Forgotten Books of the American Nursery. Rosalie Vrylina Halsey
Those who lov’d reading were obliged to send for their books from London.”
Franklin undertook to better this condition by opening a shop for the sale of foreign books. Both he and his rival in journalism, Andrew Bradford, had stationer’s shops, in which were to be had besides “Good Writing Paper; Cyphering Slates; Ink Powders, etc., Chapmens Books and Ballads.” Bradford also advertised in seventeen hundred and thirty that all persons could be supplied with “Primers and small Histories of many sorts.” “Small histories” were probably chap-books, which, hawked about the country by peddlers or chapmen, contained tales of “Fair Rosamond,” “Jane Grey,” “Tom Thumb” or “Tom Hick-a-Thrift,” and though read by old and young, were hardly more suitable for juvenile reading than the religious elegies then so popular. These chap-books were sold in considerable quantities on account of their cheapness, and included religious subjects as well as tales of adventure.
One of the earliest examples of this chap-book literature, thought suitable for children, was printed in the colonies by the press of Thomas Fleet, already mentioned as a printer of small books. This book of 1736, being intended for ready sale, was such as every Puritan would buy for the family library. Entitled “The Prodigal Daughter,” it told in Psalm-book metre of a “proud, vain girl, who, because her parents would not indulge her in all her extravagances, bargained with the devil to poisen them.” The parents, however, were warned by an angel of her intentions:
“One night her parents sleeping were in bed
Nothing but troubled dreams run in their head,
At length an angel did to them appear
Saying awake, and unto me give ear.
A messenger I’m sent by Heaven kind
To let you know your lives are both design’d;
Your graceless child, whom you love so dear,
She for your precious lives hath laid a snare.
To poison you the devil tempts her so,
She hath no power from the snare to go:
But God such care doth of his servants take,
Those that believe on Him He’ll not forsake.
“You must not use her cruel or severe,
For though these things to you I do declare,
It is to show you what the Lord can do,
He soon can turn her heart, you’ll find it so.”
The daughter, discovered in her attempt to poison their food, was reproached by the mother for her evil intention and swooned. Every effort failed to “bring her spirits to revive:”
“Four days they kept her, when they did prepare
To lay her body in the dust we hear,
At her funeral a sermon then was preach’d,
All other wicked children for to teach. …
But suddenly they bitter groans did hear
Which much surprized all that then were there.
At length they did observe the dismal sound
Came from the body just laid in the ground.”
The Puritan pride in funeral display is naïvely exhibited in the portrayal of the girl when she “in her coffin sat, and did admire her winding sheet,” before she related her experiences “among lonesome wild deserts and briary woods, which dismal were and dark.” But immediately after her description of the lake of burning misery and of the fierce grim Tempter, the Puritan matter-of-fact acceptance of it all is suggested by the concluding lines:
“When thus her story she to them had told,
She said, put me to bed for I am cold.”
The illustrations of a later edition entered thoroughly into the spirit of the author’s intent. The contemporary opinion of the French character is quaintly shown in the portrait of the Devil dressed as a French gentleman, his cloven foot discovering his identity. Whatever deficiencies are revealed in these early attempts to illustrate, they invariably expressed the artist’s purpose, and in this case the Devil, after the girl’s conversion, is drawn in lines very acceptable to Puritan children’s idea of his personality.
Almanacs also were in demand, and furnished parents and children, in many cases, with their entire library for week-day reading. “Successive numbers hung from a string by the chimney or ranked by years and generations on cupboard shelves.”26-* But when Franklin made “Poor Richard” an international success, he, by giving short extracts from Swift, Steele, Defoe, and Bacon, accustomed the provincial population, old and young, to something better than the meagre religious fare provided by the colonial press.
Such, then, were the literary conditions for children when an advertisement inserted in the “Weekly Mercury” gave promise of better days for the little Philadelphians.26-† Strangely enough, this attempt to make learning seem attractive to children did not appear in the booksellers’ lists; but crowded in between Tandums, Holland Tapes, London Steel, and good Muscavado Sugar—“Guilt horn books” were advertised by Joseph Sims in 1740 as “for sale on reasonable Terms for Cash.”
Horn-books in themselves were only too common, and not in the least delightful. Made of thin wood, whereon was placed a printed sheet of paper containing the alphabet and Lord’s Prayer, a horn-book was hardly, properly speaking, a book at all. But when the printed page was covered with yellowish transparent horn, secured to the wooden back by strips of brass, it furnished an economical and practically indestructible elementary text-book for thousands of English-speaking children on both sides of the Atlantic. Sometimes an effort was also made to guard against the inconvenient faculty of children for losing school-books, by attaching a cord, which, passing through a hole in the handle of the board, was hung around the scholar’s neck. But since nothing is proof against the ingenuity of a schoolboy, many were successfully disposed of. Although printed by thousands, few in England or in America have survived the century that has elapsed since they were used. Occasionally, in tearing down an old building, one of these horn-books has been found; dropped in a convenient hole, it has remained secure from parents’ sight, until brought to light by workmen and prized as a curiosity by grown people of the present generation. This notice of little gilt horn-books was inserted in the “Weekly Mercury” but once. Whether the supply was quickly exhausted, or whether they did not prove a successful novelty, can never be known; but at least they herald the approach of the little gilt story-books which ten years later were to make the name of John Newbery well known in English households, and hardly less familiar in the American colonies.
So far the only attractions to induce children to read have been through the pictures in the Primer of New England, and by the gilding of the horn-book. From further south comes the first note of amusement in reading, as well as the first expression of pleasure from the children themselves in regard to a book. In 1741, in Virginia, two letters were written and received by R. H. Lee and George Washington. These letters, which afford the first in any way authentic account of tales of real entertainment, are given by Mr. Lossing in “The Home of Washington,” and tell their own tale:
[Richard Henry Lee to George Washington]
Pa brought me two pretty books full of pictures he got them in Alexandria they have pictures of dogs and cats and tigers and elefants and ever so many pretty things cousin bids me send you one of them it has a picture of an elefant and a little indian boy on his back like uncle jo’s Sam pa says if I learn my tasks good he will let uncle jo bring me to see you will you ask your ma to let you come to see me.
Richard henry Lee.
[G.