Which Christians in the nineteenth century had the most lasting and widespread influence? Spurgeon? Ryle? Livingston? The lady whose little schoolhouse is pictured above is not well known now but her influence was arguably as great as any of these for reasons that Christian home educators will understand.
Favell Lee Mortimer wrote one of the most widely used reading books and it was she who invented flashcards as a means of helping a child to learn to read. However, the interesting thing about her is that her most famous books were a set of children's Bible lessons that sold millions of copies worldwide, and which outsold everything else of the kind for generations after her death.
As far as I can tell, before Favell Mortimer, although there were books for children on religious topics, no one had sat down and tried to distil basic Bible narrative into language a tiny child could understand. When her first book Peep of Day was published in 1833 by Hatchards of Picadilly it was an instant, runaway success. She had honed her method for years both as a teacher in schools which she founded and funded and also (more relevant to home educators) by personally teaching many children on a one to one basis. Although she never had children of her own she taught her younger siblings, many of her very numerous nieces and nephews and also a great number of orphans whom she adopted and raised in her own home.
What were her methods? Favell Mortimer was motivated by a desire to present the gospel clearly to very young children. She accordingly strove to use very simple vocabulary and sentence structure. She often adopted an approach which asked the child questions to provoke thought or prompt a response and she was convinced that the narrative of Scripture was the best vehicle for a small child to understand Gospel truth – not what we might call direct theological or even catachistical writing. She was adept at memorable or striking sentences that would stick in the mind – for instance Peep of Day itself opens with a wonderful pair of short simple questions:
Who put the sun in the sky? God. Can you reach up so high? No.
These sentences, given the staggering and long popularity of the book, must have awakened the “first thoughts of God” – that was how F B Meyer put it when writing about her – in millions of very young children. Not only did grateful parents flock to get their hands on her books but missionaries, desperate for simple language material for people of all ages, carried them to the four corners of the globe – with the result that Peep of Day was eventually translated into over thirty languages including Urdu, Yoruba, Cree, Matabele, Gujerati, Rarotongan... What we would probably now call pirated editions also appeared in America and one recent historical study has concluded that many books of children's Bible stories published in the USA in the 19th cent. can be traced back to her Peep of Day series.1
So who was this lady? When I had been using her books for some time with my own children I was so curious about the modest author (whose name does not even appear on her original books) that I did some research. Mrs Favell Lee Mortimer was born when George III was still on the throne and died a latish Victorian. Her life was so packed with interest, tragedy and associations (quite apart from her books) that I had to write it down. You can now buy a copy of her biography, Not Without Tears. Her bitter-sweet life of service to the master she loved wove its way through a host of well know characters from Cardinal Manning to Charlotte Brönte yet she was so different from them in her devotion to the young – whether rich or poor – and in her determination that the thing that mattered most was that they should understand the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I discovered Mrs Mortimer's Peep of Day series almost by accident over 25 years ago when my own children were young. A relative gave me Peep of Day itself and I found it was not only usable but actually better than other more modern books. I located all the books in the series, used them with all my children when they were very small. The little portions are so short and yet so valuable and it is easy to explain or modify, if you need to, the odd word or two here and there that has become dated. Her books became the daily anchor of our home school curriculum and we went through them many times.
Eventually I managed to get a complete original Hatchard's set and these I scanned to form the foundation of the Mothers' Companion curriculum.
Charlotte Mason (1842-1923), a later educator whose ideas are now very popular, based her methods on the premise that children are basically innocent: “...a hundred times a day I bow down in my heart before the babes, and feel that they are so much better than I, as though we were beings of a different class, nearer the angels, in fact,” she wrote. In contrast, although she wanted learning to be a happy experience for the child, Mrs Mortimer had no illusions about original sin and its effects on the young. A truly Christian worldview and a clear presentation of the facts of the Gospel were what she strove for in all her books as a result.
So why do I consider her as influential as Spurgeon and the others? Because she provided spiritual food for children – and children grow up.
1Dalton, Russell W., Children's Bibles in America, (London and New York, 2016)