Chapter 8

1776-1790

_Patriotic Printers and the American Newbery_

When John Mein was forced to close his London Book-Store in Boston and to return to England in 1770, the children of that vicinity had need to cherish their six-penny books with increased care. The shadow of impending conflict was already deep upon the country when Mein departed; and the events of the decade following seventeen hundred and seventy-three--the year of the Boston Tea-Party--were too absorbing and distressing for such trifling publications as toy-books to be more than occasionally printed. Indeed, the history of the American Revolution is so interwoven with tales of privation of the necessities of life that it is astonishing that any printer was able to find ink or paper to produce even the nursery classic "Goody Two-Shoes," printed by Robert Bell of Philadelphia in seventeen hundred and seventy-six.

In New York the conditions were different. The Loyalists, as long as the town was held by the British, continued to receive importations of goods of all descriptions. Among the booksellers, Valentine Nutter from time to time advertised children's as well as adults' books. Hugh Gaine apparently continued to reprint Newbery's duodecimos; and, in a rather newer shop, Roger and Berry's, in Hanover Square, near Gaine's, could be had "Gilt Books, together with Stationary, Jewelry, a Collection of the most books, bibles, prayer-books and patent medicines warranted genuine."

Elsewhere in the colonies, as in Boston, the children went without new books, although very occasionally such notices as the following were inserted in the newspapers:

_Just imported and to be Sold by Thomas Bradford_

At his Book-Store in Market-Street, adjoining the Coffee-house

_The following Books_ ...

Little Histories for Children,

Among which are, Book of Knowledge, Joe Miller's Jests, Jenny Twitchells' ditto, the Linnet, The Lark (being collections of best Songs), Robin Redbreast, Choice Spirits, Argalus & Parthenia, Valentine and Orson, Seven Wise Masters, Seven Wise Mistresses, Russell's seven Sermons, Death of Abel, French Convert, Art's Treasury, Complete Letter-Writer, Winter Evening Entertainment, Stories and Tales, Triumphs of Love, being a Collection of Short Stories, Joseph Andrews, Aesop's Fables, Scotch Rogue, Moll Flanders, Lives of Highwaymen, Lives of Pirates, Buccaneers of America, Robinson Crusoe, Twelve Caesars.

Such was the assortment of penny-dreadfuls and religious tracts offered in seventeen hundred and eighty-one to the Philadelphia public for juvenile reading. It is typical of the chapmen's library peddled about the colonies long after they had become states. "Valentine and Orson," "The Seven Wise Masters," "The Seven Wise Mistresses," and "Winter Evening Entertainment" are found in publishers' lists for many years, and, in spite of frequent vulgarities, there was often no discrimination between them and Newbery's far superior stories; but by eighteen hundred and thirty almost all of these undesirable reprints had disappeared, being buried under the quantities of Sunday-school tales held in high favor at that date.

Meanwhile, the six years of struggle for liberty had rendered the necessaries of life in many cases luxuries. As early as seventeen hundred and seventy-five, during the siege of Boston, provisions and articles of dress had reached such prices that we find thrifty Mrs. John Adams, in Braintree, Massachusetts, foreseeing a worse condition, writing her husband, who was one of the Council assembled in Philadelphia, to send her, if possible, six thousand pins, even if they should cost five pounds. Prices continued to rise and currency to depreciate. In seventeen hundred and seventy-nine Mrs. Adams reported in her letters to her husband that potatoes were ten dollars a bushel, and writing-paper brought the same price per pound.

Yet family life went on in spite of these increasing difficulties. The diaries and letters of such remarkable women as the patriotic Abigail Adams, the Quakeress, Mrs. Eliza Drinker, the letters of the Loyalist and exile, James Murray, the correspondence of Eliza Pinckney of Charleston, and the reminiscences of a Whig family who were obliged to leave New York upon the occupation of the town by British forces, abound in those details of domestic life that give a many sided picture. Joys derived from good news of dear ones, and family reunions; anxieties occasioned by illness, or the armies' depredations; courageous efforts on the part of mothers not to allow their children's education and occupations to suffer unnecessarily; tragedies of death and ruined homes--all are recorded with a "particularity" for which we are now grateful to the writers.

