Chapter XLV
It is the humor of many heads to extol the days of their
forefathers, and declaim against the wickedness of times
present. Which notwithstanding they cannot handsomely do,
without the borrowed help and satire of times past;
condemning the vices of their own times, by the expressions
of vices in times which they commend, which cannot but argue
the community of vice in both. Horace, therefore, Juvenal,
and Persius, were no prophets, although their lines did seem
to indigitate and point at our times. — SIR THOMAS BROWNE:
Pseudodoxia Epidemica.
That opposition to the New Fever Hospital which Lydgate
had sketched to Dorothea was, like other oppositions, to be
viewed in many different lights. He regarded it as a
mixture of jealousy and dunderheaded prejudice. Mr.
Bulstrode saw in it not only medical jealousy but a
determination to thwart himself, prompted mainly by a hatred
of that vital religion of which he had striven to be an
effectual lay representative — a hatred which certainly found
pretexts apart from religion such as were only too easy to
find in the entanglements of human action. These might be
called the ministerial views. But oppositions have the
illimitable range of objections at command, which need never
stop short at the boundary of knowledge, but can draw
forever on the vasts of ignorance. What the opposition in
Middlemarch said about the New Hospital and its
administration had certainly a great deal of echo in it, for
heaven has taken care that everybody shall not be an
originator; but there were differences which represented
every social shade between the polished moderation of Dr.
Minchin and the trenchant assertion of Mrs. Dollop, the
landlady of the Tankard in Slaughter Lane.
Mrs. Dollop became more and more convinced by her own
asseveration, that Dr. Lydgate meant to let the people die
in the Hospital, if not to poison them, for the sake of
cutting them up without saying by your leave or with your
leave; for it was a known " fac " that he had wanted to cut
up Mrs. Goby, as respectable a woman as any in Parley
Street, who had money in trust before her marriage — a poor
tale for a doctor, who if he was good for anything should
know what was the matter with you before you died, and not
want to pry into your inside after you were gone. If that
was not reason, Mrs. Dollop wished to know what was; but
there was a prevalent feeling in her audience that her
opinion was a bulwark, and that if it were overthrown there
would be no limits to the cutting-up of bodies, as had been
well seen in Burke and Hare with their pitch-plaisters — such
a -hanging business as that was not wanted in Middlemarch!
And let it not be supposed that opinion at the Tankard
in Slaughter Lane was unimportant to the medical profession:
that old authentic public-house — the original Tankard, known
by the name of Dollop's — was the resort of a great Benefit
Club, which had some months before put to the vote whether
its long-standing medical man, " Doctor Gambit," should not
be cashiered in favor of " this Doctor Lydgate," who was
capable of performing the most astonishing cures, and
rescuing people altogether given up by other practitioners.
But the balance had been turned against Lydgate by two
members, who for some private reasons held that this power
of resuscitating persons as good as dead was an equivocal
recommendation, and might interfere with providential
favors. In the course of the year, however, there had been
a change in the public sentiment, of which the unanimity at
Dollop's was an index
A good deal more than a year ago, before anything was
known of Lydgate's skill, the judgments on it had naturally
been divided, depending on a sense of likelihood, situated
perhaps in the pit of the stomach or in the pineal gland,
and differing in its verdicts, but not the less valuable as
a guide in the total deficit of evidence. Patients who had
chronic dis
eases or whose lives had long been worn
threadbare, like old Featherstone's, had been at once
inclined to try him; also, many who did not like paying
their doctor's bills, thought agreeably of opening an
account with a new doctor and sending for him without stint
if the children's temper wanted a dose, occasions when the
old practitioners were often crusty; and all persons thus
inclined to employ Lydgate held it likely that he was
clever. Some considered that he might do more than others "
where there was liver; " — at least there would be no harm in
getting a few bottles of "stuff" from him, since if these
proved useless it would still be possible to return to the
Purifying Pills, which kept you alive if they did not remove
the yellowness. But these were people of minor importance.
Good Middlemarch families were of course not going to change
their doctor without reason shown; and everybody who had
employed Mr. Peacock did not feel obliged to accept a new
man merely in the character of his successor, objecting that
he was " not likely to be equal to Peacock."
