Potterism Part 2

CHAPTER II

ANTI-POTTERS

1

The quest of Potterism, its causes and its cure, took the party of investigation first to the Cornish coast. Partly because of bathing and boating, and partly because Gideon, the organiser of the party, wanted to find out if there was much Potterism in Cornwall, or if Celticism had withstood it. For Potterism, they had decided, was mainly an Anglo-Saxon disease. Worst of all in America, that great home of commerce, success, and the booming of the second-rate. Less discernible in the Latin countries, which they hoped later on to explore, and hardly existing in the Slavs. In Russia, said Gideon, who loathed Russians, because he was half a Jew, it practically did not exist. The Russians were without shame and without cant, saw things as they were, and proceeded to make them a good deal worse. That was barbarity, imbecility, and devilishness, but it was not Potterism, said Gideon grimly. Gideon's grandparents had been ma.s.sacred in an Odessa pogrom; his father had been taken at the age of five to England by an aunt, become naturalised, taken the name of Sidney, married an Englishwoman, and achieved success and wealth as a banker. His son Arthur was one of the most brilliant men of his year at Oxford, regarded Russians, Jews, and British with cynical dislike, and had, on turning twenty-one, reverted to his family name in its English form, finding it a Potterish act on his father's part to have become Sidney.

Few of his friends remembered to call him by his new name, and his parents ignored it, but to wear it gave him a grim satisfaction.

Such was Arthur Gideon, a lean-faced, black-eyed man, biting his nails like f.a.gin when he got excited.

The other man, besides Johnny Potter, was the Honourable Laurence Juke, a Radical of moderately aristocratic lineage, a clever writer and actor, who had just taken deacon's orders. Juke had a look at once languid and amused, a well-shaped, smooth brown head, blunt features, the introspective, wide-set eyes of the mystic, and the sweet, flexible voice of the actor (his mother had, in fact, been a well-known actress of the eighties).

The two women were Jane Potter and Katherine Varick. Katherine Varick had frosty blue eyes, a pale, square-jawed, slightly cynical face, a first in Natural Science, and a chemical research fellows.h.i.+p.

In those happy days it was easy to stay in places, even by the sea, and they stayed first at the fis.h.i.+ng village of Mevagissey. Gideon was the only one who never forgot that they were to make observations and write a book. He came of a more hard-working race than the others did. Often the others merely fished, boated, bathed, and walked, and forgot the object of their tour. But Gideon, though he too did these things, did them, so to speak, notebook in hand. He was out to find and a.n.a.lyse Potterism, so much of it as lay hid in the rocky Cornish coves and the grave Cornish people. Katherine Varick was the only member of the party who knew that he was also seeking and finding it in the hidden souls of his fellow-seekers.

2

They would meet in the evening with the various contributions to the subject which they had gathered during the day. The Urban District Council, said Johnny, wanted to pull down the village street and build an esplanade to attract visitors; all the villagers seemed pleased. That was Potterism, the welcoming of ugliness and prosperity; the ant.i.thesis of the artist's spirit, which loved beauty for what it was, and did not want to exploit it.

Their landlady, said Juke, on Sunday, had looked coldly on him when he went out with his fis.h.i.+ng rod in the morning. This would not have been Potterism, but merely a respectable bigotry, had the lady had genuine conscientious scruples as to this use of Sunday morning by the clergy, but Juke had ascertained tactfully that she had no conscientious scruples about anything at all. So it was merely propriety and cant, in brief, Potterism. Later, he had landed at a village down the coast and been to church.

'That church,' he said, 'is the most unpleasant piece of Potterism I have seen for some time. Perpendicular, but restored fifty years ago, according to the taste of the period. Vile windows; painted deal pews; incredible braying of bad chants out of tune; a sermon from a pie-faced fellow about going to church. Why should they go to church? He didn't tell them; he just said if they didn't, some being he called G.o.d would be angry with them. What did he mean by G.o.d? I'm hanged if he'd ever thought it out. Some being, apparently, like a sublimated Potterite, who rejoices in bad singing, bad art, bad praying, and bad preaching, and sits aloft to deal out rewards to those who practise these and punishments to those who don't. The Potter G.o.d will save you if you please him; that means he'll save your body from danger and not let you starve. Potterism has no notion of a G.o.d who doesn't care a twopenny d.a.m.n whether you starve or not, but does care whether you're following the truth as you see it. In fact, Potterism has no room for Christianity; it prefers the G.o.d of the Old Testament. Of course, with their abominable cheek, the Potterites have taken Christianity and watered it down to suit themselves, till they've produced a form of Potterism which they call by its name; but they wouldn't know the real thing if they saw it.... The Pharisees were Potterites....'

The others listened to Juke on religious Potterism tolerantly. None of them (with the doubtful exception of Johnny, who had not entirely made up his mind) believed in religion; they were quite prepared to agree that most of its current forms were soaked in Potterism, but they could not be expected to care, as Juke did.

Gideon said he had heard a dreadful band on the beach, and heard a dreadful fellow proclaiming the Precious Blood. That was Potterism, because it was an appeal to sentiment over the head, or under the head, of reason. Neither the speaker nor any one else probably had the least idea what he was talking about or what he meant.

'He had the kind of face which is always turned away from facts,' Gideon said. 'Facts are too difficult, too complicated for him. Hard, jolly facts, with clear sharp edges that you can't slur and talk away.

Potterism has no use for them. It appeals over their heads to prejudice and sentiment.... It's the very opposite to the scientific temper. No good scientist could conceivably be a Potterite, because he's concerned with truth, and the kind of truth, too, that it's difficult to arrive at.

Potterism is all for short and easy cuts and showy results. Science has to work its way step by step, and then hasn't much to show for it. It isn't greedy. Potterism plays a game of grab all the time--s.n.a.t.c.hes at success in a hurry.... It's greedy,' repeated Gideon, thinking it out, watching Jane's firm little sun-browned hand with its short square fingers rooting in the sand for sh.e.l.ls.

Jane had visited the stationer, who kept a circulating library, and seen holiday visitors selecting books to read. They had nearly all chosen the most Potterish they could see, and asked for some more Potterish still, leaving Conrad and Hardy despised on the shelves. But these people were not Cornish, but Saxon visitors.

And Katherine had seen the local paper, but it had been much less Potterish than most of the London papers, which confirmed them in their theory about Celts.

Thus they talked and discussed and played, and wrote their book in patches, and travelled from place to place, and thought that they found things out. And Gideon, because he was the cleverest, found out the most; and Katherine, because she was the next cleverest, saw all that Gideon found out; and Juke, because he was religious, was for ever getting on to Potterism its cure, before they had a.n.a.lysed the disease; and the twins enjoyed life in their usual serene way, and found it very entertaining to be Potters inquiring into Potterism. The others were scrupulously fair in not attributing to them, because they happened to be Potters by birth, more Potterism than they actually possessed. A certain amount, said Juke, is part of the make-up of very nearly every human being; it has to be fought down, like the notorious ape and tiger. But he thought that Gideon and Katherine Varick had less of it than any one else he knew; the mediocre was repellent to them; cant and sentiment made them sick; they made a fetish of hard truth, and so much despised most of their neighbours that they would not experience the temptation to grab at popularity. In fact, they would dislike it if it came.

3

_Socialist Cecily_ came out while they were at Lyme Regis. Mrs. Potter sent the twins a copy. In their detached way, the twins read it, and gave it to the others to look at.

'Very typical stuff,' Gideon summed it up, after a glance. 'It will no doubt have an excellent sale.... It must be interesting for you to watch it being turned out. I wish you would ask me to stay with you some time.

Yours must be an even more instructive household than mine.'

Gideon was a Russian Jew on his father's side, and a Harrovian. He had no decency and no manners. He made Juke, who was an Englishman and an Etonian, and had more of both, uncomfortable sometimes. For, after all, the rudiments of family loyalty might as well be kept, among the general destruction which he, more sanguinely than Gideon, hoped for.

But the twins did not bother. Jane said, in her equable way, 'You'll be bored to death; angry, too; but come if you like.... We've a sister, more Potterish than the parents. She'll hate you.'

Gideon said, 'I expect so,' and they left his prospective visit at that, with Jane chuckling quietly at her private vision of Gideon and Clare in juxtaposition.

4

But _Socialist Cecily_ did not have a good sale after all. It was guillotined, with many of its betters, by the European war, which began while the Anti-Potters were at Swanage, a place replete with Potterism.

Potterism, however, as a subject for investigation, had by this time given place to international diplomacy, that still more intriguing study.

The Anti-Potters abused every government concerned, and Gideon said, on August 1st, 'We shall be fools if we don't come in.'

Juke was still dubious. He was a good Radical, and good Radicals were dubious on this point until the invasion of Belgium.

'To throw back the world a hundred years....'

Gideon shrugged his shoulders. He belonged to no political party, and had the shrewd, far-seeing eyes of his father's race.

'It's going to be thrown back anyhow. Germany will see to that. And if we keep out of it, Germany will grab Europe. We've got to come in, if we can get a decent pretext.'

The decent pretext came in due course, and Gideon said, 'So that's that.'

He added to the Potters, 'For once I am in agreement with your father's press. We should be lunatics to stand out of this d.a.m.nable mess.'

Juke also was now, painful to him though it was to be so, in agreement with the Potter press. To him the war had become a crusade, a fight for decency against savagery.

'It's that,' said Gideon. 'But that's not all. This isn't a show any country can afford to stand out of. It's Germany against Europe, and if Europe doesn't look sharp, Germany's going to win. _Germany._ Nearly as bad as Russia.... One would have to emigrate to another hemisphere....

No, we've got to win this racket.... But, oh, Lord, what a mess!' He fell to biting his nails, savage and silent.

Jane thought all the time, beneath her other thoughts about it, 'To have a war, just when life was beginning and going to be such fun.'

Beneath her public thoughts about the situation, she felt this deep private disgust gnawing always, as of one defrauded.

CHAPTER III

OPPORTUNITY

1

They did not know then about people in general going to the war. They thought it was just for the army and navy, not for ordinary people. That idea came a little later, after the Anti-Potter party had broken up and gone home.

The young men began to enlist and get commissions. It was done; it was the correct idea. Johnny Potter, who belonged to an O.T.C., got a commission early.

Jane said within herself, 'Johnny can go and I can't.' She knew she was badly, incredibly left. Johnny was in the movement, doing the thing that mattered. Further, Johnny might ultimately be killed in doing it; her Johnny. Everything else shrank and was little. What were books? What was anything? Jane wanted to fight in the war. The war was d.a.m.nable, but it was worse to be out of it. One was such an utter outsider. It wasn't fair. She could fight as well as Johnny could. Jane went about white and sullen, with her world tumbling into bits about her.