The inevitable temptation came when Miss Fanny went on “a visit to a Miss in the neighborhood; her mama ordered her to be home at eight o’clock; but she was engag’d at play, and did not mind how the time pass’d, so that she stay’d till near ten; and then her mama sent for her.” The child of course was frightened by the lateness of the hour, and the maid—who appears in the illustration with cocked hat and musket!—tried to calm her fears with the advice to “tell her mama that the Miss she went to see had taken her out.” “No Mary, said Miss Fanny, wiping her pretty eyes, I am above a lye;” and she rehearsed for the benefit of the maid her father’s admonition.
Story IX tells of the Good Girl and Pretty Girl. In this the pretty child had bright eyes and pretty plump cheeks and was much admired. She, however, was a meanly proud girl, and so naughty as not to want to grow wiser, but applied to those good people who happened to be less favored in looks such terms as “bandy-legs, crump, and all such naughty names.” The good sister “could read before the pretty miss could tell a letter; and though her shape was not so genteel her behavior was a great deal more so. But alas! the pretty creature fell sick of the small-pox, and all her beauty vanished.” Thus in the eighteenth century was the adage “Beauty is but skin deep” brought to bear upon conduct.
On the last page is a cut of “Louisburg demolished,” which had served its time already upon almanacs, but the eight cuts were undoubtedly made especially for children. Moreover, since they do not altogether illustrate the various stories, they are good proof that similar chap-book tales were printed by Fowle and Draper for little ones before the War of Independence.
In the southern provinces the sea afforded better transportation facilities for household necessities and luxuries than the few post-lines from the north could offer. Bills of exchange could be drawn against London, to be paid by the profits of the tobacco crops, a safer method of payment than any that then existed between the northern and southern towns. In the regular orders sent by George Washington to Robert Carey in London, twice we find mention of the children’s needs and wishes. In the very first invoice of goods to be shipped to Washington after his marriage with Mrs. Custis in seventeen hundred and fifty-nine, he ordered “10 Shillings worth of Toys, 6 little books for children beginning to read and a fashionable dressed baby to cost 10 Shillings;” and again later in ordering clothes, “Toys, Sugar, Images and Comfits” for his step-children he added: “Books according to the enclosed list to be charged equally to John Parke Custis and Martha Parke Custis.”
But in Boston the people bought directly from the booksellers, of whom there were already many. One of these was John Mein, who played a part in the historic Non-Importation Agreement. In seventeen hundred and fifty this Englishman had opened in King Street a shop which he called the “London Book-Store.” Here he sold many imported books, and in seventeen hundred and sixty-five, when the population of Boston numbered some twenty thousand, he started the “earliest circulating library, advertised to contain ten thousand volumes.”73-* This shop was both famous and notorious: famous because of its “Very Grand Assortment of the most modern Books;” notorious because of the accusations made against its owner when the colonials, aroused by the action of Parliament, passed the Non-Importation Agreement.
Before the excitement had culminated in this “Agreement,” John Mein’s lists of importations show that the children’s pleasure had not been forgotten, and after it their books singularly enough were connected with this historic action.
In 1766, in the “Boston Evening Post,” we find Mein’s announcement that “Little Books with Pictures for Children” could be purchased at the London Book-Store; in December, 1767, he advertised through the columns of the “Boston Chronicle,” among other books, “in every branch of polite literature,” a “Great Variety of entertaining Books for Children, proper for presents at Christmas or New-year’s day—Prices from Two Coppers to Two Shillings.” In August of the following year Mein gave the names of seven of Newbery’s famous gilt volumes, as “to be sold” at his shop. These “pretty little entertaining and instructive Books” were “Giles Gingerbread,” the “Adventures of little Tommy Trip with his dog Jouler,” “Tommy Trip’s Select Fables,” and “an excellent Pastoral Hymn,” “The Famous Tommy Thumb’s Little Story-Book,” “Leo, the Great Giant,” and “Urax, or the Fair Wanderer—price eight pence lawful money. A very interesting tale in which the protection of the Almighty is proved to be the first and chief support of the Female Sex.” Number seven in the list was the story of the “Cruel Giant Barbarico,” and it is one of this edition that is now among the rare Americana of the Boston Public Library. The imprint upon its title-page coincides with Isaiah Thomas’s statement that though “Fleming was not concerned with Mein in book-selling, several books were printed at their house for Mein.” Its date, 1768, would indicate that Mein had reproduced one of his importations to which allusion has already been made. The book in marbled covers, time-worn and faded now, was sold for only “six-pence lawful” when new, possibly because it lacked illustrations.
