A century of children's books

by Florence V. Barry

The tale of the farmer who brings a jar of candied fruits to his landlord’s children, is an eloquent sermon against ill-breeding and prejudice.

This is a sequence of moral contrasts. First, the insolent treatment of the farmer by the two boys is set against their little sister’s courtesy, then contrasted with the simple friendliness of their father; and the corresponding scene of their entertainment at the farm is drawn with the same delicate point. The two boys are compared with the farmer’s sons, more capable, even more accomplished than themselves; and stung to shame by the generosity and natural courtesy of their host.

Farming, according to Rousseau, is the most honourable of industries. After farmers he places blacksmiths and carpenters. Berquin brings his children into a natural contact with men of various crafts, the farmer, the blacksmith, the mason. They watch the building of a house and learn the need for division of labour. He can dispense with Rousseau’s artifice. He never hampers himself with theory, but allows Emile’s virtues to appear in common adventures with men and birds and animals.

Clementine, who loads the little peasant girl with useless gifts, learns, in a dialogue with her mother, to serve the real needs of her protegée; the dentist’s visit to Laurette and Marcellin is a test of courage; “Le menteur corrigé par lui-même” becomes a champion of truth.

Foolish wishes and false judgments are corrected according to Rousseau’s plan. Little Fleuri, who, as each new season arrives, would have it last for ever, is made to set down his fickle desires on his father’s tablets, and, faced in Autumn with his Winter, Spring and Summer wishes, decides that all the seasons of the year are good. Armand would cut away the brambles that take toll of the sheep’s wool, but in the nesting season, discovers how the wool is used.

Berquin cannot bring himself to judge the things that are merely beautiful by Rousseau’s standard of utility. Lucette, when she finds gay flowers in a place where her father planted those “tristes oignons”, learns with astonishment that these were tulip-roots; and Berquin allows her to rejoice where a rigid Rousseauist would have compared the uses of flowers and vegetables.

“The time of faults is the time for fables,” said Rousseau; but he put it late, when Emile was no longer a child. Berquin knows what happens in nurseries: that Josephine will forget to feed her canary, that Firmin and Julie will eat forbidden cherries, that Ferdinand, all frankness and generosity, if he cannot control his temper, will be a danger to his friends, and Camille if they give her the chance, will tyrannise over the whole family.

The remedies are mostly found in the natural consequences of these things; but Berquin brushes aside Rousseau’s strict law of necessity with a light mischievous touch; nor does he ever sanction the plan of governing a child by letting him suppose he is the master.

“The Children who wanted to govern themselves”, having tried it, do not wish to repeat the experiment; and Camille is completely reduced by the officer who advises her Mother to give her a uniform and a pair of moustaches, in which she can more appropriately indulge her fancy for ordering people about.

These children of Berquin’s are less hard and self-reliant than Emile. Even the good ones are not unnatural. There is little Alexis on a showery day in June, running first down to the garden to look at the sky, and then back, three steps at a time, to the barometer—only to find that the two are in league against him; and the eight-years-old Marthonie, a delicious picture in her white linen dress, a pair of morocco shoes on her “dear little feet”, and her hair, dark as ebony, hanging in loose curls on her shoulders; Marthonie, who insisted on being dressed for a picnic in a frock of the prettiest apple-green taffetas, with rose-coloured ribbons and shoes—and came home hatless and draggled, a tearful Cinderella with one shoe left in the mud. The Mother who met her thus and only said, “Would you like me to have another silk frock made up for you to-morrow?” owes her wisdom to Rousseau, but her playful irony to Berquin and Marmontel.