‘I suppose it is. I should never make my own children sign anything like that, but I somehow didn’t like to give it up. I feel a sort of loyalty to Father. I don’t think it matters, but he did; if he was alive I think I should tell him I didn’t agree any more and give him back the card. But as he is dead I can’t. Perhaps that’s rather silly, but after all, there’s no strong reason the other way.’
George was not a teetotaller when we knew him. He had felt like Mollie for a time, he said, after their father’s death, and then he definitely broke through the feeling of taboo, as something irrational to which one should not give in.
‘Magnus pater sed maior veritas,’ he said, and Hugo laughed at him, and said he was a Puritan in his negation of Puritanism.
Neither George nor Mollie had remained Unitarians. Mollie’s scientific mind had overcome her loyalty here; also, as she herself told me, Mr. Addington’s religion had been far less vital to him than his political and social creed.
They were both Liberals, and this seemed to me the oddest of all. To Hugo too it seemed odd, but not so much to Guy. I believe that with a different environment Guy might have been a politician. It had always been a joke against Guy that he liked to read the newspaper; not just reviews or headlines, but the solid political articles. But even he had no particular party, and it was the party that seemed so curious to Hugo and to me. To suppose that one could agree, always, on all points, with one group of people, and that one must support one party.
‘How can you agree always with one group of people?’ Hugo asked George one day, in a punt.
‘I don’t always agree on every point,’ said George, ‘but mainly, on the most important questions.’
‘But you might agree with one party on one important point, and another on another. What would you do then?’
‘That doesn’t often happen, as a matter of fact. But if it does, I suppose one would go with the party one agreed with on most points. You must work together with some group if you want to get things done.’
‘Yes, getting things done. That’s the whole difficulty. I doubt, you see, whether this getting anything done is worth the intellectual dishonesty involved in it.’