Middlemarch ... New edition

Book I. Miss Brooke

.... 1 „ II. OLD AND YOUNG . . . .88 „ III. WAITING FOR DEATH . . .167 „ TV. THREE LOVE PROBLEMS . . .237 „ V. THE DEAD HAND . . . .318 „ VI. THE WIDOW AND THE WIFE - . .395 „ VII. TWO TEMPTATIONS . . .473 „ VIII. SUNSET AND SUNRISE . . .544 PRELUDE. Who that cares much to know the history of man, and how the mysterious mixture behaves under the varying experiments of Time, has not dwelt, at least briefly, on the Use of Saint Theresa, has not smtied with some gentleness at the thought of the little gdl walk ing forth one morning hand-to-hand with her stid smaUer brother, to go and seek martyrdom to the country of the Moors 1 Out they toddled from rugged Avila, wide-eyed and helpless-looking as two fawns, but with human hearts, adeady beating to a national idea ; until domestic reality met them in the shape of uncles, and turned them back from their great resolve.

That cMld-pdgrimage was a fit beginning. Theresa's passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic Use : what were many-volumed romances of chivady and the social con quests of a briUiant gdl to her 1 Her flame quickly burned up that Ught fuel ; and, fed from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction, some object which would never justify weariness, wMch would reconcile seU-despair with the rapturous consciousness of Use beyond self. She found her epos in the reform of a reUgious order. That Spanish woman who Uved three hundred years ago, was certainly not the last of her kind. Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far-resonant action ; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur til-matched with the meanness of opportuMty ; perhaps a tragic fadure wMch found no sacred poet and sank unwept toto obUvion.

With dim tights and tangled circumstance they tried to shape thed thought and deed in noble agreement ; but after all, to common eyes thed struggles seemed mere inconsistency and formlessness ; for these later-born Theresas were helped by no coherent social faith and order wMch could perform the PRELUDE. function of knowledge for the ardently willing soul. Thed ardour alternated between a vague ideal and the common yearning of woman hood ; so that the one was disapproved as extravagance, and the other condemned as a lapse. Some have felt that these blundering Uves are due to the incon vement indefiMteness with wMch the Supreme Power has fasMoned the natures of women : d there were one level of feminine incom petence as strict as the abidty to count tiiree and no more, the social lot of women might be treated with scientific certitude.

MeanwMle the indefiMteness remains, and the limits of variation are reaUy much wider than any one would imagine from the sameness of women's coiffure and the favourite love-stories to prose and verse. Here and there a cygnet is reared uneasily among the ducklings to the brown pond, and never finds the Uving stream in fellowsMp with its own oary-footed kind. Here and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing, whose loving heart-beats and sobs after an unattained goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances, instead of centering to some long-recogmsable deed. MIDDLEMARCH — ♦ —

BOOK I. MISS BROOKE.

Chapter I

" Since I can do no good because a woman. Reach constantly at something that is near it." — The Maid's Tragedy : Beaumont and Fletcher. Miss Brooke had that Mnd of beauty wMch seems to be ttoown into redes by poor dress. Her hand and wrist were so finely formed that she could wear sleeves not less bare of style than those to wMch the Blessed "Virgin appeared to Italian painters ; and her profile as well as her stature and bearing seemed to gain the more digMty from her plain garments, wMch by the side of provincial fasMon gave her the impressiveness of a fine quotation from the Bible, — or from one of our elder poets, — to a paragraph of to-day's newspaper. She was usuaUy spoken of as being remarkably clever, but with the addition that her sister Celia had more common-sense. Nevertheless, Celia wore scarcely more trimmings ; and it was only to close observers that her dress differed from her sister's, and had a shade of coquetry in its arrangements ; for Miss Brooke's plain dressing was due to mixed conditions, in most of wMch her sister shared.

