Juvenile Literature (So Called)

SOMEWHERE deep in the heart of Clark Russell lies the germ of a grudge against the British naval man ; not the navy, but its representative. And whenever he has occasion to introduce one into his stories, he never loses the chance to administer a delicate rapier thrust calculated to sting deeply that navy man’s condescension and conceit. In An Ocean Free Lance it happens that he brings together on neutral ground (at a ball) some naval officers and the gallant captain of a successful privateer ; and after the collision the latter quietly explains to his subordinate and friend, " ' Give privateersmen the stem ! ’ is the cry among those fellows.” Which, in landsman’s English, means, —the big ship runs down the little ship if it gets in the way.

It matters not that the privateer might be a remarkably valiant vessel, going close in where the deep-draught frigate could not, and winning more honor and striking more terror in the vital part of the enemy — his commerce — than a score of deep-water battleships which have been vainly seeking an engagement, and which are too slow to chase a clipper. It matters not that in just such a craft, perhaps taken from the enemy by that very privateer, some young naval officer enjoys his first independent command which shall result in giving him his post-rank later on. He is still of the navy, and even in those days haughtily scorns the privateer. But he fails not to pocket his own prize-money.

It is perfectly true that there have been privateers which were simply pirates, although not flaunting the Jolly Roger. It is equally true that there have been privateers filled with men who swarmed into them simply because no ship of the navy was available, and who wrought deeds of hearty patriotism, and fought like devils for country alone, — for country and the love of liberty.

“ Yes,” says the navy man, with a shrug, “ it is a pity that they are not on the quarterdeck. As it is, they are only privateersmen.”

Now, there is a spirit abroad in literature which is twin-brother to this. We meet it everywhere, from the Atlantic Monthly down to the veriest pennypaper that deigns to have a column of “ reviews.” And the line is just as sharply drawn. It is the sneer of the essayist, the critic, the novelist, in the role of the navy, against the juvenilist as the privateersman. It utterly ignores the fact that the work may be as much of a masterpiece, measured by the age and capacity of its intended reader, as is the best of Henry J ames when measured by his audience.

No later than in the February number of the Atlantic an essayist takes the trouble to claim that a boy " would read Scott ” et al. instead of " the juvenile literature (so called) of the day ” if he had the chance. During the last season a Boston daily gave in each case a prodigious amount of space to the Teviews of some historical novels, covering nearly a score of them, although apparently finding little in them really to commend, either in subject or in style. It remarked of a juvenile book in a surprised sort of way — as one who would ask, " Can any good thing come out of Nazareth ?”— that it was much better written than the average boy’s book, and more interesting to adults than nine tenths of the historical novels of the year. And how much space did the reviewer devote to this literary discovery ? Just one inch. Why more ? The writer was a “ privateersman.” It cannot, of course, be literature.

To take an author now dead, — Elijah Kellogg, and his Elm Island stories. Living pictures, were they, of the sturdy life on our New England coast in early days when the village smithy was the hardware shop, and the loom was heard in the land. Your essayist looks them coldly over. They are not psychological. They wear no sign of “ vivisection done here.” They are not even scandalous. They are only rugged bits of the life of rugged boys, what they did and, casually, what they thought in their own shy, boyish way. But those thoughts were uplifting in their force. The thud of the broad-axe is heard more often than the clash of the battle-axe; so the critic sneers at them, ignoring the keen interest with which the boy for whom they were written follows the fortunes of the young fishermen-farmers in their ready adaptability to turn their hands, in the honest manual training of that day, to whatever might be needed. The books intentionally are outline sketches, unburdened by unboyisli non-essentials. “ It is not literature! ” It is nothing but bald record of what they did. Yet we read in another book that is still called literature, how —

“ Jacob went on his journey, and came into the land of the people of the east. And he looked, and behold a well in the field ; and, lo, there were three flocks of sheep lying by it, for out of that well they watered the flocks; and a great stone was upon the well’s mouth. And thither were all the flocks gathered ; and they rolled the stone from the well’s mouth, and watered the sheep, and put the stone again upon the well’s mouth.”

