Mermaid House
Lebanon, Illinois

By Ryan Byrnes

For someone who only ever lived in Midwestern suburbs, I rarely encountered anything pre-dating World War II. Mine was a world of strip malls and gas stations and Arby’s drive-throughs (the quintessential post-church activity). But as a second grader, after packing into the minivan with my siblings for a thirty-minute haul to nearby Lebanon, I could travel two centuries into the past. It felt like what the Celtics used to call “thin places,” where the boundaries between the ordinary and the magical meet.

You see, Lebanon is a small but historic town. With just under 5,000 people, it boasts the oldest university in Illinois and a preserved nineteenth-century main street complete with verandas and gothic windows and four blocks of red brick-paved streets. There, I first saw the Mermaid House.

According to the Lebanon Historic Society, in 1830, retired sea captain Lyman Adams built the Mermaid House, which he named after his professed belief in mermaids. A squat two-story house of hand-sawed oak, it is the ideal rustic prairie home.

Charles Dickens spent a night at the Mermaid House during his tour of North America from January to June 1842, when he traveled by steamboats, railroads, and wagons to speak at major American cities. During his visit to St. Louis, he made a quick excursion to the prairie country in Lebanon. He praised the inn in his travelogue American Notes for General Circulation, writing, “In point of cleanliness and comfort it would have suffered by no comparison with any English alehouse, of a homely kind.” Unfortunately, the nearby prairie did not leave such a lofty impression on him. He described the landscape as “oppressive in its barren monotony” and “scarcely one … to remember with much pleasure.”

Given the historic buildings and the town’s connection to Dickens, the main street took on a Victorian character in the local imagination, so it was only fitting that every holiday season the town put on a Victorian Christmas parade referencing Dickens’ most famous story, A Christmas Carol. Local high school drama clubs would sing carols in period costumes. Shopkeepers would decorate their facades with wreaths. As darkness fell, the town would ceremoniously switch on the Christmas lights, turning the whole street to gold.

One such Christmas, when I was a senior in high school, I took my then-girlfriend to the parade. We rode in a horsedrawn carriage, then I insisted on lining up to see Santa along with the local five-year-olds. In a shed behind the antique store, Santa would sit on his throne, and parents would take their kids to sit on his lap, say what they wanted for Christmas, and snap a photo.

At age eighteen, emboldened by my embryonic frontal lobe, the idea struck me that it would be really funny to get a picture sitting in Santa’s lap, so I dragged my unenthusiastic girlfriend with me. Dickens would have been proud. After waiting in line I finally reached the Big Man’s throne, and we ended up getting a portrait with Santa — me sitting on his knee and my then-girlfriend standing in the background looking like she was about to yell “Bah humbug!” (We did not stay together long.)

After seeing Santa, we walked to the Mermaid House, which the Lebanon Historic Society had preserved and furnished with donated period-pieces like chairs and dressers. Members of the historic society gave a guided tour, recounting the events of Dickens’ stay.

I had read Dickens in school — A Christmas Carol in seventh grade and A Tale of Two Cities in tenth grade — and I always regarded him as so high above me in skill and fame, from another plane of existence. But when I stood in his bedroom just as he would have seen it, I felt connected, as if I might turn around and see Dickens hovering like the Ghost of Christmas Past. At that moment, I came to understand that the Mermaid House is one of those thin places straddling the border between this world and the otherworld, where if you listened carefully, the indelible whispers of the spirits occasionally broke through.

Ryan Byrnes is a book editor in the New York City publishing industry and the author of two books: Royal Beauty Bright and My Dear Antonio. Readers can also find his work in LitHub, Fine Books and Collections, December, National Catholic Reporter, and more. He also contributes to the show The Saints on Relevant Radio. Follow him on Instagram at @ryan.byrnes.writes.

Photo by Edward Moore, 1935. Courtesy of Library of Congress, HABS ILL,82-LEBA,2.

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