Forgotten Books of the American Nursery Part 15

Issued at the Christmas and New Year seasons, these children's Annuals formed the conventional gift-book for many years, and publishers spared no effort to make them attractive. Indeed, their red morocco, silk, or embossed scarlet cloth bindings form a cheerful contrast to the dreary array of black and drab cloth covering the fiction of both old and young. Better ill.u.s.trations were also introduced than the ugly cuts "adorning" the other books for juvenile readers. Oliver Pelton, Joseph Andrews (who ranked well as an engraver), Elisha Gallaudet, Joseph G.

Kellogg, Joseph I. Pease, and Thomas Illman were among the workers in line-engraving whose early work served to ill.u.s.trate, often delightfully, these popular collections of children's stories.

Among the "Annualettes," "Keepsakes," "Evening Hours," and "Infant's Hours" published at intervals after eighteen hundred and twenty-five the "Token" stands preeminent. Edited by Samuel G. Goodrich (Peter Parley) between the years eighteen hundred and twenty-eight and eighteen hundred and forty-two, its contents and ill.u.s.trations were almost entirely American. Edward Everett, Bishop Doane, A.H. Everett, John Quincy Adams, Longfellow, Hawthorne, Miss Sedgwick, Eliza Leslie, Dr. Holmes, Horace Greeley, James T. Fields, and Gulian Verplanck--all were called upon to make the "Token" an annual treat to children. Of the many stories written for it, only Hawthorne's "Twice Told Tales" survive; but the long list of contributors of mark in American literature cannot be surpa.s.sed to-day by any child's book by contemporary authors. The contents, although written in the style of eighty years ago, are undoubtedly good from a literary standpoint, however out of date their story-telling qualities may be. And, moreover, the "Token" a.s.suredly gave pleasure to the public for which its yearly publication was made.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Children of the Cottage_]

By eighteen hundred and thirty-five the "Annual" was in full swing as a popular publication. Then an international book was issued, "The American Juvenile Keepsake," edited by Mrs. Hofland, the well-known writer of English stories for children. Mrs. Hofland cried up her wares in a manner quite different from that of the earlier literary ladies.

"My table of contents," she wrote in her introduction, "exhibits a list of names not exceeded in reputation by any preceding Juvenile Annual; for, although got up with a celerity almost distressing in the hurry it imposed, such has been the kindness of my literary friends, that they have left me little more to wish for." Among the English contributors were Miss Mitford, Miss Jean Roberts, Miss Browne, and Mrs. Hall, the ablest writers for English children, and already familiar to American households.

Mrs. Hofland, herself, wrote one of its stories, noteworthy as an early attempt of an English author to write for an American juvenile public.

She found her theme in the movement of emigration strong in England just then among the laboring people. No amount of discouragement and bitter criticism of the United States by the British press was sufficient to stem appreciably the tide of laborers that flowed towards the country whence came information of better wages and more work. Mrs. Hofland, although writing for little Americans, could not wholly resist the customary fling at American life and society. She acknowledged, however, that long residence altered first impressions and brought out the kernel of American character, whose husk only was visible to sojourners. She deplored the fact that "gay English girls used only to the polished society of London were likely to return with the impression that the men were rude and women frivolous." This impression the author was inclined to believe unjust, yet deemed it wise, because of the incredulous (perhaps even in America!), to back her own opinion by a note saying that this view was also shared by a valued friend who had lived fourteen years in Raleigh, South Carolina.

Having thus done justice, in her own eyes, to conditions in the new country, Mrs. Hofland, launched the laborer's family upon the sea, and followed their travels from New York to Lexington, Kentucky, at that time a land unknown to the average American child beyond some hazy a.s.sociation with the name of Daniel Boone. It was thus comparatively safe ground on which to place the struggles of the immigrants, who prospered because of their English thrift and were an example to the former residents. Of course the son grew up to prove a blessing to the community, and eventually, like the heroes in old Isaiah Thomas's adaptations of Newbery's good boys, was chosen Congressman.

