Part 10

How real literature looked upon the dusty high-road laid out across the fields by some of these writers may be read in the letters of the day. Coleridge jibed at that “pleonasm of nakedness,” Mrs. Bare-bald, and Lamb in a letter to Coleridge speaks his mind with refreshing frankness: “Goody Two Shoes,” he says, “is almost out of print. Mrs. Barbauld’s stuff has banished all the old classics of the nursery; and the shopman at Newberry’s hardly deigned to reach them off an old exploded corner of a shelf when Mary asked for them. Mrs. B.’s and Mrs. Trimmer’s nonsense lay in piles about. Knowledge insignificant and vapid as Mrs. B.’s books convey, it seems, must come to a child in the _shape of knowledge_, and his empty noddle must be turned with conceit of his own powers when he has learned that a horse is an animal, and Billy is better than a horse, and such like; instead of that beautiful interest in wild tales which made the child a man, while all the time he suspected himself to be no bigger than a child. Science has succeeded to poetry no less in the little walks of children than with men. Is there no possibility of averting this sore evil? Think of what you would have been now, if, instead of being fed with tales and old wives’ fables in childhood, you had been crammed with geography and natural history! Hang them! I mean the cursed reasoning crew, those blights and blasts of all that is human in man and child.” Yet Lamb and his sister both took a lively interest in genuine books for the young, and their own contributions have, alas! gone the way, for the most part, of other worn-out literature. It was mainly as a direct educative power that this new interest in children first found expression; with it, however, was mingled a more artistic purpose, and the two streams of tendency have ever since been recognizable, sometimes separate, oftener combined. The Lambs’ own work was illustrative of this union of the didactic and the artistic. It is outside the scope of this study to dwell at length upon this phase of literature. It is enough to point out the fact that there is a distinct class of books which has grown up quite within the memory of men now living. It is involved with industrial and commercial interests; it invites the attention of authors, and the infrequent criticism of reviewers; it has its own subdivisions like the larger literature; it boasts of cyclopædias and commentaries; it includes histories, travels, poems, works in science, theological treatises. It is a distinct principality of the Kingdom of Letters. It is idle to complain of the present abundance of children’s books, as if somebody were to blame for it. There has been no conspiracy of publishers and authors. It is worse than folly to look with contempt upon the movement; the faithful student will seek rather to study this new force, and if possible to guide it into right channels.

* * * * *

The distinction between books for the young and books for the old is a somewhat arbitrary one, and many have discovered for themselves and their children that instead of one poor corner of literature being fenced off for the lamb, planted with tender grass which is quickly devoured, and with many medicinal but disagreeable herbs which are nibbled at when the grass is gone, the whole wide pasture land is their native home, and the grass more tender where fresh streams flow than it possibly can be in the paddock, however carefully planted and watched. This community of possession is more recognizable in the higher than in the lower forms of literature. It is still more clear in pictorial art. Art is by its nature more closely representative of childhood than literature can be, and Gainsborough and Reynolds made no innovation when they painted children, although the latter, by his evident partiality for these subjects, does indicate a susceptibility to the new knowledge which was coming upon the world. There are other influences which reinforce the artistic pleasure, such as the domestic sense, the pride of family, the ease of procuring unconscious models. No one can visit an English exhibition of paintings without being struck by the extraordinary number of subjects taken from childhood. It is in this field that Millais has won famous laurels, and when the great body of book illustrations is scanned, what designs have half the popularity of Doyle’s fairies and Miss Greenaway’s idyllic children? I sometimes wonder why this should be the case in England, when in America, the paradise of children, there is a conspicuous absence of these subjects from galleries.

VII

IN FRENCH AND GERMAN LITERATURE

I

French literature before the Revolution was more barren of reference to childhood than was English literature. Especially is this true of the eighteenth century, with its superficial disbelief and its bitter protest against superstition, under which term was comprehended the supernatural as well as the preternatural. There were exceptions, as in the case of Fénelon, and the constitutional sentiment of the French was easily moved by the appeal of dependent childhood. In Rousseau one may read how it is possible to weep over children, and yet leave one’s own to the cold mercy of a foundling asylum. It is in Rousseau’s disciple, however, Bernardin de St. Pierre, that we find the most artistic expression of pure sentimentalism, and the story of Paul and Virginia is an effort at representing a world where childhood, in its innocence, is conceived of as the symbol of ideal human life. St. Pierre thought of childhood and nature as possessed of strong negative virtues; they were uncontaminated, they were unsophisticated. To escape from an evil world, he fled in imagination to an island of the tropics, where all that life required was readily furnished by lavish nature. He makes his family to consist chiefly of women and children. The masculine element is avoided as something disturbing, and except for the harmless old man who acts as chorus, it is discovered first as a rude, barbaric, and cruel force in the person of the governor of the island, who has no faith in Madame de la Tour, and in the person of the planter at the Black River, who has been an inhuman master to his slave.

