Middlemarch

CHAPTER XVIII.

”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 cross the Line, May languish with the scurvy.”

Some weeks passed after this conversation before the question of thechaplaincy gathered any practical import for Lydgate, and withouttelling himself the reason, he deferred the predetermination on whichside he should give his vote. It would really have been a matter oftotal indifference to him--that is to say, he would have taken the moreconvenient side, and given his vote for the appointment of Tyke withoutany hesitation--if he had not cared personally for Mr. Farebrother.

But his liking for the Vicar of St. Botolph's grew with growingacquaintanceship. That, entering into Lydgate's position as anew-comer who had his own professional objects to secure, Mr.Farebrother should have taken pains rather to warn off than to obtainhis interest, showed an unusual delicacy and generosity, whichLydgate's nature was keenly alive to. It went along with other pointsof conduct in Mr. Farebrother which were exceptionally fine, and madehis character resemble those southern landscapes which seem dividedbetween natural grandeur and social slovenliness. Very few men couldhave been as filial and chivalrous as he was to the mother, aunt, andsister, whose dependence on him had in many ways shaped his life ratheruneasily for himself; few men who feel the pressure of small needs areso nobly resolute not to dress up their inevitably self-interesteddesires in a pretext of better motives. In these matters he wasconscious that his life would bear the closest scrutiny; and perhapsthe consciousness encouraged a little defiance towards the criticalstrictness of persons whose celestial intimacies seemed not to improvetheir domestic manners, and whose lofty aims were not needed to accountfor their actions. Then, his preaching was ingenious and pithy, likethe preaching of the English Church in its robust age, and his sermonswere delivered without book. People outside his parish went to hearhim; and, since to fill the church was always the most difficult partof a clergyman's function, here was another ground for a careless senseof superiority. Besides, he was a likable man: sweet-tempered,ready-witted, frank, without grins of suppressed bitterness or otherconversational flavors which make half of us an affliction to ourfriends. Lydgate liked him heartily, and wished for his friendship.

With this feeling uppermost, he continued to waive the question of thechaplaincy, and to persuade himself that it was not only no properbusiness of his, but likely enough never to vex him with a demand forhis vote. Lydgate, at Mr. Bulstrode's request, was laying down plansfor the internal arrangements of the new hospital, and the two wereoften in consultation. The banker was always presupposing that hecould count in general on Lydgate as a coadjutor, but made no specialrecurrence to the coming decision between Tyke and Farebrother. Whenthe General Board of the Infirmary had met, however, and Lydgate hadnotice that the question of the chaplaincy was thrown on a council ofthe directors and medical men, to meet on the following Friday, he hada vexed sense that he must make up his mind on this trivial Middlemarchbusiness. He could not help hearing within him the distinctdeclaration that Bulstrode was prime minister, and that the Tyke affairwas a question of office or no office; and he could not help an equallypronounced dislike to giving up the prospect of office. For hisobservation was constantly confirming Mr. Farebrother's assurance thatthe banker would not overlook opposition. ”Confound their pettypolitics!” was one of his thoughts for three mornings in the meditativeprocess of shaving, when he had begun to feel that he must really holda court of conscience on this matter. Certainly there were validthings to be said against the election of Mr. Farebrother: he had toomuch on his hands already, especially considering how much time hespent on non-clerical occupations. Then again it was a continuallyrepeated shock, disturbing Lydgate's esteem, that the Vicar shouldobviously play for the sake of money, liking the play indeed, butevidently liking some end which it served. Mr. Farebrother contendedon theory for the desirability of all games, and said that Englishmen'swit was stagnant for want of them; but Lydgate felt certain that hewould have played very much less but for the money. There was abilliard-room at the Green Dragon, which some anxious mothers and wivesregarded as the chief temptation in Middlemarch. The Vicar was afirst-rate billiard-player, and though he did not frequent the GreenDragon, there were reports that he had sometimes been there in thedaytime and had won money. And as to the chaplaincy, he did notpretend that he cared for it, except for the sake of the forty pounds.Lydgate was no Puritan, but he did not care for play, and winning moneyat it had always seemed a meanness to him; besides, he had an ideal oflife which made this subservience of conduct to the gaining of smallsums thoroughly hateful to him. Hitherto in his own life his wants hadbeen supplied without any trouble to himself, and his first impulse wasalways to be liberal with half-crowns as matters of no importance to agentleman; it had never occurred to him to devise a plan for gettinghalf-crowns. He had always known in a general way that he was notrich, but he had never felt poor, and he had no power of imagining thepart 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 frameexcuses for this deliberate pursuit of small gains. It was altogetherrepulsive to him, and he never entered into any calculation of theratio between the Vicar's income and his more or less necessaryexpenditure. It was possible that he would not have made such acalculation in his own case.

