Literature for Children

by Orton Lowe

It has been claimed that a nation without fancy and romance never can hold a great place. Material prosperity without a corresponding well-being in the things of the imagination is an unfortunate prosperity. Its pleasures must necessarily be sensual pleasures that grow out of luxury. They carry the man or woman too far away from the land of childhood. Dickens saw this clearly when he said: "What enchanted us in childhood and is captivating a million young fancies now, has at the same blessed time of life, enchanted vast hosts of men and women who have done their long day's work, and laid their gray heads down to rest. It has greatly helped to keep us in some sense ever young, by preserving through our worldly ways one slender tract not overgrown with weeds, where we may walk with children sharing their delights." A good thing it is to keep that slender tract free from weeds. And the stronger the man, the more he needs to do it. Only a man who sees things out of their right proportions and who is without a sense of humour would scorn to renew his youth occasionally in the land of romance. If in life the strongest and wisest men are good at a fight, they are still better at a play. And it is no shame if their "Arabian Nights' Entertainments" is more thumbed than their Bacon's "Essays." They may be all the wiser for it. In Howard Pyle's delightful rendering of the Robin Hood tales he gives this happy admonition in the introduction: "You who so plod among serious things that you feel it a shame to give yourself up even for a few short moments to mirth and joyousness in the land of Fancy; you who think that life hath naught to do with innocent laughter that can harm no one; these pages are not for you. Clap the leaves and go no further than this, for I tell you plainly that if you will go further you will be so scandalized by seeing good, sober folk of real history so frisk and caper in gay colours and motley that you would not know them but for the names tagged to them." And then he sees the secret of making the heart beat young whilst carrying the burdens of grown-up life, and he says, "The land of Fancy is of that pleasant kind that, when you tire of it,—whisk,—you clap the leaves of this book together and 'tis gone, and you are ready for everyday life, with no harm done."

The present age as it gives colouring to educational practices is a matter-of-fact age. Whilst boasting of freedom of thought, it has fallen into a despotism of fact. Like the Old Man of the Sea, this reign of fact has been clutching at the neck of culture and railing at the play of fancy until there is but precious little of the "merrie" life left to look to. The men who cleared away the forest can be pardoned if they lived their lives largely in the light of stern fact, and so might the sons of these men; but those as many generations removed as the present should be able to drop back to the even tenor of a domestic and school life that recognizes the play of fanciful imagination as an essential part of the business of living at all. No sooner had the founders of our nation succeeded in giving men their long-coveted political freedom than science, cock-sure of being able to solve the riddle of existence, strode upon the scene and smote the favourite creatures of the imagination hip and thigh. It not only played havoc with the fairies of our fathers, but it came perilously near doing the same with their faith. And as a result, a material and utilitarian tone has taken hold of education in most places, and boys must be practical, scientific, and wear old heads on young shoulders. This same tendency had begun in the days of Charles Lamb, for he wrote the following protest to Coleridge: "Knowledge must now come to the child in the shape of knowledge, and his empty noddle must be turned with conceit at his own powers when he has learnt that a horse is an animal and Billy is better than a horse and such like; instead of that beautiful interest in wild tales which made the child a man while all the time he suspected himself to be no bigger than a child. Science has succeeded to poetry no less in the little walks of children than with men. Is there possibility of averting this sore evil? Think of what you would have been now if, instead of being fed with tales and old wives' fables in childhood, you had been crammed with geography and natural history." And what must be said to supplanting the subject of fairy life by the anatomy and physiology of the human body? Is not a boy who knows the happy likeness of Old King Cole or Allan-a-Dale as well educated as he who recognizes the picture of an alcoholic liver? All this educational pother about having boys practical and trained to reason instead of being imaginative and romantic will die of its own accord some day, and then they may once more listen to merrie tales told under the greenwood tree.

The boy who has been nurtured on tales of fancy and who trusts to things to work out for the best of their own accord will generally fall into ways of cheerfulness and contentment. He will play the game of life out with more of heart and courage, and less of doubt and fear. He may be something of an impractical dreamer, but he will be kind and true. He will not aim to understand all mysteries and all knowledge, but will aim to make people happy rather than learned. His early experience of the feelings of pity and terror will refine his emotions as much as it did in the age of Thespias those of the Greek youth. In other words, his early familiarity with fairy tales, whether learned by word of mouth from his father, his nurse, or his teacher, will set his face in the right direction. And to keep it so turned he will of necessity have to build up a fairy library. What that library might contain and what he should know as a perfect lesson must now be considered.

