 16 All that in a woman is adored, in thy fair self I find, for the whole sex can but afford the handsome and the kind, Sir Charles Sedley. The question whether Mr. Tyke should be appointed as salary chaplain to the hospital was an exciting topic to the middle marchers, and Lidgate heard it discussed in a way that threw much light on the power exercised in the town by Mr. Bullsrod. The banker was evidently a ruler, but there was an opposition party, and even among his supporters there were some who allowed it to be seen that their support was compromised, and who frankly stated their impression that the general scheme of things and especially the casualties of trade required you to hold a candle to the devil. Mr. Bullsrod's power was not due simply to his being a country banker, who knew the financial secrets of most traders in the town and could touch the springs of their credit. It was fortified by a beneficence that was at once ready and severe, ready to confer obligations and severe in watching the result. He had gathered, as an industrious man always at his post, a chief share in administering the town charities, and his private charities were both minute and abundant. He would take a great deal of pains about apprenticing Teg, the shoemaker's son, and he would watch over Teg's church going. He would defend Mrs. Stripe, the washerwoman, against Stubbs' unjust exaction on the score of a drying ground, and he would himself scrutinize a column against Mrs. Stripe. His private minor loans were numerous, but he would inquire strictly into the circumstances both before and after. In this way, a man gathers a domain in his neighbors' hope and fear, as well as gratitude and power, when once it has got into that subtle region propagates itself, spreading out of all proportion to its external means. It was a principle with Mr. Bullsrod to gain as much power as possible, that he might use it for the glory of God. He went through a great deal of spiritual conflict and inward argument in order to adjust his motives and make clear to himself what God's glory required. But as we have seen, his motives were not always rightly appreciated. There were many crass minds in Middlemarch whose reflective scales could only weigh things in the lump, and they had a strong suspicion that since Mr. Bullsrod could not enjoy life in their fashion, eating and drinking so little as he did, and worried himself about everything, he must have a sort of vampire's feast in the sense of mastery. The subject of the chaplaincy came up at Mr. Winsey's table when Lidgate was dining there, and the family connection with Mr. Bullsrod did not. He observed, prevent some freedom of remark even on the part of the host himself, though his reasons against the proposed arrangement turned entirely on his objection to Mr. Tyke's sermons which were all doctrine and his preference for Mr. Fairbrother, whose sermons were free from that taint. Mr. Winsey liked well enough the notion of the chaplains having a salary, supposing it were given to Fairbrother, who was as good a little fellow as ever breathed, and the best preacher anywhere, and companionable too. What line shall you take then, said Mr. Cheechly, the coroner, a great coursing comrade of Mr. Winsey's? Oh, I am precious glad I am not one of the directors now. I shall vote for referring the matter to the directors and the medical board together. I shall roll some of my responsibility on your shoulders, doctor, said Mr. Winsey, glancing first at Dr. Sprague, the senior physician of the town, and then at Lidgate, who sat opposite. You medical gentlemen must consult which sort of black draught you will prescribe. Eh, Mr. Lidgate? I know little of either, said Lidgate. But in general, appointments are apt to be made too much a question of personal liking. The fittest man for a particular post is not always the best fellow or the most agreeable. Sometimes if you wanted to get a reform, your only way would be to pension off the good fellows whom everybody is fond of and put them out of the question. Dr. Sprague, who was considered the physician of most weight, though Dr. Minchin was usually said to have more penetration, divested his large, heavy face of all expression and looked at his wine glass while Lidgate was speaking. Whatever was not problematical and suspected about this young man, for example, a certain showiness as to foreign ideas and a disposition to unsettle what had been settled and forgotten by his elders, was positively unwelcome to a physician whose standing had been fixed 30 years before by the tritzy on meningitis, of which at least one copy marked own was bound in cough. For my part, I have some fellow feeling with Dr. Sprague. Once self-satisfaction is an untaxed kind of property, which it is very unpleasant to find deprecated. Lidgate's remark, however, did not meet the sense of the company. Mr. Wincey said that if he could have his way, he would not put disagreeable fellows anywhere. Hang your reforms, said Mr. Cheechly. There is no greater humbug in the world. You never hear of a reform, but it means some trick to put in new men. I hope you are not one of the land-sets men, Mr. Lidgate. Wanting to take the coroner's sip out of the hands of the legal profession, your words appear to point that way. I disapprove of Wincey, interposed Dr. Sprague, no man more. He is an ill-intentioned fellow who would sacrifice the respectability of the profession, which everybody knows depends on the London colleges for the sake of getting some notoriety for himself. There are men who don't mind about being kicked blue if they can only get talked about. But Wincey is right sometimes, the doctor added judicially. I could mention one or two points in which Wincey is in the right. Oh, well, said Mr. Cheechly. I blame no man for standing up in favor of his own cloth. But coming to argument, I should like to know how a coroner is to judge off evidence if he has not had a legal training. In my opinion, said Lidgate, legal training only makes a man more incompetent in questions that require knowledge of another kind. People talk about evidence as if it could really be weighed in scales by a blind justice. No man can judge what is good evidence on any particular subject unless he knows that subject well. A lawyer is no better than an old woman at a post-mortem examination. How is he to know the action of a poison? You might as well say that scanning words will teach you to scan the potato crops. You were aware, I suppose, that it is not the coroner's business to conduct the post-mortem, but only to take the evidence of the medical witness, said Mr. Cheechly, with some scorn. Who is often almost as ignorant as the coroner himself, said Lidgate. Questions of medical jurisprudence ought not to be left to the chance of decent knowledge in a medical witness. And the coroner ought not to be a man who will believe that Strychnine will destroy the codes of the stomach if an ignorant practitioner happens to tell him so. Lidgate had really lost sight of the fact that Mr. Cheechly was his Majesty's coroner and ended innocently with the question. Don't you agree with me, Dr. Sprague? To a certain extent, with regard to populist districts and in the metropolis, said the doctor. But I hope it will be long before this part of the country loses the services of my friend Cheechly, even though it might get the best man in our profession to succeed him. I'm sure Vincy will agree with me. Yes, yes, give me a coroner who is a good cursing man, said Mr. Vincy Jovially. And in my opinion, you are safest with a lawyer. Nobody can know everything. Most things are visitation of God. And as to poisoning, why? What do you want to know is the law? Come, shall we join the ladies? Lidgate's private opinion was that Mr. Cheechly might be the very coroner without bias as to the codes of the stomach. But he had not meant to be personal. This was one of the difficulties of moving in good middle-march society. It was dangerous to insist on knowledge as a qualification for any salaried office. Fred Vincy had called Lidgate a prick. And now Mr. Cheechly was inclined to call him prick-yard, especially when in the drawing room he seemed to be making himself eminently agreeable to Rosamond, whom he had easily monopolized in a tete-té since Mrs. Vincy herself sat at the tea table. She resigned no domestic function to her daughter and the mattress-blooming, good-natured face with the two volatile pink strings floating from her fine throat. And her cheery manners to husband and children was suddenly among the great attractions of the Vincy house, attractions which made it all the easier to fall in love with the daughter. The tinge of unpretentious, inoffensive vulgarity in Mrs. Vincy gave more effect to Rosamond's refinement, which was beyond what Lidgate had expected. Certainly small feet and perfectly turned shoulders aid the impression of refined manners. And the right thing said seems quite astonishingly right when it is accompanied with exquisite curves of lip and eyelid. And Rosamond could say the right thing, for she was clever with that sort of cleverness which catches every tone except the humorous. Happily she never attempted to joke and this perhaps was the most decisive mark of her cleverness. She and Lidgate readily got into conversation. He regretted that he had not heard her sing the other day at Stone Court. The only pleasure he allowed himself during the latter part of his stay in Paris was to go and hear music. You have studied music probably, said