And now, when the question of voting had come, this repulsive fact toldmore strongly against Mr. Farebrother than it had done before. Onewould know much better what to do if men's characters were moreconsistent, and especially if one's friends were invariably fit for anyfunction they desired to undertake! Lydgate was convinced that ifthere had been no valid objection to Mr. Farebrother, he would havevoted for him, whatever Bulstrode might have felt on the subject: hedid not intend to be a vassal of Bulstrode's. On the other hand, therewas Tyke, a man entirely given to his clerical office, who was simplycurate at a chapel of ease in St. Peter's parish, and had time forextra duty. Nobody had anything to say against Mr. Tyke, except thatthey could not bear him, and suspected him of cant. Really, from hispoint of view, Bulstrode was thoroughly justified.

But whichever way Lydgate began to incline, there was something to makehim wince; and being a proud man, he was a little exasperated at beingobliged to wince. He did not like frustrating his own best purposes bygetting on bad terms with Bulstrode; he did not like voting againstFarebrother, and helping to deprive him of function and salary; and thequestion occurred whether the additional forty pounds might not leavethe Vicar free from that ignoble care about winning at cards.Moreover, Lydgate did not like the consciousness that in voting forTyke he should be voting on the side obviously convenient for himself.But would the end really be his own convenience? Other people wouldsay so, and would allege that he was currying favor with Bulstrode forthe sake of making himself important and getting on in the world. Whatthen? He for his own part knew that if his personal prospects simplyhad been concerned, he would not have cared a rotten nut for thebanker's friendship or enmity. What he really cared for was a mediumfor his work, a vehicle for his ideas; and after all, was he not boundto prefer the object of getting a good hospital, where he coulddemonstrate the specific distinctions of fever and test therapeuticresults, before anything else connected with this chaplaincy? For thefirst time Lydgate was feeling the hampering threadlike pressure ofsmall social conditions, and their frustrating complexity. At the endof his inward debate, when he set out for the hospital, his hope wasreally in the chance that discussion might somehow give a new aspect tothe question, and make the scale dip so as to exclude the necessity forvoting. I think he trusted a little also to the energy which isbegotten by circumstances--some feeling rushing warmly and makingresolve easy, while debate in cool blood had only made it moredifficult. However it was, he did not distinctly say to himself onwhich side he would vote; and all the while he was inwardly resentingthe subjection which had been forced upon him. It would have seemedbeforehand like a ridiculous piece of bad logic that he, with hisunmixed resolutions of independence and his select purposes, would findhimself at the very outset in the grasp of petty alternatives, each ofwhich was repugnant to him. In his student's chambers, he hadprearranged his social action quite differently.

