Potterism | Page 5

on a reading-party next month.'
'A little late in the day, isn't it?' commented Frank, the only one who
knew Oxford habits. 'Unless it's to look up all the howlers you've
made.'
'Well,' Jane admitted, 'it won't be so much reading really as observing.
It's a party of investigation, as a matter of fact.'

'What do you investigate? Beetles, or social conditions?'
'People. Their tastes, habits, outlook, and mental diseases. What they
want, and why they want it, and what the cure is. We belong to a
society for inquiring into such things.'
'You would,' said Clare, who always rose when the twins meant her to.
'Aren't they cautions,' said Mrs. Frank, more good-humouredly.
Mrs. Potter said, 'That's a very interesting idea. I think I must join this
society. It would help me in my work. What is it called, children?'
'Oh,' said Jane, and had the grace to look ashamed, 'it really hardly
exists yet.'
But as she said it she met the sharp and shrewd eyes of Mr. Potter, and
knew that he knew she was referring to the Anti-Potter League.
5
Mr. Potter would not, indeed, have been worthy of his reputation had
he not been aware, from its inception, of the existence of this League.
Journalists have to be aware of such things. He in no way resented the
League; he brushed it aside as of no account. And, indeed, it was not
aimed at him personally, nor at his wife personally, but at the great
mass of thought--or of incoherent, muddled emotion that passed for
thought--which the Anti-Potters had agreed, for brevity's sake, to call
'Potterism.' Potterism had very certainly not been created by the Potters,
and was indeed no better represented by the goods with which they
supplied the market than by those of many others; but it was a handy
name, and it had taken the public fancy that here you had two Potters
linked together, two souls nobly yoked, one supplying Potterism in
fictional, the other in newspaper, form. So the name caught, about the
year 1912.
The twins both heard it used at Oxford, in their second year. They
recognised its meaning without being told. And both felt that it was up

to them to take the opportunity of testifying, of severing any connection
that might yet exist in any one's mind between them and the other
products of their parents. They did so, with the uncompromising
decision proper to their years, and with, perhaps, the touch of
indecency, regardlessness of the proprieties, which was characteristic
of them. Their friends soon discovered that they need not guard their
tongues in speaking of Potterism before the Potter twins. The way the
twins put it was, 'Our family is responsible for more than its share of
the beastly thing; the least we can do is to help to do it in,' which
sounded chivalrous. And another way they put it was, 'We're not going
to have any one connecting us with it,' which sounded sensible.
So they joined the Anti-Potter League, not blind to the piquant humour
of their being found therein.
6
Mr. Potter said to the twins, in his thin little voice, 'Don't mind mother
and me, children. Tell us all about the A.P.L. It may do us good.'
But the twins knew it would not do their mother good. It would need
too much explanation; and then she would still not understand. She
might even be very angry, as she was (though she pretended she was
only amused) with some reviewers.... If your mother is Leila Yorke,
and has hard blue eyes and no sense of humour, but a most enormous
sense of importance, you cannot, or you had better not, even begin to
explain to her things like Potterism, or the Anti-Potter League, and still
less how it is that you belong to the latter.
The twins, who had got firsts in Schools, knew this much.
Johnny improvised hastily, with innocent gray eyes on his father's, 'It's
one of the rules that you mayn't talk about it outside. Anti-Propaganda
League, it is, you see ... for letting other people alone....'
'Well,' said Mr. Potter, who was not spiteful to his children, and
preferred his wife unruffled, 'we'll let you off this time. But you can
take my word for it, it's a silly business. Mother and I will last a great

deal longer than it does. Because we take our stand on human nature,
and you won't destroy that with Leagues.'
Sometimes the twins were really almost afraid they wouldn't.
'You're all very cryptic to-night,' Frank said, and yawned.
Then Mrs. Potter and the girls left the dining-room, and Frank and his
father discussed the disestablishment of the Church in Wales, a
measure which Frank thought would be a pity, but which