Potterism

Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical
Tract

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Title: Potterism A Tragi-Farcical Tract
Author: Rose Macaulay
Release Date: February 19, 2004 [EBook #11163]
Language: English
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POTTERISM ***

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POTTERISM
A TRAGI-FARCICAL TRACT
BY ROSE MACAULAY
Author of 'What Not,' etc.
1920

TO THE UNSENTIMENTAL PRECISIANS IN THOUGHT, WHO
HAVE, ON THIS CONFUSED, INACCURATE, AND EMOTIONAL

PLANET, NO FIT HABITATION
'They contract a Habit of talking loosely and confusedly.'--J. CLARKE.
'My dear friend, clear your mind of cant.... Don't think foolishly.'
SAMUEL JOHNSON.
'On the whole we are Not intelligent-- No, no, no, not intelligent.'--W.S.
GILBERT.
'Truth may perhaps come to the price of a Pearle, that sheweth best by
day; But it will not rise to the price of a Diamond or Carbuncle, that
sheweth best in varied lights. A mixture of a Lie doth ever adde
Pleasure. Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men's
mindes Vaine Opinions, Blattering Hopes, False Valuations,
Imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the Mindes
of a Number of Men poore shrunken Things, full of Melancholy and
Indisposition and unpleasing to themselves?'--FRANCIS BACON.
'What is it that smears the windows of the senses? Thought, convention,
self-interest.... We see the narrow world our windows show us not in
itself, but in relation to our own needs, moods, and preferences ... for
the universe of the natural man is strictly egocentric.... Unless we
happen to be artists--and then but rarely--we never know the "thing
seen" in its purity; never from birth to death, look at it with
disinterested eyes.... It is disinterestedness, the saint's and poet's love of
things for their own sakes ... which is the condition of all real
knowledge.... When ... the verb "to have" is ejected from the centre of
your consciousness ... your attitude to life will cease to be commercial
and become artistic. Then the guardian at the gate, scrutinising and
sorting the incoming impressions, will no longer ask, "What use is this
to _me?_"... You see things at last as the artist does, for their sake, not
for your own.'--EVELYN UNDERHILL.

CONTENTS

PART I.--TOLD BY R.M.
I. POTTERS II. ANTI-POTTERS III. OPPORTUNITY IV. JANE
AND CLARE

PART II.--TOLD BY GIDEON
I. SPINNING II. DINING WITH THE HOBARTS III. SEEING JANE

PART III.--TOLD BY LELIA YORKE
I. THE TERRIBLE TRAGEDY ON THE STAIRS II. AN AWFUL
SUSPICION

PART IV.--TOLD BY KATHERINE
VARICK
A BRANCH OF STUDY

PART V.--TOLD BY JUKE
GIVING ADVICE

PART VI.--TOLD BY R.M.
I. THE END OF A POTTER MELODRAMA II. ENGAGED TO BE
MARRIED III. THE PRECISIAN AT WAR WITH THE WORLD IV.
RUNNING AWAY V. A PLACARD FOR THE PRESS

PART I:
TOLD BY R.M.

CHAPTER I
POTTERS
1
Johnny and Jane Potter, being twins, went through Oxford together.
Johnny came up from Rugby and Jane from Roedean. Johnny was at
Balliol and Jane at Somerville. Both, having ambitions for literary
careers, took the Honours School of English Language and Literature.
They were ordinary enough young people; clever without being
brilliant, nice-looking without being handsome, active without being
athletic, keen without being earnest, popular without being leaders,
open-handed without being generous, as revolutionary, as selfish, and
as intellectually snobbish as was proper to their years, and inclined to
be jealous one of the other, but linked together by common tastes and
by a deep and bitter distaste for their father's newspapers, which were
many, and for their mother's novels, which were more. These were,
indeed, not fit for perusal at Somerville and Balliol. The danger had
been that Somerville and Balliol, till they knew you well, should not
know you knew it.
In their first year, the mother of Johnny and Jane ('Leila Yorke,' with
'Mrs. Potter' in brackets after it), had, after spending Eights Week at
Oxford, announced her intention of writing an Oxford novel. Oh God,
Jane had cried within herself, not that; anything but that; and firmly she
and Johnny had told her mother that already there were _Keddy_, and
_Sinister Street_, and _The Pearl_, and _The Girls of St. Ursula's_ (by
Annie S. Swan: 'After the races were over, the girls sculled their
college barge briskly down the river,'), and that, in short, the thing had
been done for good and all, and that was that.

Mrs. Potter still thought she would like