One year later, when the Non-Importation Agreement had passed and was rigorously enforced in the port of Boston, these same little books were advertised again in the “Chronicle” of December 4-7 under the large caption, Printed in America and to be sold by John Mein. Times had so changed within one year’s space that even a child’s six-penny book was unpopular, if known to have been imported.
Mein was among those accused of violating the “Agreement;” he was charged with the importation of materials for book-making. In a November number of the “Chronicle” of seventeen hundred and sixty-nine, Mein published an article entitled “A State of the Importation from Great Britain into the Port of Boston with the advertisement of a set of Men, who assume to themselves The Title of ALL the Well Disposed Merchants.” In this letter the London Book-Store proprietor vigorously defended himself, and protested that the quantity of his work necessitated some importations not procurable in Boston. He also made sarcastic references to other men whom he thought the cap fitted better with less excuse. It was in the following December that he tried to keep this trade in children’s books by his apparently patriotic announcement regarding them. His protests were useless. Already in disfavor with some because he was supposed to print books in America but used a London imprint, his popularity waned; he was marked as a loyalist, and there was little of the spirit of tolerance for such in that hot-bed of patriotism. The air was so full of the growing differences between the colonials and the king’s government, that in seventeen hundred and seventy Mein closed out his stock and returned to England.
On the other hand, the patriotic booksellers did not fail to take note of the crystallization of public opinion. Robert Bell in Philadelphia appended a note to his catalogue of books, stating that “The Lovers and Practisers of Patriotism are requested to note that all the Books in this Catalogue are either of American manufacture, or imported before the Non-Importation Agreement.”
The supply of home-made paper was of course limited. So much was needed to circulate among the colonies pamphlets dealing with the injustice of the king’s government toward his American subjects, that it seems remarkable that any juvenile books should have been printed in those stirring days before the war began. It is rather to be expected that, with the serious turn that events had taken and the consequent questions that had arisen, the publications of the American press should have received the shadow of the forthcoming trouble—a shadow sufficient to discourage any attempt at humor for adult or child. Evidence, however, points to the fact that humor and amusement were not totally lacking in the issues of the press of at least one printer in Boston, John Boyle. The humorous satire produced by his press in seventeen hundred and seventy-five, called “The First Book of the American Chronicles of the Times,” purported to set forth the state of political affairs during the troubles “wherein all our calamities are seen to flow from the fact that the king had set up for our worship the god of the heathen—The Tea Chest.” This pamphlet has been one to keep the name of John Boyle among the prominent printers of pre-Revolutionary days. Additional interest accrues for this reason to a play-book printed by Boyle—the only one extant of this decade known to the writer.
This quaint little chap-book, three by four inches in size, was issued in seventeen hundred and seventy-one, soon after Boyle had set up his printing establishment and four years before the publication of the famous pamphlet. It represents fully the standard for children’s literature in the days when Newbery’s tiny classics were making their way to America, and was indeed advertised by Mein in seventeen hundred and sixty-eight among the list of books “Printed in America.” Its title, “The Famous Tommy Thumb’s Little Story-Book: Containing his Life and Adventures,” has rather a familiar sound, but its contents would not now be allowed upon any nursery table. Since the days of the Anglo-Saxons, Tom Thumb’s adventures have been told and retold; each generation has given to the rising generation the version thought proper for the ears of children. In Boyle’s edition this method resulted in realism pushed to the extreme; but it is not to be denied that the yellowed pages contain the wondrous adventures and hairbreadth escapes so dear to the small boy of all time. The thrilling incidents were further enlivened, moreover, by cuts called by the printer “curious” in the sense of very fine: and curious they are to-day because of the crudeness of their execution and the coarseness of their design. Nevertheless, the grotesque character of the illustrations was altogether effective in impressing upon the reader the doughty deeds of his old friend, Tom Thumb. The book itself shows marks of its popularity, and of the hard usage to which it was subjected by its happy owner, who was not critical of the editor’s freedom of speech.
