Part 2

What thinks the teacher of such riches, what the librarian with her catalogue number? A book is a fact, nay, a friend, a dream. Is there not a creed for us all in the wisdom of that crazy man? Here was one with clear vision, to whom fact was as nothing before the essential of one’s nature--a prophet, a seer, one to whom the tragedy of growing up had been no tragedy, but whose memory of childhood had produced a chastening effect upon his manhood. Are we surprised to find him adding:

“I give to good fathers and mothers, in trust for their children, all good little words of praise and encouragement, and all quaint pet names and endearments, and I charge said parents to use them justly and generously, as the needs of their children may require.”

And so, we ask, more especially the parent than the librarian, is there not excitement in the very drawing out from a child his heart’s desire? Imperative it is in all cases that book-buying should not be a lottery, but more persistently apparent does it become that a child’s _one_ individual book upon the Christmas-tree or for a birthday should not represent a grown-up’s after-thought.

=Bibliographical Note=

_The articles referred to in this chapter are:_

BURTON, RICHARD--Literature for Children. _No. Amer._ 167:278 (Sept., 1898).

CHILDREN’S BOOKS--[From the _Quarterly Review_.] _Liv. Age_, 2:1–12 (Aug. 10, 1841).

THWING, CHARLES F.--Significant Ignorance About the Bible as Shown Among College Students of Both Sexes. _Century_, 60:123–128 (May, 1900).

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Mr. Jenks, besides editing for _St. Nicholas Magazine_ during many years a unique department known as “Books and Reading,” has written widely on the subject of juvenile literature. See his “The Modern Child as a Reader.” _The Book-buyer_, August, 1901, p. 17.

[2] An interesting field for research is that of the illustration of children’s books. Note Thomas Bewick, John Bewick, etc. Of a later period, Tenniel, Cruikshank, Doré, Herr Richter. _Vide_ “The Child and His Book,” Mrs. E. M. Field, chap. xiv; “Some Illustrators of Children’s Books.” Also “Children’s Books and their Illustrators.” Gleeson White, _The International Studio_. Special Winter No., 1897–98.

THE GROWTH OF JUVENILE LITERATURE

A PARTIAL INDICATION, BY DIAGRAM

FRENCH IMPETUS | +---------------------+------------+----------------------------------------+ | | | | | | | | Jean de La Fontaine[6][7] | Charles Perrault[6][7] Comtesse D’Aulnoy[6][7] (1621–1695) | (1628–1703) (1650–1705) | | | | ENGLISH IMPETUS | | | | | | | +--------------------+ Horn-books | Mother Goose | | | | | | | +-------+ | Oliver Goldsmith[3]-------John Newbery[3] | | | (1728–1774) (1713–1767) | | | | | | | | Chap-books | +------------+ | | | | New England Primer | | | Jean Jacques Rousseau[6][7] Isaiah Thomas[4] | (1712–1778) (1749–1831) | | | +----------------------------------+---------------------------------------------+

DIDACTIC SCHOOL | Sarah Kirby Trimmer[3]--------------------------------+ (1741–1810) | | +-------------------------+-----------------------+--------------------+ | | | | | | Joseph Jacotot[6][7][11] F. Froebel[8][12] F. A. W. Diesterweg[8][12] | C. G. Salzmann[12] (1770–1840) (1782–1852) (1790–1866) | (1744–1811)

