Her eldest daughter, Elizabeth Goose (or
Vertigoose), was married by Rev. Cotton Mather in 1715 to an
enterprising and industrious printer named Thomas Fleet, and in due
time gave birth to a son. Like most mothers-in-law in our day, the
importance of Mrs. Goose increased with the appearance of her
grandchild, and poor Mr. Fleet, half distracted with her endless
nursery ditties, finding all other means fail, tried what ridicule
could effect, and actually printed a book under the title "Songs of
the Nursery; or, Mother Goose's Melodies for Children." On the title
page was the picture of a goose with a very long neck and a mouth wide
open, and below this, "Printed by T. Fleet, at his Printing House in
Pudding Lane, 1719. Price, two coppers."
Mr. Wm. A. Wheeler, the editor of Hurd & Houghton's elaborate edition
of Mother Goose, (1870), reiterated this assertion, and a writer in
the Boston Transcript of June 17, 1864, says: "Fleet's book was partly
a reprint of an English collection of songs (Barclay's), and the new
title was doubtless a compliment by the printer to his mother-in-law
Goose for her contributions. She was the mother of sixteen children
and a typical 'Old Woman who lived in a Shoe.'"
We may take it to be true that Fleet's wife was of the Vergoose
family, and that the name was often contracted to Goose.
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