All godmothers writing to their godchildren—and indeed all women writing to the young—are very apt to be dreadfully serious and to give them only the heaviest fare, which must inevitably weary them. Now, Caroline, there is not going to be any of that kind of thing between you and me, because my aim is not to show you how many stereotyped moral sentiments I can instill into you on orthodox lines—but it is to try to prepare you for that place in the social sphere which you have a right by accident of birth and fortune to expect. And, above all, my aim is to try to help you to gain happiness spelt with a big H—as happiness is obtainable in this hour of the world’s enlightenment. It is not always possible for older people to secure it, because, when they were in the gloomy retrogressionist atmosphere which held sway in their younger days, they laid up for themselves limitations which may take them all their lives on this planet to get through.
You, Caroline, have not had time to incur any serious debts to fate, so you have a real chance to achieve the desired end, and so progress in body, soul, and spirit. Now read the dialogue.
Dialogue between Elinor and John
Dedicated to the shades of Lucian and Don Quixote
Elinor: Very well, my good friend, let us begin by discussing religion then, and from there we can branch off to other matters which come up, and, as you are here merely to make a few remarks, I gather, and leave the hard work to me, I consider I have the right to select my subjects—and I choose religion to begin upon.
John: I’ll do my best to listen, but women are illogical beings, and you will pardon a yawn now and then.
Elinor: All I ask is good manners—conceal your yawn behind a respectful hand.
John: Begin—as yet I am all attention!
Elinor: My religion is very simple. It started by being a rebellion against the narrow orthodoxy which I had been taught in my youth. I refused to credit the idea that we were all born miserable sinners. I felt that we were glorious creatures who should stand upright and rise into space. I resented the attitude of all saints and martyrs as depicted in statuary and painting—a mea culpa attitude—a pleading for the charity of some omnipotent being to overlook a personal fault—as it were to say, “If I grovel enough your vanity will be appeased and you won’t punish me.” I looked round at the glorious world of nature and at the wonder of my own body, full of health and vitality, and I wanted to cry aloud to God, “Dear God, I am so glad you have made me, and I mean to do the very best I can for your creation in return.”
John: That is not altogether a bad idea.
Elinor: I felt that human beings, because of their gift of articulate speech, were different to animals, and had been given a higher spark of the divine essence in their possession of the loan of a more responsible soul. I seemed to realize that we had no smallest right to soil it or degrade it, since God need not have lent it to us at all if He had not wished. We were, so to speak, on our honor with the thing. I suddenly understood that it was unspeakable disgrace to commit paltry actions just because people would not know about them—that even if one had to admit the necessity of bluff in the affairs of men sometimes it was perfectly childish to use it in dealing with God—and not only childish, but useless.