Forgotten Books of the American Nursery
by Rosalie Vrylina Halsey · English · Gutenberg #17857 · 392,719 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Forgotten Books of the American Nursery
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: Forgotten Books of the American Nursery
Author: Rosalie Vrylina Halsey
Release date: February 25, 2006 [eBook #17857]
Most recently updated: December 13, 2020
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17857
Credits: E-text prepared by Jason Isbell, Julia Miller, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FORGOTTEN BOOKS OF THE AMERICAN NURSERY ***
E-text prepared by Jason Isbell, Julia Miller, and the Project Gutenberg
Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/)
Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
file which includes the original illustrations.
See 17857-h.htm or 17857-h.zip:
(https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/8/5/17857/17857-h/17857-h.htm)
or
(https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/8/5/17857/17857-h.zip)
Transcriber's note:
A number of typographical errors have been maintained in the
current version of this book. A complete list is found at the
end of the text.
FORGOTTEN BOOKS OF THE AMERICAN NURSERY
A History of the Development of the American Story-Book
by
ROSALIE V. HALSEY
[Illustration: _The Devil and the Disobedient Child_]
Boston
Charles E. Goodspeed & Co.
1911
Copyright, 1911, by C.E. Goodspeed & Co.
Of this book seven hundred copies were printed in November
1911, by D.B. Updike, at The Merrymount Press, Boston
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Introductory 3
II. The Play-Book in England 33
III. Newbery's Books in America 59
IV. Patriotic Printers and the American Newbery 89
V. The Child and his Book at the End of the Eighteenth Century 121
VI. Toy-Books in the early Nineteenth Century 147
VII. American Writers and English Critics 191
Index 233
ILLUSTRATIONS
_The Devil and the Disobedient Child_ Frontispiece
From "The Prodigal Daughter." Sold at the Printing Office, No. 5,
Cornhill, Boston. [J. and J. Fleet, 1789?]
Facing
Page
_The Devil appears as a French Gentleman_ 26
From "The Prodigal Daughter." Sold at the Printing Office, No. 5,
Cornhill, Boston. [J. and J. Fleet, 1789?]
_Title-page from "The Child's New Play-thing"_ 44
Printed by J. Draper; J. Edwards in Boston [1750]. Now in the
New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations
_Title-page from "A Little Pretty Pocket-Book"_ 47
Printed by Isaiah Thomas, Worcester, MDCCLXXXVII. Now in the New
York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations
_A page from "A Little Pretty Pocket-Book"_ 49
Printed by Isaiah Thomas, Worcester, MDCCLXXXVII. Now in the New
York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations
_John Newbery's Advertisement of Children's Books_ 60
From the "Pennsylvania Gazette" of November 15, 1750
_Title-page of "The New Gift for Children"_ 70
Printed by Zechariah Fowle, Boston, 1762. Now in the Library of
the Historical Society of Pennsylvania
_Miss Fanny's Maid_ 74
Illustration from "The New Gift for Children," printed by Zechariah
Fowle, Boston, 1762. Now in the Library of the Historical Society
of Pennsylvania
_A page from a Catalogue of Children's Books printed by Isaiah
Thomas_ 106
From "The Picture Exhibition," Worcester, MDCCLXXXVIII
_Illustration of Riddle XIV_ 110
From "The Puzzling-Cap," printed by John Adams, Philadelphia, 1805
_Frontispiece from "The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes"_ 117
From one of _The First Worcester Edition_, printed by Isaiah
Thomas in MDCCLXXXVII. Now in the Library of the Historical
Society of Pennsylvania
_Sir Walter Raleigh and his Man_ 125
Copper-plate illustration from "Little Truths," printed in
Philadelphia by J. and J. Crukshank in 1800
_Foot Ball_ 126
Copper-plate illustration from "Youthful Recreations," printed in
Philadelphia by Jacob Johnson about 1802
_Jacob Johnson's Book-Store in Philadelphia about 1800_ 155
_A Wall-paper Book-Cover_ 165
From "Lessons for Children from Four to Five Years Old," printed
in Wilmington (Delaware) by Peter Brynberg in 1804
_Tom the Piper's Son_ 170
Illustration and text engraved on copper by William Charles, of
Philadelphia, in 1808
_A Kind and Good Father_ 172
Woodcut by Alexander Anderson for "The Prize for Youthful
Obedience," printed in Philadelphia by Jacob Johnson in 1807
_A Virginian_ 174
Illustration from "People of all Nations," printed in Philadelphia
by Jacob Johnson in 1807
_A Baboon_ 174
Illustration from "A Familiar Description of Beasts and Birds,"
printed in Boston by Lincoln and Edmands in 1813
_Drest or Undrest_ 176
Illustration from "The Daisy," published by Jacob Johnson in 1808
_Little Nancy_ 182
Probably engraved by William Charles for "Little Nancy, or, the
Punishment of Greediness," published in Philadelphia by Morgan &
Yeager about 1830
_Children of the Cottage_ 196
Engraved by Joseph I. Pease for "The Youth's Sketch Book,"
published in Boston by Lilly, Wait and Company in 1834
_Henrietta_ 200
Engraved by Thomas Illman for "The American Juvenile Keepsake,"
published in Brockville, U.C., by Horace Billings & Co. in 1835
_A Child and her Doll_ 206
Illustration from "Little Mary," Part II, published in Boston by
Cottons and Barnard in 1831
_The Little Runaway_ 227
Drawn and engraved by J.W. Steel for "Affection's Gift," published
in New York by J.C. Riker in 1832
CHAPTER I
_Introductory_
Thy life to mend
This _book_ attend.
_The New England Tutor_
London (1702-14)
To be brought up in fear
And learn A B C.
FOXE, _Book of Martyrs_
_Forgotten Books of the American Nursery_
CHAPTER I
_Introductory_
A shelf full of books belonging to the American children of colonial
times and of the early days of the Republic presents a strangely
unfamiliar and curious appearance. If chronologically placed, the
earliest coverless chap-books are hardly noticeable next to their
immediate successors with wooden sides; and these, in turn, are
dominated by the gilt, silver, and many colored bindings of diminutive
dimensions which hold the stories dear to the childish heart from
Revolutionary days to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Then
bright blue, salmon, yellow, and marbled paper covers make a vivid
display which, as the century grows older, fades into the sad-colored
cloth bindings thought adapted to many children's books of its second
quarter.
An examination of their contents shows them to be equally foreign to
present day ideas as to the desirable characteristics for children's
literature. Yet the crooked black type and crude illustrations of the
wholly religious episodes related in the oldest volumes on the shelf, the
didactic and moral stories with their tiny type-metal, wood, and
copper-plate pictures of the next groups; and the "improving" American
tales adorned with blurred colored engravings, or stiff steel and wood
illustrations, that were produced for juvenile amusement in the early
part of the nineteenth century,--all are as interesting to the lover of
children as they are unattractive to the modern children themselves. The
little ones very naturally find the stilted language of these old stories
unintelligible and the artificial plots bewildering; but to one
interested in the adult literature of the same periods of history an
acquaintance with these amusement books of past generations has a
peculiar charm and value of its own. They then become not merely
curiosities, but the means of tracing the evolution of an American
literature for children.
To the student desiring an intimate acquaintance with any civilized
people, its lighter literature is always a great aid to personal
research; the more trivial, the more detailed, the greater the worth to
the investigator are these pen-pictures as records of the nation he
wishes to know. Something of this value have the story-books of
old-fashioned childhood. Trivial as they undoubtedly are, they
nevertheless often contain our best sketches of child-life in the
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,--a life as different from that
of a twentieth century child as was the adult society of those old days
from that of the present time. They also enable us to mark as is possible
in no other way, the gradual development of a body of writing which,
though lagging much behind the adult literature, was yet also affected by
the local and social conditions in America.
Without attempting to give the history of the evolution of the A B C
book in England--the legitimate ancestor of all juvenile books--two main
topics must be briefly discussed before entering upon the proper matter
of this volume. The first relates to the family life in the early days
of the Massachusetts Commonwealth, the province that produced the first
juvenile book. The second topic has to do with the literature thought
suitable for children in those early Puritan days. These two subjects
are closely related, the second being dependent upon the first. Both are
necessary to the history of these quaint toy volumes, whose stories lack
much meaning unless the conditions of life and literature preceding them
are understood.
When the Pilgrim Fathers, seeking freedom of faith, founded their first
settlements in the new country, one of their earliest efforts was
directed toward firmly establishing their own religion. This, though
nominally free, was eventually, under the Mathers, to become a theocracy
as intolerant as that faith from which they had fled. The rocks upon
which this religion was builded were the Bible and the Catechism. In
this history of toy-books the catechism is, however, perhaps almost the
more important to consider, for it was a product of the times, and
regarded as indispensable to the proper training of a family.
The Puritan conception of life, as an error to be rectified by suffering
rather than as a joy to be accepted with thanksgiving, made the
preparation for death and the dreadful Day of Judgment the chief end of
existence. The catechism, therefore, with its fear-inspiring description
of Hell and the consequences of sin, became inevitably the chief means of
instructing children in the knowledge of their sinful inheritance. In
order to insure a supply of catechisms, it was voted by the members of
the company in sixteen hundred and twenty-nine, when preparing to
emigrate, to expend "3 shillings for 2 dussen and ten catechismes."[6-A]
A contract was also made in the same year with "sundry intended ministers
for catechising, as also in teaching, or causing to be taught the
Companyes servants & their children, as also the salvages and their
children."[6-B] Parents, especially the mothers, were continually
exhorted in sermons preached for a century after the founding of the
colony, to catechize the children every day, "that," said Cotton Mather,
"you may be continually dropping something of the _Catechism_ upon them:
Some Honey out of the Rock"! Indeed, the learned divine seems to have
regarded it as a soothing and toothsome morsel, for he even imagined that
the children cried for it continuously, saying: _"O our dear Parents,
Acquaint us with the Great God.... Let us not go from your Tender Knees,
down to the Place of Dragons. Oh! not Parents, but Ostriches: Not
Parents, but Prodigies."_[6-C]
Much dissension soon arose among the ministers of the settlements as to
which catechism should be taught. As the result of the discussion the
"General Corte," which met in sixteen hundred and forty-one, "desired
that the elders would make a catechism for _the instruction of youth in
the grounds of religion_."[6-D]
To meet this request, several clergymen immediately responded. Among
them was John Cotton, who presumably prepared a small volume which was
entitled "_Milk for Babes_. Drawn out of the Breast of Both Testaments.
Chiefly for the spiritual nourishment of _Boston_ Babes in either
England: But may be of like use for any children." For the present
purpose the importance of this little book lies in the supposition that
it was printed at Cambridge, by Daye, between sixteen hundred and
forty-one and sixteen hundred and forty-five, and therefore was the
first book of any kind written and printed in America for children;--an
importance altogether different from that attached to it by the author's
grandson, Cotton Mather, when he asserted that "Milk for Babes" would be
"valued and studied and improved till New England cease to be New
England."[7-A]
To the little colonials this "Catechism of New England" was a great
improvement upon any predecessor, even upon the Westminster Shorter
Catechism, for it reduced the one hundred and seven questions of that
famous body of doctrine to sixty-seven, and the longest answer in "Milk
for Babes" contained only eighty-four words.[7-B]
As the century grew older other catechisms were printed. The number
produced before the eighteenth century bears witness to the diverse
views in a community in which they were considered an essential for
every member, adult or child. Among the six hundred titles roughly
computed as the output of the press by seventeen hundred in the new
country, eleven different catechisms may be counted, with twenty
editions in all; of these the titles of four indicate that they were
designed for very little children. In each community the pastor
appointed the catechism to be taught in the school, and joined the
teacher in drilling the children in its questions and answers. Indeed,
the answers were regarded as irrefutable in those uncritical days, and
hence a strong shield and buckler against manifold temptations provided
by "yt ould deluder Satan." To offset the task of learning these
doctrines of the church, it is probable that the mothers regaled the
little ones with old folk-lore tales when the family gathered together
around the great living-room fire in the winter evening, or asked
eagerly for a bedtime story in the long summer twilight. Tales such as
"Jack the Giant Killer," "Tom Thumb," the "Children in the Wood," and
"Guy of Warwick," were orally current even among the plain people of
England, though frowned upon by many of the Puritan element. Therefore
it is at least presumable that these were all familiar to the colonists.
In fact, it is known that John Dunton, in sixteen hundred and
eighty-six, sold in his Boston warehouse "The History of Tom Thumb,"
which he facetiously offered to an ignorant customer "in folio with
Marginal notes." Besides these orally related tales of enchantment, the
children had a few simple pastimes, but at first the few toys were
necessarily of home manufacture. On the whole, amusements were not
encouraged, although "In the year sixteen hundred and ninety-five Mr.
Higginson," writes Mrs. Earle, "wrote from Massachusetts to his brother
in England, that if toys were imported in small quantity to America,
they would sell." And a venture of this character was certainly made by
seventeen hundred and twelve in Boston. Still, these were the exception
in a commonwealth where amusements were considered as wiles of the
Devil, against whom the ministers constantly warned the congregations
committed to their charge.
Home in the seventeenth century--and indeed in the eighteenth
century--was a place where for children the rule "to be seen, not
heard," was strictly enforced. To read Judge Sewall's diary is to be
convinced that for children to obtain any importance in life, death was
necessary. Funerals of little ones were of frequent occurrence, and were
conducted with great ceremony, in which pomp and meagre preparation were
strangely mingled. Baby Henry Sewall's funeral procession, for instance,
included eight ministers, the governor and magistrates of the county,
and two nurses who bore the little body to the grave, into which, half
full of water from the raging storm, the rude coffin was lowered. Death
was kept before the eyes of every member of the colony; even
two-year-old babies learned such mournful verse as this:
"I, in the Burying Place may See
Graves Shorter than I;
From Death's Arrest no age is free
Young Children too may die;
My God, may such an awful Sight
Awakening be to me!
Oh! that by Grace I might
For Death prepared be."
When the younger members of the family are otherwise mentioned in the
Judge's diary, it is perhaps to note the parents' pride in the
eighteen-months-old infant's knowledge of the catechism, an acquirement
rewarded by the gift of a red apple, but which suggests the reason for
many funerals. Or, again, difficulties with the alphabet are sorrowfully
put down; and also deliquencies at the age of four in attending family
prayer, with a full account of punishments meted out to the culprit.
Such details are, indeed, but natural, for under the stern conditions
imposed by Cotton and the Mathers, religion looms large in the
foreground of any sketch of family life handed down from the first
century of the Massachusetts colony. Perhaps the very earliest picture
in which a colonial child with a book occupies the centre of the canvas
is that given in a letter of Samuel Sewall's. In sixteen hundred and
seventy-one he wrote with pride to a friend of "little Betty, who though
Reading passing well, took Three Moneths to Read the first Volume of the
Book of Martyrs" as she sat by the fire-light at night after her daily
task of spinning was done. Foxe's "Martyrs" seems gruesome reading for a
little girl at bedtime, but it was so popular in England that, with the
Bible and Catechism, it was included in the library of all households
that could afford it.
Just ten years later, in sixteen hundred and eighty-one, Bunyan's
"Pilgrim's Progress" was printed in Boston by Samuel Green, and, being
easily obtainable, superseded in a measure the "Book of Martyrs" as a
household treasure. Bunyan's dream, according to Macaulay, was the daily
conversation of thousands, and was received in New England with far
greater eagerness than in the author's own country. The children
undoubtedly listened to the talk of their elders and gazed with
wide-open eyes at the execrable plates in the imported editions
illustrating Christian's journey. After the deaths by fire and sword of
the Martyrs, the Pilgrim's difficulties in the Slough of Despond, or
with the Giant Despair, afforded pleasurable reading; while Mr. Great
Heart's courageous cheerfulness brought practically a new characteristic
into Puritan literature.
To Bunyan the children in both old and New England were indebted for
another book, entitled "A Book for Boys and Girls: or, Country Rhimes
for Children. By J.B. Licensed and Entered according to Order."[11-A]
Printed in London, it probably soon made its way to this country, where
Bunyan was already so well known. "This little octavo volume," writes
Mrs. Field in "The Child and his Book," "was considered a perfect
child's book, but was in fact only the literary milk of the unfortunate
babes of the period." In the light of modern views upon juvenile reading
and entertainment, the Puritan ideal of mental pabulum for little ones
is worth recording in an extract from the preface. The following lines
set forth this author's three-fold purpose:
"To show them how each Fingle-fangle,
On which they doting are, their souls entangle,
As with a Web, a Trap, a Gin, or Snare.
While by their Play-things, I would them entice,
To mount their Thoughts from what are childish Toys
To Heaven for that's prepar'd for Girls and Boys.
Nor do I so confine myself to these
As to shun graver things, I seek to please,
Those more compos'd with better things than Toys:
Tho thus I would be catching Girls and Boys."
In the seventy-four Meditations composing this curious medley--"tho but
in Homely Rhimes"--upon subjects familiar to any little girl or boy,
none leaves the moral to the imagination. Nevertheless, it could well
have been a relaxation, after the daily drill in "A B abs" and
catechism, to turn the leaves and to spell out this:
UPON THE FROG
The Frog by nature is both damp and cold,
Her mouth is large, her belly much will hold,
She sits somewhat ascending, loves to be
Croaking in gardens tho' unpleasantly.
_Comparison_
The hypocrite is like unto this frog;
As like as is the Puppy to the Dog.
He is of nature cold, his mouth is wide
To prate, and at true Goodness to deride.
Doubtless, too, many little Puritans quite envied the child in "The Boy
and the Watchmaker," a jingle wherein the former said, among other
things:
"This Watch my Father did on me bestow
A Golden one it is, but 'twill not go,
Unless it be at an Uncertainty;
I think there is no watch as bad as mine.
Sometimes 'tis sullen, 'twill not go at all,
And yet 'twas never broke, nor had a fall."
The same small boys may even have enjoyed the tedious explanation of the
mechanism of the time-piece given by the _Watchmaker_, and after
skipping the "Comparison" (which made the boy represent a convert and
the watch in his pocket illustrative of "Grace within his Heart"), they
probably turned eagerly to the next Meditation _Upon the Boy and his
Paper of Plumbs_. Weather-cocks, Hobby-horses, Horses, and Drums, all
served Bunyan in his effort "to point a moral" while adorning his tales.
In a later edition of these grotesque and quaint conceptions, some
alterations were made and a primer was included. It then appeared as "A
Book for Boys and Girls; or Temporal Things Spiritualized;" and by the
time the ninth edition was reached, in seventeen hundred and twenty-four,
the book was hardly recognizable as "Divine Emblems; or Temporal Things
Spiritualized."
At present there is no evidence that these rhymes were printed in the
colonies until long after this ninth edition was issued. It is possible
that the success attending a book printed in Boston shortly after the
original "Country Rhimes" was written, made the colonial printers feel
that their profit would be greater by devoting spare type and paper to
the now famous "New England Primer." Moreover, it seems peculiarly in
keeping with the cast of the New England mind of the eighteenth century
that although Bunyan had attempted to combine play-things with religious
teaching for the English children, for the little colonials the first
combination was the elementary teaching and religious exercises found in
the great "Puritan Primer." Each child was practically, if not verbally,
told that
"This little Catechism learned by heart (for so it ought)
The Primer next commanded is for Children to be taught."
The Primer, however, was not a product wholly of New England. In sixteen
hundred and eighty-five there had been printed in Boston by Green, "The
Protestant Tutor for Children," a primer, a mutilated copy of which is
now owned by the American Antiquarian Society. "This," again to quote
Mr. Ford, "was probably an abridged edition of a book bearing the same
title, printed in London, with the expressed design of bringing up
children in an aversion to Popery." In Protestant New England the
author's purpose naturally called forth profound approbation, and in
"Green's edition of the Tutor lay the germ of the great picture alphabet
of our fore-fathers."[14-A] The author, Benjamin Harris, had immigrated
to Boston for personal reasons, and coming in contact with the
residents, saw the latent possibilities in "The Protestant Tutor." "To
make it more salable," writes Mr. Ford in "The New England Primer," "the
school-book character was increased, while to give it an even better
chance of success by an appeal to local pride it was rechristened and
came forth under the now famous title of 'The New England
Primer.'"[14-B]
A careful examination of the titles contained in the first volume of
Evans's "American Bibliography" shows how exactly this infant's primer
represented the spirit of the times. This chronological list of American
imprints of the first one hundred years of the colonial press is largely
a record in type of the religious activity of the country, and is
impressive as a witness to the obedience of the press to the law of
supply and demand. With the Puritan appetite for a grim religion served
in sermons upon every subject, ornamented and seasoned with supposedly
apt Scriptural quotations, a demand was created for printed discourses
to be read and inwardly digested at home. This demand the printers
supplied. Amid such literary conditions the primer came as light food
for infants' minds, and as such was accepted by parents to impress
religious ideas when teaching the alphabet.