There is another point of interest in connection with this English author's tale. Whether consciously or not, it is a very good imitation of Peter Parley's method of travelling with his characters in various lands or over new country. It is, perhaps, the first instance in the history of children's literature of an American story-writer influencing the English writer of juvenile fiction. And it was not the only time. So popular and profitable did Goodrich's style of story become that somewhat later the frequent attempts to exploit anonymously and profitably his pseudonymn in England as well as in America were loudly lamented by the originator of the "Tales of Peter Parley." It is, moreover, suggestive of the gradual change in the relations between the two countries that anything written in America was thought worth imitating. America, indeed, was beginning to supply incidents around which to weave stories for British children and tales altogether made at home for her own little readers.

In the same volume Mrs. S.C. Hall also boldly attempted to place her heroine in American surroundings. Philadelphia was the scene chosen for her tale; but, having flattered her readers by this concession to their sympathies and interest, the author was still sufficiently insular to doubt the existence of a competent local physician in this the earliest medical centre in the United States. An English family had come to make their home in the city, where the mother's illness necessitated the attendance of a French doctor to make a correct diagnosis of her case.

An operation was advised, which the mother, Mrs. Allen, hesitated to undergo in an unknown land. Emily, the fourteen-year-old daughter, urged her not to delay, as she felt quite competent to be in attendance, having had "five teeth drawn without screaming; nursed a brother through the whooping-cough and a sister through the measles."

"Ma foi, Mademoiselle," said the French doctor, "you are very heroic; why, let me see, you talk of being present at an operation, which I would not hardly suffer my junior pupils to attend."

"Put," said the heroic damsel, "my resolution, sir, to any test you please; draw one, two, three teeth, I will not flinch." And this courage the writer thought could not be surpa.s.sed in a London child. It is needless to say that Emily's fort.i.tude was sufficient to endure the sight of her mother's suffering, and to nurse her to complete recovery.

Evidently residence in America had not yet sapped the young girl's moral strength, or reduced her to the frivolous creature an American woman was reputed in England to be.

Among the home contributors to "The American Juvenile Keepsake" were William L. Stone, who wrote a prosy article about animals; and Mrs.

Embury, called the Mitford of America (because of her stories of village life), who furnished a religious tale to controvert the infidel doctrines considered at the time subtly undermining to childish faith, with probable reference to the Unitarian movement then gaining many adherents. Mrs. Embury's stories were so generally gloomy, being strongly tinged with the melancholy religious views of certain church denominations, that one would suppose them to have been eminently successful in turning children away from the faith she sought to encourage. For this "Keepsake" the same lady let her poetical fancy take flight in "The Remembrance of Youth is a Sigh," a somewhat lugubrious and pessimistic subject for a child's Christmas Annual. Occasionally a more cheerful mood possessed "Ianthe," as she chose to call herself, and then we have some of the earliest descriptions of country life in literature for American children. There is one especially charming picture of a walk in New England woods upon a crisp October day, when the children merrily hunt for chestnuts among the dry brown leaves, and the squirrels play above their heads in the many colored boughs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Henrietta_]

Dr. Holmes has somewhere remarked upon the total lack of American nature descriptions in the literature of his boyhood. No birds familiar to him were ever mentioned; nor were the flowers such as a New England child could ever gather. Only English larks and linnets, cowslips and hawthorn, were to be found in the toy-books and little histories read to him. "Everything was British: even the robin, a domestic bird," wrote the doctor, "instead of a great fidgety, jerky, whooping thrush." But when Peter Parley, Jacob Abbott, Lydia Maria Child, Mrs. Embury, and Eliza Leslie began to write short stories, the Annuals and periodicals abounded in American scenes and local color.

There was also another great incentive for writers to work for children.

This was the demand made for stories from the American Sunday School Union, whose influence upon the character of juvenile literature was a force bearing upon the various writers, and whose growth was coincident with the development of the children's periodical literature.