But Lydgate had not been long in the town before there
were particulars enough reported of him to breed much more
specific expectations and to intensify differences into
partisanship; some of the particulars being of that
impressive order of which the significance is entirely
hidden, like a statistical amount without a standard of
comparison, but with a note of exclamation at the end. The
cubic feet of oxygen yearly swallowed by a full-grown
man — what a shudder they might have created in some
Middlemarch circles!" Oxygen! nobody knows what that may
be — is it any wonder the cholera has got to Dantzic? And
yet there are people who say quarantine is no good!"
One of the facts quickly rumored was that Lydgate did
not dispense drugs. This was offensive both to the
physicians whose exclusive distinction seemed infringed on,
and to the surgeon-apothecaries with whom he ranged himself;
and only a little while before, they might have counted on
having the law on their side against a man who without
calling himself a London-made M.D. dared to ask for pay
except as a charge on drugs. But Lydgate had not been
experienced enough to fore
see that his new course would
be even more offensive to the laity; and to Mr. Mawmsey, an
important grocer in the Top Market, who, though not one of
his patients, questioned him in an affable manner on the
subject, he was injudicious enough to give a hasty popular
explanation of his reasons, pointing out to Mr. Mawmsey that
it must lower the character of practitioners, and be a
constant injury to the public, if their only mode of getting
paid for their work was by their making out long bills for
draughts, boluses, and mixtures.
"It is in that way that hard-working medical men may
come to be almost as mischievous as quacks," said Lydgate,
rather thoughtlessly. "To get their own bread they must
overdose the king's lieges; and that's a bad sort of
treason, Mr. Mawmsey — undermines the constitution in a fatal
way."
Mr. Mawmsey was not only an overseer (it was about a
question of outdoor pay that he was having an interview with
Lydgate), he was also asthmatic and had an increasing
family: thus, from a medical point of view, as well as from
his own, he was an important man; indeed, an exceptional
grocer, whose hair was arranged in a flame-like pyramid, and
whose retail deference was of the cordial, encouraging
kind — jocosely complimentary, and with a certain considerate
abstinence from letting out the full force of his mind. It
was Mr. Mawmsey's friendly jocoseness in questioning him
which had set the tone of Lydgate's reply. But let the wise
be warned against too great readiness at explanation: it
multiplies the sources of mistake, lengthening the sum for
reckoners sure to go wrong.
Lydgate smiled as he ended his speech, putting his foot
into the stirrup, and Mr. Mawmsey laughed more than he would
have done if he had known who the king's lieges were, giving
his "Good morning, sir, good-morning, sir," with the air of
one who saw everything clearly enough. But in truth his
views were perturbed. For years he had been paying bills
with strictly made items, so that for every half-crown and
eighteen-pence he was certain something measurable had been
delivered. He had done this with satisfaction, including it
among his responsibilities as a husband and father, and
regarding a
longer bill than usual as a dignity worth
mentioning. Moreover, in addition to the massive benefit of
the drugs to " self and family," he had enjoyed the pleasure
of forming an acute judgment as to their immediate effects,
so as to give an intelligent statement for the guidance of
Mr. Gambit — a practitioner just a little lower in status
than Wrench or Toller, and especially esteemed as an
accoucheur, of whose ability Mr. Mawmsey had the poorest
opinion on all other points, but in doctoring, he was wont
to say in an undertone, he placed Gambit above any of them.
Here were deeper reasons than the superficial talk of a
new man, which appeared still flimsier in the drawing-room
over the shop, when they were recited to Mrs. Mawmsey, a
woman accustomed to be made much of as a fertile
mother, — generally under attendance more or less frequent
from Mr. Gambit, and occasionally having attacks which
required Dr. Minchin.
"Does this Mr. Lydgate mean to say there is no use in
taking medicine?" said Mrs. Mawmsey, who was slightly given
to drawling. " I should like him to tell me how I could
bear up at Fair time, if I didn't take strengthening
medicine for a month beforehand. Think of what I have to
provide for calling customers, my dear!" — here Mrs. Mawmsey
turned to an intimate female friend who sat by — " a large
veal pie — a stuffed fillet — a round of beef — ham, tongue,
et cetera, et cetera! But what keeps me up best is
the pink mixture, not the brown. I wonder, Mr. Mawmsey,
with your experience, you could have patience to listen. I
should have told him at once that I knew a-little better
than that."