Rosamond. No, I know the notes of many birds and I know many melodies by ear, but the music that I don't know at all and have no notion about delights me, affects me. How stupid the world is that it does not make more use of such a pleasure within its reach. Yes, and you will find Middlemarch very tune-less. There are hardly any good musicians. I only know two gentlemen who sing at all well. I suppose it is the fashion to sing comic songs in a rhythmic way, leaving you to fancy the tune very much as if it were trapped on a drum. Ah, you have heard, Mr. Bauer, said Rosamond, with one of her rare smiles, but we are speaking very ill of our neighbors. Lidgid was almost forgetting that he must carry on the conversation in thinking how lovely this creature was, a garment seeming to be made out of the faintest blue sky, herself so immaculately blonde as if the petals of some gigantic flower had just opened and disclosed her. And yet with this infantile bluntness showing so much ready, self-possessed grace. Since he had had the memory of Laura, Lidgid had lost all taste for large-eyed silence. The divine cow no longer attracted him, and Rosamond was her very opposite, but he recalled himself. You will let me hear some music tonight, I hope. I will let you hear my attempts if you like, said Rosamond. Papa is sure to insist on my singing, but I shall tremble before you who have heard the best singers in Paris. I have heard very little. I have only once been to London, but our organist at St. Peter's is a good musician, and I go on studying with him. Tell me what you saw in London. Very little. A more knive girl would have said, oh, everything, but Rosamond knew better. A few of the ordinary sites such as rock country girls are always taken to. Do you call yourself a rock country girl? Said Lidgid, looking at her with an involuntary emphasis of admiration, which made Rosamond blush with pleasure. But she remained simply serious, turned her long neck a little, and put up her hand to touch her wondrous hairplates, and habitual gesture with her as pretty as any movements of a kitten's paw. Not that Rosamond was in the least like a kitten, she was a self-caught young and educated at Mrs. Lemons. I assure you, my mind is raw, she said immediately. I pass at Middlemarch. I'm not afraid of talking to our old neighbours, but I'm really afraid of you. An accomplished woman almost always knows more than we men, though her knowledge is of a different sort. I'm sure you should teach me a thousand things, as an exquisite bird would teach a bear if there were any common language between them. Happily there is a common language between women and men, and so the bears can get dot. Ah, there is Fred beginning to strum. I must go and hinder him from jarring all your nerves, said Rosamond, moving to the other side of the room, where Fred, having opened the piano at his father's desire, that Rosamond might give them some music was parenthetically performing cherry-ripe with one hand. Able men who have passed their examinations will do these things sometimes, not less than the plucked Fred. Fred, pray defer your practising till tomorrow. You will make Mr. Litgate ill, said Rosamond. He has a nearer. Fred laughed and went on with his tune to the end. Rosamond turned to Litgate, smiling gently, and said, you perceive the bears will not always be taught. Now then, Rosy, said Fred, springing from the stool and twisting it upward for her with a herty expectation of enjoyment. Some good rousing tunes first. Rosamond played admirably. Her master at Mrs. Lemons School, close to a country town with a memorable history that had its relics in church and castle, was one of those excellent musicians here and there to be found in our provinces. Worthy to compare with many a noted capital mister in a country which offers more plentiful conditions of musical celebrity. Rosamond, with the executant's instinct, had seized his manner of playing and gave forth his large rendering of noble music with the precision of an echo. It was almost startling heard for the first time. A hidden soul seemed to be flowing for from Rosamond's fingers and so indeed it was, since souls live on in perpetual echoes and to all fine expression, there goes somewhere an originating activity if it be only that of an interpreter. Litgate was taken possession of and began to believe in her as something exceptional. After all, he thought one need not be surprised to find the rare conjunctions of nature under circumstances apparently unfavorable. Come where they may, they always depend on conditions that are not obvious. He sat looking at her and did not rise to pay her any compliments, leaving that to others now that his admiration was deepened. Her singing was less remarkable but also well-trained and sweet to hear as a chime perfectly in tune. It is true, she sang, meet me by moonlight and I have been roaming for mortals must share the fashions of their time and none but the ancients can be always classical but Rosamond could also sing Black Eyed Susan with effect or Haydn's Tanzonets or Voie Che Sapete or Batie Batie, she only wanted to know what her audience liked. Her father looked round at the company delighting in their admiration. Her mother sat like a noyway before her troubles with her youngest little girl on her lap softly beating the child's hand up and down in time to the music and Fred, notwithstanding his general skepticism about Rosie listened to her music with perfect allegiance wishing he could do the same thing on his flute. It was the pleasentest family party that Lidgate had seen since he came to Middlemarch. The wincies had the readiness to enjoy the rejection of all anxiety and the belief in life as a merry lord which made a house exceptional in most county towns at that time when evangelicalism had cast a certain suspicion as of plague infection over the few amusements which survived in the provinces. At the wincies, there was always wist and the card tables stood ready now making some of the company secretly impatient of the music. Before it seized, Mr. Fairbrother came in a handsome broad-chested but otherwise small man about 40 whose black was very threadbare. The brilliancy was all in his quick gray eyes. He came like a pleasant change in the light arresting little Loiza with fatherly nonsense as she was being led out of the room by Miss Morgan greeting everybody with some special word and seeming to condense more talk into 10 minutes than had been held all through the evening. He claimed from Litgate the fulfillment of a promise to come and see him. I can't let you off, you know, because I have some Beatles to show you. We collectors feel an interest in every new man till he has seen all we have to show him. But soon he swerved to the wrist table rubbing his hands and saying, come now, let us be serious. Mr. Litgate, not play. Ah, you are too young and light for this kind of thing. Litgate said to himself that the clergyman whose abilities were so painful to Mr. Bulls Road appeared to have found an agreeable resort in this certainly not erudite household. He could half understand it, the good humor, the good looks of elder and younger and the provision for passing the time without any labor of intelligence might make the house be willing to people who had no particular use for their odd hours. Everything looked blooming in joyous except Miss Morgan, who was brown, dull and resigned and altogether, as Mrs. Vincey often said, just the sort of person for a governess. Litgate did not mean to pay many such visits himself. They were a wretched waste of the evenings and now when he had talked a little more to Rosamond, he meant to excuse himself and go. You will not like us at Middlemarch, I feel sure. She said, when the whist players were settled, we are very stupid and you have been used to something quite different. I suppose all country towns are pretty much alike, said Litgate, but I have noticed that one always believes one's own town to be more stupid than any other. I have made up my mind to take Middlemarch as it comes and shall be much obliged if the town will take me in the same way. I have certainly found some charms in it which are much greater than I had expected. You mean the rides towards Tipton and Lovick? Everyone is pleased with those, said Rosamond with simplicity. No, I mean something much nearer to me. Rosamond rose and reached her netting and then said, do you care about dancing at all? I'm not quite sure whether clever men ever dance. I would dance with you if you would allow me. Oh, said Rosamond with a slight deprecatory laugh. I was only going to say that we sometimes have dancing and I wanted to know whether you would feel insulted if you were asked to come. Not on the condition I mentioned. After this chat Litgate thought that he was going, but on moving towards the West Stables, he got interested in watching Mr. Fairbrothers play which was masterly and also his face which was a striking mixture of the shrewd and the mild. At 10 o'clock supper was brought in, such were the customs of Middlemarch and there was a punch drinking, but Mr. Fairbrothers had only a glass of water. He was winning, but there seemed to be no reason why the renewal of rubbers should end and Litgate at last took his leave. But as it was not 11 o'clock, he chose to walk in the brisk air towards the tower of St. Botolphe's Mr. Fairbrothers church which stood out dark, square and massive against the starlight. It was the oldest church in Middlemarch. The living, however, was