III. THE OLD-FASHIONED LIBRARY
A child should not need to choose between right and wrong. It should not be capable of wrong; it should not conceive of wrong. Obedient, as bark to helm, not by sudden strain or effort, but in the freedom of its bright course of constant life; true, with an undistinguished, painless, unboastful truth, in a crystalline household world of truth; gentle, through daily entreatings of gentleness, and honourable trusts, and pretty prides of child-fellowship in offices of good; strong, not in bitter and doubtful contest with temptation, but in peace of heart, and armour of habitual right, from which temptation falls like thawing hail; self-commanding, not in sick restraint of mean appetites and covetous thoughts, but in vital joy of unluxurious life, and contentment in narrow possession, wisely esteemed.—John Ruskin, in an introduction to Grimm’s“German Popular Tales,”illustrated by Cruikshank.
A child should not need to choose between right and wrong. It should not be capable of wrong; it should not conceive of wrong. Obedient, as bark to helm, not by sudden strain or effort, but in the freedom of its bright course of constant life; true, with an undistinguished, painless, unboastful truth, in a crystalline household world of truth; gentle, through daily entreatings of gentleness, and honourable trusts, and pretty prides of child-fellowship in offices of good; strong, not in bitter and doubtful contest with temptation, but in peace of heart, and armour of habitual right, from which temptation falls like thawing hail; self-commanding, not in sick restraint of mean appetites and covetous thoughts, but in vital joy of unluxurious life, and contentment in narrow possession, wisely esteemed.—John Ruskin, in an introduction to Grimm’s“German Popular Tales,”illustrated by Cruikshank.
Mr. E. V. Lucas has compiled two volumes of old-fashioned tales for modern readers. In his introductions he analyses the qualities of his selected stories, and it is generally the case that, except for incidental detail, what is said of one of a kind might just as appropriately be meant for the other. If, at moments, the editor is prone to confuse quaintness with interest, he makes full amends by the quick humour with which he deals with themoral purpose. Perhaps it was part of the game for our great-grandfathers to expect didacticism, but simply because children were then considered “the immature young of men” is no excuse, although it may be a reason, for the artificiality which subserved play to contemplation. Wherever he can escape the bonds of primness, Mr. Lucas never fails to take advantage; the character of his selections indicates this as well as such critical remarks as the following:
“The way toward a nice appreciation of the child’s own peculiar characteristics was, however, being sought by at least two writers of the eighteenth century, each of whom was before his time: Henry Brooke, who in ‘The Fool of Quality’ first drew a small boy with a sense of fun, and William Blake, who was the first to see how exquisitely worth study a child’s mind may be.”
Mr. Lucas brings together a number of stories by different persons, treating them as a group. Should you read them you will have a fairly distinct conception of early nineteenth century writing for children. But there is yet another way of approaching the subject, and that is by tracing influence from writer to writer, from group to group; by seeking for theimpetuswithout which the story becomes even more of a husk than ever.
Let us conjure up the long row of theoretical children of a bygone age, painfully pathetic in their staidness,closely imprisoned. They began with Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), the iconoclast, who attacked civil society, the family, the state, the church, and from whose pen the school did not escape chastisement. His universal cry of “back to nature” frightened the conservative; even Voltaire could not refrain, on reading the essay dealing with the origin of inequality among men, to write him: “Never has any one employed so much genius to make us into beasts. When one reads your book he is seized at once with a desire to go down on all-fours.”
Rousseau’s “Émile, or Treatise on Education” (1762) was wholly revolutionary; it tore down ancient theories, such as those practised by Dr. Isaac Watts upon his “ideal” boy and girl; all existent educational strictures were ignored. Rousseau applied to childhood his belief in the free unfolding of man’s nature; however impracticable his methods, he loosed the chains that held fast the claims of childhood, and recognised their existence. He set the pendulum swinging in the human direction; he turned men’s minds upon the study of the child as a child, and, because of this, takes his place at the head of modern education. He opened the way for a self-conscious striving on the part of authors to meet the demands of a child’s nature, by furnishing the best literary diet—according to educational theories—for juvenile minds. Revolutionary in religious as well as in political and social ideals,Rousseau’s educational machinery was destined to be infused, by some of his zealous followers, with a piousness which he never would have sanctioned.
Training should be natural, says Rousseau; the child should discover beauty, not be told about it; should recognise spontaneously what he is now taught. Education should be progressive; at the same time it should be negative. This sounds contradictory, but Rousseau would keep his child a child until the age of twelve; he would prevent him from knowing through any mental effort; he would have him grow like “Topsy” in animal spirits, his mind unbridled and imbibing facts as his lungs breathe in air. Yet inconsistency is evident from the outset: the child must observe, at the same time he must not remember. Is it possible, as Professor Payne challenges, to form the mind before furnishing it?
Rousseau’s precepts are wise and brilliant. We hear him exclaiming: “It is less consequence to prevent him [the child] from dying than to teach him how to live;” “The man who has lived most is not he who has numbered the most years, but he who has had the keenest sense of life;” “The best bed is that which brings us the best sleep.” These aphorisms are as apt as those of Franklin; but in their exercise it is necessary to consider the concomitants brought into play.
Émile is made an orphan; thus Rousseau giveshimself full sway; thus does he free himself from the necessity of constant consultation with parents. He is determined to love the boy, to encourage him in his sports, to develop his amiable instincts, his natural self. Émile must not cry for the sweets of life; he must have a need for all things rather than a joyful desire for some. Instead of teaching virtue to him, Rousseau will try to shield him from a knowledge of all vice. Where Plato recommends certain pastimes, he will train Émile to delight in himself—thus making of him something of a youthful egoist. This amœba state, endowed with all physical liberty, deprived of all dignity of childish memory, is to be the boyhood of Émile. He “shall never learn anything by heart, not even fables and not even those of La Fontaine, artless and charming as they are.” Though he does not possess the judgment to discriminate, he must be told the bare facts, and he must discover for himself the relations which these facts bear to each other. At the age of twelve, he shall hardly know a book when he sees it. Rousseau calls books “cheerless furniture.”
So much for the boy; the girl Sophie fares as ill. Being of the woman kind as well as of the child brand, she is to develop in even a more colourless fashion. Fortunately all theory is not human actuality, and Émile must have peopled his world in a way Rousseau could not prevent. We are given natural rights and hereditary endowments; eventhe savage has his standards and his dreams. Rousseau’s plan of existence ignored the social evolution of history. Yet Émile might by such training have been saved many wearisome explanations of the Mr. Barlow type, and it is ofttimes true, as Mr. G. K. Chesterton claims, that the mysteries of God are frequently more understandable than the solutions of man.
There was much in Rousseau’s book to rouse opposition; there was equally as much to appeal to those whose instinctive love of childhood was simply awaiting the flood gates to be opened. Like the Grimm fairy tales of suspended animation, on the instant, the paternal instinct began to be active, the maternal instinct to be motherly. Rousseau—emended, modified, accentuated—overran England, France, and Germany. Children were now recognised as children; it remained to be seen whether theywereto be children.
The didactic era is in no way more fitly introduced than with the names of Madame de Genlis and Arnaud Berquin in France, together with the Edgeworth and Aikin families and Thomas Day in England. To each, small space may be allotted, but they are worthy of full and separate consideration.
Stéphanie Félicité [Ducrest de St. Aubin], Comtesse de Genlis (1746–1830), is represented upon the library shelves by nearly a hundred volumes. They were written during the course of a varied existence, at the court of Louis XV and at home. HerMémoiresare told in a facile and delightful style, and indicate how she so thoroughly balanced the many conflicting elements in her duties that she remains for those days a rare example of wife, mother, society woman, and student. Her discernment of people, as revealed in these pages, was penetrating and on the whole just; and, though a typical product of her time, her nature was chastened by a refined and noble spirit.
The first glimpse she affords of herself is as a child of six, when she was taken to Paris. There, her brother was placed at a seat of learning, where the master guaranteed within six weeks’ time to teach him reading and spelling by means of a system of counters. The little girl’s teeth were shedding—not a prepossessing phase of growth at best. But, in addition, she was encased in whalebone stays, her feet were squeezed into tight shoes, her curls done up in corkscrew papers, and she was forced to wear goggles. The height of cruelty now followed. Country-bred as she had been, her manner was not in accord with the best ideas; her awkwardness was a matter of some concern. In order to give better poise to her head, a thick iron collar was clapped upon her supple throat. Here she was then, ready for regular lessons in walking. To run was to court disfavour, for little girls, especially city ones, were not allowed to do such an improper thing; to leap was an unspeakable crime; and to ask questionswas an unwarranted license. It is small wonder that later on she should utilise the memory of such abject slavery in “The Dove,” one of the numerous plays included in her “Theatre of Education.”
Her early years thus prepared Madame de Genlis for the willing acceptance of any new educational system, especially one which would advocate a constant companionship between parents and child. For she had been reared with but exceptional glimpses of her father and mother; during one of these times she relates how the former, in his desire to make her brave, forced her to catch spiders in her hands. Such a picture is worthy a place by the side of Little Miss Muffet.
Like all children, Madame de Genlis was superior to her limited pleasures; she possessed an imagination which expanded and placed her in a heroic world of her own making. There is peculiar pleasure in discovering under narrow circumstances the good, healthy spirit of youth. Madame de Genlis seemed proud to record a certain dare-devil rebellion in herself during this period. The pendulum that is made to swing to its unnatural bent brings with the downward stroke unexpected consequences. And so, when she married De Genlis, it is no surprise to read that she did so secretly—a union which is most charmingly traced in the Memoirs.
She developed into a woman with deep religious sensibility; with forceful personality; with artistictalent, well exemplified by a masterly execution on the harp. Living in an atmosphere of court fêtes, the drama occupied no small part in her daily life. Whether at her Château Genlis or elsewhere, she was ever ready for her rôle in theatricals, as dramatist or as actress. She played in Molière, and was accounted excellent in her characters; naught pleased her better than a disguise; beneath it her vivacity always disported itself.
