Forgotten Books of the American Nursery Part 16

Mrs. Lydia H. Sigourney, another favorite contributor to magazines, collected her "Poetry for Children" into a volume bearing this t.i.tle, in eighteen hundred and thirty-four, and published "Tales and Essays" in the same year. These were followed two years later by "Olive Buds," and thereafter at intervals she brought out several other books, none of which have now any interest except as examples of juvenile literature that had once a decided vogue and could safely be bought for the Sunday-school library.

The names of Mrs. Anna M. Wells, Mrs. Frances S. Osgood, Mrs. Farrar, Mrs. Eliza L. Follen, and Mrs. Seba Smith were all well beloved by children eighty years ago, and their writings, if long since lost sight of, at least added their quota to the children's publications which were distinctly American.

If the quant.i.ty of books sold is any indication of the popularity of an author's work, nothing produced by any of these ladies is to be compared with the "Tales of Peter Parley" and the "Rollo Books" of Jacob Abbott.

The tendency to instruct while endeavoring to entertain was remodelled by these men, who in after years had a host of imitators. Great visions of good to children had overtaken dreams of making children good, with the result that William Darton's conversational method of instruction was compounded with Miss Edgeworth's educational theories and elaborated after the manner of Hannah More. Samuel Goodrich, at least, confessed that his many tales were the direct result of a conversation with Miss More, whom, because of his admiration for her books, he made an effort to meet when in England in eighteen hundred and twenty-three. While talking with the old lady about her "Shepherd of Salisbury Plain," the idea came to Mr. Goodrich that he, himself, might write for American children and make good use of her method of introducing much detail in description. As a child he had not found the few toy-books within his reach either amusing or interesting, with the exception of this Englishwoman's writings. He resolved that the growing generation should be better served, but little dreamed of the unprecedented success, as far as popularity was concerned, that the result of his determination would prove.

After his return to America, the immediate favorable reception of the "Token," under Goodrich's direction, led to the publication in the same year (1828) of "Peter Parley's Tales about America," followed by "Tales about Europe." At this date of retrospection the first volume seems in many ways the best of any of the numerous books by the same author. The boy hero, taken as a child companion upon a journey through several states, met with adventures among Indians upon the frontiers, and saw places of historical significance. Every incident is told in imitation of Miss More, with that detailed description which Goodrich had found so fascinating. If a little overdone in this respect, the narrative has certainly a freshness sadly deficient in many later volumes. Even the second tale seems to lack the engaging spontaneity of the first, and already to grow didactic and recitative rather than personal. But both met with an equally generous and appreciative reception. Parley's educational tales were undoubtedly the American pioneers in what may be readily styled the "travelogue" manner used in later years by Elbridge Brooks and many other writers for little people. These early attempts of Parley's to educate the young reader were followed by one hundred others, which sold like hot cakes. Of some tales the sales reached a total of fifty thousand in one year, while it is estimated that seven million of Peter Parley's "Histories" and "Tales" were sold before the admiration of their style and qualities waned.

Peter Parley took his heroes far afield. Jacob Abbott adopted another plan of instruction in the majority of his books. Beginning in eighteen hundred and thirty-four with the "Young Christian Series," the Reverend Mr. Abbott soon had readers in England, Scotland, Germany, France, Holland, and India, where many of his volumes were translated and republished. In the "Rollo Books" and "Franconia" an attempt was made to answer many of the questions that children of each century pour out to astonish and confound their elders. The child reader saw nothing incongruous in the remarkable wisdom and maturity of Mary Bell and Beechnut, who could give advice and information with equal glibness. The advice, moreover, was often worth following, and the knowledge occasionally worth having; and the little one swallowed chunks of morals and morsels of learning without realizing that he was doing so. Most of both was speedily forgotten, but many adults in after years were unconsciously indebted to Goodrich and Abbott for some familiarity with foreign countries, some interest in natural science.