A sense of fitness rather than a feeling of loyalty to the language points to the English fairy and household tales as the ones with which to begin. If the teacher has a folk-lore curiosity and interest which aid him in giving these fairy tales to the children, that is well and good. But this historic view is by no means so important as it is to know thoroughly the tales themselves and to enter into an appreciation of them with a keen and boyish interest. The present concern is with a limited number of stories that are so wholly good and so very necessary to the child that he should come to know them completely. Then from this beginning the boy can wander at his own sweet will and keep friends with Jacobs, Perrault, Grimm, Andersen, and, last of all and no doubt best of all, "The Arabian Nights' Entertainments." But from all of these the rude vigour, the dramatic directness, and above all the playful humour of the English tales will first captivate him. They have not quite the grace, simplicity, and elegance of the French tales, nor the more fanciful and romantic touches of the German tales; yet, as Mr. Jacobs has told us, "They have the quality of going home to English children. The English folk-muse wears homespun and plods afoot, albeit with a cheerful smile and a steady gaze."

"English Fairy Tales" and "More English Fairy Tales" should be in the hands of every child. The stories are told in a way that preserves all of their dramatic interest and humour of phrase and situation. This characteristic humour of English folk-fancy, Mr. Jacobs has skilfully caught. He has this to say of his way of telling them: "I am inclined to follow the traditions of my old nurse, who was not bred at Girton and scorned at times the rules of Lindley Murray and the diction of polite society. And I have left vulgarisms in the mouths of vulgar people. Children appreciate the dramatic propriety of this as much as do their elders. Generally speaking, it has been my ambition to write as a good old nurse would speak when she tells Fairy Tales. I am doubtful of my success in catching the colloquial-romantic tone appropriate for such narratives, but they had to be done or else my object, to give a book of English Fairy Tales which children would listen to, would have been unachieved. This book is to be read aloud and not merely to be taken by the eye." All children should rejoice, that, so long after Puritanism had suppressed these tales in many parts of England, and after its decline they had come to be supplanted by the Mother Goose tales of Perrault, there has come such an excellent retelling of them in the Jacobs books. If there be anything in fairy literature better than "Tom Tit Tot," I have not found it. It is altogether fitting to have it stand first in such a great collection. And with other such very good tales as "Cap o' Rushes," "The Three Sillies," and "Jack and the Golden Snuff Box," to say nothing of the dramatic telling of "Hop o' My Thumb," "Jack the Giant Killer," and "Jack and the Bean Stalk," the pleasure from reading the book at the right age will mayhap never be surpassed. One might regret that the curious and helpful information of the notes had not been reserved for a separate treatise for mature readers, did not the amusing illustration of the court-crier by John D. Batton give the warning that the tales are closed and children must not read any further. After having learned some of the best stories through the ear, the boy must certainly buy and keep these two books.

After the English tales are familiar, the boy might be given the Mother Goose tales as first collected by Charles Perrault in 1696. They had been current orally in France for many years before this, and they undoubtedly had their origin in the oldest folk-lore of the world. It is said Perrault wrote them down as he heard them with the intention of writing them over in verse after the manner of the fables done by La Fontaine. But his little son, to whom they had been told, rewrote them from memory as an exercise, and the lad's version, being so simple and direct, was given to the world in that form by his father. They slowly found their way into England and for a while supplanted the native tales. There is surely a universal appeal in such stories as "Little Red Riding Hood," "Cinderella," "Puss in Boots," and "Sleeping Beauty." The best rendering of these to-day is a small volume by Charles Welsh, entitled "The Tales of Mother Goose." It has none of the poetic justice that refuses to have the wolf eat up Little Red Riding Hood. It would be well for some publisher to reprint an edition issued in New York in 1795 under the title of "Tales of Passed Times, by Mother Goose." Some good renderings of particular tales, however, may be found scattered through collections of fairy stories that have appeared.

