Moral stories for Georgian children

'"Oh what a shocking story," said the children, and that miserable man who hangs there is Roger, who murdered his brother? Pray let us go, Papa"  We will go immediately" said Mr. Fairchild; "but I wish first to point out to you, my dear children, that these brothers, when they first began to quarrel in their play, as you did this morning, did not think that death, and perhaps hell, would the the end of their quarrels"'
 (Mrs. Sherwood, History of the Fairchild Family, 1818, p.60.  Google digital download)

Mrs. Sherwood, History of the Fairchild Family, 1818
(University of Roehampton digital collection)

The same writers who banished fairy tales from Georgian nurseries were happy to give children poetry and were very interested in children's education.  They produced a large number of text books which filled a real need.  Mrs. Trimmer produced illustrated introductory history books, Jeremiah Joyce, John Aikin and his sister Mrs. Barbauld wrote popular introductions to science and natural history, using imaginary conversations between parents and children.  These dialogues were based on the educational theories of the French philosopher and educationalist Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778, born Geneva, domiciled in France during the French Revolution.  see Sylvia Wiese Patterson The influence of Rousseau's Emile upon the writers of children's books in England in the late 18th century, University Microfilms Inc. Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1970) )

Mrs. Barbauld also wrote and published, in 1778, the very first book for children not only written in very simple language but also printed in large, clear type.  Lessons for Children was written for her adopted nephew Charles because she could not find any books suitable for teaching him to read.  Mrs. Trimmer, in The Guardian of Education, recognised the book as a landmark.
(Guardian of Education, vol. 1,1802, p.153)

Mrs. Barbauld, Lessons for Children, 1778,
 Google Digital Archive copy, Oxford University

Children's literature in the late 18th century and the first thirty years of the 19th century was dominated by the moral stories produced by members of the Christian Evangelical movement.  They give an interesting, slightly distorted, view of the lives led by real children at the time.
The households in these stories are mostly quite well off, though not rich, religious, with few servants, occupied in good works of various kinds, and closely united, loving family units.  The stories encouraged honesty, charity, love of God, kindness to animals, industry and selflessness.  Mrs. Maria Edgeworth's stories, in particular, give a charming picture of 18th century family life.

Mrs. Edgeworth was very influenced by Rousseau and many of her stories are based on  his theories about the importance of learning from good example and by experience.  These are fictionalised in his popular and influential book Emile, 1762 (publicly burned in Paris that year) The central thesis of Emile is that a child in born not, as the Puritans believed, naturally evil, but naturally innocent.  The child must be protected from contact with corrupting influences and carefully nurtured so that natural instincts and talents are encouraged to develop.

Title page of Rousseau's Emile, 1762
Wikipedia

Rosamund, the little heroine of many of Mrs. Edgeworth's tales, has an elder sister, the good one who is never cross, always puts her needles away tidily in her housewife, never lies in bed late on cold mornings, and, being provident, is always infuriatingly ready with quietly given pennies for the deserving poor.

Rosamund and Laura, Harry and Lucy are forever far-away Georgian children in caps and ribbons, set in a Georgian landscape of gravel walks and neat flower borders but their behaviour is timeless children's behaviour;
'I am sure - no, not quite sure - but, I hope, I shall be wiser another time!'
says Rosamund of her unwise choice of the beautiful purple jar in the chemist's chemist's shop, which turns out to be merely a glass jar filled with nasty-smelling purple liquid, instead of the shoes she really needs and then has to manage without.  This is an object lesson which she remembers when offered a housewife to keep her needles safe or an imitation plum with which to play tricks on her brother and sister.  She chooses the useful housewife, though not without some agonising.
 In another story Rosamund gets a thorn in her little finger and won't let her mother take it out because she is afraid of being pricked with the needle.
'It does not hurt me in the least, whist I hold it still, and whilst I hold it out quite straight, mamma."
"And is it your intention to hold your finger out quite straight and quite still, Rosamund, all the remainder of your life?"
With gentle irony, mamma leads Rosamund to realise that having the thorn removed is the wisest thing to do.
Rosamund is never punished directly, simply made to suffer the logical consequences of he actions.  As she is a rational child, she then corrects her faults herself, or at least tries to.
(Maria Edgeworth, The Parents' Assistant, 1796, and Early Lessons, vol. 2 p.1-132 and 96-107)

Rosamund and the purple jar, Early Lessons, 9th ed.
Google digital download 

John Ruskin described his upbringing, based on Rousseau's theories, in his autobiography, Praeteria, and also recognised its shortcomings:
'My mother's general principles of first treatment were to guard me with steady watchfulness from all pain or danger; and for the rest to amuse myself as I liked, provided I was neither fretful nor troublesome.  But the law was, that I should find my own amusement.  No toys of any kind were at first allowed...Nor did I painfully wish, what I was never permitted for an instant to hope, or even imagine, the possession of such things as one saw in toy-shops.  I had a bunch of keys to play with, as long as I was capable only of pleasure in what glittered and jingled; as I grew older, I had a cart, and a ball; and when I was five or six years old, two boxes of well-cut wooden bricks.'
(John Ruskin, Praeterita, vol. 1, 1885.   Univ. Cal. download p.13)
When Ruskin was older he was taught by his parents and by a series of carefully chosen tutors and, according to Rousseau's principles, kept from the possibly contaminating companionship of other children,

