Chapter X
He had catched a great cold, had he had no other clothes
to wear than the skin of a bear net yet killed. — FULLER.
Young Ladislaw did not pay that visit to which Mr.
Brooke had invited him, and only six days afterwards Mr.
Casaubon mentioned that his young relative had started for
the Continent, seeming by this cold vagueness to waive
inquiry. Indeed, Will had declined to fix on any more
precise destination than the entire area of Europe. Genius,
he held, is necessarily intolerant of fetters: on the one
hand it must have the utmost play for its spontaneity; on
the other, it may confidently await those messages from the
universe which summon it to its peculiar work, only placing
itself in an attitude of receptivity towards all sublime
chances. The attitudes of receptivity are various, and Will
had sincerely tried many of them. He was not excessively
fond of wine, but he had several times taken too much,
simply as an experiment in that form of ecstasy; he had
fasted till he was faint, and then supped on lobster; he had
made himself ill with doses of opium. Nothing greatly
original had resulted from these measures; and the effects
of the opium had convinced him that there was an entire
dissimilarity between his constitution and De Quincey's.
The superadded circumstance which would evolve the genius
had not yet come; the universe had not yet beckoned. Even
Caesar's fortune at one time was, but a grand presentiment.
We know what a masquerade all development is, and what
effective shapes may be disguised in helpless embryos. — In
fact, the world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome
dubious eggs called possibilities. Will saw clearly enough
the pitiable instances of long incubation producing no
chick, and but for gratitude would have laughed at Casaubon,
whose plodding application, rows of note-books, and small
taper of learned theory exploring the tossed ruins of the
world, seemed to enforce a moral entirely encouraging to
Will's generous reliance on the intentions of the universe
with regard to himself. He held that reliance to be a mark
of genius; and certainly it is no mark to the contrary;
genius consisting neither in self-conceit nor in humility,
but in a power to make or do, not anything in general, but
something in particular. Let him start for the Continent,
then, without our pronouncing on his future. Among all
forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.
But at present this caution against a too hasty judgment
interests me more in relation to Mr. Casaubon than to his
young cousin. If to Dorothea Mr. Casaubon had been the mere
occasion which had set alight the fine inflammable material
of her youthful illusions, does it follow that he was fairly
represented in the minds of those less impassioned
personages who have hitherto delivered their judgments
concerning him? I protest against any absolute conclusion,
any prejudice derived from Mrs. Cadwallader's contempt for a
neighboring clergyman's alleged greatness of soul, or Sir
James Chettam's poor opinion of his rival's legs, — from Mr.
Brooke's failure to elicit a companion's ideas, or from
Celia's criticism of a middle-aged scholar's personal
appearance. I am not sure that the greatest man of his age,
if ever that solitary superlative existed, could escape
these unfavorable reflections of himself in various small
mirrors; and even Milton, looking for his portrait in a
spoon, must submit to have the facial angle of a bumpkin.
Moreover, if Mr. Casaubon, speaking for himself, has rather
a chilling rhetoric, it is not therefore certain that there
is no good work or fine feeling in him. Did not an immortal
physicist and interpreter of hieroglyphs write detestable
verses? Has the theory of the solar system been advanced by
graceful manners and conversational tact? Suppose we turn
from outside estimates of a man, to wonder, with keener
interest, what is the report of his own consciousness about
his doings or capacity: with what hindrances he is carrying
on his daily labors; what fading of hopes, or what deeper
fixity of self-delusion the years are marking off within
him; and with what spirit he wrestles against universal
pres
sure, which will one day be too heavy for him, and
bring his heart to its final pause. Doubtless his lot is
important in his own eyes; and the chief reason that we
think he asks too large a place in our consideration must be
our want of room for him, since we refer him to the Divine
regard with perfect confidence; nay, it is even held sublime
for our neighbor to expect the utmost there, however little
he may have got from us. Mr. Casaubon, too, was the centre
of his own world; if he was liable to think that others were
providentially made for him, and especially to consider them
in the light of their fitness for the author of a " Key to
all Mythologies," this trait is not quite alien to us, and,
like the other mendicant hopes of mortals, claims some of
our pity.