"No, no, no," said Mr. Mawmsey; " I was not going to
tell him my opinion. Hear everything and judge for yourself
is my motto. But he didn't know who he was talking to. I
was not to be turned on his finger. People often
pretend to tell me things, when they might as well say,
`Mawmsey, you're a fool.' But I smile at it: I humor
everybody's weak place. If physic had done harm to self and
family, I should have found it out by this time."
The next day Mr. Gambit was told that Lydgate went about
saying physic was of no use.
"Indeed!" said he, lifting his eyebrows with cautious
surprise. (He was a stout husky man with a large ring on
his fourth finger.) " How will he cure his patients, then?"
"That is what I say," returned Mrs. Mawmsey, who
habitually gave weight to her speech by loading her
pronouns. " Does he suppose that people will pay him
only to come and sit with them and go away again?"
Mrs. Mawmsey had had a great deal of sitting from Mr.
Gambit, including very full accounts of his own habits of
body and other affairs; but of course he knew there was no
innuendo in her remark, since his spare time and personal
narrative had never been charged for. So he replied,
humorously —
"Well, Lydgate is a good-looking young fellow, you
know."
"Not one that I would employ," said Mrs. Mawmsey.
"Others may do as they please."
Hence Mr. Gambit could go away from the chief grocer's
without fear of rivalry, but not without a sense that
Lydgate was one of those hypocrites who try to discredit
others by advertising their own honesty, and that it might
be worth some people's while to show him up. Mr. Gambit,
however, had a satisfactory practice, much pervaded by the
smells of retail trading which suggested the reduction of
cash payments to a balance. And he did not think it worth
his while to show Lydgate up until he knew how. He had not
indeed great resources of education, and had had to work his
own way against a good deal of professional contempt; but he
made none the worse accoucheur for calling the breathing
apparatus " longs."
Other medical men felt themselves more capable. Mr.
Toller shared the highest practice in the town and belonged
to an old Middlemarch family: there were Tollers in the law
and everything else above the line of retail trade. Unlike
our irascible friend Wrench, he had the easiest way in the
world of taking things which might be supposed to annoy him,
being a well-bred, quietly facetious man, who kept a good
house, was very fond of a little sporting when he could get
it, very friendly with Mr. Hawley, and hostile to Mr.
Bulstrode. It
may seem odd that with such pleasant
habits he should hare been given to the heroic treatment,
bleeding and blistering and starving his patients, with a
dispassionate disregard to his personal example; but the
incongruity favored the opinion of his ability among his
patients, who commonly observed that Mr. Toller had lazy
manners, but his treatment was as active as you could
desire: no man, said they, carried more seriousness into his
profession: he was a little slow in coming, but when he
came, he
did something. He was a great favorite in his
own circle, and whatever he implied to any one's
disadvantage told doubly from his careless ironical tone.
He naturally got tired of smiling and saying, " Ah!"
when he was told that Mr. Peacock's successor did not mean
to dispense medicines; and Mr. Hackbutt one day mentioning
it over the wine at a dinner-party, Mr. Toller said,
laughingly, "Dibbitts will get rid of his stale drugs, then.
I'm fond of little Dibbitts — I'm glad he's in luck."
"I see your meaning, Toller," said Mr. Hackbutt, "and I
am entirely of your opinion. I shall take an opportunity of
expressing myself to that effect. A medical man should be
responsible for the quality of the drugs consumed by his
patients. That is the rationale of the system of
charging which has hitherto obtained; and nothing is more
offensive than this ostentation of reform, where there is no
real amelioration."
"Ostentation, Hackbutt?" said Mr. Toller, ironically. "
I don't see that. A man can't very well be ostentatious of
what nobody believes in. There's no reform in the matter:
the question is, whether the profit on the drugs is paid to
the medical man by the druggist or by the patient, and
whether there shall be extra pay under the name of
attendance."
"Ah, to be sure; one of your damned new versions of old
humbug," said Mr. Hawley, passing the decanter to Mr.
Wrench.
Mr. Wrench, generally abstemious, often drank wine
rather freely at a party, getting the more irritable in
consequence.