The pride of being ladies had something to do with it : the Brooke connections, though not exactly aristocratic, were unquestionably " good : " d you inquded backward for a generation or two, you would not find any yard-measuring or parcel-tying forefathers — anything lower than an admiral or a clergyman ; and there was even an ancestor discermble as a Puritan gentleman who served under Cromwell, but afterwards conformed, and managed to come out of aU potitical troubles as the proprietor of a respectable family estate. Young women of such birth, living to a qMet country-house, and attending a viUage church hardly larger than a parlour, naturaUy regarded frippery as the ambi- A MIDDLEMARCH. tion of a huckster's daughter. Then there was weU-bred economy, wMch to those days made show to dress the first item to be deducted from, when any margin was requded for expenses more distinctive of rank.

Such reasons would have been enough to account for plain dress, qMte apart from reUgious feeUng ; but in Miss Brooke's case, retigion alone would have determined it ; and CeUa mildly acqmesced in ad her sister's sentiments, oMy infusing them with that common-sense wMch is able to accept momentous doctrines without any eccentric agitation. Dorothea knew many passages of Pascal's Pense'es and of Jeremy Taylor by heart ; and to her the destinies of manMnd, seen by the tight of ChristiaMty, made the soticitudes of feminine fasMon appear an occupation for Bedlam. She could not reconcde the anxieties of a spditual life involving eternal consequences, with a keen interest to guimp and artificial protrusions of drapery. Her mind was theoretic, and yearned by its nature after some lofty conception of the world which might frankly include the parish of Tipton and her own rule of conduct there ; she was enamoured of intensity and greatness, and rash to embracing whatever seemed to her to have those aspects ; likely to seek martyrdom, to make retractations, and then to incur martyrdom after aU in a quarter where she had not sought it.

Certainly such elements to the character of a marriageable gdl tended to interfere with her lot, and hinder it from being decided according to custom, by good looks, vamty, and merely canine affection. With all tMs, she, the elder of the sisters, was not yet twenty, and they had both been educated, since they were about twelve years old and had lost thed parents, on plans at once narrow and promiscuous, first in an EngUsh famdy and afterwards to a Swiss family at Lausanne, thed bachelor uncle and guardian trying to this way to remedy the disadvantages of thed orphaned condition. It was hardly a year since they had come to Uve at Tipton Grange with thed uncle, a man nearly sixty, of acqtoescent temper, miscellaneous opiMons, and uncertain vote. He bad traveUed to his younger years, and was held to this part of the county to have contracted a too rambling habit of mind.

Mr Brooke's conclusions were as difficult to predict as the weather : it was oMy safe to say that he would act with benevolent intentions, and that he would spend as tittle money as possible to carrying them out. For the most glutinously todefimte minds enclose some hard grains of habit ; and a man has been seen lax about aU his own interests except the retention of Ms snuff-box, concerning wMch he was watchful, suspicious, and greedy of clutch. In Mr Brooke the hereditary strain of Puritan energy was clearly in abeyance ; but in his Mece Dorothea it glowed alike through faults and virtues, turning sometimes toto impatience of her uncle's talk or Ms way of " letting things be" on Ms estate, and making her long aU the more for the time when she would be of age and have some command of money for generous schemes. She was regarded

BOOK I.

— MISS BROOKE. 3 as an hedess ; for not oMy had the sisters seven hundred a-year each from thed parents, but d Dorothea married and had a son, that son would inherit Mr Brooke's estate, presumably worth about three thousand a-year — a rental wMch seemed wealth to provincial families, stdl discussing Mr Peel's late conduct on the Cathode Question, innocent of future gold-fields, and of that gorgeous plutocracy which has so nobly exalted the necessities of genteel Use. And how should Dorothea not marry? — a gdl so handsome and with such prospects 1 Nothing could hinder it but her love of ex tremes, and her insistance on regulating Use according to notions wMch might cause a wary man to hesitate before he made her an offer, or even might lead her at last to refuse aU offers. A young lady of some birth and fortune, who knelt suddeMy down on a brick floor by the side of a sick labourer and prayed fervidly as d she thought herseU Uving in the time of the Apostles — who had strange whims of fasting like a Papist, and of sitting up at Mght to read old theological books !

