Children's books and reading

by Montrose Jonas Moses

The poetry for children that has lived is of that quality which appeals to the pristine sense of all that is fair and good and beautiful. Tender love, unfettered joy, protecting gentleness recognise no age; we, who are no longer young, look through the barred gates and up the gravel road, flanked by the dense freshness of green. Somewhere we hear the splash of water, far off we see the intense white of marble. Clinging to the iron bars outside, we watch the girl and boy, we count their footprints in the sand. They stoop to pick the violets as we stooped years ago; they look into the basin of clear water as we looked years ago. And then the path curves out of view. Here is where our appreciative contemplation of childhood becomes self-conscious; we cannot see the little ones doing what we did in years gone by. Perhaps this, perhaps that; we have our first moral doubt. Through the bars we call to the childhood of our memory; we call it to come back. The poet has but to sing of what he found beyond that bend when he was young, of the child he was, who once looked up at him from the clear depths; the boy and girl will creep down the gravel path again, they will marvel at what is told them of revolving suns, of the lost childhood, of the flight of birds, and of the shiver of grass. Let the poet but sing in true notes, making appeal to their imagery, giving them vigour in exchange for their responsiveness, and understanding in exchange for their trust; they will return, even to the iron gate, and take him by the hand. This is what it means to be the laureate of childhood.

V. Charles and Mary Lamb; The Godwins.

A story is told of Charles Lamb which, in view of actual facts, one must necessarily disbelieve. It is to the effect that, dining out one evening, he heard in an adjoining room the noise of many children. With his glass filled, he rose from his chair and drank the toast, “Here’s to the health of good King Herod.” Instinctively, those familiar with Elia will recollect his “Dream Children,” and wonder how any critic could reconcile the two attitudes. Lamb had an abiding love for young people and a keen understanding of their natures.

As writers of juvenile literature, Charles (1775–1834) and Mary (1765–1847) Lamb might never have been known, had it not been for William Godwin (1756–1836) and his second wife. The two began a publishing business, in 1805, under the firm name of M. J. Godwin and Company. The only details that concern us are those which began and ended with the Lambs and their work. Godwin, himself, under the pseudonym of Baldwin, turned out literary productions of various kinds. But though, during one period, there was every sign of a flourishing trade, by 1822 the business was bankrupt.

The Lambs regarded their writings for children as pot-boilers; letters from them abound with such confessions. But it was in their natures to treat their work lovingly; their own personalities entered the text; they drew generously upon themselves; and so their children’s books are filled with their own experiences, and are, in many respects, as autobiographical as the “Essays of Elia.” Mary undertook by far the larger number of the volumes which are usually accredited to her brother; in fact, wherever the two collaborated, Lamb occupied a secondary place.

The following list indicates the division of labour:

The King and Queen of Hearts, 1805. Lamb’s first juvenile work.

Tales from Shakespeare, 1807. Lamb wrote to Manning, May 10, 1806: “I have done ‘Othello’ and ‘Macbeth,’ and mean to do all the tragedies. I think it will be popular among the little people, besides money.”

Adventures of Ulysses, 1808. “Intended,” as Lamb told Manning, “to be an introduction to the reading of Telemachus; it is done out of the ‘Odyssey,’ not from the Greek. I would not mislead you; nor yet from Pope’s ‘Odyssey,’ but from an older translation of one Chapman. The ‘Shakespeare Tales’ suggested doing it.” Lamb’s delight in Chapman was as unalloyed as that of Keats.

Mrs. Leicester’s School, 1809. Issued anonymously, hence commonly ascribed to Lamb. The greater part of the work belongs to Mary; it seems to have been her idea originally. Lamb to Barton, January 23, 1824: “My Sister’s part in the Leicester School (about two-thirds) was purely her own; as it was (to the same quantity) in the Shakespeare Tales which bear my name. I wrote only the Witch Aunt, the First Going to Church, and the final story about a little Indian Girl in a Ship.”