Ann and Jane Taylor cherished ideals clearer and much simpler than the Lambs. They had no tragedy to darken their youth; the struggle with poverty (very real at first) was lightened by the cheerful co-operation of a whole family. They were all engaged upon the father’s craft of engraving; they all (father, brothers, sisters, even the mother) wrote.[134] They were “directed” (a phrase of their own) by an unquestioning religious faith which simplified and solved all the problems of life. The narrowing influence of the village was counteracted by breadth of intellect and by individual genius. There was, of course, nothing to supply the generous education of London life, or the exquisite literary discernment of the Lambs; but Jane Taylor showed, even in her books for children, a power of enjoyment and a sense of humour that is sometimes associated with intensely serious beliefs. She was untouched by popular philosophy, and adhered to the literary traditions of the school of Pope; but the world of the spirit was more real to her than earth itself; her work has rare qualities of spiritual insight and imagination.
This does not apply, of course, to the simple rhymes which were the sisters’ first literary venture. Mary Lamb could make waistcoats while she was “plotting new work to succeed the Tales”. The intricate process of engraving demanded more attention. They were not free till eight o’clock, and had household duties besides; but, as Ann says, “a flying thought could be caught even in the midst of work, or a fancy ‘pinioned’ to a piece of waste paper.”
Some of the rhymes (there is more to be said of them) were written too easily or too hastily to be of much account, but there are points in favour of a method that makes writing a relaxation, and allows no time for second thoughts.
The Original Poems[135] have a spontaneity and freshness that take a small child at once. The sisters never lost the secret of writing for children, because they could always think with them. Ann, the eldest, had mothered the family, and afterwards brought up a family of her own; yet she wrote at eighty: “The feeling of being a grown woman, to say nothing of an old woman, does not come naturally to me”.
Many writers (especially moralists) try to hold a child’s attention beyond its power. Jane Taylor in this, as in other matters, understands her audience.
“I try to conjure up some child into my presence, address her suitably, as well as I am able, and when I begin to flag, I say to her, ‘There, love, now you may go.’”
Jane was the genius of the family. “Dear Jane had no need to borrow, what I could ill afford to lose,” said the gentle Ann, of some good thing which had been attributed to her brilliant sister.
The habit of “castle-building” caused Jane many heart-searchings. She was as stern with herself as Bunyan; she magnified all her little failings (or supposed failings) into sins. “I know I have sometimes lived so much in a castle as almost to forget that I lived in a house, and while I have been carefully arranging aerial matters there, have left all my solid business in disorder here.”
It was absurd, of course, to accuse a Taylor of disorder; but the distrust of imagination was characteristic. She valued imagination only so far as it interpreted spiritual truth. The great difference between Jane Taylor and the realists was that her reality had no connection with materialism. To her, the life of the spirit was the greatest reality. A thing was real or unreal according to its intrinsic worth. Her sharpest satire was poured upon the material benevolence of philosophy, “the light of Nature-boasting man”, or the poet who could
“Pluck a wild Daisy, moralise on that