Mary Louisa Molesworth
and Victorian Children's Fiction (1)
For some popular writers of the past centuries, fame as a writer did not prove everlasting. It is not uncommon, though, to rediscover among those who no longer maintain their popularities to the present day, a few who have left indelible achievements for the history of literature. Mary Louisa Molesworth (1839-1921), generally known as Mrs. Molesworth, was one of the most successful children's writers of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. She was a remarkably prolific writer, and her publications went up to more than a hundred stories, including Carrots: Just a Little Boy (1876) and The Cuckoo Clock (1877), the works for which she is still best known.1 Mrs. Molesworth had a good start in her career as a children's writer, but her way of entering this professional field was not straightforward. Initially she intended to be a novelist, as is evident from her earliest books that were not written for children but were novels in three volumes. Her first publication in 1870 was Lover and Husband, followed successively by three more novels, She Was Young and He Was Old, Not Without Thorns, and Cicely: A Story of Three Years. It was in 1875, five years after her first publication, when Mrs. Molesworth published Tell me a Story, her first children's book. Although she did not first choose to write for children, she was encouraged by Sir Joseph Noel Paton, a family friend, to become a children's writer.2
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Noel Paton's acute judgement was soon to be fully justified, for Mrs. Molesworth's talents as a children's author were early recognised by her contemporaries. For instance, a review in The Athenaeum on Tell me a Story praised her effusively.
So delightful that we are inclined to join in the petition, and we hope she may soon tell us more stories.3
Naturally, Mrs. Molesworth rejoiced at the positive responses to her book, and they undoubtedly brought her great excitement and hopes to pursue her career in this field. Ten years later she related her positive feelings at being so favourably reviewed:
The first volume of stories I published, "Tell me a Story," was partly made up of tales that had already appeared, partly of original ones. And its success, though much less than that of "Carrots," the following year, was so great as quite to surprise me, and make me determine to give to stories for children all the time I could then spare for writing.4
During the following two years after Tell me a Story, Mrs. Molesworth published Carrots and The Cuckoo Clock, which achieved remarkable success. Even with this, however, she did not completely stop writing for adults, and she subsequently published some novels such as Miss Bouverie in1880 and Marrying and Giving in Marriage in 1887. Nevertheless, the approving comments on her first books for children indubitably encouraged Mrs. Molesworth's motivation and confidence to become a writer for children. In practice, Carrots and The Cuckoo Clock met with
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Mary Louisa Molesworth and Victorian Children's Fiction (1) a similarly warm reception. The Examiner pronounced Carrots:
One of the cleverest and most pleasing stories it has been our good fortune to meet with for some time. 'Carrots' and his sister are delightful little beings, whom to read about is at once to be become very fond of.
Still more admiringly, The Pall Mall Gazette referred to The Cuckoo Clock as a 'beautiful little story,' adding:
It will be read with delight by every child into whose hands it is placed.... Ennis Graham [Mrs. Molesworth's early pseudonym] deserves all the praise that has been, is, and will be, bestowed on The Cuckoo Clock. Children's stories are plentiful, but one like this is not to be met with every day.
From these reviews, it seems that Mrs. Molesworth received assurance of success from the very beginning. The praise she received from her contemporary critics no doubt contributed to her popularity and enhanced her reputation as a children's writer, laying a cornerstone in the course of her long career, during which she was to produce many stories for Victorian and Edwardian children. As in general, most literary texts reflect the author's own life and thoughts to some degree, Mrs. Molesworth too drew upon some background information and inspiration for her stories from her own experiences. Therefore a certain extent of familiarity with her life is imperative for a thorough understanding of her work. Mary Louisa Stewart, later Molesworth, was born on 29 May 1839, in Rotterdam,
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Holland, although her family left continental Europe and returned to England before her second birthday. She was the eldest daughter of Charles Augustus Stewart (c.1809-1873) and his wife Agnes Janet (1810- 1883), whose maiden name was Wilson. Mary Louisa was the second of six children, and all three of her brothers died in early adult life.5 Her father, Charles Augustus Stewart was a successful merchant. He was the son of Major General Stewart of Strath, Caithnesshire, who was a military man, whose services were rewarded with a grant of land in New South Wales.6 He is said to have encouraged his son to follow a military career, though Charles did not take his father's footsteps, choosing instead to engage in commerce. Charles's business became prosperous, and Mary Louisa seems to have been brought up in relatively comfortable circumstances as a member of a wealthy middle-class family in Manchester. Her family was perhaps not exactly 'very' wealthy,7 but all the same Mrs. Molesworth enjoyed all of the benefits that her privileged background offered. Her education―especially the earlier years of it― was mostly private, which was given by her mother, who, according to Roger Lancelyn Green, was 'an unusually well-educated woman who had spent some time in France and probably had distant relations in that country.' It seems that Mary Louisa, too, was well educated for a girl in those days, not only did she attend a boarding school in Switzerland but she also received private lessons from the Reverend William Gaskell, the husband of Elizabeth Gaskell. Green even alludes to the possibility that Mary Louisa had some tuition from Mrs. Gaskell herself. As Margaret J. Baker suggests, it is said that Mr. Gaskell encouraged her to write.8 Green quotes a comment by Susanna Winkworth about her sister Catherine: 'it was under Mr. Gaskell's guidance...that she gained her wide knowledge of English literature, and her keen appreciation of style. Her
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Mary Louisa Molesworth and Victorian Children's Fiction (1) own mind was stimulated by his rich and varied culture, rare critical power, and exquisite refinement of taste.'9 Mrs. Molesworth was a girl who felt that, unlike her love of reading, learning to write 'was wretchedness and misery.' She mentioned in one of her articles: 'not till I was fourteen did I ever attempt anything of the kind "seriously," even from a child's point of view.'10 When she was about fourteen, she spent her brief period at her Swiss boarding school, and it was after returning to England that she attended Reverend Gaskell's lessons. Mrs. Molesworth stated in the same article:
And the best work I ever did, up to the age of seventeen or so, was translation. For this, too, I have always been grateful. It taught me―thanks to the exceptional excellence of the teacher, himself a perfect master of a style, a writer far less known by name than he deserved to be―it taught me, by really thoughtful effort, command of language, just appreciation of words, unconfused with any attempt at using my own crude and immature material, till years and a developed imagination had improved my powers of invention; and to my delight, not unmingled with surprise, I found the means of expression ready and full-grown, waiting to be used.
Providing some solid training in the wide range of literary skills, his lessons helped significantly to form the essential foundation of Mrs. Molesworth's future as a children's writer. On 24 July, 1861, Mary Louisa married Richard Molesworth, the eldest son of Captain Oliver Molesworth, R.A., who was the third brother of the seventh Viscount Molesworth of Swords and Baron Phillipstown
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Yoko Takami of Phillipstown in Ireland. Richard Molesworth began his military career as a Lieutenant during the Crimean War in 1855. He received a shrapnel wound to the head during the conflict, which the doctors were not able fully to remove. Continuing his military service, he accompanied his regiment to India, returning to England in 1860. He was then promoted to Captain in the following year. Describing Richard Molesworth as a 'young, handsome, gallant' man, Mary Louisa's sister, Caroline Marian, later recalled,
it was a most real love match: she loved Richard dearly and they were young and happy together, whatever happened later.11
Their married life was probably not a smooth one in several ways. For instance, even after her marriage, Mrs. Molesworth supposedly had some financial support from her own family―'her father,' says Green, at the time after their marriage, 'like so many other successful business men of the period, was able to rent an old country seat from its impoverished owner.' Also, regarding the personality of her husband, there is an interesting comment from one of Richard's relatives:
Mrs. Molesworth told me herself that he had a very violent temper, and that her mother did not want the marriage for that reason; but she trusted to her own love and tact to keep it under control. She said it was due to the wound he had received in the Crimea on the top of his head.12
This remark suggests that Mrs. Molesworth was a woman of independent mind and strong will power, who had a passionate, romantic side to her
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Mary Louisa Molesworth and Victorian Children's Fiction (1) nature. The impression that such an interpretation creates may seem difficult to reconcile with the reputation that she now enjoys for being somewhat conservative in her outlook. Mrs. Molesworth, like her writings, is a somewhat complex figure. After their marriage the young couple moved with Richard's regiment from Dublin to Birmingham, and then to Aldershot. Altogether they had seven children. Their first child, Agnes Violet Grace, was born in 1862, followed the next year by Mary Cicely Caroline. From 1865 to 1873 she gave birth to two more daughters and three sons, although her eldest son, Richard Walter Stewart, born in 1869, died in infancy. According to Green, when they married Richard was heir presumptive to the Molesworth title, but a son was born to the Viscount Molesworth in 1868, thus dashing his hopes of succession. In 1869 the family was struck by tragedy. Not only did Mrs. Molesworth lose her eldest son, Richard Walter, she also lost her eldest daughter Violet, who died of scarlet fever at the age of seven. After her father's death, as some legal problem led to the termination of their tenancy, Mrs. Molesworth moved to Edinburgh with her family and her mother. This was probably because Mrs. Stewart was originally from Scotland and her sisters and friends, including the painter and illustrator Sir Noel Paton, were still living there.13 Richard Molesworth, who had been promoted to the rank of Major by this time, permanently retired at the end of 1874, and he is said to have indulged himself in 'extravagance and eccentricity,' leaving his wife in anxiety.14 Ultimately, their marriage collapsed, and in 1879 they decided to separate. Writing of their marital breakdown, Marghanita Laski says:
Soon Mrs. Molesworth found that she and her husband were
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incompatible and she divorced him―another amazingly strong- minded action in view of the current attitude to divorce.15
However, Green disagrees with Laski's assertion, arguing that the 8th Viscount, a relative of Molesworth, strongly advised Mrs. Molesworth to be separated from Richard, and they did not divorce but were merely separated:
There was a legal separation, but not a divorce as has been stated in previous books.16
Even if Green is correct in claiming that Mrs. Molesworth did not legally divorce her husband, she still showed great strength of character and independence of spirit in separating from him. (Notably, according to Green, Mrs. Molesworth remained very close to Richard's mother and some of his cousins even after their separation.) Considering how hugely important a marriage was to Victorian women, her decisiveness in both her marriage and separation seem more or less extraordinary for the day. At the same time, the attribution of Richard's disagreeable temper to the wound on his head expresses Mrs. Molesworth's protective attitude to her choice and the validity of their marriage. Concerning Mrs. Molesworth's character, her granddaughter suggested that in her youth, she 'was perhaps too critical of herself and others, having stronger emotions than she herself realised,' while her nephew described Mrs. Molesworth in her later years as 'a very wise person.' Her granddaughter also noted that Mrs. Molesworth's marital problems and 'the early deaths of her adored first daughter and her first son undoubtedly soured her and it was many years before the sweetness
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Mary Louisa Molesworth and Victorian Children's Fiction (1) came back'―with this, she explained the reason why Mrs. Molesworth had been a 'stern' mother, though she was 'sweet' as a grandmother; Mrs. Molesworth 'was one of those natures which resent grief, and only discipline themselves to accept it with great difficulty.'17 As to Richard Molesworth, on the other hand, Green says that he left 'to his grandsons the memory of a charming and generous eccentric whom they never saw.' Although this was his grandson's impression of him, perhaps as a father he was similarly 'an eccentric.' Under such family circumstance, the mother must have been obliged to assume the father's role as well. Probably, this links to a certain extent with the comments on Mrs. Molesworth's personality that describe her as a somewhat distant, dignified woman.18 Around this time, Mrs. Molesworth was living in Northern France, and occasionally stayed in Germany. Her French and German were fairly good: she gave lessons to Richard's batman, Archibald Forbes (1838- 1900), who later achieved fame as a war correspondent and historian, and in 1889, she also published French Life in Letters, which is listed in Macmillan's Illustrated Primary Series of French and German Readings. It is said that sometimes Mrs. Molesworth left her children with her mother in Paris while she was staying in Germany. Such opportunity must have allowed her to spare more time for herself and for her writing. Initially, she published her first few books under the pseudonym of Ennis Graham, because of the opinion of her father who regarded authorship as unladylike work. This was the usual situation for many Victorian women writers―and such patriarchal authority must have exerted a strong influence on Mrs. Molesworth as well. It may be therefore notable that before her father's death, she wrote in the same room where 'her children were being taught by the local schoolmaster.'19 The situation seems to be considerably
