Carolina Christmas

Archibald Rutledge

Description

A collection of holiday tales, poems, and recipes celebrating hearth and hunt in the South of yesteryear.

Carolina Christmas collects for the first time holiday stories of Archibald Rutledge (1883–1973), one of the most prolific outdoor and nature writers of the twentieth century and the first poet laureate of South Carolina. Some of Rutledge's finest writing revolves around his vivid memories of hunt, hearth, and holidays. These memories are celebrated in this keepsake collection of enduring stories and poems, further augmented with traditional recipes and food lore associated with the season.

Archibald Rutledge spent decades teaching at Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania. All the while he supplemented his income through his writings in order to support a growing family and restoration efforts at Hampton Plantation, his ancestral home in coastal South Carolina—now a state historic site. Each Christmas, Rutledge returned to his cherished Hampton Plantation for hunting, celebrations of the season, and renewal of his decidedly Southern soul. This annual migration home meant the opportunity to enjoy hunting and communion with nature—so vitally important to him—and to renew acquaintances with those living on neighboring plantations and with the African American community he immortalized in his book God's Children.

Rutledge wrote dozens of stories and poems revolving around the Hampton Hunt, fellowship with family and friends, the serenity of the winter woods, and his appetite for seasonal Southern foodways. Edited by Jim Casada, this collection highlights the very best of Rutledge's holiday tales in a vibrant tapestry through which Christmas runs as a bright, sparkling thread. In these tales of Christmas past—each representative of the author's sterling literary reputation and continuing popularity—Rutledge guides us once more into a world of traditions now largely lost. But to tread those forgotten trails once more, to sample and savor the foods he loved, and to experience vicariously the sport he so enjoyed is to experience the wonder of yesteryear.

Sujets

• Holidays
• HISTORY
• América
• The Old Plantation
• Henry Washington
• Archibald Rutledge
• Christmas dinner
• Old Bay Seasoning
• Child of God
• Grandparent
• Bobolink
• The Carolinas
• Nuthatch
• General officer
• Religious festival
• History of the Americas
• Li'l Abner
• General
• American
• United States
• Christmas pudding
• FL
• Mallard
• Pine
• KY
• LA
• TN
• MS
• SC
• NC
• AR
• Adage
• VA
• GA

Informations

• Publié par: University of South Carolina Press
• Date de parution: 24 août 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781611172096
• Langue: English

Extrait

Carolina Christmas

Archibald Rutledge
Carolina Christmas
Archibald Rutledge s Enduring Holiday Stories
Edited by Jim Casada
2010 Jim Casada

Cloth edition published by the University of South Carolina Press, 2010 Ebook edition published in Columbia, South Carolina, by the University of South Carolina Press, 2012

www.sc.edu/uscpress

21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The Library of Congress has cataloged the cloth edition as follows:

Rutledge, Archibald Hamilton, 1883-1973.
Carolina Christmas: Archibald Rutledge s enduring holiday stories/edited by Jim Casada.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-57003-954-6 (cloth: alk. paper)
1. Christmas stories, American. 2. Christmas-Southern States-Fiction. I. Casada, Jim. II. Title.
PS3535.U87C37 2010
813 .52-dc22
2010025088

Recipes contained in this book are being published solely because of historical interest and have not been kitchen tested. Neither author nor publisher assumes any responsibility for the reader s application of the material contained herein.
Frontispiece: From the Mercersburg Academy Karux, vol. 22. This and all other images are in the possession of Jim Casada unless otherwise stated.

ISBN 978-1-61117-209-6 (ebook)
To all kindred spirits who share my love of sporting tradition, admire Archibald Rutledge s enduring literary legacy, and cherish the joys of Christmas
Contents
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
A Note on Selection
Introduction

Part I
Christmas in Dixie
Christmas with My Colonel
Christmas Eve on the Plantation
Christmas Eve on Wicklow
A Plantation Christmas
Christmas in the Castle
Prince Alston: God s Special Child
A Wildwood Christmas
December Doings
Plantation Christmases

Part II
A Natural Christmas
My Christmas Birds and Trees
Birds of the Southern Winter
My Winter Woods
Woodcock in the Snow
A Winter Home for Wildfowl

Part III
The Hampton Hunt: Whitetail Tales
A Hunt with the Oakland Pack
Steve s Masterpiece
The Lady in Green
That Christmas Eve Stag
That Christmas Buck
All of a Christmas Morning
A Christmas Hunt
Blue s Buck
The Gray Stag of Bowman s Bank
The Surprise of My Life
The Case of the Elmwood Buck
Hunter Come Home

Part IV
The Hampton Hunt: Other Game
A Unique Quail Hunt
Fireworks in the Peafield Corner
Joel s Christmas Turkey
Miss Seduction Struts Her Stuff
My Hunterman

