Authorship prevails in nurseries--at least in some nurseries. In many it
is probably a fitful game, and since the days of the Brontes there has
not been a large family without its magazine. The weak point of all this
literature is its commonplace. The child's effort is to write something
as much like as possible to the tedious books that are read to him; he is
apt to be fluent and foolish. If a child simple enough to imitate were
also simple enough not to imitate he might write nursery magazines that
would not bore us.
As it is, there is sometimes nothing but the fresh and courageous
spelling to make his stories go. "He," however, is hardly the pronoun.
The girls are the more active authors, and the more prosaic. What they
would write had they never read things written for them by the dull, it
is not possible to know. What they do write is this--to take a passage:
"Poor Mrs. Bald (that was her name) thought she would never get to the
wood where her aunt lived, she got down and pulled the donky on by the
bridal . . . Alas! her troubles were not over yet, the donky would not go
where she wanted it, instead of turning down Rose Lane it went down
another, which although Mrs. Bald did not know it led to a very deep and
dangerous pond. The donky ran into the pond and Mrs. Bald was dround."
To give a prosperous look to the magazine containing the serial story
just quoted, a few pages of mixed advertisements are laboriously written
out: "The Imatation of Christ is the best book in all the world." "Read
Thompson's poetry and you are in a world of delight." "Barrat's ginger
beer is the only ginger beer to drink." "The place for a ice." Under
the indefinite heading "A Article," readers are told "that they are
liable to read the paper for nothing."
A still younger hand contributes a short story in which the hero returns
to his home after a report of his death had been believed by his wife and
family. The last sentence is worth quoting: "We will now," says the
author, "leave Mrs. White and her two children to enjoy the sudden
appearance of Mr. White."
Here is an editorial announcement: "Ladies and gentlemen, every week at
the end of the paper there will be a little article on the habits of the
paper."
On the whole, authorship does not seem to foster the quality of
imagination. Convention, during certain early years, may be a very
strong motive--not so much with children brought up strictly within its
limits, perhaps, as with those who have had an exceptional freedom.
Against this, as a kind of childish bohemianism, there is, in one phase
of childhood, a strong reaction. To one child, brought up
internationally, and with somewhat too much liberty amongst peasant play-
mates and their games, in many dialects, eagerness to become like "other
people," and even like the other people of quite inferior fiction, grew
to be almost a passion. The desire was in time out-grown, but it cost
the girl some years of her simplicity. The style is not always the
child.