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Yoko Takami different from that of women writers at the beginning of the century, whose writing activities often risked their own reputation as respectable women.20 Mrs. Molesworth finally returned to England after her mother's death in 1883. She was already gaining great popularity, counting Algernon C. Swinburne among her admirers. In 1884, he asserted:
It seems to me not at all easier to draw a life-like child than to draw a life-like man or woman.... Since the death of George Eliot, there is none left whose touch is so exquisite and masterly, whose love is so thoroughly according to knowledge, whose bright and sweet invention is so fruitful, so truthful or so delightful as Mrs. Molesworth's.21
While she lived in London at Sumner Place, off Onslow Square, and later at Sloane Street, Mrs. Molesworth had a reputation as a celebrated children's writer, her acquaintances including such well-known figures as Walter Pater and Rudyard Kipling. It is said that Mrs. Molesworth was very attached to her daughters, and they helped her with housekeeping, providing conditions in which she could concentrate on writing. A relation, Gwen Molesworth, remembered Mrs. Molesworth in those days as a quiet, attractive person with a dignified, rather distant manner, and she attests to a number of pictures, recollecting her 'sitting on a log, with us all around her, telling us ghost stories,' when they spent a summer together; she also alleges that one 'could not imagine her romping on the floor with small children,' in fact she 'cannot remember her laughing very heartily' though her quiet humour was appreciative.22 Not only was Mrs. Molesworth rather quiet and restrained but it is also suggested that some
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Mary Louisa Molesworth and Victorian Children's Fiction (1) people had given up calling on her, feeling that 'it was very difficult to get in.' Mrs. Molesworth was 'very methodical and exact,' claims Gwen Molesworth, 'budgeting carefully' to maintain her lifestyle―she appeared very young for her age, and 'liked good clothes and was always well turned out, fresh and up to date.' Mrs. Molesworth was apparently aware of the value of children's literature and took pride in writing stories for children. In her article 'On the Art of Writing Fiction for Children' which appeared in Atalanta, Mrs. Molesworth expressed her underlying concern about writing for children: 'so many young writers, too modest to aspire very high, think they can "write for children."'23 She responded to this unwarranted assumption in the same article:
And often this is a mistake. Writing for children calls for a peculiar gift. It is not so much a question of taking up one's stand on the lower rungs of the literary ladder, as of standing on another ladder altogether―one which has its own steps, its higher and lower positions of excellence.
Mrs. Molesworth tried to establish the validity of children's literature and the professionalism of the children's writer;24 her comments above impart a critical protest against hierarchical notions of literary value, according to which children's literature occupies the lowest rung on the ladder of literary excellence. For her contemporaries, writing for children, even more than women's literature, was still viewed as an inferior occupation, only undertaken by those incapable of writing for adults. However, she asserts here, children's writing is different from and yet equal in value to, writing for adults. As Mrs. Molesworth herself maintained, a truly
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Yoko Takami successful children's writer occupies a separate ladder altogether, with its own inherent standards. In her first children's book, Tell me a Story, Mrs. Molesworth commented, in the voice of the narrator who was asked to tell a story by children:
You are such dreadfully wise people now-a-days ― you have long ago left behind you what I used to think wonderful stories...and you have such piles of story books that you are always reading, and many of them too written for you by the cleverest men and women living! What could I tell you that you would care to hear?25
Even though there might exist a certain pretence of humility on the part of the author, what is more important is that Mrs. Molesworth clearly put forward her respect for children as her reader, and for their childish yet 'refined' critical tastes. Several articles that Mrs. Molesworth wrote for the periodicals are valuable for an appreciation of her professionalism and her views on writing. For example, it is often said that she wrote 'prolifically,' in some periods publishing even seven to eight stories in a year, and what she pronounced in an article unfolds her mental attitude as a writer that would explain her productiveness. She cites her own precept when giving advice to potential writers:
if you have any serious intention of making stories for children a part of your life-work, beware of "waiting for inspiration," as it is called. ... You must go at it steadily, nay, even plod at it, if you want to do good and consistent work, always
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Mary Louisa Molesworth and Victorian Children's Fiction (1) remembering that your audience will be of the most critical, though all the better worth satisfying on that account.26
Similarly, Mrs. Molesworth denies this 'waiting for inspiration' in other articles, such as 'How I Write My Children's Stories' and 'Story-Writing.' In the former, she reiterates: 'My rule is to sit down and begin to write, even though I am not feeling at all "inspired." And generally "it comes."' But when she is really unable to write, she says she puts her writing away: 'for I should never be satisfied to write even the simplest little tale unless I felt I could give my whole power and mind to it.' Underneath the extensive number of her publications and her considerable popularity as a writer, there was a strong motivation and discipline as such. According to Gaye Tuchman and Nina E. Fortin, for late Victorian women publication of a book was almost synonymous with that of a novel, although for men 'writing novels did not necessarily contribute to fame,' and their publications 'in the traditionally male bastions of poetry, plays, and nonfiction were more likely to do so.'27 Indeed, as mentioned, Mrs. Molesworth's first intention was to be a novelist, but she later attained a remarkable success and gained popularity as a children's writer.28 Tuchman and Fortin explain how male writers invaded the previously female-dominated field of writing novels. In accordance with the refinement of children's literature and its establishment as a literary genre, the same process must have occurred to writers for children. That partly explains the literary conditions of late Victorian period in which there were such predominant male authors who wrote for children, as Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) and George MacDonald (1824-1905). Tuchman and Fortin define the period from 1840 to 1879 as the period of invasion, when novelist was still female-dominant occupation, but