The coarseness permitted in a nursery favorite makes it sufficiently clear that the standard for the ideal toy-book of the eighteenth century is no gauge for that of the twentieth. Child-life differed in many particulars, as Mr. Julian Hawthorne pointed out some years ago, when he wrote that the children of the eighteenth century “were urged to grow up almost before they were short-coated.” We must bear this in mind in turning to another class of books popular with adult and child alike in both England and America before and for some years after the Revolution.
This was the period when the novel in the hands of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett was assuming hitherto unsuspected possibilities. Allusion must be made to some of the characteristics of their work, since their style undoubtedly affected juvenile reading and the tales written for children.
Taking for the sake of convenience the novels of the earliest of this group of men, Samuel Richardson, as a starting-point, we find in Pamela and Mr. Lovelace types of character that merge from the Puritanical concrete examples of virtue and vice into a psychological attempt to depict the emotion and feeling preceding every act of heroine and villain. Through every stage of the story the author still clings to the long-established precedent of giving moral and religious instruction. Afterwards, when Fielding attempted to parody “Pamela,” he developed the novel of adventure in high and low life, and produced “Joseph Andrews.” He then followed this with the character-study represented by “Tom Jones, Foundling.” Richardson in “Pamela” had aimed to emphasize virtue as in the end prospering; Fielding’s characters rather embody the principle of virtue being its own reward and of vice bringing its own punishment. Smollett in “Humphrey Clinker’s Adventures” brought forth fun from English surroundings instead of seeking for the hero thrilling and daring deeds in foreign countries. He also added to the list of character-studies “Roderick Random,” a tale of the sea, the mystery of which has never palled since “Robinson Crusoe” saw light.
There was also the novel of letters. In the age of the first great novelists letter-writing was among the polite arts. It was therefore counted a great but natural achievement when the epistolary method of revealing the plot was introduced. “Clarissa Harlowe” and “Sir Charles Grandison” were the results of this style of writing; they comprehended the “most Important Concerns of private life”—“concerns” which moved with lingering and emotional persistency towards the inevitable catastrophe in “Clarissa,” and the happy issue out of the misunderstandings and misadventures which resulted in Miss Byron’s alliance with Sir Charles.
Until after the next (nineteenth) century had passed its first decade these tales were read in full or abridged forms by many children among the fashionable and literary sets in England and America. Indeed, the art of writing for children was so unknown that often attempts to produce child-like “histories” for them resulted in little other than novels upon an abridged scale.
But before even abridged novels found their way into juvenile favor, it was “customary in Richardson’s time to read his novels aloud in the family circle. When some pathetic passage was reached the members of the family would retire to separate apartments to weep; and after composing themselves, they would return to the fireside to have the reading proceed. It was reported to Richardson, that, on one of these occasions, ‘an amiable little boy sobbed as if his sides would burst and resolved to mind his books that he might be able to read Pamela through without stopping.’ That there might be something in the family novel expressly for children, Richardson sometimes stepped aside from the main narrative to tell them a moral tale.”80-*
Mr. Cross gives an example of this which, shorn of its decoration, was the tale of two little boys and two little girls, who never told fibs, who were never rude and noisy, mischievous or quarrelsome; who always said their prayers when going to bed, and therefore became fine ladies and gentlemen.
To make the tales less difficult for amiable children to read, an abridgment of their contents was undertaken; and Goldsmith is said to have done much of the “cutting” in “Pamela,” “Clarissa Harlowe,” “Sir Charles Grandison,” and others. These books were included in the lists of those sent to America for juvenile reading. In Boston, Cox and Berry inserted in the “Boston Gazette and Country Journal” a notice that they had the “following little Books for all good Boys and Girls:
Up to this time the story has been rather of the books read by the Puritan and Quaker population of the colonies. There had arisen during the first half of the eighteenth century, however, a merchant class which owed its prosperity to its own ability. Such men sought for their families the material results of wealth which only a place like Boston could bestow. Many children, therefore, were sent to this town to acquire suitable education in books, accomplishments, and deportment. A highly interesting record of a child of well-to-do parents has been left by Anna Green Winslow, who came to Boston to stay with an aunt for the winters of 1771 and 1772. Her diary gives delightful glimpses of children’s tea-parties, fashions, and schools, all put down with a childish disregard of importance or connection. It is in these jottings of daily occurrences that proof is found that so young a girl read, quite as a matter of course, the abridged works of Fielding and Richardson.
