Chapter LI
"Party is Nature too, and you shall see
By force of Logic how they both agree:
The Many in the One, the One in Many;
All is not Some, nor Some the same as Any:
Genus holds species, both are great or small;
One genus highest, one not high at all;
Each species has its differentia too,
This is not That, and He was never You,
Though this and that are AYES, and you and he
Are like as one to one, or three to three."
No gossip about Mr. Casaubon's will had yet reached
Ladislaw: the air seemed to be filled with the dissolution
of Parliament and the coming election, as the old wakes and
fairs were filled with the rival clatter of itinerant shows;
and more private noises were taken little notice of. The
famous " dry election " was at hand, in which the depths of
public feeling might be measured by the low flood-mark of
drink. Will Ladislaw was one of the busiest at this time;
and though Dorothea's widowhood was continually in his
thought, he was so far from wishing to be spoken to on the
subject, that when Lydgate sought him out to tell him what
had passed about the Lowick living, he answered rather
waspishly —
"Why should you bring me into the matter? I never see
-Mrs. Casaubon, and am not likely to see her, since she is
at Freshitt. I never go there. It is Tory ground, where I
and the `Pioneer' are no more welcome than a poacher and his
gun."
The fact was that Will had been made the more
susceptible by observing that Mr. Brooke, instead of wishing
him, as before, to come to the Grange oftener than was quite
agreeable to himself, seemed now to contrive that he should
go there as little as possible. This was a shuffling
concession of Mr. Brooke's to Sir James Chettam's indignant
remonstrance; and
Will, awake to the slightest hint in
this direction, concluded that he was to be kept away from
the Grange on Dorothea's account. Her friends, then,
regarded him with some suspicion? Their fears were quite
superfluous: they were very much mistaken if they imagined
that he would put himself forward as a needy adventurer
trying to win the favor of a rich woman.
Until now Will had never fully seen the chasm between
himself and Dorothea — until now that he was come to the
brink of it, and saw her on the other side. He began, not
without some inward rage, to think of going away from the
neighborhood: it would be impossible for him to show any
further interest in Dorothea without subjecting himself to
disagreeable imputations — perhaps even in her mind, which
others might try to poison.
"We are forever divided," said Will. "I might as well
be at Rome; she would be no farther from me." But what we
call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of
unfed hope. There were plenty of reasons why he should not
go — public reasons why he should not quit his post at this
crisis, leaving Mr. Brooke in the lurch when he needed "
coaching " for the election, and when there was so much
canvassing, direct and indirect, to be carried on. Will
could not like to leave his own chessmen in the heat of a
game; and any candidate on the right side, even if his brain
and marrow had been as soft as was consistent with a
gentlemanly bearing, might help to turn a majority. To
coach Mr. Brooke and keep him steadily to the idea that he
must pledge himself to vote for the actual Reform Bill,
instead of insisting on his independence and power of
pulling up in time, was not an easy task. Mr. Farebrother's
prophecy of a fourth candidate " in the bag " had not yet
been fulfilled, neither the Parliamentary Candidate Society
nor any other power on the watch to secure a reforming
majority seeing a worthy nodus for interference while there
was a second reforming candidate like Mr. Brooke, who might
be returned at his own expense; and the fight lay entirely
between Pinkerton the old Tory member, Bagster the new Whig
member returned at the last election, and Brooke the
future independent member, who was to fetter himself for
this occasion only. Mr. Hawley and his party would bend all
their forces to the return of Pinkerton, and Mr. Brooke's
success must depend either on plumpers which would leave
Bagster in the rear, or on the new minting of Tory votes
into reforming votes. The latter means, of course, would be
preferable.
This prospect of converting votes was a dangerous
distraction to Mr. Brooke: his impression that waverers were
likely to be allured by wavering statements, and also the
liability of his mind to stick afresh at opposing arguments
as they turned up in his memory, gave Will Ladislaw much
trouble.
"You know there are tactics in these things," said Mr.
