Part 5
CHAP-BOOK = f. _chap_ in Chapman + Book. A modern name applied by book collectors and others to specimens of the popular literature which was formerly circulated by itinerant dealers or chapmen, consisting chiefly of small pamphlets of popular tales, etc. 1824 DIBDIN _Libr. Comp._ It is a chap-book, printed in rather neat black letter. 1882 J. ASHTON _Chap-books, 18th Century_ in _Athenæum_ 2 Sept. 302/1. A great mass of chap-books.
CHAPMAN = [OE. Céapmann = OHG. Choufman (OHG., MHG. Koufman), Ger. Kaufmann.] A man whose business is buying and selling; a merchant, trader, dealer. _Vide_ 890 K. ÆLFRED _Bæda_. _Vide_ further, A New English Dictionary. Murray, Oxford.
[19] “The History of Tom Hickathrift” is regarded as distinctively English; its literary qualities were likened by Thackeray to Fielding. _Vide_ _Fraser’s Magazine._
[20] The notice ran as follows: “Advertisement: There is now in the Press, and will suddenly be extant, a Second Impression of _The New England Primer_, _enlarged_, to which is added, more _Directions for Spelling_; the _Prayer of K. Edward the 6th_, and _Verses made by Mr. Rogers, the Martyr, left as a Legacy to his Children_. _Sold by Benjamin Harris_, at the _London Coffee-House_ in _Boston_.”
[21] Three typical examples of later reprints are: The N. E. Primer, Walpole, N. H., I. Thomas & Co., 1814; The N. E. Primer Improved for the More Easy Attaining the True Reading of English. To which is added The Assembly of Divines and Episcopal Catechisms. N. Y., 1815; The N. E. Primer, or an Easy and Pleasant Guide to the Art of Reading, Mass. Sabbath School Soc., 1841.
[22] Another writer of _Contes des fées_ was Mme. Jeanne Marie Le Prince de Beaumont (1711–1780), author of “Magasins des Enfans, des Adolescens et des Dames.”
[23] The Original Mother Goose’s Melody, as first issued by John Newbery, of London, about A.D. 1760. Reproduced in _facsimile_ from the edition as reprinted by Isaiah Thomas, of Worcester, Mass., about A.D. 1785. With Introductory Notes by William H. Whitmore. Albany, Munsell, 1889. [_Vide_ N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Regist., 1873, pp. 144, 311; Proceed. Am. Antiq. Soc., Oct., 1888, p. 406.]
[24] Lang says the term _Mother Goose_ appears in Loret’s “La Muse Historique” (Lettre v., 11 Juin, 1650). _Vide_ also Deulin, Charles--Les Contes de Ma Mère L’Oye, avant Perrault. Paris, 1878; and Halliwell, J. O.--Percy Society.
[25] He was the author also of a “History of Animated Nature.”
[26] A list of his publications is owned by the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
[27] _Vide_ _Notes and Queries_, June, 1875, 5th series, iii, 441. Prof. Edward F. Rimbault.
[28] _Gentleman’s Magazine_, 1826, Pt. ii, 467–69.
[29] Nurse Truelove’s New Year’s Gift; or, the Book of Books for Children. Adorned with Cuts; and designed for a Present to every little Boy who would become a great Man, and ride upon a fine Horse; and to every little Girl, who would become a great Woman, and ride in a Governour’s Gilt Coach.
[30] An interesting field of investigation: Early New England Printers. Mr. Welsh mentions a few in article referred to, p.60. A full list of Printers and Publishers (North and South) given in Evans’s American Bibliography.