Her interest in teaching began early; no sooner was she a mother than she hastened to fix her opinions as to the duties that lay before her, in a written treatise called “Reflections of a Mother Twenty Years of Age,” views which in their first form were lost, but which were rehabilitated in the later “Adèle et Théodore,” consisting of a series of letters on education.
After her mind had been drawn to the style of Buffon—for Madame de Genlis was a widely read woman—she determined upon improving her own manner of literary expression. She burned her bridges behind her, and fed the flames with all of her early manuscripts. Then she started over again to reconstruct her views, and in her study she made careful notes of what she fancied of importance for her future use. She was on intimate terms with Rousseau, took him to the theatre, and conversed with him on education chiefly, and about diverse matters generally. If she did not agree with him,Madame de Genlis was told that she had not as yet reached the years of discretion when she would find his writings suited to her. But Rousseau enjoyed the vivacious lady, who was kind-hearted and worth while talking to, notwithstanding the fact that she had the courtier’s love of banter. She writes:
“Not to appear better than I am, I must admit that I have often been given to ridicule others, but I have never ridiculed anything but arrogance, folly, and pedantry.”
Madame de Genlis was not a hero-worshipper; on first meeting Rousseau, his coat, his maroon-coloured stockings, his round wig suggested comedy to her, rather than gravity. We wonder whether she asked his advice regarding the use of pictures in teaching history, a theory which she originated and which Mrs. Trimmer was to follow in her Bible lessons. Full as the days were, Madame de Genlis, nevertheless, seems to have been able to give to her children every care and attention. This must have won the unstinted commendation of Rousseau, who preached that a boy’s tutor should be his father, and not a hired person.
Madame de Genlis created her own theatre; she wrote little comedies of all kinds, which met with great success. Often these would be presented in the open air, upon platforms erected beneath the shade of forest trees; by means of the drama she sought to teach her daughters elementary lessonsof life; the stage to her was an educational force. Through the plays her popularity and reputation increased to such an extent, that the Electress of Saxony demanded her friendship. She became instructress to the children of the Duke and Duchess of Chartres, and she prided herself upon being the first in France to adopt the foreign method of teaching language by conversation.[31]The rooms for her royal pupils were fitted according to her special indications. Rough sketches were made upon a wall of blue, representing medals, busts of kings and emperors of Rome. Dates and names were frescoed within easy view. Every object was utilised, even to the fire screens, which were made to represent the kings of France; and over the balustrades were flung maps, like banners upon the outer walls.
Up and down such staircases, and through such rooms wandered the cultivated flowers of royalty. They did not suffer, because their teacher was luckily human as well as theoretical; because she had a vein of humour as well as a large seriousness. Her whole educational scheme is described in her “Lessons of a Governess” and “Adèle et Théodore.” When she engaged a tutor to attend to the special studies of the young prince in her charge, she suggested the keeping of an hourly journal which would record the little fellow’s doings—each night she, herself,to write critical comments upon the margins of every page. In addition, she kept a faithful record of everything coming within her own observation; and this she read aloud each day to her pupils, who had to sign their names to the entries. But much to the chagrin of Madame de Genlis, the Duke and Duchess refused to take the time to read the voluminous manuscripts; they trusted to the wisdom and discretion of the teacher.
Not a moment was lost during these busy periods; history was played in the garden, and civic processions were given with ponies gaily caparisoned. Even a real theatre was built for them. Royalty was taught to weave, and was taken on instructive walks and on visits to instructive places. But, through all this artificiality, the woman in Madame de Genlis saved the teacher.
The latter part of her eventful life was filled with vexations, for the thunders of the French Revolution rolled about her. A short while before the storm broke, she went on a visit to England, where she came in contact with Fox and Sheridan, with Walpole and Reynolds; and where she paid a special visit to the House of Commons and was a guest at Windsor.
All told, here was a writer for children, self-conscious and yet ofttimes spontaneous in her style. She is interesting because of herself, and in spite of many of her literary attempts. She is little readto-day, in fact rarely mentioned among juvenile book lists; education killed a keen perception and vivacity by forcing them along prescribed lines. One glimpse of Madame de Genlis in old age is recorded by Maria Edgeworth, who called on her in 1803.
“She came forward, and we made our way towards her as well as we could, through a confusion of tables, chairs, and work-baskets, china, writing-desks and inkstands, and bird-cages and a harp.... She looked like the full-length picture of my great-great-grandmother Edgeworth you may have seen in the garret, very thin and melancholy, but her face not so handsome as my great-grandmother’s; dark eyes, long sallow cheeks, compressed, thin lips, two or three black ringlets on a high forehead, a cap that Mrs. Grier might wear,—altogether an appearance of fallen fortunes, worn-out health, and excessive but guardedirritability. To me there was nothing of that engaging, captivating manner which I had been taught to expect by many even of her enemies; she seemed to me to be alive only to literary quarrels and jealousies; the muscles of her face as she spoke, or as my father spoke to her, quickly and too easily expressed hatred and anger whenever any not of her own party were mentioned.”