It is not by any means certain that the first edition of this great
primer of our ancestors contained illustrations, as engravers were few
in America before the eighteenth century. Yet it seems altogether
probable that they were introduced early in the next century, as by
seventeen hundred and seventeen Benjamin Harris, Jr., had printed in
Boston "The Holy Bible in Verse," containing cuts identical with those
in "The New England Primer" of a somewhat later date, and these pictures
could well have served as illustrations for both these books for
children's use, profit, and pleasure. At all events, the thorough
approval by parents and clergy of this small school-book soon brought to
many a household the novelty of a real picture-book.
Hitherto little children had been perforce content with the few
illustrations the adult books offered. Now the printing of this tiny
volume, with its curious black pictures accompanying the text of
religious instruction, catechism, and alphabets, marked the milestone on
the long lane that eventually led to the well-drawn pictures in the
modern books for children.
It is difficult at so late a day to estimate correctly the pleasure this
famous picture alphabet brought to the various colonial households. What
the original illustrations were like can only be inferred from those in
"The Holy Bible in Verse," and in the later editions of the primer
itself. In the Bible Adam (or is it Eve?) stands pointing to a tree
around which a serpent is coiled. By seventeen hundred and thirty-seven
the engraver was sufficiently skilled to represent two figures, who
stand as colossal statues on either side of the tree whose fruit had
such disastrous effects. However, at a time when art criticism had no
terrors for the engraver, it could well have been a delight to many a
family of little ones to gaze upon
"The Lion bold
The Lamb doth hold"
and to speculate upon the exact place where the lion ended and the lamb
began. The wholly religious character of the book was no drawback to its
popularity, for the two great diaries of the time show how absolutely
religion permeated the atmosphere surrounding both old and young.
Cotton Mather's diary gives various glimpses of his dealing with his own
and other people's children. His son Increase, or "Cressy," as he was
affectionately called, seems to have been particularly unresponsive to
religious coercion. Mather's method, however, appears to have been more
efficacious with the younger members of his family, and of Elizabeth and
Samuel (seven years of age) he wrote: "My two younger children shall
before the Psalm and prayer answer a Quæstion in the catechism; and have
their Leaves ready turned unto the proofs of the Answer in the Bible;
which they shall distinctly read unto us, and show what they prove. This
also shall supply a fresh matter for prayer." Again he tells of his
table talk: "Tho' I will have my table talk facetious as well as
instructive ... yett I will have the Exercise continually intermixed. I
will set before them some sentence of the Bible, and make some useful
Remarks upon it." Other people's children he taught as occasion offered;
even when "on the Road in the Woods," he wrote on another day, "I, being
desirous to do some Good, called some little children ... and bestowed
some Instruction with a little Book upon them." To children accustomed
to instruction at all hours, the amusement found in the pages of the
primer was far greater than in any other book printed in the colonies
for years.
Certain titles indicate the nature of the meagre juvenile literary fare
in the beginning of the new eighteenth century. In seventeen hundred
Nicholas Boone, in his "Shop over against the old Meeting-house" in
Boston, reprinted Janeway's "Token for Children." To this was added by
the Boston printer a "Token for the children of New England, or some
examples of children in whom the fear of God was remarkably budding when
they dyed; in several parts of New England." Of course its author, the
Reverend Mr. Mather, found colonial "examples" as deeply religious as
any that the mother country could produce; but there is for us a grim
humor in these various incidents concerning pious and precocious infants
"of thin habit and pale countenance," whose pallor became that of death
at so early an age. If it was by the repetition of such tales that the
Puritan divine strove to convert Cressy, it may well be that the son
considered it better policy, since Death claimed the little saints, to
remain a sinner.
By seventeen hundred and six two juvenile books appeared from the press
of Timothy Green in Boston. The first, "A LITTLE BOOK for
children wherein are set down several directions for little children:
and several remarkable stories both ancient and modern of little
children, divers whereof are lately deceased," was a reprint from an
English book of the same title, and therefore has not in this chronicle
the interest of the second book. The purpose of its publication is given
in Mather's diary:
[1706] 22d. Im. Friday.
About this Time sending my little son to School, Where ye Child was
Learning to Read, I did use every morning for diverse months, to
Write in a plain Hand for the Child, and send thither by him, _a
Lesson in Verse_, to be not only _read_, but also _Gott_ by Heart.
My proposal was to have the Child improve in goodness, at the same
time that he improved in _Reading_. Upon further Thoughts I
apprehended that a Collection of some of them would be serviceable
to ye Good Education of other children. So I lett ye printer take
them & print them, in some hope of some Help to thereby contributed
unto that great Intention of a _Good Education_. The book is
entituled _Good Lessons for Children_; or Instruction provided for a
little Son to learn at School, when learning to Read.
Although this small book lives only by record, it is safe to assume from
the extracts of the author's diary already quoted, that it lacked every
quality of amusement, and was adapted only to those whom he described,
in a sermon preached before the Governor and Council, as "verie Sharpe
and early Ripe in their capacities." "Good Lessons" has the distinction
of being the first American book to be composed, like many a modern
publication, for a particular young child; and, with its purpose "to
improve in goodness," struck clearly the keynote of the greater part of
all writing for children during the succeeding one hundred and
seventy-five years.
The first glimpse of the amusement book proper appears in that unique
"History of Printing in America," by Isaiah Thomas. This describes,
among other old printers, one Thomas Fleet, who established himself in
Boston about 1713. "At first," wrote Mr. Thomas, "he printed pamphlets
for booksellers, small books for children and ballads" in Pudding
Lane.[19-A] "He owned several negroes, one of which ... was an ingenious
man and cut on wooden blocks all the pictures which decorated the
ballads and small books for his master."[19-B] As corroborative of these
statements Thomas also mentions Thomas Fleet, Sr., as "the putative
compiler of Mother Goose Melodies, which he first published in 1719,
bearing the title of 'Songs for the Nursery.'"
Much discussion has arisen as to the earliest edition of Mother Goose.
Thomas's suggestion as to the origin of the first American edition has
been of late years relegated to the region of myth. Nevertheless, there
is something to be said in favor of the existence of some book of
nonsense at that time. The Boston "News Letter" for April 12-19, 1739,
contained a criticism of Tate and Brady's version of the Psalms, in
which the reviewer wrote that in Psalm VI the translators used the
phrase, "a wretch forlorn." He added: "(1) There is nothing of this in
the original or the English Psalter. (2) 'Tis a low expression and to
add a low one is the less allowable. But (3) what I am most concerned
for is, that it will be apt to make our Children think of the line in
their vulgar Play song; much like it, 'This is the maiden all forlorn.'"
We recognize at once a reference to our nursery friend of the "House
that Jack Built;" and if this and "Tom Thumb" were sold in Boston, why
should not other ditties have been among the chap-books which Thomas
remembered to have set up when a 'prentice lad in the printing-house of
Zechariah Fowle, who in turn had copied some issued previously by Thomas
Fleet? In further confirmation of Thomas's statement is a paragraph in
the preface to an edition of Mother Goose, published in Boston in 1833,
by Monroe & Francis. The editor traces the origin of these rhymes to a
London book entitled, "Rhymes for the Nursery or Lullabies for
Children," "that," he writes, "contained many of the identical pieces
handed down to us." He continues: "The first book of the kind known to
be printed in this country _bears_ [_the italics are mine_] the title,
'_Songs for the Nursery: or Mother Goose's Melodies for Children_.'
Something probably intended to represent a goose, with a very long neck
and mouth wide open, covered a large part of the title-page; at the
bottom of which was: 'Printed by T. Fleet, at his printing house,
Pudding Lane (Boston) 1719.' Several pages were missing, so that the
whole number could not be ascertained." The editor clearly writes as if
he had either seen, or heard accurately described, this piece of
_Americana_, which the bibliophile to-day would consider a treasure
trove. Later writers doubt whether any such book existed, for it is
hardly credible that the Puritan element which so largely composed the
population of Boston in the first quarter of the eighteenth century
would have encouraged the printing of any nonsensical jingles.
Boston, however, was not at this time the only place in the colonies
where primers and religious books were written and printed. In
Philadelphia, Andrew Bradford, famous as the founder of the "American
Weekly Mercury," had in 1714 put through his press, probably upon
subscription, the "Last Words and Dyeing Expressions of Hannah Hill,
aged 11 years and near three Months." This morbid account of the death
of a little Quakeress furnished the Philadelphia children with a book
very similar to Mather's "Token." Not to be outdone by any precocious
example in Pennsylvania, the Reverend Mr. Mather soon found an instance
of "Early Piety in Elizabeth Butcher of Boston, being just 8 years and
11 months old," when she died in 1718. In two years two editions of her
life had been issued "to instruct and to invite little children to the
exercise of early piety."
Such mortuary effusions were so common at the time that Benjamin
Franklin's witty skit upon them is apropos in this connection. In 1719,
at the age of sixteen, under the pseudonym of Mrs. Dogood, he wrote a
series of letters for his brother's paper, "The New England Courant."
From the following extract, taken from these letters, it is evident that
these children's "Last Words" followed the prevailing fashion:
_A Receipt_ to make a _New England_
Funeral _Elegy_.
_For the title of your Elegy_. Of these you may have enough ready
made at your Hands: But if you should chuse to make it yourself you
must be sure not to omit the Words _Aetatis Suae_, which will
beautify it exceedingly.
_For the subject of your Elegy_. Take one of your neighbors who has
lately departed this life; it is no great matter at what age the
Party Dy'd, but it will be best if he went away suddenly, being
_Kill'd_, _Drown'd_ or _Froze to Death_.
Having chosen the Person, take all his Virtues, Excellencies, &c.
and if he have not enough, you may borrow some to make up a
sufficient Quantity: To these add his last Words, dying Expressions,
&c. if they are to be had: mix all these together, and be sure you
strain them well. Then season all with a Handful or two of
Melancholy Expressions, such as _Dreadful, Dreadly, cruel, cold,
Death, unhappy, Fate, weeping Eyes_, &c. Having mixed all these
Ingredients well, put them in an empty Scull of some _young
Harvard_; (but in case you have ne'er a One at Hand, you may use
your _own_,) then let them Ferment for the Space of a Fortnight, and
by that Time they will be incorporated into a Body, which take out
and having prepared a sufficient Quantity of double Rhimes, such as
_Power, Flower; Quiver, Shiver; Grieve us, Leave us; tell you, excel
you; Expeditions, Physicians; Fatigue him, Intrigue him_; &c. you
must spread all upon Paper, and if you can procure a Scrap of Latin
to put at the _End_, it will garnish it mightily: then having
affixed your Name at the bottom with a _Maestus Composuit_, you will
have an Excellent Elegy.
N.B. This Receipt will serve when a Female is the subject of your
Elegy, provided you borrow a greater Quantity of Virtues,
Excellencies &c.
Of other original books for children of colonial parents in the first
quarter of that century, "A Looking-glass" did but mirror more religious
episodes concerning infants, while Mather in his zeal had also published
"An Earnest Exhortation" to New England children, and "The A, B, C, of
religion. Fitted unto the youngest and lowest capacities." To this,
taking advantage of the use of rhymes, he appended further instruction,
including "The Body of Divinity versified." With our knowledge of the
clergyman's methods with his congregation it is not difficult to imagine
that he insisted upon the purchase of these godly aids for every
household.
In attempting to reproduce the conditions of family life in the early
settlements and towns of colonial days, we turn quite naturally to the
newspapers, whose appearance in the first quarter of the eighteenth
century was gladly welcomed by the people of their time, and whose files
are now eagerly searched for items of great or small importance. Indeed,
much information can be gathered from their advertisements, which often
filled the major part of these periodicals. Apparently shop-keepers were
keen to take advantage of such space as was reserved for them, as
sometimes a marginal note informed the public that other advertisements
must wait for the next issue to appear.
Booksellers' announcements, however, are not too frequent in Boston
papers, and are noticeably lacking in the early issues of the
Philadelphia "Weekly Mercury." This dearth of book-news accounts for the
difficulty experienced by book-lovers of that town in procuring
literature--a lack noticed at once by the wide-awake young Franklin upon
his arrival in the city, and recorded in his biography as follows:
"At the time I established myself in Pennsylvania [1728] there was not a
bookseller's shop in any of the colonies to the southward of Boston. In
New York and Phil'a the printers were indeed stationers; they sold only
paper, etc., ballads, and a few books. Those who lov'd reading were
obliged to send for their books from London."
Franklin undertook to better this condition by opening a shop for the
sale of foreign books. Both he and his rival in journalism, Andrew
Bradford, had stationer's shops, in which were to be had besides "Good
Writing Paper; Cyphering Slates; Ink Powders, etc., Chapmens Books and
Ballads." Bradford also advertised in seventeen hundred and thirty that
all persons could be supplied with "Primers and small Histories of many
sorts." "Small histories" were probably chap-books, which, hawked about
the country by peddlers or chapmen, contained tales of "Fair Rosamond,"
"Jane Grey," "Tom Thumb" or "Tom Hick-a-Thrift," and though read by old
and young, were hardly more suitable for juvenile reading than the
religious elegies then so popular. These chap-books were sold in
considerable quantities on account of their cheapness, and included
religious subjects as well as tales of adventure.
One of the earliest examples of this chap-book literature, thought
suitable for children, was printed in the colonies by the press of
Thomas Fleet, already mentioned as a printer of small books. This book
of 1736, being intended for ready sale, was such as every Puritan would
buy for the family library. Entitled "The Prodigal Daughter," it told in
Psalm-book metre of a "proud, vain girl, who, because her parents would
not indulge her in all her extravagances, bargained with the devil to
poisen them." The parents, however, were warned by an angel of her
intentions:
"One night her parents sleeping were in bed
Nothing but troubled dreams run in their head,
At length an angel did to them appear
Saying awake, and unto me give ear.
A messenger I'm sent by Heaven kind
To let you know your lives are both design'd;
Your graceless child, whom you love so dear,
She for your precious lives hath laid a snare.
To poison you the devil tempts her so,
She hath no power from the snare to go:
But God such care doth of his servants take,
Those that believe on Him He'll not forsake.
"You must not use her cruel or severe,
For though these things to you I do declare,
It is to show you what the Lord can do,
He soon can turn her heart, you'll find it so."
The daughter, discovered in her attempt to poison their food, was
reproached by the mother for her evil intention and swooned. Every
effort failed to "bring her spirits to revive:"
"Four days they kept her, when they did prepare
To lay her body in the dust we hear,
At her funeral a sermon then was preach'd,
All other wicked children for to teach....
But suddenly they bitter groans did hear
Which much surprized all that then were there.
At length they did observe the dismal sound
Came from the body just laid in the ground."
The Puritan pride in funeral display is naïvely exhibited in the
portrayal of the girl when she "in her coffin sat, and did admire her
winding sheet," before she related her experiences "among lonesome wild
deserts and briary woods, which dismal were and dark." But immediately
after her description of the lake of burning misery and of the fierce
grim Tempter, the Puritan matter-of-fact acceptance of it all is
suggested by the concluding lines:
"When thus her story she to them had told,
She said, put me to bed for I am cold."
The illustrations of a later edition entered thoroughly into the spirit
of the author's intent. The contemporary opinion of the French character
is quaintly shown in the portrait of the Devil dressed as a French
gentleman, his cloven foot discovering his identity. Whatever
deficiencies are revealed in these early attempts to illustrate, they
invariably expressed the artist's purpose, and in this case the Devil,
after the girl's conversion, is drawn in lines very acceptable to
Puritan children's idea of his personality.
Almanacs also were in demand, and furnished parents and children, in
many cases, with their entire library for week-day reading. "Successive
numbers hung from a string by the chimney or ranked by years and
generations on cupboard shelves."[26-A] But when Franklin made "Poor
Richard" an international success, he, by giving short extracts from
Swift, Steele, Defoe, and Bacon, accustomed the provincial population,
old and young, to something better than the meagre religious fare
provided by the colonial press.
Such, then, were the literary conditions for children when an
advertisement inserted in the "Weekly Mercury" gave promise of better
days for the little Philadelphians.[26-B] Strangely enough, this attempt
to make learning seem attractive to children did not appear in the
booksellers' lists; but crowded in between Tandums, Holland Tapes,
London Steel, and good Muscavado Sugar,--"Guilt horn books" were
advertised by Joseph Sims in 1740 as "for sale on reasonable Terms for
Cash."
[Illustration: _The Devil appears as a French Gentleman_]
Horn-books in themselves were only too common, and not in the least
delightful. Made of thin wood, whereon was placed a printed sheet of
paper containing the alphabet and Lord's Prayer, a horn-book was hardly,
properly speaking, a book at all. But when the printed page was covered
with yellowish transparent horn, secured to the wooden back by strips of
brass, it furnished an economical and practically indestructible
elementary text-book for thousands of English-speaking children on both
sides of the Atlantic. Sometimes an effort was also made to guard
against the inconvenient faculty of children for losing school-books, by
attaching a cord, which, passing through a hole in the handle of the
board, was hung around the scholar's neck. But since nothing is proof
against the ingenuity of a schoolboy, many were successfully disposed
of. Although printed by thousands, few in England or in America have
survived the century that has elapsed since they were used.
Occasionally, in tearing down an old building, one of these horn-books
has been found; dropped in a convenient hole, it has remained secure
from parents' sight, until brought to light by workmen and prized as a
curiosity by grown people of the present generation. This notice of
little gilt horn-books was inserted in the "Weekly Mercury" but once.
Whether the supply was quickly exhausted, or whether they did not prove
a successful novelty, can never be known; but at least they herald the
approach of the little gilt story-books which ten years later were to
make the name of John Newbery well known in English households, and
hardly less familiar in the American colonies.
So far the only attractions to induce children to read have been through
the pictures in the Primer of New England, and by the gilding of the
horn-book. From further south comes the first note of amusement in
reading, as well as the first expression of pleasure from the children
themselves in regard to a book. In 1741, in Virginia, two letters were
written and received by R.H. Lee and George Washington. These letters,
which afford the first in any way authentic account of tales of real
entertainment, are given by Mr. Lossing in "The Home of Washington," and
tell their own tale:
[_Richard Henry Lee to George Washington_]
PA brought me two pretty books full of pictures he got them
in Alexandria they have pictures of dogs and cats and tigers and
elefants and ever so many pretty things cousin bids me send you one
of them it has a picture of an elefant and a little indian boy on
his back like uncle jo's Sam pa says if I learn my tasks good he
will let uncle jo bring me to see you will you ask your ma to let
you come to see me.
RICHARD HENRY LEE.
[_G. Washington to R.H. Lee_]
DEAR DICKEY--I thank you very much for the pretty picture
book you gave me. Sam asked me to show him the pictures and I showed
him all the pictures in it; and I read to him how the tame Elephant
took care of the Master's little boy, and put him on his back and
would not let anybody touch his master's little son. I can read
three or four pages sometimes without missing a word.... I have a
little piece of poetry about the picture book you gave me but I
mustn't tell you who wrote the poetry.
G.W.'s compliments to R.H.L.
And likes his book full well,
Henceforth will count him his friend
And hopes many happy days he may spend.
Your good friend
GEORGE WASHINGTON.
In a note Mr. Lossing states that he had copies of these two letters,
sent him by a Mr. Lee, who wrote: "The letter of Richard Henry Lee was
written by himself, and uncorrected sent by him to his boy friend George
Washington. The poetical effusion was, I have heard, written by a Mr.
Howard, a gentleman who used to visit at the house of Mr. Washington."
It would be gratifying to know the titles of these two books, so
evidently English chap-book tales. It is probable that they were
imported by a shop-keeper in Alexandria, as in seventeen hundred and
forty-one there was only one press in Virginia, owned by William Sharps,
who had moved from Annapolis in seventeen hundred and thirty-six.
Luxuries were so much more common among the Virginia planters, and life
was so much more roseate in hue than was the case in the northern
colonies, that it seems most natural that two southern boys should have
left the earliest account of any real story-books. Though unfortunately
nameless, they at least form an interesting coincidence. Bought in
seventeen hundred and forty-one, they follow just one hundred years
later than the meeting of the General Court, which was responsible for
the preparation of Cotton's "Milk for Babes," and precede by a century
the date when an American story-book literature was recognized as very
different from that written for English children.
FOOTNOTES:
[6-A] _Records of Mass. Bay_, vol. i, p. 37 h.