III. THE OLD-FASHIONED LIBRARY
_A child should not need to choose between right and wrong. It should not be capable of wrong; it should not conceive of wrong. Obedient, as bark to helm, not by sudden strain or effort, but in the freedom of its bright course of constant life; true, with an undistinguished, painless, unboastful truth, in a crystalline household world of truth; gentle, through daily entreatings of gentleness, and honourable trusts, and pretty prides of child-fellowship in offices of good; strong, not in bitter and doubtful contest with temptation, but in peace of heart, and armour of habitual right, from which temptation falls like thawing hail; self-commanding, not in sick restraint of mean appetites and covetous thoughts, but in vital joy of unluxurious life, and contentment in narrow possession, wisely esteemed.--John Ruskin, in an introduction to Grimm’s_ “German Popular Tales,” _illustrated by Cruikshank_.
I. THE ROUSSEAU IMPETUS.
Mr. E. V. Lucas has compiled two volumes of old-fashioned tales for modern readers. In his introductions he analyses the qualities of his selected stories, and it is generally the case that, except for incidental detail, what is said of one of a kind might just as appropriately be meant for the other. If, at moments, the editor is prone to confuse quaintness with interest, he makes full amends by the quick humour with which he deals with the moral purpose. Perhaps it was part of the game for our great-grandfathers to expect didacticism, but simply because children were then considered “the immature young of men” is no excuse, although it may be a reason, for the artificiality which subserved play to contemplation. Wherever he can escape the bonds of primness, Mr. Lucas never fails to take advantage; the character of his selections indicates this as well as such critical remarks as the following:
“The way toward a nice appreciation of the child’s own peculiar characteristics was, however, being sought by at least two writers of the eighteenth century, each of whom was before his time: Henry Brooke, who in ‘The Fool of Quality’ first drew a small boy with a sense of fun, and William Blake, who was the first to see how exquisitely worth study a child’s mind may be.”
Mr. Lucas brings together a number of stories by different persons, treating them as a group. Should you read them you will have a fairly distinct conception of early nineteenth century writing for children. But there is yet another way of approaching the subject, and that is by tracing influence from writer to writer, from group to group; by seeking for the _impetus_ without which the story becomes even more of a husk than ever.
Let us conjure up the long row of theoretical children of a bygone age, painfully pathetic in their staidness, closely imprisoned. They began with Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), the iconoclast, who attacked civil society, the family, the state, the church, and from whose pen the school did not escape chastisement. His universal cry of “back to nature” frightened the conservative; even Voltaire could not refrain, on reading the essay dealing with the origin of inequality among men, to write him: “Never has any one employed so much genius to make us into beasts. When one reads your book he is seized at once with a desire to go down on all-fours.”
Rousseau’s “Émile, or Treatise on Education” (1762) was wholly revolutionary; it tore down ancient theories, such as those practised by Dr. Isaac Watts upon his “ideal” boy and girl; all existent educational strictures were ignored. Rousseau applied to childhood his belief in the free unfolding of man’s nature; however impracticable his methods, he loosed the chains that held fast the claims of childhood, and recognised their existence. He set the pendulum swinging in the human direction; he turned men’s minds upon the study of the child as a child, and, because of this, takes his place at the head of modern education. He opened the way for a self-conscious striving on the part of authors to meet the demands of a child’s nature, by furnishing the best literary diet--according to educational theories--for juvenile minds. Revolutionary in religious as well as in political and social ideals, Rousseau’s educational machinery was destined to be infused, by some of his zealous followers, with a piousness which he never would have sanctioned.
Training should be natural, says Rousseau; the child should discover beauty, not be told about it; should recognise spontaneously what he is now taught. Education should be progressive; at the same time it should be negative. This sounds contradictory, but Rousseau would keep his child a child until the age of twelve; he would prevent him from knowing through any mental effort; he would have him grow like “Topsy” in animal spirits, his mind unbridled and imbibing facts as his lungs breathe in air. Yet inconsistency is evident from the outset: the child must observe, at the same time he must not remember. Is it possible, as Professor Payne challenges, to form the mind before furnishing it?
