1American children’s writer Laura Richards (1850–1943), the first lady of American Nonsense poetry, was among the few professional women writers of her day to write literary autobiographies, and the only one to write two. This is remarkable not only because to this day American women still publish fewer autobiographies than their male counterparts (Culley 6), but also because, of the several hundred autobiographies published by women before 1914, fewer than thirty were authored by professional women writers like Richards (Norman 115).
2This might come as no surprise also when considering her family legacy; Richards was the fourth daughter of two American celebrities, poet and social activist Julia Ward Howe (1819–1910), and Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe (1801–1876), the well-known head of the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Massachusetts and American hero of the 1820s Greek Revolution. Richards’s first autobiography, When I Was Your Age, first serialized in 1892 and then published in a book form in 1893, was aimed at a juvenile audience. Her second autobiography, Stepping Westward, was published in 1931.
- 1 Georg Misch (1907) and Anna Robeson Burr (1909) encouraged the study of the autobiographies of grea (...)
- 2 In a series of essays published in 1956 in The Horn Book Magazine, one of the distinguished magazin (...)
3Early views of autobiography such as Misch’s and Burr’s saw the genre as a service to the nation, a public means of representing some of its great individuals.1 Although this approach is no longer up-to-date, Richards’s life-stories have been largely responsible for the creation of the Howe family mythology, which in the field of children’s literature is still hardly contested.2 Richards’s autobiographies with their glorification of her parents as role models embodying the true spirit of America—Valerie Ziegler refers to Richards’s rhetoric as “rapturous in its depiction of her sainted parents” (154)—can be read in this light. Richards was acutely aware of the heroic standing of her parents in the eyes of the American public and was careful to maintain their spotless reputation also in the (several!) biographies which she wrote about them. In addition to two biographies of her parents that were intended at an adult readership, Richards composed a short book about them aimed at a young audience and called it Two Noble Lives (1911). The biography opens with a dedicatory poem, “The Hero (Dr. S. G. Howe)” by John G. Whittier, followed by a short note in which Richards explains that “[t]his little book is designed for use in schools. It is hoped that the story of these two lives … may find its way into the hands of many children” (n.p.). In this regard, however, Richards was not exceptional: “The implantation of virtue was the primary goal of nearly everything nineteenth-century Americans read: textbooks, novels, poems, magazine stories, or religious tracts” (Tompkins 157).
4While such readings of Richards’s family mythology (with its inherent share of impeccable happy childhood) correlate with the somewhat parallel Victorian view of Nonsense as no more than a sophisticated form of children’s literature, they are nevertheless hardly adequate; as Linda Nochlin has famously pointed out in the case of art history, the right questions to be asked—and Richards’s case is no exception—are by all means contextual:
The question ‘Why have there been no great women artists?’ has led us to the conclusion, so far, that art is not a free, autonomous activity of a super-endowed individual, “influenced” by previous artists, and, more vaguely and superficially, by ‘social forces,’ but rather, that the total situation of art making, both in terms of the development of the art maker and in the nature and quality of the work of art itself, occur in a social situation, are integral elements of this social structure, and are mediated and determined by specific and definable social institutions, be they art academics, systems of patronage, mythologies of the divine creator, artist as he-man or social outcast. (158)
5Thus, rather than interpret the poems in a historical and cultural void in the manner of New Criticism, I suggest reading the poems alongside personal and historical accounts, thereby “putting the reader in possession of facts which he would otherwise have missed” (Eliot 32). As no one, so far, has thought of reading Richards’s poems alongside her two autobiographies and in the wider context of nonsense poetry and women and children’s literature in nineteenth-century America, I hope this approach will prove useful in gaining a new and more complex view of both Laura Richards’s life and her children’s verses; it may even shed new light on the society she was part of.
6It turns out that Richards diligently and remorselessly censored any detail that might have clouded the bright picture of her idyllic childhood, which was in reality fraught with mental illness and matrimonial tensions that were felt by the entire family. Dr. Gridley resented his wife’s literary aspirations, and Julia, who was more interested in matters of the spirit than in domestic chores, was overburdened by housekeeping and childrearing. In fact, Julia Ward Howe was far from the ideal American mother figure; frustrated by her husband’s objections to her writing career, she suffered bouts of depression, as did two of her daughters. At one stage Gridley threatened to divorce Howe and take custody of two of their children. However, such information could hardly be gleaned from Richards’s formal autobiographical sketches.
7It is my contention that the historical and rhetorical manipulations in Richards’s prose autobiographies have influenced readers to interpret her children’s poetry as correspondingly idyllic—and have thus obscured its subversive potential. I therefore suggest reading Richards’s poems from an autobiographical perspective and within the context of the elaborate theoretical work in the field of autobiography. In other words, I would like to claim that Richards wrote a third, yet unacknowledged autobiography, comprising her children’s poems, where cracks in the picturesque façade become noticeable. Viewed from this perspective, the poems complement and complicate Richards’s formal autobiographies, challenging the prevalent understanding and reception of both.
