By eighteen hundred and thirty-five the “Annual” was in full swing as a popular publication. Then an international book was issued, “The American Juvenile Keepsake,” edited by Mrs. Hofland, the well-known writer of English stories for children. Mrs. Hofland cried up her wares in a manner quite different from that of the earlier literary ladies. “My table of contents,” she wrote in her introduction, “exhibits a list of names not exceeded in reputation by any preceding Juvenile Annual; for, although got up with a celerity almost distressing in the hurry it imposed, such has been the kindness of my literary friends, that they have left me little more to wish for.” Among the English contributors were Miss Mitford, Miss Jean Roberts, Miss Browne, and Mrs. Hall, the ablest writers for English children, and already familiar to American households.
Mrs. Hofland, herself, wrote one of its stories, noteworthy as an early attempt of an English author to write for an American juvenile public. She found her theme in the movement of emigration strong in England just then among the laboring people. No amount of discouragement and bitter criticism of the United States by the British press was sufficient to stem appreciably the tide of laborers that flowed towards the country whence came information of better wages and more work. Mrs. Hofland, although writing for little Americans, could not wholly resist the customary fling at American life and society. She acknowledged, however, that long residence altered first impressions and brought out the kernel of American character, whose husk only was visible to sojourners. She deplored the fact that “gay English girls used only to the polished society of London were likely to return with the impression that the men were rude and women frivolous.” This impression the author was inclined to believe unjust, yet deemed it wise, because of the incredulous (perhaps even in America!), to back her own opinion by a note saying that this view was also shared by a valued friend who had lived fourteen years in Raleigh, South Carolina.
Having thus done justice, in her own eyes, to conditions in the new country, Mrs. Hofland, launched the laborer’s family upon the sea, and followed their travels from New York to Lexington, Kentucky, at that time a land unknown to the average American child beyond some hazy association with the name of Daniel Boone. It was thus comparatively safe ground on which to place the struggles of the immigrants, who prospered because of their English thrift and were an example to the former residents. Of course the son grew up to prove a blessing to the community, and eventually, like the heroes in old Isaiah Thomas’s adaptations of Newbery’s good boys, was chosen Congressman.
There is another point of interest in connection with this English author’s tale. Whether consciously or not, it is a very good imitation of Peter Parley’s method of travelling with his characters in various lands or over new country. It is, perhaps, the first instance in the history of children’s literature of an American story-writer influencing the English writer of juvenile fiction. And it was not the only time. So popular and profitable did Goodrich’s style of story become that somewhat later the frequent attempts to exploit anonymously and profitably his pseudonymn in England as well as in America were loudly lamented by the originator of the “Tales of Peter Parley.” It is, moreover, suggestive of the gradual change in the relations between the two countries that anything written in America was thought worth imitating. America, indeed, was beginning to supply incidents around which to weave stories for British children and tales altogether made at home for her own little readers.
In the same volume Mrs. S. C. Hall also boldly attempted to place her heroine in American surroundings. Philadelphia was the scene chosen for her tale; but, having flattered her readers by this concession to their sympathies and interest, the author was still sufficiently insular to doubt the existence of a competent local physician in this the earliest medical centre in the United States. An English family had come to make their home in the city, where the mother’s illness necessitated the attendance of a French doctor to make a correct diagnosis of her case. An operation was advised, which the mother, Mrs. Allen, hesitated to undergo in an unknown land. Emily, the fourteen-year-old daughter, urged her not to delay, as she felt quite competent to be in attendance, having had “five teeth drawn without screaming; nursed a brother through the whooping-cough and a sister through the measles.”
“Ma foi, Mademoiselle,” said the French doctor, “you are very heroic; why, let me see, you talk of being present at an operation, which I would not hardly suffer my junior pupils to attend.”
“Put,” said the heroic damsel, “my resolution, sir, to any test you please; draw one, two, three teeth, I will not flinch.” And this courage the writer thought could not be surpassed in a London child. It is needless to say that Emily’s fortitude was sufficient to endure the sight of her mother’s suffering, and to nurse her to complete recovery. Evidently residence in America had not yet sapped the young girl’s moral strength, or reduced her to the frivolous creature an American woman was reputed in England to be.
Among the home contributors to “The American Juvenile Keepsake” were William L. Stone, who wrote a prosy article about animals; and Mrs. Embury, called the Mitford of America (because of her stories of village life), who furnished a religious tale to controvert the infidel doctrines considered at the time subtly undermining to childish faith, with probable reference to the Unitarian movement then gaining many adherents. Mrs. Embury’s stories were so generally gloomy, being strongly tinged with the melancholy religious views of certain church denominations, that one would suppose them to have been eminently successful in turning children away from the faith she sought to encourage. For this “Keepsake” the same lady let her poetical fancy take flight in “The Remembrance of Youth is a Sigh,” a somewhat lugubrious and pessimistic subject for a child’s Christmas Annual. Occasionally a more cheerful mood possessed “Ianthe,” as she chose to call herself, and then we have some of the earliest descriptions of country life in literature for American children. There is one especially charming picture of a walk in New England woods upon a crisp October day, when the children merrily hunt for chestnuts among the dry brown leaves, and the squirrels play above their heads in the many colored boughs.