Brooke; "meeting people half-way — tempering your ideas —
saying, `Well now, there's something in that,' and so on. I
agree with you that this is a peculiar occasion — the country
with a will of its own — political unions — that sort of thing
— but we sometimes cut with rather too sharp a knife,
Ladislaw. These ten-pound householders, now: why ten? Draw
the line somewhere — yes: but why just at ten? That's a
difficult question, now, if you go into it."
"Of course it is," said Will, impatiently. " But if you
are to wait till we get a logical Bill, you must put
yourself forward as a revolutionist, and then Middlemarch
would not elect you, I fancy. As for trimming, this is not
a time for trimming."
Mr. Brooke always ended by agreeing with Ladislaw, who
still appeared to him a sort of Burke with a leaven of
Shelley; but after an interval the wisdom of his own methods
reasserted itself, and he was again drawn into using them
with much hopefulness. At this stage of affairs he was in
excellent spirits, which even supported him under large
advances of money; for his powers of convincing and
persuading had not yet been, tested by anything more
difficult than a chairman's speech introducing other
orators, or a dialogue with a Middlemarch voter, from which
he came away with a sense that he was a tactician by nature,
and that it was a pity he had not gone earlier into this
kind of thing. He was a little conscious of defeat,
however, with Mr. Mawmsey, a chief representative in
Middlemarch of that great social power, the retail
trader, and naturally one of the most doubtful voters in the
borough — willing for his own part to supply an equal
quality of teas and sugars to reformer and anti-reformer, as
well as to agree impartially with both, and feeling like the
burgesses of old that this necessity of electing members was
a great burthen to a town; for even if there were no danger
in holding out hopes to all parties beforehand, there would
be the painful necessity at last of disappointing
respectable people whose names were on his books. He was
accustomed to receive large orders from Mr. Brooke of
Tipton; but then, there were many of Pinkerton's committee
whose opinions had a great weight of grocery on their side.
Mr. Mawmsey thinking that Mr. Brooke, as not too " clever in
his intellects," was the more likely to forgive a grocer who
gave a hostile vote under pressure, had become confidential
in his back parlor.
"As to Reform, sir, put it in a family light," he said,
rattling the small silver in his pocket, and smiling
affably. " Will it support Mrs. Mawmsey, and enable her to
bring up six children when I am no more? I put the question
fictiously, knowing what must be the answer. Very well,
sir. I ask you what, as a husband and a father, I am to do
when gentlemen come to me and say, ' Do as you like,
Mawmsey; but if you vote against us, I shall get my
groceries elsewhere: when I sugar my liquor I like to feel
that I am benefiting the country by maintaining tradesmen of
the right color.' Those very words have been spoken to me,
sir, in the very chair where you are now sitting. I don't
mean by your honorable self, Mr. Brooke."
"No, no, no — that's narrow, you know. Until my butler
complains to me of your goods, Mr. Mawmsey," said Mr.
Brooke, soothingly, "until I hear that you send bad sugars,
spices — that sort of thing — I shall never order him to go
elsewhere."
"Sir, I am your humble servant, and greatly obliged,"
said Mr. Mawmsey, feeling that polities were clearing up a
little. " There would be some pleasure in voting for a
gentleman who speaks in that honorable manner."
"Well, you know, Mr. Mawmsey, you would find it the
right thing to put yourself on our side. This Reform will
touch
everybody by-and-by — a thoroughly popular
measure — a sort of A, B, C, you know, that must come first
before the rest can follow. I quite agree with you that
you've got to look at the thing in a family light: but
public spirit, now. We're all one family, you know — it's
all one cupboard. Such a thing as a vote, now: why, it may
help to make men's fortunes at the Cape — there's no knowing
what may be the effect of a vote," Mr. Brooke ended, with a
sense of being a little out at sea, though finding it still
enjoyable. But Mr. Mawmsey answered in a tone of decisive
check.