The American Sunday School Union, an outgrowth of the several religious publication societies, in eighteen hundred and twenty-four began to do more extensive work, and therefore formed a committee to judge and p.r.o.nounce upon all ma.n.u.scripts, which American writers were asked to submit.

The sessions of the Sunday-schools were no longer held for illiterate children only. The younger members of each parish or church were found upon its benches each Sunday morning or afternoon. To promote and to impress the religious teaching in these schools, rewards were offered for well-prepared lessons and regular attendance. Also the scholars were encouraged to use the Sunday-school library. For these different purposes many books were needed, but naturally only those stamped with the approval of the clergyman in charge were circulated.

The board of publication appointed by the American Sunday School Union--composed chiefly of clergymen of certain denominations--pa.s.sed upon the merits of the many ma.n.u.scripts sent in by piously inclined persons, and edited such of them as proved acceptable. The marginal notes on the pages of the first edition of an old Sunday-school favorite bear witness to the painstaking care of the editors that the leaflets, tracts, and stories poured in from all parts of the country should "s.h.i.+ne by reason of the truth contained," and "avoid the least appearance, the most indirect insinuations, of anything which can militate against the strictest ideas of propriety." The tales had also to keep absolutely within the bounds of religion. Many were the stories found lacking in direct religious teaching, or returned because religion was not vitally connected with the plot, to be rewritten or sent elsewhere for publication.

The hundreds of stories turned out in what soon became a mechanical fas.h.i.+on were of two patterns: the one of the good child, a constant attendant upon Sabbath School and Divine Wors.h.i.+p, but who died young after converting parent or worldly friend during a painful illness; the other of the unregenerate youth, who turned away from the G.o.dly admonition of mother and clergyman, refused to attend Sunday-school, and consequently fell into evil ways leading to the thief's or drunkard's grave. Often a sick mother was introduced to claim emotional attention, or to use as a lay figure upon which to drape Scripture texts as fearful warnings to the black sheep of the family. Indeed, the little reader no sooner began to enjoy the tale of some sweet and gentle girl, or to delight in the mischievous boy, than he was called upon to reflect that early piety portended an early death, and youthful pranks led to a miserable old age. Neither prospect offered much encouragement to hope for a happy life, and from conversations with those brought up on this form of religious culture, it is certain that if a child escaped without becoming morbid and neurotic, there were dark and secret resolves to risk the unpleasant future in favor of a happy present.

The stories, too, presented a somewhat paradoxical familiarity with the ways of a mysterious Providence. This was exceedingly perplexing to the thoughtful child, whose queries as to justice were too often hushed by parent or teacher. In real life, every child expected, even if he did not receive, a tangible reward for doing the right thing; but Providence, according to these authors, immediately caused a good child to become ill unto death. It is not a matter for surprise that the healthy-minded, vigorous child often turned in disgust from the Sunday-school library to search for Cooper's tales of adventure on his father's book-shelves.

The correct and approved child's story, even if not issued under religious auspices, was thoroughly saturated with religion. Whatever may have been the practice of parents in regard to their own reading, they wished that of the nursery to show not only an educational and moral, but a religious tendency. The books for American children therefore divided themselves into three cla.s.ses: the denominational story, to set forth the doctrines of one church; the educational tale; and the moral narrative of American life.

The denominational stories produced by the several Sunday-school societies were, as has been said, only a kind of scaffolding upon which to build the teachings of the various churches. But their sale was enormous, and a factor to be reckoned with because of their influence upon the educational and moral tales of their period. By eighteen hundred and twenty-seven, fifty-thousand books and tracts had been sent out by one Sunday-school society alone.[204-A] There are few things more remarkable in the history of juvenile literature than the growth of the business of the American Sunday School Union. By eighteen hundred and twenty-eight it had issued over seven hundred of these religious trifles, varying from a sixteen-page duodecimo to a small octavo volume; and most of these appear to have been written by Americans trying their inexperienced pens upon a form of literature not then recognized as difficult. The influence of such a flood of tiny books could hardly have been other than morbid, although occasionally there floated down the stream duodecimos which were grasped by little readers with eagerness.

