Are You a Bromide? Part 3

We are all born with certain bromidic tendencies, and children are the greatest bromides in the world. What boy of ten will wear a collar different from what his school-mates are all wearing? He must conform to the rule and custom of the majority or he suffers fearfully. But, if he has a sulphitic leaven in his soul, adolescence frees him from the tyrannical traditions of thought. In costume, perhaps, men still are more bromidic than women. A man has, for choice, a narrow range in garments--for everyday wear at most but four coats, three collars and two pairs of shoes.

Fewer women become Sulphites. The confession is ungallant and painful, but it must be made. We have only to watch them, to listen--and to pity.

But stay! If there is anything in heredity, women should be most sulphitic. For of all Bromides Adam was the progenitor, while Eve was a Sulphite from the first!

Alice in Wonderland, however, is the modern type--a Bromide amidst Sulphites.

What, then, is a Sulphite? Ah, that is harder to define. A Sulphite is a person who does his own thinking, he is a person who has surprises up his sleeve. He is explosive. One can never foresee what he will do, except that it will be a direct and spontaneous manifestation of his own personality.

You cannot tell them by the looks. Sulphites come together like drops of mercury, in this bromidic world. Unknown, unsuspected groups of them are scattered over the earth, and we never know where we are going to meet them--like fireflies in Summer, like Americans in Europe. The Bromide we have always with us, predicating the obvious. The Sulphite appears uncalled.

But you must not jump to the conclusion that all Sulphites are agreeable company. This is no cla.s.sification as of desirable and undesirable people. The Sulphite, from his very nature, must continually surprise you by an unexpected course of action. He must explode. You never know what he will say or do. He is always sulphitic, but as often impossible. He will not bore you, but he may shock you.

You find yourself watching him to see what is coming next, and it may be a subtle jest, a paradox, or an atrocious violation of etiquette.

All cranks, all reformers, and most artists are sulphitic. The insane asylums are full of Sulphites. They not only do ordinary things in unusual ways, but they do unusual things in ordinary ways. What is more intensely sulphitic than, when you have said your farewells, to go immediately? Or, as you swim out to rescue a drowning girl, to keep your pipe burning, all the while? They do not attempt to "entertain"

you, but let you choose your own pastime. When they present a gift, it has either rhyme or reason to it. Their letters are not pa.s.sed about to be read by the family.

Hamlet was a Sulphite; Polonius a Bromide. Becky Sharp was sulphitic; Amelia Sedley bromidic. So we might follow the line of cleavage between the two groups in Art, Religion and Politics. Compare, for instance, President Roosevelt with his predecessor in office--the Unexpected versus the sedate Thermometer of Public Opinion. Compare Bernard Shaw with Marie Corelli--one would swear that their very brains were differently colored! Their epigrams and plat.i.tudes are merely the symptoms of different methods of thought. One need not consult one's prejudice, affection or taste--the Sulphitic Theory explains without either condemning or approving. The leopard cannot change his spots.

But if, along with these contrasts, we take, for example, Lewis Carroll as opposed to Dr. Johnson, we are brought up against an extraordinary inconsistency. It is, however, only an apparent paradox--beneath it lies a vital principle. Dr. Johnson was, himself, a Sulphite of the Sulphites, but how intensely bromidic were his writings! One yawns to think of them. As for Lewis Carroll, in his cla.s.sic nonsense, so sulphitic as often to be accused by Bromides of having a secret meaning, his private life was that of a Bromide. Read his biography and learn the terrors of his formal, set entertainments to the little girls whom he patronized! They knew what to expect of him, and he never, however agreeably, disappointed them. No, unfortunately a Sulphite does not always produce sulphitic art. How many writers we know who are more interesting than their work! How many who are infinitely less so! Your professional humorist is usually a dull, melancholy fellow in his private life--and a clergyman may preach infant d.a.m.nation and be a merry father at home.

Such considerations point inevitably to the truth that our theory depends essentially not upon action or talk, but upon the quality and rationale of thought. It is a question of Potentiality, rather than of Dynamics. It is the process of reasoning which concerns us, not its translation into conduct. A man may be a devoted supporter of Mrs.

Grundy and yet be a Sulphite, if he has, in his own mind, reached an original conclusion that society needs her safeguards. He may be the wildest-eyed of Anarchists and yet bromidic, if he has accepted another's reasons and swallowed the propaganda whole.