[6-B] _Ibid._, vol. i, p. 37 e.
[6-C] Ford, _The New England Primer_, p. 83.
[6-D] _Records of Mass. Bay_, vol. i, p. 328.
[7-A] Ford, _The New England Primer_, p. 92.
[7-B] _Ibid._
[11-A] In the possession of the British Museum.
[14-A] Ford, _The New England Primer_, p. 38.
[14-B] _Ibid._
[19-A] Thomas, _History of Printing in America_, vol. iii, p. 145.
[19-B] _Ibid._, vol. i, p. 294.
[26-A] Sears, _American Literature_, p. 86.
[26-B] Although this appears to be the first advertisement of gilt
horn-books in Philadelphia papers, an inventory of the estate of Michael
Perry, a Boston bookseller, made in seventeen hundred, includes sixteen
dozen gilt horn-books.
CHAPTER II
1747-1767
He who learns his letters fair,
Shall have a coach and take the air.
_Royal Primer_, Newbery, 1762
Our king the good
No man of blood.
_The New England Primer_, 1762
CHAPTER II
1747-1767
_The Play-Book in England_
The vast horde of story-books so constantly poured into modern nurseries
makes it difficult to realize that the library of the early colonial
child consisted of such books as have been already described. The
juvenile books to-day are multiform. The quantities displayed upon
shop-counters or ranged upon play-room shelves include a variety of
subjects bewildering to all but those whose business necessitates a
knowledge of this kind of literature. For the little child there is no
lack of gayly colored pictures and short tales in large print; for the
older boys and girls there lies a generous choice, ranging from Bunny
stories to Jungle Books, or they
"May see how all things are,
Seas and cities near and far.
And the flying fairies' looks
In the picture story-books."
The contrast is indeed extreme between that scanty fare of dull sermons
and "The New England Primer" given to the little people of the early
eighteenth century, and this superabundance prepared with lavish care
for the nation of American children.
The beginning of this complex juvenile literature is, therefore, to be
regarded as a comparatively modern invention of about seventeen hundred
and forty-five. From that date can be traced the slow growth of a
literature written with an avowed intention of furnishing amusement as
well as instruction; and in the toy-books published one hundred and
fifty years ago are found the prototypes of the present modes of
bringing fun and knowledge to the American fireside.
The question at once arises as to the reason why this literature came
into existence; why was it that children after seventeen hundred and
fifty should have been favored in a way unknown to their parents?
To even the casual reader of English literature the answer is plain, if
this subject of toy-books be regarded as of near kin to the larger body
of writing. It has been somewhat the custom to consider children's
literature as a thing wholly apart from that of adults, probably because
the majority of the authors of these little tales have so generally
lacked the qualities indispensable for any true literary work. In
reality the connection between the two is somewhat like that of parent
and child; the smaller body, though lacking in power, has closely
imitated the larger mass of writing in form and kind, and has reflected,
sometimes clearly, sometimes dimly, the good or bad fashions that have
shared the successive periods of literary history, like a child who
unconsciously reproduces a parent's foibles or excellences.
It is to England, then, that we must look to find the conditions out of
which grew the necessity for this modern invention--the story-book.
The love of stories has been the splendid birthright of every child in
all ages and in all lands. "Stories," wrote Thackeray,--"stories exist
everywhere; there is no calculating the distance through which the
stories have come to us, the number of languages through which they have
been filtered, or the centuries during which they have been told. Many
of them have been narrated almost in their present shape for thousands
of years to the little copper-coloured Sanscrit children, listening to
their mothers under the palm-trees by the banks of the yellow
Jumna--their Brahmin mother, who softly narrated them through the ring
in her nose. The very same tale has been heard by the Northern Vikings
as they lay on their shields on deck; and the Arabs couched under the
stars on the Syrian plains when their flocks were gathered in, and their
mares were picketed by the tents." This picturesque description leads
exactly to the point to be emphasized: that children shared in the
simple tales of their people as long as those tales retained their
freshness and simplicity; but when, as in England in the eighteenth
century, the literature lost these qualities and became artificial,
critical, and even skeptical, it lost its charm for the little ones and
they no longer cared to listen to it.
Fashion and taste were then alike absorbed in the works of Dryden, Pope,
Addison, Steele, and Swift, and the novels from the pens of Richardson,
Fielding, and Smollett had begun to claim and to hold the attention of
the English reading public. The children, however, could neither
comprehend nor enjoy the witty criticism and subtle treatment of the
topics discussed by the older men, although, as will be seen in another
chapter, the novels became, in both the original and in the abridged
forms, the delight of many a "young master and miss." Meanwhile, in the
American colonies the people who could afford to buy books inherited
their taste for literature as well as for tea from the Puritans and
fashionables in the mother country; although it is a fact familiar to
all, that the works of the comparatively few native authors lagged, in
spirit and in style, far behind the writings of Englishmen of the time.
The reading of one who was a boy in the older era of the urbane Addison
and the witty Pope, and a man in the newer period of the novelists, is
well described in Benjamin Franklin's autobiography. "All the little
money," wrote that book-lover, "that came into my hands was laid out in
books. Pleased with the Pilgrim's Progress, my collection was of John
Bunyan's works in separate volumes. I afterwards sold them to buy R.
Burton's Historical Collections; they were Chapmen's books, and cheap,
40 or 50 in all."
Burton's "Historical Collections" contained history, travels,
adventures, fiction, natural history, and biography. So great was the
favor in which they were held in the eighteenth century that the
compiler, Nathaniel Crouch, almost lost his identity in his pseudonym,
and like the late Mr. Clemens, was better known by his nom-de-plume than
by his family name. According to Dunton, he "melted down the best of the
English histories into twelve-penny books, which are filled with
wonders, rarities and curiosities." Although characterized by Dr.
Johnson as "very proper to allure backward readers," the contents of
many of the various books afforded the knowledge and entertainment
eagerly grasped by Franklin and other future makers of the American
nation. The scarcity of historical works concerning the colonies made
Burton's account of the "English Empire in America" at once a mine of
interest to wide-awake boys of the day. Number VIII, entitled "Winter
Evenings' Entertainment," was long a source of amusement with its
stories and riddles, and its title was handed down to other books of a
similar nature. To children, however, the best-known volume of the
series was Burton's illustrated versification of Bible stories called
"The Youth's Divine Pastime." But the subjects chosen by Burton were
such as belonged to a very plain-spoken age; and as the versifier was no
euphuist in his relation of facts, the result was a remarkable "Pastime
for Youth." The literature read by English children was, of course, the
same; the little ones of both countries ate of the same tree of
knowledge of facts, often either silly or revolting.
To deliver the younger and future generations from such unpalatable and
indigestible mental food, there was soon to appear in London a man, John
Newbery by name, who, already a printer, publisher, and vendor of patent
medicines, seized the opportunity to issue stories written especially
for the amusement of little children.
While Newbery was making his plans to provide pleasure for young folks
in England, in the colonies the idea of a child's need of recreation
through books was slowly gaining ground. It is well to note the manner
in which the little colonists were prepared to receive Newbery's books
as recreative features crept gradually into the very few publications of
which there is record.
In seventeen hundred and forty-five native talent was still entirely
confined to writing for little people lugubrious sermons or discourses
delivered on Sunday and "Catechize days," and afterwards printed for
larger circulation. The reprints from English publications were such
exotics as, "A Poesie out of Mr. Dod's Garden," an alluring title, which
did not in the least deceive the small colonials as to the religious
nature of its contents.
In New York the Dutch element, until the advent of Garrat Noel, paid so
little attention to the subject of juvenile literature that the
popularity of Watts's "Divine Songs" (issued by an Englishman) is well
attested by the fact that at present it is one of the very few child's
books of any kind recorded as printed in that city before 1760. But in
Boston, old Thomas Fleet, in 1741, saw the value of the element of some
entertainment in connection with reading, and, when he published "The
Parents' Gift, containing a choice collection of God's judgments and
Mercies," lives of the Evangelists, and other religious matter, he added
a "variety of pleasant Pictures proper for the Entertainment of
Children." This is, perhaps, the first printed acknowledgment in America
that pictures were commendable to parents _because_ entertaining to
their offspring. Such an idea put into words upon paper and advertised
in so well-read a sheet as the "Boston Evening Post," must surely have
impressed fathers and mothers really solicitous for the family welfare
and anxious to provide harmless pleasure. This pictorial element was
further encouraged by Franklin, when, in 1747, he reprinted, probably
for the first time in this country, "Dilworth's New Guide to the English
Tongue." In this school-book, after the alphabets and spelling lessons,
a special feature was introduced, that is, illustrated "Select Fables."
The cuts at the top of each fable possess an added interest from the
supposition that they were engraved by the printer himself; and the
constant use of the "Guide" by colonial school-masters and mistresses
made their pupils unconsciously quite ready for more illustrated and
fewer homiletic volumes.
Indeed, before the middle of the century pictures had become an accepted
feature of the few juvenile books, and "The History of the Holy Jesus"
versified for little ones was issued by at least two old Boston printers
in 1747 and 1748 with more than a dozen cuts. Among the rare extant
copies of this small chap-book is one that, although torn and disfigured
by tiny fingers and the century and a half since it pleased its first
owner, bears the personal touch of this inscription "Ebenezer ... Bought
June ... 1749 ... price 0=2=d." Was the price marked upon its page as a
reminder that two shillings was a large price to pay for a boy's book?
Perhaps for this reason it received the careful handling that has
enabled us to examine it, when so many of its contemporaries and
successors have vanished.
The versified story, notwithstanding its quaintness of diction, begins
with a dignified directness:
"The glorious blessed Time had come,
The Father had decreed,
Jesus of _Mary_ there was born,
And in a Manger laid."
At the end are two _Hymns_, entitled "Delight in the Lord Jesus," and
"Absence from Christ intolerable." The final stanza is typical of one
Puritan doctrine:
"The Devil throws his fiery Darts,
And wicked Ones do act their parts,
To ruin me when Christ is gone,
And leaves me all alone."
The woodcuts are not the least interesting feature of this old-time
duodecimo, from the picture showing the mother reading to her children
to the illustration of the quaking of the earth on the day of the
crucifixion. Crude and badly drawn as they now seem, they were surely
sufficient to attract the child of their generation.
About the same time old Zechariah Fowle, who apprenticed Isaiah Thomas,
and both printed and vended chap-books in Back Street, Boston,
advertised among his list of books "Lately Publish'd" this same small
book, together with "A Token for Youth," the "Life and Death of
Elizabeth Butcher," "A Preservative from the Sins and Follies of
Childhood and Youth," "The Prodigal Daughter," "The Happy Child," and
"The New Gift for Children with Cuts." Of these "The New Gift" was
certainly a real story-book, as one of a later edition still extant
readily proves.
Thus the children in both countries were prepared to enjoy Newbery's
miniature story-books, although for somewhat different reasons: in
England the literature had reached a point too artificial to be
interesting to little ones; in America the product of the press and the
character of the majority of the juvenile importations, the reprints, or
home-made chap-books, has been shown to be such as would hardly attract
those who were to be the future arbiters of the colonies' destiny.
The reasons for the coming to light of this new form of infant
literature have been dwelt upon in order to show the necessity for some
change in the kind of reading-matter to be put in the hands of the
younger members of the family. The natural order of consideration is
next to point out the phase it assumed upon its appearance in
England,--a phase largely due to the influence of one man,--and once
there, the modifications effected by the fashions in adult fiction.
Although there was already much interest in the education and welfare of
children still in the nursery, the character of the first play-books was
probably due to the esteem in which the opinions of the philosopher,
John Locke, were held. He it was who gradually moved the vane of public
opinion around to serious consideration of recreation as a factor in the
well-being of these nursery inmates. Although it took time for Locke's
ideas upon the subject to sink into the public mind, it is impossible to
compare one of the first attempts to produce a play-book, "The Child's
New Play-thing," with the advice written to his friend, Edward Clarke,
without feeling that the progress from the religious books to primers
and readers (such as "Dilworth's Guide"), and then onward to
story-books, was largely the result of the publication of his letters
under the title of "Thoughts on Education."
In these letters Locke took an extraordinary course: he first made a
quaint plea for the _general welfare_ of Mr. Clarke's little son. "I
imagine," he wrote, "the minds of children are as easily turned this or
that way as Water itself, and though this be the principal Part, and our
main Care should be about the inside, yet the Clay Cottage is not to be
neglected. I shall therefore begin with the case, and consider first the
_Health_ of the body." Under Health he discussed clothing, including
thin shoes, "that they may leak and let in Water." A pause was then
made to show the benefits of wet feet as against the apparent
disadvantages of filthy stockings and muddy boots; for mothers even in
that time were inclined to consider their floors and steps. Bathing next
received attention. Bathing every day in cold water, Locke regarded as
exceedingly desirable; no exceptions were to be made, even in the case
of a "puleing and tender" child. The beneficial effects of air,
sunlight, the establishment of good conduct, diet, sleep, and "physick"
were all discussed by the doctor and philosopher, before the development
of the mind was touched upon. "Education," he wrote, "concerns itself
with the forming of Children's Minds, giving them that seasoning early,
which shall influence their Lives later." This seasoning referred to the
training of children in matters pertaining to their general government
and to the reverence of parents. For the Puritan population it was
undoubtedly a shock to find Locke interesting himself in, and moreover
advocating, dancing as a part of a child's education; and worst of all,
that he should mention it before their hobby, LEARNING. In this
connection it is worth while to make mention of a favorite primer,
which, published about the middle of the eighteenth century, was
entitled "The Hobby Horse." Locke was quite aware that his method would
be criticised, and therefore took the bull by the horns in the following
manner. He admitted that to put the subject of learning last was a cause
for wonder, "especially if I tell you I think it the least part. This
may seem strange in the mouth of a bookish man, and this making usually
the chief, if not only bustle and stir about children; this being almost
that alone, which is thought on, when People talk about Education, make
it the greater Paradox." An unusual piece of advice it most surely was
to parents to whose children came the task of learning to read as soon
as they were given spoon-food.
Even more revolutionary to the custom of an eighteenth century mother
was the admonition that reading "be never made a Task." Locke, however,
was not the man to urge a cure for a bad habit without prescribing a
remedy, so he went on to say that it was always his "Fancy that Learning
be made a Play and Recreation to Children"--a "Fancy" at present much in
vogue. To accomplish this desirable result, "Dice and Play-things with
the Letters on them" were recommended to teach children the alphabet;
"and," he added, "twenty other ways may be found ... to make this kind
of Learning a Sport to them." Letter-blocks were in this way made
popular, and formed the approved and advanced method until in these
latter days pedagogy has swept aside the letter-blocks and syllabariums
and carried the sport to word-pictures.
This theory had a practical result in the introduction to many households
of "The Child's New Play-thing." This book, already mentioned, was
printed in England in seventeen hundred and forty-three, and dedicated to
Prince George. In seventeen hundred and forty-four we find through the
"Boston Evening Post" of January 23 that the third edition was sold by
Joseph Edwards, in Cornhill, and it was probably from this edition that
the first American edition was printed in seventeen hundred and fifty.
From the following description of this American reprint (one of which is
happily in the Lenox Collection), it will be seen that the "Play-thing"
was an attempt to follow Locke's advice, as well as a connecting link
between the primer of the past and the story-book of the near future.
The title, which the illustration shows, reads, "The Child's New
Play-thing being a spelling-book intended to make Learning to read a
diversion instead of a task. Consisting of Scripture-histories, fables,
stories, moral and religious precepts, proverbs, songs, riddles,
dialogues, &c. The whole adapted to the capacities of children, and
divided into lessons of one, two, three and four syllables. The fourth
edition. To which is added three dialogues; 1. Shewing how a little boy
shall make every body love him. 2. How a little boy shall grow wiser than
the rest of his school-fellows. 3. How a little boy shall become a great
man. Designed for the use of schools, or for children before they go to
school."
[Illustration: _Title-page from "The Child's new Play-Thing"_]
Coverless and faded, hard usage is written in unmistakable characters
upon this play-thing of a whole family. Upon a fly-leaf are the
autographs of "Ebenezer Ware and Sarah Ware, Their Book," and upon
another page these two names with the addition of the signatures of
"Ichabod Ware and Cyrus Ware 1787." One parent may have used it when it
was fresh from the press of Draper & Edwards in Boston; then, through
enforced economy, handed it down to the next generation, who doubtless
scorned the dedication so eminently proper in seventeen hundred and
fifty, so thoroughly out of place thirty-seven years later. There it
stands in large black type:
To his ROYAL HIGHNESS PRINCE GEORGE This Little
Play-thing is most humbly dedicated
By
His ROYAL HIGHNESS'S
Devoted Servant
Of especial interest are the alphabets in "Roman, Italian, and English
Names" on the third page, while page four contains the dear old alphabet
in rhyme, fortunately not altogether forgotten in this prosaic age. We
recognize it as soon as we see it.
"A Apple-Pye
B bit it
C cut it,"
and involuntarily add, D divided it. After the spelling lessons came
fables, proverbs, and the splendid "Stories proper to raise the
Attention and excite the Curiosity of Children" of any age; namely, "St.
George and the Dragon," "Fortunatus," "Guy of Warwick," "Brother and
Sister," "Reynard the Fox," "The Wolf and the Kid." "The Good Dr.
Watts," writes Mrs. Field, "is supposed to have had a hand in the
composition of this toy book especially in the stories, one of which is
quite in the style of the old hymn writer." Here it is:
"Once on a time two dogs went out to walk. Tray was a good dog, and
would not hurt the least thing in the world, but Snap was cross, and
would snarl and bite at all that came in his way. At last they came
to a town. All the dogs came round them. Tray hurt none of them, but
Snap would grin at one, snarl at the next, and bite a third, till at
last they fell on him and tore him limb from limb, and as poor Tray
was with him, he met with his death at the same time.
_Moral_
"By this fable you see how dangerous it is to be in company with bad
boys. Tray was a quiet harmless dog, and hurt nobody, but,
&c."[45-A]
Thus we find that Locke sowed the seed, Watts watered the soil in which
the seed fell, and that Newbery, after mixing in ideas from his very
fertile brain, soon reaped a golden harvest from the crop of readers,
picture-books, and little histories which he, with the aid of certain
well-known authors, produced.
According to his biographer, Mr. Charles Welsh, John Newbery was born in
a quaint parish of England in seventeen hundred and thirteen. Although
his father was only a small farmer, Newbury inherited his bookish tastes
from an ancestor, Ralph or Rafe Newbery, who had been a great publisher
of the sixteenth century. Showing no inclination toward the life of a
farmer, the boy, at sixteen, had already entered the shop of a merchant
in Reading. The name of this merchant is not known, but inference points
to Mr. Carnan, printer, proprietor, and editor of one of the earliest
provincial newspapers. In seventeen hundred and thirty-seven, at the
death of Carnan, John Newbery, then about twenty-four years of age,
found himself one of the proprietor's heirs and an executor of the
estate. Carnan left a widow, to whom, to quote her son, Newbery's "love
of books and acquirements as a printer rendered him very acceptable."
The amiable and well-to-do widow and Newbery were soon married, and
their youngest son, Francis Newbery, eventually succeeded his father in
the business of publishing.
[Illustration: _Title-page from "A Little Pretty Pocket-Book"_]
Shortly after Newbery's marriage his ambition and enterprise resulted in
the establishment of his family in London, where, in seventeen hundred
and forty-four, he opened a warehouse at _The Bible and Crown_, near
Devereux Court, without Temple Bar. Meanwhile he had associated
himself with Benjamin Collins, a printer in Salisbury. Collins both
planned and printed some of Newbery's toy volumes, and his name likewise
was well-known to shop-keepers in the colonies. Newbery soon found that
his business warranted another move nearer to the centre of trade. He
therefore combined two establishments into one at the now celebrated
corner of St. Paul's Churchyard, and at the same time decided to confine
his attention exclusively to book publishing and medicine vending.
Before his departure from Devereux Court, Newbery had published at least
one book for juvenile readers. The title reads: "Little Pretty
Pocket-Book, intended for the instruction and Amusement of Little Master
Tommy and Pretty Miss Polly, with an agreeable Letter to read from Jack
the Giant Killer, as also a Ball and Pincushion, the use of which will
infallibly make Tommy a good Boy, and Polly a good Girl. To the whole is
prefixed a letter on education humbly addressed to all Parents,
Guardians, Governesses, &c., wherein rules are laid down for making
their children strong, healthy, virtuous, wise and happy." To this
extraordinarily long title were added couplets from Dryden and Pope,
probably because extracts from these poets were usually placed upon the
title-page of books for grown people; possibly also in order to give a
finish to miniature volumes that would be like the larger publications.