"As to humbug, Hawley," he said, "that's a word easy to
fling about. But what I contend against is the way medical
men are fouling their own nest, and setting up a cry
about the country as if a general practitioner who dispenses
drugs couldn't be a gentleman. I throw back the imputation
with scorn. I say, the most ungentlemanly trick a man can
be guilty of is to come among the members of his profession
with innovations which are a libel on their time-honored
procedure. That is my opinion, and I am ready to maintain
it against any one who contradicts me." Mr. Wrench's voice
had become exceedingly sharp.
"I can't oblige you there, Wrench," said Mr. Hawley,
thrusting his hands into his trouser-pockets.
"My dear fellow," said Mr. Toller, strikirg in
pacifically! and looking at Mr. Wrench, "the physicians have
their toes trodden on more than we have. If you come to
dignity it is a question for Minchin and Sprague."
"Does medical jurisprudence provide nothing against
these infringements?" said Mr. Hackbutt, with a
disinterested desire to offer his lights. "How does the law
stand, eh, Hawley?"
"Nothing to be done there," said Mr. Hawley. " I looked
into it for Sprague. You'd only break your nose against a
damned judge's decision."
"Pooh! no need of law," said Mr. Toller. " So far as
practice is concerned the attempt is an absurdity. No
patient will like it — certainly not Peacock's, who have been
used to depletion. Pass the wine."
Mr. Toller's prediction was partly verified. If Mr. and
Mrs. Mawmsey, who had no idea of employing Lydgate, were
made uneasy by his supposed declaration against drugs, it
was in. evitable that those who called him in should watch
a little anxiously to see whether he did " use all the means
he might use " in the case. Even good Mr. Powderell, who in
his constant charity of interpretation was inclined to
esteem Lydgate the more for what seemed a conscientious
pursuit of a better plan, had his mind disturbed with doubts
during his wife's attack of erysipelas, and could not
abstain from mentioning to Lydgate that Mr. Peacock on a
similar occasion had administered a series of boluses which
were not otherwise definable
than by their remarkable
effect in bringing Mrs. Powderell round before Michaelmas
from an illness which had begun in a remarkably hot August.
At last, indeed, in the conflict between his desire not to
hurt Lydgate and his anxiety that no " means " should be
lacking, he induced his wife privately to take Widgeon's
Purifying Bills, an esteemed Middlemarch medicine, which
arrested every disease at the fountain by setting to work at
once upon the blood. This co-operative measure was not to
be mentioned to Lydgate, and Mr. Powderell himself had no
certain reliance on it, only hoping that it might be
attended with a blessing.
But in this doubtful stage of Lydgate's introduction he
was helped by what we mortals rashly call good fortune. I
suppose no doctor ever came newly to a place without making
cures that surprised somebody — cures which may be called
fortune's testimonials, and deserve as much credit as the
ten or printed kind. Various patients got well while
Lydgate was attending them, some even of dangerous
illnesses; and it was remarked that the new doctor with his
new ways had at least the merit of bringing people back from
the brink of death. The trash talked on such occasions was
the more vexatious to Lydgate, because it gave precisely the
sort of prestige which an incompetent and unscrupulous man
would desire, and was sure to be imputed to him by the
simmering dislike of the other medical men as an
encouragement on his own part of ignorant puffing. But even
his proud outspokenness was checked by the discernment that
it was as useless to fight against the interpretations of
ignorance as to whip the fog; and " good fortune " insisted
on using those interpretations.
Mrs. Larcher having just become charitably concerned
about alarming symptoms in her charwoman, when Dr. Minchin
called, asked him to see her then and there, and to give her
a certificate for the Infirmary; whereupon after examination
he wrote a statement of the case as one of tumor, and
recommended the bearer Nancy Nash as an out-patient. Nancy,
calling at home on her way to the Infirmary, allowed the
stay maker and his wife, in whose attic she lodged, to read
Dr. Minchin's paper, and by this means became a subject of
com
passionate conversation in the neighboring shops of
Churchyard Lane as being afflicted with a tumor at first
declared to be as large and hard as a duck's egg, but later
in the day to be about the size of "your fist." Most
hearers agreed that it would have to be cut out, but one had
known of oil and another of "squitchineal" as adequate to
soften and reduce any lump in the body when taken enough of
into the inside — the oil by gradually "soopling," the
squitchineal by eating away.