Bald though the critic claims they are, nevertheless after a boy for whom KelIogg wrote had surreptitiously read on the haymow one of the real " pirates ” (a Beadle), and the glamour of stolen fruit was gone, the adventures of HeavyHatchet, the Bold Scout seemed flat and stale, not to be compared in the same breath with the time when Lion Ben drove his heavy canoe homeward through the storm into which he had plunged by compass to the rescue of Charlie Bell, surprised by that storm while fishing out at sea. Of course it cannot be literature. Why, I believe Kellogg never wrote a novel in his life ! He does not have ten lines allotted to him in any school manual known to me. Nevertheless, I have yet to hear of a boy whom those books failed to help upward by their subtle moral force. By their fruits ye shall know them; and men do not gather figs from thistles.

We sing Hawthorne’s praises to an organ accompaniment, grand, sombre, depressing, as though The Scarlet Letter was his one great gift to the world in payment for his birth. Yet countless girls and boys have as yet never heard of him save as the teller of those wondrous stories which have enabled them to live in delightful fancy with the gods and demigods of dear, sunny Greece; and surely this deserves as great a space when summing up his value to the world. It does not get it. Is it because the critics dare not call it literature, but must speak of it under their breath if inclined to sneer, since it is not the freight of a privateer this time, but of the frigate — Hawthorne ? Scantly indeed do they dwell upon it in their hand-books and biographies ; and by this scantiness judge what would be granted had Kellogg been the author.

But, you may say, Hawthorne is not a fair example. He is Hawthorne, long dead, and aged into a classic. Very well. Here and there in the manuals we find listed as a work of literature for careful study a book written for boys by a novelist but lately dead, namely, Treasure Island. The world was not content to leave it, where, I am told, the author placed it, among the juveniles. A novelist wrote it. If our navy man saw fit to take a schooner voyage he still is one of us as a navy man, you know, and not captain of a scurvy privateer. So we are able to recognize it at once for what it is — literature. But had it been instead the “ best book ” by some able juvenilist, say Charles W. Whistler, to name a British one (how many of you have read as yet his Havelok the Dane ?), what honorable mention would you have allotted to it, messieurs, then ? Dare you say that you would have given it space or thought ? Would you not have said to your boy, instead, “Why do you waste your time on trash like that when you might be reading Scott or ” — some other frigate - bred’s production? And then, once more, when as sometimes happens your novelist finds that, after all, it is not really so easy a task as he had thought to write a juvenile that will appeal to the instincts of his intended audience, and that in his particular case he can no more make a success of it than the born juvenilist can write a world-famous novel, do you then comment on the result as " Not quite up to the average of a good boys’ book ” ? Dare you frankly say in cold type, " This is bogus coin ” ? Perhaps you do ; but in the course of a somewhat wide reading, to the best of my recollection I have never found such criticism. But I have found the failures.

You buy your own books, messieurs, as you come across them ; at sight, for your own immediate pleasure. You talk them over at your clubs and gatherings, and A tells B that if he has n’t read C’s latest he ought to; and D, standing near, thinks likewise, and hence buys it. So the noble guild of the quarterdeck is enabled to live to some extent on copyrights, and to rejoice, now and then, on the half-million strike of some confrere. But you buy for your boy, not what he wants, but what you think he ought to want. Sometimes you hit the mark. Quite as often, perhaps, some of you do not. But you can all ignore good things too near for your eyesight; and, at best, it is only at Christmas or on birthdays that you think to buy for him at all. It does not come as a part of your own weekly pleasure. So there is no halfmillion success to be looked for here.

A juvenile may be possibly a masterpiece of literature in its way ; “as nearly a little classic as we may hope to receive from a modern writer,” to quote from one report. Yet if the author has discovered that his special gift is as a juvenilist, and by devoting his whole strength to that, instead of to second-rate novels, is giving back to the world of his birth the very best that is in him — well, you care a great deal for the welfare of your girl or boy ; you take much thought for their reading ; but you do not give space in your reviews to such books that do not bear the frigate-mark ; you do not give the world at large a chance to read about them by your free discussion, nor their authors the opportunity to learn their faults and how to make their next book better. And when you deign to speak of them at all, you sneer. Why not ? These authors are but privateersmen. They never walked a frigate’s quarterdeck. " Let the children read the classics ! We know what is best for them.”

Then the critic takes up his pen and laments in print the dearth of real literature for children in the land.

John Preston True.