Middlemarch
within. In short—I am reporting my own conversation—you may be sure I
had all the good sense on my side.”
“Your scheme is a good deal more difficult to carry out than the
Pythagorean community, though. You have not only got the old Adam in
yourself against you, but you have got all those descendants of the
original Adam who form the society around you. You see, I have paid
twelve or thirteen years more than you for my knowledge of
difficulties. But”—Mr. Farebrother broke off a moment, and then added,
“you are eying that glass vase again. Do you want to make an exchange?
You shall not have it without a fair barter.”
“I have some sea-mice—fine specimens—in spirits. And I will throw in
Robert Brown’s new thing—‘Microscopic Observations on the Pollen of
Plants’—if you don’t happen to have it already.”
“Why, seeing how you long for the monster, I might ask a higher price.
Suppose I ask you to look through my drawers and agree with me about
all my new species?” The Vicar, while he talked in this way,
alternately moved about with his pipe in his mouth, and returned to
hang rather fondly over his drawers. “That would be good discipline,
you know, for a young doctor who has to please his patients in
Middlemarch. You must learn to be bored, remember. However, you shall
have the monster on your own terms.”
“Don’t you think men overrate the necessity for humoring everybody’s
nonsense, till they get despised by the very fools they humor?” said
Lydgate, moving to Mr. Farebrother’s side, and looking rather absently
at the insects ranged in fine gradation, with names subscribed in
exquisite writing. “The shortest way is to make your value felt, so
that people must put up with you whether you flatter them or not.”
“With all my heart. But then you must be sure of having the value, and
you must keep yourself independent. Very few men can do that. Either
you slip out of service altogether, and become good for nothing, or you
wear the harness and draw a good deal where your yoke-fellows pull you.
But do look at these delicate orthoptera!”
Lydgate had after all to give some scrutiny to each drawer, the Vicar
laughing at himself, and yet persisting in the exhibition.
“Apropos of what you said about wearing harness,” Lydgate began, after
they had sat down, “I made up my mind some time ago to do with as
little of it as possible. That was why I determined not to try anything
in London, for a good many years at least. I didn’t like what I saw
when I was studying there—so much empty bigwiggism, and obstructive
trickery. In the country, people have less pretension to knowledge, and
are less of companions, but for that reason they affect one’s
amour-propre less: one makes less bad blood, and can follow one’s own
course more quietly.”
“Yes—well—you have got a good start; you are in the right profession,
the work you feel yourself most fit for. Some people miss that, and
repent too late. But you must not be too sure of keeping your
independence.”
“You mean of family ties?” said Lydgate, conceiving that these might
press rather tightly on Mr. Farebrother.
“Not altogether. Of course they make many things more difficult. But a
good wife—a good unworldly woman—may really help a man, and keep him
more independent. There’s a parishioner of mine—a fine fellow, but who
would hardly have pulled through as he has done without his wife. Do
you know the Garths? I think they were not Peacock’s patients.”
“No; but there is a Miss Garth at old Featherstone’s, at Lowick.”
“Their daughter: an excellent girl.”
“She is very quiet—I have hardly noticed her.”
“She has taken notice of you, though, depend upon it.”
“I don’t understand,” said Lydgate; he could hardly say “Of course.”
“Oh, she gauges everybody. I prepared her for confirmation—she is a
favorite of mine.”
Mr. Farebrother puffed a few moments in silence, Lydgate not caring to
know more about the Garths. At last the Vicar laid down his pipe,
stretched out his legs, and turned his bright eyes with a smile towards
Lydgate, saying—
“But we Middlemarchers are not so tame as you take us to be. We have
our intrigues and our parties. I am a party man, for example, and
Bulstrode is another. If you vote for me you will offend Bulstrode.”
“What is there against Bulstrode?” said Lydgate, emphatically.
“I did not say there was anything against him except that. If you vote
against him you will make him your enemy.”
“I don’t know that I need mind about that,” said Lydgate, rather
proudly; “but he seems to have good ideas about hospitals, and he
spends large sums on useful public objects. He might help me a good
deal in carrying out my ideas. As to his religious notions—why, as
Voltaire said, incantations will destroy a flock of sheep if
administered with a certain quantity of arsenic. I look for the man who
will bring the arsenic, and don’t mind about his incantations.”
“Very good. But then you must not offend your arsenic-man. You will not
offend me, you know,” said Mr. Farebrother, quite unaffectedly. “I
don’t translate my own convenience into other people’s duties. I am
opposed to Bulstrode in many ways. I don’t like the set he belongs to:
they are a narrow ignorant set, and do more to make their neighbors
uncomfortable than to make them better. Their system is a sort of
worldly-spiritual cliqueism: they really look on the rest of mankind as
a doomed carcass which is to nourish them for heaven. But,” he added,
smilingly, “I don’t say that Bulstrode’s new hospital is a bad thing;
and as to his wanting to oust me from the old one—why, if he thinks me
a mischievous fellow, he is only returning a compliment. And I am not a
model clergyman—only a decent makeshift.”
