"What we make children love and desire is more important than what we
make them learn."
When I was a little girl (oh, six most charming words!)--it is not
necessary to name the year, but it was so long ago that children were
still reminded that they should be seen and not heard, and also that
they could eat what was set before them or go without (two maxims
that suggest a hoary antiquity of time not easily measured by the
senses),--when I was a little girl, I had the great good fortune to
live in a country village.
I believe I always had a taste for books; but I will pass over that
early period when I manifested it by carrying them to my mouth, and
endeavored to assimilate their contents by the cramming process;
and also that later stage, which heralded the dawn of the critical
faculty, perhaps, when I tore them in bits and held up the tattered
fragments with shouts of derisive laughter. Unlike the critic, no more
were given me to mar; but, like the critic, I had marred a good many
ere my vandal hand was stayed.
As soon as I could read, I had free access to an excellent medical
library, the gloom of which was brightened by a few shelves of
theological works, bequeathed to the family by some orthodox ancestor,
and tempered by a volume or two of Blackstone; but outside of these,
which were emphatically not the stuff my dreams were made of, I can
only remember a certain little walnut bookcase hanging on the wall of
the family sitting-room.
It had but three shelves, yet all the mysteries of love and life and
death were in the score of well-worn volumes that stood there side
by side; and we turned to them, year after year, with undiminished
interest. The number never seemed small, the stories never grew tame:
when we came to the end of the third shelf, we simply went back and
began again,--a process all too little known to latter-day children.
I can see them yet, those rows of shabby and incongruous volumes, the
contents of which were transferred to our hungry little brains. Some
of them are close at hand now, and I love their ragged corners, their
dog's-eared pages that show the pressure of childish thumbs, and their
dear old backs, broken in my service.
There was a red-covered "Book of Snobs;" "Vanity Fair" with no cover
at all; "Scottish Chiefs" in crimson; a brown copy of George Sand's
"Teverino;" and next it a green Bailey's "Festus," which I only
attacked when mentally rabid, and a little of which went a
surprisingly long way; and then a maroon "David Copperfield," whose
pages were limp with my kisses. (To write a book that a child would
kiss! Oh, dear reward! oh, sweet, sweet fame!)
In one corner--spare me your smiles--was a fat autobiography of
P.T. Barnum, given me by a grateful farmer for saving the life of
a valuable Jersey calf just as she was on the point of strangling
herself. This book so inflamed a naturally ardent imagination, that
I was with difficulty dissuaded from entering the arena as a circus
manager. Considerations of age or sex had no weight with me, and lack
of capital eventually proved the deterrent force. On the shelf above
were "Kenilworth," "The Lady of the Lake," and half of "Rob Roy." I
have always hesitated to read the other half, for fear that it should
not end precisely as I made it end when I was forced, by necessity, to
supplement Sir Walter Scott. Then there was "Gulliver's Travels," and
if any of the stories seemed difficult to believe, I had only to turn
to the maps of Lilliput and Brobdingnag, with the degrees of latitude
and longitude duly marked, which always convinced me that everything
was fair and aboveboard. Of course, there was a great green and gold
Shakespeare, not a properly expurgated edition for female seminaries,
either, nor even prose tales from Shakespeare adapted to young
readers, but the real thing. We expurgated as we read, child fashion,
taking into our sleek little heads all that we could comprehend
or apprehend, and unconsciously passing over what might have been
hurtful, perhaps, at a later period. I suppose we failed to get a very
close conception of Shakespeare's colossal genius, but we did get a
tremendous and lasting impression of force and power, life and truth.
When we declaimed certain scenes in an upper chamber with sloping
walls and dormer windows, a bed for a throne, a cotton umbrella for a
sceptre, our creations were harmless enough. If I remember rightly,
our nine-year-old Lady Macbeths and Iagos, Falstaffs and Cleopatras,
after they had been dipped in the divine alembic of childish
innocence, came out so respectable that they would not have brought
the historic "blush to the cheek of youth."
On the shelf above the Shakespeare were a few things presumably better
suited to childish tastes,--Hawthorne's "Wonder Book," Kingsley's
"Water Babies," Miss Edgeworth's "Rosamond," and the "Arabian Nights."
There were also two little tales given us by a wandering revivalist,
who was on a starring tour through the New England villages,
"How Gussie Grew in Grace," and "Little Harriet's Work for the
Heathen,"--melodramatic histories of spiritually perfect and
physically feeble children who blessed the world for a season, but
died young, enlivened by a few pages devoted to completely vicious and
adorable ones who lived to curse the world to a good old age.
