In a tabular indication of the trend of juvenile literature, Sarah Kirby Trimmer (1741–1810) may be said to have been a disciple of Madame de Genlis and of Mrs. Barbauld, quite as much as a follower of Rousseau and of Raikes; she inherited from her father an overweening religious inclination, and several glimpses of her in the society of the day reveal how deeply seated her serious nature was. In London she talked with Dr. Johnson, Mr. Gainsborough, and Mr. Hogarth, and, through recognised powers of reading aloud, she charmed many of her friends. But it was a hopeless situation to cope with in a young girl, when, a dispute having arisen between Sir Joshua Reynolds and one of his friends, Sarah, being called upon to settle the point—a doubtful passage in “Paradise Lost”—drew the volume from the pocket of her skirt! At twenty-one she was married, destined to be the mother of six sons and six daughters, and no sooner was the first child born than she directed all of her attention, as Madame de Genlis did, to the subject of education.
Wearisome it is to come in contact with a person of one idea. Mrs. Trimmer naïvely confesses in her journal that she must have worn out the patience of many a visitor with her views upon education. As the years advanced, her opinions became more narrowed and more sectarian.
Mrs. Trimmer exhibited piety which was of the emotional, almost of the hysterical kind, yet sincere in its whole-souled acceptance of Bible truths. She questioned nothing; she believed with a simple faith that lacked proportion. One has to view her entirely from the standpoint of this single interest which had her under complete control. In her “Guardian of Education” she dwelt much upon the dangerous matter contained in children’s books; in her “New Plan of Education” she condemned any attempt to extend the scope of education for the poor. Her chief motive in both cases was to keep away from faith any cause of its possible undoing. The earnestness put into her charity work, her untiring devotion to the Sunday-school, a certain gentle charm of conversation won for Mrs. Trimmer wide-spread attention. Her life was guided by the belief in a divine mission; her days were well ordered, from the hours before breakfast, which she reserved for the learning of poetry, to the evenings, when she would give herself up to meditation and prayer. In fact, during twenty-five years, she kept a diary, penned in secret moments of retreat, a curious display of over-welling feeling—pietistical neurasthenia. These pages are hardly to be considered interpretative—they are outpourings, giving one an awful sense of unworthiness, if life consists simply in submitting to biblical strictures and in uttering biblical paraphrases.
But Mrs. Trimmer was withal an active little woman, whose three hours, spent every Sunday over her journal, represented meditation only: in her practise of Christianity she was zealous; and her pen was employed in preparing the kind of food to foster a proper feeling among children and cottagers and servants. In this latter respect there was a change indeed from Miss Edgeworth, who considered the advisability of separating young people entirely from any possible contact with servants.
Among her children and her grandchildren, Mrs. Trimmer exerted profound influence; the Sabbath day was observed with great strictness; toys set aside while Stackhouse’s “Commentary on the Bible”[34] was brought forth to look at; stories were told, and the progress of Bible heroes traced upon maps of the Holy Land. The spirit of rest and peace followed Mrs. Trimmer, who was averse to reading books of controversy. We are given a picture of her in her venerable old age, walking with her grandson among the plants and flowers, while she explained, with a certain lyric simplicity, the truths, as she saw them with her meek spirit, underlying the growth of the grass; and described the flight of a sparrow which escaped not the notice of God. There was thus unfolded to this little boy the holiness of all things in nature, permeated with a divine grace; he was made to consider the lilies of the field, and not a bush but might become to him a burning flame, not a stone but might be rent asunder by the resurrection of a dried-up seed.
Mrs. Trimmer’s “Easy Lessons for Children,” her “Easy Introduction to the Knowledge of Nature,” her “Sacred History for Young Persons,” and her works explaining the catechism, were among the rare books available for the purposes of Raikes’s followers. They were easily understood; they explained satisfactorily for children, according to grown-up standards, certain religious teachings. In the Catholic church to-day, Mother Loyola is said to possess that same ability to unfold the meaning of the most difficult doctrine so that Catholic children can understand. Priests turn to her books rather than trust to their own interpretations. The general interest aroused for the poor, for the lower classes, appealed to Mrs. Trimmer; she became wholly absorbed; she wrote “The Servant’s Friend” and edited a “Family Magazine,” intended for their special instruction and amusement. Adopting Madame de Genlis’s idea of using prints as a factor in nursery education, she prepared a series of illustrations from ancient history and from the Old Testament; and was further engaged in the simplification of Roman and English history for young readers.
The book that has come down to us as representing Mrs. Trimmer’s work, “The History of the Robins,” is a nature story of no mean value, easy in narrative and full of appeal for very young persons who are interested in simple incident. To American readers it is now available in a cut-up state, for Dr. Edward Everett Hale, in editing it, called the style “stilted” and diffuse, and thought that its unity could better be preserved by dealing only with the robins, and not at all with the extraneous doings of the Benson family.
When the Lambs removed to Enfield in 1827, Thomas Westwood, a boy of thirteen, lived near them. It was not long before he and Elia were on intimate terms, and he must have had exceptional merit for Lamb to give him free entrée to his books. “Lamb,” so he has recorded, “initiated me into a school of literature which Mrs. Trimmer might not have considered the most salutary under the circumstances. Beaumont and Fletcher, Webster, Farquhar, Defoe, Fielding,—these were the pastures in which I delighted to graze in those early years; and which, in spite of Trimmer, I believe did me less evil than good.”
An alteration in attitude appears to have been going on in several directions; the social strata were readjusting themselves. For Hannah More (1745–1833), it is claimed, stood at the parting of the roadways, where clergymen and schoolmasters, once frowned upon as quite inferior beings, now took positions of a higher nature. Had Miss More not thrown herself so heartily into the moral movement, she might have occupied a much more important position in English letters than she does. One cannot help feeling that, by the part she took in the Sunday-school development, she sacrificed her genius to a cause. In the biographies of these well-intentioned writers for children and for poor people, it is always satisfactory to linger, wherever opportunity presents, on the genial aspects of their lives; they are estimated in criticism so greatly by the weight, or by the lack of weight, of their ideas, that the human value which existed at the time is often lost sight of. However dry their preachments, their social lives were warmed by human intercourse and human service. It is hard to forget such a group as Scott, Maria and Patty Edgeworth, and others, listening to Patty while she sang Irish melodies. A similar scene is associated with Sally and Hannah More when they went to call on Dr. Johnson. He was not at home, and the two, left together in the autocrat’s sanctum, disported themselves in mock humour. Hannah approached his great chair, and sat pompously in it, hoping to catch some of his genius. Can you not hear Johnson’s laughter as he bluntly told her, when he was informed of the incident, that he rarely sat in that particular chair?
Mrs. Barbauld was no less clever than Hannah More in the handling of witty verse; in fact, the latter was ever ready with her gifts in the drawing-room, and added generously her share to the circle gathered around the actor, David Garrick. He it was who had sufficient faith in Miss More’s dramatic ability to present two of her plays. Even at that time she had a reputation among her associates for being very strict in her religious observances; for one evening, it being Sunday, and Garrick not averse to piano-playing, he turned to “Nine,” as he called her, thus indicating that she was a favoured one among the muses, and told her to leave the room, promising to call her back when the music was over.