Lydgate was not at all sure that the Vicar maligned himself. A model
clergyman, like a model doctor, ought to think his own profession the
finest in the world, and take all knowledge as mere nourishment to his
moral pathology and therapeutics. He only said, “What reason does
Bulstrode give for superseding you?”
“That I don’t teach his opinions—which he calls spiritual religion; and
that I have no time to spare. Both statements are true. But then I
could make time, and I should be glad of the forty pounds. That is the
plain fact of the case. But let us dismiss it. I only wanted to tell
you that if you vote for your arsenic-man, you are not to cut me in
consequence. I can’t spare you. You are a sort of circumnavigator come
to settle among us, and will keep up my belief in the antipodes. Now
tell me all about them in Paris.”
CHAPTER XVIII.
“Oh, sir, the loftiest hopes on earth
Draw lots with meaner hopes: heroic breasts,
Breathing bad air, run risk of pestilence;
Or, lacking lime-juice when they cross the Line,
May languish with the scurvy.”
Some weeks passed after this conversation before the question of the
chaplaincy gathered any practical import for Lydgate, and without
telling himself the reason, he deferred the predetermination on which
side he should give his vote. It would really have been a matter of
total indifference to him—that is to say, he would have taken the more
convenient side, and given his vote for the appointment of Tyke without
any hesitation—if he had not cared personally for Mr. Farebrother.
But his liking for the Vicar of St. Botolph’s grew with growing
acquaintanceship. That, entering into Lydgate’s position as a new-comer
who had his own professional objects to secure, Mr. Farebrother should
have taken pains rather to warn off than to obtain his interest, showed
an unusual delicacy and generosity, which Lydgate’s nature was keenly
alive to. It went along with other points of conduct in Mr. Farebrother
which were exceptionally fine, and made his character resemble those
southern landscapes which seem divided between natural grandeur and
social slovenliness. Very few men could have been as filial and
chivalrous as he was to the mother, aunt, and sister, whose dependence
on him had in many ways shaped his life rather uneasily for himself;
few men who feel the pressure of small needs are so nobly resolute not
to dress up their inevitably self-interested desires in a pretext of
better motives. In these matters he was conscious that his life would
bear the closest scrutiny; and perhaps the consciousness encouraged a
little defiance towards the critical strictness of persons whose
celestial intimacies seemed not to improve their domestic manners, and
whose lofty aims were not needed to account for their actions. Then,
his preaching was ingenious and pithy, like the preaching of the
English Church in its robust age, and his sermons were delivered
without book. People outside his parish went to hear him; and, since to
fill the church was always the most difficult part of a clergyman’s
function, here was another ground for a careless sense of superiority.
Besides, he was a likable man: sweet-tempered, ready-witted, frank,
without grins of suppressed bitterness or other conversational flavors
which make half of us an affliction to our friends. Lydgate liked him
heartily, and wished for his friendship.
With this feeling uppermost, he continued to waive the question of the
chaplaincy, and to persuade himself that it was not only no proper
business of his, but likely enough never to vex him with a demand for
his vote. Lydgate, at Mr. Bulstrode’s request, was laying down plans
for the internal arrangements of the new hospital, and the two were
often in consultation. The banker was always presupposing that he could
count in general on Lydgate as a coadjutor, but made no special
recurrence to the coming decision between Tyke and Farebrother. When
the General Board of the Infirmary had met, however, and Lydgate had
notice that the question of the chaplaincy was thrown on a council of
the directors and medical men, to meet on the following Friday, he had
a vexed sense that he must make up his mind on this trivial Middlemarch
business. He could not help hearing within him the distinct declaration
that Bulstrode was prime minister, and that the Tyke affair was a
question of office or no office; and he could not help an equally
pronounced dislike to giving up the prospect of office. For his
observation was constantly confirming Mr. Farebrother’s assurance that
the banker would not overlook opposition. “Confound their petty
politics!” was one of his thoughts for three mornings in the meditative
process of shaving, when he had begun to feel that he must really hold
a court of conscience on this matter. Certainly there were valid things
to be said against the election of Mr. Farebrother: he had too much on
his hands already, especially considering how much time he spent on
non-clerical occupations. Then again it was a continually repeated
shock, disturbing Lydgate’s esteem, that the Vicar should obviously
play for the sake of money, liking the play indeed, but evidently
liking some end which it served. Mr. Farebrother contended on theory
for the desirability of all games, and said that Englishmen’s wit was
stagnant for want of them; but Lydgate felt certain that he would have
played very much less but for the money. There was a billiard-room at
the Green Dragon, which some anxious mothers and wives regarded as the
chief temptation in Middlemarch. The Vicar was a first-rate
billiard-player, and though he did not frequent the Green Dragon, there
were reports that he had sometimes been there in the daytime and had
won money. And as to the chaplaincy, he did not pretend that he cared
for it, except for the sake of the forty pounds. Lydgate was no
Puritan, but he did not care for play, and winning money at it had
always seemed a meanness to him; besides, he had an ideal of life which
made this subservience of conduct to the gaining of small sums