Part 10

TAYLOR, JANE AND ANN--Greedy Dick, and Other Stories in Verse. Stokes, $0.50.

WATTS, DR. ISAAC--London, Houlston. The same publishing house prints volumes by Mrs. Sherwood, Mrs. Cameron, Miss Edgeworth, H. Martineau, the Taylors, etc.

WATTS, DR. ISAAC--Divine and Moral Songs. London, Elkin Mathews, 1s. 6d. net.

FOOTNOTES:

[31] She is the author of a remarkably bold “Manuel du Voyageur” en Six Langues. Paris, Barrois, 1810. Framed to meet every conceivable occasion.

[32] Day was honest in his intentions, however mistaken his policy may have been. Sabrina finally married a Mr. Bicknell, who willingly allowed her to accept support, meagre as it was, from Day.

[33] Mrs. Godwin [Mary Wollstonecraft] (1759–1797) began, as an exercise, to translate “The Elements of Morality, for the Use of Children,” written by the Reverend Christian Gotthilf Salzmann (1744–1811), who won no small renown for the excellence of his school, founded upon the principles set down by Rousseau. “The design of this book,” says the worthy master, “is to give birth to what we call a good disposition in children.” The chief delight of the 1782 edition, published in three volumes, are the copperplates which represent in the most graphic way, by pose, gesture, expression, and caption, all the ills that juvenile flesh is heir to. No one, after having once viewed the poor little figure seated on a most forbidding-looking sofa, can quite resist the pangs of sympathy over his exclamation: “How sad is life without a friend!” Life is indeed a direful wilderness of trials and vexations. The prismatic colors of one’s years shrivel up before such wickedness as is expressed by the picture “I hate you!” And yet how simple is the remedy for a boy’s bad disposition, according to the Reverend Mr. Salzmann! “Teach him,” so the philosopher argues in his preface, “that envy is the vexation which is felt at seeing the happiness of others: you will have given him a just idea of it; but shew him its dreadful effects, in the example of Hannah in chap. 29, vol. II, who was so tormented by this corroding passion, at her sister’s wedding, that she could neither eat, drink, nor sleep, and was so far carried away by it as to embitter her innocent sister’s pleasure; this representation has determined the child’s disposition--he will hate envy.” Elements of Morality ... Translated from the German.... 3d ed. (3 vols.) London, 1782.

[34] Charles Lamb has recorded his vivid impressions of this book in “Witches and Other Night Fears.”

[35] It is interesting to note the longevity of many of the women writers of this period. Both Miss Edgeworth and Mrs. Barbauld died in their eighty-second year, while Miss More reached the ripe age of eighty-eight. Mrs. Trimmer, nearing seventy, was thus comparatively young at the time of her death. A glimpse of Miss More at seventy-nine is left in the reminiscences of the original Peter Parley, who visited her, _circa_ 1823, much as a devout pilgrim would make a special journey. He wrote: “She was small and wasted away. Her attire was of dark-red bombazine, made loose like a dressing-gown. Her eyes were black and penetrating, her face glowing with cheerfulness, through a lace-work of wrinkles. Her head-dress was a modification of the coiffure of her earlier days--the hair being slightly frizzled, and lightly powdered, yet the whole group of moderate dimensions.”

[36] _Vide_ the lay sermon by Samuel McCord Crothers, “The Colonel in the Theological Seminary.”--_Atlantic_, June, 1907. Also Emerson’s essay on “Spiritual Laws.”

[37] _Vide_ Miss Strickland’s “Lives of the Seven Bishops.”

[38] For Jane Taylor, _vide_ “Contributions of Q Q;” “Essays in Rhymes on Morals and Planners.” For Ann Taylor, _vide_ “Hymns for Infant Schools.”

[39] Frederic Harrison, in his “The Choice of Books,” (Macmillan, 1886) writes:

“Poor Lamb has not a little to answer for, in the revived relish for garbage unearthed from old theatrical dung-heaps. Be it just or earnest, I have little patience with the Elia-tic philosophy of the frivolous. Why do we still suffer the traditional hypocrisy about the dignity of literature,--literature I mean, in the gross, which includes about equal parts of what is useful and what is useless? Why are books as books, writers as writers, readers as readers, meritorious, apart from any good in them, or anything that we can get from them?”