A wholly simple method of writing title-pages never came into even
Newbery's original mind; he did for the juvenile customer exactly what
he was accustomed to do for his father and mother. And yet the habit of
spreading out over the page the entire contents of the book was not
without value: it gave the purchaser no excuse for not knowing what was
to be found within its covers; and in the days when books were a luxury
and literary reviews non-existent, the country trade was enabled to make
a better choice.
[Illustration: _A page from "A Little Pretty Pocket-Book"_]
The manner in which the "Little Pretty Pocket-Book" is written is so
characteristic of those who were the first to attempt to write for the
younger generation in an amusing way, that it is worth while to examine
briefly the topics treated. An American reprint of a later date, now in
the Lenox Collection, will serve to show the method chosen to combine
instruction with amusement. The book itself is miniature in size, about
two by four inches, with embossed gilt paper covers--Newbery's own
specialty as a binding. The sixty-five little illustrations at the top
of its pages were numerous enough to afford pleasure to any eighteenth
century child, although they were crude in execution and especially
lacked true perspective. The first chapter after the "Address to
Parents" and to the other people mentioned on the title-page gives
letters to Master Tommy and Miss Polly. First, Tommy is congratulated
upon the good character that his Nurse has given him, and instructed as
to the use of the "Pocket-Book," "which will teach you to play at all
those innocent games that good Boys and Girls divert themselves with."
The boy reader is next advised to mark his good and bad actions with
pins upon a red and black ball. Little Polly is then given similar
congratulations and instructions, except that in her case a pincushion
is to be substituted for a ball. Then follow thirty pages devoted to
"alphabetically digested" games, from "The _great A Play_" and "The
_Little_ _a Play_" to "The _great and little Rs_," when plays, or the
author's imagination, give out and rhymes begin the alphabet anew.
Modern picture alphabets have not improved much upon this jingle:
"Great A, B and C
And tumble down D,
The Cat's a blind buff,
And she cannot see."
Next in order are four fables with morals (written in the guise of
letters), for in Newbery's books and in those of a much later period, we
feel, as Mr. Welsh writes, a "strong determination on the part of the
authors to place the moral plainly in sight and to point steadily to
it." Pictures also take a leading part in this effort to inculcate good
behaviour; thus _Good Children_ are portrayed in cuts, which accompany
the directions for attaining perfection. Proverbs, having been hitherto
introduced into school-books, appear again quite naturally in this
source of diversion, which closes--at least in the American
edition--with sixty-three "Rules for Behaviour." These rules include
those suitable for various occasions, such as "At the Meeting-House,"
"Home," "The Table," "In Company," and "When abroad with other
Children." To-day, when many such rules are as obsolete as the tiny
pages themselves, this chapter affords many glimpses of the customs and
etiquette of the old-fashioned child's life. Such a direction as "Be not
hasty to run out of Meeting-House when Worship is ended, as if thou
weary of being there" (probably an American adaptation of the English
original), recalls the well-filled colonial meeting-house, where weary
children sat for hours on high seats, with dangling legs, or screwed
their small bodies in vain efforts to touch the floor. Again we can see
the anxious mothers, when, after the long sermon was brought to a close,
they put restraining hands upon the little ones, lest they, in haste to
be gone, should forget this admonition. The formalism of the time is
suggested in this request, "Make a Bow always when come Home, and be
instantly uncovered," for the ceremony of polite manners in these
bustling days has so much relaxed that the modern boy does all that is
required if he remembers to be "instantly uncovered when come Home."
Among the numerous other requirements only one more may be cited--a rule
which reveals the table manners of polite society in its requisite for
genteel conduct: "Throw not anything under the Table. Pick not thy teeth
at the Table, unless holding thy Napkin before thy mouth with thine
other Hand." With such an array of intellectual and moral contents, the
little "Pocket-Book" may appear to-day to be almost anything except an
amusement book. Yet this was the phase that the English play-book first
assumed, and it must not be forgotten that English prose fiction was
only then coming into existence, except such germs as are found in the
character sketches in the "Spectator" and in the cleverly told incidents
by Defoe.
In 1744, when Newbery published this duodecimo, Dr. Samuel Johnson was
the presiding genius of English letters; four years earlier, fiction had
come prominently into the foreground with the publication of "Pamela" by
Samuel Richardson; and between seventeen hundred and forty and seventeen
hundred and fifty-two, Richardson's "Clarissa Harlowe," Smollett's
"Roderick Random" and "Peregrine Pickle," and Fielding's "Tom Jones" were
published. This fact may seem irrelevant to the present subject;
nevertheless, the idea of a veritable story-book, that is a book relating
a tale, does not seem to have entered Newbery's mind until after these
novels had met with a deserved and popular success.
The result of Newbery's first efforts to follow Locke's advice was so
satisfactory that his wares were sought most eagerly. "Very soon," said
his son, Francis Newbery, "he was in the full employment of his talents
in writing and publishing books of amusement and instruction for
Children. The call for them was immense, an edition of many thousands
being sometimes exhausted during the Christmas holidays. His friend, Dr.
Samuel Johnson, who, like other grave characters, could now and then be
jocose, had used to say of him, 'Newbery is an extraordinary man, for I
know not whether he has read or written most Books.'"[51-A]
The bookseller was no less clever in his use of other people's wits. No
one knows how many of the tiny gilt bindings covered stories told by
impecunious writers, to whom the proceeds in times of starvation were
bread if not butter. Newbery, though called by Goldsmith "the
philanthropic publisher of St. Paul's Churchyard," knew very well the
worth to his own pocket of these authors' skill in story-writing. Between
the years seventeen hundred and fifty-seven and seventeen hundred and
sixty-seven, the English publisher was at the height of his prosperity;
his name became a household word in England, and was hardly less well
known to the little colonials of America.
Newbery's literary associations, too, were both numerous and important.
Before Oliver Goldsmith began to write for children, he is thought to
have contributed articles for Newbery's "Literary Magazine" about
seventeen hundred and fifty-eight, while Johnson's celebrated "Idler"
was first printed in a weekly journal started by the publisher about the
same time. For the "British Magazine" Newbery engaged Smollett as
editor. In this periodical appeared Goldsmith's "History of Miss
Stanton." When later this was published as "The Vicar of Wakefield," it
contained a characterization of the bookseller as a good-natured man
with red, pimpled face, "who was no sooner alighted than he was in haste
to be gone, for he was ever on business of the utmost importance, and he
was at that time actually compiling materials for the history of Mr.
Thomas Trip."[52-A] With such an acquaintance it is probable that
Newbery often turned to Goldsmith, Giles Jones, and Tobias Smollett for
assistance in writing or abridging the various children's tales; even
the pompous Dr. Johnson is said to have had a hand in their
production--since he expressed a wish to do so. Newbery himself,
however, assumed the responsibility as well as the credit of so many
little "Histories," that it is exceedingly difficult to fix upon the
real authors of some of the best-known volumes in the publisher's
juvenile library.
The histories of "Goody Two-Shoes" and "Tommy Trip" (once such nursery
favorites, and now almost, if not quite, forgotten) have been attributed
to various men; but according to Mr. Pearson in "Banbury Chap-Books,"
Goldsmith confessed to writing both. Certainly, his sly wit and quizzical
vein of humor seem to pervade "Goody Two-Shoes"--often ascribed to Giles
Jones--and the notes affixed to the rhymes of Mother Goose before she
became Americanized. Again his skill is seen in the adaptation of
"Wonders of Nature and Art" for juvenile admirers; and for "Fables in
Verse" he is generally considered responsible. As all these tales were
printed in the colonies or in the young Republic, their peculiarities and
particularities may be better described when dealing with the issues of
the American press.
John Newbery, the most illustrious of publishers in the eyes of the
old-fashioned child, died in 1767, at the comparatively early age of
fifty-four. Yet before his death he had proved his talent for producing
at least fifty original little books, to be worth considerably more than
the Biblical ten talents.
No sketch of Newbery's life should fail to mention another large factor
in his successful experiment--the insertion in the "London Chronicle"
and other newspapers of striking and novel advertisements of his gilt
volumes, which were to be had for "six-pence the price of binding." An
instance of his skill appeared in the "London Chronicle" for December
19, 1764-January 1, 1765:
"The Philosophers, Politicians, Necromancers, and the learned in every
faculty are desired to observe that on the 1st of January, being New
Year's Day (oh, that we may all lead new lives!) Mr. Newbery intends to
publish the following important volumes, bound and gilt, and hereby
invites all his little friends who are good to call for them at the
Bible and Sun in St. Paul's Churchyard, but those who are naughty to
have none."[54-A]
Christopher Smart, his brother-in-law, who was an adept in the art of
puffing, possibly wrote many of the advertisements of new books--notices
so cleverly phrased that they could not fail to attract the attention of
many a country shop-keeper. In this way thousands were sold to the
country districts; and book-dealers in the American commonwealths,
reading the English papers and alert to improve their trade, imported
them in considerable quantities.
After Newbery's death, his son, Francis, and Carnan, his stepson,
carried on the business until seventeen hundred and eighty-eight; from
that year until eighteen hundred and two Edward Newbery (a nephew of the
senior Newbery), who in seventeen hundred and sixty-seven had set up a
rival establishment, continued to publish new editions of the same
little works. Yet the credit of this experiment of printing juvenile
stories belongs entirely to the older publisher. Through them he made a
strong protest against the reading by children of the lax chap-book
literature, so excellently described by Mr. John Ashton in "Chap-Books
of the Eighteenth Century;" and although his stories occasionally
alluded to disagreeable subjects or situations, these were unfortunately
familiar to his small patrons.
The gay little covers of gilt or parti-colored paper in which this
English publisher dressed his books expressed an evident purpose to
afford pleasure, which was increased by the many illustrations that
adorned the pages and added interest to the contents.
To the modern child, these books give no pleasure; but to those who love
the history of children of the past, they are interesting for two
reasons. In them is portrayed something of the life of eighteenth
century children; and by them the century's difference in point of view
as to the constituents of a story-book can be gauged. Moreover, all
Newbery's publications are to be credited with a careful preparation
that later stories sadly lacked. They were always written with a certain
art; if the language was pompous, we remember Dr. Johnson; if the style
was formal, its composition was correct; if the tales lacked ease in
telling, it was only the starched etiquette of the day reduced to a
printed page; and if they preached, they at least were seldom vulgar.
The preaching, moreover, was of different character from that of former
times. Hitherto, the fear of the Lord had wholly occupied the author's
attention when he composed a book "proper for a child as soon as he can
read;" now, material welfare was dwelt upon, and a good boy's reward
came to him when he was chosen the Lord Mayor of London. Good girls were
not forgotten, and were assured that, like Goody Two-Shoes, they should
attain a state of prosperity wherein
"Their Fortune and their Fame would fix
And gallop in their Coach and Six."
Goody Two-Shoes, with her particular method of instilling the alphabet,
and such books as "King Pippin" (a prodigy of learning) may be
considered as tiny commentaries upon the years when Johnson reigned
supreme in the realm of learning. These and many others emphasized not
the effects of piety,--Cotton Mather's forte,--but the benefits of
learning; and hence the good boy was also one who at the age of five
spelt "apple-pye" correctly and therefore eventually became a great man.
At the time of Newbery's death it was more than evident that his
experiment had succeeded, and children's stories were a printed fact.
FOOTNOTES:
[45-A] Field, _The Child and his Book_, p. 223.
[51-A] Welsh, _Bookseller of the Last Century_, pp. 22, 23.
[52-A] Foster, _Life of Goldsmith_, vol. i, p. 244.
[54-A] Welsh, _Bookseller of the Last Century_, p. 109.
CHAPTER III
1750-1776
Kings should be good
Not men of blood.
_The New England Primer_, 1791
If Faith itself has different dresses worn
What wonder modes in wit should take their turn.
POPE: _Essay on Man_
CHAPTER III
1750-1776
_Newbery's Books in America_
In the middle of the eighteenth century Thursdays were red-letter days
for the residents of the Quaker town of Philadelphia. On that day Thomas
Bradford sent forth from the "Sign of the Bible" in Second Street the
weekly number of the "Pennsylvania Journal," and upon the same day his
rival journalists, Franklin and Hall, issued the "Pennsylvania Gazette."
On Thursday, the fifteenth of November, seventeen hundred and fifty, Old
Style, the good people of the town took up their newspapers with
doubtless a feeling of comfortable anticipation, as they drew their
chairs to the fireside and began to look over the local occurrences of
the past week, the "freshest foreign advices," and the various bits of
information that had filtered slowly from the northern and more southern
provinces.
On this particular evening the subscribers to both newspapers found a
trifle more news in the "Journal," but in each paper the same domestic
items of interest, somewhat differently worded. The latest news from
Boston was that of November fifth, from New York, November eighth, the
Annapolis item was dated October tenth, and the few lines from London
had been written in August.
The "Gazette" (a larger sheet than the "Journal") occasionally had upon
its first page some timely article of political or local interest. But
more frequently there appeared in its first column an effusion of no
local color, but full of sentimental or moral reflections. In this day's
issue there was a long letter, dated New York, from one who claimed to
be "Beauty's Votary." This expressed the writer's disappointment that an
interesting "Piece" inserted in the "Gazette" a fortnight earlier had
presented in its conclusion "an unexpected shocking Image." The shock to
the writer it appears was the greater, because the beginning of the
article had, he thought, promised a strong contrast between "Furious
Rage in our rough Sex, and Gentle mildness adorn'd with Beauty's charms
in the other." The rest of the letter was an apostrophe to the fair sex
in the sentimental and florid language of the period.
To the women, we imagine, this letter was more acceptable than to the
men, who found the shipping news more to their taste, and noted with
pleasure the arrival of the ship Carolina and the Snow Strong, which
brought cargoes valuable for their various industries.
Advertisements filled a number of columns. Among them was one so novel
in its character that it must have caught the eye of all readers. The
middle column on the second page was devoted almost entirely to an
announcement that John Newbery had for "Sale to Schoolmasters,
Shopkeepers, &c, who buy in quantities to sell again," "The Museum," "A
new French Primer," "The Royal Battledore," and "The Pretty Book for
Children." This notice--a reduced fac-simile of which is given--made
Newbery's début in Philadelphia; and it must not be forgotten that but a
short period had elapsed since his first book had been printed in
England.
[Illustration: _John Newbery's Advertisement of Children's Books_]
Franklin had doubtless heard of the publisher in St. Paul's
Churchyard through Mr. Strahan, his correspondent, who filled orders for
him from London booksellers; but the omission of the customary
announcement of special books as "to be had of the Printer hereof"
points to Newbery's enterprise in seeking a wider market for his wares,
and Franklin's business ability in securing the advertisement, as it is
not repeated in the "Journal."
This "Museum" was probably a newer book than the "Royal Primer,"
"Battledore," and "Pretty Book," and consequently was more fully
described; and oddly enough, all of these books are of earlier editions
than Mr. Welsh, Newbery's biographer, was able to trace in England.
"The Museum" still clings to the same idea which pervaded "The
Play-thing." Its second title reads: "A private TUTOR for little MASTERS
and MISSES." The contents show that this purpose was carried out. It
tutored them by giving directions for reading with eloquence and
propriety; by presenting "the antient and present State of _Great
Britain_ with a compendious History of _England_;" by instructing them
in "the Solar System, geography, Arts and Sciences" and the inevitable
"Rules for Behaviour, Religion and Morality;" and it admonished them by
giving the "Dying Words of Great Men when just quitting the Stage of
Life." As a museum it included descriptions of the Seven Wonders of the
World, Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's Churchyard, and the Tower of
London, with an ethnological section in the geographical department! All
of this amusement was to be had for the price of "One Shilling," neatly
bound, with, thrown in as good measure, "Letters, Tales and Fables
illustrated with Cuts." Such a library, complete in itself, was a fine
and most welcome reward for scholarship, when prizes were awarded at the
end of the school session.
Importations of "Parcels of entertaining books for children" had earlier
in the year been announced through the columns of the "Gazette;" but
these importations, though they show familiarity with Newbery's quaint
phraseology in advertising, probably also included an assortment of such
little chap-books as "Tom Thumb," "Cinderella" (from the French of
Monsieur Perrault), and some few other old stories which the children
had long since appropriated as their own property.
In 1751 we find New York waking up to the appreciation of children's
books. There J. Waddell and James Parker were apparently the pioneers in
bringing to public notice the fact that they had for sale little
novel-books in addition to horn-books and primers; and moreover the
"Weekly Post-Boy" advertised that these booksellers had "Pretty Books
for little Masters and Misses" (clearly a Newbery imitation), "with
Blank Flourished Christmas pieces for Scholars."
But as yet even Franklin had hardly been convinced that the old way of
imparting knowledge was not superior to the then modern combination of
amusement and instruction; therefore, although with his partner, David
Hall, he without doubt sold such children's books as were available, for
his daughter Sally, aged seven, he had other views. At his request his
wife, in December, 1751, wrote the following letter to William Strahan:
MADAM,--I am ordered by my Master to write for him Books
for Sally Franklin. I am in Hopes She will be abel to write for
herself by the Spring.
8 Sets of the Perceptor best Edit.
8 Doz. of Croxall's Fables.
3 Doz. of Bishop Kenns Manual for Winchester School.
1 Doz. Familiar Forms, Latin and Eng.
Ainsworth's Dictionaries, 4 best Edit.
2 Doz. Select Tales and Fables.
2 Doz. Costalio's Test.
Cole's Dictionarys Latin and Eng. 6 a half doz.
3 Doz. of Clarke's Cordery. 1 Boyle's Pliny 2 vols. 8vo.
6 Sets of Nature displayed in 7 vols. 12mo.
One good Quarto Bibel with Cudes bound in calfe.
1 Penrilla. 1 Art of making Common Salt. By Browning.
My Dafter gives her duty to Mr. Stroyhan and his Lady, and her
compliments to Master Billy and all his brothers and Sisters....
Your humbel Servant
DEBORAH FRANKLIN
Little Sally Franklin could not have needed eight dozen copies of
Aesop's Fables, nor four Ainsworth's Dictionaries, so it is probable
that Deborah Franklin's far from ready pen put down the book order for
the spring, and that Sally herself was only to be supplied with the
"Perceptor," the "Fables," and the "one good Quarto Bibel."
As far as it is now possible to judge, the people of the towns soon
learned the value of Newbery's little nursery tales, and after seventeen
hundred and fifty-five, when most of his books were written and
published, they rapidly gained a place on the family book-shelves in
America.
By seventeen hundred and sixty Hugh Gaine, printer, publisher, patent
medicine seller, and employment agent for New York, was importing
practically all the Englishman's juvenile publications then for sale. At
the "Bible and Crown," where Gaine printed the "Weekly Mercury," could
be bought, wholesale and retail, such books as, "Poems for Children
Three Feet High," "Tommy Trapwit," "Trip's Book of Pictures," "The New
Year's Gift," "The Christmas Box," etc.
Gaine himself was a prominent printer in New York in the latter half of
the eighteenth century. Until the Revolution his shop was a favorite one
and well patronized. But when the hostilities began, the condition of
his pocket seems to have regulated his sympathies, and he was by turn
Whig and Tory according to the possession of New York by so-called
Rebels, or King's Servants. When the British army evacuated New York,
Gaine, wishing to keep up his trade, dropped the "Crown" from his sign.
Among the enthusiastic patriots this ruse had scant success. In
Freneau's political satire of the bookseller, the first verse gives a
strong suggestion of the ridicule to follow:
"And first, he was, in his own representation,
A printer, once of good reputation.
He dwelt in the street called Hanover-Square,
(You'll know where it is if you ever was there
Next door to the dwelling of Mr. Brownjohn,
Who now to the drug-shop of Pluto is gone)
But what do I say--who e'er came to town,
And knew not Hugh Gaine at the _Bible_ and _Crown_."
A contemporary of, and rival bookseller to, Gaine in seventeen hundred
and sixty was James Rivington. Mr. Hildeburn has given Rivington a
rather unenviable reputation; still, as he occasionally printed (?) a
child's book, Mr. Hildeburn's remarks are quoted:
"Until the advent of Rivington it was generally possible to tell from an
American Bookseller's advertisement in the current newspapers whether
the work offered for sale was printed in America or England. But the
books he received in every fresh invoice from London were 'just
published by James Rivington' and this form was speedily adopted by
other booksellers, so that after 1761 the advertisement of books is no
longer a guide to the issues of the colonial press."