A frontispiece to the 1802 edition of Arnaud Berquin’s (1749–1791) works represents his bust being garlanded and crowned, and his “L’Ami desEnfans” being regarded by a group of admirers, both young and old. But though this very volume was received with honours by the French Academy, and though by it Berquin claims his right to immortality, French children of the present refrain from reading him as systematically as we refrain from reading “Sandford and Merton,” which, as it happens, Berquin translated into French. There are popular editions of “L’Ami des Enfans,” but children do not relish the tameness of such moral literature. The editor detailed to write Berquin’s short life, which was spent in the study of letters, and in following up one “Ami” by another, sacrifices incident and fact for encomium. It is easy to claim for Berquin modesty and goodness during his residence in his native town near Bordeaux and after his arrival in Paris during 1772; it is interesting to know that he was encouraged to use his talents by the praise of his friends, but far more valuable would it have been to tell just in what manner he reached that ethical state which overflowed in his “L’Ami des Enfans,” published during the years 1782 and 1783. The full purport of the volume is summed up exuberantly in the following paragraph:
“Quelle aimable simplicité! quel naturel! quel sentiment naïf respirent dans cette ingénieuse production! Au lieu de ces fictions extravagantes, et de ce merveilleux bizarre dans lesquels on a si longtempségaré l’imagination des enfans, Berquin ne leur présente que des aventures dont ils peuvent être témoins chaque jour dans leur famille.”
The tales and playlets written by Berquin are almost immoral in their morality. It is a question whether the interest of children will become absorbed by the constant iteration of virtue; whether goodness is best developed through the exploitation of deceit, of lying, of disobedience, and of wilful perverseness. To be kind means to be rewarded, to be bad is synonymous with punishment. Berquin and his followers might have drawn up a moral code book in pocket form, so stereotyped was their habit of exacting an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. What are the punishments of vanity, what the outcome of playing when the afternoon task is to watch the sheep? The pictures made to illustrate the stories depict boys and girls kneeling in supplication, while the grown persons almost invariably stand in disdainful attitude. The children who would be their own masters and go out in a boat, despite parental warning, are upset: there is the algebraic formula. “Plainness the Dress of Use” is probably a worthy subject for a tale, and “A Good Heart Compensates for Many Indiscretions” a pathetic title for a play. But young people as a general rule are not maudlin in their feelings; even granting that there are some given that way, they should not be encouraged in holding a flabby standardof human, as well as of divine, justice. “L’Ami des Enfans” is filled with such sentimental mawkishness.
At the early age of twenty-three, Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1744–1817) decided to educate his son, Richard, according to the principles set down by Rousseau. He thrust the little fellow back into a state of nature by taking his shoes and stockings off and by cutting the arms from all his jackets. But, try as he did in every way to make a living Émile out of young Richard, the father found that the theories did not work. When he took the luckless boy to Paris and called upon Rousseau, there ensued an examination of results, and the sum-total was pronounced a failure. Hon. Emily Lawless writes in some glee:
“It is impossible to read without a smile of the eminently unphilosophic wrath expressed by the sage, because each time that a handsome horse or vehicle passed them on their walk, his temporary charge—a child of seven—invariably cried out, ‘That’s an English horse!’ ... a view which he solemnly pronounced to be due to a sadly early ‘propensity to party prejudice’!...”
Edgeworth lost entire faith in the practical applicationof the Rousseau scheme in after years; but the lasting effect it seems to have produced upon the unfortunate victim was to place him in the ranks of mediocrity, for he was hardly ever spoken of thereafter by his family; and in order to remove himself from further disturbance, as soon as he reached years of discretion, he hastened to place miles between himself and the scenes of his youth; Richard came to America.
Edgeworth’s love affairs—for four times he was married—are involved, and do not concern us, save as they effect Thomas Day. But, personally, he enters our plan as influencing his daughter, Maria Edgeworth (1767–1849), with whom he wrote “Practical Education.” There are some men—and Edgeworth was bordering on the type—who assume an almost dreadful position in a household; who torture the mind of boy or girl by prying, and by wishing to emphasise hidden meaning in everything; who make children fear to ask questions lest a lecture, dry and unoriginal, be the penalty. Such men have a way of fixing youth with intense, severe gaze—of smiling with a fiendish self-complacency over their own superiority—of raising their eyebrows and reprimanding should the child be watching the flight of a sparrow instead of being ever alert for an unexpected question or bit of information which a grown person might put to him on earth. Such men are the kind who make presents of Cobbet’s“Advice to Young Men,” and who write mistaken sentiments of nobility on the fly-leaf of Samuel Smiles’s “Self-Help.”
Edgeworth’s redeeming trait was his earnest desire to bring the best within reach of his children, and he considered his severity the proper kind of guidance for them. Whatever sin of commission is to be laid to his charge, it is nevertheless true that it was not so great as to destroy the love Maria had for him. The literary critic has to reckon with the total amount of effect his teaching, his personal views had upon the writings of his daughter. That he did influence her is certain, and nowhere more thoroughly shown than in her work for children. In theory this work traces its origin to Rousseau, while in its modelling it bears a close relationship to Madame de Genlis and to Berquin.
