Middlemarch
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, Dorothea, 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 carry 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 case 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. 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