+---------------------+-------------+----------+----------+--------+-------+-------+--------------+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Madame de Arnaud Berquin[6][7] | R. L. Edgeworth[3] | John Aikin[3] | Thomas Day[3] Maria Genlis[7] (1749?-1791) | (1744–1817) | (1747–1821) | (1748–1789) Edgeworth[3] (1746–1830) | | | | (1767–1849) | | Anna L. Barbauld[3][11] | | | | (1743–1825) | | +---------------------+---------+-------------------------+ +-------+ | | | | | Mme. Le Prince de Hannah More[3] tr. Mary Wollstonecraft[3] | Beaumont[6][10] (1745–1833) [Godwin] | (1711–1780) | (1759–1797) | | Patty More | Dr. Isaac Watts[3] | | | | (1674–1748) | | BOOKS FOR THE POOR | | | | | | | --+-----------------------+---------+--+ | William Godwin[3]------------+ | | | (1756–1836) | Aikin Mrs. Margaret Scott Gatty[3] | Mrs. Godwin[3] William Blake[3] (1809–1873) | | (1757–1827) | | | +---------------------------------------------+----- +------+--------------------+ | | | | Peter Parley Robert Raikes[3] Mary Lamb Charles Lamb[3] S. G. Goodrich[5] (1735–1811) (1765–1847) (1775–1834) (1793–1860) | | | | +----------------Jane Taylor[3] William Martin[3] | | (1783–1824) (1801–1867) | Mrs. Cecil Ann Taylor[3] | | Frances Alexander (1782–1866) SPURIOUS PARLEYS | (b. _circa_ 1830) | | | | | Jacob Abbott[5] | +---------------R. L. Stevenson[3] (1803–1879) | (1850–1894) [13] SUNDAY SCHOOLS [14] | +---------------------------------------------+---------------------------------------------+ | | | Mary M. Sherwood Manzoni[9] Catherine Sinclair[3] (1775–1851) (1784–1873) (1800–1864)

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Dictionary of National Biography. Gives further bibliography.

[4] Appleton’s Biographical Dictionary.

[5] Lamb’s Biographical Dictionary.

[6] Nouvelle Biographie Générale. Gives further bibl.

[7] La Grande Encyclopédie. Gives further bibl.

[8] Meyers Konversations-Lexikon. Bibl.

[9] Diccionario Enciclopedico Hispano-Americano.

[10] Influence of Perrault.

[11] Sister of John Aikin.

[12] Influence of Rousseau.

[13] American End of the Development.

[14] English End of the Development.

II. THE RISE OF CHILDREN’S BOOKS

_I wish Mrs. Marcet, the Right Honourable T. B. Macaulay, or any other person possessing universal knowledge, would take a toy and child’s emporium in hand, and explain to us all the geographical and historical wonders it contains. That Noah’s ark, with its varied contents--its leopards and lions, with glued pump-handled tails; its light-blue elephants and ꓕ footed ducks--that ark containing the cylindrical family of the patriarch--was fashioned in Holland, most likely, by some kind pipe-smoking friends of youth by the side of a slimy canal. A peasant in a Danubian pine-wood carved that extraordinary nut-cracker, who was painted up at Nuremberg afterwards in the costume of a hideous hussar. That little fir lion, more like his roaring original than the lion at Barnet, or the lion of Northumberland House, was cut by a Swiss shepherd boy tending his goats on a mountain-side, where the chamois were jumping about in their untanned leather. I have seen a little Mahometan on the Etmeidan at Constantinople twiddling about just such a whirligig as you may behold any day in the hands of a small Parisian in the Tuileries Gardens. And as with the toys, so with the toy books. They exist everywhere: there is no calculating the distance through which the stories 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 since, to little copper-coloured Sanscrit children, listening to their mother 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 Northmen Vikings as they lay on their shields on deck; and by Arabs couched under the stars on the Syrian plains when the flocks were gathered in and the mares were picketed by the tents. With regard to the story of Cinderella, I have heard the late Thomas Hill say that he remembered to have heard, two years before Richard Cœur de Lion came back from Palestine, a Norman jongleur--but, in a word, there is no end to the antiquity of these tales...._”--“_Michael Angelo Titmarsh on Some Illustrated Children’s Books_,” in _Fraser’s Magazine_ for April, 1846.

I. HORN-BOOKS; CHAP-BOOKS; THE NEW ENGLAND PRIMER.

Previous to the impetus given to child study by the educational theories of Rousseau, little was written intentionally for children that would not at the same time appeal to adults. Yet there are chapters still to be penned, stretching back into English history as far as 1430 and earlier, when words of instruction were framed for youth; when conduct, formality, austere manners, complete submission, were not only becoming to the child, but were forced upon him.[15]

There are several manuscripts extant of that year, 1430, one whose authorship is ascribed to John Lydgate and which bears the Latin title, “Puer ad Mensam.” There is also the “Babees Book” of 1475, intended for those boys of royal blood who served as pages in the palace. The American student has to reach an understanding of the purport of most of these treatises from secondary sources; the manuscripts are not easily accessible, and have so far been utilised only in a fragmentary character. For the present purpose, the mention of a few examples will suffice.