Notwithstanding the immense demand for American stories, there was fortunately still some doubt as to whether this remodelled form of instructive amus.e.m.e.nt and moral story-book literature did not lack certain wholesome features characteristic of the days when fairies and folklore, and Newbery's gilt volumes, had plenty of room on the nursery table. "I cannot very well tell," wrote the editor of the "Fairy Book"[216-A] in 1836,--"I cannot very well tell why it is that the good old histories and tales, which used to be given to young people for their amus.e.m.e.nt and instruction, as soon as they could read, have of late years gone quite out of fashion in this country. In former days there was a worthy English bookseller, one Mr. Newbery, who used to print thousands of nice little volumes of such stories, which, as he solemnly declared in print in the books themselves, he gave away to all little boys and girls, charging them only a sixpenny for the gold covers. These of course no one could be so unreasonable as to wish him to furnish at his own expense.... Yet in the last generation, American boys and girls (the fathers and mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers of the present generation) were not wholly dependent upon Mr. Newbery of St. Paul's church-yard, though they knew him well and loved him much.

The great Benjamin Franklin, when a printer in Philadelphia, did not disdain to print divers of Newbery's books adorned with cuts in the likeness of his, though it must be confessed somewhat inferior.[216-B]

Yet rude as they were, they were probably the first things in the way of pictures that West and Copley ever beheld, and so instilled into those future painters, the rudiments of that art by which they afterwards became so eminent themselves, and conferred such honour upon their native country. In somewhat later time there were the worthy Hugh Gaine, at the Sign of the Bible and Crown in Pearl street, and the patriotic Samuel Loudon, and the genuine and unadulterated New Yorker, Evert Duyckinck, besides others in Boston and Philadelphia, who trod in the steps of Newbery, and supplied the infant mind with its first and sweetest literary food. The munificent Newbery, and the pious and loyal Hugh Gaine, and the patriotic Samuel Loudon are departed. Banks now abound and brokers swarm where Loudon erst printed, and many millions worth of silk and woolen goods are every year sold where Gaine vended his big Bibles and his little story-books. They are all gone; the glittering covers and their more brilliant contents, the tales of wonder and enchantment, the father's best reward for merit, the good grandmother's most prized presents. They are gone--the cheap delight of childhood, the unbought grace of boyhood, the dearest, freshest, and most unfading recollections of maturer life. They are gone--and in their stead has succeeded a swarm of geological catechisms, entomological primers, and tales of political economy--dismal trash, all of them; something half-way between stupid story-books and bad school-books; being so ingeniously written as to be unfit for any useful purpose in school and too dull for any entertainment out of it."

This is practically Charles Lamb's lament of some thirty years before.

Lamb had despised the learned Charles, Mrs. Barbauld's peg upon which to hang instruction, and now an American Shakespeare lover found the use of toy-books as mechanical guides to knowledge for nursery inmates equally deplorable.

Yet an age so in love with the acquirement of solid facts as to produce a Parley and an Abbott was the period when the most famous of all nursery books was brought out from the dark corner into which it had been swept by the theories of two generations, and presented once again as "The Only True Mother Goose Melodies."

The origin of Mother Goose as the protecting genius of the various familiar jingles has been an interesting field of speculation and research. The claim for Boston as the birthplace of their sponsor has long ago been proved a poor one, and now seems likely to have been an ingenious form of advertis.e.m.e.nt. But Boston undoubtedly did once again make popular, at least in America, the lullabies and rhymes repeated for centuries around French or English firesides.

The history of Mother Goose and her brood is a long one. "Mother Goose,"

writes Mr. Walter T. Field, "began her existence as the raconteuse of fairy tales, not as the nursery poetess. As La Mere Oye she told stories to French children more than two hundred and fifty years ago." According to the researches made by Mr. Field in the literature of Mother Goose, "the earliest date at which Mother Goose appears as the author of children's stories is 1667, when Charles Perrault, a distinguished French litterateur, published in Paris a little book of tales which he had during that and the preceding year contributed to a magazine known as 'Moejen's Recueil,' printed at The Hague. This book is ent.i.tled 'Histoires ou Contes du Tems Pa.s.se, avec des Moralitez,' and has a frontispiece in which an old woman is pictured, telling stories to a family group by the fireside while in the background are the words in large characters, 'Contes de ma Mere l'Oye.'"

It seems, however, to have been John Newbery's publishing-house that made Mother Goose sponsor for the ditties in much the form in which we now have them. In Newbery's collection of "Melodies" there were numerous footnotes burlesquing Dr. Johnson and his dictionary, together with jests upon the moralizing habit prevalent among authors. There is evidence that Goldsmith wrote many of these notes when doing hack-work for the famous publisher in St. Paul's Churchyard. It is known, for instance, that in January, 1760, Goldsmith celebrated the production of his "Good Natur'd Man" by dining his friends at an inn. During the feast he sang his favorite song, said to be

"There was an old woman tos't up in a blanket, Seventy times as high as the moon."