Such volumes, one reader of bygone Sunday-school books tells us, glimmered from the dark depths of death and prison scenes, and were pa.s.sed along with whispered recommendation until their well-worn covers attracted the eye of the teacher, and were quickly found to be missing from library shelves. Others were commended in their stead, such as described the city boy showing the country cousin the town sights, with most edifying conversation as to their history; or, again, amus.e.m.e.nt of a light and alluring character was presumably to be found in the story of a little maid who sat upon a footstool at her mother's knee, and while she hemmed the four sides of a handkerchief, listened to the account of missionary enterprises in the dark corners of the earth.

To us of to-day the small ill.u.s.trations are perhaps the most interesting feature, preserving as they do children's occupations and costumes. In one book we see quaintly frocked and pantaletted girls and much b.u.t.toned boys in Sunday-school. In another, ent.i.tled "Election Day," are pictured two little lads watching, from the square in front of Independence Hall, the handing in of votes for the President through a window of the famous building--a picture that emphasizes the change in methods of casting the ballot since eighteen hundred and twenty-eight.

That engravers were not always successful when called upon to embellish the pages of the Sunday-school books, many of them easily prove. That the designers of woodcuts were sometimes lacking in imagination when obliged to depict Bible verses can have no better example than the favorite vignette on t.i.tle-pages portraying "My soul doth magnify the Lord" as a man with a magnifying gla.s.s held over a blank s.p.a.ce. Perhaps equal in lack of imagination was the often repeated frontispiece of "Mercy streaming from the Cross," ill.u.s.trated by a large cross with an effulgent rain beating upon the luxuriant tresses of a languis.h.i.+ng lady.

There were many pictures but little art in the old-fas.h.i.+oned Sunday-school library books.

It was in Philadelphia that one of the first, if not the first children's library was incorporated in 1827 as the Apprentices' Library.

Eleven years later this library contained more than two thousand books, and had seven hundred children as patrons. The catalogue of that year is indicative of the prevalence of the Sunday-school book. "Adventures of Lot" precedes the "Affectionate Daughter-in-Law," which is followed by "Anecdotes of Christian Missions" and "An Alarm to Unconverted Sinners."

Turning the yellowed pages, we find "Hannah Swanton, the Casco Captive,"

histories of Bible worthies, the "Infidel Cla.s.s," "Little Deceiver Reclaimed," "Letters to Little Children," "Juvenile Piety," and "Julianna Oakley." The bookish child of this decade could not escape from the "Reformed Family" and the consumptive little Christian, except by taking refuge in the parents' novels, collections of the British poets and essayists, and the constantly increasing American writings for adults. Perhaps in this way the Sunday-school books may be counted among that long list of such things as are commonly called blessings in disguise.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _A Child and her Doll_]

Aside from the strictly religious tale, the contents of the now considerable output of Harper and Brothers, Mahlon Day, Samuel Wood and Sons of New York; Cottons and Barnard, Lincoln and Edmunds, Lilly, Wait and Company, Munroe and Francis of Boston; Matthew Carey, Conrad and Parsons, Morgan and Sons, and Thomas T. Ashe of Philadelphia--to mention but a few of the publishers of juvenile novelties--are convincing proof that booksellers catered to the demand for stories with a strong religious bias. The "New York Weekly," indeed, called attention to Day's books as "maintaining an unbroken tendency to virtue and piety."

When not impossibly pious, these children of anonymous fiction were either insufferable prigs with a steel moral code, or so ill-bred as to be equally impossible and unnatural. The favorite plan of their creators was to follow Miss Edgeworth's device of contrasting the good and naughty infant. The children, too, were often cousins: one, for example, was the son of a gentleman who in his choice of a wife was influenced by strict religious principles; the other boy inherited his disposition from his mother, a lady of bland manners and fine external appearance, but who failed to establish in her offspring "correct principles of virtue, religion, and morality." The author paused at this point in the narrative to discuss the frailties of the lady, before resuming its slender thread. Who to-day could wade through with children the good-goody books of that generation?