Such a wife might awaken you some fine morning with a new scheme for the appdcation of her income wMch would interfere with political economy and the keeping of saddle-horses : a man would naturady think twice before he ilsked himseU to such fedowsMp. Women were expected to have weak opiMons ; but the great safeguard of society and of domestic Use was, that opiMons were not acted on. Sane people did what thed neighbours did, so that d any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them. The rural optition about the new young ladies, even among the cottagers, was generaUy to favour of Cetia, as being so amiable and innocent-looking, whde Miss Brooke's large eyes seemed, Uke her retigion, too unusual and striking. Poor Dorothea ! compared with her, the innocent-looking CeUa was knowing and worldly-wise ; so much subtler is a human mind than the outside tissues wMch make a sort of blazonry or clock-face for it.

Yet those who approached Dorothea, though prejudiced against her by this alarming hearsay, found that she had a charm unaccountably reconcdable with it. Most men thought her bewitching when she was on horseback. She loved the fresh air and the various aspects of the country, and when her eyes and cheeks glowed with mingled pleasure she looked very Uttle like a devotee. Biding was an indulgence wMch she aUowed herseU in spite of conscientious qualms ; she felt that she enjoyed it to a pagan sensuous way, and always looked forward to renouncing it. She was open, ardent, and not to the least seU-admdtog ; indeed, it was pretty to see how her imagination adorned her sister CeUa with attractions altogether superior to her own, and d any gentleman appeared to come to the Grange from some other motive than that of seeing Mr Brooke, she concluded that he must be to love with Ceda: Sd James Chettam, for example, whom she constantly considered from Celia's point of view, inwardly debating whether it would be good for CeUa to accept him.

That he should be regarded as a smtor MIDDLEMARCH. to herseU would have seemed to her a ridiculous irrelevance. Doro thea, with aU her eagerness to know the truths of Use, retained very chddlike ideas about marriage. She felt sure that she would have accepted the judicious Hooker, d she had been born to time to save him from that wretched mistake he made in matrimony ; or John Milton when his blindness had come on ; or any of the other great men whose odd habits it would have been glorious piety to endure ; but an amiable handsome baronet, who said " Exactly " to her remarks even when she expressed uncertainty, — how could he affect her as a lover 1 The ready detightful marriage must be that where your husband was a sort of father, and could teach you even Hebrew, if you wished it. These peculiarities of Dorothea's character caused Mr Brooke to be all the more blamed in neighbouring families for not securing some middle-aged lady as guide and companion to Ms Meces.

But he MmseU dreaded so much the sort of superior woman likely to be available for such a position, that he allowed himself to be dissuaded by Dorothea's objections, and was in this case brave enough to defy the world — that is to say, Mrs CadwaUader the Rector's wife, and the small group of gentry with whom he visited in the north-east corner of Loamshire. So Miss Brooke presided in her uncle's household, and did not at aU dislike her new authority, with the homage that belonged to it. Sd James Chettam was going to dine at the Grange to-day with another gentleman whom the gdls had never seen, and about whom Dorothea felt some venerating expectation. TMs was the Reverend Edward Casaubon, noted to the county as a man of profound learning, understood for many years to be engaged on a great work concerning religious history ; also as a man of wealth enough to give lustre to Ms piety, and having views of his own which were to be more clearly ascertained on the pubtication of his book.

His very name carried an impressiveness hardly to be measured without a precise chronology of scholarsMp. Early in the day Dorothea had returned from the infant school which she had set going to the viUage, and was taking her usual place in the pretty sitting-room which divided the bedrooms of the sisters, bent on finishing a plan for some buildings (a kind of work which she delighted to), when Celia, who had been watching her with a hesitating desde to propose something, said — " Dorothea dear, d you don't mind — d you are not very busy — suppose we looked at mamma's jewels to-day, and divided them ? It is exactly six months to-day since uncle gave them to you, and you have not looked at them yet." Celia's face had the shadow of a pouting expression in it, the full presence of the pout being kept back by an habitual awe <of Dorothea and principle ; two associated facts which might show a mysterious electricity d you touched them incautiously. To her reUef, Doro thea's eyes were fuU of laughter as she looked up.

