Forgotten Books of the American Nursery Part 11

[128-A] Miss Repplier, _Atlantic Monthly_, vol. lvii, p. 509.

[141-A] Hill, _Johnsonian Miscellany_, vol. i, p. 157.

[141-B] _Ibid._

[142-A] Welsh, _Introduction to Goody Two Shoes_, p. x.

CHAPTER VI

1800-1825

Her morals then the Matron read, Studious to teach her Children dear, And they by love or Duty led, With Pleasure read.

_A Mother's Remarks_, Philadelphia, 1810

Mama! see what a pretty book At Day's papa has bought, That I may at its pictures look, And by its words be taught.

CHAPTER VI

1800-1825

_Toy-Books in the Early Nineteenth Century_

On the 23d of December, 1823, there appeared anonymously in the "Troy (New York) Sentinel," a Christmas ballad ent.i.tled "A Visit from St.

Nicholas." This rhymed story of Santa Claus and his reindeer, written one year before its publication by Clement Clarke Moore for his own family, marks the appearance of a truly original story in the literature of the American nursery.

We have seen the somewhat lugubrious influence of Puritan and Quaker upon the occasional writings for American children; and now comes a story bearing upon its face the features of a Dutchman, as the jolly old gentleman enters nursery lore with his happy errand.

Up to this time children of wholly English extraction had probably little a.s.sociation with the Feast of St. Nicholas. The Christmas season had hitherto been regarded as pagan in its origin by people of Puritan or Scotch descent, and was celebrated only as a religious festival by the descendants of the more liberal adherents to the Church of England.

The Dutch element in New York, however, still clung to some of their traditions; and the custom of exchanging simple gifts upon Christmas Day had come down to them as a result of a combination of the church legend of the good St. Nicholas, patron of children, and the Scandinavian myth of the fairy gnome, who from his bower in the woods showered good children with gifts.[148-A] But to celebrate the day quietly was altogether a different thing from introducing to the American public the character of Santa Claus, who has become in his mythical ent.i.ty as well known to every American as that other Dutch legendary personage, Rip Van Winkle.

In the "Visit from St. Nicholas" Mr. Moore not only introduced Santa Claus to the young folk of the various states, but gave to them their first story of any lasting merit whatsoever. It is worthy of remark that as every impulse to write for juvenile readers has lagged behind the desire to write for adults, so the composition of these familiar verses telling of the arrival in America of the mysterious and welcome visitor on

"The night before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse,"

fell at the end of that quarter of the nineteenth century to which we are accustomed to refer as the beginning of the national period of American literature.

It is, of course, true that the older children of that period had already begun to enjoy some of the writings of Irving and Cooper, and to learn the fortunately still familiar verses by Hopkinson, Key, Drake, and Halleck. School-readers have served to familiarize generation after generation with "Hail Columbia," "The Star Spangled Banner," and sometimes with "The American Flag." It is, doubtless, their authors'

jubilant enthusiasm over the freedom of the young Republic that has caused the children of the more mature nation to delight in the repet.i.tion of the patriotic verses. The youthful extravagance of expression pervading every line is reechoed in the heart of the schoolboy, who likes to imagine himself, before anything else, a patriot. But until "Donder and Blitzen" pranced into the foreground as Santa Claus' steeds, there was nothing in American nursery literature of any lasting fame. Thereafter, as the custom of observing Christmas Day gradually became popular, the perennial small child felt--until automobiles sent reindeer to the limbo of bygone things--the thrill of delight and fear over the annual visit of Santa Claus that the bigger child experiences in exploding fire-crackers on the Fourth of July.

There are possibilities in both excitements which appeal to one of the child's dearest possessions--his imagination.

It is this direct appeal to the imagination that surprises and delights us in Mr. Moore's ballad. To re-read it is to be amazed that anything so full of merriment, so modern, so free from pompousness or condescension, from pedantry or didacticism, could have been written before the latter half of the nineteenth century. Not only its style is simple in contrast with the labored efforts at simplicity of its contemporaneous verse, but its story runs fifty years ahead of its time in its freedom from the restraining hand of the moralist and from the warning finger of the religious teacher, if we except Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Wonder Book."

In our examination of the toy-books of twenty years preceding its publication, we shall find nothing so attractive in manner, nor so imaginative in conception. Indeed, we shall see, upon the one hand, that fun was held in with such a tight curb that it hardly ever escaped into print; and upon the other hand that the imagination had little chance to develop because of the prodigal indulgence in realities and in religious experience from which all authors suffered. We shall also see that these realities were made very uncompromising and uncomfortable to run counter to. Duty spelled in capital letters was a stumbling-block with which only the well-trained story-book child could successfully cope; recreation followed in small portions large shares of instruction, whether disguised or bare faced. The Religion-in-Play, the Ethics-in-Play, and the Labor-in-Play schools of writing for children had arrived in America from the land of their origin.