On January 1, 1772, she wrote in her diary, “a Happy New Year, I have bestowed no new year’s gifts, as yet. But have received one very handsome one, Viz, the History of Joseph Andrews abreviated. In nice Guilt and Flowers covers.” Again, she put down an account of a day’s work, which she called “a piecemeal for in the first place I sew’d on the bosom of unkle’s shirt, and mended two pairs of gloves, mended for the wash two handkerch’fs, (one cambrick) sewed on half a border of a lawn apron of aunt’s, read part of the xxist chapter of Exodous, & a story in the Mother’s Gift.” Later she jotted in her book the loan of “3 of Cousin Charles’ books to read, viz.—The puzzling Cap, the female Orators & the history of Gaffer Two Shoes.” Little Miss Winslow, though only eleven years of age, was a typical child of the educated class in Boston, and, according to her journal, also followed the English custom of reading aloud “with Miss Winslow, the Generous Inconstant and Sir Charles Grandison.” It is to be regretted that her diary gives no information as to how she liked such tales. We must anticipate some years to find a comment in the Commonplace Book of a Connecticut girl. Lucy Sheldon lived in Litchfield, a thriving town in eighteen hundred, and did much reading for a child in those days. Upon “Sir Charles Grandison” she confided to her book this offhand note: “Read in little Grandison, which shows that, virtue always meets its reward and vice is punished.” The item is very suggestive of Goldsmith’s success in producing an abridgment that left the moral where it could not be overlooked.
To discuss in detail this class of writings is not necessary, but a glance at the story of “Clarissa” gives an instructive impression of what old-fashioned children found zestful.
“Clarissa Harlowe” in its abridged form was first published by Newbery, Senior. The book that lies before the writer was printed in seventeen hundred and seventy-two by his son, Francis Newbery. In size five by three and one-half inches, it is decked in once gay parti-colored heavy Dutch paper, with a delicate gold tracery over all. This paper binding, called by Anna Winslow “Flowery Guilt,” can no longer be found in Holland, the place of its manufacture; with sarsinet and other fascinating materials it has vanished so completely that it exists only on the faded bindings of such small books as “Clarissa.”
The narrative itself is compressed from the original seven volumes into one volume of one hundred and seventy-six closely printed pages, with several full-page copper-plate illustrations. The plot, however, gains rather than loses in this condensed form. The principal distressing situations follow so fast one upon the other that the intensity of the various episodes in the affecting history is increased by the total absence of all the “moving” letters found in the original work. The “lordly husband and father,” “the imperious son,” “the proud ambitious sister, Arabella,” all combined to force the universally beloved and unassuming Clarissa to marry the wealthy Mr. Somers, who was to be the means of “the aggrandisement of the family.” Clarissa, in this perplexing situation, yielded in a desperate mood to “the earnest entreaties of the artful Lovelace to accept the protection of the Ladies of his family.” Who these ladies were, to whom the designing Lovelace conducted the agitated heroine, is set forth in unmistakable language; and thereafter follow the treacherous behaviour exhibited by Lovelace, the various attempts to escape by the unhappy beauty, and her final exhaustion and death. An example of the style may be given in this description of the death-scene:
“Clarissa had before remarked that all would be most conveniently over in bed: The solemn, the most important moment approached, but her soul ardently aspiring after immorality [immortality was of course the author’s intention], she imagined the time moved slowly; and with great presence of mind, she gave orders in relation to her body, directing her nurse and the maid of the house, as soon as she was cold, to put her into her coffin. The Colonel [her cousin], after paying her another visit, wrote to her uncle, Mr. John Harlowe, that they might save themselves the trouble of having any further debates about reconciliation; for before they could resolve, his dear cousin would probably be no more....
“A day or two after, Mr. Belford [a friend] was sent for, and immediately came; at his entrance he saw the Colonel kneeling by her bed-side with the ladies right hand in both his, which his face covered bathing it with tears, though she had just been endeavoring to comfort him, in noble and elevated strains. On the opposite side of the bed was seated Mrs. Lovick, who leaning against the bed’s-head in a most disconsolate manner, turned to him as soon as she saw him, crying, O Mr. Belford, the dear lady! a heavy sigh not permitting her to say more. Mrs. Smith [the landlady] was kneeling at the bed’s feet with clasped fingers and uplifted eyes, with tears trickling in large drops from her cheeks, as if imploring help from the source of all comfort.
