“I prefer the little girls and boys ... that come as you call them, fair or dark, in green ribbons or blue. I like making cowslip fields grow and apple-trees bloom at a moment’s notice. That is what it is, you see, to have gone through life with an enchanted land ever beside you....”—Kate Greenaway to Ruskin.
I. The English Side.
Whatever change in children’s literature was now to take place was due entirely to the increasing importance of elementary education. A long while was to elapse before the author was wholly freed from the idea that situations could be dealt with, apart from any overbearing morale, and even then he found himself constrained to meet the problem of giving information—of teaching instead of preaching.
The interest in external nature, the desire to explain phenomena according to the dictates of belief, infused a new element into authorship for young people. But those writers brought to meet this latent stirring of the scientific spirit all the harness of the old régime. First they thought that they could explain the evident by parables, but they found that fact was too particular for generalisations, and the child mind too immature for such symbol. Then they attempted to define natural objects from a childish plane, making silly statements take the place of truth. They soon became aware that their simple style had to deal with a set of details that could not be sentimentalised.
The truth of the matter is that a new impulse was started; the national spirit began to move toward a more democratic goal; the rank and file began to look beyond the narrow hill and dale; women sought wider spheres; the poor demanded constitutional rights; energy began to stir from underneath. The word modern was in every one’s mind. The old order changeth, giving place to new. The child’s intellect must be furnished with food for its growth; Rousseau’s doctrine of “back to nature” was found not to have worked; it was realised that special training must begin early for all the walks of life. Carlyle was pleading for a public library, education was widening its sphere.
In the preceding pages, we have tried to establish a continuous line of development in children’s books through several centuries; upon such a foundation the English story and the American story of to-day are based. The table of English writers on page 147 contains names of minor importance, but still forming a part of the past history—foreshadowers of the new era. For therein you will discover that juvenile literature first begins to show signs of differing from adult literature only in its power; that where Macaulay tells the story of England in terms of maturity, Miss Strickland, Lady Callcott, Miss Tytler, and Miss Yonge adopt a descending scale. Where children were wont to act in accord with the catechism, they are now made to feel an interest in their surroundings. Mrs. Marcet writes for them “talks” on chemistry and political economy, Mrs. Wakefield on botany and insects. The extension of schools meant that literature must be supplied those schools; writers were encouraged in the same way that Miss More was prompted to produce her “Repository Tracts.” Grammars and histories began to flood the market, and in the wake of Scott’s novels, taking into consideration the fact that books were being written for the purpose of information, the child’s historical story was a natural consequence. Thus we discover the connection between “Waverley” and Henty. The death-blow to fairy tales in England, brought about by the didactic writers, resulted in a deplorable lack of imaginative literature for children, until a German influence, around 1840–1850, began to take effect, and the Grimms’ Household Tales afforded a new impulse.[41] Mrs. Gatty, author of the famous “Parables of Nature,” deigned to rejoice over the classic nonsense of Lewis Carroll. The line of descent can be drawn from Perrault to Grimm, from Grimm to Andrew Lang’s rainbow series of folk-lore.
The table is intended to do no more than indicate the gradual manner in which this break took effect. The student who would treat the evolution fully will find it necessary to place side by side with his discussion of individual books for young people, a full explanation of those social changes in English history which are the chief causes of the changes in English literature. Children’s books are subject to just those modifications which take place in the beliefs, the knowledge, and the aspirations of the adult person. The difference between the two is one of intensity and not of kind. The student will discover, after a study of the development of the common school, how and why the educational impulse dominated over all elements of pure imagination; how the retelling craze, given a large literary sanction by such a writer as Lamb, and so excellently upheld by Charles Kingsley, lost caste when brought within compass of the text-book. He will finally see how this educational pest has overrun America to a far greater extent than England, to the detriment of much that is worthy and of much which should by rights be made to constitute a children’s reading heritage.
ENGLISH TABLE
Mrs. Priscilla Wakefield. 1751–1832. Member of Society of Friends; philanthropic work among the poor. Author: Juvenile Anecdotes; Juvenile Travellers; Conversations; Introduction to Botany; Introduction to Insects; Present Condition of Female Sex, with Suggestions for Its Improvement; Life of William Penn. Reference: D. N. B.[42]
Frances Burney (Madame D’Arblay). 1752–1840. Reference: D. N. B.