Although Rivington did not set up a press until about seventeen hundred
and seventy-three,--according to Mr. Hildeburn,--he had a book-shop much
earlier. Here he probably reprinted the title-page and then put an
elaborate notice in the "Weekly Mercury" for November 17, 1760, as
follows:
JAMES RIVINGTON
_Bookseller and Stationer from London over against the Golden Key in
Hanover Square._
This day is published, Price, seven Shillings, and sold by the said
JAMES RIVINGTON, adorned with two hundred Pictures
THE
FABLES OF AESOP
with a moral to each Fable in Verse, and an Application in Prose,
intended for the Use of the youngest of readers, and proper to be
put into the hands of Children, immediately after they have done
with the Spelling-Book, it being adapted to their tender Capacities,
the Fables are related in a short and lively Manner, and they are
recommended to all those who are concerned in the education of
Children. This is an entire new Work, elegantly printed and
ornamented with much better Cuts than any other Edition of Aesop's
Fables. Be pleased to ask for DRAPER'S AESOP.
From such records of parents' care as are given in Mrs. Charles
Pinckney's letters to her husband's agent in London, and Josiah Quincy's
reminiscences of his early training, it seems very evident that John
Locke's advice in "Thoughts on Education" was read and followed at this
time in the American colonies. Therefore, in accordance with the
bachelor philosopher's theory as to reading-matter for little children,
the bookseller recommended the "Fables" to "those concerned in the
education of children." It is at least a happy coincidence that one of
the earliest books (as far as is known to the writer), aside from school
and religious books, issued as published in America for children, should
have been the one Locke had so heartily recommended. This is what he had
said many years previously: "When by these gentle ways he begins to
_read_, some easy pleasant Book, suited to his capacities, should be put
into his Hands, wherein the Entertainment that he finds might draw him
on, and reward his Pains in Reading, and yet not such as will fill his
head with perfectly useless Trumpery, or lay the Principles of Vice and
Folly. To this Purpose, I think Aesop's Fables the best which being
Stories apt to delight and entertain a child, may yet afford useful
Reflections to a grown Man.... If his Aesop has pictures in it, it will
entertain him much better and encourage him to read." The two hundred
pictures in Rivington's edition made it, of course, high priced in
comparison with Newbery's books: but New York then contained many
families well able to afford this outlay to secure such an acquisition
to the family library.
Hugh Gaine at this time, as a rule, received each year two shipments of
books, among which were usually some for children, yet about 1762 he
began to try his own hand at reprinting Newbery's now famous little
duodecimos.
In that year we find an announcement through the "New York Mercury" that
he had himself printed "Divers diverting books for infants." The
following list gives some idea of their character:
_Just published by Hugh Gaine_
A pretty Book for Children; Or an Easy Guide to the English Tongue.
The private Tutor for little Masters and Misses.
Food for the Mind; or a new Riddle Book compiled for the use of
little Good Boys and Girls in America. By Jack the Giant-Killer,
Esq.
A Collection of Pretty Poems, by Tommy Tag, Esq.
Aesop's Fables in Verse, with the Conversation of Beasts and Birds,
at their several Meetings. By Woglog the great Giant.
A Little pretty Book, intended for the Amusement of Little Master
Tommy and pretty Miss Polly, with two Letters from Jack the
Giant-Killer.
Be Merry and Wise: Or the Cream of the Jests. By Tommy Trapwit, Esq.
The title of "Food for the Mind" is of special importance, since in it
Gaine made a clever alteration by inserting the words "Good Boys and
Girls in _America_." The colonials were already beginning to feel a
pride in the fact of belonging to the new country, America, and
therefore Gaine shrewdly changed the English title to one more likely to
induce people to purchase.
Gaine and Rivington alone have left records of printing children's
story-books in the town of New York before the Revolution; but before
they began to print, other booksellers advertised their invoices of
books. In 1759 Garrat Noel, a Dutchman, had announced that he had "the
very prettiest gilt Books for little Masters and Misses that ever were
invented, full of wit and wisdom, at the surprising low Price of only
one Shilling each finely bound and adorned with a number of curious
Cuts." By 1762 Noel had increased his stock and placed a somewhat larger
advertisement in the "Mercury" of December 27. The late arrival of his
goods may have been responsible for the bargains he offered at this
holiday sale.
GARRAT NOEL _Begs Leave to Inform the Public, that according to
his Annual Custom, he has provided a very large Assortment of Books
for Entertainment and Improvement of Youth, in Reading, Writing,
Cyphering, and Drawing, as Proper Presents at _CHRISTMAS_
and _New-Year_._
The following Small, but improving Histories, are sold at _Two
Shillings_, each, neatly bound in red, and adorn'd with Cuts.
[Symbol: hand]Those who buy _Six_, shall have a _Seventh Gratis_,
and buying only _Three_, they shall have a present of a fine large
Copper-Plate Christmas Piece: [_List of histories follows._]
The following neat Gilt Books, very instructive and Amusing being
full of Pictures, are sold at _Eighteen Pence_ each.
Fables in Verse and Prose, with the Conversation of Birds &
Beasts at their several meetings, Routs and Assemblies for the
Improvement of Old and Young, etc.
To-day none of these gay little volumes sold in New York are to be seen.
The inherent faculty of children for losing and destroying books,
coupled with the perishable nature of these toy volumes, has rendered
the children's treasures of seventeen hundred and sixty-two a great
rarity. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania is the fortunate
possessor of one much prized story-book printed in that year; but though
it is at present in the Quaker City, a printer of Boston was responsible
for its production.
In Isaiah Thomas's recollections of the early Boston printers, he
described Zechariah Fowle, with whom he served his apprenticeship, and
Samuel Draper, Fowle's partner. These men, about seventeen hundred and
fifty-seven, took a house in Marlborough Street. Here, according to
Thomas, "they printed and opened a shop. They kept a great supply of
ballads, and small pamphlets for book pedlars, of whom there were many
at that time. Fowle was bred to the business, but he was an indifferent
hand at the press, and much worse at the case."
This description of the printer's ability is borne out by the "New-Gift
for Children," printed by this firm. It is probably the oldest
story-book bearing an American imprint now in existence, and for this
reason merits description, although its contents can be seen in the
picture of the title-page. Brown with age and like all chap-books
without a cover--for it was Newbery who introduced this more durable and
attractive feature--all sizes in type were used to print its fifteen
stories. The stories in themselves were not new, as it is called the
"Fourth edition." It is possible that they were taken from the Banbury
chap-books, which also often copied Newbery's juvenile library, as the
list of his publications compiled by Mr. Charles Welsh does not contain
this title.
The loyalty of the Boston printers found expression on the third page by
a very black cut of King George the Third, who appears rather puzzled
and not a little unhappy; but it found favor with customers, for as yet
the colonials thought their king "no man of blood." On turning the page
Queen Charlotte looks out with goggle-eyes, curls, and a row of beads
about the size of pebbles around her thick neck. The picture seems to be
a copy from some miniature of the queen, as an oval frame with a crown
surmounting it encircles the portrait. The stories are so much better
than some that were written even after the nineteenth century, that
extracts from them are worth reading. The third tale, called "The
Generosity of Confessing a Fault," begins as follows:
"Miss _Fanny Goodwill_ was one of the prettiest children that ever was
seen; her temper was as sweet as her looks, and her behavior so genteel
and obliging that everybody admir'd her; for nobody can help loving good
children, any more than they can help being angry with those that are
naughty. It is no wonder then that her papa and mama lov'd her
dearly, they took a great deal of pains to improve her mind so that
before she was seven years old, she could read, and talk, and work like
a little woman. One day as her papa was sitting by the fire, he set her
upon his knees, kiss'd her, and told her how very much he lov'd her; and
then smiling, and taking hold of her hand, My dear Fanny, said he, take
care never to tell a lye, and then I shall always love you as well as I
do now. You or I may be guilty of a fault; but there is something noble
and generous in owning our errors, and striving to mend them; but a lye
more than doubles the fault, and when it is found out, makes the lyar
appear mean and contemptible.... Thus, my dear, the lyar is a wretch,
whom nobody trusts, nobody regards, nobody pities. Indeed papa, said
Miss _Fanny_, I would not be such a creature for all the world. You are
very good, my little _charmer_, said her papa and kiss'd her again."
[Illustration: _Title-page from "The New Gift for Children"_]
The inevitable temptation came when Miss Fanny went on "a visit to a
Miss in the neighborhood; her mama ordered her to be home at eight
o'clock; but she was engag'd at play, and did not mind how the time
pass'd, so that she stay'd till near ten; and then her mama sent for
her." The child of course was frightened by the lateness of the hour,
and the maid--who appears in the illustration with cocked hat and
musket!--tried to calm her fears with the advice to "tell her mama that
the Miss she went to see had taken her out." "_No Mary_, said Miss
_Fanny_, wiping her pretty eyes, I am above a lye;" and she rehearsed
for the benefit of the maid her father's admonition.
Story IX tells of the _Good Girl and Pretty Girl_. In this the pretty
child had bright eyes and pretty plump cheeks and was much admired. She,
however, was a meanly proud girl, and so naughty as not to want to grow
wiser, but applied to those good people who happened to be less favored
in looks such terms as "bandy-legs, crump, and all such naughty names."
The good sister "could read before the pretty miss could tell a letter;
and though her shape was not so genteel her behavior was a great deal
more so. But alas! the pretty creature fell sick of the small-pox, and
all her beauty vanished." Thus in the eighteenth century was the adage
"Beauty is but skin deep" brought to bear upon conduct.
On the last page is a cut of "Louisburg demolished," which had served
its time already upon almanacs, but the eight cuts were undoubtedly made
especially for children. Moreover, since they do not altogether
illustrate the various stories, they are good proof that similar
chap-book tales were printed by Fowle and Draper for little ones before
the War of Independence.
In the southern provinces the sea afforded better transportation
facilities for household necessities and luxuries than the few
post-lines from the north could offer. Bills of exchange could be drawn
against London, to be paid by the profits of the tobacco crops, a safer
method of payment than any that then existed between the northern and
southern towns. In the regular orders sent by George Washington to
Robert Carey in London, twice we find mention of the children's needs
and wishes. In the very first invoice of goods to be shipped to
Washington after his marriage with Mrs. Custis in seventeen hundred and
fifty-nine, he ordered "10 Shillings worth of Toys, 6 little books for
children beginning to read and a fashionable dressed baby to cost 10
Shillings;" and again later in ordering clothes, "Toys, Sugar, Images
and Comfits" for his step-children he added: "Books according to the
enclosed list to be charged equally to John Parke Custis and Martha
Parke Custis."
But in Boston the people bought directly from the booksellers, of whom
there were already many. One of these was John Mein, who played a part
in the historic Non-Importation Agreement. In seventeen hundred and
fifty this Englishman had opened in King Street a shop which he called
the "London Book-Store." Here he sold many imported books, and in
seventeen hundred and sixty-five, when the population of Boston numbered
some twenty thousand, he started the "earliest circulating library,
advertised to contain ten thousand volumes."[73-A] This shop was both
famous and notorious: famous because of its "Very Grand Assortment of
the most modern Books;" notorious because of the accusations made
against its owner when the colonials, aroused by the action of
Parliament, passed the Non-Importation Agreement.
Before the excitement had culminated in this "Agreement," John Mein's
lists of importations show that the children's pleasure had not been
forgotten, and after it their books singularly enough were connected
with this historic action.
In 1766, in the "Boston Evening Post," we find Mein's announcement that
"Little Books with Pictures for Children" could be purchased at the
London Book-Store; in December, 1767, he advertised through the columns
of the "Boston Chronicle," among other books, "in every branch of polite
literature," a "Great Variety of entertaining Books for CHILDREN, proper
for presents at Christmas or New-year's day--Prices from Two Coppers to
Two Shillings." In August of the following year Mein gave the names of
seven of Newbery's famous gilt volumes, as "to be sold" at his shop.
These "pretty little entertaining and instructive Books" were "Giles
Gingerbread," the "Adventures of little TOMMY TRIP with his dog JOULER,"
"Tommy Trip's Select Fables," and "an excellent Pastoral Hymn," "The
Famous Tommy Thumb's Little Story-Book," "Leo, the Great Giant," and
"URAX, or the Fair Wanderer--price eight pence lawful money. _A very
interesting tale in which the protection of the Almighty_ is proved to
be the first and chief support of the FEMALE SEX." Number seven in the
list was the story of the "Cruel Giant Barbarico," and it is one of this
edition that is now among the rare Americana of the Boston Public
Library. The imprint upon its title-page coincides with Isaiah Thomas's
statement that though "Fleming was not concerned with Mein in
book-selling, several books were printed at their house for Mein." Its
date, 1768, would indicate that Mein had reproduced one of his
importations to which allusion has already been made. The book in
marbled covers, time-worn and faded now, was sold for only "six-pence
lawful" when new, possibly because it lacked illustrations.
[Illustration: _Miss Fanny's Maid_]
One year later, when the Non-Importation Agreement had passed and was
rigorously enforced in the port of Boston, these same little books were
advertised again in the "Chronicle" of December 4-7 under the large
caption, PRINTED IN AMERICA AND TO BE SOLD BY JOHN MEIN. Times
had so changed within one year's space that even a child's six-penny
book was unpopular, if known to have been imported.
Mein was among those accused of violating the "Agreement;" he was
charged with the importation of materials for book-making. In a November
number of the "Chronicle" of seventeen hundred and sixty-nine, Mein
published an article entitled "A State of the Importation from Great
Britain into the Port of BOSTON with the advertisement of a set
of Men, who assume to themselves THE TITLE of _ALL the Well
Disposed Merchants_." In this letter the London Book-Store proprietor
vigorously defended himself, and protested that the quantity of his work
necessitated some importations not procurable in Boston. He also made
sarcastic references to other men whom he thought the cap fitted better
with less excuse. It was in the following December that he tried to keep
this trade in children's books by his apparently patriotic announcement
regarding them. His protests were useless. Already in disfavor with some
because he was supposed to print books in America but used a London
imprint, his popularity waned; he was marked as a loyalist, and there
was little of the spirit of tolerance for such in that hot-bed of
patriotism. The air was so full of the growing differences between the
colonials and the king's government, that in seventeen hundred and
seventy Mein closed out his stock and returned to England.
On the other hand, the patriotic booksellers did not fail to take note
of the crystallization of public opinion. Robert Bell in Philadelphia
appended a note to his catalogue of books, stating that "The Lovers and
Practisers of Patriotism are requested to note that all the Books in
this Catalogue are either of American manufacture, or imported before
the Non-Importation Agreement."
The supply of home-made paper was of course limited. So much was needed
to circulate among the colonies pamphlets dealing with the injustice of
the king's government toward his American subjects, that it seems
remarkable that any juvenile books should have been printed in those
stirring days before the war began. It is rather to be expected that,
with the serious turn that events had taken and the consequent questions
that had arisen, the publications of the American press should have
received the shadow of the forthcoming trouble--a shadow sufficient to
discourage any attempt at humor for adult or child. Evidence, however,
points to the fact that humor and amusement were not totally lacking in
the issues of the press of at least one printer in Boston, John Boyle.
The humorous satire produced by his press in seventeen hundred and
seventy-five, called "The First Book of the American Chronicles of the
Times," purported to set forth the state of political affairs during the
troubles "wherein all our calamities are seen to flow from the fact that
the king had set up for our worship the god of the heathen--The Tea
Chest." This pamphlet has been one to keep the name of John Boyle among
the prominent printers of pre-Revolutionary days. Additional interest
accrues for this reason to a play-book printed by Boyle--the only one
extant of this decade known to the writer.
This quaint little chap-book, three by four inches in size, was issued
in seventeen hundred and seventy-one, soon after Boyle had set up his
printing establishment and four years before the publication of the
famous pamphlet. It represents fully the standard for children's
literature in the days when Newbery's tiny classics were making their
way to America, and was indeed advertised by Mein in seventeen hundred
and sixty-eight among the list of books "Printed in America." Its title,
"The Famous Tommy Thumb's Little Story-Book: Containing his Life and
Adventures," has rather a familiar sound, but its contents would not now
be allowed upon any nursery table. Since the days of the Anglo-Saxons,
Tom Thumb's adventures have been told and retold; each generation has
given to the rising generation the version thought proper for the ears
of children. In Boyle's edition this method resulted in realism pushed
to the extreme; but it is not to be denied that the yellowed pages
contain the wondrous adventures and hairbreadth escapes so dear to the
small boy of all time. The thrilling incidents were further enlivened,
moreover, by cuts called by the printer "_curious_" in the sense of very
fine: and _curious_ they are to-day because of the crudeness of their
execution and the coarseness of their design. Nevertheless, the
grotesque character of the illustrations was altogether effective in
impressing upon the reader the doughty deeds of his old friend, Tom
Thumb. The book itself shows marks of its popularity, and of the hard
usage to which it was subjected by its happy owner, who was not critical
of the editor's freedom of speech.
The coarseness permitted in a nursery favorite makes it sufficiently
clear that the standard for the ideal toy-book of the eighteenth century
is no gauge for that of the twentieth. Child-life differed in many
particulars, as Mr. Julian Hawthorne pointed out some years ago, when he
wrote that the children of the eighteenth century "were urged to grow up
almost before they were short-coated." We must bear this in mind in
turning to another class of books popular with adult and child alike in
both England and America before and for some years after the Revolution.
This was the period when the novel in the hands of Richardson, Fielding,
and Smollett was assuming hitherto unsuspected possibilities. Allusion
must be made to some of the characteristics of their work, since their
style undoubtedly affected juvenile reading and the tales written for
children.
Taking for the sake of convenience the novels of the earliest of this
group of men, Samuel Richardson, as a starting-point, we find in Pamela
and Mr. Lovelace types of character that merge from the Puritanical
concrete examples of virtue and vice into a psychological attempt to
depict the emotion and feeling preceding every act of heroine and
villain. Through every stage of the story the author still clings to the
long-established precedent of giving moral and religious instruction.
Afterwards, when Fielding attempted to parody "Pamela," he developed the
novel of adventure in high and low life, and produced "Joseph Andrews."
He then followed this with the character-study represented by "Tom
Jones, Foundling." Richardson in "Pamela" had aimed to emphasize virtue
as in the end prospering; Fielding's characters rather embody the
principle of virtue being its own reward and of vice bringing its own
punishment. Smollett in "Humphrey Clinker's Adventures" brought forth
fun from English surroundings instead of seeking for the hero thrilling
and daring deeds in foreign countries. He also added to the list of
character-studies "Roderick Random," a tale of the sea, the mystery of
which has never palled since "Robinson Crusoe" saw light.
There was also the novel of letters. In the age of the first great
novelists letter-writing was among the polite arts. It was therefore
counted a great but natural achievement when the epistolary method of
revealing the plot was introduced. "Clarissa Harlowe" and "Sir Charles
Grandison" were the results of this style of writing; they comprehended
the "most Important Concerns of private life"--"concerns" which moved
with lingering and emotional persistency towards the inevitable
catastrophe in "Clarissa," and the happy issue out of the
misunderstandings and misadventures which resulted in Miss Byron's
alliance with Sir Charles.
Until after the next (nineteenth) century had passed its first decade
these tales were read in full or abridged forms by many children among
the fashionable and literary sets in England and America. Indeed, the
art of writing for children was so unknown that often attempts to
produce child-like "histories" for them resulted in little other than
novels upon an abridged scale.
But before even abridged novels found their way into juvenile favor, it
was "customary in Richardson's time to read his novels aloud in the
family circle. When some pathetic passage was reached the members of the
family would retire to separate apartments to weep; and after composing
themselves, they would return to the fireside to have the reading
proceed. It was reported to Richardson, that, on one of these occasions,
'an amiable little boy sobbed as if his sides would burst and resolved
to mind his books that he might be able to read Pamela through without
stopping.' That there might be something in the family novel expressly
for children, Richardson sometimes stepped aside from the main narrative
to tell them a moral tale."[80-A]
Mr. Cross gives an example of this which, shorn of its decoration, was
the tale of two little boys and two little girls, who never told fibs,
who were never rude and noisy, mischievous or quarrelsome; who always
said their prayers when going to bed, and therefore became fine ladies
and gentlemen.
To make the tales less difficult for amiable children to read, an
abridgment of their contents was undertaken; and Goldsmith is said to
have done much of the "cutting" in "Pamela," "Clarissa Harlowe," "Sir
Charles Grandison," and others. These books were included in the lists
of those sent to America for juvenile reading. In Boston, Cox and Berry
inserted in the "Boston Gazette and Country Journal" a notice that they
had the "following little Books for all good Boys and Girls:
The Brother's Gift, or the Naughty Girl Reformed.