Lydgate was late in setting out, but Dr. Sprague, the two othersurgeons, and several of the directors had arrived early; Mr.Bulstrode, treasurer and chairman, being among those who were stillabsent. The conversation seemed to imply that the issue wasproblematical, and that a majority for Tyke was not so certain as hadbeen generally supposed. The two physicians, for a wonder, turned outto be unanimous, or rather, though of different minds, they concurredin action. Dr. Sprague, the rugged and weighty, was, as every one hadforeseen, an adherent of Mr. Farebrother. The Doctor was more thansuspected of having no religion, but somehow Middlemarch tolerated thisdeficiency in him as if he had been a Lord Chancellor; indeed it isprobable that his professional weight was the more believed in, theworld-old association of cleverness with the evil principle being stillpotent in the minds even of lady-patients who had the strictest ideasof frilling and sentiment. It was perhaps this negation in the Doctorwhich made his neighbors call him hard-headed and dry-witted;conditions of texture which were also held favorable to the storing ofjudgments connected with drugs. At all events, it is certain that ifany medical man had come to Middlemarch with the reputation of havingvery definite religious views, of being given to prayer, and ofotherwise showing an active piety, there would have been a generalpresumption 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 suchas gave a distant medical sanction to all serious sentiment, whether ofChurch or Dissent, rather than any adhesion to particular tenets. IfMr. Bulstrode insisted, as he was apt to do, on the Lutheran doctrineof 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 afortuitous conjunction of atoms; if Mrs. Wimple insisted on aparticular providence in relation to her stomach complaint, Dr. Minchinfor his part liked to keep the mental windows open and objected tofixed limits; if the Unitarian brewer jested about the AthanasianCreed, Dr. Minchin quoted Pope's ”Essay on Man.” He objected to therather free style of anecdote in which Dr. Sprague indulged, preferringwell-sanctioned quotations, and liking refinement of all kinds: it wasgenerally known that he had some kinship to a bishop, and sometimesspent 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: whereasDr. Sprague was superfluously tall; his trousers got creased at theknees, and showed an excess of boot at a time when straps seemednecessary to any dignity of bearing; you heard him go in and out, andup and down, as if he had come to see after the roofing. In short, hehad weight, and might be expected to grapple with a disease and throwit; while Dr. Minchin might be better able to detect it lurking and tocircumvent it. They enjoyed about equally the mysterious privilege ofmedical reputation, and concealed with much etiquette their contemptfor each other's skill. Regarding themselves as Middlemarchinstitutions, they were ready to combine against all innovators, andagainst non-professionals given to interference. On this ground theywere both in their hearts equally averse to Mr. Bulstrode, though Dr.Minchin had never been in open hostility with him, and never differedfrom him without elaborate explanation to Mrs. Bulstrode, who had foundthat Dr. Minchin alone understood her constitution. A layman who priedinto the professional conduct of medical men, and was always obtrudinghis reforms,--though he was less directly embarrassing to the twophysicians than to the surgeon-apothecaries who attended paupers bycontract, was nevertheless offensive to the professional nostril assuch; and Dr. Minchin shared fully in the new pique against Bulstrode,excited by his apparent determination to patronize Lydgate. Thelong-established practitioners, Mr. Wrench and Mr. Toller; were justnow standing apart and having a friendly colloquy, in which they agreedthat Lydgate was a jackanapes, just made to serve Bulstrode's purpose.To non-medical friends they had already concurred in praising the otheryoung practitioner, who had come into the town on Mr. Peacock'sretirement without further recommendation than his own merits and suchargument for solid professional acquirement as might be gathered fromhis having apparently wasted no time on other branches of knowledge.It was clear that Lydgate, by not dispensing drugs, intended to castimputations on his equals, and also to obscure the limit between hisown rank as a general practitioner and that of the physicians, who, inthe interest of the profession, felt bound to maintain its variousgrades,--especially against a man who had not been to either of theEnglish universities and enjoyed the absence of anatomical and bedsidestudy there, but came with a libellous pretension to experience inEdinburgh and Paris, where observation might be abundant indeed, buthardly sound.

Thus it happened that on this occasion Bulstrode became identified withLydgate, and Lydgate with Tyke; and owing to this variety ofinterchangeable names for the chaplaincy question, diverse minds wereenabled to form the same judgment concerning it.

Dr. Sprague said at once bluntly to the group assembled when heentered, ”I go for Farebrother. A salary, with all my heart. But whytake it from the Vicar? He has none too much--has to insure his life,besides keeping house, and doing a vicar's charities. Put forty poundsin his pocket and you'll do no harm. He's a good fellow, isFarebrother, with as little of the parson about him as will serve tocarry orders.”

”Ho, ho! Doctor,” said old Mr. Powderell, a retired iron-monger ofsome standing--his interjection being something between a laugh and aParliamentary disapproval; ”we must let you have your say. But what wehave to consider is not anybody's income--it's the souls of the poorsick people”--here Mr. Powderell's voice and face had a sincere pathosin them. ”He is a real Gospel preacher, is Mr. Tyke. I should voteagainst my conscience if I voted against Mr. Tyke--I should indeed.”