We note “A Booke in Englyssh metre, of the great marchaunt man called Dyves Pragmaticus, very pretye for chyldren to rede; wherby they may the better, and more readyer rede and wryte Wares and Implementes in this worlde contayned.... When thou sellest aught unto thy neighbour, or byest anything of him, deceave not, nor oppresse him, etc. Imprinted at London in Aldersgate strete by Alexander Lacy, dwellyng beside the Wall. The XXV. of April 11, 1563.”[16]

Those boys bound out or apprenticed to members of the Middle Age crafts and guilds perhaps benefited by the moral of this; no doubt they bethought themselves of the friendly warning, whenever they cried their master’s wares outside the stalls; perhaps they were forearmed as well as forewarned by the friendly rules contained in the “Books of Good Manners” (1560) which, though they could not own, were repeated to them by others more fortunate. These same boys, who played the angels in the miracle plays, and the Innocents in the “Rachel” dramas, who were held suspended by a rope high up in the nave of the church, to proclaim the birth of the Lord in the Christmas cycles, were actors also, around 1563, in “A New Enterlude for Chyldren to Play, named Jacke Jugeler, both wytte, and very playsent.”

Fundamentally, the boys of the early centuries must have been not unlike the boys of all ages, although the customs of an age usually stunt whatever is not in conformity with the times. He who, in 1572, was warned in “Youth’s Behaviour” (“or, Decency in Conversation Amongst Men, Composed in French by Grave Persons, for the use and benefit of their youth, now newly turned into English, by Francis Hawkins, nephew to Sir Thomas Hawkins. The tenth impression.”), was likewise warned in the New-England township, and needs to be warned to-day. No necessity to paint the picture in more definite colours than those emanating from the mandates direct. “Hearing thy Master, or likewise the Preacher, wriggle not thyself, as seeming unable to contain thyself within thy skin.” Uncomfortable in frills or stiff collars, and given no backs to benches, the child was doomed to a dreary sermon full of brimstone and fire; he was expected, “in yawning, [to] howl not.” The translation, it will be remarked, was made by Master Francis when he had scarce attained the age of eight; this may be considered precocious, but, when French was more the official language than English, it was necessary that all persons of any distinction should have a mastery of the polite tongue, even though they might remain not so well equipped in the language of learning.[17] Hawkins was therefore carefully exercised and the translation became a task in a twofold way. His uncle soon followed the first section of “Youth’s Behaviour” with a second part, intended for girls.

Poor starved souls of those young gentlewomen of the sixteenth century, who were recommended, for their entertainment in hours of recreation, to read “God’s Revenge against Murther; and the Arcadia of Sir Philip Sydney; Artemidorus, his Interpretation of Dreams. And for the business of their devotion, there is an excellent book entitled Taylor’s Holy Living and Dying; The Duty of Man in which the Duty to God and man are both comprehended.” Such guidance is not peculiar alone to this period. It was followed, in slightly simplified form, throughout the didactic school of writing.

Fortunately we are able, by means of our historical imagination, to fill up the interstices of this grave assemblage with something of a more entertaining character; we have a right to include the folk tales, the local legends and hero deeds which have descended to us through countless telling. Romance and interest still lie buried in annals which might be gathered together, dealing with the lives of those nurses who reared ancient kings. As a factor in the early period of children’s literature, the grandam is of vast meaning.

About the time of which we have just been speaking, as early as 1570, little folks began learning their letters from horn-books and “battle-dores.” Take an abacus frame and transfer the handle to one of its sides as a base. Within the frame insert a single leaf of thick cardboard, on one side of which place the alphabet, large and small, lettered heavily in black. Then, with the regularity of a regiment, string out three or four slender columns of monosyllables. Do we not here detect the faint glimmer of our college song, “b-a, ba; b-e, be; b-i, bi; babebi”? Should one side not hold all this, use both, although it is not preferable to do so. However, it _is_ essential that ample room be left in any case for the inclusion of the Lord’s Prayer. When this is done, slip over the face of the cardboard a clear piece of diaphanous horn, in default of which isinglass will suffice. Through the handle bore a hole, into which run a string. Finally, attach your handiwork to a girdle or belt, and behold, you are transformed into a school child of the Middle Ages! Your abacus has become a horn-book, quite as much by reason of its horn surface, as because of its essential use. Should you be looking for historical accuracy, let the “Christ-cross” precede the alphabet, whence it will become apparent why our letters are often styled the Criss-cross row. Flourishing until some time during the reign of George II, these curiosities are now rare indeed. There is little of an attractive nature in such a “lesson-book,” but childhood had its compensations, for there is preserved the cheerful news that horn-books were often made of gingerbread. Were these the forebears of our animal crackers or our spiced alphabets?

