A century of children's books

by Florence V. Barry

The most consistent of all Rousseauists was Thomas Day,[85] the author of Sandford and Merton,[86] and he owed the success of his book at least as much to his own observations and experiments, as to Rousseau.

Much of its interest, moreover, can be traced to the example of an English novelist; for in choosing some pieces for children from Henry Brooke’s Fool of Quality, Mr. Day had been so struck by its simple and vivid style as to regret that Brooke himself had not written books for children; and it is clear that, while the theory of Sandford and Merton came direct from Rousseau, many dramatic situations, which are the life of the story, were suggested by The Fool of Quality.[87]

This, indeed, was a book after Rousseau’s own heart. The hero, Henry Earl of Moreland, is an English Emile quickened out of knowledge by more natural and livelier adventures. Brought up by a foster-mother among village children, he stands for the virtues of a natural education, against a brother bred at home in the luxurious fashion of the time. The scene of his first visit (at five years old) to his parents, is a satire on Society, and the farcical turn of his adventures brings the romance of theory into touch with the novel of life and humour. This little Harry is the most natural child of fiction; like Emile at a later stage, he knows nothing of the respect due to people of rank, and is quite unmoved by his unusual surroundings; but as yet he has no philosophy; he values things as children do, for what they mean to him. A laced hat is useless as a head-covering, but an effective missile for playing ducks and drakes among the wine-glasses; when he gets astride a Spanish pointer and rides him among the company, he sees no reason to dismount because the dog, growing outrageous, rushes into a group of little masters and misses and overthrows them like ninepins; and when he has crowned the adventure by throwing down a fat elderly lady and three men, he arises and strolls leisurely about the room “with as unconcerned an aspect as if nothing had happened amiss, and as though he had neither art nor part in this frightful discomfiture”.

Emile, a much older boy, at his dinner party, received a hint from his mentor, and for the rest of the meal “philosophised all alone in his corner” about luxury, superior all to the grown-up guests. The little Harry, merely unhappy at having to hold his knife and fork “just so” and say so many “my lords and my ladies”, very naturally cries, “I wish I was with my mammy in the kitchen.” Neither then nor at any other time does he seem conscious of superior wisdom; but Theory hangs upon the foolishness of his mother. An uncle, whimsical rather than didactic, but none the less a moralist, fills the place of Rousseau’s tutor, and later, when the boy appears in clothes “trimmed like those of your beau insects vulgarly called butterflies,” this humorist so impresses him with the comparison of that “good and clever boy called Hercules” who was given a poisoned coat to wear, that Harry rips and rends the lacings of his suit and runs down to obey a summons “with half the trimmings hanging in fritters and tatters about him.”

Where Emile was controlled and self-centred, Harry is all impulse and warmth of heart. He fights like a little tiger to avenge his brother or to punish some young scamp, and cares little for the opinion of his fellows; yet he shows the greatest tenderness to animals or persons in distress. His mother, seeking proof of his wits and finding him ready to give away all his clothes except his shirt, decides that “there is but the thickness of a bit of linen between this child and a downright fool”, and so leaves him to his more discerning father.

At times, the author, preoccupied with social and political ideals, so neglects the story that even his lively humour can scarce restore it; yet he can forget Rousseau’s theories in scenes that he invents to illustrate them; nor does he ever accept a theory without proof. To the philosopher’s contention “that self-love is the motive to all human actions”, Brooke answers in the words of the estimable Mr. Meekly, “Virtue forbid”; and his own philosophy is the sounder for a trustworthy ballast of religion and patriotism.

Among minor digressions are a dialogue about toys, another on ghosts, and some of the “thousand little fables” by which Harry’s uncle, “with the most winning and insinuating address, endeavoured to open his mind and cultivate his morals”. One of these, “The Fable of the Little Silver Trouts”, has a tenderness that sets it apart from common fables. It reads like an Irish folk-tale moralised by some good priest.

If Henry Brooke could have passed on his gifts of humour and sympathy to the writers of children’s books, they would have known better than to tie life down to theory. As it was, they were mostly obsessed by the desire to teach, and preferred Mr. Day’s model of a faultless hero to one like the Fool of Quality, who actually discovered two boys within him, one “proud, scornful, ostentatious and revengeful”, the other “humble, gentle, generous, loving and forgiving”.

This English Emile was a moral contrast in himself, an anomaly that might weaken every “Example” in moral tales.

Thomas Day would have no such compromise between good and evil. Moral truths were best expressed by distinct types. To combine these in one person was to confuse the issue. Mr. Day lived, as he wrote, to prove his theories, and whenever the unknown quantity of human nature thwarted him, went back to them with unshaken confidence. A great part of his life was given to works of active benevolence, and his death was no less consistent than his life; for he died in trying to prove that a young horse could be tamed by kindness.