Chapter 2

A search through the famous Roxburghe collection of broadsheets discovered nothing that could be fairly regarded as a child's publication. The chap-books of the eighteenth century have been adequately discussed in Mr. John Ashton's admirable monograph, and from them a few "cuts" are here reproduced. Of course, if one takes the standard of education of these days as the test, many of those curious publications would appear to be addressed to intelligence of the most juvenile sort. Yet the themes as a rule show unmistakably that children of a larger growth were catered for, as, for instance, "Joseph and his Brethren," "The Holy Disciple," "The Wandering Jew," and those earlier pamphlets which are reprints or new versions of books printed by Wynkyn de Worde, Pynson, and others of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.

In one, "The Witch of the Woodlands," appears a picture of little people dancing in a fairy ring, which might be supposed at first sight to be an illustration of a nursery tale, but the text describing a Witch's Sabbath, rapidly dispels the idea. Nor does a version of the popular Faust legend--"Dr. John Faustus"--appear to be edifying for young people. This and "Friar Bacon" are of the class which lingered the longest--the magical and oracular literature. Even to-day it is quite possible that dream-books and prophetical pamphlets enjoy a large sale; but a few years ago many were to be found in the catalogues of publishers who catered for the million. It is not very long ago that the Company of Stationers omitted hieroglyphics of coming events from its almanacs. Many fairy stories which to-day are repeated for the amusement of children were regarded as part of this literature--the traditional folk-lore which often enough survives many changes of the religious faith of a nation, and outlasts much civilisation. Others were originally political satires, or social pasquinades; indeed not a few nursery rhymes mask allusions to important historical incidents. The chap-book form of publication is well adapted for the preservation of half-discredited beliefs, of charms and prophecies, incantations and cures.

In "Valentine and Orson," of which a fragment is extant of a version printed by Wynkyn de Worde, we have unquestionably the real fairy story. This class of story, however, was not addressed directly to children until within the last hundred years. That many of the cuts used in these chap-books afterwards found their way into little coarsely printed duodecimos of eight or sixteen pages designed for children is no doubt a fact. Indeed the wanderings of these blocks, and the various uses to which they were applied, is far too vast a theme to touch upon here. For this peripatetic habit of old wood-cuts was not even confined to the land of their production; after doing duty in one country, they were ready for fresh service in another. Often in the chap-books we meet with the same block as an illustration of totally different scenes.

The cut for the title-page of Robin Hood is a fair example of its kind. The Norfolk gentleman's "Last Will and Testament" turns out to be a rambling rhymed version of the Two Children in the Wood. In the first of its illustrations we see the dying parents commending their babes to the cruel world. The next is a subject taken from these lines:

"Away then went these prity babes rejoycing at that tide, Rejoycing with a merry mind they should on cock-horse ride."

And in the last, here reproduced, we see them when

"Their prity lips with blackberries were all besmeared and dyed, And when they saw the darksome night, they sat them down and cried."

But here it is more probable that it was the tragedy which attracted readers, as the _Police News_ attracts to-day, and that it became a child's favourite by the accident of the robins burying the babes.

The example from the "History of Sir Richard Whittington" needs no comment.

A very condensed version of "Robinson Crusoe" has blocks of distinct, if archaic, interest. The three here given show a certain sense of decorative treatment (probably the result of the artist's inability to be realistic), which is distinctly amusing. One might select hundreds of woodcuts of this type, but those here reproduced will serve as well as a thousand to indicate their general style.

Some few of these books have contributed to later nursery folk-lore, as, for example, the well known "Jack Horner," which is an extract from a coarse account of the adventures of a dwarf.

One quality that is shared by all these earlier pictures is their artlessness and often their absolute ugliness. Quaint is the highest adjective that fits them. In books of the later period not a few blocks of earlier date and of really fine design reappear; but in the chap-books quite 'prentice hands would seem to have been employed, and the result therefore is only interesting for its age and rarity. So far these pictures need no comment, they foreshadow nothing and are derived from nothing, so far as their design is concerned. Such interest as they have is quite unconcerned with art in any way; they are not even sufficiently misdirected to act as warnings, but are merely clumsy.

Children's books, as every collector knows, are among the most short-lived of all volumes. This is more especially true of those with illustrations, for their extra attractiveness serves but to degrade a comely book into a dog-eared and untidy thing, with leaves sere and yellow, and with no autumnal grace to mellow their decay. Long before this period, however, the nursery artist has marked them for his own, and with crimson lake and Prussian blue stained their pictures in all too permanent pigments, that in some cases resist every chemical the amateur applies with the vain hope of effacing the superfluous colour.