”Mr. Tyke's opponents have not asked any one to vote against hisconscience, I believe,” said Mr. Hackbutt, a rich tanner of fluentspeech, whose glittering spectacles and erect hair were turned withsome severity towards innocent Mr. Powderell. ”But in my judgment itbehoves us, as Directors, to consider whether we will regard it as ourwhole business to carry out propositions emanating from a singlequarter. Will any member of the committee aver that he would haveentertained the idea of displacing the gentleman who has alwaysdischarged the function of chaplain here, if it had not been suggestedto him by parties whose disposition it is to regard every institutionof this town as a machinery for carrying out their own views? I tax noman's motives: let them lie between himself and a higher Power; but Ido say, that there are influences at work here which are incompatiblewith genuine independence, and that a crawling servility is usuallydictated by circumstances which gentlemen so conducting themselvescould not afford either morally or financially to avow. I myself am alayman, but I have given no inconsiderable attention to the divisionsin the Church and--”

”Oh, damn the divisions!” burst in Mr. Frank Hawley, lawyer andtown-clerk, who rarely presented himself at the board, but now lookedin hurriedly, whip in hand. ”We have nothing to do with them here.Farebrother has been doing the work--what there was--without pay, andif pay is to be given, it should be given to him. I call it aconfounded job to take the thing away from Farebrother.”

”I think it would be as well for gentlemen not to give their remarks apersonal bearing,” said Mr. Plymdale. ”I shall vote for theappointment of Mr. Tyke, but I should not have known, if Mr. Hackbutthadn't hinted it, that I was a Servile Crawler.”

”I disclaim any personalities. I expressly said, if I may be allowedto repeat, or even to conclude what I was about to say--”

”Ah, here's Minchin!” said Mr. Frank Hawley; at which everybody turnedaway from Mr. Hackbutt, leaving him to feel the uselessness of superiorgifts in Middlemarch. ”Come, Doctor, I must have you on the rightside, eh?”

”I hope so,” said Dr. Minchin, nodding and shaking hands here andthere; ”at whatever cost to my feelings.”

”If there's any feeling here, it should be feeling for the man who isturned out, I think,” said Mr. Frank Hawley.

”I confess I have feelings on the other side also. I have a dividedesteem,” said Dr. Minchin, rubbing his hands. ”I consider Mr. Tyke anexemplary man--none more so--and I believe him to be proposed fromunimpeachable motives. I, for my part, wish that I could give him myvote. But I am constrained to take a view of the case which gives thepreponderance to Mr. Farebrother's claims. He is an amiable man, anable preacher, and has been longer among us.”

Old Mr. Powderell looked on, sad and silent. Mr. Plymdale settled hiscravat, uneasily.

”You don't set up Farebrother as a pattern of what a clergyman ought tobe, I hope,” said Mr. Larcher, the eminent carrier, who had just comein. ”I have no ill-will towards him, but I think we owe something tothe public, not to speak of anything higher, in these appointments. Inmy opinion Farebrother is too lax for a clergyman. I don't wish tobring up particulars against him; but he will make a little attendancehere go as far as he can.”

”And a devilish deal better than too much,” said Mr. Hawley, whose badlanguage was notorious in that part of the county. ”Sick people can'tbear so much praying and preaching. And that methodistical sort ofreligion is bad for the spirits--bad for the inside, eh?” 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 theReverend Edward Thesiger, Rector of St. Peter's, Mr. Bulstrode, and ourfriend Mr. Brooke of Tipton, who had lately allowed himself to be puton the board of directors in his turn, but had never before attended,his attendance now being due to Mr. Bulstrode's exertions. Lydgate wasthe only person still expected.

Every one now sat down, Mr. Bulstrode presiding, pale andself-restrained as usual. Mr. Thesiger, a moderate evangelical, wishedfor the appointment of his friend Mr. Tyke, a zealous able man, who,officiating at a chapel of ease, had not a cure of souls too extensiveto leave him ample time for the new duty. It was desirable thatchaplaincies of this kind should be entered on with a ferventintention: they were peculiar opportunities for spiritual influence;and while it was good that a salary should be allotted, there was themore need for scrupulous watching lest the office should be pervertedinto a mere question of salary. Mr. Thesiger's manner had so muchquiet propriety that objectors could only simmer in silence.

Mr. Brooke believed that everybody meant well in the matter. He hadnot himself attended to the affairs of the Infirmary, though he had astrong interest in whatever was for the benefit of Middlemarch, and wasmost happy to meet the gentlemen present on any public question--”anypublic question, you know,” Mr. Brooke repeated, with his nod ofperfect understanding. ”I am a good deal occupied as a magistrate, andin the collection of documentary evidence, but I regard my time asbeing at the disposal of the public--and, in short, my friends haveconvinced me that a chaplain with a salary--a salary, you know--is avery good thing, and I am happy to be able to come here and vote forthe appointment of Mr. Tyke, who, I understand, is an unexceptionableman, apostolic and eloquent and everything of that kind--and I am thelast man to withhold my vote--under the circumstances, you know.”