Last of all, brought out only on state occasions, was a most seductive
edition of that nursery Gaboriau, "Who Killed Cock Robin?" with
colored illustrations in which the heads of the birds were made to
move oracularly, by means of cunningly arranged strips pulled from
the bottom of the page. This was a relic of infancy, our first
introduction to the literature of plot, counterplot, intrigue, and
crime, and the mystery of the murder was very real to us. This book,
still in existence, with all the birds headless from over-exertion,
is always inextricably associated in my mind with childish woes, as
a desire on my part to make the birds wag their heads was always
contemporaneous, to a second, with a like desire on my sister's part;
and on those rare days when the precious volume was taken down, one of
us always donned the penitential nightgown early in the afternoon and
supped frugally in bed, while the other feasted gloriously at the
family board, never quite happy in her virtue, however, since it
separated her from beloved vice in disgrace. That paltry tattered
volume, when it confronts me from its safe nook in a bureau drawer,
makes my heart beat faster and sets me dreaming! Pray tell me if any
book read in your later and wiser years ever brings to your mind such
vivid memories, to your lips so lingering a smile, to your eye so
ready a tear? True enough, "we could never have loved the earth so
well if we had had no childhood in it.... What novelty is worth that
sweet monotony where everything is known and loved because it is
known?"
This autobiographical babble is excusable for one reason only.
It is in remembering what books greatly moved us in earlier days; what
books wakened strong and healthy desires, enlarged the horizon of our
understanding, and inspired us to generous action, that we get
some clue to the books with which to surround our children; and a
reminiscence of this kind becomes a sort of psychological observation.
The moment we realize clearly that the books we read in childhood and
youth make a profound impression that can never be repeated later
(save in some rare crisis of heart and soul, where a printed page
marks an epoch in one's mental or spiritual life), then we become
reinforced in our opinion that it makes a deal of difference what
children read and how they read it.
Agnes Repplier says: "It is part of the irony of life that our
discriminating taste for books should be built up on the ashes of an
extinct enjoyment."
A book is such a fact to children, its people are so alive and so
heartily loved and hated, its scenes so absolutely real! Prone on the
hearth-rug before the fire, or curled in the window seat, they forget
everything but the story. The shadows deepen, until they can read
no longer; but they do not much care, for the window looks into an
enchanted region peopled with brilliant fancies. The old garden
is sometimes the Forest of Arden, sometimes the Land of Lilliput,
sometimes the Border. The gray rock on the river bank is now the cave
of Monte Cristo, and now a castle defended by scores of armed knights
who peep one by one from the alder-bushes, while Fair Ellen and the
lovely Undine float together on the quiet stream.
For forming a truly admirable literary taste, I cannot indeed say much
in favor of my own motley collection of books just mentioned, for I
was simply tumbled in among them and left to browse, in accordance
with Charles Lamb's whimsical plan for Bridget Elia. More might have
been added, and some taken away; but they had in them a world of
instruction and illumination which children miss who read too
exclusively those books written with rigid determination down to their
level, neglecting certain old classics for which we fondly believe
there are no substitutes. You cannot always persuade the children of
this generation to attack "Robinson Crusoe," and if they do they
are too sophisticated to thrill properly when they come to Friday's
footsteps in the sand. Think of it, my contemporaries: think of
substituting for that intense moment some of the modern "tuppenny"
climaxes!
I do not wish to drift into a cheap cynicism, and apotheosize the old
days at the expense of the new. We are often inclined to paint the
Past with a halo round its head which it never wore when it was the
Present. We can reproduce neither the children nor the conditions of
fifty or even twenty-five years ago. To-day's children must be fitted
for to-day's tasks, educated to answer to-day's questions, equipped
to solve to-day's problems; but are we helping them to do this in
absolutely the best way? At all events, it is difficult to join in the
paean of gratitude for the tons of children's books that are turned
out yearly by parental publishers. If the children of the past did not
have quite enough deference paid to their individuality, their likes
and dislikes, and if their needs were too often left until the needs
of everybody else had been considered,--on the other hand, they were
not surfeited with well-meant but ill-directed attentions. If the hay
was thrown so high in the rack that they could not pluck a single
straw without stretching up for it, why, the hay was generally worth
stretching for, and was, perhaps, quite as healthful as the sweet and
easily digested nursery porridge which some people adopt as exclusive
diet for their darlings nowadays.