Rousseau’s precepts are wise and brilliant. We hear him exclaiming: “It is less consequence to prevent him [the child] from dying than to teach him how to live;” “The man who has lived most is not he who has numbered the most years, but he who has had the keenest sense of life;” “The best bed is that which brings us the best sleep.” These aphorisms are as apt as those of Franklin; but in their exercise it is necessary to consider the concomitants brought into play.
Émile is made an orphan; thus Rousseau gives himself full sway; thus does he free himself from the necessity of constant consultation with parents. He is determined to love the boy, to encourage him in his sports, to develop his amiable instincts, his natural self. Émile must not cry for the sweets of life; he must have a need for all things rather than a joyful desire for some. Instead of teaching virtue to him, Rousseau will try to shield him from a knowledge of all vice. Where Plato recommends certain pastimes, he will train Émile to delight in himself--thus making of him something of a youthful egoist. This amœba state, endowed with all physical liberty, deprived of all dignity of childish memory, is to be the boyhood of Émile. He “shall never learn anything by heart, not even fables and not even those of La Fontaine, artless and charming as they are.” Though he does not possess the judgment to discriminate, he must be told the bare facts, and he must discover for himself the relations which these facts bear to each other. At the age of twelve, he shall hardly know a book when he sees it. Rousseau calls books “cheerless furniture.”
So much for the boy; the girl Sophie fares as ill. Being of the woman kind as well as of the child brand, she is to develop in even a more colourless fashion. Fortunately all theory is not human actuality, and Émile must have peopled his world in a way Rousseau could not prevent. We are given natural rights and hereditary endowments; even the savage has his standards and his dreams. Rousseau’s plan of existence ignored the social evolution of history. Yet Émile might by such training have been saved many wearisome explanations of the Mr. Barlow type, and it is ofttimes true, as Mr. G. K. Chesterton claims, that the mysteries of God are frequently more understandable than the solutions of man.
There was much in Rousseau’s book to rouse opposition; there was equally as much to appeal to those whose instinctive love of childhood was simply awaiting the flood gates to be opened. Like the Grimm fairy tales of suspended animation, on the instant, the paternal instinct began to be active, the maternal instinct to be motherly. Rousseau--emended, modified, accentuated--overran England, France, and Germany. Children were now recognised as children; it remained to be seen whether they _were_ to be children.
The didactic era is in no way more fitly introduced than with the names of Madame de Genlis and Arnaud Berquin in France, together with the Edgeworth and Aikin families and Thomas Day in England. To each, small space may be allotted, but they are worthy of full and separate consideration.
Stéphanie Félicité [Ducrest de St. Aubin], Comtesse de Genlis (1746–1830), is represented upon the library shelves by nearly a hundred volumes. They were written during the course of a varied existence, at the court of Louis XV and at home. Her _Mémoires_ are told in a facile and delightful style, and indicate how she so thoroughly balanced the many conflicting elements in her duties that she remains for those days a rare example of wife, mother, society woman, and student. Her discernment of people, as revealed in these pages, was penetrating and on the whole just; and, though a typical product of her time, her nature was chastened by a refined and noble spirit.
The first glimpse she affords of herself is as a child of six, when she was taken to Paris. There, her brother was placed at a seat of learning, where the master guaranteed within six weeks’ time to teach him reading and spelling by means of a system of counters. The little girl’s teeth were shedding--not a prepossessing phase of growth at best. But, in addition, she was encased in whalebone stays, her feet were squeezed into tight shoes, her curls done up in corkscrew papers, and she was forced to wear goggles. The height of cruelty now followed. Country-bred as she had been, her manner was not in accord with the best ideas; her awkwardness was a matter of some concern. In order to give better poise to her head, a thick iron collar was clapped upon her supple throat. Here she was then, ready for regular lessons in walking. To run was to court disfavour, for little girls, especially city ones, were not allowed to do such an improper thing; to leap was an unspeakable crime; and to ask questions was an unwarranted license. It is small wonder that later on she should utilise the memory of such abject slavery in “The Dove,” one of the numerous plays included in her “Theatre of Education.”