but a vicarage worth barely 400 a year. Litgate had heard that and he wondered now whether Mr. Fairbrothers care about the money he won at cards, thinking he seems a very pleasant fellow but Bulls Road may have his good reasons. Many things would be easier to litgate if it should turn out that Mr. Bulls Road was generally justifiable. What is his religious doctrine to me if he carries some good notions along with it? One must use such brains as are to be found. These were actually Litgate's first meditations as he walked away from Mr. Vinces and on this ground I fear that many ladies will consider him hardly worthy of their attention. He thought of Rosamund and her music only in the second place and though when her turn came he dwelt on the image of her for the rest of his walk. He felt no agitation and had no sense that any new current had set into his life. He could not marry yet. He wished not to marry for several years and therefore he was not ready to entertain the notion of being in love with a girl whom he happened to admire. He did admire Rosamund exceedingly but that madness which had once beset him about Laure was not. He thought likely to occur in relation to any other woman. Suddenly falling in love had been at all in question. It would have been quite safe with a creature like this Ms. Vincy who had just the kind of intelligence one would desire in a woman. Polished, refined, docile, lending itself to finish in all the delicacies of life and enthrined in a body which expressed this with a force of demonstration that excluded the need for other evidence. Litgate felt sure that if ever he married his wife would have that feminine radiance, that distinctive womanhood which must be classed with flowers and music. That sort of beauty which by its very nature was virtuous, being molded only for pure and delicate joys. But since he did not mean to marry for the next five years, his more pressing business was to look into Lois' new book on fever which he was especially interested in because he had known Lois in Paris and had followed many anatomical demonstrations in order to ascertain the specific differences of typhus and typhoid. He went home and read far into the smallest hour, bringing a much more testing vision of details and relations into this pathological study than he had ever thought it necessary to apply to the complexities of love and marriage. These being subjects on which he felt himself amply informed by literature and that traditional wisdom which is handed down in the genial conversation of men. Whereas fever had obscure conditions and gave him that delightful labor of the imagination which is not mere arbitrariness, but the exercise of disciplined power combining and constructing with the clearest eye for probabilities and the fullest obedience to knowledge and then in yet more energetic alliance with impartial nature, standing aloof to invent tests by which to try its own work. Many men have been praised as vividly imaginative on the strength of their profuseness in different drawing or cheap narration. Reports of very poor talk going on in distant orbs are portraits of Lucifer coming down on his bad errands as a largely ugly man with bats' wings and spurts of phosphorescence or exaggerations of wantonness that seemed to reflect life in a diseased dream. But these kinds of inspiration did get regarded as rather vulgar and venous compared with the imagination that reveals subtle actions inaccessible by any sort of lens but tracked in that outer darkness through long pathways of necessary sequence by the inward light which is the last refinement of energy capable of bathing even the ethereal atoms in its ideally illuminated space. He, for his part, had doused away all cheap inventions where ignorance finds itself able and at ease. He was enamored of that arduous invention which is the very eye of research, provisionally framing its object and correcting it to more and more exactness of relation. He wanted to pierce the obscurity of those minute processes which prepare human misery and joy, those invisible thoroughfares which are the first lurking places of anguish, mania and crime, that delicate poise and transition which determine the growth of happy or unhappy consciousness. As he threw down his book, stretched his legs towards the embers in the grate and clasped his hands at the back of his head in that agreeable afterglow of excitement when thought lapses from examination of a specific object into a suffusive sense of its connections with all the rest of our existence. Seems as it were to throw itself on its back after vigorous swimming and float with the repose of unexhausted strength. Lidgate felt a triumphant delight in his studies and something like pity for those less lucky men who were not of his profession. If I had not taken that turn when I was a lad, he thought, I might have gone into some stupid, draught horse work or other and lived always in blinkers. I should never have been happy in any profession that did not call forth the highest intellectual strain and yet keep me in good warm contact with my neighbors. There is nothing like the medical profession for that. One can have the exclusive scientific life that touches the distance and befriend the old foggies in the parish too. It is rather harder for a clergyman. Fair brother seems to be an anomaly. This last thought brought back the wincies and all the pictures of the evening. They floated in his mind agreeably enough and as he took up his bed candle, his lips were curled with that incipient smile which is apt to accompany agreeable recollections. He was an ardent fellow, but at present his ardor was absorbed in love of his work and in the ambition of making his life recognized as a factor in the better life of mankind like other heroes of science who had nothing but an obscure country practice to begin with. Poor Litgate or shall I say poor Rosamund. Each lived in a world of which the other knew nothing. It had not occurred to Litgate that he had been a subject of eager meditation to Rosamund who had neither any reason for throwing her marriage into distant perspective nor any pathological studies to divert her mind from that ruminating habit that inward repetition of looks, words and phrases which makes a large part in the lives of most girls. He had not meant to look at her or speak to her with more than the inevitable amount of admiration and compliment which a man must give to a beautiful girl. Indeed, it seemed to him that his enjoyment of her music had remained almost silent for he feared falling into the rudeness of telling her his great surprise at her possession of such accomplishment. But Rosamund had registered every look and word and estimated them as the opening incidents of a preconceived romance. Incidents which gather value from the foreseen development and climax. In Rosamund's romance, it was not necessary to imagine much about the inward life of the hero or of a serious business in the world. Of course he had a profession and was clever as well as sufficiently handsome but the frequent fact about Lidgate was his good birth which distinguished him from all middle-march admirers and presented marriage as a prospect of rising in rank and getting a little nearer to that celestial condition on earth in which she would have nothing to do with vulgar people. And perhaps at last associate with relatives quite equal to the country people who looked down on the middle-marchers. It was part of Rosamund's cleverness to discern very subtly the faintest aroma of rank and once when she had been the Miss Brooks accompanying their uncle at the country as sizes and seated among the aristocracy, she had envied them notwithstanding their plain dress. If you think it incredible that to imagine Lidgate as a man of family could cause thrills of satisfaction which had anything to do with the sense that she was in love with him, I will ask you to use your power of comparison a little more effectively and consider whether red cloth and epaulets have never had an influence of that sort. Our passions do not live apart in locked chambers but dressed in their small wardrobe of notions bring their provisions to a common table and mess together. Feeding out of the common store according to their appetite. Rosamund in fact was entirely occupied not exactly with dirtiest Lidgate as he was in himself but with his relation to her and it was excusable in a girl who was accustomed to hear that all young men might could would be or actually were in love with her to believe at once that Lidgate could be no exception. His looks and words meant more to her than other men's because she cared more for them. She thought of them diligently and diligently attended to that perfection of appearance, behavior, sentiments and all other elegances which would find in Lidgate a more adequate admirer than she had yet been conscious of. For Rosamund though she would never do anything that was disagreeable to her was industrious and now more than ever she was active in sketching her landscapes and market cards and portraits of friends in practicing her music and in being from morning till night her own standard of a perfect lady having always an audience in her own consciousness with sometimes the not unwelcome edition of a more variable external audience in the numerous visitors of the house. She found time also to read the best novels and even the second best and she knew much poetry by heart. Her favorite poem was La La Rook the best girl in the