Forgotten Books of the American Nursery Part 12

Of Miss Edgeworth's many tales, "Waste Not, Want Not" was long considered a model. In it what Mr. Edgeworth styled the "shafts of ridicule" were aimed at the rich nephew of Mr. Gresham. Mr. Gresham (whose prototype we strongly suspect was Mr. Edgeworth himself) "lived neither in idleness nor extravagance," and was desirous of adopting an heir to his considerable property. Therefore, he invited two nephews to visit him, with the object of choosing the more suitable for his purpose; apparently he had only to signify his wish and no parental objection to his plan would be interposed. The boys arrive: Hal, whose mama spends her days at Bath over cards with Lady Diana Sweepstake, is an ill-bred child, neither deferential to his uncle, nor with appet.i.te for buns when queen-cakes may be had. His cousin Ben, on the contrary, has been taught those virtuous habits that make for a respectful att.i.tude toward rich uncles and a.s.sure a dissertation upon the beneficial effect of buns _versus_ queen-cakes. The boys, having had their characters thus definitely shown, proceed to live up to them in every particular. From start to finish it is the virtuous Ben--his generosity, thrift, and foresight are never allowed to lapse for an instant--who triumphs in every episode. He saves his string, "good whipcord," when requested by Mr. Gresham to untie a parcel, and it thereafter serves to spin a fine new top, to help Hal out of a difficulty with his toy, and in the final incident of the story, an archery contest, our provident hero, finding his bowstring "cracked,"

calmly draws from his pocket the still excellent piece of cord, and affixing it to his bow, wins the match. Hal betrays his great lack of self-control by exclaiming, "The everlasting whipcord, I declare," and thereupon Patty, Mr. Gresham's only child, who has suffered from Hal's defects of character, openly rejoices when the prize is given to Ben. As is usual with Miss Edgeworth's badly behaved children, the reader now sees the error of Hal's ways, and perceives also that in the lad's acknowledgment of the truth of the formerly scorned motto, "Waste not, want not," the era of his reformation has begun.

Perpetual action was the key to the success of Miss Edgeworth's writings. If to us her fict.i.tious children seem like puppets whose strings are too obviously jerked, the monotonous moral cloaked in the variety of incident was liked by her own generation,

Miss Edgeworth not only pleased the children, but received the applause of their parents and friends. Sir Walter Scott, the prince of story-tellers, found much to admire in her tales, and wrote of "Simple Susan:" "When the boy brings back the lamb to the little girl, there is nothing for it but to put down the book and cry." Susan was the pattern child in the tale, "clean as well as industrious," while Barbara--a violent contrast--was conceited and lazy, and a _lady_ who "could descend without shame from the height of insolent pride to the lowest measure of fawning familiarity." Therefore it is small wonder that Sir Walter pa.s.sed her by without mention.

However much we may value an English author's admiration for Miss Edgeworth's story-telling gifts, it is to America that we naturally turn to seek contemporary opinion. In educational circles there is no doubt that Miss Edgeworth won high praise. That her books were not always easy to procure, however, we know from a letter written from Washington by Mrs. Josiah Quincy, whose life as a child during the Revolution has already been described. When Mrs. Quincy was living in the capital city in eighteen hundred and ten, during her husband's term as Congressman, she found it difficult to provide her family with books. She therefore wrote to Boston to a friend, requesting to have sent her Miss Edgeworth's "Moral Tales," "if the work can be obtained in one of the bookstores. If not," she continued, "borrow one ... and I will replace it with a new copy. Cut the book out of its binding and enclose the pages in packets.... Be careful to send the entire text and t.i.tle page."

The scarcity in Washington of books for young people Mrs. Quincy thought justified the hope that reprinting these tales would be profitable to a bookseller in whose efforts to introduce a better taste among the inhabitants she took a keen interest. But Mrs. Quincy need not have sent to Boston for them. Jacob Johnson in Philadelphia had issued most of the English author's books by eighteen hundred and five, and New York publishers probably made good profit by printing them.

Reading aloud was both a pastime and an education to families in those early days of the Republic. Although Mrs. Quincy made every effort to procure Miss Edgeworth's stories for her family because, in her opinion, "they obtained a decided preference to the works of Hannah More, Mrs.

