Middlemarch
already used: to have been driven to be more particular would have been
like trying to give a history of the lights and shadows, for that new
real future which was replacing the imaginary drew its material from
the endless minutiae by which her view of Mr. Casaubon and her wifely
relation, now that she was married to him, was gradually changing with
the secret motion of a watch-hand from what it had been in her maiden
dream. It was too early yet for her fully to recognize or at least
admit the change, still more for her to have readjusted that
devotedness which was so necessary a part of her mental life that she
was almost sure sooner or later to recover it. Permanent rebellion, the
disorder of a life without some loving reverent resolve, was not
possible to her; but she was now in an interval when the very force of
her nature heightened its confusion. In this way, the early months of
marriage often are times of critical tumult—whether that of a
shrimp-pool or of deeper waters—which afterwards subsides into cheerful
peace.
But was not Mr. Casaubon just as learned as before? Had his forms of
expression changed, or his sentiments become less laudable? Oh
waywardness of womanhood! did his chronology fail him, or his ability
to state not only a theory but the names of those who held it; or his
provision for giving the heads of any subject on demand? And was not
Rome the place in all the world to give free play to such
accomplishments? Besides, had not Dorothea’s enthusiasm especially
dwelt on the prospect of relieving the weight and perhaps the sadness
with which great tasks lie on him who has to achieve them?— And that
such weight pressed on Mr. Casaubon was only plainer than before.
All these are crushing questions; but whatever else remained the same,
the light had changed, and you cannot find the pearly dawn at noonday.
The fact is unalterable, that a fellow-mortal with whose nature you are
acquainted solely through the brief entrances and exits of a few
imaginative weeks called courtship, may, when seen in the continuity of
married companionship, be disclosed as something better or worse than
what you have preconceived, but will certainly not appear altogether
the same. And it would be astonishing to find how soon the change is
felt if we had no kindred changes to compare with it. To share lodgings
with a brilliant dinner-companion, or to see your favorite politician
in the Ministry, may bring about changes quite as rapid: in these cases
too we begin by knowing little and believing much, and we sometimes end
by inverting the quantities.
Still, such comparisons might mislead, for no man was more incapable of
flashy make-believe than Mr. Casaubon: he was as genuine a character as
any ruminant animal, and he had not actively assisted in creating any
illusions about himself. How was it that in the weeks since her
marriage, Dorothea had not distinctly observed but felt with a stifling
depression, that the large vistas and wide fresh air which she had
dreamed of finding in her husband’s mind were replaced by anterooms and
winding passages which seemed to lead nowhither? I suppose it was that
in courtship everything is regarded as provisional and preliminary, and
the smallest sample of virtue or accomplishment is taken to guarantee
delightful stores which the broad leisure of marriage will reveal. But
the door-sill of marriage once crossed, expectation is concentrated on
the present. Having once embarked on your marital voyage, it is
impossible not to be aware that you make no way and that the sea is not
within sight—that, in fact, you are exploring an enclosed basin.
In their conversation before marriage, Mr. Casaubon had often dwelt on
some explanation or questionable detail of which Dorothea did not see
the bearing; but such imperfect coherence seemed due to the brokenness
of their intercourse, and, supported by her faith in their future, she
had listened with fervid patience to a recitation of possible arguments
to be brought against Mr. Casaubon’s entirely new view of the
Philistine god Dagon and other fish-deities, thinking that hereafter
she should see this subject which touched him so nearly from the same
high ground whence doubtless it had become so important to him. Again,
the matter-of-course statement and tone of dismissal with which he
treated what to her were the most stirring thoughts, was easily
accounted for as belonging to the sense of haste and preoccupation in
which she herself shared during their engagement. But now, since they
had been in Rome, with all the depths of her emotion roused to
tumultuous activity, and with life made a new problem by new elements,
she had been becoming more and more aware, with a certain terror, that
her mind was continually sliding into inward fits of anger and
repulsion, or else into forlorn weariness. How far the judicious Hooker
or any other hero of erudition would have been the same at Mr.
Casaubon’s time of life, she had no means of knowing, so that he could
not have the advantage of comparison; but her husband’s way of
commenting on the strangely impressive objects around them had begun to
affect her with a sort of mental shiver: he had perhaps the best
intention of acquitting himself worthily, but only of acquitting
himself. What was fresh to her mind was worn out to his; and such
capacity of thought and feeling as had ever been stimulated in him by
the general life of mankind had long shrunk to a sort of dried
preparation, a lifeless embalmment of knowledge.
When he said, “Does this interest you, Dorothea? Shall we stay a little
longer? I am ready to stay if you wish it,”—it seemed to her as if
going or staying were alike dreary. Or, “Should you like to go to the
Farnesina, Dorothea? It contains celebrated frescos designed or painted
by Raphael, which most persons think it worth while to visit.”
“But do you care about them?” was always Dorothea’s question.