The childhood of Paul and Virginia is made to have a pastoral, idyllic character. Their sorrows and misfortunes come wholly from evils which lie beyond their control. St. Pierre brought back a golden age by ignoring the existence of evil in the heart of man; he conceived it possible to construct an ideal world by what was vaguely expressed in the words “a return to nature.” As he reflects in the story: “Their theology consisted in sentiment like that of nature; and their morality in action like that of the gospel. Those families had no particular days devoted to pleasure, and others to sadness. Every day was to them a holiday, and all which surrounded them one holy temple, where they forever adored an Infinite Intelligence, almighty and the friend of humankind. A sentiment of confidence in his supreme power filled their minds with consolation for the past, with fortitude for the present, and with hope for the future. Behold how these women, compelled by misfortune to return to a state of nature, had unfolded in their own bosoms, and in those of their children, the feelings which nature gives us, our best support under evil!”

However we may discover the limitations of the sentimental philosophy, and its inadequacy when brought face to face with evil in life, there is a surface agreement with Christianity in this instinctive turning to childhood as the hope of the world. Yet the difference is radical. The child, in the Christian conception, holds the promise of things to come; in the conception of French sentiment of the Rousseau and St. Pierre type, the child is a refuge from present evil, a mournful reminiscence of a lost Paradise. If only we could keep it a child! is the cry of this school,—keep it from knowing this wicked, unhappy world! But alas! there are separations and shipwrecks. Virginia is washed ashore by the cruel waves. Paul, bereft of reason, dies, and is buried in the same grave. The two, growing like plants in nature, are stricken down by the mysterious, fateful powers of nature.

The contrast between this unreal recourse to nature and the strong yet subtle return which characterizes Wordsworth and his school is probably more apparent to the English and American mind than to the French. Yet a reasonable comparison betrays the fatal weakness of the one in that it leaves out of view whatever in nature disturbs a smooth, summer-day world. When St. Pierre talks of a return to nature, he does not mean the jungle and the pestiferous swamp; he regards these as left behind in Paris. Yet the conclusion of his story is the confession wrung from faithful art that Nature is after all but a step-mother to humanity.

In the great romantic movement which revolutionized French literature, an immense impetus was given to the mind, and literature thenceforth reflected a wider range of thought and feeling. In few respects does this appear more significantly than in the treatment of childhood. There is a robustness about the sentiment which separates it from the earlier regard of such writers as we have named. Lamartine, who certainly was not devoid of sentiment, passes by his own earliest childhood in Les Confidences with indifference. “I shall not,” he says, “follow the example of J. J. Rousseau in his Confessions. I shall not relate to you the trifling events of my early childhood. Man only dates from the commencement of feeling and thought; until the man is a being, he is not even a child.... Let us leave, then, the cradle to the nurses, and our first smiles, our first tears, and our first lisping accents to the ecstasies of our mothers. I do not wish to inflict on you any but my earliest recollections, embellished by the light of reason.” He gives, accordingly, two scenes of his childhood: one an interior, where his father reads aloud to his mother from Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered; the other an outdoor scene, where he engages in the rural sports of the neighborhood. Each picture is delightfully drawn, with minute detail, with poetic touch, with affectionate recollection. Encouraged, apparently, by the warmth which this memory has inspired, Lamartine continues to dwell upon the images of his childhood, especially as it has to do with the thought of his mother. He paints the simple garden attached to his father’s home, and resting a moment reflects:—

“Yes, that is indeed all, and yet that is what sufficed during so many years for the gratification, for the reveries, for the sweet leisures, and for the as sweet labors of a father, a mother, and eight children! Such is what still suffices, even at the present day, for the nourishment of these recollections. Such is the Eden of their childhood, where their most serene thoughts take refuge when they wish to receive a little of that dew of the morning life, a little of that beaming light of early dawn, which shines pure and radiant for man only amid the scenes of his birth. There is not a tree, there is not a carnation, there is not a mossy stone of this garden, which is not entwined in their soul as if it formed part of it. This nook of earth seems to us immense, such a host of objects and of recollections does it contain for us in so narrow a space.”

