The set notions that fill the pages of “Practical Education” often border on the verge of bathos. They leave no room for the exercise of spontaneous inclination; by their limitations, they recognise no great amount of common sense in others. They create in one a desire at times to laugh, and again a desire to shake the authors who were in the frame of mind to hold such views. There are certain instincts which are active by reason of their own natures,—and one is the love of parent for offspring. We even accredit the wild animal with this quality. When the Edgeworths declare that “My dear, have you nothing to do?” should be spoken in sorrow, rather than in anger, the advice irritates; it is platitudinous; it must have irritated many naturally good mothers, even in those days when such a tone in writers was more the rule than the exception.
On the subject of books Miss Edgeworth and her father become more interesting, though none the less startling in their suggestions. One of Maria’s early tasks in 1782 had been to translate “Adèle et Théodore”; to her this book was worthy of every consideration. In the choice of reading for young folks, the two do not reach very much beyond their own contemporaries: Mrs. Barbauld’s “Lessons,” the Aikin’s “Evenings at Home,” Berquin’s “L’Ami des Enfans,” Day’s “Sandford and Merton” were recommended. And in addition there were mentioned Madame de Silleri’s stories, known as the “Theatre of Education,” Madame de la Fite’s “Tales” and “Conversations,” and Mrs. Smith’s “Rural Walks.” Despite the fact that fairy tales are at this period frowned upon as useless frivolities, “Robinson Crusoe,” “Gulliver’s Travels,” “The Three Russian Sailors,” and the “Arabian Nights’ Entertainment” are suggested because of the interest and profit to be had in voyages and travels of all kinds. Fancy was thus held at a discount.
Two books of nature are mentioned, and curiously one is emphasised as of special value for children provided it is beforehand judiciously cut or blotted out here and there. The Edgeworths obtained this idea from an over-careful mother who was in the habit of acting as censor and editor of all juvenile books that found their way into her house. In Russia, the authorities take an ink pad and stamp out the condemned passages of any book officially examined. In the same summary manner, English parents were advised to treat their children’s stories. The Edgeworths went even further, suggesting that, besides striking out separate words with a pen, it would be well to cut the undesirable paragraphs from the page, provided by so doing the sense of the text on the reverse side was not materially interfered with. To mark the best thoughts for young readers was also strongly recommended.
The authors are never wanting in advice. If children are good, what need is there to introduce them to evil in their stories? Evil is here meant in its mildest sense. They should be kept from all contagion. But bad boys and girls should be told to read, in “The Children’s Friend,” tales like “The Little Gamblers” and “Honesty is the Best Policy,” which will teach them, by examples of wickedness, to correct their ways. Such strange classification suggests that literature was to be used as a species of moral reformatory. Two significant facts are to be noted in this chapter on books: there is an attempt to grade the literature by some age standard, bringing to light a gap between four and seven years which may be offset by a similar gap to-day; so, too, does there seem to have been, then as now, a great lack of history and biography.
The idea upon which the “Parent’s Assistant” was founded began to shape itself in Miss Edgeworth’s mind early in life. Left alone for a short period with her younger brothers and sisters, she manufactured tales for their edification, many of which, in after years, she utilised. In 1796 she gathered together and published some of her best stories, among them “The Purple Jar” and “Lazy Laurence.” “Simple Susan” would probably not be so widely emphasised were it not for the fact that Sir Walter Scott recorded “that when the boy brings back the lamb to the little girl, there is nothing for it but to put down the book and cry.”
Miss Edgeworth and her father had much preferred that the book be called “The Parent’s Friend,” for lodged in the former’s memory were disagreeable thoughts of an old-time arithmetic which had plagued her early years, and was named “The Tutor’s Assistant.”
The theatricals performed in the Edgeworth household afforded much pleasure. It is very likely that the custom was gleaned from Madame de Genlis. Plays were written for every festive season. The publication of the “Parent’s Assistant” suggested the acting of some of the playlets contained in the book. There seem to have been two theatres, one fitted up just over Richard Lovell’s study, and another temporary stage erected in the dining-room. Here, one evening, was enacted the exemplary dialogue of “Old Poz,” where a poor man is suspected, by a Justice, of stealing what a magpie has in reality secreted. Lucy, the good little daughter, clears the innocent fellow, upon whom her father sits in very stern, very unreasonable, and most unnatural judgment. Irritable to a degree, the Justice, who is positive about everything, shuts up any one who gainsays a word contrary to his obstinacy, but “Oh, darling,” he remarks to his daughter, after her excellent deed, “you shall contradict me as often as you please.” This method is neither more nor less than poisonous; it is polluted with a certain license which no good action ever sanctions. There is small doubt that children see the absurdity of it, for it cheapens right-doing in their eyes.
The compensating balance of good and bad is exercised to a monotonous degree in Miss Edgeworth’s tales. There are the meek, innocent girl, and the proud, overbearing girl in “The Bracelet”; the heedless, extravagant boy, and the thoughtful, thrifty boy in “Waste Not, Want Not.” Disaster follows disaster; reward courts reward. Not content with using these extremes of human nature in one story, Miss Edgeworth rings the changes, slightly altered in form, in others of her tales.
“The Purple Jar” in substance is the same as “Waste Not, Want Not”; the moral applications are identical. One has but to glance through the pages of the latter story to note its didactic pattern. Yet Miss Edgeworth possessed her literary excellencies in human characterisation, in that power of narrative which gained effect, not through ornamentation, but through deep knowledge of the real qualities of common existence. The dominant fault is that she allowed her ultimate object to become crystallised into an overshadowing bulwark, a danger which always besets the “moral” writer, and produces the ethical teacher in a most obtruding form. When Miss Edgeworth’s little girl sprains her ankle and her father picks her up, she consciously covers her leg with her gown. Fate seems never to have worked so swiftly, so determinedly, as in those tales where thoughtless boys on their walks had the consequences of their bad acts visited upon them during the homeward journey. The hungry, the lame, the halt, the blind turn unexpected corners, either to wince beneath the jeers of one type of mortal child, or to smile thanks to the other kind for a gentle word or a much-needed penny.
No one can wholly condemn the tale, typified by Miss Edgeworth’s “Parent’s Assistant.” Childhood is painted in quaint, old-fashioned colours, even though the staid little heroes and heroines have no interests. They take information into their minds as they would take physic into their bodies. They are all normal types, subjected to abnormal and unnaturally successive temptations, and given very exacting consciences. A writer in Blackwood’s becomes indignant over such literary treatment: