Seen and Not Heard

Brow-beaten by priggish parents and sanctimonious guardians, the Victorian child was robbed of his childhood and given tracts instead. Nigel Temple has selected a quantity of these improving tales and pious horror stories, and he presents them in this anthology with many of their magnifgicant original pictures, It is an ideal gift book: unusual, profusely illustrated both in colour and black-and-white, and most beautifully designed. Here we see the Victorians at their most Victorian - stern, upright, hard-working, laying down God's infallible word in matters great and small. The world, the child was informed, was a snare and a delusion. Earthly enjoyments were temptations to resist. Obedience to one's parents and duty to God were one and the same thing, and were best fulfilled by sober habits and earnest endeavour. Every activity had its serious side - and woe betide the child whose play was not ethically purposeful. Life for the Victorian child was an extended morality lesson, and at the end Death was the greatest teacher of all. Yet behind their odour of Sabbatarian sanctity these pieces give a vivid picture of the domestic life and leisure of Victorian families, and they certainly convey the tremendous pent-up energy of the Victorian epoch. Traditional customs, such as Christmas, Harvest Home and Guy Fawkes Day, are celebrated with heavyweight gusto. The everyday pattern of life at home and school is broken by special outings to the zoo or the circus, and by exciting adventures with new marvels such as the railway train. Children are made to wonder at Britain's technical prowess and at her expanding overseas empire - and both are seen as proof of God's continuing favour. Perhaps it is in their writings for children that the Victorians tell us most about themselves, and about the civilization which we are now in the midst of rejecting.