Ipswich cannot be Eatanswill, because Mrs. Leo Hunter's country
seat would not be near a big town. Ipswich must be Eatanswill because
Mrs. Leo Hunter's country seat would be near a large town. Really,
Dickens might have been allowed to take liberties with such things as
these, even if he had been mentioning the place by name. If I were
writing a story about the town of Limerick, I should take the liberty of
introducing a bun-shop without taking a journey to Limerick to see
whether there was a bun-shop there. If I wrote a romance about Torquay,
I should hold myself free to introduce a house with a green door without
having studied a list of all the coloured doors in the town. But if, in
order to make it particularly obvious that I had not meant the town for
a photograph either of Torquay or Limerick, I had gone out of my way to
give the place a wild, fictitious name of my own, I think that in that
case I should be justified in tearing my hair with rage if the people of
Limerick or Torquay began to argue about bun-shops and green doors. No
reasonable man would expect Dickens to be so literal as all that even
about Bath or Bury St. Edmunds, which do exist; far less need he be
literal about Eatanswill, which didn't exist.
Pages:
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234