Learning to Read, 1851 and 1914

Everybody on my open mic events likes to read (since you’re reading this, you do, too). A love of words and reading is the gateway drug, so to speak, to writing—and we know that that leads to open mics, tangy pseudonymous blog posts and related scurrilous activities. So I thought, what was your gateway to a love of words, reading and writing? Reel memory back to those earliest influences. Dr. Seuss, Dick and Jane, the Bobbsey Twins, the Poky Little Puppy, picture books about baby animals or dinosaurs? Children’s Bible Stories? A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson? What were mine?

Let’s wind back to 1961 and the book my landlady back in Texas used to teach me to read when I was three. That was The Arnold Primer, copyright 1901 by Silver Burdett and Company. The author was Sarah Louise Arnold, “Dean of Simmons College; formerly Supervisor of Schools, Boston, Massachusetts, and Joint Author of ‘Stepping Stones to Literature.'” This Arnold Primer bears a precise script signature, date and location: Joseph Holliday Spilman, Mission, Texas, September 14, 1914."

It opens with “A word to the children, to be read to them by the Teacher.” The teacher would say:

“Children, here is a new book for you. It is a picture book and a story book. You have bright eyes to see the pictures and you have ears to hear the stories. Would you like to learn to read the stories for yourself? . . . The primer will tell you about Ned, and Kate, and Dot and Dan, other little boys and girls—about their toys, their games, their homes, and their friends.”

The book has charming photographs and etchings of children in late Victorian clothes, like plucky Ned in his sailor suit on the first page with the epic opening lines, “This is Ned. How do you do, Ned?” A literary-minded passage:

Kate can read and write.

She can write with pen and ink.

See her pen and ink.

She can write a letter. See her letter.

Can you write?

I treasure the memories of learning about Ben’s drum, Kate’s kitty, Dan and sister Ella, Uncle Jack’s cow Jess and their well-ordered world. By the end of the book, students are reading stories, learning cursive writing (a lost art these days, so I read) and even getting a look at the “manual alphabet" using hand shapes to create letters.

Now consider a book I recent acquired, The School Reader, Second Book, part of the Sanders Series of School Books. With a copyright of 1840, this copy goes back to November 1851. That’s because a man or, more likely, a boy, named Lewis B. Richards wrote his elegant signature several times in the front of the book along with the date. Lewis’s signature could have been from the Declaration of Independence.

The School Reader is a window into another era. Each lesson begins with a vocabulary list and then a story, with a strong moral lesson, including Bible stories like Jacob and Esau. Readers learned how to be a good girl and boy, the perils of betting, kindness to animals, finding lost lambs, being friends with school mates who are outsiders—timeless lessons all.

The details of some stories can match anything found in Edith Wharton’s tales of upper-class lifestyles such as The Age of Innocence. Consider Lesson VI, “Too Late for a Ride:”

Mrs. Morris had asked her little girl, at least 10 times to make haste and drink her tea, but she did not mind her.

She did nothing but play silly tricks; sometimes stirring her tea as fast as she could, to make a tea leaf turn round in the cup, then pouring it into the saucer, she would put bits of crust to swim in it and then call them her boats and her ships . . .

Her mother left the room, and, when she came back, she had on her bonnet and shawl, ready to ride.

“But, said she, “Charlotte, my daughter I am very sorry you have been so naughty; for I meant to have taken you to the gardens with me but you are now too late, and must stay at home.”  

Then Charlotte began to drink her tea, and to eat so fast that she almost choked herself.

But all her haste was of no use, “For,” said her mother, “your aunt is at the door with her carriage waiting, and as she has been so kind as to call for us, there must be no delay.”

So away went her mother, and though Charlotte screamed as loud as she could to go with her, she found it was all in vain, for she was too late.

Her mother was soon too far off to hear her, and the young Miss was glad to hide herself up stairs, that the girls in the kitchen might not laugh at her.

This was a very good lesson for Charlotte: for, although she lost her ride, she was always careful after this, to obey her mother, as soon as she was spoken to.”

“That the girls in the kitchen might not laugh at her”—we’re in Downton Abbey territory here! And I'm enchanted that the story used the word “naughty.” The last time I saw that word must have been in an instant messaging chat on JDate, circa 2007.

What do new readers enjoy these days? I should ask my young relatives in Texas. I sent them a picture book, The 5 O'Clock Band, for Christmas, signed by illustrator Bryan Collier. My son learned to read at an early age as his mother and I constantly read to him. He later developed an appreciation for the Captain Underpants books. I’m not sure what moral lessons could be drawn from that series, but maybe I just need to do a close post-modern metatextual analysis of Captain Underpants.

Gazing at these books, I am borne back ceaselessly into the past (now where did I read that line?) of 60 years ago, learning those letters, figuring out how to write, soon checking out armloads of books at the local library. Those early lessons helped me gave me a good grounding in values. Today’s children could benefit from that kind of moral instruction as a bulwark against what splashes on them from sources that Lewis Richards and Joe Spilman couldn't even imagine.