Banish dolls is the cry in “Practical Education,” and if you have toys in the nursery at all, let them be of a useful character—not mechanical novelties, but cubes, cylinders, and the like. Place before children only those pictures which deal with familiar objects, and see to it that the pose of every figure, where there are figures, is natural; a boy once went with Sir Joshua Reynolds through an art gallery, and invariably he turned with displeasure away from any form represented in a constrained attitude. This is the general tone of the Edgeworths as teachers.
The set notions that fill the pages of “Practical Education” often border on the verge of bathos. They leave no room for the exercise of spontaneous inclination; by their limitations, they recognise no great amount of common sense in others. They create in one a desire at times to laugh, and again a desire to shake the authors who were in the frame of mind to hold such views. There are certain instincts which are active by reason of their own natures,—and one is the love of parent for offspring. We even accredit the wild animal with this quality. When the Edgeworths declare that “My dear, have you nothing to do?” should be spoken in sorrow, rather than in anger, the advice irritates; it is platitudinous; it must have irritated many naturally good mothers, even in those days when such a tone in writers was more the rule than the exception.
On the subject of books Miss Edgeworth and her father become more interesting, though none the less startling in their suggestions. One of Maria’s early tasks in 1782 had been to translate “Adèle et Théodore”; to her this book was worthy of every consideration. In the choice of reading for young folks, the two do not reach very much beyond their own contemporaries: Mrs. Barbauld’s “Lessons,” the Aikin’s “Evenings at Home,” Berquin’s “L’Ami des Enfans,” Day’s “Sandford and Merton” were recommended. And in addition there were mentioned Madame de Silleri’s stories, known asthe “Theatre of Education,” Madame de la Fite’s “Tales” and “Conversations,” and Mrs. Smith’s “Rural Walks.” Despite the fact that fairy tales are at this period frowned upon as useless frivolities, “Robinson Crusoe,” “Gulliver’s Travels,” “The Three Russian Sailors,” and the “Arabian Nights’ Entertainment” are suggested because of the interest and profit to be had in voyages and travels of all kinds. Fancy was thus held at a discount.
Two books of nature are mentioned, and curiously one is emphasised as of special value for children provided it is beforehand judiciously cut or blotted out here and there. The Edgeworths obtained this idea from an over-careful mother who was in the habit of acting as censor and editor of all juvenile books that found their way into her house. In Russia, the authorities take an ink pad and stamp out the condemned passages of any book officially examined. In the same summary manner, English parents were advised to treat their children’s stories. The Edgeworths went even further, suggesting that, besides striking out separate words with a pen, it would be well to cut the undesirable paragraphs from the page, provided by so doing the sense of the text on the reverse side was not materially interfered with. To mark the best thoughts for young readers was also strongly recommended.
The authors are never wanting in advice. If children are good, what need is there to introducethem to evil in their stories? Evil is here meant in its mildest sense. They should be kept from all contagion. But bad boys and girls should be told to read, in “The Children’s Friend,” tales like “The Little Gamblers” and “Honesty is the Best Policy,” which will teach them, by examples of wickedness, to correct their ways. Such strange classification suggests that literature was to be used as a species of moral reformatory. Two significant facts are to be noted in this chapter on books: there is an attempt to grade the literature by some age standard, bringing to light a gap between four and seven years which may be offset by a similar gap to-day; so, too, does there seem to have been, then as now, a great lack of history and biography.
The idea upon which the “Parent’s Assistant” was founded began to shape itself in Miss Edgeworth’s mind early in life. Left alone for a short period with her younger brothers and sisters, she manufactured tales for their edification, many of which, in after years, she utilised. In 1796 she gathered together and published some of her best stories, among them “The Purple Jar” and “Lazy Laurence.” “Simple Susan” would probably not be so widely emphasised were it not for the fact that Sir Walter Scott recorded “that when the boy brings back the lamb to the little girl, there is nothing for it but to put down the book and cry.”
Miss Edgeworth and her father had much preferredthat the book be called “The Parent’s Friend,” for lodged in the former’s memory were disagreeable thoughts of an old-time arithmetic which had plagued her early years, and was named “The Tutor’s Assistant.”
The theatricals performed in the Edgeworth household afforded much pleasure. It is very likely that the custom was gleaned from Madame de Genlis. Plays were written for every festive season. The publication of the “Parent’s Assistant” suggested the acting of some of the playlets contained in the book. There seem to have been two theatres, one fitted up just over Richard Lovell’s study, and another temporary stage erected in the dining-room. Here, one evening, was enacted the exemplary dialogue of “Old Poz,” where a poor man is suspected, by a Justice, of stealing what a magpie has in reality secreted. Lucy, the good little daughter, clears the innocent fellow, upon whom her father sits in very stern, very unreasonable, and most unnatural judgment. Irritable to a degree, the Justice, who is positive about everything, shuts up any one who gainsays a word contrary to his obstinacy, but “Oh, darling,” he remarks to his daughter, after her excellent deed, “youshall contradict me as often as you please.” This method is neither more nor less than poisonous; it is polluted with a certain license which no good action ever sanctions. There is small doubt that children seethe absurdity of it, for it cheapens right-doing in their eyes.