Certainly this affair of his marriage with Miss Brooke
touched him more nearly than it did any one of the persons
who have hitherto shown their disapproval of it, and in the
present stage of things I feel more tenderly towards his
experience of success than towards the disappointment of the
amiable Sir James. For in truth, as the day fixed for his
marriage came nearer, Mr. Casaubon did not find his spirits
rising; nor did the contemplation of that matrimonial
garden-scene, where, as all experience showed, the path was
to be bordered with flowers, prove persistently more
enchanting to him than the accustomed vaults where he walked
taper in hand. He did not confess to himself, still less
could he have breathed to another, his surprise that though
he had won a lovely and noble-hearted girl he had not won
delight, — which he had also regarded as an object to be
found by search. It is true that he knew all the classical
passages implying the contrary; but knowing classical
passages, we find, is a mode of motion, which explains why
they leave so little extra force for their personal
application.
Poor Mr. Casaubon had imagined that his long studious
bachelorhood had stored up for him a compound interest of
enjoyment, and that large drafts on his affections would not
fail to be honored; for we all of us, grave or light, get
our thoughts entangled in metaphors, and act fatally on the
strength of them. And now he was in danger of being
saddened by the
very conviction that his circumstances
were unusually happy: there was nothing external by which he
could account for a certain blankness of sensibility which
came over him just when his expectant gladness should have
been most lively, just when he exchanged the accustomed
dulness of his Lowick library for his visits to the Grange.
Here was a weary experience in which he was as utterly
condemned to loneliness as in the despair which sometimes
threatened him while toiling in the morass of authorship
without seeming nearer to the goal. And his was that worst
loneliness which would shrink from sympathy. He could not
but wish that Dorothea should think him not less happy than
the world would expect her successful suitor to be; and in
relation to his authorship he leaned on her young trust and
veneration, he liked to draw forth her fresh interest in
listening, as a means of encouragement to himself: in
talking to her he presented all his performance and
intention with the reflected confidence of the pedagogue,
and rid himself for the time of that chilling ideal audience
which crowded his laborious uncreative hours with the vaporous
pressure of Tartarean shades.
For to Dorothea, after that toy-box history of the world
adapted to young ladies which had made the chief part of her
education, Mr. Casaubon's talk about his great book was full
of new vistas; and this sense of revelation, this surprise
of a nearer introduction to Stoics and Alexandrians, as
people who had ideas not totally unlike her own, kept in
abeyance for the time her usual eagerness for a binding
theory which could bring her own life and doctrine into
strict connection with that amazing past, and give the
remotest sources of knowledge some bearing on her actions.
That more complete teaching would come — Mr. Casaubon would
tell her all that: she was looking forward to higher
initiation in ideas, as she was looking forward to marriage,
and blending her dim conceptions of both. It would be a
great mistake to suppose that Dorothea would have cared
about any share in Mr. Casaubon's learning as mere
accomplishment; for though opinion in the neighborhood of
Freshitt and Tipton had pronounced her clever, that epithet
would not have described her to circles in whose more
precise vocabulary cleverness implies mere aptitude for
knowing and doing, apart from character. All her eagerness
for acquirement lay within that full current of sympathetic
motive in which her ideas and impulses were habitually swept
along. She did not want to deck herself with knowledge — to
wear it loose from the nerves and blood that fed her action;
and if she had written a book she must have done it as Saint
Theresa did, under the command of an authority that
constrained her conscience. But something she yearned for by
which her life might be filled with action at once rational
and ardent; and since the time was gone by for guiding
visions and spiritual directors, since prayer heightened
yearning but not instruction, what lamp was there but
knowledge? Surely learned men kept-the only oil; and who
more learned than Mr. Casaubon?
Thus in these brief weeks Dorothea's joyous grateful
expectation was unbroken, and however her lover might
occasionally be conscious of flatness, he could never refer
it to any slackening of her affectionate interest.
The season was mild enough to encourage the project of
extending the wedding journey as far as Rome, and Mr. Casaubon
was anxious for this because he wished to inspect some
manuscripts in the Vatican.
"I still regret that your sister is not to accompany
us," he said one morning, some time after it had been
ascertained that Celia objected to go, and that Dorothea did
not wish for her companionship. "You will have many lonely
hours, Dorotheas, for I shall be constrained to make the
utmost use of my time during our stay in Rome, and I should
feel more at liberty if you had a companion."
The words " I should feel more at liberty " grated on
Dorothea. For the first time in speaking to Mr. Casaubon
she colored from annoyance.