It is through these writings, also, that we are allowed glimpses of the enthusiasm for the cause of Liberty, or King, which was imbibed from the parents by the smallest children. On the Whig side, patriotic mothers in New England filled their sons with zeal for the cause of freedom and with hatred of the tyranny of the Crown; while in the more southern colonies the partisanship of the little ones was no less intense. "From the constant topic of the present conversation," wrote the Rev. John J. Zubly (a Swiss clergyman settled in South Carolina and Georgia), in an address to the Earl of Dartmouth in seventeen hundred and seventy-five,--"from the constant topic of the present conversation, every child unborn will be impressed with the notion--it is slavery to be bound at the will of another 'in all things whatsoever.' Every mother's milk will convey a detestation of this maxim. Were your lordship in America, you might see little ones acquainted with the word of command before they can distinctly speak, and shouldering of a gun before they are well able to walk."[92-A]

The children of the Tories had also their part in the struggle. To some the property of parents was made over, to save it from confiscation in the event of the success of the American cause. To others came the bitterness of separation from parents, when they were sent across the sea to unknown relatives; while again some faint manuscript record tells of a motherless child brought from a comfortable home, no longer tenable, to whatever quarters could be found within the British lines. Fortunately, children usually adapt themselves easily to changed conditions, and in the novelty and excitement of the life around them, it is probable they soon forgot the luxuries of dolls and hobby-horses, toy-books and drums, of former days.

In the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania the sentiment of the period was expressed in two or three editions of "The New England Primer." Already in 1770 one had appeared containing as frontispiece a poor wood-cut of John Hancock. In 1775 the enthusiasm over the appointment of George Washington as commander-in-chief brought out another edition of the A B C book with the same picture labelled "General Washington." The custom of making one cut do duty in several representations was so well understood that this method of introducing George Washington to the infant reader naturally escaped remark.

Another primer appeared four years later, which was advertised by Walters and Norman in the "Pennsylvania Evening Post" as "adorned with a beautiful head of George Washington and other copper-plates." According to Mr. Hildeburn, this small book had the honor of containing the first portrait of Washington engraved in America. While such facts are of trifling importance, they are, nevertheless, indications of the state of intense feeling that existed at the time, and point the way by which the children's books became nationalized.

In New England the very games of children centred in the events which thrilled the country. Josiah Quincy remembered very well in after life, how "at the age of five or six, astride my grandfather's cane and with my little whip, I performed prodigies of valor, and more than once came to my mother's knees declaring that I had driven the British out of Boston." Afterwards at Phillips Academy, in Andover, between seventeen hundred and seventy-eight and seventeen hundred and eighty-six, Josiah and his schoolfellows "established it as a principle that every hoop, sled, etc., should in some way bear _Thirteen_ marks as evidence of the political character of the owner,--if which were wanting the articles became fair prize and were condemned and forfeited without judge, jury, or decree of admiralty."[94-A]

Other boys, such as John Quincy Adams, had tutors at home as a less expensive means of education than the wartime price of forty dollars a week for each child that good boarding-schools demanded. But at their homes the children had plenty of opportunity to show their intense enthusiasm for the cause of liberty. Years later, Mr. Adams wrote to a Quaker friend:

"For the space of twelve months my mother with her infant children dwelt, liable every hour of the day and of the night to be butchered in cold blood, or taken and carried to Boston as hostages. My mother lived in uninterrupted danger of being consumed with them all in a conflagration kindled by a torch in the same hands which on the Seventeenth of June [1775] lighted the fires of Charlestown."[94-B]

He was, of course, only one of many boys who saw from some height near their homes the signs of battle, the fires of the enemy's camps, the smoke rising from some farm fired by the British, or burned by its owner to prevent their occupation of it. With hearts made to beat quickly by the news that filtered through the lines, and heads made old by the responsibility thrust upon them,--in the absence of fathers and older brothers,--such boys as John Quincy Adams saw active service in the capacity of post-riders bearing in their several districts the anxiously awaited tidings from Congress or battlefield.