The Sister's Gift, or the Naughty Boy Reformed.
The Hobby Horse, or Christmas Companion.
The Cries of London as Exhibited in the Streets.
The Puzzling Cap.
The History of Tom Jones.
The History of Joseph Andrews. Abridg'd from the works of H. Fielding
The History of Pamela. abridg'd from the works of Samuel
Richardson, Esq.
The History of Grandison.
The History of Clarissa."
Up to this time the story has been rather of the books read by the
Puritan and Quaker population of the colonies. There had arisen during
the first half of the eighteenth century, however, a merchant class
which owed its prosperity to its own ability. Such men sought for their
families the material results of wealth which only a place like Boston
could bestow. Many children, therefore, were sent to this town to
acquire suitable education in books, accomplishments, and deportment. A
highly interesting record of a child of well-to-do parents has been left
by Anna Green Winslow, who came to Boston to stay with an aunt for the
winters of 1771 and 1772. Her diary gives delightful glimpses of
children's tea-parties, fashions, and schools, all put down with a
childish disregard of importance or connection. It is in these jottings
of daily occurrences that proof is found that so young a girl read,
quite as a matter of course, the abridged works of Fielding and
Richardson.
On January 1, 1772, she wrote in her diary, "a Happy New Year, I have
bestowed no new year's gifts, as yet. But have received one very
handsome one, Viz, the History of Joseph Andrews abreviated. In nice
Guilt and Flowers covers." Again, she put down an account of a day's
work, which she called "a piecemeal for in the first place I sew'd on
the bosom of unkle's shirt, and mended two pairs of gloves, mended for
the wash two handkerch'fs, (one cambrick) sewed on half a border of a
lawn apron of aunt's, read part of the xxist chapter of Exodous, & a
story in the Mother's Gift." Later she jotted in her book the loan of "3
of Cousin Charles' books to read, viz.--The puzzling Cap, the female
Orators & the history of Gaffer Two Shoes." Little Miss Winslow, though
only eleven years of age, was a typical child of the educated class in
Boston, and, according to her journal, also followed the English custom
of reading aloud "with Miss Winslow, the Generous Inconstant and Sir
Charles Grandison." It is to be regretted that her diary gives no
information as to how she liked such tales. We must anticipate some
years to find a comment in the Commonplace Book of a Connecticut girl.
Lucy Sheldon lived in Litchfield, a thriving town in eighteen hundred,
and did much reading for a child in those days. Upon "Sir Charles
Grandison" she confided to her book this offhand note: "Read in little
Grandison, which shows that, virtue always meets its reward and vice is
punished." The item is very suggestive of Goldsmith's success in
producing an abridgment that left the moral where it could not be
overlooked.
To discuss in detail this class of writings is not necessary, but a
glance at the story of "Clarissa" gives an instructive impression of
what old-fashioned children found zestful.
"Clarissa Harlowe" in its abridged form was first published by Newbery,
Senior. The book that lies before the writer was printed in seventeen
hundred and seventy-two by his son, Francis Newbery. In size five by
three and one-half inches, it is decked in once gay parti-colored heavy
Dutch paper, with a delicate gold tracery over all. This paper binding,
called by Anna Winslow "Flowery Guilt," can no longer be found in
Holland, the place of its manufacture; with sarsinet and other
fascinating materials it has vanished so completely that it exists only
on the faded bindings of such small books as "Clarissa."
The narrative itself is compressed from the original seven volumes into
one volume of one hundred and seventy-six closely printed pages, with
several full-page copper-plate illustrations. The plot, however, gains
rather than loses in this condensed form. The principal distressing
situations follow so fast one upon the other that the intensity of the
various episodes in the _affecting_ history is increased by the total
absence of all the "moving" letters found in the original work. The
"lordly husband and father," "the imperious son," "the proud ambitious
sister, Arabella," all combined to force the universally beloved and
unassuming Clarissa to marry the wealthy Mr. Somers, who was to be the
means of "the aggrandisement of the family." Clarissa, in this
perplexing situation, yielded in a desperate mood to "the earnest
entreaties of the artful Lovelace to accept the protection of the Ladies
of his family." Who these ladies were, to whom the designing Lovelace
conducted the agitated heroine, is set forth in unmistakable language;
and thereafter follow the treacherous behaviour exhibited by Lovelace,
the various attempts to escape by the unhappy beauty, and her final
exhaustion and death. An example of the style may be given in this
description of the death-scene:
"Clarissa had before remarked that all would be most conveniently over
in bed: The solemn, the most important moment approached, but her soul
ardently aspiring after immorality [immortality was of course the
author's intention], she imagined the time moved slowly; and with great
presence of mind, she gave orders in relation to her body, directing her
nurse and the maid of the house, as soon as she was cold, to put her
into her coffin. The Colonel [her cousin], after paying her another
visit, wrote to her uncle, Mr. John Harlowe, that they might save
themselves the trouble of having any further debates about
reconciliation; for before they could resolve, his dear cousin would
probably be no more....
"A day or two after, Mr. Belford [a friend] was sent for, and
immediately came; at his entrance he saw the Colonel kneeling by her
bed-side with the ladies right hand in both his, which his face covered
bathing it with tears, though she had just been endeavoring to comfort
him, in noble and elevated strains. On the opposite side of the bed was
seated Mrs. Lovick, who leaning against the bed's-head in a most
disconsolate manner, turned to him as soon as she saw him, crying, O Mr.
Belford, the dear lady! a heavy sigh not permitting her to say more.
Mrs. Smith [the landlady] was kneeling at the bed's feet with clasped
fingers and uplifted eyes, with tears trickling in large drops from her
cheeks, as if imploring help from the source of all comfort.
"The excellent lady had been silent a few minutes, and was thought
speechless, she moving her lips without uttering a word; but when Mrs.
Lovick, on Mr. Belford's approach, pronounced his name, O Mr. Belford!
cried she, in a faint inward voice, Now!--now!--I bless God, all will
soon be over--a few minutes will end this strife--and I shall be happy,"
etc. Her speech was long, although broken by dashes, and again she
resumed, "in a more faint and broken accent," the blessing and
directions. "She then sunk her head upon the pillow; and fainting away,
drew from them her hands." Once more she returned to consciousness,
"when waving her hand to him [Mr. Belford] and to her cousin, and bowing
her head to every one present, not omitting the nurse and maid servant,
with a faltering and inward voice, she added Bless--Bless--you all!--"
The illustrations, in comparison with others of the time, are very well
engraved, although the choice of subjects is somewhat singular. The last
one represents Clarissa's friend, "Miss Howe" (the loyal friend to whom
all the absent letters were addressed), "lamenting over the corpse of
Clarissa," who lies in the coffin ordered by the heroine "to be covered
with fine black cloth, and lined with white satin."
As one lays aside this faded duodecimo, the conviction is strong that
the texture of the life of an old-fashioned child was of coarser weave
than is pleasant to contemplate. How else could elders and guardians
have placed without scruple such books in the hands of children? The one
explanation is to be found in such diaries as that of Anna Winslow, who
quaintly put down in her book facts and occurrences denoting the
maturity already reached by a little miss of eleven.
FOOTNOTES:
[73-A] Winsor, _Memorial History of Boston_, vol. ii, p. xix.
[80-A] Cross, _Development of the English Novel_, pp. 38, 39.
CHAPTER IV
1776-1790
The British King
Lost States thirteen.
_The New England Primer_,
Philadelphia, 1797
The good little boy
That will not tell a lie,
Shall have a plum-pudding
Or hot apple-pye.
_Jacky Dandy's Delight_,
Worcester, 1786
CHAPTER IV
1776-1790
_Patriotic Printers and the American Newbery_
When John Mein was forced to close his London Book-Store in Boston and
to return to England in 1770, the children of that vicinity had need to
cherish their six-penny books with increased care. The shadow of
impending conflict was already deep upon the country when Mein departed;
and the events of the decade following seventeen hundred and
seventy-three--the year of the Boston Tea-Party--were too absorbing and
distressing for such trifling publications as toy-books to be more than
occasionally printed. Indeed, the history of the American Revolution is
so interwoven with tales of privation of the necessities of life that it
is astonishing that any printer was able to find ink or paper to produce
even the nursery classic "Goody Two-Shoes," printed by Robert Bell of
Philadelphia in seventeen hundred and seventy-six.
In New York the conditions were different. The Loyalists, as long as the
town was held by the British, continued to receive importations of goods
of all descriptions. Among the booksellers, Valentine Nutter from time
to time advertised children's as well as adults' books. Hugh Gaine
apparently continued to reprint Newbery's duodecimos; and, in a rather
newer shop, Roger and Berry's, in Hanover Square, near Gaine's, could be
had "Gilt Books, together with Stationary, Jewelry, a Collection of the
most books, bibles, prayer-books and patent medicines warranted
genuine."
Elsewhere in the colonies, as in Boston, the children went without new
books, although very occasionally such notices as the following were
inserted in the newspapers:
_Just imported and to be Sold by Thomas Bradford_
At his Book-Store in Market-Street, adjoining the Coffee-house
_The following Books_ ...
Little Histories for Children,
Among which are, Book of Knowledge, Joe Miller's Jests, Jenny
Twitchells' ditto, the Linnet, The Lark (being collections of best
Songs), Robin Redbreast, Choice Spirits, Argalus & Parthenia,
Valentine and Orson, Seven Wise Masters, Seven Wise Mistresses,
Russell's seven Sermons, Death of Abel, French Convert, Art's
Treasury, Complete Letter-Writer, Winter Evening Entertainment,
Stories and Tales, Triumphs of Love, being a Collection of Short
Stories, Joseph Andrews, Aesop's Fables, Scotch Rogue, Moll
Flanders, Lives of Highwaymen, Lives of Pirates, Buccaneers of
America, Robinson Crusoe, Twelve Caesars.
Such was the assortment of penny-dreadfuls and religious tracts offered
in seventeen hundred and eighty-one to the Philadelphia public for
juvenile reading. It is typical of the chapmen's library peddled about
the colonies long after they had become states. "Valentine and Orson,"
"The Seven Wise Masters," "The Seven Wise Mistresses," and "Winter
Evening Entertainment" are found in publishers' lists for many years,
and, in spite of frequent vulgarities, there was often no discrimination
between them and Newbery's far superior stories; but by eighteen hundred
and thirty almost all of these undesirable reprints had disappeared,
being buried under the quantities of Sunday-school tales held in high
favor at that date.
Meanwhile, the six years of struggle for liberty had rendered the
necessaries of life in many cases luxuries. As early as seventeen
hundred and seventy-five, during the siege of Boston, provisions and
articles of dress had reached such prices that we find thrifty Mrs. John
Adams, in Braintree, Massachusetts, foreseeing a worse condition,
writing her husband, who was one of the Council assembled in
Philadelphia, to send her, if possible, six thousand pins, even if they
should cost five pounds. Prices continued to rise and currency to
depreciate. In seventeen hundred and seventy-nine Mrs. Adams reported in
her letters to her husband that potatoes were ten dollars a bushel, and
writing-paper brought the same price per pound.
Yet family life went on in spite of these increasing difficulties. The
diaries and letters of such remarkable women as the patriotic Abigail
Adams, the Quakeress, Mrs. Eliza Drinker, the letters of the Loyalist
and exile, James Murray, the correspondence of Eliza Pinckney of
Charleston, and the reminiscences of a Whig family who were obliged to
leave New York upon the occupation of the town by British forces, abound
in those details of domestic life that give a many sided picture. Joys
derived from good news of dear ones, and family reunions; anxieties
occasioned by illness, or the armies' depredations; courageous efforts
on the part of mothers not to allow their children's education and
occupations to suffer unnecessarily; tragedies of death and ruined
homes--all are recorded with a "particularity" for which we are now
grateful to the writers.
It is through these writings, also, that we are allowed glimpses of the
enthusiasm for the cause of Liberty, or King, which was imbibed from the
parents by the smallest children. On the Whig side, patriotic mothers in
New England filled their sons with zeal for the cause of freedom and
with hatred of the tyranny of the Crown; while in the more southern
colonies the partisanship of the little ones was no less intense. "From
the constant topic of the present conversation," wrote the Rev. John J.
Zubly (a Swiss clergyman settled in South Carolina and Georgia), in an
address to the Earl of Dartmouth in seventeen hundred and
seventy-five,--"from the constant topic of the present conversation,
every child unborn will be impressed with the notion--it is slavery to
be bound at the will of another 'in all things whatsoever.' Every
mother's milk will convey a detestation of this maxim. Were your
lordship in America, you might see little ones acquainted with the word
of command before they can distinctly speak, and shouldering of a gun
before they are well able to walk."[92-A]
The children of the Tories had also their part in the struggle. To some
the property of parents was made over, to save it from confiscation in
the event of the success of the American cause. To others came the
bitterness of separation from parents, when they were sent across the
sea to unknown relatives; while again some faint manuscript record tells
of a motherless child brought from a comfortable home, no longer
tenable, to whatever quarters could be found within the British lines.
Fortunately, children usually adapt themselves easily to changed
conditions, and in the novelty and excitement of the life around them,
it is probable they soon forgot the luxuries of dolls and hobby-horses,
toy-books and drums, of former days.
In the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania the sentiment of the period was
expressed in two or three editions of "The New England Primer." Already
in 1770 one had appeared containing as frontispiece a poor wood-cut of
John Hancock. In 1775 the enthusiasm over the appointment of George
Washington as commander-in-chief brought out another edition of the A B
C book with the same picture labelled "General Washington." The custom
of making one cut do duty in several representations was so well
understood that this method of introducing George Washington to the
infant reader naturally escaped remark.
Another primer appeared four years later, which was advertised by
Walters and Norman in the "Pennsylvania Evening Post" as "adorned with a
beautiful head of George Washington and other copper-plates." According
to Mr. Hildeburn, this small book had the honor of containing the first
portrait of Washington engraved in America. While such facts are of
trifling importance, they are, nevertheless, indications of the state of
intense feeling that existed at the time, and point the way by which the
children's books became nationalized.
In New England the very games of children centred in the events which
thrilled the country. Josiah Quincy remembered very well in after life,
how "at the age of five or six, astride my grandfather's cane and with
my little whip, I performed prodigies of valor, and more than once came
to my mother's knees declaring that I had driven the British out of
Boston." Afterwards at Phillips Academy, in Andover, between seventeen
hundred and seventy-eight and seventeen hundred and eighty-six, Josiah
and his schoolfellows "established it as a principle that every hoop,
sled, etc., should in some way bear _Thirteen_ marks as evidence of the
political character of the owner,--if which were wanting the articles
became fair prize and were condemned and forfeited without judge, jury,
or decree of admiralty."[94-A]
Other boys, such as John Quincy Adams, had tutors at home as a less
expensive means of education than the wartime price of forty dollars a
week for each child that good boarding-schools demanded. But at their
homes the children had plenty of opportunity to show their intense
enthusiasm for the cause of liberty. Years later, Mr. Adams wrote to a
Quaker friend:
"For the space of twelve months my mother with her infant children dwelt,
liable every hour of the day and of the night to be butchered in cold
blood, or taken and carried to Boston as hostages. My mother lived in
uninterrupted danger of being consumed with them all in a conflagration
kindled by a torch in the same hands which on the Seventeenth of June
[1775] lighted the fires of Charlestown."[94-B]
He was, of course, only one of many boys who saw from some height near
their homes the signs of battle, the fires of the enemy's camps, the
smoke rising from some farm fired by the British, or burned by its owner
to prevent their occupation of it. With hearts made to beat quickly by
the news that filtered through the lines, and heads made old by the
responsibility thrust upon them,--in the absence of fathers and older
brothers,--such boys as John Quincy Adams saw active service in the
capacity of post-riders bearing in their several districts the anxiously
awaited tidings from Congress or battlefield.
Fortunate indeed were the families whose homes were not disturbed by the
military operations. From Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, families
were sent hastily to the country until the progress of the war made it
possible to return to such comforts as had not been destroyed by the
British soldiers. The "Memoirs of Eliza Morton," afterward Mrs. Josiah
Quincy, but a child eight years of age in seventeen hundred and
seventy-six, gives a realistic account of the life of such Whig
refugees. Upon the occupation of New York by the British, her father, a
merchant of wealth, as riches were then reckoned, was obliged to burn
his warehouse to save it from English hands. Mr. Morton then gathered
together in the little country village of Basking Ridge, seven miles
from Morristown, New Jersey, such of his possessions as could be hastily
transported from the city. Among the books saved in this way were the
works of Thurston, Thomson, Lyttleton, and Goldsmith, and for the
children's benefit, "Dodsley's Collection of Poems," and "Pilgrim's
Progress." "This," wrote Mrs. Quincy, "was a great favorite; Mr.
Greatheart was in my opinion a hero, well able to help us all on our
way." During the exile from New York, as Eliza Morton grew up, she read
all these books, and years afterward told her grandchildren that while
she admired the works of Thurston, Thomson, and Lyttleton, "those of
Goldsmith were my chief delight. When my reading became afterward more
extensive I instinctively disliked the extravagant fiction which often
injures the youthful mind."
The war, however, was not allowed to interfere with the children's
education in this family. In company with other little exiles, they were
taught by a venerable old man until the evacuation of Philadelphia made
it possible to send the older children to Germantown, where a Mr. Leslie
had what was considered a fine school. The schoolroom walls were hung
with lists of texts of Scripture beginning with the same letter, and for
globes were substituted the schoolmaster's snuffbox and balls of yarn.
If these failed to impress a child with the correct notions concerning
the solar system, the children themselves were made to whirl around the
teacher.
In Basking Ridge the children had much excitement with the passing of
soldiers to Washington's headquarters in Morristown, and with watching
for "The Post" who carried the news between Philadelphia, Princeton, and
Morristown. "'The Post,' Mr. Martin," wrote Mrs. Quincy, "was an old man
who carried the mail, ... he was our constant medium of communication;
and always stopped at our house to refresh himself and horse, tell the
news, and bring packets. He used to wear a blue coat with yellow
buttons, a scarlet waistcoat, leathern small-clothes, blue yarn
stockings, and a red wig and cocked hat, which gave him a sort of
military appearance. He usually traveled in a sulky, but sometimes in a
chaise, or on horseback.... Mr. Martin also contrived to employ himself
in knitting coarse yarn stockings while driving or rather jogging along
the road, or when seated on his saddle-bags on horseback. He certainly
did not ride _post_, according to the present [1821] meaning of that
term."
Deprived like many other children of Newbery's peaceful biographies and
stories, the little Mortons' lives were too full of an intense daily
interest to feel the lack of new literature of this sort. Tales of the
campaigns told in letters to friends and neighbors were reëchoed in the
ballads and songs that formed part of the literary warfare waged by Whig
or Loyal partisans. Children of to-day sing so zestfully the popular
tunes of the moment, that it requires very little imagination to picture
the schoolboy of Revolutionary days shouting lustily verses from "The
Battle of the Kegs," and other rhymed stories of military incidents.
Such a ballad was "A Song for the Red Coats," written after the
successful campaign against Burgoyne, and beginning:
"Come unto me, ye heroes,
Whose hearts are true and bold,
Who value more your honor,
Than others do their gold!
Give ear unto my story,
And I the truth will tell,
Concerning many a soldier,
Who for his country fell."
Children, it has been said, are good haters. To the patriot boy and
girl, the opportunity to execrate Benedict Arnold was found in these
lines of a patriotic "ditty" concerning the fate of Major André:
"When he was executed
He looked both meek and mild;
He looked upon the people,
And pleasantly he smiled.
It moved each eye to pity,
Caused every heart to bleed;
And every one wished him released--
And _Arnold_ in his stead."[98-A]
Loyalist children had an almost equal supply of satirical verse to fling
back at neighbors' families, where in country districts some farms were
still occupied by sympathizers with Great Britain. A vigorous example of
this style of warfare is quoted by Mr. Tyler in his "Literature of the
American Revolution," and which, written in seventeen hundred and
seventy-six, is entitled "The Congress." It begins:
"These hardy knaves and stupid fools,
Some apish and pragmatic mules,
Some servile acquiescing tools,--
These, these compose the Congress!"[98-B]
Or, again, such taunts over the general poverty of the land and
character of the army as were made in a ballad called "The Rebels" by a
Loyalist officer:
"With loud peals of laughter, your sides,
Sirs, would crack,
To see General Convict and Colonel Shoe-black,
With their hunting-shirts and rifle-guns,
See Cobblers and quacks, rebel priests and the like,
Pettifoggers and barbers, with sword and with pike."
