A century of children's books

by Florence V. Barry

These are the Stairs

That lay under the String

That Hal cut.

This is the Child

That fell over the Stairs—etc.

With it are interwoven character-incidents that echo the title-motto and harp on the note of Rousseau and Henry Brooke: the choice of the two boys between a warm great-coat and a green and white uniform, which culminates with perfect logic in Ben’s loan of the despised coat to cover Hal’s spoilt finery; and the minor choice between queen-cakes and keeping one’s halfpence to give to a beggar.

It is the strong point of Miss Edgeworth’s contrasts that her bad children are never attractive, and her good ones hardly ever impossible.

Hal is no villain; but there is no glamour about his naughtiness: he is greedy and boastful as well as improvident; a child is not moved to emulate him. The real villains are dishonest or cruel or insolent, never simply thoughtless or self-willed.

But the good children are a positive triumph. Only Miss Edgeworth could make a boy live that untied knots to save string, chose an overcoat instead of a gay uniform and had money to spare for good works. This Ben is as natural as his pleasure-loving cousin.

The moral, for all its insistence, never hides a picture: the house, the Bristol streets and shops, the scene in the Cathedral, where they listen to a robin that has lived there for so many years; and Ben and his uncle admire the stained-glass windows, but Hal looks bored. These are drawn to the life.