“The excellent lady had been silent a few minutes, and was thought speechless, she moving her lips without uttering a word; but when Mrs. Lovick, on Mr. Belford’s approach, pronounced his name, O Mr. Belford! cried she, in a faint inward voice, Now!—now!—I bless God, all will soon be over—a few minutes will end this strife—and I shall be happy,” etc. Her speech was long, although broken by dashes, and again she resumed, “in a more faint and broken accent,” the blessing and directions. “She then sunk her head upon the pillow; and fainting away, drew from them her hands.” Once more she returned to consciousness, “when waving her hand to him [Mr. Belford] and to her cousin, and bowing her head to every one present, not omitting the nurse and maid servant, with a faltering and inward voice, she added Bless—Bless—you all!—”
The illustrations, in comparison with others of the time, are very well engraved, although the choice of subjects is somewhat singular. The last one represents Clarissa’s friend, “Miss Howe” (the loyal friend to whom all the absent letters were addressed), “lamenting over the corpse of Clarissa,” who lies in the coffin ordered by the heroine “to be covered with fine black cloth, and lined with white satin.”
As one lays aside this faded duodecimo, the conviction is strong that the texture of the life of an old-fashioned child was of coarser weave than is pleasant to contemplate. How else could elders and guardians have placed without scruple such books in the hands of children? The one explanation is to be found in such diaries as that of Anna Winslow, who quaintly put down in her book facts and occurrences denoting the maturity already reached by a little miss of eleven.
73-* Winsor, Memorial History of Boston, vol. ii, p. xix.
80-* Cross, Development of the English Novel, pp. 38, 39.
| The British King Lost States thirteen. |
| The New England Primer, Philadelphia, 1797 |
| The good little boy That will not tell a lie, Shall have a plum-pudding Or hot apple-pye. |
| Jacky Dandy’s Delight, Worcester, 1786 |
When John Mein was forced to close his London Book-Store in Boston and to return to England in 1770, the children of that vicinity had need to cherish their six-penny books with increased care. The shadow of impending conflict was already deep upon the country when Mein departed; and the events of the decade following seventeen hundred and seventy-three—the year of the Boston Tea-Party—were too absorbing and distressing for such trifling publications as toy-books to be more than occasionally printed. Indeed, the history of the American Revolution is so interwoven with tales of privation of the necessities of life that it is astonishing that any printer was able to find ink or paper to produce even the nursery classic “Goody Two-Shoes,” printed by Robert Bell of Philadelphia in seventeen hundred and seventy-six.
In New York the conditions were different. The Loyalists, as long as the town was held by the British, continued to receive importations of goods of all descriptions. Among the booksellers, Valentine Nutter from time to time advertised children’s as well as adults’ books. Hugh Gaine apparently continued to reprint Newbery’s duodecimos; and, in a rather newer shop, Roger and Berry’s, in Hanover Square, near Gaine’s, could be had “Gilt Books, together with Stationary, Jewelry, a Collection of the most books, bibles, prayer-books and patent medicines warranted genuine.”
Elsewhere in the colonies, as in Boston, the children went without new books, although very occasionally such notices as the following were inserted in the newspapers:
Just imported and to be Sold by Thomas Bradford
At his Book-Store in Market-Street, adjoining the Coffee-house
The following Books ...
Little Histories for Children,
Among which are, Book of Knowledge, Joe Miller’s Jests, Jenny Twitchells’ ditto, the Linnet, The Lark (being collections of best Songs), Robin Redbreast, Choice Spirits, Argalus & Parthenia, Valentine and Orson, Seven Wise Masters, Seven Wise Mistresses, Russell’s seven Sermons, Death of Abel, French Convert, Art’s Treasury, Complete Letter-Writer, Winter Evening Entertainment, Stories and Tales, Triumphs of Love, being a Collection of Short Stories, Joseph Andrews, Aesop’s Fables, Scotch Rogue, Moll Flanders, Lives of Highwaymen, Lives of Pirates, Buccaneers of America, Robinson Crusoe, Twelve Caesars.