Of course the disappearance of the vast majority of books for children (dating from 1760 to 1830, and even later) is no loss to art, although among them are some few which are interesting as the 'prentice work of illustrators who became famous. But these are the exceptions. Thanks to the kindness of Mr. James Stone, of Birmingham, who has a large and most interesting collection of the most ephemeral of all sorts--the little penny and twopenny pamphlets--it has been possible to refer at first hand to hundreds, of them. Yet, despite their interest as curiosities, their art need not detain us here. The pictures are mostly trivial or dull, and look like the products of very poorly equipped draughtsmen and cheap engravers. Some, in pamphlet shape, contain nursery rhymes and little stories, others are devoted to the alphabet and arithmetic. Amongst them are many printed on card, shaped like the cover of a bank-book. These were called battledores, but as Mr. Tuer has dealt with this class in "The Horn Book" so thoroughly, it would be mere waste of time to discuss them here.

Mr. Elkin Mathews also permitted me to run through his interesting collection, and among them were many noted elsewhere in these pages, but the rest, so far as the pictures are concerned, do not call for detailed notice. They do, indeed, contain pictures of children--but mere "factual" scenes, as a rule--without any real fun or real imagination. Those who wish to look up early examples will find a large and entertaining variety among "The Pearson Collection" in the National Art Library at South Kensington Museum.

Turning to quite another class, we find "A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies" (Collins: Salisbury), a typical volume of its kind. Its preface begins: "I am very much concerned when I see young gentlemen of fortune and quality so wholly set upon pleasure and diversions.... The greater part of our British youth lose their figure and grow out of fashion by the time they are twenty-five. As soon as the natural gaiety and amiableness of the young man wears off they have nothing left to recommend, but _lie by_ the rest of their lives among the lumber and refuse of their species"--a promising start for a moral lecture, which goes on to implore those who are in the flower of their youth to "labour at those accomplishments which may set off their persons when their bloom is gone."

The compensations for old age appear to be, according to this author, a little knowledge of grammar, history, astronomy, geography, weights and measures, the seven wonders of the world, burning mountains, and dying words of great men. But its delightful text must not detain us here. A series of "cuts" of national costumes with which it is embellished deserves to be described in detail. _An American Man and Woman in their proper habits_, reproduced on page 6, will give a better idea of their style than any words. The blocks evidently date many years earlier than the thirteenth edition here referred to, which is about 1790. Indeed, those of the Seven Wonders are distinctly interesting.

Here and there we meet with one interesting as art. "An Ancestral History of King Arthur" (H. Roberts, Blue Boar, Holborn, 1782), shown in the Pearson collection at South Kensington, has an admirable frontispiece; and one or two others would be worth reproduction did space permit.

Although the dates overlap, the next division of the subject may be taken as ranging from the publication of "Goody Two Shoes--otherwise called Mrs. Margaret Two-shoes"--to the "Bewick Books." Of the latter the most interesting is unquestionably "A Pretty Book of Pictures for Little Masters and Misses, or Tommy Trip's History of Beasts and Birds," with a familiar description of each in verse and prose, to which is prefixed "A History of Little Tom Trip himself, of his dog Towler, and of Coryleg the great giant," written for John Newbery, the philanthropic bookseller of St. Paul's Churchyard. "The fifteenth edition embellished with charming engravings upon wood, from the original blocks engraved by Thomas Bewick for T. Saint of Newcastle in 1779"--to quote the full title from the edition reprinted by Edwin Pearson in 1867. This edition contains a preface tracing the history of the blocks, which are said to be Bewick's first efforts to depict beasts and birds, undertaken at the request of the New castle printer, to illustrate a new edition of "Tommy Trip." As at this time copyright was unknown, and Newcastle or Glasgow pirated a London success (as New York did but lately), we must not be surprised to find that the text is said to be a reprint of a "Newbery" publication. But as Saint was called the Newbery of the North, possibly the Bewick edition was authorised. One or two of the rhymes which have been attributed to Oliver Goldsmith deserve quotation. Appended to a cut of _The Bison_ we find the following delightful lines:

"The Bison, tho' neither Engaging nor young, Like a flatt'rer can lick you To death with his tongue."

