But--how is one to phrase it without wronging
Daniel Povey? He was entirely moral; his views were
unexceptionable. The truth is that, for the ruling classes of
Bursley, Daniel Povey was just a little too fanatical a worshipper
of the god Pan. He was one of the remnant who had kept alive the
great Pan tradition from the days of the Regency through the vast,
arid Victorian expanse of years. The flighty character of his wife
was regarded by many as a judgment upon him for the robust
Rabelaisianism of his more private conversation, for his frank
interest in, his eternal preoccupation with, aspects of life and
human activity which, though essential to the divine purpose, are
not openly recognized as such--even by Daniel Poveys. It was not a
question of his conduct; it was a question of the cast of his
mind. If it did not explain his friendship with the rector of St.
Luke's, it explained his departure from the Primitive Methodist
connexion, to which the Poveys as a family had belonged since
Primitive Methodism was created in Turnhill in 1807.
Daniel Povey had a way of assuming that every male was boiling
over with interest in the sacred cult of Pan. The assumption,
though sometimes causing inconvenience at first, usually conquered
by virtue of its inherent truthfulness.
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