Читать книгу Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - Rosalie Vrylina Halsey - Страница 9

“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-* “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-† 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-* 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-† 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.”

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.

6-* Records of Mass. Bay, vol. i, p. 37 h.

6-† Ibid., vol. i, p. 37 e.

6-‡ Ford, The New England Primer, p. 83.

6-§ Records of Mass. Bay, vol. i, p. 328.

7-* Ford, The New England Primer, p. 92.

7-† Ibid.

11-* In the possession of the British Museum.

14-* Ford, The New England Primer, p. 38.

14-† Ibid.

19-* Thomas, History of Printing in America, vol. iii, p. 145.

19-† Ibid., vol. i, p. 294.

26-* Sears, American Literature, p. 86.

26-† 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.