A survey of chap-books[18] presents a picture of literature trying to be popular; we find all classes of people being catered to, young and old, rich and poor. The multitude of assorted pamphlets reflects the manners, the superstitions, the popular customs of rustics; the stories stretch from the humourous to the strictly religious type. There are many examples preserved, for not until well on in the nineteenth century were chap-books supplanted in favour. To-day, the largest collection that the world possesses, garnered by Professor Child, is to be found in the Harvard University Library; but the Bodleian and the British Museum claim to be richer in early examples, extending back to 1598.

Charles Gerring, calling the chap-books “uninviting, poor, starved things,” yet lays before readers not an unwholesome array of goods. He writes:

“For the lads, there were tales of action, of adventure, sometimes truculently sensational; for the girls were stories of a more domestic character; for the tradesmen, there was the ‘King and the Cobbler,’ or ‘Long Tom the Carrier’; for the soldier and the sailor, ‘Admiral Blake,’ ‘Johnny Armstrong,’ and ‘Chevy Chase’; for the lovers, ‘Patient Grissil’ and ‘Delights for Young Men and Maids’; for the serving-lad, ‘Tom Hickathrift’[19] and ‘Sir Richard Whittington’; while the serving-maid then, as now, would prefer ‘The Egyptian Fortune Teller,’ or ‘The Interpretation of Dreams and Moles.’”

Every phase of human nature was thus served up for a penny. In those days, people were more apt to want tales with heroes and heroines of their own rank and station; a certain appropriateness in this way was satisfied. Such correspondence was common as early as 1415, when a mystery play was presented by the crafts, and the Plasterers were given the “Creation of the World” to depict, while the Chandlers were assigned the “Lighting of the Star” upon the birth of Christ.

There were to be had primers, song-books, and joke-books; histories, stories, and hero tales. Printed in type to ruin eyes, pictured in wood-cuts to startle fancy and to shock taste--for they were not always suited to childhood--these pamphlets, 2½″ × 3½″, sometimes 5½″ × 4¼″ in size, and composed of from four to twenty-four pages, served a useful purpose. They placed literature within reach of all who could read. Queer dreams, piety of a pronounced nature, jests with a ribald meaning, and riddles comprised the content of many of them. A child who could not buy a horn-book turned to the “battle-dore” with his penny--a crude sheet of cardboard, bicoloured and folded either once or twice, with printing on both sides; the reading matter was never-failingly the same in these horn-books and “battle-dores,” although sometimes the wood-cuts varied. A horn-book is recorded with a picture of Charles I upon it.

The sixteenth or seventeenth-century boy could own his “Jack and the Giants” and “Guy of Warwick,” his “Hector of Troy” and “Hercules of Greece”; he could even have the latest imported novelty. Some believe that because Shakespeare based many of his plays upon Continental legends, a demand was started for such chap-books as “Fortunatus,” “Titus Andronicus,” or “Valentine and Orson.” The printers of these crude booklets were on the alert for every form of writing having a popular appeal; there was rivalry among them as there is rivalry among publishers to-day. Not long after the appearance of the English translation of Perrault’s “Tales of Mother Goose,” each one of them, given a separate and attractive form--“Blue-beard” in awful ferocity, “Cinderella” in gorgeous apparel, and the others--was made into a chap-book. In Ashton, we find mention of an early catalogue “of Maps, Prints, Copy-books, Drawing-books, Histories, Old Ballads, Patters, Collections, etc., printed and sold by Cluer Dicey and Richard Marshall at the Printing-Office in Aldermary (4) Church Yard, London. Printed in the year MDCCLXIV.” These men appear to have been important chap-book publishers.