"I beg your pardon, sir, but I can't afford that. When
I give a vote I must know what I am doing; I must look to
what will be the effects on my till and ledger, speaking
respectfully. Prices, I'll admit, are what nobody can know
the merits of; and the sudden falls after you've bought in
currants, which are a goods that will not keep — I've never;
myself seen into the ins and outs there; which is a rebuke
to human pride. But as to one family, there's debtor and
creditor, I hope; they're not going to reform that away;
else I should vote for things staying as they are. Few men
have less need to cry for change than I have, personally
speaking — that is, for self and family. I am not one-of
those who have nothing to lose: I mean as to respectability
both in parish and private business, and noways in respect
of your honorable self and custom, which you was good enough
to say you would not withdraw from me, vote or no vote,
while the article sent in was satisfactory."
After this conversation Mr. Mawmsey went up and boasted
to his wife that he had been rather too many for Brooke of
Tipton, and that he didn't mind so much now about going to
the poll.
Mr. Brooke on this occasion abstained from boasting of
his tactics to Ladislaw, who for his part was glad enough to
persuade himself that he had no concern with any canvassing
except the purely argumentative sort, and that he worked no
meaner engine than knowledge. Mr. Brooke, necessarily, had
his agents, who understood the nature of the Middlemarch
voter and the means of enlisting his ignorance on the side
of
the Bill — which were remarkably similar to the means
of enlisting it on the side against the Bill. Will stopped
his ears. Occasionally Parliament, like the rest of our
lives, even to our eating and apparel, could hardly go on if
our imaginations were too active about processes. There
were plenty of dirty-handed men in the world to do dirty
business; and Will protested to himself that his share in
bringing Mr. Brooke through would be quite innocent.
But whether he should succeed in that mode of
contributing to the majority on the right side was very
doubtful to him. He had written out various speeches and
memoranda for speeches, but he had begun to perceive that
Mr. Brooke's mind, if it had the burthen of remembering any
train of thought, would let it drop, run away in search of
it, and not easily come back again. To collect documents is
one mode of serving your country, and to remember the
contents of a document is another. No! the only way in
which Mr. Brooke could be coerced into thinking of the right
arguments at the right time was to be well plied with them
till they took up all the room in his brain. But here there
was the difficulty of finding room, so many things having
been taken in beforehand. Mr. Brooke himself observed that
his ideas stood rather in his way when he was speaking.
However, Ladislaw's coaching was forthwith to be put to
the test, for before the day of nomination Mr. Brooke was to
explain himself to the worthy electors of Middlemarch from
the balcony of the White Hart, which looked out
advantageously at an angle of the market-place, commanding a
large area in front and two converging streets. It was a
fine May morning, and everything seemed hopeful: there was
some prospect of an understanding between Bagster's
committee and Brooke's, to which Mr. Bulstrode, Mr. Standish
as a Liberal lawyer, and such manufacturers as Mr. Plymdale
and Mr. Vincy, gave a solidity which almost counterbalanced
Mr. Hawley and his associates who sat for Pinkerton at the
Green Dragon. Mr. Brooke, conscious of having weakened the
blasts of the "Trumpet " against him, by his reforms as a
landlord in the last half year, and hearing himself cheered
a
little as he drove into the town, felt his heart
tolerably light under his buff-colored waistcoat. But with
regard to critical occasions, it often happens that all
moments seem comfortably remote until the last.
"This looks well, eh?" said Mr. Brooke as the crowd
gathered. " I shall have a good audience, at any rate. I
like this, now — this kind of public made up -of one's own
neighbors, you know."
The weavers and tanners of Middlemarch, unlike Mr.
Mawmsey, had never thought of Mr. Brooke as a neighbor, and
were not more attached to him than if he had been sent in a
box from London. But they listened without much disturbance
to the speakers who introduced the candidate,
one of them — a political personage from Brassing, who came
to tell Middlemarch its duty — spoke so fully, that it was
alarming to think what the candidate could find to say after
him. Meanwhile the crowd became denser, and as the
political personage neared the end of his speech, Mr. Brooke
felt a remarkable change in his sensations while he still
handled his eye-glass, trifled with documents before him,
and exchanged remarks with his committee, as a man to whom
the moment of summons was indifferent.