"You must have misunderstood me very much," she said, "
if you think I should not enter into the value of your
time — if you think that I should not willingly give up
whatever interfered with your using it to the best purpose."
"That is very amiable in you, my dear Dorothea," said
Mr.
Casaubon, not in the least noticing that she was
hurt; " but if you had a lady as your companion, I could put
you both under the care of a cicerone, and we could thus
achieve two purposes in the same space of time."
"I beg you will not refer to this again," said Dorothea,
rather haughtily. But immediately she feared that she was
wrong, and turning towards him she laid her hand on his,
adding in a different tone, ;; Pray do not be anxious about
me. I shall have so much to think of when I am alone. And
Tantripp will be a sufficient companion, just to take care
of me. I could not bear to have Celia: she would be
miserable."
It was time to dress. There was to be a dinner-party
that day, the last of the parties which were held at the
Grange as proper preliminaries to the wedding, and Dorothea
was glad of a reason for moving away at once on the sound of
the bell, as if she needed more than her usual amount of
preparation. She was ashamed of being irritated from some
cause she could not define even to herself; for though she
had no intention to be untruthful, her reply had not touched
the real hurt within her. Mr. Casaubon's words had been
quite reasonable, yet they had brought a vague instantaneous
sense of aloofness on his part.
"Surely I am in a strangely selfish weak state of mind,"
she said to herself. " How can I have a husband who is so
much above me without knowing that he needs me less than I
need him?"
Having convinced herself that Mr. Casaubon was
altogether right, she recovered her equanimity, and was an
agreeable image of serene dignity when she came into the
drawing-room in her silver-gray dress — the simple lines of
her dark-brown hair parted over her brow and coiled
massively behind, in keeping with the entire absence from
her manner and expression of all search after mere effect.
Sometimes when Dorothea was in company, there seemed to be
as complete an air of repose about her as if she had been a
picture of Santa Barbara looking out from her tower into the
clear air; but these intervals of quietude made the energy
of her speech and emotion the more remarked when some
outward appeal had touched her.
She was naturally the subject of many observations this
evening, for the dinner-party was large and rather more
miscellaneous as to the male portion than any which had been
held at the Grange since Mr. Brooke's nieces had resided
with him, so that the talking was done in duos and trios
more or less inharmonious. There was the newly elected
mayor of Middlemarch, who happened to be a manufacturer; the
philanthropic banker his brother-in-law, who predominated so
much in the town that some called him a Methodist, others a
hypocrite, according to the resources of their vocabulary;
and there were various professional men. In fact, Mrs.
Cadwallader said that Brooke was beginning to treat the
Middlemarchers, and that she preferred the farmers at the
tithe-dinner, who drank her health unpretentiously, and were
not ashamed of their grandfathers' furniture. For in that
part of the country, before reform had done its notable part
in developing the political consciousness, there was a
clearer distinction of ranks and a dimmer distinction of
parties; so that Mr. Brooke's miscellaneous invitations
seemed to belong to that general laxity which came from his
inordinate travel and habit of taking too much in the form
of ideas.
Already, as Miss Brooke passed out of the dining-room,
opportunity was found for some interjectional " asides."
"A fine woman, Miss Brooke! an uncommonly fine woman, by
God!" said Mr. Standish, the old lawyer, who had been so
long concerned with the landed gentry that he had become
landed himself, and used that oath in a deep-mouthed manner
as a sort of armorial bearings, stamping the speech of a man
who held a good position.
Mr. Bulstrode, the banker, seemed to be addressed, but
that gentleman disliked coarseness and profanity, and merely
bowed. The remark was taken up by Mr. Chichely, a middle-aged bachelor and coursing celebrity, who had a complexion
something like an Easter egg, a few hairs carefully
arranged, and a carriage implying the consciousness of a
distinguished appearance.
"Yes, but not my style of woman: I like a woman who
lays herself out a little more to please us. There should
be a
little filigree about a woman — something of the
coquette. A man likes a sort of challenge. The more of a
dead set she makes at you the better."
"There's some truth in that," said Mr. Standish,
disposed to be genial. " And, by God, it's usually the way
with them. I suppose it answers some wise ends: Providence
made them so, eh, Bulstrode?"
"I should be disposed to refer coquetry to another
source," said Mr. Bulstrode. " I should rather refer it to
the devil."