[40] The reader is referred to “The Moral Instruction of Children,” by Felix Adler, New York: Appleton, 1892. Besides considering the use to be made of fairy tales, fables, and Bible stories, the author discusses fully the elements in the Odyssey and the Iliad which are valuable adjuncts in moral training.

IV. CONCERNING NOW AND THEN

_Ce que je vois alors dans ce jardin, c’est un petit bonhomme qui, les mains dans les poches et sa gibecière au dos, s’en va au collège en sautillant comme un moineau. Ma pensée seule le voit; car ce petit bonhomme est une ombre; c’est l’ombre du_ moi _que j’étais il y a vingt-cinq ans. Vraiment, il m’intéresse, ce petit: quand il existait, je ne me souciais guère de lui; mais, maintenant qu’il n’est plus, je l’aime bien. Il valait mieux, en somme, que les autres_ moi _que j’ai eus après avoir perdu celui-là. Il était bien étourdi; mais il n’était pas méchant et je dois lui; rendre cette justice qu’il ne m’a pas laissé un seul mauvais souvenir; c’est un innocent que j’ai perdu: il est bien naturel que je le regrette; il est bien naturel que je le voie en pensée et que mon esprit s’amuse à ranimer son souvenir.... Tout ce qu’il voyait alors, je le vois aujourd’hui. C’est le même ciel et la méme terre; les choses ont leur âme d’autrefois, leur âme qui m’égaye et m’attriste, et me trouble; lui seul n’est plus._--_Anatole France_, in “Le Livre de mon Ami.”

“_I prefer the little girls and boys ... that come as you call them, fair or dark, in green ribbons or blue. I like making cowslip fields grow and apple-trees bloom at a moment’s notice. That is what it is, you see, to have gone through life with an enchanted land ever beside you...._”--_Kate Greenaway to Ruskin._

I. THE ENGLISH SIDE.

Whatever change in children’s literature was now to take place was due entirely to the increasing importance of elementary education. A long while was to elapse before the author was wholly freed from the idea that situations could be dealt with, apart from any overbearing _morale_, and even then he found himself constrained to meet the problem of giving information--of teaching instead of preaching.

The interest in external nature, the desire to explain phenomena according to the dictates of belief, infused a new element into authorship for young people. But those writers brought to meet this latent stirring of the scientific spirit all the harness of the old régime. First they thought that they could explain the evident by parables, but they found that fact was too particular for generalisations, and the child mind too immature for such symbol. Then they attempted to define natural objects from a childish plane, making silly statements take the place of truth. They soon became aware that their simple style had to deal with a set of details that could not be sentimentalised.

The truth of the matter is that a new impulse was started; the national spirit began to move toward a more democratic goal; the rank and file began to look beyond the narrow hill and dale; women sought wider spheres; the poor demanded constitutional rights; energy began to stir from underneath. The word _modern_ was in every one’s mind. The old order changeth, giving place to new. The child’s intellect must be furnished with food for its growth; Rousseau’s doctrine of “back to nature” was found not to have worked; it was realised that special training must begin early for all the walks of life. Carlyle was pleading for a _public_ library, education was widening its sphere.

In the preceding pages, we have tried to establish a continuous line of development in children’s books through several centuries; upon such a foundation the English story and the American story of to-day are based. The table of English writers on page 147 contains names of minor importance, but still forming a part of the past history--foreshadowers of the new era. For therein you will discover that juvenile literature first begins to show signs of differing from adult literature only in its power; that where Macaulay tells the story of England in terms of maturity, Miss Strickland, Lady Callcott, Miss Tytler, and Miss Yonge adopt a descending scale. Where children were wont to act in accord with the catechism, they are now made to feel an interest in their surroundings. Mrs. Marcet writes for them “talks” on chemistry and political economy, Mrs. Wakefield on botany and insects. The extension of schools meant that literature must be supplied those schools; writers were encouraged in the same way that Miss More was prompted to produce her “Repository Tracts.” Grammars and histories began to flood the market, and in the wake of Scott’s novels, taking into consideration the fact that books were being written for the purpose of information, the child’s historical story was a natural consequence. Thus we discover the connection between “Waverley” and Henty. The death-blow to fairy tales in England, brought about by the didactic writers, resulted in a deplorable lack of imaginative literature for children, until a German influence, around 1840–1850, began to take effect, and the Grimms’ Household Tales afforded a new impulse.[41] Mrs. Gatty, author of the famous “Parables of Nature,” deigned to rejoice over the classic nonsense of Lewis Carroll. The line of descent can be drawn from Perrault to Grimm, from Grimm to Andrew Lang’s rainbow series of folk-lore.

