A PLEA FOR THE FAIRCHILD FAMILY. [To THE EDITOR OF
THU "SPECTATOR,"] Sin,—Are you not a little hard on the "Fairchild Family" (Spectator, June 27th) ? In order to judge it fairly we must
remember that a hundred years ago there were hardly any tales for children, and the few that did exist were written by authors who thought that the only justification of a child's story-book was to drag in as much religious advice as possible. They could only give whit they had got, and the religion of those days was hard and narrow and condemnatory. Apart from this, it must be admitted that the moral is good ; it is undoubtedly wrong to be jealous and disobedient and passionate, and to steal one's mother's jam ; and the wrong.
doings of the Fairchilds are almost invariably worked out so as to bring on their own punishments. If read aloud with sundry expurgations, it never fails to delight girls under twelve years old, though it cannot boast of the exciting and stimulating properties of modern children's fiction.
And to their elders there comes a calm and restful sensa- tion in reading of the quiet country home life in those long-ago days, before the roads and lanes had been invaded by train or motor; when children were still childlike enough to find their chief treats in a 'day in the hayfield or a walk with their father, and their excitements were when Betty on her
pillion brought them back picture-books from the fair. When one hears nowadays of children who are dissatisfied with a party where champagne and ices are not provided, it is refreshing to read of the Fairchild Family feasting on fowl and green peas with raspberry-and-currant tart; and in these days of week-end river parties and country houses, where there is much bridge and little church, the chapter describing their happy, peaceful, busy Sundays comes to us hurrying, excitable, overstrung mortals of the twentieth century as the memory of the cool English meadows of childhood might come to the traveller wearied with the burning desert. —I am,
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