Such was the assortment of penny-dreadfuls and religious tracts offered in seventeen hundred and eighty-one to the Philadelphia public for juvenile reading. It is typical of the chapmen’s library peddled about the colonies long after they had become states. “Valentine and Orson,” “The Seven Wise Masters,” “The Seven Wise Mistresses,” and “Winter Evening Entertainment” are found in publishers’ lists for many years, and, in spite of frequent vulgarities, there was often no discrimination between them and Newbery’s far superior stories; but by eighteen hundred and thirty almost all of these undesirable reprints had disappeared, being buried under the quantities of Sunday-school tales held in high favor at that date.
Meanwhile, the six years of struggle for liberty had rendered the necessaries of life in many cases luxuries. As early as seventeen hundred and seventy-five, during the siege of Boston, provisions and articles of dress had reached such prices that we find thrifty Mrs. John Adams, in Braintree, Massachusetts, foreseeing a worse condition, writing her husband, who was one of the Council assembled in Philadelphia, to send her, if possible, six thousand pins, even if they should cost five pounds. Prices continued to rise and currency to depreciate. In seventeen hundred and seventy-nine Mrs. Adams reported in her letters to her husband that potatoes were ten dollars a bushel, and writing-paper brought the same price per pound.
Yet family life went on in spite of these increasing difficulties. The diaries and letters of such remarkable women as the patriotic Abigail Adams, the Quakeress, Mrs. Eliza Drinker, the letters of the Loyalist and exile, James Murray, the correspondence of Eliza Pinckney of Charleston, and the reminiscences of a Whig family who were obliged to leave New York upon the occupation of the town by British forces, abound in those details of domestic life that give a many sided picture. Joys derived from good news of dear ones, and family reunions; anxieties occasioned by illness, or the armies’ depredations; courageous efforts on the part of mothers not to allow their children’s education and occupations to suffer unnecessarily; tragedies of death and ruined homes—all are recorded with a “particularity” for which we are now grateful to the writers.
It is through these writings, also, that we are allowed glimpses of the enthusiasm for the cause of Liberty, or King, which was imbibed from the parents by the smallest children. On the Whig side, patriotic mothers in New England filled their sons with zeal for the cause of freedom and with hatred of the tyranny of the Crown; while in the more southern colonies the partisanship of the little ones was no less intense. “From the constant topic of the present conversation,” wrote the Rev. John J. Zubly (a Swiss clergyman settled in South Carolina and Georgia), in an address to the Earl of Dartmouth in seventeen hundred and seventy-five,—“from the constant topic of the present conversation, every child unborn will be impressed with the notion—it is slavery to be bound at the will of another ‘in all things whatsoever.’ Every mother’s milk will convey a detestation of this maxim. Were your lordship in America, you might see little ones acquainted with the word of command before they can distinctly speak, and shouldering of a gun before they are well able to walk.”92-*
The children of the Tories had also their part in the struggle. To some the property of parents was made over, to save it from confiscation in the event of the success of the American cause. To others came the bitterness of separation from parents, when they were sent across the sea to unknown relatives; while again some faint manuscript record tells of a motherless child brought from a comfortable home, no longer tenable, to whatever quarters could be found within the British lines. Fortunately, children usually adapt themselves easily to changed conditions, and in the novelty and excitement of the life around them, it is probable they soon forgot the luxuries of dolls and hobby-horses, toy-books and drums, of former days.
In the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania the sentiment of the period was expressed in two or three editions of “The New England Primer.” Already in 1770 one had appeared containing as frontispiece a poor wood-cut of John Hancock. In 1775 the enthusiasm over the appointment of George Washington as commander-in-chief brought out another edition of the A B C book with the same picture labelled “General Washington.” The custom of making one cut do duty in several representations was so well understood that this method of introducing George Washington to the infant reader naturally escaped remark.
Another primer appeared four years later, which was advertised by Walters and Norman in the “Pennsylvania Evening Post” as “adorned with a beautiful head of George Washington and other copper-plates.” According to Mr. Hildeburn, this small book had the honor of containing the first portrait of Washington engraved in America. While such facts are of trifling importance, they are, nevertheless, indications of the state of intense feeling that existed at the time, and point the way by which the children’s books became nationalized.