The fullness with which Lamartine treats the recollection of his youth partakes of the general spirit of French memoirs,—a spirit, to speak roughly, which regards persons rather than institutions,—but indicates also something of the new spirit which informed literature when it elevated childhood into a place of real dignity. There are passages, indeed, which have a special significance as intimating a consciousness of the deeper relations of childhood. Michelet, for instance, in his philosophy of the unfolding of woman’s life, recognizes the characteristics of maidenhood as anticipatory of maturity, and does it with so serious a contemplation that we forget to smile when we discover him profoundly observant of those instincts of maternity which are shown in the care of a child for its doll.

This attitude toward the child is observable in the masters of modern French literature. However far they may be removed from any mere domestic regard of the subject, they apprehend the peculiar sacredness attaching to children. Alfred de Musset, for example, though by no means a poet of the family, can never speak of children without emotion. Not to multiply instances, it is enough to take the great poet of the period. Victor Hugo deserves, it has been said, to be called the poet of infancy, not only for the reason that he has written of the young freely, but has in his Les Enfants, Livre des Mères, written for them. It is to be observed that the suggestion comes, with Hugo, chiefly from the children of his family; from his brother Eugène, who died an early death; from his daughter, whom he mourns in tender verse; and from his grandchildren. One feels the sincerity of a great poet when he draws the inspiration for such themes from his own familiar kind.

It may be said in general of the contribution made to this literature by the French that it partakes of those qualities of lightness and grace which mark the greater literature; that the image of childhood is a joyous, innocent one, and satisfies the eye that looks for beauty and delicacy. Sentiment predominates, but it is a sentiment that makes little draught upon thought. There is a disposition now to regard children as dolls and playthings, the amusement of the hour; now to make them the object of an attitudinizing sentiment, which is practically wasted unless there be some one at hand to applaud it.

II

When we pass from France to Germany we are aware that, however we may use the same terms, and recognize the existence of sentiment as a strong element in the literature of both countries, there is a radical difference in tone. It is not merely that French sentiment is graceful and German sentiment clumsy: the grace of the one connects itself with a fine art,—we feel an instinctive good taste in its expression; in the other, the awkwardness, the obtrusiveness, seem to be the issue of an excess of natural and homely feeling. It would be too much to say that French sentiment is insincere and German sentiment unpleasantly sincere; that the one is assumed and the other uncalculating,—we cannot thus dismiss elementary feeling in two great peoples. But an Englishman or American, to whom, in his reserve, the sentiment of either nation is apt to be a little oppressive, is very likely to smile at the French and feel uncomfortable in the presence of the German; to regard the French feeling as a temporary mood, the German as a permanent state.

Be this as it may, it is true that the German feeling with regard to childhood, as it finds expression in life and literature, revolves very closely about the child in its home, not the child as a charming object in nature. Childhood, in German literature, is conceived very generally in its purely domestic relations, and is so positive an element as to have attracted the attention of other nations, and even to have given rise to a petty cult. Coleridge, writing from Germany in 1799, reports to his English readers, as something strange to himself, and of local significance only, the custom of Christmas gifts from parents to children and from children to parents. He is especially struck with the custom of representing these presents as coming from Jesus Christ.

The whole structure of Santa Claus and Kriss Kringle, the Christ Child and Pelznichel, with the attendant ceremonies of the Christmas tree, is built into the child life of Germany and the Low Countries; and it is by the energy of this childish miracle that it has passed over into English, and especially into American life. All this warmth of domestic feeling is by no means a modern discovery. It is a prime characteristic of the Germanic people, and one strong reason for the ascendency of Lutheranism may be found in the singular exposition of the German character which Luther presented. He was not merely a man of the people; through his life and writings and organizing faculty he impressed himself positively on the German national character, not turning it aside, but deepening the channels in which it ran. Certain it is that the luxuriance of his nature was almost riotous on the side of family life. “The leader of the age,” says Canon Mozley, “and the adviser of princes, affecting no station and courting no great men, was externally one of the common crowd, and the plainest of it. In domestic life the same heart and nature appear. There he overflows with affection, warmth, tenderness; with all the amiable banter of the husband, and all the sweet arts and pretty nonsense of a father among his little children. Whether he is joking, lecturing his ‘rib Catharine,’ his ‘gracious dame Catharine,’ or writing a description of fairyland and horses with silver saddles to his ‘voracious, bibacious, loquacious,’ little John; or whether he is in the agony of grief over the death-bed of his favorite daughter, Magdalene, we see the same exuberant, tender character.”[34]