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Yoko Takami men 'began to value the novel as a cultural form.' Then from 1880 to 1899 is the period of redefinition, when 'men of letters, including critics, actively redefined the nature of a good novel and a great author,' and they 'preferred a new form of realism that they associated with "manly" literature.' It was under such condition that Mrs. Molesworth wrote the above article in 1893. As a professional writer for children, Mrs. Molesworth warned women who tended to see writing for children as inferior ― therefore easier ― work than writing novels. Perhaps men's invasion encouraged more women to turn to the field of children's literature. In this shifting period of the genre―that was expanding and becoming more complex, Mrs. Molesworth was successful, and her occupational field was indeed a competitive one: it was, by the end of the century, no longer the assumed preserve of women writers. In spite of the fame and popularity she enjoyed during her own lifetime, however, Mrs. Molesworth is not a well-known writer today. With the literary correlation between the quantity of work and the amount of fame that women writers received, Tuchman explains by examining the Dictionary of National Bibliography that 'the less famous novelists, women like Mrs. Molesworth, gained entry to the DNB because they wrote so much that was widely read that the compilers of the DNB could not ignore them.'29 When she died in 1921, 'her popularity was suffering from a temporary eclipse which even excluded her from DNB,'30 suggests Green, though her fame seems to have remained in her obituary written in The Times: 'Though now children's books come yearly in hundreds Mrs. Molesworth's have not yet been superseded, and very likely, never will be.'31 The listing in DNB all the same evidently proves that Mrs. Molesworth was by any reckoning a 'popular' writer for children, and it is even more significant that her entry was included in the DNB volume
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Mary Louisa Molesworth and Victorian Children's Fiction (1) for the 'missing persons' published in 1993. This seems symbolic of her under-rated evaluation by the past generations. Although children's literature has become the subject of increasing critical attention in recent years, and is currently one of the fastest growing areas of literary studies, Mrs. Molesworth remains, as a rule, a 'minor' writer. Truly, she is an under-read, as well as under-rated, woman writer today. Mrs. Molesworth was in fact a creative and innovative writer, and the broader literary context within which she was working also helped to make her a successful children's writer. It was to her great advantage that children's literature was in a transitional state at the time, when writing for children came to be regarded as an established literary genre. Mrs. Molesworth made an important contribution to this developing genre―a contribution that her contemporaries readily acknowledged―while at the same time she benefited from the increased interest that people had in this expanding field. Laski explains the background to Victorian children's literature:
For the first half of the nineteenth century the children's story was in a state of flux. It was, I suppose, Rousseau's Emile that inculcated the belief that children were different animals from adults and as such required different treatment, clothing, surroundings and even books. Emile was published in France in 1767, and the somewhat revolutionary ideas it propagated required no little time to become thoroughly imbued with existing English credos and absorbed into the English attitude to childhood.32
In this context, children's reading gained more attention from adults and
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Yoko Takami more reading materials were produced, but these tended to be overtly didactic, sacrificing pleasure and enjoyment at the altar of moral and educational instruction. On the subject of the significant changes in attitude towards children that were taking place in the nineteenth century, Green turns to this newly emerging conception of the child. He suggests that the new notion of a child as a real and interesting personality became predominant over the old idea of a miniature and inferior adult―in other words an incomplete person to be trained into manhood. This new conception introduced the image of the child as a creature who lives and dreams in a world of its own, entirely separate from that of adults.33 This new, modern attitude towards childhood comes to be clearly reflected in the literature that was produced for children at the time, not least in the work of Mrs. Molesworth herself. On the other hand, reading as an activity, particularly women's reading, was a controversial issue throughout the Victorian period. Kate Flint gives a good account of the contradictions and paradoxes surrounding women's reading in the nineteenth century. While reading contributed to the ideology which supported the ideal of the middle-class home, it could also be regarded as dangerously useless, a thief of one's time which might better be spent performing housewifely duties.34 Since children were deemed to be more naive and inexperienced than adults, their reading activities must have been restricted to an even narrower range of styles and genres. Early Victorian children's literature was therefore mainly didactic in function, and was chiefly used to instruct children and to direct them to God.35 Explicit examples of this tendency can be found, for instance, in the works of Mary Martha Sherwood (1775-1851), the renowned author of The History of the Fairchild Family (1818-1847). Edward Salmon professed in 1886, though it was particularly about girls'
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Mary Louisa Molesworth and Victorian Children's Fiction (1) reading, 'Girls' literature would be much more successful than it is if it were less goody-goody.'36 Concerning her own childhood experiences of reading, which she had gained about three decades prior to the above comment, Mrs. Molesworth avows:
Of these 'The Fairchild Family' was my favourite by far, excepting for the prayers and hymns at the end of each chapter. These I was too conscientious to 'skip,' but they were a sore trial, till at last I hit upon the plan of reading forward a certain number of them, so that I could then go back and enjoy the story straight on for several chapters without the uncongenial break!37
As a young reader, she was keenly aware of that 'the forcedness of the religious, and even moral, teaching it strove to impart'―against which she felt 'some inward revolt,' as she states in another article―were inartistically intermitting and spoiling her thorough appreciation of the story.38 As she often recalled that reading was always a great delight to her, her intellectual interests could not be satisfied with such disturbance. She further goes on about her childhood reading: 'I was never very fond of Miss Edgeworth's stories―there was something hard and dry about them, and something wanting, which I could not define.' She describes Edgeworth's stories as 'too sensible,' and the suggestion may correspond to Salmon's argument on the same writer. 'The cleverness of much of her writing is unquestioned,' he writes, but 'she marred her abilities by her bigoted belief in the accuracy of her own views and methods'; 'There is no pathos, no humour, little true sympathy in these children's stories.'39 It is probable that through those trying materials which she occasionally
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Yoko Takami encountered in her youth, Mrs. Molesworth gradually formed her critical views on children's stories, and gained an essential stratum for her own writing. In the history of children's literature, the nineteenth century was the period in which some important pioneers who published invaluable stories appeared, and made significant contributions to the development of children's literature. These figures include Catherine Sinclair (1800-1864) and Charlotte M. Yonge (1823-1901). Laski sees, in particular, Yonge's The Daisy Chain, published in 1856, as pivotal in the emergence of a new type of children's literature. She argues, that it was with The Daisy Chain that 'the children's novel, as we know it and as our three ladies [Mrs. Ewing, Mrs. Molesworth and Mrs. Hodgson Burnett] wrote it, really began.'40 Salmon also affirms, in his article 'What Girls Read,' that the brilliant writers, such as Alcott, Sewell, Meade, and Yonge, 'have endeavoured to do for girls what has now for some years been done for boys,' and 'to a considerable extent they have succeeded.'41 Mrs. Molesworth's taste in reading as a girl clearly reflected the developing state of this literature: she first recalls that, among many books she read, she liked 'The Wide, Wide World' best by far and between six and ten she read most of the Waverleys; then she explains, 'Later on, with Miss Sewell's books, and still more with Miss Yonge's, a mine of untold treasures seemed to open before me and from that time onwards the ever- increasing rush of fiction for the young makes it difficult to recall special impressions.'42 Indeed, she recalls that 'the delight of Miss Yonge's books,' as Laski said the very same, 'seemed to me to open a new world of fiction.' Apparently, children's literature acquired a variety of styles, and by the end of the nineteenth century, its literary quality was greatly refined.
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Mary Louisa Molesworth and Victorian Children's Fiction (1) Associated with a series of social reforms, as Richard D. Altick explained, Victorian Britain produced a new group of readers and a marked rise in literacy; then children's literature naturally began addressing a more highly educated readership.43 Mrs. Molesworth's philosophy about the literary standard for children was indeed synchronistic with the modern taste of the readership―both children and adults who chose books for them―who resolutely rejected the overwhelming didacticism of old children's literature. The realistic descriptions of children's lives without becoming obtrusively didactic, but with thorough sympathy with them are the outstanding qualities of Mrs. Molesworth's writing. Relating to this essential quality of her work, Baker specifies:
Helena Swan, in a book called Girls’ Christian Names, states that as a child Mary Stewart suffered from excessively Calvinistic surroundings, and she made up her mind that no child of her own should be taught the religion of fear. Her stories were written with this purpose in view, to give children something interesting to read on Sunday afternoons.44
In consequence, the strong religiousness and didacticism are eliminated or at least not usually felt in Mrs. Molesworth's stories. In her own words, Mrs. Molesworth stressed what the effects of children's reading should be, and what foundation should essentially be provided for them for their healthy developing.
For life is often very sad and very trying, and we must not prematurely unfold such experience to the innocent, happy creatures whose very innocence and happiness furnish the
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strength they too will surely require for their own struggles and difficulties. Children must have sunshine if they are to grow, and the background of all one gives them should be bright and hopeful. Nor is this in reality misleading. The sunshine is there ―the everlasting beyond and above, though it is sometimes so veiled to us.45
Salmon suggests that since the 1860s onward it had been a period 'rich in marvels for the nursery,' and mentions a series of remarkable books, such as those by Charles Kingsley (1819-1875), Tom Hood (1835-1874), and of course, Lewis Carroll and George MacDonald.46 As to women writing for children, whom he readily admits as the majority of this branch of literature, again, a number of writers are mentioned with either his positive or negative comments on their works, and among them, Mrs. Molesworth is referred to in length and with notable importance. With his acute observation of the nature of her works, he declares:
Mrs. Molesworth is, in my opinion, considering the quality and quantity of her labours, the best story-teller for children England has yet known. This is a bold statement and requires substantiation. ... Mrs. Molesworth's great charm is her realism― realism, that is, in the purest and highest sense. ... There is much pathos and humour in their small troubles. ... To adult readers the humour of these three books [Carrots, The Adventures of Herr Baby, and Us] is immense; to baby readers the generally miniature contretemps of Mrs. Molesworth's little people will strike home as matters of the most serious moment. ... A joyous
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Mary Louisa Molesworth and Victorian Children's Fiction (1) earnest spirit pervades her work, and her sympathy with children is unbounded. ... She is an almost infallible guide to the eccentricities of child nature, and analyses the workings of a child's brain in a manner that explains doubts which the child itself is either incapable or afraid of attempting. The importance of this cannot be exaggerated.