"I'll take another glass of sherry, Ladislaw," he said,
with an easy air, to Will, who was close behind him, and
presently handed him the supposed fortifier. It was
ill-chosen; for Mr. Brooke was an abstemious man, and to
drink a second glass of sherry quickly at no great interval
from the first was a surprise to his system which tended to
scatter his energies instead of collecting them Pray pity
him: so many English gentlemen make themselves miserable by
speechifying on entirely private grounds! whereas Mr. Brooke
wished to serve his country by standing for
Parliament — which, indeed, may also be done on private
grounds, but being once undertaken does absolutely demand
some speechifying.
It was not about the beginning of his speech that Mr.
Brooke was at all anxious; this, he felt sure, would be all
right; he should have it quite pat, cut out as neatly as a
set of couplets from Pope. Embarking would be easy, but the
vision of open
sea that might come after was alarming.
"And questions, now," hinted the demon just waking up in his
stomach, " somebody may put questions about the
schedules. — Ladislaw," he continued, aloud, " just hand me
the memorandum of the schedules."
When Mr. Brooke presented himself on the balcony, the
cheers were quite loud enough to counterbalance the yells,
groans, brayings, and other expressions of adverse theory,
which were so moderate that Mr. Standish (decidedly an old
bird) observed in the ear next to him, " This looks
dangerous, by God! Hawley has got some deeper plan than
this." Still, the cheers were exhilarating, and no
candidate could look more amiable than Mr. Brooke, with the
memorandum in his breast-pocket, his-left hand on the rail
of the balcony, and his right trifling with his eye-glass.
The striking points in his appearance were his buff
waistcoat, short-clipped blond hair, and neutral
physiognomy. He began with some confidence.
"Gentlemen — Electors of Middlemarch!"
This was so much the right thing that a little pause
after it seemed natural.
"I'm uncommonly glad to be here — I was never so proud
and happy in my life — never so happy, you know."
This was a bold figure of speech, but not exactly the
right thing; for, unhappily, the pat opening had slipped
away — even couplets from Pope may be but " fallings from
us, vanishings," when fear clutches us, and a glass of
sherry is hurrying like smoke among our ideas. Ladislaw,
who stood at the window behind the speaker, thought, " it's
all up now. The only chance is that, since the best thing
won't always do, floundering may answer for once." Mr.
Brooke, meanwhile, having lost other clews, fell back on
himself and his qualifications — always an appropriate
graceful subject for a candidate.
"I am a close neighbor of yours, my good friends — you've
known me on the bench a good while — I've always gone a good
deal into public questions — machinery, now, and
machine-breaking — you're many of you concerned with
machinery, and I've been going into that lately. It won't
do, you know,
breaking machines: everything must go
on — trade, manufactures, commerce, interchange of
staples — that kind of thing — since Adam Smith, that must go
on. We must look all over the globe: — 'Observation with
extensive view,' must look everywhere, ' from China to
Peru,' as somebody says — Johnson, I think, ' The Rambler,'
you know. That is what I have done up to a certain
point — not as far as Peru; but I've not always stayed at
home — I saw it wouldn't do. I've been in the Levant, where
some of your Middlemarch goods go — and then, again, in the
Baltic. The Baltic, now."
Plying among his recollections in this way, Mr. Brooke
might have got along, easily to himself, and would have come
back from the remotest seas without trouble; but a
diabolical procedure had been set up by the enemy. At one
and the same moment there had risen above the shoulders of
the crowd, nearly opposite Mr. Brooke, and within ten yards
of him, the effigy of himself: buff-colored waistcoat,
eye-glass, and neutral physiognomy, painted on rag; and
there had arisen, apparently in the air, like the note of
the cuckoo, a parrot-like, Punch-voiced echo of his words.
