In those happy days it was easy to stay in places, even by the sea, and they stayed first at the fishing 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 analyse 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 antithesis 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 fishing 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 God would be angry with them. What did he mean by God? 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 God 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 God who doesn't care a twopenny damn 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 God 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—snatches 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 shells.
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.