Happily, many of the writers for little ones chose to be unknown, for it would be ungenerous to disparage by name these ladies who considered their productions edifying, and in their ingenuousness never dreamed that their stories were devoid of every quality that makes a child's book of value to the child. They were literally unconscious that their tales lacked that simplicity and directness in style, and they themselves that knowledge of human nature, absolutely necessary to construct a pleasing and profitable story. The watchwords of these painstaking ladies were "religion, virtue, and morality," and heedless of everything else, they found oblivion in most cases before they gained recognition from the public they longed to influence.

The decade following eighteen hundred and thirty brought prominently to the foreground six American authors among the many who occasioned brief notice. Of these writers two were men and four were women. Jacob Abbott and Samuel G. Goodrich wrote the educational tales, Abbott largely for the nursery, while Goodrich devoted his attention mainly to books for the little lads at school. The four women, Mrs. Sarah J. Hale, Miss Eliza Leslie, Miss Catharine Sedgwick, and Mrs. Lydia H. Sigourney, wrote mainly for girls, and took American life as their subject. Mrs.

Hale wrote much for adults, but when editor of the "Juvenile Miscellany," she made various contributions to it. Yet to-day we know her only by one of her "Poems for Children," published in Boston in eighteen hundred and thirty--"Mary had a Little Lamb."

Mary's lamb has travelled much farther than to school, and has even reached that point when its authors.h.i.+p has been disputed. Quite recently in the "Century Magazine" Mrs. Hale's claim to its composition has been set forth at some length by Mr. Richard W. Hale, who shows clearly her desire when more than ninety years of age to be recognized as the originator of these verses, In fact, "shortly before her death," wrote Mr. Hale, "she directed her son to write emphatically that every poem in her book of eighteen hundred and thirty was of her own composition."

Although rarely seen in print, "Mary had a Little Lamb" has outlived all other nursery rhymes of its day; perhaps because it had most truly the quality, unusual at the time, of being told directly and simply--a quality, indeed, that appeals to every generation.

Miss Leslie, like Mrs. Hale, did much editing, beginning on adult gift-books and collections of housewife's receipts, and then giving most of her attention to juvenile literature. As editor Miss Leslie did good work on the "Violet" and the "Pearl," both gift-books for children. She also abridged, edited, and rewrote "The Wonderful Traveller," and the adventures of Munchausen, Gulliver, and Sindbad, heroes often disregarded by this period of lack of imagination and over-supply of educational theories. Also, as a writer of stories for little girls and school-maidens, Eliza Leslie met with warm approval on both sides of the Atlantic.

Undoubtedly the success of Eliza Leslie's "American Girls' Book,"

modelled after the English "Boy's Own Book," and published in 1831, added to the popularity attained by her earlier work, although of this she was but the compiler.

The "American Girls' Book" was intended for little girls, and by dialogue, the prevailing mode of conveying instruction or amus.e.m.e.nt, numerous games and plays were described. Already many of the pastimes have gone out of fas.h.i.+on. "Lady Queen Anne" and "Robin's Alive," "a dangerous game with a lighted stick," are altogether unknown; "Track the Rabbit" has changed its name to "Fox and Geese;" "Hot b.u.t.tered Beans"

has found a subst.i.tute in "Hunt the Thimble;" and "Stir the Mush" has given place to "Going to Jerusalem."

But Miss Leslie did more than preserve for us these old-fas.h.i.+oned games. She has left sketches of children's ways and nature in her various stories for little people. She shared, of course, in the habit of moralizing characteristic of her day, but her children are childish, and her heroines are full of the whims, and have truly the pleasures and natural emotions, of real children.