Her early years thus prepared Madame de Genlis for the willing acceptance of any new educational system, especially one which would advocate a constant companionship between parents and child. For she had been reared with but exceptional glimpses of her father and mother; during one of these times she relates how the former, in his desire to make her brave, forced her to catch spiders in her hands. Such a picture is worthy a place by the side of Little Miss Muffet.
Like all children, Madame de Genlis was superior to her limited pleasures; she possessed an imagination which expanded and placed her in a heroic world of her own making. There is peculiar pleasure in discovering under narrow circumstances the good, healthy spirit of youth. Madame de Genlis seemed proud to record a certain dare-devil rebellion in herself during this period. The pendulum that is made to swing to its unnatural bent brings with the downward stroke unexpected consequences. And so, when she married De Genlis, it is no surprise to read that she did so secretly--a union which is most charmingly traced in the Memoirs.
She developed into a woman with deep religious sensibility; with forceful personality; with artistic talent, well exemplified by a masterly execution on the harp. Living in an atmosphere of court fêtes, the drama occupied no small part in her daily life. Whether at her Château Genlis or elsewhere, she was ever ready for her rôle in theatricals, as dramatist or as actress. She played in Molière, and was accounted excellent in her characters; naught pleased her better than a disguise; beneath it her vivacity always disported itself.
Her interest in teaching began early; no sooner was she a mother than she hastened to fix her opinions as to the duties that lay before her, in a written treatise called “Reflections of a Mother Twenty Years of Age,” views which in their first form were lost, but which were rehabilitated in the later “Adèle et Théodore,” consisting of a series of letters on education.
After her mind had been drawn to the style of Buffon--for Madame de Genlis was a widely read woman--she determined upon improving her own manner of literary expression. She burned her bridges behind her, and fed the flames with all of her early manuscripts. Then she started over again to reconstruct her views, and in her study she made careful notes of what she fancied of importance for her future use. She was on intimate terms with Rousseau, took him to the theatre, and conversed with him on education chiefly, and about diverse matters generally. If she did not agree with him, Madame de Genlis was told that she had not as yet reached the years of discretion when she would find his writings suited to her. But Rousseau enjoyed the vivacious lady, who was kind-hearted and worth while talking to, notwithstanding the fact that she had the courtier’s love of banter. She writes:
“Not to appear better than I am, I must admit that I have often been given to ridicule others, but I have never ridiculed anything but arrogance, folly, and pedantry.”
Madame de Genlis was not a hero-worshipper; on first meeting Rousseau, his coat, his maroon-coloured stockings, his round wig suggested comedy to her, rather than gravity. We wonder whether she asked his advice regarding the use of pictures in teaching history, a theory which she originated and which Mrs. Trimmer was to follow in her Bible lessons. Full as the days were, Madame de Genlis, nevertheless, seems to have been able to give to her children every care and attention. This must have won the unstinted commendation of Rousseau, who preached that a boy’s tutor should be his father, and not a hired person.
Madame de Genlis created her own theatre; she wrote little comedies of all kinds, which met with great success. Often these would be presented in the open air, upon platforms erected beneath the shade of forest trees; by means of the drama she sought to teach her daughters elementary lessons of life; the stage to her was an educational force. Through the plays her popularity and reputation increased to such an extent, that the Electress of Saxony demanded her friendship. She became instructress to the children of the Duke and Duchess of Chartres, and she prided herself upon being the first in France to adopt the foreign method of teaching language by conversation.[31] The rooms for her royal pupils were fitted according to her special indications. Rough sketches were made upon a wall of blue, representing medals, busts of kings and emperors of Rome. Dates and names were frescoed within easy view. Every object was utilised, even to the fire screens, which were made to represent the kings of France; and over the balustrades were flung maps, like banners upon the outer walls.
