6
When I began to scribble these haphazard memories I had designed to be very droll concerning the "provincialism" of Lichfield; for, as every inhabitant of it will tell you, it is "quite hopelessly provincial," —and this is odd, seeing that, as investigation will assure you, the city is exclusively inhabited by self-confessed cosmopolitans. I had meant to depict Fairhaven, too, in the broad style of Cranford, say; and to be so absolutely side-splitting when I touched upon the Green Chalybeate as positively to endanger the existence of any apoplectic reader, who presumed to peruse the chapter which dealt with this resort.
But, upon reflection, I am too familiar with these places to attempt to treat them humorously. The persons who frequent their byways are too much like the persons who frequent the byways of any other place, I find, at bottom. For to write convincingly of the persons peculiar to any locality it is necessary either to have thoroughly misunderstood them, or else perseveringly to have been absent from daily intercourse with them until age has hardened the brain-cells, and you have forgotten what they are really like. Then, alone, you may write the necessary character studies which will be sufficiently abundant in human interest.
For, at bottom, any one of us is tediously like any other. Comprehension is the grave of sympathy; scratch deeply enough and you will find not any livelily-coloured Tartarism, but just a mediocre and thoroughly uninteresting human being. So I may not ever be so droll as I had meant to be; and if you wish to chuckle over the grotesque places I have lived in, you must apply to persons who have spent two weeks there, and no more.
For the rest, Lichfield, and Fairhaven also, got at and into me when I was too young to defend myself. Therefore Lichfield and Fairhaven cannot ever, really, seem to me grotesque. To the contrary, it is the other places which must always appear to me a little queer when judged by the standards of Fairhaven and Lichfield.
16.
He Seeks for Copy
I had aforetime ordered Mr. George Bulmer to read The Apostates, and, as the author of this volume explained, from motives that were purely well-meaning. To-night I was superintending the process.
"For the scene of the book is the Green Chalybeate," said I; "and it may be my masterly rhetoric will so far awaken your benighted soul, Uncle George, as to enable you to perceive what the more immediate scenery is really like. Why, think of it! what if you should presently fall so deeply in love with the adjacent mountains as to consent to overlook the deficiencies of the more adjacent café! Try now, nunky! try hard to think that the right verb is really more important than the right vermouth! and you have no idea what good it may do you."
Mr. Bulmer read on, with a bewildered face, while I gently stirred the contents of my tall and delectably odored glass. It was "frosted" to a nicety. We were drinking "Mamie Taylors" that summer, you may remember; and I had just brought up a pitcherful from the bar.