Never ask your husband questions. If you do, you may be certain he will
only tell you the truth when he feels inclined--and one day you will
find it out, and then think he is always lying. Do not worry him when he
is tired. Never tell him of the petty delinquencies of the servants.
Learn to manage these yourself. Do not be egotistical and talk about
yourself. Do not recount to him the better position or greater
pleasures enjoyed by your friends. But, on the other hand, do not be
meek and submissive and without character, pandering to all his
weaknesses. Hold your own opinions when they are just and right, and
from the very first day inspire him with regard for you as well as love.
Let everyone in your new home understand that you mean to deserve their
respect, and so will exact its observance. Whether people are respected
in their own houses or not lies entirely with themselves, and not with
the manners or characters of their relations and servants. You can be
feared and respected, or you can be revered and respected, or you can be
outwardly respected and inwardly despised. You will be well served in
the first case; you will be exquisitely served in the second; and you
will be cheated and mocked in the third. It lies with yourself which of
these you choose to call forth. You may think, Caroline, that,
considering you are only just coming out, I might be talking to you upon
lighter and more frivolous subjects; but, as you are pretty and an
heiress, the marriage question will crop up so very soon that I feel
that now, while you will still listen to me, is my only chance to
impress its importance upon you--because the lighter things are for such
a little time, and marriage is for so many years! But in my next and
last letter before I shall see you, I will revert to the ways of girls,
to give you your last polish before you make your curtsey to the King
and Queen in May.
So now I will say good-night, child.
Your affectionate Godmother,
E. G.
VI
APRIL, 1913.
As this is the last letter I shall write to you before we meet,
Caroline, I shall have to collect all the little things I want to say to
you which are much easier to write than to express personally. And so,
first, I shall begin by suggesting what you had better avoid. The whole
tendency (as I think I said in a former letter) of modern society is
toward rowdiness and vulgarity, and if one is very young and full of
spirits it is so easy to be led away into indiscretions when one sees
most of one’s companions doing the same thing. But it is very foolish
and not in our scheme to secure for you prestige and a brilliant
future, my child, so I shall be quite ruthless in what I am going to
say.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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