BOOK I.

— MISS BROOKE. 5 " What a wonderful Uttle almanac you are, CeUa ! Is it six calen dar or six lunar months 1 " " It is the last day of September now, and it was the first of April when uncle gave them to you. You know, he said that he had for gotten them till then. I beUeve you have never thought of them since you locked them up to the cabinet here." " Well, dear, we should never wear them, you know." Dorothea spoke in a futi cordial tone, half caressing, had explanatory. She had her pencd in her hand, and was making tiny side-plans on a margin. CeUa coloured, and looked very grave. " I think, dear, we are wanting in respect to mamma's memory, to put them by and take no notice of them. And," she added, after hesitating a tittle, with a rising sob of mortification, " necklaces are qMte usual now ; and Madame Potogon, who was stricter in some things even than you are, used to wear ornaments.

And Christians generally — surely there are women in heaven now who wore jewels." CeUa was conscious of some mental strength when she really apptied herseU to argument. " You would like to wear them . " exclaimed Dorothea, an ad of astomsbed discovery animating her whole person with a dramatic action which she had caught from that very Madame PotiiQon who wore the ornaments. " Of course, then, let us have them out. Why did you not teU me before 1 But the keys, the keys ! " She pressed her hands against the sides of her head and seemed to despad of her memory. " They are here," said CeUa, with whom this explanation had been long meditated and prearranged. " Pray open the large drawer of the cabinet and get out the jewelbox." The casket was soon open before them, and the various jewels spread out, making a bright parterre on the table.

It was no great coUection, but a few of the ornaments were reaUy of remarkable beauty, the finest that was obvious at first being a necklace of purple amethysts set in exquisite gold work, and a pearl cross with five brilliants to it. Dorothea immediately took up the necMace and fastened it round her sister's neck, where it fitted almost as closely as a bracelet ; but the circle stoted the Henrietta-Maria style of Ceda's head and neck, and she could see that it did, to the pier-glass opposite. " There, CeUa ! you can wear that with your Indian muslin. But tMs cross you must wear with your dark dresses." CeUa was trying not to smde with pleasure. " 0 Dodo, you must keep the cross yourseU." " No, no, dear, no," said Dorothea, putting up ber hand with care less deprecation. " Yes, indeed you must ; it would sMt you — in your black dress, now," said Celia, tosistingly.

" You might wear that." " Not for the world, not for the world. A cross is the last thing I would wear as a trinket." Dorothea shuddered sdghtly. MIDDLEMARCH. 6 " Then you wdl tMnk it wicked to me to wear it," said CeUa, un " No, dear, no," said Dorothea, stroking her sister's cheek. " Souls have complexions too : what wdl suit one wtil not suit another. " But you might like to keep it for mamma's sake." "No, I have other things of mamma's — her sandal-wood box wMch I am so fond of— plenty of things. In fact, they are ad yours, dear. We need discuss them no longer. There— take away your property." Ceda felt a Uttle hurt. There was a strong assumption ot superi ority to tMs PuritaMc toleration, hardly less trying to the blond flesh of an unenthusiastic sister than a PuritaMc persecution. " But how can I wear ornaments d you, who are the elder sister, wtil never wear them ?

" " Nay, Ceda, that is too much to ask, that I should wear trinkets to keep you to countenance. If I were to put on such a necklace as that, I should feel as d I had been pirouetting. The world would go round with me, and I should not know how to walk." Celia had unclasped the necklace and drawn it off. " It would be a little tight for your neck ; something to tie down and hang would sMt you better," she said, with some satisfaction. The complete un fitness of the necklace from aU points of view for Dorothea, made Celia happier to taking it. She was opening some ring-boxes, wMch disclosed, a fine emerald with diamonds, and just then the sun pass ing beyond a cloud sent a bright gleam over the table. " How very beautUul these gems are ! " said Dorothea, under a new current of feeUng, as sudden as the gleam.