The essence of Rousseau's theory was that the child should be protected from all outside influences which would threaten the natural innocence of its mind, and should acquire knowledge naturally through a benevolently guided exploration of the world around it.  The foundation of Ruskin's lifelong study of art, architecture and aesthetic principles were laid in his early childhood through the tactile and visual exploration of everyday objects.  His building bricks were particularly important to him:

John Ruskin c.1864
Wikipedia

'I never saw or heard of another child so fond of its toy bricks except Miss Edgeworth's (fictional) Frank.  Maria Edgeworth's tales, particularly Harry and Lucy, were of course part of Ruskin's staple reading.   Ruskin developed finely tuned artistic sensibilities as a result of his early education.   It is likely that Darwin and other Victorian scientists, also following their natural inclinations, developed their habits of scientific analysis, while still children, as a result of the same method of education, having been encouraged to collect cabinets of shells, geological specimens, insects or botanical specimens and examine them.

However the solitary upbringing advocated by Rousseau and the ceaseless vigilance with which Ruskin was watched over as a youth left him 'only by protection innocent, instead of by practise virtuous' (Praeteria download version p.55), emotionally vulnerable because his emotions had never been tested, and lacking social graces.  So the eruption into his life of the charming girls who came to stay for a while when Ruskin was about seventeen was overwhelming, the embarrassment of trying to entertain them awful, and possibly his over-protected childhood led to the failure of his marriage.(Praeteria download version p.273-)

In Mrs. Sherwood's books, as in Maria Edgeworth's, moral lessons are taught by the children's failings.  The History of the Fairchild Family, (3 vols, 1818, 1841, 1847) is another children's book which  remained very popular throughout the 19th century.  Maybe this is also what made it popular with children.  Emily, Henry and Lucy are always falling short of perfection in their own eyes as well as in their parents; trying to be good and failing.  In the chapter forbiddingly called The constant bent of man's heart towards sin, for instance, the children have been left at home under the care of a servant.  They are determined to be good.  They begin their lessons, but see a pig in the garden and think it would be good to chase it out.  This would be good, but instead of stopping at the gate they follow it down the lane and through a stream.  A farmer's wife sees how wet and muddy they are and invites them in to get dry.  This is kind of her, but they should not have accepted because her children are naughty children and their parents have forbidden them to play there.  The farmer's wife gives them cake and cider, which was kind, but they get tipsy and fall down in the lane and muddy their clothes even more.  They are very remorseful for a while, but then they are tempted by the swing in the barn, on which they are not allowed to play unsupervised.  Of course their swinging gets out of hand and Emily falls off and cuts her head.  In despair the servant, John, ties the other two children to a chair so that they cannot get into any more mischief.  When their parents get home they are very sorry and run to confess their naughtiness.  (Mary Sherwood, History of the Fairchild Family, vol.1, 1818, digital p. 70-83.  Available in digital download, University of Roehampton)

History of the Fairchild Family,
 illustrated by Florence Rudland, 1902
(Project Gutenberg internet edition)

In these stories the cardinal sins are disobedience to parents and lying.  One of the most forceful stories in The History of the Fairchild Family is Absence of God where Mr. Fairchild punishes Harry, explaining that a father stands in relation to his children as God does to man and so disobedience to his father is a sin against God.(p 265-75)  The children's worst punishments, in accordance with this religious theory, are their own remorse and their parents' displeasure.  Emily steals damsons from the cupboard and is so overcome by guilt that she nearly dies of a fever.(p.114-123)  Henry refuses to learn his first Latin lesson on the ingenious grounds that although this one is easy he has looked at later lessons and knows he will not be able to do them: 'I am sure I cannot learn all the hard words in this book, and so I won't begin;  (p.265-275)  Harry's punishment is to be ignored by his family, though his little sisters are very tearful about it, and he is quickly brought to a state of remorseful repentance by the moral weight of family disapproval, another example of the kind of psychological punishments which both John Locke and Rousseau favoured.  On one terrible occasion the children art taken to see the body of a hanged man on a gibbet, as a lesson in how small faults can lead to greater ones and eventually to the gallows.  (Google digital edition p.,75-6)

As might be expected religious duties are strongly stressed in these moral stories, but in fact religious observance clearly varied between puritanism as strict as any practised in the 17th century to Henrietta Hotham's lighthearted declaration in 1763 at the age of eleven: 'I have not yet declared of what Religion I shall be; but I go three times a week to the Church door; and upon Moses Hart's having done a most humane and charitable action by one of Mr. Carr's sons, I have been to the Jew's synagogue; it is observed that there is no Apprehension of my being a Papist, I like Fish too well to have it my Duty to eat it.'
(A.M.W. Stirling, The Hothams,  2 vols, 1918, p.95)