"Ay, to be sure, there should be a little devil in a
woman," said Mr. Chichely, whose study of the fair sex
seemed to have been detrimental to his theology. "And I
like them blond, with a certain gait, and a swan neck.
Between ourselves, the mayor's daughter is more to my taste
than Miss Brooke or Miss Celia either. If I were a marrying
man I should choose Miss Vincy before either of them."
"Well, make up, make up," said Mr. Standish, jocosely; "
you see the middle-aged fellows early the day."
Mr. Chichely shook his head with much meaning: he was
not going to incur the certainty of being accepted by the
woman he would choose.
The Miss Vincy who had the honor of being Mr. Chichely's
ideal was of course not present; for Mr. Brooke, always
objecting to go too far, would not have chosen that his
nieces should meet the daughter of a Middlemarch
manufacturer, unless it were on a public occasion. The
feminine part of the company included none whom Lady Chettam
or Mrs. Cadwallader could object to; for Mrs. Renfrew, the
colonel's widow, was not only unexceptionable in point of
breeding, but also interesting on the ground of her
complaint, which puzzled the doctors, and seemed clearly a
ease wherein the fulness of professional knowledge might
need the supplement of quackery. Lady Chettam, who
attributed her own remarkable health to home-made bitters
united with constant medical attendance, entered with much
exercise of the imagination into Mrs. Renfrew's account of
symptoms, and into the amazing futility in her case of all,
strengthening medicines.
"Where can all the strength of those medicines go, my
dear?" said the mild but stately dowager, turning to
Mrs. Cadwallader reflectively, when Mrs. Renfrew's attention
was called away.
"It strengthens the disease," said the Rector's wife,
much too well-born not to be an amateur in medicine. "
Everything depends on the constitution: some people make
fat, some blood, and some bile — that's my view of the
matter; and whatever they take is a sort of grist to the
mill."
"Then she ought to take medicines that would reduce —
reduce the disease, you know, if you are right, my dear.
And I think what you say is reasonable."
"Certainly it is reasonable. You have two sorts of
potatoes, fed on the same soil. One of them grows more and
more watery — "
"Ah! like this poor Mrs. Renfrew — that is what I think.
Dropsy! There is no swelling yet — it is inward. I should
say she ought to take drying medicines, shouldn't you? — or a
dry hot-air bath. Many things might be tried, of a drying
nature."
"Let her try a certain person's pamphlets," said Mrs.
Cadwallader in an undertone, seeing the gentlemen enter.
"He does not want drying."
"Who, my dear?" said Lady Chettam, a charming woman, not
so quick as to nullify the pleasure of explanation.
"The bridegroom — Casaubon. He has certainly been drying
up faster since the engagement: the flame of passion, I
suppose."
"I should think he is far from having a good
constitution," said Lady Chettam, with a still deeper
undertone. "And then his studies — so very dry, as you say."
"Really, by the side of Sir James, he looks like a
death's head skinned over for the occasion. Mark my words:
in a year from this time that girl will hate him. She looks
up to him as an oracle now, and by-and-by she will be at the
other extreme. All flightiness!"
"How very shocking! I fear she is headstrong. But tell
me — you know all about him — is there anything very bad?
What is the truth?"
"The truth? he is as bad as the wrong physic — nasty to
take, and sure to disagree."
"There could not be anything worse than that," said Lady
Chettam, with so vivid a conception of the physic that she
seemed to have learned something exact about Mr. Casaubon's
disadvantages. "However, James will hear nothing against
Miss Brooke. He says she is the mirror of women still."
"That is a generous make-believe of his. Depend upon
it, he likes little Celia better, and she appreciates him.
I hope you like my little Celia?"
"Certainly; she is fonder of geraniums, and seems more
docile, though not so fine a figure. But we were talking of
physic j tell me about this new young surgeon, Mr. Lydgate.
I am told he is wonderfully clever: he certainly looks it — a
fine brow indeed."
"He is a gentleman. I heard him talking to Humphrey.
He talks well."
"Yes. Mr. Brooke says he is one of the Lydgates of
Northumberland, really well connected. One does not expect
it in a practitioner of that kind. For my own part, I like
a medical man more on a footing with the servants; they are
often all the cleverer. I assure you I found poor Hicks's
judgment unfailing; I never knew him wrong. He was coarse
and butcher-like, but he knew my constitution. It was a
loss to me his going off so suddenly. Dear me, what a very
animated conversation Miss Brooke seems to be having with
this Mr. Lydgate!"