The stories in vogue in England during this first quarter of the nineteenth century explain every vagary in America. There fashionable and educational authorities had hitched their wagon to the literary star, Miss Edgeworth, and the followers of her system; while the religiously inclined pinned their faith also upon tracts written by Miss Hannah More. In this still imitative land the booksellers simply reprinted the more successful of these juvenile publications. The changes, therefore, in the character of the juvenile literature of amus.e.m.e.nt of the early nineteenth century in America were due to the adoption of the works of these two Englishwomen, and to the increased facilities for reproducing toy-books, both in press-work and in ill.u.s.trations.

Hannah More's allegories and religious dramas, written to cooperate with the teachings of the first Sabbath Day schools, are, of course, outside the literature of amus.e.m.e.nt. Yet they affected its type in America as they undoubtedly gave direction to the efforts of the early writers for children.

Miss More, born in seventeen hundred and fifty-four, was a woman of already established literary reputation when her attention was attracted by Robert Raikes's successful experiment of opening a Sunday-school, in seventeen hundred and eighty-one. During the religious revival that attended the preaching of George Whitefield, Raikes, already interested in the hardships and social condition of the working-cla.s.ses, was further aroused by his intimate knowledge of the manner of life of some children in a pin factory. To provide instruction for these child laborers, who, without work or restrictions on Sundays, sought occupation far from elevating, Raikes founded the first "Sabbath Day school."

The movement spread rapidly in England, and ten years later, in seventeen hundred and ninety-one, under the inspiration of Bishop White, the pioneer First Day school in America was opened in Philadelphia. The good Bishop was disturbed mentally by the religious and moral degeneracy of the poor children in his diocese, and annoyed during church services by their clamor outside the churches--a noise often sufficient to drown the prayers of his flock and the sermons of his clergy. To occupy these restless children for a part of the day, two sessions of the school were held each Sunday: one before the morning service, from eight until half-past ten o'clock, and the other in the afternoon for an hour and a half. The Bible was used as a reader, and the teaching was done regularly by paid instructors.

The first Sunday-school library owed its origin to a wish to further the instruction given in the school, and hence contained books thought admirably adapted to Sunday reading. Among the somewhat meagre stock provided for this purpose were Doddridge's "Power of Religion," Miss More's tracts and the writings of her imitators, together with "The Fairchild Family," by Mrs. Sherwood, "The Two Lambs," by Mrs. Cameron, "The Economy of Human Life," and a little volume made up of selections from Mrs. Barbauld's works for children. "The Economy of Human Life,"

said Miss Sedgwick (who herself afterwards wrote several good books for girls), "was quite above my comprehension, and I thought it unmeaning and tedious." Testimony of this kind about a book which for years appeared regularly upon booksellers' lists enables us to realize that the average intelligent child of the year eighteen hundred was beginning to be as bored by some of the literature placed in his hands as a child would be one hundred years later.

To increase this special cla.s.s of books, Hannah More devoted her attention. Her forty tracts comprising "The Cheap Repository" included "The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain" and "The Two Shoemakers," which, often appearing in American booksellers' advertis.e.m.e.nts, were for many years a staple article in Sunday-school libraries, and even now, although pushed to the rear, are discoverable in some such collections of books. Their objective point is best given by their author's own words in the preface to an edition of "The Search after Happiness; A Pastoral Drama," issued by Jacob Johnson of Philadelphia in eighteen hundred and eleven.

Miss More began in the self-depreciatory manner then thought modest and becoming in women writers: "The author is sensible it may have many imperfections, but if it may be happily instrumental in producing a regard to Religion and Virtue in the minds of Young Persons, and afford them an innocent, and perhaps not altogether unuseful amus.e.m.e.nt in the exercise of recitation, the end for which it was originally composed ...

will be fully answered." A drama may seem to us above the comprehension of the poor and illiterate cla.s.s of people whose attention Miss More wished to hold, but when we feel inclined to criticise, let us not forget that the author was one who had written little eight-year-old Thomas Macaulay: "I think we have nearly exhausted the epics. What say you to a little good prose? Johnson's 'Hebrides,' or Walton's 'Lives,'

unless you would like a neat edition of Cowper's poems or 'Paradise Lost.'"