world. He will be a happy fellow who gets her was a sentiment of the elderly gentleman who visited the Vinces and the rejected young men thought of trying again as is the fashion in country towns where the horizon is not thick with coming rivals. But Mrs. Blimdale thought that Rosamund had been educated to a ridiculous pitch for what was the use of accomplishment which would be all laid aside as soon as she was married while her aunt, Bilstrode who had a sisterly faithfulness towards her brother's family had two sincere wishes for Rosamund that she might show a more serious turn of mind and that she might meet with a husband whose wealth corresponded to her habits. End of Chapter 16 Recording by Red Abriss January 2008 Chapter 17 of Middle March This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information on to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Red Abriss Middle March by George Elliott Chapter 17 The clerkly person smiled and said promise was a pretty maid but being poor she died unwed. The reverent Camden Fairbrother whom Lidgate went to see the next evening lived in an old personage built of stone, venerable enough to match the church which it looked out upon. All the furniture too in the house was old but with another grade of age that of Mr. Fairbrother's father and grandfather. There were painted white chairs with gilding and reeds on them and some lingering red silk damask with slits in it. There were engraved portraits of Lord Chancellor's and other celebrated lawyers of the last century and there were old pure glasses to reflect them. As well as the little satin wood tables and the sofas resembling a prolongation of uneasy chairs all standing in relief against the dark windscot. This was the physiognomy of the drawing room into which Lidgate was shown and there were three ladies to receive him who were also old fashioned and of a faded but genuine respectability. Mrs. Fairbrother, the vicar's white haired mother be frilled and kerchived with dainty cleanliness upright, quick-eyed and still under 70. Ms. Noble, her sister a tiny old lady of meeker aspect with frills and kerchief decidedly more worn and mended and miss Winifred Fairbrother, the vicar's elder sister well-looking like himself but nipped and subdued as single women are apt to be who spend their lives in uninterrupted subjection to their elders. Lidgate had not expected to see so quaint a group knowing simply that Mr. Fairbrother was a bachelor he had thought of being ushered into a snuggery where the chief furniture would probably be books and collections of natural objects. The vicar himself seemed to wear rather a changed aspect as most men do when acquaintances made elsewhere see them for the first time in their own homes. Some indeed showing like an actor of genuine parts disadvantageously cast for the curmudgeon in a new piece. This was not the case with Mr. Fairbrother. He seemed a trifle, milder and more silent the chief talker being his mother while he only put in a good-humored moderating remark here and there. The old lady was evidently accustomed to tell her company what they ought to think and to regard no subject as quite safe without her steering. She was afforded lizard for this function by having all her little wants attended to by miss Winifred. Meanwhile, tiny miss Noble carried on her arm a small basket into which she diverted a bit of sugar which she had first dropped in her saucer as if by mistake looking round furtively afterwards and reverting to her teak up with a small innocent noise as of a teeny timid quadrupet. Pray think no ill of miss Noble. That basket held small savings from her more portable food destined for the children of her poor friends among whom she trotted on fine mornings fostering and petting all needy creatures being so spontaneous a delight to her that she regarded it much as if it had been a pleasant vice that she was addicted to. Perhaps she was conscious of being tempted to steal from those who had much that she might give to those who had nothing and carried in her conscience the guilt of that repressed desire. One must be poor to know the luxury of giving. Mrs. Fairbrother welcomed the guest with a lively formality and precision. She presently informed him that they were not often in want of medical aid in that house. She had brought up her children to wear flannel and not to overeat themselves which last habit she considered the chief reason why people needed doctors. Lidgate pleaded for those whose fathers and mothers had overeaten themselves. But Mrs. Fairbrother held that view of things dangerous. Nature was more just than that. It would be easy for any felon to say that his ancestors ought to have been hanged instead of him. If those he had bad fathers and mothers were bad themselves, they were hanged for that. There was no need to go back on what you couldn't see. My mother is like old George III, said the vicar. She objects to metaphysics. I object to what is wrong, Camden. I say, keep hold of a few plain truths and make everything square with them. When I was young, Mr. Lidgate, there never was any question about right and wrong. We knew our catechism and that was enough. We learned our creed and our duty. Every respectable church person had the same opinions. But now, if you speak out of the prayer book itself, you are liable to be contradicted. That makes rather a pleasant time of it for those who like to maintain their own point, said Lidgate. But my mother always gives way, said the vicar, slyly. No, no, Camden. You must not lead Mr. Lidgate into a mistake about me. I shall never show that disrespect to my parents to give up what they taught me. Anyone may see what comes of turning. If you change once, why not 20 times? A man might see good arguments for changing once and not see them for changing again, said Lidgate. I'm used with the decisive old lady. Excuse me there. If you go up on arguments, they are never wanting when a man has no constancy of mind. My father never changed and he preached plain moral sermons without arguments and was a good man. Few better. When you get me a good man made out of arguments, I will get you a good dinner with reading you the cookery book. That's my opinion. And I think anybody's stomach will be a me out. About the dinner, certainly, mother, said Mr. Fairbrother. It is the same thing, the dinner or the man. I'm nearly 70, Mr. Lidgate, and I go upon experience. I'm not likely to follow new lights, though there are plenty of them here as elsewhere. I say they came in with the mixed stuffs that will neither wash nor wear. I was not so in my youth. A church man was a church man, and a clergyman, you might be pretty sure, was a gentleman, if nothing else. But now he may be no better than a dissenter and want to push aside my son on pretense of doctrine. But whoever may wish to push him aside, I am proud to say, Mr. Lidgate, that he will compare with any preacher in this kingdom not to speak of this town, which is but a low standard to go by, at least to my thinking, for I was born and bred at Exeter. A mother is never partial, said Mr. Fairbrother, smiling. What do you think, Tyke's mother says about him? Ah, poor creature. What indeed, said Mrs. Fairbrother, her sharpness blunted for the moment by her confidence in maternal judgments. She says the truth to herself, depend upon it. And what is the truth, said Lidgate. I'm curious to know. Oh, nothing bad at all, said Mr. Fairbrother. He's a zealous fellow, not very learned and not very wise. I think because I don't agree with him. Why, Camden, said Miss Winifred. Griffin and his wife told me only today that Mr. Tyke said they should have no more calls if they came to hear you preach. Mrs. Fairbrother laid down her knitting, which she had resumed after her small allowance of tea and toast, and looked at her son as if to say, you hear that? Miss Noble said, oh, poor things, poor things in reference, probably to the double loss of preaching and cold. But the vicar answered quietly, that is because they are not my parishioners and I don't think my sermons are worth a load of coals to them. Mr. Lidgate said, Mrs. Fairbrother, who could not let this pass, you don't know my son. He always undervalues himself. I tell him he is undervaluing the God who made him and made him a most excellent preacher. That must be a hint for me to take Mr. Lidgate away to my study mother, said the vicar, laughing. I promised to show you my collection, he added, turning to Lidgate, shall we go? All three ladies remonstrated. Mr. Lidgate ought not to be hurried away without being allowed to accept another cup of tea. Miss Winifred had abundance of good tea in the pot. Why was Camden in such a haste to take a visitor to his den? There was nothing but pickled vermin and drawers full of blue bottles and moths with no carpet on the floor. Mr. Lidgate must excuse it. A game at Cribbage would be far better. In short, it was plain that a vicar might be adored by his womankind as the king of men and preachers and yet be held by them to stand in much need of their direction. Lidgate with the usual shallowness of a young bachelor wondered that Mr. Fairbrother had not taught them better. My mother is not used to my having visitors who can take any interest in my hobbies, said the vicar, as he opened the door of his study, which was indeed as bare of luxuries for the body as the ladies had implied, unless a short porcelain pipe and a tobacco box were to be accepted. Men of your profession don't generally smoke, he said, Lidgate