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The Memoirs of a Baby (1904) by Josephine Daskam ⭐⭐⭐
The Memoirs of a Baby was published in April 1904 by Grosset and Dunlap.
This is a very cute book chronicling Susy’s, Tom’s, and baby Martin’s family life during his first five years. Its tone is extremely light and frivolous, with lots of drawings peppered throughout. At first, Martin is a perfect baby, never crying, always in a sunny mood. Aunt Emma, Tom’s aunt who brought him up, is there to help, as well as servants and nannys to dote on the boy. It’s funny, though, because you’d think Aunt Emma had no experience in child-rearing, as she reads advice from a book and gets terrible suggestions from magazines.
Maybe I missed something, but for most of the book I was wondering what in the world Tom did for work. They seem to be pretty well-to-do, but he’s always at home. They never mention him going to work or coming home from work, though toward the end they mention that he works for ‘a soulless corporation’.
Some parts were strange. There was one scene where Susy asks Tom in alarm how she will explain to Martin (who can’t even talk yet) when he asks what gas was. Yes, gas. Neither Aunt Emma, Tom, or Susy can come up with an explanation as to what gas is, and I can only assume this is a fart joke, because Tom proceeds to say “Gas is what you don’t blow out in a hotel.” Please enlighten me if this is not what this scene means, because I’d rather not think this was a strange and feeble attempt at 1904 humor.
Martin’s first word ends up being a dirty word, due to the fact that his father repeated the expletive multiple times one time when he was angry. They leave the word up to your guess, but they describe it as the first letter being close to the front of the alphabet. Susy was not in the room at the time. Tom was saved when Martin said a bunch of other words and quickly forgot the dirty one. The floodgates were opened. It was nonstop talking from here on out.
There were three accounts of racism, all for comedic effect. These were one comment each about the jewish, asians, and a half-black servant. More than a little distasteful and cringy!
But, overall, this was a cute book, nothing extraordinary, so I give it a 3 star rating. It was a quick read, due to over 60 full page drawings that were added to the publication.
You may recognize the name of author Josephine Daskam (February 17, 1876 – July 29, 1961), because she was a pioneer in the Girl Scouts movement, and edited the Girl Scouts Handbook. Many of her works feature female protagonists, and she was very well received as an author. She also went by the name of Mrs. Seldon Bacon.
It looks like The Memoirs of a Baby is on OpenLibrary, and you can get a bunch of Daskam’s other works on gutenberg.