This was introduced quite irrelevantly in the preface to "Mother Goose's Melodies," but with the apology that it was a favorite with the editor.

There is also the often quoted remark of Miss Hawkins as confirming Goldsmith's editorship: "I little thought what I should have to boast, when Goldsmith taught me to play Jack and Jill, by two bits of paper on his fingers." But neither of these statements seems to have more weight in solving the mystery of the editor's name than the evidence of the whimsically satirical notes themselves. How like the author of the "Vicar of Wakefield" and the children's "Fables in Verse" is this remark underneath:

"'There was an old Woman who liv'd under a hill, And if she's not gone, she lives there still.'

"This is a self evident Proposition, which is the very essence of Truth. She lived under the hill, and if she's not gone, she lives there still. n.o.body will presume to contradict this. _Croesa._"

And is not this also a good-natured imitation of that kind of seriously intended information which Mr. Edgeworth inserted some thirty years later in "Harry and Lucy:" "Dry, what is not wet"? Again this note is appended to

"See Saw Margery Daw Jacky shall have a new master:"

"It is a mean and scandalous Practise in Authors to put Notes to Things that deserve no Notice." Who except Goldsmith was capable of this vein of humor?

When Munroe and Francis in Boston undertook about eighteen hundred and twenty-four to republish these old-fashioned rhymes, in the practice of the current theory that everything must be simplified, they omitted all these notes and changed many of the "Melodies." Sir Walter Scott's "Donnel Dhu" was included, and the beautiful Shakespeare selections, "When Daffodils begin to 'pear," "When the Bee sucks," etc., were omitted. Doubtless the American editors thought that they had vastly improved upon the Newbery publication in every word changed and every line omitted. In reality, they deprived the nursery of much that might well have remained as it was, although certain expressions were very properly altered. In a negative manner they did one surprising and fortunate thing: in leaving out the amusing notes they did not attempt to replace them, and consequently the nursery had one book free from that advice and precept, which in other verse for children resulted in persistent nagging. The ill.u.s.trations were entirely redrawn, and Abel Bowen and Nathaniel Dearborn were asked to do the engraving for this Americanized edition.

Of the poetry written in America for children before eighteen hundred and forty there is little that need be said. Much of it was entirely religious in character and most of it was colorless and dreary stuff.

The "Child's Gem" of eighteen hundred and thirty-eight, considered a treasury of precious verse by one reviewer, and issued in embossed morocco binding, was characteristic of many contemporary _poems_, in which nature was forced to exude precepts of virtue and industry. The following stanzas are no exception to the general tone of the contents of practically every book ent.i.tled "Poetry for Children:"

"'Be good, little Edmund,' your mother will say, She will whisper it soft in your ear, And often repeat it, by night and by day That you may not forget it, my dear.

"And the ant at its work, and the flower-loving bee And the sweet little bird in the wood As it warbles its song, from its nest in the tree, Seems to say, 'little Eddy be good.'"

The change in the character of the children's books written by Americans had begun to be seriously noticed in England. Although there were still many importations (such as the series written by Mrs. Sherwood), there was some inclination to resent the stocking of American booksellers'

shelves by the work of local talent, much to the detriment of English publishers' pockets. The literary critics took up the subject, and thought themselves justified in disparaging many of the American books which found also ready sale on English book-counters. The religious books underwent scathing criticism, possibly not undeserved, except that the English productions of the same order and time make it now appear that it was but the pot calling the kettle black. Almost as much fault was found with the story-books. It apparently mattered little that the tables were now turned and British publishers were pirating American tales as freely and successfully as Thomas and Philadelphia printers had in former years made use of Newbery's, and Darton and Harvey's, juvenile novelties in book ware.

In the "Quarterly Review" of 1843, in an article ent.i.tled "Books for Children," the writer found much cause for complaint in regard to stories then all too conspicuous in bookshops in England. "The same egregious mistakes," said the critic, "as to the nature of a child's understanding--the same explanations, which are all but indelicate, and always profane--seem to pervade all these American mentors; and of a number by Peter Parley, Abbott, Todd, &c., it matters little which we take up." "Under the name of Peter Parley," continued the disgruntled gentleman, after finding only malicious evil in poor Mr. Todd's efforts to explain religious doctrines, "such a number of juvenile school-books are current--some greatly altered from the originals and many more by _adopters_ of _Mr. Goodrich's_ pseudonym--that it becomes difficult to measure the merits or demerits of the said _magnus parens_, Goodrich."