smiled and shook his head. Nor of mine either, properly I suppose. You will hear that pipe allaged against me by Bulls Road and Company. They don't know how pleased the devil would be if I gave it up. I understand. You are of an excitable temper and want a sedative. I am heavier and should get idle with it. I should rush into idleness and stagnate there with all my might. And you mean to give it all to your work. I am some 10 or 12 years older than you and have come to a compromise. I feed a weakness or two, lest they should get clamorous. See, continued the vicar, opening several small drawers. I fancy I have made an exhaustive study of the entomology of this district. I am going on both with the fauna and the flora, but I have at least done my insects well. We are singularly rich in orthoptera. I don't know whether, ah, you have got hold of that glass jar. You are looking into that instead of my drawers. You don't really care about these things, not by the side of this lovely and encephalous monster. I have never had time to give myself much to natural history. I was early bitten with an interest in structure and it is what lies most directly in my profession. I have no hobby besides, I have the sea to swim in there. Ah, you are a happy fellow, said Mr. Fairbrother, turning on his heel and beginning to fill his pipe. You don't know what it is to want spiritual tobacco, bad emendations of old texts or small items about a variety of aphis brassi key. With the well-known signature of Philo-micron for the Twadler's magazine, or a learned tritsey on the entomology of the Pentateuch, including all the insects not mentioned, but probably met with by the Israelites in their passage through the desert, with a monograph on the ant as treated by Solomon, showing the harmony of the book of Proverbs with the results of modern research. You don't mind my fumigating you? Didgit was more surprised at the openness of the stock than at its implied meaning, that the vicar felt himself not altogether in the right vocation. The neat fitting up of drawers and shelves and the bookcase filled with the expensive illustrated books on natural history made him think again of the winnings at cards and their destination. But he was beginning to wish that the very best construction of everything that Mr. Fairbrother did should be the true one. The vicar's frankness seemed not of the repulsive sort that comes from an uneasy consciousness seeking to forestall the judgment of others, but simply the relief of a desire to do with as little pretense as possible. Apparently he was not without a sense that his freedom of speech might seem premature, for he presently said, I have not yet told you that I have the advantage of you, Mr. Litgit, and know you better than you know me. You remember Trolley who shared your apartment at Paris for some time? I was a correspondent of his, and he told me a good deal about you. I was not quite sure when you first came that you were the same man. I was very glad when I found that you were. Only I don't forget that you have not had the like prologue about me. Litgit divined some delicacy of feeling here but did not half understand it. By the way, he said, what has become of Trolley? I have quite lost sight of him. He was hot on the French social systems and talked of going to the backwoods to found a sort of Pythagorean community. Is he gone? Not at all. He is practicing at a German bath and has married a rich patient. Then my notions were the best so far, said Litgit, with a short scornful laugh. He would have it. The medical profession was an inevitable system of humbug. I said the fault was in the men, men who truckled to lies and folly. Instead of preaching against humbug outside the walls, it might be better to set up a disinfecting apparatus 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 formed the society around you. You see, I have paid 12 or 13 years more than you for my knowledge of difficulties. But Mr. Fairbrother broke off a moment and then added, you are eyeing the glass bus 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 docked 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 middle-march. 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 Litgate, moving to Mr. Fairbrother'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 yokefellows bully. But do look at these delicate orthoptera. Litgate had, after all, to give some scrutiny to each drawer, the vicar laughing at himself and yet persisting in the exhibition. At purpose of what you said about wearing harness, Litgate began, after they had sat down, I made up my mind sometime 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 big wiggism. An obstructive trickery. In the country, people have less pretension to knowledge and are less of companions. But for that reason, they affect one's amorpropria less. One makes less bad blood and one 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 Litgate, conceiving that these might press rather tightly on Mr. Fairbrother. 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 guards? I think they were not Peacock's patients. No, but there is a Miss Garth at Old Featherstones at Lovik, 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 Litgate. He could hardly say of course. Oh, she gouges everybody. I prepared her for confirmation. She is a favorite of mine. Mr. Fairbrother puffed a few moments in silence. Litgate not caring to know more about the guards. At last the vicar laid down his pipe, stretched out his legs, and turned his bright eyes with a smile towards Litgate, saying, but we middle marchers are not so tame as you take us to be. We have our intrigues and our parties. I'm a party man, for example, and Bull's Road is another. If you vote for me, you will offend Bull's Road. What is there against Bull's Road? Said Litgate, 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 Litgate, 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 Walter 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. Fairbrother, quite unaffectedly. I don't translate my own convenience into other people's duties. I'm opposed to Bullshroed 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 click-pacing. 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 Bullshroed'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's only returning a compliment. And I'm not a model clergyman, only a decent makeshift. Litgate 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 Bullshroed 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 40 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. End of chapter 17, recording by Red Abrace, January, 2008. Chapter 18 of Middle March. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Red Abrace, Middle March by George Elliott. Chapter 18. Oh, sir, the loftiest hopes on earth draw lots with meaner hopes, heroic breasts. Breathing bad air ran risk of pestilence or lacking lime juice when they crossed the line, may languish with the scurvy. Some weeks passed after this conversation before the question of the chaplaincy gathered any practical import for Lidgate. 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 Taik without any hesitation, if he had not cared personally for Mr. Fairbrother. But his liking for the vicar of Saint Bouddalf's grew with growing acquaintances. That entering into Lidgate's position as a newcomer who had his own professional objects to secure, Mr. Fairbrother should have taken pains rather to warn off than to obtain his interest, showed an unusual delicacy and generosity which Lidgate's nature was keenly alive to. It went along with other points of conduct in Mr. Fairbrother, which were exceptionally fine and made his character resemble those southern landscapes which seemed 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. Litgate liked him hurtily 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. Litgate at Mr. Bullstrode'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 Litgate as a co-adjutor but made no special recurrence to the coming decision between Tike and Fairbrother. When the general board of the infirmary had met, however, and Litgate had noticed 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 middle-march business. He could not help hearing within him the distinct declaration that Bullstrode was prime minister and that the Tike 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. Fairbrother'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. Fairbrother. 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 Ledgate'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. Fairbrother contended on theory for the desirability of all games and said that Englishman's wit was stagnant for want of them, but Ledgate felt certain that he would have played very much less but for money. There was a billiard room at the Green Dragon, which some anxious mothers and wives regarded as a chief temptation in middle-march. 