Meanwhile when Nancy presented herself at the Infirmary,
it happened to be one of Lydgate's days there. After
questioning and examining her, Lydgate said to the
house-surgeon in an undertone, " It's not tumor: it's
cramp." He ordered her a blister and some steel mixture,
and told her to go home and rest, giving her at the same
time a note to Mrs. Larcher, who, she said, was her best
employer, to testify that she was in need of good food.
But by-and-by Nancy, in her attic, became portentously
worse, the supposed tumor having indeed given way to the
blister, but only wandered to another region with angrier
pain. The staymaker's wife went to fetch Lydgate, and he
continued for a fortnight to attend Nancy in her own home,
until under his treatment she got quite well and went to
work again. But the case continued to be described as one
of tumor in Churchyard Lane and other streets — nay, by Mrs.
Larcher also; for when Lydgate's remarkable cure was
mentioned to Dr. Minchin, he naturally did not like to say,
" The case was not one of tumor, and I was mistaken in
describing it as such," but answered, "Indeed! ah! I saw it
was a surgical ease, not of a fatal kind." He had been
inwardly annoyed, however, when he had asked at the
Infirmary about the woman he had recommended two days
before, to hear from the house-surgeon, a youngster who was
not sorry to vex Minchin with impunity, exactly what had
occurred: he privately pronounced that it was indecent in a
general practitioner to contradict a physician's diagnosis
in that open manner, and afterwards agreed with Wrench that
Lydgate was disagreeably inattentive to etiquette. Lydgate
did not make the affair a ground for
valuing himself or
(very particularly) despising Minchin, such rectification of
misjudgments often happening among men of equal
qualifications. But report took up this amazing case of
tumor, not clearly distinguished from cancer, and considered
the more awful for being of the wandering sort; till much
prejudice against Lydgate's method as to drugs was overcome
S by the proof of his marvellous skill in the speedy
restoration of Nancy Nash after she had been rolling and
rolling in agonies from the presence of a tumor both hard
and obstinate, but nevertheless compelled to yield.
How could Lydgate help himself? It is offensive to tell
a lady when she is expressing her amazement at your skill,
that she is altogether mistaken and rather foolish in her
amazement. And to have entered into the nature of diseases
would only have added to his breaches of medical propriety.
Thus he had to wince under a promise of success given by
that ignorant praise which misses every valid quality.
In the case of a more conspicuous patient, Mr. Borthrop
Trumbull, Lydgate was conscious of having shown himself
something better than an every-day doctor, though here too
it was an equivocal advantage that he won. The eloquent
auctioneer was seized with pneumonia, and having been a
patient of Mr. Peacock's, sent for Lydgate, whom he had
expressed his intention to patronize. Mr Trumbull was a
robust man, a good subject for trying the expectant theory
upon — watching the course of an interesting disease when
left as much as possible to itself, so that the stages might
be noted for future guidance; and from the air with which he
described his sensations Lydgate surmised that he would like
to be taken into his medical man's confidence, and be
represented as a partner in his own cure. The auctioneer
heard, without much surprise, that his was a constitution
which (always with due watching) might be left to itself, so
as to offer a beautiful example of a disease with all its
phases seen in clear delineation, and that he probably had
the rare strength of mind voluntarily to become the test of
a rational procedure, and thus make the disorder of his
pulmonary functions a general benefit to society.
Mr. Trumbull acquiesced at once, and entered strongly
into the view that an illness of his was no ordinary
occasion for medical science.
"Never fear, sir; you are not speaking to one who is
altogether ignorant of the vis medicatrix," said he,
with his usual superiority of expression, made rather
pathetic by difficulty of breathing. And he went without
shrinking through his abstinence from drugs, much sustained
by application of the thermometer which implied the
importance of his temperature, by the sense that he
furnished objects for the microscope, and by learning many
new words which seemed suited to the dignity of his
secretions. For Lydgate was acute enough to indulge him
with a little technical talk.
It may be imagined that Mr. Trumbull rose from his couch
with a disposition to speak of an illness in which he had
manifested the strength of his mind as well as constitution;
and he was not backward in awarding credit to the medical
man who had discerned the quality of patient he had to deal
with. The auctioneer was not an ungenerous man, and liked
to give others their due, feeling that he could afford it.
He had caught the words "expectant method," and rang chimes
on this and other learned phrases to accompany the assurance
that Lydgate " knew a thing or two more than the rest of the
doctors — was far better versed in the secrets of his
profession than the majority of his compeers."
