Potterism Part 3

Mr. Potter said in the press, and Mrs. Potter in the home, 'The people of England have a great opportunity before them. We must all try to rise to it'--as if the people of England were fishes and the opportunity a fly.

Opportunity, thought Jane. Where is it? I see none. It was precisely opportunity which the war had put an end to.

'The women of England must now prove that they are worthy of their men,'

said the Potter press.

'I dare say,' thought Jane. Knitting socks and packing stores and learning first aid. Who wanted to do things like that, when their brothers had a chance to go and fight in France? Men wouldn't stand it, if it was the other way round. Why should women always get the dull jobs?

It was because they bore them cheerfully; because they didn't really, for the most part, mind, Jane decided, watching the att.i.tude of her mother and Clare. The twins, profoundly selfish, but loving adventure and placidly untroubled by nerves or the prospect of physical danger, saw no hards.h.i.+p in active service. (This was before the first winter and the development of trench warfare, and people pictured to themselves skirmishes in the open, exposed to missiles, but at least keeping warm).

2

Every one one knew was going. Johnny said to Jane, 'War is beastly, but one's got to be in it.' He took that line, as so many others did. 'Juke's going,' he said. 'As a combatant, I mean, not a padre. He thinks the war could have been prevented with a little intelligence; so it could, I dare say; but as there wasn't a little intelligence and it wasn't prevented, he's going in. He says it will be useful experience for him--help him in his profession; he doesn't believe in parsons standing outside things and only doing soft jobs. I agree with him. Every one ought to go.'

'Every one can't,' said Jane morosely.

But to Johnny every one meant all young men, and he took no heed.

Gideon went. It might, he said to Juke, be a capitalists' war or any one else's; the important thing was not whose war it was but who was going to win it.

He added, 'Great Britain is, on this occasion, on the right side.

There's no manner of doubt about it. But even if she wasn't, it's important for all her inhabitants that she should be on the winning side.... Oh, she will be, no doubt, we've the advantage in numbers and wealth, if not in military organisation or talent.... If only the Potterites wouldn't jabber so. It's a unique opportunity for them, and they're taking it. What makes me angriest is the reasons they vamp up why we're fighting. For the sake of democracy, they say. Democracy be hanged. It's a rotten system, anyhow, and how this war is going to do anything for it I don't know. If I thought it was, I wouldn't join. But there's no fear. And other people say we're fighting "so that our children won't have to." Rot again. Every war makes other wars more likely. Why can't people say simply that the reason why we're fighting is partly to uphold decent international principles, and mainly to win the war--to be a conquering nation, not a conquered one, and to save ourselves from having an ill-conditioned people like the Germans strutting all over us. It's a very laudable object, and needs no camouflage. Sheer Potterism, all this cant and posturing. I'd rather say, like the _Daily Mail_, that we're fighting to capture the Hun's trade; that's a lie, but at least it isn't cant.'

'Let them talk,' said Juke lazily. 'Let them jabber and cant. What does it matter? We're in this thing up to the neck, and every one's got to relieve themselves in their own way. As long as we get the job done somehow, a little nonsense-talk more or less won't make much difference to this mighty Empire, which has always indulged in plenty. It's the rash coming out; good for the system.'

So, each individual in his own way, the nation entered into the worst period of time of which Europe has so far had experience, and on which I do not propose to dwell in these pages except in its aspect of a source of profit to those who sought profit; its more cheerful aspect, in fact.

3

Mrs. Potter put away the writing of fiction, as unsuitable in these dark days. (It may be remembered that there was a period at the beginning of the war when it was erroneously supposed that fiction would not sell until peace returned). Mrs. Potter, like many other writers, took up Y.M.C.A. canteen work, and went for a time to France.

There she wrote _Out There_, an account of the work of herself and her colleagues in Rouen, full of the inimitable wit and indomitable courage of soldiers, the untiring activities of canteen workers, and the affectionate good-fellows.h.i.+p which existed between these two cla.s.ses.

The world was thus shown that Leila Yorke was no mere _flaneuse_ of letters, but an Englishwoman who rose to her country's call and was worthy of her men-folk.

Clare became a V.A.D., and went up to town every day to work at an officers' hospital. It was a hospital maintained partly by Mr. Potter, and she got on very well there. She made many pleasant friends, and hoped to get out to France later.

Frank tried for a chaplaincy.

'It isn't a bit that he wants excitement, or change of air, or a free trip to France, or to feel grand, like some of them do,' explained Mrs.

Frank. 'Only, what's the good of keeping a man like him slaving away in a rotten parish like ours, when they want good men out there? I tell Frank all he's got to do to get round the C.G. is to grow a moustache and learn up the correct answers to a few questions--like "What would you do if you had to attend a dying soldier?" Answer--"Offer to write home for him." A lot of parsons don't know that, and go telling the C.G. they'd give him communion, or hear his confession or something, and that knocks them out first round. Frank knows better. There are no flies on old Frank. All the same, pater, you might do a little private wire-pulling for him, if it comes in handy.'

But, unfortunately, owing to a recent though quite temporary coldness between the Chaplain-General and the Potter press, Mr. Potter's wire-pulling was ineffectual. The Chaplain-General did not entertain Frank's offer favourably, and regretted that his appointment as chaplain to His Majesty's forces was at present impracticable. So Frank went on in Pimlico, and was cynical and bitter about those clergymen who succeeded in pa.s.sing the C.G.'s tests.

'Why don't you join up as a combatant?' Johnny asked him, seeing his discontent. 'Some parsons do.'

'The bishops have forbidden it,' said Frank.

'Oh, well, I suppose so. Does it matter particularly?'

'My dear Johnny, there is discipline in the Church as well as in the army, you know. You might as well ask would it matter if you were to disobey _your_ superior officers.'

'Well, you see, I'd have something happen to me if I did. Parsons don't.

You'd only be reprimanded, I suppose, and get into a berth all right when you came back--if you did come back.'

'That's got nothing to do with it. The Church would never hold together if her officers were to break the rules whenever they felt like it. That friend of yours, Juke, hasn't a leg to stand on; he's merely in revolt.'

'Oh, old Juke always is, of course. Against every kind of authority, but particularly against bishops. He's always got his knife into them, and I dare say he's glad of the chance of flouting them. High Church parsons are, aren't they? I expect if you were a bit higher you'd flout them too.

And if you were a bit lower, the C.G.'d take you as a padre. You're just the wrong height, old thing, that's what's the matter.'

Thus Johnny, now a stocky lieutenant on leave from France, diagnosed his brother's case. Wrongly, because High Church parsons weren't actually enlisting any more than any other kind; they did not, mostly, believe it to be their business; quite sincerely and honestly they thought it would be wrong for them, though right for laymen, to undertake combatant service.

Anyhow, as to height, Frank knew himself to be of a height acceptable in benefices, and that was something. Besides, it was his own height.

'Sorry I can't change to oblige you, old man,' he said. 'Or desert my post and pretend to be a layman. I am a man under authority, like you. I wish the powers that be would send me out there, but it's for them to judge, and if they think I should be of less use as a padre than all the Toms, d.i.c.ks, and Harrys they are sending, it's not for me to protest.

They may be right. I may be absolutely useless as a chaplain. On the other hand, I may not. They apparently don't intend to give themselves a chance of finding out. Very well. It's nothing to me, either way.'

'Oh, that's all right then,' Johnny said.

4

No one could say that the Potter press did not rise to the great opportunity. The press seldom fails to do this. The Potter press surpa.s.sed itself; it nearly surpa.s.sed its great rival presses. With energy and whole-heartedness it cheered, comforted, and stimulated the people. It never failed to say how well the Allies were getting on, how much ammunition they had, how many men, what indomitable tenacity and cheerful spirits enlivened the trenches. The correspondents it employed wrote home rejoicing; its leading articles were n.o.ble hymns of praise. In times of darkness and travail one cannot but be glad of such a press as this. So glad were the Government of it that Mr. Potter became, at the end of 1916, Lord Pinkerton, and his press the Pinkerton press. Of course, that was not the only reward he obtained for his services; he figured every new year in the honours' list, and collected in succession most of the letters of the alphabet after his name. With it all, he remained the same alert, bird-like, inconspicuous person, with the same unswerving belief in his own methods and his own destinies, a belief which never pa.s.sed from self-confidence to self-importance. Unless you were so determined a hater of Potterism as to be blindly prejudiced, you could not help liking Lord Pinkerton.

5

Jane, sulking because she could not fight, thought for a short time that she would nurse, and get abroad that way. Then it became obvious that too many fools were scrambling to get sent abroad, and anyhow, that, if Clare was nursing, it must be a mug's game, and that there must be a better field for her own energies elsewhere. With so many men going, there would be empty places to fill.... That thought came, perhaps, as soon to Jane as to any one in the country.

Her father's lady secretary went nursing, and Lord Pinkerton, well aware of his younger daughter's clearheaded competence, offered Jane the job, at a larger salary.

'Your shorthand would soon come back if you took it up,' he told her. For he had had all his children taught shorthand at a young age; in his view it was one of the essentials of education; he had learned it himself at the age of thirteen, and insulted his superior young gentlemen private secretaries by asking them if they knew it. Jane and Johnny, who had been in early youth very proficient at it, had, since they were old enough to know it was a sort of low commercial cunning, the accomplishment of the slave, hidden their knowledge away like a vice. When concealed from observation and pressed for time, they had furtively taken down lecture notes in it at Oxford, but always with a consciousness of guilt.

Jane had declined the secretarys.h.i.+p. She did not mean to be that sort of low secretary that takes down letters, she did not mean to work for the Potter press, and she thought it would be needlessly dull to work for her father. She said, 'No, thank you, dad. I'm thinking of the Civil Service.'

That was early in 1915, when women had only just begun to think of, or be thought of, by the Civil Service. Jane did not think of it with enthusiasm; she wanted to be a journalist and to write; but it would do for the time, and would probably be amusing. So, owing to the helpful influence of Mr. Potter, and a good degree, Jane obtained a quite good post at the Admiralty, which she had to swear never to mention, and went into rooms in a square off Fleet Street with Katherine Varick, who had a research fellows.h.i.+p in chemistry and worked in a laboratory in Farringdon Street.

The Admiralty was all right. It was interesting as such jobs go, and Jane, who was clear-headed, did it well. She got to know a few men and women who, she considered, were worth knowing, though, in technical departments such as the Admiralty, the men were apt to be superior to the women; the women Jane met there were mostly non-University lower-grade clerks, and so forth, nice, cheery young things, but rather stupid, who thought it jolly for Jane to be connected with Leila Yorke and the Potter press, and were scarcely worth undeceiving. And naval officers, though charming, were apt to be a little elementary, Jane discovered, in their general outlook.

However, the job was all right; not a bad plum to have picked out of the hash, on the whole. And the life was all right. The rooms were jolly (only the new geyser exploded too often), and Katherine Varick, though she made stinks in the evenings, not bad to live with, and money not too scarce, as money goes, and theatres and dinners frequent. Doing one's bit, putting one's shoulder to the wheel, proving the mettle of the women of England, certainly had its agreeable side.

6

In intervals of office work and social life, Jane was writing odds and ends, and planning the books she meant to write after the war. She hadn't settled her line yet. Articles on social and industrial questions for the papers, she hoped, for one thing; she had plenty to say on this head. Short stories. Poems. Then, perhaps, a novel.... About the nature of the novel Jane was undecided, except that it would be more unlike the novels of Leila Yorke than any novels had ever been before. Perhaps a sarcastic, rather cynical novel about human nature, of which Jane did not think much. Perhaps a serious novel, dealing with social or political conditions. Perhaps an impressionist novel, like Dorothy Richardson's. Only they were getting common; they were too easy. One could hardly help writing like that, unless one tried not to, if one had lately read any of them.

Most contemporary novels Jane found very bad, not worth writing. Those solemn and childish novels about public schools, for instance, written by young men. Jane wondered what a novel about Roedean or Wycombe Abbey would be like. The queer thing was that some young woman didn't write one; it need be no duller than the young men's. Rather duller, perhaps, because schoolgirls were more childish than schoolboys, the problems of their upbringing less portentous. But there were many of the same ingredients--the exaltation of games, hero-wors.h.i.+p, rows, the clever new literary mistress who made all the stick-in-the-mud other mistresses angry.... Only were the other mistresses at girls' schools stick-in-the-mud? No, Jane thought not; quite a decent modern set, on the whole, for people of their age. Better than schoolmasters, they must be.

How dull it all was! Some woman ought to do it, but not Jane.