Forgotten Books of the American Nursery Part 2

[6-D] _Records of Ma.s.s. Bay_, vol. i, p. 328.

[7-A] Ford, _The New England Primer_, p. 92.

[7-B] _Ibid._

[11-A] In the possession of the British Museum.

[14-A] Ford, _The New England Primer_, p. 38.

[14-B] _Ibid._

[19-A] Thomas, _History of Printing in America_, vol. iii, p. 145.

[19-B] _Ibid._, vol. i, p. 294.

[26-A] Sears, _American Literature_, p. 86.

[26-B] Although this appears to be the first advertis.e.m.e.nt of gilt horn-books in Philadelphia papers, an inventory of the estate of Michael Perry, a Boston bookseller, made in seventeen hundred, includes sixteen dozen gilt horn-books.

CHAPTER II

1747-1767

He who learns his letters fair, Shall have a coach and take the air.

_Royal Primer_, Newbery, 1762

Our king the good No man of blood.

_The New England Primer_, 1762

CHAPTER II

1747-1767

_The Play-Book in England_

The vast horde of story-books so constantly poured into modern nurseries makes it difficult to realize that the library of the early colonial child consisted of such books as have been already described. The juvenile books to-day are multiform. The quant.i.ties displayed upon shop-counters or ranged upon play-room shelves include a variety of subjects bewildering to all but those whose business necessitates a knowledge of this kind of literature. For the little child there is no lack of gayly colored pictures and short tales in large print; for the older boys and girls there lies a generous choice, ranging from Bunny stories to Jungle Books, or they

"May see how all things are, Seas and cities near and far.

And the flying fairies' looks In the picture story-books."

The contrast is indeed extreme between that scanty fare of dull sermons and "The New England Primer" given to the little people of the early eighteenth century, and this superabundance prepared with lavish care for the nation of American children.

The beginning of this complex juvenile literature is, therefore, to be regarded as a comparatively modern invention of about seventeen hundred and forty-five. From that date can be traced the slow growth of a literature written with an avowed intention of furnishing amus.e.m.e.nt as well as instruction; and in the toy-books published one hundred and fifty years ago are found the prototypes of the present modes of bringing fun and knowledge to the American fireside.

The question at once arises as to the reason why this literature came into existence; why was it that children after seventeen hundred and fifty should have been favored in a way unknown to their parents?

To even the casual reader of English literature the answer is plain, if this subject of toy-books be regarded as of near kin to the larger body of writing. It has been somewhat the custom to consider children's literature as a thing wholly apart from that of adults, probably because the majority of the authors of these little tales have so generally lacked the qualities indispensable for any true literary work. In reality the connection between the two is somewhat like that of parent and child; the smaller body, though lacking in power, has closely imitated the larger ma.s.s of writing in form and kind, and has reflected, sometimes clearly, sometimes dimly, the good or bad fashions that have shared the successive periods of literary history, like a child who unconsciously reproduces a parent's foibles or excellences.

It is to England, then, that we must look to find the conditions out of which grew the necessity for this modern invention--the story-book.

The love of stories has been the splendid birthright of every child in all ages and in all lands. "Stories," wrote Thackeray,--"stories exist everywhere; there is no calculating the distance through which the stories have come to us, the number of languages through which they have been filtered, or the centuries during which they have been told. Many of them have been narrated almost in their present shape for thousands of years to the little copper-coloured Sanscrit children, listening to their mothers under the palm-trees by the banks of the yellow Jumna--their Brahmin mother, who softly narrated them through the ring in her nose. The very same tale has been heard by the Northern Vikings as they lay on their shields on deck; and the Arabs couched under the stars on the Syrian plains when their flocks were gathered in, and their mares were picketed by the tents." This picturesque description leads exactly to the point to be emphasized: that children shared in the simple tales of their people as long as those tales retained their freshness and simplicity; but when, as in England in the eighteenth century, the literature lost these qualities and became artificial, critical, and even skeptical, it lost its charm for the little ones and they no longer cared to listen to it.

Fashion and taste were then alike absorbed in the works of Dryden, Pope, Addison, Steele, and Swift, and the novels from the pens of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett had begun to claim and to hold the attention of the English reading public. The children, however, could neither comprehend nor enjoy the witty criticism and subtle treatment of the topics discussed by the older men, although, as will be seen in another chapter, the novels became, in both the original and in the abridged forms, the delight of many a "young master and miss." Meanwhile, in the American colonies the people who could afford to buy books inherited their taste for literature as well as for tea from the Puritans and fashionables in the mother country; although it is a fact familiar to all, that the works of the comparatively few native authors lagged, in spirit and in style, far behind the writings of Englishmen of the time.

The reading of one who was a boy in the older era of the urbane Addison and the witty Pope, and a man in the newer period of the novelists, is well described in Benjamin Franklin's autobiography. "All the little money," wrote that book-lover, "that came into my hands was laid out in books. Pleased with the Pilgrim's Progress, my collection was of John Bunyan's works in separate volumes. I afterwards sold them to buy R.

Burton's Historical Collections; they were Chapmen's books, and cheap, 40 or 50 in all."

Burton's "Historical Collections" contained history, travels, adventures, fiction, natural history, and biography. So great was the favor in which they were held in the eighteenth century that the compiler, Nathaniel Crouch, almost lost his ident.i.ty in his pseudonym, and like the late Mr. Clemens, was better known by his nom-de-plume than by his family name. According to Dunton, he "melted down the best of the English histories into twelve-penny books, which are filled with wonders, rarities and curiosities." Although characterized by Dr.

