The Juvenile Tatler,[96] by Mrs. Teachwell (Lady Fenn) is a collection of moral dialogues and dramas: “The Foolish Mother”, “The Prudent Daughter”, “The Innocent Romp”, and others suggested by Marmontel. But the characters are wholly English. The Innocent Romp is a feminine counterpart of the Bad Boy.
The other persons of this drama (real people too) are Mr. Briskly, a Widower, whom Marmontel would have called “The Foolish Father”; Mrs. Freeman, his sister, “The Wise Aunt”; Miss Prudence Freeman, her daughter, “The Good Cousin”.
Lady Fenn’s humour is English, like her characters: she invents amusing pranks for her heroine, and is original in admitting a girl to the masculine pastime of mischief.
A very natural dialogue between the Foolish Father and the Wise Aunt prepares the reader for the entrance of the Romp. Her latest offence has lost her an eligible suitor. Chasing the housemaid with a rotten apple, she has just thrown it full in the face of Lord Prim, alighting from his coach to pay his compliments to her, on her return from school. Thus announced, she enters, fresh from an excursion into a neighbour’s garden by way of the wall. Questioned about the visible traces of this adventure, she confesses that she fell from the top of the wall, and adds that she would like to fall twenty times if she could be sure she was not seen, and to make her cousin Prudence fall too. “La! Cousin,” she cries, with seductive enjoyment, “’tis delightful! Just like flying.” (A cautious foot-note explains: “This was written before the invention of Air Balloons.”)
When the author has a doubt about the moral influence of her heroine, she inserts a corrective foot-note.
The Romp, it is disclosed by her Aunt, not content with dressing the cat in baby-linen to play at a mock-christening, disguised herself as an old woman, and carried it to Mr. Starchbland, the Curate. Upon this there are three separate comments: The Foolish Father’s “A profane trick”; The Wise Aunt’s “She thought no further than the surprise it would be to the person who should lift up the mantle and possibly”——Oh, excellent Wise Aunt!—“possibly, the roguery of getting the parson scratched.” And, last, the foot-note, to avert parental criticism: “Let it not be supposed that Miss B would suffer the Sacred Rite to begin”.
The author’s sympathies are with the Aunt (she was an aunt herself). So the Wise Aunt carries off her niece to undergo a moderate process of conversion. The Foolish Father, who “dotes” upon his daughter “when she is neatly dressed and tolerably sedate”, is obviously drawn from life.
The Fairy Spectator,[97] “By Mrs. Teachwell and Her Family”, is Mrs. Argus transformed into the Benevolent Educational Fairy of Madame de Beaumont. Here is a characteristic bit of dialogue:
| Mrs. Teachwell: | You know that stories of Fairies are all fabulous? |
| Miss Sprightly: | Oh, yes! Madam. |
| Mrs. Teachwell: | Do you wish for such a Fairy Guardian? |
| Miss Sprightly: | Very much, Madam. |
| Mrs. Teachwell: | Why, my dear? |
| Miss Sprightly: | Because she would teach me to be good. |