This had happened before the affair of Fred Vincy's
illness had given to Mr. Wrench's enmity towards Lydgate
more definite personal ground. The new-comer already
threatened to be a nuisance in the shape of rivalry, and was
certainly a nuisance in the shape of practical criticism or
reflections on his hard-driven elders, who had had something
else to do than to busy themselves with untried notions.
His practice had spread in one or two quarters, and from the
first the report of his high family had led to his being
pretty generally invited, so that the other medical men had
to meet him at dinner in the best houses; and having to meet
a man whom you dislike is not observed always to end in a
mutual attachment. There was hardly ever so much unanimity
among them as in the
opinion that Lydgate was an
arrogant young fellow, and yet ready for the sake of
ultimately predominating to show a crawling subservience to
Bulstrode. That Mr. Farebrother, whose name was a chief
flag of the anti-Bulstrode party, always defended Lydgate
and made a friend of him, was referred to Farebrother's
unaccountable way of fighting on both sides.
Here was plenty of preparation for the outburst of
professional disgust at the announcement of the laws Mr.
Bulstrode was laying down for the direction of the New
Hospital, which were the more exasperating because there was
no present possibility of interfering with his will and
pleasure, everybody except Lord Medlicote having refused
help towards the building, on the ground that they preferred
giving to the Old Infirmary. Mr. Bulstrode met all the
expenses, and had ceased to be sorry that he was purchasing
the right to carry out his notions of improvement without
hindrance from prejudiced coadjutors; but he had had to
spend large sums, and the building had lingered. Caleb
Garth had undertaken it, had failed during its progress, and
before the interior fittings were begun had retired from the
management of the business; and when referring to the
Hospital he often said that however Bulstrode might ring if
you tried him, he liked good solid carpentry and masonry,
and had a notion both of drains and chimneys. In fact, the
Hospital had become an object of intense interest to
Bulstrode, and he would willingly have continued to spare a
large yearly sum that he might rule it dictatorially without
any Board; but he had another favorite object which also
required money for its accomplishment: he wished to bay some
land in the neighborhood of Middlemarch, and therefore he
wished to get considerable contributions towards maintaining
the Hospital. Meanwhile he framed his plan of management.
The Hospital was to be reserved for fever in all its forms;
Lydgate was to be chief medical superintendent, that he
might have free authority to pursue all comparative
investigations which his studies, particularly in Paris, had
shown him the importance of, the other medical visitors
having a consultative influence, but no power to contravene
Lydgate's ultimate decisions; and the general management
was to be lodged exclusively in the hands of five directors
associated with Mr. Bulstrode, who were to have votes in the
ratio of their contributions, the Board itself filling up
any vacancy in its numbers, and no mob of small contributors
being admitted to a share of government.
There was an immediate refusal on the part of every
medical man in the town to become a visitor at the Fever
Hospital.
"Very well," said Lydgate to Mr. Bulstrode, " we have a
capital house-surgeon and dispenser, a clear-headed,
neat-handed fellow; we'll get Webbe from Crabsley, as good a
country practitioner as any of them, to come over twice
a-week, and in ease of any exceptional operation, Protheroe
will come from Brassing. I must work the harder, that's
all, and I have given up my post at the Infirmary. The plan
will flourish in spite of them, and then they'll be glad to
come in. Things can't last as they are: there must be all
sorts of reform soon, and then young fellows may be glad to
come and study here." Lydgate was in high spirits.
"I shall not flinch, you may depend upon it, Mr.
Lydgate," said Mr. Bulstrode. " While I see you carrying
out high intentions with vigor, you shall have my unfailing
support. And I have humble confidence that the blessing
which has hitherto attended my efforts against the spirit of
evil in this town will not be withdrawn. Suitable directors
to assist me I have no doubt of securing. Mr. Brooke of
Tipton has already given me his concurrence, and a pledge to
contribute yearly: he has not specified the sum — probably
not a great one. But he will be a useful member of the
board."
A useful member was perhaps to be defined as one who
would originate nothing, and always vote with Mr. Bulstrode.
The medical aversion to Lydgate was hardly disguised
now. Neither Dr. Sprague nor Dr. Minchin said that he
disliked Lydgate's knowledge, or his disposition to improve
treatment: what they disliked was his arrogance, which
nobody felt to be altogether deniable. They implied that he
was insolent, pretentious, and given to that reckless
innovation for the sake of noise and show which was the
essence of the charlatan.