In New England the very games of children centred in the events which thrilled the country. Josiah Quincy remembered very well in after life, how “at the age of five or six, astride my grandfather’s cane and with my little whip, I performed prodigies of valor, and more than once came to my mother’s knees declaring that I had driven the British out of Boston.” Afterwards at Phillips Academy, in Andover, between seventeen hundred and seventy-eight and seventeen hundred and eighty-six, Josiah and his schoolfellows “established it as a principle that every hoop, sled, etc., should in some way bear Thirteen marks as evidence of the political character of the owner,—if which were wanting the articles became fair prize and were condemned and forfeited without judge, jury, or decree of admiralty.”94-*
Other boys, such as John Quincy Adams, had tutors at home as a less expensive means of education than the wartime price of forty dollars a week for each child that good boarding-schools demanded. But at their homes the children had plenty of opportunity to show their intense enthusiasm for the cause of liberty. Years later, Mr. Adams wrote to a Quaker friend:
“For the space of twelve months my mother with her infant children dwelt, liable every hour of the day and of the night to be butchered in cold blood, or taken and carried to Boston as hostages. My mother lived in uninterrupted danger of being consumed with them all in a conflagration kindled by a torch in the same hands which on the Seventeenth of June [1775] lighted the fires of Charlestown.”94-†
He was, of course, only one of many boys who saw from some height near their homes the signs of battle, the fires of the enemy’s camps, the smoke rising from some farm fired by the British, or burned by its owner to prevent their occupation of it. With hearts made to beat quickly by the news that filtered through the lines, and heads made old by the responsibility thrust upon them,—in the absence of fathers and older brothers,—such boys as John Quincy Adams saw active service in the capacity of post-riders bearing in their several districts the anxiously awaited tidings from Congress or battlefield.
Fortunate indeed were the families whose homes were not disturbed by the military operations. From Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, families were sent hastily to the country until the progress of the war made it possible to return to such comforts as had not been destroyed by the British soldiers. The “Memoirs of Eliza Morton,” afterward Mrs. Josiah Quincy, but a child eight years of age in seventeen hundred and seventy-six, gives a realistic account of the life of such Whig refugees. Upon the occupation of New York by the British, her father, a merchant of wealth, as riches were then reckoned, was obliged to burn his warehouse to save it from English hands. Mr. Morton then gathered together in the little country village of Basking Ridge, seven miles from Morristown, New Jersey, such of his possessions as could be hastily transported from the city. Among the books saved in this way were the works of Thurston, Thomson, Lyttleton, and Goldsmith, and for the children’s benefit, “Dodsley’s Collection of Poems,” and “Pilgrim’s Progress.” “This,” wrote Mrs. Quincy, “was a great favorite; Mr. Greatheart was in my opinion a hero, well able to help us all on our way.” During the exile from New York, as Eliza Morton grew up, she read all these books, and years afterward told her grandchildren that while she admired the works of Thurston, Thomson, and Lyttleton, “those of Goldsmith were my chief delight. When my reading became afterward more extensive I instinctively disliked the extravagant fiction which often injures the youthful mind.”
The war, however, was not allowed to interfere with the children’s education in this family. In company with other little exiles, they were taught by a venerable old man until the evacuation of Philadelphia made it possible to send the older children to Germantown, where a Mr. Leslie had what was considered a fine school. The schoolroom walls were hung with lists of texts of Scripture beginning with the same letter, and for globes were substituted the schoolmaster’s snuffbox and balls of yarn. If these failed to impress a child with the correct notions concerning the solar system, the children themselves were made to whirl around the teacher.
In Basking Ridge the children had much excitement with the passing of soldiers to Washington’s headquarters in Morristown, and with watching for “The Post” who carried the news between Philadelphia, Princeton, and Morristown. “‘The Post,’ Mr. Martin,” wrote Mrs. Quincy, “was an old man who carried the mail, ... he was our constant medium of communication; and always stopped at our house to refresh himself and horse, tell the news, and bring packets. He used to wear a blue coat with yellow buttons, a scarlet waistcoat, leathern small-clothes, blue yarn stockings, and a red wig and cocked hat, which gave him a sort of military appearance. He usually traveled in a sulky, but sometimes in a chaise, or on horseback.... Mr. Martin also contrived to employ himself in knitting coarse yarn stockings while driving or rather jogging along the road, or when seated on his saddle-bags on horseback. He certainly did not ride post, according to the present [1821] meaning of that term.”