Those Loyalists who lived through this exciting period in America's
history bore their full share in the heavy personal misfortunes of their
political party. The hatred felt toward such colonials as were true to
the king has until recently hardly subsided sufficiently to permit any
sympathy with the hardships they suffered. Driven from their homes,
crowded together in those places occupied by the English, or exiled to
England or Halifax, these faithful subjects had also to undergo
separation of families perhaps never again united.
Such a Loyalist was James Murray. Forced to leave his daughter and
grandchildren in Boston with a sister, he took ship for Halifax to seek
a living. There, amid the pressing anxieties occasioned by this
separation, he strove to reëstablish himself, and sent from time to time
such articles as he felt were necessary for their welfare. Thus he
writes a memorandum of articles sent in seventeen hundred and eighty by
"Mr. Bean's Cartel to Miss Betsy Murray:--viz: Everlasting 4 yards;
binding 1 piece, Nankeen 4-7/8 yards. Of Gingham 2 gown patterns; 2
pairs red shoes from A.E.C. for boys, Jack and Ralph, a parcel--to Mrs.
Brigden, 1 pair silk shoes and some flowers--Arthur's Geographical
Grammar,--Locke on Education,--5 children's books," etc. And in return
he is informed that "Charlotte goes to dancing and writing school,
improves apace and grows tall. Betsy and Charles are much better but not
well. The rest of the children are in good health, desiring their duty
to their Uncle and Aunt Inman, and thanks for their cake and gloves."
To such families the end of the war meant either the necessity for
making permanent their residence in the British dominion, or of bearing
both outspoken and silent scorn in the new Republic.
For the Americans the peace of Yorktown brought joy, but new beginnings
had also to be made. Farms had been laid waste, or had suffered from
lack of men to cultivate them; industries were almost at a standstill
from want of material and laborers. Still the people had the splendid
compensation of freedom with victory, and men went sturdily back to
their homes to take up as far as possible their various occupations.
An example of the way in which business undertaken before the war was
rapidly resumed, or increased, is afforded by the revival of prosperity
for the booksellers in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. Renewals of
orders to London agents were speedily made, for the Americans still looked
to England for their intellectual needs. In Philadelphia--a town of forty
thousand inhabitants in seventeen hundred and eighty-three--among the
principal booksellers and printers were Thomas Bradford, Mr. Woodhouse,
Mr. Oswald, Mr. Pritchard,--who had established a circulating
library,--Robert Aitkin, Mr. Liddon, Mr. Dunlap, Mr. Rice, William and
David Hall, Benjamin Bache, J. Crukshank, and Robert Bell. Bell had
undoubtedly the largest bookstore, but seems not to have been altogether
popular, if an allusion in "The Philadelphiad" is to be credited. This
"New Picture of the City" was anonymously published in seventeen hundred
and eighty-four, and described, among other well-known places, Robert
Bell's book-shop:
BELL'S BOOK STORE
Just by St. Paul's where dry divines rehearse,
Bell keeps his store for vending prose and verse,
And books that's neither ... for no age nor clime,
Lame languid prose begot on hobb'ling rhyme.
Here authors meet who ne'er a spring have got,
The poet, player, doctor, wit and sot,
Smart politicians wrangling here are seen,
Condemning Jeffries or indulging spleen.
In 1776 Bell's facilities for printing had enabled him to produce an
edition of "Little Goody Two-Shoes," which seems likely to have been the
only story-book printed during the troubled years of the Revolution.
Besides this, Bell printed in 1777 "Aesop's Fables," as did also Robert
Aitkin; and J. Crukshank had issued during the war an A B C book,
written by the old schoolmaster, A. Benezet, who had drilled many a
Philadelphian in his letters. After the Revolution Benjamin Bache
apparently printed children's books in considerable quantities, and
orders were sent by other firms to England for juvenile reading-matter.
New England also has records of the sale of these small books in several
towns soon after peace was established. John Carter, "at Shakespeare's
Head," in Providence, announced by a broadside issued in November,
seventeen hundred and eighty-three, that he had a large assortment of
stationers' wares, and included in his list "Gilt Books for _Children_,"
among which were most of Newbery's publications. In Hartford,
Connecticut, where there had been a good press since seventeen hundred
and sixty-four, "The Children's Magazine" was reprinted in seventeen
hundred and eighty-nine. Its preposterous titles are noteworthy, since
it is probable that this was the first attempt at periodical literature
made for young people in America. One number contains:
An easy Introduction to Geography.
The Schoolboy addressed to the Editors.
Moral Tales continued.
Tale VIII. The Jealous Wife.
The Affectionate Sisters.
Familiar Letters on Various Subjects,--Continued....
Letter V from _Phillis Flowerdale_ to _Miss Truelove_.
Letter VI from _Miss Truelove_ to _Phillis Flowerdale_.
Poetry.--The Sweets of May.
The Cottage Retirement.
Advice to the Fair.
The Contented Cottager.
The Tear.
The Honest Heart.
The autograph of Eben Holt makes the contents of the magazine ludicrous
as subjects of interest to a boy But having nothing better, Eben most
surely read it from cover to cover.
In Charleston, South Carolina, Robert Wells imported the books read by
the members of the various branches of the Ravenel, Pinckney, Prioleau,
Drayton, and other families. Boston supplied the juvenile public largely
through E. Battelle and Thomas Andrews, who were the agents for Isaiah
Thomas, the American Newbery.
An account of the work of this remarkable printer of Worcester,
Massachusetts, has been given in Dr. Charles L. Nichols's "Bibliography
of Worcester." Thomas's publications ranked as among the very best of
the last quarter of the eighteenth century, and were sought by
book-dealers in the various states. At one time he had sixteen presses,
seven of which were in Worcester. He had also four bookstores in various
towns of Massachusetts, one in Concord, New Hampshire, one in Baltimore,
and one in Albany.
In 1761, at the age of ten, Thomas had set up as his "'Prentice's
Token," a primer issued by A. Barclay in Cornhill, Boston, entitled "Tom
Thumb's Play-Book, To Teach Children their letters as soon as they can
speak." Although this primer was issued by Barclay, Thomas had already
served four years in a printer's office, for according to his own
statement he had been sent at the age of six to learn his trade of
Zechariah Fowle. Here, as 'prentice, he may have helped to set up the
stories of the "Holy Jesus" and the "New Gift," and upon the cutting of
their rude illustrations perhaps took his first lessons in engraving.
For we know that by seventeen hundred and sixty-four he did fairly good
work upon the "Book of Knowledge" from the press of the old printer.
Upon the fly-leaf of a copy of this owned by the American Antiquarian
Society, founded by Thomas, is the statement in the Worcester printer's
handwriting, "Printed and cuts engraved by I. Thomas then 13 years of
age for Z. Fowle when I.T. was his Apprentice: bad as the cuts are
executed, there was not at that time an artist in Boston who could have
done them much better. Some time before, and soon after there were
better engravers in Boston." These cuts, especially the frontispiece
representing a boy with a spy-glass and globe, and with a sextant at his
feet, are far from poor work for a lad of thirteen. "The battered
dictionary," says Dr. Nichols, "and the ink-stained Bible which he found
in Fowle's office started him in his career, and the printing-press,
together with an invincible determination to excel in his calling,
carried him onward, until he stands to-day with Franklin and
Baskerville, a type of the man who with few educational advantages
succeeds because he loves his art for his art's sake."
In supplying to American children a home-made library, Thomas, although
he did no really original work for children, such as his English
prototype, Newbery, had accomplished, yet had a motive which was not
altogether selfish and pecuniary. The prejudice against anything of
British manufacture was especially strong in the vicinity of Boston; and
it was an altogether natural expression of this spirit that impelled the
Worcester printer, as soon as his business was well established, to
begin to reprint the various little histories. These reprints were all
pirated from Newbery and his successors, Newbery and Carnan; but they
compare most favorably with them, and so far surpassed the work of any
other American printer of children's books (except possibly those of
Bache in Philadelphia) that his work demands more than a passing
mention.
Beginning, like most printers, with the production of a primer in
seventeen hundred and eighty-four, by seventeen hundred and eighty-six
Thomas was well under way in his work for children. In that year at
least eleven little books bore his imprint and were sent to his Boston
agents to be sold. In the "Worcester Magazine" for June, 1786, Thomas
addressed an "Advertisement to Booksellers," as follows: "A large
assortment of all the various sizes of CHILDREN'S Books, known
by the name of Newbery's Little Books for Children, are now republished
by I. Thomas in Worcester, Massachusetts. They are all done excellently
in his English Method, and it is supposed the paper, printing, cuts, and
binding are in every way equal to those imported from England. As the
Subscriber has been at great expense to carry on this particular branch
of Printing extensively, he hopes to meet with encouragement from the
Booksellers in the United States."
Evidently he did meet with great encouragement from parents as well as
booksellers; and it is suspected that the best printed books bearing
imprints of other booksellers were often printed in Worcester and bound
according to the taste and facilities of the dealer. That this practice
of reprinting the title-page and rebinding was customary, a letter from
Franklin to his nephew in Boston gives indisputable evidence:
Philada. Nov. 26, 1788.
LOVING COUSIN:
I have lately set up one of my grand-children, Benja. F. Bache, as a
Printer here, and he has printed some very pretty little Books for
Children. By the Sloop Friendship, Capt. Stutson, I have sent a Box
address'd to you, containing 150 of each volume, in Sheets, which I
request you would, according to your wonted Goodness, put in a way
of being dispos'd of for the Benefit of my dear Sister. They are
sold here, bound in marbled Paper at 1 S. a Volume; but I should
suppose it best, if it may be done, to sell the whole to some
Stationer, at once, unbound as they are; in which case I imagine
that half a Dollar a Quire may be thought a reasonable Price,
allowing usual Credit if necessary.
My Love to your Family, & believe me ever,
Your affectionate Uncle
B. FRANKLIN.
JONA. WILLIAMS, ESQ.
Franklin's reference to the Philadelphia manner of binding toy-books in
marbled paper indicates that this home-made product was already
displacing the attractive imported gilt embossed and parti-colored
covers used by Thomas, who seems never to have adopted this ugly dress
for his juvenile publications. As the demand for his wares increased,
Thomas set up other volumes from Newbery's stock, until by seventeen
hundred and eighty-seven he had reproduced practically every item for
his increasing trade. It was his custom to include in many of these
books a Catalogue of the various tales for sale, and in "The Picture
Exhibition" we find a list of fifty-two stories to be sold for prices
varying from six pence to a shilling and a half.
These books may be divided into several classes, all imitations of the
English adult literature then in vogue. The alphabets and primers, such
as the "Little Lottery Book," "Christmas Box," and "Tom Thumb's
Play-thing," are outside the limits of the present subject, since they
were written primarily to instruct; and while it is often difficult to
draw the line where amusement begins and instruction sinks to the
background, the title-pages can usually be taken as evidence at least of
the author's intention. These other books, however, fall naturally under
the heads of jest and puzzle books, nature stories, fables, rhymes,
novels, and stories--all prototypes of the nursery literature of to-day.
The jest and joke books published by Thomas numbered, as far as is known
to the writer, only five. Their titles seem to offer a feast of fun
unfulfilled by the contents. "Be Merry & Wise, or the Cream of the Jests
and the Marrow of Maxims," by Tommy Trapwit, contained concentrated
extracts of wisdom, and jokes such as were current among adults. The
children for whom they were meant were accustomed to nothing more
facetious than the following jest: "An arch wag said, _Taylors_ were
like _Woodcocks_ for they got their substance by their long bills."
Perhaps they understood also the point in this: "A certain lord had a
termagant wife, and at the same time a chaplain that was a tolerable
poet, whom his lordship desired to write a copy of verses upon a shrew.
I can't imagine, said the chaplain, why your lordship should want a
copy, who has so good an original." Other witticisms are not quotable.
[Illustration: _A page from a Catalogue of Children's Books printed by
Isaiah Thomas_]
Conundrums played their part in the eighteenth century juvenile life,
much as they do to-day. These were to be found in "A Bag of Nuts ready
Cracked," and "The Big and Little Puzzling Caps." "Food for the Mind"
was the solemn title of another riddle-book, whose conundrums are very
serious matters. Riddle XIV of the "Puzzling Cap" is typical of its
rather dreary contents:
"There was a man bespoke a thing,
Which when the maker home did bring,
This same maker did refuse it;
He who bespoke it did not use it
And he who had it did not know
Whether he had it, yea or no."
This was a nut also "ready cracked" by the answer reproduced in the
illustration.
Nature stories were attempted under the titles of "The Natural History
of Four Footed Beasts," "Jacky Dandy's Delight; or the History of Birds
and Beasts in Verse and Prose," "Mr. Telltruth's Natural History of
Birds," and "Tommy Trip's History of Beasts and Birds." All these were
written after Oliver Goldsmith's "Animated Nature" had won its way into
great popularity. As a consequence of the favorable impression this book
had made, Goldsmith is supposed to have been asked by Newbery to try his
hand upon a juvenile natural history.
Possibly it was as a result of Newbery's request that we have the
anonymous "Jacky Dandy's Delight" and "Tommy Trip's History of Beasts
and Birds." The former appears to be a good example of Goldsmith's
facility for amusing himself when doing hack-work for Newbery. How like
Goldsmith's manner is this description of a monkey:
"The monkey mischievous
Like a naughty boy looks;
Who plagues all his friends,
And regards not his books.
"He is an active, pert, busy animal, who mimicks human actions so
well that some think him rational. The Indians say, he can speak if
he pleases, but will not lest he should be set to work. Herein he
resembles those naughty little boys who will not learn A, lest they
should be obliged to learn B, too. He is a native of warm countries,
and a useless beast in this part of the world; so I shall leave him
to speak of another that is more bulky, and comes from cold
countries: I mean the Bear."
To poke fun in an offhand manner at little boys and girls seemed to have
been the only conception of humor to be found in the children's books of
the period, if we except the "Jests" and the attempts made in a
ponderous manner on the title-pages. The title of "The Picture
Exhibition; containing the Original Drawings of Eighteen Disciples....
Published under the Inspection of Mr. Peter Paul Rubens,..." is
evidently one of Newbery's efforts to be facetious. To the author, the
pretence that the pictures were by "Disciples of Peter Paul Rubens"
evidently conveyed the same idea of wit that "Punch" has at times
represented to others of a later century.
Fables have always been a mine of interest to young folks, and were
interspersed liberally with all moral tales, but "Entertaining Fables"
bears upon its title-page a suggestion that the children's old friend,
"Aesop," appeared in a new dress.
Another series of books contained the much abridged novels written for
the older people. "Peregrine Pickle" and "Roderick Random" were both
reprinted by Isaiah Thomas as early as seventeen hundred and
eighty-eight. These tales of adventure seem to have had their small
reflections in such stories as "The Adventures of a Pincushion," and
"The Adventures of a Peg-top," by Dorothy Kilner, an Englishwoman.
Mention has already been made of "Pamela" and "Clarissa" in condensed
form. These were books of over two hundred pages; but most of the
toy-books were limited to less than one hundred. A remarkable instance
of the pith of a long plot put into small compass was "The History of
Tom Jones." A dog-eared copy of such an edition of "Tom Jones" is still
in existence. Its flowery Dutch binding covers only thirty-one pages,
four inches long, with a frontispiece and five wood-cut illustrations.
In so small a space no detailed account of the life of the hero is to be
expected; nevertheless, the first paragraph introduces Tom as no
ordinary foundling. Mr. Allworthy finds the infant in his bed one
evening and rings up his housekeeper Mrs. Deborah Wilkins. "She being a
strict observer of decency was exceedingly alarmed, on entering her
master's room, to find him undressed, but more so on his presenting her
with the child, which he ordered immediately to be taken care of." The
story proceeds--with little punctuation to enable the reader to take
breath--to tell how the infant is named, and how Mr. Allworthy's nephew,
Master Bilfil, is also brought under that generous and respectable
gentleman's protection. Tommy turned out "good," as Mr. Allworthy had
hoped when he assumed charge of him; and therefore eventually inherited
riches and gained the hand of Miss Sophia Western, with whom he rode
about the country in their "Coach and Six."
Of the stories in this juvenile library, the names, at least, of "Giles
Gingerbread," "Little King Pippin," and "Goody Two-Shoes" have been
handed down through various generations. One hundred years ago every
child knew that "Little King Pippin" attained his glorious end by
attention to his books in the beginning of his career; that "Giles
Gingerbread" first learned his alphabet from gingerbread letters, and
later obtained the patronage of a fine gentleman by spelling "apple-pye"
correctly. Thus did his digestion prove of material assistance in mental
gymnastics.
[Illustration: _Illustration of Riddle XIV in "The Puzzling-Cap"_]
But the nursery favorite was undoubtedly "Margery, or Little Goody
Two-Shoes." She was introduced to the reader in her "state of rags and
care," from which she gradually emerged in the chapters entitled, "How
and about Little Margery and her Brother;" "How Little Margery
obtained the name of Goody Two-Shoes;" "How she became a Tutoress" to
the farmers' families in which she taught spelling by a game; and how
they all sang the "Cuz's Chorus" in the intervals between the spelling
lesson and the composition of sentences like this: "I pray God to bless
the whole country, and all our friends and all our enemies." Like the
usual heroine of eighteenth century fiction, she married a title, and as
Lady Jones was the Lady Bountiful of the district. From these tales it
is clear that piety as the chief end of the story-book child has been
succeeded by learning as the desideratum; yet morality is still pushed
into evidence, and the American mother undoubtedly translated the
ethical sign-boards along the progress of the tale into Biblical
admonitions.
All the books were didactic in the extreme. A series of four, called
"The Mother's," "Father's," "Sister's," and "Brother's Gifts," is a good
example of this didactic method of story-telling. "The Father's Gift"
has lessons in spelling preceded by these lines:
"Let me not join with those in Play,
Who fibs and stories tell,
I with my Book will spend the Day,
And not with such Boys dwell.
For one rude Boy will spoil a score
As I have oft been told;
And one bad sheep, in Time, is sure
To injure all the Fold."
"The Mother's Gift" was confined largely to the same instructive field,
but had one or two stories which conformed to the sentiment of the
author of "The Adventures of a Pincushion," who stated her motive to be
"That of providing the young reader with a few pages which should be
innocent of corrupting if they did not amuse."
"The Brother's" and "Sister's Gifts," however, adopt a different plan of
instruction. In "The Brother's Gift" we find a brother solicitous
concerning his sister's education: "Miss Kitty Bland was apt, forward and
headstrong; and had it not been for the care of her brother, Billy, would
have probably witnessed all the disadvantages of a modern education"!
Upon Kitty's return from boarding-school, "she could neither read, nor
sew, nor write grammatically, dancing stiff and awkward, her musick
inelegant, and everything she did bordered strongly on affectation." Here
was a large field for reformation for Billy to effect. He had no doubts
as to what method to pursue. She was desired to make him twelve shirts,
and when the first one was presented to him, "he was astonished to find
her lacking in so useful a female accomplishment." Exemplary conversation
produced such results that the rest of the garments were satisfactory to
the critical Billy, who, "as a mark of approbation made her a present of
a fine pair of stays."
"The Sister's Gift" presents an opposite picture. In this case it is
Master Courtley who, a "youth of Folly and Idleness," received large
doses of advice from his sister. This counsel was so efficient with
Billy's sensitive nature that before the story ends, "he wept bitterly,
and declared to his sister that she had painted the enormity of his
vices in such striking colors, that they shocked him in the greatest
degree; and promised ever after to be as remarkable for generosity,
compassion and every other virtue as he had hitherto been for cruelty,
forwardness and ill-nature." Virtue in this instance was its own reward,
as Billy received no gift in recognition of his changed habits.
To the modern lover of children such tales seem strangely ill-suited to
the childish mind, losing, as they do, all tenderness in the effort of
the authors (so often confided to parents in the preface) "to express
their sentiments with propriety." Such criticism of the style and matter
of these early attempts to write for little people was probably not made
by either infant or adult readers of that old-time public. The children
read what was placed before them as intellectual food, plain and
sweetened, as unconcernedly as they ate the food upon their plates at
meal-time. That their own language was the formal one of the period is
shown by such letters as the following one from Mary Wilder, who had
just read "The Mother's Gift:"
Lancaster, October 9th, 1789.
HOND. MADM:
Your goodness to me I cannot express. My mind is continually crowded
with your kindness. If your goodness could be rewarded, I hope God
will repay you. If you remember, some time ago I read a story in
"The Mother's Gift," but I hope I shall never resemble Miss Gonson.
