A dangerous storm has swept in today, a harsh coda to a two-day chinook that caused us to let our guard down. It puts me in mind of a favorite ballad of mine for the season, “Young Charlotte.”
Young Charlotte lived on the mountainside in a wild and lonely spot
There were no cabins for three miles wide except her father’s cot
And yet on many a winter’s night, young swains would gather there
For her father kept a social board, and she was very fair
Recall of these lines sends me into the storm to the mailbox, wherein I find a package that has come by virtue of online commerce, containing a bizarre little artifact: a Frozen Charlotte. Its story has to do with the ballad ringing in my head, but it goes back farther.
A quick plot summary of the ballad: Young Charlotte is dead set on attending a New Year’s ball twenty miles away, despite the fearful cold and her mother’s warning to wrap up warmly. The carriage ride is miserable, Charlotte falls silent, and on arrival at the ballroom, is found to be frozen stiff. On the surface, this is sort of a cautionary tale, on two counts: listen to your mother, and don’t disregard the dangers of winter.
Tracing the lineage of the ballad, we find it originates with a 1843 poem, “A Corpse Going to a Ball,” by a popular writer from Maine, Seba Smith. He writes of Charlotte’s demise,
He took her hand in his—O God!
’Twas cold and hard as stone!
He tore the mantle from her face;
The cold stars on her shone—
Then quickly to the lighted hall
Her voiceless form he bore—
Young Charlotte was a stiffened corpse,
And word spoke never more.
The poet Smith took inspiration from a New York newspaper report that first appeared 1 January 1840 and spread via newspaper exchange, the story of an un-named girl “up here in the country” who died on the way to a ball, like in the ballad. The story closes, “he spoke to her, but she answered not; she was dead—stone dead—frozen stiff—a corpse on the way to a ball.”
The story has no confirmation or specifics; the poet juices it up; and balladry scooped it into oral tradition. Such a tragic story, people are often uncomfortable with it, or ascribe blame. The first thing to remember, though, is that the story was bogus from the beginning, a fictitious filler of column inches, then grist for a pulp poet.
The second thing to remember is, although some singers treat the ballad seriously, as a morality play, that is not the historic sense of it. The ballad is a farce, a parody, sung by young people at play parties and other places where they could sing it, feign horror, and roll their eyes at the mother’s admonitions.
The proof of such attitudes: the Frozen Charlotte. A little white porcelain or bisque figure (mine is just over an inch long), the frozen Charlotte, which would be baked into a cake as a game and a party favor.
I do not plan to bake my Frozen Charlotte into a cake. I do plan, however, to exhibit it whenever I sing her ballad, to assuage the potential grief of listeners.