Let us look a little at some of the famous children's books of a past
generation, and see what was their general style and purpose. Take,
for instance, those of Mrs. Barbauld, who may be included in that
group of men and women who completely altered the style of teaching
and writing for children--Rousseau, de Genlis, the Edgeworths,
Jacotot, Froebel, and Diesterweg, all great teachers,--didactic,
deadly-dull Mrs. Barbauld, who composed, as one of her biographers
tells us, "a considerable number of miscellaneous pieces for the
instruction and amusement of young persons, especially females."
(Girls were always "young females" in those days; children were
"infants," and stories were "tales.") Who can ever forget those "Early
Lessons," written for her adopted son Charles, who appeared in the
page sometimes in a state of hopeless ignorance and imbecility, and
sometimes clad in the wisdom of the ancients? The use of the offensive
phrase "excessively pretty," as applied to a lace tidy by a very tiny
female named Lucy, brings down upon her sinful head eleven pages
of such moralizing as would only be delivered by a modern mamma on
hearing a confession of robbery or murder.
All this does strike us as insufferably didactic, yet we cannot
approve the virulence with which Southey and Charles Lamb attacked
good Mrs. Barbauld in her old age; for her purpose was eminently
earnest, her views of education healthy and sensible for the time in
which she lived, her style polished and admirably quiet, her love
for young people indubitably sincere and profound, and her character
worthy of all respect and admiration in its dignity, womanliness, and
strength. Nevertheless, Charles Lamb exclaims in a whimsical burst of
spleen: "'Goody Two Shoes' is out of print, while Mrs. Barbauld's and
Mrs. Trimmer's nonsense lies in piles around. Hang them--the cursed
reasoning crew, those blights and blasts of all that is human in man
and child."
Miss Edgeworth has what seems to us, in these days, the same overplus
of sublime purpose, and, though a much greater writer, is quite as
desirous of being instructive, first, last, and all the time, and
quite as unable or unwilling to veil her purpose. No books, however,
have ever had a more remarkable influence upon young people, and there
are many of them--old-fashioned as they are--which the sophisticated
children of to-day could read with pleasure and profit.
Poor, naughty Rosamond! choosing the immortal "purple jar" out of
that apothecary's window, instead of the shoes she needed; and in a
following chapter, after pages of excellent maternal advice, taking
the hideous but useful "red morocco housewife" instead of the coveted
"plum."
People may say what they like of Miss Edgeworth's lack of proportion
as a moralist and economist, but we have few writers for children at
present who possess the practical knowledge, mental vigor, and moral
force which made her an imposing figure in juvenile literature for
nearly a century.
There has never been a time when the difficulty of making a good use
of books was as great as it is to-day, or a time when it required so
much decision to make a wise choice, simply because there is so much
printed matter precipitated upon us that we cannot "see the wood for
the trees."
It is not my province to discriminate between the various writers for
children at the present time. To give a complete catalogue of useful
books for children would be quite impossible; to give a partial list,
or endeavor to point out what is worthy and what unworthy, would be
little better. No course of reading laid down by one person ever suits
another, and the published "lists of best books," with their solemn
platitudes in the way of advice, are generally interesting only in
their reflection of the writer's personality.
I would not choose too absolutely for a child save in his earliest
years, but would rather surround him with the best and worthiest
books, and let him choose for himself; for there are elective
affinities and antipathies here that need not be disregarded,--that
are, indeed, certain indications of latent powers, and trustworthy
guides to the child's unfolding possibilities.
"Books can only be profoundly influential as they unite themselves
with decisive tendencies." Provide the right conditions for mental
growth, and then let the child do the growing. If we dictate too
absolutely, we _en_velop instead of _de_veloping his mind, and weaken
his power of choice. On the other hand, we do not wish his reading to
be partial or one-sided, as it may be without intelligent oversight.
I was telling bedtime stories, the other night, to a proper, wise,
dull little girl of ten years. When I had successfully introduced a
mother-cat and kittens to her attention, I plunged into what I thought
a graphic and perfectly natural conversation between them, when she
cut me short with the observation that she disliked stories in which
animals talked, because they were not true! I was rebuked, and tried
again with better success, until there came an unlucky figure of
speech concerning a blossoming locust-tree, that bent its green boughs
and laughed in the summer sunshine, because its flowers were fragrant
and lovely, and the world so green and beautiful. This she thought, on
sober second thought, a trifle silly, as trees never did laugh! Now,
that exasperating scrap of humanity (she is abnormal, to be sure)
ought to be locked up and fed upon fairy tales until she is able to
catch a faint glimpse of "the light that never was on sea or land."