Trimmer and Mrs. Chapone," for reading aloud she chose extracts from Shakespeare, Milton, Addison, and Goldsmith. Indeed, if it were possible to ask our great-grandparents what books they remembered reading in their childhood, I think we should find that beyond somewhat hazy recollections of Miss Edgeworth's books and Berquin's "The Looking Gla.s.s for the Mind," they would either mention "Robinson Crusoe," Newbery's tales of "Giles Gingerbread," "Little King Pippin," and "Goody Two-Shoes" (written fifty years before their own childhood), or remember only the cla.s.sic tales and sketches read to them by their parents.

Certainly this is the case if we may take as trustworthy the recollections of literary people whose childhood was pa.s.sed in the first part of the nineteenth century. Catharine Sedgwick, for instance, has left a charming picture of American family life in a country town in eighteen hundred--a life doubtless paralleled by many households in comfortable circ.u.mstances. Among the host of little prigs and prudes in story-books of the day, it is delightful to find in Catharine Sedgwick herself an example of a bookish child who was natural. Her reminiscences include an account of the way the task of sweeping out the schoolhouse after hours was made bearable by feasts of Malaga wine and raisins.

These she procured from the store where her father kept an open account, until the bill having been rendered dotted over with such charges "per daughter Catharine," these treats to favorite schoolmates ceased. Also a host of intimate details of this large family's life in the country brings us in touch with the times: fifteen pairs of calfskin shoes ordered from the village shoemaker, because town-bought morocco slippers were few and far between; the excitement of a silk gown; the distress of a brother, whose trousers for fete occasions were remodelled from an older brother's "blue broadcloth worn to fragility--so that Robert [the younger brother] said he could not look at them without making a rent;"

and again the antic.i.p.ation of the father's return from Philadelphia with gifts of necessaries and books.

After seventeen hundred and ninety-five Mr. Sedgwick was compelled as a member of Congress to be away the greater part of each year, leaving household and farm to the care of an invalid wife. Memories of Mr.

Sedgwick's infrequent visits home were mingled in his daughter's mind with the recollections of being kept up until nine o'clock to listen to his reading from Shakespeare, Don Quixote, or Hudibras. "Certainly,"

wrote Miss Sedgwick, "I did not understand them, but some glances of celestial light reached my soul, and I caught from his magnetic sympathy some elevation of feeling, and that love of reading which has been to me an 'education.'" "I was not more than twelve years old," she continues, "I think but ten--when one winter I read Rollin's Ancient History. The walking to our schoolhouse was often bad, and I took my lunch (how well I remember the bread and b.u.t.ter, and 'nut cake' and cold sausage, and nuts and apples that made the miscellaneous contents of that enchanting lunch-basket!), and in the interim between morning and afternoon school I crept under my desk (the desks were so made as to afford little close recesses under them) and read and munched and forgot myself in Cyrus'

greatness."

It is beyond question that the keen relish induced by the scarcity of juvenile reading, together with the sound digestion it promoted, overbalanced in mental gain the novelties of a later day.

The Sedgwick library was probably typical of the average choice in reading-matter of the contemporary American child. Half a dozen little story-books, Berquin's "Children's Friend" (the very form and shade of color of its binding with its green edges were never forgotten by any member of the Sedgwick family), and the "Looking Gla.s.s for the Mind"

were shelved side by side with a large volume ent.i.tled "Elegant Extracts," full of ballads, fables, and tales delightful to children whose imagination was already excited by the solemn mystery of Rowe's "Letters from the Dead to the Living." Since none of these books except those containing an infusion of religion were allowed to be read on Sunday, the Sedgwick children extended the bounds by turning over the pages of a book, and if the word "G.o.d" or "Lord" appeared, it was pounced upon as sanctified and therefore permissible.

Where families were too poor to buy story-books, the children found what amus.e.m.e.nt they could in the parents' small library. In ministers'

families sermons were more plentiful than books. Mrs. H.B. Stowe, when a girl, found barrels of sermons in the garret of her father, the Rev. Dr.

Beecher, in Litchfield, Connecticut. Through these sermons his daughter searched hungrily for mental food. It seemed as if there were thousands of the most unintelligible things. "An appeal on the unlawfulness of a man's marrying his wife's sister" turned up in every barrel by the dozens, until she despaired of finding an end of it. At last an ancient volume of "Arabian Nights" was unearthed. Here was the one inexhaustible source of delight to a child so eager for books that at ten years of age she had pored over the two volumes of the "Magnalia."