The trends in children's literature, as the above sections have described, were in a state of refinement. In the process, romance and fantasy had come to be widely recognised by this time as a literary art, and, already in Mrs. Molesworth's childhood, fairy tales were very popular: in her article 'Story-Reading and Story-Writing,' the names such as Grimm and Hans Andersen are mentioned as her favourite writers. It is said that the considerable impact brought by the publication of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll in 1865 and the following Alice book in 1872, accelerated this trend.47 However, children's literature was in flux. Fantasy writing was becoming ever more popular, nevertheless, realism was flourishing to such an extent that Mrs. E. M. Field could write in 1889: 'the fairy-tale seems to have given way entirely in popularity to the child's story of real life, the novel of childhood, in which no effort is spared to make children appear as they are.'48 Salmon's words―'Fiction for the babes...divides itself into two distinct departments: the fairy tale and the story of life'―also expressed the situation. It was in such changing circumstances and changing modes of Victorian children's literature that Mrs. Molesworth was able to combine her excellent fantasy writing and astute realism into one remarkable style. 'The magic slips into the story as naturally and quietly as the wings of the cuckoo when they brushed against Griselda's cheek,' expressed
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Baker.49 In fact, Green emphasises that in spite of her occasional departures into the realms of fantasy, Mrs. Molesworth was the most powerful influence in the trend towards realism in children's writing. To my belief, Mrs. Molesworth succeeded in mediating fantasy and realism effectively in her writing, and the combination of these two in some of her stories produced an impressive harmony. In respect of the quality of Mrs. Molesworth's writing, her merit in terms of realism is best shown in her detailed description of the child's life, which eloquently proves that she was a keen observer of children. Molesworth also points out in the article that 'in writing stories for either old or young, the great thing is to make the acquaintance of your characters, and get to know them as well and intimately as you possibly can.'50 This attitude inevitably contributed to the realistic quality of Mrs. Molesworth's characterisation and depiction of children and their lives. Indeed, Mrs. Molesworth was well aware of the importance of realistic quality of children's books. She argues that a writer must be true to nature:
Save in an occasional flight to fairyland ... children's stories should be real―true, that is to say, to what may be or are actual experiences in this always conquered, often sorrowful, world of ours. ... But underlying the sad things, and the wrong things, and the perplexing things which must be touched upon in the little dramas, however simple, there must be belief in the bright side― in goodness, happiness, and beauty ― as the real background after all.51
Clearly, as she insists, for children's stories a frame of work should depend on a writer's sincere belief in the good. However, not only this but as a
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Mary Louisa Molesworth and Victorian Children's Fiction (1) professional writer for children, it is to such sense of balance as one may interweave the good and the bad in writing that Mrs. Molesworth claims one of the highest values. The literary production is always in collaborative connection with its recipients and, particularly, its purchasers. In the nineteenth century, the standard of taste and opinion on the parents' side, too, must have been transmuted. 'Mothers who, as girls, read Miss Sewell or Miss Yonge,' according to Salmon, for example, 'now consent to their daughters studying "Ouida" and Miss Braddon.' As the choice had been considerably widened, the parental responsibility became inexpressibly serious. Salmon claims enthusiastically: 'If in choosing the books that boys shall read it is necessary to remember that we are choosing mental food for the future chiefs of a great race, it is equally important not to forget in choosing books for girls that we are choosing mental food for the future wives and mothers of that race.'52 He declares, especially concerning girls and little children, that women's work is 'hardly second to man's,' and 'it is this which ought to be borne in mind in reading girls'; this is further important with the little ones, since their period before their teens 'is not only impressionable, but charged with the gravest potentialities.' The correlation between these two sides occasionally forms the evident bridge between the work in question and that of next generation. 'Mrs. Molesworth was the favourite children's writer of Edith Nesbit,' concedes Baker, and, with a comparison between Nesbit's Five Children and It and The Cuckoo Clock, she specifies that 'it is easy to see her influence on the young writer's work.' Baker values these women for their talent to approach magic with a fine realistic touch, with which every fantastic event in their stories seems genuinely convincing (and she even claims that it is the same kind of the peculiar gift that created A Midsummer Night’s Dream).53 In
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And if the responsibility of writing any book is grave, surely the gravest of all is that of writing for children? Indeed, I often have felt that if I could thoroughly realise the possible effect of any carelessness, any unwisdom in what I write―when I recall the depth of impression made upon myself as a child by some injudicious passage, some little-intended suggestion of harm―I should hesitate to write at all.54
As a mother herself, Mrs. Molesworth also recognised what Salmon stressed as regards parents' responsibility: 'to an awe-inspiring extent, we, parents or in any sense guides or teachers of the young, should accept our tremendous responsibilities.'55 Finally, the changes in the literary standards for children can be observed by merely looking at the prize selections for schools. The typical prize-books in the early period were mostly old-fashioned moral tales, but the criteria for the book selection gradually changed. For instance, in the 1870s Mrs. Molesworth's Carrots and The Cuckoo Clock were so popular as prizes that a stock of 2,000 copies was used up within a year and had to be reordered; then in the 1891 selection, we can find titles such as North and South, Mary Barton and Villette,56 though these novels must have been intended for older readers than Mrs. Molesworth's stories. The required literary qualities for children's reading improved
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Mary Louisa Molesworth and Victorian Children's Fiction (1) throughout the period, and Mrs. Molesworth retained her position in such a shifting epoch, in which the standards of children's literature were greatly enhanced. From what the foregoing sections have discussed, it is possible to draw the inference that the qualities and the characteristics of Mrs. Molesworth's writing may have originated from among a complex of traditional features of children's literature, and the new emerging modes of modern literature that attracted a more sophisticated readership. Although her popularity rapidly declined after her death, Mrs. Molesworth all the same remains a remarkable woman writer whose life and career had reflected, and coincided with, the growing state of society and the changing human conditions around the turn of the century.
