Berquin’s parents are nearly infallible, but he does not give them every point in an argument. In the affair of Charlotte and the watch, for example, it is not always M. de Fonrose who scores.
Charlotte invents a dozen reasons for wanting a watch, and her inexorable parent disposes of them all, till she is forced back on Rousseau’s final position. A watch must needs be a useful possession, since her Papa, philosopher as he is, cannot do without it. This, obviously, is a point to Charlotte. If she wants the thing for its usefulness, it is hers. The sudden capitulation is too much for Charlotte. She suspects her Papa of badinage. Not at all; he is perfectly serious. She will find the watch hanging from the tapestry by the side of his bed.
Few English children could buy the first translation of Berquin, in twenty-four volumes. A selection, including many little dramas for three or four persons, appeared later under the title of The Children’s Friend; but the true English version was the admirable Looking Glass for the Mind[77] adapted by Mr. Cooper for E. Newbery and illustrated by John Bewick’s inimitable cuts. Alexis transfers his best grace to Bewick’s “little Anthony”, standing a-tiptoe on a chair to read the barometer; Caroline walks as proudly as Marthonie in her finery; and the four little pupils of Mademoiselle Boulon are not less French for their English names.
It is odd, considering Rousseau’s attitude to the education of girls (for in his account of Sophie he reverses the whole method of Emile’s training) that the trilogy of educational romance, begun with Emile, should have been completed by two women.
Madame d’Epinay, Rousseau’s friend and benefactress, published her Conversations d’Emilie[78] at his request, and Madame de Genlis, in Adèle et Théodore,[79] worked out her own scheme of practical education on his principles.
Of the two, Madame d’Epinay is more faithful to Rousseau, and so great was the interest aroused by the Emile, that she was awarded the French Academy prize for “a work of the greatest benefit to humanity”.
She herself declared that her book contained “neither a plan of education, nor any connection in the ideas”; yet it is plain that Emilie follows Emile like an obedient younger sister.
An age that believed in freedom and equality could not long stand by the privilege of sex, and Emilie, although she suffers some of the restrictions imposed on Sophie, shares the natural education of Emile, and is taught to practise most of his virtues. She gains her knowledge, as he does, from experience; Nature is the wise Mistress who refuses her request for more lessons, and had Emilie’s mother followed her own inclination, it is likely that the little girl at ten years old “Would not yet have known how to read.”
As it is, she is allowed to spend ten years (for Emile’s twelve) in jumping and running, and her enlightened Parent (the counterpart of Emile’s guardian) believes that the time has not been wasted. Not that Emilie is ever allowed to forget Rousseau’s Salic Law concerning obedience and restraint. She is sternly snubbed for romping with her brothers, and after a disastrous adventure with a beautiful green ladder, admonished that “the modesty of her sex requires a decorum which should restrain the giddiness and warmth even of childhood”. This sends her back to her doll, the care of which has so far exercised her ingenuity that her mother “will not oppose a continuation of it for some time to come”. And to Sophie’s sewing and embroidery, Emilie adds a new amusement: that of passing these instructive conversations on to her doll.