The compensating balance of good and bad is exercised to a monotonous degree in Miss Edgeworth’s tales. There are the meek, innocent girl, and the proud, overbearing girl in “The Bracelet”; the heedless, extravagant boy, and the thoughtful, thrifty boy in “Waste Not, Want Not.” Disaster follows disaster; reward courts reward. Not content with using these extremes of human nature in one story, Miss Edgeworth rings the changes, slightly altered in form, in others of her tales.
“The Purple Jar” in substance is the same as “Waste Not, Want Not”; the moral applications are identical. One has but to glance through the pages of the latter story to note its didactic pattern. Yet Miss Edgeworth possessed her literary excellencies in human characterisation, in that power of narrative which gained effect, not through ornamentation, but through deep knowledge of the real qualities of common existence. The dominant fault is that she allowed her ultimate object to become crystallised into an overshadowing bulwark, a danger which always besets the “moral” writer, and produces the ethical teacher in a most obtruding form. When Miss Edgeworth’s little girl sprains her ankle and her father picks her up, she consciously covers her leg with her gown. Fate seems never to have worked so swiftly, so determinedly, as in those tales wherethoughtless boys on their walks had the consequences of their bad acts visited upon them during the homeward journey. The hungry, the lame, the halt, the blind turn unexpected corners, either to wince beneath the jeers of one type of mortal child, or to smile thanks to the other kind for a gentle word or a much-needed penny.
No one can wholly condemn the tale, typified by Miss Edgeworth’s “Parent’s Assistant.” Childhood is painted in quaint, old-fashioned colours, even though the staid little heroes and heroines have no interests. They take information into their minds as they would take physic into their bodies. They are all normal types, subjected to abnormal and unnaturally successive temptations, and given very exacting consciences. A writer inBlackwood’sbecomes indignant over such literary treatment:
“They [the girls] have good reason to expect from these pictures of life, that if they are very good and very pious, and very busy in doing grown-up work, when they reach the mature age of sixteen or so, some young gentleman, who has been in love with them all along, will declare himself at the very nick of time; and they may then look to find themselves, all the struggles of life over, reposing a weary head on his stalwart shoulder.... Mothers, never in great favour with novelists, are sinking deeper and deeper in their black books,—there is a positive jealousy of their influence; while the father in the religioustale, as opposed to the moral and sentimental, is commonly either a scamp or nowhere. The heroine has, so to say, to do her work single-handed.”
What is true of these young people is therefore likewise true of their grown-up associates. They have definite personalities, and they are either monstrosities of excellence or demons of vice and temper. But here also a careful distinction was preserved. Mr. Lucas says in his “Old-Fashioned Tales”:
“The parents who can do no wrong are very numerous; but they are, it should be pointed out, usually the parents of the central child. There are very often parents and relations of other and subsidiary children whose undesirable habits are exceedingly valuable by way of contrast.”
Despite the fact that there is so much to condemn in thisgenreof writing, Miss Edgeworth was endowed with that sober sense and inexhaustible power of invention claimed for her by critics of the period. Her care for detail, her exhibition of small actions that mark the manners of all people in different walks of life, were distinguishing features of her skill.
With her father Miss Edgeworth laboured on other things besides the “Practical Education”; while the two were preparing the essay on “Irish Bulls,” published in 1802, she plainly states that the first design was due to him, and that in her own shareshe was sedulously following the ideas suggested by him. Throughout her autobiographical data she offers us many glimpses of that family unity which existed—whether from voluntary desire or because of the domineering grip of Edgeworth, is not stated. She was continuously solicitous for his welfare, not through any forced sense of duty, but because of her desire to give pleasure in small ways; she found it agreeable to sit of an evening doing needle work, while Edgeworth “read out” Pope’s Homer. In the course of such hours she first became acquainted with Scott’s “Lady of the Lake” and “Waverley.”
The friendship between Miss Edgeworth and Scott was deep and cordial; one was not without abiding influence on the other. She describes with graphic pen the first sound of his voice at Abbotsford; and the biographer has no more agreeable material to work upon than her fortnight spent as a guest of the novelist, and his return visit to Edgeworthtown in 1825.
For a man whose avowed detestation of women was well known to every one, Thomas Day (1748–1789) succeeded in leading a life of romantic variety. Yet he was not a person of strong passion; in fact, was more inclined to brooding melancholy. His intimacy with the Edgeworth family began when he met Richard Lovell at Oxford; and it was when he saw the training of Émile applied to his friend’s son that his mind was seized with the idea of carryingout a similar scheme himself. He held a great contempt for dress; and his numerous vagaries regarding the conduct and duties of a wife were so pronounced that it is most likely they came between himself and Maria Edgeworth, with whom it is thought there was some romantic understanding.
Unlike Edgeworth, Day had no child to experiment upon. So he set about “breeding up” two girls, away from conflicting influences, and according to nature. One was obtained from an orphan asylum, and was known as Sabrina Sidney; the other, called Lucretia, was taken from a Foundling Hospital. In order to give a moral tone to the situation, these girls were bound out to Edgeworth, who was a married man. Not many knew that Day had hastened with both of the damsels to Avignon. Here he began to educate them with the intention of training one for his future wife.