The astounding legend of the bison's long tongue, with which he captures a man who has ventured too close, is dilated upon in the accompanying prose. That Goldsmith used "teeth" when he meant "tusks" solely for the sake of rhyme is a depressing fact made clear by the next verse:

"The elephant with trunk and teeth Threatens his foe with instant death, And should these not his ends avail His crushing feet will seldom fail."

Nor are the rhymes as they stand peculiarly happy; certainly in the following example it requires an effort to make "throw" and "now" pair off harmoniously.

"The fierce, fell tiger will, they say, Seize any man that's in the way, And o'er his back the victim throw, As you your satchel may do now."

Yet one more deserves to be remembered if but for its decorative spelling:

"The cuccoo comes to chear the spring, And early every morn does sing; The nightingale, secure and snug, The evening charms with Jug, jug, jug."

But these doggerel rhymes are not quite representative of the book, as the well-known "Three children sliding on the ice upon a summer's day" appears herein. The "cuts" are distinctively notable, especially the Crocodile (which contradicts the letterpress, that says "it turns about with difficulty"), the Chameleon, the Bison, and the Tiger.

Bewick's "Select Fables of AEsop and others" (Newcastle: T. Saint, 1784) deserves fuller notice, but AEsop, though a not unpopular book for children, is hardly a children's book. With "The Looking Glass for the Mind" (1792) we have the adaptation of a popular French work, "L'Ami des Enfans" (1749), with cuts by Bewick, which, if not equal to his best, are more interesting from our point of view, as they are obviously designed for young people. The letterpress is full of "useful lessons for my youthful readers," with morals provokingly insisted upon.

"Goody Two Shoes" was also published by Newbery of St. Paul's Churchyard--the pioneer of children's literature. His business--which afterwards became Messrs. Griffith and Farran--has been the subject of several monographs and magazine articles by Mr. Charles Welsh, a former partner of that firm. The two monographs were privately printed for issue to members of the Sette of Odde Volumes. The first of these is entitled "On some Books for Children of the last century, with a few words on the philanthropic publisher of St. Paul's Churchyard. A paper read at a meeting of the Sette of Odde Volumes, Friday, January 8, 1886." Herein we find a very sympathetic account of John Newbery and gossip of the clever and distinguished men who assisted him in the production of children's books, of which Charles Knight said, "There is nothing more remarkable in them than their originality. There have been attempts to imitate its simplicity, its homeliness; great authors have tried their hands at imitating its clever adaptation to the youthful intellect, but they have failed"--a verdict which, if true of authors when Charles Knight uttered it, is hardly true of the present time. After Goldsmith, Charles Lamb, to whom "Goody Two Shoes" is now attributed, was, perhaps, the most famous contributor to Newbery's publications; his "Beauty and the Beast" and "Prince Dorus" have been republished in facsimile lately by Messrs. Field and Tuer. From the _London Chronicle_, December 19 to January 1, 1765, Mr. Welsh reprinted the following advertisement:

"The Philosophers, Politicians, Necromancers, and the learned in every faculty are desired to observe that on January 1, being New Year's Day (oh that we may all lead new lives!), Mr. Newbery intends to publish the following important volumes, bound and gilt, and hereby invites all his little friends who are good to call for them at the Bible and Sun in St. Paul's Churchyard, but those who are naughty to have none." The paper read by Mr. Welsh scarcely fulfils the whole promise of its title, for in place of giving anecdotes of Newbery he refers his listeners to his own volume, "A Bookseller of the Last Century," for fuller details; but what he said in praise of the excellent printing and binding of Newbery's books is well merited. They are, nearly all, comely productions, some with really artistic illustrations, and all marked with care and intelligence which had not hitherto been bestowed on publications intended for juveniles. It is true that most are distinguished for "calculating morality" as the _Athenaeum_ called it, in re-estimating their merits nearly a century later. It was a period when the advantages of dull moralising were over-prized, when people professed to believe that you could admonish children to a state of perfection which, in their didactic addresses to the small folk, they professed to obey themselves. It was, not to put too fine a point on it, an age of solemn hypocrisy, not perhaps so insincere in intention as in phrase; but, all the same, it repels the more tolerant mood of to-day. Whether or not it be wise to confess to the same frailties and let children know the weaknesses of their elders, it is certainly more honest; and the danger is now rather lest the undue humility of experience should lead children to believe that they are better than their fathers. Probably the honest sympathy now shown to childish ideals is not likely to be misinterpreted, for children are often shrewd judges, and can detect the false from the true, in morals if not in art.

