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Updated: June 18, 2025
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!"
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.
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 class British merchant, shows plainly that all satire is, in its essence, a sulphitic juggling with bromidic topics.
One has a grim, naïf, 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.
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.
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 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.
You may not have understood them; before you heard of the Sulphitic Theory you were annoyed at their dullness, their dogmas, but, with this white light illuminating them, you accept them, now, for what they are, and, expecting nothing original from them, you find a new peace and a new joy in their society.
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.
This may be easily illustrated. 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.
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