8The suggestion to read Richards’s children’s poems autobiographically might seem at the outset a somewhat farfetched innovation: Children’s poems, and nursery rhymes in particular, seem to involve nothing resembling an autobiographical pact—the contract between autobiographer and reader, where the writer commits herself to providing a sincere account of her life (Lejeune 4–5). Moreover, even though some poetry has been read autobiographically, prose is still perceived as more suitable for life writing due to its temporal form. Besides, there is no reason to believe that the poems were ever intended to be self-reflexive in the first place.
9Thus, in order to view Richards’s poems autobiographically, one first has to overcome the limitations imposed by what is customarily conceived as the genre of autobiography. Many scholars still relate to autobiography, and women’s autobiographies of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in particular, as “a branch of history” (Jelinek 2). That is, they approach memoirs mainly as straightforward documentary texts, often disregarding their literary subtleties and their writers’ personal manipulations. At the same time, the historical boundaries of the genre have been long and consistently contested. Scholars of autobiography have pointed out its “very slipperiness” and “unruly” nature (Anderson 2). Specifically, Jean Starobinski maintains that “[a]utobiography is certainly not a genre with rigorous rules” (77), and Georges Gusdorf asserts that autobiography consists of “the artist’s entire work” (46); Avrom Fleishman goes as far as to state that “it is essential to avoid speaking of an autobiographical ‘style’ or even an autobiographical ‘form,’ because there is no such generic style or form” (73), thereby concurring with Candace Lang that “[a]utobiography is indeed everywhere one cares to find it” (6). One might conclude along with Paul de Man that “[a]utobiography, then, is not a genre or a mode, but a figure of reading or of understanding that occurs, to some degree, in all texts” (921). This kind of wide-ranging approach is critical for my reading of Richards’s children’s poems as a form of hidden autobiography.
10“Can autobiography be written in verse?” asks Paul de Man (20). Reading poetry as autobiography is not new at least in the field of women’s studies: “Given the dearth of autobiographical information about women before the eighteenth century, the poetic corpus of many women poets, beginning with Sappho, has been read precisely as autobiography” (Schenck 290). In the nineteenth century it was also not unusual to view poetry in autobiographical terms: “The notion of a self-enclosed poetic realm was not generally assumed in the nineteenth century. Instead, poetry directly participated in and addressed the pressing issues facing the evolving nation” (Wolosky ix-x).
11Indeed, the fragmented nature of poetry yields a unique and novel outlook on the past; as Adrienne Rich puts it, “poems are like dreams; in them you put what you don't know you know” (40). Because poems are ciphers, they often lack an obvious concord with the reader. In some ways this is even truer for nursery and nonsense rhymes. Although the seemingly frivolous nature of these poems may lead to their dismissal as childish or nonsensical, it nevertheless encourages a more relaxed tone and allows for the spontaneous inclusion of autobiographical elements.
12Accordingly, Richards’s nursery rhymes and nonsense poems can be viewed as autobiographical snapshots that stand in sharp contrast to her carefully constructed, formal autobiographies. As I write elsewhere, “the label of nonsense (literally understood) prevented readers from seriously prying into her poetry, and enabled Richards greater freedom of writing” (Gordon Ginzburg “There Once Was” 181). Thus her poems, albeit also highly polished, are more authentic in the sense that they permit representations of raw experiences without any conscious imposition of censorship or chronological order.
13Richards’s choice to write nursery rhymes and nonsense poems, while emphasizing musicality and sound, is autobiographical in and of itself. For Richards, writing Nonsense seemed like a natural choice—not only due to her early exposure to works by Edward Lear, Heinrich Hoffmann, or to Mother Goose, but also owing to the influence of her musical upbringing. Richards recalls her mother singing “merry, jovial ditties, with choruses of ‘Juvevallera!’ and ‘Za hi! Za he! Za ho-o-o-o-o-oh!’ in which we joined in boundless enthusiasm” (When I Was 130), or “gay student choruses of ‘Juch hei’ and ‘Vivallera-lera,’ … sparkling French songs whose gayety was enchanting, whatever their moral might be” (Stepping 6). All these songs evidently left their mark on the children’s writer-to-be.