Everybody looked up at the open windows in the houses at the
opposite angles of the converging streets; but they were
either blank, or filled by laughing listeners. The most
innocent echo has an impish mockery in it when it follows a
gravely persistent speaker, and this echo was not at all
innocent ; if it did not follow with the precision of a
natural echo, it had a wicked choice of the words it
overtook. By the time it said, "The Baltic, now," the laugh
which had been running through the audience became a general
shout, and but for the sobering effects of party and that
great public cause which the entanglement of things had
identified with " Brooke of Tipton," the laugh might have
caught his committee. Mr. Bulstrode asked, reprehensively,
what the new police was doing; but a voice could not well be
collared, and an attack on the effigy of the candidate would
have been too equivocal, since Hawley probably meant it to
be pelted.
Mr. Brooke himself was not in a position to be quickly
conscious of anything except a general slipping away of
ideas
within himself: he had even a little singing in
the ears, and he was the only person who had not yet taken
distinct account of the echo or discerned the image of
himself. Few things hold the perceptions more thoroughly
captive than anxiety about what we have got to say. Mr.
Brooke heard the laughter; but he had expected some Tory
efforts at disturbance, and he was at this moment
additionally excited by the tickling, stinging sense that
his lost exordium was coming back to fetch him from the
Baltic.
"That reminds me," he went on, thrusting a hand into his
side-pocket, with an easy air, " if I wanted a precedent,
you know — but we never want a precedent for the right
thing — but there is Chatham, now; I can't say I should have
supported Chatham, or Pitt, the younger Pitt — he was not a
man of ideas, and we want ideas, you know."
"Blast your ideas! we want the Bill,"-said a loud rough
voice from the crowd below.
Immediately the invisible Punch, who had hitherto
followed Mr. Brooke, repeated, " Blast your ideas! we want
the Bill." The laugh was louder than ever, and for the
first time Mr. Brooke being himself silent, heard distinctly
the mocking echo. But it seemed to ridicule his
interrupter, and in that light was encouraging; so he
replied with amenity —
"There is something in what you say, my good friend, and
what do we meet for but to speak our minds — freedom of
opinion, freedom of the press, liberty — that kind of thing?
The Bill, now — you shall have the Bill" — here Mr. Brooke
paused a moment to fix on his eye-glass and take the paper
from his breast-pocket, with a sense of being practical and
coming to particulars. The invisible Punch followed: —
"You shall have the Bill, Mr. Brooke, per electioneering
contest, and a seat outside Parliament as delivered, five
thousand pounds, seven shillings, and fourpence."
Mr. Brooke, amid the roars of laughter, turned red, let
his eye-glass fall, and looking about him confusedly, saw
the image of himself, which had come nearer. The next
moment he saw it dolorously bespattered with eggs. His
spirit rose a little, and his voice too.
"Buffoonery, tricks, ridicule the test of truth — all
that is very well " — here an unpleasant egg broke on Mr.
Brooke's shoulder, as the echo said, "All that is very well;
" then came a hail of eggs, chiefly aimed at the image, but
occasionally hitting the original, as if by chance. There
was a stream of new men pushing among the crowd; whistles,
yells, bellowings, and fifes made all the greater hubbub
because there was shouting and struggling to put them down.
No -voice would have had wing enough to rise above the
uproar, and Mr. Brooke, disagreeably anointed, stood his
ground no longer. The frustration would have been less
exasperating if it had been less gamesome and boyish: a
serious assault of which the newspaper reporter " can aver
that it endangered the learned gentleman's ribs," or can
respectfully bear witness to " the soles of that gentleman's
boots having been visible above the railing," has perhaps
more consolations attached to it.
Mr. Brooke re-entered the committee-room, saying, as
carelessly as he could, "This is a little too bad, you know.
I should have got the ear of the people by-and-by — butthey
didn't give me time. I should have gone into the Bill
by-and-by, you know," he added, glancing at Ladislaw. "
However, things will come all right at the nomination."
But it was not resolved unanimously that things would
come right; on the contrary, the committee looked rather
grim, and the political personage from Brassing was writing
busily, as if he were brewing new devices.