" It is strange how deeply colours seem to penetrate one, Uke scent. I suppose that is the reason why gems are used as sptiitual emblems in the Revelation of St John. They look like fragments of heaven. I think that emerald is more beautiful than any of them." " And there is a bracelet to match it," said Celia. " We did not notice this at first." " They are lovely," said Dorothea, slipping the ring and bracelet on her finely-turned finger and wrist, and holding them towards the window on a level with her eyes. AU the wMle her thought was trying to justify her detight in the colours by merging them to her mystic reUgious joy. "You would like those, Dorothea," said CeUa, rather falteringly, beginning to think with wonder that her sister showed some weakness, and also that emeralds would sMt her own complexion even better than purple amethysts.

" You must keep that ring and brace let—d nothing else. But see, these agates are very pretty — and quiet." " Yes ! I wdl keep these — this ring and bracelet," said Dorothea. Then, letting her hand faU on the table, she said to another tone — " Yet what miserable men find such things, and work at them, and seU them ! " She paused again, and CeUa thought that her sister

BOOK I.

— MISS BROOKE. 7 was going to renounce the ornaments, as to consistency she ought to do. " Yes, dear, I wtil keep these," said Dorothea, decidedly. " But take aU the rest away, and the casket." She took up her pencd without removing the jewels, and stdl looking at them. She thought of often having them by her, to feed her eye at these Uttle fountains of pure colour. " ShaU you wear them in company ? " said CeUa, who was watching her with real curiosity as to what she would do. Dorothea glanced qMckly at her sister. Across aU her imaginative adornment of those whom she loved, there darted now and then a keen discernment, wMch was not without a scorching quatity. If Miss Brooke ever attained perfect meekness, it woMd not be for lack of toward fire. " Perhaps," she said, rather haughtdy. " I cannot teU to what level I may sink."

CeUa blushed, and was unhappy : she saw that she had offended her sister, and dared not say even anything pretty about the gift of the ornaments wMch she put back toto the box and carried away. Dorothea too was unhappy, as she went on with her plan-drawing, questioning the purity of her own feeling and speech to the scene wMch had ended with that Uttle explosion. CeUa's consciousness told her that she had not been at aU in the wrong : it was qtote natural and justifiable that she shoMd have asked that question, and she repeated to herseU that Dorothea was inconsistent : either she should have taken her full share of the jewels, or, after what she had said, she should have renounced them altogether. " I am sure — at least, I trust," thought CeUa, " that the wearing of a necklace wiU not interfere with my prayers.

And I do not see that I should be bound by Dorothea's opiMons now we are going toto society, though of course she herseU ought to be bound by them. But Dorothea is not always consistent." Thus CeUa, mutely bending over her tapestry, until she heard her sister railing her. " Here, Kitty, come and look at my plan ; I shaU think I am a great architect, if I have not got incompatible stairs and fireplaces." As CeUa bent over the paper, Dorothea put her cheek against her sister's arm caressingly. Ceda understood the action. Dorothea saw that she had been in the wrong, and CeUa pardoned her. Since they could remember, there had been a mixture of criticism and awe in the attitude of Celia's mind towards her elder sister. The younger had always worn a yoke ; but is there any yoked creature without its private opiMons . MIDDLEMARCH.

Chapter II

" ' Dime ; no ves aquel caballero que hicia nosotros viene sobre un caballo rucio rodado que trae puesto en la cabeza un yelmo de oro?' 'Lo que veo y columbro, respondio Sancho, ' no es sino un hombre sobre un asno pardo como el mio>t que trae sobre la cabeza una eosa que relumbra.' ' Pues ese es el yelmo de Mambrino,' dijo Don Quijote. " — Cervantes. " 'Seest thou not yon cavalier who cometh toward us on a dapple-grey steed, and weareth a golden helmet?' 'What I see," answered Sancho, 'is nothing but a man on a grey ass like my own, who carries something shiny on his head.' 'Just so,' answered Don Quixote : ' and that resplendent object is the helmet of Mambrino. ' " " Sir Humphry Davy ?" said Mr Brooke, over the soup, to Ms easy smiling way, taking up Sd James Chettam's remark that he was studying Davy's Agricultural Chemistry.