Up and down such staircases, and through such rooms wandered the cultivated flowers of royalty. They did not suffer, because their teacher was luckily human as well as theoretical; because she had a vein of humour as well as a large seriousness. Her whole educational scheme is described in her “Lessons of a Governess” and “Adèle et Théodore.” When she engaged a tutor to attend to the special studies of the young prince in her charge, she suggested the keeping of an hourly journal which would record the little fellow’s doings--each night she, herself, to write critical comments upon the margins of every page. In addition, she kept a faithful record of everything coming within her own observation; and this she read aloud each day to her pupils, who had to sign their names to the entries. But much to the chagrin of Madame de Genlis, the Duke and Duchess refused to take the time to read the voluminous manuscripts; they trusted to the wisdom and discretion of the teacher.
Not a moment was lost during these busy periods; history was played in the garden, and civic processions were given with ponies gaily caparisoned. Even a real theatre was built for them. Royalty was taught to weave, and was taken on instructive walks and on visits to instructive places. But, through all this artificiality, the woman in Madame de Genlis saved the teacher.
The latter part of her eventful life was filled with vexations, for the thunders of the French Revolution rolled about her. A short while before the storm broke, she went on a visit to England, where she came in contact with Fox and Sheridan, with Walpole and Reynolds; and where she paid a special visit to the House of Commons and was a guest at Windsor.
All told, here was a writer for children, self-conscious and yet ofttimes spontaneous in her style. She is interesting because of herself, and in spite of many of her literary attempts. She is little read to-day, in fact rarely mentioned among juvenile book lists; education killed a keen perception and vivacity by forcing them along prescribed lines. One glimpse of Madame de Genlis in old age is recorded by Maria Edgeworth, who called on her in 1803.
“She came forward, and we made our way towards her as well as we could, through a confusion of tables, chairs, and work-baskets, china, writing-desks and inkstands, and bird-cages and a harp.... She looked like the full-length picture of my great-great-grandmother Edgeworth you may have seen in the garret, very thin and melancholy, but her face not so handsome as my great-grandmother’s; dark eyes, long sallow cheeks, compressed, thin lips, two or three black ringlets on a high forehead, a cap that Mrs. Grier might wear,--altogether an appearance of fallen fortunes, worn-out health, and excessive but guarded irritability. To me there was nothing of that engaging, captivating manner which I had been taught to expect by many even of her enemies; she seemed to me to be alive only to literary quarrels and jealousies; the muscles of her face as she spoke, or as my father spoke to her, quickly and too easily expressed hatred and anger whenever any not of her own party were mentioned.”
A frontispiece to the 1802 edition of Arnaud Berquin’s (1749–1791) works represents his bust being garlanded and crowned, and his “L’Ami des Enfans” being regarded by a group of admirers, both young and old. But though this very volume was received with honours by the French Academy, and though by it Berquin claims his right to immortality, French children of the present refrain from reading him as systematically as we refrain from reading “Sandford and Merton,” which, as it happens, Berquin translated into French. There are popular editions of “L’Ami des Enfans,” but children do not relish the tameness of such moral literature. The editor detailed to write Berquin’s short life, which was spent in the study of letters, and in following up one “Ami” by another, sacrifices incident and fact for encomium. It is easy to claim for Berquin modesty and goodness during his residence in his native town near Bordeaux and after his arrival in Paris during 1772; it is interesting to know that he was encouraged to use his talents by the praise of his friends, but far more valuable would it have been to tell just in what manner he reached that ethical state which overflowed in his “L’Ami des Enfans,” published during the years 1782 and 1783. The full purport of the volume is summed up exuberantly in the following paragraph:
“Quelle aimable simplicité! quel naturel! quel sentiment naïf respirent dans cette ingénieuse production! Au lieu de ces fictions extravagantes, et de ce merveilleux bizarre dans lesquels on a si longtemps égaré l’imagination des enfans, Berquin ne leur présente que des aventures dont ils peuvent être témoins chaque jour dans leur famille.”