Part V
Christmas Verse
Christmas Eve on the Rapidan (1863)
Christmas Song

Part VI
Feasting at Hampton: The Culinary Aspects of a Low Country Christmas
Drinks and Cordials
Starters
Side Dishes
Breads
Main Dishes
Desserts
Illustrations
Archibald Rutledge frontispiece
Archibald Rutledge with shotgun, 1915
Old Buckshot
Archibald Rutledge, circa 1948
Rutledge with deer antlers
Turkey calls
Archibald and Alice Rutledge
Family gathering at Hampton Plantation
Acknowledgments
Over the course of some three decades involving active study of the life and literary endeavors of Archibald Rutledge, many individuals have helped me or encouraged my efforts. Foremost in their ranks was the late Irvine Rutledge, Old Flintlock s son. Irv was enthusiastic about my plans for a series of anthologies that would once again make some of his father s finest writing readily available to the reading public, and I cherish our extensive exchange of correspondence and the occasion when I met and chatted with Irv and his wife on the steps of Hampton Plantation. Other members of the Rutledge clan, most notably Don Rutledge and Elise Bradford, two of Old Flintlock s grandchildren, have been quite supportive of my work. A few years back they did me a singular honor by asking me to make the acceptance speech for Rutledge s posthumous induction into the South Carolina Academy of Authors.
As always, my wife, Ann, has been my shrewdest critic, sometime typist, proofreader extraordinaire, and helpmate in general. The good folks at the University of South Carolina Press, who have published three previous Rutledge anthologies, have been paragons of patience as I procrastinated in my all too typical fashion. They know how to turn a manuscript into a book, seamlessly making the transition from raw material to a polished finished product, and I have every confidence their past performances will be replicated in the current work.
Although I have now been a recovering professor for a decade and a half, as I originally began accumulating Rutledge information the staff at Winthrop University s Dacus Library was most helpful in obtaining obscure items for me, arranging to procure articles through the wonders of interlibrary loan, and generally doing what fine librarians do while laboring in unappreciated obscurity, making life easier for authors and editors. Similarly Dale Arenz, who has amassed and indexed an incredible holding of outdoor magazines, was of invaluable assistance when it came to obtaining copies of a couple of obscure Rutledge articles.
Finally I would be remiss if I did not thank all those readers who share my enduring pleasure in the works of Archibald Rutledge. He takes all of us down darkening but delightful roads into a world of nature, sport, and life we have largely lost. To those who share my joy in these vicarious experiences and who have evidenced same by buying my previous Rutledge collections, I herewith tender a simple but heartfelt thanks.
A Note on Selection
Unlike my previous Archibald Rutledge anthologies, selection of items for inclusion in the current one has been a relatively simple, straightforward undertaking. The seasonal focus explains this in large measure, but some mention of how the pieces included were located does seem merited.
Rutledge was an incredibly prolific writer, and seldom does a week pass when I do not discover a new story or poem that he wrote. He almost certainly had a few thousand stories published, along with hundreds of poems, in a literary career that spanned portions of eight decades. Many, though by no means all, of these publications subsequently appeared in book form. In fact, with the exception of My Colonel and His Lady and the little inspirational books he wrote, virtually all of Rutledge s full-length works comprised previously published magazine features, essays, short stories, or poems.
The selections included in the present work come from a wide variety of sources, and some of them have been published many times over, not only in Rutledge s own books but in various collections and anthologies. Others have not, at least to my knowledge, seen the printed light of day since their original appearance. Virtually without exception, and this is true even for those selections that were reprinted several times, readers would have to have recourse to out-of-print books, some of them quite rare, or difficult-to-find periodicals were they desirous of reading this material. Indeed that consideration, along with the enduring appeal of Rutledge s work, provides a prime underlying justification for the current book.
As a part of introducing each selection, its previous place or places of publication, insofar as they are known to the editor, are cited. Unlike the quartet of Rutledge anthologies I have previously edited and compiled (in chronological order of appearance, with all but the final work being from the University of South Carolina Press, these are Hunting and Home in the Southern Heartland: The Best of Archibald Rutledge, Tales of Whitetails: Archibald Rutledge s Great Deer Hunting Stories, America s Greatest Game Bird: Archibald Rutledge s Turkey-Hunting Tales, and Bird Dog Days, Wingshooting Ways), the present one contains some poetry. Although I would readily confess that I find his poetry less appealing and less enduring than his prose, in the current instance the subject matter lends itself to inclusion of a few selections of the former genre.
This book differs rather dramatically in one other way. The final section, devoted to culinary matters associated with the Christmas season, contains material that in large measure originates with my wife, Ann, and me. As co-authors of a number of cookbooks, all of which focus on wild game, fish, and nature s bounty, we felt it appropriate to include coverage of one of the highlights of Yuletide at Hampton Plantation-fine and festive fare.
Rutledge frequently mentions the dishes that graced sideboards and the family table during the holidays, and the recipes, food memories, and menus found here make every effort to convey not only the spirit but the gustatory reality of December dining at his beloved home by the Santee River. To that end we have also incorporated recipes that have passed down through generations of folks in the Low Country along with selections from our own cookbooks in an effort to capture culinary memories of a Carolina Christmas.
Introduction
Hampton hunts and wildwood walks are experiences I have shared vicariously with Archibald Rutledge from the days of starry-eyed youth to the present. As a youngster his stories in Field & Stream and Outdoor Life so entranced me that I carefully timed my visits to the barbershop in order to be sure to face a lengthy wait for a barber s chair. That wait ensured ample opportunity to read and savor his latest contributions to the magazines. Many of the finest of those pieces dealt with the Christmas season, and the passage of two generations and appreciably greater familiarity with his work has merely served to reinforce my enchantment with the writings of this squire of the Santee.
That enchantment, along with realization of just how deeply the celebration of Christmas figured in his love of Hampton Plantation, underlies this work. Only after one reads and ponders the dozens of Yuletide stories he wrote does full realization come of his passion for the season s traditions and the way they had long been celebrated at his cherished home by the river.
Hunting was an integral and