“They are, I believe, highly esteemed. Some of them represent the fable
of Cupid and Psyche, which is probably the romantic invention of a
literary period, and cannot, I think, be reckoned as a genuine mythical
product. But if you like these wall-paintings we can easily drive
thither; and you will then, I think, have seen the chief works of
Raphael, any of which it were a pity to omit in a visit to Rome. He is
the painter who has been held to combine the most complete grace of
form with sublimity of expression. Such at least I have gathered to be
the opinion of cognoscenti.”
This kind of answer given in a measured official tone, as of a
clergyman reading according to the rubric, did not help to justify the
glories of the Eternal City, or to give her the hope that if she knew
more about them the world would be joyously illuminated for her. There
is hardly any contact more depressing to a young ardent creature than
that of a mind in which years full of knowledge seem to have issued in
a blank absence of interest or sympathy.
On other subjects indeed Mr. Casaubon showed a tenacity of occupation
and an eagerness which are usually regarded as the effect of
enthusiasm, and Dorothea was anxious to follow this spontaneous
direction of his thoughts, instead of being made to feel that she
dragged him away from it. But she was gradually ceasing to expect with
her former delightful confidence that she should see any wide opening
where she followed him. Poor Mr. Casaubon himself was lost among small
closets and winding stairs, and in an agitated dimness about the
Cabeiri, or in an exposure of other mythologists’ ill-considered
parallels, easily lost sight of any purpose which had prompted him to
these labors. With his taper stuck before him he forgot the absence of
windows, and in bitter manuscript remarks on other men’s notions about
the solar deities, he had become indifferent to the sunlight.
These characteristics, fixed and unchangeable as bone in Mr. Casaubon,
might have remained longer unfelt by Dorothea if she had been
encouraged to pour forth her girlish and womanly feeling—if he would
have held her hands between his and listened with the delight of
tenderness and understanding to all the little histories which made up
her experience, and would have given her the same sort of intimacy in
return, so that the past life of each could be included in their mutual
knowledge and affection—or if she could have fed her affection with
those childlike caresses which are the bent of every sweet woman, who
has begun by showering kisses on the hard pate of her bald doll,
creating a happy soul within that woodenness from the wealth of her own
love. That was Dorothea’s bent. With all her yearning to know what was
afar from her and to be widely benignant, she had ardor enough for what
was near, to have kissed Mr. Casaubon’s coat-sleeve, or to have
caressed his shoe-latchet, if he would have made any other sign of
acceptance than pronouncing her, with his unfailing propriety, to be of
a most affectionate and truly feminine nature, indicating at the same
time by politely reaching a chair for her that he regarded these
manifestations as rather crude and startling. Having made his clerical
toilet with due care in the morning, he was prepared only for those
amenities of life which were suited to the well-adjusted stiff cravat
of the period, and to a mind weighted with unpublished matter.
And by a sad contradiction Dorothea’s ideas and resolves seemed like
melting ice floating and lost in the warm flood of which they had been
but another form. She was humiliated to find herself a mere victim of
feeling, as if she could know nothing except through that medium: all
her strength was scattered in fits of agitation, of struggle, of
despondency, and then again in visions of more complete renunciation,
transforming all hard conditions into duty. Poor Dorothea! she was
certainly troublesome—to herself chiefly; but this morning for the
first time she had been troublesome to Mr. Casaubon.
She had begun, while they were taking coffee, with a determination to
shake off what she inwardly called her selfishness, and turned a face
all cheerful attention to her husband when he said, “My dear Dorothea,
we must now think of all that is yet left undone, as a preliminary to
our departure. I would fain have returned home earlier that we might
have been at Lowick for the Christmas; but my inquiries here have been
protracted beyond their anticipated period. I trust, however, that the
time here has not been passed unpleasantly to you. Among the sights of
Europe, that of Rome has ever been held one of the most striking and in
some respects edifying. I well remember that I considered it an epoch
in my life when I visited it for the first time; after the fall of
Napoleon, an event which opened the Continent to travellers. Indeed I
think it is one among several cities to which an extreme hyperbole has
been applied—‘See Rome and die:’ but in your case I would propose an
emendation and say, See Rome as a bride, and live henceforth as a happy
wife.”
Mr. Casaubon pronounced this little speech with the most conscientious
intention, blinking a little and swaying his head up and down, and
concluding with a smile. He had not found marriage a rapturous state,
but he had no idea of being anything else than an irreproachable
husband, who would make a charming young woman as happy as she deserved
to be.
“I hope you are thoroughly satisfied with our stay—I mean, with the
result so far as your studies are concerned,” said Dorothea, trying to
keep her mind fixed on what most affected her husband.
“Yes,” said Mr. Casaubon, with that peculiar pitch of voice which makes
the word half a negative. “I have been led farther than I had foreseen,
and various subjects for annotation have presented themselves which,