Johnson as "very proper to allure backward readers," the contents of many of the various books afforded the knowledge and entertainment eagerly grasped by Franklin and other future makers of the American nation. The scarcity of historical works concerning the colonies made Burton's account of the "English Empire in America" at once a mine of interest to wide-awake boys of the day. Number VIII, ent.i.tled "Winter Evenings' Entertainment," was long a source of amus.e.m.e.nt with its stories and riddles, and its t.i.tle was handed down to other books of a similar nature. To children, however, the best-known volume of the series was Burton's ill.u.s.trated versification of Bible stories called "The Youth's Divine Pastime." But the subjects chosen by Burton were such as belonged to a very plain-spoken age; and as the versifier was no euphuist in his relation of facts, the result was a remarkable "Pastime for Youth." The literature read by English children was, of course, the same; the little ones of both countries ate of the same tree of knowledge of facts, often either silly or revolting.

To deliver the younger and future generations from such unpalatable and indigestible mental food, there was soon to appear in London a man, John Newbery by name, who, already a printer, publisher, and vendor of patent medicines, seized the opportunity to issue stories written especially for the amus.e.m.e.nt of little children.

While Newbery was making his plans to provide pleasure for young folks in England, in the colonies the idea of a child's need of recreation through books was slowly gaining ground. It is well to note the manner in which the little colonists were prepared to receive Newbery's books as recreative features crept gradually into the very few publications of which there is record.

In seventeen hundred and forty-five native talent was still entirely confined to writing for little people lugubrious sermons or discourses delivered on Sunday and "Catechize days," and afterwards printed for larger circulation. The reprints from English publications were such exotics as, "A Poesie out of Mr. Dod's Garden," an alluring t.i.tle, which did not in the least deceive the small colonials as to the religious nature of its contents.

In New York the Dutch element, until the advent of Garrat Noel, paid so little attention to the subject of juvenile literature that the popularity of Watts's "Divine Songs" (issued by an Englishman) is well attested by the fact that at present it is one of the very few child's books of any kind recorded as printed in that city before 1760. But in Boston, old Thomas Fleet, in 1741, saw the value of the element of some entertainment in connection with reading, and, when he published "The Parents' Gift, containing a choice collection of G.o.d's judgments and Mercies," lives of the Evangelists, and other religious matter, he added a "variety of pleasant Pictures proper for the Entertainment of Children." This is, perhaps, the first printed acknowledgment in America that pictures were commendable to parents _because_ entertaining to their offspring. Such an idea put into words upon paper and advertised in so well-read a sheet as the "Boston Evening Post," must surely have impressed fathers and mothers really solicitous for the family welfare and anxious to provide harmless pleasure. This pictorial element was further encouraged by Franklin, when, in 1747, he reprinted, probably for the first time in this country, "Dilworth's New Guide to the English Tongue." In this school-book, after the alphabets and spelling lessons, a special feature was introduced, that is, ill.u.s.trated "Select Fables."

The cuts at the top of each fable possess an added interest from the supposition that they were engraved by the printer himself; and the constant use of the "Guide" by colonial school-masters and mistresses made their pupils unconsciously quite ready for more ill.u.s.trated and fewer homiletic volumes.

Indeed, before the middle of the century pictures had become an accepted feature of the few juvenile books, and "The History of the Holy Jesus"

versified for little ones was issued by at least two old Boston printers in 1747 and 1748 with more than a dozen cuts. Among the rare extant copies of this small chap-book is one that, although torn and disfigured by tiny fingers and the century and a half since it pleased its first owner, bears the personal touch of this inscription "Ebenezer ... Bought June ... 1749 ... price 0=2=d." Was the price marked upon its page as a reminder that two shillings was a large price to pay for a boy's book?

Perhaps for this reason it received the careful handling that has enabled us to examine it, when so many of its contemporaries and successors have vanished.

The versified story, notwithstanding its quaintness of diction, begins with a dignified directness:

"The glorious blessed Time had come, The Father had decreed, Jesus of _Mary_ there was born, And in a Manger laid."

At the end are two _Hymns_, ent.i.tled "Delight in the Lord Jesus," and "Absence from Christ intolerable." The final stanza is typical of one Puritan doctrine:

"The Devil throws his fiery Darts, And wicked Ones do act their parts, To ruin me when Christ is gone, And leaves me all alone."

The woodcuts are not the least interesting feature of this old-time duodecimo, from the picture showing the mother reading to her children to the ill.u.s.tration of the quaking of the earth on the day of the crucifixion. Crude and badly drawn as they now seem, they were surely sufficient to attract the child of their generation.

About the same time old Zechariah Fowle, who apprenticed Isaiah Thomas, and both printed and vended chap-books in Back Street, Boston, advertised among his list of books "Lately Publish'd" this same small book, together with "A Token for Youth," the "Life and Death of Elizabeth Butcher," "A Preservative from the Sins and Follies of Childhood and Youth," "The Prodigal Daughter," "The Happy Child," and "The New Gift for Children with Cuts." Of these "The New Gift" was certainly a real story-book, as one of a later edition still extant readily proves.

Thus the children in both countries were prepared to enjoy Newbery's miniature story-books, although for somewhat different reasons: in England the literature had reached a point too artificial to be interesting to little ones; in America the product of the press and the character of the majority of the juvenile importations, the reprints, or home-made chap-books, has been shown to be such as would hardly attract those who were to be the future arbiters of the colonies' destiny.

The reasons for the coming to light of this new form of infant literature have been dwelt upon in order to show the necessity for some change in the kind of reading-matter to be put in the hands of the younger members of the family. The natural order of consideration is next to point out the phase it a.s.sumed upon its appearance in England,--a phase largely due to the influence of one man,--and once there, the modifications effected by the fashions in adult fiction.