Reflecting on this possibility and comparing modern systems of education with those prevailing a century ago, it will be noticed that in those days girls became wives and mothers before they had time to realise the joy of youth; that children were introduced to society too soon to have indulged in the delightful exercise of imagination, untouched by responsibility; and that toddling babies must have been taught to theorise on moral problems, judging by the period at which some of them attained to a reasoned self-control.
Looking back, too, with curiosity, to the methods by which this precocious maturity of judgment was produced, it is interesting to note the changes in the school curriculum apparent at different periods, and the absence of those subjects which, in our day, we regard as preliminary to education, and which yet require more years for their mastery than were necessary a hundred years ago for the mastery of feminine accomplishments and the acquisition of fixed moral principles.
It is those fixed moral principles that form the most marked characteristic of the eighteenth-century child. Of religious teaching there was strikingly little; religious fervour is almost entirely absent from the literature of the period. But moral teaching was, so far as girls were concerned, the only branch of study in which they were called to exercise their reason.
We are all of us apt to imagine that the writers of children’s books in the last century had so little artistic faculty as to be constantly writing a language which no human being could ever have indulged in, in real life. But, in fact, these prematurely grown-up girls were never called on to exercise their intelligence on any subject except morals. They were twice as old as our children of the same age, but their brains were less accustomed to exercise than those of our infants in the kindergarten nowadays. The style in vogue was a natural result.
Daniel Defoe, in his “Tour through Great Britain,” describes the domestic system in the woollen industry in the West Riding at the beginning of the eighteenth century with glowing enthusiasm. I quote, from the edition of 1759, the account of the trade in Halifax and the surrounding district. After describing the scenery, he goes on:
“Nor is the industry of the people wanting to second these advantages. Though we met few people without doors, yet within we saw the houses full of lusty fellows, some at the dye vat, some at the loom, others dressing the cloth; the women and children carding or spinning; all employed from the youngest to the oldest; scarce anything above four years old but its hands were sufficient for its own support.”
There are other instances of a similar kind in other parts of the book. It is to him a delightful thing that there should be work enough for these little four-year-old mites to be able to relieve their parents from the burden of their support.
Clearly, then, children were not allowed to be children for long in those days. And some of the stories to which I shall refer are not quite so ridiculous as we may have imagined. We have accused the writers of talking in an absurdly grown-up manner to little children. It was really the little children who were absurdly grown up in real life, not merely in fiction.
Take as an instance the story of “Jemima Placid,” written some time between 1770 and 1790. I quote the prologue:
“As I had nothing particular to do, I took a walk one morning as far as St. James’s Park, where meeting with a lady of my acquaintance, she invited me to go home with her to breakfast; which invitation I accordingly complied with. Her two daughters had waited for her a considerable time, and expressed themselves to have been much disturbed at her stay. They afterwards fretted at the heat of the weather; and the youngest, happening accidentally to tear her apron, she bewailed it the succeeding part of the day with so much appearance of vexation, that I could not help showing some degree of astonishment at her conduct; and having occasion afterwards to mention Miss Placid, I added that she was the most agreeable girl I had ever known.