Enterprising American booksellers also copied the new ways of advertising juvenile books. An instance of this is afforded by Johnson and Warner of Philadelphia, who apparently succeeded Jacob and Benjamin Johnson, and had, by eighteen hundred and ten, branch shops in Richmond, Virginia, and Lexington, Kentucky. They advertised their “neatly executed books of amusement” in book notes in the “Young Gentlemen and Ladies’ Magazine,” by means of digressions from the thread of their stories, and sometimes by inserting as frontispiece a rhyme taken from one used by John Harris of St. Paul’s Churchyard:
“At JO—— store in Market Street
A sure reward good children meet.
In coming home the other day
I heard a little master say
For ev’ry three-pence there he took
He had received a little book.
With covers neat and cuts so pretty
There’s not its like in all the city;
And that for three-pence he could buy
A story book would make one cry;
For little more a book of Riddles:
Then let us not buy drums and fiddles
Nor yet be stopped at pastry cooks’,
But spend our money all in books;
For when we’ve learnt each bit by heart
Mamma will treat us with a tart.”
Later, when engraving had become more general in use, William Charles cut for an advertisement, as frontispiece to some of his imprints, an interior scene containing a shelf of books labelled “W. Charles’ Library for Little Folks.” About the same time another form of advertisement came into use. This was the publisher’s Recommendation, which frequently accompanied the narrative in place of a preface. The “Story of Little Henry and his Bearer,” by Mrs. Sherwood, a writer of many English Sunday-school tales, contained the announcement that it was “fraught with much useful instruction. It is recommended as an excellent thing to be put in the hands of children; and grown persons will find themselves well paid for the trouble of reading it.”
Little Henry belonged to the Sunday-school type of hero, one whose biography Dr. Holmes doubtless avoided when possible. Yet no history of toy-books printed presumably for children’s amusement as well as instruction should omit this favorite story, which represents all others of its class of Religion-in-Play books. The following incidents are taken from an edition printed by Lincoln and Edmunds of Boston. This firm made a special feature of “Books suitable for Presents in Sunday-School.” They sold wholesale for eight dollars a hundred, such tales as Taylor’s “Hymns for Infant Minds,” “Friendly Instruction,” Fenelon’s “Reflections,” Doddridge’s “Principles of the Christian Religion,” “Pleasures of Piety in Youth,” “Walks of Usefulness,” “Practical Piety,” etc.
The objective point of little Henry’s melancholy history was to prove the “Usefulness of Female Missionaries,” said its editor, Mrs. Cameron, a sister of the author, who at the time was herself living in India. Mrs. Sherwood based the thread of her story upon the life of a household in India, but it winds itself mainly around the conversion of the faithful Indian bearer who served five-year-old Henry. This small orphan was one of those morbidly religious children who “never said a bad word and was vexed when he heard any other person do it.” He also, although himself “saved by grace,” as the phrase then ran in evangelical circles, was chronically anxious lest he should offend the Lord. To quote verbatim from this relic of the former religious life would savor too much of ridiculing those things that were sacred and serious to the people of that day. Yet the main incidents of the story were these: Henry’s conversion took place after a year and a half of hard work on the part of a missionary, who finally had the satisfaction of bringing little Henry “from the state of grossest heathen darkness and ignorance to a competent knowledge of those doctrines necessary to salvation.” This was followed immediately by the offer of Henry to give all his toys for a Bible with a purple morocco cover. Then came the preparations for the teacher’s departure, when she called him to her room and catechized him in a manner worthy of Cotton Mather a century before. After his teacher’s departure the boy, mindful of the lady’s final admonition, sought to make a Christian of his bearer, Boosy. Like so many story-book parents, Henry’s mother was altogether neglectful of her child; and consequently he was left much to the care of Boosy—time which he improved with “arguments with Boosy concerning the great Creator of things.” But it is not necessary to follow Henry through his ardent missionary efforts to the admission of the black boy of his sinful state, nor to the time when the hero was delivered from this evil world. Enough has been said to show that the religious child of fiction was not very different from little Elizabeth Butcher or Hannah Hill of colonial days, whose pious sayings were still read when “Little Henry” was introduced to the American child.
Indeed, when Mrs. Sherwood’s fictitious children were not sufficiently religious to come up to the standard of five-year-old Henry, their parents were invariably as pious as the father of the “Fairchild Family.” This was imported and reprinted for more than one generation as a “best seller.” It was almost a modernized version of Janeway’s “Token for Children,” with Mather’s supplement of “A Token for the Children of New England,” in its frequent production of death-bed scenes, together with painful object lessons upon the sinfulness of every heart. To impress such lessons Mr. Fairchild spared his family no sight of horror or distress. He even took them to see a man on the gallows, “that,” said the ingenuous gentleman, “they may love each other with a perfect and heavenly love.” As the children gazed upon the dreadful object the tender father described in detail its every phase, and ended by kneeling in prayer. The story of Evelyn in the third chapter was written as the result of a present of books from an American Universalist, whose doctrines Mrs. Sherwood thought likely to be pernicious to children and should be controverted as soon as possible. Later, other things emanating from America were considered injurious to children, but this seems to be the first indication that American ideas were noticed in English juvenile literature.
But all this lady’s tales were not so lugubrious, and many were immense favorites. Children were even named for the hero of the “Little Millenium Boy.” Publishers frequently sent her orders for books to be “written to cuts,” and the “Busy Bee,” the “Errand Boy,” and the “Rose” were some of the results of this method of supplying the demand for her work. Naturally, Mrs. Sherwood, like Miss Edgeworth, had many imitators, but if we could believe the incidents related as true to life, parents would seem to have been either very indifferent to their children or forever suspicious of them. In Newbery’s time it had been thought no sin to wear fine buckled shoes, to be genteelly dressed with a wide “ribband;” but now the vain child was one who wore a white frock with pink sash, towards whom the finger of scorn was pointed, and from whom the moral was unfailingly drawn. Vanity was, apparently, an unpardonable sin, as when in a “Moral Tale,”
“Mamma observed the rising lass
By stealth retiring to the glass
To practise little arts unseen
In the true genius of thirteen.”