Miss More's influence upon the character of Sunday-school books in England undoubtedly did much to incline many unknown American women of the nineteenth century to take up this cla.s.s of books as their own field for religious effort and pecuniary profit.

Contemporary with Hannah More's writings in the interest of religious life of Sunday-school scholars were some of the literary products of the painstaking pen of Maria Edgeworth.

Mention of Miss Edgeworth has already been made. About her stories for children criticism has played seriously, admiringly, and contemptuously.

It is not the present purpose, however, to do other than to make clear her own aim, and to try to show the effect of her extremely moral tales upon her own generation of writers for American children. It is possible that she affected these authors more than the child audience for whom she wrote. Little ones have a wonderful faculty for seizing upon what suits them and leaving the remainder for their elders to discuss.

Maria Edgeworth's life was a long one. Born in seventeen hundred and sixty-seven, when John Newbery's books were at the height of their fame, she lived until eighteen hundred and forty-nine, when they were scarcely remembered; and now her own once popular tales have met a similar fate.

She was educated by a father filled with enthusiasm by the teachings of Rousseau and with advice from the plat.i.tudinous family friend, Thomas Day, author of "Sanford and Merton." Only the truly genial nature and strong character of Miss Edgeworth prevented her genius from being altogether swamped by this incongruous combination. Fortunately, also, her busy practical home life allowed her sympathies full sway and counteracted many of the theories introduced by Mr. Edgeworth into his family circle. Successive stepmothers filled the Edgeworth nursery with children, for whom the devoted older sister planned and wrote the stories afterward published.

In seventeen hundred and ninety-one Maria Edgeworth, at her father's suggestion, began to note down anecdotes of the children of the family, and later these were often used as copy to be criticised by the little ones themselves before they were turned over to the printer. Her father's educational conversations with his family were often committed to paper, and these also furnished material from which Miss Edgeworth made it her object in life to interweave knowledge, amus.e.m.e.nt, and ethics. Indeed, it has been most aptly said that between the narrow banks of Richard Edgeworth's theories "his daughter's genius flowed through many volumes of amus.e.m.e.nt."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Jacob Johnson's Book-Store._]

Her first collection of tales was published under the t.i.tle of "The Parent's a.s.sistant," although Miss Edgeworth's own choice of a name had been the less formidable one of "The Parent's Friend." Based upon her experience as eldest sister in a large and constantly increasing family, these tales necessarily struck many true notes and gave valuable hints to perplexed parents. In "The Parent's a.s.sistant" realities stalked full grown into the nursery as

"Every object in creation Furnished hints for contemplation."

The characters were invariably true to their creator's original drawing.

A good girl was good from morning to night; a naughty child began and ended the day in disobedience, and by it bottles were smashed, strawberries spilled, and lessons disregarded in unbroken sequence. In later life Miss Edgeworth confessed to having occasionally introduced in "Harry and Lucy" some nonsense as an "alloy to make the sense work well;" but as all her earlier children's tales were subjected to the pruning scissors of Mr. Edgeworth, this amalgam is to-day hardly noticeable in "Popular Tales," "Early Lessons," and "Frank," which preceded the six volumes of "Harry and Lucy."

Although a contemporary of Mrs. Barbauld, who had written for little children "Easy Lessons," Miss Edgeworth does not seem to have been well known in America until about eighteen hundred and five. Then "Harry and Lucy" was brought out by Jacob Johnson, a Philadelphia book-dealer.

This was issued in six small red and blue marbled paper volumes, although other parts were not completed until eighteen hundred and twenty-three. Between the first and second parts of volume one the educational hand of Mr. Edgeworth is visible in the insertion of a "Glossary," "to give a popular meaning of the words." "This Glossary,"

the editor, Mr. Edgeworth, thought, "should be read to children a little at a time, and should be made the subject of conversation. Afterwards they will read it with more pleasure." The popular meaning of words may be succinctly given by one definition: "Dry, what is not wet." Could anything be more lucid?

Among the stories by Miss Edgeworth are three rarely mentioned by critics, and yet among the most natural and entertaining of her short tales. They were also printed by Jacob Johnson in Philadelphia, in eighteen hundred and five, under the simple t.i.tle, "Three Stories for Children." "Little Dog Trusty" is a dog any small child would like to read about; "The Orangeman" was a character familiar to English children; and "The Cherry Orchard" is a tale of a day's pleasure whose spirit American children could readily seize. In each Miss Edgeworth had a story to tell, and she told it well, even though "she walked," as has been often said, "as mentor beside her characters."