Another poem from Charles & Mary Lamb
After conceding that there is no need to warn a child of the dangers of the demon drink, since, thankfully, nobody offers alcohol to a child, the poet goes on:
... there’s a vice
That shares the world’s contempt no less;
To be in eating over- nice
Or to court surfeits by excess
...
By temperance meat is best enjoyed;
Think of this maxim when you dine
Prefer with plain food to be fed,
Rather than what are dainties styled;
A sweet tooth in an infant’s head
Is pardon’d, not in a grown child.
If parent, aunt, or liberal friend,
With splendid shilling line your purse,
Do not the same on sweetmeats spend,
Nor appetite with pamperings nurse.
Go buy a book …
Purchase some toy …
Go see some show …
That may the youthful mind expand.
And something of your store impart,
To feed the poor & hungry soul;
What buys for you the needless tart,
May purchase him a needful roll
And so we have what were to become the great Victorian virtues, self improvement & philanthropy
What I find intriguing about this, from a modern perspective, is how much responsibility (and choice) a child was expected to have for his own behaviour in 1809 when these poems were first published
But then I remembered the story of Sir Elkanah Armitage. Born in 1794 to a family of weavers, he went to work in a factory when he was 8 years old because there was not enough work at home for him & all his brothers. With 20 years experience of business behind him he set up his own firm when he was 28. He became wealthy & was a powerful figure in Manchester politics. He died aged 82 in 1876
And somehow I doubt that the prime minister in 1809, William Henry Cavendish Cavendish-Bentinck, third duke of Portland, felt that it was any part of his job to give advice on, still less issue regulations to prescribe or proscribe the content of diet of the nation's children