The word charlatan once thrown on the air could not be
let drop. In those days the world was agitated about the
wondrous doings of Mr. St. John Long, " noblemen and
gentlemen " attesting his extraction of a fluid like mercury
from the temples of a patient.
Mr. Toller remarked one day, smilingly, to Mrs. Taft,
that "Bulstrode had found a man to suit him in Lydgate; a
charlatan in religion is sure to like other sorts of
charlatans."
"Yes, indeed, I can imagine," said Mrs. Taft, keeping
the number of thirty stitches carefully in her mind all the
while; "there are so many of that sort. I remember Mr.
Cheshire, with his irons, trying to make people straight
when the Almighty had made them crooked."
"No, no," said Mr. Toller, "Cheshire was all right — all
fair and above board. But there's St. John Long — that's
the kind of fellow we call a charlatan, advertising cures in
ways nobody knows anything about: a fellow who wants to make
a noise by pretending to go deeper than other people. The
other day he was pretending to tap a man's brain and get
quicksilver out of it."
"Good gracious! what dreadful trifling with people's
constitutions!" said Mrs. Taft.
After this, it came to be held in various quarters that
Lydgate played even with respectable constitutions for his
own purposes, and how much more likely that in his flighty
experimenting he should make sixes and sevens of hospital
patients. Especially it was to be expected, as the landlady
of the Tankard had said, that he would recklessly cut up
their dead bodies. For Lydgate having attended Mrs. Goby,
who died apparently of a heart-disease not very clearly
expressed in the symptoms, too daringly asked leave of her
relatives to open the body., and thus gave an offence
quickly spreading beyond Parley Street, where that lady had
long resided on an income such as made this association of
her body with the victims of Burke and Hare a flagrant
insult to her memory.
Affairs were in this stage when Lydgate opened the
subject of the Hospital to Dorothea We see that be was
bearing
enmity and silly misconception with much spirit,
aware that they were partly created by his good share of
success.
"They will not drive me away," he said, talking
confidentially in Mr. Farebrother's study. " I have got a
good opportunity here, for the ends I care most about; and I
am pretty sure to get income enough for our wants.
By-and-by I shall go on as quietly as possible: I have no
seductions now away from home and work. And I am more and
more convinced that it will be possible to demonstrate the
homogeneous origin of all the tissues. Raspail and others
are on the same track, and I have been losing time."
"I have no power of prophecy there," said Mr.
Farebrother, who had been puffing at his pipe thoughtfully
while Lydgate talked; " but as to the hostility in the town,
you'll weather it if you are prudent."
"How am I to be prudent?" said Lydgate, " I just do what
comes before me to do. I can't help people's ignorance and
spite, any more than Vesalius could. It isn't possible to
square one's conduct to silly conclusions which nobody can
foresee."
"Quite true; I didn't mean that. I meant only two
things. One is, keep yourself as separable from Bulstrode
as you can: of course, you can go on doing good work of your
own by his help; but don't get tied. Perhaps it seems like
personal feeling in me to say so — and there's a good deal of
that, I own — but personal feeling is not always in the wrong
if you boil it down to the impressions which make it simply
an opinion."
"Bulstrode is nothing to me," said Lydgate, carelessly,
" except on public grounds. As to getting very closely
united to him, I am not fond enough of him for that. But
what was the other thing you meant?" said Lydgate, who was
nursing his leg as comfortably as possible, and feeling in
no great need of advice.
"Why, this. Take care — experto crede — take care not
to get hampered about money matters. I know, by a word you
let fall one day, that you don't like my playing at cards so
much for money. You are right enough there. But try and
keep clear of wanting small sums that you haven't got.
I am perhaps talking rather superfluously; but a man likes
to assume superiority over himself, by holding up his bad
example and sermonizing on it."
Lydgate took Mr. Farebrother's hints very cordially,
though he would hardly have borne them from another man. He
could not help remembering that he had lately made some
debts, but these had seemed inevitable, and he had no
intention now to do more than keep house in a simple way.
The furniture for which he owed would not want renewing; nor
even the stock of wine for a long while.
