on a tour of the streets of London on Christmas Day:

"... The poulterers' shops were still half open, and the fruiterers' were radiant in their glory. There were great, round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out into the street in their apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish Onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish Friars, and winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and apples, clustered high in blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, made, in the shopkeepers' benevolence to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that people's mouths might water gratis as they passed; there were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through withered leaves; there were Norfolk Biffins, squat and swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner. The very gold and silver fish, set forth among these choice fruits in a bowl, though members of a dull and stagnant-blooded race, appeared to know that there was something going on; and, to a fish, went gasping round and round their little world in slow and passionless excitement.

The Grocers'! oh, the Grocers'! nearly closed, with perhaps two shutters down, or one; but through those gaps such glimpses! It was not alone that the scales descending on the counter made a merry sound, or that the twine and roller parted company so briskly, or that the canisters were rattled up and down like juggling tricks, or even that the blended scents of tea and coffee were so grateful to the nose, or even that the raisins were so plentiful and rare, the almonds so extremely white, the sticks of cinnamon so long and straight, the other spices so delicious, the candied fruits so caked and spotted with molten sugar as to make the coldest lookers-on feel faint and subsequently bilious. Nor was it that the figs were moist and pulpy, or that the French plums blushed in modest tartness from their highly-decorated boxes, or that everything was good to eat and in its Christmas dress; but the customers were all so hurried and so eager in the hopeful promise of the day, that they tumbled up against each other at the door, crashing their wicker baskets wildly, and left their purchases upon the counter, and came running back to fetch them, and committed hundreds of the like mistakes, in the best humour possible; while the Grocer and his people were so frank and fresh that the polished hearts with which they fastened their aprons behind might have been their own, worn outside for general inspection, and for Christmas daws to peck at if they chose...."
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Thanks for this reference. I felt like I was right there when I read it. Talk about descriptive. A Christmas Carol is one of my favorite Christmas programs.
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Dickens is a great writer when it comes to descriptions, and I think "A Christmas Carol" is his best work. I re-read it every year. I'm developing a little collection of Christmas books.

DESCRIPTIONS OF SUGAR PLUMS:

The dictionary defines a sugarplum as a small round or oval piece of sugary candy. English being the flexible language it is, the name could have come from the resemblance to a small plum. Or it could have come from actual plums preserved in sugar, a relatively new idea in 16th Century England. Prior to this time sugar was so expensive that it was used very sparingly, much as we would use a spice today. In the 1540's, however, sugar started being refined in London which lowered the price considerably, although only well-off families were able to use it lavishly. Preserving with sugar allowed the sweet fruits of summer to be enjoyed all year round, especially during the holiday season.
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Sugarplums belong to the comfit family, a confection traditionally composed of tiny sugar-coated seeds. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word sugarplum thusly: “A small round or oval sweetmeat, made of boiled sugared and variously flavoured and coloured; a comfit.” The earliest mention of this particular food is 1668. … According to the food historians, the word plum in Victorian times referred to raisins or dried currants, not plums as we Americans think of them today. …
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“Sugarplums were an early form of boiled sweet. Not actually made from plums…they were nevertheless roughly the size and shape of plums, and often had little wire stalks’ for suspending them from. They came in an assortment of colours and flavours, and frequently, like comfits, had an aniseed, caraway seed, etc. at their centre. The term was in vogue from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries … .” —An A-Z of Food & Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 329)

What are comfits?

“Comfit, an archaic English word for an item of confectionery consisting of a seed, or nut coated in several layers of sugar…In England these small, hard sugar sweets were often made with caraway seeds, known for sweetening the breath (hence kissing comfits). Up to a dozen coats of syrup were needed before the seeds were satisfactorily encrusted. Comfits were eaten a sweets, and also used in other sweet dishes; for example seed cake was made with caraway comfits rather than loose caraway seeds as in the 19th century. Confectioners as early as the 17th century recognized by varying the proportions of sugar in the syrup they could change the final texture, making pearled comfits or crisp and ragged comfits. The word comfit remained in use in English up until the 20th century: Alice, of Alice in Wonderland, has a box of comfits in her pocket.”
—Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 208)

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