”It seems to me that you have been crammed with one side of thequestion, Mr. Brooke,” said Mr. Frank Hawley, who was afraid of nobody,and was a Tory suspicious of electioneering intentions. ”You don'tseem to know that one of the worthiest men we have has been doing dutyas chaplain here for years without pay, and that Mr. Tyke is proposedto supersede him.”

”Excuse me, Mr. Hawley,” said Mr. Bulstrode. ”Mr. Brooke has beenfully informed of Mr. Farebrother's character and position.”

”By his enemies,” flashed out Mr. Hawley.

”I trust there is no personal hostility concerned here,” said Mr.Thesiger.

”I'll swear there is, though,” retorted Mr. Hawley.

”Gentlemen,” said Mr. Bulstrode, in a subdued tone, ”the merits of thequestion may be very briefly stated, and if any one present doubts thatevery gentleman who is about to give his vote has not been fullyinformed, I can now recapitulate the considerations that should weighon either side.”

”I don't see the good of that,” said Mr. Hawley. ”I suppose we allknow whom we mean to vote for. Any man who wants to do justice doesnot wait till the last minute to hear both sides of the question. Ihave no time to lose, and I propose that the matter be put to the voteat once.”

A brief but still hot discussion followed before each person wrote”Tyke” or ”Farebrother” on a piece of paper and slipped it into a glasstumbler; and in the mean time Mr. Bulstrode saw Lydgate enter.

”I perceive that the votes are equally divided at present,” said Mr.Bulstrode, in a clear biting voice. Then, looking up at Lydgate--

”There is a casting-vote still to be given. It is yours, Mr. Lydgate:will you be good enough to write?”

”The thing is settled now,” said Mr. Wrench, rising. ”We all know howMr. Lydgate will vote.”

”You seem to speak with some peculiar meaning, sir,” said Lydgate,rather defiantly, and keeping his pencil suspended.

”I merely mean that you are expected to vote with Mr. Bulstrode. Doyou regard that meaning as offensive?”

”It may be offensive to others. But I shall not desist from votingwith him on that account.” Lydgate immediately wrote down ”Tyke.”

So the Rev. Walter Tyke became chaplain to the Infirmary, and Lydgatecontinued to work with Mr. Bulstrode. He was really uncertain whetherTyke were not the more suitable candidate, and yet his consciousnesstold him that if he had been quite free from indirect bias he shouldhave voted for Mr. Farebrother. The affair of the chaplaincy remaineda sore point in his memory as a case in which this petty medium ofMiddlemarch had been too strong for him. How could a man be satisfiedwith a decision between such alternatives and under such circumstances?No more than he can be satisfied with his hat, which he has chosen fromamong such shapes as the resources of the age offer him, wearing it atbest with a resignation which is chiefly supported by comparison.

But Mr. Farebrother met him with the same friendliness as before. Thecharacter of the publican and sinner is not always practicallyincompatible with that of the modern Pharisee, for the majority of usscarcely see more distinctly the faultiness of our own conduct than thefaultiness of our own arguments, or the dulness of our own jokes. Butthe Vicar of St. Botolph's had certainly escaped the slightest tinctureof the Pharisee, and by dint of admitting to himself that he was toomuch as other men were, he had become remarkably unlike them inthis--that he could excuse others for thinking slightly of him, andcould judge impartially of their conduct even when it told against him.

”The world has been too strong for _me_, I know,” he said one day toLydgate. ”But then I am not a mighty man--I shall never be a man ofrenown. The choice of Hercules is a pretty fable; but Prodicus makesit easy work for the hero, as if the first resolves were enough.Another story says that he came to hold the distaff, and at last worethe Nessus shirt. I suppose one good resolve might keep a man right ifeverybody else's resolve helped him.”

The Vicar's talk was not always inspiriting: he had escaped being aPharisee, but he had not escaped that low estimate of possibilitieswhich we rather hastily arrive at as an inference from our own failure.Lydgate thought that there was a pitiable infirmity of will in Mr.Farebrother.