Many thoughts cheered him at that time — and justly. A
man conscious of enthusiasm for worthy aims is sustained
under petty hostilities by the memory of great workers who
had to fight their way not without wounds, and who hover in
his mind as patron saints, invisibly helping. At home, that
same evening when he had been chatting with Mr. Farebrother,
he had his long legs stretched on the sofa, his head thrown
back, and his hands clasped behind it according to his
favorite ruminating attitude, while Rosamond sat at the
piano, and played one tune after another, of which her
husband only knew (like the emotional elephant he was!) that
they fell in with his mood as if they had been melodious
sea-breezes.
There was something very fine in Lydgate's look just
then, and any one might have been encouraged to bet on his
achievement. In his dark eyes and on his mouth and brow
there was that placidity which comes from the fulness of
contemplative thought — the mind not searching, but
beholding, and the glance seeming to be filled with what is
behind it.
Presently Rosamond left the piano and seated herself on
a chair close to the sofa and opposite her husband's face.
"Is that enough music for you, my lord?" she said,
folding her hands before her and putting on a little air of
meekness.
"Yes, dear, if you are tired," said Lydgate, gently,
turning his eyes and resting them on her, but not otherwise
moving. Rosamond's presence at that moment was perhaps no
more than a spoonful brought to the lake, and her woman's
instinct in this matter was not dull.
"What is absorbing you?" she said, leaning forward and
bringing her face nearer to his.
He moved his hands and placed them gently behind her
shoulders.
"I am thinking of a great fellow, who was about as old
as I am three hundred years ago, and had already begun a new
era in anatomy."
"I can't guess," said Rosamond, shaking her head. "We
used to play at guessing historical characters at Mrs.
Lemon's, but not anatomists."
"I'll tell you. His name was Vesalius. And the only
way he could get to know anatomy as he did, was by going to
snatch bodies at night, from graveyards and places of
execution."
"Oh!" said Rosamond, with a look of disgust on her
pretty face, "I am very glad you are not Vesalius. I should
have thought he might find some less horrible way than
that."
"No, he couldn't," said Lydgate, going on too earnestly
to take much notice of her answer. "He could only get a
complete skeleton by snatching the whitened bones of a
criminal from the gallows, and burying them, and fetching
them away by bits secretly, in the dead of night."
"I hope he is not one of your great heroes," said
Rosamond, half playfully, half anxiously, " else I shall
have you getting up in the night to go to St. Peter's
churchyard. You know how angry you told me the people were
about Mrs. Goby. You have enemies enough already."
"So had Vesalius, Rosy. No wonder the medical fogies in
Middlemarch are jealous, when some of the greatest doctors
living were fierce upon Vesalius because they had believed
in Galen, and he showed that Galen was wrong. They called
him a liar and a poisonous monster. But the facts of the
human frame were on his side; and so he got the better of
them."
"And what happened to him afterwards?" said Rosamond,
with some interest.
"Oh, he had a good deal of fighting to the last. And
they did exasperate him enough at one time to make him burn
a good deal of his work. Then he got shipwrecked just as he
was coming from Jerusalem to take a great chair at Padua
He died rather miserably."
There was a moment's pause before Rosamond said, "Do you
know, Tertius, I often wish you had not been a medical man."
"Nay, Rosy, don't say that," said Lydgate, drawing her
closer to him. " That is like saying you wish you had
married another man."
"Not at all; you are clever enough for anything: you
might easily have been something else. And your cousins at
Quallingham all think that you have sunk below them in your
choice of a profession."
"The cousins at Quallingham may go to the devil!" said
Lydgate, with scorn. " It was like their impudence if they
said anything of the sort to you."
"Still," said Rosamond, " I do not think it is a
nice profession, dear." We know that she had much quiet
perseverance in her opinion.
"It is the grandest profession in the world, Rosamond,"
said Lydgate, gravely. " And to say that you love me
without loving the medical man in me, is the same sort of
thing as to say that you like eating a peach but don't like
its flavor. Don't say that again, dear, it pains me."
"Very well, Doctor Grave-face," said Rosy, dimpling, " I
will declare in future that I dote on skeletons, and
body-snatchers, and bits of things in phials, and quarrels
with everybody, that end in your dying miserably.''
"No, no, not so bad as that," said Lydgate, giving up
remonstrance and petting her resignedly.