The library advantages of a more fortunately placed old-fashioned child we know from Dr. Holmes's frequent reference to incidents of his boyhood. He frankly confessed that he read in and not through many of the two thousand books in his father's library; but he found much to interest him in the volumes of periodicals, especially in the "Annual Register" and Rees's "Encyclopedia." Although apparently allowed to choose from the book-shelves, there were frequent evidences of a parent's careful supervision. "I remember," he once wrote to a friend, "many leaves were torn out of a copy of Dryden's Poems, with the comment 'Hiatus haud diflendus,' but I had like all children a kind of Indian sagacity in the discovery of contraband reading, such as a boy carries to a corner for perusal. Sermons I had enough from the pulpit. I don't know that I ever read one sermon of my own accord during my childhood.

The 'Life of David,' by Samuel Chandler, had adventures enough, to say nothing of gallantry, in it to stimulate and gratify curiosity."

"Biographies of Pious Children," wrote Dr. Holmes at another time, "were not to my taste. Those young persons were generally sickly, melancholy, and buzzed around by ghostly comforters or discomforters in a way that made me sick to contemplate." Again, Dr. Holmes, writing of the revolt from the commonly accepted religious doctrines he experienced upon reading the Rev. Thomas Scott's Family Bible, contrasted the gruesome doctrines it set forth with the story of Christian told in "Pilgrim's Progress," a book which captivated his imagination.

As to story-books, Dr. Holmes once referred to Mrs. Barbauld and Dr.

Aikin's joint production, "Evenings at Home," with an accuracy bearing testimony to his early love for natural science. He also paid a graceful tribute to Lady Bountiful of "Little King Pippin" in comparing her in a conversation "At the Breakfast Table" with the appearance of three maiden ladies "rustling through the aisles of the old meeting-house, in silk and satin, not gay but more than decent."

Although Dr. Holmes was not sufficiently impressed with the contents of Miss Edgeworth's tales to mention them, at least one of her books contained much of the sort of information he found attractive in "Evenings at Home." "Harry and Lucy," besides pointing a moral on every page, foreshadowed that taste for natural science which turned every writer's thought toward printing geographical walks, botanical observations, natural history conversations, and geological dissertations in the guise of toy-books of amus.e.m.e.nt. A batch of books issued in America during the first two decades of the nineteenth century is ill.u.s.trative of this new fashion. These books, belonging to the Labor-in-Play school, may best be described in their American editions.

One hundred years ago the American publishers of toy works were devoting their attention to the make-up rather than to the contents of their wares. The steady progress of the industrial arts enabled a greater number of printers to issue juvenile books, whose attractiveness was increased by better ill.u.s.trations; and also with the improved facilities for printing and publishing, the issues of the various firms became more individual. At the beginning of the century the cheaper books entirely lost their charming gilt, flowery Dutch, and silver wrappers, as home products came into use. Size and ill.u.s.trations also underwent a change.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _A Wall-paper Book-Cover_]

In Philadelphia, Benjamin and Jacob Johnson, and later Johnson and Warner, issued both tiny books two inches square, and somewhat larger volumes containing ill.u.s.trations as well as text. These firms used for binding gray and blue marbled paper, gold-powdered yellow cardboard, or salmon pink, blue, and olive-green papers, usually without ornamentation. In eighteen hundred J. and J. Crukshank, of the same town, began to decorate with copper-plate cuts the outside of the white or blue paper covers of their imprints for children. Other printers followed their example, especially after wood-engraving became more generally used.

In Wilmington, Delaware, John Adams printed and sold "The New History of Blue Beard" in both peac.o.c.k-blue and olive-green paper covers; but Peter Brynberg, also of that town, was still in eighteen hundred and four using quaint wall-paper to dress his toy imprints. Matthew Carey, the well-known printer of school-books for the children of Philadelphia, made a "Child's Guide to Spelling and Reading" more acceptable by a charming cover of yellow and red striped paper dotted over with little black hearts suggestive of the old Primer rhyme for the letter B:

"My Book and Heart Shall never part."

In New York the dealers in juvenile books seem either to have bound in calf such cla.s.sics as "The Blossoms of Morality," published by David Longworth at the Shakespeare Gallery in eighteen hundred and two, or in decorated but unattractive brown paper. This was the cover almost invariably used for years by Samuel Wood, the founder of the present publishing-house of medical works. He began in eighteen hundred and six to print the first of his many thousands of children's religious, instructive, and nursery books. As was the custom in order to insure a good sale, Wood first brought out a primer, "The Young Child's A B C."

He decorated its Quaker gray cover with a woodcut of a flock of birds, and its t.i.tle-page with a picture, presumably by Alexander Anderson, of a girl holding up a dove in her left hand and holding down a lamb with her right.