The temptation to say something about the famous "Cruikshank Fairy Book" in which some of these Mother Goose tales appeared cannot be resisted at this point. It is a very noticeable illustration of the inability of a man of talent always to keep to his last. No artist has ever drawn such superior pictures for children as did Cruikshank. Where can anything better be found than Jack's descent on the harp, the Ogre's flight, or the presentation of the boots to the King? Why then did not Cruikshank make a picture book with pictures only? Why did he leave his last to write the stories anew in order that he might take the opportunity to give his own views and convictions on what he considered important social and educational questions; or "to introduce a few temperance truths with a fervent hope that some good may result therefrom"? The notion that moralizing makes children good has spoiled many an artistic horn and has never made a good educational spoon.

In Cruikshank's work in illustrating "Household and Fairy Tales" by the brothers Grimm, we have a masterful production from the best period of his genius, and we have it illustrating a superior text, the translation made by Edward Taylor in 1823 and reprinted in 1868 with an introduction by John Ruskin. Thackeray said that they had been the first real, kindly, agreeable, and infinitely amusing and charming illustrations for a child's book in England, and that they united beauty, fun, and fancy. And who was a better judge of this than Thackeray? If it was not too bold to say that "Tom Tit Tot" is the best household fairy story in the language, it could be said with equal truth that Cruikshank's etching of the two elves in "The Elves and the Shoemaker" is the best fairy illustration yet done. These German stories are charming. The contention that the stories are creepy is but the contention of a moralist. It should carry no weight with the teacher who would give the boy artistic notions of beauty, love, and mystery. These notions are always safer than those of cold realism worked out in artificial conduct. Sir Walter Scott wrote in this strain to Edward Taylor in 1832: "There is a sort of wild fairy interest in them which makes me think them fully better adapted to awaken the imagination and soften the heart of childhood than the good boy stories which have in late years been composed for them. In the latter case, their minds are, as it were, put into stocks, like their feet at the dancing-school, and the moral always consists in good moral conduct being crowned with temporal success. Truth is, I would not give one tear shed over Little Red Riding Hood for all the benefit to be derived from a hundred histories of Johnny Goodchild. In a word, I think the selfish tendencies will soon enough be acquired in this arithmetical age; and that, to make the higher class of character, our wild fictions—like our own simple music—will have more effect in awakening the fancy and elevating the disposition than the colder and more elaborate compositions of modern authors and composers." It is hoped the pictures of Cruikshank and the translation of Taylor will soon appear in a large and attractive volume.

When the dramatic colloquialism and humour of the English tales, the superior grace, elegance, and beauty of the French tales, and the light, airy fancy of the German tales have been presented to the boy, the Scandinavian tales of Hans Christian Andersen will give him a refinement in fairy life that he has not found before. They do not have, save in a few such cases as "Holger the Dane," the quality of appealing to grown-ups as well as to children—the test of a child's book that is literature, or rather the test of a man yet on good terms with the world. They are somewhat dull, wearisome, and overdone in places and do not stop when the story is ended, as we find in "The Fir Tree"; yet in some way they temper the English and German tales and meet Ruskin's requirement that a child's tale should sometimes be both sweet and sad. In fact, these stories are great favourites with many children, who actually prefer "The Ugly Duckling" to "The Golden Bird." The boy might early start with a few of the individual stories so delightfully illustrated by Helen Stratton, and then when he can afford it buy the excellent edition illustrated by the Danish artist, Hans Tegner, from all of which he will get a new and pleasant touch of fairy life.

There yet remains one book, not always called a fairy book, that must be read before the boy leaves the land of fancy and wonder. It was the favourite volume of Stevenson, and small surprise is it to any one who knows the book and knows of the man. Nor is it less surprising to think that the Oriental scholar, Antoine Galland, who first gave these stories to Europe two hundred years ago, would be called out of bed at night to tell them to an eager crowd under his window, the crowd always begging for just one story more. One might search in vain for a companion volume to this most capital of all books, "The Arabian Nights' Entertainments." The tales are on a bigger scale than are the English and German tales. There is a vastness of desert and starry sky in the tent life of the Arab that is unknown in the cottage life of the English peasant. And this is reflected in the tale that is told. Immensity and Oriental mystery have taken the place of colloquial directness and humour, and we have almost pure romance. Their richness and splendour captivate the reader and transport him into a wonderland of powerful magicians and magnificent palaces. The book is elemental in its appeal and will always furnish royal entertainment for man or boy. And the man who is not too completely grown up will keep his Lane's translation within arm's reach against the hours when the dull cares of the world are weighing him down.