"It was Bowyer who did it," said Mr. Standish,
evasively. " I know it as well as if he had been
advertised. He's uncommonly good at ventriloquism, and he
did it uncommonly well, by God! Hawley has been having him
to dinner lately: there's a fund of talent in Bowyer."
"Well, you know, you never mentioned him to me,
Standish, else I would have invited him to dine," said poor
Mr. Brooke, who had gone through a great deal of inviting
for the good of his country.
"There's not a more paltry fellow in Middlemarch than
Bowyer," said Ladislaw, indignantly, "but it seems as if the
paltry fellows were always to turn the scale."
Will was thoroughly out of temper with himself as well
as with his "principal," and he went to shut himself in his
rooms with a half-formed resolve to throw up the "Pioneer "
and Mr. Brooke together. Why should he stay? If the
impassable gulf between himself and Dorothea were ever to be
filled up, it must rather be by his going away and getting
into a thoroughly different position than by staying here
and slipping into deserved contempt as an understrapper of
Brooke's. Then came the young dream of wonders that he
might do — in five years, for example: political writing,
political speaking, would get a higher value now public life
was going to be wider and more national, and they might give
him such distinction that he would not seem to be asking
Dorothea to step down to him. Five years: — if he could only
be sure that she cared for him more than for others; if he
could only make her aware that he stood aloof until he could
tell his love without lowering himself — then he could go
away easily, and begin a career which at five-and-twenty
seemed probable enough in the inward order of things, where
talent brings fame, and fame everything else which is
delightful. He could speak and he could write; he could
master any subject if he chose, and he meant always to take
the side of reason and justice, on which he would carry all
his ardor. Why should he not one day be lifted above the
shoulders of the crowd, and feel that he had won that
eminence well? Without doubt he would leave Middlemarch, go
to town, and make himself fit for celebrity by "eating his
dinners."
But not immediately: not until some kind of sign had
passed between him and Dorothea. He could not be satisfied
until she knew why, even if he were the man she would choose
to marry, he would not marry her. Hence he must keep his
post and bear with Mr. Brooke a little longer.
But he soon had reason to suspect that Mr. Brooke had
anticipated him in the wish to break up their connection.
I)eputations without and voices within had concurred in
inducing that philanthropist to take a stronger measure than
usual for the good of mankind; namely, to withdraw in favor
of another candidate, to whom he left the advantages of
his canvassing machinery. He himself called this a strong
measure, but observed that his health was less capable of
sustaining excitement than he had imagined.
"I have felt uneasy about the chest — it won't do to
carry that too far," he said to Ladislaw in explaining the
affair. "I must pull up. Poor Casaubon was a warning, you
know. I've made some heavy advances, but I've dug a
channel. It's rather coarse work — this electioneering, eh,
Ladislaw? dare say you are tired of it. However, we have
dug a channel with the 'Pioneer' — put things in a track, and
so on. A more ordinary man than you might carry it on
now — more ordinary, you know."
"Do you wish me to give it up?" said Will, the quick
color coming in his face, as he rose from the writing-table,
and took a turn of three steps with his hands in his
pockets. " I am ready to do so whenever you wish it."
"As to wishing, my dear Ladislaw, I have the highest
opinion of your powers, you know. But about the 'Pioneer,'
I have been consulting a little with some of the men on our
side, and they are inclined to take it into their
hands — indemnify me to a certain extent — carry it on, in
fact. And under the circumstances, you might like to give
up — might find a better field. These people might not take
that high view of you which I have always taken, as an
alter ego, a right hand — though I always looked forward
to your doing something else. I think of having a run into
France. But I'll write you any letters, you know — to
Althorpe and people of that kind. I've met Althorpe."
"I am exceedingly obliged to you," said Ladislaw,
proudly. "Since you are going to part with the 'Pioneer,' I
need not trouble you about the steps I shall take. I may
choose to continue here for the present."
After Mr. Brooke had left him Will said to himself, "The
rest of the family have been urging him to get rid of me,
and he doesn't care now about my going. I shall stay as
long as I like. I shall go of my own movements and. not
because they are afraid of me."