In New England, Nathaniel Coverly of Salem sometimes used a watered pink paper to cover his sixteen page toy-books, and in Boston his son, as late as eighteen hundred and thirteen, still used pieces of large patterned wall-paper for six-penny books, such as "Tom Thumb," "Old Mother Hubbard," and "c.o.c.k Robin."

The change in the appearance of most toy-books, however, was due largely to the increased use of ill.u.s.trations. The work of the famous English engraver, Thomas Bewick, had at last been successfully copied by a physician of New York, Dr. Alexander Anderson.

Dr. Anderson was born in New York in seventeen hundred and seventy-five, and by seventeen hundred and ninety-three was employed by printers and publishers in New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, and even Charleston to ill.u.s.trate their books. Like other engravers, he began by cutting in type-metal, or engraving upon copper. In seventeen hundred and ninety-four, for Durell of New York, he undertook to make ill.u.s.trations, probably for "The Looking Gla.s.s for the Mind." Beginning by copying Bewick's pictures upon type-metal, when "about one-third done, Dr.

Anderson felt satisfied he could do better on wood."[166-A] In his diary we find noted an instance of his perseverance in the midst of discouragement: "Sept. 24. This morning I was quite discouraged on seeing a crack in the wood. Employed as usual at the Doctor's, came home to dinner, glued the wood and began again with fresh hopes of producing a good wood engraving." September 26 found him "pretty well satisfied with the impression and so was Durell." In eighteen hundred he engraved all the pictures on wood for a new edition of the same book, and from this time he seems to have discontinued the use of type-metal, which he had employed in his earlier work as ill.u.s.trator of the "Pilgrim's Progress" issued by Hugh Gaine, and of "Tom Thumb's Folio" printed by Brewer. After eighteen hundred and twelve Anderson almost gave up engraving on copper also, and devoted himself to satisfying the great demand for his work on wood. For Durell of New York, an extensive reprinter of English books, from toy-books to a folio edition of Josephus, he reproduced the English engravings, never making, according to Mr. Lossing, more than a frontispiece for the larger volumes.

Although Samuel Wood and Sons of New York also gave Dr. Anderson many orders for cuts for their various juvenile publications, he still found time to engrave for publishers of other cities. We find his ill.u.s.trations in the toy-books printed in Boston and Philadelphia; and for Sidney Babc.o.c.k, a New Haven publisher of juvenile literature, he supplied many of the numerous woodcuts required. The best of Anderson's work as an engraver coincided with the years of Babc.o.c.k's very extensive business of issuing children's books, between 1805 and 1840. His cuts adorned the juvenile duodecimos that this printer's widely extended trade demanded; and even as far south as Charleston, South Carolina, Babc.o.c.k, like Isaiah Thomas, found it profitable to open a branch shop.

Anderson's ill.u.s.trations are the main features of most of Babc.o.c.k's little blue, pink, and yellow paper-covered books; especially of those printed in the early years of the nineteenth century. We notice in them the changes in the dress of children, who no longer were clothed exactly in the semblance of their elders, but began to a.s.sume garments more appropriate to their ages, sports, and occupations. Anderson also sometimes introduced into his pictures a negro coachman or nurse in the place of the footman or maid of the English tale he ill.u.s.trated.

While the demand for the engraver's work was constant, his remuneration was small, if we are to judge by Babc.o.c.k's payment of only fifty shillings for fifteen cuts.

For these toy-books Anderson made many reproductions from Bewick's cuts, and although he did not equal the Englishman's work, he so far surpa.s.sed his pupils and imitators of the early part of the century that his engravings are generally to be recognized even when not signed. In eighteen hundred and two Dr. Anderson began to reproduce for David Longworth Bewick's "Quadrupeds," and these "cuts were afterwards made use of, with the Bewick letter-press also, for a series of children's books."[168-A]

In eighteen hundred and twelve, for Munroe & Francis of Boston, Dr.

Anderson made after J. Thompson a set of cuts, mainly remarkable "as the chief of his few departures from the style of his favorite, Bewick."[169-A]

The custom of not signing either text or engravings in the children's books has made it difficult to identify writers and ill.u.s.trators of juvenile literature. But some of the best engravers undoubtedly practised their art on these toy-books. Nathaniel Dearborn, who was a stationer, printer, and engraver in Boston about eighteen hundred and eleven, sometimes signed the full-page ill.u.s.trations on both wood and copper, and Abel Bowen, a copper-engraver, and possibly the first wood-engraver in Boston, signed a very curious publication ent.i.tled "A Metamorphosis"--a manifold paper which in its various possible combinations transformed one figure into another in keeping with the progress of the story.