The table is intended to do no more than indicate the gradual manner in which this break took effect. The student who would treat the evolution fully will find it necessary to place side by side with his discussion of individual books for young people, a full explanation of those social changes in English history which are the chief causes of the changes in English literature. Children’s books are subject to just those modifications which take place in the beliefs, the knowledge, and the aspirations of the adult person. The difference between the two is one of intensity and not of kind. The student will discover, after a study of the development of the common school, how and why the educational impulse dominated over all elements of pure imagination; how the retelling craze, given a large literary sanction by such a writer as Lamb, and so excellently upheld by Charles Kingsley, lost caste when brought within compass of the text-book. He will finally see how this educational pest has overrun America to a far greater extent than England, to the detriment of much that is worthy and of much which should by rights be made to constitute a children’s reading heritage.

ENGLISH TABLE

MRS. PRISCILLA WAKEFIELD. 1751–1832. Member of Society of Friends; philanthropic work among the poor. Author: Juvenile Anecdotes; Juvenile Travellers; Conversations; Introduction to Botany; Introduction to Insects; Present Condition of Female Sex, with Suggestions for Its Improvement; Life of William Penn. Reference: D. N. B.[42]

FRANCES BURNEY (MADAME D’ARBLAY). 1752–1840. Reference: D. N. B.

WILLIAM FORDYCE MAVOR. 1758–1837. Ed. 1799, juvenile periodical for Walker, Newbery. Reference: D. N. B.

JOANNA BAILLIE. 1762–1851. Work among the poor made her known as Lady Bountiful. Reference: D. N. B.

JEREMIAH JOYCE. 1763–1816. Author: Lectures on the Microscope.

MRS. JANE MARCET. 1769–1858. Macaulay wrote: “Every girl who has read Mrs. Marcet’s little dialogues on political economy could teach Montague or Walpole many fine lessons in finance.” Author: Scientific text-books; Conversations on Chemistry intended for the Female Sex; Conversations on Political Economy, imitated by Harriet Martineau in her Illustrations of Political Economy. Reference: D. N. B.

MRS. BARBARA HOFLAND. 1770–1844. Imitated the Edgeworth style. Author: Emily; The Son of a Genius; Tales of a Manor; Young Crusoe. Reference: D. N. B.

MRS. MARY MARTHA SHERWOOD. 1775–1851. Stories and tracts evangelical in tone. With her sister, Mrs. Cameron, invented a type of story for rich and for poor. Author: The Fairchild Family (intended for the middle classes); Little Henry and His Bearer. Reference: _New Review_ (May 18, 1843); Life of Mrs. Sherwood by her daughter; D. N. B. An edition of The Fairchild Family, New York, Stokes, $1.50.

JANE PORTER. 1776–1850. Reference: D. N. B.

MARIA HACK. 1778–1844. Quaker parentage. A believer in the “walk” species of literature. Author: Winter Evenings, or Tales of Travellers; First Lessons in English Grammar; Harry Beaufoy, or the Pupil of Nature. Reference: D. N. B.

MRS. ELIZABETH PENROSE. 1780–1837. Pseud. Mrs. Markham. Daughter of a rector. One critic wrote: “Mrs. Penrose adapted her history to what she considered the needs of the young, and omitted scenes of cruelty and fraud, as hurtful to children, and party politics after the Revolution as too complicated for them to learn.” Author: Began school histories in 1823; these were brought up to date afterward by Mary Howitt. Moral Tales and Sermons for Children. Reference: D. N. B.

JOHN WILSON CROKER. 1780–1857. One of the founders of the _Quarterly Review_; reviewed abusively Keats’s Endymion. Author: Stories from the History of England, 1817, which supplied Scott with the idea for his Tales of a Grandfather; Irish Tales. Reference: Jenning’s Diaries and Correspondence of Croker (London, 1884); Internat. Encyclo.

LADY MARIA CALLCOTT. 1785–1842. Author: Little Arthur’s History of England. Reference: D. N. B.