By 1800 literature for children had become an established fact. Large numbers of publications were ostentatiously addressed to their amusement; but nearly all hid a bitter if wholesome powder in a very small portion of jam. Books of educational purport, like "A Father's Legacy to his Daughter," with reprints of classics that are heavily weighted with morals--Dr. Johnson's "Rasselas" and "AEsop's Fables," for instance--are in the majority. "Robinson Crusoe" is indeed among them, and Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," both, be it noted, books annexed by the young, not designed for them.

The titles of a few odd books which possess more than usually interesting features may be jotted down. Of these, "Little Thumb and the Ogre" (R. Dutton, 1788), with illustrations by William Blake, is easily first in interest, if not in other respects. Others include "The Cries of London" (1775), "Sindbad the Sailor" (Newbery, 1798), "Valentine and Orson" (Mary Rhynd, Clerkenwell, 1804), "Fun at the Fair" (with spirited cuts printed in red), and Watts's "Divine and Moral Songs," and "An Abridged New Testament," with still more effective designs also in red (Lumsden, Glasgow), "Gulliver's Travels" (greatly abridged, 1815), "Mother Gum" (1805), "Anecdotes of a Little Family" (1795), "Mirth without Mischief," "King Pippin," "The Daisy" (cautionary stories in verse), and the "Cowslip," its companion (with delightfully prim little rhymes that have been reprinted lately). The thirty illustrations in each are by Samuel Williams, an artist who yet awaits his due appreciation. A large number of classics of their kind, "The Adventures of Philip Quarll," "Gulliver's Travels," Blake's "Songs of Innocence," Charles Lamb's "Stories from Shakespeare," Mrs. Sherwood's "Henry and his Bearer," and a host of other religious stories, cannot even be enumerated. But even were it possible to compile a full list of children's books, it would be of little service, for the popular books are in no danger of being forgotten, and the unpopular, as a rule, have vanished out of existence, and except by pure accident could not be found for love or money.

With the publications of Newbery and Harris, early in the nineteenth century, we encounter examples more nearly typical of the child's book as we regard it to-day. Among them Harris's "Cabinet" is noticeable. The first four volumes, "The Butterfly's Ball," "The Peacock at Home," "The Lion's Masquerade," and "The Elephant's Ball," were reprinted a few years ago, with the original illustrations by Mulready carefully reproduced. A coloured series of sixty-two books, priced at one shilling and sixpence each (Harris), was extremely popular.

With the "Paths of Learning strewed with Flowers, or English Grammar Illustrated" (1820), we encounter a work not without elegance. Its designs, as we see by the examples reproduced on page 9, are the obvious prototype of Miss Greenaway, the model that inspired her to those dainty trifles which conquered even so stern a critic of modern illustration as Mr. Ruskin. On its cover--a forbidding wrapper devoid of ornament--and repeated within a wreath of roses inside, this preamble occurs: "The purpose of this little book is to obviate the reluctance children evince to the irksome and insipid task of learning the names and meanings of the component parts of grammar. Our intention is to entwine roses with instruction, and however humble our endeavour may appear, let it be recollected that the efforts of a Mouse set the Lion free from his toils." This oddly phrased explanation is typical of the affected geniality of the governess. Indeed, it might have been penned by an assistant to Miss Pinkerton, "the Semiramis of Hammersmith"; if not by that friend of Dr. Johnson, the correspondent of Mrs. Chapone herself, in a moment of gracious effort to bring her intellect down to the level of her pupils.

To us, this hollow gaiety sounds almost cruel. In those days children were always regarded as if, to quote Mark Twain, "every one being born with an equal amount of original sin, the pressure on the square inch must needs be greater in a baby." Poor little original sinners, how very scurvily the world of books and picture-makers treated you less than a century ago! Life for you then was a perpetual reformatory, a place beset with penalties, and echoing with reproofs. Even the literature planned to amuse your leisure was stuck full of maxims and morals; the most piquant story was but a prelude to an awful warning; pictures of animals, places, and rivers failed to conceal undisguised lessons. The one impression that is left by a study of these books is the lack of confidence in their own dignity which papas and mammas betrayed in the early Victorian era. This seems past all doubt when you realise that the common effort of all these pictures and prose is to glorify the impeccable parent, and teach his or her offspring to grovel silently before the stern law-givers who ruled the home.