C. Gilbert, a pupil of Mason, who had introduced the art of wood-engraving in Philadelphia from Boston, engraved on wood certainly the two full-page ill.u.s.trations for "A Present for a Little Girl,"

printed in eighteen hundred and sixteen for a Baltimore firm, Warner & Hanna.

Adams and his pupils, Lansing and Morgan, also did work on children's books. Adams seems to have worked under Anderson's instruction, and after eighteen hundred and twenty-five did cuts for some books in the juvenile libraries of S. Wood and Mahlon Day of New York.

Of the engravers on copper, many tried their hands on these toy-books.

Among them may be mentioned Amos Doolittle of New Haven, James Poupard, John Neagle, and W. Ralph of Philadelphia, and Rollinson of New York, who is credited with having engraved the silver b.u.t.tons on the coat worn by Washington on his inauguration as President.

But of the copper-plate engravers, perhaps none did more work for children's books than William Charles of Philadelphia. Charles, who is best known by his series of caricatures of the events of the War of 1812 and of local politics, worked upon toy-books as early as eighteen hundred and eight, when in Philadelphia he published in two parts "Tom the Piper's Son; ill.u.s.trated with whimsical engravings." In these books both text and pictures were engraved, as will be seen in the ill.u.s.tration. Charles's plates for a series of moral tales in verse were used by his successors, Mary Charles, Morgan & Yeager, and Morgan & Sons, for certainly fifteen years after the originals were made. To William Charles the children in the vicinity of Philadelphia were also probably indebted for the introduction of colored pictures. It is possible that the young folks of Boston had the novelty of colored picture-books somewhat before Charles introduced them in Philadelphia, as we find that "The History and Adventures of Little Henry exemplified in a series of figures" was printed by J. Belcher of the Ma.s.sachusetts town in 1812. These "figures" exhibited little Henry suitably attired for the various incidents of his career, with a movable head to be attached at will to any of the figures, which were not engraved with the text, but each was laid in loose on a blank page. William Charles's method of coloring the pictures engraved with the text was a slight advance, perhaps, upon the ill.u.s.trations inserted separately; but it is doubtful whether these immovable plates afforded as much entertainment to little readers as the separate figures similar to paper dolls which Belcher, and somewhat later Charles also, used in a few of their publications.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Tom the Piper's Son_]

The "Peac.o.c.k at Home," engraved by Charles and then colored in aqua-tint, is one of the rare early colored picture-books still extant, having been first issued in eighteen hundred and fourteen. The coloring of the ill.u.s.trations at first doubled the price, and seems to have been used princ.i.p.ally for a series of stories belonging to what may be styled the Ethics-in-Play type of juvenile literature, and ent.i.tled the "History and Adventures of Little William," "Little Nancy," etc. These tales, written after the objective manner of Miss Edgeworth, glossed over by rhyme, contained usually eight colored plates, and sold for twenty-five cents each instead of twelve cents, the price of the picture-book without colored plates. Sometimes, as in the case of "Cinderella," we find the text ill.u.s.trated with a number of "Elegant Figures, to dress and undress." The paper doll could be placed behind the costumes appropriate to the various adventures, and, to prevent the loss of the heroine, the book was tied up with pink or blue ribbon after the manner of a portfolio.

With engravers on wood and copper able to make more attractive the pa.s.sion for instruction which marked the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the variety of toy-book literature naturally became greater.

Indeed, without pictures to render somewhat entertaining the Labor-in-Play school, it is doubtful whether it could have attained its widespread popularity.

It is, of course, possible to name but a few t.i.tles typical of the various kinds of instruction offered as amus.e.m.e.nt. "To present to the young Reader a Little Miscellany of Natural History, Moral Precept, Sentiment, and Narrative," Dr. Kendall wrote "Keeper's Travels in Search of his Master," "The Canary Bird," and "The Sparrow." "The Prize for Youthful Obedience" endeavored to instill a love for animals, and to promote obedient habits. Its story runs in this way:

"A kind and good father had a little lively son, named Francis; but, although that little boy was six years old, he had not yet learned to read.

"His mama said to him, one day, 'if Francis will learn to read well, he shall have a pretty little chaise.'

"The little boy was vastly pleased with this; he presently spelt five or six words and then kissed his mama.

"'Mama,' said Francis, 'I am delighted with the thoughts of this chaise, but I should like to have a horse to draw it.'