All the ideas were not Dick's own; in the case of the
Imperial League, for example, he merely floated on the top of the
flood-tide of opinion, and even the Crusade, his other and dearer
pre-occupation, was the fruit of the Dean of St. Neot's brain as much as
or even more than of his own. The Dean never got the credit of having
ideas at all, first because he did not look like it, being short, stout,
ruddy, and apparently very fond of his dinner, secondly because he never
talked of his ideas to women. Mrs. Baxter did not care about ideas and
possibly the Dean generalised rashly. More probably, perhaps, he had
contracted a prejudice against talking confidentially to women from
observing the ways of some of his brethren; he had dropped remarks which
favoured this explanation. Anyhow he lost not only the soil most fruitful
for propagation, but also the surest road to a reputation. Of the idea of
the Crusade he was particularly careful to talk to men only; women, he
felt sure, would tell him it was superb, and his wish was to be
confronted with its difficulties and its absurdities, to overcome this
initial opposition only with a struggle, and to enlist his antagonist as
a fellow-warrior; he had especial belief in the persuasiveness of
converts.
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