Reading Lessons from the Eighteenth Century Mothers, Children and Texts

Reading Lessons from the Eighteenth Century Mothers, children and texts Reading Lessons from the Eighteenth Century Mothers, children and texts Evelyn Arizpe and Morag Styles with Shirley Brice Heath First published 2006 by: Pied Piper Publishing Ltd. 80 Birmingham Road Shenstone Lichfield Staffordshire WS14 0JU © Copyright Evelyn Arizpe, Morag Styles, Shirley Brice Heath All illustrations courtesy of the Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 0 9546384 8 4 paperback 0 9552106 1 5 hardback Printed in Britain by 4EDGE LTD, 7a Eldon Way, Eldon Way Industrial Estate, Hockley, Essex SS5 4AD To my parents, Gracy and Jorge Arizpe, who let me find my own way through books. E.A. Writing this book has involved thinking deeply about families and the past. I should like, therefore, to dedicate this book to the memory of my maternal grandparents, Mary and Alec McRobb. Unlike Jane Johnson, they were both ardent socialists, but like her they worked immensely hard, devoted their lives to their families, and tried to make the world a better place for other people. M.S. Contents Foreword Victor Watson i Prologue A Story about a Story... Morag Styles v Introduction Maternal Pedagogy and Histories of Reading 1 Chapter 1 Family Fictions: in the footsteps of the 17 Johnsons Chapter 2 The Changing World of Books and Reading in 49 the Eighteenth Century Chapter 3 Reading Lessons from an Eighteenth-Century 69 Nursery Chapter 4 A Mother’s Story: Moral Texts and ‘Pretty’ 97 Readers Chapter 5 Women as Readers: Jane Johnson’s 117 Commonplace Book Chapter 6 Reading the World of Adults: the letters and 137 journals of Robert and Barbara Johnson Chapter 7 Child’s Play for Private and Public Life 179 Shirley Brice Heath Appendix i Johnson Family Tree 208 Appendix ii Texts cited and referenced in Jane Johnson’s 210 commonplace book Appendix iii Texts cited and referenced in Robert Augustus 214 Johnson’s Journal Select bibliography 217 Index 236 Foreword To anyone familiar with her, Jane Johnson is a beacon shining in the murky uncertainties of eighteenth-century history. In the first chapter of this book, Evelyn Arizpe and Morag Styles speak of ‘drawing Jane out of the shadows’ so that we can see her more clearly - a felicitous phrase to indicate one of the authors’ purposes, to explain and interpret this ordinary yet extraordinary woman and rescue her from obscurity. I have noticed that, when people write about Jane Johnson, images of light and dark come naturally to their minds. Undoubtedly, while so few people knew of her, Jane Johnson could truly be said to have been lost in the shadows of the forgotten past. But the work done by the three researchers who have written this book has shown how Jane was her own source of brightness within the life she led and the family she loved. No shadows for her! - except, of course, the Shadow of the Valley of Death, the meaning of which she never once lost sight of. She would probably have denied that her own light was of any significance, attributing everything to God. ‘Oh Lord send out thy Light and Truth,’ she writes; and she approvingly quotes Thomson’s ‘Father of Light & Life…’, adding her own humble prayer to the chosen extract. Such imagery is traditional, perhaps commonplace. But this book shows how, combined with energy, intelligence and purpose, the brightness of Jane’s faith enlightened her family and illuminated the world they grew up in, not only because of the firmness of her moral convictions but also because of the love apparent in everything she did and wrote. Her words are full of urgency and joy - uncompromising and demanding, but never dull - and always loving. As this book testifies, her influence over her children lasted all through their lives. They became intellectually curious adults, interested in the world they lived in, affectionate to each other, and devoted in their religion. Years later, Jane’s daughter Barbara wrote: ‘How often have I seen Joy brighten every Eye and Irradiate every countenance.’ She is talking, in fact, about the pleasure of reading newspapers, but her choice of words is characteristic, just the kind of phrasing she would have learned from her mother. i Foreword To me, the daily domestic life of eighteenth-century history remains elusive and shadowy. Only fiction can show it with clarity and immediacy. I confess, for example, that middle-class life at the end of the eighteenth century and during the Regency period would be for me an unknown tract of wilderness if it were not for Jane Austen. This book works in a similar way. Rural landed middle-class England for almost the whole century is brought to life and brilliantly lit through this exploration of one family and its intimate friends. A lot of the material is fragmentary - gossip, letters, brief entries in a journal or a commonplace book. They provide a story of wills, inheritance, family scandal (perhaps), marriages, the deaths of children and parents; and, later, towards the end of the century, the subsequent lives of Jane’s grown-up children and their families. At the centre of the narrative is Jane Johnson herself, firm in her convictions, rooted in the realities of her day, active in her concern for the well-being and wise thinking of her loved-ones. And, above all, strong and vigorous in words: ‘… we must not expect,’ she writes in her commonplace book, ‘to be carried [to Heaven] Lolling at our Ease in a four wheel’d Post Chaise hung upon springs, but provided we get there at last, it is very well, even tho’ we are jolted through the Cart Ruts in a Dung-Cart.’ This is the language of Henry Fielding and - much more to Jane’s taste - Samuel Richardson. More significantly, it is also the language of John Bunyan - earthy, urgent, uncompromising, with an evangelical commonsense he would have recognised and approved of. Shortly before her husband died, Jane wrote in her commonplace book: I gave a strong proof of my Courage, made a Bold Stand against Vice, but my forces were weak, & the Enemy soon got the better & drove me out of the Field. May Virtue for the future have a more powerful, & more successful Advocate. We can only speculate upon the distress that led to this admission. It is immediately followed by four lines of writing crossed out so thoroughly that it is impossible to decipher her words. We should not be surprised that a woman like her might have second thoughts, or even secret thoughts. But such a determined erasure is so rare in her ii Victor Watson papers that it comes as something of a shock to see it, for Jane Johnson was a woman of openness. She believed in the value of using words to expose and express, to formulate and analyse, to convey love and faith - always to let in the light of understanding. Shadows and darkness, ambiguities and secrets, were inimical to her. She was a woman of clarity and definition. So welcome to Jane Johnson’s written world. Victor Watson. September 2005 iii iv Prologue: A Story about a Story ..... ‘... no Boy was ever better belov’d than you are ...’ a letter from Jane Johnson to her son, George, dated April 20 17551 As this is an informal tale of researchers researching, it seems appropriate to use Christian names for much of this narrative, once new characters have been introduced. As we feel so close to Jane Johnson, we refer to her as Jane throughout the book. Beginnings Once upon a time in the spring of 1994 a famous American scholar, Shirley Brice Heath, came from across the sea to stay with me in Cambridge. She was here to give a lecture on her latest research to an eager crowd of British academics and teachers who had read her seminal book, Ways with Words. Shirley wondered if a seminar on an eighteenth-century Englishwoman who created a fascinating nursery library for her own children might be of interest? The answer was a resounding ‘yes’ as the group of us then teaching children’s literature at Homerton College, Cambridge, were very keen on its history. It transpired that Shirley’s uncle, Reed Voran of Muncie, Indiana, knew about a holding at the Lilly Library, Indiana University, that he thought would interest her. Shirley’s uncle had been the executor of the estate of Elisabeth Ball, daughter of a prominent midwestern family of industrialists, whose penchant for collecting had included children’s literature. In particular, Elisabeth’s father, George Ball, had bought two large collections of children’s books in the 1930s which were shelved in Oakhurst, the Ball mansion in Muncie. Other materials were stashed in the tops of cupboards throughout the house. Far back on a closet shelf on the third floor of the mansion nestled an old hatbox containing the first nursery library in English consisting of 438 pieces created by someone called Jane Johnson2 (1706 - 1759). At the death of Elisabeth Ball in 1982, Reed Voran called in Justin Schiller, New York expert on antiquities of children’s literature. In his final check of the house, Schiller found the hatbox.

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