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 40 pounds. Ledgate 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 thoroughly hateful to him. Hitherto in his own life, his wants had been supplied without any trouble to himself, and his first impulse was always to be liberal with half-crowns as matters of no importance to a gentleman. It had never occurred to him to devise a plan for getting half-crowns. He had always known in a general way that he was not rich, but he had never felt poor, and he had no power of imagining the part which the want of money plays in determining the actions of men. Money had never been a motive to him, hence he was not ready to frame excuses for this deliberate pursuit of small gains. It was altogether repulsive to him, and he never entered into any calculation of the ratio between the vicar's income and his more or less necessary expenditure. It was possible that he would not have made such a calculation in his own case. And now, when the question of voting had come, this repulsive fact told more strongly against Mr. Fairbrother than it had done before. One would know much better what to do if men's characters were more consistent, and especially if one's friends were invariably fit for any function they desired to undertake. Lidgate was convinced that if there had been no valid objection to Mr. Fairbrother, he would have voted for him. Whatever bulls-road might have felt on the subject. He did not intend to be a vassal of bulls-roads. On the other hand, there was Tyke, a man entirely given to his clerical office, who was simply curate at a chapel of ease in St. Peter's parish and had time for extra duty. Nobody had anything to say against Mr. Tyke, except that they could not fear him, and suspected him of Kant. Really, from his point of view, bulls-road was thoroughly justified. But whichever way Lidgate began to incline, there was something to make him wins, and being a proud man, he was a little exasperated at being obliged to wins. He did not like frustrating his own best purposes by getting on bad terms with bulls-road. He did not like voting against Fairbrother, and helping to deprive him of function and salary, and the question occurred whether the additional 40 pounds might not leave the vicar free from the ignoble care about winning at cards. Moreover, Lidgate did not like the consciousness that in voting for Tyke, he should be voting on the side, obviously convenient for himself. But would the end really be his own convenience? Other people would say so, and would allege that he was cutting favor with bulls-road for the sake of making himself important and getting on in the world. What then? He, for his own part, knew that if his personal prospects simply had been concerned, he would not have cared a rotten nut for the banker's friendship or enmity. What he really cared for was a medium for his work, a vehicle for his ideas, and after all, was he not bound to prefer the object of getting a good hospital, where he could demonstrate the specific distinctions of fever and test therapeutic results before anything else connected with this chaplaincy? For the first time, Lidgate was feeling the hampering thread-like pressure of small social conditions, and their frustrating complexity. At the end of his inward debate, when he set out for the hospital, his hope was really in the chance that discussion might somehow give a new aspect to the question and make the scale dip so as to exclude the necessity for voting. I think he trusted a little also to the energy which is begotten by circumstances, some feeling rushing warmly and making resolve easy. While debate in cool blood had only made it more difficult, however, it was he did not distinctly say to himself on which side he would vote, and all the while he was inwardly resenting the subjection which had been forced upon him. It would have seemed beforehand like a ridiculous piece of bad logic that he, with his unmixed resolutions of independence and his select purposes, would find himself at the very outset in the grasp of petty alternatives, each of which was repugnant to him. In his students' chambers, he had pre-arranged his social action quite differently. Litgate was late in setting out, but Dr. Sprague, the two other surgeons, and several of the directors had arrived early. Mr. Bulls told treasurer and chairman being among those who were still absent. The conversation seemed to imply that the issue was problematical and that a majority for Tyke was not so certain as had been generally supposed. The two physicians, for a wonder, turned out to be unanimous or rather, though of different minds, they concurred in action. Dr. Sprague, the rugged and weighty was, as everyone had foreseen, an adherent of Mr. Fairbrother. The doctor was more than suspected of having no religion, but somehow Middlemarch tolerated his deficiency in him as if he had been a law chancellor. Indeed, it is probable that his professional weight was the more believed in, the world-old association of cleverness with the evil principle being still potent in the minds, even of lady patients who had the strictest ideas of thrilling and sentiment. It was perhaps this negation in the doctor which made his neighbors call him hard-headed and dry-witted. Conditions of texture which were also held favorable to the storing of judgments connected with drugs. At all events, it is certain that if any medical man had come to Middlemarch with the reputation of having very definite religious views of being given to prayer and of otherwise showing an active pity, there would have been a general presumption against his medical skill. On this ground, it was, professionally speaking, fortunate for Dr. Minchin that his religious sympathies were of a general kind and such as gave a distant medical sanction to all serious sentiment, whether of church or dissent, rather than any adhesion to particular tenets. If Mr. Bullsroad insisted, as he was apt to do, on the Lutheran doctrine of justification as that by which a church must stand or fall, Dr. Minchin in return was quite sure that man was not a mere machine or a fortuitous conjunction of atoms. If Mrs. Wimple insisted on a particular providence in relation to her stomach complaint, Dr. Minchin, for his part, liked to keep the mental windows open and objected to fixed limits. If the Unitarian Brewer gested about the Athanasian creed, Dr. Minchin quoted Pope's essay on man, he objected to the rather free style of anecdote in which Dr. Sprague indulged, preferring well-sanctioned quotations and liking refinement of all kinds. It was generally known that he had some kinship to a bishop and sometimes spent his holidays at the palace. Dr. Minchin was soft-handed, pale-complexioned and of rounded outline, not to be distinguished from a mild clergyman in appearance. Whereas Dr. Sprague was superfluously tall, his trousers got creased at the knees and showed an excess of boot at a time when straps seemed necessary to any dignity of bearing. You heard him go in and out and up and down as if he had come to sea after the roofing. In short, he had weight and might be expected to grapple with a disease and throw it, while Dr. Minchin might be better able to detect it lurking and to circumvent it. They enjoyed about equally the mysterious privilege of medical reputation and concealed with much etiquette their contempt for each other's skill. Regarding themselves as middle-march institutions, they were ready to combine against all innovators and against non-professionals given to interference. On this ground, they were both in their hearts equally averse to Mr. Bulls Road, though Dr. Minchin had never been in open hostility with him and never deferred from him without elaborate explanation to Mrs. Bulls Road, who had found that Dr. Minchin alone understood her constitution. A layman who pried into the professional conduct of medical men and was always obtruding his reforms, though he was less directly embarrassing to the two physicians than to the surgeon apothecaries who attended poppers by contract, was nevertheless offensive to the professional nostril as such. And Dr. Minchin shared fully in the new peak against Bulls Road, excited by his apparent determination to patronize Lidgate. The long-established practitioners, Mr. Wrench and Mr. Taller, were just now standing apart and having a friendly colloquy, in which they agreed that Lidgate was a jack-o'-nips, just made to serve Bulls Road's purpose. To non-medical friends, they had already concurred in praising the other young practitioner who had come into the town on Mr. Peacock's retirement without further recommendation than his own merits and such argument for solid professional acquirement, as might be gathered from his having apparently wasted no time on other branches of knowledge. It was clear that Lidgate, by not dispensing drugs, intended to cast imputations on his equals and also to obscure the limit between his own rank as a general practitioner and that of the physicians who, in the interest of the profession, felt bound to maintain its various grades, especially against a man who had not been to either of the English universities and enjoyed the absence of anatomical and bedside study there, but came with a liberous pretension to experience in Edinburgh and Paris, where observation might be abundant indeed, but hardly sound. Thus it happened that on this occasion, Bulls Road became identified with Lidgate and Lidgate with Dyke and owing to this variety of interchangeable names for the chaplaincy question, diverse minds were enabled to form the same judgment concerning it. Dr. Sprague said at once bluntly to the group assembled when he entered, I go for fair brother, a salary with all my heart, but why take it from the vicar? He has none too much, has to ensure his life besides keeping house and doing a vicar's charities, put 40 pounds in his pocket and you will do no harm. He is a good fellow, his fair brother, with as little of the parson about him as will serve to carry orders. Ho, ho, doctor said old Mr. Powderl, a retired iron monger of some