I had a smooth passage over on Monday and came here yesterday with Tertia, William and a headache. The first printed thing that caught my eye when I landed at Newhaven was a newspaper placard: "Vice in the Potteries: Shocking Details." It turns out that a bumptious local vicar, the Honourable Leonard Tyrwhitt by name, has been preaching sermons on "The Devil (and all his works) in the Potteries". It beggars belief. Talk about self-righteous, he is the sort of priest who goves religion a bad name.
It is one of the easiest and one of the most dangerous things in the world to kick up the dust of what is called 'morals'. The mere word 'vice' will draw people together from afar as a dead dog will draw carrion crows. When I tried to buy the London newspaper which had placarded our 'vice', do you suppose I could get it? Not a bit. It was sold out. It was sold out all over London. And the fact is that for days past the whole of England has been feasting upon the panorama of our alleged enormities.
It would be interesting to know whether any thinking man really believes at the bottom of his heart that human nature is worse in the Potteries than it is elsewhere. For my part I regard the theory that the Potteries is ultra-vicious as unworthy of discussion. I have no doubt that the same 'vice' is to be found in any large manufacturing district. Indeed in English villages a virgin at age twenty is something of a curiosity. No doubt the Honourable Tyrwhitt has emerged from that stratum of society which is sufficiently affluent to be high-minded and high-moraled. His elevated position does not however give him the right to look down on those less favoured by birth and expect them to conform to his idea of what is right and wrong.
I went out this morning and saw numbers of people as I walked down to Burslem. This afternoon, walking to Hanley, I was struck by the orange-apple cold Christmas smell of the greengrocers' shops. And now all is silent. There is a palpable air of expectation.
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