A happy half-century, and other essays

by Agnes Repplier

“In their walks he [the tutor] teaches them natural history and botany, not dryly as a task, but practically, which amuses them very much. In their hours of study come drawing, writing, reading, and summing. Their lesson in writing consists of a theme which they are to translate into three languages, and sometimes into Latin, for they learn that a little also. The boys learn Latin as a recreation, and not as a task, as is the custom in England. Perhaps one or two hours a day is at most all that is given to that study. ’Tis certainly not so dry a study, when learnt like modern languages. We have bought them the whole of the Classical Authors, so that they can instruct themselves if they will; between ninety and a hundred volumes in large octavo. You would be surprised,—even Charles Auguste, who is only five, reads German well, and French tolerably. They all write very good hands, both in Roman and German texts. Clem and Harry shall write you a letter in English, and send you a specimen of their drawing. Harry (the second) writes musick, too. He is a charming boy, improves very much in all his studies, plays very prettily indeed upon the harpsichord, and plays, too, all tunes by ear. Clem will, I think, play well on the violin; but ’tis more difficult in the beginning than the harpsichord. He is at this moment taking his lesson, the master accompanying him on the pianoforte; and when Henry plays that, the master accompanies on the violin, which forms them both, and pleases them at the same time. In the evening their tutor generally recounts to them very minutely some anecdote from history, which imprints it on the memory, amuses them, and hurts no eyes.”

There is nothing like it on record except the rule of life which Frederick William the First drew up for little Prince Fritz, when that unfortunate child was nine years old, and which disposed of his day, hour by hour, and minute by minute. But then Frederick William—a truth-teller if a tyrant—made no idle pretence of pleasing and amusing his son. The unpardonable thing about the Baroness de Bode is her smiling assurance that one or two hours of Latin a day afforded a pleasant pastime for children of eight and nine.

This was, however, the accepted theory of education. It is faithfully reflected in all the letters and literature of the time. When Miss More’s redoubtable “Cœlebs” asks Lucilla Stanley’s little sister why she is crowned with woodbine, the child replies: “Oh, sir, it is because it is my birthday. I am eight years old to-day. I gave up all my gilt books with pictures this day twelvemonth; and to-day I give up all my story-books, and I am now going to read such books as men and women read.” Whereupon the little girl’s father—that model father whose wisdom flowers into many chapters of counsel—explains that he makes the renouncing of baby books a kind of epoch in his daughters’ lives; and that by thus distinctly marking the period, he wards off any return to the immature pleasures of childhood. “We have in our domestic plan several of these artificial divisions of life. These little celebrations are eras that we use as marking-posts from which we set out on some new course.”

Yet the “gilt books,” so ruthlessly discarded at eight years of age, were not all of an infantile character. For half a century these famous little volumes, bound in Dutch gilt paper—whence their name—found their way into every English nursery, and provided amusement and instruction for every English child. They varied from the “histories” of Goody Two-Shoes and Miss Sally Spellwell to the “histories” of Tom Jones and Clarissa Harlowe, “abridged for the amusement of youth”; and from “The Seven Champions of Christendom” to “The First Principles of Religion, and the Existence of a Deity; Explained in a Series of Conversations, Adapted to the Capacity of the Infant Mind.” The capacity of the infant mind at the close of the eighteenth century must have been something very different from the capacity of the infant mind to-day. In a gilt-book dialogue (1792) I find a father asking his tiny son: “Dick, have you got ten lines of Ovid by heart?”

“Yes, Papa, and I’ve wrote my exercise.”

“Very well, then, you shall ride with me. The boy who does a little at seven years old, will do a great deal when he is fourteen.”

This was poor encouragement for Dick, who had already tasted the sweets of application. It was better worth while for Miss Sally Spellwell to reach the perfection which her name implies, for she was adopted by a rich old lady with a marriageable son,—“a young Gentleman of such purity of Morals and good Understanding as is not everywhere to be found.” In the breast of this paragon “strange emotions arise” at sight of the well-informed orphan; his mother, who sets a proper value on orthography, gives her full consent to their union; and we are swept from the contemplation of samplers and hornbooks to the triumphant conclusion: “Miss Sally Spellwell now rides in her coach and six.” Then follows the unmistakable moral:—

If Virtue, Learning, Goodness are your Aim,

Each pretty Miss may hope to do the same;

an anticipation which must have spurred many a female child to diligence. There was no ill-advised questioning of values in our great-grandmothers’ day to disturb this point of view. As the excellent Mrs. West observed in her “Letters to a young Lady,” a book sanctioned by bishops, and dedicated to the Queen: “We unquestionably were created to be the wedded mates of man. Nature intended that man should sue, and woman coyly yield.”