It will be doubtless through a misconception of this principle that the first schism in the Sulphitic Theory arises. Already the cult has become so important that a newer heretic sect threatens it. These protestants cannot believe that there is a definite line to be drawn between Sulphites and Bromides, and hold that one may partake of a dual nature. All such logic is fatuous, and founded upon a misconception of the Theory.

There is, however, a subtlety which has perhaps had something to do with confusing the neophyte. It is this: Sulphitism and Bromidism are, symbolically, the two halves of a circle, and their extremes meet. One may be so extremely bromidic that one becomes, at a leap, sulphitic, and _vice versa_. This may be easily ill.u.s.trated.

Miss Herford's inimitable monologues, being each the apotheosis of some typical Bromide--a shopgirl, a country dressmaker, a bargain-hunter and so on--become, through her art, intensely sulphitic. They are excruciatingly funny, just because she represents types so common that we recognize them instantly. Each expresses the crystallized thought of her particular bromidic group. Done, then, by a person who is herself a Sulphite _par excellence_, the result is droll. "One has," says Emerson, "but to remove an object from its environment and instantly it becomes comic."

The same thing is done less artistically every day upon the vaudeville stage. We love to recognize types; and what Browning said of beauty:

We're made so that we love First, when we see them painted, Things we have pa.s.sed Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see

can be easily extended to our sense of humor in caricature. A recent hit upon the variety stage does still more to ill.u.s.trate the problem.

The "Cherry Sisters" aroused immense curiosity by an act so bromidic as to be ridiculous. Were they rank amateurs, doing their simple best, or were they clever artists, simulating the awkward crudeness of country girls? That was the question. In a word, were they Sulphites or Bromides?

What such artists have done histrionically, Hillaire Belloc has done exquisitely for literature in his "Story of Manuel Burden." This tale, affecting to be a serious encomium upon a middle cla.s.s British merchant, shows plainly that all satire is, in its essence, a sulphitic juggling with bromidic topics. It is done unconsciously by many a simple rhymester whose verses are bought by Sulphites and read with glee.

In the terminology of our theory we must, therefore, include two new terms, describing the variation of intensity of these two different states of mind. The extremes meet at the points of Nitro-Bromidism and Hypo-Sulphitism, respectively. Intensity of Bromidism becomes, then, Nitro-Bromidism, and we have seen how, through the artist's, or through a Sulphite's subtle point of view, such Nitro-Bromide becomes immediately sulphitic.

By a similar reasoning, a Hypo-Sulphite can, at a step, become bromidic. The ill.u.s.tration most obvious is that of insanity. We are not much amused, usually, by the quaint modes of thought exhibited by lunatics and madmen.

It cannot be denied, however, that their processes of thought are sulphitic; indeed, they are so wildly original, so fanciful, that we must denominate all such crazed brains, Hypo-Sulphites. Such persons are so surprising that they end by having no surprises left for us. We accept their mania and cease to regard it; it, in a word, becomes bromidic. So, in their ways, are all cranks and eccentrics, all whose set purpose is to astonish or to shock. We end by being bored at their att.i.tudes and poses.

The Sulphite has the true Gothic spirit; the Bromide, the impulse of the cla.s.sic. One wonders, relis.h.i.+ng the impossible, manifesting himself in characteristic, spontaneous ways; the other delights in rule and rhythm, in ordered sequences, in authority and precedent, following the law. One carves the gargoyle and ogrillion, working in paths untrod, the other limits himself to harmonic ratios, balanced compositions, and to predestined fenestration. One has a grim, _naf_, virile humor, the other a dead, even beauty. One is hot, the other cold. The Dark Ages were sulphitic--there were wild deeds then; men exploded. The Renaissance was essentially bromidic; Art danced in fetters, men looked back at the Past for inspiration and chewed the cud of Greek thought.

For the Sulphite, fancy; for the Bromide, imagination.