14Some of Richards’s poems are autobiographical in a very straightforward manner, such as the unpublished poem “There Once Was a Lady Called Laura,” which echoes life at the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Massachusetts, where the family lived from time to time:
There once was a Lady called Laura,
She lived on the verge of Gomorah;
She said, I will find
All the lame, sick and blind
And we all will read Browning to-morrer! (Jingle Jangle ll. 1–5)
15The allusion to Gomorah in this limerick, while providing a perfect rhyme for “Laura,” at the same time hints at the emotional burden of life in the Perkins Institute for the Blind. In her prose writing, in contrast, Richards does not explicitly speak ill of the time that the family spent at Perkins, but the language she uses to describe it conveys faint unease and a chaotic sense of flux: “Between moves, we were apt to spend weeks or months at the Perkins Institution for the Blind … [where] we children lived, from time to time, a rather breathless sort of life, I seem to think, never exactly taking root” (Stepping 12–13). According to Richards, only her eldest sister Julia Romana, “fully entered into that life [and] made her most intimate friends among the blind girls of her own age” (13). In a sentence that stands out and forms a paragraph of its own, Richards declares, perhaps with a certain subtextual rebelliousness: “For myself I can claim no such lovely accomplishments” (14).
16Despite this virtuous self-deprecation, which places the blame for her social difficulties entirely on her own shoulders, the stories that Richards shares about the Institute give some indication of the toll that life amid the blind took on the whole family. She relates an episode, for example, concerning a gift given to her sister Maud by a family friend, a “wonderful creature, with hair almost like Maud’s own, and great blue eyes that opened and shut, and cheeks whose steadfast rose did not flash in and out, but bloomed always” (When I Was 33). Young Maud went off to play with the doll, and then
[a]t length she returned, flushed and triumphant.
‘My dolly is blind, now!’ she cried; and she displayed the doll, over whose eyes she had tied a ribbon, in imitation of Laura Bridgman. ‘She is blind Polly! ain’t got no eyes ‘t all!’
Alas! It was even so. Maud had poked the beautiful blue glass eyes till they fell in, and only empty sockets were hidden by the green ribbon. (33)
17Echoes of this remarkable scene are found in “Emily Jane” (In My Nursery 140–141), a poem about a doll who has “[a] hole for an eye, and a lump for a nose, / It really looks better than you would suppose” (ll. 11–12). The description is also reminiscent of Pistachio, another mutilated toy: “More precious than any doll could be … Pistachio was an oval mahogany footstool, covered with green cloth of the color of the nut whose name he bore” (When I Was 35).
18Eyes play an unforgettable role in “Belinda Blonde” (Nursery 70–71) with Jack-in-the-box’s “great goggle-eyes glaring wildly about” (l. 22), and in “A Nursery Tragedy” (Nursery 202–204), where the toy elephant bears a fierce grudge against the rocking horse for staring at him:
‘I might forgive your want of tusks,
Your lack of trunk forgive ;
But that wild, goggling, glassy glare —
No ! never, while I live !’ (ll. 29–32)
19This abundance of eye poems and eye stories suggests that Richards is preoccupied with eyes. However, it is not her close relationship with her father’s students that inspired this imagery, as Laura Richards—named after the blind, deaf, and mute Laura Bridgman, Dr. Howe’s most famous student—does not recall forming any: “I do not remember any intimate friendship with the blind children of my own age” (Stepping 17). This was, I believe, as negative as Richards could bear to express herself about life in the Institute or its ensuing effects.
20Furthermore, among Richards’s various romantic and courting verses, two stand out as bearing strong autobiographical imprints. The description of the princess in “The Princess of Saturn and the Red man in Mars” (Nursery 207–212) is powerfully suggestive of Julia Ward Howe:
There once was a princess both fair and tall,
Who did not live on this earth at all.
She lived up in Saturn,
And she was a pattern
Of every accomplishment, great and small;
The graces and virtues, she had them all.
Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, she had them pat;
And she also played on the sackbut! Think of that!
And she sang so sweet,
All the birds at her feet
With envy and sorrow fell down quite remarkably flat; (ll. 1–11)
21The description of the beautiful, learned, and musical “Princess of Saturn” brings to mind a similar description of Julia Ward Howe in Stepping Westward:
My mother’s singing formed an important part in our education. She had a beautiful high soprano voice .... Musical to her finger tips [sic], she knew (I firmly believed) all the songs in the world; she certainly knew a great many of them. Language was no barrier to her; French, German and Italian were at her familiar command, and any other language was accessible if required. In Rome, she studied Hebrew with a learned Rabbi …. Latin was her intimate friend through life; at fifty she took up Greek. (5)
22Emphasis on the intellectual abilities of women rather than on their domestic virtues was not common among the Victorians, who resented the idea of women intellectuals. It is nevertheless suited to Julia Ward Howe, who was known for her intellectual propensities as much as for her poor housewifery.
23The almost impossible love story between two opposites, the green princess from Saturn and the red man from Mars (Julia was famously red-headed) is similarly evocative of the different temperaments of Richards’s parents. Louise Tharp observes that “[a] greater contrast can hardly be imagined than that between Dr. Howe and Julia Ward” (82). It is unlikely that Richards, who was also her parents’ biographer, was unaware of the tensions in their marriage, even though she never relates to them openly (Gordon Ginzburg, “Queering” 292).