" WeU, now, Sd Hum ptoy Davy : I dined with him years ago at Cartwright's, and Words worth was there too — the poet Wordsworth, you know. Now there was something singular. I was at Cambridge when Wordsworth was there, and I never met bim — and I dined with him twenty years afterwards at Cartwright's. There's an oddity to things, now. But Davy was there : he was a poet too. Or, as I may say, Wordsworth was poet one, and Davy was poet two. That was true in every sense, you know." Dorothea felt a Uttle more uneasy than usual. In the beginning of dinner, the party being smaU and the room still, these motes from the mass of a magistrate's mind feU too noticeably. She wondered how a man Uke Mr Casaubon would support such triviatity. His manners, she thought, were very dignified ; the set of his don-grey had and his deep eye-sockets made him resemble the portrait of Locke.

He had the spare form and the pale complexion wMch be came a student ; as different as possible from the blooming Engtish man of the red-wMskered type represented by Sd James Chettam. "I am reading the Agricultural Chemistry," said tMs excellent baronet, " because I am going to take one of the farms into my own hands, and see d something cannot be done to setting a good pat tern of farming among my tenants. Do you approve of that, Miss Brooke ? " " A great mistake, Chettam," interposed Mr Brooke, " going toto electrifying your land and that kind of thing, and making a parlour of your cow-house. It won't do. I went toto science a great deal myseU at one time ; but I saw it would not do. It leads to everything ; you can let nothing alone. No, no — see that your tenants don't sell thed straw, and that kind of thing ; and give them drato tog-tiles, you know.

But your fancy-farming will not do — the most expensive sort of whistle you can buy : you may as well keep a pack of hounds." " Surely," said Dorothea, " it is better to spend money in finding

BOOK L

— MISS BROOKE. 9 out how men can make the most of the land wMch supports them aU, than to keeping dogs and horses oMy to gallop over it. It is not a sin to make yourseU poor to performing experiments for the good of ail. She spoke with more energy than is expected of so young a lady, but Sd James had appealed to her. He was accustomed to do so, and she had often thought that she could urge him to many good actions when he was her brother-in-law. Mr Casaubon turned Ms eyes very markedly on Dorothea while she was speaking, and seemed to observe her newly. " Young ladies don't understand potitical economy, you know," said Mr Brooke, smiling towards Mr Casaubon. " I remember when we were aU reading Adam Smith. There is a book, now. I took in aU the new ideas at one time — human perfectibiUty, now.

But some say, history moves in cdcles ; and that may be very weU argued ; I have argued it myseU. The fact is, human reason may carry you a Uttle too far — over the hedge, to fact. It carried me a good way at one time ; but I saw it would not do. I puUed up ; I pulled up in time. But not too hard. I have always been in favour of a little theory : we must have Thought ; else we shaU be landed back in the dark ages. But talking of books, there is Southey's 'Peninsular War.' I am reading that of a morning. You know Southey ? " "No," said Mr Casaubon, not keeping pace with Mr Brooke's impetuous reason, and thinking of the book only. " I have tittle leisure for such literature just now. I have been using up my eyesight on old characters lately ; the fact is, I want a reader for my evenings ; but I am fastidious to voices, and I cannot endure Ustening to an imperfect reader.

It is a misfortune, to some senses : I feed too much on the toward sources ; I Uve too much with the dead. My mind is something like the ghost of an ancient, wandering about the world and trying mentaUy to construct it as it used to be, in spite of ruin and confusing changes. But I find it necessary to use the utmost caution about my eyesight." This was the first time that Mr Casaubon had spoken at any length. He dedvered MmseU with precision, as d he had been caUed upon to make a pubtic statement ; and the balanced sing-song neatness of Ms speech, occasionaUy corresponded to by a movement of Ms head, was the more conspicuous from its contrast with good Mr Brooke's scrappy slovenliness. Dorothea said to herseU that Mr Casaubon was the most interesting man she had ever seen, not excepting even Monsieur Ltiet, the Vaudois clergyman who had given conferences on the Mstory of the Waldenses.