From the fifteenth century on, however, the wave of Sulphitism rose steadily, gradually dropping at times into little depressions of Euphuistic manners and intervals of "sensibility" but climbing, with the advance of science and the emanc.i.p.ation of thought to an ideal--the personal, original interpretation of life. The nineteenth century showed curiously erratic variations of the curve. From its beginning till 1815, Sulphitism was upon the increase, while from that year till 1870 there was a sickening drop to the veriest depths of bromidic thought. Then the Bromide infested the earth. With his black-walnut furniture, his jig-saw and turning-lathe methods of decoration, his lincrusta-walton and pressed terracotta, his chromos, wax flowers, hoop skirts, chokers, side whiskers and pantalettes, went a horrific revival of mock modesty inspired by the dying efforts of the old formulated religious thought. And then---- when steam had had its day, impressing its materialism upon the world; making what should be hard, easy, and what should be easy, hard--came electricity--a new science almost approaching a spiritual force, and, with a rush, the telephone that made the commonplace bristle with romance! The curve of sulphitism arose. A wave of Oriental thought lifted many to a curious idealism--and, as so many other centuries had done before, there came to the nineteenth a _fin de siecle_ glow that lifted up the curve still higher. The Renaissance of thought came--came the cult of simplicity and Mission furniture--corsets were abandoned--the automobile freed us from the earth--the Yellow Book began, Mrs. Eddy appeared, radium was discovered and appendicitis flourished.

So there are bromidic vegetables like cabbage, and sulphitic ones like garlic. The distinction, once understood, applies to almost everything thinkable. There are bromidic t.i.tles to books and stories, and t.i.tles sulphitic. "The Something of Somebody" is, at present, the commonest bromidic form. Once, as in "The Courting of Dinah Shadd" and "The d.a.m.nation of Theron Ware," such a t.i.tle was sulphitic, but one cannot pick up a magazine, nowayears, without coming across "The ---- of ----"

As most magazines are edited for Middle Western Bromides, such t.i.tles are inevitable. I know of one, with a million circulation, which accepted a story with the sulphitic t.i.tle, "Thin Ice," and changed it to the bromidic words, "Because Other Girls were Free." One of O.

Henry's first successful stories, and perhaps his best humorous tale, had its t.i.tle so changed from "Cupid _a la carte_," to "A Guthrie Wooing."

This is one of the few exceptions to the rule that a sulphitic thing can become bromidic. Time alone can accomplish this effect. Literature itself is either bromidic or sulphitic. The dime novel and melodrama, with hackneyed situations, once provocative, are so easily nitro-bromidic that they become sulphitic in burlesque and parody.

Metaphysically, Sulphitism is easily explained by the theory of Absolute Age. We have all seen children who seem to be, mentally, with greater possibility of growth than their parents. We see persons who understand without experience. It is as if they had lived before. It is as if they had a definite Absolute Age. We recognize and feel sympathetic with those of our caste--with those of the same age, not in years, but in wisdom. Now the standard of spiritual insight is the person of a thousand years of age. He knows the relative Importance of Things. And it might be said, then, that Bromides are individuals of less than five hundred years; Sulphites, those who are over that age.

In some dim future incarnation, perhaps, the Bromide will leap into sulphitic apprehension of existence. It is the person who is Absolutely Young who says, "Alas, I never had a youth--I don't understand what it is to be young!" and he who is Absolutely Old remarks, blithely, "Oh, dear, I can't seem to grow up at all!" One is a Bromide and the other a Sulphite--and this explanation illuminates the paradox.

The Sulphite brings a fresh eye to life. He sees everything as if for the first time, and not through the blue gla.s.ses of convention. As if he were a Martian newly come to earth, he sees things separated from their environment, tradition, precedent--the dowager without her money, the politician without his power, the sage without his poverty; he sees men and women for himself. He prefers his own observation to any _a priori_ theories of society. He knows how to work, but he knows, too (what the Bromide does never), how to play, and he plays with men and women for the joy of life, and his own particular game. Though his view he eccentric it is his own view, and though you may avoid him, you can never forget or ignore him.

And so, too, using an optical symbolism, we may speak of the Sulphite as being refractive--every impression made upon him is split up into component rays of thought--he sees beauty, humor, pathos, horror, and sublimity. The Bromide is reflective, and the object is thrown back unchanged, una.n.a.lyzed; it is accepted without interrogation. The mirrored bromidic mind gives back only what it has taken. To use the phraseology of Harvard and Radcliffe, the Sulphite is connotative, the Bromide denotative.