Notes １ The popularity of Carrots is evidently reflected in its frequent appearance on the title page of other Molesworth books. Jane Cooper says: Mrs. Molesworth's main publishers were Macmillans, and '24 of the 40 Molesworth/Macmillan titles had on the title page below her name "Author of..." and then listed two or three of her other books. 21 of these had Carrots in first place, while only 3 named a title other than Carrots first, one of these, of course, being Carrots itself. Eleven of her other publishers also mentioned Carrots on the title page of some of their books by her.' Jane Cooper, 'Penny Plain or Twopence Coloured?: An Incident in the Working Life of Mrs. Molesworth' in Children’s Books History Society Newsletter 55 (1996), pp. 9-13. ２ Mrs. Molesworth mentioned how she had started her career: 'it was not till I had three or four children of my own that I began to write for them, and even then, this was owing to the suggestion of a friend with a clearer instinct than I had myself as to what I could do best. ... "Better do a small thing well," he said, "than a great thing indifferently," when he had been criticizing one of the novels that were my first launches into literature.' Molesworth, 'Story-Writing' in The Monthly Packet (August 1894), p. 163. ３ The end papers for the book advertisement attached to Mrs. Molesworth's The Tapestry Room (London: Macmillan, 1879) contain some comments on her books that were extracted from critical reviews. Besides the quotation from The Athenaeum, the following
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two reviews by The Examiner and The Pall Mall Gazette were also referred to in the same source. ４ Molesworth, 'How I Write My Children's Stories' in Little Folks, vol.117 (1894), p. 17. ５ One of her brothers was the elder, who was three years older than the writer. For further details on the life of Mrs. Molesworth, see Roger Lancelyn Green, Mrs. Molesworth (London: The Bodley Head, 1961). My remarks are principally based on this book. However, due to lack of information, it is difficult to present a full account of Mrs. Molesworth's life. It has been said that the full biography of Mrs. Molesworth was in preparation by Miss Ruth Robertson, but she seems to have been not able to publish it after all. It is also said that the copies that she had collected were passed on to Mrs. Jane Cooper, but I have so far been unable to identify the biographical book on Mrs. Molesworth published by either of them. ６ The paragraph on Mrs. Molesworth by Gillian Avery in The Dictionary of National Bibliography (1993) refers to her father's parentage 'there is some mystery,' as to which Green plainly comments that he 'was the son, or adopted son of Major General Stewart.' ７ 'The Reel Fairies' which is included in Tell me a Story, for example, is one of the stories that are mostly autobiographical of Mrs. Molesworth's childhood. This story describes the heroine, Louisa, and her lonely feelings as her mother is often engaged with writing or 'doing accounts' in the drawing room, and her family's frugal living compared to a wealthy friend of her mother. ８ Margaret J. Baker, 'Mary Louisa Molesworth' in The Junior Bookshelf (vol. 12, no. 1, March 1948), p. 20. ９ Green, Mrs. Molesworth, p. 22. 10 Molesworth, 'Story-Writing,' pp. 160-161. Here she also confesses: 'It never occurred to me in the vaguest way that I should come to "write books;" I was absolutely free from self-consciousness on the subject, and as far as my opinion of my own intellectual powers went, if ever I thought about them at all, I thought them decidedly inferior to those of my companions.' 11 Green, Mrs. Molesworth, pp. 28-29. 12 Ibid., p. 29. 13 Joseph Noel Paton was not only a valuable advisor in the first place to Mrs. Molesworth, but as an illustrator, he also contributed to her Silverthorns (1886). 14 Green, Mrs. Molesworth, p. 37. 15 Marghanita Laski, Mrs. Ewing, Mrs. Molesworth and Mrs. Hodgson Burnett (London: Arthur Barker Ltd., 1950), p. 57. 16 Green, Mrs. Molesworth, p. 38. There is also another point where Green and Laski differ in their arguments. Green corrects Laski's statement that Mrs. Molesworth's childhood
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was mostly spent in the countryside, and he emphasises that she lived near the centre of Manchester until she was twenty-one, except for holidays in the countryside and for her short period at Swiss boarding-school. 17 Ibid., pp. 36-37. 18 Mrs. Molesworth may seem to have possessed conservative views in general, but through her writing she expressed more liberal and progressive views on various states of human lives in the changing society. 19 Green, Mrs. Molesworth, p. 35. 20 For example, a 'biographical sketch' of Charlotte Smith describes the social circumstances at the beginning of the nineteenth century for women who wrote for their livelihood: the 'penalties and discouragements attending the profession of an author fall upon women with a double weight; to the curiosity of the idle and the envy of the malicious their sex affords a peculiar incitement: arraigned, not merely as writers, but as women, their characters, their conduct, even their personal endowments become the subjects of severe inquisition....' Alison Adburgham, Women in Print: Writing Women and Women’s Magazines from the Restoration to the Accession of Victoria (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1972), p. 178. 