Memories of a Victorian Girlhood: "Frances took me to a very private place ... and told me there, in confidence..."

Oh, bite your tongue. It's not what you think.

Pretty soon after that, when we were both between nine and ten years old, Frances took me to a very private place under the wooden bridge on the Little Island, and told me there, in confidence, that it was not at all the thing nowadays to believe in Christianity any more. It simply wasn't done. I felt at once that this was what I had always thought, though I had not been quite able to express it. I admired Frances tremendously; she seemed to live in an up-to-date, sophisticated world, where Art and literature were taken seriously. Her mother had short hair, and even smoked cigarettes; so that anything Frances said was sure to be right. Her information was a great relief to me; a real comfort. From that very night I gave up saying my prayers. I remember, that evening, catching a glimpse, through the doorway, of Charles kneeling by his bed and thinking: 'Poor boy, he's only seven; I won't disturb his mind just yet.' But, knowing my own incapacity for holding my tongue, I am certain that I told him all about it next day; and I don't suppose his mind was at all disturbed. he had probably known it all along.

--Gwen Raverat, Period Piece 219 (1952; Ann Arbor Paperback 1991)

Raverat was born in 1885, so she is writing about an event in/around 1895, a granddaughter of Charles Darwin. Among other achievements, she was a distinguished wood engraver. A blue plaque commemorates the site of her childhood home, now the site of Darwin College at Cambridge. She died in 1957