standing, his interjection being something between a laugh and a parliamentary disapproval. We must let you have your say, but what we have to consider is not anybody's income, it is the souls of the poor sick people. Here Mr. Powderl's voice and face had a sincere pathos in them. He is a real costful preacher, is Mr. Dyke. I should vote against my conscience if I voted against Mr. Dyke, I should indeed. Mr. Dyke's opponents have not asked anyone to vote against his conscience, I believe, said Mr. Hackbutt, a rich tanner of fluent speech whose glittering spectacles and erect hair were turned with some severity towards innocent Mr. Powderl, but in my judgment it behoves us as directors to consider whether we will regard it as our whole business to carry out propositions emanating from a single quarter. Will any member of the committee aver that he would have entertained the idea of displacing the gentleman who has always discharged the function of chaplain here? If it had not been suggested to him by parties whose disposition it is to regard every institution of this room as a machinery for carrying out their own views, I tax no man's motives, let them lie between himself and a higher power, but I do say that there are influences at work here which are incompatible with genuine independence. And that a crawling servility is usually dictated by circumstances which gentlemen so conducting themselves could not afford either morally or financially to avoid. I myself am a layman, but I have given no inconsiderable attention to the divisions in the church and, oh, damn the divisions. Burst in Mr. Frank Holly, lawyer and town clerk who rarely presented himself at the board, but now looked in hurriedly whip in hand. We have nothing to do with them here. Fair Brother has been doing the work what there was without pay, and if pay is to be given, it should be given to him. I call it a confounded job to take the thing away from Fair Brother. I think it would be as well for gentlemen not to give their remarks a personal bearing, said Mr. Plimdale. I shall vote for the appointment of Mr. Dike, but I should not have known if Mr. Hackbert hadn't hinted it that I was a servile crawler. I disclaim any personalities. I expressly said if I may be allowed to repeat or even to conclude what I was about to say. Ah, here is mentioned, said Mr. Frank Holly, at which everybody turned away from Mr. Hackbert, leaving him to feel the uselessness of superior gifts in middle march. Come, doctor, I must have you on the right side, eh? I hope so, said Dr. Minchin, nodding and shaking hands here and there, at whatever cost to my feelings. If there's any feeling here, it should be feeling for the man who is turned out, I think, said Mr. Frank Holly. I confess I have feelings on the other side also. I have a divided esteem, said Dr. Minchin, rubbing his hands. I consider Mr. Dike an exemplary man, none more so, and I believe him to be proposed from unimpeachable motives. I, for my part, wish that I could give him my vote, but I am constrained to take a view of the case which gives the preponderance to Mr. Fairbrothers' claims. He is an amiable man, an able preacher, and has been longer among us. Old Mr. Powderill looked on, sad and silent. Mr. Plimdale settled his cravat uneasily. You don't set up Fairbrother as a pattern of what a clergyman ought to be, I hope, said Mr. Larcher, the eminent carrier who had just come in. I have no ill will towards him, but I think we owe something to the public, not to speak of anything higher in these appointments. In my opinion, Fairbrother is too lax for a clergyman. I don't wish to bring up particulars against him, but he will make a little attendance here, go as far as he can. And a devilish deal better than too much, said Mr. Holly, whose bad language was notorious in that part of the county. Sick people can't bear so much praying and preaching, and that methodistical sort of religion is bad for the spirits, bad for the inside air, he added, turning quickly round to the four medical men who were assembled. But any answer was dispensed with by the entrance of three gentlemen with whom there were greetings more or less cordial. These were the reverend Edward Thiseager, rector of St. Peter's, Mr. Bulstrode, and our friend, Mr. Brook, of Tipton, who had lately allowed himself to be put on the board of directors in his turn, but had never before attended. His attendance now being due to Mr. Bulstrode's exertions. Litgate was the only person still expected. Everyone now sat down, Mr. Bulstrode presiding, pale and self-restrained as usual. Mr. Thiseager, a moderate evangelical, wished for the appointment of his friend, Mr. Tyke, a zealous, able man, who, officiating at the Chapel of Ease, had not a cure of souls too extensive to leave him ample time for the new duty. It was desirable that the chaplaincies of this kind should be entered on with a fervent intention. There were particular opportunities for spiritual influence, and while it was good that a salary should be allotted, there was the more need for scrupulous watching lest the office should be perverted into a mere question of salary. Mr. Thiseager's manner had so much quiet propriety that objectors could only simmer in silence. Mr. Brook believed that everybody meant well in the matter. He had not himself attended to the affairs of the infirmary, though he had a strong interest in whatever was for the benefit of Middlemarch, and was most happy to meet the gentleman present on any public question. Any public question, you know, Mr. Brook repeated, with his nod of perfect understanding. I'm a good deal occupied as a magistrate, and in the collection of documentary evidence, but I regard my time as being at the disposal of the public, and in short, my friends have convinced me that a chaplain with a salary, a salary, you know, is a very good thing, and I'm happy to be able to come here and vote for the appointment of Mr. Thike, who I understand is an unexceptionable man, apostolic and eloquent and everything of that kind. And I am the last man to withhold my vote. Under the circumstances, you know, it seems to me that you have been crammed with one side of the question, Mr. Brook, said Mr. Frank Hawley, who was afraid of nobody and was a Tory suspicious of electioneering intentions. You don't seem to know that one of the worthiest men we have has been doing duty as a chaplain here for years without pay, and that Mr. Thike is proposed to supersede him. Excuse me, Mr. Hawley, said Mr. Bullsroad. Mr. Brook has been fully informed of Mr. Fairbrothers character and position. By his enemies, flashed out Mr. Hawley. I trust there is no personal hostility concerned here, said Mr. Thisegar. I will swear there is, though, retarded Mr. Hawley. Gentlemen, said Mr. Bullsroad, in a subdued tone. The merits of the question may be very briefly stated, and if anyone present doubts that every gentleman who is about to give his vote has not been fully informed, I can now recapitulate the considerations that should weigh on either side. I don't see the good of that, said Mr. Hawley. I suppose we all know whom we mean to vote for. Any man who wants to do justice does not wait till the last minute to hear both sides of the question. I have no time to lose, and I propose that the matter be put to the vote at once. A brief but still hot discussion followed before each person wrote, Tyke or Fairbrother on a piece of paper and slipped it into a glass tumbler, and in the meantime, Mr. Bullsroad saw Lidgate enter. I perceive that the votes are equally divided at present, said Mr. Bullsroad, in a clear biting voice, then looking up at Lidgate. There is a casting vote still to be given. It is yours, Mr. Lidgate. Will you be good enough to write? The thing is settled now, said Mr. Wrench, rising. We all know how Mr. Lidgate will vote. You seem to speak with some peculiar meaning, sir, said Lidgate, rather defiantly and keeping his pencil suspended. I merely mean that you are expected to vote with Mr. Bullsroad. Do you regard that meaning as offensive? It may be offensive to others, but I shall not desist from voting with him on that account. Lidgate immediately wrote down Tyke. So the reverent Walter Tyke became chaplain to the infirmary and Lidgate continued to work with Mr. Bullsroad. He was really uncertain where the Tyke were not the most suitable candidate, and yet his consciousness told him that if he had been quite free from indirect bias, he should have voted for Mr. Fairbrother. The affair of the chaplaincy remained a sore point in his memory as a case in which this petty medium of Middlemarch had been too strong for him. How could a man be satisfied with a decision between such alternatives and under such circumstances? No more than he can be satisfied with his hat, which he has chosen from among such shapes as the resources of the age offer him, wearing it at best with the resignation which is chiefly supported by comparison. But Mr. Fairbrother met him with the same friendliness as before. The character of the publican and sinner is not always practically incompatible with that of the modern Pharisee. For the majority of us scarcely see more distinctly the faultiness of our own conduct than the faultiness of our own arguments or the dullness of our own jokes. But the vicar of St. Potols had certainly escaped the slightest tincture of the Pharisee, and by dint of admitting to himself that he was too much as other men were, he had become remarkably unlike them in this. That he could excuse others for thinking slightly of him and could judge impartially of their conduct even when it told against him. The wall has been too strong for me, I know. He said one day to Lidgate, but then I am not a mighty man. I shall never be a man of renown. The choice of Hercules is a pretty fable, but Prodicus makes it easy work for the hero as if the first results were enough. Another story says that he came to hold the dyestaff and at last wore the niches shirt. I suppose one good resolve might keep a man right if everybody else's resolve helped him. The vicar's talk was not always inspiring. He had escaped being a Pharisee, but he had not escaped that low estimate of possibilities which we rather hastily arrive at as an inference from our own failure. Lidgate thought that there was a pitiable infirmity of will in Mr. Fairbrother. End of chapter 18. Recording by Red Abrace, January 2008. Chapter 19 of Middlemarch. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Red Abrace, Middlemarch by George Elliot, chapter 19. El ultra vedete chaha fato alla guancia. Dela sua palma sospirando leto. For Gatoria, seven. When George IV was still reigning over the privacies of Windsor, when the Duke of Wellington was prime minister and Mr. Winsey was mayor of the old corporation in Middlemarch, Mrs. Casua-Born, born Dorothea Brooke had taken her wedding journey to Rome. In those days, the world in general was more ignorant of good and evil by 40 years than it is at present. Travelers did not often carry full information on Christian art either in their heads or their pockets. And even the most brilliant English critic of the day mistook the flower-flushed tomb of the ascended virgin for an ornamental vase due to the painter's fancy. Romanticism, which has helped to fill some dull blanks with love and knowledge, had not yet penetrated the times with its leaven and entered into everybody's food. It was fermenting still as a distinguishable vigorous enthusiasm in certain long-haired German artists at Rome and the youth of other nations who worked or idled near them were sometimes caught in the spreading movement. One fine morning, a young man whose hair was not immoderately long but abundant and curly and who was otherwise English in his equipment had just turned his back on the Belvedere torso in the Vatican and was looking out on the magnificent view of the mountains from the adjoining round vestibule. He was sufficiently absorbed not to notice the approach of a dark-eyed, animated German who came up to him and placing a hand on his shoulder, said with a strong accent, Come here, quick. Else she will have changed her pose. Quickness was ready at the call and the two figures passed lightly along by the milleagre towards the hall where the reclining Ariadne then called the Cleopatra lies in the marble voluptuousness of her beauty, the drapery folding around her with a petal-like ease and tenderness. They were just in time to see another figure standing against a pedestal near the reclining marble. A breathing, blooming girl whose form, not shamed by the Ariadne, was clad in a quakerish gray drapery. Her long cloak, fastened at the neck, was thrown backward from her arms and one beautiful, ungloved hand pillowed her cheek, pushing somewhat backward the white beaver bonnet which made a sort of halo to her face around the simply braided dark brown hair. She was not looking at the sculpture, probably not thinking of it. Her large eyes were fixed dreamily on a streak of sunlight which fell across the floor but she became conscious of the two strangers who suddenly passed as if to contemplate the Cleopatra and without looking at them, immediately turned away to join a maid servant and courier who were loitering along the hall at little distance off. What do you think of that for a fine bit of antithesis? Said the German, searching in his friend's face for responding admiration but going on volubly without waiting for any other answer. There lies antique beauty, not corpse-like even in the death but arrested in the complete contentment of its sensuous perfection and here stands beauty in its breathing life with the consciousness of Christian centuries in its bosom. But she would be dressed as a nun. I think she looks almost what you call a quaker. I would dress her as a nun in my picture. However, she is married. I saw her wedding ring on that wonderful left hand. Otherwise I should have thought the sallow, gazed, leisure was her father. I saw him parting from her a good while ago and just now I found her in that magnificent pose. Only think he is perhaps rich and would like to have her portrait taken. Ah, it's no use looking after her. There she goes. Let us follow her home. No, no, said his companion with a little frown. You are singular, Larislaw. You look struck together. Do you know her? I know that she is married to my cousin, said Will Larislaw, sauntering down the hall with a preoccupied air while his German friend kept at his side and watched him eagerly. What? The case-slicer? He looks more like an uncle, a more useful sort of relation. He is not my uncle. I tell you he is my second cousin, said Larislaw, with some irritation. Scorn, scorn, don't be snappish. You are not angry with me for thinking Mrs. Second cousin, the most perfect young Madonna I ever saw. Angry? Nonsense. I've only seen her once before for a couple of minutes when my cousin introduced her to me just before I left England. They were not married then. I didn't know they were coming to Rome, but you will go to see them now. You will find out what they have for an address since you know the name. Shall we go to the post and you could speak about the portrait? Confound, you no-man. I don't know what I shall do. I'm not so brazen as you. Bah! That is because you are dilettante-ish and amateurish. If you were an artist, you would think of Mrs. Second cousin as antique form animated by Christian sentiment or sort of Christian antagon, sensuous force controlled by spiritual passion. Yes, and that your painting, her was a chief outcome of her existence. The divinity passing into higher completeness and all but exhausted in the act of covering your bit of canvas. I am amateurish, if you like. I do not think that all the universe is straining towards obscure significance of your pictures. But it is, my dear. So far as it is raining through me, a Dolph no-man that stands firm, said the good-natured painter, putting a hand on Ladislaw's shoulder and not in the least disturbed by the unaccountable touch of ill-humour in his stone. See now, my existence presupposes the existence of the whole universe. Does it not? And my function is to paint. And as a painter, I have a conception which is altogether genialish of your great aunt or second grandmother as a subject for a picture. Therefore, the universe is straining towards that picture through that particular hook or claw which it puts forth in the shape of me. Not true, but how if another claw in the shape of me is straining to thwart it? The case is a little less simple then, not at all. The result of the struggle is the same thing, picture or no picture, logically. Will could not resist this imperturbable temper and the cloud in his face broke into sunshiney laughter. Come now, my friend, you will help, said no-man, in a hopeful tone. No nonsense, no-man. English ladies are not at everybody's service as models. And you want to express too much with your painting. You would only have made a better or worse portrait with a background which every connoisseur would give a different reason for or against. And what is a portrait of a woman? Your painting and plastic are poor stuff after all. They perturb and dull conceptions instead of raising them. Language is a finer medium. Yes, for those who can't paint, said no-man. There, you have perfect right. I did not recommend you to paint, my friend. The amiable artist carried his thing, but latest law did not choose to up your tongue. He went on as if he had not heard. Language gives a fuller image, which is all the better for being vague. After all, the true seeing is within. And painting stares at you with an insistent imperfection. I feel that especially about representations of women, as if a woman were a mere colored superfaces. You must wait for movement and tone. There is a difference in their very breathing. They change from moment to moment. This woman whom you have just seen, for example, how would you paint her voice, Bray? But her voice is much diviner than anything you have seen of her. I see, I see, you are jealous. No man must presume to think that he can paint your ideal. This is serious, my friend. Your great aunt, Der Nefe Als Ankel, in a tragic sense, Ange Heuer. You and I shall quarrel now, man, if you call that lady my aunt again. How is she to be called then? Mrs. Kasaubon, good. Suppose I get acquainted with her in spite of you and find that she very much wishes to be painted. Yes, suppose, said Will Ladislaw in a contemptuous undertone, intended to dismiss the subject. He was conscious of being irritated by ridiculously small causes, which were half of his own creation. Why was he making any fuss about Mrs. Kasaubon? And yet he felt as if something had happened to him with regard to her. There are characters which are continually creating collisions and nodes for themselves in dramas which nobody is prepared to act with them. Their susceptibilities will clash against objects that remain innocently quiet. End of Chapter 19, Decoding by Red Abrass, January 2008.