Liberal quotations followed from "Peter Parley's Farewell," which was censured as palling to the mind of those familiar with the English sources from which the facts had been irreverently culled.

The reviewer then pa.s.sed on to another section of "American abominations" which "seem to have some claim to popularity since they are easily sold." "These," continued the anonymous critic, "are works not of amus.e.m.e.nt--those we shall touch upon later--but of that half-and-half description where instruction blows with a side wind....

Accordingly after impatient investigation of an immense number of little tomes, we are come to the conclusion that they may be briefly cla.s.sified--firstly, as containing such information as any child in average life who can speak plainly is likely to be possessed of; and secondly, such as when acquired is not worth having."

To this second cla.s.s of book the Reverend Mr. Abbott's "Rollo Books"

were unhesitatingly consigned. They were regarded as curiosities for "mere occupation of the eye, and utter stagnation of the thoughts, full of empty minutiae with all the rules of common sense set aside."

Next the writer considered the style of those Americans who persuaded shillings from English pockets by "ingeniously contrived series which rendered the purchase of a single volume by no means so recommendable as that of all." The "uncouth phraseology, crack-jack words, and puritan derived words are nationalized and therefore do not permit cavilling,"

continued the reviewer, dismayed and disgusted that it was necessary to warn his public, "but their children never did, or perhaps never will, hear any other language; and it is to be hoped they _understand_ it. At all events, we have nothing to do but keep ours from it, believing firmly that early familiarity with refined and beautiful forms ... is one of the greatest safeguards against evil, if not necessary to good."

However, the critic did not close his article without a good word for those ladies in whose books we ourselves have found merit. "Their works of amus.e.m.e.nt" he considered admirable, "when not laden with more religion than the tale can hold in solution. Miss Sedgwick takes a high place for powers of description and traits of nature, though her language is so studded with Americanisms as much to mar the pleasure and perplex the mind of an English reader. Besides this lady, Mrs. Sigourney and Mrs. Seba Smith may be mentioned. The former, especially, to all other gifts adds a refinement, and nationality of subject, with a knowledge of life, which some of her poetical pieces led us to expect.

Indeed the little Americans have little occasion to go begging to the history or tradition of other nations for topics of interest."

The "Westminster Review" of eighteen hundred and forty was also in doubt "whether all this Americanism [such as Parley's 'Tales' contained] is desirable for English children, were it," writes the critic, "only for them we keep the 'pure well of English undefiled,' and cannot at all admire the improvements which it pleases that go-ahead nation to claim the right of making in our common tongue: unwisely enough as regards themselves, we think, for one of the elements in the power of a nation is the wide spread of its language."

This same criticism was made again and again about the style of American writers for adults, so that it is little wonder the children's books received no unqualified praise. But Americanisms were not the worst feature of the "inundation of American children's books," which because of their novelty threatened to swamp the "higher cla.s.s" English. They were feared because of the "mult.i.tude of false notions likely to be derived from them, the more so as the similarity of name and language prevents children from being on their guard, and from remembering that the representations that they read are by foreigners." It was the American view of English inst.i.tutions (presented in story-book form) which rankled in the British breast as a "condescending tenderness of the free nation towards the monarchical regime" from which at any cost the English child must be guarded. In this respect Peter Parley was the worst offender, and was regarded as "a sad purveyor of slip-slop, and no matter how amusing, ignorant of his subject." That gentleman, meanwhile, read the criticisms and went on making "bread and b.u.t.ter," while he scowled at the English across the water, who criticised, but pirated as fast as he published in America.