In this sketch of Luther we may read some of the general characteristics of the Germanic life, and we are ready, at the first suggestion, to assent to the proposition that the German people, judged by the apparatus of childhood, books, pictures, toys, and schools, stands before other nations. The material for the portraiture of childhood has been abundant; the social history, the biographies, give constant intimations of the fullness with which family life, inclosing childhood, has been dwelt upon in the mind. The autobiographies of poets and novelists almost invariably give great attention to the period of childhood. A very interesting illustration of this may be found in the life of Richter, who stands at the head of the great Germans in his portrayal of childhood.

“Men who have a firm hold on nothing else,” says Richter in his brief autobiography, “delight in deep, far-reaching recollection of their days of childhood, and in this billowy existence they anchor on that, far more than on the thought of later difficulties. Perhaps for two reasons: that in this retrospection they press nearer to the gate of life guarded by spiritual existences; and secondly, that they hope, in the spiritual power of an earlier consciousness, to make themselves independent of the little, contemptible annoyances that surround humanity.” He then recites an incident from his second year, and continues: “This little morning-star of earliest recollection stands yet tolerably clear in its low horizon, but growing paler as the daylight of life rises higher. And now I remember only this clearly, that in earlier life I remembered everything clearly.”

How clearly will be apparent to the reader who follows Richter through the minute and detailed narrative of his childish life, and in his writings the images of this early life are constantly reappearing under different forms. Something is no doubt due to the early birth in Richter of a self-consciousness, bred in part by the solitude of his life. It may be said with some assurance that the vividness of early recollection has much to do with determining the poet and novelist and essayist in his choice of themes bearing directly upon childhood. The childish experience of Wordsworth, De Quincey, Dickens, Lamartine, and Richter is clearly traceable in the writings of these men. If they look into their own hearts and write, the images which they bring forth are so abundantly of childhood that they cannot avoid making use of them, especially since they retain recollections which demand the interpretation of the maturer mind. That they should so freely draw from this storehouse of childish experience reflects also the temper of the age for which they write. The fullness with which the themes of childhood are treated means not that a few men have suddenly discovered the subject, but that all are sensitive to these same impressions.

It is not, however, the vividness of recollection alone, but the early birth of consciousness, which will determine the treatment of the subject. If one remember the facts of his early years rather than how he thought and felt about those facts, he will be less inclined to dwell upon the facts afterward, or make use of them in his work. They will have little significance to him. A distinction in this view is to be observed between Richter and Goethe. The autobiographies of the two men reveal the different impressions made upon them by their childhood. The facts which Goethe recalls are but little associated with contemporaneous reflection upon the facts, and they serve but a trifling purpose in Goethe’s art. The facts which Richter recalls are imbedded in a distinct conception regarding them, and perform a very positive function in his art.

The character of Mignon may be dismissed from special consideration, for it is clear that Goethe used Mignon’s diminutiveness and implied youth only to heighten the effect of her elfish and dwarfish nature. The most considerable reference to childhood is perhaps in the Sorrows of Young Werther, where the relations between Werther and Charlotte comprise a sketchy group of children who act as foils or accompaniments to the pair. Werther discovers Charlotte, it will be remembered, cutting slices of bread for her younger brothers and sisters; it is by this means that Goethe would give a charm to the character, presenting it in its homely, domestic setting. But his purpose is also to intimate the exceeding sensibility of Werther, and he represents him as taking a most affectionate interest in the little children whom he sees on his walks. I suspect, indeed, that Goethe in this has distinctly borrowed from the Vicar of Wakefield; at any rate, the comparison is easily suggested, and one brings away the impression of Goldsmith’s genuine feeling and of Goethe’s deliberate assumption of a feeling for artistic purposes. Nevertheless, Goethe makes very positive use of childhood in this novel, not only through the figures of children, but also through the sentiment of childhood.