Fortunate indeed were the families whose homes were not disturbed by the military operations. From Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, families were sent hastily to the country until the progress of the war made it possible to return to such comforts as had not been destroyed by the British soldiers. The "Memoirs of Eliza Morton," afterward Mrs. Josiah Quincy, but a child eight years of age in seventeen hundred and seventy-six, gives a realistic account of the life of such Whig refugees. Upon the occupation of New York by the British, her father, a merchant of wealth, as riches were then reckoned, was obliged to burn his warehouse to save it from English hands. Mr. Morton then gathered together in the little country village of Basking Ridge, seven miles from Morristown, New Jersey, such of his possessions as could be hastily transported from the city. Among the books saved in this way were the works of Thurston, Thomson, Lyttleton, and Goldsmith, and for the children's benefit, "Dodsley's Collection of Poems," and "Pilgrim's Progress." "This," wrote Mrs. Quincy, "was a great favorite; Mr. Greatheart was in my opinion a hero, well able to help us all on our way." During the exile from New York, as Eliza Morton grew up, she read all these books, and years afterward told her grandchildren that while she admired the works of Thurston, Thomson, and Lyttleton, "those of Goldsmith were my chief delight. When my reading became afterward more extensive I instinctively disliked the extravagant fiction which often injures the youthful mind."

The war, however, was not allowed to interfere with the children's education in this family. In company with other little exiles, they were taught by a venerable old man until the evacuation of Philadelphia made it possible to send the older children to Germantown, where a Mr. Leslie had what was considered a fine school. The schoolroom walls were hung with lists of texts of Scripture beginning with the same letter, and for globes were substituted the schoolmaster's snuffbox and balls of yarn. If these failed to impress a child with the correct notions concerning the solar system, the children themselves were made to whirl around the teacher.

In Basking Ridge the children had much excitement with the passing of soldiers to Washington's headquarters in Morristown, and with watching for "The Post" who carried the news between Philadelphia, Princeton, and Morristown. "'The Post,' Mr. Martin," wrote Mrs. Quincy, "was an old man who carried the mail, ... he was our constant medium of communication; and always stopped at our house to refresh himself and horse, tell the news, and bring packets. He used to wear a blue coat with yellow buttons, a scarlet waistcoat, leathern small-clothes, blue yarn stockings, and a red wig and cocked hat, which gave him a sort of military appearance. He usually traveled in a sulky, but sometimes in a chaise, or on horseback.... Mr. Martin also contrived to employ himself in knitting coarse yarn stockings while driving or rather jogging along the road, or when seated on his saddle-bags on horseback. He certainly did not ride _post_, according to the present [1821] meaning of that term."

Deprived like many other children of Newbery's peaceful biographies and stories, the little Mortons' lives were too full of an intense daily interest to feel the lack of new literature of this sort. Tales of the campaigns told in letters to friends and neighbors were reëchoed in the ballads and songs that formed part of the literary warfare waged by Whig or Loyal partisans. Children of to-day sing so zestfully the popular tunes of the moment, that it requires very little imagination to picture the schoolboy of Revolutionary days shouting lustily verses from "The Battle of the Kegs," and other rhymed stories of military incidents. Such a ballad was "A Song for the Red Coats," written after the successful campaign against Burgoyne, and beginning:

"Come unto me, ye heroes, Whose hearts are true and bold, Who value more your honor, Than others do their gold! Give ear unto my story, And I the truth will tell, Concerning many a soldier, Who for his country fell."

Children, it has been said, are good haters. To the patriot boy and girl, the opportunity to execrate Benedict Arnold was found in these lines of a patriotic "ditty" concerning the fate of Major André:

"When he was executed He looked both meek and mild; He looked upon the people, And pleasantly he smiled. It moved each eye to pity, Caused every heart to bleed; And every one wished him released-- And _Arnold_ in his stead."[98-A]

Loyalist children had an almost equal supply of satirical verse to fling back at neighbors' families, where in country districts some farms were still occupied by sympathizers with Great Britain. A vigorous example of this style of warfare is quoted by Mr. Tyler in his "Literature of the American Revolution," and which, written in seventeen hundred and seventy-six, is entitled "The Congress." It begins:

"These hardy knaves and stupid fools, Some apish and pragmatic mules, Some servile acquiescing tools,-- These, these compose the Congress!"[98-B]

Or, again, such taunts over the general poverty of the land and character of the army as were made in a ballad called "The Rebels" by a Loyalist officer:

"With loud peals of laughter, your sides, Sirs, would crack, To see General Convict and Colonel Shoe-black, With their hunting-shirts and rifle-guns, See Cobblers and quacks, rebel priests and the like, Pettifoggers and barbers, with sword and with pike."