The hawkers, who went through the streets and who travelled the country-side, much as our pioneer traders were accustomed to do, were termed chapmen. They were eloquent in the manner of describing their display; they were zealous as to their line of trade. Imagine, if you will, the scene in some isolated village--the wild excitement when the good man arrived. He was known to Piers Plowman in 1362, he perhaps wandered not far away from the Canterbury Pilgrims; each of Chaucer’s Tales might well be fashioned as a chap-book. Along the dusty highway this old-time peddler travelled, with packet on his back and a stout staff in hand--such a character maybe as Dougal Grahame, hunch-backed and cross-eyed--by professions, a town crier and bellman, as well as a trader in literature. On his tongue’s tip he carried the latest gossip; he served as an instrument of cross-fertilisation, bringing London-town in touch with Edinburgh or Glasgow, and with small hamlets on the way.

“Do you wish to know, my lady,” he would ask, “how fares the weather on the morrow?” From the depths of his packet he would draw “The Shepherd’s Prognostication” (1673), wherein is told that “the blust’ring and noise of leaves and trees and woods, or _other places_ is a token of foul weather.” “And prithee, mistress,” he would add, “I have a warning herein for you. A mole on the forehead denotes fair riches, but yonder brown spot on your eyebrow bids me tell you to refrain from marriage, for if he marry you, he shall have seven wives in his life-time!”

Many a modern reader would be interested in the detailed directions given for falling in love and for falling out again; for determining whom fate had decreed as the husband, or who was to be the wife. It is more wholesome in these days to name the four corners of a bedroom than to submit to the charm of a pared onion, wrapped in a kerchief and placed on the pillow; yet the two methods must be related.

For the little ones, there were picture-books in bright colours, smug in their anachronisms. The manufacturers of chap-books never hesitated to use the same wood-cuts over and over again; Queen Anne might figure in a history, but she served as well in the capacity of Sleeping Beauty; more appropriate in its historical application seems to have been the appearance of Henry VIII as Jack the Giant-Killer.

The subject of chap-books is alluring; the few elements here noted suggest how rich in local colour the material is. Undoubtedly the roots of juvenile literature are firmly twined about these penny sheets. Their circulation is a matter that brings the social student in touch with the middle-class life. Not only the chap-books and the horn-books, but the so-called Garlands, rudimentary anthologies of popular poems and spirited ballads, served to relieve the drudgery of commonplace lives, toned the sluggish mind by quickening the imagination. A curious part of the history of these Garlands is their sudden disappearance, brought about by two types of hawkers, known as the “Primers-up” and “Long-Song Sellers,” who peddled a new kind of ware.

The Primers-up are relatives of our city venders. They clung to corners, where dead walls gave them opportunity to pin their literature within sight of the public. Wherever there happened to be an unoccupied house, one of these fellows would be found with his songs, coarse, sentimental, and spirited, cut in slips a yard long--three yards for a penny. Thus displayed, he would next open a gaudy umbrella, upon the under side of which an art gallery of cheap prints was free to look upon. Conjure up for yourselves the apprentice peering beneath the large circumference of such a gingham tent.

Across the way, the Long-Song Sellers marched up and down, holding aloft stout poles, from which streamed varied ribbons of verse--rhythm fluttering in the breeze--and yelling, “Three yards a penny, songs, beautiful songs, nooest songs.”

It is apparent that much of the horn-book is incorporated in the “New England Primer,” although the development of the latter may be considered independently. The Primer is an indispensable part of Puritan history in America, despite the fact that its source extends as far back as the time of Henry VIII, when it was probably regarded more in the light of a devotional than of an educational book. The earliest mention of it in New England was that published in the Boston _Almanac_ of 1691, when Benjamin Harris, bookseller and printer, called attention to its second impression.[20] Before that, in 1685, Samuel Green, a Boston printer, issued a primer which he called “The Protestant Teacher for Children,” and a copy of which may be seen in the library of the American Antiquarian Society of Worcester, Massachusetts. The title would indicate also that in America the primer for children at first served the same purpose as the morality play for adults in England; it was a vehicle for religious instruction.

The oldest existent copy of the New England Primer bears the imprint of Thomas Fleet, son-in-law of the famous Mrs. Goose, of whom we shall speak later. This was in 1737. Before then, in 1708, Benjamin Eliot of Boston, probably encouraged by earlier editions of primers, advertised “The First Book for Children; or, The Compleat School-Mistress”; and Timothy Green in 1715 announced “A Primer for the Colony of Connecticut; or, an Introduction to the True Reading of English. To which is added Milk for Babes.” This latter title suggests the name of the Reverend John Cotton, and, furthermore, the name of Cotton Mather, one of the austere writers, as the titles of his books alone bear witness.