24Conceivably, as one of her sisters observed, Laura Richards was simply “too amiable to be critical of her mother as her older sisters were” (Clifford 151). This and other similar evidence imply a positive disposition (Alexander vi), but evidence suggests that this is not the whole story. Richards employed a conscientious strategy of omission because she was aware not only of the family’s problems but also of their potential harmful effect on her parents’ legacy: “I keep very few letters for the sake of posterity” (“Letter,” 20 August 1926), she writes in a private letter. Adopting a role as the family’s “censor-historiographer,” Richards destroyed many of her parents’ papers, as well as some of her sisters’ letters that had not suited the legacy she wanted to create of her family.
25Richards’s “managed view of history” (Smith, Yellow House 71) can be gleaned from her letters concerning controversial materials in the family archive. About keeping the journals of her young father’s activities in Greece she writes:
But—the original letters and journals to Athens? No, darling! Somebody might read them, and see what S.G.H. thought of many, if not most, of the men for and with whom he was fighting. He was young and ardent; he flung down his white heat of wrath and scorn, often not stopping to consider; the journals were his safety-valve. In his “Historical Sketch” he carefully surpassed all this feeling, and I carefully followed his lead in the ‘Life and Letters.’ The Greek army of that time seems to have been rather a poor set; still, they made the fight and did the trick, and in his book he gives them the credit which the private record—often jotted down in moments of fatigue or irritation—sometimes denies. (“Letter,” 13 July 1924)
26Of her mother she writes in a letter to her sister from the 24 June 1935: “About the J.W.H. papers, now! I think you’d better send them—some of them, at least; and destroy the rest? …. Her place is secure; we must be content with that. I think—hope—mean, to destroy much of what I have; I have destroyed much already” (emphasis in the original). When it came to the destruction of Julia Romana (Howe) Anagnos’s diary lest it should reveal the sister’s mental illness, Laura Richards expressed no doubts: “Destroy dear Julia’s notebook! I know it isn’t easy to do. I still have one, and so help me, I will make an end to it today. She gave herself to humanity in many ways; she could not do this, it was not in her. I never understood how or why, but I am quite clear that we should be doing her no kindness by preserving her writings” (“Letter,” 31 Jan. 1928). The family image that emerges yields a somewhat monotonous and unsatisfactory picture of reality that sharply contrasts with the vivid nature of Richards’s verses. The discrepancy between the purportedly historical autobiographies and the subdued violence in so many of the nursery rhymes has led me to look for the historical in the fictional—and especially in the nonsense and nursery rhymes that initially aroused my curiosity, and I tried, in the words of Keith Thomas, to look “not so much for what the author meant to say as for what the text incidentally or unintentionally reveals” (36).
27In light of this, the eerie nature of the closing lines of “The Princess of Saturn”—which witness how “the princes and kings / Said such heartbreaking things” (ll. 122–123), yet in the same breath maintain that “[i]n these mirth-loving pages they must not be seen” (l. 124)—strongly calls to mind Richards’s acts of suppression, and provides a brief if rare glimpse into one of Richards’s family secrets.
28It may be useful to compare Richards’s autobiographies to “exterior space—the stage of the world— … a light, clear space where everyone’s behavior, movements, and motives are quite plain on first sight” (Gusdorf 32), and Richards’s poems to the expression of an “interior space … shadowy in its essence” (32). Furthermore, though chronologically narrated, the autobiographies recollect fragments of events: “The autobiographer can rarely recapture the daily lived quality of his early life, but must step from island to island of significant reminiscence” (Sanders 53). These “islands” may also serve my purpose as useful metaphors for the poems Richards wrote, which I view as a vital complement to her autobiographies.
- 3 This is what Richards writes in “The Hurdy-Gurdy,” the introductory rhyme (subtitled “Introduction” (...)
29Indeed, in her first prose autobiography Richards admits that “glimpses of our happy childhood must necessarily be fragmentary and brief” (When I Was 210). “Fragmentary and brief” is a description that can certainly be applied to her nursery rhymes and nonsense poems as well, even though in the latter these attributes serve to reveal what has been so carefully concealed elsewhere. Richards, who never openly recounted her frustrations and negative emotions in her official autobiographies, seemed to find, in the genre she dismissively designated as her “hurdy gurdy” verses (Hurdy-Gurdy 1),3 the freedom to air her uncensored, raw experiences.
30Reading autobiography into what Richards dismissed as nonsense involves not only questioning systems of genre but also legitimizing nursery rhymes as poetry worthy of serious analysis. This kind of reading may not only deconstruct the dismissive critical approach to Richards and her work, but also change the way current scholarship treats children’s verses at large.
RSS feed