Those Loyalists who lived through this exciting period in America's history bore their full share in the heavy personal misfortunes of their political party. The hatred felt toward such colonials as were true to the king has until recently hardly subsided sufficiently to permit any sympathy with the hardships they suffered. Driven from their homes, crowded together in those places occupied by the English, or exiled to England or Halifax, these faithful subjects had also to undergo separation of families perhaps never again united.

Such a Loyalist was James Murray. Forced to leave his daughter and grandchildren in Boston with a sister, he took ship for Halifax to seek a living. There, amid the pressing anxieties occasioned by this separation, he strove to reëstablish himself, and sent from time to time such articles as he felt were necessary for their welfare. Thus he writes a memorandum of articles sent in seventeen hundred and eighty by "Mr. Bean's Cartel to Miss Betsy Murray:--viz: Everlasting 4 yards; binding 1 piece, Nankeen 4-7/8 yards. Of Gingham 2 gown patterns; 2 pairs red shoes from A.E.C. for boys, Jack and Ralph, a parcel--to Mrs. Brigden, 1 pair silk shoes and some flowers--Arthur's Geographical Grammar,--Locke on Education,--5 children's books," etc. And in return he is informed that "Charlotte goes to dancing and writing school, improves apace and grows tall. Betsy and Charles are much better but not well. The rest of the children are in good health, desiring their duty to their Uncle and Aunt Inman, and thanks for their cake and gloves."

To such families the end of the war meant either the necessity for making permanent their residence in the British dominion, or of bearing both outspoken and silent scorn in the new Republic.

For the Americans the peace of Yorktown brought joy, but new beginnings had also to be made. Farms had been laid waste, or had suffered from lack of men to cultivate them; industries were almost at a standstill from want of material and laborers. Still the people had the splendid compensation of freedom with victory, and men went sturdily back to their homes to take up as far as possible their various occupations.

An example of the way in which business undertaken before the war was rapidly resumed, or increased, is afforded by the revival of prosperity for the booksellers in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. Renewals of orders to London agents were speedily made, for the Americans still looked to England for their intellectual needs. In Philadelphia--a town of forty thousand inhabitants in seventeen hundred and eighty-three--among the principal booksellers and printers were Thomas Bradford, Mr. Woodhouse, Mr. Oswald, Mr. Pritchard,--who had established a circulating library,--Robert Aitkin, Mr. Liddon, Mr. Dunlap, Mr. Rice, William and David Hall, Benjamin Bache, J. Crukshank, and Robert Bell. Bell had undoubtedly the largest bookstore, but seems not to have been altogether popular, if an allusion in "The Philadelphiad" is to be credited. This "New Picture of the City" was anonymously published in seventeen hundred and eighty-four, and described, among other well-known places, Robert Bell's book-shop:

BELL'S BOOK STORE

Just by St. Paul's where dry divines rehearse, Bell keeps his store for vending prose and verse, And books that's neither ... for no age nor clime, Lame languid prose begot on hobb'ling rhyme. Here authors meet who ne'er a spring have got, The poet, player, doctor, wit and sot, Smart politicians wrangling here are seen, Condemning Jeffries or indulging spleen.

In 1776 Bell's facilities for printing had enabled him to produce an edition of "Little Goody Two-Shoes," which seems likely to have been the only story-book printed during the troubled years of the Revolution. Besides this, Bell printed in 1777 "Aesop's Fables," as did also Robert Aitkin; and J. Crukshank had issued during the war an A B C book, written by the old schoolmaster, A. Benezet, who had drilled many a Philadelphian in his letters. After the Revolution Benjamin Bache apparently printed children's books in considerable quantities, and orders were sent by other firms to England for juvenile reading-matter.

New England also has records of the sale of these small books in several towns soon after peace was established. John Carter, "at Shakespeare's Head," in Providence, announced by a broadside issued in November, seventeen hundred and eighty-three, that he had a large assortment of stationers' wares, and included in his list "Gilt Books for _Children_," among which were most of Newbery's publications. In Hartford, Connecticut, where there had been a good press since seventeen hundred and sixty-four, "The Children's Magazine" was reprinted in seventeen hundred and eighty-nine. Its preposterous titles are noteworthy, since it is probable that this was the first attempt at periodical literature made for young people in America. One number contains:

An easy Introduction to Geography. The Schoolboy addressed to the Editors. Moral Tales continued. Tale VIII. The Jealous Wife. The Affectionate Sisters. Familiar Letters on Various Subjects,--Continued....