Miss Leslie began her work for children in eighteen hundred and twenty-seven, when "Atlantic Stories" were published, and as her sketches of child-life appeared one after another, her pen grew more sure in its delineation of characters and her talent was speedily recognized. Even now "Birthday Stories" are worth reading and treasuring because of the pictures of family life eighty years ago. The "Souvenir,"

for example, is a Christmas tale of old Philadelphia; the "Cadet's Sister" sketches life at West Point, where the author's brother had been a student; while the "Launch of the Frigate" and "Anthony and Clara"

tell of customs and amus.e.m.e.nts quite pa.s.sed away. The charming description of children shopping for their simple Christmas gifts, the narrative of the boys who paid a poor lad in a bookstore to ornament their "writing-pieces" for more "respectable presents" to parents, the quiet celebration of the day itself, can ill be spared from the history of child life and diversions in America. It is well to be reminded, in these days of complex and expensive amus.e.m.e.nts, of some of the saner and simpler pleasures enjoyed by children in Miss Leslie's lifetime.

All of this writer's books, moreover, have some real interest, whether it be "Althea Vernon," with the description of summer life and fas.h.i.+ons at Far Rockaway (New York's Manhattan Beach of 1830), or "Henrietta Harrison," with its sarcastic reference to the fas.h.i.+onable school where the pupils could sing French songs and Italian operas, but could not be sure of the notes of "Hail Columbia." Or again, the account is worth reading of the heroine's trip to New York from Philadelphia. "Simply habited in a plaid silk frock and Thibet shawl," little Henrietta starts, under her uncle's protection, at five o'clock in the morning to take the boat for Bordentown, New Jersey. There she has her first experience of a railway train, and looks out of the window "at all the velocity of the train will allow her to see." At Heightstown small children meet the train with fruit and cakes to sell to hungry travellers. And finally comes the wonderful voyage from Amboy to the Battery in New York, which is not reached until night has fallen.

This is the simple explanation as to why Eliza Leslie's books met with so generous a reception: they were full of the incidents which children love, and unusually free from the affectations of the pious fict.i.tious heroine.

The stories of Miss Catharine Sedgwick also received most favorable criticism, and in point of style were certainly better than Miss Leslie's. Her reputation as a literary woman was more than national, and "Redwood," one of her best novels, was attributed in France to Fenimore Cooper, when it appeared anonymously in eighteen hundred and twenty-four. Miss Sedgwick's novels, however, pa.s.s out of nursery comprehension in the first chapters, although these were full of a healthy New England atmosphere, with coasting parties and picnics, Indians and gypsies, nowhere else better described. The same tone pervades her contributions to the "Juvenile Miscellany," the "Token,"

and the "Youth's Keepsake," together with her best-known children's books, "Stories for Children," "A Well Spent Hour," and "A Love Token for Children."

In contrast to Mrs. Sherwood's still popular "Fairchild Family,"

Catharine Sedgwick's stories breathe a sunny, invigorating atmosphere, abounding in local incidents, and vigorous in delineation of types then plentiful in New England. "She has fallen," wrote one admirer, most truthfully, in the "North American Review" of 1827,--"she has fallen upon the view, from which the treasures of our future literature are to be wrought. A literature to have real freshness must be moulded by the influences of the society where it had its origin. Letters thrive, when they are at home in the soil. Miss Sedgwick's imaginations have such vigor and bloom because they are not exotics." Another reviewer, aroused by English criticism of the social life in America, and full of the much vaunted theory that "all men are equal," rejoiced in the author's att.i.tude towards the so-called "help" in New England families in contrast to Miss More's portrayal of the English child's condescension towards inferiors, which he thought unsuitable to set before the children in America.

All Miss Sedgwick's stories were the product of her own keen intelligence and observation, and not written in imitation of Miss More, Miss Edgeworth, or Mrs. Sherwood, as were the anonymous tales of "Little Lucy; or, the Pleasant Day," or "Little Helen; a Day in the Life of a Naughty Girl." They preached, indeed, at length, but the preaching could be skipped by interested readers, and unlike the work of many contemporaries, there was always a thread to take up.