Even in a strict Quaker household such as the Gurney's the children's private journals for spiritual self-examination contain some surprisingly rebellious sentiments:
'At this time I do not believe in Christ' 'Oh how I long to get a broom and bang all the old Quakers who do look so triumphant and disagreable.'
(Augustust J.C. Hare, The Gurneys of Earlham, 1895, Vol. 7 p.72, 79)

Generally, however both adults and children who belonged to the various sects which disented from the established Church of England were particularly fervent in their religious beliefs, partly, no doubt, because in the latter half of the 18th century dissenters were still liable to persecution.  As late as 1800 Isaac Taylor, (brother of Jane Taylor who wrote Twinkle twinkle little star) described a near escape from a mob bent on attacking their house, and there was strong feeling against the Catholics due to the Stuart claim to the Crown.
(Doris May Armitage, The Taylors of Ongar, 1938 p. 24-55)

 Adults and children were exposed to propaganda such as The Protestant Tutor, 1713, advertised as:
'Instructing Youth and Others in the Complete Method of Spelling, Reading, and Writing True English: Also Discovering to them the Notorious Errors, Damnable Doctrines and Cruel Massacres of the Bloody Papists; which England may expect from a Popish Successor, with Instructions for Grounding them in the Protestant Religion.  To which is added the Preamble to the Patent for Creating the Electoral Prince of Hanover a Peer of the Realm, Duke of Cambridge.
(later George I  The Protestant Tutor, 1713, Parker Collection, Library of Birmingham))
The anti-Catholic Foxe's Book of Martyrs was also still very popular reading.

Image from Foxe's Book of Martyrs, 1563
British Library digital image

Mrs. Sherwood remembered being at school in Reading where many French refugees fled during the French Revolution (1789-99) One of them, the Abbe Beauregard, attempted to convert her to the Catholic religion which she resisted:
'Popery of course must be wrong, because my parents had said so, and because those people worshipped saints; and God alone, I had been taught, was the fit object of worship.'
(The Life of Mrs. Sherwood, 1857 A digital version is available on Google)
Stephen Hawtrey, at school in France shortly before the Revolution, experienced the reverse prejudice, being told that, as a Protestant, he could not be a Christian because he had not been baptised.
 (Florence M. Hawtrey,  The History of The Hawtrey Family, 1903, Vol. 1, p. 392)

Although the 18th and 19th centuries were a period of strong and active religious feeling in Britain which expressed itself in generally puritanical attitudes to dress and behaviour, it is evident from the force with which Nonconformist and Evangelical writers condemned such behaviour that a large number of middle and upper class children were being brought up under what, to their eyes, appeared a deplorably lax regime, and to very different standards.  Many late 18th and early 19th century stories proclaim the superiority of spiritual beauty over physical, ridicule overdress, spoilt children, and extol the virtues of plain dressing, simplicity and personal cleanliness, something which was beginning to be expected in polite circles.

Mary Hughes, The Ornaments Discovered, 1815,
 Copy:internet  Biblio.co.uk, Abbey Antiquarian Books

The Ornaments Discovered by Mary Hughes contrasts the behaviour of Emma:
'dress, unfortunately for her, was the most important object in life' and foundling Fanny, whose spiritual ornaments give the title.  Fanny is so sweet natured, or lacking in discrimination, that she continues to regard Emma as her dearest friend when the latter's lack of moral courage has led to Fanny being considered a liar and a thief.  She is, in fact, a shining moral example of not only virtues such as honesty but also those qualities which the Georgians and especially the Victorians thought so essential in a woman, utter unselfishness, sweet-nature, good temper and gentleness.
(Mary Hughes, The Ornaments Discovered, 1822 edition, Parker Collection, Library of Birmingham)

The poem Finery in Jane and Anne Taylor's popular collection Original Poems for Infant Minds makes the same point:

''Twas Lucy, tho' only in simple white clad
(Nor trimmings, nor laces, not jewels she had)
Whose cheerful good nature delighted them more
Than all the fine garments that Harriet wore.'
(Jane and Anne Taylor, Original poems for infant minds, 1804.  p. 99.
Garland Press facsimile 1976.  Digital copy available on Google Project Gutenberg, but pagination differs)

For a few years at least simplicity became the fashion.  However, with so many pretty things to tempt them who could blame those who could afford it for yielding to the temptation to display their wealth and dress themselves and their children up like Christmas trees?

The New England Puritans were no more successful in discouraging people from a taste for finery than the British Nonconformists and Evangelicals. Alice Morse Earle quotes, for example, a long letter from a twelve year old American girl, Anna Green Winslow, written in 1771, describing her complicated toilet for a special occasion:
'I was dress'd in my yellow coat, black bib & apron, my pompedore shoes, the cap my aunt Storer sometime since presented me with blue ribbins on it, a very handsome locket in the shape of a hart, the paste pin my Hon'd Papa presented me with in my cap, my new cloak & bonnet on, my pompedore gloves, and I would tell you they all lik'd my dress very much.'...Nor was this all, on another occasion she wore'...black feathers....my paste comb, all my paste, garnett, marquasett, and jet pins, together with my silver plume...'
(Alice Morse Earle Child life in Colonial days, 1899, p.58-9.  Digital copy available on Project Gutenberg, an excellent account of child life in the USA)