Poor, blind, deaf little person, predestined, perhaps, to be the
mother of a lot of other blind, deaf little persons some day,--how I
should like to develop her imagination!
Whatever children read, let us see that it is good of its kind, and
that it gives variety, so that no integral want of human nature shall
be neglected,--so that neither imagination, memory, nor reflection
shall be starved. I own it is difficult to help them in their choice,
when most of us have not learned to choose wisely for ourselves. A
discriminating taste in literature is not to be gained without effort,
and our constant reading of the little books spoils our appetite for
the great ones.
Style is a matter of some moment, even at this early stage. Mothers
sometimes forget that children cannot read slipshod, awkward,
redundant prose, and sing-song vapid verse, for ten or twelve years,
and then take kindly to the best things afterward.
Long before a child is conscious of such a thing as purity,
delicacy, directness, or strength of style, he has been acted upon
unconsciously, so that when the period of conscious choice comes, he
is either attracted or repelled by what is good, according to his
training. Children are fond of vivacity and color, and love a bit of
word painting or graceful nonsense; but there are people who strive
for this, and miss, after all, the true warmth and geniality that is
most desirable for little people. Apropos of nonsense, we remember
Leigh Hunt, who says that there are two kinds of nonsense, one
resulting from a superabundance of ideas, the other from a want of
them. Style in the hands of some writers is like war-paint to the
savage--of no perceptible value unless it is laid on thick. Our
little ones begin too often on cheap and tawdry stories in one or two
syllables, where pictures in primary colors try their best to
atone for lack of matter. Then they enter on a prolonged series of
children's books, some of them written by people who have neither
the intelligence nor the literary skill to write for a more critical
audience; on the same basis of reasoning which puts the young and
inexperienced teachers into the lowest grades, where the mind ought
to be formed, and assigns to the more practiced the simpler task of
_in_forming the already partially formed (or _de_formed) mind.
There has never been such conscientious, intelligent, and purposeful
work done for children as in the last ten years; and if an
overwhelming flood of trash has been poured into our laps along with
the better things, we must accept the inevitable. The legends, myths,
and fables of the world, as well as its history and romance, are being
brought within reach of young readers by writers of wide knowledge and
trained skill.
Knowing, then, as we do, the dangers and obstacles in the way, and
realizing the innumerable inspirations which the best thought gives to
us, can we not so direct the reading of our children that our older
boys and girls shall not be so exclusively modern in their tastes; so
that they may be inclined to take a little less Mr. Saltus, a little
more Shakespeare, temper their devotion to Mr. Kipling by small doses
of Dante, forsake "The Duchess" for a dip into Thackeray, and use
Hawthorne as a safe and agreeable antidote to Mr. Haggard? We need not
despair of the child who does not care to read, for books are not the
only means of culture; but they are a very great means when the mind
is really stimulated, and not simply padded with them.
Mr. Frederic Harrison says: "Books are no more education than laws are
virtue. Of all men, perhaps the book-lover needs most to be reminded
that man's business here is to know for the sake of living, not to
live for the sake of knowing."
But a child who has no taste for reading, who is utterly incapable of
losing himself in a printed page, quite unable to forget his childish
griefs,
"And plunge,
Soul forward, headlong into a book's profound,
Impassioned for its beauty and salt of truth,"
--such a child is to be pitied as missing one of the chief joys of
life. Such a child has no dear old book-friendships to look back upon.
He has no sweet associations with certain musty covers and time-worn
pages; no sacred memories of quiet moments when a new love of
goodness, a new throb of generosity, a new sense of humanity, were
born in the ardent young soul; born when we had turned the last page
of some well-thumbed volume and pressed our tear-stained childish
cheek against the window pane, when it was growing dusk without, and a
mother's voice called us from our shelter to "Lay the book down, dear,
and come to tea." For, to speak in better words than my own, "It
is the books we read before middle life that do most to mould our
characters and influence our lives; and this not only because our
natures are then plastic and our opinions flexible, but also because,
to produce lasting impression, it is necessary to give a great author
time and meditation. The books that are with us in the leisure of
youth, that we love for a time not only with the enthusiasm, but with
something of the exclusiveness, of a first love, are those that enter
as factors forever in our mental life."