‘Let me see, let me see!’ said Henry, ‘oh, how pretty!’”
Late editors flinch at the inhumanity of the punishments, and usually omit the gibbet story which, at the outset, throws a horrible shadow on the book. There has been a quarrel in the nursery; the children are penitent, they have been forgiven; but Mr. Fairchild deems it necessary to give them a concrete illustration of the fate of one who has failed to control his passions. He takes them to “Blackwood” (so far off that little Henry has to be carried) and shows them the body of a murderer hanging from a gibbet. “The face of the corpse was so shocking that the children could not look upon it”.
It is to be supposed that children who survived this kind of treatment could be happy, since there was little left to excite their terror. Henry, when he steals a forbidden apple, is threatened with fire and brimstone and locked up in a dark room. The very frightfulness of all this would defeat its end, for if a child could live through it, and look up the next morning at an unclouded sky, or take his part in the cheerful concerns of men, the thing would come, in time, to have no meaning for him. It is clear that this happened with the Fairchild Family. They act and talk (save when they are made the mouthpieces of older persons) like healthy and ordinary children. They even dare to be naughty in an ordinary way. No sooner are Mr. and Mrs. Fairchild called away from home, than original sin begins to assert itself. This chapter is “On the Constant Bent of Man’s Heart towards Sin”.
Emily and Lucy play in bed instead of getting up: “Emily made babies of the pillows, and Lucy pulled off the sheets and tied them round her, in imitation of Lady Noble’s long-trained gown.” There is no encouragement for the dramatic games of children, any more than for dancing, in Mrs. Sherwood’s books.
Then Henry announces hot buttered toast for breakfast; they hurry down “without praying, washing themselves, combing their hair, making their bed, or doing any one thing they ought to have done.”
After breakfast they take out their books, but they have eaten so much that they “cannot learn with any pleasure”. A quarrel is checked by Henry’s discovery of a little pig in the garden. The three at once give chase. Another “juvenile” Pilgrim’s Progress, this:
“Now, there was a place where a spring ran across the lane, over which was a narrow bridge, for the use of people walking that way. Now the pig did not stand to look for the bridge, but went splash, splash, through the midst of the water; and after him went Henry, Lucy and Emily, though they were up to their knees in mud and dirt.” Mrs. Sherwood had caught the live clearness of Bunyan’s pictures.
A neighbour (one of the unregenerate, whom the children have been forbidden to visit) kindly dries their clothes; she also regales them with cider, “and as they were never used to drink anything but water, it made them quite tipsy for a little while.”
The good-natured John, discovering their condition, calls them “naughty rogues”. He gives them dinner and ties them to their chairs, but afterwards relents and allows them to play in the barn, where he thinks they can do no more mischief. Here they let down a swing which they are only supposed to play with when Papa is present; Emily falls out of it and narrowly escapes being killed.
At this point Mr. and Mrs. Fairchild quite unexpectedly come home. The children fall upon their knees and fade once more into unreality.