MARY RUSSELL MITFORD. 1787–1855. Careful detail of description, akin to Dutch style of painting. Author: Tragedies; Village Stories; Juvenile Spectator. She was among the first women to adopt writing as a profession. Miss Yonge speaks of her “writing so deliciously of children,” but she “could not write for them.” Reference: D. N. B.; Recollections; Letters.

AGNES STRICKLAND. 1796–1874. “With the exception of Jane Porter, whom she visited at Bristol, and with whom she carried on a frequent correspondence, and a casual meeting with Macaulay, whom she found congenial, she came little in contact with the authors of the day.” Author: Lives of the Queens of England; Two Rival Crusoes. [Note the hybrid type of story that sprung up around the real Robinson Crusoe.] Edited Fisher’s Juvenile Scrap Book, 1837–1839. Reference: D. N. B.

MRS. MAY SEWELL. 1797–1884. Left Society of Friends for the Church of England. Wrote homely ballads. _Vide_ daughter, Anna Sewell. Author: Her ballad, Mother’s Last Words, circulated about 1,088,000 copies when it first appeared. Reference: Mod. Biog.

MARY HOWITT. 1799–1888. Authorship linked with that of her husband. In 1837 began writing children’s stories and poems. Her daughter, Anna Mary, also was a writer of children’s books. Author: Translator of Fredrika Bremer’s novels; editor, Fisher’s Drawingroom Scrap Book. Reference: Reminiscences of My Later Life (_Good Words_, 1886); D. N. B.

CATHERINE SINCLAIR. 1800–1864. Fourth daughter of Sir John Sinclair. Her work considered the beginning of the modern spirit. A friend of Scott. Author: Holiday House; Modern Accomplishment; Modern Society; Modern Flirtations. Reference: A Brief Tribute to C. S. (Pamphlet); D. N. B.

G. P. R. JAMES. 1801–1860. Influenced by Scott and encouraged by Irving. Thackeray parodied him in Barbazure, by G. P. R. Jeames, Esq., in Novels by Eminent Hands; also in Book of Snobs (chaps. ii and xvi). Author of a long list of novels.

HARRIET MARTINEAU. 1802–1876. Reference: D. N. B.

MRS. MARGARET SCOTT GATTY. 1809–1873. She was forty-two before she began to publish. _Vide_ Ewing. Author: Aunt Judy Tales; Parables of Nature; 1866--_Aunt Judy Magazine_ (monthly), continued after her death, with her daughter as editor; stopped in 1885. Reference: Life in ed. Parables (Everyman’s Library); _Illustrated London News_, Oct. 18, 1873; _Athenæum_, Oct. 11, 1873, p. 464; D. N. B.

ANNA SEWELL. 1820–1878. Author: Black Beauty (1877). Reference: D. N. B.

CHARLOTTE M. YONGE. 1823-. Author: Heir of Redclyffe; The Kings of England; The Chaplet of Pearls.

MRS. MARY LOUISA WHATELEY. 1824–1889. Went to Cairo and lived from 1861–1889, where she had a Moslem school. Wrote chiefly about Egypt. Fairy tale influence. Author: Reverses; or, the Fairfax Family. Reference: Hays’ Women of To-day; London _Times_ (March 12, 1889).

MRS. DINAH MARIA MULOCK CRAIK. 1826–1887. Pseudo-fairy tale writer. Author: Adventures of a Brownie, etc.

JULIANA HORATIO EWING. 1841–1885. Reference: J. H. Ewing and Her Books, by Horatia K. T. Gatty; D. N. B.

ANN FRASER TYTLER. Daughter of Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselel. Author: Leila on the Island; Leila in England; Leila at Home.

