The criticism is a thought too serious. Ridicule is not always a bad method of dealing with children’s faults; “S. S.” herself could use it on occasion. Had she forgotten the Wagstaffs’ party in Jemima Placid, or the delightful mischief of the dressing of Sally Flaunt, in which the Pincushion played a chief part?
It is really a question of treatment; a wooden sword is sharp enough for the nursery. If children are simply tickled by incongruities or miss the point altogether, it is because the satirist has an eye on the grown-up part of his audience. But, as “S. S.” points out, there is a danger that incidents will be dragged in for satirical ends “without any cause to produce them”; and, true to her own simple canon of art, she decides “to make them arise naturally from the subject”, though it increase the difficulties of her task.
The Preface shows a concern for form which is rare in these modest writers; and the method justifies itself.
It is extraordinary that so much food for profit and enjoyment could be stored in the shelves of old-fashioned houses.
CHAPTER VII
SOME GREAT WRITERS OF LITTLE BOOKS
The fallacy of Disguise—Qualities of the “great” writers—Mrs. Barbauld’s literary lessons: Hymns in Prose—Evenings at Home—A new vein of romance—Charles Lamb’s attack on the Schoolroom: Science and Poetry—The Tales from Shakespeare—“Lilliputian” attitude of the Lambs—The Adventures of Ulysses—Mrs. Leicester’s School—The Taylors of Ongar: Imagination and spiritual life—Method of work—The Contributions of Q. Q.—“The Life of a Looking Glass”—Mrs. Sherwood: the struggle between imagination and dogma—The Infant’s Progress—The History of the Fairchild Family.
Disguise is of little advantage to a writer, least of all to a writer of children’s books. For although he has many invisible cloaks to choose from, Sharp-Eyes and Fine-Ear are hot upon his track. They recognise the pedant under his “Mask of Amusement”, they judge the Moralist by the standard of his own Bad Boy, and are no more impressed by the Perfect Parent or Tutor than birds by a scarecrow, when once they have found out that it is not alive.
A writer may be just as sincere in acknowledging the reality of wonders as in finding matter of interest in everyday things, if he express his own point of view; but the maker of puppets or bogeys has given up his personality and disguised his voice. He may be forgiven if he can reveal himself at odd moments by individual gestures, as the whimsical editor of a Lilliputian “Gift” would sometimes peep out in his preface; no single lapse will be remembered against him: the “Children’s Friend” atoned for one little Grandison by many lifelike portraits.
But the great writers were those that lived most fully in their stories. It was no more essential that they should write nothing else but children’s books than that a mother should never go outside her nursery; for as every man (unless he be a pedant or a monster) has something of the child in him, so every child likes to enter into the talk and business of men. There never was a good child’s book that a grown-up person could not enjoy; and the habit of “talking-down” to children, whether in books or in life, is more fatal to understanding and friendship than the abstract reasoning of the Lilliputians. When Johnson praised Dr. Watts for his condescension in writing children’s verses, he did him an injustice, for no man could have taken a little task more seriously. As to Mrs. Barbauld,[123] had she deserved half the abuse of her critics, she never would have found favour in so many nurseries.