Events did not progress smoothly, however; the girls quarrelled as saints would have quarrelled under the circumstances, and they occupied their time by falling out of boats and having smallpox. What their schooling consisted of may be imagined from the fragment of a letter written by Sabrina to Mr. Edgeworth:
“I hope I shall have more sense against I come to England—I know how to make a circle and an equilateral triangle—I know the cause of day and night, winter and summer.”
At the advanced age of twenty-two—even younger than Edgeworth when he first became imbued with the Rousseau doctrines—Day returned to Lichfield—the home of Johnson and of Dr. Charles Darwin—bringing with him his charges: Lucretia, who was hopelessly dull, and Sabrina, who proved the favourite and was by far the more attractive of the two, with her fetching auburn ringlets, her long amorous eyelashes, and her very melodious voice. The young ladies had failed to become thoroughly steeled against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. In most respects they persisted in remaining like the average woman with sensibility. When hot sealing-wax was dropped upon the shapely arm of Sabrina, to harden her against the fear of pain, she refused to behave heroically; when a pistol was fired at her petticoats—a volley of lead for all she knew—her screams and frantic jumps indicated that her nerves were not impervious to the unexpected.
Day did not fail to show his disgust and disappointment. While Sabrina was at boarding-school, he hastened to forget all about her, and fell in love with Honora Sneyd, whose fame chiefly rests upon the fact that she was once courted by Major André. To make the situation more awkward, Edgeworth, despite his married state, likewise possessed strong affection for the same lady. She refused Day, and what followed contains the zest of a wicked littlecomedy. He fell ill, and had to be bled; then he summoned up sufficient strength to escape to France with Edgeworth, who felt it best to remove himself from temptation. It was during this trip that he visited Rousseau with poor little Richard. But before crossing the Channel, Day had succeeded in transferring his affections to Honora’s sister, Elizabeth.
“Go,” she said to him in substance, “try to assume some of the graces that you sorely lack. Learn to dress stylishly, and be taught the proper curl for a wig. Train yourself into a fashionable-looking husband, and come back to me.”
Thus commanded, Day spent many weary hours wielding the foil, and being carried through the intricacies of the dance. And those legs of his—how he put them into exercise, hoping against hope to straighten them ere he returned to England!
But there was evidently no improvement in the end, for when the lady saw him, she unhesitatingly refused him. It is sufficient to say that, in time, Edgeworth married both sisters, Death regarding kindly his love of novelty.
With affections thus left high and dry, Day turned once more to Sabrina. He had long ago discarded Lucretia, who apprenticed herself to a milliner, and later became the wife of an honest draper. But Sabrina was fair to look upon and Day saw no reason why she should not satisfy his ideas of wifehood,provided she would dress according to his tastes. We applaud the shake of those auburn ringlets as she refused his wishes, and thus escaped matrimony with him.[32]There was another lady upon whom this honour was to descend.
When Miss Milnes, of Wakefield, was approached by Day, she was informed of all his requirements, and was deceived as to none of his vagaries. It must have been somewhat of a surprise to him when she accepted him, outlandish attire and all; and it is a pleasant disappointment to know that the marriage was a happy one, despite the fact that Mrs. Day insisted upon holding opinions of her own.
Day was most content when he was theorising; at the same time, it must not be lost sight of that he had timely interests. His feelings were strongly aroused against the state of negro slavery in America, and he was earnest in his advocacy of parliamentary reform. His great fault was that he was always carried to extremes whenever good motives prompted him. His earnest concern for the poor, during 1781, was accompanied by stern denials of pleasures for himself,—well-nigh of the necessities of life.
Day realised the failures of his theories as applied to grown people; had he not done so, we most likelywould not have had “Sandford and Merton.” His attention was soon attracted to the infant mind as an unworked field; the Edgeworths were meeting success with their children’s books; he would attempt the same thing, and so, during 1783, 1787, and 1789, the three successive volumes of his famous story appeared—an elongated “Waste Not, Want Not.”
Day had heretofore suggested a certain effeminate bearing in his character; he recognised it, and was now suddenly beset with a consuming desire to supplant this manner by an overtowering manliness, by the exercise of firmness and strength. But the new policy was to prove his undoing. On the afternoon of September 28, 1789, he went to ride on an unbroken horse, believing to curb him by the discipline of command rather than of the stock. The animal took fright and threw him; he received injuries from which he almost immediately died. On the evidence of Miss Seward, it is recorded that Mrs. Day thereafter “lay in bed, into the curtains of which no light was admitted, ... and only rose to stray alone through her garden when night gave her sorrows congenial gloom.”
The estimate of such a work as “Sandford and Merton” cannot be based upon modern standards; all of the factors characteristic of the didactic writers for children, such as persistent questioning, the encyclopædic grown person in the shape of Mr. Barlow,and the monotonous interchange of narrative and dialogue, are employed as vehicles for knowledge. The book is unique, inasmuch as it sought to supply a variety of stories suitable in style and content for the beginner.