"She is talking cottages and hospitals with him," said
Mrs. Cadwallader, whose ears and power of interpretation
were quick. " I believe he is a sort of philanthropist, so
Brooke is sure to take him up."
"James," said Lady Chettam when her son came near, "
bring Mr. Lydgate and introduce him to me. I want to test
him."
The affable dowager declared herself delighted with this
opportunity of making Mr. Lydgate's acquaintance, having
heard of his success in treating fever on a new plan.
Mr. Lydgate had the medical accomplishment of looking
perfectly grave whatever nonsense was talked to him, and
his dark steady eyes gave him impressiveness as a listener.
He was as little as possible like the lamented Hicks,
especially in a certain careless refinement about his toilet
and utterance. Yet Lady Chettam gathered much confidence in
him. He confirmed her view of her own constitution as being
peculiar, by admitting that all constitutions might be
called peculiar, and he did not deny that hers might be more
peculiar than others. He did not approve of a too lowering
system, including reckless cupping, nor, on the other hand,
of incessant port-wine and bark. He said "I think so" with
an air of so much deference accompanying the insight of
agreement, that she formed the most cordial opinion of his
talents.
"I am quite pleased with your protege," she said to
Mr. Brooke before going away.
"My protege? — dear me ! — who is that?" said Mr.
Brooke.
"This young Lydgate, the new doctor. He seems to me to
understand his profession admirably."
"Oh, Lydgate! he is not my protege, you know; only I
knew an uncle of his who sent me a letter about him.
However, I think he is likely to be first-rate — has studied
in Paris, knew Broussais; has ideas, you know — wants to
raise the profession."
"Lydgate has lots of ideas, quite new, about ventilation
and diet, that sort of thing," resumed Mr. Brooke, after he
had handed out Lady Chettam, and had returned to be evil to
a group of Middlemarchers.
"Hang it, do you think that is quite sound? — upsetting
the old treatment, which has made Englishmen what they re?"
said Mr. Standish.
"Medical knowledge is at a low ebb among us," said Mr.
Bulstrode, who spoke in a subdued tone, and had rather a
sickly air. "I, for my part, hail the advent of Mr.
Lydgate. I hope to find good reason for confiding the new
hospital to his management."
"That is all very fine," replied Mr. Standish, who was
not fond of Mr. Bulstrode; "if you like him to try
experiments on your hospital patients, and kill a few people
for charity
I have no objection. But I am not going to
hand money out of my purse to have experiments tried on me.
I like treatment that has been tested a little."
"Well, you know, Standish, every dose you take is an
experiment — an experiment, you know," said Mr. Brooke,
nodding towards the lawyer.
"Oh, if you talk in that sense!" said Mr. Standish, with
as much disgust at such non-legal quibbling as a man can
well betray towards a valuable client.
"I should be glad of any treatment that would cure me
without reducing me to a skeleton, like poor Grainger," said
Mr. Vincy, the mayor, a florid man, who would have served
for a study of flesh in striking contrast with the
Frauciscan tints of Mr. Bulstrode. " It's an uncommonly
dangerous thing to be left without any padding against the
shafts of disease, as somebody said, — and I think it a very
good expression myself."
Mr. Lydgate, of course, was out of hearing. He had
quitted the party early, and would have thought it
altogether tedious but for the novelty of certain
introductions, especially the introduction to Miss Brooke,
whose youthful bloom, with her approaching marriage to that
faded scholar, and her interest in matters socially useful,
gave her the piquancy of an unusual combination.
"She is a good creature — that fine girl — but a little
too earnest," he thought. "It is troublesome to talk to
such women. They are always wanting reasons, yet they are
too ignorant to understand the merits of any question, and
usually fall hack on their moral sense to settle things
after their own taste."
Evidently Miss Brooke was not Mr. Lydgate's style of
woman any more than Mr. Chichely's. Considered, indeed, in
relation to the latter, whose mind was matured, she was
altogether a mistake, and calculated to shock his trust in
final causes, including the adaptation of fine young women
to purple-faced bachelors. But Lydgate was less ripe, and
might possibly have experience before him which would modify
his opinion as to the most excellent things in woman.
Miss Brooke, however, was not again seen by either of
these gentlemen under her maiden name. Not long after that
dinner-party she had become Mrs. Casaubon, and was on her
way to Rome.