Deprived like many other children of Newbery’s peaceful biographies and stories, the little Mortons’ lives were too full of an intense daily interest to feel the lack of new literature of this sort. Tales of the campaigns told in letters to friends and neighbors were reëchoed in the ballads and songs that formed part of the literary warfare waged by Whig or Loyal partisans. Children of to-day sing so zestfully the popular tunes of the moment, that it requires very little imagination to picture the schoolboy of Revolutionary days shouting lustily verses from “The Battle of the Kegs,” and other rhymed stories of military incidents. Such a ballad was “A Song for the Red Coats,” written after the successful campaign against Burgoyne, and beginning:
Children, it has been said, are good haters. To the patriot boy and girl, the opportunity to execrate Benedict Arnold was found in these lines of a patriotic “ditty” concerning the fate of Major André:
Loyalist children had an almost equal supply of satirical verse to fling back at neighbors’ families, where in country districts some farms were still occupied by sympathizers with Great Britain. A vigorous example of this style of warfare is quoted by Mr. Tyler in his “Literature of the American Revolution,” and which, written in seventeen hundred and seventy-six, is entitled “The Congress.” It begins:
Or, again, such taunts over the general poverty of the land and character of the army as were made in a ballad called “The Rebels” by a Loyalist officer:
Those Loyalists who lived through this exciting period in America’s history bore their full share in the heavy personal misfortunes of their political party. The hatred felt toward such colonials as were true to the king has until recently hardly subsided sufficiently to permit any sympathy with the hardships they suffered. Driven from their homes, crowded together in those places occupied by the English, or exiled to England or Halifax, these faithful subjects had also to undergo separation of families perhaps never again united.
Such a Loyalist was James Murray. Forced to leave his daughter and grandchildren in Boston with a sister, he took ship for Halifax to seek a living. There, amid the pressing anxieties occasioned by this separation, he strove to reëstablish himself, and sent from time to time such articles as he felt were necessary for their welfare. Thus he writes a memorandum of articles sent in seventeen hundred and eighty by “Mr. Bean’s Cartel to Miss Betsy Murray:—viz: Everlasting 4 yards; binding 1 piece, Nankeen 4 7/8 yards. Of Gingham 2 gown patterns; 2 pairs red shoes from A. E. C. for boys, Jack and Ralph, a parcel—to Mrs. Brigden, 1 pair silk shoes and some flowers—Arthur’s Geographical Grammar,—Locke on Education,—5 children’s books,” etc. And in return he is informed that “Charlotte goes to dancing and writing school, improves apace and grows tall. Betsy and Charles are much better but not well. The rest of the children are in good health, desiring their duty to their Uncle and Aunt Inman, and thanks for their cake and gloves.”
To such families the end of the war meant either the necessity for making permanent their residence in the British dominion, or of bearing both outspoken and silent scorn in the new Republic.
For the Americans the peace of Yorktown brought joy, but new beginnings had also to be made. Farms had been laid waste, or had suffered from lack of men to cultivate them; industries were almost at a standstill from want of material and laborers. Still the people had the splendid compensation of freedom with victory, and men went sturdily back to their homes to take up as far as possible their various occupations.
An example of the way in which business undertaken before the war was rapidly resumed, or increased, is afforded by the revival of prosperity for the booksellers in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. Renewals of orders to London agents were speedily made, for the Americans still looked to England for their intellectual needs. In Philadelphia—a town of forty thousand inhabitants in seventeen hundred and eighty-three—among the principal booksellers and printers were Thomas Bradford, Mr. Woodhouse, Mr. Oswald, Mr. Pritchard,—who had established a circulating library,—Robert Aitkin, Mr. Liddon, Mr. Dunlap, Mr. Rice, William and David Hall, Benjamin Bache, J. Crukshank, and Robert Bell. Bell had undoubtedly the largest bookstore, but seems not to have been altogether popular, if an allusion in “The Philadelphiad” is to be credited. This “New Picture of the City” was anonymously published in seventeen hundred and eighty-four, and described, among other well-known places, Robert Bell’s book-shop:
Bell’s Book Store