Gentle Miss Eliza Leslie received altogether different treatment in this review of American juvenile literature. She was considered "good everywhere, and particularly so for the meridian in which her tales were placed;" and we quite agree with the reviewer who considered it well worth while to quote long paragraphs from her "Tell Tale" to show its character and "truly useful lesson." "To America," continued this writer, "we also owe a host of little books, that bring together the literature of childhood and the people; as 'Home,' 'Live and Let Live'

[by Miss Sedgwick], &c., but excellent in intention as they are, we have our doubts, as to the general reception they will meet in this country while so much of more exciting and elegant food is at hand." Even if the food of amus.e.m.e.nt in England appeared to the British mind more spiced and more _elegant_, neither Miss Leslie's nor Miss Sedgwick's fict.i.tious children were ever anaemic puppets without wills of their own,--a type made familiar by Miss Edgeworth and persisted in by her admirers and successors,--but vitalized little creatures, who acted to some degree, at least, like the average child who loved their histories and named her dolls after favorite characters.

To-day these English criticisms are only of value as showing that the American story-book was no longer imitating the English tale, but was developing, by reason of the impress of differing social forces, a new type. Its faults do not prevent us from seeing that the spirit expressed in this juvenile literature is that of a new nation feeling its own way, and making known its purpose in its own manner. While we smile at sedulous endeavors of the serious-minded writers to present their convictions, educational, religious, or moral, in palatable form, and to consider children always as a race apart, whose natural actions were invariably sinful, we still read between the lines that these writers were really interested in the welfare of the American child; and that they were working according to the accepted theories of the third decade of the nineteenth century as to the const.i.tuents of a juvenile library which, while "judicious and attractive, should also blend instruction with innocent amus.e.m.e.nt."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _The Little Runaway_]

And now as we have reached the point in the history of the American story-book when it is popular at least in both English-speaking countries, if not altogether satisfactory to either, what can be said of the value of this juvenile literature of amus.e.m.e.nt which has developed on the tiny pages of well-worn volumes? If, of all the books written for children by Americans seventy-five years and more ago, only Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Wonder Book" has survived to the present generation; of all the verse produced, only the simple rhyme, "Mary had a Little Lamb," and Clement Moore's "The Night before Christmas" are still quoted, has their history any value to-day?

If we consider that there is nothing more rare in the fiction of any nation than the popular child's story that endures; nothing more unusual than the successful well-written juvenile tale, we can perhaps find a value not to be reckoned by the survival or literary character of these old-fashioned books, but in their silent testimony to the influence of the progress of social forces at work even upon so small a thing as a child's toy-book. The successful well-written child's book has been rare, because it has been too often the object rather than the manner of writing that has been considered of importance; because it has been the aim of all writers either to "improve in goodness" the young reader, as when, two hundred years ago, Cotton Mather penned "Good Lessons" for his infant son to learn at school, or, to quote the editor of "Affection's Gift" (published a century and a quarter later), it has been for the purpose of "imparting moral precepts and elevated sentiments, of uniting instruction and amus.e.m.e.nt, through the fascinating mediums of interesting narrative and harmony of numbers."

The result of both intentions has been a collection of dingy or faded duodecimos containing a series of impressions of what each generation thought good, religiously, morally, and educationally, for little folk.

If few of them shed any light upon child nature in those long-ago days, many throw shafts of illumination upon the change and progress in American ideals and thought concerning the welfare of children. As has already been said, the press supplied what the public taste demanded, and if the writers produced for earlier generations of children what may now be considered lumber, the press of more modern date has not progressed so far in this field of literature as to make it in any degree certain that our children's treasures may not be consigned to an equal oblivion. For these too are but composites made by superimposing the latest fads or theories as to instructive amus.e.m.e.nt of children upon those of previous generations of toy-books. Most of what was once considered the "perfume of youth and freshness" in a literary way has been discarded as dry and unprofitable, mistaken or deceptive; and yet, after all has been said by way of criticism of methods and subjects, these chap-books, magazines, gift and story books form our best if blurred pictures of the amus.e.m.e.nts and daily life of the old-time American child.

We are learning also to prize these small "Histories" as part of the progress of the arts of book-making and ill.u.s.tration, and of the growth of the business of publishing in America; and already we are aware of the fulfilment of what was called by one old bookseller, "Tom Thumb's Maxim in Trade and Politics:" "He who buys this book for Two-pence, and lays it up till it is worth Three-pence, may get an hundred per cent by the bargain."

FOOTNOTES:

[204-A] _Election Day_, p. 71. American Sunday School Union, 1828.

[216-A] Mr. G.C. Verplanck was probably the editor of this book, published by Harper & Bros.

[216-B] This statement the writer has been unable to verify.