Forgotten Books of the American Nursery A History of the Development of the American Story-Book

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Title: Forgotten Books of the American Nursery

A History of the Development of the American Story-Book

Author: Rosalie V. Halsey

Release Date: February 25, 2006 [eBook #17857]

Language: English

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Forgotten Books of the American Nursery

The Devil and the Disobedient Child

FORGOTTEN BOOKS

OF

THE AMERICAN NURSERY

A History of the Development of

the American Story-Book

BY

ROSALIE V. HALSEY

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

ILLUSTRATIONS

CHAPTER I

Introductory

Forgotten Books of the American Nursery

CHAPTER I

Introductory

Ashelf 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 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-†

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-‡

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-§

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-*

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-†

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-*

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