O Dear! What a thing it is to disobey one's parents. I have one of
the best Masters. He gave me a sheet of paper this morning. I hope
Uncle Flagg will come up. I am quite tired of looking for Betsy, but
I hope she will come. When school is done keeping, I shall come to
Sudbury. What a fine book Mrs. Chapone's Letters is: My time grows
short and I must make my letter short.
Your dutiful daughter,
P.W.
Nursery rhymes and jingles of these present days have all descended from
song-books of the eighteenth century, entitled "Little Robin Red
Breast," "A Poetical Description of Song Birds," "Tommy Thumb's
Song-Book," and the famous "Melodies of Mother Goose," whose name is
happily not yet relegated to the days of long ago. Two extracts from the
"Poetical Description of Song Birds" will be sufficient to show how
foreign to the birds familiar to American children were the
descriptions:
THE BULLFINCH
This lovely bird is charming to the sight:
The back is glossy blue, the belly white,
A jetty black shines on his neck and head;
His breast is flaming with a beauteous red.
THE TWITE
Green like the Linnet it appears to sight,
And like the Linnet sings from morn till night.
A reddish spot upon his rump is seen,
Short is his bill, his feathers always clean:
When other singing birds are dull or nice,
To sing again the merry Twites entice.
Reflections of the prevailing taste of grown people for biography are
suggested in three little books, of two of which the author was Mrs.
Pilkington, who had already written several successful stories for young
ladies. Her "Biography for Girls" contains various novelettes, in each
of which the heroine lives the conventional life and dies the
conventional death of the period, and receives a laudatory epitaph. They
are remarkable only as being devoid of any interest. Her "Biography for
Boys" does not appear to have attained the same popularity as that for
girls. A third book, "The Juvenile Biographers," containing the "Lives
of Little Masters and Misses," is representative of the changes made in
many books by the printer to cater to that pride in the young Republic
so manifest in all local literary productions. In one biography we note
a Representative to the Massachusetts Assembly:
"As Master Sammy had always been a very sober and careful child, and
very attentive to his Books, it is no wonder that he proved, in the End,
to be an excellent Scholar.
"Accordingly, when he had reached the age of fourteen, Mr. William
Goodall, a wealthy merchant in the city of Boston, took him into his
counting house, in order to bring him up in the merchantile Way, and
thereby make his Fortune.
"This was a sad Stroke to his poor Sister Nancy, who having lost both
her Papa and Mama, was now likely to lose her Brother likewise; but
Sammy did all he could to appease her, and assured her, that he would
spend all his leisure Time with her. This he most punctually performed,
and never were Brother and Sister as happy in each other's company as
they were.
"Mr. William Goodall was highly satisfied with Sammy's Behaviour, and
dying much about the Time that Miss Nancy was married to the Gentleman,
he left all his business to Sammy, together with a large Capital to
carry it on. So much is Mr. Careful esteemed (for we must now no longer
call him Master Sammy) that he was chosen in the late General Election,
Representative in the General Court, for one of the first Towns in New
England, without the least expense to himself. We here see what are the
Effects of Good Behaviour."
This adaptation of the English tale to the surroundings of the American
child is often found in Thomas's reprints, and naturally, owing to his
enthusiasm over the recent change in the form of government, is made
wholly by political references. Therefore while the lark and the linnet
still sang in songs and the cowslips were scattered throughout the
nature descriptions, Master Friendly no longer rode in the Lord Mayor's
coach, but was seated as a Congressman in a sedan chair, "and he
looked--he looked--I do not know what he looked like, but everybody was
in love with him." The engraver as well as the biographer of the
recently made Representative was evidently at a loss as to his
appearance, as the four dots indicating the young gentleman's features
give but a blank look perhaps intended to denote amazement at his
election.
The illustrations of Thomas's toy reprints should not be overlooked. The
Worcester printer seems to have rewritten the "Introduction" to "Goody
Two-Shoes," and at the end he affixed a "Letter from the Printer which
he desires may be inserted.
SIR: I have come with your copy, and so you may return it
to the Vatican, if you please; and pray tell Mr. Angelo to brush up
his cuts; that in the next edition they may give us a good
impression."
This apology for the character of the illustrations serves as an
introduction to a most interesting subject of conjecture as to the
making of the cuts, and particularly as to the engraving of the
frontispiece in "Goody Two-Shoes."
[Illustration: _Goody Twoshoes._]
It will be remembered that Isaiah Thomas in his advertisement to
booksellers had expressly mentioned the great expense he had incurred in
bringing out the juvenile books in "the English method." But Mr. Edwin
Pearson, in his delightful discussion of "Banbury Chap-Books," has also
stated that the wood-cut frontispiece in the first American edition of
"Goody Two-Shoes," printed by Thomas, was engraved by Bewick, the famous
English illustrator. A comparison of the reproduction of the Bewick
engraving in Mr. Pearson's book with the frontispiece in Thomas's
edition shows so much difference that it is a matter of regret that Mr.
Pearson withheld his authority for attributing to Bewick the
representation of Margery Two-Shoes. Besides the inference from Thomas's
letter that the poor cuts would be improved before another edition
should be printed, there are several points to be observed in comparing
the cuts. In the first place, the execution in the Thomas cut suggests a
different hand in the use of the tools; again, the reversed position of
the figure of "Goody" indicates a copy of the English original. Also the
expression of Thomas's heroine, although slightly mincing, is less
distressed than the British dame's, to say nothing of the variation in
the fashion of the gowns. And such details as the replacing of the
English landscape by the spire of a meeting-house in the distance seem
to confirm the impression that the drawing was made after, but not by
Bewick. In the cuts scattered throughout the text the same difference in
execution and portrayal of the little schoolmistress is noticeable.
Margery, upon her rounds to teach the farmers' children to spell such
words as "plumb-pudding" "(and who can suppose a better?)," presents her
full face in the Newbery edition, and but a three-quarter view to her
American admirers.
These facts, together with the knowledge that Isaiah Thomas was a fair
engraver himself, make it possible that his apology for the first
impression of the tiny classic was for his own engraving, which he
thought to better.
Thomas not only copied and pirated Newbery's juvenile histories, but he
adopted his method of advertising by insertions in the text of these
tales. For example, in "The Travels of Robinson Crusoe, Written by
Himself," the little reader was told, "If you learn this Book well and
are good, you can buy a larger and more complete History of Mr. Crusoe
at your friend the Bookseller's in Worcester near the Court House." In
"The Mother's Gift," there is described well-brought-up Miss Nugent
displaying to ill-bred Miss Jones, "a pretty large collection of books
neatly bound and nicely kept," all to be had of Mr. Thomas; and again
Mr. Careful, in "Virtue and Vice," "presented at Christmas time to the
sons and daughters of his friends, little Gilt Books to read, such as
are sold at Mr. Thomas' near the Court House in Worcester."
Thomas and his son continued to send out these toy-books until their gay
bindings faded away before the novelty of the printed paper covers of
the nineteenth century.
FOOTNOTES:
[92-A] Tyler, _Literary History of the American Revolution_, vol. i, p.
485.
[94-A] _Life of Josiah Quincy_, p. 27. Boston, 1866.
[94-B] Earle, _Child Life in Colonial Days_, p. 171.
[98-A] Tyler, _Literature of the American Revolution_, vol. ii, p. 182.
[98-B] _Ibid._, p. 156.
CHAPTER V
1790-1800
By Washington
Great deeds were done.
_The New England Primer_,
New York, 1794
Line after line their wisdom flows
Page after page repeating.
T.G. HAKE
CHAPTER V
1790-1800
_The Child and his Book at the End of the Century_
Any attempt to trace the slow development of the American child's story
of the nineteenth century must inevitably be made through the
school-books written during the previous one. Before this, English books
had been adapted to the American trade. But now the continued interest
in education produced text-books pervaded with the American spirit. They
cannot, therefore, be ignored as sporadically in the springtime of the
young Republic, they, like crocuses, thrust forward in the different
states their blue and yellow covers.
Next to clergymen, schoolmasters received the veneration of the people,
for learning and godliness went hand in hand. It was the schoolmaster
who reinforced the efforts of the parents to make good Americans of the
young folks, by compiling text-books which outsold the English ones
hitherto used. In the new editions of the old "New England Primer,"
laudatory verse about General Washington replaced the alphabet rhyme:
"Whales in the Sea
God's Voice obey."
Proud parents thereafter heard their infants lisp:
"By Washington
Great deeds were done."
For older pupils Noah Webster's speller almost superseded Dilworth's,
and his "Little Readers' Assistant" became the First Reader of many
children. Webster as schoolmaster in a country district prepared this
book for his own scholars. It was printed in Hartford in seventeen
hundred and ninety, and contained a list of subjects suitable for
farmers' children:
I. A number of Stories mostly taken from the history of
America, and adorned with Cuts.
II. Rudiments of English Grammar.
III. The Federal Catechism, being a short and easy explanation
of the Constitution of the United States.
IV. General principles of Government and Commerce.
V. Farmers' Catechism containing plain rules of husbandry.
Bennington, Vermont, contributed in "The Little Scholar's Pretty Pocket
Companion in Rhyme and Verse," this indirect allusion to political
affairs:
"'Twas a toy of royalty, of late almost forgot,
'Tis said she represented France
On English Monarchies arms,
But lately broke his chains by chance
And widely spread alarms."
But the most naïve attempt to inculcate patriotism together with a
lesson in obedience is found in "The Child's Instructor," published
about seventeen hundred and ninety-one, and written by a Philadelphian.
Philadelphia had become the residence of the President--a fact that may
account for one of the stories in this book about an infant prodigy
called Billy. "The child at five years of age was always good and
obedient, and prone to make such a remark as, 'If you would be wise you
must always attend to your vowels and consonants.' When General
Washington came to town Billy's mama asked him to say a speech to the
ladies, and he began, 'Americans! place constantly before your eyes, the
deplorable scenes of your servitude, and the enchanting picture of your
deliverance. Begin with the infant in his cradle; let the first word he
lisps be _Washington_.' The ladies were all delighted to hear Billy
speak so well. One said he should be a lawyer, and another said he
should be President of the United States. But Billy said he could not be
either unless his mama gave him leave."[123-A]
Another Philadelphian attempted to embody political sentiment in "A
Tale--The Political Balance; or, The Fate of Britain and America
Compared." This juvenile has long since disappeared, but it was
advertised by its printer, Francis Bailey, in seventeen hundred and
ninety-two, together with "The History of the Little Boy found under a
Haycock," and several other books for children. One year later a
"History of the American Revolution" for children was also printed in
Philadelphia for the generation who had been born since the war had
ended. This was written in the Biblical phraseology introduced and made
popular by Franklin in his famous "Parable against Persecution."
This enthusiasm over the results of the late war and scorn for the
defeated English sometimes indeed cropped out in the Newbery reprints.
An edition (1796) of "Goody Two-Shoes" contains this footnote in
reference to the tyranny of the English landlord over Goody's father:
_"Such is the state of things in Britain. AMERICANS prize your liberty,
guard your rights and be happy._"[123-B]
In this last decade of the century that had made a nation of the
colonial commonwealths, the prosperity of the country enabled more
printers to pirate the generally approved Newbery library. Samuel Hall
in Boston, with a shop near the court-house, printed them all, using at
times the dainty covers of flowery Dutch or gilt paper, and again
another style of binding occasionally used in England. "The Death and
Burial of Cock Robin," for instance, has a quaint red and gilt cover,
which according to Mr. Charles Welsh was made by stamping paper with
dies originally used for printing old German playing-cards. He says: "To
find such a cover can only be accounted for by the innocence of the
purchasers as to the appearance of his Satanic Majesty's picture cards
and hence [they] did not recognize them." In one corner of the book
cover is impressed the single word "Münch," which stamps this paper as
"made in Germany." Hall himself was probably as ignorant of the original
purpose of the picture as the unsuspecting purchaser, who would
cheerfully have burned it rather than see such an instrument of the
Devil in the hands of its owner, little Sally Barnes.
[Illustration: Frontispiece.
Sr. Walter Raleigh and his man.]
Of Samuel Hall's reprints from the popular English publications, "Little
Truths" was in all probability one of the most salable. So few books
contained any information about America that one of these two volumes
may be regarded as of particular interest to the young generation of his
time. The author of "Little Truths," William Darton, a Quaker publisher
in London, does not divulge from what source he gleaned his knowledge.
His information concerning Americans is of that misty description
that confuses Indians ("native Americans") with people of Spanish and
English descent. The usual "Introduction" states that "The author has
chose a method after the manner of conversations between children and
their instructor," and the dialogue is indicated by printing the
children's observations in italics. These volumes were issued for twenty
years after they were introduced by Hall, and those of an eighteen
hundred Philadelphia edition are bound separately. Number one is in blue
paper with copper-plate pictures on both covers. This volume gives
information regarding farm produce, live-stock, and about birds quite
unfamiliar to American children. But the second volume, in white covers,
introduces the story of Sir Walter Raleigh and his pipe-smoking
incident, made very realistic in the copper-plate frontispiece. The
children's question, "_Did Sir Walter Raleigh find out the virtues of
tobacco?_" affords an excellent opportunity for a discourse upon smoking
and snuff-taking. These remarks conclude with this prosaic statement:
"Hundreds of sensible people have fell into these customs from example;
and, when they would have left them off, found it a very great
difficulty." Next comes a lesson upon the growth of tobacco leading up
to a short account of the slave-trade, already a subject of differing
opinion in the United States, as well as in England. Of further interest
to small Americans was a short tale of the discovery of this country.
Perhaps to most children their first book-knowledge of this event came
from the pages of "Little Truths."
Hall's books were not all so proper for the amusement of young folks. A
perusal of "Capt. Gulliver's Adventures" leaves one in no doubt as to
the reason that so many of the old-fashioned mothers preferred to keep
such tales out of children's hands, and to read over and over again the
adventures of the Pilgrim, Christian. Mrs. Eliza Drinker of Philadelphia
in seventeen hundred and ninety-six was re-reading for the third time
"Pilgrim's Progress," which she considered a "generally approved book,"
although then "ridiculed by many." The "Legacy to Children" Mrs. Drinker
also read aloud to her grandchildren, having herself "wept over it
between fifty and sixty years ago, as did my grandchildren when it was
read to them. She, Hannah Hill, died in 1714, and ye book was printed in
1714 by Andrew Bradford."
But Mrs. Drinker's grandchildren had another book very different from
the pious sayings of the dying Hannah. This contained "64 little stories
and as many pictures drawn and written by Nancy Skyrin," the mother of
some of the children. P. Widdows had bound the stories in gilt paper,
and it was so prized by the family that the grandmother thought the fact
of the recovery of the book, after it was supposed to have been
irretrievably lost, worthy of an entry in her journal. Careful inquiry
among the descendants of Mrs. Drinker has led to the belief that these
stories were read out of existence many years ago. What they were about
can only be imagined. Perhaps they were incidents in the lives of the
same children who cried over the pathetic morbidity of Hannah's dying
words; or possibly rhymes and verses about school and play hours of
little Philadelphians; with pictures showing bait-the-bear, trap-ball,
and other sports of days long since passed away, as well as "I Spie
Hi" and marbles, familiar still to boys and girls.
[Illustration: _Foot Ball_]
From the fact that these stories were written for the author's own
children, another book, composed less than a century before, is brought
to mind. Comparison of even the meagre description of Mrs. Skyrin's book
with Cotton Mather's professed purpose in "Good Lessons" shows the
stride made in children's literature to be a long one. Yet a quarter of
a century was still to run before any other original writing was done in
America for children's benefit.
Nobody else in America, indeed, seems to have considered the question of
writing for nursery inmates. Mrs. Barbauld's "Easy Lessons for Children
from Two to Five Years old," written for English children, were
considered perfectly adapted to gaining knowledge and perhaps amusement.
It is true that when Benjamin Bache of Philadelphia issued "Easy
Lessons," he added this note: "Some alterations were thought necessary to
be made in this ... American edition, to make it agree with the original
design of rendering instruction easy and useful.... The climate and the
familiar objects of this country suggested these alterations." Except for
the substitution of such words as "Wheat" for "Corn," the intentions of
the editor seem hardly to have had result, except by way of
advertisement; and are of interest merely because they represent one step
further in the direction of Americanizing the story-book literature.
All Mrs. Barbauld's books were considered excellent for young children.
As a "Dissenter," she gained in the esteem of the people of the northern
states, and her books were imported as well as reprinted here. Perhaps
she was best known to our grandparents as the joint author, with Dr.
Aikin, of "Evenings at Home," and of "Hymns in Prose and Verse." Both
were read extensively for fifty years. The "Hymns" had an enormous
circulation, and were often full of fine rhythm and undeserving of the
entire neglect into which they have fallen. Of course, as the fashion
changed in the "approved" type of story, Mrs. Barbauld suffered
criticism. "Mrs. and Miss Edgeworth in their 'Practical Education'
insisted that evil lurked behind the phrase in 'Easy Lessons,' 'Charles
wants his dinner' because of the implication 'that Charles must have
whatever he desires,' and to say 'the sun has gone to bed,' is to incur
the odium of telling the child a falsehood."[128-A]
But the manner in which these critics of Mrs. Barbauld thought they had
improved upon her method of story-telling is a tale belonging to another
chapter. When Miss Edgeworth's wave of popularity reached this country
Mrs. Barbauld's ideas still flourished as very acceptable to parents.
A contemporary and rival writer for the English nursery was Mrs. Sarah
Trimmer. Her works for little children were also credited with much
information they did not give. After the publication of Mrs. Barbauld's
"Easy Lessons" (which was the result of her own teaching of an adopted
child), Mrs. Trimmer's friends urged her to make a like use of the
lessons given to her family of six, and accordingly she published in
seventeen hundred and seventy-eight an "Easy Introduction into the
Knowledge of Nature," and followed it some years after its initial
success by "Fabulous Histories," afterwards known as the "History of
the Robins." Although Mrs. Trimmer represents more nearly than Mrs.
Barbauld the religious emotionalism pervading Sunday-school
libraries,--in which she was deeply interested,--the work of both these
ladies exemplifies the transitional stage to that Labor-in-Play school
of writing which was to invade the American nursery in the next century
when Parley and Abbott throve upon the proceeds of the educational
narrative.
Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" and Thomas Day's "Sanford and Merton" occupied
the place in the estimation of boys that the doings of Mrs. Barbauld's
and Mrs. Trimmer's works held in the opinion of the younger members of
the nursery. Edition followed upon edition of the adventures of the
famous island hero. In Philadelphia, in seventeen hundred and
ninety-three, William Young issued what purported to be the sixth
edition. In New York many thousands of copies were sold, and in eighteen
hundred and twenty-four we find a Spanish translation attesting its
widespread favor. In seventeen hundred and ninety-four, Isaiah Thomas
placed the surprising adventures of the mariner as on the "Coast of
America, lying near the mouth of the great river Oroonoque."
Parents also thought very highly of Thomas Day's "Children's Miscellany"
and "Sanford and Merton." To read this last book is to believe it to be
possibly in the style that Dr. Samuel Johnson had in mind when he
remarked to Mrs. Piozzi that "the parents buy the books but the children
never read them." Yet the testimony of publishers of the past is that
"Sanford and Merton" had a large and continuous sale for many years.
"'Sanford and Merton,'" writes Mr. Julian Hawthorne, "ran 'Robinson
Crusoe' harder than any other work of the eighteenth century
particularly written for children." "The work," he adds, "is quaint and
interesting rather to the historian than to the general, especially the
child, reader. Children would hardly appreciate so amazingly ancient a
form of conversation as that which resulted from Tommy [the bad boy of
the story] losing a ball and ordering a ragged boy to pick it up:
"'Bring my ball directly!'
"'I don't choose it,' said the boy.
"'Sirrah,' cried Tommy, 'if I come to you I will make you choose it.'
"'Perhaps not, my pretty master,' said the boy.
"'You little rascal,' said Tommy, who now began to be very angry, 'if I
come over the hedge I will thrash you within an inch of your life.'"
The gist of Tommy's threat has often been couched in modern language by
grandsons of the boys from whom the Socratic Mr. Day wrote to expose the
evils of too luxurious an education. His method of compilation of facts
to be taught may best be given in the words of his Preface: "All who
have been conversant in the education of very young children, have
complained of the total want of proper books to be put in their hands,
while they are taught the elements of reading.... The least exceptional
passages of books that I could find for the purpose were 'Plutarch's
Lives' and Xenophon's 'History of the Institution of Cyrus,' in English
translation; with some part of 'Robinson Crusoe,' and a few passages
from Mr. Brooke's 'Fool of Quality.' ... I therefore resolved ... not
only to collect all such stories as I thought adapted to the faculties
of children, but to connect these by continued narration.... As to
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/17857