II. THE AMERICAN SIDE.

As for the American phase of the subject, we have already indicated three stages by which the Colonial or Revolutionary reader was given his “New England Primer,” his “Mother Goose,” and his Thomas books obtained directly from Newbery of England. The whole intellectual activity was in the hands of the clergy; even the governing body pretended to be God-fearing men, and were prone to listen to the dictates of the ministry. The austere demands of the Puritan Sunday, more than anything else, caused the writing of religious books, and so firm a hold did the Sabbath _genre_ of literature take, that, in 1870, it was still in full sway, and even now exists to a limited extent. The history of education in America for a long while has to do with denominational schools, and teaching was largely left in the hands of the clergy. So that we shall find our early writer of “juveniles” either a man of the church, or his wife; prompted solely by the desire to supply that character of story which would fitly harmonise with the sanctity of Sunday, rather than with the true excellence of all days. If, in the school, a book was needed, it was far better to write one than to trust to others for what might turn out to be heretical.[43] The Rev. Jedidiah Morse began his literary career in the capacity of teacher; Noah Webster’s idea was at first to prepare a treatise on grammar which could be used in the schools. These two were the most scientific thinkers of their period. The list on page 158, indicating but a few of the forgotten and only faintly remembered authors of early days, fairly well represents the general trend; in the writing done, there were the same morals, the similar luckless children, subject to the same thin sentiment of piety and rectitude as we discovered holding sway in England for nearly two centuries. The name of Peter Parley is no longer familiar to children, and a crusade is fast being formed against the Jacob Abbott class of book. The type of writer was the kind that debated for or against slavery in terms of the Bible. The Puritan soil was rich for the rapid growth of the Hannah More seed, and no one assisted in sowing it to greater extent than Samuel G. Goodrich (1793–1860). He may symbolise for us the reading child in New England at the beginning of the nineteenth century; his training, his daily pursuits, as told in his autobiography, supply pages of invaluable social colour.[44]

“It is difficult,” so he says, “... in this era of literary affluence, almost amounting to surfeit, to conceive of the poverty of books suited to children in the days of which I write. Except the New England Primer--the main contents of which were the Westminster Catechism--and some rhymes, embellished with hideous cuts of Adam’s Fall, in which ‘we sinned all’; the apostle and a cock crowing at his side, to show that ‘Peter denies his Lord and cries’; Nebuchadnezzar crawling about like a hog, the bristles sticking out of his back, and the like--I remember none that were in general use among my companions. When I was about ten years old, my father brought from Hartford ‘Gaffer Ginger,’ ‘Goody Two Shoes,’ and some of the rhymes and jingles now collected under the name of ‘Mother Goose,’ with perhaps a few other toy books of that day. These were a revelation. Of course I read them, but I must add, with no relish.”

The confession follows that when he was given “Red Riding Hood,” he was filled with contempt; and in this spirit he condemns such nonsense as “hie diddle diddle,” which is not fit for Christian parents to use. He found some considerable pleasure in “Robinson Crusoe,” but it was not until he met with Miss Hannah More’s tracts that he might be said to have enjoyed with relish any book at all.

Thus his reading tastes foreshadowed his literary activity. When he turned writer, he aimed for the style which distinguishes Mary Howitt, Mrs. Hofland, and Miss Strickland; he disclaimed any interest in the nursery book that was unreasonable and untruthful, for so he considered most of the stories of fancy. In his books, his desire was chiefly “to feed the young mind upon things wholesome and pure, instead of things monstrous, false, and pestilent.... In short, that the element of nursery books should consist of beauty instead of deformity, goodness instead of wickedness, decency instead of vulgarity.” In this manner, the mould of the Peter Parley tales was shaped. Goodrich at first adopted no philosophy of construction, so he says; he aimed to tell his story as he would have spoken it to a group of boys. But after a while, a strong sense of the child’s gradual growth took hold of him; he recognised psychological stages, and he saw that, as in teaching, his books must consider that children’s “first ideas are simple and single, and formed of images of things palpable to the senses.”

While on a visit to England in 1823--the memorable time he met Miss More--he turned his attention to what was being accomplished there in popular education for children. After investigation, he thus wrote:

“Did not children love truth? If so, was it necessary to feed them on fiction? Could not history, natural history, geography, biography become the elements of juvenile works, in place of fairies and giants, and mere monsters of the imagination? These were the inquiries that from this time filled my mind.”

Under such conditions Peter Parley was born, and reborn, and overborn; battles were waged for and against him, just as they have only recently been waged for and against the Elsie books. But no sooner was Peter Parley identified with a definite person than Mr. Goodrich’s trials began. He became a victim of the imperfect copyright system; he found his tales being pirated in England. And as fast as he would settle one difficulty, another would arise; spurious Parleys came to light, conflicting with his sales. It was the case of Goodrich _alias_ Kettell, _alias_ Mogridge, _alias_ Martin, and many more beside. In fact, a writer, considering the life of William Martin (1801–1867), quotes a statement to the effect that “Messrs. Darton, Martin’s publishers, in especial used to prefix the name [Peter Parley] to all sorts of children’s books, without reference to their actual authorship.”