“The only method I could invent,” writes Day, “was to select such passages of different books as were most adapted to their experience and understanding. The least exceptionable that I could find for this purpose were Plutarch’s Lives, and Zenophon’s History of the Institution of Cyrus, in English translations; with some part of Robinson Crusoe, and a few passages in the first volume of Mr. Brook’s Fool of Quality.”
In those days, if authors are to be believed, birds were in the habit of alighting on the hands of good children; they are more timid now, though children are not less good. The poor boy was made to feel how kind the good rich boy was to him throughout his shocking adversity; we are more considerate to-day. And so, Tommy Merton and Harry Sandford, products of a stilted age, are clad in uniforms similar to those worn by Miss Edgeworth’s children. They are endowed with no exceptional qualities, with no defined will power; they stand in a long row of similarly subjected slaves of theory.
Miss Agnes Repplier calls this story one of her early moral pitfalls. She read it at a period wheninformation was being forced down her, and “which,” so she writes, “I received as responsively as does a Strassburg goose its daily share of provender.”
Among the writers of this period, none are more important than Anna Letitia Aikin Barbauld (1743–1825). Her position is a unique one, for, being acquainted with all of her literary contemporaries and subject to their influence, she stands in a transition stage. Through her mental independence, she succeeded partially in breaking from the introspective method of motive-hunting, and foreshadowed the possibilities of Mrs. Hemans, the Brontés, and Mrs. Browning. She was reared in an atmosphere of intellectuality by her father, John Aikin, a professor and a man of advanced opinions regarding female instruction, two points which argued for her less conventional mind and for her less stilted manner.
When she married Rochemont Barbauld, who had been a student under her father, and who was a non-conformist, she was well versed in Greek and Latin, and in every way was equipped to do literary work. She was more or less influenced by her husband’s religious independence; he changed his congregation from English Presbyterianism to Unitarianism, and it is not surprising to find the English public looking somewhat askance at Mrs. Barbauld’s fitness to write for children. Madame de Genlis was in like fashion criticised for the religiousviews she held, and we shall find Miss More subject to the same scrutiny. The Aikins were the first to introduce the material lines in children’s literature, “but the more anxiously religious mothers felt a certain distrust of the absence of direct lessons in Christian doctrines; and Mrs. Trimmer was incited to begin a course of writing for young people that might give the one thing in which, with all their far superior brilliancy, the Aikins were felt to be deficient.”
We are not concerned with all of Mrs. Barbauld’s work; she used to write poetry, some of it in repartee vein which struck the acute fancy of Charles Lamb; her essays were of an exceptional order, in a few instances expressed in imitation of Johnson; he himself had to acknowledge that of all who tried to ape him, she was most successful. Her educational opinions, sent from time to time in letters to Mrs. Montague, marked her ability as a teacher; but the method that she believed in was well nigh Socratic and ofttimes wearisome in its persistency; history and geography were given to infant minds in the form of lectures. Around 1802 William Godwin, of whom we shall have something to say later in his connection with the Lambs, wrote:
“I think Mrs. Barbauld’s little books admirably adapted, upon the whole, to the capacity and amusement of young children.... As far as Mrs. Barbauld’s books are concerned, I have no difficulty. But here my judgment and the ruling passion ofmy contemporaries divide. They aim at cultivating one faculty; I should aim at cultivating another.... Without imagination, there can be no genuine ardour in any pursuit or for any acquisition, and without imagination there can be no genuine morality, in profound feeling of other men’s sorrow, no ardent and persevering anxiety for their interests. This is the faculty which makes the man, and not the miserable minuteness of detail about which the present age is so uneasy.”
Childless herself, Charles Aikin was adopted by Mrs. Barbauld, the little Charles of “Early Lessons for Children,” composed especially for him. The latter work was followed by “Hymns in Prose for Children,” consisting of translations from all tongues, put into simple language, and not into verse, for fear they might fail to reach the comprehension otherwise. These hymns are probably most representative of Mrs. Barbauld’s individual writings, for the work by which she is best known, the “Evenings at Home,” was written in collaboration with her brother, Dr. Aikin.
In the “Evenings” a new tone is detected; despite a stilted style, the two authors aroused an interest in external objects, and, by their descriptions and suggestions, attempted to infuse meaning into the world surrounding the child. This small departure from the sectarian tendency prevailing in so much of the literature of that period, imperceptible though it maybe, was due to a shifting of attitude toward women which was taking place in England. Mrs. Barbauld might be considered a “bold” example of feminine intellect reaching out for a larger sphere. We read that Fox was surprised that a woman could exhibit such clearness and consistency of viewpoint as were to be discovered in such of her essays as “Monastic Institutions”; and there were others who wondered at the alertness and interest she manifested in all matters pertaining to public affairs. Her force of intellect pleased some, her manner others. Scott confessed that her public reading of poetry inspired him to court the muse; Wordsworth unfolded so far as to envy the beauty of her stanzas on “Life,” which toward the end contain these attractive, hopeful, and faith-abiding lines: