Potterism | Page 2

to write an Oxford novel.
Because, after all, though there might be many already, none of them
were quite like the one she would write. She had tea with Jane in the
Somerville garden on Sunday, and though Jane did not ask any of her
friends to meet her (for they might have got put in) she saw them all
about, and thought what a nice novel they would make. Jane knew she
was thinking this, and said, 'They're very commonplace people,' in a
discouraging tone. 'Some of them,' Jane added, deserting her own
snobbishness, which was intellectual, for her mother's, which was
social, 'are also common.'
'There must be very many,' said Mrs. Potter, looking through her
lorgnette at the garden of girls, 'who are neither.'
'Fewer,' said Jane, stubbornly, 'than you would think. Most people are
one or the other, I find. Many are both.'
'Try not to be cynical, my pet,' said Leila Yorke, who was never this.
2
That was in June, 1912. In June, 1914, Jane and Johnny went down.
Their University careers had been creditable, if not particularly
conspicuous. Johnny had been a fluent speaker at the Union, Jane at the
women's intercollegiate Debating Society, and also in the Somerville
parliament, where she had been the leader of the Labour Party. Johnny
had for a time edited the _Isis_, Jane the Fritillary. Johnny had done
respectably in Schools, Jane rather better. For Jane had always been
just a shade the cleverer; not enough to spoil competition, but enough
to give Johnny rather harder work to achieve the same results. They had
probably both got firsts, but Jane's would be a safe thing, and Johnny
would be likely to have a longish viva.
Anyhow, here they were, just returned to Potter's Bar, Herts (where Mr.
Percy Potter, liking the name of the village, had lately built a lordly
mansion). Excellent friends they were, but as jealous as two little dogs,
each for ever on the look-out to see that the other got no undue

advantage. Both saw every reason why they should make a success of
life. But Jane knew that, though she might be one up on Johnny as
regards Oxford, owing to slightly superior brain power, he was one up
on her as regards Life, owing to that awful business sex. Women were
handicapped; they had to fight much harder to achieve equal results.
People didn't give them jobs in the same way. Young men possessed
the earth; young women had to wrest what they wanted out of it
piecemeal. Johnny might end a cabinet minister, a notorious journalist,
a Labour leader, anything.... Women's jobs were, as a rule, so dowdy
and unimportant. Jane was bored to death with this sex business; it
wasn't fair. But Jane was determined to live it down. She wouldn't be
put off with second-rate jobs; she wouldn't be dowdy and unimportant,
like her mother and the other fools; she would have the best that was
going.
3
The family dined. At one end of the table was Mr. Potter; a small,
bird-like person, of no presence; you had not thought he was so great a
man as Potter of the Potter Press. For it was a great press; though not so
great as the Northcliffe Press, for it did not produce anything so good
as the Times or so bad as the _Weekly Dispatch_; it was more of a
piece.
Both commonplace and common was Mr. Percy Potter (according to
some standards), but clever, with immense patience, a saving sense of
humour, and that imaginative vision without which no newspaper
owner, financier, general, politician, poet, or criminal can be great. He
was, in fact, greater than the twins would ever be, because he was not at
odds with his material: he found such stuff as his dreams were made of
ready to his hand, in the great heart of the public--the last place where
the twins would have thought of looking.
So did his wife. She was pink-faced and not ill-looking, with the cold
blue eyes and rather set mouth possessed (inexplicably) by many
writers of fiction. If I have conveyed the impression that Leila Yorke
was in the lowest division of this class, I have done her less than justice;
quite a number of novelists were worse. This was not much satisfaction

to her children. Jane said, 'If you do that sort of thing at all, you might
as well make a job of it, and sell a million copies. I'd rather be Mrs.
Barclay or Ethel Dell or Charles Garvice or Gene Stratton Porter or
Ruby Ayres than mother. Mother's merely commonplace; she's not
even a by-word--quite. I admire dad more. Dad anyhow gets there. His
stuff sells.'
Mrs. Potter's novels, as a matter of fact, sold