Reality

Extract

The world of Canon Streeter is a very different world from that of William Clissold; for one thing, it seems to be based on fuller scientific knowledge, and to have been discovered by a more acute mind. William Clissold, like so many of his family, was born a little too long ago to be worth listening to when he babbles about science; had he been a specialist and kept up with the literature of his stuff, he would have been all very well. But he was too busy with his business to be a specialist. Moreover, he never had a first-class mind. His power of observation is admirable; his power of description is also equally felicitous. He had the makings of a great man.

He had one drawback. He suffered from an inferiority complex. Witness how he talks of ‘Mr. G.’ He has that unhappy mind that disdains what it cannot equal or cannot understand. Disdain ‘is probably the wrong word. He does not disdain it. He pulls snooks at it. He cannot abide anyone who is finer than himself. He and his family are clever at their little personal descriptions; they are clever, but with the cleverness of a gutter-snipe. He has the naughty gifts of the cockney, only he lacks the cockney’s heart.

Compared with his world, Canon Streeter’s world may well be called Reality; it is real in the sense that it seems to correspond with facts. Moreover, Canon Streeter has a very keen, incisive and subtle mind. There is a touch of Newman about him, as a Catholic theological expert has pointed out: he has that almost uncanny gift of analysis which Newman reveals.