21 This observation originally in The Nineteenth Century (1884) has been quoted from time to time. For example, George Bainton ed., The Art of Authorship (London: James Clarke & Co., 1890), p. 93; Green, Mrs. Molesworth, p. 44. Also, it was partly quoted sometimes in the end paper of Mrs. Molesworth's books such as Mary: A Nursery Story for Very Little Children (London: Macmillan, 1893). 22 Green, Mrs. Molesworth, pp. 45-47. 23 Molesworth, 'On the Art of Writing Fiction for Children' in Atalanta (May 1893), p. 583. 24 In the article 'Children's Classics,' Bella Sydney Woolf mentions that 'Ms. Molesworth has never regarded herself as exactly a "professional" writer, for she has taken her books greatly as a recreation.' However, from the articles in which Mrs. Molesworth explained how she wrote and how she thought about writing for children, it seems right to suppose that she apparently regarded herself as a professional writer. See the article in The Quiver (London, Paris, New York & Melbourne: Cassell and Company, Ltd., 1906), pp. 674-676. 25 Molesworth, Tell me a Story (London: Macmillan, 1908, first published in 1875), pp.2-3. 26 Molesworth, 'On the Art of Writing Fiction for Children' p. 586. 27 Gaye Tuchman with Nina E. Fortin, Edging Women Out: Victorian Novelists, Publishers, and Social Change (London: Routledge, 1989), p. 130. 28 To see to what extent her widely acknowledged popularity reached, Mrs. Molesworth dedicated The Tapestry Room (1879) 'by permission' to H.R.H. Vittorio Emanuele, Prince of Naples, Crown Prince of Italy, adding: 'One of the Kindliest of my Young Readers.'
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It is also significant that the year 1879 was when Mrs. Molesworth was separated from her husband, and it therefore indicates that, on the point of her marital breakdown, she was already widely popular and successful as a children's writer. For another example in later period, as it has been mentioned, in Postern of Fate (1973) Agatha Christie referred to a couple of Mrs. Molesworth's titles such as The Cuckoo Clock, The Tapestry Room and The Four Winds Farm (1887). Such reference perhaps implies the author's reading taste in her childhood. 29 Tuchman with Fortin, Edging Women Out, p. 136. 30 Green, Mrs. Molesworth, p. 9. 31 Baker, 'Mary Louisa Molesworth,' p. 26. 32 Laski, Mrs. Ewing, Mrs. Molesworth and Mrs. Hodgson Burnett, p. 17. 33 Green, Mrs. Molesworth, pp. 51-52. 34 Kate Flint, The Woman Reader 1837-1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), p. 11. 35 J. S. Bratton, The Impact of Victorian Children’s Fiction (London: Croom Helm, 1981. First published in Totowa, New Jersey: Barnes & Noble Books, 1981), pp. 207-8. 36 Edward Salmon, 'What Girls Read' in James Knowles ed., The Nineteenth Century: A Monthly Review (London: Kegan Paul, Trench. & Co., vol. xx. July-December, 1886), p. 515. He also examined through various works the brief history of young children's literature, in another article 'Literature for the Little Ones' in The Nineteenth Century (vol. xxii. July-December 1887). 37 Molesworth, 'Story-Writing,' p. 162. 38 Molesworth, 'Story-Reading and Story-Writing' in Chambers’s Journal 75 (5 November 1893), p. 772. 39 Salmon, 'Literature for the Little Ones,' p. 569. 40 Laski, Mrs. Ewing, Mrs. Molesworth and Mrs. Hodgson Burnett, p. 17. 41 Salmon, 'What Girls Read,' p. 515. 42 Molesworth, 'Story-Writing,' p. 163. The following quotation about Yonge is from 'Story- Reading and Story-Writing,' p. 773. 43 Richard D. Altick, The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800-1900, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1957). 44 Baker, 'Mary Louisa Molesworth,' p. 20. 45 Molesworth, 'Story-Writing,' p. 163. 46 This and the following comments by Salmon, see 'Literature for the Little Ones,' pp. 570- 579. Also, as for the women writers for children, Woolf's 'Children's Classics' includes many of those writers with mainly the introductory comments on each. 47 Bratton, The Impact of Victorian Children’s Fiction, p. 70. There are, however, some critics like J. R. R. Tolkien and Colin Manlove who do not accept Lewis Carroll's Alice
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books as true fantasies. Michael Wheeler, English Fiction of the Victorian Period (London & New York: Longman, 1985, 1994), pp. 108-109. 48 Green, Mrs. Molesworth, P. 52. 49 Baker, 'Mary Louisa Molesworth,' p. 24. 50 Molesworth, 'On the Art of Writing Fiction for Children,' p. 585. 51 Ibid., p. 584. 52 Salmon, 'What Girls Read,' p. 517, 526; 'Literature for the Little Ones,' p. 563. 53 Baker, 'Mary Louisa Molesworth,' pp. 21-23. 54 Molesworth, 'Story-Writing,' p. 164. 55 Molesworth, 'Story-Reading and Story-Writing,' p. 775. 56 Bratton, The Impact of Victorian Children’s Fiction, p. 196. In fact, it is not unusual to find a scribbled message on the flyleaf of the second-hand books by Mrs. Molesworth that are still obtainable today, which indicates that the book was awarded to school pupils, or in some cases given as a present on special occasions.
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